Duck

The following week there was a riot re-enactment. People threw things again, the police charged through people again, at home the windows were open for the breeze and we couldn't hear Mad Men over the noise of the helicopter for four hours. Next morning the re-aftermath, the road still closed and people watching the police watching the people. Stories of wallopings and pummelment, summed up by a man slumped against a wall, head down, eyes closed, with a sign on his belly, red-on-white, that said: non-aggresive protest.

Hoof Hoof

Asleep in the duty hutch dreaming horses I woke up to two of them looking through the open windows and I went whuh and they trotted off in the direction of everyone else. Which was troubling because although I am not a horse-wrangler I supposed I was supposed to make them leave. So I got out of bed and followed, and they were blurry and brown and part mammoth. And hungry. So I didn’t get close. And the whole camp was sleeping and I thought probably the best thing to do is not startle them into galloping over a marquee and chewing some child’s shins off. So I kept my distance and sent my thoughts out to them. And my thoughts returned with the message: GESTURES. So I moved round to where they could see me and waved my hands at them like they were vans. But they just stared and chewed and went further from the exit. They live up the road and I walk past them twice a day and I hoped I hadn’t accidentally invited them round to watch the sun rise. They were acting so welcome.
I woke up someone who isn’t allergic to horses and pointed at the horses and said is this unusual? And they said let them eat and they will go away. And I did and they did. And the following day was another green boiler full of screaming kids and I fell asleep in a hot hammock at 5pm.
Before the horses I’d been up all night with someone else’s face waiting for a diagnosis at the post-fiasco retina shop. It came over the phone and was good. Or do I mean prognosis, or both. We’d thought the victim might be losing a retina because of the wet red mess where their eye used to be. And the doctor saying the retina might be detached. But it was just wolf-crying and they were sent home with eye-drops and opiates and a list of things to do to the eye which included putting a grain of rice in there. Waiting for all this took a mountain of time and before the drive back I had to wire my mind to the moon to keep my lids up. So I had a cold can of muck and when I got back in the shed I could feel the brain jittering around in its holder, sweating thoughts through the third eye and murmuring how can a fizzy drink be so ruinous.

The Monster Traverse

I'm emailing farmers. For September. I speak Google. I will perform tasks and my reward will be slow Frenchification plus knowledge of self-sufficiency. These are the reasons I gave the agency when they asked why do you want to do this, why, come on, why, really. I missed out "not wanting to go back to a country now ruled by chubby blue scum", because it's partially my fault that that scum has risen (sorry), because I didn't immediately register a proxy when the polling card arrived, because I was busy doing fuck all, then when I was away and trying to phone-register they always had a problem with the computer, or it was the wrong hour or day, and now we've got five years.
Across the street is a carousel of withered white horses with no one on them, and that carousel tune [Who gets the royalties?] is playing. It really symbolises something. Besides the death of the things-spinning-round industry. What happens to carousel attendance during a recession? [It goes round and round?] (A lot of brackets are happening today, to stop the words blowing away in the wind)...(...if words could blow away in the wind, which ones would you find in the gutter?) [Well maybe there'd just be a jumble of letters becoming mush or being swept into piles and burned] (This is an old idea) [Is it though?] (Yes) [Yeah I agree] (It's probably in The Phantom Tollbooth anyway) [I could imagine so. That's a good book] (I agree) [Good] (Great) [Right] (Well then) [On with the story] (There isn't one) [Something about politics and carousels?] (It was waffle) [I'm sure I saw a thread and the start of an analogy] (Really?) [Well they were far away...it was hard to tell] (Pigeons are spitfires from the right distance and angle) [Bollocks] (You know what I mean) [Likewise] (Touché) [Is that French?] (Think so) [A new story then] (Alright. Last night I climbed up a rock and there was an amazing view and nobody died. The end) [That it?] (Yeah. What more do you want?) [Romance] (I licked the rock on the way up) [And mild peril] (My knee bled) [Moral dilemmas] (I had biscuits but didn't offer them round, knowing that there wouldn't be enough for everyone) [That's not a dilemma] (I try) [I can see] (The end) [Good] (Thanks for nothing) [Have you got any others?] (They're in bits) [What's the last line you wrote?] (I am peeved) [Nobody says that] (Well it amused me) [Well it's shit] (That's mean) [That's me]

If You Are Dazzled, Slow Down or Stop

Unlike most humans, I cannot stop achieving. Last year I ticked more boxes than you hated Mondays. Every day I lost the battle against success. Victory followed me everywhere like gloom follows doom and eventually I was the first person to appear on the cover of every magazine in WH Smiths in the same month. The Smiths in the train station, mind, not the new one.
The pinnacle of my achievments was the horse I made out of pastry. Vegan pastry, which is hard to get right, you know, especially on such a large scale. As large as the shirehorse I modelled it on. I rode it through town on a Saturday morning in May so that everyone could tell how humble I was when I donated it to the local bakery that was going out of business until I rode in.
By the end of the day, there was nothing left of the horse but the blue plastic hooves, which the staff now use as hats.