Reader's bloody digest...

Reader’s Digest

PO Box 5,

Isle of Man,

IM993UZ

Dear Reader’s Digest,

OK, I surrender.  I’m sorry, truly I am, but I just can’t take any more.

It’s my own fault, I know, for ever responding to the mail shot you sent me a little while ago, but since then the rain of completely incomprehensible tosh which you have poured through my letterbox has bean unceasing.

I mean, honestly, how many prize draws, which, if the implications in the glossy missives that arrive on a more than weekly basis are to be believed, I have almost certainly won, can you actually run?  There’s the immediate £5,000 draw; the immoderate £10,000 draw; the infeasible seven shillings and sixpence early bird bonus and the incontinent £120,000 draw.  OK, I may have made one of those up, but you know exactly what I mean and don’t you dare to pretend otherwise.

Furthermore, have you ever tried following your own instructions? Good grief, people!  Look, I’m no slouch at being able to cook up a process so complicated that a four digit IQ is required to stand a whelk’s chance in a supernova of successfully completing it. This will be attested to by, quite literally, legions at my place of employment who have been faced with the prospect of completing one of my fiendish puzzles or having their arms metaphorically ripped out and being beaten to death with the wet and bloody stumps.

I can even do a Sudoku puzzle in less than a week without getting my children to help me. But I am left bereft and gormless in the face of the convoluted directions in each and every letter you send me.  Stick the green sticker on your post-code at precisely four o’clock next Tuesday if you don’t want to buy a book full of red stickers every three weeks until hell freezes over, or alternatively put the gold sticker in your left ear while whistling the stars and stripes forever.

Bah.

You make Ikea flat pack instructions look like a particularly instructive nursery rhyme. My irritation at being unable to follow your insane ramblings is only eclipsed by my grudging admission that you are clearly in a different league to me when it comes to forcing innocent people to perform mind-warpingly pointless menial activities.  I salute you, while simultaneously detesting you.

The funny thing is that, at first I didn’t mind, because we have an open fire and I heat my home almost entirely on pulped junk mail because, in Bracknell, there is no council waste collection service. Instead of this, every two weeks we are lined up in the street by machine gun toting fascists and forced to eat the contents of our dustbins (which is why I have taken to putting the dog’s turds in my neighbour, Bob’s, trash).  Oddly, perhaps, he’s looking well on it.

The thing is, yesterday was a bad day.  You sent me so many offers to burn that when I came home from work the dog had roasted in her basket and my wife had melted. On the plus side, I don’t have to buy a turkey this Christmas, and I’m not being nagged, but I was quite fond of the old girl. I didn’t mind the wife much either.

Anyway, the thing is, I’d like you to stop now, please.  No more. Unless you’re writing to acknowledge that you’ll stop, forthwith, or the next envelope from you contains a big fat cheque, I don’t want any more mail from you.

I fervently hope that this letter finds you well, and happy, and delighted to comply with my request to cease and desist all mail forthwith.

I remain your faithful and admiring (but preferably from a long way away) servant,

The Grumbler