Fairy lights

It has to be borne in mind by anyone conversing with me that I am a novelist.

At our (lovely, relaxing, sublime even) hairdressing salon recently getting my hair cut, I casually remarked to the gentle and talented Vicky who takes care of all of us, that the reason my family's hair grows so almighty fast is that our brains are nothing but compost. She hesitated, scissors arrested in mid air. "Is that . . . true?" she said: "because I believe anything."

"No," I said.

It reminded me of an occasion when I was preparing a couple for marriage. We were at the chapel on the Thursday night, going through in exact and minute detail what would be happening at their wedding on the Saturday. At these rehearsals I required every person to attend who had an active part to play in the ceremony — congregations are active too, but you know what I mean. So we had our organist, our bride and groom, the best man and bridesmaids, the bride's father, and the ring-bearing page boy, who was about six years old I suppose, and stood patiently alongside his relatives staring at my feet while I explained every atom of what would take place.

I paused to ask if they had any questions. The page boy had. He pointed to my toe ring, and asked me why I was wearing it.

"Because," I said, "In my former incarnation I was married to a hedgehog."

He looked up at me with amazement. "Is that . . . true?" he asked.

"No," I said.

Bear that in mind when I tell you that in the bath this morning I finally got my head round what electrolytes are.

My grandparents lived in Scarborough, in East Yorkshire where the Vikings set up house and begat my family line.

Occasionally I used to stay with them as a child — my grandparents I mean, not the Vikings, though it came to pretty much the same thing. 

They took me to see a place that entirely spoke to my soul. Searching on the internet now, I can find no trace of it, so I don't know what it was called — it may have been the Valley Gardens or possibly the South Cliff Gardens, but it was in a deep valley/hillside (as most places are in coastal towns) lavishly illuminated with strings of coloured lights. You had to go there after dark, obviously, and we did. If you imagine something like a Christmas tree but huge and you could walk down in to it, and I think there was water with boats that also had coloured lanterns reflecting on the water. So magical, so pretty, so colourful. Enchanting. It was too long ago, I cannot put a name to it, but to me it was like fairyland. It took my breath away.

And I was thinking in the bath this morning, that must be what electrolytes are. They are the illuminations of the lumen of the gut. As you go down into the darkness of its labyrinthine valley, winding back and forth on itself as its pathway makes its downward descent, it is lit and make marvellously beautiful by the abundance of glorious electrolytes sparkling along the route, making a kind of fairy land of your insides. 

Those people who write about cleansing the gut producing startling ropes of mucus are mistaken; what they are finding is strings of electrolytes whose bulbs have gone, being put out with the trash. That's all it is.

Down there in your gut it looks something like this —

— entirely because of the electrolytes. I think that red one might be the way out, seen from within. It does appear to be some kind of sphincter.