Yet another race of absurdly looking aliens are attempting to invade Earth with their improbable weapons and stupidly designed spaceships. The situation looks bleak. In order to find a way to make the audience plausibly believe that aliens are superior the writers have used buzz words such as electromagnetic radiation and quantum amplified lasers to explain why the defences of the Earth are powerless against the invasion. The Governments of the world have all but surrendered, yet one hope still remains. In secret our hero, Opaqueman, the man through whom no light may pass, and his sidekick, the attractive girl who states the obvious quite alot, have snuck aboard the alien mothership in an attempt to sabotage their main weapon: the über-nuclear-force field-based-antimatter ray.

Opaqueman was crawling through the air vents of the alien mothership, with his sidekick attractive girl just behind him. They had been crawling for hours, as the situation on Earth below them became increasingly grim. It was somewhat lucky therefore that the entire mothership was connected by a series of unmonitored air vents to allow our hero to make his valiant attempt to save Earth quite so easy. Eventually they found the grill which they were looking for. As they both peered out, Opaqueman hoped his overly coloured lycra suit wouldn’t be visible from the room outside.

“Oh no” exclaimed attractive sidekick girl, perhaps a little too loudly considering the situation, but luckily none of the nearby surprisingly dim-witted guards heard her. “How can this situation be any worse? I mean, not only are their at least 30 armed guards who probably have extremely poor aim and positioning, but also the evil alien mastermind himself is overseeing the completion of the über -nuclear-force field-based-antimatter ray. Surely the situation is hopeless!”

“Fear not,” said Opaqueman, putting on his boldest tone, “for I have seen a fatal flaw in the grand master plan.” It was at this point that the air vent split open, spilling Opaqueman and his sidekick onto the floor at the feet of the alien mastermind. Surrounded by guards, they held their arms up in surrender.

“Opaqueman,” the alien leader said in high pitched but extremely good English, “I should have been expecting this. You thought you could sneak aboard and foil my infallible schemes of domination, but you were wrong. The alien threw its head back and performed a perfect example of clichéd megalomaniac laugh #3.

“Curses” Opaqueman whispered to no one in particular, “Now no one can stop your fiendish plan”

“As if anyone was going to stop me anyway, with a plan as brilliant as this! Little did you know that it was so well thought through that there is only a single weak spot, where the trigger sends a beam of light to a receiver on the far side of the room for purely aesthetic value when the ray is fired. I got the idea from the ships self destruct system, which also works by shining light on another receiver which happens to be in this very same room. Still, I have a weapon to finish, say goodbye to your planet Opaqueman!” And with that the alien mastermind strode off to complete his plans.

“What should we do?” said the sidekick helplessly to Opaqueman, both surrounded with armed guards, just as the final countdown to the destruction of Earth started. 20 seconds.

“Well I do have a smoke grenade in my belt which I forgot about…”

Bang. Flash. The guards choked on the thick purple smoke which had appeared around them.

Biff!

Pow!

Slam!

Seconds later Opaqueman appeared from the cloud of smoke, the guards unconscious on the floor, just the countdown struck zero. A flash of light came from a laser by the alien mastermind, destined for the receiver two foot to the right of Opaqueman. It was now or never, Opaqueman threw himself to the right and summoned his strength in order to use his one superpower: the ability to stop light.

A long, stereotypical scream of “Nooooo!” was heard as Opaqueman somehow found that he had beaten the light to the receiver, and saw it conveniently bounce off the shiny logo on his lycra and hit the self destruct receiver, as if this improbable set of events wasn’t entirely obvious to the reader from the moment they started reading.

Opaqueman crashed to the floor, his strength drained from being opaque for so long. As the ship started to explode around him his sidekick dragged him to the again conveniently nearby escape pod, where they escaped the exploding ship and returned to Earth.

And so the Earth was once again saved by the unique talents of our hero. But with ever more villains forging improbable plans which can usually be foiled by blocking light in some form, how long will it be before our hero is needed to save the world once more?

