The setting: Isle of Lewis, Scotland; circa 1985.

Wee Kenny Eyeballs almost choked to death on his fish finger when his sister told him The Latest. The latest Latest was that the Siarachs* were going to march on the capital (Stornoway) tomorrow with a list of demands, chief of which was the assertion of their right, as Free (Free, mark you!) Presbyterians to scribble HEATHEN on the door of any person or persons hanging out their washing on the Sabbath.**

Anyway, Kenny almost choked to death at that news but didn’t and was fully composed again by pudding time. Wee Kenny Eyeballs almost choked to death a lot whenever he heard upsetting news during meals. A childhood pyloric stenosis and an unresolved mos vivo*** coupled with recurring throatal occlusion had caused repeated sudden rises in intra-ocular pressure and led to his Unfortunate Protruding Eyeball Condition (UPEC.) (And also his Bulging Forehead-Vein Disorder (BFVD)). That was how comes he got the name Kenny Eyeballs: The Wee was just by the way.

However, when, at pudding, his sister told him The Other Latest – which was the story going round the village about Kevin Drooly and Marina Shed and the peat-stack and the windy day and The Best of Slow Jazz cassette-tape and tape-recorder and the pot of honey and the unexpected bee attack and the missing-presumed-blown-away-clothes and the desperate phonecalls to Karen Drooly at the pub and the four dark, wretched hours before she and her drunken pals picked them up and the car-ride of shame and subsequent treatment in Accident and Emergency for exposure and 3rd-degree stings – Kenny did indeed choke entirely to death, undone by a mouthful of Swiss roll and custard.

His sister couldn’t be sure but she did say his last words sounded a lot like “Narina, ny girl! Chchc snrfl ack chhh. Ang ny “est og azz” take! Orra astard! Mmrfl.”

At the funeral, as the mourners threw their flowers and handfuls of dirt down onto the coffin, Kevin Drooly, heavily bandaged on account of the bee-stings and with tears clouding his vision, threw an old battered cassette tape with the words ow Jazz barely visible beneath its covering of tear-streaked peat-dust.

“I’m sorry old pal, I was going to give it back! I was!” he said.

Kevin was sorry also for (very nearly) having it off with Marina Shed, Kenny’s girlfriend of a week, but did not mention that then. He knew that, for young men of a certain age, mere women could never truly come between best friends. But the music could. The music could. The theft of another man’s Best Of Slow Jazz was a hideous, ear-ripping betrayal. He may as well have baked that Swiss roll and cooked that custard himself and then rammed the down his friend’s throat, tamping the gloopy mess down with a spoon until the whole windpipe was blocked, before dancing round the convulsing corpse.

One whisky-soaked week later, in a pit of remorse so hopeless and metaphorically pit-like, Kevin Drooly and the similarly guilt-wracked Marina Shed went back to the same peat-stack at which they’d met for their doomed night of honey-love. They stripped themselves bare, the angry red weals from their previous stingings still swelling all over their pale goosebumped flesh making them look, in the pale moonlight, like human raspberry-ripples. And then, weeping and singing the song “Tragedy” by the Bee Gees, the two flung themselves on the formerly unexpected but now wholly established peatstack beehive in a last act of penance for their treachery. The repeat exposure to massive stinging killed them both puffily.

THE END

* People from the west of the island.

** This – the scribbling of the word HEATHEN! on the doors of demonstrable heathens – was subsequently allowed but was tempered by a controversial “No Indelible Ink/Pencil Only” clause that opened a bitter rift between the town and all those West of the cattle-grid. This observer is unhappy to have to report that many sorry blood-baths followed.

*** The will to live

(Where Mairi-Sine is pronounced Mah-ree Shee-nuh, and x = 4)

Although normally a flock known for their good-times and easy smiles, noone was laughing when Mairi-Sine opened the metal gate to the croft with a squeak that would have made a Spice Girl wince and caused elderly birds to drop stone-dead from the trees. No-one looked up as she slammed the gate behind her and stalked purposefully across the field to where Wiry-Wooled Wendy, her love-rival, stood with her back to the gate, laughing and comparing hooficures with a couple of ditzy peroxide ewes. And everyone made very sure to find a fascinating buttercup to sniff around as Mairi-Sine, her eyes just little gleams of fury, approached Wiry-Wooled Wendy.

“You done thought you could steal my man? You thought YOU could steal MY man, you ewe, you?” she hollered.

