I've been keeping count. We still have three blue mice in the cornfield. The west wind whips up walnuts and we wander wistfully, waking weevils who wrap rancid radishes in rags. This was three days ago in an old episode of Daktari: the one where Clarence the cross-eyed lion suddenly understood everything, even electricity. I can remember it distinctly, because it was the day Dad found the Plymouth under the bed. Everyone else was at church: the Dutch Deformed Church; the one where the windows are continuously caving in, and you can buy cobweb candy for threepence. My mother was allergic to emblems. That's why we had to move house so often. We ended up in the fjords, where the nights were long and blue, and gravy oozed out of the radio. It was good. There was a fat kid across the canyon who used to stutter, but we cured him by tying him to a kite and hiding it in the library under 'F'. Gus was collecting prawns about this time. There was a big red thing that used to pass overhead every night about 2.00 o'clock, muttering in Hebrew. By the time we could afford a better place the blubber epidemic had started. Now I live in a quiet place. There's a faultline nearby, but that doesn't stop them growing celery.
1997, Tim Gadd