Listing to Port

9850 Ends
 -9850.1 Spatial ends
    –9850.11 This end of that thing
       —9850.111 Those that are distant and distinct from the other end
          —-9850.1111 The ends of roads, subway lines and long-distance rail tracks
       —9850.112 Those that curl round a bit
          —9850.1121 The heads of snakes that are eating their own tails
          —9850.1122 The ends of sausages
    –9850.12 The other end of that thing
       —9850.121 Those that are distant and distinct from the other end
          —-9850.1211 The other ends of roads, subway lines and long-distance rail tracks
       —9850.122 The tails of snakes that are eating their own tails
    –9850.13 The ends of things which could be said to only have one end
       —9850.131 The ends of lakes
       —9850.132 Those things you can put under table legs
    –9850.14 The ends of things with multiple endings
       —9850.141 Gruesome deaths in choose your own adventure stories
       —9850.142 Spider feet
       —9850.143 Pom-pom string
    –9850.15 Places that are named after some kind of end but may or may not be the end of something
       —9850.151 Places that are called ‘Frog end’ but bear no resemblance to either end of a frog
       —9850.152 The arse end of nowhere
 -9850.2 Temporal ends
    –9850.21 Sunsets, temporary farewells and other minor endings
       —9850.211 Those which invoke a charming sense of wistfulness
       —9850.212 Those whose thoughtless ease belies the chance that someday they will be a bigger ending
    –9850.22 The ends of years, courses, projects and suchlike
    –9850.23 Those that are not really ends
       —9850.231 That bit in the story where everyone gets married and we stop because that’s obviously the peak of their life right
       —9850.232 Those that involve things you will totally stop doing today or maybe tomorrow
       —9850.233 Those that will be ends if the currently-last instalment does not make enough money, otherwise there will be a sequel along soon
    –9850.24 Deaths
    –9850.25 Apocalypses
       —9850.251 Those involving fire
       —9850.252 Those involving ice
       —9850.253 Those involving nanobots and baked goods
       —9850.254 Those involving mechanically enhanced wildebeest who were only intending to take an ill-thought-through revenge on lionkind
       —9850.245 Those which are frankly too embarrassing to talk about but well done human race, you really did it this time
 -9850.3 Innuendological ones
    –9850.31 Bell ends
 -9850.4 Loose ones

The laughter never stops, open your heart, dreams go on forever, may all your dreams come true, follow your heart, toss your liver in the air with joy, love so totally your left buttock falls off and you don’t even notice, stomp out your spleen, everything everywhere is clowns forever.

1. The Land of No-Nos. A movable dimension approximately the size of a cupboard, the Land of No-Nos is thought to have been conjured into existence by a particularly enterprising toddler. It appears as a large plastic door which can be unlocked by any of the large plastic sets of keys sold for children to play with. Inside there lies a small emporium of all the things toddlers would really, really like to play with and/or eat, including bottles of cleaning fluid, small electronic devices, marbles, cat food and random brown lumps picked up off the ground. The appearance of the land of no-nos can sometimes be inferred by one’s offspring becoming either suspiciously quiet or suspiciously loud.
2. The ButterDome. Back in 1987, at the height of the European Butter Mountain, some enterprising dairy-pusher quietly spirited away a few tonnes of butter into a custom miniature dimension about 30 metres across, creating the ButterDome. A visit to the ButterDome is a must for all fans of butter-related extreme sports. Although the butter is primarily used for skiing and tobogganing, there are also tube slides and a range of Winter Olympic sports available. At the end of each session, the butter is squeezed through a wormhole by a specially-trained cadre of grease-resistant badgers, sending it back through its own timeline to its moment of peak freshness before the courses are relaid.
3. The Hoop of Convenience. A small, grey and unremarkable inter-dimensional bubble, the Hoop of Convenience was conjured into being in 1872 by an anonymous socialite. Under the pseudonym Madame Q, she describes her struggles in being the constantly-shining star of every party with a bladder and digestive system that would rather take an occasional break. Being blessed with dimensional powers after accidentally consuming a cocktail meant for an alien partygoer in disguise, she solved this problem by creating the Hoop. It manifests as a round, wooden ring such as might be used to reinforce the floofier kind of dress. When activated, one can step through into the aforementioned bubble, where time moves at a different pace and one can get out of one’s complicated clothes and relieve oneself at leisure. Madame Q is believed to have passed on the Hoop to her descendants, but today it is mainly considered an interesting but smelly curiosity.
4. Olafsson’s Pocket. Olafsson’s Pocket is a pocket dimension which is an actual pocket. It is transferred from garment to garment by means of an ancient curse, which is widely enough known in cursing sort of communities that inflicting someone with Olafsson’s Pocket is a common practical joke. In use, Olafsson’s Pocket functions similarly to a real pocket in that one can insert one’s hand and/or objects into it. However objects frequently emerge somewhat transformed and, as the Pocket is a little leaky, occasionally they are flung into the interstellar vacuum of another Universe.

