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“Dory, there’s no asparagus, can we go and buy some?”

“Asparagus? Whatever for?” replied a frantic looking Dory, almost hidden behind arms full of pillows and quilts.

“For Will Tarkin, Mac said he likes asparagus” young Becky replied.

“Who the bloody hell is Will Tarkin? I’ve got enough to cope with trying to get ready for Granny Hill!” Dory sounded uncharacteristically flustered and impatient, and Becky recoiled slightly from the sparky energy.

“Will Tarkin is the mouse, Dory” Becky said in a tone that suggested it was inconceivable to have forgotten who Will Tarkin was.

“Will bloody Tarkin is getting a bit too big for his boots!” snapped Dory. “He’ll be wanting caviar next! I’ve got a time travelling mouse camped up behind my microwave, and Granny Hill’s frightened to death of mice; the room she was going to stay in is full of baby geckos, and you know how scared she is of lizards, not to mention the dead rat that was outside a moment ago, appearing from nowhere, and now I’m trying to get Peppy’s house across the road ready so Granny Hill can stay there instead, and none of the bedding has been washed and it’s still raining, and now you want me to take you shopping for asparagus for a MOUSE! And not only that, there are dead rhino beetles all up Peppy’s driveway, I can’t imagine why, and I’d be willing to bet that Granny Hill is afraid of rhino beetles too, so I suppose I’ll have to sweep up rhino beetles today too, as if I haven’t got enough to do cleaning up dead rats and baby geckos. Granny Hill is afraid of gas heaters too, so I’ll have to take an electric one over to Peppy’s”

“Granny Hill sure is afraid of a lot of things, Dory. Why is she scared of everything?”

“Good question, sweetheart” replied Dory, relaxing her energy as she brought her attention back to the moment. “She’s one of the old ones, from the Victim Mentality Days and the Age of Medical Suggestibility. They’re always afraid of everything, and Granny Hill’s a good example. Afraid of her money in case she can’t keep control of it, afraid of her car for the same reason, afraid of the food she eats in case it contains hidden poisons and afraid of the hospitals in case they’re dirty and dangerous. She’s afraid of strangers in case they have knives and stab her, even though in all her life she’s never seen a person threaten anyone with a knife, she’s even afraid of people in other countries, just in case they come and drop a bomb on her.”

“She must enjoy being scared, then, mustn’t she?” asked Becky. “Otherwise she wouldn’t do it. Doesn’t she realize she’s creating her reality herself?”

“Well, that was the trouble in the old days, honey, they didn’t know that back then. There’s a lot of people who still don’t know it now”

“Wow, really?” Becky said incredulously. “That must be weirdo!”

Dory had to laugh. “Believe it or not, neither did I for years. I keep forgetting it even now! Some of us used to say things like ‘think positive’ which wasn’t far off the mark, or ‘behind every cloud is a silver lining’, or ‘this too will pass’, that was always a good one for when you felt like it was all out of control. Alot of people prayed to gods too, thinking that their life was in the hands of the gods. I never knew much about praying myself though, we didn’t do that in our family, but it was very popular.”

“Maybe they were asking their own essence to help, that would make sense” replied Becky astutely. “Praying probably helped.”

“Yeah it probably did but there was alot of baggage that went along with praying, it wasn’t something you could do on your own in your own way, you had to go to a certain building to do it, and say certain words, even wear certain clothes and eat certain things. It was all very complicated, didn’t really work out in the end. The funny thing was, they were always fighting with people who prayed differently in different special buildings and who ate different special things and wore different special clothes, it was bizarre really.”

“Who is Granny Hill anyway, and why is she coming to stay?” Becky was bored with the way the conversation was going, and curious about Granny Hill who came to stay every so often, and always seemed to rattle Dory. “Whose granny is she?”

“Buggered if I know really, Becky” Dory replied. “Every family has one, I don’t know where they come from, they sort of just appear every so often and want to come and stay for a while.”

Tikfijikoo Island (continued)

(see this comment for previous part)

Mahiliki comes crashing down the island (with the pilot) having Veranassessee dumbfounded and speechless.

Rafaela leads Paquita and Jose through their dreams into acceptance of their facial conditions, and out of the island’s experiments through a secret passageway underground.
As well, Anita leads her parents away from the island, through a tunnel, thanks to the intervention of her favourite team of “invisible” essence friends. She bids Akita goodbye as he’s drawn to the impromptu fiesta by Mavis and tells him he shall see his spirit dog again.

