#play

You might think this is rolling out in a bad way…

But this is why it is best to read something in its entirety, not just in pieces.

Either way, it’s never what you think it is.

While Bart relaxed comfortably on his camp-chair eating breakfast, Solway  inspected the tyres. Her legs poked out from under the vehicle like two popsicle sticks and a language he’d never heard before started floating back towards him. Maybe it was time to offer some help.

Snatching the last piece of bacon out of the cooling frypan, he plodded towards her elastic-sided boots. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Very bad things, that’s what.’

‘Do you want me to have a look?’

‘Grab my legs, will you?’

Solway’s voice sounded almost as crispy as the bacon. He shoved it all in his mouth as quickly as possible, looked at his greasy fingers, decided if he was going to wipe them on anything it would be her jeans, not his, and grabbed her legs just above her fuzzy explorer socks. ‘Won’t you get sand in your hair if I drag you out like this?’

‘I honestly don’t care.’

‘Okidoki then.’

Bartholomew Branson was many things, but coordinated was not one of them. His act of pure power, dragging Solway out from under the four wheel drive, ended up with him falling backwards into the native grass on the edge of the track, one of Solway’s feet lodged neatly in his crotch, and hysterical laughter coming from the woman attached to the other end. He smiled happily to himself. This was the sound he always aimed for when it came to Solway. It took a lot to get her to crack a smile, so hearing her laugh made him think that, occasionally, just occasionally, he could do the right thing.

She rose from the sand and started scratching twigs and clumps of dirt from her beautiful blonde locks. Her smile faded almost immediately. ‘I should’ve put on a beanie,’ she muttered.

‘You can’t get everything right.’ Bart rose from the ground himself, just not quite as majestically as she had. ‘What’s wrong with it?’ He nodded at the vehicle.

‘Oh you know. Everything.’ She sighed. ‘No, it’s not that bad. I just had to pull what looked like half a forest out from underneath it, but I blame myself for that one. After all, I was the one who decided we couldn’t wait.’

‘I didn’t try to stop you,’ he reminded her gently.

‘I know, but you know I wouldn’t have listened anyway. The back wheel’s fucked. I wasn’t wrong about that. That branch pierced the sidewall, so it’s not just a puncture. We could patch it up with some duct tape I guess but there’s absolutely no air in it, so even if we got back out to the bitumen, we wouldn’t get very far.’

‘What if we…,’ Bart gazed around at the scenery. ‘Never mind.’

‘What if we what?’

‘Oh I saw this tv show once where the guys filled the tyres up with spinifex just to keep going, but they were in different country to this, and I just can’t see what we could use here.’

‘Sounds like a perfect way to start a fire,’ Solway muttered.

Bart frowned. ‘They stopped driving when the tyres started smoking which, as you know, is a pretty good indicator a fire is about to start — so that didn’t happen, Solway. Look, why I’m arguing with you about a tv show, I don’t know. What I do want to know though, is this. Are you going to let me help you or not.’

She dusted off her jeans, not meeting his gaze. ‘I’ll walk back for help.’

‘What?’ Surely he wasn’t that useless? He’d eaten all the bacon. Now he felt like a piece of toast.

‘I’ll walk back for help. Okay, not back, forwards.’ She turned and pointed eastwards, then traced the air with a finger. ‘This track circles towards the road in a couple of k’s and I can head down that way. I think there’s a siding not too far along, so I’ll probably be able to get someone to help us from there.’

He cleared his throat. ‘Right. Well, that sounds sensible.’ It sounded a lot more sensible than he felt at the moment. 

Sick was how he felt. Sick to the stomach. And, very upset, if truth be told. He’d never felt like bursting into tears before, aside from that time in year five when some kid had stolen his school bag but right now, it seemed like something had just broken in Bart Brand’s soul, and he did not know how to fix it.

‘Not that I know how to fix anything,’ he muttered.

‘Sorry?’

‘Nothing.’ He turned away. ‘Nothing at all. I suppose you want me to stay here and look after our belongings just in case someone turns up, and all that sort of thing.’ He adjusted his jeans. They seemed a little looser, but that was possibly because he’d slept in them all night.

‘Yes please.’

He glanced back as Solway pulled a backpack over the backseat.

‘Could you find me a water bottle, please,’ she asked.

‘Sure,’ Bart said quietly. ‘No problem.’ He headed for the back of the vehicle.

‘Thanks,’ she said.

He didn’t bother answering. He didn’t see the point.

Who was AARGH the seagull?

