Listing to Port

1. Cats and dogs will lie down together and make adorable litters of puttens and kippys. You will not really care that it is the end times because look at their little faces they are so cute.
2. Radio stations will drop off the air, one by one, calmly and without any great fuss. Eventually, there will only be three stations remaining: two of robotic voices endlessly reciting numbers (one in a language you know, one in a language you do not), and a station filled with small clicking noises a bit like the conversation of cockroaches.
3. Bananas will eat monkeys. Bananas will eat sheep. Bananas will basically eat anything. It’ll be kind of like you brought a bunch of little caterpillars into your house and then they wriggled loose and ate all the food in the cupboards overnight and now they are the size of your arm and a bit intimidating and they’ve shed their old skins and are growing new ones. There’s that one in town that’s the size of a sofa and sometimes you come across its trail of scraped yellow skin down the road and go the other way. Nobody is quite sure if they pupate later on. Nobody will get to find, out, anyway.
4. There will be an odd yellow cast to the air, a little like everything is being filmed in sepia. It will make for amazing selfies. The beautiful people of the day will respond by going to their doom in top hats and waxed moustaches.
5. Coffee will run out before wi-fi. Chocolate will run out before the post stops being delivered. You will still be able to get a phone signal right to the end, but by then the networks will have fused together into a giant electromagnetic squid thing so you’ll have to be OK with tentacles to make a phone call.
6. Fake messiahs will be everywhere. Most of them will be made of plastic, although a few more ambitious ones will be made of metal. Fake messiahs will be used to prop open doors, weigh down the piles of paper of the vast bureaucracy of the end times, and hang coats from. Fake messiahs will serve as plinths for expensive shoe shops. Occasionally you will trip over a fake messiah on the way to the shops and vaguely ponder a lawsuit against the messiah factory.
7. Also there will be the bit where all the humans go; this might be one of the signs of the end times for some other species, like rats or horses.

5505 Cities
 -5505.1 Those that never sleep
    –5505.11 Those cities that never sleep because they have far too much exciting stuff to do
       —5505.111 Cities that are like small dogs, bursting with disorganized excitement, full of twitchy crowds standing round waiting for awesome things to happen
       —5505.112 Cities that will dance in a frenzy of joy until long after the other cities are all laid down
       —5505.113 Cities that are building something in there, though no-one is sure quite what
    –5505.12 Those cities that never sleep because they have awful, intractable insomnia
       —5505.121 Cities that are additionally grumpy, weepy and forgetful
 -5505.2 Those that sleep entirely normally thank you
    –5505.21 Those cities which would in any case rather not discuss their sleep with you, and if you could refrain from prying about other things and just let them be that would be great
    –5505.22 Those that cannot be having with the antics of those other cities and would just rather the trains ran on time
       —5505.222 Those that cannot really be having with anything
    –5505.23 Those whose statistical yearbooks record the exact optimal level of sleep and maximal citizen happiness
    –5505.24 Those who need sleep to grow, who are constantly waking with new limbs and appendages
 -5505.3 Cities that sleep amazingly, expansively, that sleep for years
    –5505.31 Those that cradle their inhabitants in the precise mathematics of perfect days
    –5505.32 Those that radiate false calm, and whose anger is locked away
       —5505.221 Cities that have terrible dreams and that wake up with a dew of night-sweat running down their tallest towers
    –5505.33 Those that are cursed to sleep but always on the verge of waking
    –5505.34 Those that sleep like dormice, cute and curled up between the mountains and the sea
 -5505.4 Cities built on mystery and lies
    –5505.41 Those having as their foundation a large and unpleasant secret, and the corners of the secret are occasionally dug up and tugged upon and then hastily put back, and for the few days following nobody makes eye contact
    –5505.42 Those cities that have not looked in the mirror for some time
       —5505.421 Those that know they are great and old and grand and powerful, so long as they remain unexamined
       —5505.422 Those cities that know they are too nice to be angry
    –5505.42 Those that are built on absurdity and would fall apart if their problems were to be fixed
 -5505.5 Cities that are dead
    –5505.51 Those whose ghosts seethe gently at the modern age from under trees
    –5505.52 Cities caught mid-death like flies in amber, and buried
    –5505.53 Cities that are dead but still walking
 -5505.6 Improper cities
    –5505.61 Those cities having no proper location, that might more properly be called cuckoos, settling down in the nests of other cities to make neighbourhoods oddly familiar from other cities in other places
    –5505.62 Cities of plaster, paste and clockwork, convincing only to a distant eye
       —5505.621 Those that consist only of a dog chasing a bus, endlessly, looped onto a webcam, empty of humanity

