Glittermouse Visual Arts

A Nearly True Story About Something That Almost Happened
By The Person it Almost Nearly Happened To

Part One

One day, when the roads were all covered with rain and the cars and vans and lorries were all making "Swowsh" noises as they drove past, she left the house that she had been sleeping in the night before. Even though she had slept a lot in the night before, she still felt sleepy and grey like the sky. She suspected that maybe the rain had leaked into her somewhere to make her feel that way or maybe she was so tired because she had been investigating beer the night before. A friend had asked her if she would like to go and have a drink and she had thought that she would, so they had. While they were having their drinks, her friend had written Throne of Blood on a beer mat. She thought this was quite an interesting thing to have written.

Later on in the next day (the grey and sleepy one), she had a dream while she was pouring a big bristly man a pint of beer. The dream was that the thing that had been written down on the beer mat was somehow something to do with what the swan had been going to say the previous day before the cappuccino had happened. When the cold beer spilled onto her hand, she stopped having the dream but she somehow knew it was a true dream because the big bristly man winked at her as she put his drink on the counter. At least, she hoped that was why he had winked at her. Later on the same day, as she picked up a newspaper that someone had left on a table, a small brass whistle fell out of it. This was, she felt, quite a curious object. She put it into her pocket, carefully and with reverence, as she felt sure that it was not only curious but actually rather important too. She did not really have the time to think anymore about it until much later that day. The sky was still sleepy but now it was a dark muddy black orange colour too. This was because the days were beginning to retract into themselves, trying to keep warm because they knew that the world was tired of having summer. The rain jumped up and down on the paving stones excitedly because rain feels happier in the days which are autumn and winter.

She was sitting on a train when she remembered the whistle. She had finished working for that day and was going home to sleep. She found the little whistle in her pocket and thought about it long and hard. She wondered very much what would happen if she blew on it. It wasn't the kind of whistle, she decided, which would simply say "Wheeeeeeee!" it was far more likely to do something altogether more interesting. She wondered whether she should blow it. Then she thought about the swan and what had been written. She wanted to ask the swan what it had been going to say and if it knew what the writing on the beer mat meant, but she didn't think that she would be able to find her way back to the dream lake. The she had an Inkling. It didn't hurt at all but it felt awfully funny. She wasn't absolutely sure about the Inkling but it felt like quite a real Inkle. She felt like a lot of unusual occurrences had been quite carefully packed into a short space of time. She supposed the same people who would have said she couldn’t be a girl because she was too old would have said that they were not strange occurrences at all, but those are the sort of people that never have much fun and certainly never have adventures, so when she got home, after brushing her teeth and hair and getting out her work clothes for the next day, she got the little whistle carefully out of her pocket. She sat on the edge of the bed, feeling Inkle ever more strongly and raised the whistle to her toothpastey lips. It made a rather disappointing hoarse screech. She wondered if it had a sore throat. Nothing happened. For five whole minutes nothing happened, then she turned out her light and went to sleep. Almost immediately, she began to have a dream.

All of a sudden, it was time to get up. The dawn had crept in quickly and didn't seem at all half as sleepy as it had the day before. She sat up in bed, tired and annoyed that all the valuable dreams had been scared into the corners of her head like shadows in a torch beam. She washed and dressed. The day was Septembery. The parked cars had tried to cover themselves in frost but it hadn't quite ripened and tiny water droplets sat in its place. The sun wasn't quite up yet and her breath skipped along in front of her, probably trying to find it. But she couldn't remember her dreams! She knew she'd had them but she simply didn't know what they were. She thought there had been some sea and maybe a beach. She wondered if there had been any swans. On her way to work, she stopped and had a cup of coffee. In the shop where there was coffee, there were also some fish. They swam around quite frantically and seemed for all the world that they were trying to tell her something. They made her feel close to her lost dream, making her sure that the ocean had been in it somewhere. The fish mouthed words to her. Suddenly she realised what the fish and the seaside dream were meant to tell her. She should go and visit her Uncle Ron, who lived by the sea. As she had the next day off work, she decided to go to the seaside just as soon as she could. She left work at four O'clock and made her way to the coast. It felt lovely to be leaving the big city and she felt herself relaxing as she gazed out from the train window at the fields. The train clattered past a ruined castle on a hill, and seeing a big black swan sitting on one of the turrets, she felt sure she must be heading in the right direction…

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