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“It’s the 57th Creative Challenge theme, so I have to do it,” Ann remarked to her editor. “Obviously”, she added.

“What do you mean, obviously?” asked her editor (Ann had forgotten his new name in the second book, and toyed breifly with the idea of making up a new one ~ perhaps Rumbold the Pale?)

“Well, I would have thought that was obvious, Godfrey!” Ann replied tartly, secretly delighted that she’d remembered the old boy’s name. Notwithstanding, Ann continued to make little ‘cuh’ and ‘tut’ noises, and rolled her eyes a bit, until Godfrey eventually replied.

“Spiggot on the spike freak, Lingenburg Dash”.

“I beg your pardon?” Ann looked at Godfrey in astonishment. “Holy Moly, I said that earlier myself, whatever does it mean?”

“I haven’t got a clue, dear,” he replied. “Just popped into my head, you know, how it does…” His voice trailed off as he stared into space.

“I’ll google it.” As Ann started the search, she realized she’d completely forgotten that she was doing the 57th Creative Challenge entry. “Blimey O Riley, what am I LIKE” she said to herself, with a wry grin ~ she wasn’t altogether sure what wry meant, but somehow she felt it was wry ~ “Now what was the theme again?”

“Misery Loves Company” Godfrey piped up. “And dare I say, it’s rather obvious what has occurred here.”

“What do you mean, obvious?” retorted Ann, somewhat snarkily, although nowhere near as snarkily as Lavender might have said it.

Godfrey resisted the urge to respoond with a few little ‘cuh’s’ and ‘tut’s’, and chose to simply smile enigmatically.

Ann scowled at her old freind and said “If you don’t spell it out, you maddening old coot, I’ll write you out of this story. I’ll delete you.”

“You can write me out of YOUR story if you wish, but I may continue to write YOU into MY story.”

“Oh Gawd, WHAT?” Ann said to herself. “Where did that come from?”

“Ann, let me explain.”

“You sound just like Elias, Godfrey!”

“Ha! Ha! Ha!”

“Ahahahahahahah”

“Now shut up and pay attention”

“Elias would never say that”

“That’s YOU saying that, Ann, to yourself,” said Godfrey.

“YOU said that Godfrey, it’s right here in black and white!” retorted Ann.

“It’s never black and white, Ann, and it’s only here in black and white as ME saying it because YOU wrote it.”

“Well there’s no answer to that” replied Ann. She went to put the kettle on.

Ann returned to her computer with a steaming mug of tea.

“Now, shall we get back to the point, Ann?” inquired Godfrey, with a wry grin.

“I must look up that word later”, Ann mused. “I seem to be inordinately fond of the word wry tonight, I wonder why. I Wonder Wry…”

“ANN!” Godfrey shouted. “Back to the point!”

Ann looked pained. “What point?”

“The point of this story, and the obvious occurence therein.”

“Welp, you’ve lost me there, Gordon, there was a point?”

“Oh My God, this could go on all night” Gordon was wringing his hands.

“Good God Gordon, didn’t see you come in!” exclaimed Godfrey.

Ann was giggling helplessly. She was rather pleased with the way she covered her faux pas over the editors name.

“‘Ann was giggling helplessly’; you see Ann, there is your clue!” Godfrey said excitedly, as he read aloud what Ann had just written.

“OH! NOW I get it! D’oh! Nonsense loves company! Giggling loves company! No wonder I couldn’t stay focused on misery!”

Despite doing so well in Continuity Class, Ann had wandered off again. By the time she returned, she had forgotten what the thread was. I must sign up for that Thread Refresher Course, she told herself. I wonder if dear old Frantic can squeeze me in?

Ann Tattler beamed in delight, unable to conceal her pleasure and surprise. She had scraped in a pass for “Continuity Class for Complete Beginners”. It had taken months, but under the excellent tutelage of Prof Frantic Moose, she had finally cracked it.

Her next hurdle was “Meaningful Writing for the Scattered Brain”.

Her pleasure evaporated somewhat when she read the pithy course description.

