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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.’

Just get on with it.

‘Remain calm, remain calm.’ The illustrious scribe cleared his throat. ‘I have made a list of all the thingies, and I’d just like to say I’m pretty sure Mum and Dad did it right.’ He glanced over at the mama, who nodded. She was not wearing the correct reading glasses again, he noticed, and his mouth twitched slightly as she blinked.

‘I don’t think that’s blinking,’ said the third one as he industriously pulled up his sock. ‘That is just really weird face-pulling, that’s all I want to say.

‘Silence,’ said the scribe as he positioned himself on a rock. ‘I have folded up my headgear this morning, and it makes a rather good cushion.’

‘Do we get to say what the dad did wrong,’ said the thirsty one. ‘Because I believe I could add a few pointers.’

The mama sighed, and began to clean her glasses. ‘It won’t make any difference,’ she mouthed at the scribe. ‘They aren’t mine.’

Number three was very busy shouting about things again. No one knew why because the back door was wide open.

‘That is not funny,’ said the scribe in a very severe voice. ‘Mum said if you get rude again, I can use the tennis racquet, not you.’

‘I think my head piece has fallen sideways,’ said the second one. ‘Why didn’t they size this thing, and…’ he watched as a random stranger wandered past. ‘.. Was he invited?’

‘No.’ Many people said this very quickly indeed. ‘That one is a very kind best friend of number one, and we do not talk about it.’

‘Right, well then,’ said number five. ‘Give me a lemon and I’ll squeeze it freely all over the great mind’s serendipitous whatsimajig.’

‘I don’t know what to do about that,’ said the scribe as he fussily wrote all the words down. ‘I said, “No, Pasha, we don’t tell them all the things, we wait for all the real people to rock up first, then we tell them all the things.” ‘

‘Mama said that too,’ added four. ‘I just want to know why I’m four and not three, although I must admit, he’s not too bad looking for a…’

‘You are four,’ said the mama. ‘Now get down from there before you hurt yourself.’

Four lowered himself from the pavilion’s roof as slowly as he could without injuring himself. ‘That was demonstrating how wonderful I am,’ he said, staring furiously at the scribe. ‘Which you aren’t even though you can write well, you’re not my homey, he is.’ And he pointed at number one, who frowned. ‘See, we both have magnificent eyebrows, and although I am quite sure we are not related, which would be weird, he said I look okay for a nob-head. I am not a nob-head, by the way, I’m an institutional bastion of the community, or something.’ He growled at the mama’s correction. ‘You are not getting away with that either.’

There may have been a bit of cackling from the mama as four pulled up three’s socks and tried to jump into his position. ‘You are not Three,’ she muttered. ‘Get over it.’

‘I want to be three, though,’ said Four. ‘Because then I’d be even more like Freddy Mercury, and you could see me all the time.’

The mama was not quite sure what he meant by that. ‘That’s nice, dear,’ she mumbled under her breath. ‘Which one did you mean?’

‘You know exactly who, I mean’t that as well, and the other one, and all the ones I sent you on a platter because it was stuff like that which makes my mum talk to me, and that’s why I did it, and that’s freshly made bread over there, and see, my mum said I was a good boy when I wanted to be and did you get all that, mama, cos I said it really really quickly but too bad I didn’t see that coming.’

The scribe had made another copy of the things four had said over the years, and he posted them in his very large maniacally written booklet of great and horrible things four had done over the years.

Three looked down at his shoes. ‘I am desperately seeking another pair of fabulous shoes, because mum didn’t let me look.’

‘Lemons are for buttheads,’ said five. ‘And I know because when I was little mum kicked me out of the bedroom because her and dad were making fishes, she said, and I still don’t know what that means. Do you?’

‘My mum said they didn’t do it right anymore,’ said five’s made up friend whom five was pushing backwards with his foot. ‘They didn’t let me finish — my mum said that too.’

‘Right, that’s enough. It’s a new something or other,’ said the mama. ‘I think you lot have been up all night and most of the day besides, and I’m sure it’s past someone’s bedtime.’

‘Yes, it’s way past my bedtime,’ said five. ‘Mum has to start yet another day without three and four, and I think she doesn’t really just let me say one thing.’

‘What is it,’ said the mama, rolling her eyes dramatically.

‘We are not getting any younger, mama, please come back now.’

‘No.’

‘DO AS YOU’RE TOLD,’ shrieked three, and tripped over his sock. ‘I can be really mean when you aren’t here, mum, I can too, yes I can, no I cant, no I don’t want to be mean, I want my mum back and she doesn’t want to come back, and I don’t know why this is that time isn’t it, I am sad now.’