Broken bottles; stars; discarded fairy wings, half in and half out of the mud; piles of swords; brass knobs; a shaft of frozen dog piss, collected at source in Antarctica and shipped to your grotto in the freezer compartment of a serious research vessel; the Crown Jewels; the carapace of a shiny green beetle; a pair of glasses at the bottom of a river; toenails painted with glitter polish; traffic jams on a sunny day; the plastic crowns of the invading army of tiny princesses as they step out of the sea onto the land; the sea itself; a red-splotched carp seen between waterlilies; chandeliers; a level 3 trombone fire; nuclear accidents; cloth of gold; a million tiny eyes; the shattered mirrors of failed enchanters; icicles; space blankets; fleets of alien vessels; the glitter glue shelf at your local craft shop; ice castles; bullion.

1. There is a small black door of rough wood that opens into the high-glamour halls of Faerie, the ones where fabulous beings dance all night in their masks and lace and finery, and once a month at midnight it unlocks itself and for an hour the dancers emerge on tiny silver chains. And the trapped ones are all blinking and wide-eyed and wondering where the last ten years went, and the other ones are staring hungrily at passers-by with their big yellow eyes. And after an hour a bell sounds and some great beast inside, slightly too far away to see clearly, starts the winch going to haul the chains back in. The odd thing about the chains is their fragility against the wider world; an untrapped human could melt them away just by breathing on them. But for some reason the wider world has always assumed that what is going on is some kind of goth club, and no-one has investigated further.
2. There is a door that leads to a world almost exactly like this one, except that in some key respects your life there has taken a different path. I do not know exactly what this door looks like, only that one may meet it a few times in a lifetime and that it bears a plate stating its nature and warning of the consequences of entering. Nobody remembers going through the door; your memories, too, switch to the shape of the new world. You have no way of knowing how your life in the other world differs from this one. Some people will always go through the door, and some people have never been, and some people will go only once. I do not know which of those you are.
3. There is a door, a white upvc door but it must be a door into some other world because if you go round the other side it’s a brick wall. And when you open it the world on the other side is oddly indistinct, as if what you are seeing is alien enough that your mind needs more time to make sense of it. People talk of a passageway or maybe an opening. Some say that it is white or that it is rapidly flickering between colours. Common to all accounts is the sense that there is something large on the other side that is moving towards the viewer very rapidly. And then you slam the door, and you spend a little time just breathing, and then you go home and dream about it for a few nights. And maybe, some years later, you talk about it. But by then you have forgotten where the door is or why you opened it in the first place.
4. There is a door to all the other worlds at once, a great area of cracked space like a smashed mirror in more dimensions than you care to count. Although it isn’t a door in the normal sense, it is a thing that offends the eye, and most worlds have tried to cover it up or wall it over. Some say it is the consequence of a great explosion between realities, far away in a world that does not exist in the normal sense any more, the runaway consequence of someone inexpertly tring to make doors. If you find it, I would not recommend going through. The open ways through to each individual world are tiny, far too small to fit a person. Every so often a gust of blood-smelling air emerges as someone passes into the cracks from some other world far off.
5. There is a door that you go through every day, into a world that is almost exactly like the one you were born in. The only difference between the worlds is some fact or other. It varies. Something like: the exact definition of ‘xylophone’, or the way that doctors deal with umbilical cords, or suchlike. It isn’t that you have trouble remembering which is the right version. It’s that some of the time you are living in a world where one version is true, and some of the time you are living in a world where the other version is true.

Dear Mr. Heracles,
                We are pleased to inform you that the operation was successful. We removed from the dog’s (dogs’?) stomach the following items: one golden apple, toothmarks to upper side; piece of wooden club, rather splintered; aconite leaves; a large quantity of snake bones, too many to count; several handfuls of earth and stones; remnants of three dog collars, heavily chewed, bearing identical tags (‘Cerberus, if found please return to Underworld’); several laurel wreaths; some fragments of lion-skin; short length of chain, apparently made of adamant; three or four arrow shafts; a large hairball, appears to be wool from some sort of golden fleece; a belt; some cattle dung; and a rattle. We expect him to make a full recovery. Please note that we are still awaiting our agreed payment of one hundred cattle.

