Listing to Port

Heart’s Ease, 1596

A pair of twins, Diana and Francisca, are separated at birth when the ship they are travelling in is wrecked. Diana is found on the shore by Antonio, a servant to the Duke of Milan, and is brought up in the Ducal household. Here she attracts the eye of Lorenzo, the Duke’s heir. To flee his unwelcome attentions, she dresses as a boy and rides out to the country, where she enters the service of Silvio, a mysterious gentleman who is searching for treasure. Meanwhile, Francisca is brought up as a shepherdess by Balthazar, a humorous shepherd. Antonio heads after Diana, but is forced by a storm to lodge with Balthazar overnight. Francisca spies on Lorenzo from the hayloft and, in a famous speech, waxes lyrical on his manly beauty. The next day, Lorenzo catches up with Diana and observes her new-found devotion to Silvio. Catching her alone, Lorenzo threatens to reveal Diana’s disguise to Silvio unless she sleeps with him. Weeping, Diana flees out onto the moor where she falls into a pit. Francisca, who is out rescuing sheep that have been stranded by the storm, rescues Diana. To maintain her disguise, Diana flirts awkwardly with Francisca, but Francisca confesses that she is already in love with Silvio and cannot love another. Diana tells Francisca that she can arrange for her to marry Silvio, despite her low birth. Then she goes to Silvio and tells him that she will sleep with him, but they must be married first, and that due to her extreme modesty she must be veiled during the marriage and couple in darkness. Needless to say, Francisca is substituted during the event. Meanwhile, Silvio encounters Balthazar on the moor and is intensely irritated by the shepherd’s weak puns. When Balthazar  mentions that he found Francisca in a shipwreck, Silvio realises that Francisca may be one of the long-lost daughters of his master, the Duke of Florence, and that the treasure he seeks may be in the shipwreck. Both daughters, he says, shared a star-shaped mark on their upper arm. Diana, realising that she is Francisca’s lost twin, reveals her disguise and origins. Francisca and Lorenzo arrive and it is confirmed that Francisca also shares the mark. Silvio and Diana return to Florence to be married, whilst Balthazar delives a final humorous monologue about love.

Richard I, 1596

A heavily-fictionalised account the life of Richard I. The first act covers his conquest of Cyprus, ending with his marriage to Berengaria of Navarre. In the second and third acts a rather brief account of the Third Crusade is given, with Saladon as the main antagonist. The rest of the play covers Richard’s shipwreck at Aquileia, capture by Leopold V, ransom and eventual release. The play is mainly notable for a lengthy speech by a random soothsayer, foretelling the ascent to the throne of Elizabeth I and prophesying that she will be basically the best ruler ever.

Pastime with Good Company, 1611

Three sets of twins arrive in Venice at the start of the Carnival season. Lucio and Roderigo have entered into a drunken bet that they will dress as women; both will try to win the hearts of carnival-goers, and they will meet at the end of the day to judge who has been most successful. Meanwhile, Helena and Maria have dressed as each other in order to circumvent some rather complicated legalese related to an inheritance. Unfortunately, since they are identical twins, no-one has yet noticed. Meanwhile Claudio, who is the rightful Duke of Padua in disguise, and Lucetta, his twin sister, are fleeing the usurpation of the Dukedom by Liono. Arriving in Venice, Claudio sees Roderigo dressed as a girl and pretends to be immediately smitten, although in reality he wishes to woo her in order to keep an eye on Lucio, who he suspects of being Liono’s maidservant. Roderigo, playing along with the conceit, agrees to wed Claudio and preparations are made for a wedding banquet that evening.  Claudio orders Maria, who he believes to be a local baker, to construct an enormous cake. Helena, who has dressed as Maria dressed as a boy in the hope of attracting notice to her disguise, is approached by Lucetta, who suggests that, given her dainty resemblance to a girl, she should dress as one to mess with Claudio. Meanwhile, Maria pretends to have taken poison and dies, for no readily apparent reason. Roderigo, who is distraught at this happenstance, having fallen in love with her when they shared a brief exchange of puns earlier, attempts to fling himself from the Campanile. However, he is inexplicably saved by falling into Claudio’s enormous cake, which is passing by underneath on its way to be delivered. Meanwhile, Liono, who has also ridden to Venice, delivers a passionate speech about his decision to abandon the other Thundercats for a life of evil, whereupon Maria punches him and he falls in the canal. After a scene of heated discussion, everyone agrees that this is all so confusing they should just go for a beer, pick lots as to who marries who, and then go home.

Thy Mother, 1587

Little is known about this early comedy, which is probably for the best.

1. Twattorama, 10:20 - 11:00, Channel 4. Each week, a random member of the public is chosen from the electoral rolls. The program proceeds to make the case, via a series of leading interview questions, selective editing and dubious use of statistics, that their subject is the worst person alive. Twattorama is the subject of a number of pending lawsuits, but remains inexplicably popular amongst people who are sure that they are not the worst person alive.  
2. Polar souffle, 10:00-10:50, BBC2. A group of experts in different fields are locked in a room with a random selection of equipment. They have 50 minutes to prove the existence of the Arctic before the floor drops open and they are deposited in a bath of blue gunge. Note: the floor opens whether they are successful or not; this is a scripted part of the show.
3. MetaChallenge, 9:20 - 10:00, Channel 4. Teams compete to devise a new reality show concept. Each week they face a new challenge: coming up with the idea, pitching it to TV executives, recruiting subjects for a pilot episode, etc. Viewers vote for the concept they would most like to succeed. At the end of the show, the most successful idea is commissioned.
4. The Great British TV Dinner Cookoff and Jigsaw Puzzle Challenge, ITV, 8:00 - 10:00. Participants compete on a number of Saturday night-themed activities, including: cooking a meal for a family of four to eat on the sofa; finishing a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle; getting the washing put away before bedtime; putting toddlers to bed in time to watch the program; etc. Anyone may compete. Indeed, the filming is almost entirely automated and one may choose the activities and participants one wishes to watch (there being many, many participants at one time) as well as acting as judges to rate their activities. As such, the program is something between reality TV and a really, really judgmental social network.

1. Socks that have been used as sleeping bags for adorable baby animals; particularly where one only finds out about this happenstance by plunging one’s toes into adorable baby animal shit.
2. Socks to be worn over other socks in a recursive manner, for when the weather is particularly cold and/or when one wishes to have spherical feet.
3. Socks that look like cocks, available only in larger sizes, for the less secure gentleman who really, really wishes people to be aware of what they say about people with large feet.
4. Socks which are marked out as limited-use by slogans such as 18 Today, or Happy New Year!, or suchlike, but which are nevertheless worn for general use.
5. Socks full of fabulous treasures, hung out in the mountains for dragons on the eve of the migration season. One may become amazingly rich or amazingly dead in the mountains on such nights.
6. Socks woven out of pasta. Typically capellini, although spaghetti can also be used. The frugal-minded may therefore either eat or wear them, depending on their current need. One may also wear them to futurist conventions, where I am sure they would cause a stir; or to go bathing in tomato sauce, where they would merely be moderately ridiculous.
7. Socks that will in fact annihilate in a deadly burst of energy if paired with a matching sock, and must therefore always be worn odd.

