Stray halopeter advice

Several stray halopeters have been seen in the village, roaming the grass and some of the paved areas around the shop, and near the brook bridge. You are asked to proceed with care if you see a halopeter. Usually they travel only very short distances, for example, falling from a blurred area of the ceiling, in order to occupy the outside of a body. This is what we have come to accept as a halopeter infestation. They arrive on the body, muster together and vibrate. The result is that the human host is rendered very tired for several hours. In some cases, as we have recorded and explained in several meetings, the halopeter vibrations can cause you to change certain beliefs or habits.

In my own case, I have experienced a strong change of desires following a halopeter surge. Before the surge I enjoyed tomatoes. After the surge, I no longer enjoyed tomatoes. Of course, I do not mean literal tomatoes, but something else. The tomatoes are purely a stand in for what I really desired and now no longer desire.

I still like tomatoes, from time to time.

This new behaviour of going about on their own, in grassed areas and some paved areas, means we must all be vigilant. It could be that they are spreading themselves and seeking new hosts. Do not allow the halopeters to approach you unawares if you don’t want to be forced to live with them.

If you must take a walk near the places I have described, then please be careful. Or, better still, ask yourself if you really do need to go and see that green swathe of fine grass. Would it be better to have someone who has seen that fine grass describe it to you?

In receiving a description of the grass, and avoiding a trip there yourself, you might discover something about the grass itself – perhaps its similarity to the hairs on a lovable dog’s chest – that you would not discover with your own basic eyes.

I will share a typical day from my own diary with notes added to show where I changed my normal course, in order to avoid a confrontation with a roaming halopeter.

Morning

I wake up as usual, with the sense that something has been taken away from me. I cannot explain this feeling entirely, but I wake with a sort of resentment to the day – as though the tight yellow buds that line the wall beneath my window, have been hammering on my bricks, slighting my home. Then comes that fat head the sun, bleeding in its imposition. I mourn for my crumbling palace, my gorgeous lagoon, and a fleet of smiling mice I have befriended.

Of course, I enjoy my dreams. We all do. Waking is not always what we want to do, but I put my feet on the bedroom floor, and soon I am on better terms with the sun, and apologise for calling them a fat head.

I make tea and have a bun. At the table, I read my book about nature for a few minutes while I chew my bun. The bun is covered in salted butter. I read about the insects in the garden – page 88 in my book.

One of the insects is a moth - a Gable Rory. Another is a sub-moth - a Salt Duke. And further still, I discover there is a demi-moth called Cally’s Joinery. [I should remind everyone that the books we found here in the village when we arrived and took up our dwellings can be full of fascinating revelations and facts that did not appear in books we may have known before.]

 I shower in hot water and get dressed. With my face red and dry, and my teeth burning from the strong toothpaste I like, I prepare my clothes for the day. I wear a loose blue shirt and loose black trousers and snug woolen shoes.

Now dressed, and happy, I ask myself - should I take a slow walk to the copses to see if I can find a specimen of Cally’s Joinery? It is the season for it.

No – of course I won’t because that would bring me into the path of the straying halopeters. Even though I am already infested, I have no intention of getting more of them on me. I am minded that we do not know what happens if rival halopeters take against one another. There is a chance it could lead to ruination in my dwelling. If the blurred area currently occupied by ‘my’ halopeters has to house a second family of them, I fear the blur would spread to encompass the entire landing. And then, how would I get into the bathroom? How would I get access to my loft?

Instead I go along to Paulina’s house early. Paulina and I have been drawing each other for a few months now, so she is expecting me - but not for a couple of hours. I ask Paulina if she minds and she’s fine with it. She tells me she was just staring at the grasses any way. We agree to start our drawing early and that we should aim to finish a complete sketch in one sitting.

Today, we draw in chalk on black paper. Paulina takes good shape on my paper, I see jags of her personality breaking through very early on. I quickly have the shape of her head and neck, and within about 45 minutes, I think I have something of her attentiveness where I work lightly on her smile.

At the two hour mark, we agree to stop and share a peek.

She shows me her picture of my face with a good natured pride. She’s a far better artist than me. How effortlessly, I say, Paulina, you have captured by determination to avoid certain areas of the village.

Thanks, she says. I didn’t know that’s what it was, but now you say it, I can give a name to what I have been trying to get down here. You are cautious of the stray halopeters. Is that right? It’s taking up a lot of your face, this worry. Look.

 I look closely at how she has captured my concerns. It’s very moving, I tell her.

Cheers, she says.

Paulina and I prepare lunch together. We make lemon brown rice, beluga lentil dumplings with black olives and fennel, sharing the work of cutting and balling up the dumplings. While the rice finishes to cook, and the dumplings roast in the oven, I mix garlic into mayonnaise and Paulina does a quick passata. It’s a good lunch, both visually and in taste.

While we eat, the conversation drifts a little. Before I know it we are freewheeling way beyond the realms of our drawings. I can’t remember why she decided to go in this direction, but before long Paulina is telling me about her nephew again. I explain to Paulina that her nephew is actually probably not real. She says understands about the chance that her memories are not real, and then goes on about him any way. She tells me about this nephew’s gift for mathematics, and his friendship groups in the school he attends - a school for gifted mathematicians.

