Dear HM Government,

This is to notify you of the founding of the First Church Of Blessed Toastology, which will formally bring into being an organization to bring together all those who respect the divinity of flat bread-based cooked breakfast foods not only in this country but all over the world.

I am High Priestess Of Jam And Sweet Spreads. I am infallible, apparently*, I have ultimate authority over all members of our faith, and it is I who holds the holy Bread Knife – as once wielded by our deity, Mr Bun The Baker – which I can pronounce any doctrine I like so long as I am holding above my head.

Now that we are incorporated into a body – we'll have our own Facebook group and everything! – we shall of course expect to be treated with the deference given to other religious groups.

1. Since, apparently, "traditional beliefs" come before the law of the land or what is morally or philosophically correct, I feel it important to point out that the law against shoplifting is not in accordance with traditional Toastist doctrine.

Therefore we demand an exemption from the Theft Act 1968 to allow our followers to purloin supplies of bread, toasters, butter, spreads, and crockery in accordance with the High Priestess' First Decretum; "And lo, verily, thou must empty the shops of all Toast-related items, so that they do not fall into the hands of the heathen unbelievers. Hoard your bread! Hoard your butter! Hoard your toast racks! For it has been revealed to me that only those who truly believe in Mr Bun The Baker will be saved when the Big Oven explodes!"

2. The Second Decretum holds that followers of the faith must carry a jar of Nutella with them at all times, in a small handbag, just in case there's a bit of dry toast that needs spreading before consumption.

We expect that these jars – which, of course, must remain untouched by any heathen – will not be subject to airport or other scrutiny. We will regard it as "human rights abuse" if they are ever taken from a follower in police custody or similar circumstances.

3. We demand that the National Curriculum includes Toastist doctrine as part of the "balance" necessary in young people's education, and that in our own schools [which you'll give us lots of money to set up] we can tear up the whole sodding thing and just teach what we like.

Central to this is the truth revealed by our A Bit Burnt Cosmologist, Nicholas Parsons**, that so-called "atoms" are merely crumbs from Mr Bun The Baker's Really, Really Big Piece Of Toast; the fact that so-called "science" reveals them to not be made of bread, nor that anyone has ever seen, detected or logically deduced the Really, Really Big Piece Of Toast is heresy, and if anyone tries to say any of that we'll argue with them in a circular and irrational way until they get bored and give up.

[Also see: climate change, which is absolutely nothing to do with CO2, but it means Mr Bun The Baker turned the browning knob up a bit.]

4. The First Church of Blessed Toastology is a peace-loving religion, which teaches love and compassion.

Unless you disagree with us, in which case you're going to be damned to having red-hot toasting forks poked in your genitals for the rest of eternity.

We have no concept of "holy war" or "crusade", but we don't like Luton's one-way system very much. Watch it.

5. Followers of the faith must, in accordance with The Third Decretum, wear cute shoes at all times. The fact that cute shoes have nothing at all to do with toast is utterly irrelevant  here, and you've been mortally damned just for thinking that already, okay?

And don't even think of trying to besmirch our name by splashing all over the papers the kind of thing the High Priestess does with followers with cute shoes. That won't work at all.

6. Oh, and by the way, we own Inverness now. Bad luck.

The above represent only a part of the customs, laws and traditions of our Church, which we'll change any time we feel like it just because we can, and which you're not allowed to question. At all. So yah boo sucks.

Love to Rowie and Cormac.

Signed,

The High Priestess Of Jam And Sweet Spreads, In Her Infinite Glory And Butteriness.

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* "Infallible? he must be a bugger to play Trivial Pursuit with". Credit for this joke: Who Dares Wins, circa 1985.
** Not the Nicholas Parsons. Unless you're reading this, Nicholas, in which case you're welcome to join.

Yet more in the occasional series of "letters dictated but not sent" [sometimes because the court order precludes any form of contact].

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Dear U.S. Television, Specifically In This Case Showtime.

I'll admit, I've not been your biggest fan over the years. It used to be customary for anyone brought up in the UK to scoff at most of the output of other countries' commercial offerings – mostly with good reason, though with some very notable and celebrated exceptions.

Given the state of some of our broadcasting now, we're not in any position to scoff any more, of course, and although lots of things arrive on these shores that should have been strangled at birth [Everyone Turns Over From Raymond is the first one that comes to mind right now], and thanks to the Interwebz we can preview some things before they get here and hope they never do [The Prisoner remake, which we should resist at the border like rabies], when something worthy wings its way over it should be praised.

Top of my list right now is Nurse Jackie, which the BBC has been promoting with the first five episodes every night this week.

[All 3 episodes so far available in the UK here]

Although there's echoes of House – and every emergency-room drama-soap for the past thirty years – there's a unique, subtle vein of black humour that anyone who's ever worked in healthcare will recognize and enjoy.

The eponymous character is certainly no advert for nursing, with drug addiction, family breakdown, ethical violations and general bad behaviour as themes – and there's an annoying English upper-class "Sloane" doctor character which would make anyone here roll their eyes – but there's also an underlying humanity which shines through.