1. There is a mountain that has been entirely hollowed out by ants, but it is far enough away that no large creature has walked on it since. It is ready to crack like an egg, but maybe it never will.
2. Near the top of another mountain there is a damp meadow covered in coarse grass and a deep, clear tarn. It extends down into the rock, and the bottom is not visible because it is too dark down there, not because of any murkiness in the water. Somewhere far down and shimmering through the tiny ripples raised by the mountain winds one can see a sheep skeleton when the light is good.
3. There is a peak over which the clouds make faces and the sky is a staticy mess of visions. Although it is not high, one can never quite trust one’s senses up there. The world below looks rather flat, as if it were missing a dimension in the haze.
4. There is a pass where one can see down into a steep, stony valley that does not lead anywhere in particular. It would be folly to go down there, really; the way back up is steep and icy and there are sharp stones in the scree. But if you look at the far end it always seems that you can see someone running down there. Running and running, back towards the valley’s entrance, but never moving any closer, as if they were somehow disjoint from the physical world.
5. There is a high lonely moor and, in those months of the year when it is not covered in ice, one can see grassy lumps rising out if the boggy earth. If you were to look closer, you would see that they are old buildings; and that there are many of them, and some are the rotten stumps of great towers. But there is no record of any city having been there.
6. There is a black peak, but sometimes at dusk the birds rise off it and you can see that it is actually silver.  
7. Another mountain lies in a hot part of the world and there are seven lakes around its summit which are the most perfect turquoise. At the height of summer, great lilies grow on the lakes and the air is alive with tiny green butterflies. From a distance, however, all one can see on the mountain’s slopes is a forest of dead trees bleached white by the sun. It is not known what killed the trees and, as a consequence, the lakes are rarely visited.  
8. There is a mountain that extends up into the sky beyond the normal limits of the atmosphere to sustain life; I am not sure if it is on this or another planet. There were five explorers who climbed it and saw some kind of vision near the peak. I do not know what kind of vision. They discarded their life support equipment and formed their bodies into a kind of structure, where they promptly froze to death. Although other explorers have since ventured up there, it is unwise to go near the structure, which now consists of some thirty bodies: the original five, and a further twenty-five who got too close.  Observations from a distance suggest it is starting to look like some kind of temple.

1. There was once an assassin, although she didn’t think of herself that way. Really, she was just doing what she had to do. The war, when it came, was someone else’s fault entirely and would have happened sooner or later in any case. Better to pull the thorn and start it now, rather than hanging around basking in the growing bad-feeling. Not only that, but it was more or less an accident that anyone died anyway. To be sure, she was there with the gun and the grenades. She had phoned in the bomb threat that left the cavalcade stuck on the old road. But she had more or less decided not to do it when an acorn fell on her head. Everything happens for a reason, you know. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do. The acorn, unregarded, fell into a patch of soft earth.

2. They say that the lifespan of an oak tree is three hundred years growing, three hundred years living and three hundred years dying. The acorn’s questing shoots had no idea of this saying, or that it was not normally true. The earth went round the sun once, then once again. The war was still far off. It became a sapling, then a mature tree. The woodland flourished for four hundred years, basking in steamy, sap-smelling summers and sitting through mild, damp winters. Someone seeded the ground with landmines then, a hundred years later, robots came to dig them up. The tree survived. Beetles ate out its heart, but it remained standing. A small town grew up in the greenwood beside it. Two hundred years later, twenty thousand refugees came to stay, and the town stretched out its limbs into the woody valleys around and became a city. Nine hundred years later, the husk of the old oak, surrounded by black tulips, lay at the centre of a genteel square.

3. At the death of the old year (which was in those days in the yellow height of summer), a parade of swimmers hung black ribbons on the oak as they processed down through the steep streets to the lake. Perhaps this year there were more ribbons than usual; it was a very hot summer. In any case, the last remaining branch of the oak snapped free and fell down over the road. A group of teenage girls came down from the silent houses on the square and stripped it of bark, which they used to make masks.

4. The masks hung in the silent houses for a hundred years more. A kind and gentle age came over the land.  People ventured out across the borders again. One could walk in the mountains without having to watch for drones. There were people digging in the black moorlands of the old cities, and finding old technologies, and bringing their secrets back to life. The silent houses found themselves full of families who could not help but laugh from time to time.

5. There were five children who grew up on the square, and they were all writers. It was a good time for writers, because now the war was over there was finally time to twist its stories into something beautiful or strange enough to hang an audience’s attention on. They thought that they would travel to the mountains and live on ice water and berries and dried meat, and that each of them would write a play, and they would come back to the city on a glorious wave of Art and be some kind of famous Set or other. And perhaps when they were setting out their minds were wandering further, oh further! on to the days when they would attend academic seminars about their journey, but in thrilling disguise.

6. In any case, it did not go quite as they expected. They made it to a remote valley, where they were only moderately hungry.  On the third day they caught a wild pig, which they drained of blood in the hope of making black pudding. Someone brought out a bottle of a thin green herbal spirit. They wore the masks and made a forest out of twigs set in the earth to act out a scene someone else had written that morning. There were refugees, and a bear. Two hours later, the fifth of the travellers went for a scenic piss on a cliff edge and did not come back. In a panic, the others scrambled down the cliff half-way to where they could see a pale shape in the darkness below; then they fell too. A warm rainstorm washed out the river valley two days later, leaving no trace. In time, the empty campsite was found, with its masks and blood and bundles of twigs, and formed an enduring mystery that captured the attention of the age. Someone even wrote a play about it.

7. A bottle and some bones and a packet of verses were swept with the floods down into the caves below the mountains, where they meandered through various ghastly sumps and narrow caverns. Eventually, they made it to the sea, washed up into the open door of an old lighthouse. Someone must have been living there then, although I am not sure how. They took the drifting objects and put them three floors up, near the lamp. In those days the lighthouse ran on energy from the decay of radioactive isotopes, because the land around it was not deemed habitable. But this was a generous age, and for a further hundred years the light gradually wound down, and travellers came to live again in the old villages by the sea.  

8. At some point they found the verses, but they could not read them. These travellers had a story, which was that they were the first brave pioneers to come back to this area after the dark age; and so they believed that they had found some great long-lost relic. They made a wooden town and painted it in many colours, and it had a blue tower that one could see for three miles along the coast. Here they kept their relics. In time it, too became a city, and the blue tower sat incongruously in its busy docklands. Scholars came from all around to look at the lost verses. But they threw away the bottle, believing it to be litter.

