In My Own World

Once there was a time I grew out of these heavy mists of nowhere to create a world I could live in. It was a place of peace and of quiet. A slow lazy river wove its way through lands of green and the air was alive with bird song.

It was a bright and living world I populated with many different animals and plants. I wanted a living world that grew and changed and where each day was something new for me.

It was my world and I was alone in it, walking through it; watching each new day and the changes it brought with it. I created seasons to see how the world and the living beat of it changed over time.

I had all I needed and I was alone there, with no-one to interrupt my thoughts as I walked, watching the days passing all around me. I thought I would be lonely, but I’ve never been lonely with myself. Crowds made me lonely; by myself I had all the company I needed.

Then, one night, she came to me in my dreams and took me by the hand to a world she had created inside my dreams; taking me down a long winding path to a house she’d built just for us.

The next day, out in my world, walking and watching the changes I realised I wanted her there with me, so I could show her my world as she had shown me hers.

Those Days When the Rains Came

Then there were all those days when the rains came. Those days when she sat staring out of her window feeling that all the days of her life were pouring down the gutter of the years like those raindrops. She would sigh and dream of a life beyond the view from her window in the high tower. A life beyond the thick forest that grew out on the edge of the open land between the castle where she watched her life washing away, beyond the distant mountains even that were, more often than not, lost deep inside the mists and clouds.

She would watch the people of the village and the castle hurrying about their lives, down below her tower, heads bowed under the relentless grey downpours that seemed to turn the whole world narrow, cold and damp.

One day, she thought, she would find her way through the maze of corridors, sneak past the sentries stationed there to bar her way, and find a way out of the castle and then across the moat and out beyond the village into that world. Perhaps, she thought, even finding a place – like those she had read about – where the rain didn’t always fall and where there would be someone who would want her for herself and not for her name and her status.

One day, she decided once more watching the endless rain, one day she would find the strength and the courage and break free from her tower and go find this new world she knew was out there, just waiting for her to find it.

In the Blue Skies of Her Eyes

There was a world I could see deep in the blue of her eyes. A world I could not reach, a land where the possible became the real and the real grew wings to fly across skies of the bluest of whatever could be.

Alison would sit on the window ledge, with the window in summer open in front of her and look out across the meadow at the back of the house, not really seeing the meadow, but letting her thoughts run across it until they took to the air in those blue skies of her eyes.

I sat there in the room behind her, sometimes watching her daydreaming eyes, sometimes looking down at the writing pad where I tried to capture a handful of dreams of my own.

My doodling, though, could never capture anything like the thoughts that kept Alison sitting on that window ledge watching a world of her own creation unfold its stories only for her.

Most days I struggled to make the words dance on the page. Mostly, a few words would stumble around the page, never really going anywhere, not doing anything.

Then I would look up to that window ledge with the open window and the summer behind it and I would imagine a woman sitting there with a strange world deep within the blue of her eyes. Then I wondered what that woman saw when she stared out through those world-filled eyes and then - after I’d named her Alison – then, I wrote it all down.

Newsflash!

Anyway, there she was with the crumpet almost in the ‘ready’ position and with the otter looking somewhat perturbed. Just then a Newsflash broke into one of those soap opera programmes she likes to watch whilst preparing the crumpets and getting the otter into position. I don’t know which soap opera it was, they all consist of over-loud stroppy women screaming either at each other or at some hapless bloke (in a female-driven world – such as soap opera - all blokes have to be hapless – it is a law) about some matter of overwhelming triviality.

Anyway, the newscaster was looking suitably grave, so we assumed that something of great import had happened….

Which it had….

Anyway, it was something of great import happening far away and so consequently there was little for us to do but to gawp at the endlessly repeating images of nothing much happening now that the matter of great import was over, meanwhile the news studio wheeled in expert after expert to give us their essential suppositions and speculations whilst some junior researcher deep in the heart of the newsroom rang around a contact list trying to find out what was really happening… if anything.

