Update: The hiatus referred to below ended on January 1st 2015.

And so, as the days shorten and an icy wind begins to blow from the south, I must turn the key in the lock of my humidor, place my ashtray in its storage box, and give my tar filled lungs a chance to heal: season two of A Harem of Dusky Beauties has concluded.

I shall return with the mountain brooks begin to burble, their banks reverberating with the ballads of boisterous bullfrogs; or when the new foal takes his first tentative steps out from the shadow of his mother; or once I find myself on the platform of a rural train-station, alone except for a clear-skinned girl with hay-coloured hair wearing a gaily patterned summer dress. A rogue gust of wind lifts it momentarily around her hips, and as she struggles to pull it down our eyes meet, and she grins at me conspiratorially, the colour of her underwear a secret shared between us (eggshell blue).

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As is traditional, I have left you with the below bonus issue, a dusky beauty previously deemed ‘too vile’ for inclusion in the site proper. A word of warning: it forms chapter ten of my offensively racist autobiographical novel, My Life in Shanghai: Soft Drugs and Hard Women in the Whore of the Orient.

Hasta la vista, mi amigos. May all your smoke rings be round.

A. T. Groom