6750 The common cold
 -6750.1 General
    –6750.11 Phlegmy sort
        –6750.112 Productive of bright green phlegm
        –6750.113 Productive of bright orange phlegm
        –6750.113 Productive of clouds of dandelion fluff
    –6750.14 More of a cough, really
        –6750.141 The sort that keeps one up at night
        –6750.112 Sounds like a bark
    –6750.15 Mainly of the lost voice sort
        –6750.151 Striking just before one has to sing
    –6750.16 Gentle little cold that wanders around the back of throat and glands without ever really doing much
 -6750.2 Obtained via miscellaneous and/or unknown means
    –6750.21 Obtained while on mission from MI5
 -6750.3 Obtained via contact with children
    –6750.31 Via nursery
         –6750.311 First cold in a row acquired from nursery
         –6750.312 Second or more cold in a row acquired from nursery
 -6750.4 Obtained via recreational activity
    –6750.41 Recreational activity that was definitely worth it
    –6750.42 Recreational activity that wasn’t
 -6750.5 Obtained via mode of transport
    –6750.51 On an aeroplane
        –6750.511 At the start of a holiday that would be really great without a cold
        –6750.512 By the return journey, able to share cold with a whole new group of people
    –6750.59 First documented case of donkey-human transmission
 -6750.8 The uncommon cold
    –6750.81 Productive of rainbow glitter phlegm
    –6750.82 Sneezing up tiny unicorns
    –6750.83 Sinuses colonised by tiny kittens
    –6750.84 World’s best viral party going on in eustachian tubes, invitation extended to local bacteria, entrance queue goes all the way down throat and back

0800 Lost things
 -0800.1 Recently lost
    –0800.23 Mittens
       —0800.231 Mittens placed on walls, railings and gates by helpful passers-by
    –0800.24 Stuffed bears, dogs and bunnies
       —0800.241 Those that are found again, to great joy
       —0800.242 Those that are not
          —-0800.2422 Those that are lost in airports at the start of a long journey
       —0800.243 Those that might have been found again, or might have been replaced by a duplicate, you are never quite sure
    –0800.25 Things that you know you put down just a moment ago
       —0800.251 Items that are in fact still on your person somewhere and obvious to a hypothetical bystander
       —0800.252 Items which you need to find to be able to find them
          —-0800.2521 Glasses
          —-0800.2522 Cups of coffee
 -0800.2 Long lost
    –0800.21 The subject of intense nostalgia
       —0800.211 Things for which the nostalgia does not align with the original reality
       —0800.212 The subject of sepia-tinted documentaries
    –0800.27 Things after the death of the last person who remembers them directly
    –0800.28 Things after the death of the last person who has heard the truth of them
    –0800.29 Things that have passed even out of story and rumour
 -0800.3 Things that are not lost, but know perfectly well where they are
    –0800.31 Things that are hiding
    –0800.32 Things that are mistaken about their location
       —0800.323 Confident walkers in mazes
 -0800.4 Things under sofa cushions
    –0800.41 Remote controls, keys and pens
    –0800.42 Food, dust and buttons
    –0800.43 Other sundry items
    –0800.44 Things that have passed into the main body of the sofa
       —0800.444 Things that are so valuable they require the dismantling of the sofa to retrieve
 -0800.5 That are the subject of humorous asides
    –0800.51 Marbles
       —0800.511 Literal marbles
    –0800.52 Virginity
       —0800.523 May or may not be lost, depending on whether a specific act counts or not
 -0800.6 Appetites, desires and dreams
 -0800.7 Cities, civilisations, treasure, ships, aeroplanes, etc.
    –0800.72 That in fact never existed in the first place
    –0800.73 Rumoured location is covered in dense jungle
    –0800.74 Rumoured location is under the sea
 -0800.8 Memories
    –0800.81 Of which only a ghost remains
       —0800.811 Memories that itch maddeningly at your thoughts when you smell a particular smell
       —0800.812 Things that you know you once knew
       —0800.813 Things that other people know you once knew

Thingies, chachachoogoos, bobbits, thingumwatsits, westworps, crappium dioxide, doodahs, nappitywitchas, blackbird babs, naraloos, blop, stuff bits, big dust, detritus, lost elephants, snorgums, watchumbangas, gadingas, bin fugitives, bumbarras, sivdongs, house bibblers, manifestations, megaquarks, thicketywatchas, gorp ongs, crumbly possessionum, mixed media hail, skakoogahs, level zero items, plorp, itomium, norgits, ultragrorp, aggregations of the absurd, refined stuffium, rattlers, glorbals, rampaging thing colonies, blurpblurp, smingonka, stuff.

1. The Western Thnorbilla. A bird of highly distinctive appearance that has developed a symbiotic relationship with humans. The Western Thnorbilla is covered with stiff, spiky white feathers that resemble spines - indeed, bird experts have speculated that further evolution in that general direction would lead to a kind of bird-porcupine thing. When in camouflage mode, the Thnorbilla extends and locks together its long legs so that they resemble a handle, the whole bird thereby somewhat resembling a toilet brush. The Thnorbilla then infiltrates a human house. If it finds a toilet brush of suitable design, it drags it to a local bin and tosses it. Then it occupies the vacant brush holder, drinking from the toilet and venturing into the kitchen at night to raid the fridge. As most Thnorbilla hosts are unaware of their visitors, it is difficult to get an estimate of population. However, recent high-resolution footage of the bird’s brush-chucking antics is thought to have been obtained and is scheduled for a future BBC bird documentary with David Attenborough. Scientists thereby hope that more people may be inspired to check for Thnorbillas so a proper census of this unusual species can be obtained.

2. The Giant Splapbird. This bird, thought to be one of the largest that has ever lived, is surprisingly hard to spot. The Giant Splapbird roosts on tiled roofs, where it has evolved a sophisticated camouflage; each feather resembles a roof tile, and its large round beak can be easily mistaken for a chimney pot. Provided it chooses the right roofs, and provided people rarely look up, the Giant Splapbird can evade detection for a lifetime. We are unsure what it eats and do not wish to find out.

3. Cadden’s Warbler. Can you hear a noise, right now, that sounds a little like a dripping tap? Just on the edge of hearing? Are you sure? Listen really carefully. You think that might be it? Annoying, isn’t it. That’s the Cadden’s Warbler. You probably have two to three hundred living in the pipes and drains of your house and they will. not. shut. up. Should you be unfortunate enough to have an infestation so severe that you actually start to see them flying around, you may note that they are small grey birds about the size of bees. Due to their habitat, they are continually a bit damp and dirty and you may want to discourage them from perching on things. A really dense swarm of Cadden’s Warblers looks a bit like the sort of static that one used to see on old-timey televisions and might be a good reason to leave the country.

1. There was once a giant who lived in a tower by the sea. Life was not easy for giants in those days and she had lived alone a long, long time. One morning she woke from a vivid dream, full of whisperings and fumblings and gasping cries, to find the roof of the tower had split in the night, and the room full of wet birds fighting and jostling at the windows and shitting on the bed. It seemed she had been taking her pleasure to the gulls’ clumsy wingtips and to the suggestively susurrating sea. In frustration, she took off her clitoris and rolled up all its tendrils until all that was left was a smooth, round pebble. She went out to the beach, where a light drizzle was falling, put it down among the million other clay-coloured pebbles on the sea-wet foreshore and stepped away; and when she was certain that it was not findable again, she went back to the tower, pulled a tarpaulin from the cupboard, and went back to sleep under it.

