Previously on williamessex.com. Pipsqueak, Myrtille and Roland were at the back, holding bottles … wassailing with the best of them … onto the floor rolled – a lamp … the kitten looked back with an expression that seemed to say: there’s about to be a major plot twist – and slipped out into the night.

“You can’t signal your plot twists in advance.”

“I can. I just did.”

“Not if you don’t know what they’re going to be.”

“But I do. It’s perfectly simple. The kitten–”

“Anyway, you’re supposed to write your waffly bit first.”

“My what?”

“We shouldn’t be talking like this. Your waffly bit. Where you start by rabbiting on about something completely irrelevant.”

“My waffly bit? Edgalcius the Mage, I’ll have you know–”

“Hang on, what’s this?”

Pipsqueak was woken by a noise. His head – no, it wasn’t his head; Pipsqueak lay very still and the room stopped moving.

If he lay like this for the rest of his life, he quite possibly wouldn’t throw up.

But his head. Yes, it was his head.

Pipsqueak groaned. His head felt– And his mouth– Pipsqueak lay very still. His mouth needed a good metaphor.

But this was one of those situations, Pipsqueak knew, where any good metaphor instantly sounds like it’s been used before.

“Careful. That’s you thinking. Pipsqueak’s a character. And that’s not a thought he’d have.”

“Sorry, I just couldn’t think of a way to describe the inside of his mouth. Have you ever cleaned out a parrot cage? But more leathery.”

“When you can’t describe something, maybe the message is: don’t describe it. Basic rule.”

“I thought I was writing this.”

“Yeah, but I’ve been in stories like this so many times before. By so many authors. The Old Guy with a Thousand Faces, wasn’t that your working title? So many stories. So many heroes to help on their way. Can you imagine the number of ominous storm-clouds I’ve had to ride under?”

“It only rains at night in fantasy novels.”

“Stair-rods, though. And the old guy – the wizard, the mage, the whatever – is always being called out of bed for some late-night intervention.”

“But you must have seen some beautiful–”

“Yeah, but when the descriptions really don’t work? And you have to tell a young woman that she looks like that because some pretentious git of an amateur author fell in love with his own ridiculously over-written description of how her face could launch– hold it! Look.”

Pipsqueak’s mouth, which was a perfectly ordinary mouth, with teeth and everything, slight overbite, some thinning of the enamel, discoloration, possible fracture in Upper Left Seven, periodontitis, very dry just at this moment, parched actually, bits of food stuck between – Pipsqueak felt very bad. But very bad in a normal way that he recognised.

He felt like he felt when he’d been drinking and eating to excess. Which is what he’d been doing. So he felt like that.

He lay very still.

“You’ve said that.”

He continued to lay very still.

That sound; what was it?

“That’s Pipsqueak thinking about the sound, isn’t it? You need to make it clear.”

“Yes. Shh.”

Pipsqueak rolled onto his side and – well, he felt a bit better afterwards and managed to get it cleared up without waking Myrtille. He got to his feet. The room had stopped swaying. It was a tent. He was in a tent. There was Myrtille and there was – who let him in? Still asleep, anyway – and there was his rucksack. 

That noise… It had sounded like conversation. Very faint, kind of tinny, but definitely two voices.

The contents of his rucksack had spilled out onto the carpet.

“Carpet now? Very fancy.”

“Shh!”

“Sorry.”

“Shhhh!”

There were his spare – Pipsqueak shuffled his spare long-johns back into the rucksack – and there was … yeah, this thing.

Using just his finger and thumb on the handle, Pipsqueak picked up the lamp and put it to his ear.

There was a sound like – Pipsqueak frowned – it was the sound that a massive, heavily salted body of water would make if there was a lot of wind making it surge against a sloping surface made of pebbles or sand.

What a weird idea, Pipsqueak thought.

“He’s never seen the sea, you idiot!”

“Shhhh!”

Pipsqueak jerked back, dropping the lamp. He was right: the voices were coming from the lamp!

“And that’s seashells, anyway.”

He scrambled to his feet and backed away from the lamp.

He could hear his heart beating. His breath was short. He felt a powerful urge to fight or – his feet rose two inches off the carpet and then bumped down again.

“Not that kind of flight!”

“I said – shhhh!” 

All of a sudden Pipsqueak’s hangover was completely cured.

It’s magic, he thought. I’d forgotten about the lamp. I’d forgotten that it was magic.

But – two voices?

Pipsqueak brought his breathing under control. He waited for his heartbeat to subside.

The genie was on his side. If the genie had a friend…

Pipsqueak glanced at Myrtille. Then he reached for the lamp.

