If you're a baker*, flying in the face of received wisdom and flirting aleatorily with the cosmic implications of the number 13, we've struck a dozen.

I directed the chaps to gab re: Valentine's Day, but we settled on an embargo until any of them have a love life.

Instead, I offer an excerpt from my upcoming (auto)biography†, Still Sings He. This passage details the inaugural intersection of me and my first wife, or "meet-cute" if you WILL insist on this incessant assault:

"And so he had fingered his final key. He had sung his final note. In a desperate bid for bowel vacation, he had instead vacated the land of the living. Elvis had left the building. Or so reported innumerable media outlets, collectively lunging for that staggeringly obvious headline as though it were genius. It is only repeated here for posterity, a cautionary tale against the road more followed.

'T'was a road that Jeremy had only considered when it was presented, when the gleam of orthodoxy and a happy life appeared as a tangible promise, and not a vindictive mirage. In August of 1977, Jeremy met the First Her.

Mabel Vundt was a comely specimen, or so asserted her friends in more commonplace language. With blue eyes and a sunny disposition, she made one visualise a beach when placing both attributes together in a sentence. There was more than a passing resemblance to Ma Kettle, but Jeremy would always scoff at the suggestion this was anything beyond incidental. He and Ma had, if not re-constructed their bridges, acknowledged the cinders.

As so many fairytales so very nearly recount, they met on the grounds of a castle. Prince and princess acquainted not in bedchamber, but one would have to admit to geographical adjacency constituting an overlap, of sorts. She was drinking a can of Carling and smoking a Woodbine and he wasn't partaking at all because of legal restriction. He thought her pulchritudinous, so much so he could not only understand her slovenly manner, but forgive it."

255 words is sufficient for a tease, you penny-pinchers.

*I have received no correspondence from any self-described "baker", so I am content to proceed on the profession's obsolescence.

†The mentionable Ovan Dellish has acquitted himself tolerably and cranked out the first draft. But it is now time for yours truly to take the reins of penmanship‡.

‡Not literally, of course, the Pfidzes of the world weren't conceived for giggles... purely. But the text will spurt forth from my mouth, my head and my heart, have no doubt. That is, unless you find any of the content objectionable, in which case it's probably Dellish or Lanka taking liberties with my technophobia.