Listing to Port

1. January: The magnified echo of a goblin weeping in a distant sewage pipe.

2. February: The rustly harrumph emitted by a disgruntled book which has been placed in an inaccessible corner instead of being the book that you pull out to make the secret door open.

3. March: That noise that unicorns make when they migrate overhead to Pluto, from which they are not coming back.

4. April: The weary sigh of a bisexual Pantone executive deleting a surplus shade of purple from the database.

5. May: A kettle’s whistle.

6. June: The gentle hiss of a fart being released in a well-stacked lift.

7. July: The tap of feet in expensive shoes, waiting in a long queue for the knife sharpener.

8. August: The b of the bang of a starting gun.

9. September: The swift rustle of a signature being signed.

10. October: An endless clatter of keys, and the tapping of dust falling on the roof.

11. November: The sort of robust plop that a turd makes hitting water when there is going to be a lot of splashback.

12. December: The metallic shriek of an old filing cabinet slamming closed.

1. Trelephant leaves. The trelephant is a colder-climate relation of the elephant. In order to conserve energy it spends the winter sleeping on one leg, similarly to the lawn flamingo. This, combined with the barkiness of their skin, leads to trelephants often being misidentified as trees. To add to the confusion, many trelephants are obsessive leaf collectors who like to display their collections along their many tentacles. They usually drop these leaves during their winter sleep. Trelephant leaves can be identified by their catalogue numbers, usually marked on the underside next to the stem.

2. Sock-worms. The small, translucent ghost-forms of these worms lurk in winter mud waiting for walkers to come past. When they spot a nearby boot, they float up through the sole and summon their own sock-worm egg back through time at the point of hatching, fulfilling their spiritual destiny and allowing the ghost to dissipate. The newly-hatched worm lives in the sock, eating little holes and dreaming about woodlands, until it is washed or squished. At this point it forms a ghost again and migrates back to the woods, ready for the next walker.

3. The bungalows of the Little People. You may need a magnifying glass to spot these, depending on how little your local Little People are. It is generally considered a sign of bad luck to have trespassed in the realms of the Little People to such an extent that you have tracked them home on your boots. The Little People cannot do a great deal to harm you, but they can definitely make you itch in places it is hard to reach.

4. Nether boots. Often dismissed as the result of standing on a reflective surface, the attachment of nether boots to the underside of your feet is actually a deeply worrying occurrence. You should detach them immediately with a sharp trowel. Otherwise you may find yourself slowly flowing down through your bootsoles into a nether copy who only exists in mirrored surfaces. Eventually, you may end up stuck as a reflection without a person in some frozen lake somewhere.

5. Hole seeds. These are small, purple and elongated, a little like grains of rice. They can often be found in boot mud following lengthy digressions from the proper path. If planted, they will grow holes of various sizes; some are large enough to enter and may even be accessorized with staircases or ladders. We are unsure whether this is a good idea or not. Nobody who has entered them has ever come back, but that may be because they have found an awesome reason to stay wherever they ended up.

1. The Alexandrian Rook. We are unsure whether this beast was originally a book or a bird. It is believed to draw its origin from the sack of library of Alexandria; the first specimens being either burned and librarian-haunted books that nonetheless managed to escape, or crow-like birds who found themselves able to successfully hide in the book ash. These days they appear whilst roosting to be small books with all-black pages. When threatened with reading, they unfold themselves and fly off. However, over the years they have evolved exceptionally dull titles and as a result are rarely removed from the shelves.

2. The Gentlemen. Each library has its own unique code for summoning the Gentlemen. For example, one might take out and put back the third book on the bottom shelf nearest the door, the favourite book of the head librarian, and each book whose author begins with Z. Once summoned, the gentlemen (who are impeccably groomed) will enter the library. An extremely polite request will be made, usually of something the summoner cannot afford to lose. The summoner’s liver is a common example. The Gentlemen will wax lyrical about how happy this item will make them. Most people still manage to refuse, but are left with a vague but uncomfortable sense of having violated the social contract. No punishment is exacted. The Gentlemen may be heard to tut slightly as they leave.

3. The late fine. Initially animated by Doris of Sendai, the original pirate-witch-ninja, the late fine is a sentient pile of pieces of eight which has spent the past eighty years wandering the libraries of the world. It is believed to be looking for a library from which Doris once borrowed and neglected to return a book on practical cutlass use. Sadly the fees accruing to that withdrawal are now likely to exceed the value of the late fine. Being a rather timid beast which does not fancy a telling-off, we believe it may have ascertained the correct library many years ago and have been avoiding it ever since.

4. The Gudrunsen collection. In 1849, a small village in Northern Sweden was cursed into books by something that came out of a tree in a hollow. The books, which are attractively leather-bound, contain what appears to be an ever-evolving stream of consciousness from each resident. Some are aware that they are trapped in books, though most believe that they are dreaming. The Gudrunsen collection was held in a library funded by relatives of the books for nearly a hundred years, but was accidentally sold to a Finnish collector in the years following World War II. Its current whereabouts are unknown.

1. Tradition relates that there is a mountain in the Himalayas that is in fact a particularly large onion. This is difficult to discern from a distance as it is covered with a mixture of dirt and snow. Because of its remote location, it is largely ignored by local government authorities even though they have been aware of it for some time. However, a freak avalanche causing widespread weeping is a scenario that has been covered in disaster preparedness exercises by both China and India.

2. A little-known evolutionary meander followed the asteroid impact which wiped out the dinosaurs. A surviving group of pterosaurs, finding themselves devoid of joy on Earth’s post-apocalyptic surface, determined to backtrack down the phylogenetic tree with the hope of maybe ending up as seaweed. Not being genetic experts, they took a wrong turn in the ammonite region and ended up transforming themselves into aubergines. This is why the original aubergines were the size of pterosaurs. Modern-day aubergines are much smaller.

3. Although (contrary to the story of Cinderella) no large pumpkin has ever been used as a carriage, there did once exist a pumpkin which was used as a hovercraft. Problems seating the fan assembly led to the airflow being provided by an array of flatulent anacondas instead. The arrival of the pumpkin hovercraft was thus perpetually heralded by an unusual smell. Nobody would hire it as transport to their royal balls and as a result no further pumpkin hovercraft were ever made.

