The first time you meet Mister Pogo, you’ll say, “Good evening, sir!” because that’s what they will have told you to say. But you’ll be thinking, “This is a very, very, tall and quite scary person, and I find the slugs very offputting.” Probably you won’t be thinking that in words, but in that distilled syllabary that your brain uses to represent ideas in single squirts of neural activity.

The second time you meet Mister Pogo, you’ll say, “Good evening, sir!” because that’s what you remember from last time. And this time you might even mean it, just a little bit, because it will have been several years at the least, and you’ll have learned a lot more about the slugs, and he won’t seem so tall because you’ll be slightly further away, or perhaps he will have shrunk, you can’t be sure. In any case, these aren’t the sorts of things you will be worrying about.

Should you meet Mister Pogo a third time, you’ll probably say, “Good evening, sir!” and this time you really will mean it, because it really will be a good evening, and it really must be, because you know better than anyone, that no-one meets Mister Pogo a fourth time.

“Now, a little known fact about the octopus—”

“Yes I know the fact about the octopus.”

“What fact about the octopus? The one about the—”

“Yes the one about the—”

“Excuse me may I interrupt?”

“—may you—?”

“I’m sorry we’re busy here, now a—”

“I’m sorry but I really must interject—”

“Excuse me who are you?”

“I’m sorry but your—”

“Excuse—”

“What is the meaning—”

And that was the last time anyone mentioned octopusses. Anyone. Ever. Again.

The close was carpeted with halogen glow from the streetlights overhead. Photons crawled sleepily out from their lamps and, with no sense of urgency or duty, floated through the quiet winter air and melted on the cold pavement, flickering only for a second and leaving a dull haze of vague yellow glimmer.

Aleta was awoken by the crunch of car tires on gravel-specked asphalt. She turned inelegantly on the bench and swang her feet toward the floor and her head upward. The air was cool and through her blurry, sleep stained and unspectacled eyes she could see a soft cherry glow crawling in from the East. She guessed it was around 5:30am. She scrambled round for her glasses, found them, and put them on just in time to see the shadow of the man, who had stuck his head out of the window of his truck to inspect her, folding itself back into the cabin, as he drove off again.

Furry little black egg. You rub it on your lips to check if it’s dry or wet. It’s wet. You’re grateful to know but now you wonder whether that was such a good idea. Now you’ve got furry little black egg juice on your lips. You lick them. It’s sticky and doesn’t come off cleanly. You grab an old torn tissue from your pocket and rub and lick and then rub. Feels like it’s mostly gone. But you have a sour taste in your mouth. The taste of a little furry black egg.

You place the egg back in the bowl, the nest, next to the others. The creatures are either too lazy or too busy to make their own nests these days. So they buy bowls from the shop and use those. And then they have more time to do their tax returns, or watch television shows about celebrities.

“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.