On blogs and complaining – or – address and redress

My drear friend, Aloysius Z. Kattelbaum (of Book Titles and other tittle-tattle, below) kindly sent me these instructions on the RIGHT way to complain:

“I’d like to complain about your blog. It was so sharp it had me in stitches. I’ve never had stitches in my sides before but I’ve heard about people like you in China. Are you in the kidney business? I ought to sue.
I’d like to sue but I don’t have any money. You are considerably richer than me, somebody told me. If you lent me the money I could sue you.
In addition to that, the amount of time you’ve wasted I figure is worth something. I should charge you for that, too.
That’ll be at least £1,200 so far (and I haven’t got halfway down your blog yet).

I had lunch with my accountant once, which was a surprise because he normally looks down on people like me, and we had a long and interesting discussion about his holiday home in New York County alongside the longest lake in the US and how he always flies Virgin Atlantic, taking an economy seat, upgraded for free because his legs wouldn’t fit (he’s 6ft 7in) and how 150 -yr-old ‘historic’ houses over there can be bought cheaply because Americans prefer new.
The lunch was educational and expensive for me, but entertaining, and the next day he sent me the bill for the hour and a half and that’s how I know the going rates (accountants’, lawyers’, apostrophe’s and legalese).

Come to think of it, maybe he was charging for entertaining me, in which case of course, you could too. In that case just lend me the money to sue you and send me the entertainment bill and we’ll call it quits.”