Outside the tent, the kitten crouched in the darkness. It had watched, through a very small tear in the fabric of the tent, as Pipsqueak had woken up and – the kitten wrinkled its nose at the memory.

The kitten had watched until Pipsqueak had picked up the lamp, dropped the lamp, and then reached for the lamp again.

Now there would be magic not of its making.

Fascinated, the kitten reached out a claw to enlarge the tear in the fabric of the tent. Perhaps it would learn more magic from what it was about to see; perhaps some of the secrets of this strange, fantastical world would be revealed.

And then, behind the kitten, darkness formed out of darkness. The stars were blacked out and a dark shape leaned forward over the kitten.

“There you are, my little one,” said a voice as rusty and creaky as – as the voice of an elderly cat-breeding witch who didn’t use her voice very much and hardly ever thought about dental hygiene. “I knew there were seven in the litter.”

Before the kitten could get a proper stare going, it had been snatched up and was held close in the old witch’s black cloak.

“What kind of a familiar will you be, if you’re always running off?” said the witch, turning away. “If I don’t get you properly trained, I won’t be able to sell you to anybody.”

Then the darkness was darkness again. There were stars, and a distance away, the last embers of a camp fire. An owl hooted. Wolves howled. Across the camp, faint snoring could be heard.

Inside the tent, Pipsqueak began to polish the lamp.

Bought a hat the other day. A beanie, I think you might call it. A bobble hat without a bobble.

I didn’t need a new hat, but I’d come to the supermarket without a hat, and it was cold outside, and there was a rack of hats, gloves, scarves, all roughly the price of an overpriced cup of coffee.

My new hat has a turn-up. You know what I mean. Actually, it’s called a fold-over, and the small amount of research I’ve done for this post suggests that a fold-over is intended to double up the cold-protection over the ears and the neck.

Or to extend the cold-protection down, of course.  

Except that the fold-over on my new hat is sewn into place. You can’t pull it down if there’s a wind off the Urals biting into the back of your neck, and you can’t fold it further up if, er, the hair around the top of your head is not as, um, cold-proof as it used to be.

I’ve bought a hat that has to look the same in all conditions. To the extent that it’s just ever so slightly impractical for its ostensible purpose.

I bought a bag recently. The leaflet went on about the brass buckles and the leather straps and how all-round sturdy and important the bag was – except that the buckles and straps were sewn together, and the bag actually opened with the poppers concealed underneath.

Why have a big brass buckle if it’s just a big brass decoration? I suppose I’ve answered my own question.

Why do we take ourselves so puffed-up seriously these days, if we’re not even prepared to unfasten a buckle?

We've all got cold brains. Is that it?

Imagine an organisation where the faces change.

Where the opportunities open up because people move on.

I’m not thinking about media organisations in particular, but imagine a news broadcast that wasn’t presented by the same tired old faces repeating the question to each other at length and then replying that yes, the issue is complicated and no, nobody knows what’s going to happen next.

“Grumpy again today, aren’t we?”

“Ed! You don’t come in until further down.”

“Sorry.”

Is it just me, or are universities and colleges packed with young people studying the creativities up to and including reading off an autocue in a gloss-painted plyboard studio? Most of them could do a half-decent job, and all of them have access to the technology.

“It’s just that–”

“Not yet!”

At times, you could think that the right to interview politicians seems to be held within families and passed down through the generations. I mean, yes, there’s–

“You’re just in a bad mood.”

“Have you seen the news recently?”

–there’s YouTube, and there are podcasts, and blogs, and vlogs, and all that, and the future is full of young people talking at us through our screens.

But there isn’t a bridge between “trad” TV and “indie” TV. Same as in publishing. Think of all those young, idealistic, cheap-to-hire students who won’t get the job they’re training to do. The best of them will make their own futures, but–

“Oh, I get it. You’re talking about barriers to entry.”

–the “trad” industry, in its present form, will just wither into irrelevance. If I flick through Freeview, for example, I don’t come across an entry-level TV station populated by recent graduates doing a half-decent job of gaining experience for their CVs while standing outside in the dark holding furry microphones to their faces and telling us that nobody knows what’s coming next.

“A really bad mood.”

Universities are expanding, so where’s the joined-up thinking? There are so many trained young people available to the creative industries. They’re a resource; why not use them?

All I can find on Freeview, some nights, is re-runs of shows from my childhood back in the Cretaceous Era. Not a single entry-level–

“You were enjoying Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased).”

“I was, but–”

“That was worth finding, wasn’t it? Black-and-white classic from the sixties?”