2. I do not know what became of the pebble or the giant, but fifteen years later only the tower’s ruined stump and the rumour of what had happened remained. There were three lovers who had heard the rumour, and they travelled to the beach and made a bonfire in the ruins. That night, when they had drunk a good amount of whisky, they took three pebbles from the beach and gave them to each other as a pledge of love (for they had also been reading about the love-gifts of Adelie penguins).

3. In later years, the lovers were forced by circumstance to live on different continents. They wrote each other thyme-scented letters and spent larger proportions of their hours flying and moping than they would have believed ideal. One of the thyme-scented letters was lost in the post, causing a minor romantic bust-up. They did not know it, but the lost letter had slipped out from a broken crate at the airport and was blown by a force 10 gale over the wet, flat fields all the way to the sea, where it sank and was used as an unusual-smelling breeding site by starfish.  

4. An old man gathered the baby starfish up and sold them in a round fishbowl to a woman who collected stars. In her dark and glittering house, the starfish grew and grew, eventually ending up in a black-painted tank that had once been a bath. Once a year, on the longest night, the woman would wheel her chair into the bathroom and sing songs to the starfish about how their life would be when they returned to the stars (for she seemed to be under the impression that that was where they were from).

5. There was a widow who lived in the same town, and every day on the way to work she went past the house of the woman who loved stars and peered through its shrouded windows. She thought that she was in love with the star-woman (though this was debatable, as they had not even met). She thought that she would like to keep the star-woman in her house and feed her glittering broths. She thought sometimes that she would like to rescue the star-woman from her house after a fire and tend to her wounds and comfort her gasping pain; and sometimes she thought of causing the gasping pain in the first place. But the star-woman did not take lovers. So the widow instead drew a picture that represented in her feelings in perfect and pure and unchallengeable geometry, and she felt much happier once she had managed to abstract them from the messy and unsuccessful human level. Then she had the picture tattooed on her back.  

6. The picture was published in a magazine and became famous. Indeed, the widow soon found herself not short of would-be lovers wishing to touch it, and even entertained a brief but disastrous tryst with the star-woman herself, who was a great reader of magazines. After her death, some of her younger lovers sneaked into the funeral home and stole the tattoo, which they had made into the cover of a fat book of blank paper. It seemed that some curse hovered over the book, or something of that sort, for no-one could ever bring themselves to  write in it. Eventually a rumour arose that it was already written in, if only one could find the way to reveal the words, and a community of esoteric scholars grew up around it.  

7. The scholars met every year by the sea; they did not have the book itself (only a few had ever seen it) and so, in an effort to understand it, they took it in turns to draw the book’s cover on their own skin. And sometimes this was done in great seriousness in well-lit lecture halls; and sometimes this was done beside bonfires on the beach at night, with the air thick with pot-smoke and the pebbles sticky with kicked-over margaritas. And had the mystery they were investigating existed, I think the second set of methods would have come closer to understanding it.

8. One year, without knowing it, they met on the giant’s beach; but by then the tower was long gone and only the clay-coloured pebbles remained.

9080 Trains
-9080.1 Diesel
-9080.2 Electric
   –9080.25 Toy trains
-9080.3 Steam
   –9080.12 Quaint ye-olde steam trains
       —9080.122 Used primarily to visit Santas with dodgy beards
   –9080.13 Actual working steam trains in places that still do that kind of thing
-9080.4 Nuclear-powered
   –9080.42 Runs through secret tunnels between bunkers in the event of a global emergency
   –9080.44 Train will explode when passing through $city unless stopped by action hero
-9080.5 Solar-powered
   –9080.52 For which inclement weather is a valid excuse for service cancellation
   –9080.55 Still running when there is nothing left on the Earth’s surface but rails and dirt and sunlight
-9080.6 Other tangible power source
   –9080.61 Powered by LNG
   –9080.62 Powered by any old burnable junk that can be stuffed in the furnace
   –9080.64 Handcarts
   –9080.65 Powered by people putting their legs through holes in the carriages and running really fast
   –9080.66 Not powered but can at a pinch be pushed by another train
   –9080.67 Trains that are on boats
-9080.7 Powered by magic
   –9080.71 But still looks like quaint ye-olde steam train
-9080.8 Powered by thought
   –9080.81 Space train pods on the magic woo quantum rails of the Future
   –9080.88 Trains of thought
-9080.9 Trains of paranormal origin
   –9080.91 Ghost underground trains
      —9080.912 Of a mysterious silver colour
      —9080.913 Crammed to the gills with deceased commuters
      —9080.914 Still used by live commuters, who have not noticed
   –9080.92 Zombie trains
      —9080.921 Trains whose parts will rise up from junkyards all over the world when the zombie train apocalypse comes

Sanderson’s Surprise Organ
Devised for the jaded, sensation-seeking musical palates of the twenty-second century, Sanderson’s Surprise Organ resembles a standard, if over-ornate, pipe organ in nearly all respects. The organist is never informed beforehand if it is Sanderson’s instrument they are to play; its location is kept a closely-guarded secret and audiences are secretively prearranged. Charlotte Sanderson (later Dame Charlotte), the organ’s manufacturer, was a well-known sadist and Bach enthusiast. As well as the organ’s more usual features, she included a number of hidden functions, including: a hidden hammer which pops out and hits the organist on the knee; a pipe delivering a blast of cold water to the genital region; a retractable seat; a fire ant dispenser; and a compartment which can swing open to release a small and excitable dog. There exist a number of so-called ‘Sanderson scores’ wherein a second performer can operate the extra features from a safe distance at given points in the piece, to the amusement and delight of the audience. The rare organists who have survived a bout with Sanderson’s Organ to finish the piece originally started have won considerable fame and fortune, and are known collectively as the Sanderson Club. Their annual dinner, held at the floating gardens in New York, is a major press event.  

The New Earth Victorian Choir
Founded on the Venusian colony New Earth in 3830, the Victorian Choir consisted entirely of clones of Queen Victoria. This unusual situation came about after it was discovered that the colony’s vat birth centre director, having obtained a lock of Victoria’s hair and certain dreams and obsessions, had seeded the entirety of three years’ female clone stock with Victoria’s genes. The colony took the unusual step of supplying musical therapy to the little Victorias en masse, whereupon it turned out that they shared a fondness for singing in public. In later years, they formed a choir which was one of the foremost proponents of neo-Venusian soft punk, and undertook a solar system-wide tour which included the first live performance in Tokyo since the Great Sinking.