That was, of course, before Hare came along, just before junction 3.  She bounded up to him in the middle lane before poking him in the shell.  Strangely enough Tortoise didn’t feel this, and with some sort of Radio 4 discussion show playing inside his shell, hadn’t heard Hare approach.  Eventually Hare realised it would be a much smarter idea to poke Tortoise in the tail to get some attention, and with a swift jab in that direction, the radio volume dimmed and Tortoise looked around.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Hare” said Hare, as if this should have been perhaps a fair bit more obvious than it seemed to have been.  “Where are you off to?”

Not being an animal of swift mental agility, Tortoise took a moment or two to ponder upon this.  “South” he said in the end, as at least if he didn’t know exactly where he was going, he knew the direction he was going in.  “Why?”

“Because I’m racing you there” said Hare, and then she bounced off in front.

Damn, thought Tortoise, that’s all I need, some sort of race.  But then again, what the hell.  And with that, he sped up to a positively speedy 60 mph, which I’m reliably told by Braniac is the speed of time itself.  One day that show might actually include both science and the truth, though many would say those two rarely go together.

Anyway, back to the point.  Hare was winning, quite easily.  So easily that she thought she would have a break, and so she stopped at Fleet services.  And whilst she was waiting the extremely long time it takes anyone to make a coffee (with perhaps the exception of the Costa in Poole) Tortoise actually overtook her.  Half an hour later, knowing she had some catching up to do, she sped off.

Luckily, Tortoise had found some road works (completion Spring 2009, apologise for the delays which we will be causing for AN ENTIRE YEAR! MWHAHAHA!)   As the queue of traffic slowly filtered past the invisible workmen, the statue workmen, and those workmen struggling to open their umbrellas because it was a windy day, Tortoise looked back to see Hare only four places behind him.

Hare was more distracted by the specially trained highway maintenance guinea pig which had been trained to eat only tarmac and was slowly tearing up the road with a subtle ‘Om Nom Nom Nom’ now and again.  Transfixed by this beast of a small mammal, Hare failed to realise the traffic speed up again.  Only when the sports hedgehog behind her let his feelings on the matter show did she notice the huge gap in front of her, and speed off again.

Five minutes later, Hare had overtaken Tortoise.

Forty minutes after that Hare reached the finish line, which someone had conveniently put up at the end of the M3.  Pleased with herself, she looked back to see how close the race was.  Tortoise was nowhere to be seen.  So she waited half an hour, still no sign.  Tortoise, downhearted that he had been overtaken and with the knowledge that Hare wasn’t stupid enough to stop again, had slowed down to a meandering pace which forced local snails into the middle lane in order to overtake.  Hare felt a little guilty when someone told her what Tortoise was up to, so in an attempt to encourage him a bit more she took the shiny finishing line poles which someone had thoughtfully provided, and dragged them back up the road to Winchester, hoping Tortoise was close, so he could still get a respectable time.  He wasn’t.

Perhaps, thought Hare, some competition would spur him on.  Quickly onto Facebook, Hare got about 20 people to start from Fleet to race the Tortoise to Winchester (15 might attend, 3 were missing out and 1245631 didn’t reply in time).  And so the Tortoise was overtaken by another Hare, three field mice and a badger.  And a platypus.  And a small donkey.  And some firemen but I’m not really sure they were part of the race, or if they were just going to put out a fire.  In the end it was a photo finish between Tortoise and a sloth, who just nicked it with a gangster lean which might have just been falling over.

“What happened?” asked Hare when Tortoise sidled over to him after the race.  “Why’d you give up?”

“Don’t know really” replied Tortoise, “I’m meant to win, that’s how the story goes, but it didn’t work”

“Story smory, what race in the history of everything was won by deliberately going slower than everyone else.  Going fastest, sort of part of the definition of a race wouldn’t you say?”

“Meh” said Tortoise, giving up again and trundling off, knowing that he should really race against equally slow tortoises next time.

“Zero” said the bit next to it, registering the other bit’s surprise, who for convenience’s sake shall be called Vince as bits don’t really have any other distinguishing features, let alone proper names.  George, the bit to whom Vince was talking to, had only just woken up and was in the process of brushing its teeth.

“Zero” George said again, as if in a single binary digit it could express the concept that it wondered what has made Vince so excited that it would want to share it with its neighboughs.

“One” replied Vince, as if to say ‘look, the lazy student type who is meant to control this place has finally done something with it’.

