Sensible Shoes
Maggie Jones
We clambered on to the No. 6 bus when it stopped at the end of Warwick road. We’d only just caught it, Mum doing her imitation of running, waving frantically at the driver to wait, which luckily he did for those few extra seconds.
We were going into town to meet Dad at his Warehouse, so that I could have some new shoes. Daddy learnt how to be a Wholesaler in London years ago and he said that it was hard going but now he has his own business. I like saying the words ‘Wholesale Textile Clothier’. It’s a bit of a mouthful but it sort of sounds important. It’s quite hard to say fast.
Dad sells the sort of clothes people wear to work and shoes and something called ‘drapery’, things like sheets and blankets, towels (I like the stripy ones), handkerchiefs and tablecloths. He travels all over the place selling things to shops, the sort that say, ‘Gentlemen and Ladies’ Outfitters’ over the door. My shoes always come from the Warehouse.
I pressed my nose to the steamed up bus window. I only ever had one thought about shoes so I said, ‘Mummy, do you think Daddy will have any red bar shoes this time?’I so want some red bar shoes. I love the bright colour and I love the thin strap going across the top of your foot, finished with a little red stud with my white socks showing through. I actually have to wear fawn, woollen socks in the winter but white socks would be best with red bar shoes.
‘Well, I don't really think so dear,’ said Mum, still red in the face from our efforts to catch the bus. ‘I don’t think Daddy has ever stocked red bar shoes, besides, lace ups are better for your feet.’
‘But I hate lace ups, they’re so difficult to do up and I hate brown,’ I wailed.
‘All the girls’ shoes Daddy has are brown. That’s nicer than black isn't it?’
I didn’t reply because it was a silly question. Only boys have black lace ups so I obviously wouldn’t prefer black. I stared at the Common whizzing by and felt confused. I like having new shoes because they smell all leathery and are shiny and smart but why do I always have to have George Ward brown lace ups? I like to imagine there will be a miracle and that Daddy will have something else, but he never does. I have one pair of proper shoes at a time, apart from black plimsolls for PT,black gumboots for rain and black ballets shoes. I havebrown lace ups in the winter and slightly better, brown leather sandals with a cut out petal design in the summer. That’s that.
I watched the red No. 6 drive off noisily and thought that was probably all I was going to see of shiny redness that afternoon.
I like going into Dad’s office. It’s great fun twirling round on his desk chair until he finishes talking to customers on the phone.
‘Come on Longlegs, let’s see if we’ve got your size,’said Daddy and we all edged along the skinny passage way between the metal shelving, neatly stacked with boxes and packets. There were men’s shirts; working jackets in plaid; socks; ladies’ fashions; towels; sheets of plain and striped cotton or winceyette for winter; boxed handkerchiefs arranged in a fan shape, trimmed with machine lace and embroidery, and of course shoes.
The boxes came out one after another, a succession of identical brown lace ups. As Mum helped me try each pair, I hoped that a miracle would have happened as each lid was lifted, and some red bar shoes would suddenly be there, but to no avail.
‘Can you wriggle you toes properly? Do they feel comfortable?’ asked Mum. There was much walking up and down on corrugated paper to save the soles being scratched and lots of toe pressing, which was tricky as the toe caps were rather solid. Eventually a pair was decided upon.
Daddy suddenly said, ‘How about one of these?’ taking down several cellophane packets from a shelf and handing them to me. They were lovely flowery cotton dresses. Now this was more like it. I had a feeling Daddy knew I wasn’t too thrilled with brown lace ups, even though I was lucky to have them when lots of children didn't have new shoes at all.
‘Thanks Dad, let me see.’
All the prints were on white backgrounds. I looked quickly through, sliding aside the orange and brown with reveres and the green and yellow check with bows.
‘Yes, this one please,’ I said. The dress had small pale pink and blue flowers and a deep square neckline, edged with a wide white border. There were small cap sleeves and white centre buttons right down to the waist, whichwas trimmed with a narrow belt covered in the same fabric. The skirt was full and gathered.
‘Go and try it then,’ Dad said and I skipped off to the office. The heavy cotton had a sheen and was full of newness and stiffness. It twirled out just enough as I spun round. Lovely! I felt very grown up, almost like Mummy, who at that moment appeared at the door,
‘Oh that does look pretty, Darling. Now, let me see if there’s enough growing room.’ I tried to stand still as she pulled and prodded.