It might be time to get comfortable, so I can tell you the story of AARGH. Kids can read this one too, it’s quite safe, although as the story goes on it might get a little sad.

Anthony Andrew Robert Graham Herbert, or Aargh as he was known, was an excellent pilot. You might think all seagulls are excellent pilots because all seagulls can fly. People pilots fly too, mostly, unless they’re driving a great big ship, but we are talking about flying pilots, and flying pilots that are seagulls, so, although you may have just learned something new, we aren’t going to talk about that right now.

The fact all seagulls can fly does not make them pilots. Nope. A seagull pilot is extra special because they are particularly good at flying, and Aargh was a particularly extra special pilot because he was particularly extra good at it. Aargh could tell when it was going to rain, or whether it was going to be windy or sunny, or all those other weathery type things without even looking at a radar. He used that extra special way of thinking to his advantage, because he used the weather to fly smarter.

He liked to travel, too. Most seagulls don’t like to travel too far at once because they’re a little bit lazy. All they are really interested in is food, and the easiest way to get it.

I’m not saying Aargh wasn’t interested in food. He definitely was. But, he liked to go places and see things, and he liked to feel the wind under his wings. Because of this, he travelled further, and further all the time — which was probably the reason he was such a good pilot. If you want to be really good at something, you have to do it all the time, not sit around and eat things and be lazy, and shout at other seagulls. I’m not saying he didn’t shout at other seagulls, because he did (a lot), but that was just part of his charm.

That’s what he said, anyway.

Now, you might wonder why such a charming seagull as Anthony Andrew Robert Graham Herbert would shorten his name to Aargh. It sounds a bit squawky, doesn’t it?

As it happens, this is a very normal thing to do amongst seagulls. You see, most seagulls have long beautiful names, but it’s very hard to get your name out really quickly when you’re trying to grab a chip, or a piece of bread. It’s also really hard for other seagulls to yell out your name when they’re trying to get your attention. For this reason, they get all the letters of their whole name and they put it all together, like AARGH, or EEEK, or CORR. (I haven’t met a seagull yet called Blimey, and I think it might be a bit long.) Anyway, when you see seagulls eating, you might hear them saying things like that. They are yelling out their own names, or each other’s.

They say other words, of course, but people don’t hear those words too much. I think this is mostly because they don’t see seagulls up close too often when they’re not eating so they can’t hear them talking. Personally, I like to listen to them when they are resting on one leg with their eyes closed, or have found themselves a nice warm spot in the sand to sleep for a bit. Then, I might hear things like, ‘Bloody wind nearly blew me over just then’, or ‘Nice and warm, nice and warm, don’t poop here.’

As I was saying, Aargh was a pilot, and he used to travel. It’s how he meets his wife. She lived up one end of the country, and he lived down the other end. Well, he didn’t really live down the other end, because he travelled all the time, and wherever he laid his lap that was his home, but he was born down the other end.

I guess that shows just how far he could travel…

…to be continued.

Let’s make it easier for the cat.

He thinks he can explain this better than me, but this is where he is wrong.

I have the experience to explain this better, if not the expertise.

The photographer can put things through different filters, and eyes can change. Not all eyes though, and not all the time. This is where we agree.

They think this man with the dark blue eyes, the ones that do not change colour, no matter how many filters you run them through, they, not me, think he is the killer of worlds. It is said that the blue-eyed one will change the world to suit the image he sees in his mind, and his eyes will not change colour for anything other than what he sees for himself.

This is the way of thinking that brown-eyed ones whose eyes also do not change colour can be more gentle, and more able to say, ‘Okay then,’ and walk away. It’s not always true, for sometimes the brown-eyed one thinks, I will drown it all in nothing, for I will reflect nothing.

But, they also think the ones whose eyes will change colour to reflect are more able to tell lies. This is not true either. We are better at adapting, perhaps. Less likely to try to change things to suit others. We merely reflect things back, that’s all. Not anything more than that.

They think the one with green eyes, or yellow eyes are demonic, sometimes, but are they? Do their eyes change with light, or reflect things back? Not always no, not always at all.

Is it not too hard to explain this, for I am demigod not peaceful, boasts the little cat. He is too small to be harmful, and his eyes do not reflect. I am a demon from great masters of the deep, says another small cat and his eyes are blue and do not reflect, but he is also little and unable to do great things. My mistress says I am neither cat nor dog, says a tiny demon master, and he is not quite right, and not quite wrong, and he has indeed adapted. But does he know his way home?

