In the low tide scrub hinterland fringing the canals of East London, all manner of life is exhumed: carved out cats, whose missteps had fatally wrong footed them into a starving badger lair; an empty marmalade jar divested of its fairground retro goldfish prize (three consecutive hoops on a roadside cone); a deflated helium balloon crash-landed from a child’s party; a bird spectacularly entangled and carried away by a goal net unfastened in a gust of wind.
Under this moody sulphurous globe of late autumn, amongst all the death and detritus, a woman walks, head down, wringing her hands in a vain attempt to wipe away thoughts, her brain frazzled and beset by fear. She doesn’t notice a resurrected, reborn half-dog-half-cat holding a Dyson leaf collector in its reconstructed paws; nor the legless, one-claw-one-hand surgical philosopher with his chest clasped tight in fish gut. It’s a pity for his words are exemplary:
‘Do it to yourself, do it to others, patch up the armless and fill the poor souls with their stuffing taken out, put crows eyes on crows feet, jumpstart a de-frosting Iceland salmon and sew an aqualung through its spine, taxidermy the taxi driver who lost all recall of his knowledge, give him a dog’s memory for treats and plant a Satnav into his frontal lobe . . . ‘
As he speaks, his lone claw chops creative life shapes into the sky, whilst his hand reaches in his pocket for a long discarded Strawberry Quality Street. ‘I hate these,’ he thinks. ‘If only I had the power to summon new life, not just resurrect and re-shape the lifeless, I could bring forth a chocolate caramel, or a purple clad toffee brazil.’ He spits the strawberry cream out and the half-dog-half-cat hoovers it up.
‘Waste not want not,’ munches the half-dog-half-cat.
The surgical philosopher, who has been closely watching the rejected chocolate disappear into his splendid domestic creation, is suddenly struck by a big idea. ‘Pass me the leaf collector,’ he commands, ‘for I can fashion something from it that may have benefit for life-form as we know it, something for the greater wellbeing of our planet.’
His words take flight towards the angst-ridden woman, who had passed by only a moment before: ‘Madam, would you allow me to adapt the leaf blower into a strimmer and splice it directly into your brain? Not only might it help you shed unnecessarily negative thoughts but it might shape burdensome worries into manageable bite-sized chunks’.
The woman turns: ‘Are you insane: some kind of DIY Jesus with ideas above your station?’
‘You’re not ready,’ the surgical philosopher surmises. ‘It’s understandable, I feel your pain, your confused state. But when you are ready, you know where to find me.’
‘In the looney bin,’ she replies, and yet even as she say this, she finds her feet taking small steps forward, drawing her imperceptibly towards the surgical philosopher, to a life without worries, a life without hands or feet.