I gave Daddy a big hug and Mummy and I set off home. I clutched my dress tightly. It almost made up for the sensible shoes.
My Fair Lady
Marion Hinds
I should never have married Harold but I felt sorry for him when his mother died. We met at Amateur Dramatics, Harold overacting in the crowd scenes and me doing wardrobe. A trained curtain maker, I had endless fabric and trimmings, so pantomime to period drama saw a raid on my remnants – and Oklahoma was spectacular.
It was My Fair Lady when Harold started singing lessons – ‘coaching’ he called it. He was always out, having coaching with Valerie.
He had a lesson when I had my appointment at the eye hospital so I arranged a lift through Voluntary Services. Mr Baker was my driver, ever so kind he was and made me a cup of tea when we got home. Harold wasn’t back from coaching.
I went to the first night. Very disappointing, despite all that rehearsing and Harold’s name not in the programme. Then I saw it - ‘Hal’. He had changed his name to Hal. Apparently Valerie’s idea – more professional sounding.
Harold was too busy rehearsing so I asked if Mr Baker could take me for my post op.
‘I would be only too pleased,’ he said. He was glad of the company is what he said.
‘So am I,’ is what I said.
That was six years ago. I’m having the other eye done Tuesday and Mr Baker will take me. He’s ever so kind.
Harold has been living with Valerie since My Fair Lady.
Funny name for a bloke, Valerie.
Slug
A Radio Monologue
Jennie Pearson
Background sound of chomping mouthparts when appropriate.
The sound of human voices, perhaps children.
‘Slug! Ohh gross! Slugs! Look everywhere! Ugh, they’re disgusting!’
The slug’s voice should be rather androgenous: either a deep female or a light male voice.
‘Do you hear that? Do you hear it? So hurtful! What have we done to deserve that? Hated universally, apart from by a few eco-nuts. I know this because I heard it on Gardeners’ Question Time. My lady gardener has the radio on in the greenhouse near where my pot stands. Even Bob Flowerdew says he wouldn’t put up with slugs on his cabbages. But really, you know, most humans judge us simply by our looks. Horrible, slimy, senseless things, they think. Because they don’t understand what we do or how we live. I like to think (and I do spend time pondering the ways of the world in the long winter days), deep down real gardeners want to like us. It’s just that our habits conflict. Habits conflict? Slugs being, slugs surviving, our getting by, our minding our own business…that’s what conflicts.
Look, here’s the situation. Here am I, grazing peacefully on these succulent leaves, keeping myself to myself. It’s tea-time inside, the TV’s on, I can hear. There’s a light drizzle precipitating out here and you’re mostly indoors. That’s when I’m out and about. All as it should be. So what’s the problem? In the day time, you don’t see me generally. I like to tuck myself under my pot plant or sometimes I have an outing to a nice patch of damp, mulchy leaves near the chicken run. She’s planted some fresh young delphiniums for me over to the right there and in the vegetable garden she has some good looking cabbages coming on well. I could complain about her tidiness in the garden…always picking up the leaves and fallen branches but it would be a bit churlish, wouldn’t it? She does her best and I’m not sure she realises how much I’ve got to eat just to maintain my body weight…three or four times my weight every day….it takes a lot of chomping. Takes up most of my time. Keeps me out of trouble, I can tell you. I’ve no time to be out on the streets causing mayhem. I’ve got to maintain this sleek, muscly body. I’m considered quite a fine figure in my world, you know. You humans think of me as fat. You deride other humans for being slug-like, fat and lazy. No, no, I’ve heard it. I hear the comments. My gardeners spend a lot of time outdoors with friends….barbecues and things. I hear him showing off about taking up running….not going to laze about like a slug, he joked (I don’t think!). It’s so unfair. I’m all muscle. I’ve got to keep trim so my big foot can surf along my mucus trail. It’s vital. See? Like this. Helps me move smoothly over the grass.
