Listing to Port

1. Snuggled up in the cosy crook of the first e, like a ferret in a nest.
2. If you look carefully, the shaft of the initial letter T is a tower block which is small because it is very far away into your screen (the crossbar is in fact the runway of a tiny airport which is even further away). This tower block has three flats available. They are quite comfortable, as things made of pixels go.
3. The hole of the last letter o is full of ants, but it’s a great place to live if you’re an ant.
4. Do you see the elephant near the end of the title? Only an ear and a trunk are visible, they look a little like a letter p (the body is the same colour as the background, because this elephant is a master of disguise). Anyway, under that elephant is a warm sandy spot that’s great to have a picnic in, and the elephant has promised not to move until you’re done.
5. What looks like a letter k is in fact a schematic representation of the state of Britain post-Brexit - confusedly going every which way apart from leftwards. It is the sole exhibit in a tiny museum of political schematics which I have just set up in the title of this post. That museum needs a dynamic, thrusting curator. Is that you? Apply here.
6. You may notice that there are some spaces in the title, and that the positions on screen that they occupy have hosted other letters in the past. As brownfield word sites, they are ripe for development. This is one area where I feel we can take many lessons from the German language. In Germany, modern sentence building regulations mean that spaces between words are usually rapidly filled with new and stylish letters.
7. Do you see that letter a in the title? That’s the best letter a ever. It’s sweet and funny and really a joy to hang out with. It’s a little shy, but once you come in and get to know it you will have an awesome little letter friend for life. It will even perch on your shoulder and you can feed it treats. Don’t mistake it for the other letter a in the title, though, which has committed murder and will do so again. I’m sure you can tell the difference.
8. The dot of the first i is in fact a spiral galaxy approximately 50 million light years into your screen. It has millions of habitable planets. There’s bound to be one you like.
9. I realise that this post is only digital at the moment, and you may be feeling reluctant, because this does tend to make real estate values volatile. But imagine: this is an up and coming area and could one day be printed out on a real printer, giving it oodles of old-fashioned charm for the retro crowd and setting off a rocket under prices. It’s in your interest to get in before that happens.

1. Eat words. Devour them book by book. Chew them over, casually and quietly, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Take words on picnics beneath waterfalls. Raid the library at midnight for juicy poetry.
2. Be a fan of words. Follow them about. Ask others where to find the best words and go to the places they recommend and hang about there trying to look interesting. Have sweet reveries about words before you fall asleep at night.
3. Get to know words. Go out for a coffee and bring your words with you and look up five hours later to see that your coffee has gone cold. Stay out with words until it is slightly too late. Have silly little adventures with words that make you giggle, but which you cannot quite explain to other people. Write letters to words and wait breathlessly for their reply.
4. Have a relationship with words. Dream all day of the moment when you get to touch them. Look words in the i and tell them what you are going to do to them, and then do it.
5. Have a bad relationship with words. Lie awake at 5 a.m. wondering where you went wrong with words. Take long walks alone to avoid the messes that you and words have made together. Let words hold you and explain why they no longer love you, but only cry when they have gone.
6. Murder words. Cut them. Cut them again and again until you can no longer quite see what they were before. Wall up words in dead-end paragraphs and leave them there to decay unread.
7. Rewrite history. Raise words from the dead, raw and new and clean, and shape them back into something that can be set free into the world. Keep their history a secret. Let them only know that you love them. Watch them go away from you and hope that they come back.
8. Grow old with words. Let them get well-worn and familiar. Let them be polished smooth like seeds while time roughs you up. Hold words in your hand and live together until you die, then let them close your eyes. Let them mourn. But leave them plenty of good soil, so that they can grow when you are gone.

1. Starling, n.: An inhabitant of the stars; an alien.
2. Badger, n.: A person who puts badges on things.
3. Humanitarian, n.: A person who subsists only on human flesh.