Day 49: Miffed Matt and the Game of Fives #3

(Part One)

(Part Two)

INT. ENTRANCE TUNNEL - DAY - SUBJECTIVE CAMERA

Miffed Matt's P.O.V. We're in a dark tunnel with light at the end. We're pushing forwards, grunts and groans all around. We hear cacophonous noise, commotion from outside the tunnel. An enormous archway, the noise swells, and then we're through--

CUT TO:

EXT. SPOON TOWN - DAY

--And into the (comparatively) open air of Spoon Town.

It's bedlam. EXOTIC VENDORS hawk their grotty wares.

Booted feet stomp through mud and slush.

Warped and disfigured CHILDREN run cackling through the crowds.

Bands of SHIRTLESS MEN, adorned in crude tattoos, swilling hooch, belch and roam and fight.

Under a wooden sign reading "Booty Salon" a parade of OLDER WOMEN have thick paint slopped onto their faces and gaudy inks brushed over their nails.

Food stalls sell meat-like sticks of gristle and sinew, at-best from roadkill, fried in rancid grease.

The air is thick with shrill cries, piercing laughter, guttural chanting.

It's the centre of Worksop in a post-apocalyptic future, and literally nothing has changed.

MIFFED MATT'S P.O.V. - STORYTELLER

A squat and ugly STORYTELLER, who'd be here at any time, really, and totally doesn't exist for purely expositional reasons, on a grubby stage regaling his audience.

STORYTELLER
...Love him. For he delivered us from darkness. After the Great Undoing, while all around us crumbled, the temple that was the heart of this town thrived. The weary and the sick came from miles around to patronise the site, to give up what few coins they had to the gods of this temple, and they were rewarded with glorious Stellar Juice to ease their pains and to soften their aching minds. The temple became more than a temple: an arbiter of politics, a trade giant, the only employer in town. All roads led to the Spoon.

Our procession of Driver and Prisoners and Miffed Matt has paused to let a wagon pass. Miffed Matt watches the Storyteller.

STORYTELLER (CONT'D)
And the Spoon was held in the hand of one man. One beautiful, sacred man. After the needs of our town clashed with the aims of regional government, this man did not sit idly by. He watched what was good and holy in our ground be shipped to the devils overseas, and he said No more. He crowned himself Grand Humungous of the Wastes, declared the old men in corrupted Laandan, and their antiquated ways, a blight upon the land, and with his legions of loyal Tender Boys he swept away the last vestiges of a broken regime and ushered in this era of enlightenment. So remember, tonight, as you're sleeping safe, as you're enjoying the spoils of this realm of Eden, who to thank for these riches. Love him, love your saviour, the Remainer-Smasher, the Curry-Wednesday Warrior -- Boss of the Burger, Beermat Poet, founder and Man-in-the-Chair of Spoon Town, the one, the only -- Grand Humungous Timmartin!

The crowds cheer. Streamers fill the air. The wagon lurches on, and the procession continues. Miffed Matt, from under his hood, spits on the ground.

CUT TO:

INT. THE EYRIE - DAY

A rounded room perched high above Spoon Town. Dark. Shadowy. Malicious.

GRAND HUMUNGOUS TIMMARTIN'S P.O.V. - MIFFED MATT

We're looking down a dirty telescopic lens at Miffed Matt, spitting on the ground and moving off.

We hear a low growl from O.S.

BACK TO SCENE

A clawed hand grips the seeing glass and thrusts it away.

A body in the blackness. Wisps of grey hair. A shining eye. The Grand Humungous is at home.

Turns to an UNSEEN CREATURE making suckling noises below him.

GRAND HUMUNGOUS TIMMARTIN
Look

The Unseen Creature takes the seeing glass.

UNSEEN CREATURE'S P.O.V. - SCANNING CROWD

GRAND HUMUNGOUS TIMMARTIN (O.S.)
Our new guests.

The lens sweeps the crowd, pinpoints the procession, the Prisoners, and, finally, Miffed Matt.

BACK TO SCENE

GRAND HUMUNGOUS TIMMARTIN
Bring me that man.

CONTINUED...

Day 48: Miffed Matt and the Game of Fives #2

EXT. SPOON TOWN GATES - DAY

Dawn breaks hard over the ragged mountains. The wan sunlight illuminates a towering collection of metal, a jutting perimeter wall of ragtag corrugated sheets and vehicle shells and scavenged detritus, looming fifty-metres high and three miles round like a giant hobo’s smashed teeth rising from the desert.