Things most profound can be found in the most shallow conversation. Prof Leone Laminae

Sadly, I am not sure that “profound” is one of my strong points, she confided later to her twin sister Sally.

Tuning into her other focus Becky, which was happening with an alarming increase in frequency, Yoland scribbled down a few lines of what might loosely be termed poetry.

Methinks it’s time to ponder not
Upon the box of black and white
Methinks the time has come again
To thinketh not and ponder not
Upon the need to clear explain.
Begone, oh wordy facts, begone!
And leave me free to talk some rot
And note and jot alot of snaps
Of this and that, beguiling snips
Of snaps and wisps, of tongues and lights;
Hums and sparks of nonsense blips
And plates of eggs and french fried chips.

I’m running out of steam, said she

Report back now, Immediately

Toot! Toot!

“What I really love about this, Yoland” Grace said when she’d read her friend’s poem, “Is that it really is complete rubbish. I mean, it’s not cleverly pretending to be rubbish, it really IS rubbish. But I am feeling the energy, and I feel that you enjoyed posting utter rubbish, and that’s the feeling that counts.”

“Er….thanks, Grace…I think,” replied Yoland with a smirk.

“You rude tart” she added.

Yoland decided to stick to fiction for awhile rather than the reporting of facts. She would even go so far as to disguise the facts to look like fiction, because fiction never got you into trouble, so she was inclined to think after the mornings rude awakening. If she simply said ‘I made it up’ in future, well, it seemed an easier way. Yoland decided to talk to herself for the forseeable future too, rather than to anyone else. She would make up characters to talk to, but it would all be made up, none of it would be the reporting of facts. She was through with facts, facts were too much trouble. Making it all up was easier.

While she was eating her marmite buttered toast, she opened the book at random that she had taken to bed with her the previous night, but hadn’t opened.

Once again, Yoland exclaimed “What a coincidence”, and wondered if coincidences would ever cease to be enchanting and fun. She doubted it, somehow. Each coincidence was always such a tiny tantalizing glimpse of so much more.

“…..you merely perceive a small portion of any given action,” Yoland read, “and when you cease to perceive it then it seems to you that the action itself ceases, and so an artificial boundary is erected.

“It has not occured to you, you see, to attempt to look OVER this boundary, so to speak, because you have taken it for granted that nothing exists on the other side. I am not here speaking necessarily of death, though this is the obvious instance of course. I am speaking of something much more subtle. I am speaking of ANY small seemingly insignificant action that you perform during an ordinary day, and HERE we are coming close.”

Yoland reckoned Seth was pretty close to what she’d been saying the previous night.

“You percieve only the most initial elements of such an action. It is as if you threw a ball, and could only follow the ball three inches away in space ~ then the ball would seem to vanish to you. The action would therefore seem completed. You would think it idiotic to imagine what happened to the ball when you could see it no longer, for habit would work in such a way that the disappearance of the ball would seem natural and normal, and a part of the nature of things.

“So, comparing the ball to an action, you perceive but the smallest portion of any given action, even one performed by yourself. It does not occur to you that there is more to perceive.”

Yoland was inclined to agree. Then she suddenly remembered that she was making it all up from now on, and went for a stroll around the Kasbah.

Ann was beginning to wonder about the two Yoland threads that she appeared to have created, somewhat unwittingly, and possibly ill advisedly. There had been some discussions on bi polar extremes recently at one of her quilting bees, and there were all the black and white outfits and soft furnishings at the lunch party, as well as the interior designers flowers all coming up white this year instead of colours.

Ann knew enough about the magnitudes of potential strings (otherwise known as MP’s) to appreciate that she had a choice whether to attach any symbolic meaning to any of this, or not, in myraids of merry multitudinous ways, methodical, medicinal, mesmerising, or otherwise.

The Yoland that was making things up (as opposed to the Yoland that was reporting the facts) was going to stay in Chefchaouen for a few days. Chaouen, as it was known, was a mountain village in the Shift Mountains in Rococco, not far from the beaches of the Spreaditarainian, not far from the Ayemuirmann Stretch.

The Yoland that was reporting the facts wondered where this was going.

