Anyone who knows God cannot describe Him. 

Anyone who can describe God does not know Him

 

If someone comes to you with a gift, 

and you do not accept it, 

who does the gift belong to?

Mr Olympia

 

Kevin Shawn Flex Nasser 

The four men who shared the stage with Dorian for those 6 years 

Each came second at least once 

Each swapped places for 2nd, 3rd, 4th 

Each lined up behind Ronnie in 98

 There were other great competitors in that era, but these are the four that stood out 

Each one could have been Mr Olympia, deserved to be

 

older comic heroes that pre date Superman 

The Tarzan illustrations go back to the books, before the cartoons and TV shows, the loincloth, often leopard fur or deep brown hide, and the deep tan skin he has 

When Superman was created he was drawn as Tarzan, the trunks and the muscles - in B&W there would be no need for Tarzan skin brown and Superman's blue tights and shirt - they were added after, then the famous S and of course the cape - the red and blue colour scheme we all know 

Batman was done in a similar way, and of course with big reference to Zorro in how his cape and cowl work, all black

 For the comics, Batman was done with grey and blue, and had the trunks 

As we saw with Henry Cavill, the one piece blue with no red trunks does work, and no modern cinema Batman has trunks they way the comics and the Adam West version had, as well as being all black - Keaton, Bane, Clooney, Affleck, Pattinson .

 

Like how Supergirl had the red skirt 

In the show with Melissa she starts this way, then gets the updated version "with pants" , which do not have the red trunks 

Tyler's version of Superman in that show, then into his own show Superman and Lois, has the design same as her, no red trunks .

Batman

 

The 89 film into the 90s Batman series were four films - and would have been five 

Michael Gough as Alfred and Pat Hingle as Jim Gordon connect the four 

They all follow on from each other and tell a four movie arc 

Yes Batman changed - Keaton, Keaton, Kilmer, Clooney 

Yes Robin was only in the last two 

We worked through the Rogues Gallery

 Joker 

Penguin

 Catwoman

 ( yes - Max Shreck - ) 

Two Face

 Riddler

 Poison Ivy 

Bane 

Mr Freeze

 there was talk of a Batman 5, though it wouldn't be called

 that there was talk it would be Clooney again 

Talk was Scare crow would have been the villain 

As it turned out, we had Scarecrow in Batman Begins, first film of the new reboot,

 and while Clooney never got the chance to play the Older Bruce/Batman again, we saw Affleck do that

 We didn't get to see the Jason Todd storyline told and probably never would have 

So YES - that series WAS a Trilogy - then became a Quad and would have been a Quint 

Superman

The costumes are bright like the comics 

The Henry then Tyler costumes had a darker blue and no trunks

The Henry Superman is a darker version, more like Batman in some ways, paired with the Affleck Batman 

of course in those films David's Superman is a return to the brighter red and blue, with the brighter look to the sets as well

 Costume back to what we saw with Chris, Brandon and Dean, the classic look

Supergirl

 

Supergirl is now on her fifth screen incarnation 

Helen had only the one film, she was Chris Supergirl, they never filmed together

 Dean never had a Supergirl which was a wasted opportunity 

Brandon never had a Supergirl, she would have been the same continuity as Helen

 Laura was Supergirl in Smallville, an interesting take for that version, and the sexiest Supergirl we've had 

Melissa was Supergirl for her own show, her version of Superman played by Tyler came from her, not the other way round 

Sasha was Supergirl for the Henry Superman, though they never appeared together, the dark haired, darker version of Kara for this universe, a pity we never saw her realise her potential

 Millie is the new Supergirl for the David Superman, again a different take, party girl, drunk, attitude, very different from how Melissa portrayed her in the show

 

The issue with the World Champion title is that it is "ephemeral" for want of a better word

 Boxing is probably the sport where this is seen the most, and the Heavyweight division being the most extreme example 

With something like tennis there is no "World Champion" - there are tournaments - and everyone see Wimbledon as being the One they all want to win 