4. Interestingly, although the tomato is commonly thought to be a vegetable, it is actually a close relative of the sparrow. It gained its honorary vegetable status after a swap with the city of Cairo, which was briefly changed into an enormous vegetable during the reign of Saladin. Confusion over whether modern Cairo is technically a bird or technically a city has persisted in some of the more traditional dictionaries to this day.

5. The Himalia group of Jupiter’s moons are often considered to be the remnants of the break-up of a larger asteroid. In fact, they have similar orbits because they grew that way. They are our solar system’s only example of space lemons, a type of giant vegetable unusually common in the interstellar void but rather rarer in the vicinity of G-type stars. Space lemons, which root in dark matter and do not require sunlight, are edible and in fact delicious. Some alien species have embedded generation ships in them to take advantage of the abundant food supply.

1. That medium-sized tanker in a fetchingly sensible shade of silver. This is a shipment of very fine dream sand, as you would be able to discern if you could get close enough to read the hazard notice. I would not recommend getting quite that close, because if the tanker were to suffer a spillage everyone within a three-month radius would end up furiously sleeping for at least three months.

2. The small grey truck with a conspicuous ‘speed limiter installed’ sign. This is not actually a truck. It is two elephants on a specially-modified bicycle. You are only seeing it as a truck because that is what you expect a large grey object to be on a road of this size.

3. The large green truck with a stylised smiley face logo on it, heading West. This truck is full of spies. Literally full: they are stacked some seven deep in an ingenious spy stacking system which cannot be patented on account of being top secret. They are conservatively-dressed and have very serious faces, apart from the one at the bottom who is making fart jokes and being ignored.

4. That red shipping container, glimpsed briefly in traffic in the other lane. Contents: a slightly smaller red shipping container, containing a slightly smaller red shipping container, containing another, slightly smaller red shipping container, and so on. The source of so many shipping containers of non-standard dimensions is not obvious. In the smallest container is a miniature safe, locked, key nowhere in sight, emitting a furious buzzing noise.

5. The small orange shipping container, marked with a logo in a language you do not read. This is a shipment of fruit, primarily silver moon apples headed for the perilous realm, where they will form part of the fairy world’s seasonal fruit baskets. If you are offered one of these fruit baskets, do not accept it.

6. A small-size black and white horse carrier, no horse visible inside. This carrier was once used by one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, and as a result has become a place of pilgrimage for ghosts. At the moment it is being used to transport the ghosts of Arthur Sullivan and W. S. Gilbert. They have obtained some highly sought-after permits to spend the night haunting a theatre in which Hamilton is being performed, and are making their way there right now.

7. Half a house, as transported on a special truck for the carrying of large things. This is a witch-squashing house, as popularised by the film the Wizard of Oz. These days, they are usually remotely controlled; essentially, they are the drones of the mystical world. This one has been damaged by being dropped from a great height onto a particularly rocky coven. It is being sent for repair in Swindon.

Oh-godparents, agony aunts each specialising in the infliction of agony by different means, nefarious nephews, sinister stepsons lurking beneath missing steps, mothers but you are not sure whose, cousins by the evil dozens, great-great clock grandfathers sitting in the corner and ticking, nautiloid nieces, ex-half-step-siblings, second cousins who once removed always seem to come back again and spin their webs in a different corner each time, blood relations, brothers-in-mystical-but-not-in-human-law, aunts that aren’t, aunts that aren’t always but sometimes are, those who have retained nothing but the concept of zero, those relatives who happen when you go back in time and sleep with your youthful great-grandparent, hundredth cousins who are overjoyed to meet their long-lost relations how ARE you?, sons in glittery red rising only at the apocalypse, patrilateral ortho-whatnots, carbuncular unculars, relations to whom your links are describable only with the secretest algebra.

Q: What do you get if you cross Santa with a duck?
A: Never cross Santa. Santa has a long memory, deep and mysterious powers, and is pettily vindictive - witness his treatment of children who fail his behaviour test. He has copious free time in the non-Christmas period to pursue petty grudges. It doesn’t matter in what manner you cross him, you will regret it. Go ahead and cross ducks. If you cross a duck, it might quack at you. If you cross Santa, being shat on by a reindeer from 30000 feet will be the least of your troubles.

Q: What happened to the man who stole an advent calendar?
A: The police were uninterested in investigating such a minor crime, so he got away with it. As he consumed the remaining chocolates, he felt a deep sense of shame at what his life had come to.

Q. Why are Christmas trees bad at sewing?
A. Because they are trees.

Q. What do you call a cat in the desert?
A. Tiddles? Tiddles? Please come here, Tiddles. I didn’t mean to let you out. Oh god, that rattlesnake is not a toy.

Q. What does Santa do with misbehaving elves?
A. He fires them, leaving them without a job just before Christmas, which is the only time of year that elves can reliably get work. Many elves who are fired by Santa have to turn to crime to support their families. Never cross Santa.

Q. Who hides in the bakery at Christmas?
A. Interestingly, this is often where elves who have been fired end up. As soon as the staff go home for the night, they make off with the contents of the store cupboard, safe in the knowledge that the theft will not be discovered until after the holiday season.

Q. Why did the turkey cross the road?
A. The turkey lived on the opposite side of the road to a polling station where a referendum on Christmas was being held. Sadly, the turkey’s journey was wasted as only humans were eligible to cast ballots.

Q. How can tell if Santa has been in your shed?
A. Santa is often caught short on his rounds, but the rumour that he visits unlocked sheds to relieve himself is not true. Usually he goes off the side of his sleigh when transiting between populated areas.

Q. What might Santa suffer from if he gets stuck in a chimney?
A. Death.

Q. How does Good King Wenceslas like his pizzas?
A. Good King Wenceslas was assassinated in the year 935. If he remains sufficiently functional to like pizza, we can only conclude that he has been raised from the dead for some reason, possibly as part of the zombie apocalypse. Let us not chat about the horrors he consumes upon a thin layer of bread. We need to get to the shelter, and quickly.