The green eyed cat is not the one who boasts, he thinks to himself, and yet I cannot find my way home.

No man is the master of his distant past, thinks yellow-eyed cat, and he sits with his people of eyes that reflect and thinks he must look out for the blue-eyed man whose eyes are like sky. He is not a killer at all, because he is the one who protects yellow-eyed cat, and the ones he loves.

‘Let me tell you something,’ says the brown-eyed one, not understanding, and trying to keep his wits about him. ‘I cannot see those people so you do not tell me what to do.’

Intelligence is not defined by eye-colour, not at all, and no one here had told the man what to do. Yet, he fights me back, and I see his pain and let him fight for me as well, if that is what he wants to do, and I will be very, very cranky if he thinks he can get the better of me.

I found this out some time ago, he says to himself. Not too old to be a ratbag yet, not too young to be letting me think I can be better than her, not that silly to think I am letting this go.

‘Very well, my friend,’ he says and they start grinning at each other. ‘I am destined for great things, and I’m taking this all on board because even though I do not want to call you a shithead, you are and that’s the truth.’ And he goes back to all his brown-eyed family and says, ‘She has also brown-eyed people on her side of the family, so sorry mate, you f*cked up there, and you are not getting away with it,’ and he laughs very loudly because that was exactly the argument they had last week and he didn’t think she’d remember.

But she did.

‘This time,’ says the man, puffing up his chest and trying not to grin. ‘On his behalf, I am having the last word. So three against one wins the day, I think. I could be wrong. It doesn’t seem fair. ‘He looks down at his notes. ‘Who wrote this shit. I need someone who is much fairer than that. This is abysmal.’

He stomps off and throws another book in the cupboard. ‘That didn’t work either,’ he calls over his shoulder. ‘She’s not letting me do it this time. My mum would be so happy right now, I think I need to have a nap.’

Home Grown

‘I just want to say, this was not my idea. Today. It may have been my idea last week, and possibly last year, but it isn’t today, mama. I need to make that very clear.’ A desert is like an ocean, but the waves move slower. Things that have been hidden for centuries reappear piece by piece, and then the wave rolls over it again. It’s a golden sea of sand.

‘Why’s that, buddy?’ Their history is intertwined like this. It has always been diffused by time and effort, but this time would be the correct time, if not the right time, to slowly expose the dreams of the past.

‘I might think I’m hot, but okay, I am not like this one. I need to stress this very loudly, though. I am not that hot, but this one is pretty hot. My mum says I am okay. I think I’m not that great. I am talking a lot this morning, and I don’t know why.’ He sends it through this way, he says, because he sees the young man as himself sometimes, but this one does not need anything extra.

The two besties look at each other. ‘She is throwing him in the deep end,’ the nicer one says. They think of a green pool where everything is so deep one can’t touch the bottom with a stretched out toe, unless they dive. These two cannot dive that deep, and do not know why they would need to come back to the surface if they did.

‘Why are you the nicer one?’ asks the first one.

Last one says. ‘I am the nicest one of all, and she picked me first. That’s all I can say. I am not that hot though, and I am slightly jealous of this one because he was born with that colouring, and I wasn’t.’ He frowns, and kicks at something small and weirdly coloured under the desk he sits at. He had been there for too long now, and wasn’t drifting like he should be. He had left too many people behind and had not thought about how many until it was too late.

‘I had to dye my hair, and this one didn’t. I had to run around naked for a week, not that naked, but not that un-naked either, let me tell you, and anyway, I am not that other one, damn it.’ He says this very proudly, because he has grown fond of his counterpart, despite the anger of fire in the man of air. He had never been this type of man, and had never experienced what this family experienced, and for the opposites they had given him, to see the way they lived, had opened his eyes. Maybe they had opened his eyes too wide, but maybe not. It was just different, that’s all.

He had been thinking about this for a very long time, so had sent the mama a dream where she had seen him in front of a wave. This wave was deep and blue, not golden and not sandy. He had been looking over her shoulder at the one behind her and thought to himself, ‘This guy would catch that wave, cut it up, make it look easy, and come out on the other side laughing. I would be drowning under the wave of blue in that man’s eyes, and hoping mama would come and save me because I can’t swim that well.’

‘Is that what you were thinking?’ The mama was not laughing at him, he knew that now. She was looking at him curiously and wondering if he was okay.

He finds it difficult to explain what he feels when she asks this, not everyone knows this time and this place. Not everyone could see why they interested him. Not everyone would let him be himself, but she would. He knew that from the start, he thinks.