We regret to inform you, however, that we have some concerns about the treatment and training of your dog. It seems apparent that he is not offered much affection or exercise in his day-to-day life. He is rather fond of chasing snakes, which is a problem given that he persists in mistaking his tail for a snake (to be fair, so did we initially!). Additionally he seems to be fond of leg-humping, which I’m sure you will appreciate is also a problem given his size and threatening aspect. We recommend that he is given at least two long walks per day, and ideally that he also has a course of sessions with our in-house pet psychologist. He also needs to be microchipped. As I am sure you are aware, 'Underworld’ is not an adequate address and also appears to be that of a previous owner (we did contact the band Underworld, but they denied all knowledge). If you have not made any progress on these issues by the time of the follow-up appointment, we may sadly be forced to contact the necessary authorities.

Yours sincerely,
Faithful Friend Vets Ltd.

1. Netbasketfootsportsball. A spirited but ultimately rather confusing attempt to merge all the different things that people do with balls together. It is rarely played anymore, but sometimes people accidentally do a few rounds when knocking balls around in a multi-sport environment. If you end up dangling by your foot from some kind of hoop while someone else is fervently apologising for elbowing a ball into your face, you have probably been playing netbasketfootsportball. Interestingly, a recent revival movement has been sparked by the claim that the game’s problems could all be solved by introducing some tennis elements to the mix.
2. Tossing the ball over the fence and then having to go and ask for it back. You may think of it as an idle childhood game, but in fact there is an international ball fence toss league who meet once every five years in Tashkent. The top level game combines elements of physical skill (getting the ball over the expert level fence in the first place) with verbal dexterity (making the argument to get it back from the league’s ferocious selection of professional next door neighbours).
3. Mouseball. The closest thing that mice have to an extreme sport, mouseball is played in the summer with the contents of a single peapod, the game being deemed over when all the peas have been won. Two teams of mice assemble at either end of a garden, while the mouse referee places a pea in the middle. At the referee’s signal, both teams race for the pea and attempt to get it to their end of the garden, frequently biting each other in their energetic attempts to get control. A bonus of five peas is deemed won if the active pea is inserted under the chin of a sleeping cat.
4. Giant ball marbles. Giant ball marbles has similar rules to conventional marbles, except that the balls used must be the largest ball of their kind in the world. Thus one could bring the world’s largest ball of rubber bands to the giant ball marbles arena, for example, and pit it against the world’s largest hairball. Games of giant ball marbles are sadly rare, due to the effort and expense involved in transporting large balls to the main arena, a field in central Kansas.
5. Four-dimensional basketball. You’re never going to be able to play this, but after the aliens land you might occasionally observe a three-dimensional slice through a game being played. The best place to view is in the same plane as the basket sphere of one team or another - see if you can get your alien hosts to put you here or orient the pitch so that you are here naturally. Then you will at least be able to tell how many baskets have been scored. By one team, at least. Make sure your hosts put you back afterwards or you may find yourself perpetually dislocated.
6. Ball. Perhaps the purest ball game, ball consists of placing a single, perfectly round ball in an open space and contemplating it for a while. There is no set game length. Touching the ball after the initial set-down is grounds for immediate sending-off.

1. Being as how we sometimes want to sit on the toilet and look at our phones without flagging up to the world that we have chosen to take something with us that  is not strictly necessary for the task of excretion; or similarly
2. Being as how some of us do menstruating and need stuff to deal with that and may not wish to announce this to the room; and
3. Being as how we may someday be in a contest of riddles deep underground, and the answer to ‘what have I got in my pocket’ is an easy one if we have no pockets, and thus we will end up eaten and there will be no-one to defeat the dragon; and
4. Being as how we sometimes need something to do with our hands when slouching around, and crossing arms or fiddling with things attracts a certain breed of amateur psychologist; and
5. Being as how a lady sometimes needs to have to hand a discreet contraceptive after she has jumped from a helicopter, abseiled down a building, drilled through the back wall of a bank, fought off a few security guards, picked the lock, taken the diamond and hijacked the getaway car, not to mention needing a place to put the diamond; and
6. Being as how one sometimes needs a warm place to put a baby kangaroo whilst one searches for its mother; and
7. Being as how losing a bag is significantly easier than losing a pocket, the latter occurrence requiring one either to get naked, battle something with claws or have really badly-made clothes; and
8. Being as how you can pull pockets inside-out and use them as sock puppets when you are bored:

we, the undersigned, are of the opinion that DRESSES AND SKIRTS SHOULD HAVE POCKETS; and that furthermore TROUSERS FOR THE FEMALE-IDENTIFED SHOULD HAVE POCKETS TOO; and that furthermore these pockets should be actual functional ones that do not spill their contents when you sit, squat or bend; that fake pockets are Satan’s spunkstains and let us not speak of them further; that good pockets are big enough to hold at least two of a wallet, a phone, keys and a handkerchief and that given the fundamental symmetry of human beings it is usually no hardship to put at least two pockets on; and that frankly we do not give a fuck about the fabric draping marginally differently compared to the ability to conveniently carry stuff around in the way that people with penis-enabled trousers take for granted.

