Chapter 5

Dail’s conversation the previous day with his friend who, he felt, was a rather ambiguous person and if he were writing a book, was the kind of character he would probably choose to fully introduce at a later date, had cast into blindingly vibrant and painfully bright light the fact that, indeed, he had still not had any luck with an idea for The Book.

The best course of action, Dail had decided, was to get out of the house and snoop around the “real world” for some sort of inspiration. Subsequently, he was strolling down the street in his North-West London-ish hometown; trying to avoid the behooded locals and the weather, which today had reached a balmy minus 2. To be fair, he conceded, it was January in London (well, he conceded yet again, just outside London, but near enough for everyone to consider London. It was at the end of the Northern Line, which was good enough for him).
Meandering into a coffee shop called Yours, he ordered a hot chocolate and, once he had collected it from the pre-designated receiving area, wandered over to a sublimely squishy armchair, which he proceeded to sink into so quickly that he assumed he must have struck an iceberg at some point during the sitting manoeuvre. In an attempt to validate this theory, he tapped out an S.O.S. distress call on the table to see if anyone might perchance come to his aid, though all he achieved in doing so was causing a look of deeply repressed fear to briefly ripple across the face of a nearby elderly gentleman. That or a draught had just entered the room and dislodged some wrinkles…
Having negotiated some sort of equilibrium within the armchair, Dail sat there for the next few hours letting his mind wander around possible book ideas. However, thanks to his terrible sense of direction, he got utterly lost and very little was achieved.

Surely Yours is a terrible name for a place where people are likely to socialise or meet, Dail’s mind pointed out. Well yes, he agreed. It could cause all sorts of misunderstandings and terribleness. Things could get very confusing for those who didn’t know it was a coffee shop…

*brrrring brrrring*
“Hello?”
“Hey man, shall we go to Yours?”
“Well I’m already here…but sure. Come on down.”
“You’re already there? Cool! See you in about 5 minutes.”

Ten minutes later

*brrrring brrrring*
“Nyello?”
“Where are you?”
“I’m at mine.”
“Why? We’re going to Yours.”
A brief silence.
“God I hate you.”

After roughly 53 minutes, Dail and his mind had strayed into an altogether stranger village of thoughts, where Mayoress Silly reigned as King, and the locals held a bi-annual carnival celebrating the birthday of the Amish God of Soiled Under-Garments. Unfortunately, today was not the day of the Great Carnival so, together, they had drunkenly stumbled into the local taverna and set about discussing, in very hushed yet serious tones, just how they would react should they wake up one morning to discover that the surface of the Earth had been covered in Tic Tacs. Probably not very well, they surmised. There would be much yelping and flailing of extremities.
“Maybe that’s why the Moon is white…” mused Dail.
“Prossibly. At least it would be minty fresh.” Counter-mused his mind.
“Unequivocally minty. What the hell does prossibly mean?”
“It’s like possibly, only more probable.”
“Outstanding.”
Evidently the local mead (the secret ingredient was rain water that was wrung out of the wool of sheep which were kept in a special field) had taken them to that wonderful state of drunkenness whereby all ‘logic’ becomes infallible.

This is insane. Surely it can’t be this hard to just come up with an idea for a book. There are loads out there. Loads. More than 36, anyway, Dail observed. Definitely more than 100. But both The Bath and The Toilet have forsaken me, and Yosh wasn’t much help either… T.V. is useless and people keep sinking in coffee shops. Maybe that’s why there are sometimes lifejackets under seats… Actually that wouldn’t work because only airplane seats really have lifejackets…and sinking into them isn’t really a problem as they’re not exactly the most comfortable seats in the world… But what is with those whistles they have attached to them? They could all at least be tuned differently, so in the event of a large group of people cast adrift at sea they could at least attempt to compose a song to while away the hours until the emergency services arrived, and hopefully keep the sharks entertained enough to not treat their legs as chew toys. Maybe they liked Beethoven… No, Dail decided. They’re probably more partial to acid jazz.