I say it sounds fine, but these reminiscences must be kept on the right level. They may not be real. The nephew may not be real, just as my own family, as I remember them, may not be real.

Paulina finishes her portrait of me with a haste she has not shown before. I try to capture her passion in my drawing, but as usual I over egg it. Paulina’s work is a triumph. I thank her and we agree to draw with pencil next time, and it should be soon.

Before I leave, I tell Paulina that I enjoy hearing about her nephew. He sounds like a good kid, I say. I say nothing of my own nephews, or nieces. I say nothing of my son also, because it’s awful to think that my memory of him may not be real - him with his whole-head smile, and his walk that is a dance.

Afternoon

On the way home, I feel disturbed by the memory of the picture I made of Paulina. I don’t have it with me, I always leave the work with her, but I am disturbed by my recollection of the way Paulina looked in my final picture. There was something deeply wrong, but I cannot check it to make sure.

As I walk through the village, my feelings of doubt about the picture of Paulina give way to something that feels suddenly enormous and terrifying. As if, in the pure black paper on which I tried to draw her, there was a depth like a kind of loss. As if, rather than drawing Paulina onto the page, I had in fact placed her into the depths of this loss. I feel a terrible aching guilt for having possibly done this. I feel as though I have condemned Paulina to something awful.

I turn and rush back to Paulina’s dwelling. I call out to her, but there is no answer. I let myself in and go through the dwelling calling her name, she still does not answer. I am in her kitchen, frantically worried about Paulina. At the back of her kitchen is a dark cupboard. In my dwelling, this room is a kind of utility space where I sometimes dry my clothes or speak certain rituals to a little shrine I keep. In most dwellings, this is a room with a door, a simple closed off area for utilitarian things.

In Paulina’s kitchen, the utility area is without a door. Normally, there is a light in there, a pale wall, the hint of a basket. But now, nothing. A darkness. I say Paulina’s name again and my voice breaks on it. I edge closer to the dark room, feeling an immense pressure coming from the darkness in there. I edge closer still. I can hear my breath in my nostrils, dried up, collapsing air.

I talk softly to the darkness. I tell Paulina I did not know that the paper we were using had this quality of loss. I did not know I had trapped her in her utility room in this way. I have been out of sorts lately, and worried about the potential of a catastrophic double-infestation that would blur my dwelling into nothing.

Paulina, of course, had been in the garden area of her home, lying in the grass, listening to the breeze. she was absolutely fine, and had no idea why I was so sad or worried about her. She gave me a cup of tea, she let me examine and re-examine the picture I had made. It is a normal piece of black sugar paper with a drawing of Paulina on it. Paulina in the picture looks only vaguely like the real Paulina. she has a mouth that does not look like it would move naturally if the picture were to come to life. If the picture were to come to life, it would find itself dry lipped before long, and very possibly in a lot of difficulty when trying to form hard consonants.

I try to remember the day I left. I was in the hot tub. I was in the inflatable hot tub at a friend’s house. They had an inflatable hot tub. That’s the kind of people they were. And I was not enjoying it. My friend’s wife had persuaded me to get into the hot tub and I didn’t like the noise, or the heat, or the way all of the bubbles eroded my sense of reality. Time seemed to fade when I was in the hot tub. Some people might like that – they might like it even enough to go to the trouble of buying and maintaining an inflatable hot tub. All the chlorinating and draining and scrubbing and storage and electricity bills. I was in this hot tub and feeling quite out of sorts. When the bubbles cycle was over, I climbed out and staggered, disoriented and faint, towards the French doors of my friend’s house. I held my arm up to anyone who tried to talk to me.

I muttered that I knew I was bright pink. I knew I looked like a juicy prawn or a lobster. I was going to go and shower but instead I went out the front door and I saw a rusty old bike, which I rode into the silent summer street. For miles and miles there was nothing but the reeling hoiling sound of my bike. All through the town I went on my squealing new bike, breathing heavily and with sweat in my eyes, I saw not a soul. After an hour I had reached the edge of town, where there was the first in a series of flax fields. The yellow flowers were cut off at the head by a thick, unmoving mist. Of course, this is the mist that leads the way to the village. The first figure I met in there tried to urge me to turn back in case someone stole my bike. But then another voice - a smiling actor from the 16th century, assured me that the bike would be fine. And besides, nobody was stealing bikes any more when they could steal phones.

I stop my recollection there. Unwilling to drift into the following series of meetings, all of who tried to remind me of my family, and of their confusion that I was not coming back down from my shower at the party. There is every chance that no such shower existed. Nor any such party.

Evening

I make myself a heavy meal of oven chips, hotdogs (x2) with a large white fried onion. I cook in a hurry because I am starving after my shock at Paulina’s. I read about some more insects in my book while I slowly chew my food. Everything is cold, but I enjoy it any way. I drink a can of fiery ginger beer.

I sleep on the sofa, not wanting to disrupt the halopeters who are there, in their blurred area, up the stairs. I dream of my palace and my friends the hot smiling mice.