Things Your Children Must Never Know

Flog me with nettles you pretty young boys;
Sharpen your pigsticks, extinguish my eyes;
Dress me in sackcloth and shuck off my ploys,
For the essence of warfare is constant surprise.

Now, what did the poet mean by ... yes, Emily? No, we can't do one about flowers. The next one might be about flowers, but this one is about ... well, you tell me. Who were the pretty young boys? The Hitler youth? Mister Richardson's class, you think? Well yes, I suppose some of them are quite pretty. No, I'm not a paedophile. I don't care what your dad says.

Mister Potter says: take some household ammonia, more correctly known as dilute ammonium hydroxide. You'll probably have to go back to the sixties for it, or go to one of those hardware shops whose stock looks as if it's been untouched since the sixties. Now add some iodine. You'll probably have to go back to the sixties for that too. Or buy ammonium hydroxide and iodine on the internet. Now Mister Potter shuts up for a moment and lets us continue.

What the poet meant, of course, is that he had a full head and needed to empty it a little. He needed a little brainal tap, something to relieve the pressure. Squirt, brain, squirt.

Mister Potter again: add a teaspoon of iodine to a jamjar of ammonium hydroxide and a black powder will precipitate out. Collect it on a filter paper. Buy coffee maker filter papers; use your initiative for heaven's sake. When the powder is dry, be very careful how you handle it, the slightest vibration will explode it. I used to sprinkle it on the floor at school, it scared the cleaners to death. Yes, you can probably blow your hand off with it. What of it?

Chorus: I used to have a poet living in my head. He was called Albert Feinstein. He was a Jew. He got drunk every night and had stinking hangovers. He never contributed to the rent and stole my milk from the fridge. He never took my pork. Sometimes he would be rude to my friends on the telephone. Sod poets and all their works. Poetry is pretty toxic stuff until it's been sterilised by Faber.

Some people ask me how I make this stuff up. As I open them up and rummage inside to see if there's anything interesting among the guts, I inquire:

Do you really think I'm making it up?