And I need to be especially fit when you lot go and put down egg shells or ash, often still warm from the fire. You’re always up to those nasty, dastardly tricks, aren’t you? If I had to choose, I’d take the beer trap, a good way to die half happy at least. But salt? Hot water? Copper wire that gives an electric charge? Or tasty but deadly blue pellets? A torturer’s wicked arsenal! Shame on you, playing God like that. I even heard of one gardener who used to go out at night and cut my cousins in half with his garden shears. I know, you think of it as war, don’t you? I heard her say it. ‘I’ll get rid of the little b-s if it’s the last thing I do.’ But it’s not war when one side can’t fight back. It’s pogrom, ethnic cleansing, wholesale carnage.
But why not just leave us be? Think of us as some of the slightly rougher stitches in life’s rich tapestry, part of nature’s extraordinary balancing act. There’s plenty of horrors out there who’ll eat us, I can assure you. Blackbirds, frogs, toads, hedgehogs, foxes and badgers all consider us gourmet titbits. And, meanwhile, before they manage to bring our short, eventful lives to an abrupt end, we do lots of processing of the earth. All our chomp, chomping…you wouldn’t believe how much good our (excuse me mentioning it but it’s important) our excretions do for your soil. There’s enough of us about and every little helps says the slogan of a certain infamous supermarket which won’t countenance vegetables with any chomp marks in evidence. They really do demand a blitzkreig policy from their growers, I believe! But you ordinary right-minded gardeners, grow a few nice juicy things just for us like her delphiniums and her cabbages. Keep us happy, off your backs, as it were and we’ll do lots of churning through the soil leaving our poo everywhere. Whoops, didn’t mean to lower the tone. But it is the truth. We can work together. The soil’s the thing as Bill Sowerbutts used to say.
Ho hum. Life’s not fair though, is it? The cookie crumbles in surprising ways. And the weather is often the devil with the most cunning tricks. Take this year, for instance. It’s been a funny old summer, hasn’t it? You’ve liked it, I think. I’ve seen you all lounging about in the sun. But the long warm days aren’t so pleasant for us. I’m looking forward to some dark, damp days when the rain falls all day. I’m getting the urges. I’ve got to go out soon and find a partner, a fellow mollusca gastropoda of my genus who’s sending out beautiful smells to my sensory glands on the ends of my lower antennae. Ooh it’s so exciting! I can’t wait. We hermaphrodites, (you know, we’ve all got both parts...yes, yes, really…aren’t we lucky? Take care before you put us in the stranger-than-fiction box and use it as another reason to look down on us. It’s really a very practical thing.) We hermaphrodites, as I was saying, we can fertilise ourselves if things get desperate. Yes, they’re all clones. I know it’s not ideal. We could become inbred. But it’s useful in a drought or if some stupid gardener decides to fire bomb his garden and one’s really desperate to find a partner.
I managed last year, of course. Found slug 205 as I was crossing the lawn. We managed, we made babies, we did. Proudest moment of my life so far. I left 35 eggs, I think it was, inside some perfect mulch under the camelia bush just over that wall. Lovely damp spot….never dries out. I left the little tykes well set up. And 205, I daresay, did much the same. Not sure how the offspring turned out….if they turned out, but I hope they did. There were certainly quite a few spring sluglets chomping about this year. I’m only a year older myself but they’re all dashing about full of themselves…might even make it a bit difficult to find a suitable mate with them all flashing their new smells. But I’ve done my bit…made an impression, as they say, on the population. But I’ll give it another go this year: there’s still life in this old codger yet. Especially if we don’t get our thingies corkscrewed. O-ow, that’s a fate almost worse than death. You have to bite each other’s thingies off. Yes, yes really. I would not joke about such a thing. Ooh, not nice, I don’t really want to think about it. But, you know, we’re quite good at rejuvenating. Often do it when we get into trouble…a bird bites a backside or a badger nips our nodgers. That’s my word for my light sensitive antennae, my eyes if you like, the feelers you see waving about out front. Rejuvenation? Yes, it’s a useful asset but still the corkscrew thing is not ideal. The male bit can’t work anymore, of course, so only female parts are able to work. Better than nothing, our kind still has a chance. Resourceful, you’ve got to admit.
Well, my seeing antennae have picked up the new day’s light in the east so it’s time to make my way home for some kip. Belly’s full and I think there might be an interesting fellow gastropod hanging out under the terracotta pot over there. I’m going to make sure our mucus trails cross tomorrow night.
Meanwhile think kindly of us. Perhaps it’s useful for you to know a bit about what gets us out of bed...or from under the flower pot, I should say. I like to think it helps. Who knows? See you round.’
