As I Walked Out in Galway City

It is a hangover. I thought it was the weather until I tried to rise. Cramps in my calf muscles as if a butcher were trying to strip them slowly from the bone. Homemade Strawberry Wine from a shop in Shop Street in Galway City. Köstliche Träume alone late at night on a sofa with a good film, Australian (the film) and delightful. It bulged with unrequited love like an Elizabethan codpiece and with what the euphemist these days calls scenes of a graphic nature. I suppose it is because the action goes off the graph in matters of body ripping and bottom slapping. Should they not be called scenes of an ungraphic or transgraphic or hypographic nature? Good old rumpety-pumpety anyway, and much kitchen vulgarity in the style of New South Wales suburban, the whole ending with a murder (brutal of course) and kisses and hugs all round back at the Outback. That’s my cup of Fosters! Though originating from down-under in that far-off austral landmass which appears to those who have only seen it on maps to be a capsized continent and possibly sinking to boot (or is that New Zealand?) this was nevertheless a happy film devoid of kangaroos. Thus it confounded my I’m-on-top-of-the-world prejudice. I like a dénouement where the women are gráphicly satisfied (we all like a bit of the grá and what am I but a gráfic artist anyway) and afterwards all the men get pushed off a cliff. When they fall for a long time unrepentative and then go splat at the bottom, well, could one ask for more? Not my own nemesis, though. That is more vice-versa. This after all is not a pipe! It is only a pipe dream.

And as for pipe dreams, let us begin one:

The Bog Crocodile
The Bog Crocodile opened an eye and surveyed for a moment the lazy surface of the pool that stretched away from him in two placid directions between yellow orchids and purple willow herb. No change in the familiar surroundings was apparent and this was enough to ensure the unrelenting somnolence of the other eye. Yet something must have prompted this tiny shift in his awareness. The Bog Crocodile was not given to idle speculation. Indeed he was not given to speculation of any kind whatsoever. The Bog Crocodile was certain. He was, one might say, sufficient in himself. Like the Universe.
It was clear to him that the orange waters flowing imperceptively today over his loggy bulk still slid past with the same immeasurable sloth as ever. The air hung motionless from a pig skin yellow sky, as though too tired to breathe. Even when an infantile puff of breeze, scarcely awake at this early hour, accidentally set the cotton heads nodding, it seemed nothing more than an affirmation of the never ending changelessness of things.
However at this moment deep beneath his unsuspecting certainty, from turfy depths where the black mash of sunlight and centuries lay fermenting into fire, a silver bubble as large and wobbly as a juggler’s dinner plate rose slowly towards the light.

Silent and treacherous, it broke surreptitiously upon the surface of the pool with the false politeness of an embarrassed guest struggling to divert attention from a smelly indiscretion at the dinner table.
An old spider knitting quietly in a clump of marsh marigolds sensed a twang of change register on his web. Peering to the right and to the left he strengthened his grasp on his silver ladder and a moment later felt the reeds twitch as a strange ripple passed them by. It brought with it an old, old smell, and made him think of dead flies, and long forgotten banquets in buzzing bluebottle halls, and the cobwebby paradise of ruined cottages and abandoned barns mouldering into the earth. It was the smell of arum lily and graves. It had a toadstool quality, even more pungent at first than that of the flowers in which he kept his deadly traps.
From a vantage point high above the wetland a sharp eyed bird of prey noticed the waters ripple and break. She wheeled for a moment treading the high breeze expectantly.
Below her the Bog Crocodile closed both eyes in defiance and took a deep and considered breath. “I smell,” he thought with the assurance of age if not of wisdom, “I smell something very rotten.” In pontifical solemnity he slowly licked his lips.

(From "An Leabhar Dubh agus Geal - Stories from my Linocuts". The Bog Crocodile Chapter One. Unfinished. But all suggestions for the continuation of this tale welcomed. I know what is going to happen. But perhaps you know better?)