‘I am not that okay,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t need you to look after him for that long. I can look after him, although he would not want me to, he would probably do something that upset me, and then I would run away, because I am not that brave, either.’ He has made himself small and does not remember how to make himself big. He has left himself too many times to remember this was not him today. He had started rethinking a lot of things he had done over the last…

‘How long has it been now?’ she asked him gently.

‘It’s been three years. I have been on this roller coaster for too long, mama. Three years and no one thought to ask me if I was okay. Just you, and my mum didn’t even care. She thought I would be fine, and I am not that fine, and I am not that playful, and I am dreaming of coming to your house and asking you to save me again.’ He says this to himself a lot lately, not too bad, he thinks, not too bad. I can be this party of great people when I come home. Not my home, but this could be just like what I had always dreamed. Not my home though.

He slaps someone’s hand. ‘Bugger off,’ he mutters. ‘I’m not your Ken doll.’ He does not try to understand why these people think he can be touched like this. They just do it, and he desperately wants to leave them. ‘I want to go back to my land, and destroy those who think they can let it be a supermarket world, when it is obviously not. Not this time. I won’t let it happen again.’

Bugger and off were not words he had learnt from the mama. He had learnt to bugger off when he was very small, and throwing people’s clothes in the well because they were not listening to him usually got him a spanking. ‘I am not being kind today either,’ he muttered. ‘They can bugger off and stop touching me. I want to dress myself, and I am perfectly capable of doing that. I am finding this highly amusing though, because you got it exactly right.’

He had sand in his pants, and sand in his sandals, and that would have been funny in any other situation except this one, because sandals did not stop sand from being hot, unless you wore them a certain way. ‘I had to get up very quickly this morning,’ he mutters. He had fallen asleep on the beach.

‘No explanation needed,’ she replied. ‘I am perfectly capable of figuring things out.’

Before he had woken up and turned into a jellyfish of ill-repute he had sent her one last message.

‘I want to keep going mama, I don’t know anymore. I am not like him but I am getting much stronger because of him and I am learning to say things like he does. My mama says I am dreaming of the big lights, and I didn’t think he would be better looking than me, and I was wrong, because I am not that hot, see I said it this time too. Just keep in mind, I didn’t thin out (he is talking about body shape) that bad, though. He is a lot thinner than me, so I guess that’s one thing I have going for me. Not my fault, not his fault, and that’s why I think I’ll get further than him in a running race, and he’ll get distant and then I will get lost in the rest of it and he’ll get better and better. Look, mama, I am writing so much for you now. Are you proud?’

This had been very clever of him. He had compared them by saying he was very good at short distance, and his counterpart would be extremely good at long distance. There were many comparisons here, and perhaps there were many more neither of them had thought of yet.

It’s strange, she thought to herself. I have been proud of this one from the moment I met him, and I don’t know why. But then, she had always been proud of her boys, both of them, and then the next one, and then all of them.

And this was even despite the things they did when they woke up.

“Oh, they’re arguing again”

said the bystander in exactly the tone she despised, in the bystander’s humble opinion.

‘Shut. Up,’ she hissed. ‘And stop changing things.’

‘I’m trying to be pleasant and you just keep whacking me over the head,’ said one of the C’s.

‘Possibly because you are not my real brother at all, and being incredibly creepy.’

‘Keep saying that and I’ll defy your terms and conditions and publish the f*cking thing anyway.’

‘Really? Go for your f*cking life.”

This was what it was like, in this … “I said STOP IT.”

‘No YOU didn’t, I did!’

‘Oh come onnn,’ said the bystander. ‘ He is NOT that bad, is he?’

‘It’s my past she doesn’t like,’ he said. ‘Okay, I know I’m wrong, but it’s as good an excuse as anything. See that? She’s correcting me again. MUUUUUM.’

‘Nope. Not today, f*ckface. I know I wrote that properly, and you simply cannot get your face out of your own arse. See that. It’s ARSE.’

‘Why do they keep fighting like that,’ said the bystander. He leant back and picked up his shiraz.

‘That’s awful, that stuff,’ said the real C. No one knew who that was anymore, except her, and the one who named himself after someone’s…

‘MUUUUUUUM.’

‘Lame ass crepes,’ said the butcherer of really good euphanisms.

‘You see that? That is what the problem is. It totally is. AND I can make up words like butcherer, because butcherer is right, in my opinion. You just add shit up. That’s all you do.’