Disco lobsters, sea pigs, those eels who can never be arsed, octopuses who have invented a form of advanced mathematics by knotting seaweed and have recently realised that they are now imprisoned in a metric fuckton of knotted seaweed, sea snakes hissing into tiny coral trumpets, submarine parking permit crabs (retired), parrotfish who have recently expired, those fish in the middle of the middle ocean and the centre of the deeps who have never seen nor touched anything hard and are not sure whether the whole idea is a conspiracy or not, those who have just found some eggs, electric eels who have formed a collective power station for some mysterious purpose not at all involving death rays, great stacks of slippy flatfish, those who are pretending to be the reflection of the moon, sleepy icefish, whales who have fallen in love with a voice heard across half an ocean and are even now singing their slow replies, those whose whole world is a wet stone, those who have done a shit on an item of sunken treasure, fish who grew legs but the walk on land was a bit disappointing and certainly not a basis for further exploration, endless schools of giddy yaysquid, sprats who cannot be having with all this bollocks.

6166 Clothes
 -6166.1 Those covering the whole body
    –6166.11 Bear costumes
       —6166.111 Those that are sweated in for charity
       —6166.112 Those that are meant to fool bears
          —6166.1121 Bears are totally fooled, not sniggering at all, no, it’s just a cough, damp out here isn’t it
    –6166.12 Deep-sea diving suits
    –6166.13 Upper-air leaping suits, to be worn by the fish people as they come visiting
    –6166.14 Those worn by sinister science people in films
       —6166.141 To be accessorised by items that beep, little lights that go from side to side, and (this season) stripes
    –6166.15 Those that cover exactly as much of the body as a charity bear costume but which people seem bizarrely more keen to ban
 -6166.2 Those covering the upper bits of the body
    –6166.21 Hats
       —6166.211 Bobble hats
          —6166.2111 Those having a bobble at or larger than the size of the wearer’s head
       —6166.212 Hats (other)
    –6166.22 Balaclavas
    –6166.23 Neck things
       —6166.231 Shakespeare neck things
       —6166.232 Those covering the necks of people who are not amused except they are a bit amused really they just have to keep really still for the photo and not do mouth things
    –6166.24 Torso clothing
       —6166.241 No sleeve
       —6166.242 Some sleeve
       —6166.243 Infinite sleeve
       —6166.244 Non-euclidian sleeve
          —6166.2441 Those into which it is unwise to put a limb you are fond of
          —6166.2442 Those which can maybe be explained away with glove puppets
 -6166.3 Those covering the lower bits of the body
    –6166.31 Bottom flaps
    –6166.32 Modest pantaloons
    –6166.33 Drapery
    –6166.34 Ultra- or mega-drapery
       —6166.341 That which is concealing small animals, humans, tents, settlements etc.
       —6166.342 That which is concealing the wearer having a sneaky outdoors wee
 -6166.4 Those covering small or indistinct areas
 -6166.5 Those covering the left or right side of the body
 -6166.6 Those not really covering anything at all
    –6166.61 Those belonging to the emperor and purchased rather recently
    –6166.61 Those made of space, time, woo, memories, or other charmingly magic-realism clothing material
 -6166.7 Those that act more generally as a barrier between something and something else
    –6166.71 The veil (mystical)
    –6166.72 The human-cosmos barrier method (general)
    –6166.73 Those that are actually a wall or something but are temporarily being used to hide a butt

1. Jonah, 2320. Guests sleep in an airtight capsule swallowed by a genetically modified blue whale. In the morning they are shat out, freshly-showered, into a random part of the Atlantic Ocean.
2. Cloudbase Alpha, 2452. Although marketed as an authentic ‘sleeping in a cloud’ experience, Cloudbase Alpha will attract complaints from those who believe they were sold an uncomfortable room beneath a blimp covered in cotton wool. Subsequently, Cloudbase Alpha will deflate all over Mount Rushmore following an unseasonal storm, causing an international incident.
3. Your House, 2576. Following the Cotton Wool Uprising, there will be an upsurge in people not really wanting to go out, but still wishing to experience nostalgic scenes from their former lives. Your House will cater to this market by promising to provide the hotel experience in people’s own houses, usually by providing a carefully-calculated schedule for alternate householders to do the dishes and lug large bags upstairs.
4. Inspire, 2714. Many people will assume that Inspire is named after its huge central spire structure. In fact, Inspire will be called that because visitors should make sure to take a really, really deep breath before entering. The entire structure is filled with a non-breathable atmosphere. It is just about possible to escape via the lift if you have genetically-modified lungs. Unfortunately all hotel guests in 2414 are required to sign non-disclosure agreements and pay in advance, leaving the disappearance of many of Inspire’s less-altered guests an enduring mystery.
5. Expire, 2900. Inspire’s more-truthful successor, marketed primarily as a place where people who do not need to breathe an atmosphere can go to get away from irritating air-breathers.
6. Well Well Well, 3895. At the heart of the third Dark Age, Well Well Well consists of three wells that fugitives from the Raiders may hide in, at the risk of potentially freezing to death or drowning. It is important to remember that the definition of ‘boutique hotel’ will have shifted somewhat by this age. This is due to the popular stereotype of Resistance fighters staying in boutique hotels in the 3600s.
7. BoutiqueHotel, 4010. By this time, the phrase 'Boutique Hotel’ will have come to mean something more like 'fortified citadel’. This charming extended fort at the North Pole’s asteroid islands will be the world’s premier boutique hotel by this point. Being a no-bullshit type of society, they will call it their word for what it is.
8. Teaketel, 5518. The first fortified space cruiser to set off for the 1SWASP J1407 system, and (primarily due to said fortifications) the first space cruiser to travel significantly beyond the orbit of the moon.
9. Tel-5, 897 YW. This moon is extremely dangerous to land on due to the orbiting debris field related to its position in the ring system of Earth-2, and will thus become a protected refuge for people who are seeking a no-questions-asked life restart.
10. Bertie El-5, 1919 YW. The designation Tel or Teaketel now primarily survives in the surname El, denoting someone who draws descent from one of the many refugees from Earth-2’s radioactive ex-moon, currently spiralling in towards the Star following its summary ejection. Bertie El-5, the flamboyant 95th president of New New Malaysia, will be perhaps the most well-known of this group. Her penchant for travelling around with a selection of space lizards living in her beard will be a system-wide source of delight.  
11. BertelTM, 88 NYW. Named after Bertie El-5, these charming robotic lizards will be the system’s most popular toy for some five hundred years, throughout the rise and fall of the of the New Star Cult.  
12. Eltem, 789 NYW. An adorable dwelling space themed around big-eyed robots (BertelTM having diversified somewhat in the intervening years). People occasionally pay to stay there.

