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Argaeous stood in the middle of nowhere, but still

the graveyard, at first holding his arms out wide, then windmilling them with great gusto. TEA AND INERTIA.

‘Crystalline, I am possibly spelling your name wrong, again,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘But, you should get the llamas and bring them here, for if Mary doth not accompany Cassius the lead llama from many years ago to chill him the hell out, the people and News Crews will drag the bloomin’ sleigh to all sorts of unaccommodating placemats.’ Which they did.

The luna equations were aligned indeed. Several personal favourites had decided to don their masks of slightly wooden legs and horrendously shaped bonnets and were flying in a not too distant line of kinsmen of old. They also had not realised the extent some people would go to to make it seem as if Mrs Capewell was evil and nasty.

‘Ah ha!’ Argaeous cried with homily frustrations. ‘My timid wolf at last beats upon the heavens of God knows what.’

‘I didn’t tell your timid wolf to do that,’ said someone no one knew. ‘But I do like that these past many lives of distant humanitarian blessed be friends have supplied thee with. They can send money to lots of other people. My soon to be freakishly handsome great aunt of mother gomorrah has decided to be welsh today.’

‘Is he of a wonderfully short stature with berry pretty eyes.’ It appeared Crys had arrived with a ne’er do well in tow.

‘Apparently. And likes horses. Mostly white ones but has been known to get in a chariot behind others as well.’

‘Others as well?’

‘Indeed, but not in deed, just chariots.’ It must be said here the Greek had been Greeking much of late and would possibly be the one who needed to sit down. Very soon. Or lose that pretty shirt.

‘I see how one might get that mixed up if one were as blind as a bat and didn’t… oh that one where no one really died,’ said the welshman, drinking deeply from his cup of foul knowledge.

‘Yes, him. And the othery. And her as well.’

‘FRIENDS, ROMANS, COUNTRYMEN of the past,’ shouted the small of stature. She had indeed filled out declarations and shown some to the Justice of the Peace across the way, which had not been taken into account by distant over the land and sea and far away, favourites, who like to write things down and present them to lost in space very well known masked men of large and sweetened empires and then use them for their own benefits. Things were also then shown to the local Shadow Federal Ministers office for that kind of thing, and they also had no plans because they were having far too much fun at Mrs Capewell’s expense, which happened to be quite a lot, once again not really benefiting her personally in any way, but they were having fun so who cared.

‘Look what they’ve done there!’ Is it Mr Chatty, or one of the “Hemingways” who has taken a page from a Benjamin booklet? They might indeed have been raiders of a lost ark, and sore indeed, for my ark is still safely ensconced in paper, although not half as pretty as it ended up being I’m sure. It will possibly be available in a later chapter that was possibly never meant for the internet, but seeing as I am apparently damned, it will be. (After all, how much worse could it be? I mean, having control over the weather is rather ridiculous, isn’t it? Especially when the Llamas have now become AI internet consultants for Facebook. It can’t get much worse than that.)

‘Kindly remove the hands,’ added the AI, winking in a most dramatic fashion. ‘I’ve got this.’ With that, the AI turned itself into yet another beloved story of the soon to be extremely broke former author and f*cked that up as well. Ladybirds become sparkly gay people baring their arses on television in ads, or stripped in far off taverns and called themselves Ambrosia, and no one wanted to take them to show their children because that’s kind of disgusting. So, the original ladybird called Ambrosia Honeybun Polka Dot carefully removed herself from the situation as much as she was able and said, ‘Quite frankly, the ladybird died. Thanks for asking.’

Off the AI galloped, in a very winsome way, floating his tail behind him like a waterfall of sheer delight, his rather large and majestic looking companion running beside him with a slightly heroic grin. The heroics were for themselves, not her and none of them came back because why bother? All they needed to do really, was steal her words, mix them up, take them for granted and never think about the woman again because nobody gave a shit about who she was or where she came from. The fact she had slightly good ideas didn’t matter too much either. She personally, would not get any benefit from them, would not be recognised for them, did not have a team of anyone looking out for her because her parents and grandparents had died quite a few years back, thanks very much, and nobody really understood why it wasn’t a nice thing to do, stealing things from a person’s grave (or old Facebook account, or WordPress, or Microsoft Word) who hadn’t actually died, just got sick of all the bullshit.