457XB Junker
For a small extra fee, prospectors seeking to scrap a solar-class or smaller size spaceship in the late 6700s can crash it into the geoengineered asteroid 457XB Junker, which lies in the second asteroid belt of HD 189733 A. The resulting sounds (consisting of various explosions as well as the highly resonant response of the asteroid’s surface) are beamed out into space via a powerful systemwide livelink and can be picked up by all sentient beings in the vicinity. Fans of the asteroid’s output usually make the tour out to listen and watch simultaneously in one of several nearby hotel space stations. Interestingly, in 6755 one of these space stations itself crashed into 457XB Junker, permanently damaging the surface but producing (according to aficionados of that sort of thing) the most amazing sound in the history of the Universe.

The Subliminal Noise Ensemble
The subliminal noise ensemble is a long-term project attributable to certain members of the global illuminati, needing (as it does) unparallelled access to global advertising and content creation and sophisticated location projection software to pull off.  The first performance (unknown to the participants) was scheduled for January 21st, 2440. For some three hundred years before that point, the ensemble’s secretive directors had been placing subliminal hints in various media sources aimed at the participants and their ancestors, with the aim of bringing together exactly the right people at the right time. In the last few years before the performance, the focus switched from ancestry and location to speech and sounds, with the aim of planting phrases, noises and exclamations of various sorts in the minds of the ensemble. On the day itself, the members of the ensemble fund themselves unconsciously drawn to central Almaty, where for thirty minutes, quite unaware, they made a series of utterances exquisitely timed and tuned to each other, which (to the audience of thirty listeners) represented the sublime culmination of centuries of work. Then they went home, with a vague sense that something important had happened, though they could not quite say what, and lived the rest of their lives under only the normal sort of subliminal influences. After this time, it is believed that the work of the subliminal noise ensemble continued with a focus on further performances, but with greater secrecy (perhaps due to a wider focus or more sophisticated methods?).

1. This river flowed from the mountains to the sea sometime during the Cretaceous; I am not sure which sea and which mountains, for things were different then. It was a major thoroughfare for the little dinosaurs who lived in and around it. There are those who say that the histories of the dinosaurs are out there waiting to be discovered; fossil footmarks in sand noting which dinosaur sold what to which other dinosaur, who pissed against which tree, and so forth. If so, and if only we could read them, the river would feature prominently. But I think that they do not exist, and there was no-one else there to remember it,

2. There was an old kingdom, and the ruling family had acquired many enemies. Fortunately, they had a large dungeon, and the large dungeon was full of their many enemies. One day, the river that fed the castle moat rose up beyond its accustomed high water point and swept away a chunk of the dungeon wall; whereupon the enemies took it upon themselves to float off into the torrent on rafts improvised from the broken remains of torture equipment. The ruling family, having no other target for its ire, settled on the river. It was subjected to a kind of Damnatio Memoriae. An army of scholars spent months excising references to it from the royal libraries, and an army of serfs worked to divert its sources. Eventually there was a famine and an uprising led by the escaped enemies, and the people sat around bonfires fed with the censored books, and everyone had more important things on their mind than rivers. And so it was that the enforced forgetting, surprisingly, stuck.

3. There was a little stream that wound around a housing estate, between a boggy stretch of hillside and a boating lake. It was the sort of feature that people know about but don’t think to record. Nobody came to map it, and nobody had a name for it. It was not very interesting, except to the frogs. Eventually, they came to expand the housing estate. Someone put in an anonymous pipe to carry the water, and it was paved over. The frogs moved out (the ones who migrated up the hillside were notably more successful than those who headed into town). The stream was forgotten.

4. There were three hundred little rivers in the delta. For a while there was a city there, a kind of proto-Venice in which the delta’s rivers became streets, and little assignations and petty infamies were committed in this river as in the others, and the city’s ruins sank into the mud here as elsewhere when its short time was over. For a while stories were told of these streets even as they rotted away. But one of the other river-streets had had a mysterious floating body whose clothes were those of a man from the far North; and another had a barge full of monkeys which was the result of an unwise bet by the bezoar-seller; and in another the queen of the city dropped a famous pearl and promised the ownership of a cursed tower to whoever might retrieve it. So it was the other rivers that were remembered and that went into the scanty histories of the time, even as the silt of the delta shifted and the river itself went away.

5. It was a slow and stagnant river, and had the most amazing fauna; such suckers, so many legs, so many body segments! Everyone who passed the river took a good long look at it and decided that, on balance, they would prefer not to remember it.

Thnorbs, teleporter kidney, style tuberculosis, space breath, brain flinders, clone-donor mismatch, London virus, Jebediah’s buttock, miniraptor bite, shrinking word syndrome, virtual herpes, mimetic fixation, VR rattle syndrome, cybersex knee, juve boils, the jurragees, duplicate spleen.

1. There was once a fishwife’s daughter who ran away to sea to lean metalsmithing (why it needed to be at sea is anyone’s guess). In her seafaring days, she sailed over at least three of the lost enchanted oceans and made a number of magical swords to use in exploring the sort of shipwrecks one finds there. On her forty-fifth birthday she was forced to return to land by the sudden eruption of a salt allergy. She determined to enter the third magical sword (which was the least rusty of the bunch) into the royal sword contest. But, on arriving at the contest, she found that entrants were required by law to be members of the King’s Brotherhood of Swordsmiths; an organisation which she was ineligible for election to in several ways. In a fit of temper, she threw the third sword into a thicket and stomped off home to start a carpentry business (which, alas, she was terrible at).

2. There was a youngest son who was just passing by on his way to find his fortune. Since he was still rather lacking in fortune he had been thrown out of the stables at the back of the nearest inn and ended up spending the night in a very uncomfortable thicket. In the morning, he found that many of his troubles had been caused by lying on the flat of a rather unusual-looking sword. He took up the weapon and was fortunate enough to blunder into a pack of dragons on a working brunch. Arriving at the city with seven dragon tails and a red and buzzing sword, he was soon adopted as the King’s champion. He spent a number of fruitful years amassing lost hoards, making babies, and trying to persuade the sword not to eat his friends (it had, alas, got a taste for blood after all those dragons). Stories of his fame spread far and wide.  

3. There was a thin blue dragon who had survived the massacre; he did so by hiding in a tree. In fact, he was so terrified that he stayed in the tree for fifteen years, living on squirrels and sunlight and rain and occasionally drenching the rabbit warren below with lukewarm dragon piss. After fifteen years, the tree had grown round the dragon and he could no longer leave. He found this somewhat bothersome, as did the rabbits. Now, blue dragons can sometimes worm their way between worlds, if given enough time to find the weak spots in the space-time continuum; and this dragon set to chipping out a window into a world that did not have a tree in that place. If took him another fifteen years, but finally the window was large enough for him to slither through. However, by this time the rabbits had banded together and found a champion of their own, who had set up camp on a tree branch and had been nibbling at the dragon’s neck scales for a few weeks. On the evening the dragon was due to wriggle free, the rabbit champion at last prised a scale loose and put a sharpened stick thorough the dragon’s jugular.

