The Chronicles of Brendan Earle, Apprentice Mage.

Getting to Know More About You

Day Seven

Memory Accession: Sample 342

Accession justification:

They would be better in my world. I can make things work that their world cannot.

Close your eyes for a minute. Now try to find where you put your pen or coffee cup. Yeah. Now you're me. My problem isn’t that I’m thick, it’s just that I haven’t been able to open my eyes, figuratively speaking,  since I was three years old. With my laptop and Thunder screen reader I can read, write, access the Internet, forward e-mail jokes… I do everything the normal office worker does except waste time downloading porn. And I do mean waste time. Sex, after all, really is something you do best by Braille.

Adam

It must have been a part of the dream, but just before waking I was listening to a Robert Johnson blues number. My sub-conscious had a sense of humour, obviously, as it was a case of, ‘woke up this morning…’ I had a hang-over.

In a way that was a relief. If I was hung-over that morning it meant I’d been drunk the night before. This eleven year-old body had no capacity for alcohol at all. The Japanese tend to believe that things you do and say while plastered can’t be held against you, as it was the booze talking. It’s probably still just an excuse, but it made me feel better. I pulled on a dressing gown, cleaned my teeth, put on ‘The Wildness’ by Deacon Blue (my favourite way of waking up on mornings after parties) and started some coffee.

Phoebe

I woke up to the sound of last night’s music playing downstairs and took a minute to realise that it wasn’t part of my dream. I didn’t feel very good. I could think well enough to know that this was a hang-over, but I didn’t know what to do about it. Well, get up, clean teeth and go drink some chia.

Ah, couldn’t do that. We weren’t in the Land now. Ok, clean teeth anyway. I pulled on a dressing gown – couldn’t be bothered to get dressed yet and wasn’t wandering around the house in Malaika’s nightdress in front of Adam – especially not in Malaika’s body – washed my face too and went down to the kitchen where I could smell coffee.

Adam was filling a big glass with water when I came in. He looked like I felt, but managed a smile and a good morning. He looked into my eyes and for a moment I wondered, but then he shrugged, dropped an orange tablet into the water and passed me the glass. “Lots of water, vitamin C and I’m going to make toast and put marmite on it for the vitamin B. It repairs some of the damage.”

Ok, he knew what to do about this and… well, I probably wasn’t going to have anything to worry about from last night. That’s how it felt with a sore head, anyway. The tablet fizzed in the water and tickled my tongue when it went down. I sat down at the kitchen table and ate the toast and started to drink the coffee. He asked if I wanted more to eat, but I wasn’t fixed yet, so I said no thanks.

“This is a hang-over isn’t it? “I asked him.

“Yeah, I don’t know how you are, but this feels mild. I wouldn’t normally be like this after just a few glasses of wine over that length of time, but this body is only eleven and it can’t hold its drink.”

“Well, this one is eighteen and it can’t either. What should we do today?”

“Ah, I’d like some time to recover from not sleeping well and having funny dreams last night. Then, let’s think. Well, it’s Sunday, isn’t it? We could go to Eldon Square and listen to the buskers. Maybe we can go to the Hancock, if you feel like a museum?”

“I’ll think about it. What was your funny dream? Mine was singing ‘Landslide’ in a bar.”

“Really? Well, at least you’d be good at it. I was a fish, chasing a golden fish with vicious big teeth. It threatened to eat me and got away. I can only interpret dreams if they have fat cows and thin cows in them, so I think that was about drinking too much wine.”