News from Shakes Manor

Sunday morning. We're in the car, driving down a country road, each tree-lined side of which has burst into the flames of full autumn bloom. The sun is shining; it's crisp and cool—but not so cool that we can't put the windows down. The breeze coming in smells of muddy fall.

We're not nattering aimlessly, as we usually do in the car. On the stereo, Backspacer is playing; it's the first time I've heard it, and Iain's said it's good, so I'm listening. It's not background music, but the focus of our self-imposed silence.

I'm looking out the window, watching the sunlight dancing across the leaves in shimmering dapples, and indistinctly appreciating having the roads all to ourselves; a conscious thought never manifests that everyone else is in church or still in bed. I feel dreamy, and my imagination wanders along a characteristically weird path.

Eventually, the album finishes and segues into something old I've heard a million times before. Normally, that would be my cue to commence a review of Backspacer, but I was still on Planet Zuh, so instead I launched directly into the middle of a conversation precisely where my daydreaming had left off.

"Sometimes," I tell Iain, "when we're in the car like this, just going about our day, and the music is playing and we're both happy and content, I imagine the most unexpected thing happening—like a GIANT MONSTER FOOT CRASHING DOWN ON THE ROAD IN FRONT OF US! AAAHHHHHHH!!! And then I imagine you swerving the car to miss it, and we drive into a cornfield—cornstalks all akimbo!—and we come to a halt and we get out, and—phew!—we're okay, and we both look up and OMG IT'S A GIANT MONSTER WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS CRAZY FUCKERY?! And we run for it and laugh manically, because HOLY MAUDE THIS SHIT IS TOTALLY TRUCKNUTZ!"

Iain looks at me and laughs. "A giant moonster foot?!" It is a sign of his profound inuredness to my idiocrasy that his question was merely about the details of my hypothetical.

"Or some variation thereof," I tell him. "Sometimes it's a gigantic fault opening up in the earth right in front of us. Sometimes, it's a gigantic fault opening up—AND A GIANT MONSTER CRAWLING OUT! Like a movie. Except not a movie…because it's really happening."

"What are ye like, wooman!" he exclaims, laughing.

"Omigod! HOT LAVA! Coming towards us! AND GREAT CAESAR'S GHOST IT'S RADIOACTIVE!"

"I fink I preferred the giant moonster foot."

"OH THE HUMANITY!"

"Good lord, yer a weird little fing."

"You'll be grateful when something wild happens and we survive thanks to my giant monster foot preparedness," I tell him.

"Ye've goot a point there, Tschoobs."