169

168

The end.

167

Group hug.

We reach out, needing something beyond our tired isolated selves. For the self is vast, but the world is much, much vaster. The self is resourceful but the world easily defeats it. The flood of despair rises. Hey you! Other people! Can you help at all? I'd like to believe I share some of your feelings, I'd like to believe I can help you. Surely empathy can't be completely useless?

(We misunderstand, we disappoint, we hurt each other. That really wasn't the intention. Sorry!)

Maybe at least we could all shout 'HELP!' forlornly together.

166

You will be inhabited by strange cheese.

(There. Who says that Drodbar doesn't have a dark side?)

165

Did I say 'eery'? I meant 'eary'. Since yesterday, everything has ears. Everything - walls of course, also windows, wallabies, wheels. Apples, bananas, carrots. New Zealand has ears that stick out a hundred miles - you can see them on the map. Tennis players (Virginia Wade, Yvonne Goolagong) are hitting the ball with their giant ears, instead of rackets.

Have you got ears?

164

I can't find them anywhere. In truth I found them unsatisfying and slightly eery. I wanted to like them, for they had the solidity of the old. They were round, transparent, but too much geared for 'childlike fascination', i.e. for poets, not for real children. There was an ugly flake in the middle, representing a colour, but always an unattractive shade, and the shape and texture of the flakes were definitely rather horrible.

And what, precisely, could one use them for? Eventually, just as I should by rights have been feeling too old for them, I found a use, thanks to David Vine. Substitute snooker. But then next Christmas my parents gave my brother and me an actual quarter-size snooker table. I liked the motion, the motion of the body in playing a shot and the motion of the snooker balls. Solitary snooker accompanied my meditations: a misspent youth - meditating.

So, as quite often, I feel slightly guilty and regretful for not being more excited about things of which I approve.

But anyway, aweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, the sun has got his hat on (or has she?), Miriam Margolyes, abracadabra Unreliable Witness, zxcvbnm. And a packet of cheese and onion flavour crisps, please.

163

Residents of Australia! Would you like to join my Lets Pretend We Live In England Society?

(N.B. Residents of America, Argentina, very small islands, Greeks who live in Scotland etc. also very welcome.)

(P.S. Residents of England! Why not start a Lets Pretend We Are Residents Of Australia [etc.] Pretending To Live In England Society?)