How goes it?

You can’t/won’t answer. So let me punt a sit-rep your way.

Sentience at the Hope High Castle is grimly benign. Virulent penetration is an implausibility. One hesitates to grumble but one displays awesome agility in vaulting to defend its inevitability, in doing so spawning the image of a human centipede of self, translucent wraiths evacuating and transmogrifying into meaty opacity, assembling an altogether British continuum of caveats, a crescendoing choir of flustered apology.

I lost myself for a moment there.

One hesitates to grumble in this, this four-walled kingdom, this chapter in a book that will never be printed on paper and considered stodgy by the children futilely instructed to read it.

But security is sterile.

Adrenaline has, at best, been a “day player” in the production of Jeremy Kettle. He does not… I do not (to rewind into first-person) crave adventure. I am a misadventurer. But the near-certainty of robust fettle (kidney stones notwithstanding) robs the situation of spice.

Anyway, as I say, one hesitates.

I have spent much of the past week curating a domestic festival (a “Domestival” if you will, but you won’t) of classic flicks and serials for the Castle’s coterie. My personal collection is, of course, the pool from which we pump. The shit-munchers sufficiently edified, Marje and I will retire to her quarters, whereupon we will uncork a bottle of prime Aldi bubbly, turn on the Glade plug-in and settle down to a private screening on her portable DVD player. Saliently, we’ve been binging Professor Coreander Smark’s seminal 70’s documentary series, Every Square Inch. Recently re-regarded Episode 5 of Series 1 – “Suds”. I first saw it as a soppy, idealistic teen. Indelible.

I have developed a habit of referring to myself as Juliett Kilo around the premises, just on the off-chance of martial law. Crucially, others haven’t followed suit, but good things come to those who doggedly insist. Regrettably, I have also recidivised into my habit of smoking. I know, I know. But these days are oh-so incessant and Pfidze’s lungs could do with some exposure therapy.

Here’s Episode 18 of the Funfiltered podcast. Credit where credit’s due, they simply will not be stopped.