Loonytunes woke up on the morning of December 25 and his comely partner leaned over and kissed him passionately on the lips. "Steady on," he remarked, sensitive to the possibility that he might not taste or smell so good on account of the fact he had got chooked as a goose the previous night at the Cosmopolitan Club. But she smiled, lasciviously, and this excellent fellow paused to realise that his expected hangover and appalling state of physical disrepair were absent. Unmentionable things happened.

Three minutes later - his stamina was the stuff of erotic legend - he remarked that he was hungry. Soon enough, he was served a choice of crayfish, salmon, bacon, scrambled eggs, toasted white bread, a bowl of cucumber and radishes in vinegar with lots of salt at the ready, peaches, tea, beer, and a jellytip iceblock. "Delicious," he announced and, resting his head slept the bloated sleep of the just.

He roused himself before noon. The day was as bright as genius; sunshine oiled his bare, barrel-shaped chest. His handsome cat at his side, Loonytunes decided on a stroll around his estate. The creek was at high tide but he could see through the sparkling waters and gaze upon the gambolling eels, the round oysters, the old trouts. Herons roosting on top of the mangroves caught his eye and returned his nod. "Morning," he called to them, but a passing jogger, a rich 24-year-old Swedish gymnast called Ava Meontoast, assumed his greeting was meant for her, and her heart leapt in her pert breast. She had always desired Loonytunes.

A man in tune with the elements, he looked at the angle of her shadow and knew it was 12.36pm - his game of rugby would start very soon. "I may be a bit rusty on account of the fact I hung up my boots 22 seasons ago," he worried, but turned up at the local park and yielded to tearful requests that he take up a position as midfield supremo. A gasp went up as he tackled Campese deep in his own half, and waltzed through despairing lunges, side-stepping ten defenders and touched down inches from touch. His game-winning conversion sped between the posts like a bullet in the breast of a fowl; Colin Meads and other legends of the game smiled to see the majestic Loonytunes once more impose his will on the game.

Afterwards, relaxing in the team bath, he was approached by Graham Greene, who asked for his autograph. "Of course," Loonytunes said. "But would you mind awfully if 1 told you how 1 thought The Power and the Glory might be written in a more vivid manner?" Greene tore off his clothes there and then and joined Loonytunes in the tub. Only mentionable things happened - Loonytunes dictated, Greene rewrote eight chapters. "Much better," Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the Times later noted.

A visit to a money machine threatened to wipe his mood. "Insufficient funds," it said, and then calculated that he was $29,015.50 in overdraft. But this even-tempered colossus took it in his stride. He simply went to work: that afternoon, he mowed lawns, washed cars and healed the sick, earning enough to shout all his closest friends and various fawning acolytes - Wowbagger, Sporky, Ginger, Shazz, Anonymouse, Fenchurch, Kats-Eyes, even poor old Jones - to a restaurant dinner. Instead, though, the great man donated his money to the City Mission.

Returning home, it struck Loonytunes that he had stopped smoking. "That was easy," he commented to himself, his back straight as an ironing board, his face glowing like a powerful lightbulb. He lit a barbecue in his backyard and piled on steaks, chops and chooks. He was a stickler for feasting on a balanced diet.

In the cool of the evening, he turned his eager, well-hung mind to whether he had passed his life so far in a meaningful fashion, and if his celebrated Home Page was actually any good. He turned over the back pages of his existence and saw that he was much fulfilled. He had made the right decisions, the right sentence constructions; guilt, shame, despair, longing, and deep, wretched anxieties were complete strangers on the shore of his well-being: marvellously, he harboured no delusions.

"Time for your special present, darling," purred his kittenish partner, as Loonytunes, that old dog, made his way to bed. "Thank you, my pet," he growled, and fell to his knees. Mystical, sainted, holy, he prayed for world peace and an end to hunger, and then brushed his teeth and drank a lot of beer.

He dreamed long into the night. There was no end to the fantastical images that delighted his subconscious - a goose on a seesaw, Ava Meontoast on a seesaw, a conversation with God in which Loonytunes was asked to mind the shop, his brutal slayings of everyone who he had ever hated, beautiful flowers at his feet and doughnuts in the sky.

He woke up on Boxing Day with a sore head, and it was pissing down outside.