Similar in Bodybuilding where Mr Olympia is seen as being the One title everyone wants

 There is no World Champion in Tennis or Bodybuilding 

With boxers they fight each other and earn rank, move up the Top 100, Top 10, etc 

The Rocky  film has the example of Clubber being the Best Boxer in the World, the Number One who got that rank by fighting all the others, all the "contenders" 

Yet the elusive title of "World Champion" belongs to Rocky, as he won it from Apollo then defended it against 10 challengers 

The way the accusation of "setups" and how Mickey explains them as "hand picked" goes to show how "unreal" this title is - what does it actually mean to hold this title when it is separate from the "real" world of the ranked boxers 

Rocky is called a "paper champion" by Clubber as his title exists only on paper, only in theory

 For Rocky to fight Clubber here means two things: 

Clubber has already beaten everyone else and can now beat Rocky and earn the World Champion title and belt (which happens in the first match) 

Rocky can beat Clubber, the Number One fighter, the man who has beaten everyone else, and prove he really is deserving of the title (which happens in the second match) 

Beating Clubber makes Rocky "Undisputed" 

In the real world, the boxing titles, in particular World Heavyweight Champion, ARE "disuputed"

 Mike Tyson was an example of someone who fought to unify the title, win the different belts by beating the various men who held them, to become Undisputed 

WBA

 WBC

 WBO

 IBF 

The Ring 

(let me know if there is one missing) 

at any time you could have five different men, all unbeaten so far in their career, holding one of these belts, who can claim to be Undefeated World Champion 

We have seen fights where someone has one or more belt, had a fight that was "sanctioned" by one body and not another, lose two of his belts, but keep the third - no longer Undefeated or Undisputed but somehow still World Champion

 Like a game of conkers 

Which makes you wonder what they really fight for and why they really want it

 Of course a truly genuine Professional sportsman competes for the money, how much they get paid - which would be a good explanation - "I don't really care about their paper title - I just get paid more for a fight while I carry it and defend it" .

 

The same thing happened with the A Team 

In the show they were Vietnam vets 

In the 2010 Liam Neeson film they were Iraq vets 

Captain America went into freeze at the end of WW2 so can wake up Now, whatever year Now is 

Punisher has to be updated to have been in the most recent war 

Batman, Superman. Etc They all keep the same fixed time, ages, but it is always the current year 

If Buffy was made today they would all have mobile phones and be on Facebook and Tik Tok

Simpsons

 

Matt Groening once explained that each episode takes place in one day, one 24 hour period

 Each year a 26 episode season /series is released 

So calculate long to make a 365 day year from those 

So they stay the same ages for that reason 

However they need the sliding timeliness 

So ten years go past for us and it's 9 months for them 

So mobile phones, the Internet, the current President, need to be updated 

And Abe who originally served in WW2 now has to have served in a later war 

Or not at all, if he imagined it

Hulk

 

Some of these comic relief bits really made the episodes 

The first hulk out was always some accident like getting stung by bees or fall down some stairs 

Then Jack would turn up halfway through the episode because there had been a Hulk sighting

 Instead of just turning back to David right away, Hulk was wander round calm and get involved with something 

The case with Ricky and the soda 

The girl on the beach with the sandcastle 

The boy at the zoo with the peanuts 

And of course bowling 

Allowed Lou to do a bit more with Hulk than the smashing and throwing people round

suicide ...

 

if God exists, 

he will be generous with those creatures who chose to leave this Earth early, 

and he might even apologize for having made us spend time here

 

In life, there is only the present moment, the now. 

You can't measure time the way you measure distance between two points.

 "Time" doesn't pass

 

if a frog is placed in a container along with water from its own pond, it will remain there, utterly still, while the water is slowly heated up. 

The frog doesn't react to the gradual increase in temperature, to the changes in its environment, and when the water reaches the boiling point, the frog dies, fat and happy.

On the other hand, if a frog is thrown into a container full of already boiling water it will jump straight out again, scalded, but alive

 

One must make the most of opportunities, 

or they are lost forever

 

The completion is always more difficult that the beginning

 

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, 

and He bends you with His might 

that His arrows may go swift and far. 

