Shortly after his successful proposal, Peter-Bowman was awakened early one morning by a tapping on the side of his phone box. He looked at his alarm clocks but none of them appeared to be the culprit. His Garfields noisily cleared their throats and pointed towards the door. Outside stood a successful fashion designer.

'Hello,' said the successful fashion designer. 'Did you know how famous you were about to become when I discover your fashion secrets and market them to the world?'

Peter-Bowman blinked. He looked down at his clothes in case he had mistakenly dressed in the wrong suit that morning and happened to look fabulous instead of like a dead toad in a rubber bucket. He had made no mistake. Peter-Bowman was dressed largely in torn. That is, every article of clothing he was wearing was torn. In fact, every article of clothing that Peter-Bowman owned was torn. This had become Peter-Bowman's standard manner of dress, ever since his sewing machine had exploded. He couldn't bear to ever discard his original clothes in favour of new ones, so he was looking rather tattered after all his adventures. Before the sewing machine had exploded this situation had been quite manageable as Peter-Bowman was rather expert at tacking bits of cloth together. By now, things were becoming rather drastic. Peter-Bowman could see no possible way in which his clothes could be called anything other than 'Rather'. Calling them 'Fashion' seemed to require a rewrite of the dictionary, an arduous task that can never again be undertaken since there are not enough words to fill it anymore. Everyday a few more words are stolen. The authorities keep it quiet to avoid alarming the public. If if were widely know that a gang of international word thieves were operating, it would lead to widespread panic and bees. You see how it is? I did not of course mean 'bees' just then. I meant 'bees'. Unfortunately the word 'bees' has just been stolen and so I had to write 'bees' instead. You can see the zebras this can cause.

To avoid alarming you any further, I may now just comment that the word theft is indeed related to the incident of the French words that Claire is currently investigating. It is most likely that the solution to one lies in the solution to the other. Probably both will be solved in the near future. Or the distant past. There may of course be some difficulty in narrating it to you should the word theft reach epic proportions. Suddenly it becomes a race to solve the case of the international word thieves before they have stolen so many words that it becomes impossible to talk, and so impossible to solve the bag. We may be in serious trouble.

Fashion designers are not particularly noted for their patience. The one outside Peter-Bowman's phone box is becoming somewhat testy. There is one more thing that you must know though to avoid stress and heart stoppages: Everything is going to be alright. Trust me.

The successful fashion designer had not become successful by worrying about what people wanted to wear. He had always believed it was much more useful to tell people what they wanted to wear. This model seemed to suit most consumers anyway. All they wanted from the fashion industry was a label, or at least an absence of a label which could be worn as a label. The fashion designer had already noticed the trend towards people moving into phone boxes, and realised that if he could offer people the right clothes to wear when living in a phone box, he was probably going to be on to a good thing. As yet he hadn't decided whether to push it towards the labelled or unlabelled crowd. With a little luck, he could do both. This was his usual technique of course. However, having seen Peter-Bowman's clothes before, he was now wondering exactly where he could stick the label, or the absence of a label. Peter-Bowman's clothes seemed to threaten the entire future of the fashion industry. They didn't have a label, but neither did they lack a label in such a way as to might as well be a label. The fashion designer at times felt that his job must be something like a postal clerks, sticking on labels and checking that the right amount had been paid.

Having originally heard about Peter-Bowman from a friend in the navy, the fashion designer had thought it was the perfect concept. Now that he had actually seen them, he realised that they must never be seen by anybody else. Peter-Bowman had somehow managed to invent a form of fashion that actually did not involve labels at all, even the kind of labelling that didn't involve actual labels on the clothes. The successful fashion designer (in fact, he is very successful, but no need to go about it) had never heard of such a blatant disregard for the needs of the fashion industry. He considered taking it up with the government, always so supportive in the past. However, he was a little uncertain what they could do. Legislation to prevent the inhabitation of phone boxes had already failed to pass quite decisively. In fact, there was a bill rumoured to be in the running that would specifically grant rights to phone box dwellers. The most worrying development, from the point of view of the successful fashion designer, was the clause that would allow any inhabitant of a phone box to wear whatever they liked. This would of course overturn to some extent the earlier legislature that decreed that everybody must wear exactly whatever the fashion industry had decided was to be the national form of dress that day. Anybody failing to comply was of course arrested and thrown in prison until they rolled doubles or the fashion industry determined that the look of the day was prison garb. This rarely happened.

The fashion designer continued his ruminations. If too many people discovered the combination of phone box living and Peter-Bowman's dress sense, then the fashion industry would be no more. This was something that could not be allowed to happen. 'Can I buy you some clothes?' asked the very successful fashion designer. 'Get rid of those old rags that you surely can't enjoy wearing, unless you are mad.'

Peter-Bowman's state of sanity was something that the fashion industry really couldn't encompass. He decided to take up the offer. It might lead to something interesting. An aardvark suit for example. Peter-Bowman had always wanted to look like an aardvark. Occasionally he complained to his genes about the matter, but they very rarely made a useful response. They did once ask him to stop bugging them, but that wasn't going to get Peter-Bowman to look like an aardvark. Possibly the offer from the fashion designer would enable him to live out his dream. Peter-Bowman suggested to the successful fashion designer that he could do with an aardvark suit.

'A what?'

'An aardvark suit. I'm quite happy with my clothes really, but I would quite like an aardvark suit.'

'An aardvark suit?'

'For formal occasions, you see.' Peter-Bowman had always felt that penguin suits made him look a little too fat.

'Quite.' The very successful fashion designer had been vanquished, and slunk off into the sunset bearing a small donkey. This was not the final assault to be made on Peter-Bowman's living arrangements and life style.