all aboard the arc

The phone rang. ‘Hello’, I said. ‘Rilly’ said the voice, ‘it’s your agent’. ‘I’m sorry’, I replied, ‘I don’t know anyone of that name’, and hung up. The phone rang again. I picked it up. ‘Be serious Rilly, you don’t get paid for cheap gags.’ ‘You really do have the wrong number don’t you’, I said. ‘Rilly’ said the voice, before you hang up, I’ve just got two words for you’. ‘That’s a coincidence’ I said, ‘so have I’. ‘You first’ he said. ‘No, you first’, I replied. ‘No, you’ he argued. No you’, I remonstrated, then I thought perhaps I had gone too long without the company of anyone over , err, however old my daughter was. ‘OK Rilly, here goes’, he sighed, ‘narrative arc’. ‘What another coincidence!’ I said, slightly fibbing. ‘You need to change, Rilly’ said my agent. I looked down at my top. ‘It’s just a bit of sick’, I said. ‘Babies recognise their mother by smell you know, I saw it on a nature documentary, it's a bonding thing’. ‘I mean you must change, Rilly, character development, that’s what we need.’ ‘Change? How?’ I asked. ‘You have to stop being grumpy about The North’. ‘STOP BRING GRUMPY?!’ I shouted. The baby started crying. ‘Stop being grumpy?’ I whispered. ‘Can you hear that? I asked him, ‘I’m covered in mushy pea sick from a baby who gurgles in a northern accent and you tell me not to be grumpy!’ ‘But you have to learn and grow and change as a person from your experiences Rilly’. ‘I am not a novel, I am a free woman!’, I argued. ‘I am not a fictional character!’ ‘But wife in the north has a narrative arc, Rilly’, said my agent. ‘Yes, but she’d rather have a pantry!' I pointed out. ‘What’s in it for me anyway?' ‘Well, according to marketing,’ he began, 'royalties on another fifty thousand sales’.


I laughed as young Tilly skipped laughing through the buttercup filled meadow under the typically bright and warm northern spring sunshine. ‘I’m so happy mummy’, she laughed. I laughed too. ‘why are you happy Tilly, my love? Because it's always sunny?' I asked, smiling. ‘Because I love you mummy’, she said, with a beautiful childlike grin, and she put a daisy chain around my neck. ‘You look pretty mummy’, she chuckled and we both laughed. ‘Mummy?’ asked my lovely daughter. ‘Yes Tilly darling?’ ‘I want to live in a castle’ she said. ‘We already own half the village dear’, I explained, ‘What more do you want?’ ‘I want to live in a proper castle and be a princess’. ‘Oh gosh’, I said, ‘we’ll have to see what we can do about that dear’, I told her, wondering if my old chum the paper’s court correspondent could swing an invite from any newly single eligible bachelors of her aquaintance this summer. ‘Oh mummy, it’s starting to rain!’ said Tilly, tugging my sleeve, 'let’s go and sit in that old boat over there and pretend we’re in a storm!’ and so we ran, mother and daughter hand in hand, fleeing two by two to board The Narrative Ark and get out of the rain. I hoped we wouldn’t be aboard for forty days and forty nights though; I didn't know how long I could keep this up, the baby sick was starting to whiff a bit and a nagging recollection from my catholic upbringing told me The Ark had no bar onboard.