On Slugs and Sloping Off.

I sometimes wonder whether slugs are some kind of supernatural beings. I’ve often looked at the wall outside my office and seen that it was empty of all life save the odd housefly or wasp, and then looked again to see one or more slugs on the windowsill making for the rolled oats I put there for the birds.

How do they get there so quickly? They’re not exactly rivals of Usain Bolt, are they? I’ve considered that they might be disguised Klingons utilizing their cloaking device, but dismissed the idea as lacking credibility. I’m more inclined to stick with the safer theory that they’re ghosts of human nose droppings come to take revenge by eating our cabbages and bird food.

*  *  *

My sometime acquaintance, Chelsea, has been conspicuous by her absence for several weeks, but today she was back.

‘You’ve been missing,’ I said. ‘Where’ve you been?’

‘Travelling.’

‘Where to?’

‘Around the world.’

‘Was it expensive?’

‘Not really.’

‘Are you going to tell me about it when you’re less busy?’

‘Definitely.’

Now, said Chelsea used to have the sort of exceptional but restrained personality which only exceptionally perceptive people like me get to recognise, but today it was about 500% bigger. I knew the same thing happen once to another sometime acquaintance who travelled the globe. She went from being a pleasant but shrinking violet to someone with a personality which filled the room.

So there you have it: if you want to expand your personality, take the world tour. Only do it on the cheap; don’t do it on a cruise ship. Those things are designed to set your feet even more firmly in suburban concrete.

(And Chelsea also said that she was finding it difficult to re-acclimatize herself to being a wage slave. So that’s something else to watch out for.)