Dear Ally,

If you could remove one letter from the alphabet which would it be and why? And how would that whole process work?

Thanks,

Joanna, Botswana

* * * * *

My Dearest Jo-jo-jo-jo-joanna,

Ohhh the alphabet. It has been my enemy for many a long year. And that’s saying something, because I don’t have many enemies. I am a very calm and logical person, not at all prone to fits of passion or irrational rage.

I don’t immensely dislike many people, just Stephen Harper, Gordon Brown, George Bush, Renee Zellweger, Brian (and Ben) Mulroney, Jamie Oliver, Bill Gates (and all of Microsoft), Kiera Knightley, Tom Cruise, nasty PDA couples who refuse to separate for three seconds on a narrow sidewalk forcing other people to walk into oncoming traffic to avoid them, those creepy eyebrow kids from the Cadbury’s commercial, my evil flatmate Cheryl, my evil flatmate Amanda, Grainne Watson, Jack Thompson, Peter MacKay, all of those muderous dictators, Jaques Derrida, Diana Vickers, Sarah Palin, the cast and crew of The Blair Witch 2, Miley Sirus, Hayden Christiansen, the hoardes of posh little brats that pour forth from the gate of George Heriot’s school…

- DEEP BREATH ! -

…  Hillary Duff, the woman who wrote the Twilight books, CHRIS COLUMBUS (the schmuck), Jonathan Ross,  George Eliot, the cast of Everybody Loves Raymond (nobody loves Raymond), the guys from those Vodaphone adverts who sing those annoying songs, models with voiceovers in tv commercials, Charles Dickens, Martha Jones, Gwen Stefani, Penis-Neck from Paris Hilton’s British Best Friend, Phillip and Lorraine’s (and their crazy sex/hate relationship from the Apprentice), Nicole Kidman, Bob Geldof, Bono, Angelina Jolie, that woman from the Dalry Somerfields who always makes me and Cheryl go back to get our ID if one of us forgets (even though she has carded us on MULTIPLE occasions and fully knows that we’re in our mid-twenties), those arseholes across the way who come back drunk on weeknights at four in the morning and scream outside my window for an hour, Amanda Byrnes, Mel Gibson, Charlotte Church, Slavoj Zizek, Derek Acorah, and baby deer.

Honestly, that’s hardly anyone! You think about the fact that there’s 6.5 billion people in the world and I only immensely dislike those people? Well, plus the ones I couldn’t remember. But still, very, very few.

Anyway, I think I had a point in there somewhere. Oh yes! The alphabet. Well, the whole of the alphabet, as I said, as been my enemy for years. Since I was a small child, and realised that my genius was hampered by the strict, formulaic limitations imposed by this “alphabet” that I was to be learning. That thing is complex, dude. There’s got to be at least 20 letters in there, and some of them are all swirly but some are all stick-like! How is a kid supposed to twist and bend their mind to fit such a complicated and finite mould? We go from true freedom of thought, a kind of unlimited imagination and perception, open to any and all concepts and impressions, reveling in nothing but the purity of the sensations that life has to offer, and little by little we are crippled, bound by language and its little bitty puzzle pieces, cramped and stifled. I couldn’t bear it! I rebelled, and was labelled “probably autistic” in consequence.

So, to be honest, selecting only one of those suffocating little bastards to blot out of existence would be extremely satisfying and unsatisfying at the same time. However, since you demand it, I shall obey. As a result…

This blog post has been brought to you by the letter “W”!

Yes, “W” would have to go. Or should I say UUould have to go. Because that’s all that “W” is, isn’t it? Double “U’s”? Such a uuaste of space and voice. And it’s a liar, as uuell. It’s not at all double “U’s”! It clearly is a visual combination of double “V’s” (uuhich the French have picked up). I can’t have that in my alphabet, even if it may be my enemy. And so “W” must go. As to houu that uuould go about, I should think it uuould have become quite obvious by nouu!

Of course, the hardest part about it uuould be going through all of those millions upon millions of cans of alphabet soup, picking out the “W’s” and burning them in a massive bonfire, dancing naked around the flames all night until, by dauun, they are reduced to nothing more than pathetic, dying embers.