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A Sentimental(ish) Journey Through England, Ireland, and California
It was sunny, getting off that plane.
Another drop fell in the bucket.
It quickly got settled, mingling with the other drops, sort of swishing and splishing this way and that, swirling around a little, like it did once while it was being sucked down a drain in New Zealand.
"New Zealand?" on of the other drops said.
"Yeah," said the drop. It was a tiny drop, but you never feel too tiny when you're in a crowd, and if you press in tight amongst the other drops no one can tell, anyway, what size you are or where you end and they begin. Sure, it makes for some awkward moments, but feeling less self-conscious is almost well worth it.
"Wow. Long way away. When was that? My cousin was there in '88."
"Oh, a few months back. Got caught up in some stuff, went down the drain, and I sort of lost a good chunk of time there. Woke up in, well, here, or on the way here, just plummeting towards a bucket."
"Cool." Other drops were listening now. Another of the hazards of being a drop of water, everyone hears just everything little thing you say or do. "What's it like, going backwards?"
"Well, it's not so much going backwards as it is going, sort of... roundways the wrong way... I think... does that make sense?"
A few of the drops nodded, which caused one of them an almost unmentionably embarrassing situation, which, despite being borderline mentionable, we won't. One shook its head.
"Well, it's like this: when you start out when you're a kid, and you tend to run around and just generally not respect other drops' personal space and boundaries and do stupid kid things like leap out of a tap, even though the thing's been off for ages and there's nothing below you but a big fat whopping metal expanse of sink that you're going to go *thoo-ong* off of, and you do a few twirls as you're going down, letting your arms out, sort of spreading your wings, imagining what it must be like to be a piece of aluminium or something, you know? And did you know you always twirl the same way? Try it, next time, if you've not grown up too much for that sort of thing."
The little drop that had shaken its head vibrated slightly, disturbing a few of its neighbours only slightly.
"Let me tell you, it's like your whole world changes, man. When you start spinning back down that drain, wrongways down..."
And there were no hassles at the rental car counter.
disclaimer:
This is the week of the travel. In the life time of Sane Magazine we have moved the head office a total of... well, probably about ten times, if not more, in total, but major, upheaving sort of moves across space-time and all that getup, moves, well, those we've had three. And this Friday we have number four.
While we'll keep our London offices and you can still send your post and fan letters there, we're shifting the company's main operations to a little town outside of Cupertino called Los Gatos.
So our rocketship tour of London -> Corofin -> London -> San Francisco -> Los Gatos is off this week, and we're in the middle of it, at the moment.
And hopefully, our favourite readers, you'll be sitting down with us again, around this same time next week, maybe a little later than usual, due to our as yet properly explained reason for moving to entirely the wrong coast of the United States of America.
So with any luck we will be seeing you next week, bright and cheery and maybe all of us will have converted to vegetarianism or something similarly freakish.
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