Floating souls filled with rolling nanotubes

Margaret woke to tell me there were people in this world who thought that dungbeetles rolled dung. In my hazy half-awake state I said I was one of those people. That's when she told me that people ought to stop categorising beings - human or non - by what they do. She had renamed the species optimistic-creatures-of-general-good-tolerance-in-a-divided-world. I suggested that this was as bad as rolling dung. She pulled the duvet off me and told me she was ready for a cup of tea.

Bessy had spent the entire night looking at a picture of the molecular configuration of a nanotube. I believe she has designs on being the first dog to pass through one - but I don't pry.

Felix tells me the Big Bang was no great party (he was there) and that all the universe as it wasn't known then got way out of hand and that's why he ended up on his bench looking at the English Channel. Not that he's got a wrong word to say about spontaneous combustions and the like - but he might have been projected onto another spinning rock. I guess the grass is always...

George had great news this morning: his mother bought a place in Torquay when he was a child and forgot to tell him. He arranged for some of his friends and himself to make their way there whilst maintaining their souls in helium-filled balloons hovering undecidedly at a distance of some metres above the ground. I asked if this wasn't a perilous task given that at his age one was less certain of a soul returning. I don't think he liked that because he scowled and said my balloon would not float on account of my heavy burden of sin. It's times like that when I think there has to be a reason why I employed George.

Cookie was on an about-turned parasol with our first patient of the day - Flot of the Shells (she renamed herself) - somewhere inside the pattern of the sun printed on the canvas. I asked if there was anyway for me to remove the wisdom tooth she'd come in to have removed without disturbing the configuration. Cookie said that was a silly question as there was no such thing. I was about to ask 'what' when I realised that Flot was never really a patient at all and just a hypothetical manifestation of Cookie's imagination that happened to walk in through the door one day and shake my hand.

Which, I suppose, is where Margaret was coming from when I woke this morning: there are ways of defining someone - and other ways. And there are places we arrive and places we never visited. And there are probably ways of thinking about the places we never went - and other ways of thinking about them. And there are very little things that matter alot - and very big things that don't matter at all. It's all about definitions and opinions and where one's soul is floating.

Syrup dripping from ears

There are sad days and big days and yellow days and dream days and there are just days...like today. That's what Margaret told me this morning as she sat with her feet in a bowl of syrup. On days like today you just have to keep yourself out of trouble and soak up sweet things. Bessy was having none of it and had hung her left ear from the balcony as a sign of protest.

What is one supposed to make of these things?

Rubbing melons into purple faces

Melons have a habit of rolling into or over Bessy's tail. She's begun to take a philosophical angle on them and appears to be rather interested in the phenomenon she describes as pick-up-on-the-purple-man-and-rub-it-in-the-face school of thought. At least, that's what I interpreted from the bark and the tail wag and the look that accompanies lopsided ears, when I woke this Sunday morning. Margaret said the dog needed letting out and that last night's desert had nothing to do with philosophy. She's black and white like that is Margaret, from time to time.

Felix tells me there are three ways to break into prison disguised as a melon. However, for reasons of national security, he won't tell me what they are.

Being a Sunday, though I am thinking of the pleasant haven I call work, I am not there so cannot report on the goings on of George and Cookie. George did mention he was planning a weekend of tumultuous nakedness in abstract places, and Cookie that there was no such thing as a weekend since she had lost them in a bet (which had something to do with moles and souls - not sure - you'd have to ask next time you pop in).

So there I am. The end of a weekend that may well have been pawned to pay for salvation, and the discovery that the person rescuing me might have had two other disguises with which to climb in. If that doesn't tempt you to rub your face purple, I don't know what will.

Appending love from blackberries

Funny that there should have been a lover for Bessy hiding in the blackberry. He didn't know he was in there and she had no idea she was searching for him and everything appears to have happened without either really understanding what. I guess that's what happens.

Margaret has gone to visit a school friend. They tell each other that time hasn't moved on and all the machinations of the universe are simply the workings of the bowels of that chap they can't stand who knows all the answers. Which, I guess, says something about knowing too much in a world that stands still.

Felix had misplaced his right foot as I approached this morning for a cup of tea in the rain. For some time now he has had the feeling that parts of his body simply don't want to be with him anymore. I suggested that this is what happens - we fall in and we fall out of friendship - and if he liked he could appropriate me as part of his body, if this helped. I don't think he could think of a use for me so we drank our tea like the old friends we are, sharing a bench rather than a soul.

George and Cookie were absent from work when I arrived at the surgery. I've no idea why so I got on without them. I thought this was a shame and then thought I ought to wait and see, in case it wasn't. And then I thought it wasn't, except I thought I ought to wait and see if it was, in the end, just in case. And then I thought about blackberries and thought about love and small, beautiful things that come and go when one is least expecting it.