Sclatchy Rigmarole

- A lack of visibility.
- I've been tending to the ghouls.
- On a volunteer basis?
- It's not very clear.
- Under a powerful timetable?
- They keep long hours and set no deadlines.
- I expect the results will astonish and repulse?
- I'm not sure results are a decent expectation.
- The executive committee disagrees.
- They haven't got a constitution.
- They still have eyes.
- I agree.
- I trust you gather my berries, here.
- I smell a crumble full of meaning.
- There'll be a review period. A good long stare at your bollocks.
- I'm flattered.
- Followed by a focussed discussion.
- Absolutely.
- Topped off by a verdict, the weight of which will vary according to -
- I'm sure.
- Good luck.
- Yes.

Full Cost Recovery

- and there's a decrease in intensity sometimes?
- nngh.
- is it both elbows?
- always.
- and any other symptoms?
- the sky is full of graphs and charts.
- bar? pie?
- the gamut.
- you ought to've mentioned this at the beginning.
- I ought to've a lot of things at the beginning.
- yes.
- but that's not what the beginning's fucking for.
- if we can just focus on getting a full description. is there anything else?
- the graphs and charts smell like airports.
- thankyou very much for coming.
- I arrange my shoes in chronological order.
- we'll have the results in fourteen days.

From Us At Full Pelt

Go on then.
Hi I'm here to bother you. What's harrowing?
I've been watching my toenails grow.
Take long?
Whole minutes.
Talons yet?
Yes. And my clippers are rusty and unusable.
No surprise there.
So I've bought these extra-long shoes.
Are there not health risks?
Health risks, shoe risks, sock risks. It's not in my nature to back down.
Dancing much?
As much as usual. But trying to let the others have a go, these days, and I was getting funny looks.
You get those dancing or not.
I've noticed.
It's your head.
Is it ever anything else?
It seems to be gaping, even when the mouth is closed.
Right.
You should cover it with something. Before doing that becomes illegal.
At least I don't have to witness it. The gaping.
Spare a thought for those who do.
What is it you're here to say exactly?
Forgotten now. Something about wounds.
Terrific.
Just something I'd heard, not thought of.
Could you have heard it without me having heard it?
Possibly. Never checked. Can't. No log, see. I'm logless.
Is there a chance it might reoccur?
It was a survey I'd glimpsed. A graph. One line was going down and another was going up. It was relevant, and then you put me off.
I was only responding to your jolts.
Well don't.
I have to, now. There were these women with a flipchart and columns and arrows.
And that's all it takes is it?
It's all there's been to take.

Your Prospects Are Slugs and It Hasn't Rained In A While

In the pub opposite the coach station waiting for a coach, a man sat down next to me and I borrowed his lighter and he asked me how my weekend was. I said great thanks and asked him how his was and he told me it was shite and why's his real ale so fucking expensive then started going on about foreigners and how it's their fault this country's gone to shit they drain the system send em all back and I said what're you going to do to change it and he said I've just bought a house in Bulgaria.

He went away and was replaced by a man shouting into a phone about the fucking cost of his pint and the traffic and the expense and the foreigners and the expense and the traffic and the cost of his pint and the foreigners and the expense and the cunting eternity it takes to get anywhere in this fucking dungeon. I wrote a very long text on my phone and he finished his conversation and sat staring at me while I made my message longer and longer and sent it and put my phone down and looked up at him. He went scuse me mate are you drinking Stella and I said yes but I'm not getting another because they're three eighty and I don't have many three eighties left and he said do you want mine, I'm so angry at how much it costs I can't bring myself to drink it, and I said well thanks very much cheers yeah thanks a lot and he slid it across the table and stood up and went over the road to the station.

Occupation

The body of a woman with the head and tail of a dolphin. It's kneeling on a block of ice and looking at you with its pink-lipsticked mouth open. It has a yellow drink balanced on its left flipper. Beside it is the body of a woman with the head and legs of a zebra. The rare kind of zebra that goes about on two feet. It's looking at you and taking off its pink bikini one shoulderstrap at a time. Nipples imminent. You just paid money to see it, you lonely freak, because you were thirsty and wanted a can of Orangina and this is what they put on the side of cans of Orangina nowadays.

Besides the Dolph-maid and the Sexual Zebra there is a third creature, but it's so hideous my brain has deleted the memory. Maybe it's only in France, I can't be sure, having not left the land of baguettes and delicious cheese for nearly a full three months, but could this be a new Europe-wide strain of deranged soft-drink adverts?
I hope so, but only the future knows, and I don't want it to start arriving any faster than it already does, which is quite fast, with thirteen hours a day six days a week spent clipping kids in harnesses onto ropes and telling them all they have to do is go up the rock and come back down and be careful not to smash their face off during any of it, so it's important to listen to me and watch if you like and when you reach the top you need to lean back like this until your legs are horizontal and your feet flat against the rock and your toes point to the sky and shoulder width apart or wider and slowly walk down the rock like in the Batman TV Show you don't remember, except they were going up a building and you're coming down a rock but nevermind that just remember the further out you lean the more stable you will be and there's no need to look for footholds just keep those feet flat and if you don't keep them flat there's a small chance you might slip against the rock and smash your face off, then your friends will have to run around trying to catch your face, which may well've been whooshed away by the gusting sky and have landed on a cloud, up at which faraway people will look and say "look Pierre, a cloud that strongly resembles a face" and when we're back at camp I'll have to fill out a "Face Loss Form" and that's a lot of work, well not a lot of work but it's annoying so please just listen, I'm trying to get away from paperwork and photocopiers and where's-the-file-I-think-it's-in-the-office and the water cooler needs changing and numbers are god, is that clear?

I have never said this to the kids, because if I'm not instructing them I'm serving them food, or eating the food at their table, or working in the Tuck Hutch / Snack Shed / Magical Confectionary Wonderland, from where I can keep my eyes pointed at anyone sitting on the nearby fence and ask them to please not sit on the fence, just walk around, if you sit on the fence physically and/or metaphorically it will break and you may end up on the wrong side, having done damage to both, and yourself, and I will have to repair it and send you to be repaired, and not one of us wants that, just line up to make yourself diabetic on these here tasty fruits of child labour and human rights abuse they call cans of Coke and bars of Mars.