Those who cannot believe how lucky they are; those who do not know each others’ names; those who play games; those who are there at midnight; those who snatch delight in the weary interstices of childcare; those who would fight a bear for you; those who shyly touch knees under tables; those who need to argue before they can fuck; those who are rigorously scheduled; those who are on the other sides of oceans; those who have detected in each other a common strangeness; those who do not know your name or their own; those who make nests; those who have a heated secrecy; those who crash and burn beautifully and ask to be lit again; those who love the story of their love but are less keen on the love itself; those who hide under fun; those who would happily brick each other up in a cave; those who are dizzy when they meet; those who love their cozy silences; those who are outraged when they find they are not looking in a mirror; those who have quite a nice thing going; those who wake up glowing; those who contemplate the ceiling; those who are there to close your eyelids one last time.

1. The old Earth, having been lapped by the ebb and flow of temperatures for some time, is finally succumbing to the heat. Life remains only at the poles; great humid forests which grow frantically in the Arctic and Antarctic summers. In the winter they sit silently through the months of wet darkness. On the shores of the polar continents (or what were the shores some years ago, because the oceans are beginning their long slow final evaporation) the outer forest, roots boiled to sterile mush, sits rotting. The edge of the outer forest moves a little bit inwards every year.

2. Although the sun is big and red, the world beneath is still inhabited. By now, so many generations of humans have passed by that any part of the planet you care to choose is nothing but the archaeological layers of past civilisations. Landscapes are walls built on walls built on walls. The only things to mine are ruins and rubbish. Even when they are in some new technological flowering, the people of this Earth stay close to their homes. Some of the ruins are dangerous, and you never quite know in what way.

3. There are no people left on Earth, but the machines they left are more hardy. The machines know that every year a certain amount of new housing is required, which they dutifully build on top of the old housing, there being no other place to do so. Unobserved by human eyes, the towers of Earth are amazing. They tilt against each other, sliding on the crumbling foundations of older buildings which in turn are mined for the materials to build new ones. Sometimes they topple like dominoes. As time goes by, the machines enter a kind of senility occasioned by the action of thousands of years of cosmic rays on their circuitry. Some get stuck on this or that feature: teetering skyscrapers containing nothing but swimming pools; acres of doors that lead only to other doors; planet-spanning corridors lined with avocado bathroom suites. The old planet is slowly destroyed in a kind of telephone game of human culture.

4. The Earth is a bare, rocky ball, devoid of atmosphere or native life. Nostalgic for the homeland of mankind, inhabitants of other planets pay vast sums to stay in the planet’s many dome-based resorts, where they can lie under a blue filter painted with clouds and soak up the ultraviolet in an authentically plastic replica of famous Earth landmarks. The only permanent residents of the planet are low-paid immigrant workers from Titan.

1. You sit down at a table in a restaurant which is decorated with a lovely flower arrangement. You didn’t realise that the table was actually occupied by a horse who was about to eat the flowers. When the horse comes back from the toilet it is too polite to turf you off and just pays its bill and sadly goes home.

2. There is a dinosaur in the wheelchair space on the bus. Nobody seems to know the bus company’s policy on dinosaurs, and you are not sure whether the dinosaur has a legitimate disability or is just not sure where to sit.

3. You think someone is waving at you and wave back, but actually their limbs were just being controlled by a vast alien puppetmaster.

4. You have advertised your fridge as a refuge for stranded penguins on a popular website. There has been great interest. Just as the first penguin family is about to arrive, you remember that your fridge has no ventilation and any penguins who stay in it will suffocate.

5. You pull on a door. It does not open. So you push on the door. That does not work either. In fact it is not a door at all, it is a camel that has eaten a doorknob.

6. You go shopping for camembert and durian fruit. On the way back you accidentally get into a lift with the entire British aristocracy and it gets stuck between floors.

7. There are two doors in a corridor at a door convention and they both hold themselves open for each other. In their rush to get through, they bump into each other and fall over onto the floor. All the following doors fall through them onto the floors below, creating a horrific yawning maw into the depths of the earth.