Maggie Jones
We clambered on to the No. 6 bus when it stopped at the end of Warwick road. We’d only just caught it, Mum doing her imitation of running, waving frantically at the driver to wait, which luckily he did for those few extra seconds.
We were going into town to meet Dad at his Warehouse, so that I could have some new shoes. Daddy learnt how to be a Wholesaler in London years ago and he said that it was hard going but now he has his own business. I like saying the words ‘Wholesale Textile Clothier’. It’s a bit of a mouthful but it sort of sounds important. It’s quite hard to say fast.
Dad sells the sort of clothes people wear to work and shoes and something called ‘drapery’, things like sheets and blankets, towels (I like the stripy ones), handkerchiefs and tablecloths. He travels all over the place selling things to shops, the sort that say, ‘Gentlemen and Ladies’ Outfitters’ over the door. My shoes always come from the Warehouse.
I pressed my nose to the steamed up bus window. I only ever had one thought about shoes so I said, ‘Mummy, do you think Daddy will have any red bar shoes this time?’I so want some red bar shoes. I love the bright colour and I love the thin strap going across the top of your foot, finished with a little red stud with my white socks showing through. I actually have to wear fawn, woollen socks in the winter but white socks would be best with red bar shoes.
‘Well, I don't really think so dear,’ said Mum, still red in the face from our efforts to catch the bus. ‘I don’t think Daddy has ever stocked red bar shoes, besides, lace ups are better for your feet.’
‘But I hate lace ups, they’re so difficult to do up and I hate brown,’ I wailed.
‘All the girls’ shoes Daddy has are brown. That’s nicer than black isn't it?’
I didn’t reply because it was a silly question. Only boys have black lace ups so I obviously wouldn’t prefer black. I stared at the Common whizzing by and felt confused. I like having new shoes because they smell all leathery and are shiny and smart but why do I always have to have George Ward brown lace ups? I like to imagine there will be a miracle and that Daddy will have something else, but he never does. I have one pair of proper shoes at a time, apart from black plimsolls for PT,black gumboots for rain and black ballets shoes. I havebrown lace ups in the winter and slightly better, brown leather sandals with a cut out petal design in the summer. That’s that.
I watched the red No. 6 drive off noisily and thought that was probably all I was going to see of shiny redness that afternoon.
I like going into Dad’s office. It’s great fun twirling round on his desk chair until he finishes talking to customers on the phone.
‘Come on Longlegs, let’s see if we’ve got your size,’said Daddy and we all edged along the skinny passage way between the metal shelving, neatly stacked with boxes and packets. There were men’s shirts; working jackets in plaid; socks; ladies’ fashions; towels; sheets of plain and striped cotton or winceyette for winter; boxed handkerchiefs arranged in a fan shape, trimmed with machine lace and embroidery, and of course shoes.
The boxes came out one after another, a succession of identical brown lace ups. As Mum helped me try each pair, I hoped that a miracle would have happened as each lid was lifted, and some red bar shoes would suddenly be there, but to no avail.
‘Can you wriggle you toes properly? Do they feel comfortable?’ asked Mum. There was much walking up and down on corrugated paper to save the soles being scratched and lots of toe pressing, which was tricky as the toe caps were rather solid. Eventually a pair was decided upon.
Daddy suddenly said, ‘How about one of these?’ taking down several cellophane packets from a shelf and handing them to me. They were lovely flowery cotton dresses. Now this was more like it. I had a feeling Daddy knew I wasn’t too thrilled with brown lace ups, even though I was lucky to have them when lots of children didn't have new shoes at all.
‘Thanks Dad, let me see.’
All the prints were on white backgrounds. I looked quickly through, sliding aside the orange and brown with reveres and the green and yellow check with bows.
‘Yes, this one please,’ I said. The dress had small pale pink and blue flowers and a deep square neckline, edged with a wide white border. There were small cap sleeves and white centre buttons right down to the waist, whichwas trimmed with a narrow belt covered in the same fabric. The skirt was full and gathered.
‘Go and try it then,’ Dad said and I skipped off to the office. The heavy cotton had a sheen and was full of newness and stiffness. It twirled out just enough as I spun round. Lovely! I felt very grown up, almost like Mummy, who at that moment appeared at the door,
‘Oh that does look pretty, Darling. Now, let me see if there’s enough growing room.’ I tried to stand still as she pulled and prodded.