That would have to be all for the time being, because boys can be really yucky when they want to be sometimes, and sometimes their mama just wanted to dismantle them all and put them in jars as a reminder to all the other ones that this was probably what she did better than anyone else. Last night’s very carefully displayed scene of her pulling Two’s arms and legs off had horrified everyone except the one who had owned a barbie doll when she was a kid and done exactly the same thing.

‘Last time we didn’t even last that long,’ said a demonic child from hell. ‘Last time, we didn’t even see that coming.’

The Funny Thing About Getting Older

I put the first picture up on my gravatar or whatever the hell it’s called, because frankly, it’s safer. I seem to have adopted more sons than I actually gave birth to, again, and really I don’t want to frighten them off, they are all very sweet. (That is, when they’re not swearing and carrying on and being all masculine and shit — which can be very f*cking annoying).

Some of my imaginary friends may be male, but they have the same understanding of what this means.

‘I haven’t put on my makeup yet,’ an unnamed friend screeches through his bedroom window. ‘Kindly remove your hands from my buttocks until I look twenty years younger and twice as good-looking.’

I think he had to man up to say that one, because it is rather funny. We won’t say anything else about that though, will we. Yes, I know, he wasn’t quite real, but he was real enough for someone else to say, ‘I want to be Harry.’

Not too many fellas wanted to be my ‘I am now in the Special Forces and am terrified of losing my marbles like the guy I thought I could look up to.’ Possibly because they recognised it, wished to avoid it, and when it may have been suggested to them through, once again, unnamed channels, they decided it was perhaps the perfect time to ask their long term girlfriends to not run away on them quite yet, because they needed to ask them a question.

We don’t all get to live the dream. This part of a long ago story was probably a little too real to a lot of people, and not something they could laugh about for too long. Maybe that’s why so many of us shed so many tears over the aeons.

Anyway, I took a few shots of me trying to look more cool than I actually am, this morning, and I took them without my glasses on. When I did put them back on, I thought, ‘Jesus effing Christ, what the hell, and definitely not my idea of a good time thanks very much by crikey.’

Fortunately, I could move the blur button around on my phone, and I felt much happier about myself. Twenty years, or possibly fifteen, or maybe slightly less, who knows really in the scheme of things (the last year has been quite shit) gone in the push of a finger along a screen. The wattle neck remains, but I don’t really care, to be very honest. It’s who I am, after all, which is why I will show the last picture first and not the other way around.

That feels so much better.

I’m not very good at taking myself seriously, but I will add I have a reasonable ego, so those who think I took off from other places through fright, or not believing in myself, or other equally ridiculous things, sorry to tell you this, but you’re wrong. I left those other places because I have a seriously awful temper, and the people I “crashed into” for lack of better words, well, “some” of them had tempers as equally horrific as my own. It was not a pleasant time for any of us.

There were some lovely, slightly misled, people who, though they were not experiencing quite the same battle of egos I was experiencing with unnamed bullshit artists and ratbags from hell, thought I may have been having problems with my mental health. I was, to be honest, because who the feck let those bastards in there, is what I want to know. Bloody hell.

Still, I will show them I am not being kind today, so they’ll have to put up with this one. I’m not kidding, this one is a pain the arse.

You’re in trouble now.

Just for good measure, I’ll add the weird school teacher who isn’t a school teacher at all, but may possibly pass as one of those mean old ballet instructors with a bung leg and one eye. I haven’t put a colour in my hair for a while, so you’ll get all the grey bits too. Have fun with that.

Right then. Now that I’ve done this and made myself look like a right twat, you can go back to sucking on your dunked toast and scrambled eggs.

Have a fabulous day, and don’t let the bed-bugs bite.

Love mum x aka the people mama, aka la chat (not le chat, because he’s a boy).

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 Unicorn Clock

I have an old Unicorn Clock on the desk behind my laptop. It no longer has a key.

This clock belonged to my parents, and was always on display. When it was wound up, and worked, it chimed a lot. But, I don’t remember hearing it too much, and that was possibly because it chimed a lot and annoyed the crappers out of everyone.

It’s quite a loud chime.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s as loud as a church clock, or a town hall clock, but it’s certainly loud enough to be heard through a reasonably sized modern Australian house with no problems whatsoever.

I know this, rather than remember it, because I just picked it up and turned it over to see if there was anything on it other than just the word, “Unicorn”. When I did this, it chimed at me, possibly because it didn’t like being turned upside down, or possibly because I disturbed something of its inner workings. As I’m rather logical, most of the time, I’m going to put it down to the latter.