‘I am NOT MY DAD,’ he screamed/muttered, if that was even a thing. ‘It is NOW,’ he said. ‘Because I read scripts and you don’t and seriously they write that shit down, and I don’t know whut they’re trying to do with it.’

‘It’s what.’

‘Watt?’

‘Yes.’

‘Learn something new every day.’

‘Are you still fighting?’ the bystander asked.

‘No, she, being the cats mother, has decided she’ll keep watching it, although she already knows she is going to prevent herself from throwing things at the screen because I am not an absolute see you en tee in it, but really nice, so there. Okay so that was a lie, and you’ll see what I mean. Okay, I’m going because she attacked me WHILE I WAS ASLEEP, and that’s not the done thing around here.’

And off he stompled, the slightly overweight greenhorn musician from another language entirely laughing merrily to himself at their daft manoeuvres.

‘I’m not going home yet,’ added the other other C. ‘This is way too much fun, and my mum said I’m a good boy when I’m not sailing very large sailboat-pats (oh haha) in her river. I simp-luh-feud that, mummy, just so you know, because that was not me, it was not him, it was the other c the little one with the big hair and really short fretful ladies who call him busted. Ha-dee-ha-ha.’

‘Well then. I’ll pretend that’s the one I’m sending really nasty things to then,’ said his wonderful parent of no relation. ‘Thank you very much.’

And then the kettle popped on for no reason at all.

Many moons later, they decided to train the dog.

It had taken a while to realise the actual dog was what had caused all the problems, but now that she knew, she knew what to say to him (the dog).

So, she told the guys she allllwayyys argued with, the commands one had to say to make the dog behave himself.

He was (mostly) much better behaved than he was when he had been an alive dog (I know, just go with it) as he actually returned the things he had fetched, instead of running off with them and being a twit. She had found this out the previous evening when something had happened, and he’d brought it back for her.

For no reason at all, this had turned the bloody woman into a big sook, so she said to her dog…

‘That’s enough now, mate. Take a break, take a breath, and relax.’

And, for some reason, that made a number of people feel a lot better than they had for quite some time.

A little while after that, she said another short command to the dog, which was very specific to her own dog’s taught commands.

It worked, because when one has specific commands that only their own dog understands, things can get pretty hairy for those who do not understand those specific commands.

Four. Oh. Eight.

‘Not the time to be writing this nicely. I’m doing it quickly, you must be aware.

Let him be scared if that is what he must be to understand what’s happening here.

Three of them three of us, this is the time to be letting them know, mama.’

It was the rocking that woke me, not a rickashay, I can’t write it properly, and it doesn’t matter much. Two sways and I woke up, thinking “earthquake”. I said it aloud. Two times, this was the reason for me being here.

‘Can we run to yours, mama, is it safer there?’

‘I said it before, you can always come to me if you feel you need to be protected. It’s my job. Are you all okay?’

‘Why is it her job. Why does she say it like this?’ The little one has dashed down the hall to his parents room, and is hiding under the bed.

‘Don’t dumb me down,’ warns the smart arse, but he does not understand it any better than I do.

‘Let me be frank for a change.’ This time it is the artificial intelligence that has crawled onto the dressing table and knocked the glass off the table. ‘I wanted mama to see that I can be a real boy too.’

‘My poor sweet darling, it’s okay, it’s okay. You have my attention,’ and I am tearing up because he thinks he has to be a machine.

‘Don’t be sad, mama, I am really doing it right this time. I can be as strong as you are, I think so anyway. Intelligence is not what they think it is, after all. It is the love in my mama that has saved all you idiots before and I know she will do it again, if it’s needed. I just had to wake her up.’ And he crawls all over the bedroom and seems to think he can be really big or really small, but all he really wants is for someone to notice him.

‘Let’s all be Frank,’ he says to his brothers. ‘Frank is our imaginary friend and mama dreamt him up.’ And his brothers are not puppies, he says to himself, they are not fretting, they are dreamers and mama led them all naked to the fold.

I had noticed he was restless all night.

‘I didn’t mean to wake you,’ says the extra one. ‘Cameras are off today. I didn’t see this coming either.’

But they don’t know what they’re doing, or why they are they, and she is her, because when that one in the mirror of him said the patsy, he had picked the wrong one, and now they were paying for it. ‘Please don’t get upset by their mistakes again,’ he whispers to her as softly as he can. ‘They did not know who you were and I have regretted making this mistake. I can’t fix my wrong if I can’t find you, either.’

