Can I think of anyone else who uses the conditional form in such an elegant and instructive manner? Making of a tense not used nearly enough in these days of opinion bashing and summative demand a suggestion both of the fun of a thing and also the darn good reason for doing it? No. I can’t. Only Michael, I think, commands this part of speech with the charm and efficacy its grammatical status suggests. And commands it, in particular (I myself might say), with reference to possible submissions for certain issues of PNR. So, then, an ‘Oh yes, I should think so…’ comes in ready response to some idea about whether one might do something about this poet or that. Or there is a ‘I would have thought…’ that arrives in the inbox or conversation by way of a gentle suggestion that one is slightly off-piste and might change track a tad. And there is also the compellingly suggestive: ‘Might it be the case, do you think…?’ At which point one braces oneself for a powerfully imagined thesis taking in a new line of enquiry that begs a rewrite of the entire article one has just filed or embeds within its modest content vast potentials for further reading and thought – all of which, naturally, might, just, yield ideas for further pieces for the magazine, and, of course, for life. Altogether, Michael’s conditionals… sing.

Happy Birthday, dear Michael’s PNR! Happy Birthday to you!
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