Meanwhile, Sha and Glo discover some strange hairiness side-effects to their absorption of honeycomb.

[Fast forward a few weeks later.]

Apparently Dory and young Becky who were going to Tikfijikoo discover the island is placed under quarantine.
All clues indicate the vortex activities, cyclones, and mad spider experiments have put the international security at risk.

Veranassessee is reporting the situation at the local headquarters of the Confregation (likely to be fired), while Mahiliki and the pilot are under scrutiny to check their stories…

We find the three divas, Sharon, Gloria and Mavis with a little more hair, but not less slickness, in a military hospital on nearby Antarctica. Akita was brought there too, in solitary confinement because he pretends to be a WWII soldier and to be guided by a speaking dog (which is all real of course, but you never know). They soon plan to escape.

Madame Chesterhope, who was unwillingly rescued on the submarine of captain Pavel is placed in some sort of detention.
Meanwhile, Claude has visibly gotten back to Jarvis who had managed to get the crystal skull amidst the island’s confusion. They now both are on the submarine, toasting on the success of the operation of crystal skull’s retrieval.

Balbina, an old lady living in the future timeline in Venezuela (same timeline as Anita and her parents) is moved to her son’s home, nearby old caves were she expects Anita and her parents may soon resurface.

A moment later she fell in the pool, slipping on some loose change. The part had been a free for all, and her host had alot to answer for. lots of drinks had been given to the grey goat and mavis didn’t give a shit. she meant during the days that followed to find salome, to be able to find some meaning to the story about leonora. It was a fine day for a plane ride she thought as she waited in line feeling excited until she noticed a red working lamp advertising love, but she never noticed how much easier it was during the news. The finn connection had her smiling as she thought to try creating calm and stay present and breathe as she looked around and noticed her arms were far from normal. suddenly shhe was walking away. the goat forgotten but wrick managed to save the library which was full of fresh air known only to sri who was to sort it all out although he laughed about the wood fire of the 19 planets and she was behind herself all the way

(oops, said Bea, I forgot to indicate which of the words was from the word cloud and which were mine. Oh well, never mind….)

“Hey, Leo, look at this here in the newspaper ~ my book’s being made into a movie!”

“What book’s that then, Bea? Not that dreadful ‘T’eggy Gets a Good Rogering’, surely.” Leonora replied dismissively.

“Oh they’re not calling it that for the movie…..”

“Bloody good job if you ask me” Leo interrupted, and then exclaimed “OH!”

“What?”

“Book sync!”

“Book sync? What book sync?”

“I forgot to tell you, Baked Bean Barb called…”

“Who?!”

“You remember, we met her in that bar down on the coast awhile back, remember? We got talking over a few tapas ~ found we had some mutual friends back home and all…”

“Funny how that happens, eh ~ small world, innit? So what did she call for then?”

“Well, it’s the funniest thing, she said when she was rummaging around on the rubbish tip….”

“Oh now I remember, you mean Baked Bean Barb! The one that’s lived in her Ford Fiesta for 15 years, and finds food in dustbins? That one? On the run, wasn’t she?”

“That’s the one! On the run for 30 years because of that Baked Bean Incident that was in all the papers”

“You meet all sorts down here, eh. So what did she call for?”

“Well” continued Leonora “It’s the strangest thing! She said she found a book on the rubbish tip, which was in English, so she says she took the book ~ she reads alot you know, Barb does, even though she’s only got one eye. Dunno how she manages it really, her glasses are always so dirty…”

“Will you get to the point?”

“Hang on, hang on, I’m getting there….she found this book, right, so she goes back to wherever she’s camped up, you know, with the other travellers, all them old hippies on their way to Morocco for the winter I expect….”

“We should go with them next winter Leo, might be fun”

“I reckon it would Bea ~ well with Jose coming back soon from that island, we’ll have to go somewhere ~ anyway, as I was saying, Barb starts reading this book, she says it’s the most peculiar book she’s ever read, never read anything like it, she says, but she can’t put it down she says ~ well, you’ll never guess what!”

“I can’t guess, Leo, I’m waiting for you to tell me.”

“Barb says we’re in the book!”

“What do you mean, we’re in the book?”

“We’re in the book! ‘Leonora and Beattie’ are in the book! Renting a finca from a ‘Jose’ and living in the mountains in Andalucia!”

