On a day of our own choosing 33 years ago, a woman and I vowed to live together in defiance of every unpleasant contingency and to prove all the pleasures of love. Nearly every year we run off to some hills, valleys, dales, fields or craggy mountains to mark that day. This year that occasion falls between today and Sunday.

Because many hills, valleys, dales, fields and craggy mountains are still not WiFi-endowed, you might not hear from me this Friday. I will bring the laptop but I cannot promise the laptop will bring me the web.

I suspect she will kick off her fair linèd slippers with buckles of purest gold, sit down at an ivory table and eat off silver dishes. Afterwards I hope to make her laugh until her sides ache.

To do this I will suggest we further develop this generative friendship, collaboration and partnership; that we recommit to positive and constructive caring for one another. I plan to use a lot of silly catch-phrases stolen from the emergent writings. I will quote directly from underlined portions in Tony Jones' Anecdotes and Platitudes. I will orate from the balcony the most vapid passages I can find.  The lights in nearby cottages will come on. Curses will be shouted and security will be called.

But I will be merciless. And in the candlelight I shall whisper precious truths and poignant sorrows with the most banal, pompous and insincere phrases ever to be uttered outside the UN General Assembly.

On the left side of the page I shall make a list of positive ways that she can care for me, and she in turn will fill the right side with constructive ways I might care for her. We will move, Fred- and Ginger-like, from the ivory table to the sofa where we can discuss both sides with the sort of nincomplop earnestness that Sir Pelham Grenville might have wished to put into the hearts of Gussie Fink-Nottle and Madeline Bassett.

Thus I hope to lighten the spirit and return to the hapless drudgery of editing the abyssal thinkings of Kevin, Trucker Frank and other near-literate reformers of the great Christian faith.