“Ed, I just wanted to say–”

“Something about the old ways dying. Organisations closing themselves to the new. Not regenerating.”

“And the false promises of education.”

“Don’t get your knickers in any more of a twist, ha ha.”

Ed and I are riding horses along the northbound road out of the walled town. They’re slow old horses, with copious manes and plate-sized hooves. Ed’s relaxed in the saddle but I haven’t yet, er, found my rhythm. It’s so long since I rode a horse that I don’t know how to describe the experience, let alone live it.

“Do some research,” he murmurs.

“Shh! That’s my omniscient-narrator voice. You don’t hear that.”

“Unreliable narrator, more like.”

“Besides, I’d fall off.”

We’ve agreed that we need to be nearer to the action. If there is any action. We’re both a bit worried about the magic kitten.

“You shouldn’t write things into the story if you don’t know what they're going to do,” Ed had said, and we’d argued for a while, good-naturedly, about spontaneity in writing. You know – about relaxing enough to allow spur-of-the-moment ideas – even kittens – into the flow. Not resisting what comes.

Then we’d made our way down the mountain – doesn’t matter how – and hired two horses at the farrier’s in the village.

I can see from Ed’s profile now that he’s laughing at me.

“You had to write that we’re on horses, didn’t you?” he says, reading my mind.

“It just came to me.”

“And we need to be nearer the action because?”

“That just came to me too. But Pipsqueak’s forgotten all about the lamp.”

“The one that summons you.”

“Yeah. Not sure about that. Maybe I should go back and delete it.”

“Leave it for now. They’re all asleep anyway.”

“They’re my friends, Mother!” Stace had said forcefully, and the guards hadn’t dragged Pipsqueak and Myrtille out of the Royal Presence.

But there had been an argument, conducted mainly in not-quite-inaudible hissing between Mother and Daughter, at the end of which a compromise had been reached: Stace would sit with the Queen at the banquet, while Pipsqueak and Myrtille would sit at a secondary table – with Roland.

“I should be up there!” Roland had hissed. “This is an insult!”

“Have another drink,” Myrtille had said. “Far more fun down here.”

It was true. The Queen and Stace – Princess Eustacia – hadn’t been able to eat yet.

Every time one of them raised a fork, another gaudily fancy-dressed fool, in cap and bells and tights and pointed slippers, would prance out onto the open space in front of their long table, and start another long, boring, rhyming-doggerel, interminable series of couplets about the glories of the Royal House.

Two more long tables had been set, one along either side of the performance space, and the guests there hadn’t been able to eat, either. They were equipped with foaming tankards that they crashed down at the end of every couplet. Sometimes, the foam slipped off a tankard, and had to be fixed on again.

Whereas Pipsqueak, Myrtille and Roland were at a round table towards the back, holding bottles of the soft drink so that the label could be seen from over there – they’d been coached in this – and faking a laugh – this, too – when the man over there – beside that screen, see him waving? – held up the board with LAUGH written on it.

And the soft-drink bottles had turned out to contain something stronger. Pipsqueak had been reluctant to co-operate at first, turning his bottle so that the label couldn’t be seen from over there, but after several long swigs, he’d been wassailing away with the best of them.

Even the people at the side tables, facing in towards the entertainment, who had been swigging furtively from soft-drink bottles concealed in their breeches and – Pipsqueak now saw – munching on sandwiches concealed beneath their plates piled high with varnished-for-the-camera traditional fayre were beginning to smile.

But the Queen remained stony-faced. As did Stace – Princess Eustacia.

“Iss hopelesh,” Roland was saying. “Ai luff hurr.” He straightened up, and enunciated “I Love Her, yes, that’s right, I Lovvvve Her. But I can’t–”

“Why don’t you–” Pipsqueak began, but Myrtille shushed him with her hand.

“Does she know how you feel?” Myrtille asked, leaning forward.

“Don’ you unnerstann? Her murther’s ther Queen. How can I–?” Roland slumped forward onto the table.

“I thought you said they were asleep.”

“Yes, sorry, that was just scene-setting.”

Everybody in the camp was asleep.

“Except the kitten.”

Except the kitten, which stepped lightly across Pipsqueak’s face and made for the flap of the tent. Myrtille was flat on her back, snoring, and Roland – he’d followed them into their tent – was face down mumbling to himself.

The kitten nudged a paw at Pipsqueak’s backpack and instantly recoiled, as if expecting it to retaliate. For a long time kitten stared at backpack and backpack didn’t move, and then the kitten extended a paw again and touched the knot in the cord holding the backpack closed.

