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Cluster index: Robert Saxton

5 The Teapot

‘A SECOND BREW needs a helping hand, so shift your arse and serve me, Jeeves! Lift that lid and stir those leaves.’ Drinking tea directly from the spout, as the Chinese did in antiquity, is the brazen self-reliance of addiction. Teapots were smaller then, scaled for the individual. His brew crock stolen, perhaps by a […]

4 The Princess

‘THAT WAS NO LIPSTICK: it was a chip she’d dipped in ketchup. A tiara would be the height of vulgarity.’ Imagine if her buckle spelled ‘Peace’ or bore the Toyota glyph unwittingly; or she named her daughter Toya. Not on your royal jelly! The palace is omniscient these days. Even the secret tattoo is chronicled […]

6 The Oak

‘LADY GREGORY’S EARTHLY nightmare: the crash of the acorn, and the roots jostling each other rudely through the cleft.’ An Arthurian oak ship, sailing the seven centuries, is under attack from aliens. The bark emits a gall that traps every familiar monster in a spherical prison – a setback so habitual it alters the course […]

3 The Moth

‘THERE IS NOTHING to be gained, not even justice, by putting on trial the moth that has eaten the tapestry. It warrants the same amnesty as a rust moth.’ Our own lives may seem crepuscular in the wisdom of a warm summer night. Yet the dust on Castaneda’s moth, loose on its powdery wing, is […]

2 The Friend

‘ALPHABETICAL SEATING ARRANGEMENTS at the police academy encourage alphabetical groups of friends, with congestion in address books.’ A mishap in the tanning booth leaves him with an over-tanned front and pale back. It will be slow to fade, though his back can be darkened if he’ll risk the machine again. This duo – left-brain and […]

1 The Mirror

‘LOOK BOTH WAYS before you cross yourself. Gaze first at the hills in the picture and then at the picture made by the hills.’ Eureka! The crackpot scientist brandishes his formula: seven shards of light at right angles to flowing water. Only by running around the back of his mind could he take his panoptic […]