Dear Billing....

My dear, my very dear, Billing, my poppet, my pigsnie. How mistakenly now all seems lost you come whimpering to ask me whether the terms of affection in which I address you meant nothing from the beginning. Alas they did not.

I fear I have some responsibility for your predicament, I can see now, how my investment in Thor may have encouraged you to pursue this delusion you have so steadfastly held on to, ie. that you are a successful miner. I am sorry if that is the case. Can you not see that if one travels on the back of the bus for 40 years they cannot and should not call themselves a bus driver.

My investment in Thor did and does not mean I have any affection or respect for you, there I've said it. It was purely and simply my attempt at making money. Selfish I know. But hey, anymore selfish than screwing long term shareholders at 25 for 1? The more one thinks about your 'career' the worse it becomes.

You seem caught up in that world of your own creation where pleasure and pain, drilling and selling take on transfinite values and all your arithmetic is dismayed. Once more the inexplicable meets us. Next to the curse of useless tempters like yourself the greatest curse upon us is the failure of our own intelligence department. All that sustains me is the conviction that our realism, our rejection (in the face of all temptations) of all silly nonsense and claptrap, must win in the end. Or maybe just for once in your life you would actually do what you said you'd do?

yours affectionately, uncle.

(with the greatest respect to wormwood, screwtape and C.S.Lewis) MT