Jutting from one section of the wall is an abscess, the Guard Tower, housing the Spoon Town Gates -- and bleeding out from the abscess onto the sand is a smudged dirty fleck, the Driver, with his line of Prisoners (and Miffed Matt) in tow.

A small hatch slides open in the side of the Guard Tower, and the face of a GUARD, twisted and scarred, pierced with many rings and chains, pokes out from the hole.

GUARD
Welcome to Spoon Town. Witness our might and cower, unholy worm. Password please.

The Driver steps forward.

DRIVER
Right, I know this. The blood of the sewer rat flows uphill.

GUARD
Incorrect password.

DRIVER
Oh, dammit, yeah. I think that’s the password to one of the other barbaric trade hubs I frequent.

GUARD
Don’t worry, that happens.

DRIVER
It’d be handier if they were all the same, wouldn’t it?

GUARD
Oh, no, they should never be the same. What if someone hacked into your brain, with say a serrated cleaver, and found the password. Then they’d have access to all your personal barbaric trade hubs.

DRIVER
Right, yeah, of course. I’ve seen the educational semaphore. OK. Well I’m pretty sure this one has something to do with forsaken. The forsaken shall inherit the Earth?

GUARD
Is that all lowercase?

DRIVER
No. Capital E on Earth. Because otherwise the forsaken are just inheriting earth, common or garden - ha - clod, ground, dirt; rather than the world, our kingdom, the planet that we call Earth.

GUARD
Incorrect password.

DRIVER
The forsaken shall inherit the earth all lowercase.

GUARD
Incorrect.

DRIVER
The forsaken shall inherit the earth each word capitalised.

GUARD
Incorrect. Would you like to reset your password, perhaps?

DRIVER
Yes! I didn’t know that was an option.

GUARD
Of course. Just answer your secret question first. What is your favourite torture implement?

DRIVER
Well that’s easy, the good old cat o’ nine tails. That’s oh-apostrophe tails. Although, hang about, when would I have set up this question? Because I was big into the flaying knife for a time last year. Ahh. I have no memory of this. Let’s go with cat o’ nine tails...

GUARD
Incorrect. You have now exceeded your total number of allowed guesses and for your own safety will be locked out of Spoon Town for ten minutes. Please try again later.

The Guard’s head disappears back into the wall and the hatch is slammed shut.

The Driver looks back at his prisoners and grins sheepishly.

DRIVER
Pain in the irradiated tumour, these things.

The Prisoners mutter their noncommittal assent.

DRIVER
I’m sure I know the blasted thing.

PRISONERS
(in general agreement)
Mmhmm, of course, yep.

No one says anything. The Driver scratches himself, whistles a little. The Prisoners shift their weight, gaze around. The Driver coughs, stares up at the sky.

DRIVER
Looks like more acid rain.

PRISONER #1
Could be.

The Driver scratches himself again.

PRISONER #1 (CONT’D)
Did you see those mutilations out near Futility Ravine last week?

DRIVER
No, I must have missed those.

PRISONER #1
Bad mutilations, they were. Sloppy.

DRIVER
They’ve got no class, the bandits these days.

PRISONER #1
Oh, you’re telling me. Time was, a bandit would tear down your yurt with his modified ramrod, take all your possessions, carry off your daughters, skin you alive -- but he’d do it with a certain élan. It was all part of the game. These kids today, it’s like no one taught them the rules. They don’t announce their approach with heavy metal guitar solos. They don’t arrive for a warm-up round of murder and then leave again, promising to return, giving you enough time to hire a wandering hero to protect your family. They just show up, lop off a few body parts, and drive away again. Where’s the flair? Where’s the pageantry?

DRIVER
Take old Guzzlicker the Gluttonous, now there was a bandit with style.

PRISONER #1
Killed my great uncle, did Guzzlicker. Hell of a bandit.

DRIVER
They don’t make them like that anymore.

PRISONER #1
No they do not.

Both men fall to silence. A wistfulness fills the air. No one says anything. A two-headed lizard scuttles past.

DRIVER     PRISONER #1
I was--    It’s funny--

DRIVER
Sorry.

PRISONER #1
You go.

DRIVER
No, sorry, after you.

PRISONER #1
No, it’s just, I was just going to say it’s funny, underneath the leather harnesses, the chainmail, the rat-skull belts, the pierced nipples, the daubed blood of your vanquished foes, take all that away, and underneath we’re not so--

--The hatch snaps open. The Guard pops his head back out.

