nature

The Discovery.

When one is not on foot, and the trees one is trying very hard to avoid are rather close together, trying to get from one place to the next, just to find the sandy track one has finally arrived at is in the wrong place, one might feel slightly peeved.

If it is in the middle of the night though, one might decide to grab the swag, remove one’s boots, and set up camp right there, in the middle of the track.

‘I’m not particularly fond of this spot,’ he said to his rather tall companion. ‘Can we not go on a little further?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she huffed. ‘I got you here in one piece, and if you want to find it, perhaps staying in one piece is a particularly good idea. Go to sleep, for God’s sake. I’ll film you tomorrow.’

‘Can’t we talk about it now?’ He scratched his beard. He’d never been particularly good at these things, but he knew, he just knew, if he could find the place where the drone had spotted that very interesting, very large, blinking whatever-it-was, his career would sky-rocket.

‘I know where you’re going with this,’ she replied. ‘But many people wouldn’t. There’s no reception there and I think it might take a few missed turnoffs just to reach the right place. According to the map, there’s a little inlet, tributary type thing just up the way a bit, so perhaps when it’s daylight and we can both see where we’re going, we’ll go and check it out.’

‘Excellent.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘I think this would be much better than emptying sewerage tanks for a living.’

‘Yes well. In my experience, being behind the camera instead of in front of it, is what I’d rather do. But, you do you.’

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.

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.

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.’

This One

There you are. There is your opposite. Listen to them chirp and repeat themselves. It won’t take long.

‘There he is.’

‘Is that him?’

‘Oh, I can’t tell how old he is.’

‘Who’s this? Is this the one?’

‘I can’t tell, I can’t tell.’

This is where we disagree. I don’t see this one like you/they see him. No, not at all.

They will be jumping through more hoops than they can count, and I’m not the one to lay those hoops down.

The other one laughs out loud. ‘This is where we agree.’

It won’t be ‘kindly remove,’ at all, now will it.

‘Most definitely not,’ says an older version, who knows this well. ‘I can see the riots, almost. Not those types of riots,’ the friend adds quickly. ‘I see the other kind, the kind I had to deal with, simply from something just like this.’

Across the ocean and in the middle nods, neither sagely, nor thymely. ‘Oh, the poor chap,’ he says quietly, because what he’d picked up along the way had come there quite some time ago. ‘I didn’t think you’d let him down, and you did not. Not at all.’

He regrets this decision later, perhaps, but not right now. Very much right now, he whispers fiercely. What the hell was I thinking.

I’m sure he’s laughing on the inside, and I am likely correct, yet again, because I’m rather good at that.

‘But, who is it though?’ someone whispers. ‘Who is he?’

I will stand up and walk away, and leave them to it.

‘Made it myself,’ I say and high five the much taller one beside me. There is a conspiratorial wink.

‘My mum said that too.’

Just kidding.

Three Thirty am – the witching hour.

There is a little Golden Book story I would tell my kids when they were little. It was something about a mouse that decided to go sailing on his bed. He would get up, brush his teeth, and do a list of boring things before starting his day. I’m not sure why it was important to start with this particular image, but who am I to argue?

As I’m writing this — having got up, for no particular reason (aside from old habits) at three thirty am, the cat has decided to meow forlornly at glass doors because apparently, once again, he has forgotten where his cat flap is. A cat flap is a cat door. I needed to write that because “language barrier”. I don’t know either, I’m just repeating what the little voice beside me says.

So, the extremely contrived image sent to me during last night’s (it’s still last night, and one half hour past the witching hour when I woke up, ya bastards), was the picture of an old fashioned key sitting on the corner of a window sill. Now, when I looked at that particular key (god this cat is driving me insane), I said in my head, quite clearly, “Wardrobe key”, so if anyone reading this had a dream along these lines and wondered why “wardrobe key” came to mind, that was me. Sorry about that, but not really.

The funny thing about writing so early in the morning, before the sun has come up, and while everything is silent, is that something happens to the writing on the page. It does its own thing, and I am, well I’m not forced exactly, but I tend to think, ‘okay, I’ll go along with it,’ and whoever it is writing the other side of this says, very clearly, ‘Let’s see where it take us.’

This is not usually my form of transportation…

I do prefer to write with a slightly more professional flair, which is something that seems to have escaped me these last several months or so, and to be honest with you, I’m not particularly happy about it. So there.

Back to the topic at hand. ‘Wardrobe key.’ The lion, the witch (pauses) and the wardrobe. Not in this case though. In this case it’s because I happen to have an old fashioned wardrobe around here somewhere, so I kind of know what those keys look like.

Then of course, there is the other type of ‘old fashioned’ key. The one not sitting in the corner of a window sill that I’d be worried about being knocked off said window sill by a random elbow. The door key, which is apparently why I’m writing this for you.

The following is from a story I wrote.

Picture the scene:

He’s woken up to something and he doesn’t know quite where he is. This room has doors on both sides of the bed, an old fashioned lamp which he doesn’t remember having turned on, and the rain outside is falling. Through the window, and reflected in the lamp light, the raindrops look like a thousand meteorites. (I wrote that a lot better the first time around).

Click-click.

Someone is trying to open the door. This is what has woken him up. The door in question is on the right side of the wall where the head of the bed is. The other door leads outside.

When this happens, the guy we’re looking at not only is already naturally a little on edge, he’s very well trained, so there are a million thoughts running through his head. He’s unarmed, he was told he’s got all the keys (which he is now questioning as someone is definitely trying to unlock the door), and he is preventing himself from doing something stupid by trying to figure out all the scenarios of how to deal with an intruder without waking up the rest of the house.

As he is who he is, he decides, rather than flinging the door open and confronting someone, he is going to use the door that goes outside, go around the side of the house, and come back in behind whoever it is that is trying to unlock the door to the bedroom he was told was “completely safe”.