“Just do it. Either just do it, or just make something up” she told herself. Again. “Either do it, or make it up, but stop thinking about it and talking about it.” Yoland sighed and turned on the radio. It was an old pink one, the kind with the dials that turn, and a pull out antenna. The antenna was a bit rusty at the bottom and didn’t rotate very well, which made it a bit tricky to get a clear reception without alot of preliminary juggling around and fidgeting. The dogs under her desk scratched themselves noisily as Yoland fiddled with the radio.

“In the backwater….”

“…yes you’ve got the Splain Channel loud and clear now all you have to do is focus on what the next word is and then write it down without thinking about the spelling, as you can see you are looking at the keybaord and tryping”, Yoland smiled at the typo, “the words that you are hearing without trying to anallzye them too much now. ok are you ready? We’re going to do some balloon exercise first to get the ball rolling, you see, there are many ways to blow up a balloon, and I’ll be the first to tell you you’re doing it wrong, I am kidding, of course.”

Yoland smiled, inching forward on the chair to accomodate the dog that had wormed his way round her back, wondering whether or not to move him.

“Your chair is fine the way it is, that’s a very common delaying tactic my freind, and one you are quite familiar with. Now, pay attention once again to simply the words that you hear as you are writing, watching the keys is rather mesmerising is it not….”

Yoland did a quick reality check and agreed that she was feeling a bit mesmerized, and realized that she possibly could feel considerably more mesmerized if she stopped doing reality checks.

“…and as you watch your fingers moving along in a rather detached way, you can detach your attachment to knowing what the next word might be and simply write what you hear; we are practicing the sliding away from the strict hold on trying to anticpate the net words and then you freeze the flow, it shouldn’t be tiring if you let go and relax a bit and simply allow your fingers to move of their own accord while you relax your shoulders…”

What a load of rubbish, thought Yoland, as she adjusted her chair, which had a habit of suddenly dropping down an inch, just enough to make it hard for her to reach the keyboard. Sighing, she wondered about ever getting a satisfactory answer to her Really Big Questions, the ones that nobody had answered so far. All she ever managed to tune into was rambling waffling inane….

“….you feel that your questions are so large that the capacity for distortion is huge, and you feel that other questions are easily answered via other routes and methods, and this is correct.”

Yoland wondered what THAT was supposed to mean.

“Ok we can forget questions then and I will tell you a story.”

Yoland relaxed. That sounded easier.

“Once upon a time there was a beer fisherman from the planet of Oxbloodshire.”

Oh here we go, she thought. What’s coming next…

“Whether or not you find clues in there is entirely your choice to create them, and all are equally valid. This is such a simple thing: that even the most seemingly miniscule sentences contain a myriad of potential diversions and convergences, routes, patterns, nets, from even the tiniest particle of an idea. All of them are boundlessly creative offshoots which become a particular stream, or string.”

Yoland found herself wondering where some of them started, and found she didn’t know where to start.

“With the question of syncronicities every point of them is the start point, the end point, the main point, the moot point, and the connecting links as well, as are all the others. When you get your ball of string in a tangle, it’s easier to throw it away and start a new one.”

Yoland was inclined to agree, but wondered if that sounded like sensible advice.

“Immediately the new one starts linking up all kinds of things in a new interconnected design pattern, and then when that gets in a right tangle, a fresh ball of string awaits; the tangled ones aren’t in a tangle at all when you’re not tangled up within it.”

Well, that certainly sounded resonable, Yoland had to admit.

“And why waste time with old tangles anyway when you can start afresh and just make something up, for no particular reason?”

Bloody good question, why not indeed? Yoland decided to start making things up there and then, and turned her computer off and went to pack her case.

Franlise read the message from the Fellowship with mixed emotions.

The Fellowship congratulates and thanks you for your continuity work on the script. We acknowledge the extreme difficulties you contend with as you face erratic forces resistant to any form of continuity and seeking only to create meaningless threads. The Fellowship also advises the script will be even further improved if you could sexy it up a bit.

Phoebe popped her head back in the room where Mark was waiting.