As the kitten watched, the knot untied itself.

The backpack fell open, spilling its contents.

Onto the floor in front of the kitten rolled – a lamp.

“Oh, too easy.”

The kitten looked up at me, and its expression seemed to say: there's your lamp.

Then the kitten darted across the floor to the flap of the tent, stopped, looked back at you – yes, you – with an expression that seemed to say: there’s about to be a major plot twist – and slipped out into the night.

There is a patch of woodland in Cornwall, and through that patch of woodland runs a stream. Further down the valley, the stream runs through a village.

When the rains come the stream swells. In the past, the stream has contributed to flooding in the village.

But a few years ago, a farmer introduced two beavers into the patch of woodland, and they began to build dams in the stream.

For a while, those two beavers were the only beavers in Cornwall. But then they built a comfortable lodge in the middle of one of their newly formed lakes, and now there are four beavers in Cornwall.

They build dams. They wake up in the evening (they’re nocturnal) with a single thought: tonight would be a good night to build a dam. They go to bed thinking: tomorrow night would be a good night to build a dam.

Except for a brief window in the early part of the year when their thoughts turn to making baby beavers (kits).

You are interested in this story for two reasons.

One: since the beavers started to regulate the flow of water by building dams, the stream hasn’t contributed to the flooding problem in the village.

Two: in the wet ground and shallow water curated by the beavers, there’s a lot of biodiversity wriggling around and eventually turning into butterflies, et cetera. Beavers kick-start the food-chain. Beavers know the recipe for primordial soup.

We’re all in favour of biodiversity, aren’t we? And flooding is a climate-change issue, so you can’t not be interested in that.

You might also like watching wildlife at night. Wear your wellies.

There’s a website. Look for the Cornwall Beaver Project. They do guided walks to visit the beavers and watch them at work. Wrap up warm.

[Post rating: 45ER. Mild, age-related grumbling; some pretentious conversation; fantasy; class tension. Adults under 45 should be accompanied by an elderly relative.]

My guess would be, I’m about to fall out of love with technology.

As I sit here waiting for Windows to configure its updates, with the rain hammering on the plastic roof above me, wondering whether I have enough battery left to write this post, I don’t wonder what updates Windows could possibly need, so soon after the last lot.

They’re for my own good. I know that.

People younger than me will patronise me, just ever so slightly, as they explain that updates make my laptop more secure, improve its performance, et cetera, blah.

Yes. I’ve heard all that before.

But won’t you at least let me complain?

As for Artificial Intelligence – could somebody hurry up and invent Artificial Common Sense?

[Younger readers. The term “Common Sense” was widely used, a few generations back, to describe “sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts”. Thanks, internet. It has somewhat fallen out of use, not least because, er, the people who rant on about using common sense tend to be, ah, out of sync with the zeitgeist.]

What I think about as I sit here – just enough battery, I think – is my phone.

I think about the other day, and the app I was using to get from the place near York to the place near Edinburgh.

My phone – my app – knew the way, so I had it in my pocket with the earphones in. The youngish-sounding woman knew exactly where I was, and intervened every time I came anywhere near a junction.

She never actually said “Oh, well done, William!” or “You’re such a good driver!” but I could hear in her voice that she was impressed.

Our relationship lasted until she said “There’s congestion near Gateshead. If you don’t want to take my alternative route, hit no thanks.”

Hit no thanks? On my phone? While I’m driving? She must have known what speed I was doing.

Reader, we went via Gateshead. No congestion. No illegal fiddling with the phone either. I just went via Gateshead.

She still talks to me, but – it’s not the same.

Ed’s making tea. He has a fireplace right at the back of his cave – a recess with a naturally occurring chimney right above it – and he’s set up a big kettle on a hook above a log fire. There’s a stack of logs to one side; I guess they must have been hauled up the mountain by somebody.

“We’re civilised because we smile,” he says, continuing a conversation we started earlier. “Not education. Certainly not politics. We have civilisation because we have facial expressions.”

“You don’t think animals understand each other?”

“Of course they do. But the fine nuance of a facial expression enables a much wider range of interpretation. Understanding. Prompts more thought. Scope for empathy.”

“I like ‘fine nuance’. I’m going to use that in my blog.”

“You know what I mean. Facial expressions lead to a much deeper recognition of the other. Thus, civilisation.”

“No four-letter word beginning with S, Sherlock. Not in my blog.”

“My name’s – oh, I see what you mean. But don’t you see–”

“Ed, what do we do about the magical cat?”