GUARD
Welcome to Spoon Town. Witness our might and cower, unholy worm. Password please.

DRIVER
Ahh, there we go. Sorry for the delay everyone, I’ll get you chaps moving onwards to your certain deaths in a jiffy. Right. Password. The forsaken shall inherit the Earth one two three. T and E capitalised. Numbers as numerals.

GUARD
Incorrect

DRIVER
Poisoned warts! OK. The forsaken shall inherit the Earth one two three exclamation mark.

GUARD
Incorrect

DRIVER
One the forsaken shall inherit the Earth one two three exclamation mark.

GUARD
Incorrect

The Driver looks about to burst into tears. The Guard, in a tiny moment of humanity winning out against the inexorably churning machine of bureaucratic obstinacy, takes pity on him.

GUARD
You know you have to explicitly state the spaces between words, right?

DRIVER
Of course! One capital-T-the space forsaken space shall space inherit space the space capital-E-Earth one two three exclamation mark.

GUARD
Password accepted. Step forward for your visitor’s band. Relinquish all weapons at the booth. Failure to comply will be met with swift retribution. Please enter Spoon Town, and have a nice day.

The Driver whips his prisoners and the whole sorry procession limps forward, the Driver pausing only briefly as he passes the Guard to raise his eyebrows in a small gesture of thanks that, though small, still to the Driver means everything.

Miffed Matt trudges with the Prisoners, his head down, through the gates and into the waiting maw of Spoon Town. He says nothing.

CONTINUED...

Day 47: Miffed Matt and the Game of Fives

FADE IN:

EXT. WASTELAND - NIGHT

A foul and corrupted hellscape. Pools of noxious liquid gurgle and plop. Twisted creatures skitter across the rocks. Jets of ignited gases burn and flicker upwards into the black sky. 

SUPERIMPOSE: "Worksop. 2076." 

To be honest, the wasteland we're seeing isn't much different from present day Worksop. Maybe the lifeforms are a little more abnormal, the food less edible, the sense of lingering hopelessness perhaps a touch more palpable. But in every other regard this future Worksop is worse. 

A ramshackle car comes hurtling over the dunes. It looks like the LEGO concoction of a drunk three-year-old, pieced together from all the chewed-up blocks left in the bottom of the box. There's a rudimentary cage welded onto the vehicle's rusted back. Inside, A NUMBER OF PRISONERS rattle the bars and moan. THE DRIVER slams his fist down onto the wheel and yells. 

DRIVER
Quiet, dogs! 

PRISONER #1
Please, just tell us where you're taking us. 

The driver hawks up a wad of phlegm and grebs it behind him into the cage. The prisoners recoil. The loogie lands with a splat by the boot of the one captive who has remained silent -- a jaded, resolute STRANGER rocking only slightly with the bounce of the truck. The Stranger stares straight ahead; what he's thinking, we couldn't guess.

PRISONER #2
(to Stranger)
I know you.

No response.

PRISONER #2 (CONT'D)
Don't worry. I won't tell no one. But I know you. You're the one what walked out of the Kerfon Whorehouse Massacre with not a scratch on you.

Nothing.

PRISONER #2 (CONT'D)
You entered the Land of Ice, and walked back out again, with frozen nuggetz to feed a starving village.

Nada.

PRISONER #2 (CONT'D)
You're
(whispering)
Miffed Matt.

The other prisoners, overhearing this, gasp and cry out.

DRIVER
I told you vermin to STAY QUIET!

The Driver jams the wheel hard to the left and the prisoners roll on the floor, crash into the bars of the cage. All but the Stranger, Miffed Matt, who remains somehow motionless.

The car rattles along, and Prisoner #1 approaches the cab.

PRISONER #1
(to driver)
Maybe there's something you want? We've got some small keepsakes between us. Or information? We could tell you where to find a map to the Tomb of the Last Greggs. I've seen it, the map, with my own eyes.

DRIVER
You want to know where we're going?

PRISONER #1
That's all we want.

DRIVER
I'm not a cruel man. I'm only doing my job. I tell you what, you want to know where we're going? I can let you in on that, little one, I can do that for you. We're going... to Spoon Town.

The Prisoners howl in anguish.

DRIVER (CONT'D)
I thought you'd like that. Heh heh. We're off to Spoon Town, to see my mistress, my pretty mistress, and then, well, you merry bunch are going to get to play yourselves a nice game of FIVES.