1. One or the other of you had taken an inconveniently binding vow of chastity.
2. You kissed on the understanding that one of you would turn into something else, but nothing happened.
3. You kissed on the understanding that neither of you would turn into something else, but one of you did.
3. The one time you managed to both exist at the same point in time, you were haunting a weevil, they were personifying an unusual shade of green, and you were both travelling in different temporal directions.
4. You had the kind of love that could have smashed universes, stopped time, lit the sky on fire. Other inhabitants of your universe were perhaps understandably not on board with your relationship and eventually managed to split you up.
5. You realised that you were actually in love with the idea of love itself. The idea of love refused to return your phone calls and floated the idea of a restraining order.
6. You were in love with a teacher, guardian angel, god, anthropomorphic personification or other professional superior, and all concerned felt that a relationship was probably a breach of ethics.
7. You were waiting for them to make the first move. They were waiting for you to make the first move.
8. For some reason having to do with mystical woo stuff, you were unable to fuck without causing some kind of apocalypse.
9. One or both of you were already in a monogamous relationship with someone who was engaged in saving a country, continent, planet or other geographical entity, and whose work would be put in jeopardy by emotional upset.
10. You were a bee. They were a bee. When you tried to bee together you were shut down by the bug police for excessive buzzing.
11. You swore that you would die for them and then you did.
12. You just weren’t that into each other.

7020 Roads, tracks and pathways
 -7020.1 Major routes
    –7020.11 Motorways, freeways and other roads with multiple lanes
       —7020.111 Those upon which one roars towards a spectacular neon horizon, Kraftwerk playing on the stereo, a mote in the bloodstream of an endless city
       —7020.112 Those upon which one sits in grunting, farting traffic for hours
       —7020.113 Those which have suffered an unusual change in use
          —7020.1131 Vast roads mid-demonstration, wild and free and full of dogs and signs and humans
          —7020.1132 Those that are cursed with unexpected roadworks
    –7020.12 Those that go ever on
       —7020.121 Ring roads and other circular routes
          —-7020.1211 Those acting as a prayer wheel of discontent, funnelling all the frustration of the metropolitan area into the centre of the city
          —-7020.1212 Those inhabited by bands of eager adventurers who have not yet discovered that they are going in a circle
       —7020.122 Those roads that go ever on if you have the right passport, visas and a suitable amount of cash, and otherwise end ignominiously at a border point
    –7020.13 Those that are a great parade of multicoloured shipping containers
 -7020.2 By-roads
    –7020.21 That road that goes past your house
    –7020.22 The road that you followed on Google Maps, the one that wonds round the mountains, out past the point that you will ever travel to in real life
    –7020.23 Roads to get lost on
       —7020.231 Those which look obvious and easy to walk down on the map, provided one neglects to take into account the contours, temperature, dubious surrounds or local laws
 -7020.3 Paths and tracks
    –7020.31 Paths that are less taken
       —7020.311 Those featuring No Trespassing, Danger Falling Rocks or These Llamas Will Eat You signs
    –7020.32 Paths that should not be left for any reason, no matter what you see or hear to either side
    –7020.33 Those that you cannot go down until you know their name, which is the answer to a curious riddle
    –7020.34 Those that are clearly a shortcut to where you need to go
 -7020.4 Minor pathways
    –7020.41 Those tiny paths off to the side of the main track, imbued with some peculiar sort of glamour, as if one might go down them and find something magical at the head of a waterfall instead of ending up with one leg in a bees’ nest
    –7020.42 Paths that are maybe paths and maybe not and might in fact exist only due to the human brain’s peculiar genius for making patterns out of geographical noise
    –7020.43 Those that were made by one person wading through the long grass, realising there is no way through, and wading back
 -7020.5 Dubious or mythical pathways
    –7020.51 Those left by dogs or foxes in the woods
    –7020.52 Those left by malign ghosts in the woods, forever leading down to that crack in the tree at the valley’s base
 -7020.6 Those that no longer exist
 -7020.7 Those that will exist some day, but not yet

True love, dust, ceremonial swords, locked boxes, wrappings that shiver in undetectable winds, Christmas trees, spiders, obsolete technologies, nests of cables, murder victims, lecture notes, obscure heirlooms, insect cities, toys that have gone on an adventure, doors into other attics, plutonium, haunted ballgowns, mystery plastic things, fibreglass, stuffed parrots, hatstands, theatrical costumes, stories written in exercise books, suitcases, bare bulbs, crutches, the last breaths of emperors, mummified cakes, cards from distant restaurants, unwanted furniture, aerials, dead clocks, lost bears, glass bottles, silence and birdsong.

1. The Department for Cockups (DfC)
2. The Ministry for Folding Cats (MfFC)
3. The Department of Sitting Around In Chairs Looking Important (DoSAICLI)
4. The Department of Being Sincerely But Ineffectually Concerned about Things (DoBSBICaT)
5. The Department that has Big Impressive Corridors But No-one is Quite Sure What it Does (DthBICBNiQSWiD)
6. The Department for Carefully Gathering all the Scientific Evidence and then Ignoring It (DfCGatSEatII)
7. The Department of Hey Look it’s a Dancing Pony Pay No Attention to What’s Going On Behind You (DoHLiaDPPNAtWGOBY)
8. The Department for Doing Things Tomorrow (DfFTT)