pages 23 - 27

What are you thinking Alice!
Alice thought that perhaps her thoughts might be written on her forehead so she had better thought something else quickly. She wrung her hands. As the lump went down her throat, her peter pan collar began to strangle her as if it was an idea that she should not have swallowed. Had someone been feeding her bad ideas?


The Queen was in an off mood. A black swathe of weeping underneath her heartening robes. “Why is it that I’m in such a foul mood everytime someone looks at me. I can’t help it. It is the time of the month for running into cars and ripping people’s heads off.


Then suddenly Alice remembered why she hated all the tarts that had ever existed. At a school camp they had upset her very badly.
“We dare Alice to kiss Jack!”
If Jack had really loved her he wouldn’t have crawled over towards her making grunting noises with his eyes ready to roll out of his sockets and into her pockets. They all laughed merrily because he wasn’t good at English and could always act the fool.


She had dashed into the dark night leaving a trail of tears that no-one followed. And now here she was doing it again because the caterpillar had asked her to take off the blue dress and when she replied that she had tried but she couldn’t he laughed and left.
He laughed and left.


“Twenty cups of tea will fix anything “ said the March Hare.
List
Glasses
Stakes
Book

Morals for every occasion. Even Florence Caulfield Hewlett could not solve her dilemmas.
ASTRAKHAN COLLARS AND CUFFS, To repair.
BLANKETS: to remove teas stains from.
BOOTS AND SHOES, BROWN, to blacken.
BREAD, STALE, to use for.
BUTTONS, PEARL, to preserve when mangled.
FUR, WHITE, To keep in summer.
MUSTARD, value of.
RUGS, to keep flat at edges,
SATIN, BLACK, to renovate.
ANKLES WEAK, BILLIOUS ATTACK, FRECKLES, To remove.

pages 28 - 32

Boo Hoo Hoo
Boo Hoo Hoo
It took me hours to make those tarts, pinching all their little edgings, boiling up the jam as it frothed and settled, frothed and settled. Mixing and rolling and cutting the pastry into little rounds that sit just so in the tart tray. Oh the cheek of him, silently strolling in when my back is turned, and he just flogs them willy nilly and gobbles them up without not one thought for the work I’ve done!


One day Alice met her old school friend Rennay. (Alices’ mouth opened noticeably wide in surprise)
“Rennay – what’s happened . . . . You’ve become a tart!
“Got along a bit with Jack I did”
“Yes but you didn’t have to become a tart!’
“’S Automatic once you sleep with him, didn’t you know his mother’s the Queen of tarts”
“No I thought she was the Queen of . . . .. But surely he could at least marry you with all those babies” ( Rennay had behind her a gaggle of children all falling about each other)
“What’s the point of getting married, I’ve already got all the babies I need. You only get married to ‘ave babies.”

Alice wondered what she could do to help. Maybe we could pick some fruit and I could make some jam or preserves for your babies.
“Got all the jam I need love.”

“How many babies have you got Rennay”, asked Alice looking down for they seemed to be everywhere.
“ 18” said Rennay
“ Eighteen!” said Alice, that’s a lot. . .”
“One for each go at it”, said Rennay.
“You get a baby each time!” started Alice, visibly appalled.
“Yep” said Rennay, suddenly looking doubtful.
“Is it worth it?” enquired Alice
“Small price to pay for a baby” said Rennay.

There was a moment when they had to look around a bit to each gather their thoughts because they had not seen each other for so long it was difficult to make conversation, that with the gentle clamour of 18 babies.

“Anyway why are you still wearing that puffed sleeved dress”, asked Rennay, drawn to pick at Alice’s sleeve.
“It looks fit for a five year old. You must’ve had it 18 years.”
“Yes”, said Alice, “I’ve been wearing it 18 years and I can’t get it off.”
Then it dawned on Alice that Rennay was 18 and she had 18 children!

“the Queen of hearts . . . .” Alice began because she was curious . . .
“It’s all a big front!” blurted Rennay, “It’s just a great big tart factory – they plan to take over the world!”

“It’s all a big front!” Rennay said again, as if the first time she may have been speaking only to herself. “And another thing, Jack is not really her son!”
“Not her son!” exclaimed Alice, willing to join in.
“No, he’s her lover”.
“ Her lover . . . I thought he was your lover!”
“He is the lover of lovers and she keeps him in the castle as her ‘son’ so no-one will know and so he’s handy like.”
“But what about the king, surely he knows? He’s no dimwit. Not a clue?”