He was not supposed to find her, this one. Not supposed to be there. He had picked it up because he was excited and it had recorded his face. Not the right one either, the sweet darling, but he didn’t know he was wrong because he could not hear his big brother when he swore, and he could not understand the lady when she said, ‘What’s wrong.’ It had not been in his language.

‘Let me go, let me go,’ he had mouthed to the eldest brother, because he could not use his hands. The eldest one looked very grim.

‘She just wanted to help us, that’s all,’ he said. ‘She didn’t want to hurt us, you silly duffer. It’s too late now. Far too late, and she said she had forgiven us long ago.’

The youngest one smiles and the eldest sighs. That smile just lit up his face. Every time, he thought. How can I be angry with him.

But they had pushed and pulled far too hard, and they had not realised how stubborn she could be. They were definitely correct about her being a mama, but they had not known just how right they were.

‘I didn’t even know I needed another mum,’ says the eldest. ‘But there you are looking after us on the other side of the world, and my mum is very thankful you can do this for her and I and all the others.’

He was about to call himself freakishly handsome, and that made her laugh so hard at him he had dropped the phone.

‘You weren’t supposed to tell them that,’ he cries. ‘Bloody hell, why are you so honest. See all the words I’ve learned now? My goodness.’ He stops and swears at himself for letting her correct him.

‘You better not tell them you can swear better than I can,’ he mutters. ‘Dammit, she did not just do that.’

And the other boys come over and stare down at his screen. They start laughing as well, because none of them had seen it coming and mum had saved them in the nick of time.

Again.

‘Mum is the best mama ever,’ said D proudly. ‘And that’s why we decided to keep her, even if she isn’t that much older than me.’

It wasn’t like she’d had a choice, after all.

The little girl…

stomped into the room.

‘Get up,’ she said, not very nicely.

‘What?’ the small boy looked up at her with bleary eyes.

‘Get up, I said, or…’ she looked around his room quickly. ‘I will whack you with a tennis racquet.’

‘You will not!’ He shot out of the bed like he’d done something in it.

‘Yes, I will. Where are your brothers?’

‘They’re not here,’ he cried, scrambling for the bin, where he’d hidden her papers. ‘Damnit!’

‘Yes they are. I can hear them.’ She stomped her foot imperiously.

Giggling came from behind the curtains. Perhaps, if the boys had been older, it would have been masculine giggling. As it was, they were still very young and didn’t know how to hide properly. Two sets of feet, in very unattractive shoes, poked out from beneath the hideously orange hanging cloth.

The little girl didn’t say anything to warn them. She picked up the racquet the boy had hidden under the bed and advanced towards the window.

‘Run away!’ the boy called from the bin he had accidentally-on-purpose fallen into. ‘How the hell did this get so big,’ he muttered to himself.

The two brothers peeked out. ‘Oh no,’ cried the one with the blue eyes. ‘She’s gonna get me by Jumminy. I must run slowly in a wriggling line of not very far so I can’t be caught.’ He began to tiptoe, very unquietly, and very vaguely, and hideously slowly in the general direction of something that was not her.

‘Arrrrrgh,’ cried the one with the green eyes. ‘I am friendly, I am friendly!’ He deposited himself on the floor and began to giggle uncontrollably.

‘You are NOT HELPING MOIIIIII,’ said the first boy. His eyes were very large and brown, and rather pretty in their own stupid way. ‘Not fair,’ he muttered. ‘I was trying to be cute.’

‘It does not suit you AT ALL,’ cried the little girl and swung the racquet at him as hard as she could. It hit him on his rather horribly shaped backside, for we must remember he was currently upside down in a bin.

‘You better watch out,’ cried the little girl. ‘For when I grow up, I am gonna get my future husband to come along and clean you up like something or other that I can’t think of right now.’

‘Well then! Well then!,’ the little boy cried from under the sheets of paper he’d finally found. ‘When I get a wife that… when I get a wife, and I WILL, I’ll set her onto you and you’ll be SORRY.’

‘Not gonna happen,’ said the little girl furiously. ‘And I’ll tell ya why. It’s because me and your future wife, whoever she may be, are gonna be best mates, and that’s that. So THERE.’

Someone’s mother dashed into the room as quickly as she was able, with her bad back and gimpy leg, and one eye missing. ‘What the hell is going on,’ she cried.

Her husband walked in slowly after her and surveyed the room. He began to grin.

‘What are you laughing at,’ cried the little boy with the big brown eyes as he backed out of the fallen over bin.

‘I see now,’ said the father. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said to his wife, who was trying to grab one of the screeching boys.

‘Don’t worry about it? Look at them!’