“I am ever so sorry, Sheila must have left for the Cayman Islands already. Anyway, here, I found these lovely cufflinks, but really, as I am sure you will appreciate, have no use for them myself. Would you like them dear?”

Without giving the visibly bemused Mark time to refuse, Phoebe was off again.

She wondered if she had been wise giving away the cufflinks. Not to worry, she thought philosphically, I still have the handcuffs. They might come in useful at some stage.

Arthur Bickerswell-Snodley had been delighted to receive Ann’s invitation to stay with her at Little Big Hopeswell for the May Day weekend. He hadn’t seen Ann for 570 years, although they had remained in contact through the years, at first by old fashioned handwritten letters, and later by email —as well, of course, by telepathic means and out of body rendezvous— but this was to be an actual physical visit.

Arthur travelled by train to Chipping Else Hampton, where Jibblington, Ann’s chauffeur and general dogsbody, met him in the old jalopy, a rather grand old Silver Ghost Rolls.
Jibblington, it must be stated, worked part time for Ann, as did the enigmatic cleaning lady, Franlise — both were merely aspects of much larger personalities elsewhere engaged in myriad pursuits. Jibblington was a much of a mystery to Ann as dear Franlise was, not to mention old Godfrey Pig Littleton. Godrey’s flooh, in point of fact, had been the catalyst behind Ann’s invitation to Arthur.

While Jibblington and Bickerswell-Snodley glided along the country lanes, cushioned and buoyant in the silver car’s plush, if a trifle vulgar, crimson upholstery, Ann tutted in exasperation as Godfrey pestered her to finish her latest entry to the Play.

“I haven’t finished it yet, Godfrey, sheesh!” she exclaimed. “OK, OK!” Godfrey was rather rudely drumming his fingers on her desk. “Here, you can read what I’ve written so far.”

Yoland felt tired and deflated somehow. Weary, perhaps that was it, weary of the way she always felt when the animals were sick or dying. It was all very well to look at it logically, that with so many animals with such relatively short natural life spans that there would always be some coming, some going, but it was the way it made her feel that was so tiring. Responsible, as if she could have done more, or guilty that they were reflecting her energy somehow. It was all very well to say that the animals were creating their own reality, that would be easy enough to accept in some cases such as old age and diseases, but Yoland almost wished she’d never learned that they reflect her own energy, that always made her feel even more responsible than she already did.

The black cat was dying. Yoland had made up her mind to take her to the vets that morning. That was another dilemma she’d faced often enough, too ~ would the animal prefer to die naturally at home? Or was it in too much pain, and would it prefer to end it quickly? How could she know? Yoland supposed she did always know, in the end, which was to be the choice, but there was always the agonizing period of time beforehand when she wondered which decision to make. But the black cat had disappeared and she couldn’t find her to take her to the vets after all.

When she’d made the decision to take the black cat to the vet that morning, Dean accidentally knocked a photograph of her first dog, Joe, off the wall. He was the first of her dogs to go, and a good age for a big dog, fourteen years old, and Yoland had known all along that he would die at home, and sure enough, he had. One day Yoland knew he was close to the end, and less than 24 hours later, he lay on his bed, and just gradually stopped breathing. Yoland hadn’t even been quite sure of the moment in which he went, as she held his head, she asked Dean, Do you think he’s dead? Dean replied, If he’s not breathing he is. It was a silly question, really, of course Yoland knew that if you weren’t breathing you were dead. As deaths go, it was peaceful and easy. They took him in the car to a place in the woods and buried him, somewhere where the ground was soft enough to dig; it was high summer and the ground was hard and dry. It wasn’t until Joe was covered with earth that Yoland cried.

Yoland cried again as she remembered Joe, and then she wondered if perhaps his photograph falling off the wall that morning was a message ~ perhaps a message that the black cat was choosing to die at home too, her own little niche somewhere, wherever that might be, wherever the roof cats slept. Maybe Joe was reassuring her that he’d be there when the black cat got there, in that field of flowers where the animals played while they waited for us to join them.

It was a comforting thought. Yoland reached for the tissues.