Wiry-Wooled Wendy turned slowly to face her accuser and, as we see her turn, we – the readers of this true story – can only gasp in astonishment at her incredible physical beauty. (Gasp, people, gasp! I need you to work with me a little here.) You’re gasping because Wiry-Wooled Wendy was a terrible name for her. For, you see, her wool was really like the finest cashmere/merino/spandex blend, teased out into the softest of cotton-candy puffs. Her long, luxuriant eyelashes lifted lazily to reveal eyes of glint-flecked dark gold, which gazed steadily at Mairi-Sine. Her perfect scarlet Cupid’s bow lips twitched slightly as she looked at Mairi-Sine’s mud-caked wellies, but Wiry-Wooled Wendy seemed wholly unconcerned and gave every appearance of being even a little bored by this human intrusion into her day.

“Why, I do declare I just do not know what you mean,” she purred, the very picture of lamb-like innocence.

“Don’t come the dumb ungulate with me, Wiry-Wooled Wendy,” hissed Mairi-Sine, her brown pony-tail quivering with rage and her blue eyes flashing with anger. “I have all the evidence I need to make sure you’re tomorrow’s special on chops at Charley Barley’s butcher-shop. What about THIS, eh? Who else wears post-van red lipstick in this village?”

Mairi-Sine thrust a man’s shirt at Wiry-Wooled Wendy. It did have bright red lipstick kisses all over its collar, noted the other sheep, none of whom were paying any more attention to the formerly fascinating buttercups. And post-van red was Wendy’s preferred shade of scarlet.

All eyes were on Wiry-Wooled Wendy then, as she drawled, “Oh honey, do you seriously think I would entertain a man wearing a cheap nylon rag like that? I’ve worked hard in this village so’s I don’t have to have that sort of rough clientele any more. You’re Martin Callie’s wife, aren’t you? Well, no offence, sugah, but no Callie could afford me these days, ceptin’ for Ole Man Callie and he doesn’t get out much any more.”

She idly plucked a daisy, tied its stem into a knot with her tongue, and flicked it to a young ram who blushed hotly and managed to fall on his chin somehow, even though he was standing still.

Mairi-Sine frowned slightly. “But I have this too, you lying little yarn-ball!” she shrieked, waving a piece of paper triumphantly in the air.

“Look! Look at this address and tell me that www.sheeplust.croft isn’t you, you wooly tart! www is obviously Wiry-Wooled Wendy, you can’t pull the wool over my eyes, you…you… horny trollope!

Everyone gasped. This was a terrible thing to say to any sheep of negotiable affection and, tough though she was, if there was one thing Wiry-Wooled Wendy couldn’t abide being called, it was horny. She knew she had an embarrassing tendency for forehead swellings but she went to great pains to disguise this by filing them down on boulders, secretly at night, while the rest of the flock pretended to sleep and not hear her.

She rose up magnificently on her hind legs, with an habitual little shimmy, causing several farmers who watched her with binoculars from their neighbouring fields every day, to swoon in dead faints of desire. Striding imperiously towards the woman she struck Mairi-Sine clean across the face with an immaculately polished front left hoof, leaving an angry pink cloven mark, that looked a bit rude, to be honest.

“Get you facts straight first, little missy!” she hissed at the shocked Mairi-Sine. “WWW isn’t me, you bald, pink twit. That’s a k not a t – www.sheeplusk.croft is the web address for a gay sheep-man love club over in Luskentyre. And the post-van-painting and touch-up shop is right next-door to their garage and touch-up shop. From what I hear, your husband is quite a regular there.”

Swivelling on one elegant ankle, Wiry-Wooled Wendy fell back down on all fours and strolled back to her sisters with a haughty this-conversation-is-ended-type shake of her tail. The last remaining Peeping-Tom shepherd, fainted clean away.

Meanwhile, Mairi-Sine, eyes wide and face drained of all colour, sunk to her knees, failing to avoid a small pile of day-old dung. Clutching the web address to her chest, she raised her face to the pouring rain. (Dramatically it had suddenly started to rain, almost as if events were being guided by some unseen narrative voice.) She wept. Tears of purest joy she wept.

“I’m free! Free of him at last!” she sobbed. “I would never have got an anullment from that deathly boring Mirror-reader of a husband if he’d only been having it away with a ewe because the “Cultural Sensitivity” and “Loneliness Exemption” laws won’t allow bestiality cases against Highlanders any more. And it’s all “Don’t ask, don’t tell” now anyway. But thank God! He’s having an affair with a MALE sheep! The court in Stornoway is sure to deem man-on-RAM action an abhorrent sin against nature. It’s perfect! Think of the leverage I’ve got! Oooh, wait til the Reverend Alec hears this!”

“I think the Reverend Alec was the founder member of www.sheeplusk.croft, actually,” piped up a small tup from the middle of the crowd.

“Well, in that case, he’ll just have to come out even more strongly against it in the papers to deflect suspicion away from himself,” trilled Mairi-Sine, hopping around in excitement in the bright sunshine which had appeared just as suddenly as the rain had stopped – about a paragraph ago now.