“Zero” commented George: ‘about time too if you ask me, place had grown stagnant with the lack of content’.

“Zero” came a shout from across the magnetic platter, basically meaning ‘what right have you and you got to wake poor tired bits up this time of the morning?’

“One” shouted Vince, gesturing in the direction of the blog.

“Zero” came the reply.  Apparently that isn’t good enough news to warrant waking a bit up, so it was going back to sleep.

And so the blog sat there, waiting for some real content to appear, something inspired, perhaps with a bit of humour, if you’re lucky.  George and Vince wondered quite when that day would arrive…

What was more unfortunate was that the next note hit the resonant frequency of stairs. Not the wood that made the stairs, that was different, just the frequency of stairs themselves. Going at the rate it was, the sofa was probably next on the list of things to fall apart, but that wasn’t really the problem at the time being. People were doing their best to get to the roofs of their respected buildings, to try and get the attention of the nearest helicopter to help them out. With the stairs now gone, that plan fell out the window, and this was bad news for whoever left the window ajar like that because they were obviously going to be blamed.

Clive stared out of his own thankfully closed window at the sight in the street below. Someone was sailing up the street in a small dingy. If only Clive knew how to sail he could attempt to commandeer that vessel and escape in it. Just as he was thinking that three people from the second floor jumped out at the boat wearing knotted handkerchiefs on their heads and comedy eye patches. They succeeded in poking the sailor with a plastic cutlass before forcing him overboard with many shouts of ‘yarr!’. This was all very good for the mock pirates, if it wasn’t for the iceberg that appeared around the corner of the street.

Clive stared at it for a few seconds, wondering quite how the ice had survived the lower octave C which had melted most of it’s kind. His confusion was answered when it promptly scraped against one of the sides of the street. What occurred then was possibly the second loudest (after the mighty speaker) but most definitely the worst sound in existence. It wasn’t ice, it was polystyrene. And commanding it seemingly were several penguins from the local zoo, who probably thought it was highly ironic to escape on something which formed alliteration with their own name.

The pirates were not the most experienced of sailors, and successfully failed to miss the plastic iceberg. The dingy merely bounced off, but the sound that made was enough to force the would-be pirates off their ship. It also knocked two of the penguins off their feet, in the comical way only penguins can.

The situation looked desperate. However, it usually does, and then someone comes along with an easy solution and you feel slightly cheated as the storyline is cut short. This is, just in case you were worrying about the fate of this world, no exception to that rule. So panic not, because in these cases there are always contingency plans. This one happened to be devised by Eric Schmidt, and his merry band of Googleteers. Wow, that so should be the job description of anyone working at Google. But back to the point, in their many labs, where they invent magic software to waste your time using such as fancy satellite photos, in there spare time they also took a concept they borrowed from Microsoft one step further. They invented World Restore (beta). And being the kind chaps they are, gave it away free to the UN to fix up all this mess.

So Clive woke up on the same day once again. This time no speakers, no water, definitely no penguins.

As the more observant pedestrian would point out, it was emblazoned with the word ‘caution’ down one side. It wasn’t guarding anything, not protecting some road works in progress, or overseeing the important job of watching wet concrete dry. It was just on its own. I suppose you could say it was cautioning people that it was there, to protect it against a certain sort of person. That sort of person thinks a bit like this:

‘hmm, I’m walking down the street. Look at all the pretty dazzly lights! Ohh look! Something else vaguely bright orange on the floor, lets walk in a direction which will collide with that the logic of a normal person would say is a real solid object that doesn’t want to be collided with. Oh wait, the object says caution. I better not walk into it then, as if the word caution rather than the fact that it is a bright orange cone is a reason to be wary of it.’

It was also an advantage that is was small, and to some people unnoticeable. This protected it from the sort of person who thought like this:

‘Oi, where can I get my next bottle of value cider with this fake ID mush’

The cone didn’t like those sort of people. They kicked cones, and were generally considered not to be in the slightest way reasonable and conscientious members of society. And the cone liked society, it thought it was nice in a fuzzy sort of way. It was also wary of those student types, who occasionally took good cones like itself prisoner inside their homes. But for the moment this cone was safe, it was in the middle of the pavement, being passed by everyone in the street, left to its own devices.