“You’re having me on!” exclaimed Bea. “I’ve gotta see this to believe it.”

Angela Wing was getting impatient. It had taken the fat white goose many months to reach a state of impatience, being such an accepting sort of creature, but really, she was wondering if she would ever have even so much as a walk in part in the Reality Play. Sure, she was a player behind the scenes, often appearing in the dreams of the players, but heck, a little bit of limelight would be nice occasionally.

She preened her brilliant white feathers, thinking how well they would show up under the lights, as it were. It was all very well lurking in the shadows of the ill remembered dreams all the time, but Angela felt the time was ripe for more exposure.

Becky yawned. Where on earth did that come from? she wondered, as she tried to rouse herself from her long nap. I wasn’t even dreaming about Angela Wing! All I can remember dreaming about is a book cover, something to do with eights…

“Oh My God” exclaimed Bea. “I had a dream about the DOOR!”

“Oh, well done! The question is, did you remember it?” asked Leonora.

“As a matter of fact, Leo, I did!” replied Bea with a happy smile. “As a matter of fact, although I’m not too sure how factual matter really is, but anyway, I did remember the dream, and I wrote it all down.”

“Gosh, up early this morning, weren’t you?” asked Leo, who was sipping coffee at the kitchen table and watching the sun come up over the mountains through the open door.

“Oh I didn’t write it down this morning, silly! I wrote it all down last week.”

Leo placed her cup on the table and rubbed her eyes, frowning. “Wait a minute, let me get this straight…..”

Bea laughed ~ she was in rather a jolly mood, despite the early hour. “I had the dream last week, Leo, but I only just realized this morning that the dream was about THE DOOR”

“So what did you learn about the door, then?”

Bea frowned. “Well I’m not really sure. But it seemed so significant because it was that scary door, you know, the dreams I’ve been having for years about that door in that bedroom that’s too scary to get near, never mind go through….would you like to read it? Maybe you can interpret it for me.”

“If I must” sighed Leonora “You better pour me another cup of coffee then and pass me those cigarettes.”

Leonora read from Bea’s Dream Journal:

I was sorting winter clothes out on an upstairs landing of a cottagey gabled house,
and decided to use the upstairs bedroom instead of the downstairs one.
The bedroom was a recurring dream one, gabled attic with dormer windows kind of room.
Then I saw the door and remembered this was the door I was always too terrified
in dreams to open; it was so scary that I always wanted to use this bedroom
but never could because of that terrifying door and whatever lay beyond it.

“Didn’t you do a waking dream and go through that door?” Leonora asked. “Oh, yes here is is…”

Remembering that I had done a waking dream and gone beyond the door once,
I marched up to the door, flung it open and strode through.
Suddenly an almost overpowering fear and dread stopped me in my tracks
but I carried on anyway.

“Oh, bloody well done, Bea! Good for you, girl!” Leonora could be a bit waspish at times, but she was a kind old soul underneath.

 It was a bit like a old slightly shabby but once grand hotel foyer, high ceilings
(not the same as when I went through in the waking dream, which was then rows
of closed doors on either side).  The foyer opened out on the left into a large old
fashioned restaurant dining room, with one person over on the far side sitting at
a table.  I carried on straight ahead through opaque etched glass double doors
onto an upstairs outdoor terrace.  There was a city scene below.  On the left
was a shallow ornately shaped ornamental pool.

“Reminds me a bit of our trip to Barcelona, this does, eh” Leo commented.

“Yeah, I’m sure that had something to do with the gargoyle imagery” replied Bea.

A woman squeezed past me holding a small thick book and I knew she was
going to jump off the terrace which was several storeys up.  She collapsed into
the pool, writhing backwards, baring a flat white breast and dropping the book.

“Flat breast, hahah Bea, that weren’t you then, obviously, was it!”

Bea chuckled. “Not bloody likely! I reckon that bit slipped in the dream because I can’t find a comfortable bra lately”

“You and me both” replied Leo. She continued reading from the journal.

I picked up the book, and somehow ended up with two books, which seemed like guide books. I couldn’t hold onto the two books with the creature in my hand, which was weird, like a very heavy small furry grey reptile, or gargoyle.

“Maybe it was a baby dragon?”

“Don’t say that!” retorted Bea, who had a horror of dragons. “The thought did cross my mind too, though” she admitted.