1. Legitimate belly
2. Pregnant with quads
3. Wardrobe-smuggler
4. Loosely-tethered laughter-blimp
5. Snake in a doughnut
6. Sherry bladder about to blow
7. That’s no moon

The holes in the middle of doughnuts, those nothings that are meant to be sweet but have somehow been dunked in the salt instead, potholes, voids (gaping), zeroes painted on the sides of skyscrapers, the stomachs of raided piggybanks, those that are both ventured and gained, the sum total of guilt-free free time reportedly available to parents, voids (howling), those scrappy gangs of zeroes who are holding shoddily-written code to ransom, bank balances that don’t, the vacuum of space, the sum of ideas on how to fix the coffee machine that are easily accessible before the coffee machine has been used, the attendee list of the 2016 global dodo convention, ones that are engaged in self-subtraction, those that are wanted for in paradise, those that can stop the action protagonist of your choice, those that were once just things but decided against it, those that are gleefully impossible, those that have been learned from history.

1. Do you have gonads? Gonads need a lot of room. Show that you have a gender by giving your gonads all the space they need. If they are between your legs or in that general vicinity, try keeping your knees as far apart as possible, particularly if you are in a warm and crowded environment such as a subway train. Better yet, have your knees surgically removed. Then you can keep one knee in Croydon and the other knee in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, giving your gonads the space they truly need to breathe without being limited by the length of your femurs. If your gonads are more shy, retiring types, give them the respect and space they deserve by encasing your body in a giant inflatable ball. This will also allow you to roll to work.
2. Do you have emotions? Media science shows us that you need to decide between being an emotion-haver or not. Why not try giving up all feelings, including happiness, pride and mild irritation? You could even donate them to your friends who are emotion-havers. If you are an emotion-haver, you need to be having an emotion at all times or you may be asked to give your card back. Servants can be hired at very little cost to provoke anger, disgust or the forehead-slapping emotion at times when you may be in danger of entering feelings-neutrality. Alternatively, there are helpful sites available on the interwebs which fulfil this important function.
3. Wear clothes with pockets. Better still, wear clothes with pockets that have other pockets inside the pockets that they have. You may even to be able to manage a triple pocket layering density by keeping clothes that have pockets inside other pockets inside your most voluminous pockets. This can be useful if you ever grow a large number of supplementary hands and need somewhere to put them.
4. You may wish to wait for a Prince to arrive. I am sorry to announce that you are probably reading this in 2016 or later and the primary incarnation of Prince is dead. If you are still intent on waiting, you may wish to enter hibernation until 2130 when the first of the Prince clone army will be ready. Princes are very important for gender-havers because they promote healthy confusion.
5. Hide your chin by growing a beard. Anyone can do this. If you find it difficult to grow a beard directly on your chin, why not grow one in a pot? Many varieties are available, including Cypressus Leylandii and Buxus Sempervirens. These modern beards are solar-powered and can be worn in a discreet neck sling. Flaunt your gender with your beard by affixing a sign to it which states your gender in big letters.

Dear relative, whose angry screeds
I get to read on social media;
I know the ways we disagree
Could fill a full encyclopaedia,
But now we meet on Christmas Day
It’s time to put aside critiques
And share this time with love and joy.
I got your dog this toy. It squeaks.

I choose my gifts with thought and care.
I know how much you love that pup -
I’m sure that her infectious joy
As merrily she chews it up
Will fill you full of Christmas pep.
What’s more, I’m sure the coming weeks,
The dawning of our brand new year
Will also fill with joy and squeaks.

Now, dog toys often break, it’s true.
I choose my gifts with thought and care.
So something I considered well
Is making sure this toy will wear
As little as a toy can do.
I used a shop I truly trust
To tooth-proof up the rubber, and
Make sure the squeaker is robust.

Another thing that makes dogs sad
Is when their toys get stuck up high.
I choose my gifts with thought and care.
I do not want your dog to cry.
I asked the shop I got it from
To make some very minor tweaks.
When activated by a bark,
It bounces down to make more squeaks.

A marvel of technology!
But what if it were shut somewhere  
Inside a cupboard, or a bin?
I choose my gifts with thought and care.
This toy is proofed against that fate:
It has a smell that dogs adore
To help your dog to dig it out
And squeak and squeak and squeak it more.

So pass the sprouts, dear relative.
It’s time to raise our glasses high.
And then some pudding, don’t you think?
What’s that, you say? A gift? Oh my.
You choose your gifts with thought and care.
I’m pleased to hear you have on order
A loving present for my daughter:
The Child’s First Extra-Loud Recorder.

1. The tooth fairy. Perhaps the most benign of her fairy cohort, the tooth fairy will pay 20p or more per tooth, if left in a suitable place where it can be collected unobserved. It is important to the tooth fairy to collect unobtrusively because her main clients are small children. Having collected and installed spare teeth for several centuries, she has rather a lot of teeth. Small children who don’t yet fully math may not anticipate quite how many teeth. The risk of a negative PR event is thus rather high and the tooth fairy has been advised by multiple fairy consultants to avoid face-to-face meetings with clients.
2. The bicycle fairy. The bicycle fairy also collects unobtrusively, mainly because she is technically breaking the law. As with the tooth fairy, she is only licensed to collect when the item for collection is under a pillow. Unlike the tooth fairy, she carries a pillow around in her backpack. She is also careful to leave 20p behind, although most people who come back to their bicycle to find it gone do not bother to pick the 20p up. It is believed that she eats some of the bicycles; the others are donated to whichever fish are able to ignore them most impressively.
3. Perhaps surprisingly there actually is a bin fairy. She can be summoned by throwing a pillow in the bin. The bin fairy will remove the pillow, the contents of the bin, the bin itself and occasionally some of the surrounding structural material. In return, she will leave seventy pounds in Arcturan hypermoney. This is perhaps not the bargain it sounds like; Arcturan hypermoney is made from miniature crocodiles and has been known to chew on the fingers of the unwary. She is believed to be constructing some kind of vast space structure out of bins in an intergalactic void somewhere. Its purpose is unknown.
4. The morals fairy deals in more intangible objects. She can usually be found exchanging sums up to and including several million pounds for human qualities such as dignity, honesty and self-respect (as well as more concrete items such as secrets, lies, compromising videos and the like). Unlike the other fairies, she does not adhere to the pillow rule and is perfectly happy to do a deal under a hat instead. After taking the secrets and lies through a milking parlour to comprehensively squeeze them, she is believed to grind up the residue and smoke it; this accounts for the peculiarly acrid smell which accompanies her.