He’s quiet for a moment, shovelling tea leaves into a big teapot. “We do need to talk about the cat,” he says, using a stick to tip the kettle to pour boiling water into the teapot.

Then he pulls on a gauntlet to lift the kettle off the hook over the fire and set it down on a big log – more a slice of tree-trunk, really – turned on its end to serve as a low table.

“You just wanted a cat up a tree, didn’t you?” he says, passing me my mug of tea.

“It just came out magical. You know that thing – the character took over.”

Ed sits down on the other throne facing the fire – the back of Ed’s cave is where he keeps the plunder, junk and architectural salvage that might come in useful in a future story – and gestures at the iron tray of muffins on the slightly larger low table – slice of tree trunk – between us.

I shake my head. “I was trying to be funny, I suppose. They’re off on a quest, and ahead of them there’s a cat needing to be rescued. I would have deleted it later.”

“I wouldn’t do that just yet. Look.”

The four riders have come up over a rise in the road and now they’re looking down at the source of all the noise.

Stace is still hissing with embarrassment.

“I told Mother I’d be perfectly warm in a sleeping bag!” she hisses at Pipsqueak, using one hand to shade her face from the scene ahead. “I know how to put up a tent on my own!”

Ahead of them is an encampment – more a festival, really. Tents, marquees, musicians on a stage, groups of cool-looking young people all drinking the same soft drink, all holding the label so that Pipsqueak can see the brand, laughing uproariously, raising glasses – bottles and cans, sorry; different flavours of the same basic drink – and all of them talking to their other hands – their free hands.

“What’s with the hand thing?”

“I wanted it to be authentic for a modern audience. But this is fantasy. No mobile phones. So there’s a lot of palmistry going on.”

“Oh, look,” says Roland. “Queen Overcaria must have taken the bypass. She got ahead of us.”

Roland pushes his horse forward, then reins it – him – back; he’s waiting for Stace to go ahead of him.

Which she does, spurring her horse forward. “Mother! I can take care of myself!” Pipsqueak hears her say, and then she’s gone on ahead of them, Roland following.

“Looks like we’ve got an easy bed for the night,” says Myrtille. “Come on.”

Pipsqueak and Myrtille spur their yaks into movement. An honour guard has formed ahead of them; Stace and Roland have already passed between the two ranks of men in tights. Beyond them, Pipsqueak sees Stace jump down from her horse and stride up to a woman wearing – well, she’s obviously the Queen, even at this distance.

But then an odd thing happens. The honour guard merges into a single line, now diagonally blocking the road. It’s as if Pipsqueak and Myrtille, on their yaks, are to be directed round to the back of the encampment.

Pipsqueak sighs. But then he feels the kitten push its head out of his jacket.

The kitten stares at the honour guard.

The honour guard reforms into two lines, as before.

Pipsqueak and Myrtille ride their yaks along the road and into the presence of the Queen, who is saying, “But darling, I thought it would be fun! Just you and me and–”

“Mother!”

Stace is standing right in front of the Queen with her fists on her hips. Roland is kneeling in front of both of them. He looks back over his shoulder, clearly surprised to see Pipsqueak and Myrtille coming into the Royal Presence.

“Can’t you let me do anything on my own?” Stace is saying, in a loud furious whisper.

“Oh, this is going to be interesting.” Ed’s leaning forward to watch, elbows on his knees. “That honour guard was a nice touch, and now you’ve got a class system. How’s the Queen going to react to Pipsqueak and Myrtille?”

“Hang on,” I tell him. “We may have to wait until next week. I don’t think I’ve got enough batt

Automation kills authenticity.

And spontaneity.

Automation is the opposite of familiarity, and yet it breeds contempt just as effectively.

It was a good idea, once, to send me an email asking me about my recent visit to your bank. Or my stay at your hotel, et cetera.

Now, though, it’s hard to believe that there’s a group of customer-service people gathered breathless around the inbox, waiting for my reply.

My friend asked for mayo the other day, and was told that the person empowered to add mayo to the menu wasn’t in the building.

Not quite in those words, but we went off into a conversation about how difficult it is, these days, to talk to anybody who’s got the agency to do anything.

I checked out of a hotel recently, and the youngster on reception said, “If you do the questionnaire, make it nine or ten. They don’t register anything else.”

He gets a ten for being real.

Week off.

I've been driving around in a vast rented motorhome, stopping off overnight at campsites on the way.

Long story.