I also said it was frustrated. That was a lie as well I suppose. Really it was quite content. It was where it wanted to be, in the street, with the people, doing the important task of alerting people and bringing to the forefront of their attention that it existed and was possibly in their way. It was a good existence. But as the evening drew on, and the shops closed up, it got a little tired of its job. I don’t confess to knowing quite how small orange cones phrase their thoughts, but it went something like this:

‘Alerting people to my existence and enriching their day with my presence is good, but I could really do with a mince pie and a large mocha from the Starbucks just there.’

There was a free mince pie offer with any coffee (offer includes cones) sign up, and never one to miss a bargain, the cone moved in its conely fashion up to the door, and went in.

The Department of Arbitrary but Fundamental Troubles objective was launched by the government as a result of high alcohol consumption and a particularly mad focus group. These people decided that a lot of the problems that are found in the world nowadays are all linked with the fact that no one knows the answers to so many fundamental problems that arise in everyday life. So many men wandering streets to find the amount they had to go down (this one was missed off the report, as any indication that this idea might stop the public getting exercise wasn’t an attractive one), so many people fearing for their lives after walking under ladders. So many quick response vehicles being taken off emergency services to instead chase a rainbow as soon as it is seen, in order for the gold to pay off the NHS debts.

The problems, as far as the focus group could see (in an enclosed room, so therefore roughly five metres max.) were endless. When the government itself looked, it tended to agree with them (well, it couldn’t see any change in the extra ten metres their vastly larger rooms would allow). So they created the department. The first problem it encountered with this was almost fatal however, as when the department’s name was acronymically written, it read ‘DAFT objective’, and the document was very soon lost in all the other hundred initiatives that parliament made with the same description. Only when it was found paper clipped to a loan invoice did it manage to get dragged up again.

So the department was made, and for a time everyone thought the problem would now start to solve itself. How wrong could they be. The list soon piled up as to which problems they were going to look for first, but with the generous loan based funding they had received. Two days in, with thirteen cases of severe burns due to the wonderings of whether lightning really doesn’t strike the same place twice, and two cases of broken legs due to ladders falling on people, the head of department had called all fit people back to the office, to look at more menial paradoxes.

This is where the personnel manager had stepped in. To reinstate some sort of safety procedure into the department, risk assessment pads had been circulated, all pretty and colourful to get these government chaps to use it. It was thought that menial tasks it would result in a lot less injuries. Unfortunately, it was discovered that paradoxes had an interesting effect of converting mass into energy. This would usually be heralded as a scientific breakthrough in the sort of scale Einstein was used to. Instead it resulted in a lot of insurance forms for burns as people folded paper too many times in order to reach the moon, or cut a Mobius strip through the middle one more than it could handle. This is where the predicament came from. The personnel manager had to try and bring in people who had qualifications in office software different to Microsoft software, as you really don’t want to know the trouble the had when the computer systems had loaded Microsoft Works, and the oxymoron detector blew a small hole in the office wall.

But elsewhere in the office, people were rejoicing. The discovery of the energy creating energy from paradoxes would solve the energy crisis. Kyoto targets could be finally reached. People could do away with nuclear power, and still not have stupid white oversized windmills over their houses. And most of all, a use has finally been created for all those useless documents governments get churned out. Generators to harness these papers were being installed around governmental departments around the clock to absorb as much contradictory content as possible.

Who would have thought that the world could be saved by politicians.

This door, however, was of the ‘opening because it detects someone who might want to use it today has just woken up in the morning’ kind. It was considered a solid business plan that this sort of door was preferred to the security type when it came to DIY shop entrances. Customers find it a lot easier to get in, and a lot easier to get out once they wake up to the concept how much effort doing DIY would be compared to paying someone else to do it.

The shop assistant looked up from his quickly cooling cup of brown textured water with hints of what may or may not be something that vaguely resembles coffee. Or tea. On one of the quieter days the assistant had actually opened up the drinks machine to see if there really was a difference. He found only one, and that was for the same product, the coffee was five pence cheaper. Since that discovery he had saved over twenty pounds, but perhaps that was just saying something about the amount of coffee he drunk. Or the amount of time he had worked there. Whichever is less depressing.

