I am afraid that you are mistaken in the matter of my tails for I have never worn less than two or more than twenty-four at the one time and together, notwithstanding anything I have confided in you this fine morning.
Your personal difficulty will be resolved when I tell you that my second-best day-shirt is fitted with two tails, the one longer than the other, thus enabling me to intermix the physical comfort of two shirts on a cold day with the ceremonial probity of four tails about my bottom (the four of them moving in unison in my trousers when I waggle my hair-tail).
I never permit myself to forget that truth is an odd number and that my own personal numerals, the first and the last and all intermediaries, are inevitably even.
I have frequently missed these small things which are necessitous to personal comfort-my glasses and the black glove I use for moving the hob when it is hot, these are two examples.
It is not impossible that my kangaroo has hidden them in her pouch, for by the hoke there was never a child there.

– Flann O’Brien, “At Swim-Two-Birds” (1939)

June 19 through August 2, 2021