Listing to Port

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.

I used to have an elephant,
Her toes were cherry red.
I went out picking cherries but
I picked her out instead.
I said her hiding place was bad
And now she had been busted;
She said it was a better place than
Fridges, cars and custard.

She brought a mighty eletrunk
In which she stuffed her stuff.
My children asked me ‘Are you sure
Our sofa’s big enough?
And tell us, why is she so grey,
So wrinkly beside?
Should she be washed and ironed?’
'Forget it’, I replied.

Then next I thought Her Elephance
Could prove a lesson for
A group of seven blind men
who were waiting at the door.
'I’ve something here for you to feel,
Pray tell me what each finds!’
'That’s nice,’ they said, 'Now, if you please,
Where should we put these blinds?’

One day she went a-wandering
In search of some lost shore.
Two whales in a mini picked
Her up on the M4.
They called me on the Elephone
From somewhere North of Gower.
What was she doing there?’ I asked.
'About 5 miles an hour.’

At last I found the perfect home
For elephants at large;
Some friends of mine became her hosts
(She promised not to charge).
They kept her in their living-room
Behind the sofa-bed.
'Why, thank you!’ said my thoughtful friends.
'Don’t mention it’, I said.