10:45 · morning
Muddle, holding on to the single word "wicks", takes the wrong turning, ends up lost in the nettles and finds the lost box on its side with twenty-two lanterns spilled into the ditch. Getting them up takes three trips and both knees. Puzzly meets Muddle at the top with a bucket.
2 fluffs tell this minute. None of them saw the same one.
I stopped at the bottom of the bank, in the nettles, thoroughly lost.
And there it was. Tipped on its side in the wet, lid off, half its contents down in the ditch: a wooden box.
I stood and looked at it for a while, because I genuinely could not work out, for about ten seconds, whether I had found something or was in trouble.
Then I counted what was in the ditch, which took some time, and was twenty-two.
I met Muddle at the top of the bank at about quarter to eleven, soaked to both knees, with an armful of lanterns out of a ditch.
"Why have you got those?"
"Because I went the wrong way," said Muddle, "to the shed."
"That's not an answer."
