Tonight, I will be reaing some of The Lion of Sleep at Ern Malley in Stepney. 

The Lion of Sleep is a word hoard, a book designed to be read aloud by parents to children at bedtime, and lull the young mind with the wonder of unfamiliar and beautiful words. 

Here is a sample: 

ALVERY the ANGLER

The entire tale of King Alvery’s adventures begins with a fish. The Lion of Sleep likes fish, you see, although not often to eat. He once attempted to catch a fish while asleep in his bedroom, and he advises that you do not try to catch any fish in yours.

One day, as the sun rose, Alvery was fishing on Ningaloo Reef. The tide was neap and he needed a needlefish, a catch so very thin the average angler would need nine at least. He paddled east in his Outrigger, towards the sun, and before long, he was well out into the open sea.

Soon up came a lumpsucker, a most lingering type of fish, of a lineage that Alvery did not like at all, owing to their odour. The Lion was fishing with a lobworm lure on a longline, and the lumpsucker informed him that this was not the right sort of rig to catch a needlefish.

‘Don’t you know anything about fishing at all?’ asked the lumpsucker.

‘Hardly,’ said Alvery. ‘I’m a Lion. And besides, I’m asleep. It is difficult to catch fish when you’re asleep.’

‘Excuses, excuses,’ said the Lumpsucker. ‘Your rig is the problem, not your sleepiness.’

‘Do I need a net?’ asked the Lion patiently.

‘No, you ninny. Not unless you plan to fix a hole in it. You need a proper jig and reel, the sort the Irish used to play.’

Alvery was taken aback, which can be a problem on a canoe. He was a Lion of Pride, very unused to being called by rude names at home, and so he became regal, and said: ‘Stop calling me names, you horrible blob! Leave me alone.’

Reluctantly, the lumpsucker left, but by now, the Outrigger had attracted a whole cast of other marine denizens, who swam up to see what the big wooden floaty thing on the surface might be. There was a pike, a pickerel, a mackerel and a doggerel, a catfish and a dogfish, a thyme and a plaice and a sole, a sturgeon and a curmudgeonly gudgeon, a perch and a roach and a loach and a tench, a pipefish called Pete and a needlefish named Nicola, a grenadier, and a riflefish, and a rather confused Sergeant Baker who had forgotten his uniform. The leatherface tried to speak, but couldn’t. The Pike piped up.

‘You’re a long way from home,’ she said. ‘What are you doing out here?’

‘I’ve forgotten,’ replied Alvery. ‘The sun is coming up. I except I shall wake up soon.’

‘You appear to be holding a fishing rod,’ said the Pike. ‘Ballsock of Biggitch, is it? A classic tackle brand! Perhaps you were fishing?’

‘Ah, now I remember,’ said Alvery. ‘I’m trying to catch a needlefish.’

‘Just the one?’ the Pike enquired. ‘Most need nine.’

‘No need for nine when one will do,’ said Alvery. ‘And I know just the one.’

The Pike most helpfully told the Lion what must be done. Once the water was chummy thick with burley and loose-bait, Alvery took a paternoster rig with a linen leader and a linoleum line clip and attempted to ledger below the thermocline. The Pike certainly knew a lot about fishing!

‘I need to know, in my line of work,’ proclaimed the Pike. ‘I’ve never been caught! From whale to minnow, I know all the tricks of the piscator and piscatrix!’

Alvery was wise enough to be guided by such an expert, and so should you be. Pretty soon, the bob-float wobbled gaily as a needlefish took the lobby bait, the Pike called ‘Strike’, and Alvery hoisted his catch aboard with a tender care. Nicola the Needlefish was terrified when the canny Catfish asked:

‘Will you have her with your noodles?’

‘Dear me, no!’ said the Lion. ‘I do not want to eat her! I want to have her for tea!’

Nicola the Needlefish brightened considerably at this invitation, but a singular problem remained. They were now well out of sight of land, and Alvery had no idea of where Ningaloo Reef really is. He was only there because he liked the name. How was he to get home?

‘You need an Orving Overcaster,’ said the Pike. ‘Just cast off, wildly, in any direction. Your line will guide your spirit home.’

The Pike had been right before, so, once Alvery had weighted his line with an Arsley Bomb, he performed a manoeuvre the fisherfolk call ‘The Big Chuck’. He used all his strength to cast off, and as he was an exceedingly strong Lion, the hook went over the water for many miles, right out of the sea and onto the land, straight to where his own Palace was standing on the shore.

