Forgetting songs when falling with graceful eyelashes

I woke this morning to see Bessy falling as a leaf in autumnal garb from the highest point of the beautiful oak in a neighbour's garden. She looked so natural I could have sworn she'd practiced it before but, being a leaf of only one year's living, this was clearly impossible.

Margaret was putting the finishing touches to the cold frame in the garden. She wanted somewhere to snuggle up in but not so much that she felt warm. It would appear that the sensation of a trill down her spine when curled up reminds her of her childhood and happy journeys to the seaside. I don't ask questions about these things. Thus she built a stone-walled cubicle with an old glass window for a roof, which looks perfect to me for hardening off some new plants in the spring - if Margaret leaves some space.

Felix had filled my space on the bench with wistful allusions to the past he was struggling to conjure up after a night with little sleep. He seemed troubled by his inability to put form to an era long gone when some distant relative had planted an acorn and sung a song for him. I asked if he could remember the song. The song, though, had been sucked in as the acorn germinated and so the whole episode was irretrievable. Hence his frustration. Sometimes I don't quite understand Felix. So long as he understands himself, though, I imagine the world will be OK.

George used to abseil down the necks of giraffes. It was, apparently, where he learned to really appreciate eyelashes. He fluttered them at me this morning in a most unnerving manner so I swept through to the surgery.

Cookie and our first patient, Mrs Jellyweeble were balancing each on a dental probe. Mrs Jellyweeble was once known for her remarkable ability to dress hamsters so that they were mistaken for City financiers betting on poor borrowers, or something. I asked her today if she couldn't dress a probe into some sort of floating giraffe absconding from responsibility. Cookie hopped off her probe and said that was the daftest thing she'd heard in ages given that there was no jam or cream on the premises. I didn't follow, but it didn't matter seeing as the day was such a fine autumnal one.

Which I suppose brings me to a thought I was having about childhood and falling gracefully: one ought to have perfected it or perfected another means of descending in a manner one doesn't forget. Or maybe one could learn to balance so that falling doesn't become necessary.