Greetings. I am Wonko the Sane. In the outside world I go by the name of Paolo De Grandis, a mild mannered lad who, on weekdays, used to cruise the Oakhill corridors with his faithful sidekick Teppic looking for adventure. Since then I have taken my search to Cape Town where I have made UCT my new home base.

And somewhere on this good boffo stretch of coastline lay the house of this inconsolable man, a man whom many regarded as being insane. But this was only, as he would tell people, because he was. One of the many many reasons why people thought him insane was because of the peculiarity of his house which, even in a land where most people's houses were peculiar in one way or another, was quite extreme in his peculiarness. His house was called The Outside of the Asylum. His name was simply John Watson, though he preferred to be called - and some of his friends had now reluctantly agreed to this - Wonko the Sane. In his house were a number of strange things, including a grey glass bowl with eight words engraved upon it. We can talk of him much later on - this is just an interlude to watch the sun go down and to say that he was there watching it... He had lost everything he cared for, and was now simply waiting for the end of the world - little realizing that it had already been and gone.

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