The driving's been easy, and the evenings peaceful, but the opportunities to unfold the table and sit at the laptop haven't come as frequently as would be conducive, etc., so I'm going to sit here watching the trees in the wind and the evening sun, for as long as it takes this thought to unwind, and then I'm going to take a wander round, listen to the trees some more, eat something, award myself another early night, and be off home in the morning.

No post this week, is what I'm saying. Just whatever thoughts come to mind.

Last week I went to the cinema twice, after months of not going to the cinema, and it struck me that if you ignore the thing being advertised, cinema advertising is transcendent.

There’s one at the moment, for example. We stare down at a kaleidoscopic, shifting, moving, apparently hand-drawn landscape, flying above a road as it scribbles itself into being, the landscape around it changing from city to country to sea to land again, our eyes full of authentic, bright, spontaneous artistry, so very hand-drawn…

…all the while listening to a voice-track packed with affirmations and resolve. We’re individuals! We’re brave and strong! We’re going to face those challenges and win!

It's a lovely advertisement. A work of art.

I genuinely didn't catch the brand of hatchback we're supposed to buy, to make it all happen. But I felt great.

The hatchback was on a road, I think it was a bridge, from yesterday to tomorrow I guess, and there was no other traffic. Just steady progress from the past to the future.

Nothing like the A1 the other day, that stretch from Peterborough to Blyth. Don't think that was symbolic of very much, but the advertisement was very definitely an exercise in meaningfulness.

There's probably some ponderous conclusion to be drawn here, but I'm not really in the mood.

I did wonder how different the world would be, if the self-help industry, and those people promoting meditation on Facebook, got hold of the advertising budgets of the car industry.

What if all the welfare, spirituality, mental health people started promoting wellness with visions of landscapes drawing themselves and voice-tracks full of affirmations? With such music.

We'd all feel very much better? For a while, at least?

Instead of the message being "You'll feel fantastic if you buy a small hatchback," it would be "You'll feel fantastic if you believe in yourself."

That could work.

Ed's gone back to his cave on the mountain, for a post-lunch snooze, and the Heroes' Journey is passing through one of those patches best covered by a short phrase, so...

They rode on.

But we can't leave it there. We don't exactly need a cliff-hanger ending, but it's always worth encouraging a little curiosity about what comes next, so...

Pipsqueak jerked upright. He realised that he had fallen asleep in the saddle. But what had woken him?

"For fah's sake!"

She had. Princess Eustacia - Stace - was staring ahead and swearing. There was a glow in the fog, over the rise in the road ahead, and what sounded like - music?

"I don't believe it!"

Stace - Pipsqueak couldn't quite get used to the name - started swearing under her breath. As Pipsqueak watched, she started smoothing down her hair and patting at her clothes. She looked panic-stricken.

"Mother!" she hissed. "For fah's sake!"

"What's the matter?" Pipsqueak pulled his yak alongside her horse.

Suddenly - as if she had just remembered it was there in front of here - Stace grabbed the kitten and passed it to Pipsqueak.

"Take this! I'm not allowed pets."

"What is it? What's up ahead?"

She looked at him, and there were almost tears in her eyes.

"I'm so sorry," she says.

Let me tell you about my idea.

I went to a conference recently. London. Serious-minded and (mostly) suit-wearing people from around the world. Public transport morning and evening (for me, anyway), and a small hotel.

Four days of sitting in audiences watching panels of serious-looking (and minded) people discuss serious subjects that interested them. Lots of security.

Then I came back to Falmouth and went for lunch at the extremely healthy café, Nude Canteen, up Killigrew Street from the Moor. I like it and I’m not alone in that opinion. Lunch for two.

Nude Canteen was launched in April “to make the most of Falmouth’s vibrant, creative population,” which is convenient because it saves me having to describe any of the other regulars. Vibrant. Creative. They fit in.

[I checked the name, because I always do, and I came across the original press release, in the Falmouth Packet.]

Nude Canteen offers flatbreads, Hawaiian poke bowls, sushi burritos, dahl bowls and salads; all completely made-to-order with freshly shredded organic vegetables. Just thought I’d mention that.

[The Falmouth Packet is probably not where E Annie Proulx got the idea for The Shipping News (1993), but, yeah, could have been. There’s also a weekly print edition. Shipping news? Yes, that too.]

My idea isn’t a particularly good idea, and I don’t suppose it’s all that original, either.

But it’s mine this time. I had it, and I got excited about it, and I kind of roughly worked out how to do it, and then – as you do – I explained to myself – as I do, anyway – all the reasons why it wouldn’t work.

Which is fine. I remember my idea, a while back, for waste-plastic road surfaces embedded with wifi to talk to (carry road-sign information to) self-driving cars. There was a definite release of tension in deciding to write about it rather than start a new career in road-building.

