John Worley, Northampton – “Hello, hello, I thought you were dead. Hmm, that’s actually the title of an ancient Hudson + Ford song. Quite why that should stick in mind I really have no idea. Reckon the older one gets, the more junk accumulates inside one’s head (just as more fanzine accumulate inside one’s room). Anyway, it’s nice to see another issue of TC out on the streets – someone obviously didn’t like it and discarded it in the gutter…”

Ah, irony, I see. The point about head-junk is true, I fear; as I run towards The Big 30 – still some years to go, I may add – my brain fills up with useless trivia to the detriment of useful things. Like my name. Still, they say short-term memory loss is the first sign of senility. Or is it long-term memory loss…?

Miles Wood, London – “Interesting to see a review of ‘The Story of Linda’. I recall going into a video shop back in Wolverhampton with a view to purchasing (or rehiring to copy), Just Jaeckin’s adaption of ‘The Story of O’. I was informed, much to my distress, that the shop no longer stocked that title, but that I might wish to try ‘The Story of Linda’. Feeling vaguely insulted – did they think I wanted to watch any old porno flick? – I politely declined the offer. Hmmm, funny how these things stick in one’s mind”.

A phrase which rings a bell; wish I could remember why… Moving on, some words about the babe above:

Rik Rawling, Morley- “You have noticed I’ve enclosed some pictures of stuff I’ve drawn in recent years…Your artwork throughout the mag seems to involve all my various obsessions – hot babes, mutants, dangerous weapons and any kind of weirdness”.

I think this is a compliment, but faced with some free artwork, I’m not going to argue. Especially since CorelDraw’s clip art libraries are a tad short of hot babes, mutants or dangerous weapons. Also out of the box marked ‘Compliments?’:

David Stark + Carl Desforges, Driffield – “We both agree that you must be a sad, depraved, perverse individual, so all we can say is keep up the good work”.

Don’t believe anyone who tells you ‘zine editors do it for the ego-boost… Now, here are three people who seem to have too much time on their hands.

Dom Morris, Lincoln – “I’ve come to believe that in the future, money as we know it will cease to be used to carry out transactions. In the place of cash, people will use the universal currency of “Pictures of Nastassja Kinski (with no clothes on)”. So, in the interests of progress, here are two PoNK notes – worth a couple of new issues, surely?”

Andy Collins, E.Sussex – “I discovered an unusual cup at a local discount warehouse (you know, where they sell all the dodgy food which is desperately trying to imitate brand names but doesn’t get much further than the colour of the wrapping), and promptly bought it. The unusual feature? A picture of a nude girlie stuck to one side. Nothing special about that, particularly, except the fact that she has got ‘painted on’ underwear. This little gimmick is apparently to “encourage your man to do the washing up” because, yes, you guessed it, when the underwear gets wet, it becomes see-through and you get 100% muff-vision. I thought about keeping my porn-mug permanently immersed in tepid water (something around 37C), but rejected this on the grounds of (a) perhaps I should use the thing for it’s proper purpose and (b) it’s more fun licking it wet in the appropriate parts. Unfortunately, she’s now peeled off, probably due to intense tongue abuse, so she’s just sitting on my desk looking sultry. I’m just glad that man is putting new technologies to good use instead of wasting them on puerile commercial gimmicks”

Andy Waller, Bromsgrove – “Probably the highlight of the week was on Friday afternoon, when I had to dress up as ‘Mr.Blobby’ for a kiddies’ party (3-4 year olds). There was an appeal on the radio for someone, so I volunteered – got paid a bit of cash and it was quite entertaining too (very surreal). The suit provided was bloody hot, and pretty uncomfortable, since I was in it for about three hours. The little kid, whose birthday it was, was an objectionable little bastard – at one point he was calling me a “twat” and chucking plastic chairs at me. Similarly, if Mr. Blobby falls over, it seems to be the in thing for all the kids to pile on top of him, unfortunately for me. I came home pretty bruised and less fond of four-year old kids than I had been a few hours before”.

Mr.Waller is now available for parties, bar mitzvahs and satanic rituals. Wonder if the parents knew they were hiring a man whose published works include, in this very ‘zine, a piece on the delights of necrophilia? Any similarity to John Wayne Gacy is, I’m sure, purely coincidental.

Mike Landers, Colne – “Currently having a musical crisis. Perhaps you could explain this for me. There is a song on MTV getting heavy airplay called “Open Sesame” by a Swedish Muslim rapper called Leila K. It has everything I usually hate in music: unintelligible lyrics à la “Informer” which when deciphered mean very little, twenty zillion BPM (if a human being could play the drums as fast, he’d probably explode as in ‘Spinal Tap’), unoriginal video featuring bimbos gyrating and…I like it. In fact, I would go out and buy it if I could. If this carries on, I shall have to resign my membership of the Metallica fan club – and if you follow the stereotype through, the local Satanic cult too”.

Hang on… Unintelligible lyrics? Unoriginal video featuring bimbos gyrating? Sounds pretty much like heavy metal to me! No, a wide taste in music is a good thing – broadens the mind, encourages tolerance, and extends the number of babes with whom you can claim to have something in common…

Peter Payne, Japan – “I was told by my landlady the other day that, because I was teaching children in my apartment, I was in violation of our lease agreement. She’s kind of being underhanded, taking advantage of the fact that I’d never read our lease contract since it was in Japanese. Her real reason appears to be that she’s getting married and needs the space for her new husband; I am just a poor, stupid foreigner…Oh well – just as in America there are good people and bad people. In Japan you have to have 4-5 times your first month’s rent up front for deposit, “right money” i.e. pay the money to have the right to live there, and “thank you” money, thanking whoever is allowing you to live there. This amounts to $1200 or so, which you generally don’t get back…”

That explains it! The landlord at 7 Tummons Gardens is Japanese, that’s why he kept our 900 quid deposit. Hmm, never met any black, sax-playing Japanese people before.

A distinct shortage of sufficiently off-the-wall letters this time – are you lot growing cagey, wary of my steely wit? This is a rhetorical question. To bring this up to a nice, even number, we bring you the page opposite. I have been reliably informed that if you stare at it hard enough, you will experience wondrous visions. Or something. Me, all I got was a headache, despite close scrutiny under the influence of everything from Guinness to kebab. All descriptions of what you can see in the picture are very welcome…