The offending image. We regret that our reader has misinterpreted this completely innocent image. Cecil clutches the phone mid conversation as he enthused about the drenching rains.

Dear reader, occasionally we feel obliged to publish one of the many leters we receive on a daily basis from our enthusiastic public. This one raised a twitter in the ethics department, and we felt that in the interests of transparency it should be published to assuage any moral confusion on behalf of our broad and loyal readership.

‘At the risk of seeming less than urbane, I would nevertheless like to take issue with you regarding one or two points made in a recently published piece in your otherwise excellent magazine. The piece in question was written by a Mr Cecil Poole and was entitled ‘On Top’. The piece opens with the highly amusing and laudable observation that it is essential to a successful life to have chosen the right parents!

This is all well, good and jolly as far as it goes but this opening paragraph is accompanied by a photograph of a dastardly paedophile parent, clad in close-fitting and alluring night attire, who is making libidinous choices of his own by towering over a child’s bed whilst the child in question desperately attempts to phone the police.

Surely you.are aware, dear Editor, of the subtle and dangerous forces you are, albeit unintentionally, releasing here? What on earth were you thinking of? Is it your intention to suggest that at any moment this repellent old vulture will be ‘On Top?’. Oh, Heaven forfend! I suggest Sir or Madam, that you take a quick and critical big stick to your editorial staff before you find yourself arraigned before the courts.

Another inisdious sign of Gobal Warming. Falling Grand Piano’s; ‘In the key of D’.

Severe Upright piano weather event.

Thankfully the article moves on and describes Mr Poole’s land and the locally available precipitation. Oddly the author insists that every drop of moisture that falls on his land is his and his alone, that he is personally responsible for it. Well forgive me Mr Poole, but that sounds like a lot of bladder to me. Eventually the drought breaks, and a tiny, forgiveable dissonance creeps into Mr Poole’s wellchosen words.‘…As with all dry spells, it is broken by rain…’Was Mr Poole expecting something else?. Lightning perhaps, and a fall of Grand Pianos?Further on the author reminds us all that a ‘… home without an island is definitely not a castle…’ and there is, we agree, a certain truth in this pithy observation. There is, undoubtedly, enormous prestige involved in owning same. This pleasure is, alack, fleeting and entirely seasonal. This dry dam seasonality, this absence of fashionable archipelago, so preys on Mr Poole’s mind that he, as we have seen, completely denies access to his vast estates in the absence of good rain.

‘of how the modern farmer, high in the catchment area, can so tragically, and quite by accident, destroy the livelihoods of those further downhill‘.

One day, I am told, during a particularly dry spell, the vicar unexpectedly came to call. Mr Poole was so unnerved by this that he took to standing inthe dry dam in a bathful of water with palm fronds tucked into his hatband. Sadly, this subterfuge utterly failed to convince anyone and it took many days to convince the author that no man is an island.This writing is a triumphant, a carefully crafted catalogue of how the modern farmer, high in the catchment area, can so tragically, and quite by accident, destroy the livelihoods of those
further downhill.

The author, if any of us need further convincing, includes a photograph, taken from his helicopter, of the day the sluice gates were opened, (accidentally of course) and swept a whole family to oblivion in a matter of minutes. None of them were ever seen again.To honour their memory, Mr Poole bought the stripped, drenched and denuded land, which was sadly much reduced in value and sold it within days and at a vast profit, to Bunnings.Well I suppose it is a good thing that someone profited from this awful tragedy.As I have so often said in the past, there is a bright future for Mr Poole in the world of journalism should he care to take up the challenge’.