CHAPTER 3 FROTHIE FAILS TO RETRIEVE

Open a new document and a blinking cursor demands your attention. Emerge blinking into a grey dawn and, half a minute behind you, “Auntie” Frothie will have pinned you down with one of her monologues that take over a room, smell of decaying rind and end up trailing off into nowhere. She has had no sleep and has spent the last hour devising a tale so inane and convoluted that it will leave you suffocated.

This is her domain and Crabdale has been trapped here for as long as he can remember. Every day begins in the same way and there is absolutely no respite.

The pattern of Frothie’s monologues was a chain of interlocking relative clauses, which took the unfortunate victim (I will not say “listener”) further and further from what might have been the original point. She would faithfully report each painful step of the interminable conversations-with-herself that filled her otherwise empty days. And each monologue was an impostor; being unsolicited, it announced itself as if it were a fragment of a real conversation.

“No, the interesting thing was…” she began at high volume, “I couldn’t remember which nostril she was referring to. She did say something about nostril-clearing, which I meant to write down and I should’ve written it down only I didn’t have a pencil and I had been debating with myself whether to bring one but," - here, the pitch rose to a higher intensity and each stressed syllable became a shriek - "Did I remember? Did I find one? Where is there a pencil anyway?"

The eyes stared madly out of the head.

“So I was sitting there racking my brains and she was explaining the breathing technique… I wish I could remember… it was supposed to be good for something or other; backaches, I think it was. Anyhow, she was explaining it and we were all trying to do it, if you see what I mean, and I did start to feel a certain dizziness, which made me think of Ellen because that’s exactly what she used to say when she was trying to learn the oboe…”

This was the cue for one of a fascinating range of silly voices.

“I really really wanted to learn the instrument but I wouldn't have done it if I'd known it was going to make me fall over!!!” – a peal of manic laughter and back, at once to a hushed, almost apologetic tone “…if you see what I mean.”

Crabdale avoided looking at the flat, yellow teeth and chewed harder on his carbon granules. Exit, exit, shut down, log off.