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; 

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, 

so He loves also the bow that is stable

 

the path to knowledge is a path that's open to everyone

 

When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision

 

To enjoy the rainbow, first enjoy the rain

 

You don't have to climb a mountain to find out whether or not it's high

 

Once the soul has left the body it had to walk across a bridge as narrow as a knife edge, 

with paradise on the right 

and, on the left, 

a series of circles that lead down into the darkness inside the earth. 

Before crossing the bridge, each person had to place all his virtues in his right hand and all his sins in his left,

 and the imbalance between the two meant that the person always fell towards the side 

to which his actions on Earth had inclined him

 

Even if you cannot change all the people around you,

 you can change the people you choose to be around

 

In a world where everyone struggles to survive whatever the cost, 

how could one judge those people who decide to die?

 

Two of the hardest decisions in life: 

the patience to wait for the right moment 

and the courage to accept whatever you encounter.

 

The moments that precede sleep are very similar to death.

 We are filled by a torpor

 and it is impossible to know when the 'I' takes on a different form.

 Our dreams are our second life.

 

the earth produces enough to satisfy needs, 

but not enough to satisfy greed

 

Until one day when, as well as his spiritual death, physical death appears; 

at that moment God will ask:

 "what did you do with your life?" 

We must all answer this question,

 and woe betides those who answer: 

"I remained standing at the door

 

Scars are medals branded on the flesh, and your enemies will be frightened by them because they are proof of your long experience of battle. 

Often this will lead them to seek dialogue and avoid conflict.

Scars speak more loudly than the sword that caused them

 

what dreams gather, 

wakefulness scatters

 

People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, 

because they feel that they don’t deserve them,

 or that they’ll be unable to achieve them

 

good or bad, an idea only exists when someone tries to put it into practice

 

what you brought from your past, is of no use in your present. 

When you must choose a new path, do not bring old experiences with you. 

Those who strike out afresh, but who attempt to retain a little of the old life, end up torn apart by their own memories

 

 there is no need for iron to be the same as copper, or copper the same as gold. 

Each preforms its own exact function as a unique being, 

and everything would be a symphony of peace

 

We are all the same instincts-- 

Good and Evil struggled between us. 

It was all a matter of control. 

And choice.

 Nothing more and nothing less

 

We aren't who we want to be. 

We are what society demands. 

We are what our parents choose. 

We don't want to disappoint anyone; 

we have a great need to be loved. 

So we smother the best in us.

 Gradually, the light of our dreams turns into the monster of our nightmares. 

They become things not done, possibilities not lived

 

the Kingdom of God is inside you,

 and all around you,

 not in mansions of wood and stone. 

Split a piece of wood...

 and I am there,

 lift a stone... 

and you will find me

 

The words of the Lord are written in the world around us. 

Merely be attentive to what happens in your life 

and you will discover where

 

 the hand of the merciful God always lies on the heads 

of courageous men and women, 

those who dare to be different because they believe in their dreams

 

There are things that are brought into our lives to lead us back to the true path 

Other things arise so we can apply all that we have learned. 

And, finally, some things come along to teach us.

 

The most sophisticated things in the world 

are precisely those within the reach of everyone

 

I have inside me the winds, the deserts, the oceans, the stars, and everything created in the universe.

 We were all made by the same hand, and we have the same soul.

 

We have been taught that we must follow certain formulas and rules 

if we want to find god.

 We do not recognize that god is wherever we allow him/her to enter

 Two roads diverged in a wood, 

and I -

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference

 

Before the 20th century, drug safety studies were not required. 

Narcotics were sold under the counter. 

Teething babies were given serums laced with morphine. A medicine for strep was made with anti-freeze. 

No one was responsible for distinguishing between medicine that heals and medicine that harmed. 

No one studied side effects or adverse reactions. 

All you could do was roll the dice. 

Recommendations, rules, guidelines.