The hook went whizzing into an open window and right into Alvery’s grand estate bedroom, landing in his second largest aquarium. A special and very expensive type of pet fish called a Sarcastic Fringehead decided to take the bait, and was duly caught on the hook.

‘Great,’ she said. ‘That’s all I need.’

Alvery awoke, and greatly regretted having caught his own pet fish, in his own bedroom. But at least he had the Needlefish he needed for his tea ceremony. You shall hear about that anon.

Are you sleepy? In order to bring the Lion of Sleep into your room, you will need to make sure there are no fish present.

•    Step One – Move Your Aquarium. If you do not have an aquarium in your bedroom you will need to emulate the removal of one, by taking a glass of water into your bedroom, and then taking it out again.
•    Step Two – Check Your Wardrobe. One of the most common causes of fish in the bedroom is that someone has absentmindedly put fish in the wardrobe, mistaking it for the refrigerator.
•    Step Three – Check Under the Bed. Fish are shy creatures and will often hide under beds if they cannot find any water.
•    Step Four – Check Your Sock Drawer. Some socks have fishy patterns, and real fish with poor eyesight may sometime attempt to school with these.
​
If there are no fish present in any of these places, and you cannot hear the sound of a fish breathing, you may be assured that there are no fish in your bedroom, and continue to invoke Alvery.

Good night. 

Some time ago, I just submitted something to the New Yorker for the first time. Despite the glamorously low success rate for first-time authors, hopes are high.

Here is a short selection from my short fiction piece, Bloody Gerald....

Naiden soon noticed that there wasn't much time between being a new cat, and being a dirty cat. It seemed to happen without him doing much at all. And all the other little cats were dirty, too, even the ones that never rolled around on the ground like he did, or poked in puddles. 

"If this goes on, we will be more dirt than cat," Naiden thought.

Airport is male. He has legs below the terminals, the tubular type with plastic-knob shoes, but you can’t imagine his arms. The windows of the arrival hall are his eyes, the automatic doors into the departure hall his mouth. He wears an apron made of planes. The control tower and hangar are not part of his body, so whenever he goes anywhere, they are left waiting on the tarmac.

Airport awoke as Intercom crackled: ‘Control Tower Ralph To Airport, Do You Copy Over!’

A plane, again? Airport did not feel like answering. He had been dreaming of an executive lounge where they served drinks with special straws named after famous actors. He wanted to go on a Holiday and see the actors in the films they played on the long-haul flights. Ah, to live a life of leisure like the lucky elite, instead of being a regional Airport with concrete hair. That would be grand.

One of my current projects is a children's word hoard, entitled The Lion of Sleep. It tells the story of how the magical lion Alvery Zee may help you to get to sleep, through the recitation of all the wonderful things he will require to travel to Contragonia and find his true love.

There's an extract below the read more button...

A Life in the Book of Monsters is available now through Amazon.

While remaining dedicated nonsense, it also hints at the story of Arthur Hindside, a failing romantic poet of the mid-19th century, who goes insane after a trip to France to rescue a lost manuscript, then becomes a supernatural journalist, tries to contact the Holy Spirit during a seance, and then finally escapes London to teach at  Scottish Grammar School, only to go missing for seven years after sleeping on a hilltop on St John's Eve.

Sheesh...I never did hear back from the New Yorker (!), or any other place I wrote to, but I happen to think this is a fine piece of nonsense / satire, so I am including it in full this time. Click to read the whole thing...

From the time Naiden was very little, he liked games. There were some games in the Forest of Many Things, and some in the House, and evensome in the Imaginary World. 

Games in the House had actual rules. Sometimes, the rules were that you got put outside, because you didn't understand why.

​Another game had some things that people held in front of their faces, and then when they put them down on the table, you could attack them, and then you got put outside again. The best game of all was a big flat thing that you could lie on, and the rules were tiny little pieces of prey made of red and green plastic, and when they went across the board they moved almost as fast as you did! No wonder the people liked playing this game so much.

The people in the House liked it when Naiden helped them played this game. It was his favourite. 

In the Imaginary World, Naiden knew what all these games were called, and could say their names.

​He was very good at the game called Poker. The other players could not see what was on his cards, because he held them with the pictures facing towards his body, He often won the Poker game for this reason. 

In the Forest of Many Things, the games didn't have rules, and there was no such thing as winning. It could be a problem, not knowing when to stop. It was usually Naiden who said it was time to finish the game, and go home. Because he was the particular kind of cat to think of things like that. 

Next time we'll hear about one of the games that Naiden and his friends played played in the Forest, and how it ended.