4. There was a teenage girl who lived nearby, and who was shunned by many of the villagers for her mildly eccentric views. One day, whilst out walking, she found a tree that was surrounded by the most amazing blue flowers. And then to look up, and see the tree crowned with fantastical bones! There was nothing to do but climb it. And if she came down from the tree into a different world from the one she went up from, well: there was nothing very much to miss in the first world anyway. And how well it had equipped her to live in the second world! For all their myriad fantastical quantities, the inhabitants of the second world were a little silly, and curiously easily won over with a small amount of basic science and occasional acts of compassion. Soon she found herself saving the king of the second world, who was in disguise following a republican coup led by some cranky goblins.

5. The goblins were most put out to realise that the king was not dead after all, and did not put up much of a fight. When it became clear that the forces of light were about to triumph, they called together all their elven servants and set them free with directions for the safest way to leave the kingdom and individual bags of golden fixtures and fittings from the palace bathrooms. Furthermore, they requested, if the elves could see their way to calling in on some of the republican movement’s chief donors and asking them for some aid, it would be very much appreciated. As it ended up, only one of the elves got that far, and the donor was of very little help; but, being schooled in magic, she was able to suggest a location a few worlds away where a hero or two might be found to stir things up in the kingdom a little.

6. The elf came finally to the house of a young boy who had been living a rather dull life with unremarkable parents. Since elves are terrible navigators, he did not realise that he was at the wrong address and informed the boy that he was the Chosen One who was needed to save a distant and magical land. Fortunately, the directions he gave the boy were typically terrible and the boy ended up in the wrong distant and magical land. Although this land also needed saving, the task of saving it could be done by just about anyone; in fact, it was more like a road trip than an adventure. So the boy did as well as any other child might have done, and he was certainly very good at believing he was Chosen. As a reward, he was given three castles in the fairy hinterlands and a host of humorous magical servants.

7. Later on, the elf (who had decided he liked the mortal world and was reluctant to go home) was arrested for driving the wrong way down the M1 and developed an alarming beard whilst in police custody. After a series of increasingly frustrating interviews, he was charged with storytelling and sentenced to shut up.

0089 Stones
 -0089.1 Extremely large
    –0089.12 Planets that are rocks
    –0089.15 Asteroids
 -0089.2 Around the size of a librarian
    –0089.21 Statues
       —0089.211 Extremely serious statues
       —0089.212 Statues having one or more legs in the air
       —0089.215 Angels
       —0089.216 Ancient statues so enclosed in guano that they have been mistaken for mounds
    –0089.22 Funerary monuments
       —0089.222 Resembling a tooth or claw
       —0089.225 Rigged by enterprising funeral directors so as to topple when the liklihood of causing another funeral is highest
 -0089.3 The size of a fist or slightly larger
    –0089.31 Stone apples, stone pears and other fruit of petrified trees
    –0089.33 Stones found in cairns
    –0089.34 Can be used to stun a burglar
       —0089.343 Have been used to stun a burglar
 -0089.3 Pebbles
    –0089.33 Pebbles balanced in towers
    –0089.34 Pebbles having words on, the words together making up a story now long lost to entropy
    –0089.39 Forgotten pebbles of myth and legend
       —0089.383 The pebble needle of Dogger Bank
       —0089.387 The seven stone hearts of the deathless dogs
       —0089.398 The stone giant’s lost clitoris
 -0089.4 Gravel and scree
    –0089.41 Stones found in the shoe
       —0089.414 Stones which, once removed from the shoe, find their way back in again
       —0089.415 Stones which are part of the shoe and should not be removed
 -0089.5 Resembling dust
    –0089.55 Space dust
 -0089.6 Stones of which the size is unknown
 -0089.7 Stones of which the size is unknowable

A Midnight Lunch of Antarctic Light for Hope In the Cold Winter Months
~Starter~
The murky light of eternal dusk that follows the last sunset of the Antarctic Winter, seen though a gathering snowstorm. To be served with the smell of fresh metal and lubricant, and the long slow creaking of things settling into ice.
~Main~
A selection of dim electric lights against the dark; reflected screen-light with the brightness turned down; flickering fluorescent tubes; CFL-light in the first few moments of warming up. To be served with the smell of hot dust and a low buzzing. Drinkers may request an ice core segment to suck on.
~Dessert~
The first silver, red or gold of the sun creeping over the horizon after the Antarctic Winter.  To be served with ice-cold, fishy air from the penguin colonies at Halley, and silence.

A Light Lunch for Those Who Have Made It
~Starter~
A selection of finely synchronised paparazzi camera-flashes, served with the sound of torrential rain and the smell of charred grass.
~Main~
Brittle beauty with a harshness behind it; an expertly blended mix of warm red-toned footlights taken from a gentle play starring a well-known comedian and searchlights seen through barbed wire. To be served with the smell of unusually greasy greasepaint and an uneasy silence.
~Dessert~
Midday Los Angeles sunlight, filtered through exhaust-laden air and a pair of closed red curtains. To be served with the smell of spilled gin and bleach, snoring, and the sound of a distant hoover.

A Light Feast
~Starters~
Rose-gold dawn light captured from the flank of K2 after a night spent unexpectedly at altitude. To be served with the song of larks and a blast of icy air that freezes the nostril hairs.
To be followed by:
Two minutes of the dull brownish light that precedes an enormous hailstorm. To be served with the sound of a dripping tap.
~To cleanse the palate~
Five minutes of dappled sunlight from the floor of a Norwegian pine forest. To be served with the smell of warm pine needles, peppercorns and green mango, and the gentle soughing of a light wind through thousands of trees.
~Main~
The syrupy light of an American afternoon over a huge cornfield. To be served with the smell of bruised cherries and warm leather, and the sound of drowsy bees.
~To cleanse the palate~
Five minutes of moonlight, filtered through the air of a cold, clear winter’s night; to be served with the smell of oncoming snow showers.
~Dessert~
Fifteen minutes of neon light, freshly harvested from the streets of Tokyo after dark. To be served with the smell of sugar doughnuts.

1. Horse Well, New Mexico. Always good to begin a trip out in the wild a little. Do look after that horse, by the way. I’m rather fond of her. When you’re done sightseeing (I hear there are some interesting caves neaby?), get on I-25 N in San Miguel County from NM-137 N, US-285 N and US-84 W. Continue to Lockwood, then take exit 452 from I-90 W. You did feed the horse, didn’t you? I forgot to say - this is a trip of just over three days by car if you don’t stop, so it may be a while on horseback. Get onto I-15 N/US-89 N in Cascade County from MT-3 N, US-191 N and US-87 N and carry on until MT-44 W/Valier Hwy in Pondera County. Take exit 348 from I-15 N. Carry on along MT-44 to US-2 W, in…

2. Hungry Horse, Montana. Very scenic around here, isn’t it? Also, you should be able to get some food for that horse. Now take US-2, State Hwy 464 and AB-2 N to AB-20 N in Red Deer County, Canada, continuing to AB-22. There take AB-43 N and Alaska Ave until you reach…

3. Whitehorse, Yukon. Taken a turn for the chilly, I think you’ll find. You do know that horse wasn’t that colour when you got it, right? That’s snow. I don’t think the horse likes it. You should maybe brush it off. When you’re ready to go, get back on Alaska Hwy/YT-2 N/Yukon 1 W, taking AK-2 W to AK-11 N/N Slope Haul Rd in Livengood, United States. Follow AK-11 N/N Slope Haul Rd until you run out of land, at which point you will be in:

4. Deadhorse, Alaska. What did I tell you about looking after that horse? I hope you have some alternative method of getting home.

