If you go out in the desert for long without water, the thirst can drive you mad.

Some time during the summer I produced, by request, a ballad for a Girl Guides’ Pageant on the subject of Drake’s Cannon-Ball, a local legend. It was (also by request) in the stanza of ‘Young Lochinvar’, and occupied me three days. The requestress was in raptures, but then she doesn’t know a trochee from an iambus (nor, for that matter – like de la Mare – do I).

'And he looks fit. Strong. I worry about you here alone. There are some real boofheads in this building.' 'Harmless boofheads. Anyway, I'm safer with boofheads down the hall than some religious nut-job muscle man in the flat with me.'

There's parts of Mexico they'd take you straight to the hoosegow for just whistlin that.