Cover

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Fiction

Help the Witch

Non-fiction

Notebook

Ring the Hill

21st-Century Yokel

Nice Jumper

Bring Me the Head of Sergio Garcia

Under the Paw

Talk to the Tail

The Good, The Bad and The Furry

Close Encounters of the Furred Kind

Title

Dedication

For Ralph, my most psychedelic cat (2001–21)

‘The Queen o’ Faeries she caught me, in yon green hill to dwell’

‘Tam Lin’, eighteenth-century ballad

CONTENTS

By the Same Author

Dedication

Map of Underhill

ME (NOW)

GROUND UNDER REPAIR (1990)

DRIFTWOOD (1968)

STOPCOCK (2019)

ME (NOW)

PAPPS WEDGE (2043)

ME (NOW)

MESSAGE BOARD (2012)

REPORT OF DEBRIS (2014)

BILLYWITCH (1932)

SEARCH ENGINE (2099)

EPILOGUE: ME (NOW)

Acknowledgements

A Note on the Author

Supporters

Copyright

Map of Underhill

ME (NOW)

It’s a heavy day, and it hangs all over me. I’m deep in it. I’m so far in it, I’m technically invisible, unless you’re extremely near to me, and very few people are. I doubt that will change today, but tomorrow could be different. Days like this – the ones that stay heavy from beginning to end – are rare here. Yesterday, for example, started heavy, but became very light and boldly colourful, then was just a tiny bit heavy for the final part, in spurts and streaks. During the light, boldly colourful middle part everything radiated cleanliness, was so thoroughly fresh and laundered that you wondered where all the bad stuff it had washed away had disappeared to, what vast drain or waste tank the world could possibly possess that could have so efficiently put it out of sight and smelling distance. Small creatures woke up in the freshness, and were hungry, in a ferocious way. ‘Hangry’ I believe it is called nowadays by the young folk. A man walked through a dark corridor cut diagonally across a field of high late summer barley and got seriously messed up by horseflies, to such an extent that he increased his speed to a trot and then a run through the last third of the corridor, waving his arms like a crazy person who believes he is being attacked from both flanks by ghosts, until he reached a shady, thistle-dotted copse, which he decided, incorrectly, might offer some respite. The small mercy for him in all this was his confident belief that he had remained unobserved. The belief was misguided. I saw him and, I have to admit, I did have a good old cackle.