Ok so the caffine has kept me awake a while. And as another twist to my weird, wired state, the following event has just taken place! And I don’t know. It’s all strange.

In fact, I would like say that my life doesn’t feel at all normal anymore. Where are the days where I’d just go to work, read books and drink tea? Gone.

So. After my last post, unable to sleep, I joined you know who in the living room. (I wonder if she sleeps at all? I’ve never seen it.) (And in fact I just have to get something off my chest: she makes me sit on a kitchen chair – in my own living room – because she insists she needs the whole sofa. And I comply. Why? In my house? I’m a mug.) Anyway, while I was sitting there, brimming with caffine and feeling kind of passively enraged, there was a tapping at the window.

Outside was an enormous black cat, (SEE PICTURE – psycho eyes, eh?) with a torn ear. Not the most salubrious of felines and I tried to shoo him away. But Miss H suddenly leapt up (which confirms that the rheumatism she complains of unless I make her cups of tea may not be quite as severe as she claims) and ran over to the window. The next thing they are both sat on the sofa with the cat staring intently at her and Miss H even lifted her veil to reveal her face; not something she does often (Thankfully. Ahem). I asked what was going on, but Miss H just asked why my governesses hadn’t taught me it was rude to interrupt. (That thing I said in my last post about affection for her – I was tired and vulnerable and didn’t mean it. I’ve got my wits about me now.)

Forty minutes later after the cat had eaten the grilled chicken I was
planning to have for lunch tomorrow and it had drunk the last of the milk, Miss H deigned to explain. This, more or less, is what she said.

When the Ffforde (whoever he is) is stripping the books, he focuses on the most important scenes and characters first. This means sometimes a minor character can sometimes get away from him and not get reduced to text. There will be traces of these characters left in the book. They know something about the fake Fforde. Something about a key, Miss H said? She rolled her eyes when I asked what she meant and told me to use my mind and ‘think girl’!

Apparently these characters are all so terrified of him coming back to destroy them if he twigs they could be a danger to him, that they¹ve gone into hiding in fiction. They will only agree to talk over the footnoterphone. Miss H says she can think of a way to get this routed to phone boxes. As long as we do it at the last minute, the fake Fforde won¹t be able to trace them until it¹s too late. The cat (a precocious bastard) says he¹s not afraid of anyone. As some kind of proof of this he shredded my favourite cushion.

Anyway, the upshot is that Miss H thinks we need to find out who the
characters are and then what they know. I¹ve worked out where the cat is from, of course, and I¹m looking through the books we found in Foyles. There are some other odd words apart from those nasty little rhymes. Anyone got any ideas? I don’t know. Talking cats. What next?