Oiling limericks and dreams with combustible pink socks

On the up side, Bessy never tells a dreamer not to dream. On the down, she always stops a dreamer from dreaming by waking them with a sharp comment or brief limerick such as one from Jerry Markison's collection. Not that judicious comments shouldn't rouse one from pleasant slumber - it's just that it shouldn't be in the middle of a dream about wonderful places and lovely people, which is what I was dreaming this morning.

Being a Bank Holiday here on the South Coast (and presumably in other parts of the UK) Margaret had decided to hack some trees down and recast the garden as a scene from a morbid play neither of us had ever heard of nor cared to go and see, which made it doubly interesting. Somehow there was to be a confusion of ideas in the centre that would self-combust so as to end with a bang. Not sure where the ideas were coming from, but there were explosions going off all day at inopportune times. Fantastic.

Felix has never sat out a Bank Holiday in all the days they and he have been around, which is remarkable considering his penchant for absconding in an unforeseen way. That's what accounted for his telling me this morning that he'd just watched a failing cousin (who could not be related on account of his not being present at his own conception) playing a violin worse than the squeak of an un-oiled hinge on a green kitchen door. It would seem that all this had to do with code for some form of assault on our way of life, so Felix had done a brave thing and unscrewed the door. I couldn't quite see how this prevented the awful music, but Felix has a wonderful way of working.

Being a Bank Holiday, I haven't seen George and Cookie today. George did mention some sort of contest he was partaking in that involved cardboard and water and lots of pink socks. After I had mentioned carting a tonne of rubbish to the tip as a priority this weekend, Cookie said on Friday it was a disgrace that anyone considered a heavy-handed masseur as anything but worthy of the highest esteem. I didn't have a clue what she was talking about, but the garage is now quite empty.

Which, I suppose, was due in part to cutting a dream short and tackling reality, and due in another part to feeling heroic as explosions went off around me.

Muesli in places people would never migrate to

There are places and there are people and there are places people seem unwilling to admit are places people shouldn't go. It was tricky, but Bessy managed to communicate this to Margaret as the latter balanced the ingredients of a bowl of muesli, one on top of the other, on the edge of Bessy's nose. I was rather surprised if only because Bessy has never shown the least bit of interest in the willingness of any being other than herself. Margaret seemed not to be phased and managed to communicate to Bessy the importance of always ending with a raisin.

Felix had wound up with unwilling participants in a devious mix up of salty water and fire crackers in the centre of Beijing. He was still there as we drank our tea together overlooking the English Channel and I listened to the echos of his archaic call to arms drifting across the world like swallows migrating from the Serengeti wearing knee length shorts and sartorial grins. I didn't bother asking him why.

George once absconded from a misconstrued cocktail of love and independence in the lower reaches of the River Congo, he told me on Friday. I asked if he didn't mean his independence was misconstrued over love and cocktails, as most seekers of such things belatedly find. He lifted his chin and looked at me down his nose. There are places, he said, that I should never be allowed to visit for I was sure to bind everyone interminably to hell. That's a pleasant thing to say, as far George goes.

Cookie welcomed me into the surgery with a jar of jellied miracles, which was great.

All this made me wonder if, like other misconstructed people, I seem to find places to be, willingly or not, where absconding is simply not an option. There's satisfaction in contemplating these things and coming to spurious conclusions about one's independence from it all.

Blowing eyelashes around chives and apparent memories

When the alium globes fill out their purple potential and the chive buds seem almost to flower, Margaret finds herself unable to prevent the urge to whoop and whing beside the bumble bees. It's a spectacle I love to observe, like a spring rite, an awakening of her natural soul.

Bessy, on the other hand, recalls that in the dying days of the previous year she buried the memory of a dormant dream somewhere that happens to be - as far as she recalls - beneath the chives. Which is why they always seem almost to flower.

George never did flower, according to his closest friends, so George tells me. Today his lashes were made up but not made up, or something I couldn't quite get to grips with. He let me know that there were days in his youth when he blew rings of eyelashes across lonely cafes and embraced the world in love. I said this sounded wonderful but he retorted that it wasn't about sounding but about seeing and being and loving. The conversation ended.

Cookie was apparently not apparent and so I didn't greet her. Don't ask me why we do this, but there are days when we're each invisible to the other. It makes for interesting dentistry as instruments pass about and teeth are filled without either the dentist or nurse being present. God only knows whether the patient is there or not.

Which makes one wonder if - like chives dug up by dogs - everything is just about to happen, but doesn't quite. Perhaps I ought just to humm and buzz and enjoy what is about to happen, just in case it doesn't.