And my new idea is so close to what I’m doing already that – hang on, I haven’t told you about it yet.

Okay.

Last week. I was in an audience waiting for a conference session to start.

The lights went down. The big thumpy music started up. The title of the session – and a collage of images – flashed up on the cinema-sized screen backing the stage.

The subject for the session was interesting enough, and the people due up on stage were well-known enough, and – well, high production values. They were trying to get our attention.

I looked around.

I was the only one not transfixed by the screen of my smartphone.

Cut to the following Tuesday – two days ago.

I looked up from my flatbread-full of freshly shredded organic vegetables.

You guessed it.

Now, I realise that we all look at our smartphones a lot.

I realise that there are times when the only available gadget is a smartphone.

But I hadn’t really thought this through.

Flashback. I remember, back in the late nineties, getting my head around the idea that the internet meant direct access to audiences. Thus, to readers.

I was writing a book at the time, and (I’ve just checked) you can still find it online. It was called E-Commerce in Retail Banking, and no, it wasn’t a fantasy novel about a group of young people heading off on a quest that seems to involve a cat up a tree.

“The cat’s just a diversion, surely?”

“Ed. I haven’t explained my idea yet.”

“Sorry.”

My idea – look, I didn’t say it was a good idea – was to develop fiction for the small screen. Tiny chapters in tiny novels. We have short attention spans, and if we’re attending conferences in London, short journeys to work.

So an app on your phone offering a menu of novels, none of which is more than ten chapters long (five-day week, to and from work). Short chapters to cut down on the scrolling. Bonsai novels, you might say.

And if you didn’t, you might come up with Phone Fiction, or perhaps Pocket Novels. Remember pocket cartoons on the front pages of broadsheet newspapers?

Okay. Pocket cartoon: “an editorial cartoon consisting of a topical single-panel single-column drawing”.

Really?

Okay. Broadsheet newspaper: “a newspaper with a large format, regarded as more serious and less sensationalist than tabloids”.

I had the idea of telling coherent, attention-holding micro-novels that smartphone users could read via a dedicated app, as an alternative to flicking through Facebook or checking their emails. Stories with beginnings, middles, ends, et cetera – characters, plots, twists, goodies, baddies, spies, detectives, romantic encounters and occasional shoot-outs. Always the same length. Consistent.

Anyway.

“What if the cat’s magical?”

Ed looks up from his newly delivered flatbread.

“Is it me now?”

“Yes. What if the cat’s magical?”

“You mean – one of them rescues it and then it’s helpful somehow?”

“Something like that.”

Ed doesn’t reply. He’s unfolded his flatbread and now he’s holding up a fork-full of freshly shredded red cabbage as though he’s never seen a vegetable before.

“How do they decide what to put in these things?” he says softly, asking himself.

“Ed?”

“Sorry. What?”

“The cat?”

Pipsqueak has moved his yak close to the tree. He’s about to stand up in his saddle and reach up to the cat.

“You could try it. But which of them gets it? Because it wouldn’t be loyal to all of them.”

“Ah – hold on.”

Pipsqueak’s yak won’t hold still. Something about the tree is bothering it. Pipsqueak stands at its head, holding the bridle.

“Is that bit a bridle? I thought it would be a snaffle, or actually a bit, or something.”

“I’ll look it up later.”

Stace is down off her horse in a second and scrambling up onto Pipsqueak’s yak.

“Hold my legs!” she says to Myrtille, and to Pipsqueak’s surprise, Myrtille comes scrambling down off her yak and does exactly that.

Both women are staring up at the cat – kitten. It’s mewling piteously and staring down at Stace with occasional glances at Myrtille.

It’s almost as though they’re hypnotised, Pipsqueak thinks.

“That’s a bit obvious!”

“Ed! This is a first draft. Maybe they both like cats. I haven’t decided.”

A movement further up the tree catches Pipsqueak’s eye. The upper branches seem to be curling down towards Stace, almost as if they’re trying to grab her.

“Come on, Kitty, come to mummy, come to Stace, come on now, mew, miaow, sweetie, oh, you’re adorable, you sweet little thing, you.”

Pipsqueak can’t work out whether he’s embarrassed for Stace, for the sounds she’s making, or just embarrassed generally. He looks away as she stretches up, doesn’t watch as she stretches up her body to reach the kitten, revealing her tummy and her hips as her clothes part at the middle, and then realises that Myrtille isn’t watching him.