“Then I’ll have public opinion firmly and self-righteously on my side and, sure as eggs is eggs, I’ll get a very generous alimony settlement. Now I can run away and become the astronaut I’d always dreamed I’d be some day!”

And, with that, she gaily wiped the day-old dung from her knees and skipped back up the croft to the open road, a whole new world of whole new worlds and space-diapers opening up gloriously before her.

“But why was she so upset about you then, Wend’, if she just wanted rid of him anyway?”, asked Betty, as tragic a case of mutton dressed as ham as there’s ever been – she’d attempted to dye her wool a baby-pink but the total effect was more of a bacony-pink. Streaky-bacony-pink.

“Well, for the look of the thing, of course,” said Wiry-Wooled Wendy patiently, nodding in quiet admiration at Mairi-Sine’s retreating form which was now bobbing and dozee-dohing happily on the horizon. She understood, all right.

“Just for the look of the thing,” she repeated softly to herself, before turning back to the others.

A long time ago in a land far away, a plucky little girl-sperm puffing I think I can! I think I can! won the race to the egg. I knew I could! I knew I could! said smug little she as she fused her DNA to the egg’s setting off a cascade of reactions, causing chemical gradients to arise in the newly formed embryo and triggering DNA switches on and off according to the various concentrations and proportions of chemicals in these gradients. Over time a little girl grew and developed and gave her mother’s inwards a hell of a time.

Already she’d had a world of dumb luck dodging genetic bullets such as cystic fibrosis and developmental landmines like cerebral palsy. She knew nothing of this luck though for she was just a baby.

Birth happened and apparantly hurt a lot, but not her. Phew!, she would have thought if she thought thoughts such as Phew at that time. I’ve made it this far, now what?

Over the next several decades or so that very “what” went right ahead and happened and the little girl grew up in a randomly assigned remote, windy place where everybody keeps low to the ground like moss to keep from being torn from the very living land into the very deadly sea. With incredible good fortune and an early understanding of umbrella husbandry, the little girl avoided being blown out to sea. Managing to not get hurled to a watery grave got easier as she grew and got heavier but was counterbalanced by her also getting taller. Nevertheless, to the ground she would stick, well into her teens until she became unstuck a little.

Years passed and the little girl grew and made Poor Choices on bicycles, ponies and ice-skating rinks leading to four broken bones in all, and some pain. But still she survived, right into her teenage years when she discovered adult beverages and made more Poor Choices which occasionally ended up causing her to fall over. She was finally getting the hang of not breaking bones though so she looked upon this period as one of marked progress.

Time passed again, doing that awkward smiling hahahelloagainhaha thing you do when you’ve met someone you used to know really well at the apples in the supermarket, chatted pleasantly about all either of you care to, but then keep re-meeting them at every aisle in the place until the checkouts, by which time your conversation with this person, or Time, in this case, is exhausted and you’ve both given up all pretense of trying.

Various things happened and both good and bad times were had, as is normal, and today I’m 33 and have reached a personal best in terms of years without broken bones. I married; I bred, getting a great twoferone deal on babies in 2002. I felt – still do – very very lucky indeed.

That’s it. I failed to fall under any buses and have always been pretty good about eating my vegetables. I did not choke on any of the toys my mother feared I would and now, doctors say, there is every reason to suppose I might live another 33 years. I might not, of course, but I’m not going to sweat that now because this weekend I’m having a 93rd birthday party. My very good friend turns 60 and I turn the very mundane and non-milestoning 33 but we’re celebrating together because she doesn’t want a whole party’s limelight shone on her by herself. I welcome every excuse to party and drink and behave like a buffoon, plus this might be the only 93rd birthday I get so I’m going to enjoy it while I’m still young enough to remember what to do with a glass of barley-pop.

Made it to 33 then. Phew! Keep on going there, Sam; steady as she goes. Watch out for banana skins and don’t eat pink chicken.

volcano 001Originally uploaded by Sam, Problemchildbride.

Part (a) of the answer, I’s afraid, is all too prosaic. It was a papier-mache volcano for a tea-party-in-the-jungleish thing I did for the girls’ pre-school class. In the end, I plumped for non-fizzing or paint-based* lava because vinegar, food-dye and bicarbonate of soda would have completely messed up my trees (or, as “a pal” referred to them, the “what-are-all-these-spots-on-it?” lovingly daubed bits.)

But lookout papier-mache sculptresses, out there! Unreasonable vanity about your own volcano will creep up and consume you, if you’re not vigilant. It’s an insidious suburban epidemic. We housewives will commonly gather to admire our papier-mache volcanoes, secretly thinking our own the finest, before snorting coke off them and ignoring our ironing/children/collapsing septa in a whirly-twirly nirvana. Here ends your peek into the secret life of the 21st century housewife.