1. Castle in the clouds, location variable. Seemed like a good idea at the time but actually you can’t land a plane on it and it’s a bit high up for a helicopter so getting to the shops is a nightmare. Great for things that can fly and who also like damp fog in their rooms in the morning. Non-steerable. Viewings by appointment, we reserve the right to cancel if the property is drifting near an airport or through a thunderstorm at the scheduled time.
2. Castle cursed with a hundred years of sleep by an evil enchantress. Enchantress was not sure where to apply the spell and ended up casting it at the front door and running away, so if you use another door to go in you are fine. Comes with large pile of sleeping delivery professionals in the front hall. By agreement with the Society for Mystical Post, purchasers will need to turn sleepers regularly to prevent pressure sores.
3. Castle on little legs up in the foothills of the Lost Mountains, uninhabited since shortly after its original enchantment when it became sentient. Castle is now ticklish but most problem areas have been identified and fenced off. Purchaser will need to be resistant to digestive juices to use the main hallway. Purchaser will also need to be able to catch the castle, and to trim its toenails.
4. Floating castle on the South Pole of Jupiter. Amazing views. Usually has oxygen. Would suit responsible, radiation-resistant professional who likes amazing views.
5. Castle on the Western borders of Faerie, on the shores of the nether sea. Built by elves. Elves, who may have been a bit more into dancing and singing and draping themselves over furniture than building, got bored half-way through and hired a dodgy wizard to magic the rest up. Hence most of the towers are illusory and in hot weather they flicker and someone will have to undrape themselves and go and bang on the ceiling to get them to come back.
6. Castle accidentally built on tail of hibernating dragon. One initially careless, now exceedingly careful owner. Must sell before Spring.
7. Charming, bijou basement castle-ette. Basically like a full castle but without the above-ground parts. Would suit open-minded torture professionals, minor abominations and aspiring villains. Newly installed bathroom suite. Dogs welcome.  

1145 Tools
 -1145.1 Those for making holes in things
    –1145.11 Pointy sticks
    –1145.12 Drills
       —1145.121 Those capable of drilling through rock and metal and stuff
       —1145.122 Those capable of drilling through wood
       —1145.123 Those capable of drilling through butter and cheese
    –1145.13 Scissors
       —1145.131 The safety scissors that you used to cut a perfect monkey out of some paper and also your shirt, age 9
       —1145.132 Scissors for running with
       —1145.133 The multi-bladed herb-cutting scissors of your nightmares, marching on their ten points to the relentless beat of dreams
    –1145.14 Fingers
 -1145.2 Those for joining things together
    –1145.21 Glue
    –1145.22 Tape
       —1145.221 Duct tape
       —1145.222 Lesser forms of tape
    –1145.23 Accidental use of paint
    –1145.24 Little connecty widget things
    –1145.25 Love and hugs
 -1145.3 Those for breaking stuff
    –1145.31 Big fucking hammers
    –1145.32 Saws and stuff
 -1145.4 Those for stopping things squeaking
    –1145.41 WD-40
    –1145.42 Gags
    –1145.43 Helium-removal tools
 -1145.5 Those for turning things around
    –1145.51 Wrenches
    –1145.52 Screwdrivers
 -1145.6 Those for doing something else but you are not quite sure what
    –1145.61 Those plastic things that are in that box in the garage whose proper and essential use will only come to light after you have thrown them away
       –1145.611 Those that in addition appear to be irreplaceable

1. May you open your nappy bag at a time of great need to find only one nappy, used, several days old, and an empty packet of wipes.
2. May your baby open a portal to the vomit dimension and channel a milky spew larger than their own head through it.
3. May the next sleep regression begin tonight.
4. May there be no one food that everyone will eat.
5. May your toddler sequentially vomit on every clean duvet cover in the house.
6. May all your attempts to concentrate be interrupted by ‘I need a wee!’
7. May the toddler toddle your phone and keys off to a mysterious, inaudible and probably damp destination shortly before you are due to go out for an important appointment.
8. May the important toy go missing in the airport.
9. May they eat library books, draw on the walls, post letters into the bath; may their curiosity be channelled into finding out whether technology bounces.
10. May your child catch some picturesque illness that no childminder will come within ten miles of just as you approach a work deadline.
11. May their shoes be wrong in some subtle way that they lack the language to explain.
12. May the baby learn to climb up slides.
13. May you be so tired that you can no longer count.