See, I told you… they just can’t be trusted. I am reliably informed the ball-guy will be here later this week… I will be having words. With the pair of them.

Leave them with a keyboard and pretty much anything can happen. Like their new book. It started out okay, they even got the god-thing in early…I’m not going to complain about that:

“Anu’s Folk
studied in
the North-Isles.

Four seats there
And four sages
who taught them;

A plentiful sowing…
A dutiful flowing…
A beautiful glowing…
An artful knowing…

Wen catches a brief sight of the poem I have been showing Ben before he has time to hastily secrete it about his person.

“You’re obsessed with that dog!”

Which of course as anyone who has read any of our books well knows is utter nonsense…”

***

I mean, if you read that you might even be forgiven for thinking he likes me… He’ll deny that, of course. Call me a ‘daft dog’ or some such thing. He’ll still play ball though… and share the cheese…

***

“…“Okay,” say I, “you can remember where we had got to?”

“Of course,” says Ben, “Anu’s Folk had just returned from the North Isles where they had been instructed in the magical arts by four sages who had given them four teachings which, because of the nature of directional space which is relative and which is derived from a central point, became somewhat interchangeable.”

“It’s really the basis of the directional and elemental magical temple. Time and space, that is, the body inevitably split the One Essence into four.”

“The four streams issuing into Eden,” says Ben.

“Which when looked at from that point of view becomes a quintessence.”

“That’s very good,” says Wen, “but that was movement outwards-in and in order to complete their teaching Anu’s Folk had still to learn the properties of movement inwards-out.”…”

***

I was quite in charity with them at this point… they really seem to have grasped my importance to their storytelling… till I read their next reference to me.

It went downhill from there, I have to say… I mean, they start with a name like Wulf-here and you expect any reference to dogdom to get good… well, I did, at least.

***

““Next comes Wulfhere, another of Penda’s sons, who did a pretty good job till he was carried off, defeating the Northumbrians. He had reason to be miffed, I suppose. Æthelred comes next. and he’s married to Osthryth, Oswiu’s daughter. She ends up murdered too.”

“Beheaded?”

“No idea, probably not,” said Wen sorry to disappoint him. “The Mercian barons did it. Meanwhile, the pagans have been replaced by Celtic Christianity, which has lost out to Rome, all in a single generation.” Don is singing quietly.

“It begins with your family, but soon it comes ’round to your soul…”

“… and the Kingship of all England is being batted between the two kingdoms like a tennis ball.”

Anu, who had been sleeping quietly, pricked up his ears and decided to join the conversation, dropping the allusion at Don’s feet, and looking up expectantly.

“It’s too complicated, isn’t it my little dribbling black one?”

Don toe-flicked the tennis ball into the air and over Anu’s head through the always-open-even-in-mid-winter-living-room-door and out into the garden. Anu turned and scuttled out into the garden too, with something of a yelp, but before Don could say “Can we try and make it a bit simpler for people” Anu was back at Don’s feet, along with the tennis-ball-of-love, again waiting expectantly…and again drooling.

“There’s no harm in trying I suppose…””

***

“Dribbling”???!!!!*

I never dribble!

Well, not a lot anyway…more of a slight anticipatory drool really… head on their knee, puppy dog eyes, sort of thing… just so they remember I’m there…

And, to make matters worse, not a picture of me in sight … again. Even after I’d pointed it out. They just go delving into weirdness… visions and far-memories and meditations and the like… Then there’s all the history and their unorthodox theories about it all…

It’s a shame the Inquisition is past its sell-by date…

That’s all I have to say about their new book. If they want a review from me they can go whistle… and it won’t come running, just like I never do! You’ll just have to read it yourself to get the full scale of their iniquity… all complaints about my portrayal in it to the authors please!

Ruddy cheek, if you ask me.

Much love,
Anu Ani xxx

*In case there are any Terry Pratchett fans reading this, although he says ““Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind,” you will note there are only four.