1. One Sunday, an old woman discovered a hole in a book. The hole was about the size of a fist and of unknown depth; it was accessible only from page 265, and there was no sign of it at all on page 266. The sides were rough with something like dirt or rust. The woman, who had no particular remaining responsibilities, determined to set off on an expedition to explore the hole; the only problem being that it was too small. So she set off to the print shop to photocopy the page and get the hole enlarged to a size she could crawl into.

2. On the way to the print shop, she dropped a packet of pins which she had been intending to take into the book (for she knew that there was often an unmet need for pins on adventures). The pins fell into the road, and were run over by the number three bus. The bus continued for three miles with a packet of pins spinning round on one of its tyres; and then it suffered a loud and spectacular puncture. The bus driver stepped off the bus, tripped on a pin and broke his jaw in three places on a passing brick.

3. The bus driver spent three months with his jaw wired up, drinking chicken soup and watching the most peculiar daytime soap operas. But when he came to open his mouth again, the bus driver found that he could say nothing but “Well.” With the help of a large PPI settlement which he had been encouraged to apply for through subliminal messaging hidden in ‘The Lonely and Desperate’, he hired the finest speech therapist in twelve countries to help him.

4. After seven weeks of intense therapy, the speech therapist managed to draw forth six other words, including 'January’, 'and’ and 'banana’. He decided to write a paper on the case, which he intended to present some months later at a conference in Cairo. However, he was in the end unable to speak at the conference as he had accidentally stuck himself to the bed in the conference hotel room with marmalade.

5. With the help of three phone calls, the speech therapist managed to detach himself in time to take the boat home. However, he found that he had left his foot behind, which was a surprise, as it had not previously been detachable. Fortunately, he had given the hotel his home address. When they found the foot, they were able to post it to him. In fact, because they sent it by airmail, it arrived home somewhat before he did. By this time, he had obtained a fine prosthetic in the port of Rotterdam and was only interested in the foot for sentimental value.

6. Later in life, when short on money, he took the foot to an alien pawnbroker. The pawnbroker paid him fifteen perfect spheres for it. He found, however, that the spheres bothered him; and nobody seemed willing to convert them into cash. So he took them to the Department of Things at the local university, where an archivist offered to assess them for admission into the Permanent Collection.

7. The archivist determined that the spheres were of no interest, as they could not be put into any of the current categorisations. She put them in the bin at the back of the department, where a dumpster-diving chemist took them home and used them to play something a bit like giant snooker-chess-tiddlywinks with the children in her back garden. Interestingly, the archivist later invented the number nine, for which she was awarded a small medal.

8. Seventy years later, the chemist died of a misremembered appendix. The children took the spheres out of the attic, but could not remember the rules of the game; instead, they brought them to family reunions and placed them on the table, where they sat, dully gleaming, amongst pints of stout at the eldest’s wake, and amongst glasses of champagne on the occasion of the youngest refusing a knighthood.

9. The middle child, who had never had occasion to summon her siblings to drinks and spheres, had a habit of stretching in the garden after breakfast. One day she stretched a little too far to the right and accidentally slapped a passing time traveller in the face. The time traveller was irate but, not wishing to interfere with human timelines, contented herself with transporting the middle child’s shed two hundred years into the past. Thereafter, no shed built in that garden would remain temporally stable, and the middle child had to keep her lawnmower in the garage.

10. There were once three second-hand booksellers who found some sheds in the woods near their home, where they lived with an irascible cat. It so happened that, the evening before, the cat had shredded a first edition of Shakespeare’s Laundry Poetry. As a consequence the booksellers were feeling particularly angry. They took it in turns to punch the sheds. which helped a little. Then (seeking a cat-proof storage solution) they took the sheds home and filled them with books. But for ever after, the books they sold were a little peculiar. This did not go down well with the punters and eventually the booksellers were forced to liquidate their remaining stock and go into haberdashery instead. One of the books was sold to an old woman…

We, the undersigned, having experienced the ebb and flow of life, believe that the architectural disciplines have for too long set store in a notion of permanence that is at best optimistic, and at worst harmful. We therefore humbly therefore present six proposals for a more transient architecture.

1. We propose a tower whose structure is partially supported by a colonnade around the perimeter; the columns themselves being discontinuous, with a gap of perhaps a metre and a half between the base and a suitably-cushioned upper portion. As built, the tower is unstable; to continue to exist without developing the most alarming cracks, each pillar must be supported by willing human volunteers, rather like live caryatids. The inhabitants of the building take it in turns to hold their home up; they are as a consequence always aware of their existence depending on the hard work of others.
As a variation, the inhabitants of the building do not provide the support themselves, but rather donate into a pot of money which anyone may win by participating in a kind of complicated tombola. The queue for the tombola winds round and supports the colonnade, holding up the building. Should the queue become short enough that part of the building is unsupported, the residents must donate more money in the hope of increasing demand. Residence in the building is a kind of status symbol, being representative of unlimited wealth.

2. A city that is made of a regular grid structure of open cubes, three metres on a side and ten cubes high, the struts of the grid being composed of some anonymous metal with plenty of attachment points. Residents may rent any given set of cubes for a period of a month only, and bring their own walls and furniture. The existence of continuous roads is a matter of common agreement and their straightness a measure of the amount of social cohesion in the city at any given time.    

3. We consider buildings these days to be maintained by a perpetual input of energy, though that energy is invisible; heating and electricity and somesuch. Therefore we propose to make the implicit explicit in the form of a perpetual motion tower, rather like an inhabited fairground ride. The tower resembles a spinning mushroom. The rate of spin we choose after careful experiments in what can be tolerated by its inhabitants, who are astronauts, athletes and the like who may benefit somehow from the constant centrifugal forces. They live rent-free and suffer the constant admiration of those who live underneath. The centrifugal forces are also necessary to keep the building together. If it were to stop, it would disintegrate. There is a substantial generator facility to guard against power cuts.

4. Observing ancient cities whose new buildings are built with the thousand-year remnants of the old, we propose a more dynamic variant. A city is built on a vast silty plain, criss-crossed with slow rivers. Initially, its honey-coloured stone is quarried from a great cliff at the edge of the plain. Once the city is well-established, a line is drawn at the base of the cliff. Every year, the line is moved ten metres further out from the cliff edge. All buildings that fall behind the line must be demolished. The stone is passed to masons, who may use it for building anew on the other side of the city - unless the city, in its slow march across the plain, has encountered a river, in which case the stone is used for building bridges. The city thus spends its years in constant metamorphosis. How changed it must be when, thousands of years hence, it reaches the sea! And will it be willing then to drown?

