You lick the edge of a tin of haricot beans. Ralph watches your tongue.

“Is it Ralph or Raiph?” asks the doctor. Ralph doesn’t respond and you carry on licking the can.

The doctor, who had been looking at Ralph waiting for his response, is now also watching your tongue, which is unnerving to you given that you are looking directly him, with your eyes. Usually in such a situation either you would either both be looking at each others’ eyes or both licking a can. I guess that’s why he’s the doctor and you’re the patient. This is not a level relationship.

After a few minutes you put your tongue back into your mouth, behind your teeth and lips, which you then open again, to clarify, “It’s Ralph.”

“How many drops of rain fall on the Earth each day?” you wondered once, out loud, while sitting against the willow tree in your garden on a warm clear spring day.

I heard you and I wanted to let you know. But I hadn’t counted in a while and wanted to get it right.

I had other things to do that day. A rather troublesome volcano on my backside needed managing. I put you on my list of things to do.

You had long since turned to soil by the time I reached inbox zero. But I hadn’t forgotten. I smelled you in the petrichor. And I counted, and whispered, “Twenty-seven quintillion and three.”

Angela, who was a mouse, raised her hand.

Teacher did not notice for some time. The other students were human people. Human people who did not know the answer.

“Ahem,” said Angela. She scuttled closer to the front, stopping in between Mark and Isabelle’s desks. She put up her paw a little higher. Mark looked down, and then to Isabelle, who was busy writing a Cool S on her lined notebook. “Ahem,” piped Angela again.

Teacher, sighing, conceded, “Yes, Angela?”

“Seventy-three!” said the mouse.

“Seventy-three is not the answer.”

Angela put her paw down and sank to the floor, embarrassed, again.

Soft and slow water bunched up the blue sand of the shore like satin bed sheets. A cardinal hopped across the rippled earth and watched the sunset as she paddled in the waves.

In June 1992 I worked as a bird in a paint factory.

It was Bird Paint Inc. You know the one. You’ll remember the song. From the advert, with the birds and the paint.

It was an unusually hot summer and I wasn’t a bird. I didn’t mention it in the interview (about not being a bird) and they didn’t bring it up but I think it was obvious. I started the following day.

As far as I could tell I was the only one who wasn’t a bird. I think the other birds noticed, but no one mentioned it.

“Is that an original Smrnk Frnklstein on your wall?”

I made up the name of the artist. But it was a legitimate question nonetheless.

“Yes.”

I couldn’t tell it she was lying or if I’d just channelled some truth about the world that I didn’t know. So I nodded and wagged my finger at it for five beats, and then I added, “that’s a damn fine specimen.”

“It’s a 1978. His blue period.”

The painting was a wash of rusty red, brown and blacks, through which you could vaguely make out the outlines of two, maybe three people. It looked quite a lot like it had been painted in dried blood. Period, maybe, blue, no. I wagged my finger and my head again for about ten beats each, not always in sync. “That guy!”

“Would you like another drink?” she asked.

“That guy!”

She stood up to go to the kitchen, at which point I realised, yes, I did want another drink. My glass was empty. I tipped it to my lips and sucked the ice cube into my mouth and crunched it into three pieces which i rolled around with my tongue.

Magneto (from the X-Men) had a damn good sleep. The kind of sleep that, when you wake up from, you look around your house and you see the dust and dirt, and you look in the mirror and see your scruffy beard, and you open your fridge and all your yogurt is moldy, and you think, “damn, I’ve really been letting life get the better of me.”

Magneto trimmed his beard and cleaned his floor and threw away his yogurt and took it to the trash. “Thwunk!” went the moldy yogurt. A nearby rat watched in amazement and said, squeakily, to his friend, “isn’t that Magneto (from the X-men?)”. Magneto pretended not to hear.

Later, at the shop, as he plonked a vat of onken onto the counter and threw a Snickers into the mix, too, the shopkeeper looked at him, and said, “By golly, aren’t you Magneto (from the X-men?)”

“No,” said Magneto, “I’m famous shakespearian actor Ian McKellen.”

Things were easier this way.

Every now and then a star falls out of the sky.

“Plop!” it goes. Usually it falls into the ocean. They’re only little, but very bright. A couple of fish get a fright but nothing major.

I folded the limp, wet toast onto my tongue.

Is it even toast any more when it’s wet? At school they used to sell white toast cut into triangles dripping in butter. That was floppy too. No, didn’t have any crunch to it. But definitely still toast.

I chewed and rolled the quid of limp carbohydrates around my mouth with my tongue. The rain continued to pool on my plate, the other slice getting wetter and wetter.

It was nearly dusk and the tide was coming in. I could see three lit-up boats just over on the horizon. They say the horizon is only a few miles away. I reached into my pocket for a biro and the piece of paper with the shopping list on, to do a little calculation. But that was sodden too and crumbled in my hand and onto my jeans.

She glanced at his intray. In it, atop a stack of crisp red paper sheets arranged in a neat pile, was an unopened jar of pickles.

“What’s with the pickles?” she asked.

“They need eating,” he replied.