heath found a red-tissue-lined (i always get into trouble with the gang about my hyphens, especially after the incident with the sixteen metre-high callas. cp: how can a flower be 16 metre high? me: you ignoramus! if i meant that i would have put in two hyphens! the entire gang, pouncing: but you didn't put in any hyphens at all! so i shall say, very carefully and without deviation, that the envelope was tissue-lined, and that said tissue was red. and that i put in all the hyphens, so you couldn't misunderstand me. and i couldn't have said red tissue-lined, because then you might think the envelope was entirely red, and in any case that would have needed a comma. so none of you better cavil about my punctuation! i have got very far from the subject. begin again.) heath gave to me a card with a lipstick mark and s.w.a.l.k on the front (this card came with the aforementioned envelope) and said he thought i should have it because of going postal. after he left i took down my pratchett and found the page:

"It was addressed to someone called Antimony Parker at 1 Lobbin Clout, and on the back, in capitals was S.W.A.L.K.

My very dearest Timony! Yes! Why should a woman, sensible of the real honour that a man is doing her, play the Coy Minx at such a time!"

i have decided to keep the card in the book at that page, and one day when i am dead someone might dispose of my books and sell them off, and some kid might find it in the way i always find newspaper cuttings and letters in the pages of old books (possession!) and there it would be! he would see moist wondering what S.W.A.L.K. meant, and lo, there would be a card proclaiming same!

and now i remember being 12 and sending i think cards, or maybe invitations? to some students in my class once, and my cousin (six years older and devious) was helping me address them. is this one a boy? she asked, and promptly wrote S.W.A.K on it. (she also wrote S.W.S. on some of them. what's that supposed to mean? i asked suspiciously. sealed with saliva, she answered me, without a blush. i'm never letting anyone near my letters again.)