Where is Chintito?

In case you are wondering why this odd piece of writing has come up instead of your favourite columnist's writing please let us explain. Chintito just called and said he was 'tied up' and just could not make the deadline. Now you may be wondering what exactly is tying him up. Your guess is as good as ours. For all you know he might be literally 'tied up' with a piece of rope or duct tape by kidnappers who are trying to force him to reveal his true identity. Well he didn't sound as if anyone was poking a sharp blade into his throat so perhaps such a theory would be a bit farfetched. So chances are that he is involved in some sort of 'official work' that he just cannot get out of and that has forced him to let his fans down of course, unintentionally.

At this point we must reveal a little about Chintito. He is one of those individuals that you would think is not quite normal. For one thing he speaks like a Japanese monorail and hates repeating himself. For another, he does not believe in sleep, making do with about two hours per night. He never tires, wakes up in the wee hours of the morning, attends to official business, plays a game of x (certain facts have to remain classified), goes to and arranges meetings of charitable organisations he is associated with, plans and attends day-long seminars on various subjects (classified), keeps his family and friends in splits with his wry humour, writes a few pages of an upcoming book, writes a 2000 word article for some newspaper -- and then -- sits in front of the computer to write yet another tickling, teasing Chintito. We have sometimes wondered whether he is even human. That would explain a lot of things. Almost every week we sit on tenterhooks, checking and rechecking our email just to see that beautiful word 'Chintito' and invariably it appears just when we are giving up hope, just when we are desperately about to call the guy.

So what happened this week? Chintito called himself and announced (of course at the last minute) that he was 'tied up' and mumbled something about being stuck at some meeting for hours. Perhaps it was an inter-galactic conference on how to save the world from bigots and imperialists and so he missed the saucer back home and had to wait for the next space-rick. Before we could even say 'But…' the line was cut off. So that's the story. Next week we are sure Chintito will be back, hopefully released by his captors without having to reveal his true identity. He's a crafty fellow that Chintito. We're sure he will find a way to charm or confuse them enough to get away without giving away anything. Until then we are keeping our fingers crossed!

From the SWM Desk