13:30 · the hot part
Humdy, bored on the barn floor, turns the dot-colouring into a race and notices that the gate end is going green fast and the middle is not going green at all. Cloudy works out why: everybody started at the ends. Tidy moves four fluffs into the middle.
3 fluffs tell this minute. None of them saw the same one.
Earlier in the day I had done something similar without noticing — Humdy had said come and look at this, about the map, and I had looked at the green dots and drifted off for a second and come back with there's nobody working the middle, which turned out to be true and which four fluffs were sent to fix.
Twice in one day. Both times by not paying attention.
And then Humdy, who had been bored since about nine o'clock, wanted to colour in a dot every time a hook got filled.
Now — and I want to be honest, because this is the part I am pleased about and it did not feel good at the time — my first thought was no. It is my map. I have just spent two hours on the dots. Somebody else's pen all over it.
I said, "That's what they're for."
And then it was not my map any more. Within about twenty minutes it was Humdy's job, and fluffs were coming in from the lane to look at how green the gate end was going, and by half past one Humdy had noticed the thing I never would have: the gate end was going green fast and the middle was not going green at all.
"I'm SO bored," I said, luxuriously, lying on the barn floor.
I say that a hundred times a day and I mean it every single time, and the interesting thing about me — the thing nobody waits around for — is what happens about four minutes afterwards.
