Snail delivery

I've based myself in the Snail Cafe in Racozci Square. Always sitting at the same table under a weirdly skewed painting that bears a remarkable resemblance to Otto Dix's 1920 Skat Players. I'm waiting for Diogenes to return from a one-week trip to Lake Balaton so I can finally get my hands on that mysterious delivery from Thailand. 

Fuelled by copious amounts of cold beer and rich goulash, I've kept myself busy creating two new blogs. One is devoted to Shadows and all things 'meddlesome' and the other to my one hand clapping novels, including Zen Ambulance (now going through another draft and almost ready). The two blogs will hopefully give my readers an interesting insight into the many things I've put into my books. Everything from poems, sources, memorable quotes, references to films and TV, music and where to find the real-life locations behind the places that appear in the stories.  

Suddenly I get a tap on the elbow. I turn around. My friend Diogenes is standing there in his bright orange overalls. Naturally he's carrying a very large plastic dinosaur with a zip running the length of its stomach.
     "You're back," I say.
     "Yeah, just in," he replies. "Any chance of a beer?"
     I order one in for him.
     "At the risk of sounding dense, why are you carrying a giant plastic dinosaur?" I ask him.
     "Actually, it's not a dinosaur but a Thai water dragon - I can't even begin to pronounce it in Latin so don't ask. Her name is Claudette."
     Claudette? 
     "OK but why on earth have you brought her here?" 
     But the beer arrives, Diogenes sits down with the dragon on his lap and gets stuck in. I have to wait for an answer. Finally, he wipes the froth from his beard. Then he looks around the cafe and, satisfied no one else is watching, picks up Claudette and unfastens her zip. He puts his hand gently inside her stomach.
     "I've got the key to your special delivery from Thailand," he whispers.

Spinball

I open my eyes. Morning sunlight is streaming into the carriage, empty apart from me. There is a faint smell of cigarette smoke mixed in with freshly cut oranges. Looking out of the window I can see Keleti Station in the distance. It's rapidly getting bigger. In a few minutes I’ll be arriving in Budapest.  

I had a strange dream sometime in the early hours. Imagine this large sphere made of glass or plastic spinning around in outer space; it’s all sort of glittery and sparkly like one of those Christmas toys you shake to prompt a fake snowstorm. Inside the sphere I can see my family: there’s my wife and I sitting on a sofa and at our feet our little daughter and son are playing on the floor together. We are completely absorbed in watching our children play. It’s as if we’re stuck or captured in a single moment. I watch them – us – with intense fascination. But, despite my best efforts, the sphere gradually spins away into the darkness and out of sight towards an unknown destination. Somewhere in time.

With a sigh I grab my trilby and get ready to leave the train. I need to meet Demetrius and finally find out what that mysterious delivery is from Thailand.

Bucharest, Goodbye Cormac

I've got a four berth couchette on the Dacia 347. Destination: Vienna. But I'm getting off at Budapest where I've got to see Diogenes the dwarf about that mysterious delivery that's waiting for me.

There's only two of us in the couchette, me and the backpacker. He's sucking noisily on some kind of mint and got incredibly hairy legs that knot just under the knees. But I've got my laptop; I'm busy designing my website.

Shlooop...

As the train pulls out of Gara du Nord I decide that its impossible to work while I've got this guy sat opposite me.

"Have you ever seen a film called I was a Teenage Werewolf?" I ask him.
     "No," he says, crossing his legs. "Why?"
     "Michael Langdon starred in it - before he became famous in Little House on the Prairie."  
     "I didn't know that."
     "Not many people do."
     "Say, why are you writing our dialogue using quotation marks? I thought you were trying to write like Cormac McCarthy."
     "I've decided I'm not Cormac."
     "What about Zen City, Iso?"
     "I'm going to bring out a new edition, re-written using quotation marks. More accessible. Hopefully, more commercial."
     "And Man in a Zen Ambulance?"
     "That'll be same."
     "And this blog?"
     "Yep, quotation marks from now on in."
     Backpacker crunches up the mint or whatever it is in his mouth.    
    "Oh, I get it," he says. "You want me to go, is that it?"  
     Finally.     
     He gathers up all his belongings, including a massive bright red Fuji-Tite-Rite backpack and struggles out of the compartment.
     Suddenly I'm feeling better.
     "Definitely easier to understand the dialogue now," he shouts back from somewhere down the corridor.
     "Yeah, I guess."