1. My mum and my dad met on an egg farm. That’s why my mum’s nickname is chook. My mum also used to call my dad hen, which is funny because he’s a male. Mum even says that he’s not half a man. But that has nothing to do with the nickname. The nicknames happened because my mum used to call the chickens chooks and my dad used to call the chickens hens and they would always argue about what the right name is. I said they should have agreed to disagree, because my mum is always telling me to do that when my cousins come over and we start fighting. I said they should have called them chickens. My mum and my dad both laughed when I said this and they started calling me chicken. This didn’t last, though, because chicken has two syllables and does not make for a very good nickname when my real name is already very short, which is Dill, like the herb.
2. This morning we had an outing to the botanical gardens. I ventured into an iced room where they show plants from the Antarctica, though I was very comfortable in there because I had a coat. You cannot live with nurses and carers and young dilly dally maids and not leave home without a coat. They stuff you into it. It is my wish now to suffocate, one day, when I no longer want to deal with the world. I will be wearing a coat and I want the suited men to tell the dilly dalliers that I was utterly overheated. I don’t like winter and coats, but I don’t like summer either. I prefer autumn. The colours are more noticeable, greeting me at eye level and above me, as well as below me, even making sounds beneath my slippers. Besides, I enjoy the reason to stay inside. I am sly like that. I take advantage of it. They don’t tell me things in winter because I am busy pretending they’re not visiting. In the summer, my imagination gasps for water and in the dry air can find none. It croaks. That’s what old people do. They croak.
3. Josephine was a real beauty when I first met her. Course she’s not now, but she was all them years back and that’s why I wanted to push her up against the jukebox and play her a tune of me own. God, she was beautiful. And she was taken by my song. She moved her hips and she danced with her arms swinging out to her sides, letting out some little girl screams when I broke into the chorus. I was going to be a rock star all them years back and Josephine was going to come with me and stay by my side. But she kept dancing even when I smashed my guitar, when Dan was taken by the coppers. She couldn’t keep her damned arms still, looking like a crazy woman, being thrown out the door just before they start cleaning up for the breakfast round. You look at her now and you see that. You wouldn’t believe it, but your world can change fast, kiddo. And you don’t wanna be like old Josephine.
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