 Ideally, they exist to save you from unnecessary pain. Have fun and stay safe while doing it. 

But rules only work if you follow them. 

But sometimes the rules you've been following turn out to be flawed. 

All bets are off. 

You're completely on your own.

 

Now all the mountains had been conquered and astronauts had walked in space. 

There were no more islands on earth—no matter how small—left to be discovered.

 

We always want to cast blame, something to fear and avoid. 

But the only thing to blame is everything. 

We often place blame because it's easier than taking responsibility. 

If you always look outward, you never have to turn inward.

 But progress only comes when you shine a light on yourself.

 What do you think? 

How do you feel? 

Ask the questions and the answers might surprise you.

 

.each reader creates his own film inside his head, gives faces to the characters, constructs every scene, hears the voices, smells the smells.

...whenever a reader goes to see a film based on a novel that he likes, he leaves a feeling disappointed, saying: "The book is so much better than the film"

 

in the blank spaces between the letters. 

In the moment when a note of music ends and the next one has not yet begun 

 

Let yourself get carried away by the night from time to time. 

Look up at the stars and try to get drunk on the sense of infinity. 

The night, with all its charms, is also a path to enlightenment.

 Just as a dark well has thirst-quenching water at its bottom, 

the night, whose mystery brings us closer to the mystery of God,

 has a flame capable of enkindling our soul 

hidden in its shadows

 

time doesn't teach;

 it merely brings us a sense of weariness and of growing older

 

Those who look on other people's misery with indifference are the most
miserable of all

 

An old man likes to return in memory 

to the days of his youth 

like a stranger who longs to go back to his own country. 

He delights to tell stories of the past 

like a poet who takes pleasure in reciting his best poem. 

He lives spiritually in the past 

because the present passes swiftly, 

and the future seems to him 

an approach to the oblivion of the grave.

 An hour full of old memories

 passed like the shadows

 of the trees over the grass

 

Said a sheet of snow-white paper, “Pure was I created, and pure will I remain forever. I would rather be burnt and turn to white ashes than suffer darkness to touch me or the unclean to come near me.”  

The ink-bottle heard what the paper was saying, and it laughed in its dark heart; but it never dared to approach her. 

And the multicoloured pencils heard her also, and they too never came near her.

  And the snow-white sheet of paper did remain pure and chaste forever, pure and chaste—and empty

 

The sun teaches to all things that grow their longing for the light. 

But it is night that raises them to the stars.

 

life is a sort of debt and payment. 

It gives us again and takes from us anew 

until we get tired of the giving and receiving 

and surrender to the final sleep

 

One day you will wake up 

and there won't be any more time 

to do the things you've always wanted.

 

In theory, every loss is for our own good; 

in practice, though,

that is when we question the existence of God and ask ourselves: 

What did I do to deserve this?

Neil Gaiman: The Problem of Susan

 

In the dream, she is standing, with her brothers and her sister, on the edge of the battlefield. It is summer, and the grass is a peculiarly vivid shade of green: a wholesome green, like a cricket pitch or the welcoming slope of the South Downs as you make your way north from the coast. There are bodies on the grass. None of the bodies are human; she can see a centaur, its throat slit, on the grass near her. The horse half of it is a vivid chestnut. Its human skin is nut-brown from the sun. She finds herself staring at the horse’s penis, wondering about centaurs mating, imagines being kissed by that bearded face. Her eyes flick to the cut throat, and the sticky red-black pool that surrounds it, and she shivers.

Flies buzz about the corpses.

The wildflowers tangle in the grass. They bloomed yesterday for the first time in, how long? A hundred years? A thousand? A hundred thousand? She does not know.

All this was snow, she thinks, as she looks at the battlefield. Yesterday, all this was snow. Always winter, and never Christmas. Her sister tugs her hand and points. On the brow of the green hill they, stand, deep in conversation. The lion is golden, his hands folded behind his back. The witch is dressed all in white. Right now she is shouting at the lion, who is simply listening. The children cannot make out any of their words, not her cold anger or the lion’s thrum-deep replies. The witch’s hair is black and shiny; her lips are red.