5. We conceive of an apartment building in the form of a great wheel or machine. Every few days, we approach the iron gears at the building’s core and give them some number of cranks. The apartments move on well-oiled tracks; here, there and everywhere. And the doors are unmarked! What chaos, then, when the residents come home from work and have to find their home once again. Who has left their door open, which key fits which lock, and whose couch to sleep on or bed to share if the correct apartment cannot be found before nightfall? And who has ended up as the penthouse, and who as the damp basement? Let us not dwell on those who were in the corridors and stairwells when the gears turned. No good will come of that.

6. Having come to terms with death, we choose to view time as a dimension in which we happen to be occupying a given location, rather than a march to an inevitable end. Our dispassionate wish then is that when we happen to occupy the furthest-along point in our time domain it have a good view and the makings of an interesting tale. And we are fortunate in that Nature is generous with spectacle! Thus we court transience in geography. We build only on the most exciting fault lines, the most piquantly tottering volcanic stacks. Nothing infuriates us like a solid foundation. Our apses span chasms, our arcades are founded on quicksand and timid masons gape at our tottering cloisters. Our fondest wish is that future generations find nothing of us in dry bones and pottery shards, nothing in tablets, no anklets, no urns and no stale mercantile notes, nothing, nothing, nothing but a raging torrent of myth and story and spectacle.

(there are no signatures)

1. Hopkin’s Worm (note: this is a misclassification as Hopkin’s Worm is now thought to be an unusual crustacean). A rare example of a bellybutton-based parasite. The young of this creature resemble short, dark threads and often infest cotton-based clothing. Once it has made its way to the bellybutton, Hopkin’s Worm loses the ability to crawl and becomes entirely reliant on its host, living off the lint it gleans from the host’s clothing. Hopkin’s Worm’s hosts therefore often seem to have unusually clean bellybuttons. Interestingly, Hopkin’s Worm has no excretory facilities, instead becoming significantly larger throughout its lifespan; however, this growth is usually mistaken for middle-aged spread by the host.

2. Annifaners. These barely-visible mites live in the human ear, where they live on, in and protected by earwax. Their presence is almost undetectable by the host; however, annifaner mating is known to make a quiet rustling noise, a little like the sound of the sea far off. Since they primarily mate at night, annifaner hosts are more likely than most humans to dream of the ocean.

3. The Hammerian Hat. There is in fact only one known Hammerian Hat in existence, and it seems likely that it is the last of its kind. The Hammerian Hat in its dormant form resembles a simple cotton skullcap. If worn for any length of time (particularly if slept in) it will attempt to fuse to its host, consuming their hair and in turn growing its own pseudo-hair, as well as a set of roots with which it connects to the host’s circulatory system. The host merely notices that the hat has disappeared and that they are having a very bad hair day. The only known specimen disappeared from a research lab in the early 1920s, so it may be that the Hammerian Hat is now entirely extinct.

4. Gorlocks. These small parasitic shadows do not eat, excrete or reproduce; it is thought, in fact, that the Gorlock population on Earth has remained stable since at least the time of the dinosaurs. Their original origin is not known. They attach themselves to host entities purely to get protection from direct sunlight, which they dislike. As they overlap the host’s original shadow, Gorlocks are almost undetectable unless the host is in bright non-directional light, at which point they will attempt to hide. Gorlocks usually attach to trees but can occasionally be found on humans.

5. The Worcestershire Farter. This creature typically masquerades as someone known to the host, appearing at the door as if for a social visit with a sign requesting food and drink (typically offered with the excuse that the Farter has a very sore throat and cannot speak). Unbeknownst to the host, the Worcestershire Farter is in fact a highly-developed colony of single-celled organisms which is has taken on, chameleon-like, the appearance of a previous host. After it has been fed, the organisms produce prodigious amounts of gas through all available orifices; typically, by this point, the bodily facsimile is deteriorating and it may develop a few new orifices as well. During this phase, the Farter begins to take on the characteristics of the current host. By the time it has ejected itself from the host’s home (usually before the arrival of any ambulances) it has fully adopted the appearance of the host and typically stolen their phone or address book, ready to move on to the next host. The Worcestershire Farter can be deterred on initial presentation by asking it to remove its hat, since its clothes are part of it rather than separate garments.

6. Scumble-oybles. Small parasitic words which, once heard, stick in the back of the brain such that the host is never quite sure if they are a real word with a dictionary definition or merely a random collection of letters. Central to the Scumble-oyble survival strategy is the impression that, were they a real word, they would be such an usual and commonplace word that the host could feel justifiable embarrassment about looking them up.

Beazley Wazzock, Liz-of-the-lantern, Mr. Polite, Licketty Lurb, the Knight of the Purple Rose’s Thorn, Thousand year Alice, Fennelfur the Unclaimable, Teeth Jenkins, the Fellowship of Perpetual Energy, John Cutaneous, Thurnorpaldreddel, Jennifer Flycatcher, the Underfamiliars, McClintock’s Millions, the Snail-shell Haunts, Normal John, Suri No-Sleep, the Sisters of the Lightless Garden, Hedge Bugger.

1. So hot right now! Washemoops - that shade of greyish pink that white things go when washed with black and red things that are not quite colourfast. Pair a washemoops shirt with tracksuit bottoms and bed head for the authentic early 2016 look. 

2. We’re loving pilling on cardigans and sweaters right now.

3. Try rocking black socks with red soles for that ‘just walked on a bleachy floor’ look.

4. For the truly daring, try trousers with split seams at the groin. Guaranteed to make you friends on the underground!

5. Spilled tomato sauce on yourself and it didn’t quite wash out? Congratulations, you’ve stumbled on 2016′s hottest trend: splat chic.

1. The hats of your mortal enemies, turned inside-out and used as flowerpots.

2. A soft woolly hat that itches at the back of the head, to be put on after a night of no sleep, so that your head can feel the same on the inside and the outside. It has a bobble on top that is unsettlingly large.

3. A hat made of thoughts, woven together by master bullshitters, and containing only the finest notions; thoughts thought by Einstein and Newton; the thoughts of Beethoven prior to writing his ninth symphony; Austen’s thoughts as she put pen to paper for the first line of Pride and Prejudice. The hat is invisible. As thoughts cannot be absorbed through the skull, it has no effect whatsoever on the mental capacity of the wearer.

4. The hat that some aunt or uncle or someone threw up in, years ago, and from which the smell can never be quite erased; but you keep it anyway because it was expensive.

5. A shabby top hat, said to be from the Victorian era, which occasionally disgorges a set of silk scarves, a rabbit, an old watch, or a glove. Occasionally, in the dead of night, it has been known to spit out despairing messages written on old playbills; but these days the hat’s owner burns them without reading the contents.

6. Slightly-too-big hats that have never been worn, but that make great cat beds.

7. A hat consisting of a black headband with a number of telescopic stilts attached, on which can be mounted a large, off-colour lens through which the sun casts an unpleasant light. To be worn to the wedding of people one dislikes.

8. Sorry about the eighth hat. I won’t say anything if you don’t.