Pipsqueak watches Stace take the kitten in her hands and hold it to her chest. She’d fall down if it wasn’t for Myrtille, who steadies her as she sits down on Pipsqueak’s yak.

Stace curls herself round the kitten and Myrtille holds onto both of them. The tree seems to wilt. It’s as if it wants the kitten back, Pipsqueak thinks, watching the branches curl down towards the two women on the yak. And then he realises – it really is reaching down!

Before he can do anything, the kitten – its tiny face visible on Stace’s shoulder, close in against her neck, half-hidden by her hair – the kitten hisses at the tree, and the branches spring back into place.

“Did you see that?” Pipsqueak shouts. “The tree’s alive!”

And the kitten – wait, what did the kitten do?

The kitten stares at him.

What just happened? Suddenly, Pipsqueak can't remember.

Both Stace and Myrtille look at him as though they’ve just woken up. Pipsqueak’s yak pulls her head free and steps decisively away from the tree – he has to catch it. The two women scramble down, the kitten between them. Pipsqueak, his yak safely held, sees it snarl at the tree, showing its teeth.

The kitten just snarled at the tree!

The kitten turns its head and stares at him.

Pipsqueak frowns.  There was something… something he’s forgotten… about the kitten...

“Eh?” Throughout all this, Roland has been sitting on his horse staring down at his–

“He can’t have a smartphone. This is a fantasy world.”

–staring down at the lines on his hand. He’s missed the whole scene.

Myrtille’s back on her yak and Stace is back on her horse with the kitten tucked in front of her.

“Wake up, Roly!” shouts Stace.

Roly looks up. “I went to a palm reader once,” he says. “She told me to wake up.”

Pipsqueak can see that he wants to say more, but Stace is set on leaving. Roland shuts up and pulls his horse round, ready to follow her.

Pipsqueak mounts his yak. Something just happened, but – what?

“Let’s get going!” he shouts, more to clear his head than because they won’t hear him say it quietly.

And then because he looks that way, just at the right moment, he sees that when Stace spurs her horse, the kitten reaches out and lays a paw on the horse’s neck – and the horse doesn’t race off ahead.

Okay, thinks Pipsqueak. That’s going to be handy.

The kitten smiles, in the expressionless way that kittens smile, and thinks to itself: let him understand gradually.

The four of them ride together, close together, as the forest gathers around them.

The trees rustle, as though they’re talking to each other.

But every time the noise gets loud enough to drown out their conversation, Stace’s kitten – he’s already Stace’s kitten – hisses once, loudly, and our hero and her companions ride on in silence, untouched by any of the sharp, black branches.

“I like that. Very nice.”

“Did you catch the thing with the palm-reading?”

“Telling him to wake up? Yes, very clever. He wakes up to his heroic side.”

“Maybe I should have added a golf bag to his luggage earlier. So he can pull out a sword unexpectedly, at a crucial moment.”

“What’s that behind his saddle?”

“Oh, you’ve done it for me. Thanks.”

“Roland’s heroic moment set up. I like the way you’re making it an inner journey, by the way.”

“Isn’t everything an inner journey, if it’s worth making?”

“But you’ve blown the punchline. You were going to end with those branches, weren’t you?”

“Ed. A little faith. You want a good ending – have you seen the puddings here?”

“Ah…”

In a change to our scheduled programming, here’s a poem by Maya Stein.

I subscribe to her Ten-Line Tuesday poems – one arrives every Tuesday (strictly, Wednesday; she’s in another time zone) and it’s a certain length.

I can’t quite say that I don’t know Maya Stein, because I’ve been reading her poetry for quite some number of years now, but we’ve never met and only exchanged perhaps half-a-dozen emails in more-than-that years.

More about Maya Stein at www.mayastein.com. This poem is a good example of what you could get by going there.
 
Train will not whistle at crossing
It would be nice to have signs. A cloud parting in two, say, and an arrow of sun
pointing. It would be lovely, at the fork of any unbearable decision, that a path
with equidistant, perfectly round stones would unwrap at your feet. Haven’t you waited
at certain corners, squinting at maps? Haven’t you held a damp finger to the sky,
gauging the wind? Haven’t you searched the bottoms of tea cups, scattered feathers,
tipped your ear against gravel, shaken dice, placed hands palm-up on a table
at a county fair, made bargains with a stop light, a sidewalk crack, a dime, a daisy?
Haven’t you held a deerskin pouch against your chest and counted to 10?
It would be nice to have signs, but mostly, the train will not whistle at the crossing.
You must stand at the empty tracks and decide. You must be that arrow, and point.
                                                                                    Maya Stein