“Where I’m from the stars are all over.”

We’re lying on a sloped, dry, grassy bank next to a highway. There should be cars.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you look over there,” I point, “and you look over there,” I point, “and it looks the same. Even and equal.”

She pauses for a while. There’s no rush. It’ll be a while till anyone comes. And we’ll be able to hear them.

“But stars are stars. They’re just there.”

And she strokes the sky with her palm. And she lingers on the line of the milky way and stretches out a finger and runs along the length of it, and back again.

“And especially there”

What is it about this time of year? The light? Of a low and tired sun? Gentle and hazy and soft, streaky lilac and orange, peach, grapefruit? Or the coolness of the air, no longer trying so unbearably hard, now cooling and tucking itself up. Somehow it’s 2003. And 2017. And 1995. October is always October.

Maybe it’s the smell of snot, that takes you back. That first cold of the winter, your body giving up now that no one’s asking you out to frollick in the sun. Letting itself bung up with mucus and cosy fatigue. Yes. It’s probably the snot.

Most people are not well acquainted with the tops of their heads.

They don’t make top-of-head mirrors. They would have to be quite intricate, and bulky, and cumbersome. And most people only look at the front, anyway. Not me.

In fact there’s not much that can go that wrong with the top of one’s head. I watch the crowds of people zig-zagging across the square below, each diagonal in the wind, flip-flopping like blades of grass in a sandstone meadow as the gusts dance and change direction. And as I look down at those hairy or hairless or hand-clutched-hat-covered scalps, not once do I see someone and think, you ought to buy a head mirror, mate.

We passed three service stations looking for a KFC.

All we could see were Burger Kings. And a McDonalds.

Kyle pissed himself.

In the end we didn’t even find a KFC. We stopped at the fourth service. I got a Greggs of Shame. Kyle got a Subway. The Subway wasn’t bad actually, I had a bite. You can put on what you want. Sweetcorn and onions. For example. Anyway it doesn’t matter, Kyle still wasn’t happy. Mostly because he was covered in piss.

I just wanted fried chicken from a bucket. I hate the motorway.

My friend Trish trained a squirrel monkey to open doors from the inside out. She’d have it crawl through the letter box (squirrel monkeys are small enough to fit through most UK letter boxes, the ones that go straight on the door and into the house), and then jump up and undo the lock from the inside. Then she’d go in and have her way.

They were quite a pair, Trish and Kevin (Kevin was the squirrel monkey). You’d think people would be suspicious of her, walking around with a squirrel monkey, and draped in gold, diamonds, and pearls.

But they weren’t.

People have more important things to worry about these days.

Tulip counted the coins in her pocket, silently with her fingers on the outside of her jeans and feeling them through the denim. One 50p, she could feel. A 10p. Careful not to clack them and make a sound. Another 10p. And another. Or was that the other 10p again? Hard to tell. Could have been a 2p to be honest. But those are bigger. There was definitely a 50p. Oh and there’s a 10p. And a couple of five penny pieces.  That’ll be enough.

It was a very large house. The microwave was a normal size though. Maybe slightly bigger than normal, and a bit shinier and fancier and with more settings. Full power, three minutes, was all she needed. Literally who uses low? Then a little shake and a stir with a fork, as advised, presumably to avoid the court cases, and then back in for another minute. She raised herself up onto the countertop to wait. White marble. She’d seen cross sections of these in a kitchen shop, and they’d been mostly chipboard but with thin marble coverings. She wondered if maybe this house was different. She would not be surprised. She leaned over to the right to see if the cats were still alive. She’d be a bad sitter if she’d killed them. The pinger pinged and she jumped off the counter, opened two wrong drawers and then a right one, and grabbed a fork to stir her butter chicken. It was a really nice fork.

Bajingo berries grow at the tops of very very tall trees.

Only three very very tall trees, in the middle of the island, on top of the mesa.

You have to climb up the vines to get to the top of the mesa. There is no escalator.

Bajingo berries are delicious. It’s worth it.

There are no bajingo berries at the base of the tree. Only at the top of the tree. You have to really want them.

You have to shimmy up one of the trees to get to them. There is no escalator.

No one knows if there are any other bajingo berries anywhere else. Most people think probably not. There was a survey.

When you get to the top of one of the bajingo berry trees, you will be tired and probably hungry. You might want to just sit and snack on bajingo berries.

Oh no no.

You must be very focused.

When you pick a bajingo berry, you have to say “Bajingo!” as you twist it from its branch. Remember you’ll be very high up at this point. And you must be sure to pronounce the exclamation mark. “Bajingo!”

If you don’t say “Bajingo!” as you pick one of the berries, it will say it for you. “Bajingo!” it’ll say. And then it’ll be so excited that it’ll explode right in your hands. And you’ll be very high up at this point, remember. So you don’t want that, it would be very dangerous.

Even worse, no bajingo berries will ever grow again from that branch, if you forget to say “Bajingo!” before you place the berry in your basket.

And that’s probably why there aren’t many bajingo berries left any more, and why they’re all very high up. Only the most determined pickers deserve bajingo berries.

I could feel the coffee massaging the outer corners of my eyes.  I glanced behind us. The other two were already asleep. I flicked on the radio. It was an advert for a washing machine. Prerecorded from years ago and endlessly repeated. I thought about how nice it would be to wash my clothes. And to have a shower and climb under clean sheets with a gentle breeze and go to sleep. The light was just creeping over the edge of the mountains. The air was dewey and cold. Lady Gaga’s new song was on the radio. Lady Gaga had been dead for some years. Funny, that.

I found a little bag of blue crystals on the bus.

There was no one else but I stood. It was a single decker.

Before I moved to the city I didn’t know there were double decker buses. I thought buses were big and long and boxy but short. Like battenbergs. Granddad used to give me battenberg. And they were usually empty, and drove fast down country roads. Just for me.

And then I moved to the city and all the buses were shiny and curvy with big windows that snaked all round them, and had adverts for takeaways on the side. And they were tall, almost made so that the city folk had a ready-made platform from which to look down on people. And the drugs they took, while they were eating their takeaways, and looking down at the top of out heads, were white.

I picked up the little bag and slid it into my pocket.

Village hall. Battenberg. Triangular sandwiches with egg and cress.