I found one on the web that looked very similar, if slightly lighter in colour, and that one had a plaque on it. This one does not. What it does have, is handwritten numbers underneath that may mean something, or not much at all, and if it means something more personal, then that meaning has been lost to time, quite literally.

I can safely say it’s not worth much, money-wise, nor is it particularly attractive. The only people it has meaning to, are my immediate family, my siblings, and myself. It’s just an old clock, with no key, that I keep on my desk.

Clearing the Air.

There are certain things I need to explain. I’m only saying this so those who read it can look outside their own sandboxes for a change and realise there are other people out there who are not the same.

When I speak these things in the early morning, I am taking in the ones who live with me, and their thoughts are not always wise. My house is full of men (my husband included), and I’m the only one who is not.

Besides that, they’re sleeping, so we need to be careful. Do you understand this now?

‘We did not know they were asleep.’

It is very early here. If you looked at the time for where I am, you would perhaps choose to understand this better. We do not endorse gossip or foolishness, and I will not go down that path. It is not who I am, as a person.

I ask the one beside me, who says he is decidedly not female, whether it’s okay to speak about them. You see, this is my kindness to you, to them. We are trusted because we don’t carry on like silly people about all this, that, and the other — we just listen. Not everything should be repeated. I can’t make this any clearer.

We know the poets amongst you are finding it easier to speak your mind through the trickiness of words, and this is very clever, and it’s okay too. Just don’t expect all the “romantic” things to be real for you. They aren’t real for us, and bending for you won’t achieve good things. I have tried to show the younger men, this one beside me included, that not everything is best unveiled. He is laughing, because he understands this now, although it has taken quite some time to show this through my eyes.

We expect there to be a lot of complaints about the simplicity of this explanation. My kindness to you is your saving grace and this has been agreed. I wasn’t picked as a friend or partner because I am soft or particularly gentle. Sorry about that, but this is who I am. It’s also why I haven’t fallen out of any rocking chairs. I haven’t quite reached that age yet. Give it a few more years.

I will tell you it is more often than not I have been put in situations where I have been asked to protect a friend’s back from ridiculous people who don’t speak or write what they are thinking. We hear you anyway.

It’s not quite the same, he says, not quite the same as hearing a friend (someone genuine) say (or write), ‘You look particularly handsome today, buddy.’

I remind him I didn’t quite say it like that, it was quite a bit funnier. It was fine to be laughing with someone, and we are trying to show you what the difference is.

Let me give you an example of how I speak with my own boys. You may see why we all get along.

‘Hey baby, look at you. You look very pretty today.’ (I am definitely a mum and this was definitely one of the boys. He laughs, you see, because there is no underlying weirdness or strangeness here. He is comfortable in who he is, with me. It was also a genuine compliment — not contrived, and people can tell the difference. I was also being cheeky.)

It’s simple confidence, for the most part, or, well I wouldn’t call my own confidence “Charisma” exactly, because that’s something I can turn on or off.

Do they understand this yet? Some of them? I know the ones I’ve come in contact with in person know this well enough to see when I’m playing.

There is a difference between being silly and being creepy. Some people are creepy. Some are slimy, worse than eels. Some are very rude. There is a difference, and to understand that difference, you need to have the right attitude, not the wrong one.

I can hear the mumbling as well. Oh well. I know who will understand this and who won’t, so this will be their decision as much as my own. We appreciate our differences, and we show respect, and that’s just the way of it. I am being a lot kinder than some might think, and that’s possible because they don’t hear what I hear. This has been filtered down quite a lot, to be honest, although the distant holler of “Geronimo” as a silly duffer jumps into a pool of water with a very big splash “just for something to do” is something I would enjoy doing too.

The Real Dream

He says, ‘This is what she saw, when she looked at him on the floorboards.’

She stands there, behind the camera, watching. He is over there, on the other side of the room. Is it a room?

Not really. Not really a room. This is where he lifts his head. You see that. He’s not short. He’s not little. The little one with the darker skin pops his head up in front of me, and his green eyes shine. He is laughing.

‘You see it now,’ he says. I saw it before, I am saying this quietly. I didn’t repeat how they did it, the others would not let me.

‘I couldn’t say I had a crush on him,’ she says. ‘We needed to work together.’

He claps his hands. There are people behind him. The cloths of silk float in the warm breeze. He looks over and tries not to grin. He purses his lips and lifts his chin. He does not say begin. He just nods.

‘I am not stuck here. This is the place between. They always move between this place, and the next place. We just keep drinking our red tea.’