It was only then, ten minutes later, we realised that the otter – seeing us distracted by the TV - had grabbed the crumpet and made its escape and was now ensconced under the sideboard hastily licking up the last of the crumpet crumbs with what could only have been a triumphant grin on its be-whiskered face.

Sometimes, I think the very gods themselves conspire against me.

Keeping the Old Traditions Alive

Still, not that it mattered much once everything else had been put to one side… next to the scones, if you must know.

No, the other scones, the special scones kept fresh in an airtight container for erotic purposes.

Although, the erotic porpoises are rather partial to a fresh scone, providing it doesn’t get too waterlogged, or if there is seawater in the strawberry jam.

Then, once she was satisfied, which did make my jaw ache, especially in that position… and – well, at my age – the kitchen floor can be rather hard on the knees as well. However, having her satisfied is well worth the extra effort, because she can get a bit grumpy if left un-satiated for more than a few hours and – also – she is quite a dab hand at rolling pin wielding.

The latter being a form of hand-to-hand combat seemingly handed down the female line of her family for generations. After all, it was only a minor administrative error that prevented her great-grandmother from going to the front in WWI in 1914 with a regiment of like-minded ladies all armed with the deadliest rolling pins the military science of the time could provide. If they had gone, as the majority of historians now agree, then it really would have been all over by Christmas.

Still, though, we are lucky in that the rolling pin was not outlawed as a weapon of war – as it surely would have been had the Queen’s Own First Harridans – been let loose on the Boche… in which case, we wouldn’t even have the scones and then where would we be?

All out at sea with the porpoises, probably….

A Rather Nifty Hat

Anyway, there you are: one of the finest examples of a… well, one of those… er… things it has ever been my pleasu… that I’ve seen, certainly in this life, anyway.

Although, there was a time when I was in another life (much like this one, but with a wider choice of possible socks and a rather nifty hat… oh, and a rather splendid selection of cheeses) and , instead of messing around with… well, with things like that - whatever it turns out to be – I engaged in some rather unusual sexual activities with a couple of very nice young ladies who felt their horizons needed a certain amount of broadening in that area and – thenceforth – selected me as being the ideal gentleman to help them in their quest.

However, I’m reasonably certain you didn’t come here for talk of such matters, after all there are many disreputable places on these Interwebnets where such things occur, but I’m sure you would not be one to immediately head off there, rather than stay here patiently waiting for me to remember what it was – if anything – I was going to write about today. That is if I can stop thinking about that previous life and its rather remarkable cheese… and the nifty hat.

So, anyway….

Oh, you’ve already gone.

Two by Two

Well, obviously I did my best to put them out of the way and I made sure that neither of us mentioned them to any visitors to our house. Although, to be honest most people do – eventually – tend to notice that we seem to have a pair of giraffes wandering around in the back garden….

Eventually….

Even though most visitors are too polite to mention it first, there are some who find it difficult to hide their incredulity as normal good manners would usually dictate.

‘Fuck me! Is that a giraffe…? Bloody hell! There are two of them!’ Such comments do – quite often result in a conversational hiatus, especially if it is a warm day and, with the window open, one of the giraffes pops its head through the window to help itself to a cake or biscuit.

It can be awkward, especially if the guest or visitor spills their tea everywhere in the haste to get away from a giraffe seemingly insistent on poking its nose into all and sundry… especially the cakes.

Of course, then we have to explain why we have a pair of giraffes in our back garden and consequently we have to mention all the recent rain, Mr Noah from three doors down building his rather large boat in his back garden, and – therefore – having not enough room for the giraffes as well….

And… well, I presume you get the picture.

As do our visitors… eventually. Usually in the few seconds before remembering they have an urgent appointment elsewhere.

We – as we wave them away - just hope that urgent appointment isn’t with the Jones family just up the road, because their visitors do tend to be more than a little surprised when they first glimpse the pair of crocodiles wallowing in the bath.