The prisoners react. Oh shit. All but Miffed Matt. He simply raises one eyebrow and, imperceptible to all but us, lets the corner of his mouth twist into what might just be the beginnings of a smile.

CONTINUED...

Day 46: FIVES!

I'm on the bus with Mike, we're on the way home, trying to finish a cryptic crossword we started at work. 'Figures it's a game [5],' is the clue we're looking at.

"What I'm thinking," I say, "is is it a number that's also the name of a game?"

"Hmm," Mike says, which is what he always says when I come up with something I think is really clever, but which to Mike is completely obvious."

"You know, like 'Three', or 'Seven'."

"Yes," Mike says. "I understand."

Mike is more intelligent than me. But only, like, in IQ. It makes him laugh whenever I tell him this, and then he looks sad.

We leave the clue and try to do the others we've missed. We get one, and then cheat another, because we're never going to get it, and we've not got long left on the bus. Mike makes an attempt at one more. "What if... No. But... Could it...? Hrmm."

"Cheat it," I say.

"Cheating it," he says, and cheats it.

"That's disappointing," we both say.

We go back to the first clue, 'Figures it's a game [5].'

"What about 'Nines'? I say. Is nines a game?"

Mike looks at me, like, "Of course nines isn't a game, you utter moron." But he doesn't say it out loud, just in case nines really is a game, and he ends up looking stupid.

"What about--" I say.

"Nope," Mike says. "I'm cheating it."

"All right. Cheat it. If it's 'Three' or 'Seven' or 'Nines', though, I'm having half a point."

Mike looks on his phone. He's pretty quick at finding the answers to cryptic crossword clues on his phone, like he's got the page bookmarked on Chrome or something.

"The answer," he says, "Is 'FIVES'."

"Fuck off," I say. "That's a quarter of a point."

We trundle along a ways. The bus is pretty busy, with office workers looking weary and worn down. We're at Broomhill now, a few stops away from home.

"What's fives?" I ask. "Is it a card game?"

"I reckon," Mike says patronisingly. "It's called 'fives'. It's not going to be a bloodsport, is it?

We continue on. I'm feeling a bit put out by all this condescension, to be honest.

"It could be a bloodsport. It could be a fight to the death in a ramshackle arena. I think it probably is, in fact."

"Five must enter!" Mike intones.

"Two must enter. Then three more must also enter. Five must remain! Four of course could also have entered, but then only one would be allowed to enter. Five must remain!"

"Seven may enter. Two must leave. Five must remain!"

"Eighty-nine may enter. But look, where are you all coming from? There are far too many of you for this arena. We only built it to fit five. A lot of you are going to have to turn around and go right back out. As I said, five must remain!"

The bus rolls on.

"...Eighty-four," Mike says.

"What?"

"Eighty-four is how many would have to leave."

"I know."

"Oh. It just sounded like you were being vague because you couldn't do the arithmetic when you were on the spot."

"You better watch that tongue, boy, or I'll challenge you to a game of fives!"

- - -

So that's basically what happened. We made each other laugh, I made myself laugh, I got all giddy, then we got off the bus and went home.

I didn't really have any reason to write this -- although I've just now thought what I should have done was to begin the post explaining briefly that we came across the game of fives in a crossword and, not knowing the rules, decided to do some research, and this is what we found -- And then I could have written a little story about how fives is a post-apocalyptic bloodsport played by the slaves of scavengers , in an iron-fenced arena presided over by a mutated and fiendish leather-bound monstrosity, called Tina Turner, in an outpost town built of oil drums and barbed wire, the last vestiges of humanity eking out a harsh existence in a scarred and forsaken land.

But now it's 01:05 and I've got work in the morning and I haven't done that, so, *shrugs*. Maybe that'll happen tomorrow, if it doesn't seem like a stupid idea by then.

P.S. So I Googled fives, and it turns out it's an actual physical sport, played with balls and walls, a bit like squash, that probably everyone in the world has heard of. But Mike didn't know that, so he can suck it. Card game indeed!

Day 45: Mid-point

So yeah man this is day 45 and I should be feeling great and all but of course inevitably I'm feeling completely shitty.

Yeah, I don't know what to tell you. I don't have the energy to pretend I'm...

... Ung. No. Not that tone. I guess there are things I can do. It's OK to feel like this, but I don't need to add to it. There is no "should". It's not that I "should" be feeling great. Reality is just what it is. Unhappiness is the discrepancy between your assumptions about reality and reality itself. What's that thing, you can argue with reality -- you'll just lose 100% of the time?