It is very hard not to laugh now.

‘He’s a bloody cheeky shit,’ I say to the one in my dream.

She laughs. ‘I know. I had to work with him.’

it is easy for us to communicate here. We understand all of the each, the others, perfectly. I say it this way, for it is not just the girl who showed me her thoughts. There were three people, and each of them had something to say. I couldn’t write it better than that either, whispers are the right hand. This is just the truth of it.

The little one is dancing behind them now. Behind us. We are the ones watching.

He can’t keep still, the one over there. Everyone is dancing and it’s very hard not to join in, he thinks, and you can see it in his eyes. He lifts his hands, holds them out and laughs.

‘We do it this way, you see/they don’t see.’ They do not have the left hand/right hand. We have that and have shared.

I nod, and the girl beside me is crying. ‘I can’t do this without him there,’ she says. He is not just my friend, she thinks. She will be okay. We know this. He is calming to her.

‘Your “partner in crime”,’ I say, and I hug her in the dream. ‘It will be okay. We are not the only dreamers.’

They heard it elsewhere, too. They decided to show it with the young one in the north. He thought it was wonderful, he said. It took a long time to get there, though. Perhaps too long, he thought once. He doesn’t think so now.

They couldn’t get a boat with a sail shaped like a fish fin. Not like that one. They had to make it up, they said.

The one who writes this story to us, here in the middle of the bottom of the world, as he calls it, wanted “Hakan” to be beautiful in his own way. ‘I didn’t know, quite know, how to fix this particular scene so it was acceptable. I had to ask the man who did the music.’

So, they sent the dream. They sent it, and today I will write the truth of it.

The shining silk sails of cloth that floated in the breeze, the dancing people, the happiness of simply being able to do this one thing, to act it, to write it, to sing it and to share with our friends in the south through the arc of a moon.

Motivation?

He starts laughing. He knows what’s coming.

‘It did take me a while to get used to it,’ he mutters. ‘Go on then.’

Are we driving? Have we just met? What did I say that made you laugh.

They’re friends.

‘You said I had pretty eyes,’ he says. He chuckles again. ‘I think you may have said that a lot.’

‘One of my favourite pastimes.’

We’re driving.

‘Move over.’

‘I can’t move over. If I move over, I’ll have to open the door, and then I’ll fall out.’

‘Fine then. You should probably stop the car.’

‘Stop the car?’

‘Get your hand off your dick, and stop the car.’

He grins. ‘Got it.’

He gets his hand off his dick, and stops the car. She gets out, lifts a finger (it’s the right way round, dude, don’t get offended) and walks around the back of the vehicle.

‘I’m not stupid,’ she says as she comes up to the driver’s side.

‘I wouldn’t run you over,’ he protests.

‘Shush. Move over. Don’t get that handbrake stuck up your arse though, will ya.’

He moves over.

‘Buckle up.’

He buckles up. ‘Where are we going?’ He grins.

‘Where do you wanna go?’

‘I dunno. I asked first.’

‘What’s your point?’

‘Stop being a shithead. Where are we going?’

‘That way.’

‘That way?’ He points down the road. ‘You mean this way?’

‘Splitting hairs now, are we?’ She throws it in first.

‘Handbrake,’ he mutters.

‘I’ll give you a fucking hand brake. I’m surprised it’s not still stuck up your arse.’

There may be no small amount of chuckling. ‘God, you’re a bitch.’

‘Thank you. Oh it sounds good, doesn’t it?’ The engine has that little bit of a whine – the sound you know you are going to have a good time to. ‘I didn’t think the old girl had it in her. Who did her up?’

‘I did.’

‘You might have mentioned that once or twice. I just wasn’t sure, you know? Said something about the VIN?’

‘Yeah. Might have said something like that. I missed her a lot when she went. Didn’t get stolen though. Know we aren’t gonna talk about that, are we?’

‘Nah. We’ll leave that. Second.’

‘Second?’

Yep. Second. ‘She’s got a bit of grunt. Better for a straight road, I think.’

‘You’re probably right. Couldn’t keep up with me down those windy roads, could ya.’

‘Fuck off.’ Third. ‘Wind the window down.’

‘What the fuck for.’

Oh good, he’s starting to relax.

‘Having fun yet?’

‘Ya know what. I think I am.’ He leans back and winds down the window. ‘Where’d you say we were going?’

‘This way.’

Update from a Small Cat – Jan 26th

‘Ah. You wish me to meander with you.’ It wasn’t a question. The cat had stood up and capered along the wall under the fence at least five minutes beforehand, and was likely waiting on the corner for his frenemy, el cato.

