The Itty-Bitty Teaspoon Divider

Someone talks about an idea to overcome cheating. They suggest I demonstrate accurate measurement by using a teaspoon with an itty-bitty divider.

I think it would work better if the divider were moveable.

The Three Disgraces

1)    I haven't had time to learn the dance steps - I can't even see the other dancers to check that I am in time.

2)    I don't know any of the answers to the three questions on football.

3)    The final humiliation: I am left holding a bundle of dry twigs instead of a fine pair of antlers.

Missed Opportunity

If only I had a camera, I think, then I could show everyone just how stunning these button decorations look on my plastic storage trays.

There is never one to hand when you need it most.

Mystery of Choreography

I've got lots of questions for the Ballet Rambert choreographer:

Like where do they start?
Does he have an overall idea in mind?
Do they just dance around and see what happens?
How do they remember it?
Do they use notation? What does it look like?

Running Scared

A terrifying chase sequence through dark woods. I'm not sure who is after me - a young man.

It started as a game.

I hide, my heart beating fast, in the shadow of a bush. I hear him rushing down and he stops in the same place or nearby.

Is it myself I am running from?

Scarey Rolf

Rolf Harris sings softly on Top of the Pops. His face is covered in hair and his mouth filled with white space.

Dangerous Assignation

After 20 years K has come back to life and has a romantic date with an Algerian soldier from the enemy camp.

K is nervous -  he knows it could also be a military trap.  He takes my mobile and a bottle of a substance called AMMO.   It is so thoughtless of him to take the mobile into such a risky environment. I am furious about it.

Face Paint

As an "avant-garde" experiment I black up my face then sleep on it.
The next day I do the same with luminous yellow paint.

Despite being the only one to find it hilarious I am convinced this is radical progress.

Awkward Instruction

This comes at the end of a string of prosaic instructions:

Stand in a square en pointe for two sentences.

It is a disagreeable order and I obey it reluctantly. Everything else had been so straightforward.

And relax.

Two Dream Fragments

A kidney shaped bowl with attachments.

A badly drawn car with brown splodge on the roof.

The drawing gets placed in the bowl and then slowly disappears.

Awkward Game

My other self and I are negotiating a pile of cards. Each card is coded with a grid of parallel lines. Amongst them are two identical cards which can only be used once. He wants to take mine but I won't let him. There is an uneasy tension.

Art Danger

Like a great revolutionary orator, a Polish artist addresses a crowd in front of Somerset House. He storms towards a shop window smashing the glass. Inside is a block of an extremely unstable substance at which he hurls a handful of coarse salt. A poisonous vapour is emitted.
How can he do this and survive I wonder?
The audience is spellbound and flocks towards him in admiration. Everyone now has their face bandaged as protection from the fumes.

Twigs and Weeds

I am furious with my friend. We are supposed to be driving our flying car but she got waylaid taking instructions from someone with an old A to Z. What particularly annoys me is that I have missed out looking at the illustrations in this rare 1964 edition. There is a small engraving of Lots Road from that time when it was nothing more than twigs and weeds.

Midlife Crisis

I am shifting an unwieldy pile of cardboard boxes loosely bound together to form an ugly sculpture. Hanging at the bottom are two loose boxes which somehow represent testicles. My long dead aunty offers to help me carry this home. Bundling the boxes together, I thank her and tell her I can manage alone.

Dying Twins

I work as a teacher in a school in Nazi Germany. While I am there two male technicians in their mid 60s die one after the other, blood and clear liquid spurting from mysterious wounds.

Forbidden Juice

Dad explains that when I was a kid I had been desperate for this string of sweet juice that I thought was sex energy. I was mad to have it, but I'd misbehaved so it was being kept from me. He said it was just Ribena, but I remember it as this concentrated solution of yellow Space Dust and sherbet lemonade steeped in tobacco tins.

Mr Obama Goes To Washington

I am in a communal sittingroom. I turn on the telly- white noise then a blue screen with fragments of  text - now a scene from a cheap American film. The setting is the early sixties, the dialogue uninspired. Lead character walks on and I realise it's a remake of Frank Capra's Mr Smith Goes To Washington but it's about Barack Obama's early life. It is as if it has been made with the racist undertones of a 1930's film so that gawky teen Obama is played by a white actor with exaggerated bulging eyes. I am angry at the grotesque caricature.

In the original film James Stewart plays the part of Mr Smith a naive idealist who fights political corruption and guards American values as a moral hero.

Celestial Flight

My dream leads me along a sunny country lane. I sense that my point of view is 6 inches higher than normal - am I floating? I take the liberty of turning my body horizontal and find I am able to partially control the dream. I glide up spiralling granite steps which morph into the carved feathers of an angel and here I sit singing with a boy's unbroken voice - a tiny insect held by the warm air pressure flying high high snug in those safe wings.

The rest of the night was filled with nightmares dominated by a giant Keanu Reeves slicing his arms open.