It's not an easy watch, it's not something you can watch without paying attention, but – at least so far – it has its rewards. Well done Showtime, and well done Beeb for picking it up and actually putting some promo weight behind it.

Yours noninvasively,

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Dear Facearse Denizens,

Please, do us all a favour: before you join a Facebook group, take a look inside – specifically at the "wall"  – and check if you'll be associating yourself with utter morons if you click "join".

Yours eyeboggingly,

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Dear British Theatre,

Yeah, I know, it's a tough time for everybody in this recession. It's difficult to get bums on seats when money's tight for punters – the normal fare of worthy, arty, cultural plays acted to an audience of three [including the director's mother's dog] has to be modified a bit to keep business ticking over.

So I can't entirely blame you when you resort to populist, headline-grabbing moves such as the previously-non-acting Charlie Dimmock to star naked in "Calendar Girls".

But nor can I blame myself for immediately ringing up enquiring if there's a discount for a season ticket.

Yours bonzerbegoniasly,

[title from this bitchenly amazing song/band]

Today: yet another in the occasional series of "letters I've composed but am too chicken to actually send".

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Dear Magazine Whose Name Begins With F. And Which Is Sold On The Top Shelf,

Thank you for your email, in which you say that the little piece I wrote for you as a favour to a friend was "fucking amazing" and that you'd welcome any more contributions I had.

Unfortunately, further down this mail you included the phrase "sadly we can't pay", which collectively must be four of the most depressing words in the English language [alongside "after the break, Emmerdale"].

If this was the sort of publication, as well as the sort of contribution, which came with a byline [journalese: big sod-off "THIS BITCHENLY AMAZING ARTICLE WRITTEN BY" box], or if I were wishing to collect published contributions for a resume/CV, I'd probably be happy to bash some more out. Since it isn't, I'm not.

Yours journalistically,

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Dear Poking-Their-Nose-In-Landlords,

Yep, I know, it's come round again: you're going to pop round to ensure that I'm not trashing your treasured property, even though over the past five years I've paid you thousands of pounds for the privilege of staying here and I haven't smeared poo all up the walls¹ yet so why I should start now is anybody's guess.

At least, though, I should say thank you for giving me three weeks' notice, which means I can take my time tidying up and sorting out the place rather than rushing it all over the course of a few days.

And, I guess, looking round, it *does* need doing, so I guess I should welcome being given the motivation for tasks that otherwise far too often go into the "maybe later" box – which I know from 37 years' experience often becomes the "doesn't actually happen" box.

Just keep your nose out of *that* box next to the bed, okay?

Yours rentingly,

1 You get to see some strange sights as a roving social care worker. Maybe I should suggest that the woman who does the inspection have a secondment as one, so that she can see how well my surface-messy-but-at-least-hygienic-and-non-destructive laissez-faire attitude to housework compares.

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Dear Brain,

For smeg's sake: why oh why, of all the plethora of programmes available to you on your multi-channel Freeview-enabled television, have you become enmeshed in medi-soap-drama Holby City?

Rosie Marcel, who plays Jac Taylor.

Yes, I know, they put the signed version of it on at 1am on Sunday night/Monday morning when there's absolutely nothing else on the telly or radio, but you could always read a book or something instead.

I know you have a patchy record with this kind of thing – Prisoner [CBH] may not count because you watched it for wobbly-wall reasons rather than to follow the drama, but your teenage flirtations with EastEnders, Neighbours and Home And Away do count against you – and we all know what an addictive personality you are: watching Holby may not be quite as self-destructive as drinking a half-bottle of vodka every day, but the psychological processes aren't that different.

[Although, to be fair, unlike vodka Holby has never made me throw up, sing badly, or write mawkish teenage emo poetry of a sort that makes me cringe whenever I re-read it².

...yet.]

Yours nurse-the-screens!-ingly,

2 I keep it in a folder somewhere because although it makes me cringe and want to chop it into tiny little pieces and feed it to a badger, it also reminds me that although occasionally I still get low and feel like the world is on top of me, it is never as bad as it used to be.

Dear Denizens Of [unnamed social networking/blog site];

You know what? If you post, say, forty updates a day, none of which have any relevance whatsoever, and people who have you on their friends list have to scroll through all of them to get to other people's entries, it's more than likely that they'll remove you from said list.

Yours faithfully,

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FaceBarse, for once, has the right idea: you can "hide" some people without actually de-friending them, or you can hide the updates from various applications [no, I don't want to be your pal on Vampire Fashion Wars 2000, and I don't care you just scored 250 points for sucking all the blood out of a Gucci badger].

The next stage is an interface where, using simple programming language [hey, I grew up on 1980s Spectrum BASIC], one could exclude various topics based on a simple language search; this would have been useful a couple of weeks ago….

10 IF update$ = "omigod MJ!!!1!!!"
THEN GOSUB temphide

…of course, one wishes one could extend this filter to the whole of the Interwebz;

10 IF comment$ = "All taxes are theft"
OR comment$ = "The BBC is full of Marxist
sympathizers"
OR comment$ = "Independent schools allow
a choice in education and social mobility
for the underprivileged"
THEN utterfail=1:
comment$ = FN ["A nice picture of some
meerkats instead"]

…the trouble is, on some sites it'd be so full of meerkats you'd think it'd've been an invasion…

[source. sorry, I just liked this image because it reminded me of a certain person who's often pictured with a flower in her hair...]

