an ink polaroid...look closely, if you will. its taken at dusk, as polaroids of such places should be. it is dark. there are no streetlamps - remember this is the country. mrs arkeston's house, or rather mrs arkeston's garden. if you have a torch you'll be able to spot me. see those bushes? the ones in front of the chickenwire fence? well, if you're really observant you'll notice a pair of bright blue shoes sticking out from underneath. i'm hiding where i think mrs arkeston can't see me. i would be hiding in a better place, right in the middle of the bush, but my mate janet got there first. if you could take a sonic sample...an ink cd, if you like, you would hear the birds calling. there's a forest behind mrs arkeston's house - or it seemed like a forest back then. now they've cut most of it down to build more dwellings. they started building a couple of months after she died, as if they were waiting for it to happen - anyway, the forest was full of birds. birds you could never see. birds that hid in the bushes and shouted out mysterious messages to a little girl who couldn't help but listen. if you play your ink cd you will hear them calling. somewhere, you'll hear the distant growl of a motorbike and above it all.... mrs arkeston's voice...shouting out at what she couldn't see..... "i know you're out there...i can hear you. i've told you, stay out of my garden. you shouldn't be here, i'll tell your parents"....an old lady's voice, fraught with the paranoia of a lonely existence, hovvering in the summer air, competing with the crickets which join with our giggles in a mutual chorus of mocking. poor mrs arkeston. she didn't know it was me behind her house. she liked me. she even used to give me sweets when she saw me out with margaret. i never ate them, of course. you didn't eat anything mrs arkeston gave you. once, she told me she was my real mother. we'd gone to the post office in the next village. i can't remember what margaret was doing there, but i'd wandered off into a little corner full of brightly coloured trucks and model dinosaurs. i heard a shuffling behind me and there she was, smiling down at me and offering me something wrapped in shiny paper. i'm sure i smiled and said thank you, hoping she would go away. but she didn't. she leaned very closely and said "i knew you'd be here....that's why i came.." "you see....you're a very special girl to me....i wish i hadn't left you that night.... but i couldn't keep you, you were such a beautiful baby, you couldn't be tied to an old woman like me..." maybe that's what she said, anyway. she probably said something like that. all i remember is her shuffling out of the post office, clutching her bag and me staring down at the stupid bright yellow truck i was holding, with the tears starting to fall. later, margaret told me that mrs arkeston said that sort of thing a lot, and i shouldn't listen to her....but i always wondered. till i grew up and realised she was at least 70 when i was born. you're probably wondering why i'm showing you this polaroid. yes, its a nice picture but what does it have to do with you...or with belle and sebastian? keep reading, it should make sense. the rumour was, mrs arkeston had a troll in her back garden. that's what we're doing there. we're terrified of the troll, but we couldn't help ourselves. we had to see if it was real. we're not laughing because the old woman is funny, we're laughing because we're terrified. a moment after this was taken, a bird flew into the bush behind us and sent us both running, off into the forest. we didn't stop till we got back to janet's dad's house and he gave us both a cup of cocoa. he didn't ask where we'd been. i think he knew, and i think he knew he wouldn't be going back. i don't know if janet ever went back. she moved away when i was 14. her dad met a woman from leeds and off she went, to the big city. i returned though. many years later. back to the spot where the troll had scared us. the bushes seemed smaller now, mrs arkeston's house had been replaced by a small semi-detached residence. the forest? more of a hedge...and the troll? i had a good look. no troll. no mrs arkeston. just a new, cold looking house. i walked back to the chippy, trying not to feel disappointed. the magic had gone. when i was naive enough to believe a troll lived there, it had all seemed so much more exciting. every now and then, i try and recapture that feeling. that belief in a big, scary, fascinating world out there, instead of a little village with a chippy, a newsagents and a woman that goes from house to house cutting old ladies' hair. i try and re-enter the magical world. where trolls lurk behind bushes, mysterious old ladies are your mother and birds sing secret messages to you. there's a doorway to that world. well, there are many doorways to that world. david wills, up the road, is serving six months in jail for selling doorways to that world. but there are other entries, easier to find, if you look properly. and it isn't a matter of knowing where to look, its knowing how. i heard a brittle, damaged yet strangely hopeful voice drifting through the dark towards me.... "she's very quiet...and very small. in fact she's hardly there at all. that's what she is, and what she is, and what she is..." i could feel myself shrinking, shrinking back into a believer. earlier i'd been to a festival with magic clowns and balloons rising up in the air. i can't remember what stuart david called the festival, but once i'd listened to it, i went outside, and tried to see it in the grass, in the flowers, even in the duck pond. for a moment, just a moment. it was there. the world with the trolls in was back. i could almost hear mrs. arkeston shouting my name. "tigermilk" took me there... the musical leaping of the first bars of "i could be dreaming" led me there.... stuart david seems to know the way every time. every time it looks a little bit different. i can't wait to see what the world of the new album looks like. i'm planning to take it into the forest-that-isn't-a-forest, put on my walkman and sink down beneath the mushrooms to hide in its chords. wake me up if the troll comes. eileen __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. 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