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.

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.