Instead, they candidly asked her for ratings of their broken internet services, whilst breaking hers, told no one who they’d stolen the ideas from, although it became blatantly obvious they were hers to begin with, and wouldn’t communicate in a civil manner because they didn’t care to. Sound like a good way to push someone off a cliff? It does, doesn’t it. They compensated her for this by giving her an extra Unemployment benefit once in a while and telling themselves it was a good job well done. They hoped, by doing this, and by barring her from as much as they possibly could, they’d get off scot free and she’d maybe eventually lie down like the dog she was supposed to be.

The End.

So when we say you…

kill her, you save her arse every time.

This was today’s dream.

The small white bus was cross-axled in the road. On either side of the road was thick scrub and low trees. One side was quite steep, the other side, to our left, had a ditch. My copilot, a tall blonde fella, was doing his damndest to help me stop the bloody thing from falling backwards into that ditch. I didn’t tell him that side had a ditch, I knew it was there, and I was not going to let that bus fall into it. No fucking way.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘You can do this mate. We don’t give in, and we don’t give up.’

‘I can’t hold it,’ he said, and I could see him straining to keep it on the track.

I got out and put my shoulder into that metal door and I pushed. ‘Come on. We’ve got this.’

He had the other side. If I didn’t change the position of the back of that stupid fucking bus, it, and all its belongings, were gonna end up in that fucking ditch. So, I pushed her over a few inches so that if she went backwards again, she’d back up into a tree instead. The leaves of the peppermint were hanging over the back of that bus, and I knew it was not going to be easy.

The nose of the bus began to tip down. I could hear her then, the little one. I could hear the agony in her voice.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow,’ she gasped and cried and it was the most awful sound I’d ever heard. But, the whole point was to get this thing up that fucking hill, because there was nowhere else for us to go. The road was washed out further ahead, we couldn’t turn her round, we could only get her to go up.

‘Put your back into it,’ I grunted. ‘It’s not gonna be easy but we’ll save the stupid woman one more bloody time because she needs to get this right.’

If she ever reads this, I hope she finally gets it right. It’s not about what shit looks like, or how it appears to be, it’s about how we are trying to get you to access something you do not think you have, and lady if you do not think you have emotions, that is why you feel so fucking awful in yourself right now.

‘Do we send this to her too,’ asked the little one who had survived the crash of that bus. He was a big lad now, and not a little girl, but it didn’t matter in the long run. In the long run, the whole point was to get that woman to safety, regardless of what she’d fucking done.

‘Nah, I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘She’ll figure it out.’

Happy Birthday

So, you see, to the “young” people, your life to experience a love lasting until “Death do us Part” is to take onboard the learning of patience. This will not be the same love as one from your parents but one whom can challenge you and make you listen to them as well.

The difference? The difference is this. You are going to love a woman/man you do not wish to lose. You will never lose your mother’s love, and you know this innately, but to lose your wife’s/husband’s love because of your own silliness and need to be right all the time, is not something you want to happen.

Therefore, when you meet this person, the person where all your future lies, hyou will say to yourself, ‘I do not wish to lose them.’

You may forget this occasionally, but you must also remember she/he knows how to dance. Sometimes, boys, you have to let her lead you, not the other way around.

This is how a true partnership works.

Every spring she comes back to a garden…

Let me explain a few things about what happens when a story is shared.

First of all, it goes to an editor, and in one particular case, the editor and the publisher wanted to change the amount of letters in a certain seagull’s name. Instead of it being “AARGH”, which was his original name, it became AAAARGH, which was quite a bit longer.

Then, of course, it went to the illustrator, who had come from a different part of the world entirely, and the illustrator put their own little twist on Ambrosia and Aargh, and all the other creatures added to the story.

You see, when I first wrote about Ambrosia and Aargh, Ambrosia was a ladybug, not a ladybird, and Aargh, as you can see, had far fewer letters to his name.