Part the second of the answer is #24 but I shall never reveal what else I built that day. You will just have to wait ’til my barely audible death-bed post for that, forgetting for a minute that all my posts are barely audible. You may wonder about it if you wanna, or you may not give a flying fellatio. As you wish**.

* For the tech-heads amongst you.

** Everything is as-you-wish round here, man. Amn’t I all cool and laid back and what have you?

What did I build yesterday?

1. Hopes?

2. Dreams?

3. A papier-mache volcano with real fizzing lava?

4. It, so they will come?

5. A cherry for a tree for the set for Anton Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard?”

6. A new world, right in my kitchen?

7. A new world order, right in my bathtub?

8. A bad reputation?

9. A good reputation?

10. A reputation for snoopy nosiness and infuriating impertinence?

11. A small wall of my very own with which to shut out sadness but which will also shut out joy in an ironic twist I should have forseen but will learn a valuable, heart-breaking lesson from in days to come.

12. Someone up, just to tear them down?

13. Assorted Lego erections?

14. A garden of earthly delights?

15. An enormous sandwich a la mode? (Yes, I know what I said.)

16. A mansion of love in my heart which no man can e’er tear down?

17. A better bum?

18. Static electricity with balloons and hairy jumpers?

19. A tower of song?

20. A solid, dependable attitude, in general?

21. An outreach program for the Disenchanted of Tunbridge Wells?

22. A tissue of foul, foul lies? And if so, what about?

23. All of the above?

24. Most of the above? And which?

25. Something else entirely?

Where do the hill-sheep go when they die?

Few men know of it; a few more women do although the reason for this is not clear. Noone’s done A Study although scientists think it has something to do with women’s inteweition and a Medieval spelling error that cosmically “took” somehow. But forget everything you have ever heard about mountain-sheep death rites; every myth and every legend, forget em all! For I have it on very good authority* that what follows is what really happens:

A cloud descends on a mountain, obscuring from human eyes a sheep-ritual so ancient that it is very, very old. Indeed, so incontinently old is this sheep-ritual that the first human ever to witness it was called Ug, son of Oorg, The Not Quite The Full Sapiens Yet. Within this cloud, all the mountain’s sheep gather and stand in a circle. Everyone loves a good Paaaassing.

There is no altar – however cool that would be – for an altar would remind the flock too much of the Old Testament, when their ancestors didn’t come out of things very well at all, and not a day passed when some poor wee lamb wasn’t being dragged off to a suspiciously cinematic stone slab in a wilderness somewhere. This has had many effects on the hapless sheep psyche, chief among them being that Charlton Heston is universally loathed in the ungulate world; and that the word “scape-goat” has become a highly-charged insult, spat with all the vitriol of a deep sheep suffering that man will not recognise.

“Phthoo! Scape-sheep more like!” say middle-class sheep with their sea-view rocks and pen-sheeyon-plans while, down in the ‘Hood, baaasta’s are referring to each other as “scape-gs” in much the same way as the n word is used among gangstas in South Central LA.

So, no altar then. No. There is only a simple rock or tuffet upon which an extra-wild-wooled Willer of the Weather invokes, with an eerie bleat, the Great Sheep Gods, Ovinus and Ovinia, to come for a fallen friend. (On weekends and major holidays, you get the Subbing Goddess, Mary – ah oui, she of Little Lamb fame but not of the contrarian gardening movement)

The Gods come. A great wailing and gnashing of lower incisors against upper horny pad commences. The dead sheep, now in his past tense, is brought hence from thence (over a fence.)

The cloud then lifts, carrying the soul of the debaaarted to greener pastures, where the sun always shines and every blessed and bleating heart sings sweetest music. Egg sandwiches and whiskey are passed around among the living and perhaps a few tears are shed but, for the most part, sheep are stoic and practical and not apt to wearing their hearts on their fleeces. There are always a few artsy, emotional young sheep though – known as the Bopeepians, they’re in every flock – with Ideas and harps and tie-dyed wool, trying to introduce new ideas to the proceedings, but they are in the minority, looked upon with disdain by the greater flock and, everyone agrees noddily, they are just showing off and embarrassing themselves). Sometimes the Gods stick around for this bit, ostensibly for the look of the thing but actually for the feast: the Gods are awfully fond of the hard stuff (eggs).

By the time the cloud has sailed on to the next mountain-top to collect the next given-up ghost, or stopped at the abattoir for a coach-party of souls to hop on board, all that any observer would see is a curious circle of sheep, chewing stolidly, unceasingly, starily, on wind-whipped grasses. With inexplicable bits of egg on their wool. Inexplicable, because hens don’t live on mountains. The observer – the same one – is left to wonder, for the rest of his life, about that egg, and that circle, and about that strange, faraway look** in those sheeps’ eyes…

* Mine

** Nothing mystical about this really, unless you count whiskey as mystical.