How to Live and the Way of Bread

Change your name to the colour that suits you best. Dance the frivolous purple tarmac springs until your teeth become what judges prefer with asparagus. Feed the lions after dark in a round tureen-like vessel, and perplexed divers spurn the violent remarks made towards every other person called Benjamin. Which is not my name. And if it were, were it that I cared? Or not. However, for a fox which gropes odourously at the funneling sky which spews forth fennel in the manner of the Gods (or at least minor media personalities), I care little, or at least less than more. Which qualifies as a little in anyone's book. Most of all, my own.

So where does this leave us? Examining once more the small upside down cherubs which lined the abbey, Marlon took a puff on his velveteen cigarette, before proceding down the aisle, with that which people of a more charitable nature would have referred to as a peculiar muffin perched upon his sorry brow. It fell off with a clunk, and rolled embarrassingly towards the puzzled vicar, who had attempted to talk the stubborn groom out of involving himself with pastries of any kind. Marlon was, however, one of the less attractive members of the species felus catus and promptly chased the muffin, kicking it with throaty paws until it hit a pew and stopped moving. A few crumbs shed onto the ancient stone floor, that had been laid by monks in 1312. Marlon eyed the crumbs somewhat suspiciously, and deftly reached out a probing paw, which was more used to cigarettes and mauling than toying with pastry in historic places of religious import. What the hell, thought Marlon. Whilst he thought this, the muffin unexpectedly started to move ferociously towards the startled cat, in a manner that he was not at all sure of. Surely pastries were not designed with warfare in mind? At least, not where he came from. But then, he was a cat, and what did he know of the way of bread?

Epilogue

When I was your age, said the master to his impatient pupil, I used to try to catch butterflies in a silken net. Oh how I was fascinated by their silken wings and bright colours. And yet, hard as I tried, I couldn't catch a single butterfly. Yet one day, after I had given up, and was resting underneath a nearby tree, the largest and most beautiful butterfly I had ever seen flew straight into my unattended net. Oh, how joyful I was to have captured one so beautiful! And so I stuck it to a bit of card with a map pin. And that's kind of like life, really.