TIM UPPERTON
Lunch on the grass
It was pleasant on the grass. We were just sitting around. The wine in the glasses was pale green. There was a woman beside me. She was very attractive to me, but I was distracted by the presence of a small, shiny blue-green beetle of some kind on her bare thigh, quite motionless. Such a tiny beetle, on that vast plain! That’s the sort of day it was. ‘Try the potato salad!’ the woman said. ‘If you don’t try the potato salad, I shall die!’ ‘I don’t like potato salad,’ I said. I spoke more stiffly than the occasion warranted. She looked at me sadly, and sank into the grass. I, too, felt a deep sadness. All my life I have made enemies, despite my best intentions. I looked away, wishing I were somewhere else. The other picnic-goers were, I sensed, turning against me. A rustling sound came from the leaves of the hedge, or perhaps from a small animal deep within the hedge, perhaps a mouse. I could feel the mouse’s feelings, wanting, as I did, a place of concealment. ‘Try the potato salad!’ remonstrated the bearded man reclining opposite me. He was wearing some sort of frock-coat. ‘Yes, try the potato salad!’ everyone said in unison. ‘But I don’t like potato salad,’ I said, and you can guess what happened next.