How-To-Write... a Cheque

...or: cheque this art...

Americans will flinch at the "que" on the tail of this old literary curio. Notwithstanding "diner’s checks” scribbled on napkin by aspiring waiters, or those national-stereotype “Czechs” whose Lightness of Being is Unbearably Not Slovakian, the grand Olde English Promissorie Note has lost much of its currency - and not a few of its currants.

Biro on Bog Roll

A flashed wad of cheques is a rare sight indeed these days of Stephen Fry-by-night, elf-publishing and other stabs of pen. Whether copper-plated on mock vellum or crudely tattooed across the arse of water-buffalo, the original cheque is nothing less than a literary means of conveying value between parties. Except on bank holidays, it may be seen hovering over pools of stagnant syntax, or drowning in the phlegm of newspaper touts.

Echo! Echo!

Letraset on tin foil, Biroed on bog roll, Chinese woodblock printed, iced in cochineal on retirement cake or scratched with blue-black ink from the dregs of Bob Cratchit’s well, all that really matters is latex plays no part in its manufacture. Beware the crossed words “Acc. Payee Only”, which deal a severe blow to a cheque’s social mobility; as do frankings of less than fifty smackeroos by your Flexible Friend. A truly great cheque will have digits running into seven figures proclaiming, for Pity’s sake, the latest Lottoman Empress. In addition to its face value, such a cheque, cleared by the banks, may be framed and flogged off at Sodabuy’s in aid of the smiling polio victim.

Letraset on Tin Foil

Even a cheque contaminated with derivatives of hevea brasiliensis (rubber tree) may have intrinsic value; when, for example, its dodgy payer is a household name. Again, any bone-fed auction house may be contacted to assess the potential. Other examples of unkind payment: shiploads of rotten spuds delivered our way under the Marshall Plan, Confederate Dollars, fake chocolate money, misspelt innuendoes (“earos” for “euros”, “ponce” for “pence” & etc.) and the absolute vanishing of inks.

Tattoo on Buffalo 

Let us leave, buy the bye, the How-To-Writes of "cheque's-in-the-post", "Travellers' Cheques" and "chequebook journalism" for other, more fastidious correspondents to sign off on.

Chinese Wood-Blocked

And proceed, not before meantime, to the "post-dated cheque" so beloved of impoverished students and the absolute bane of slum landlords. Do be careful when passing these delicate notes, if Referred to Drawer they may easily turn to Cack-in-the-Attic.

Never Sign!

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The Society Of The Poem
by Jonathan Raban

Literary Theory: An Introduction
by Terry Eagleton

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