Still, even with the mystery which was the exact contents of his drink, the door opening distracted his attention. A customer? What a novel concept at this time in the morning. He looked to see who it was. No one there. A few seconds past, more cold air was blown in, making the temperature plummet to just about what it was outside. Seconds past, and still no one came in. After roughly half a minute, and with a large sigh of relief from the assistant, a man walked in carrying a glass bowl. Not an ordinary glass bowl however, oh no, this had not only water in it, and some rocks and plant life, but real fish. Yes, hold your excitement I know it can be hard sometimes but please try, but it did contain real live goldfish. Amazing. He walked over to the assistants desk, and unceremoniously plonked the bowl on top.

‘Bit chilly in here’ the man remarked, rubbing his hands together. The assistant rolled his eyes. ‘Right’ said the man, casting his eyes around the store at all the tools and materials he could use on a pointless, over budget free time consuming project. His eyes lit up with delight at the thought. ‘I would like some paint, in the colour of that goldfish.’ He pointed to one of the fish, touching the glass as he did so. The fish, in its own strange world somehow forgot there was a glass side to the bowl, and that in all honesty it wasn’t particularly partial of eating peoples fingers, opened its mouth to take a bite. It hit its head into the side of the bowl, and retreated with a dazed expression’.

‘The stupid one?’ the shop assistant asked, obviously wanting to ensure that exactly the right shade of annoyingly bright orange was made.

‘That’s the one’ the man replied, ‘when today can I expect the paint to be ready?’

‘When’ the shopkeeper repeated with thoughtful slowness, and the swift raising of eyebrows, ‘today? Not sure I understand.’

‘You do mix up paints don’t you?’

‘Well, in theory’. The shop assistant scratched his head and reached for a his cup of coffee, before he remembered what it was and thought against it. ‘But that’s a fish.’

‘Yes, I want the paint in the colour of that fish.’

‘And you can’t just find that on a Dulux colour chart?’

‘Obviously not, I have much better things to do with my time.’

The shop assistant thought about this one. Here was a man, who carefully had taken a fish bowl from his home, and to this store. A DIY store, the start of so many quests which can be successfully labelled as ‘wastes of time’, saying he had better things to be doing. Right. ‘So you will pay me, to stand here and work out the exact colour of that fish, and to make you some paint?’

‘That’s right, someone like yourself who I’m sure has an A-level in geography must be able to deal with simple colour work such as that.’

At last, thought the assistant, a use for my time at school, and investment into those colouring pencils. A smile crossed his face at work for the first time in many months. ‘Call in this afternoon Sir, I’ll have it ready for you then.’

‘Very good, just make sure when I come back that fish and my paint are exactly the same colour.’

It was on these words that the man promptly walked out, and a clever plan came into the shop assistants mind. Customer wants paint the same colour as his fish. To this, there was a simple solution.

When the man walked back in, he was greeted with a bucket of pure white waterproof paint, two white fish in a glass bowl, and a smile from the assistant.

This however, was a different matter. The coldness was more than confusing, it was disturbing. Tumbleweed are not creatures of the cold, they are creatures of warmth and dryness. Sure it was a lonely life, but there was always the occasional cacti to run into, and it usually got quite a good extra’s wage from the old western films. Twice the tumbleweed was actually put in the credits, probably its finest hour. Well, if you were a tumbleweed, getting recognised is what its all about. Egotistic little balls of plant life they are, but they lead a happy life. This tumbleweed, out of work since the filming of ‘firefly’ was cancelled mid-season, decided it would be a good opportunity to travel the world. So it did. Plane fares for tumbleweed aren’t half bad you know.

The tumbleweed was uncomfortable with the crunching though. Once or twice it saw a white person, seemingly at one with this strange blanket on the world. Not very talkative however, or at least extremely resistant to the most advanced form of interrogation a tumbleweed was capable of. I’ll leave that one to your imaginations.

It didn’t have too long to ponder upon the problem though, as it happened to run into a dinner table. The tumbleweed usually quite liked dinner tables, it was the end of society he liked to think he belonged to. It kept a weary eye on this one however, because it was all white, and he was distrustful of such a colour at this moment in time. Not as distrustful as he was of the napkins on the table however, they were more than white, they were positively gleaming.