As he is also an ex carpenter by trade, he has all these random thoughts about the fact the door (that someone is currently attempting to unlock) is very sturdy and won’t be broken down in a hurry by “whoever it is”. All of his experiences, what makes him who he is in this moment, come together and form him into something honed to a fine point, a weapon in himself and he uses everything without thinking about it.

I’ll add here, the person on the other side of the door is still trying to unlock it, not break it down, nor does it seem to be at the point of them breaking it down. This is giving him a lot more time to not only wonder who it is (there are really only three choices: the first choice is someone who is not living/residing inside the house, the second choice is a teenage girl, something he’d not want happening either, and the third choice is an old lady, which just seems very odd as she is the one who gave him the keys) but to decide how he’s going to deal with them. If it is who he thinks it is (a very large man), then he’s going to need to be “on the ball” or seeking the advantage.

It does not exactly go his way. Most of it goes his way, but not the outcome of his snap decision of how to confront something. I suppose, by the end of this scene, or scenes, he gets lucky, but that doesn’t change the fact the first decision he makes is to attack, rather than defend. I would say any psychologist would tell you this guy, whoever he may be, could potentially be a problem. What I’ve given you here though, is an example of how someone specifically trained might deal with something.

It’s a shame that for this scene the guy was in a suburban house, with an elderly relation and her granddaughter. His first instinct (although it is to protect and defend later) is to be the one with the advantage. It’s fair to say he’d chosen to observe what he was dealing with first, and went about dealing with it far better than he might have under different circumstances. It is also fortunate the person he was dealing with (although he didn’t know it) knew him and what he would be thinking.

It must also be said, in this particular scene, the circumstances under which this guy is in at this point of time and leading up to it, the “context” if you will, gives him every right to behave exactly as he does (although, in the end, it’s not something he has been able to share with anyone).

Horseplay: a story of clowns

To be very honest with you, I don’t know whether this one should be repeated or not, but we wrote it together, like many other things we wrote together.

I had my own Words once, many years ago. It isn’t the same thing now. Horseplay was written by us for fun.

C.S Capewell and C.D Chevalier.

Citrin du Chevalier was a magnificent stallion of ill repute who wanted to tell a story before his brains fell out.

‘Why would your brains fall out, Citrin,’ asked his rider, a jockey by any other name.

‘Because I have been very silly, galloping around the countryside, and forgetting what I am supposed to be doing.’ Here, Citrin says, “I am better now, this was long ago and far away and I am better but I’m still an idiot.’

‘Is that why you wish to be a goldfish’ the jockey asked gently, rubbing Citrin’s magnificent chestnut neck.

‘Neigh,’ cried Citrin. ‘But, it resonated with me, because I have the attention span of one.’

The jockey pondered this for a little while, then asked Citrin if he would like to try some dressage.

‘To be honest, I am used to racing,’ Citrin snorted. ‘Dressage makes me a little cranky. Can we have a run around the paddock a few times and then, perhaps, I’ll give it a whirl.’

So, the jockey took off her boots and spurs, reminded Citrin he was not a porcupine because they do not exist in Australia, then removed Citrin’s saddle and bridle, unbranded his coat and removed the iron from his feet. She did not let him float off and up into the air, she let his winter coat grow in and he began to look a little scruffy.

‘How does that feel, Citrin,’ she asked, looking into his mismatched yet awesome eyes.

‘It feels like I am free, for once.’ He puffed through his nostrils and looked around the paddock. And, looking back on these words, he says softly “It feels like I am free all over again. Thank you. ‘How big is the world beyond this paddock, oh jockey friend.’

‘The world is a very large place, Citrin, and I am a little concerned you may get lost. But, here in Australia the sky goes on forever and, if you plan carefully, you can run for many kilometres before you need to stop.’

‘I like this idea,’ said Citrin. ‘Would you be too concerned about me running for many years?’

‘It depends on what you want to run, and whether you want to run to something or from something. What would you like to do, Citrin?’

‘I just want to run to something rather than from something,’ Citrin said. ‘That is all I want to do. I haven’t been able to run to something for a very long time and I’m sad. I just need to have a destination.’

The jockey stroked his scraggly mane, and brushed his tail until it shone. ‘Before I open this gate again, Citrin, I am going to let you have a rest in a safe place and think about where you would like to run to. I know you have been a good stallion all your life, now, and I know you just need to have a break. I think you are perfectly capable of being victorious one last time, if you want to be.’

You write it differently today, he thinks. This is not how it went the last time. I have a copy too. I think I am getting fed up with people more often than I’m not, and I really need to talk about it to my friends. Properly this time, I think, not just with you.

This had been a huge step in the right direction for Citrin. The jockey did not sit outside the gate and wait, and she did not need to find the other horses who were Citrin’s friends. They had found him quite soon after this story was written the first time, and have been “coddling the bejesus” out of him ever since. They had spoken of pavlova, and how one should not eat in bathtubs, and had spoken of pools, and how one should sing about scarecrows in pools, and had laughed a great deal about being weird and friendly, all at the same time, and they had reached a point where almost every single one of them was reasonably happy, if not completely whole again.

Little did she know, they had helped her write this one last time as well, and were sitting in bathtubs with rubber duckies, and crying into their noodles, and desperately trying to be patient and not mean, and demonstrating that they could be nice too, if they really wanted to.

What matters the most though, more than anything else, is that they are trying. And, if they’re trying their best, that’s all we ever ask for really, isn’t it?

‘Yes,’ whispered Citrin from atop a distant mountain. He looked down at the chestnut gelding he had “appliqued on his destrier’s blanket” just the previous week. ‘That’s all we can ask for.’

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.