Saturday 16 October 2010

In Which Horses Are Indeed Mentioned

I've decided inside now that I live on an island, a cold rock hunkered down somewhere in the north. I make my liquor out of samphire and my boots out of the seals, hunt soft, sweet crabs in the rock pools and rabbits in the scrub. I eat my fish in waist-deep waves, slicing them to sashimi with my knife of flint and licking out the roe.

My boat is small but he is brave and sometimes I sleep beneath him just to listen to the rain. There are goats on the island but I don't trust them and the foul-tasting puffins nest fat and useless on the cliffs. Down by the dark pool the horses stand, piebald with lichen and unsettlingly still. The dark pool has a skin on it so thick you could walk across it, if you dared.

At night I sit in my implausible caravan as the wind butts and mutters outside. I carve little scrimshaw kittens and read my murderbooks at the table, picking the faux-walnut vinyl off its top. Whales pass by from time to time and once a year the squid come, their lights dancing in the water like drowning stars.

Here on the outside I have another cup of tea. I have spent the morning corralling cats and sewing outlandish trousers and the rest of the day stretches ahead of me in a tangle of wool and hair, paper and smoke, Strictly Come Dancing and softboiled eggs. Later, though, I'll sit shivering in a salted bath and with my fingers in my ears I'll be able to hear the gulls.

7 comments:

  1. Delightful and always worth the wait.

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  2. I want to sleep under the boat in the rain with you.

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  3. Why shiver? Hot water is good stuff.

    Don't worry, I understand. As long as you're not 14./

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  4. I hope those trousers were Papal Swiss Guardish. Out of all the outlandish trousers I've seen, those are my favorite.

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  5. this is really good, sack, and oddly sweet for you

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  6. Scrimshaw kittens for all of you x

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