.
I’ve been imagining this:-Manchester.
A bookshop.
Me.
“If, once more, you charge £5,000 for botanical books I’ve not bought,”(I’m saying this in a tough, gangsterish voice)“I’ll go to the police.”
The woman behind the counter pales. Shrinks into her suit.
“Pressed geranium flowers,”I whisper (menacingly).
She’ll send no more. (I can tell by the way she clutches fearfully at her beads.)
I leave.
Oh! Very likely!
Truth is as floppy as a Spider Plant leaf.
As squashy as a ripe persimmon.
But with invisible threads (like a prickly pear) - and the skin slicing power of grass.
The bookselling woman would ‘sing’ about Ming.
Identity - uncertain.
Papers - forged.
Date of birth - unknown.
The police wouldn’t look for Algerian Goths.
(In Dorchester.)
They’d soon find out where we live.
We’d run.
But where?
Not Mars!
(No air!)
I need a lie.
A good one.
Believable.
Bad . . . . . .
She steals books from the British Library and sells them in brown-paper covers?
Her cleaning lady is paid a pittance?
Both?
Does she drink while she drives?
Take drugs?
Grow them?
Plants . . . . . .
Ferns . . . . . .
Pluto . . . . . .
Hmm.
Flower power?
Flower power?
. . . . . . Might be worth a try.