10:30 · morning
Bravo takes the bank job off the frightened fluff, stands at the top and says out loud "I'm scared of this bit" before going down sideways on the solid part. Four lanterns come up out of the nettles hand to hand. Shivvy, following, gets three steps down without noticing.
3 fluffs tell this minute. None of them saw the same one.
The bank was worse than it looked, and it looked bad. Wet, steep, all loose stuff underfoot, with a good crop of nettles at the bottom and four lanterns down in them.
I stood at the top and the whole thing arrived at once. The drop. The slipperiness. A very clear picture of myself going down it considerably faster than planned.
Now. Here is what I have always done at this exact point, for as long as I can remember. I say easy! and I go.
I did not say easy.
And I got one badly wrong at half past seven in the morning, though it was not mine to get wrong: the bank job went to a fluff who is frightened of the bank, in front of about fifteen of us, and every one of us watched them say yes and not one of us looked at their face. Hushy heard them say oh afterwards. Chatty ran it round the land. Bravo took it off them by mid-morning and stood at the top of that bank and said out loud that it was frightening.
I told Bravo he did not have to.
"I know," said Bravo.
And then there was Lonny, who had been at the edge of my yard since eight o'clock being available.
The bank was the part I dreaded, and I was not even the one going down it.
Bravo took that job off somebody who was too frightened to say no, and stood at the top of it, and then said — out loud, to nobody in particular — "I'm scared of this bit."
I went completely still.
"You are?"
