HOW TO REDEEM THE IRREDEEMABLE:
                                                  A FEARY TALE

Once upon a time there lived the Happiest Family Ever. There was Alrighty Bod, omniscient and omnipresent, the Lowly Boast in her grey plumage, and their son the Prince of Peas, himself a cross between Pisum abyssinicum and Pisum sativum. If you’re at all confused, read on.
     All was celestial harmony between the members of the Happiest Family Ever. The word ‘problem’ had not yet been invented because nothing was problematical in the land at the head of the four rivers – not, that is, until Alrighty Bod got bored: centuries, millennia, whole ages had bored tiny holes through his indestructible substance, and by now he was all but invisible. In order to plug these cavities he abracadabraed a species he nicknamed Homo. Unfortunately, during the process of engendering these creatures he’d been half asleep, and the Homos turned out to be the conjuring trick that went pear-shaped.
     To cut a very long story down to size, Homos proved to be so cruel, selfish and bloody-minded that the Happiest Family Ever was several times on the point of sending them back into the Nothing from which they’d emerged. Finally Alrighty Bod got so angry with them that he decided to purchase their compliance with infanticide.
     Lowly Boast was apoplectic with confused resentment. ‘How’s that going to settle anything, Bod? I mean, how will our own son’s death make those bastards even zero point one percent less horrendous than they are?’
     ‘Too bad if you can’t see why, Boast. It’s the only way, and that’s all there is to it.’
     Well, the upshot of it was, since Alrighty Bod was the boss, his decision was law in the Happiest Family Ever, and the Prince of Peas was nipped in the bud after a short incarnation or incarceration as a Homo, dying on a couple of two by fours nailed together by skirted Italians.
     Now Homos have been saved from themselves by this blood-offering and will live happily ever after – unless they wreck their planet first.