The Spoons That Are My Ears!

Here we see a mysterious forest, an unusual expanse of mixed woodland. The broccoli trees are in full bloom; there's an old driftwood tree in the foreground; and on the right-hand side of the picture stands a rare handtree... It seems to be a left-hand tree. Counting the rings of handtrees isn't a very good way of estimating their age; not all of them wear rings. But judging by the height and span of this one it would be reasonable to suppose it is about 43 years old. Keen-eyed readers may notice that one of the broccoli trees has been blown over in a Sunday Dinner Gust; luckily no one was sleeping beneath it at the time!

What's this? A pterodactyl enters the scene. Not just any old pterodactyl but Ptula Graaark, who has appeared in several of my stories already. Ptula wants to rest for a few moments and chooses the driftwood tree as a convenient and relaxing perch. Incidentally, why do we all assume that pterodactyls made a croaking noise instead of going "Cheep! Cheep!" or "How do you do?" There's no evidence for it... Please note that Ptula is modelling a blue sea-glass pendant made by Adele. Check out her Tiddu website for more samples of excellent crystal and sea-gem jewellery! Blue is one of the rarer sea-glass colours!

Now we see that the handtree has suddenly borne fruit. The fruit of handtrees is always eminently readable and mostly comes in book form. This succulent example is a charity anthology entitled Last Drink Bird Head. It contains my story 'The Time Tunnel Orchid' which I first made public at a reading in Portugal several years ago. All proceeds from this anthology go to help promote literacy through the official ProLiteracy Organisation. Other contributors include Steve Aylett, Michael Bishop, Michael Cisco, Gio Clairval, Brendan Connell, Paul Di Filippo, Stephen R. Donaldson, Rikki Ducornet, Jeffrey Ford, Tanith Lee, Bruce Holland Rogers, Peter Straub, Michael Swanwick, Steve Rasnic Tem, Jeffrey Thomas, Liz Williams and Gene Wolfe.