Responses to a Financial Survey

(i) Name:

My friends call me the Baron of Beef. You can call me Sir. I don't actually have any friends

(ii) Date of Birth:

A sunny Sunday back in the good old days, before we got bogged down in the mire of referring to dates by newfangled numbers.

(iii) Address:

You think I don't know that you shadowy bastards have it all on file? No doubt you'll send round a reply anyway, be it in the form of a letter, a phone call, a suspicious neighbourhood dog or a pudgy baby staring at me from its buggy. Any such response will be all the proof I need.

(iv) What is your income?

I have been known to ejaculate great sprawling arcs of ink, although I'll admit it has usually been infused with bile. But I do not write often; to mix my Bible stories and thus concentrate their power, it would be like spilling Onan's pearly seed upon rocky ground from which sprout the deaf ears and trampling hooves of Gaderene swine.

(v) Do you have any savings?

I saved time and money by marrying a woman who was already mostly dead inside, halving how long I would have to wait to become a widower.

(vi) What are your plans for retirement?

I want to end up as an elderly man living on my railwayman pension in the late 1950s, my half century of service granting me a generous remuneration and a right to scowl misanthropically at the world revolving around me. I want to drink self-spiked lemonade shirtless on a porch somewhere in American suburbia; a handkerchief draped over my hairless pate as I sweat, swat and flail at imaginary flying elves and impart dubious advice upon my disappointing sons and the neighbourhood at large. It is, of course, my own species of wisdom: partially comprised of wilful ignorance, partially steps in an ongoing plot to baffle and destroy, and usually made up entirely on the fly.

I make claims to be descended from Russian tsars, from Zen monks, from the Old Gods who dwell in the dark places of the Earth, from semi-sentient jackdaws and from Welshmen. That my ancestors came over on the Mayflower, they built the Mayflower, and in some inexplicable existential way, were the Mayflower. That my great-grandmother danced for Napoleon and my great-grandfather danced within a hollow pocket in his belly. That I have accepted the brine shrimp as my personal saviour and that the planet we share is comprised largely of bloodclots and dust. That the way to get ahead at work is to slip plastic army men, biscuits and other little tokens of esteem into bosses' pockets. That washing leads to infertility and that milk is comprised of the liquidised flesh of unpigmented cave-molluscs.

I want to be a belligerent scourge upon all I encounter, bellowing and vivid and clinging tight to life and the inheritance of my unfortunate children.

(vii) Can we contact you with information about financial services provided by ourselves and other related companies?

You can try, but I wouldn't recommend it. I keep guns in the house, as well as several less gentlemanly weapons about my person.

Thank you for taking the time to complete this survey.

Thank you for taking the time to reinforce my misanthropy and for leaving me white-knuckled, quivering and painfully erect in the throes of my insatiate rage.