I gave Daddy a big hug and Mummy and I set off home. I clutched my dress tightly. It almost made up for the sensible shoes.
My Fair Lady
Marion Hinds
I should never have married Harold but I felt sorry for him when his mother died. We met at Amateur Dramatics, Harold overacting in the crowd scenes and me doing wardrobe. A trained curtain maker, I had endless fabric and trimmings, so pantomime to period drama saw a raid on my remnants – and Oklahoma was spectacular.
It was My Fair Lady when Harold started singing lessons – ‘coaching’ he called it. He was always out, having coaching with Valerie.
He had a lesson when I had my appointment at the eye hospital so I arranged a lift through Voluntary Services. Mr Baker was my driver, ever so kind he was and made me a cup of tea when we got home. Harold wasn’t back from coaching.
I went to the first night. Very disappointing, despite all that rehearsing and Harold’s name not in the programme. Then I saw it - ‘Hal’. He had changed his name to Hal. Apparently Valerie’s idea – more professional sounding.
Harold was too busy rehearsing so I asked if Mr Baker could take me for my post op.
‘I would be only too pleased,’ he said. He was glad of the company is what he said.
‘So am I,’ is what I said.
That was six years ago. I’m having the other eye done Tuesday and Mr Baker will take me. He’s ever so kind.
Harold has been living with Valerie since My Fair Lady.
Funny name for a bloke, Valerie.
Slug
A Radio Monologue
Jennie Pearson
Background sound of chomping mouthparts when appropriate.
The sound of human voices, perhaps children.
‘Slug! Ohh gross! Slugs! Look everywhere! Ugh, they’re disgusting!’
The slug’s voice should be rather androgenous: either a deep female or a light male voice.
‘Do you hear that? Do you hear it? So hurtful! What have we done to deserve that? Hated universally, apart from by a few eco-nuts. I know this because I heard it on Gardeners’ Question Time. My lady gardener has the radio on in the greenhouse near where my pot stands. Even Bob Flowerdew says he wouldn’t put up with slugs on his cabbages. But really, you know, most humans judge us simply by our looks. Horrible, slimy, senseless things, they think. Because they don’t understand what we do or how we live. I like to think (and I do spend time pondering the ways of the world in the long winter days), deep down real gardeners want to like us. It’s just that our habits conflict. Habits conflict? Slugs being, slugs surviving, our getting by, our minding our own business…that’s what conflicts.
Look, here’s the situation. Here am I, grazing peacefully on these succulent leaves, keeping myself to myself. It’s tea-time inside, the TV’s on, I can hear. There’s a light drizzle precipitating out here and you’re mostly indoors. That’s when I’m out and about. All as it should be. So what’s the problem? In the day time, you don’t see me generally. I like to tuck myself under my pot plant or sometimes I have an outing to a nice patch of damp, mulchy leaves near the chicken run. She’s planted some fresh young delphiniums for me over to the right there and in the vegetable garden she has some good looking cabbages coming on well. I could complain about her tidiness in the garden…always picking up the leaves and fallen branches but it would be a bit churlish, wouldn’t it? She does her best and I’m not sure she realises how much I’ve got to eat just to maintain my body weight…three or four times my weight every day….it takes a lot of chomping. Takes up most of my time. Keeps me out of trouble, I can tell you. I’ve no time to be out on the streets causing mayhem. I’ve got to maintain this sleek, muscly body. I’m considered quite a fine figure in my world, you know. You humans think of me as fat. You deride other humans for being slug-like, fat and lazy. No, no, I’ve heard it. I hear the comments. My gardeners spend a lot of time outdoors with friends….barbecues and things. I hear him showing off about taking up running….not going to laze about like a slug, he joked (I don’t think!). It’s so unfair. I’m all muscle. I’ve got to keep trim so my big foot can surf along my mucus trail. It’s vital. See? Like this. Helps me move smoothly over the grass.
And I need to be especially fit when you lot go and put down egg shells or ash, often still warm from the fire. You’re always up to those nasty, dastardly tricks, aren’t you? If I had to choose, I’d take the beer trap, a good way to die half happy at least. But salt? Hot water? Copper wire that gives an electric charge? Or tasty but deadly blue pellets? A torturer’s wicked arsenal! Shame on you, playing God like that. I even heard of one gardener who used to go out at night and cut my cousins in half with his garden shears. I know, you think of it as war, don’t you? I heard her say it. ‘I’ll get rid of the little b-s if it’s the last thing I do.’ But it’s not war when one side can’t fight back. It’s pogrom, ethnic cleansing, wholesale carnage.
