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.

Mia takes a sip of her room-temperature water. It’s warmer than she hoped. She wishes she were in a colder room. So that room temperature was a bit colder. Three degrees celsius? She’s not sure. She wonders if she’d prefer warm water, rather than room temperature water, if she were in a a room of three degrees celsius.

What is the best temperature for drinking water, she types into Google. If it were three degrees she’s probably be wearing gloves. And she’d have to take them off to type. Because she doesn’t have any of those special gloves that you can type with.

“The best temperature for drinking water is room temperature (20°C / 68°F) for maximum flavour, or chilled cold (6°C / 43°F)” says Google. It’s from a website for an Icelandic water company. Svalabarði. She doesn’t trust them.

“I don’t trust them.” she says. To herself? There’s no one around. Everyone else is dead. Except Google. Google is eternal. Why Google, she thinks, why not fridges, as she takes another sip of her room temperature water, in her relatively warm room.

Pigeon pokes around in the grass.

Bob bob bob bob bob bob.

Why are you so jerky, little pigeon? Is that what you want? Is that your rhythm? Do you wish you could be smoother?

Pigeon doesn’t hear me. Pigeon doesn’t care.

Pigeon is uptight. Pigeon needs to relax. “Relax, pigeon.” I whisper. Pigeon is coming closer. I can’t see his feet. Maybe that’s why he’s wading in the long grass. He is ashamed. “Don’t be ashamed, pigeon,” I whisper. He can’t hear me. His shame is too loud.

Pigeons don’t even have instagram. I think? Or do they? Do I just not pay attention. So classist. So… othering. They’re not worth it. I don’t even see them. Bob bob bob bob bob. Little pigeon. Where are you going?

He’s gone to the other field. He is probably self conscious. I think he saw me looking. And typing. He knew. Did he know? Does he know? Do they know? If they have instagram, maybe. If they don’t, maybe they know too. Maybe especially if they don’t. Maybe instagram stops us knowing anything, really.

Can pigeons use touch screens? I’ve never let them try. “Come here, pigeon, come try my touch screen,” I whisper. He can’t hear me. Because of the din of his shame. And also because he’s in the other field. There’s another pigeon. I guess this one is just as good. I guess that’s what they think about us. “Come here, pigeon, come try my touch screen.”

Application to purchase a dog

Dear Ms. Evans,

I saw your advertisement in the Gazette this morning. The one about the dogs. I thought I should clarify because there was also an advertisement for a bulk purchase of drain cleaner under the same name. But there are a lot of Evanses in this town and I imagine also a lot of Sarahs. So just to be clear, and just in case, this is about the dogs.

I want to be clear on this point. My drains are clean as can be. If you were to choose me as a new parent to those adorable puppies, you would certainly not have to fear them growing up beside the stress and sorrow of a blocked drains. Dogs have sensitive noses, I know. There are no odours here. My drains are clean. So clean. Please understand this.

Anyway, just to be clear again, because I feel I may have put my thoughts in the wrong order, and perhaps I am being presumptuous when I mention before anything else the wonderful and odour-free life that your puppies will have in my lovely home. My lovely soft home. It is so clean and so nice. So ready for small puppies. So here it is. This is why I am writing. I would like to adopt one of your puppies. Two of your puppies.

If possible I would like the smallest one and the biggest one.

Thank you,

Pauline xx

The first thing they burned was the maps.

Gone.

No more maps.

And people tried to remember them. And scribble them down on pages and on walls and on floors. But they burned those too. And we kept trying. And scribbling them on the soles of our shoes. And under the wallpaper. And in the stones of the forest floor and in the stitches of our linens. Jean Maebie had Sweden tattooed on the inside of her cheek. They found her and they cut off both sides and cooked them and ate them with an egg and some poor quality mayonnaise. “Hellmanns, at least?” she’d said. I think. Hard to understand. She didn’t have any cheeks.  I guess Hellmann’s must have been the good one.

And so our mothers told us with words, “because you can’t burn words”. And they said, “The M25 goes all the way round London, like a snake encircling its prey, ready to watch it choke.” And from generation to generation they would tell us the stories of where things are and where things were, and the truth would warp and melt. I guess we could go and check. But we can’t be bothered.

Frank.

“Frank?” she enquired.

“Frank?” He replied.

“Frank.”

“I’m not Frank.” eyes down, cradled in his thumbs. Crocheting himself a blanket with the threads of his idle stare. He was often wrong about this sort of thing. But he had long ago decided to stick to what he believed. A lot simpler that way.

She looked down her list again. “Frank, you have a visitor.”

He lifted up his eyes with his brain and his neurons and the muscles in his head. Lifted them up and propped them on his eyelids and sat them there and let them rest for a moment. And he let them find the nurse and reach her face. Young black woman with colourful hair. Pink and green, he thought. Probably. “I’m not…” he poked at the curled pages of her clipboard, with his finger and his arm and his shoulder and his neurons and his brain, and peeled a page back. “You missed one.”

Embarrassed, “oh… oh. Sorry Paul,” she checked again. No visitors for Paul. Lucky Frank.

“Do you see that branch?”

“Which one?”

“The one that looks sort of like this,” she makes a little claw with her right hand, two fingers clasped down and the other two and thumb fanned and twisted. I roll my head around, so that the back of my ear just about touches the grass, to see. I try to make the same shape with my own hand, and look back up to try to match my own fingers with the trees. I don’t see the branch.

“I think so. Yes I see it.” I don’t.

“At the end of that branch. On the thumb. Shaped like a sort of pear cut in half. That one’s my favourite.”

“Really great choice,” I say, “really fantastic leaf.” I still don’t see it. But I think it’s my favourite nonetheless.

Seven fifteen the bread truck comes.

“Would you like some bread?” ask the breader.

“No thank you, not today,” I say. I don’t need any bread today. I’m going away for a while. “I’m going away for a while,” I say.

The bread truck coughs and growls and comes to a stop. Miss Helen is ready next door with her six pounds and she is holding it out ready, but the breaders do not notice her, and they stop a little short, and she’s left waiting, with her arm held out lame, and an empty linen bag dangling by her the handles of her chair. The breaders have stopped just short of Miss Helen’s drive, and have got out, and are coming this way. Miss Helen is staring.

“Good morning, Miss Helen!” I say, cheerfully. I am not cheerful, really.

“You’re going away for a while?” asks one of the breaders.

“Yes. A while. Away.”

“Won’t you need any bread?”

“No thank you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Not even sandwiches?”

“No, thank you.”

“Okay.”

Seven sixteen the bread truck leaves.

I’m going away for a while.

Blue eyed frog over there. I see it with my own green eyes. I wade through its gaze like an ibis across dense mud. Watching me, little frog. Why are you staring. Is it me? With my green eyes?

A pair of dragonflies out shopping. They whizz past my tired wet ears. zzzZZZZzzzz. That’s what they say. With their wings. Each clutching three or more designer paper bags with little strings for handles. They were talking about the government.

Stop getting distracted. Blue eyed frog. I look for it with my own, green, eyes. I shuffle them across the dry tree moss and hop between a branch and a leaf. Where are you little blue eyed frog. I can’t find you.

It’s winter but it’s not cold. I miss that frog.