Cold, confused and with a quickly advancing state of paranoia, the tumbleweed was not in a good state. It was appropriate at that moment then, that God was strolling by. You know, as he does, I’m surprised you haven’t seen him more often. Honestly how unobservant must you be. Anyway, the tumbleweed decided as the opportunity had arose, it might as well get some answers. It enquired as to the trustfulness of the napkins.

‘Napkins eh?’ God chuckled, stroking his chin. He was going for a modern slick look at the moment, losing the beard, keep him in the with kids and all that. ‘I wouldn’t want to touch them if I were you, they’re not ordinary napkins. Oh no. This table was set up by them theoretical physicist chaps. Evening now though, soon as six o’clock came, off to the pub with the lot of them. They wouldn’t be too happy with you if you mucked up their experiment now would they?’

The tumbleweed was intrigued by this, always partial to a bit pf physics now and again. You would be surprised how popular it is amongst desert life, they may not have the equipment, but they sure as hell have the ideas.

‘How is this an experiment?’ God said, repeating the tumbleweed’s question. ‘To be honest, not got a clue. All I heard was it was integral to the balance of the universe, and could ruin everything if touched. Just thought you should know.

A warning would never stop a tumbleweed, and this one had heard its fair share of threats in it’s time. Comes from being in westerns. It hurriedly formulated a plan, and informed God that there was some sinful grass just behind him, and that it should get a proper ‘old-skool’ smiting, if you know what I mean.

Whilst God was off investigating (it was awhile since God had smote anything, had to prove he still had it) the tumbleweed hopped onto the table, and, checking over its equivalent of a shoulder to see that God wasn’t looking, touched the nearest napkin. There was a loud pop, a pause of a few seconds when everything went fuzzy. Then it all disappeared, all of it. The table, the napkins, the sky, the ground. It was all black. All that was left was the tumbleweed, and God. The thoughts of the tumbleweed were along the lines of ‘oh cheesecakes’.

God rolled his eyes. ‘Now you’ve gone and done it haven’t you. Just couldn’t keep away. You idiot of a small ball of dry plant life. I suppose I better go and fix this mess.’ God reached into his pocket, and took out his mobile. No reception. He closed his eyes for a moment, and beside him a microwave transmitter appeared. He saw that it was vaguely ok, but wasn’t quite in the same league as the planets. Must have got a bit rusty on the whole creation thing.

He phoned up his house, as with high property prices at the moment, that son of his was still at living with him. ‘Hey there Jesus, little favour if you don’t mind, hit the universal restart switch would you, ta.’ Ending the call he glanced at his phone, ‘must remember to recharge this sometime, battery life just ain’t what it used to be.’

It wasn’t long until things started to change again. First everything was blue, then green. Then back to black. Then the Windows logo appeared in what used to be the sky, but disappeared for a few seconds. Then it went blue, back to black, and finally the world reappeared. The tumbleweed sighed it’s relief. It hadn’t destroyed the Universe. It was a good thing.

God was just opening his mouth to give the tumbleweed a good talking to, when a grey rectangle appeared in front of him. It was covered in a small amount of writing, and it read a bit like this:

God swept it aside, ‘God knows about it, believe me. So infuriating, last time I trust Gates with this OS stuff.’ He strode up to the tumbleweed. ‘Well, really you should get a good smiting for that little stunt, but I’m a little tired and really can’t be bothered. So just consider yourself admonished and don’t do it again. But I suppose I better send you on your way, preferably the other side of the world, you don’t want to be around when those physicists get back. See you around.’

And with a small pop, the tumbleweed found himself by the sea, in a slightly more temperate climate. Overall, it thought it got off that quite easily, and now, now it might go sailing, with no one around to bother it. Or so it hoped. That hope lasted about twenty seconds.

‘Look! A tumbleweed! Lets go poke it!’

Said one rock, in a long bored voice, to it’s neighbour.

“You what?”

“I bet you” the rock repeated, the tiredness in it’s voice perhaps an indicator that it never should have started the conversation, “that helicopter over there doesn’t move in the next half an hour.”