In her dream she notices these things.

They will finish their conversation soon, the lion and the witch…. There are things about herself that the professor despises. Her smell, for example. She smells like her grandmother smelled, like old women smell, and for this she cannot forgive herself, so on waking, she bathes in scented water and, naked and towel-dried, dabs several drops of Chanel toilet water beneath her arms and on her neck. It is, she believes, her sole extravagance.

Today she dresses in her dark brown dress suit. She thinks of these as her interview clothes, as opposed to her lecture clothes or her knocking-about-the-house clothes. Now she is in retirement, she wears her knocking-about-the-house clothes more and more. She puts on lipstick.

After breakfast, she washes a milk bottle, places it at her back door. She discovers that next-door’s cat has deposited a mouse head, and a paw, on the doormat. It looks as though the mouse is swimming through the coconut matting, as though most of it is submerged. She purses her lips, then she folds her copy of yesterday’s Daily Telegraph, and she folds and flips the mouse head and the paw into the newspaper, never touching them with her hands. Today’s Daily Telegraph is waiting for her in the hall, along with several letters, which she inspects, without opening any of them, and then places on the desk in her tiny study. Since her retirement, she visits her study only to write. Now she walks into the kitchen and seats herself at the old oak table. Her reading glasses hang about her neck, on a silver chain, and she perches them on her nose, and begins with the obituaries.

She does not actually expect to encounter anyone she knows there, but the world is small, and she observes that, perhaps with cruel humour, the obituarists have run a photograph of Peter Burrell Gunn as he was in the early 1950s, and not at all as he was the last time the professor had seen him, at a Literary Monthly Christmas party several years before, all gouty and beaky and trembling, and reminding her of nothing so much as a caricature of an owl. In the photograph, he is very beautiful. He looks wild, and noble. She had spent an evening once kissing him in a summer house: she remembers that very clearly, although she cannot remember for the life of her in which garden the summer house had belonged. It was, she decides, Charles and Nadia Reid’s house in the country. Which meant that it was before Nadia ran away with that Scottish artist, and Charles took the professor with him to Spain, although she was certainly not a professor then. This was many years before people commonly went to Spain for their holidays; it was exotic then. He asked her to marry him, too, and she is no longer certain why she said no, or even if she had entirely said no. He was a pleasant-enough young man, and he took what was left of her virginity on a blanket on a Spanish beach, on a warm spring night. She was twenty years old, and had thought herself so old…. The doorbell chimes, and she puts down the paper, and makes her way to the front door, and opens it.

Her first thought is how young the girl looks.

Her first thought is how old the woman looks. “Professor Hastings?” she says. “I’m Greta Campion. I’m doing the profile on you. For the Literary Chronicle.”

The older woman stares at her for a moment, vulnerable, and ancient; then she smiles. It’s a friendly smile, and Greta warms to her. “Come in, dear,” says the professor. “We’ll be in the sitting room.”

“I brought you this,” says Greta. “I baked it myself.” She takes the cake tin from her bag, hoping its contents haven’t disintegrated en route. “It’s a chocolate cake. I read online that you liked them.” The old woman nods, and blinks. “I do,” she says. “How kind. This way.”

Greta follows her into a comfortable room, is shown to her armchair, and told, firmly, not to move. The professor bustles off and returns with a tray, on which are teacups and saucers, a teapot, a plate of chocolate biscuits, and Greta’s chocolate cake.

Tea is poured, and Greta exclaims over the professor’s brooch, and then she pulls out her notebook and pen, and a copy of the professor’s last book, A Quest for Meanings in Children’s Fiction, bristling with Post-it notes and scraps of paper. They talk about the early chapters, in which the hypothesis is set forth that there was originally no distinct branch of fiction that was intended only for children, until the Victorian notions of the purity and sanctity of childhood demanded that fiction for children be made …

” . . well, pure,” says the professor.

“And sanctified?” asks Greta, with a smile.

