Joe Bennett: Mystery email arrives from Naw Naw with a Form B attached

You know what they say about opening email attachments from unknown sources. Photo / Getty Images

A DOG'S LIFE

Children, if you dare to think

Of the greatness, rareness, muchness,

Fewness of this precious only

World in which you say

You live, you think of things like this:

Blocks of slate enclosing dappled

Red and green, enclosing tawny

Yellow nets, enclosing white

And black acres of dominoes,

Where a neat brown paper parcel

Tempts you to untie the string…

Thus begins a poem by the incomparable Robert Graves. It came to mind today because I received an email with an attachment called Form B. Here is the text of the email in full, and I am not making this up:

Best regards
Naw Naw (Mr)
Management Officer KCN Branch.

I had a mountain of work to do, so just as you would have done I untied the string, by which I mean that I typed Naw Naw into a search engine. The internet came up with 23 million responses, most of which concerned a rap song with Naw Naw as the title. I listened to the song. It was in English but I didn't understand a word. I was on my own.

Mr Naw Naw's email address ended .mm. On a hunch I added the word Myanmar to the search. Bingo. The website LinkedIn listed a Naw Naw who attended Yadarnapon University in Myanmar from 2006 to 2008. However this Naw Naw wasn't a Management Officer at the KCN Branch but rather a Beauties and Spa Manager in Yangon.

And the website further revealed that there was yet a third Naw Naw in Myanmar, this one a university lecturer in technology, so it is possible, I now realise, that some time between 2006 and 2008, Naw Naw 2 attended a lecture given by Naw Naw 3. Oh the greatness, rareness, muchness, fewness of this precious only world! Which bring us back to Robert Graves.

Writer Robert Graves holding a balloon on Albert Bridge, London in 1972. Photo / Getty Images

Inside the parcel in the poem are:

Blocks of slate enclosed by dappled
Red and green, enclosed by tawny
Yellow nets, enclosed by white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where the same brown paper parcel -
Children leave the string alone!

But how can you leave the string alone when you have come so far in your research into a mysterious email, especially since Naw Naw 3's profile came with a photograph which proved her to be a she. Naw must be an androgynous first name in Myanmar. Curiouser and curiouser.

Myanmar is currently suffering a brutal military coup and I have read that the coup's leaders, in a bid to hamper the resistance, have largely shut down the internet. So I not only didn't know who Naw Naw (Mr) was or why he was emailing me, I also don't know how.

The only further information I had was his title. A search revealed that KCN is the abbreviation for Kachin State, a northerly region of Myanmar that borders China to the east and India to the west. So Naw Naw (Mr) is a provincial branch management officer, but of what?

For who dares undo the parcel
Finds himself at once inside it.
…enclosed by dappled
Green and red, enclosed by yellow
Tawny nets, enclosed by black
And white acres of dominoes,
With the same brown paper parcel
Still untied upon his knee.

Then a gust of schoolboy chemistry came back to me. I looked it up and sure enough KCN is the chemical formula for Potassium Cyanide, the notorious poison taken by several prominent Nazis to thwart the allies at the end of the war.

Was there a message here, and if so did it concern the attachment so innocuously named Plan B? Of course I know better than to open attachments from unknown sources. But then again…

…if he then should dare to think
Of the fewness, muchness, rareness,
Greatness of this endless only
Precious world in which he says
He lives - he then unties the string.