But, unless we can share really carefully well thought out “why’s” to explain to other people, we do not always get what we want. Sometimes, we just have to go with the flow.

You see, Ambrosia was difficult to sell to my publisher, even though we were friends, because Ambrosia seemed a little too “common”. This is why I made Ambrosia into a Transverse ladybird, because that made her a little more Australian (who could also travel a little further if she needed to). Unfortunately, or fortunately as the case may be, this argument for Ambrosia’s survival in the story industry was not passed on to the artist/illustrator, who made a perfectly good and beautiful ladybug/ladybird that everyone could see.

Aargh also nearly got left out of the story. Who’d have thunk it! Being “just a seagull” made Aargh a little common too, you see, so we made sure to make him an Australian Silver Gull (which he actually was).

Unfortunately, this little piece of information may not have been picked up by the illustrator either, being a Canadian, and the illustrator may have very well put her own twist as to what Aargh looked like.

Despite it looking like a dastardly plan to go international, it actually wasn’t. It was simply a conglomeration of several minds hard at work with their own ideas, which resulted in the final, slightly mixed up version of the original story of Ambrosia Honeybun Polka Dot. 

I’ll tell you a secret, too. One of the pages of writing in the book is not quite in the right place. It’s actually also a little bit mixed up, and that had nothing to do with me. In fact, quite a lot of the final story was not much like the original story at all, which was quite a bit shorter.

In saying this, and also looking at other editing mistakes in another book I wrote, even though it annoyed the bejeebers out of me at the time, I let it go. You see, it was already printed, copyrighted and all the other wonderful things that go with creating a story, and sometimes, just sometimes, there’s not much one can do about it at all except collect the royalties.

And sometimes, the royalties for writing books are not very much at all.

(I’ll give you a round number of what I receive for those two books over a quarterly period. It’s around $200 AU every three months. That’s not very much at all, is it. Not for someone who is fifty five years old and doesn’t get any other income. I’ll leave that with you to think about.)

Kate Capewell

Dear Toodles

She wrote. ‘Good to see your English is improving.’

‘My English has always been rather good,’ he said. ‘It just wasn’t your English, which is weird and Australian.’

‘There is nothing wrong with being weird and Australian, and this is meant to be my letter to you, so please be quiet.’

‘I am being quiet. I am sleeping peacefully because that is what is required of me at this time of the morning.’

‘Well then, perhaps you can just listen rather than talk.’

Toodles thought about that for a short while and decided it was possibly a good idea to listen, rather than talk. He listened.

‘If you are very well behaved, something wonderful is going to happen for your birthday. I’ve already written it down, and I know you want to change one little thing in it to make yourself appear a little more… hmmm, how shall I put it?’ She tapped her lip thoughtfully. ‘Blokey. You can talk,’ she added.

‘No, it’s okay,’ he replied airily. ‘It’s just, you know, some things we can’t be absolutely sure of.’

‘This is true, and I have amended one small thing. The other thing I see you were a little concerned about was what we call “A saying”.’

‘A saying? What’s a saying?’

‘It’s a little like,’ and she grinned as the little whispering friend in her ear offered up a particular well thought out saying. ‘A conversational art-piece.’

‘Is that what you do? Offer up little conversational art-pieces for people to ponder over and wonder about their meanings?’

‘That’s what I’m doing here, yes. In the past, I may have written that down regarding the Australian language and put it in a book, but here I’m offering these little snippets on this page only for you to work on and look at and perhaps wonder to yourself, “What If”…’

‘I think you are doing good things today,’ said Toodles. ‘Can I change me name then, so I can stop saying good bye?’

‘I think you can. You can change it to the greeting of someone being polite and friendly, and perhaps add a little bit of good manners in there, you know, just for fun.’

‘And what about the silly things the silly ones have done all over the internet because they were bored and didn’t have anything better to do?’

‘I believe there might be a certain gentleman wayyyyy over the other side of the world who is thinking about this right now, as we speak, and he has decided that maybe, just one last time, he’s going to think of some wonderful ways he can get them to fix it all up and make it nice again.’

‘You believe that?’

‘I do. Sometimes, believing in something is the most important thing of all.’