“And sanctimonious,” corrects the old woman. “It is difficult to read The Water Babies without wincing.”

And then she talks about ways that artists used to draw children as adults, only smaller, without considering the child’s proportions, and how Grimm’s stories were collected for adults and, when the Grimms realised the books were being read in the nursery, were bowdlerized to make them more appropriate. She talks of Perrault’s “Sleeping Beauty in the Wood and of its original coda in which the prince’s cannibal ogre mother attempts to frame the Sleeping Beauty for having eaten her own children, and all the while Greta nods and takes notes, and nervously tries to contribute enough to the conversation that the professor will feel that it is a conversation or at least an interview, not a lecture.

“Where,” asks Greta, “do you feel your interest in children’s fiction came from?

The professor shakes her head. “Where do any of our interests come from? Where does your interest in children’s books come from?”

Greta says, “They always seemed the books that were most important to me. The ones that mattered. When I was a kid, and when I grew. I was like Dahl’s Matilda.… Were your family great readers?”

“Not really … I say that, it was a long time ago that they died. Were killed. I should say.”

“All your family died at the same time? Was this in the war?”

“No, dear. We were evacuees, in the war. This was in a train crash, several years after. I was not there.”

“Just like in Lewis’s Narnia books,” says Greta, and immediately feels like a fool, and an insensitive fool. “I’m sorry. That was a terrible thing to say, wasn’t it?”

“Was it, dear?”

Greta can feel herself blushing, and she says, “It’s just I remember that seq

uence so vividly. In The Last Battle. Where you learn there was a train crash on the way back to school, and everyone was killed. Except for Susan, of course.”

The professor says, “More tea, dear?” and Greta knows that she should leave the subject, but she says, “You know, that used to make me so angry.”

“What did, dear?”

“Susan. All the other kids go off to Paradise, and Susan can’t go. She’s no longer a friend of Narma because she’s too fond of lipsticks and nylons and invitations to parties. I even talked to my English teacher about it, about the problem of Susan, when I was twelve.”

She’ll leave the subject now, talk about the role of children’s fiction in creating the belief systems we adopt as adults, but the professor says “And tell me, dear, what did your teacher say?” “She said that even though Susan had refused Paradise then, she still had time while she lived to repent.”

“Repent what?”

“Not believing, I suppose. And the sin of Eve.”

The professor cuts herself a slice of chocolate cake. She seems to be remembering And then she says, “I doubt there was much opportunity for nylons and lipsticks after her family was killed. There certainly wasn’t for me. A little moneyless than one might imagine, from her parents’ estate, to lodge and feed her. No luxuries …”

“There must have been something else wrong with Susan,” says the young journalist, “something they didn’t tell us. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been damned like that, denied the Heaven of further up and further in. I mean, all the people she had ever cared for had gone on to their reward, in a world of magic and waterfalls and joy. And she was left behind.”

“I don’t know about the girl in the books,” says the professor, “but remaining behind would also have meant that she was available to identify her brothers’ and her little sister’s bodies. There were a lot of people dead in that crash. I was taken to a nearby school, it was the first day of term, and they had taken the bodies there. My older brother looked okay. Like he was asleep. The other two were a bit messier.”

“I suppose Susan would have seen their bodies, and thought, they’re on holidays now. The perfect school holidays. Romping in meadows with talking animals, world without end.”

“She might have done. I remember thinking what a great deal of damage a train can do, when it hits another train, to the people who were travelling. I suppose you’ve never had to identify a body, dear?”

“No.”

“That’s a blessing. I remember looking at them and thinking, What if I’m wrong, what if it’s not him after all? My younger brother was decapitated, you know. A god who would punish me for liking nylons and parties by making me walk through that school dining room, with the flies, to identify Ed, well … he’s enjoying himself a bit too much, isn’t he? Like a cat, getting the last ounce of enjoyment out of a mouse. Or a gram of enjoyment, I suppose it must be, these days. I don’t know, really.”

She trails off. And then, after some time, she says, “I’m sorry, dear. I don’t think I can do any more of this today. Perhaps if your editor gives me a ring, we can set a time to finish our conversation.”

