Britney couldn’t decide what to have for lunch. It was a tough choice. She knew she definitely wanted lunch, which was a good start, and a sign that things were getting better. She asked Hannah. Hannah was her dog.

“What should I have for lunch, Hannah?” asked Britney.

Hannah stared at Britney, nonplussed. She did a little shuffle and licked her lips, and yelped very quietly. Not a scared or unhappy yelp. Just a yelp. The sort of yelp that might say “I know you’re asking me a question, but I don’t know what you’re asking, so I’ll just nod and hope for the best.” Hannah didn’t know what lunch was.

Britney remembered that dogs don’t speak Human, let alone English. “Stupid Britney!” she said to herself.

She grabbed her phone and called her friend Carol.

Carol was a dog translator.

“Hey Carol, please could you ask Hannah what I should have for lunch?”

Britney held the phone to Hannah’s ear. Hannah perked up, opened her mouth, salivated, panted, and barked twice. Britney took the phone back.

“Cheese sandwich”, said Carol.

I ate too many pringles.

I had popped that little lid of that long, smooth can.

Peeled back the soft, smiling paper covering.

And helped myself to just one.

Just one.

Sour cream and chive.

Sour cream.

And chive.

I threw it onto my hungry tongue.

Dripping with desire.

I deserved it.

The tangy powder atop the duck-billed crisp shook my taste buds.

Saliva spewed forth from my pulsating gullet.

I closed my eyes. The ripe summer air spun around my pursed lips. Everything was good again.

I took the tiniest sip of San Pel.

Oh go on then, I said.

Just one more.

 

Take my hand in yours, little fly. Let me cradle your flaking wings. There’s no need to flit away. No where left to go. No shits left to lick. No steaming bins ’round which to flutter. No foals’ faces left to dance on. It’s okay, I’ve got you.

It’s just you and me now, little fly. No one else. You can rest your weary shoulders. Cradle me in your flaking wings, and let’s watch the sun go down. One last time.

Tom couldn’t remember what bus he had to get on to go home. He remembered it was a red one. But this didn’t help, because, that afternoon, as he leaned against the half-seats in a glass and grey bus shelter, with a light drizzle dribbling down from the paper-pulp sky, under which a teenage seagull and clearly well-to-do pigeon-about-town argued impolitely over a gritty wet chip, and the bin that should have been emptied yesterday was still overflowing, it didn’t help because, well, where Tom lives, all of the buses are red. And that was that.

You linger in the gentle shade of a café awning. It’s 7:56. You see her traversing the zebra crossing. She’s wearing a black crop top and long green skirt. She notices you and injects intention into her stride.

“Wave.” You greet her.

“Waving hand.” She responds. You hug awkwardly.

“Smiley face sunshine.” You say.

“Slightly laughing face,” she smiles, “glass of beer glass of wine cocktail question mark left arrow?”

“Tick OK hand sign smiley face” you respond.

For dinner last Wednesday we had eggs.

The first course was a soft-boiled hummingbird’s egg, with needle-sliver soldiers of buttered toast.

The second course was the egg of a blue tit, gently scrambled and topped with spinach.

The third course — still far from the main —was the egg of a quail, fried and sesasoned with cracked black peppercorn.

The eighteenth course, again bigger than the seventeenth and all eggs before it, was an Ostrich eggs benedict. It was delicious.

For dessert, we had the egg of a chocolate moa. Chocolate moas, an extant species unlike their poor dead cousins, the normal moas, get pretty angry when you steal their eggs. As I took a cautious bite, I heard a scream and a squawk from the kitchen. The chocolate moa had traced back its own ovum to our little party, and come for vengeance. It killed each and every person at the dinner. They couldn’t run away because they had eaten too many eggs. I just said “I’m so sorry moa.” And the moa, of course, forgave me.

The shop floor was a long, thin corridor, with bulky tables dotted along the centre line. On each table was a pile of distinctly coloured wares, each jumbled up seemingly randomly but organised neatly by hue. The walls, bare, grey brick, hung with framed monochrome news clippings, pressed inward, pushing customers toward the central offerings.

I slinked slowly past the green table, stroking its surface gently with my little finger. A stuffed parakeet, perched atop a weathered copper singing bowl, eyed me up with distrust.

There’s a little blue pot in the corner opposite you. It’s gilted and ornate, with three ribbed handles and a spiral base. You’ve only just noticed it. It’s been dark, but the gold edges poke through the dull dusty air, like minnows darting defiantly against the current.

You move to reach out toward the pot. You tumble and topple to the dusty concrete floor. Momentarily distracted by a break from the drabness, you forgot where you were. Your legs lie in a closed drawer in the next room. The door is guarded by a young woman with a red jumper. Metal rings pierce the spaces between each pair of vertebrae; each ring is chained to the wall behind you. You wonder what’s in that little blue pot.

There are seven steps between the foot of the path and the blue painted oak door of her house. They’re slightly too far apart for walking up foot-by-foot, slightly too close together to run up.  You have to hobble up in a kind of awkward shuffle. And they’re unevenly spaced. You have to really concentrate on these steps.

“How do you know it’s oak?” asks Sarah, as she wiggles awkwardly up the unsociably designed walkway.

“She told me,” replies Samayamantri, “in 1997, at the cinema.”

“What were you going to see?” asks Hayley, on the fourth step.

“As Good as it Gets,” he replies

“And was it?” (Sixth step now)

“No.”

Hayley knocks on the blue painted oak door. It responds with a dull, PVC thud. “She lied.”

“Oh.”

 

A wide white willow swept the grass beneath my feet. Spring cleaning, she said, with a whistle and a curtsey.

I pulled the little tugboat onto the bank and tied it to a jutting rock. The air was still with occasional scurries of breeze, as if it were too shy to blow. Or perhaps tired, hungover like the rest of us. Daisies, still wet with the dew of night, kept their heads bowed in slumber. Heavy one for them, too.

I made my way up to the brow of the hill, who groaned and turned as I gently stepped across her skin. I took four ibuprofens from my pocket, downed two of them, and lodged the two in the earth beneath me. The hill smiled in appreciation.