So I can say: "It would be nice if I felt great." Or: "I would like to feel great." Or just: "I have felt great before but right now I do not feel great." But not "I should feel great."

Or if I find I have said, "I should feel great," then not to worry about that. "I shouldn't have said 'should' just then." Pssch. Just let it go. This moment is this moment.

I feel tired in all my muscles. I feel a draining away of energy, of determination, desire. An emptying out. Everything is clouded and foggy. My vision is... it's like I'm not totally here in the scene, but looking out on it from a ways back, down inside myself.

It's depression.

I guess I've had tiny attacks of depression like this most nights for many years. Sometimes they just make for a tough evening, just those attacks themselves. Other times I beat myself up for letting an attack come on, for being the kind of person who lets attacks come on, whatever. Or I get a hopeless "here we go again" feeling, like this is what it has been like for so long, this is all I can envisage for the future, what's the point in any of this? And any of those things can worsen the initial attack, increase its duration, turn it into a full depressive episode.

So better to just let myself feel whatever I feel. If I'm depressed right now, once again, then so be it. I could suffer from continuous migraines. I could have trouble breathing. I could have diabetes or fibromyalgia or arthritis. I don't. But I do get depressed. Hopefully I can work on assuaging that depression as I continue with my life, but who knows? I mean I'd like to not have this feeling any more, but probably the first step towards that is practising, getting good at, accepting the feeling when it is here.

So it's here. I'm depressed. But actually already the shift in perspective has changed it. The amount of energy is the same, but the kind of valence, I suppose, the electrical charge, of the energy is different. Now it's more that I'm fragile and drained, but actually OK, rather than somehow fundamentally broken and miserable.

Maybe I need a crisis plan to put into action for the next time this happens, probably tomorrow, and for the day after, and the day after that.

1. Find reality.
2. Recognise reality.
3. Admit reality.
4. Accept reality.
5. Notice the ways I am arguing with reality.
6. Re-frame experiences to offer alternative interpretations ("I should be feeling great" becomes "it would be nice to feel great but I accept that right now that is difficult for me").

That's a rough list. It's all I can do tonight. But that's enough, for now. I'm proud of myself for doing this much.

Day 44: Coming home

Back from the country. We weren't kidnapped by locals and experimented upon and changed. Unless part of the process of being changed was taking out bits of our brains so that we didn't remember being changed. Maybe I'm not myself. Maybe none of us are ourselves. But what can you do? You just have to carry on, hoping that it all makes sense, that there is some force for good moving you beneath your conscious awareness, that you are not a secret sleeper agent for a malevolent cult growing out of a small village near Holmfirth biding your time until you are activated as the first phase in a plan of world domination and terror.

You just have to carry on carrying on. So that's what I'll do.

We woke up at a decent hour this morning and stripped the bed (Fran) and washed the last dishes (Fran) and put everything back where we'd found it (Fran) and drank instant coffee (me), then folded the dog into a taxi, sat in around him, and drove to the railway station away from our idyllic little retreat.

On the train we sat largely in silence, watching the little towns roll by, with Mish up on the seats opposite, my hand on Fran's knee, Fran playing with her zombies on her phone, me reading about trade deals on the New York Times app.

We went for lunch in the Rutland when we arrived back in the city. Fran had a vegan patty, with cheese to confuse the bartender. I had a fish finger sandwich. The chips were real chips, fat and glorious. Fran had a pint. I had an orange drink. Fran's pint looked good, as do they all.

We hauled our bags to the bus stop in a thick drizzle as Mission padded along daintily beside us, head up, drawing looks, as always. I saw Fran onto her bus and then hurried off for my own.

I've done very little back at the house. Listened to episodes of the Serial podcast, which is fascinating and illuminating and I recommend highly, had some snoozes, eaten tea.

Gentle day, and an early night, with work again in the morning (all the hisses).

As of tomorrow I'll have been writing this blog for 45 days. halfway to my target of 90. I've still got a long way to go, but just for a moment I'll allow that right now, thinking about how far I've come, it feels pretty good.

Night night.

Day 43: Imperfections

Dearest friends,

I hope this missive finds you well. It is our third day in the village, and country life is continuing at its own sedentary pace.

I love the cottage we're staying in. It's an old tumble-down brick building, snug and comfortable and relaxing, the perfect antidote to hectic city life. The pillows are soft, the breakfast counter is inviting, and the top room's supporting oak beams are sufficiently gnarled and sturdy.

