This is a copy of a letter from a 'Fallen Son of the Soil', 'pleading 
poverty' to HMS Inspector of Taxes in response to a revenue demand.
     
     
Dear Sirs,
     
In reply to your correspondence of the first instance, advising of the 
trouble that I will experience should your office's demands for payment not 
be met.
     
Although I was at first a little surprised by your letter it would have been 
a source of amusement had it not revived in me a melancholy reflection of 
events leading to my present state of poverty.  Allow me to explain.
     
In 1958 I bought on credit a sawmill, together with a team of horses and a 
timber wagon.  The following year, also on credit, I purchased an adjacent 
200-acre arable farm, two ponies, a breeding bull, two razor-backed hogs and 
a double-barrelled shotgun.
     
In 1960 the mill burned down and one of the ponies died in the fire.  I 
loaned the horses and wagon to my brother, who, exercising an extreme error 
of judgement, drove them over a cliff.  The fall killed the animals, 
destroyed the wagon and shattered my brother's brain and body.
     
Upon my brother's return from hospital and, thinking that the sun's warming 
rays, might lift his spirits, I left him sitting in the garden.  When I 
returned a short time later to take him back to the house, I discovered that 
the hogs had escaped their enclosure and were eating his legs, my brother 
appeared to find this amusing and smiled at me through a mouthful of hog 
droppings.  I fetched the gun and killed the pigs.  My brother died a week 
later of swine fever and secondary blood poisoning.
     
In 1961 my father died in agony after trapping his balls in a sugar-beet 
mangler. In the same year my other brother, who had been mentally retarded 
from birth, was hanged for raping a pensioner.  Also in 1961 a tramp of 
intemperate habits seduced my only daughter and I was obliged to pay him 
£100 in order to stop him becoming one of my relatives.
     
In 1962 my youngest boy contracted mumps, it spread to his testicles and the 
doctors were forced to castrate the poor lad in order to save his life. 
Later that year, myself and two of my sons went fishing, but during a sudden 
squall on the lake the boat overturned and both of the boys drowned, neither 
one being the boy that had caught mumps.  I forthwith joined the church and 
took to pray.
     
In 1963 my poor wife, having lost her wits under the strain, ran off to 
Australia with a one0armed sheep sheerer who worked for me at the time, 
taking all our savings.  She left me to cope with our two year-old twins, 
the fruits of a final union in our life together.  I was forced to employ a 
housekeeper, she, being hard working and personable I later married.  This 
enabled me to reduce the household expenses, but it proved a devil of a job 
to get her pregnant.
     
Upon the matter of getting her with child, I sought the advice of my doctor; 
he suggested that some extra excitement initiated at the crucial moment of 
orgasm, might prove an aid to conception.  That night I put the shotgun 
under the bed.  At the point of devine bliss I grabbed up the gun and fired 
it out of the window.  My wife screamed and evacuated her bowels; this 
caused the muscles in her vagina wall to spontaneously contract, tearing the 
ligaments in my penis during the process.  We were rushed to hospital with 
me in mortal agony, where we were separated under local anaesthetic.  In the 
morning, with my appendage in traction, I was informed that I shot the pony 
that had escaped the fire.
     
In 1964 a jealous business rival cut the nuts off my stud bull.  This one 
act completely buggered my business and I took to drink.  I didn't stop 
drinking until all I had left was an old pocket watch and a weak bladder. 
Winding the watch and running for a piss kept me busy most of the time.
     
After a year or two of alcoholic oblivion, the church encouraged me to take 
heart and rebuild my life, so I purchased on credit a manure spreader, a 
reaper, a binder and a tractor.
     
The following month the worst floods in living memory washed everything away 
and buried the farm under a sea of mud.  At around the same time, my second 
wife caught VD from a travelling salesman, she gave it to me and I 
unknowingly, gave it to the vicar's wife.  Shortly after this, one of my boys 
died of a virus caused through wiping his arse on an infected rabbit skin and 
the vicar would not let him be buried in the consecrated ground of the 
churchyard.  Even though he sung in the choir for years.
     
Now you will understand why I am both surprised and mildly amused by your 
department's threat to cause me trouble if I fail to co-operate.  Quite 
frankly, if you can think of any trouble that I have not already 
experienced, I would be very interested to hear about it.
     
I must advise you that my present personal and financial circumstances 
dictate that you would find pushing butter up a porcupine's backside with a 
red-hot needle in the desert, easier than extracting money from me at this 
time.
     
Yours faithfully
     
     
A. Nonymous (retired)