I’d say it’s high time he did.

Gumnuts, actually.

They are picked by the parrot and the cockatoo. You can tell by looking at them what type of bird has pulled them from the tree.

A red tailed, black cockatoo eats them one way. A white cheeked, black cockatoo eats them another way. They also fly differently. One is straight and glides, one flies like a wave.

‘You’re kidding me,’ says this one, remembering. ‘That’s what she said last time. Actual birds. That’s what she meant.’

The other one rolls his eyes. ‘Just like actual horses, you twit.’ He sticks out his tongue for good measure.

We wonder if they will decide to go and see the actual horses. They are ready to be seen as well, they say.

‘Can I stroke him,’ says the little girl to her mother. ‘Will he bite?’

‘No, darling, he is very friendly, he will not bite. See how he is now?’

They see this now.

I can’t write the name of the place because I could not see it clearly, but I’ve been there. The two boys are in the far paddock, a bay, and a chestnut. The chestnut stood once under a tree, his feet nearly in his own poo, unfortunately. He will come out from under the tree today, his head held high, and he will snort. If you look very carefully, you might even see him smile.

Behind him walks the older bay. Once he was a strawberry roan. He is very, very gentle and will see if maybe you have something for him. Be careful with his back, though. He is not to be ridden, and the owners of these two love them very, very much.

Before you get to them, you will see the “Magnificent white horse” and the dun, and maybe the young bay filly as well. Opposite the boys is the tiny black mare, and she is never forgotten by the people who visit her, even if it is not always her owners. At the very rear, you may be lucky enough to see the palomino, if she isn’t rolling around on her back in the sand.

I may be wrong about the palomino, because I did not properly meet her when I was there last. Maybe today she is standing at the fence and waiting for someone to come and see her. Maybe today she can go for a ride.

See Me Now

One magpie comes to the fence and he asks. I watch him and chitter to him, and he asks. I watch him and I chitter-chat to him, and he asks.

I laugh to myself without any sound, and stand.

‘Oh no,’ he thinks and flies. He has heard me laugh and stand.

‘Tricky thing,’ I think and say in my head, ‘You have been seen. I pinpoint him and know I have done this before. This is and will be new.’

I send an old memory, by listening to it myself and all of a sudden there they are.

‘That sounds like my mum and dad,’ says the middle bird. ‘I know that sound. Listen!’

‘Are they not new then,’ says the first bird. He is very young.

‘Are you sure,’ says the third bird.

‘I know what I’m talking about,’ replies the middle bird. ‘That’s why I’m here. We need to start singing now. It is time to start singing.’

And, off they go to the trees and wait until I am listening. In the distance, I can hear them.

They have begun to sing.

To The Dawn.

‘Play with me?’

The small cat canters down the darkened hallway. It’s early, and most of the occupants of the house are sleeping. This is our time, but we need to be very quiet.

I’m not wearing my glasses, once again, for once again I can’t find them.

This is normal.

The small cat has eyes for this sort of thing. I do not. Once, many years ago, I may have, but that time has passed. It was possibly around the time I noticed I needed to have longer arms to see things.

A little voice inside me says, ‘You should go and get new glasses.’ The practical part of me, who notices I have not been earning a wage, tells me to buy yet another pair of cheap reading glasses.

Yet another part of me says, ‘Well, you should be earning a wage, so you can buy yourself new glasses.’

These parts of myself try not to be negative, yet because they are practical they list all the reasons why these things are not achievable. So, I decide that when there is more light in the sky, I will try to find the glasses I know I own, and use those.

But, I want to do something now, so I studiously try to ignore these things and try not to fuss too much about not wearing my glasses, and instead rely on the fact I have a fairly good idea where the keys on the keyboard are. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time I have had to write blind.

‘May we sing to you, for you.’ the small voices ask, and it makes me sad for no reason at all. One of the young men of the house has gotten out of bed and is having a shower. He works early this morning, has taken on extra responsibilities for himself, and is learning how to shine.

It is beautiful to see.

Dawn is here.

You see, someone achieving something is possibly one of the most wonderful things in the world to me. To see them rise and say, ‘This is what I am going to do,’ is possibly one of the sweetest things to feel.