But the place isn't perfect. Everything tarnishes with time, and desire can never truly be sated. What looks immaculate at first glance soon becomes something less than that.

Here are a few points I've noticed.

- There are no full length mirrors in any of the rooms, so to see what your day's outfit looks like you have to take a face mirror off its hook and scan it up and down your body.
- There's an expensive looking coffee machine in the kitchen, but no ground coffee, and none sold in any of the shops nearby.
- Some of the crockery has a decidedly royalist bent to its design.
- The bathroom walls are painted in a drab shade of taupe, and between the hours of seven and eight each night bleed a translucent ectoplasm that vanishes by 8:01 pm.
- The TV flickers occasionally and the channels change rapidly, settling on a grainy image of the room in which the TV is placed, two people watching the screen visible from the back, a masked figure approaching from behind slowly, before the set flickers again and regular programming is resumed.
- The copy of the popular board game Battleships left on the shelf is a nice touch, and exactly as I remember from childhood, except that every time one of us lands a "hit" on one of the other's ships we hear a blood-curdling scream from the woods off behind the house. This is a feature I do not recall from previous versions of the game.
- Nor do I remember copies of Guess Who? in the past being comprised of pictures of local children who have gone missing over the last fifty-year period.
- The cupboards are stacked with food and there are bowls of fresh, bright fruit on the tables, yet behind a bookcase in the attic we have found a covered picture portraying the very same food as downstairs, only now it is rotting, liquefied, covered in veins of rancid fat and splotches of hirsute mold, releasing clouds of hissing spores as maggots writhe around the decomposing innards.
- All the electrical items have a second cable, after the power supply, that snakes around skirting boards and along banisters and leads eventually under the door to the spare room, which door has remained locked for the duration of our visit.
- Next to the radio is a seemingly innocuous houseplant which has for reasons I cannot fathom been encased within a metal prison from which it grows its hanging tendrils yet can never escape.
- By the stairs there sits an ornamental rabbit on a tiny chair, its head tilted and staring up to the next level at a varnished gnome hiding under a table of which the gnome himself, in some kind of cosmic existential irony, is the central support. The gnome is peering up at an ostrich lamp beside the television, the ostrich skewered clean through by the pole on which the lampshade hangs. This sorry bird gazes across the room at two porcelain dog statues on the windowsill facing one another, yet with heads turned so that their eyes never meet. Although the figurines are clearly fixed in their poses, even when you swivel them so heads should be pointing inwards, still somehow they are not. I cannot explain this phenomenon. What messages pass between this collection of silent creatures? From where do they originate? What master do they serve?
- The visitors' book has plenty of entries from guests upon arrival, praising the cottage and the surrounding village, yet there are no records of anyone leaving. There is young Ms Flopsy, so looking forward to bounding round the countryside, Mrs Stuthio, sounding uppity but polite, old Mr Gardener, noting his excitement at getting to escape the family for a bit of fishing, and then a newly-wed couple, the Pointers, so desperately in love, writing how they never want to spend a moment apart. Such sweet sounding guests. I wonder what happened to them all.
-None of the taps in the house seem to work, except that when you turn them associated lights flash on a giant radio tower standing on a hill far in the distance overlooking the entire valley.
- Having a door to the garden is pleasant, I just wish the garden onto which the door opened was always on the same astral plane, and not periodically a hellscape cut through with rivers of blood and gargoyles spitting flame.
- I've just thought, perhaps if the dog statues are not looking at one another, I should determine where exactly it is that they are looking. Well, placing them in their original positions, then getting down on the floor and putting my head between theirs, they appear to be staring up at a painting on the wall set in an ornate gilded frame. The painting is labelled La Chasse, and depicts the nobility from the surrounding regions gathered in preparation for what seems to be an important hunt. The lords are on horseback and mill around festooned in finest regalia as impatient dogs roll and jostle in packs on the ground. There is a clear excitement and energy to the scene. But in the distance at the edge of view are two foxes, male and female, with remarkably lifelike features, one with a face appearing disconcertingly like Fran's face, the other a visage like mine own. The foxes are looking at one another in fear and confusion and, perhaps, dawning realisation at their plight.
- The doorbell is very loud, and rouses us when we are relaxing -- as has just happened. Fran is going down to answer it. Craning my head I think I can just make out the hunched figure of Father Tunbridge, the village's benevolent leader, on the porch. He appears to be wearing some kind of red tunic and riding boots, though it is hard to make out in the dark. I do wonder what the good reverend wants at this late hour...