Col. Lionel "Mulchy" Hotchkiss
Royal Marines (Ret.)

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Dear Col:  I've been following your column for years, so it's with great reluctance that I approach you electronically with the following:

TGT:  I find your introductory comment "following your column for years" intriguing, since for many years my column was only in my mind, and even then I didn't follow it with any great enthusiasm. Still, accompanied by a nice glass of sherry, even the most composted of sentiments may be found to contain a gaseous truth within.

Now, with respect to your inquiry.

Bifurcating your question into fewer than three parts, I recorded the sentence "Vampires are..." using Pro-Tools 11, adding a background tabla track, and a guitar track modified by a loop of Glenn Beck saying the word "honor" miked into a Frampton-designed talk-box. This was accompanied by an amiable glass, or three, of Château de Briat Bas-Armagnac Hors d'Age.

I must report the result did not sound unpleasant, particularly the Beck sample further modified to sound as if he was calling from a minaret at sundown.

On the off-chance that the auditory element of your inquiry was not foremost in your mind, I had considered adopting a commoderate position with respect to the public and its general loathing of the semi-exsanguinated undead, and the latter's potential intestinal disquiet while subterranean nesting, possibly resulting in his or her discarded personal organic matter commingling with that provided by nature.

But since vampires don't exist, I felt no need to pursue that line of investigation further. Indeed, as a consequence of that self-created gastro-imagery, I found it necessary to repair to the garden gazebo for a stiff brandy with a splash of ginger ale, which I keep together in a seemingly innocuous bag of gardenia scented cat litter. After re-reading a chapter of Winnie the Pooh and the Metheglin Brewery Raid Mystery, and consulting my always soothing copy of Halfpenny's The Country Gentleman's Pocket Companion and Builder's Assistant (for Rural Decorative Architecture in the Augustine, Gothic and Chinese Taste), 1751, I felt "two fingers neat" assuaged that another question to The Garden Tippler had been successfully concluded - on my part.

Waiter!