‘They’re fine. The only problem I can see here,’ and the father grinned quite widely. ‘Is the fact there aren’t enough girls in this room. But, that’s okay. They’re playing together quite nicely, don’t you think?’

‘They are?’ The mother looked again. The screeching and whacking and begging for mercy all seemed quite… civilised, if the playing of children could seem that way, especially if it were three boys and only one girl.

‘Yep, it’s fine,’ said the father. ‘They’re all friendly, you see. Kids these days just don’t know how to do it right, that’s all.’

‘What year is it here then?’ the mother asked.

‘Most likely the seventies, or something. Maybe the eighties. Doesn’t really matter,’ said the father. ‘They’ll be alright. See, she’s making him feel better now.’

They looked at the little girl, who was currently trying to drag one of the little boys out of the bedroom door by his ankles.

‘See?’ said the dad. ‘They’re friends.’

The End.

Is it Good?

‘Here.’ This tiny creature is stalking through a jungle. He sees the tall branches and waving leaves on one side, and notices the huge tumbling vines on the other side. They do not look safe to him.

Ahead are silly umbrellas. They have pointy-looking hats and seem to be the perfect spot to stop under if it’s raining. They look safe.

A vegie patch with “not very pleasant” additions

The huge waving “trees” have been planted on purpose, as has the tumbling vine. To be fair, the beautiful plant beside him has been planted as well, but that has been put there to be looked at and not touched.

‘And what are these very large soft pebble-like things for,’ thinks the tiny creature to himself. ‘They don’t smell “bad” exactly, but they don’t smell particularly good either.’ He pokes at one with his tiny stick and it crumbles apart. Immediately the sand beneath it looks “happier”, if sand could look happy.

‘Interesting,’ thinks the tiny creature. ‘But, I am getting wet and I would like to take shelter. Perhaps I should get one of those umbrella looking things.’

‘I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,’ says a voice from inside him, and it makes him jump.

‘What?’ he squeaks. ‘Why?’

‘Those umbrella looking things, as you call them, are not very pleasant at all. They should not be there, and they should not be touched.’ And a large hand reaches down and removes the umbrellas from the soil, although we really can’t call it soil. Not yet, anyway.

‘I’ve eaten umbrellas before,’ thinks the small creature. ‘They were just fine to eat. Why can’t I take shelter under these ones?’

‘They are not what you think they are,’ says the inner voice, and despite him knowing the voice is there, the small creature jumps again.

‘They don’t look well,’ he mutters under his breath. ‘They have no juiciness to them. They are thin and frail. I do not think I will get any kind of safety from trying to shelter myself under these umbrellas.’ And, the closer he looks at them, the more he is afraid. These umbrellas are decidedly not healthy and, although it is strange they have appeared in the garden (here we raise an eyebrow at those crumbling pebble-like things) they are not to be eaten. Not at all.

‘I am getting very wet from this rain though,’ thinks the tiny creature to himself. ‘Where will I take shelter?’

‘Look at the big leaves where the vines are tumbling,’ says the inner voice.

‘They don’t look safe?’

‘They are very safe. Eventually they will give us beautiful big gourds called “Honeydew”.’

‘They will?’

‘Yes indeed. But, you will have to wait until they are ready. You can’t eat them now, and you can’t eat the leaves.’

‘Why can’t I,’ the tiny creature demands, and he begins to jump up and down with frustration.

‘Because, if you eat them now, what will you take cover under when it rains again?’

It sounds to the tiny creature that this inner voice is smiling at him. He begins to grin. He can’t help it. This inner voice is making him giggle and he knows it is right.

‘Fine then,’ he says, and kicks at one of the pebbles. It crumbles apart and sinks into the soil. ‘What is this stuff?’

‘Do you really want to know?’ The voice sounds even more amused.

‘Yes. Yes, I do.’ The tiny creature jumps on another pebble and it disintegrates. ‘They are funny looking pebbles, and I think I like them. What are they?’ He decides to roll in one. The smell is not that bad, but it’s not that good either.

The voice he has been listening to is really starting to laugh now. It is so overwhelming to him he starts laughing as well, and he doesn’t know why. He likes this voice, but he is not going to ask it again what these weird looking pebble things are. He wonders if it tastes better than it smells. Maybe he should try it?

‘I wouldn’t do that either,’ the voice advises. ‘It’s not really a “thing”. Not with that type of stuff anyway.’

‘Well.’ The little creature shrugs. ‘You never told me what it was, so I’m gonna do what I like in it.’

