Despite my good friend J Mosthem promising to cancel my membership seventeen months ago, I remain a member of The Softback Preview.

If you’re not familiar with the operation of this organisation, members are sent a booklet each month listing all the tomes presently on offer, and can buy any that take their fancy for bargain prices. The only catch is that there’s a ‘Recommended Title’ in each issue, and unless you tick the box saying ‘No, I don’t want to buy Aren’t You That Prat Off The Telly? - An Autobiography by Keith Chegwin for a bargain £9.99′, they assume that you do want to buy it, and pop it in the post.

This has happened to me a few times. Since I’ve never once purchased anything from them willingly (I only joined for the bargain enrolment package), you might think that I’d have closed my account by now, but that would be far too much trouble. Though possibly less trouble than having to tick a box and send a form off every month for the rest of my life.

Anyway, it’s happened again, and I yesterday received a box set containing The King’s English, A Grammar of the English Language, The English Language and A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. This didn’t surprise me greatly, because I’d got three envelopes lying on my living room floor containing the last few forms which I hadn’t got round to posting yet.

This at least prompted me to post the other two, but I didn’t want to send off the envelope containing the form saying I don’t want the books that had just arrived, in case it created a paradox and destroyed the universe. So I had to carefully open each of the envelopes to find out which it was.

My careful opening went about as wrong as it possibly could do, turning the envelopes into confetti, from which state they were only salvageable by applying thick bandages of Sellotape. The result is that there are now two items of mail circulating through the bowels of the postal service which look like origami roadkill.

It’s really rather unpleasant. I hope they don’t give old J a nasty shock.