Could this be true ? thought Alice


Could this be true?
Some things were true. Some things were not what they seemed and somethings that you thought could not possibly be true because you hadn’t even thought them, were true simply because no-one could think them up. But Rennay had thought this AND also said it.


It’s just a bureaucratic bungle. The people I judge aren’t even real. Their crimes are so petty, I don’t know why I have to waste my time. I cut off all their heads and still nobody notices! The bugger who stole my tarts has still not been apprehended.

pages 33 -37

Guilty of . . . . . walking on living grass, not recycling properly,
not having a matching set of crockery,
having sideburns and long fingernails.


I thought I’d give Rennay a break from her children and took her out for afternoon tea,
but she just started stripping off and dancing on the table.


“You cannot change a tiger’s stripes!” said the Duchess.


I thought I may as well get married.
May as welln’t I?

We were married by the guinea pig Rufus, who though being shy had managed to avoid being suppressed by running very fast whenever anybody spoke. We had a silent ceremony until we had to say the “I dos” and then we turned around to see that he was not there anymore.


Taking advice from the rabbits
I procreated.

pages 38 - 42

She conceived 856 offspring within wedlock.
Her puffed sleeves grew bigger than ever and she still could not take her dress off. She was advised to trim her hair for the births but it grew back immediately. Like one of those dolls.


Dustmites in the sheets! Sponges not sterilized!
Four children were not placed on the control crying regime!
Not looking after yourself!
Letting yourself go !


She was very respectable, though she didn’t want to be. Though having so many children makes it obvious where you’ve laid your eggs. She didn’t really feel up to wearing white anymore.


What was the deal with white rabbits?
Who did they think they were fooling?


Alice remembered the cup who refused to have tea poured into it. Stains!
The cup and matching pot sat on a shelf together for years very still.

pages 43- 47

When Alice was
a tea-pot,
she poured.
Pour pour Alice.

Hot tears
Over a hot face
Soaked up by
the white linen
tablecloth

Sometimes Alice
Would sit and look at each stain
Remembering each
Tear-soaked afternoon.


Puffed sleeves never helped anyone work out what to make 856 children for tea. Tuna mornay again?


And the moral of that is . . . .
Always get take-away!
The duchess always kept a sea of remarks up her sleeves.


In the garden Alice met Sinthea who was looking quite perky with matching twin daughter (all three were matching). Alice had tried for a pair of those and had been rewarded with a pair of unmatching guinea pigs.
Alice knew by Sinthea’s beautiful smile that
Alice looked to Sinthea like the tart that
Alice had always wanted to be.


“It was lovely to see you,” lied Sinthea. They swapped addresses, they would never use, but would leave regretfully folded up in the bottoms of their handbags to torment their consciences for years afterwards.
(Alice and Sinthea were peas in a pod)

pages 48 - 52

She had landed upside down like a beetle. Her little mushroom legs kicking in the air but not prevailing. The rabbit saw it as the opportune moment that he had been waiting for.


Amongst the shopping, burping and feeding, washing up and hanging out the rabbit had been and gone. The thousand labium had opened up and spores were popping into the air. Alice had locked herself into the pantry. Even in that still airless room, she could feel the air between each of her fingers. The cavity beneath her ribs was hollowed out with even more hunger and her bottom half throbbed. She watched the dust motes float in the sunshine that spoked through the slats.

Dips, tissues, crackers, coconut, milk, corned beef, mince, lasagna pasta,
She was a warm muffin of sponge freshly doused in the dripping chocolate icing and was rolling around in the slatternly coconut. Come back and eat me, she called.


Am I taking the mouse out to make tea or am I putting it in to take mouse tea? “Now where was I?” said Alice aloud to herself. She had to speak out loud and clearly to arrange her thoughts and to put one foot in front of the other. Her hair swathed thick around her so that she would not see or hear the children.


If I was a rabbit, I wouldn’t worry about being late. Nor would I eat grass. I would eat Alice, thought Alice.


Where was she and where had she put the children?

Chapter 2 : POCKETS AND CHECKS

“Children were empty vessels to be filled up with information. Give me a child under the age of seven ( a confident man had said) and I can mould it as I wish.”
“Your head is full of nonsense”, screamed The Duchess.
“Some things you just cannot get through a child’s head. Thickheaded they are.
Their ears are closed to all sense.