I was holding it with one hand round its middle and the fat grey belly of it
was bulging out under my fingers.  It was unbelievably heavy for such a small creature
and I didn't want to hold it, so I passed it to a boy. (Twice I was holding the creature,
and twice I passed it to the boy, but I can't recall the other time)

Back inside the building, I followed the boy down a big wide staircase that
curved round to the right at a landing below.  I started to fall down the stairs and
knew it was because of the book that I was holding that the woman had been holding
when she collapsed into the pool, so I threw the book down the stairs to save myself,
and felt the tumbling down from the books perspective, although I stayed in
the same place, clutching the banister.

“Well I am amazed that you remembered so much, Bea! Going through the doors and finding the books reminds me of Jane’s Library you know”. Leo was starting to go into an altered state.

“Are you going into an altered state, Leo?” asked Bea. “Are you channeling Juani Ramirez again?”

“The creature, the gargoyle, was representing ‘a different species of awareness, of consciousness’” continued Leonora, as Bea hastily started taking notes. Leo wouldn’t remember what she’d said while she was channeling Juani, so it was essential that Bea record what was said.

“The weight was a marker to help you recall the creature, as well as being symbolic of denseness”

Bea couldn’t help making a snirking noise. Dense eh, she said under her breath.

“The door” continued Leonora “Is a signpost, a marker.”

Just then the phone rang, snapping Leonora out of the trance. Bea picked up the telephone, but there was nobody there.

“Pffft” said Bea.

“More coffee?”

“I had an absolutely brilliant revelation last night” Bea was saying “about The Door. Buggered if I can remember what it was, though.”

“Well fat lot of use that is then, Bea” replied Leonora. “Any snapshots? Can you remember anything at all?”

“Well, there was a big pale green patch that floated down, then there was the floating part, oh and all the coloured light flashes…the French girl, the old fashioned scene…..and that weird change of focus, sort of off centre and a bit out of body, with the guy behind my right shoulder shouting HEY every time my focus started drifting back to normal. Oh, and the spiraling part, that was cool too!” Bea was starting to drift off into another world just thinking about it.

“Yes, well, now we know all about The Door” said Leonora sarcastically. “Very helpful, Bea, well done.”

“That’s it!” shouted Bea, leaning forward in excitement. “It’s about blocking energy!”

Leonora rolled her eyes.

“Holding tightly to energy, that’s what the closed door is. I can have an open door, and still be free to create who walks through it. We don’t lock the door here, do we, but we don’t get any intruders.”

“Maybe that’s because we’ve got nine dogs” said Leo. “And anyway, define intruder, in a ‘you create your own reality’ context. What’s the difference between an intruder, and a wonderful surprise?”

Bea was stumped for a moment. “That’s a good question, Leo, we’ll come back to that in a bit, but let me finish telling you this before I forget again.
I used to mentally open a big double door every time I did a meditation or went to sleep” Bea continued “and I havent opened that door in months. Well, sometimes it’s open, obviously, but I dont seem to throw the doors open wide anymore, you know, to other energies objectively, if you see what I mean.”

Bea was starting to ramble. “I used to invite any Tom, Dick and Harry to my meditations as long as they weren’t aliens.”

“What about the dogs in raincoats dimension?” asked Leo “What were they if they weren’t aliens?”

“Oh, they were alright, I liked them. Oh you know what I’m like about that other dimensional stuff, don’t get me started on that now. I think occasionally things happen and I get rattled, and shut the door for a bit.”

“Right, so let see if I’ve got this straight” said Leonora “There’s more than one layer to this Door thing because what you’ve just told me is what’s going on in your reality. The question is, what’s going on in mine?”

“Buggered if I know, Leo” Bea replied. “Fancy a cuppa?”

Tikfijikoo Island (continued)

(synopsis)

It starts with the Dr doing some evil tests on that remote island; he’s with the nurse Bellamy, whose forte is coconut tree frog-leaping, and Veranessesseesessesses with her impossible name (V’ass)
We then learn the Dr is mad, and his researches are financed by an occult organization, who V’ass is working for, to check on their assets; he’s mad but brilliant.

He’s a bit of a transvestite too (fullname Chris Bronklehampton)
The organization has given him a machine in which there is a crystal skull, unknown to him. This crystal skull seems linked to spiders somehow and his researches on spiders genome (blue bonnet), but we only know it’s coveted by many people. It’s all happening in our dimension, roughly at our time.