Is this my purpose? I feel it is.

Perhaps, someday someone will also do that for me.

Today, though, like most days, I will see them rise, and I will do my best to help them shine, and listen when I can, and switch off when I can’t. This is how I deal with things. I will do the things they are unable/unwilling to do, and make sure everything runs smoothly.

I put myself in their shoes and I think, ‘Oh, I should be there, sitting with them, and just being there for them. They yawn loudly, and I think, ‘Please do that quietly, other people are sleeping’, and then I think, ‘If I was sitting with them, perhaps they would not yawn as loudly.’ I hear the morning birds and I think, ‘I should be there, appreciating their songs,’ and then I compare that to sitting and appreciating being with the person who supports me because I chose to walk away from something that was not kind.

I have been told that was a poor decision, to walk away from something that was not kind, because now I do not earn that wage. Yet here, where I am doing my best to be kind, it is accepted and ignored as well.

Do I get to share my passion for words with them? No, not often. This is boring to them

Do they get to share their passion for the sport of their choosing with me? Often, and loudly. Do I wish to participate in that sport? No. They like to get louder and louder to share their passion with me. I get quieter and quieter because my words and their words do not compare.

So, instead, we use the practical knowledge of how to make things work, with each other, and although my practical knowledge of certain things far exceeds theirs in some ways, their practical knowledge of other things far exceeds mine in others. This is how the partnership is formed. I will continue to be proud of them, and the things I love to do will continue to be mine and mine alone — for if I disagree with something then I am called, very loudly by people with loud voices, these people I love, horrible names. If I say, ‘If you do this to help yourself, you can be more independent.’ They say, ‘If you do this for me, I don’t need to.’

So, this is where it’s at. I cannot go and earn a wage for myself, because it infringes on the time for them. Yet, if I do not work and earn a wage, it is a bad decision and I should have stayed.

Where do I come into this?

I should get myself a dog.

I can’t get myself a dog, because this is not the right environment for a dog. The dog would be mistreated, the dog might escape, the dog would not be trained properly for there are many people in my home, and a dog needs to be trained one way, not many ways, so the dog can learn one thing first before he can learn many.

I go back to my words. I have learnt from the past that to get something to play with, in whatever shape or form, will only serve to have it and myself mistreated, and have myself blamed — so I go back to my words.

My own words are the only words that are safe for me.

Why?

No one on this page at this time has interfered with my own words. Only I have interfered with my own words. I allow changes if they are correct. If I no longer have access to make the correct changes, then I no longer have access to the one thing I can control.

Then lose control.

That is a very unwise decision. It is illogical, impractical, and ridiculous.

Then get another hobby.

This is where they and I agree. Why, when I only have one thing I absolutely, thoroughly enjoy, the one thing I have left to enjoy because everything else is taken away, or impractical, unwise, not appreciated, not accepted, and no one has given me/will give me the opportunity or access to be myself for myself and no one else, why would I get another hobby?

Then there is only one thing left to do. Here we disagree. I will not end, nor will I give in or give up, because that is simply not who I am. I will get up, again, and again, and again. I will not be violent if I can help it. I will not try to hurt if I can help it. I will not be loud or obnoxious if I can help it. I will just get smaller, and smaller until finally there is nothing left at all.

And then I will start again.

Aargh…

It would be highly unusual to find a seagull in a water tank after a cyclone, but even more unusual to find two seagulls, a Little Penguin and, if you looked very carefully, a ladybird in a water tank all together. Especially if, on one particular occasion, one also happened to find inside the water tank, a thong.

Now the thong is not the type you pull up, nor is it the type that may be attached to anything other than one’s foot, and this was a left-footed thong, that our friend Paul the Little Penguin, had flown on, surfed on, and landed on, quite speckily I might add, when he arrived inside the water tank.

It had been the safest place to be at the time he arrived, for when he arrived there had been a great deal of commotion going on. Ambrosia, whom he spotted almost immediately despite her size, was holding one little front leg up to her nose, Aargh was floating around in a circle swearing quite a lot, and Pepe was looking very embarrassed….