Tom couldn’t remember what bus he had to get on to go home. He remembered it was a red one. But this didn’t help, because, that afternoon, as he leaned against the half-seats in a glass and grey bus shelter, with a light drizzle dribbling down from the paper-pulp sky, under which a teenage seagull and clearly well-to-do pigeon-about-town argued impolitely over a gritty wet chip, and the bin that should have been emptied yesterday was still overflowing, it didn’t help because, well, where Tom lives, all of the buses are red. And that was that.

You linger in the gentle shade of a café awning. It’s 7:56. You see her traversing the zebra crossing. She’s wearing a black crop top and long green skirt. She notices you and injects intention into her stride.

“Wave.” You greet her.

“Waving hand.” She responds. You hug awkwardly.

“Smiley face sunshine.” You say.

“Slightly laughing face,” she smiles, “glass of beer glass of wine cocktail question mark left arrow?”

“Tick OK hand sign smiley face” you respond.

For dinner last Wednesday we had eggs.

The first course was a soft-boiled hummingbird’s egg, with needle-sliver soldiers of buttered toast.

The second course was the egg of a blue tit, gently scrambled and topped with spinach.

The third course — still far from the main —was the egg of a quail, fried and sesasoned with cracked black peppercorn.

The eighteenth course, again bigger than the seventeenth and all eggs before it, was an Ostrich eggs benedict. It was delicious.

For dessert, we had the egg of a chocolate moa. Chocolate moas, an extant species unlike their poor dead cousins, the normal moas, get pretty angry when you steal their eggs. As I took a cautious bite, I heard a scream and a squawk from the kitchen. The chocolate moa had traced back its own ovum to our little party, and come for vengeance. It killed each and every person at the dinner. They couldn’t run away because they had eaten too many eggs. I just said “I’m so sorry moa.” And the moa, of course, forgave me.

The shop floor was a long, thin corridor, with bulky tables dotted along the centre line. On each table was a pile of distinctly coloured wares, each jumbled up seemingly randomly but organised neatly by hue. The walls, bare, grey brick, hung with framed monochrome news clippings, pressed inward, pushing customers toward the central offerings.

I slinked slowly past the green table, stroking its surface gently with my little finger. A stuffed parakeet, perched atop a weathered copper singing bowl, eyed me up with distrust.

There’s a little blue pot in the corner opposite you. It’s gilted and ornate, with three ribbed handles and a spiral base. You’ve only just noticed it. It’s been dark, but the gold edges poke through the dull dusty air, like minnows darting defiantly against the current.

You move to reach out toward the pot. You tumble and topple to the dusty concrete floor. Momentarily distracted by a break from the drabness, you forgot where you were. Your legs lie in a closed drawer in the next room. The door is guarded by a young woman with a red jumper. Metal rings pierce the spaces between each pair of vertebrae; each ring is chained to the wall behind you. You wonder what’s in that little blue pot.

There are seven steps between the foot of the path and the blue painted oak door of her house. They’re slightly too far apart for walking up foot-by-foot, slightly too close together to run up.  You have to hobble up in a kind of awkward shuffle. And they’re unevenly spaced. You have to really concentrate on these steps.

“How do you know it’s oak?” asks Sarah, as she wiggles awkwardly up the unsociably designed walkway.

“She told me,” replies Samayamantri, “in 1997, at the cinema.”

“What were you going to see?” asks Hayley, on the fourth step.

“As Good as it Gets,” he replies

“And was it?” (Sixth step now)

“No.”

Hayley knocks on the blue painted oak door. It responds with a dull, PVC thud. “She lied.”

“Oh.”

 

A wide white willow swept the grass beneath my feet. Spring cleaning, she said, with a whistle and a curtsey.

I pulled the little tugboat onto the bank and tied it to a jutting rock. The air was still with occasional scurries of breeze, as if it were too shy to blow. Or perhaps tired, hungover like the rest of us. Daisies, still wet with the dew of night, kept their heads bowed in slumber. Heavy one for them, too.

I made my way up to the brow of the hill, who groaned and turned as I gently stepped across her skin. I took four ibuprofens from my pocket, downed two of them, and lodged the two in the earth beneath me. The hill smiled in appreciation.

Kevin was born in the butchers’ shop at 4:29pm, next to a lamb shank. That’s why they named him Kevin (that was also the lamb’s name).

For his eleventh birthday, Kevin asked the birthday ghost for a steam train. The birthday ghost didn’t give him a steam train. Instead, the birthday ghost chopped off his hands and feet as punishment for making unreasonable requests.

For his fifteenth Christmas, Kevin asked the Christmas lobster for his hands and feet back. It had been a difficult couple of years. The Christmas lobster was more sympathetic than the birthday ghost. “Kevin, I’ll try my best,” said the Christmas lobster, “but the birthday ghost is not known for being easy to reason with.” Nevertheless, the Christmas lobster tried. He sashayed to the birthday ghost’s house, and said “Excuse me, birthday ghost, might I request a small favour?” The birthday ghost came to the door and looked at the Christmas lobster sternly. He was wearing Kevin’s hands and feet. “No.” said the birthday ghost. And that was that.

You scrape the back of my leg with your toenail. “Ouch,” I say.

There’s a cardboard cutout of David Milliband on the floor. He’s bent at the knee, as though he were begging us for mercy. There’s a pair of tights across his brow, and an empty bottle of shiraz beside him. The contents are mostly soaked into the six-week old carpet. I should be annoyed.

“He was always the better brother,” you say, “I wish he’d won.” I pinch your ear in agreement.

The window is slightly open. A bee arrives. I scrape the back of your leg with my toenail. “Ouch”, you say.

The bee comes to rest on the bedside table. It gives me a sad, worried look.

A little fly landed on the end of my nose. “Good day, little fly,” I said, “what have you been up to today?”

The fly cleared her little throat, and with a squeak and a buzz, she piped “Hello there friend! Not much at all! Just living the fly life! Hopping from shit to shit and filling my little tummy!”

“That’s cute, little fly!” I replied, with a friendly wink. “Did you wash your little feet?”

“Wash my little feet? Oh, friend, I wish I could! For I do love shit, but it sure does give you sticky toes! And, you see, I cannot afford soap!”

“That’s a shame little fly, I shall give you a job, and pay you three pounds an hour!”

“Three pounds an hour!”

“Tell me little fly, do you have any special skills?”

“Why yes, friend, I am an expert in tax law! And I have found it most difficult to get a job in this difficult economic climate! But—”

“Perfect, little fly, I need someone to look over my tax returns! You’re hired!”

“But, friend, three pounds an hour is far less than minimum wage, and although I am most grateful—”

Squish.