(Where Leo and Bea are renting Jose’s house and they are Dory’s and Dan timeframe ie: now)

The first experiences give dreadful results; there is Sasha (mummified by the doctor) who’s dead, and now speaks with the Dr; and there is Claude, who gained super strength and madness, and escaped the island facility.
Claude is one of those working with the Mad Baron ; he’s on a undercover mission to get the skull
(The false Viscountess —lady in salmon— at the auction was also working for the baron)

So Claude escapes but there is another mysterious person looking for the skull; it’s Madame Chesterhope, and she’s sent the magpies to steal it. The magpies are from another dimension, they are famous stealers.
Claude encounters the magpies on their mission. He’s captured in an energy labyrinth they have set on the island temporarily, to cover their tracks.

Meanwhile, Sha and Glo have arrived. Dory wanted to go but she couldn’t find the airline (bag lady)…
And Mavis later explains in a comment (555) how they all got involved in that adventure. She takes some time to convince her husband, and get to go to Tikfijikoo too. During the flight correspondence, she gets to know Paquita and Joselito.

On the island, the Dr is losing it seriously. He talks to the dead mummy, and had blond wig and stuff.
V’ass is reacquainting herself with the Italian of her secret organization, to report on the Dr. (insert steamy sex scene ) )

Dory is back at Gib, with Dan and young Becky and later, her friends Yurick and Yann came to visit; go see Salitre
She has knowledge of Leo and Bea (Fletcher) – at whose place there are skulls too.

On the island, everything starts to get crazy; since Sha and Glo arrived
The magpies are ready to strike as a cyclone is coming.
Claude has recovered his memory and is no longer mad; but he’s still trapped and tries to find an escape in a strange tree. He goes into another dimension, the giant spiders’ one.
In this dimension there are a few human survivors. There is young Anita, and her mummified parents, but still alive from a plane crash; and a stranded soldier from WWII, named “Akita”, who’s got a spirit dog with him he’d found on the spider island.
They somehow managed to survive in the giant spider’s jungle (the island is on top of a sort of Bermuda triangle).

Anita is in communication with our four essences, who can manifest easily in this spider dimension and our essences are aware of an dimensional gate opening (the cyclone).
All this people get together and succeed in escaping through the wortex.

So now, that explains the people around the campfire on Tikfijikoo. It was all relatively brief, during the storm, where the others were sheltered on the facility (thanks to V’ass who cared for the careless Sha and Glo)

Sha and Glo find out the magpies trying to pry the computer open where the skull is hidden; they crush the magpies with coconuts bra slings (exit the magpies in purple blood )
They find the strange crystal skull they mistakenly think is some apparatus like an UV lamp. They take it to the UV room and plug it; it starts to project all sorts of lights
They want to dance, because it’s like a disco.

Meanwhile, one giant spider has managed to sneak through the portal, and goes close to them, but she gets sidetracked by the lightened skull and gets shrunk to a small size… and gets crushed by Sha and Glo (they’re the heroines of the day, but they don’t know squat )

There is also a honeycomb subplot with a man named Jarvis on the island, with beehives.

Now: Sha and Glo are dancing, Mavis is going out attracted by the campfire, finding out the survivors (The campfire was there because it’s night, and Claude is wary of the island’s owners, because he was abducted and mummified). The Dr is mad as ever.
The skull is in the UV room, but they don’t know what it is — only Madame Chesterhope and Claude are knowing (possibly Jarvis and V’ass); but Mme Chesterhope is flung into the ocean crashing into Mahiliki’s plane recently

“Oh just leave the reader to do the proof reading, Yurick! If ‘there are no accidents’ then a few misspellings or a bit of mangled grammar might contain a clue for someone somewhere, somewhen….
it might be best to leave them in. You never know, you know… and anyway, I have this funny feeling that the pages aren’t quite as officially fixed as we might be inclined to think. Not quite cast in stone, as it were….Don’t ask me what I mean, Yurick,” Dory said with a laugh, “Because I can’t explain it.”

Yurick knew better than to ask Dory to explain anything, and remained silent, with one eyebrow raised quizzically as Dory rambled on.

“It’s like the branches of a tree,” Dory continued, with a faraway look in her eyes. “The branches on a tree look like such a tangle, but they are all connected to the trunk ~ the roots might look like a hopeless tangle too, if we could see them, but they do know what they’re doing ~ feeding the trunk or the core which sprouts out all over the place. There’s a bird in the tree, hopping from branch to branch. Does he care if he hops from one branch to another? No! Imagine if the bird was so rigid that he had to hop all along one branch from start to finish before changing to another branch.”