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Talking of the BBC and of letters: no response yet to the mail I sent on Sunday complaining that they were sucking up to the Nazi dwarf [though I didn't exactly put it in those words].

Nor has their been any feedback to the mail I sent regarding this 'news' story, in which I suggested that the untalented person therein wouldn't know what "different" means if it crawled up his arse and died, and that he should go back to hospital radio where whence he came. [Preferably in a hospital on, say, St Helena. However much the wirebirds will hate it. I'm all for conservation, but some sacrifices just have to be made.]

Perhaps the lack of feedback is because I put "pissoffunfunnymoyles@yahoo.com" as my email address.

Apologies if that is your actual address…

Another episode of "the letters Fish were to write, if he could be bothered to actually post them and if they would have any effect whatsoever and weren't just pissing in the wind".

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Dear Denizens Of Websites I Used To Frequent,

When I comment on your blog/journal posts on [insert name of other social networking site where I don't post there any more but I very occasionally leave comments on people I like who still do] – your response of "Fish! Squee! Why haven't I heard from you in so long?" tends to tempt me to say something along the lines of "because you're too lazy to click away from this generic site onto my own, probably. Have you heard of "bookmarking"? Don't be scared, it's your friend."

If you weren't so hot I'd give up on you altogether.

Yours lustingly,

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Dear Evil Sister,

No, piss off: for the second time, I'm not adding you on FaceArse, and I regret giving you the email address linked to my account there.

When you asked for my email address last Xmas you gave the impression that it was so you could discuss some issues arising from our childhoods that remain a barrier between us. This you have not done, and I can't add you as a "friend" whilst I still feel no friendship towards you, and nor do I want to give you access to the "trust circle" of people I've got on there. My instinct is you'd infect them like froggin' Ebola.

If you're serious about reconnecting and being able to deal with the past and put it behind us, it's gonna take a lot more effort than just clicking "add as friend". Until then, sod completely off.

Yours blockingly,

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Dear Woman Who Sells The Big Issue In [nearbynicemiddleclasstown] Who Is Of Uncertain Extraction, Possibly Roma:

Why is it you made me so tongue-tied when I bought this week's issue? I don't even like the magazine that much…

Yours flibbertyblurghly,

Another in the series of our occasional peeks into the "outbox" section of Fish's snail- and e-mail trays to see exactly what he's been trying to tell the universe…

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Dear Jacqui Smith [UK Home Secretary],

There's not very many things you do that I applaud. However, banning the Westboro Baptist Church twatheads from the UK is definitely one of them.

I've never been a believer in the inviolable primacy of free speech over everything else; it's always a very good first principle to work from, but it always has to be tempered with a pragmatic view of what harm may be generated. [Unconvinced? Try going to your local shopping mall with a "Gary Glitter For President" banner and see how long it is before you get the shit kicked out of you.]

The celebration of acts of specific violence against a particular group of people, in my view, definitely comes under the category of "likely to cause harm".

This comes a couple of weeks after a similar case where a Dutch right-wing politician, Geert Wilders, was banned from coming over to present his film about Islam to the Lords, the upper House of our Parliament.

I didn't agree with that latter ban. The two cases may look similar, but there are important differences; Wilders was coming to a meeting in a place where his views certainly would have been challenged and exposed for the crap they are. The Westboroans were coming specifically to push their agenda in public and to try and drown out by shouting any challenge to their views.

One also has to consider the "backlash" of a ban in that the very fact that a ban is imposed may alert people to an extremist's point of view and give him the "oxygen of publicity".

Outside of specialists, Wilders' name was utterly unknown in the UK before the ban; I'm sure his film is now circulating around file-sharing networks, with people keen to see what caused such trouble.

Again, the Westboro cult fails these tests, because thanks to a documentary in 2007 and some Interwebz face-palming it's already fairly well-known [and well-despised]. In my judgement, banning them would not give them any substantial publicity boost amongst those whose sympathies instinctively lie with those who are banned and censored.

So, a rather qualified "well done" to you.

Pity about the expenses fraud though.

Yours main-home-is-a-spare-room-in-sisters-house-my-arse-ly,

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Dear Interwebz,

Every time I think "how could my time be wasted in even more utterly froggin' useless ways?", you outdo yourself.

http://dinosaursfuckingrobots.com/ [Safe for most workplaces, don't worry.]

Yours no-further-explanation-required-ingly,

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Dear Bill [old schoolfriend and large-amounts-of-dope/drink-buddy]:

Happy 37th birthday, wherever you are. The last I heard of you over a decade ago, you were working in insurance in Norwich, so good luck with that. [Ah, how the formerly weird are beaten back into conformity.]

I guess since, for some reason, I remember the date, your name would have been floating around my brain and so it's not unnatural that you turned up in my dream last night.

But it was unnatural that you turned up like that.

Yours facepalmingly,

PS: Apologies to [ancient mutual friend] TH if you read this bit. I hope you weren't eating at the time…