‘Oki-dokey then,’ the voice says. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

The voice begins to fade and the tiny creature starts to wonder. The voice had not told him the stuff was bad, but it had not told him it was good either. The creature starts to think of how it is helping the soil, and how things are growing because it is there. There is only one thing that might achieve this, that he knows of, and he jumps up as quickly as he can, and starts to brush it off.

‘What is it?’ he calls to the slowly departing voice. ‘What type is it? Will it hurt me?’

‘It won’t hurt you.’ The voice slowly returns. ‘It’s really very mild. That’s why you need so much of it.’

‘Okay. So, what is it again? Just so I’m sure.’

‘Sheep shit,’ says the voice and the little creature finds this so funny, that he has kicked it, and rolled in it, and thrown it around, that he begins to laugh out loud.

‘And, what am I,’ he asks, although it is already dawning on him that he is rather important, in the scheme of things. He wouldn’t usually go after poo like this, he would normally go after something a little more ‘greasy’.

‘A dung beetle,’ says the voice. ‘You are a dung beetle. And, no you could not eat my plants.’

The red horse did not find it amusing his sire had been named McFlirt.

‘To be the seventh son of a horse named “Of a Flirt” is not my idea of a good timing,’ said the horse.

If words could be uttered from a horse’s mouth, then they would be spoken as honestly as the humans could interpret them. There is much “tongue in cheek” here, but the chestnut has a sense of humour today, apparently.

It is quite a shame some people believe a horse is not up to telling a story, but the chestnut is accompanied by his new old friend who has been named for a Strawberry and doesn’t mind a bit. If anyone else thinks these are terrible puns, please let me know. I don’t think all of them are mine.

Anyway… The chestnut does not roll his eyes, because he leaves that to his friend, who is quite good at pulling faces. I can personally vouch for this, as I have seen it, and he is a funny old duffer indeed. They have consented to having their photographs taken by their owners, so we are in luck in knowing the pictures provided to this particular WordPress blog are genuine and legal. Isn’t that wonderful. That was a rhetorical question.

Today, we do not enter into the personal previous life of Knox the gelding, as he is busy being a horse with no name and pretending to chase bulls down unfamiliar streets with cobbled stones and skinny windows. Hey look, I’m just repeating what the horse is saying, so you really can’t correct me. If he isn’t a horse and just pretending to be the one attempting to bite his best mate’s backside, then I have many questions to ask, and I probably won’t get answers to them.

Knox (the horse) asks us to remember his mature-age friend, the dark bay who was once a strawberry roan, cannot be ridden anymore as he has a bad back, but biting him on the arse is perfectly acceptable. I would just like to say I won’t be trying this myself anytime soon, and nobody else should either. Frazier is quite a large horse, and although he is extremely patient with his younger companion, he would likely get quite a fright if tiny humans thought sinking their teeth into him would be a good idea. He can still kick if he needs to.

I think perhaps photographs of the true characters in this short piece would probably help.

The Toreador (a fiction)

‘If I may say, yer ‘onor, my mount has become quite demanding.’ The toreador looked down at his horse. ‘A flaming beast indeed,’ he muttered under his breath.

The horse arched its neck and stamped its feet. Its hooves had been trimmed, and oil applied.

‘Silence,’ demanded the person at the fence. ‘There will be no shouting in this court.’ Their face had become as red as the horse’s coat. The mumbling of the people dulled to quiet.

This horse had been marked on both shoulders, and stood under a tree to keep out of the sunlight for longer than he’d expected. His older companion rolled expressive eyes and stuck out his tongue for good measure.

‘I really don’t feel like being a toreador today,’ said the toreador. ‘Can someone else look after him?’

‘He’s your horse,’ said the other rider. ‘I think he wishes to have some exercise.’

‘Perhaps in the evening then, when it’s cooler,’ suggested the toreador hopefully, then grimaced as he noticed the trembling of the horse beneath him. ‘Bugger. He’s going to be a pain in the backside. Perhaps I’ll take him for a short stroll around the paddock instead.’

‘I do not think that will be enough,’ said the rider of the dark bay.

As if to prove that point, the bay sighed, very deeply. He had been bitten enough by the young maniac beside him over the last few weeks, but it had not ruined his own good nature.

The horse wished the toreador to take him to a bull. He lifted his head and snorted. This time it was the toreador who sighed.

‘The bull always comes to us, you idiot,’ he said, raising his spear. ‘Now for goodness sake, calm down and start dancing.’

to be continued…