Sleigh bells in the darkness, when the wolf leaves your door, success in a game of riddles, the small victory that follows a huge defeat, the sight of a great city from above, selective forgetting, refinding the path in the woods, people standing up for each other, the sight of the dragon’s slickly glistening weak spot, signposts in the mist, when the new planet has a breathable atmosphere, warm laughter heard through a distant window, small creatures with soft bellies, forgiveness, the kindness of strangers, geese arriving from the South, the opening of a mysterious box after some considerable time, joyous singing of no discernable origin, having a plan.

1. Number boffins have shown that over 90% of interview time is devoted to the front of interviewees’ heads. You can improve your coverage by allocating 50% of interview time to the back of their heads instead.
2. Always strive to give a voice to the voiceless, a name to the nameless and a bottom to the bottomless. In the specific case of bottoms, always make sure to provide both buttocks equally. Otherwise the formerly-bottomless may end up leaning too far to the left or right when they sit.
3. Increase balance by carrying out all panel interviews on a large square board which is precariously balanced on a central column above a pit full of wet sharks. Mark one side of the board with gradations from authoritarian to libertarian, and the other with gradations from economic hard-left to economic hard-right. Interviewees must stand on the position on the board corresponding to their political views. Unbalanced panels will be literally eaten alive, although you may run the risk of ending up with a large number of newly-converted centrists who are hugging each other and crying.
4. Why not increase coverage across the veracity spectrum by having one interviewee who always lies and one who always tells the truth? You may ask one question. This will allow more time for advertising.
5. Never forget to devote equal screen time to the existential horror point of view, perhaps by getting a representative from the void to come on screen and howl for a few minutes.

1. Seretse’s chameleon. Have you ever seen a Seretse’s chameleon? No? Research shows that at least 78.3% of rooms in non-Arctic regions harbour at least one. Unlike normal chameleons, Seretse’s chemeleon can change shape and texture as well as colour to resemble nearby objects. If you have ever found a small object to be oddly non-functional at one use but fully operational later on, you may have been using a Seretse’s chameleon. They are also commonly implicated in situations where objects are confusingly not where you left them last.
2. Mrs. Ursula Flores, an Ecuadorean spy who started out as a double agent, rapidly became a triple agent and subsequently became an multiple agent of such a high degree that a new diplomo-mathematical notation had to be invented to describe her. Mrs. Flores once spent fifteen months as a hatstand in the pursuit of a particularly sensitive piece of information. One of her signature moves is to disguise herself as a disguise, enabling her to spy on other spies with impunity. For example, she can do an extremely convincing imitation of a large overcoat. Her collection of fake beards with microphones in is particularly admired by those who like that sort of thing.
3. Captain Beard. Captain Beard, who is emphatically one of those people who likes that sort of thing, is said to have studied under Mrs. Flores during her days as a chandelier in the Dominican Republic. He is said to be the first to have applied the diguisory arts to piracy, primarily by costuming himself as articles of treasure and then counter-robbing those who come to loot him. Captain beard can sometimes be distinguished by his bread. Do not loot treasure that has a beard. It will not end well.
4. The Bananas. The Bananas (not to be confused with bananas) are an alien race who have chosen to use the closest available Earth-vocalisation to their own name for themselves as their name on this planet. They are approximately 5 millimetres tall and usually travel in saucer-type ships approximately resembling pizza bases. After an initial Earth reconnaissance period, they decided to use this resemblance to aid them in infiltrating the planet’s cities. Banana ships are therefore frequently topped with cheese and pepperoni and sent to collect information from restaurant patrons. If you have ever had trouble ordering a pizza from a pizza delivery emporium, it may be that you unwittingly discovered a secret Banana base. Interestingly, Banana ships are cloaked on the underside so that humans looking up cannot see them passing overhead. However, it is sometimes possible to view what appear to be flying pizzas from above making their way between assignments if you are viewing a city from a tall building or an aeroplane.
5. Professor Grace Wu. Professor Wu is an expert in psychology whose research on human attention led to her devising a novel methodology for winning at hide and seek. Instead of hiding herself, Professor Wu arranges objects and people in her general vicinity such that something else nearby is always more noticeable. After more than three hundred straight wins in the World Hide and Seek League, Professor Wu was fired from her academic job for frivolity. In retaliation, she hid her entire university, leading to a 25% drop in admissions. Professor Wu has not been found since 1985, but is probably somewhere.
6. The hermit turtle. The world’s smallest turtle species, the hermit turtle does not have its own shell but instead uses everyday objects as shells and hiding places. It is most notable for hollowing out the insides of chocolates and hiding inside them. However, it finds the insides of chocolate boxes boring and usually wanders off before it finds itself in danger of being eaten. This is why the chocolates keep disappearing.

Drizzle, failsnow, bird lubrication, leaky skybath, wetting, precipitation, tinkling it down, shower, calling the clouds to come home to the sea, dragon wee, a visit from the mobile mud factory, doing that wet thing, sogging, cloud vomit, the dawn of the gadget apocalypse, invitations to the snail party, underwhelming, turning on the Scotland Simulator, mandatory washtime, liquid sunshine, enchanting wetsplat, water prison break, monsoon, cloudburst, tree drink, torrents, h-two-go, homeopathic sky noodles, the minnow space programme phase 1, puddle generation, bucketing, regional moistening, locking up the water cycle against the rack of earth, unmuggifying, post-cumulus drip, coming down in stairrods, the sky god’s clammy handshake, drip diving, dedessication, bedragglementification, an impromptu round of roof-drumming, deluge, sky piddle, storm, gravity water, the tears of angels watching over Earth’s reckless onion-chopping, a good sousing, drop pogo, cats and dogs out there, rain.