“Hahahah,” Yurick laughed, “A Sumafi bird?”

“You might say the little bird is the present moment, free to hop onto any branch at any time, or even fly to another tree…” continued Dory, who hadn’t heard Yurick.

“Another tree?” asked Yurick with a mock pained expression. “I have enough trees on my plate already.”

“And the thing is with trees, there isn’t really a place to start hopping or a place to stop hopping, from the birds perspective.”

Dory turned to Yurick with a grin. “It’s a book that you can read from any starting point. No beginning, and no end… maybe we can have all the pages loose with no numbers on, sort of a do-it-yourself assembly…”

Yurick laughed, a trifle nervously, and asked Dory if she would like a cup a coffee.

The truth was the book was nowhere near finished. In fact the island story she was working on currently was becoming more and more complex. Elizabeth put it down to her own wonderfully complex nature, this insatiable need to add more and more characters, all converging on the island for the dramatic finale.

Finale! She snoorted derisively. Having no idea where it was all going ,if the truth be told, then there was not much likelihood of a finale for quite some time.

A tentative knock on the door. It was that bloody Finnley! Since the sex scene fiasco Elizabeth had banned her entry to her office. Quite a rookus there had been. Still, she had to grudgingly admit, the girl had writing talent! Perhaps she could make use of her. Elizabeth quite fancied herself in the role of a leader, and the idea of Finnley in a sort of subservient underling capacity was tremendoosly appealing to her.

Bea sighed loudly, and dragged a tissue across her sweaty face. Leonora obviously hadn’t heard her, so Bea sighed loudly again.

What’s up with you now? asked Leo, who wasn’t really paying attention to Bea’s incessant whining.

Oh I dunno, I just don’t know what I want to do, Bea grumbled. My head’s in a fog. I’ve got hundreds of ideas, but I don’t want to do any of them badly enough to even think about starting anything. So then I try to sort a few thing out, you know, so I can bloody find things again, and I just end up with a big pile of bloody miscellaneous. It’s the bane of my life, all the miscellaneous stuff that defies categorizing. I should have been called Miss A. Laneous. I start to sort things out and then I get sidetracked; I never finish any sorting out, I just end up with more and more miscellaneous….her voice trailed off miserably.

Leo swiveled round in the computer chair, took off her glasses and glared at Bea. Bea, you know you always find what you need by trusting that you’ll find what you need when you need to find it. You’ve told me that time and time again. You’ve droned on and on about that, how you love finding ‘just the thing’ and ‘by accident’ and now you’re sitting there moaning and groaning because for some inexplicable reason ~ Leonora rolled her eyes ~ you think that having things neatly ordered would be a better way.

Well, it would be nice to be able to find what I’m looking for, Leo, Bea retorted.

Well if you found what you were looking for right away, you silly cow, you wouldn’t find all those other magical bloody surprises by friggen accident, now would you?

There’s no need to be rude, Bea said sniffily.

Now it was Leo’s turn to sigh. Why don’t you bugger off outside and find something to appreciate, you grumpy old bat. “Oh! look at this, Bea!” Leo exclaimed, “Look what I just found by accident!”

Leo swiveled the computer screen round so that her friend could see.

“Illi sat up and surveyed her surroundings. The sky was a deep azure blue, the sun was making twinkling stars on the waters of the lagoon, a warm gentle breeze rustled the coconut palm leaves, and birds sang and twittered in the foliage. It was indeed idyllic, and Illi decided to simply enjoy it, while her new ideas formed into a reality.

Illi was enjoying a new found freedom in her contentment, in not pushing her energy in frustration, and meandered happily around the island taking mental snapshots of a thousand delightful and marvelous wonders, appreciating even the smallest most insignificant things. Time lost all sense of meaning: there were deep velvet indigo skies full of sequins, and there were abstract multicoloured sunrises and sunsets; there were cottonwool clouds in cartoon shapes suspended on a canvas of blue. It mattered not the day or night; there was no longer a sense of time passing, just a glorious collage of appreciation and beauty.”

Bea read the excerpt reluctantly, and harumphed.

Oh for Gut’s sake, Bea! Leo was getting exasperated. Try appreciating miscellaneous floundering fog then.