But why not just leave us be? Think of us as some of the slightly rougher stitches in life’s rich tapestry, part of nature’s extraordinary balancing act. There’s plenty of horrors out there who’ll eat us, I can assure you. Blackbirds, frogs, toads, hedgehogs, foxes and badgers all consider us gourmet titbits. And, meanwhile, before they manage to bring our short, eventful lives to an abrupt end, we do lots of processing of the earth. All our chomp, chomping…you wouldn’t believe how much good our (excuse me mentioning it but it’s important) our excretions do for your soil. There’s enough of us about and every little helps says the slogan of a certain infamous supermarket which won’t countenance vegetables with any chomp marks in evidence. They really do demand a blitzkreig policy from their growers, I believe! But you ordinary right-minded gardeners, grow a few nice juicy things just for us like her delphiniums and her cabbages. Keep us happy, off your backs, as it were and we’ll do lots of churning through the soil leaving our poo everywhere. Whoops, didn’t mean to lower the tone. But it is the truth. We can work together. The soil’s the thing as Bill Sowerbutts used to say.
Ho hum. Life’s not fair though, is it? The cookie crumbles in surprising ways. And the weather is often the devil with the most cunning tricks. Take this year, for instance. It’s been a funny old summer, hasn’t it? You’ve liked it, I think. I’ve seen you all lounging about in the sun. But the long warm days aren’t so pleasant for us. I’m looking forward to some dark, damp days when the rain falls all day. I’m getting the urges. I’ve got to go out soon and find a partner, a fellow mollusca gastropoda of my genus who’s sending out beautiful smells to my sensory glands on the ends of my lower antennae. Ooh it’s so exciting! I can’t wait. We hermaphrodites, (you know, we’ve all got both parts...yes, yes, really…aren’t we lucky? Take care before you put us in the stranger-than-fiction box and use it as another reason to look down on us. It’s really a very practical thing.) We hermaphrodites, as I was saying, we can fertilise ourselves if things get desperate. Yes, they’re all clones. I know it’s not ideal. We could become inbred. But it’s useful in a drought or if some stupid gardener decides to fire bomb his garden and one’s really desperate to find a partner.
I managed last year, of course. Found slug 205 as I was crossing the lawn. We managed, we made babies, we did. Proudest moment of my life so far. I left 35 eggs, I think it was, inside some perfect mulch under the camelia bush just over that wall. Lovely damp spot….never dries out. I left the little tykes well set up. And 205, I daresay, did much the same. Not sure how the offspring turned out….if they turned out, but I hope they did. There were certainly quite a few spring sluglets chomping about this year. I’m only a year older myself but they’re all dashing about full of themselves…might even make it a bit difficult to find a suitable mate with them all flashing their new smells. But I’ve done my bit…made an impression, as they say, on the population. But I’ll give it another go this year: there’s still life in this old codger yet. Especially if we don’t get our thingies corkscrewed. O-ow, that’s a fate almost worse than death. You have to bite each other’s thingies off. Yes, yes really. I would not joke about such a thing. Ooh, not nice, I don’t really want to think about it. But, you know, we’re quite good at rejuvenating. Often do it when we get into trouble…a bird bites a backside or a badger nips our nodgers. That’s my word for my light sensitive antennae, my eyes if you like, the feelers you see waving about out front. Rejuvenation? Yes, it’s a useful asset but still the corkscrew thing is not ideal. The male bit can’t work anymore, of course, so only female parts are able to work. Better than nothing, our kind still has a chance. Resourceful, you’ve got to admit.
Well, my seeing antennae have picked up the new day’s light in the east so it’s time to make my way home for some kip. Belly’s full and I think there might be an interesting fellow gastropod hanging out under the terracotta pot over there. I’m going to make sure our mucus trails cross tomorrow night.
Meanwhile think kindly of us. Perhaps it’s useful for you to know a bit about what gets us out of bed...or from under the flower pot, I should say. I like to think it helps. Who knows? See you round.’