LIFESTYLE

I used to be a mammal, you know with lots of fluffy fur. The I went to the hair-dressers and I said “Can’t you do something with this? Style it into a couple of fins for me one on either side, so I can swim 'cause I’m fed up sitting here day in day out on this land waiting for something to happen”. I said to the stylist, “You know what I think? I think it’s up to us to make things happen. In this life we can’t just be sitting around waiting for things to happen. Because that way they never will”. He said, “Uh huh, uh huh” as he combed and shaped my fur into the required shape, lacquered it and patted it with the slightly red palms of his hands. Then he showed me the fins in the side mirror which reflected back into the front mirror so that I could see how perfectly matched they were, one on either side. I said “Yes that’s exactly it- you do know me”. Then, placing a heavy tip into his hands I left.


So now I was a fish. A fish out of water. I was aware of others noticing me as I ploughed my way through the busy streets. Now my main concern was to find some water.

I went down into the underground but there seemed to be no pointers. Only different strips of colour on the wall all tangling outwards and ending in different locations. I chose blue because blue gave a suggestion of water. But when I got out at the end of the line there was nothing very blue about my surroundings. Just a grey sky with rows of streets and houses. Similar in kind to the ones I had known all my life. I had gone somewhere without going anywhere I thought.


Then I saw a sign. It said “To the pool”. I went in paid for my ticket and was handed a towel. “I shan’t be needing that” I said. I didn’t bother to state the obvious. “Uh huh, uh huh” said the swimming attendant without looking up. “Same charge”.


And then I was on the diving board, waiting for the spatter of little ones to disperse so that I could take my plunge. “So here I go” I thought, the water breaking open like cellophane on my touch- the gift of a new world within. Me a creature of the sea. Down I go.


The water filled my lungs. It caught me and dragged me down. I coughed and spluttered, rose out of the water gasping for breath, down again. Then up squinting into the fluorescent lights with a mouth gaping water.

I got out of the water and went into the changing room, shivering. I was without a towel. Then I combed my dishevelled fur back into shape, into it’s original style and left to return from where I had come from.


I used to be a mammal. And I suppose I still am a mammal. Yet I am a different mammal from the one I was before. For I have done various things in my life that one could describe as not altogether typical of mammal- life. Yet perhaps it is only because of these wanderings that I can truly believe in what I say when I say, with hesitation, “I am a mammal”