While Principal at Richlands East, Ray Kelley was asked for specific information concerning the Pre-school Centre at his school. He was told that the required return had not been received by its due date. There wasn’t any Pre-school Centre at the school, so Ray replied to the request in rhyming couplets of iambic tetrameter using his nom-de-plume, Fantasma Foo. Fred Chambers, who diligently maintained such records in Head Office, would have been dismayed.
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15 September 1982
Re: Documents overdue
Dear Sir, I am dismayed and grieved to learn that you have not received from Richlands East State Pre-School Centre a note naming the President or any other appointee to this year’s Pre-School P. & C.
Further, the 1981 financial statement is (through unexplained delay) “not furnished” yet.
This is a matter for regret – but not, perhaps, for great surprise.
I am now writing to advise the Pre-School Centre on your list as “Richlands East” does not exist.
This “airy nothing” has a name; the time has come for it to claim “a local habitation”, too. That, sir, is what is overdue.
Yours faithfully
Fantasma Foo
