Words we sometimes said in the basement of the Ned

 Notes designed by Susanne Dietz

 

 Yesterday was fun and crammed, and with Serena and Tom on the chocolate coin exchange, and Hannah checking bags (but not opening them –"Very nice, Italian?") a slight shunt reunion, happily. Thank you to Coney for organising The Golden Key and to Gemma for having me and to you if you came, and sorry if we were full. When we were trying to find a mood for the bar outside our snug and kennels I don't think we anticipated how much time would be spent simply queueing, but that's the thing about unknowns. Choas inside the kennels was a lot more welcome and I was very lucky to be teamed with clowns as kind as my fellow accountants Sachi Kimura and Julia Masli (the word "accountant" has a nicely ecclesiastical ring to it once you don a robe). It couldn't all be unknowns though, so I wrote a little text for us to say and here it is.

 

Counting the grains of rice:

This is a new idea.

Each of these is a promise. Not a big promise. Not a particularly important promise. Still probably more promises than it’s fair to expect any single person to be able to keep. Which is why they’re kept here.

 

Originally a promise was much bigger and most people would be unlikely to keep even one. They were about the size of this table, and made of something dangerous like limestone or cows. But one night there was a storm. And a promise sank to the bottom of the sea – so it wasn’t lost, as the joke goes, it was at the bottom of the sea – and all the islanders had to decide whether or not to still count that as a promise kept. Which they did.

Maybe that’s why we’re underground.

 

Eating a grain:

This won’t be missed. Something will be missed. But no-one will know it was this.

Taking another grain:

And what’s the smallest thing you can promise? What’s worth this?

 

 

 Proving that I'd licked a duck by sticking a grain of rice to it was a lot more fun though.