AN EMAIL from AA MILNE

Here's some new bathroom reading: Francis Heaney's book Holy Tango of Literature. It's terribly high-concept for loo-side entertainment, and works like this -- pick an author, make an anagram of their name, and then use that as a title for something written in their style.

An example: William Blake becomes "Likable Wilma", a poem which begins "Wilma, Wilma, in thy blouse / Red-haired prehistoric spouse". Made me laugh, anyway. Emily Dickinson's "Skinny Domicile" you can read here.

If you want SF, you get Harold Pinter rewriting the opening scenes of Star Wars ("Horrid Planet"), and David Mamet doing the airlock scene from 2001 ("Dammit, Dave").

I'm still giggling -- though I can't quite work out why -- over the closing lines of William Carlos Williams' hitherto unknown "I Will Alarm Islamic Owls"

Forgive me
they see so well in the dark
so feathery
and so dedicated to Allah