1. The penguin. You show your interest in someone by bringing them tokens of affection, such as pebbles. You expect your lover to fashion these tokens of affection into a rudimentary nest and lay eggs in it. There are never any eggs. Your love life is perpetually disappointing.
2. The bonobo. You show your interest in someone by having sex with them. This is also how you express excitement, boredom or an interest in reconciliation. As you get to know someone better, you express your continued affection for them by continuing to have sex with them. Truly special partners may get priority spots in your busy sexing schedule.
3. The fish. You show your interest by following someone around, waiting for them to leave some eggs behind. Why are there never any eggs? You spend a lot of time drinking and commiserating with penguins. Actually, you spend a lot of time drinking in general. Occasionally, you are arrested for wanking over discarded shopping trolleys.
4. The panda. You dislike embarking on relationships without an extreme level of logistical support, including a team of scientists devoted to monitoring your hormone levels and full documentation of each introduction to a potential partner. If these conditions are fulfilled, you show affection by tolerating your potential partner and not eviscerating anyone with your giant claws.
5. The cat. You show your interest in someone by pointedly ignoring them, unless they have food. As you get to know and trust someone you will slowly progress to a more sociable, casual level of ignoring them. When you are truly comfortable in someone’s presence you will sit on their sofa and lick your anus, occasionally fixing them with a sharp stare.

1. They say everyone has a skeleton or two in their closet. Me too. I have two. It’s quite a big closet. It has some dresses in that I quite like to wear. But I can’t, because there are two skeletons in there and they’re not too pleased with me and they’d rather like to come out. So I guess I’m out for the cost of the dresses as well as all the parking fees.
2. How did it come to this? Well, it started at the picket line. I was doing pickup at the hospital. Lots of pickups at the hospital, these days. Which is a bit of a problem, because, as I mentioned, parking. Not only are the charges horrendous, but I’m paid in a different currency. If you see what I mean.
3. Anyway, the picket line was still there. I think there’s been someone at it every day since I started this job. Sometimes security try to move them on, but usually they just let them be. Generally the ambulances, and everyone else for that matter, use the back entrance when they’re around. You can see their point. It is kind of uncomfortable. Which suits me down to the ground. My fee gets reduced for every minute beyond optimum pickup time I’m late, so having a non-crowded entrance is just fine.
4. Maybe it was a bit stupid of me to go right past them. I don’t know. I thought my rights were pretty clear. They’re not allowed to harm me, and if they’re a bit pissed off that I’m doing their old jobs, well. A girl’s gotta live, you know? I need it more than they do. And on the way in it was fine. I had the equipment stowed away. I walked straight in. I was on the ward a full minute early.
5. The first pickup was straightforward. I mean, some people have emotional problems with it. There’s even a support section in the app where you can chat with others and there are calming exercises to do and stuff. But I’ve always been fine. But then, when I’m packing the equipment away, I see the guy in the next bed. And it’s clear he’s going to go soon, as well.
6. The thing is, I’m saving up for a holiday. I got about five hours for the first pickup, but I need well over twenty-four per day if I’m going to take a week off. The last time I spoke to my doctor he said my case was amazing, that every time he saw me I looked like I had a couple of months left. I guess I’m going to have to tell him soon what I do for a living. But anyway, I need at least that amount of buffer or I’ll get too ill to do pickup. Game over. So having a holiday means earning at a higher rate for a bit.
7. So I look round. Nobody to notice. No cameras that I can see. Then I take the other guy’s pillow and gently put it over his face. He doesn’t even struggle. I have my phone out, so when the alert for an urgent pickup at the hospital comes up, I’m right there. I’ve even got the equipment ready. Urgent pickup is ten extra hours of life, credited straight to my account. Score!
8. Except then I look up and see one of them at the window. I’m never quite sure what to call them. Deaths? Except that now the job’s been contracted out, they don’t actually do anything. We collect the souls. They picket the hospital. They don’t even need to eat or sleep, so I guess they’re just out there all the time. There are lots of different types, but we mostly get the skeleton ones. This was one of the skeleton ones. And it had definitely seen me.
9. Can they talk to the police? Would the police even listen? I don’t know, but I got out of there as fast as I could. Out of the back entrance, of course. But my car was round by the front. So I waited a few hours. Long enough for them to lose interest? Long enough to run up an amazing parking bill, certainly. I thought I’d got away with it. I got as far as home thinking I’d got away with it.  But they must have spotted me and followed because two of them came round the corner as I was unlocking the door.  One of them got a foot in before I could slam it and in a panic I ran to hide in the closet. As I said, it’s a big closet. They came in looking for me, I ran out and shut it. I was never quite sure why it had a lock but wow, I was pretty thankful it did.
10. So that’s my skeletons. They do bang and rattle at night a bit, but you get used to it. Anyway, I don’t do hospital pickups any more and so my rate’s gone down. Probably no holiday for a while. Don’t know what the doctor’s going to say next time he sees me. Still, where there’s life there’s hope, eh?

June 2016: Don’t listen to experts
December 2016: Facts don’t exist
June 2017: Law is a liberal conspiracy
December 2017: For too long we have valued rigorous training and education over common sense and believing that it can’t be too hard can it, for example when choosing who gets to fly the plane
June 2018: Science is a cult and also totally to blame for all the plane crashes
December 2018: Was gravity the first great hoax?
June 2019: (Nobody can be reached for comment as the entirety of humanity has floated off into space)

Cats in the dark, serenity, dodo eggs, a good heart, the truth, the sort of little tiny vital screws without which bits of your gizmo will forever be popping off, the right muse, the spoons, that toy that you saw five minutes ago, anything that you cannot phone, treasure, successful chameleons, a suitable stick to put the moon on that is long enough and not so pointy that it will leave an unsightly hole for future generations to mythologise, anything that is actually where you left it last, the motivation, things that have popped out of existence for a quick break but will totally be back shortly, masters of disguise, things the dog ate, absolute silence, ghosts, things that are behind or under other hard-to-find objects, your way, the world’s smallest violin, elephants that are in the fridge or a tree or your living room, lost worlds, time.