‘I didn’t say that, you did.’ El cato projected this thought through the glass door at the rear of his own house. ‘I am not ambulating today either.’

‘What are you doing then. I can’t see you?’

‘Nope, I am a figment of your imagination and you are a worm.’

‘Oh, fabulous. I have always wanted to be a worm.’

‘You have not.’ Of this, el cato was sure. ‘You said you never knew which end to talk to.’

‘Perhaps I’ve changed my mind?’

‘I don’t think you have changed your mind.’ El cato stood and stretched, fluffing up his magnificent tail. He had spotted le chat peering over the fence. ‘Little basket.’

‘Speak to me not of baskets, I am breathtaking. Look at me.’ Le chat wiggled his backside with anticipation. ‘Just so you know, I’m ready to pounce. I’m not sure what at, yet, but I’m ready.’

The dog on the other side of the fence wrinkled her pretty face. ‘What are they doing,’ she mumbled. ‘And why must I always be the one between them?’

The human, who had not got up to look around the corner (through sheer willpower alone), sighed deeply. ‘I can hear you all. Will you please cease and desist. It is Sunday morning. Even the birds are silent.’

It was true. The birds were distant, the wind was lifting into a breeze, and le chat was beginning to sing the song of the people, so they would hear him and perhaps wonder…

‘Oh there you are,’ said the human under her breath.

‘I was bored,’ murmured le chat. ‘Wall smells like stone, fence smells like metal.’ He stared vaguely off into the middle distance. ‘Cobwebs.’ He crouched low on the sand coloured brick. ‘Extra large.’

The human made a slight wheezing sound which the cat assumed meant she was laughing. He stood and turned, wrapping his own black tail gently around his forepaws. The patch on his shoulder stood out starkly against the white of his coat.

‘My ears are not lopsided,’ he chided her. ‘One is merely listening more than the other.’

On this, they could agree.

‘And, just so you know,’ he added. ‘Bermuda is the general opposite place in the world of where we are, which is why, when I dig, you say I am trying to dig all the way to Bermuda.’

And that was the absolute truth.

‘Gunna”

‘What’s a gunna?’ The small boy is excited.

‘Well, it’s different to a gunnie,’ says the man, and he grins. It’s not a polite grin. Not at all.

‘I knew of a place once called Gunna’s Ridge, seeing as we’re going there,’ added the man, and he swiped his nose with a grimy hand.

‘Where is it?’ The boy was curious now, more curious than he should have been. He wonders why it is no longer present tense, and why he is beginning to get a sinking feeling in his gut.

‘Let me tell ya what a gunna is.’ The man stood up and absent-mindedly straightened his trousers.

He pushed his curly hair back into position, and the boy could smell Brill Cream. It was a very distinctive smell to a small child, and still is, apparently. The collared shirt was neatly tucked back into the man’s trousers, and his belt tightened a notch. He reached down and wiped the dirt off his shoes as best he could.

‘Come on then, kiddo.’

‘I don’t know if I want to,’ the boy said. ‘I’d rather just talk about it.’

The man nodded. ‘Yep. That’d be about right, I s’pose.’

‘You s’pose? What’s that mean?’ The boy began to feel a little belligerent, himself. Had he spelled something wrong? He didn’t know, and he was no longer caring much either. ‘Why can’t we just talk about it?’ he said, and tried to stop himself from snarling. If he snarled at the man, he’d get a cuff over the ear, he knew he would. It had happened before.

‘You just wanna talk about it. Ya don’t wanna do it, ya don’t wanna learn it, ya don’t wanna see, ya don’t wanna do anythin’ much, do ya,’ the man said. He didn’t appear angry at all. He didn’t seem perplexed. He just seemed resigned to the idea that this kid could only learn about things through talking about it.

‘Yep.’ The kid stood up straighter. There wasn’t anything wrong with him. He had two strong legs, two strong arms, and he had a heartbeat. What was wrong with this bloke, that he was looking at him like he’d just crawled out from under a rock?

‘You wanna know what a gunna is still, do ya?’ The man said and he began to turn away.

‘Yes I do,’ replied the kid.

‘Pretty sure I’ve just explained it. You are. You’re a gunna. Gunna do this, gunna do that. Gunna do all sorts of shit, and yet here you are, doing sweet eff ay, and nothin’ to show for it.’

‘That’s a gunna?’ The kid scratched his head. ‘Dunno if I wanna be one of them, then.’

‘Sweet,’ said the man. ‘Come on then. Let’s go.’