Glamping- and Sleeping bags

Zipping up a sleeping bag is as easy as doing up your bra with gloves on

I’m still swimming with the seaweed, (a great title for a book, play, or poem).

We had a seal pop up once which was pretty exciting. There is always the odd gull circling and bemused dog walker. The local bus drives by at the same time usually when I’ve screamed myself silly. I like to jump about and wave at the bus (I think the waves bring out a repressed teenager) until the others remind me that I look like I’m drowning.

Afterward, we all race home to as one of the swimmers calls a ‘flurry of activity’, a plate of something hot and for me a long look at my coffee pot. After decades of greeting the morning with black coffee, I have (thanks to what I thought was a heart attack) heartburn and now greet the day with food and ginger tea, which is not the same. Drinking herbal tea in the morning is like watching the TV with the sound off or drying yourself with a wet wipe instead of a nice fluffy towel.

So pissed off am I with the lack of caffeine, that I even had one of my characters in a book I’ve nearly finished The Woman Who Wanted To Be Funny suffer the public indignity of thinking he is having a heart attack—on stage (which turns out to be heartburn).

Fictitious revenge is so sweet in fiction.

Looking at the world through a robot’s eyes takes imagination and I am using Pete’s Earth memoirs to delve deeper into how he sees things and his past.

So let’s recap…

We left Pete two newsletters ago feeling things in his Lycra that he had never felt before. They have caught up with Beryl (the esteemed leader), her sidekick H2 and Legless and are now camping, unsure what to do next.

The Earth Memoirs

Writing in a tent isn’t easy, not when you have a dwarf sleeping close by and you don’t want him to know.

Being locked into a sleeping bag doesn’t help either, I feel like a cucumber in a sock.

Where I come from temperatures inside are kept at a sheet throwing over warmth, blankets and the like are for field workers—a rough lot, partial to a hessian-like material that scratches the skin like wire wool. They sleep on a hard surface close to the ground and snore like walruses. We, Androids reboot rather than sleep and we do it on a mattress of light foam so light you can roll it up and put it in your pocket—like a Barbie yoga mat. It’s made from fabric that breathes with the flow of Teflon and remembers your bumpy bits—like a Barbie yoga mat with a memory.

Mex says sleeping on an Earth bed is much more fun. But then with a skinful of whisky and a mountain of Scottish Tablet who wouldn’t? Mex has embraced everything ‘earthy’ Bunnie has thrown her way and falls asleep at the drop of a hat. As I write she is happily snoring in the tent next to us under the influence of a jug of cocktails, a bag of chips, and a battered deep-fried slice of pizza.

A sight that had her so mesmerized she shouted, “Oh pizza where art thou pizza?” until Bunnie told her it was going in the bin.

So, here I am under the light of a mobile on its last legs, trying to write about the feelings an Android is not supposed to feel, besides a dwarf who instigates such feelings.

I’m used to the feeling of numbness, but after having my body rubbed, and my innards full of food I felt anything but numbness. I have never been rubbed before, let alone eaten, and the pleasure of it all has swept me off my feet, made me want more…

After all one flapjack is never enough let alone the touch of Woody’s hand.

It was Woody’s idea for us to go ‘glamping’ as he put it. His uncle, a man with gorilla-like qualities owns a caravan park. According to Bunnie, he charges “like a Mallee bull” an Australian term so I’m told, referring to prices so high that it costs an arm and a leg.

Woody’s not like that, he shared his flapjack with me when he hardly knew me. He seems to see things differently from most whether it is because he a dwarf I don’t know but it was a definite advantage when we met up with Beryl our esteemed ex-leader and her sidekick H2. He, unfazed by Beryl’s ‘I’m still the leader and don’t you forget it’ stance helped H2 connect with DBO on Planet Hy Man on his mobile….

This would have been a great bonus until I found out she is with Pope, Pot, and Prudence, the only other three Androids like me on Planet Hy Man and they are as loyal as a hungry footman and just as trustable.

“Everyone has a price,” I told Woody “and theirs is a packet of crisps.”

I had almost given up writing anything when the mobile flashed a message from H2, I nearly jumped out of my Teflon. I thought the battery was (to quote Woody) buggered.

“Just a minute,” I grunted. “I need to get out of this sleeping bag. Just need to find the zipper…”

“Sleeping bag, zipper how very ancient.” laughed that pickling Pope…

Pope had been a thorn in my Teflon for years always wanting the better of me and now here he was sunning himself on a veranda in the hippy colony while I was wrestling with a sleeping bag.

“Somethings never change,” he laughed— again.

“If I could find the zipper” I wrestled and rolled.

“Where’s you yoga now” he snorted (something Pope excels at).

Pope had always sneered at my yoga, he is as stiff as a board — a downward dog has him creaking like a rusty Zimmer frame.

“Shh you wake the others” I hissed.

I rolled across the tent and knocked into Woody.

He jumped awake. “What was that?”

“Who’s that?” Said Pot.

“Woody,” sighed Prudence.

And for the first time ever Pope was speechless turns out I am not the only one who finds Woody heart-stoppingly gorgeous.

Bodacious Creed: a Steampunk Zombie Western (The Adventures of Bodacious Creed Book 1)

Half alive, Creed feels torn between his need for justice and his desire to fall back into the peace of death. The former marshal must work with a brothel madam, a bounty hunter, and the remaining marshals before the outlaws kill the only people he cares about. His death can wait.

Happy reading from an Aussie sunning it in Scotland