1. When the night has a thousand eyes but it still refuses to help you find your keys even though it can almost certainly see them somewhere.
2. When you fall into the trench from which trenchcoats are mined and although your fall is somewhat cushioned it’s been a bumper year at the trenchcoat refinery so it’s going to take you a while to climb out again and meanwhile someone is doing crime somewhere.  
3. When there has been an unfortunate mix-up between dames (female) and dames (pantomime) and as a result some slapstick comedy memes have started following you around with a tuba and it’s become nearly impossible to sneak a moody smoke on a street corner.
4. When you are trying to escape a sketchy, shady past, which is a problem because past you has a time machine and keeps on pinning up sketches and occasionally erecting sunshades around your dive bar habitat.
5. When you attempt to make the streets of this dirty old town less mean by stripping them of all meaning, leaving residents of the town confused as to why there are senselessly flat paved areas all over the place.

1. If you reach under your bathroom door, you may be able to extract a small brass handle recessed into its lower side. Closing the bathroom door and pulling the handle should enable you to open the door upwards instead of sideways, revealing a long dark chute leading down into the depths of the earth. This is the Sundries Disposal, a feature installed in most houses built after 1975 by order of the Global Mystical Court. Should mystical forces need, for whatever reason, to take over your house, the chute is intended to help them dispose of any of your fixtures and fittings that do not fit their taste or decorating requirements. We do not recommend venturing down the chute as it is our understanding that the goblins at the lower end did not agree to have avocado bathroom suites dropping on their heads at regular intervals and are somewhat irate about the matter.  
2. If you can get into the right dream, you should be able to find that door in your hallway; that is, the one that leads to the top floor of your house, the floor that is only there in dreams. The contents of this floor may vary, but do try to get in when the library is in residence. It has a fine collection of books that their authors only ever dreamed about. Sometimes that door leads to a lift instead. Do not, whatever the temptation, take the lift downwards below the bottom floor of your house.  
3. If you lever the skirting boards of your house away, you may sometimes be able to discover doors used by the little people. Whether these are readily discernible or not depends on just how little the little people in your house are, as well as how fast they are at removing doors. In some cases, doors used by the little people may also have been repurposed by use for the very little people. If you open a little people door to find a host of smaller doors behind it, it is likely that your house has very little people. Be sure to leave gin out for them in the summer, when they are in danger of evaporating.
4. Many sofas these days have vents into an alternative universe located at the far end of the crevice down the back of the seats. This is a hygienic measure, designed to save your living room from the unpleasant odours that can arise from crevice crumbs. If you take apart your sofa, you may be able to widen these vents into a passable orifice. This is one reason that sofa disassembly and recycling is usually recommended to be done by a qualified technician. The alternative universe is, however, rather nice at the time of year if you do not mind getting covered in crumbs.
5. If you remove all the doors in your house and put them in a big pile with some sexy music playing you can sometimes get them to mate. Be sure to provide any pregnant doors with a warm, safe and dark environment. Once they have whelped, the baby doors will distribute themselves around your house. Baby doors usually lead to cupboards, but you may often find one or two upstarts which open onto secret passages instead.
6. Is there a door in your house that you and all the other inhabitants and visitors have been ignoring? You know, because it leads into hell or has been enchanted by an evil fairy or is behind that elephant in your living room or something? Think really hard about this. Ignoringness is the sixteenth superpower and is tremendously hard to beat. However, if you can defeat it then you too can bask in the knowledge of the horrors lurking within the heart of your home. In fact, if you have an elephant in your living room it may well be standing there precisely so as to hide the door. Elephants do this a lot. It is part of their wider service to a world they love.

Fridge rescue, dildo hiders incorporated, the emergency kitten delivery brigade, the nee naw apparition service for the edification and delight of small toddlers, the internet extraction service, the emergency chocolate hamster brigade, the department of politically-expedient exaggeration in order to create emergencies in order to push through policy that people do not have to think about too much, the remote control location services, those providing airlift facilities for people who are standing on one leg because one boot has been sucked off by the mud, preventative services based around the concept of subliminally promoting the idea of having a nice cup of tea and a sit down before one does anything too rash, those erecting sheltered places to take an al fresco pee along distant walking routes, those releasing butterflies that have become caught in nets designed to protect cabbages, those providing last-minute cosmetic services for unexpectedly well-nibbled cabbages.

1. If you think you are having a bad day, spare a thought for the howling void which has been trying to escape from under London for more than a thousand years. No sooner does it chip a hole in the city’s fragile surface then a group of contractors with strict instructions not to look into any potholes comes along and fills up the hole with concrete. The fight against the emergence of the void is carried out by a secret division of the Home Office, often under the guise of emergency sewer works.
2. The European Society for the Kind Treatment of Voids tells the story of a void which was left tied up outside in a thunderstorm by a careless collector of holes and hollows. Its subsequent howls were heard by the entire street, which ever thereafter had a feeling of dull-eyed terror about it. The void could only be persuaded to stop howling by bringing an abyss outside for it to stare into. Subsequently, the abyss and the void eloped to Las Vegas, where they were married by Elvis Presley, who was exclusively raised from the dead for the duration of the horrifying yet delightful ceremony.
3. Howling ‘Howling Void’ Void, a howling void which controversially reached number 94 on the US pop charts in 1974 with the song 'Howling Void’, a dark wail of agony and nihilism compared by some to the sound of a void that is howling.
4. An interesting legal situation arose in India in 1902 in which a contract between a Mr. M. Singh and a Mr. R. R. Pant was accidentally declared null and howling void rather than simply null and void. This error created an area of contract law so suffused with existential terror that for over thirty years lawyers were only permitted to study it after a period of rigorous meditation on all that is good in the world.
5. More prosaically, a small void that had come up to Earth to experience the magic of Christmas carelessly stubbed its toe on the Sydney Opera House, letting out a howl that drove all the fish from Sydney harbour for a period of approximately three weeks. The displaced fish subsequently wrote a book about their experiences, but were never able to successfully publish it due to the language barrier and the unfortunate tendency of books to dissolve into mush on extended contact with seawater.