Oddly shaped diamonds formed in the spaces left by overlapping contradictions.


Everyone was having a go at pinning something onto her. Someone was siphoning air into her sleeves. Everyone was having a go at pinning something onto her. She began to rise into the air. Someone was siphoning air into her sleeves. “Too many pockets”, Alice cried” What will the duchess say if she sees?”

pages 57 - 61

A saucer had tightened around her neck. “ Hold still”, said the Duchess,
“Here comes Deportment and Grooming”.


TOO MANY POCKETS

Alice was told that cups should not be stacked inside each other, because it is suggestive.


“FLIMSY HUSSY SPENT STRAPS”

“PIPS, FLESH AND FRAGRANT SKINS”

There were suddenly two duchesses. One lamenting on the leotards that circus girls were wearing and the other proclaiming that young women should not be eating fruit in public!


There was not one thought that didn’t lead to another.
What was Alice left to think?
Dare she think?

pages 62 - 66

It was like the nightmare that she had of checks increasing and gradually covering the earth. She would be shoved off or consumed by the checkerpattern that had grown and extended unchecked.


“Alice, What’s wrong!”
Alice had to run from the science test. She was trying to think of molecules and elements but the checks had invaded her thoughts. The checks multiplied and spread like cells out of control. The other children thought that she did not know the answers.


It was a dirty trick thought Alice. She had to make her own gingham apron. All girls had to cross-stitch into the fabric their hopes for the future. (Alice’s hopes shrank in the wash). The apron covered their breasts but drew attention to them at the same time. And then there were the pockets!
Later in life the apron still sat preserved in a cupboard, too laboured on to wear, encased in a thick starch of pancaked home ec. Teachers, the boy who wanted to do more than hold her hand, the dirty girls doing things at the bottom of the oval, the crushes, the girl who swore she’d “bash ‘er”.


Pockets were things you could put things in. “Purses are the same” said The Duchess, quite agitated. “They don’t always snap shut! Not nearly fast enough. Thieves are always about.
Where will you put things if you don’t have pockets, thought Alice. In a jam jar? Things were always safer in pockets.

Soap money fairness
salt buttons rice
safety pins a hankey
Thieves are often lanky

pages 67 -71

The shape that was the entrance to pockets was also the shape of the eyes of the chesire cat. And then there were the spirals. . . . . . .


“Oh no, this tablecloth has sixes all over it, 666 the number of the beast,” cried the Duchess, “and the moral is . . don’t listen to music backwards because it becomes a mass of sixes instead of treble clefs”.
They are just spirals, said Alice slowly and clearly tracing her fingers around the curves that led inwards.
The Duchess dashed alice’s hand away from the tablecloth.
“Everyone knows that spirals are just overwrought sixes. The sign of the Devil is everywhere and has a tendency for wrought iron.
Alice had a strange vision of bodies wrought around one another trying to make shapes of sixes.


The entrance to the pocket
Was also the shape that formed
Circles when overlapped.



Although The Duchess had told Alice not to wear a “V” shaped neckline because it points down to you know where, SHE HERSELF OFTEN wore a dress that had a “V’ shaped on the bell of the skirt pointing up to you know where.

pages 72 - 76

Once when Alice was asleep, The Duchess had even said,
“I’m not wearing any undies!”
But Alice could not confirm this when she awoke to find The Duchess going through her dreams with a fine-toothed comb and comparing them to her women’s journal collection from the 1950’s.


No Petting!


Petting?
Everybody talked about it but no-one would say what it was.
Pettifogger pets pettish petaurist petrified
Petersham petrochemistry for pete’s sake
Pestle petunse pittitus petrole petit peter
Pays paul peter pets pail petrolatum petty
Pets? Petticoat petrel petunia petal
Then she found out it was to do with the holes in your clothing. The pockets, the gaps between the buttons, the slither between the fabric and your waist, the neckline of your dress, the belts and buttons, the press-studs and clips. The Velcro, the ties and the meeting of lips.


Meanwhile she suspected The Duchess of saying one thing and doing another. Whilst her long sleeves and high collars covered her amply, the wind could still whistle up inside her skirt to flirt with her bare legs. Besides, where did she get that whining piglet from?


In Alice’s mind, there was a father for the piglet.