“We just go’ engaged!” slurred the man to the quiet train. He stood, crooked, at the end of the carriage, near the door, a can of Magners’ in hand. Nobody stirred. He patted his, presumably, fiancée, on the shoulder, and tried again, a deep breath, broad lips bearing dry teeth. “We just go’ engaged!” A little louder. As people start to notice they give a little cheer, a weak ‘wahey!’ ripples down the fusilage. “Wha’, just noo?” enquires a nearby punter. The man wears a red checked shirt. He seems friendly enough. “Nae, go’ engaged in Windermere, just bough’ the ring.” He beams again. “We jus’ go’ enaged!” he closes his eyes to the sky. Cyncical as I am, I can’t help but smile at his happiness.

Monty was late for his date. He had met Susy two days ago. He had caught whiff of a biscuit tin whose lid hadn’t been replaced properly: this was a good and rare thing, for the biscuit tin was a special treat. Following his nose through the trail of crumbs, he laid his paws on a garibaldi, and as he began to nibble, he felt a whisker graze his. He looked up. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Dark chocolate eyes and a raspberry pink nose, fur of silk and– well, that tail! He coughed, and spluttered, and– “Hi.” she said. He smiled with quiet relief. They enjoyed their garibaldi together. She had to leave for class, but they arranged to meet again the next evening.

When the hour came, he had spent so long preening his fur, and practising what he was going to say in front of the spoon, that time had got away from him. He was so nervous that his stomach was rumbling. He was hungry, and behind schedule, and needed energy. He hurried across the kitchen floor, then stopped: a morsel caught his eye, a tiny cube of cheese on a wood and wire plate. Very edgy, he thought. Very careless of them to leave that out. But he was hungry, and he needed it, and—

Susy waited outside the baking cupboard, just like they’d agreed. It was getting late now.

Clare stirred in the middle of the night, awoken by her bladder. She arose dutifully to placate it, to secure the rest of the night’s slumber. On her way to the bathroom, she saw an enormous spider. Clare does not fear spiders, so it did not bother her. She did her business and went back to bed.

When morning came, she had her cheerios and coffee, washed, and went off to work. Nine hours later she returned, and slumped in the chair with a glass of ribena. She suddenly remembered the spider, and glanced toward the corner of the ceiling where she had seen it. Sure enough, it was still there. What has it been doing all day? she thought. I’ve been working hard to pay for the heating for it to enjoy living here, and it just sits. It didn’t even do the washing up. Without realising it, she began to glare at the spider, with the sort of resentment only a 9-to-5 can bring. After a few minutes of glaring, however, it suddenly dawned on her, the absurdity of being a spider. What must it be thinking? It is literally only interested in its next meal. It sits there all day, probably with maddening anticipation of the morsel that’s about to stray into its web. It’s probably gone completely bonkers just sitting there all day. She could just imagine its thoughts, mmm flies yes yummy flies come to my web cooommmeeeeee, for hours on end. She began to smile to herself as she realised how ridiculous that was.

Mary had a child, he was made of caramel. The wise men said “We cannot accept a messiah made of caramel!”. Mary said “Yes you bloody well can you bigoted nitwits.” So they did. After that, nobody ever mentioned that he was made of caramel, because, frankly, everyone thought it was a bit weird. And besides, unless you tasted him with a lick you couldn’t really tell the difference. Mary should have been more concerned about those “wise men”.

Mary was four hundred feet tall. “What’s it like being four hundred feet tall?” people would ask her. But she couldn’t hear, because she was four hundred feet away up into the air, and besides, her eardrums were trampolines and her inquisitors mere ants. They would shout louder, but she still wouldn’t hear. If she had heard, she would have boomed, “It’s really lonely. Everyone else is really tiny. I want to hug something that isn’t a mountain.”

It is a terrible thing, the hunting of wild shoes for their horns, for the teasing and torture of their captive cousins. A mule in the wilderness, or a beastly boot, going about their business, displaying their battle spears as trophies of good breeding. Ensnared and enslaved, their keratinous appendages lopped off, taken home. Brogues cower in the shadows. Violated by their captor’s crammed limbs, then ridiculed by the polished ends of their enemies.

I met the cellist on a Tuesday. Hidden in plain sight, no one suspects a cellist. Once the applause had passed, the flowers given, the bows taken, the self-congratulatory walkbacks of the conductor done with, I slipped round the back of the concert hall to the stage door. There were no guards so I went straight in. I came across a clarinettist, polishing her instrument with a red cloth. “I’m looking for a cellist.” I said. She pointed down the corridor. I thanked her and proceeded cautiously. I was unsure whether I would be able to pick the right cellist; luckily she saw me first, at once knew what I was up to, and headed straight over, cello on her back. She had been awaiting the moment with dread for months. With wet eyes, she agreed to come.

He loved how big the sky looked from the end of the street. Once you’d passed the tall houses and shed the creaky petrol station, and turned your back on the anachronistic lamp posts, and the trees they planted to make it feel like home, and got to the end, and looked up, the heavens consumed you like a burst of cool air after a long car journey, or the sudden splash at the end of a water slide. This is where the playing fields lived, but they were fenced to give the impression that this was the edge of the world. In a city of such loud claustrophia, the tranquility of the blankness was opium.

Why in age is cuntery forgiven? The racial slurs of a wizened fool are laughed away and taken light, presumed uncomfortable shards of a bygone age, one whose sentiments are since absolved by learned sensibility. Mistakes of the young are washed, with luck, away: by school or a clip round the ears. Perhaps we assume betterment to be part of growing up, that all will learn eventually. The elders have deep roots, their bark thickened, covering whichever whorls of disgrace should have been smoothed in their sapling years. For the most part, if you are a cunt, you’ll fossilise that way. We end life as curiosities, all alike, as bambis in the petting zoo: discarded into the same pile and made the same, cute and helpless, blue rinsed and senseless, a devious disguise, we hide behind time.

In the middle of a large desert (we say the middle: there is nothing on the horizon, it is purely flat, so who is to know?), at the top of a poplar tree (yes, there are poplar trees in the desert, populus euphratica), stands a little mouse, surveying his environment (the little mouse holds a pair of binoculars in his little paws — who makes binoculars for mice? I don’t know). He can’t remember for the life of him which direction he has come from (he hasn’t the wits to use the sun as a compass). He nudges his friend, the vole, to stop annotating his story with pedantic interjections (sorry, says the vole). He rubs his aching head. He needs to stop drinking.