It was a pretty nice morning. I ate toast and drank some good juice. On the toast, I spread unsalted butter and put on top little chunks of crunchy mature cheddar. The juice had bits in. The good kind of bits.

The previous night I’d been out in the garden and I’d heard a little noise coming from the old well.

“Hello,” said the noise from the well.

I had been a little startled, because the well didn’t usually make noises. But, I didn’t usually stay out that late. I’d been delayed by a long queue at the post office. I don’t know why everyone had wanted to post something, that day. Maybe they were sending off coupons from the Times, too. I’ll keep an eye out.

The woman in a white sweater, still wearing the night on her neck, leans against a field of yellow flowers, which zoom past under the new spring sun, which also did not realise that the clocks had changed this morning, and had to get ready in a hurry.

“I would quite like a blue one”

“Why a blue one?”

“I think it would go well. In the kitchen.”

“Do they do blue ones?”

“Yes. I think so!”

“What if they don’t?”

“Well we’ll have a look!”

“But what if they don’t?”

“…then I’ll paint it blue.”

“You’ll paint it blue?”

“Yeah. Soy milk latte please!”

“And a long black. Thanks!”

“Stop flirting!”

“I’m not!”

“You are. It’s ok. You can flirt.”

“You can’t just paint it blue.”

“I can paint anything blue. I can paint you blue.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Watch me.”

“No sugar, thanks.”

“Naomi.”

“Anyway I think they do blue ones, I think I saw one on the website.”

“But if they don’t?”

“Fine okay. Maybe a green one.”

An elephant tried to get on my bus today. But it was too big to get through the door.

“I’d like to go Highbury & Islington, please!” she said, to the driver, from the curb. She didn’t know that it was a flat fare. £1.90.

The bus driver took one look and sighed, “sorry love, I’d let you on if I could.”

The doors slid shut. She got her trunk out of the way just in time.

I glimpsed her through the dusty window as we drew off, left behind and stood still on the pavement. Dejected but, probably, used to it.

Me, comfortably seated, little paper bag filled with fresh snow peas on my lap.

At the next stop I got off and walked back. A light jog. There she was.

“Come, it’s not far from here! I’ll take you. Would you like some peas?”

“I’m feeling sad today.”

You crouch on the little rock and follow her gaze across the pond and back.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Just am.”

The water is empty but for two swans, gliding gently through the thin cracked ice, side by side.

“It’s ok to be sad sometimes. It’ll get better.”

“How?”

“Well there are nice things. Like,” you sit, now, on the rock, “like hot chocolate, and cheese on toast. And elephants. And… and books and hot water bottles.”

“I do like those things. Thank you.”

Julia sliced off three chunks of butter and placed them on her toast like bits of cheese. She put another piece of fresh toast on top, and placed her knife down, and waited.

Zigborg, sitting politely at the other end of the table, watched. He watched the butter and he watched the toast, and he watched Julia watching the toast and the butter, and then, he waited.

“Grglblrghbl?”

“Not now, Zigborg.”

“Gbrbrgbgblrbg gbrbgbl?”

“It’s so that the butter melts and then I can spread it more easily.”

“Gbrlbrbrblrgblr?”

“About a minute or so. Would you like some?”

“Gtgbbgblrbgb!”

And Julia grabbed another couple of slices of bread from the basket, and put them in the toaster, and then deconstructed her bread sandwich and spread the soft butter smoothly on each slice, and gave one to Zigborg.

“Grbrlbhgblrg!”

You steady yourself and stumble a little closer to the lamppost. The mist on your glasses gives the light from the bulb a strange fuzzy halo. You take your glasses off to wipe them. As you put them back on the lamp is clear for a few seconds but then the haze returns. You’re within reaching distance.

You turn to me and look me straight in the cheek. I’m staring ahead because I get travel sick. We’re on the bus south to Guatemala. I’m by the window. The sun is coming down on the other side of the aisle and there’s a nice light flooding in.

I can tell you’re looking but I’m concentrating on not vomiting on the small child in the seat in front.

“What.” I say.

You carry on staring at my cheek. I know you’re looking at my cheek, and not my eyes or my mouth, because I can see your reflection in the tiny little convex mirror they put next to the ashtray on the seat in front. Nobody is smoking, even though there are no no-smoking signs. I guess it’s normal now.

“I think I forgot something.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“No going back now.”

“Yeah. There’s something on your cheek.” You lean a little bit closer and rub my face with your finger. And then you lick it and rub it a little bit more. And then you lean all the way in and lick it with the tip of your tongue, and then,

“What was it?”

“What?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

I started running a bath and threw in two of the champagne-scented bath bombs that my ex-girlfriend’s mother had given me for Christmas. They didn’t smell like champagne to me. They smelt like bath bombs.

So I threw on the robe that I stole from the hotel we stayed at for Rob’s wedding, and shuffled to the kitchen, leaving the hallway window to steam up slightly as the fog from the too-hot water billowed out onto the landing, and i got to the fridge and found the mostly empty bottle of prosecco that Sally had left open last week after coming home at 6am on her birthday morning, before she’d fallen asleep and decided she was too grown up now (and too alone) for afters. It was flat. I had a sip.

I poured a bit in the bath and it still didn’t smell like champagne. It didn’t even smell like prosecco. It still just smelled like bath bombs.

One summer they rented a little blue tug boat and put a small oven on it and drove it all up and down the canal selling fresh croissants to passers-by on the towpath. They hung a big sign on the side that said “Croissants, £1” in purple felt-tip. Sometimes there would be other boats in the way and they wouldn’t be able to reach the land, so they had a couple of big sticks, one with a little bucket on the end for the pound coins, and one with a little basket to put the croissants in, and reach them over all the way to the bank. Tim said they sold a croissant to David Milliband, once, but I didn’t believe him.