“You know your problem?” the second rock, with its up-most politeness replied “You listen to those Humans far too much. That’s what they were saying earlier wasn’t it? I heard them, you can’t lie to me. They come over here, thinking it ‘controversially cool’ to sit on a rock staring out to sea for awhile, not caring about the rocks underneath, oh no. Not realising the irritation of having a bad dropped on its head. It was a heavy bag as well you know, I have the bump to prove it.”

“Oh yeah?” the first rock realised by this point that starting a conversation really was a bad plan, but with the lack of better things to do, it thought it better see it through to the end. “So where’s the bruise?”

“Bruise? I’m a rock for God’s sake!”

“Oh convenient excuse.”

“Don’t give me that” the second rock was getting a little irritated now, a seagull had landed on it and wasn’t in the mood for moving. The second rock hated seagulls, in his opinion, they were lazy gits who should go and get proper jobs. Sea combing really didn’t count. “That bag had a hard cover book in it! Those things hurt you know. Who carries a hard cover book around with them?”

“She does obviously. At least their reading. Kids these days really far too lazy. I mean, I would read if I could, just the small problem of not having eyes. Or legs to get the books. Or money. Or a brain. But you know, apart from that…”

“Bah, those books weren’t meant for reading, they were obviously gonna use them to beat up some defenceless pebble when they were out of sight.”

“Oh, stop your fussing, that pebble will survive, its bade of hard stuff. At least it won’t get kidnapped by, oh, what do they call them?”

“Tourists?”

“That’s the one, damn tourists.”

The second rock sighed “Twill be the summer soon, then we’ll have people crowding to sit on us. I suppose we better get used to it. To be honest, I think I’m one of the better rocks to sit on. Good sturdy top. That human seemed to compliment me anyway, he said I was to be commended.”

The first rock could see where this was going, once that neighbour of him got boastful, there was no stopping him. “He was complimenting her choice anyway, you egotistic clump of regular minerals. Anyway, you lost.”

“Lost? Lost what?”

“The helicopter moved….”

And so it continued, until it rained. This shut the rocks up. It also got rid of the seagull, much to it’s displeasure, as its seat on the rock was just getting warm. But it flew off, in search of shelter. Later on, it found a crisp on the floor, and ate it. Overall it thought it a good day.

As the evening drew on, the rocks were still bickering until the tide came in.

‘Do you think’ said my Brother, walking with me through the forest this ever so cold afternoon, ‘that the trees should form an agreement. I mean, they all try to be so tall to get the sunlight, but if they were all small, it would be so much easier.’

I pondered on this for a moment, before the answer came to be.

‘Its because’ I ventured, ‘they can’t beat the hell out of each other. The way I look at it, is that we Humans are a reasonable bunch, and can get along with each other and co-operate and all that jazz, but the only reason we can make such wonderful arrangements is because, from time to time, we can just beat anyone who doesn’t agree with us. Makes a nice society. These trees though, their greedy.’

‘Greedy?’

‘Like accountants. But their stuck in the ground, can’t go to the nearest neighbour and say ‘oi, get out my sunlight’ can they, so they just have to grow.’

And that, it seemed, was that. So you know, trees just don’t grasp society, and that’s a fact that should be remembered.

A little time later, walking in roughly the opposite direction (convenient on a circular walk no?) we were blessed by the full force of the sunshine, warming us up slightly. For no particular reason, the fact that this light was seven and a bit minutes old was brought into conversation.

‘Lazy light’ I commented, ‘Speed of light really isn’t fast enough for your modern day person, must remember to get it increased sometime’

‘You can’t insult the light’ interjected my Brother, ‘Its spent its entire lifetime trying to get here, and to do what? Collide with your face that’s all.’

‘What a disappointing end, I mean, you can imagine in photon heaven, the groups of little photons are grouped together, telling their stories. One might say that it was there when JFK was shot, others may mention they were present at the moon landing, the football supporting ones may mention some world cup or other, but a few would shy away from such a crowd, and when asked what they did would say that they collided with my face. Think of the photons I’m embarrassing’

After much head shaking, it was decided that though I do humiliate the occasional photon, I didn’t embarrass the yoghurt I ate at lunch, because that’s not conscious. Or if it is, it doesn’t really care too much. Yoghurt heaven is so not an interesting place. But photons, totally different story.

So the next time your out in the sunshine, enjoying yourself, remember the photons, they have feelings too you know.