1. The minotaur was sick again today. Could there be a more miserable sight? Crouched on the deck, heaving its guts up. Truly it was never meant to be at sea. But these are the things we are driven to, in order that we might have a future. Of course, the minotaur itself doesn’t have a future any more. It is stupid, has no sea legs and is ludicrously top-heavy; all factors, I suspect, in the disappearance of its mate in the last storm. Does it realise this, somewhere at the back of its tiny brain? Maybe that is why it is so sad today.  
2. I am sad to say it is far from the only doomed beast on this ship. We are a mess. I don’t know how we thought we could ever do this. There has been storm after storm after storm. We are barely watertight. There is never enough food, and too often these days it is soaked in salt water or rotting. Maybe N. had a plan for this stage. I trusted him so much, and he was right about so much; about the rising of the waters, about what we needed to do. But he died on the second day at sea. We feed the cockatrice more carefully now.
3. Enough of this misery! The wind is rising, but it is fresh and curiously sweet. Perhaps the waters are receding, who knows.
4. Another storm. Good lord, at least I am still alive. But our losses are almost too hard to bear. There is a compartment at the back of the ship, one where we keep the creatures that do not mind getting too wet; the hippocampus and the merlion and the like. Some crates came loose at the height of the storm. The female hippocampus was impaled on a pickaxe and the male one trapped in the debris. The wives of S., H. and J. went in to free it. Something shifted, I don’t know. But they became trapped too, and when the swell broke over the ship they were drowned. If I thought too hard about what this meant for the world I would despair. Why did I not think? Why did I not tell them to stay apart? So I am clearing up. It keeps the mind busy.  
5. That fresher breeze again. J. says he has heard birds. Whatever may become of the world in the future, at least it will have birds.
6. There is land! I was almost out of hope, but no: here we are, stranded on a mud-bank, and every hour it gets a little larger, a little more populated with salt-poisoned trees and stranded shellfish. H. and J. have walked on it. The minotaur, even. I could hardly have imagined that it would survive, but here it is: squelching about on the new mud, mooing with joy.
7. The waters are still receding. I looked out of the window this morning and could not even see them. We are eating kelp and seawater and the fish the waters were kind enough to leave behind. But what a bind we are in! I am not sure how we will feed ourselves in the longer term. And maybe we will not need to. There is barely a pair of breeding animals left. All our work, for nothing! The male centaur lasted until landfall but was dead by the first morning. The manticore tore the female serpopard apart and ate it. Of course, we are done for as well. I am too old to bear children and in any case N. is dead. There are no other females among us.
8. I see that I have not written here in some time. Cautiously, carefully, I may have good news to report. Although our breeding pairs were wiped out, some of the beasts have been able to interbreed. The female centaur surprised us in May with a birth; sired, it seems, by the hippocampus. It is a little like both. A warm brown beast with four legs and the long, solemn head of its father. J. has been asking what I should call it. My reply? ‘A hippocampus-centaur, of course’. But I think that I could shorten that to 'horse’. It seems to fit.
9. The griffin and the merlion, too (J. shortens this to 'Lion’; he has been looking after the cubs, now in the second generation). I have high hopes for the union of the hippalectryon and the cockatrice. H. has been going through the lists of surviving beasts, one by one, and he claims there are several hundred potential crossbreeds. It seems we will be populating the world after all, just not quite with the creatures that we thought we were going to. And there are things growing now, and the sea is far away, and we only dream of it from time to time and do not have to see it when we wake.
10. S. asks who will write this history. We cannot cross-breed. Our days are numbered. But I think we will still have intelligent life to succeed us. I have had some success with the offspring of the centaur and the minotaur. They are scrawny little hairless things, but I have been teaching them language and they are quick to learn.
11. Of course, I will not quite tell them what happened. Let them forget the old animals, or at least put them to the back of their minds. Let N. be one of them, and let him have saved them as he saved all the new beasts. Let the new beasts have existed since the dawn of time. N. was a good soul. History deserves him to be bathed in uncomplicated glory. And so he shall be.

1. When you see a single magpie, the size of a double-decker bus, descend from a storm-dark sky above Manhattan to peck shiny stuff off the top of skyscrapers.
2. When a black cat crosses your path as you are trying to pick your way through a minefield.
3. When you break a mirror over the head of someone who was previously a good friend of yours.
4. When the lift is heading for the thirteenth floor, but the building only has ten floors and the lift is not very aerodynamic.
5. When you open an umbrella indoors because it is raining indoors because you no longer have a roof.
6. When you are eating with giant metal chopsticks during a thunderstorm and you leave them sticking upwards in the bowl.
7. When you say ‘Macbeth’ in a theatre to a genie who has just asked you which play you would like them to make your life resemble more closely.
8. When you walk under a ladder which is being used by a loose coalition of supervillains to climb into the sky and put out the sun.

When nuclear reactions begin in the heart of a collapsing protostar; when you just feel a little off for the first time; when when you watch the grainy footage of the first footfall on humanity’s new home; when a tree grows again in your environmental dystopia; when you open the paper at the start of the exam; when that fish ploips up out of the sea for an experimental walk on land; when the prison door closes; when the first geese take off for the South; the starting tick of the new clock; the first newly wrought sentence of the novel, still warm and lacking even a full stop.

1. Try turning it off and on again.
2. Place it beneath your Christmas tree and sing ‘Jingle Bells’ backwards three times over it as dusk falls on Christmas Eve. Leave overnight. Hopefully Santa will have fixed it with his magic screwdriver.
3. Maybe it doesn’t know what it needs to do. Make sure to tell it, with diagrams, just what is required of it. Be insistent, particularly if you are a non-expert in the field.
4. Wash it, then apply WD-40, duct tape and/or paint as required.
5. Cut off the burnt bits and cover the rest of it in icing. If it is still not working, it is OK to eat the icing at this point.
6. Try turning it off and on again again.
7. Go to the toilet, search on your phone for how to get it working again, then pretend that you knew this all along.
8. Keep it under your pillow until you dream of how to fix it. Alternatively, just fix it in a dream and then stay in the dream with the working version until you no longer need it.
9. Are you feeding it zeroes? It may be dividing by them. Zeroes are not very nutritious and alternative numbers are available at very low cost. Try feeding it something else.
10. Try turning everything else off and on again, including the lights, yourself, the government and the sun. Something will probably work.
11. Consider it in its current state. Is it not perfect just as it is? Do you really need the so-called functionality you seek? It is working just as the Universe intended, right now, and all you need to do is make peace with that fact.