Greta nods and says of course, and knows in her heart, with a peculiar finality, that they will talk no more.

That night, the professor climbs the stairs of her house, slowly, painstakingly, floor by floor. She takes sheets and blankets from the airing cupboard and makes up a bed in the spare bedroom, in the back. It is empty but for a wartime austerity dressing table, with a mirror and drawers, an oak bed, and a dusty applewood wardrobe, which contains only coat hangers and a dusty cardboard box. She places a vase on the dressing table, containing purple rhododendron flowers, sticky and vulgar.

She takes from the box in the wardrobe a plastic bag containing four old photographic albums. Then she climbs into the bed that was hers as a child, and lies there between the sheets, looking at the black and white photographs, and the sepia photographs, and the handful of unconvincing colour photographs. She looks at her brothers, and her sister, and her parents, and she wonders how they could have been that young, how anybody could have been that young.

After a while she notices that there are several children’s books beside the bed, which puzzles her slightly, because she does not believe she keeps books on the bedside table in that room. Nor, she decides, does she have a bedside table. On the top of the pile is an old paperback book it must be over forty years old: the price on the cover is in shillings. It shows a lion, and two girls twining a daisy chain into its mane.

The professor’s lips prickle with shock. And only then does she understand that she is dreaming, for she does not keep those books in the house. Beneath the paperback is a hardback, in its jacket, of a book that, in her dream, she has always wanted to read: Mary Poppins Brings in the Dawn, which P. L. Travers had never written while alive.

She picks it up and opens it to the middle, and reads the story waiting for her. Jane and Michael go with Mary Poppins on her day off, to Heaven, and they meet the boy Jesus, who is still slightly scared of Mary Poppins because she was once his nanny, and the Holy Ghost, who complains that he has not been able to get his sheet properly white since Mary Poppins left, and God the Father, who says, “There’s no making her do anything. Not her. She’s Mary Poppins.” “But you’re God,” said Jane. “You created every body and everything. They have to do what you say.”

“Not her,” said God the Father once again, and he scratched his golden beard flecked with white. “I didn’t create her. She’s Mary Poppins.”

And the professor stirs in her sleep, and dreams that she is reading her own obituary. It has been a good life, she thinks, as she reads it, discovering her life laid out in black and white. Everyone is there. Even the people she had forgotten.

Greta sleeps beside her boyfriend in a small flat in Camden, and she, too, is dreaming.

In the dream, the lion and the witch come down the hill together. She is standing on the battlefield, holding her sister’s hand. She looks up at the golden lion, and the burning amber of his eyes. “He’s not a tame lion, is be?” she whispers to her sister, and they shiver.

The witch looks at them all, then she turns to the lion and says, coldly, “I am satisfied with the terms of our agreement. You take the girls: for myself, I shall have the boys.”

She understands what must have happened, and she runs, but the beast is upon her before she has covered a dozen paces. The lion eats all of her except her head, in her dream. He leaves the head, and one of her hands, just as a house cat leaves the parts of a mouse it has no desire for, for later, or as a gift.

She wishes that he had eaten her head, then she would not have had to look. Dead eyelids cannot be closed, and she stares, unflinching, at the twisted thing her brothers have become. The great beast ate her little sister more slowly, and it seemed to her, with more relish and pleasure, than it had eaten her; but then, her little sister had always been its favourite.

The witch removes her white robes, revealing a body no less white, with high, small breasts, and nipples so dark, they are almost black. The witch lies back upon the grass, spreads her legs. Beneath her body, the grass becomes rimed with frost.

“Now,” she says.

The lion licks her white cleft with its pink tongue, until she can take no more of it, and she pulls its huge mouth to hers, and wraps her icy legs into its golden fur…

Being dead, the eyes in the head on the grass cannot look away.

Being dead, they miss nothing. And when they are done, sweaty and sticky and sated, only, then does the lion amble over to the head on the grass, and devour it in its huge mouth, crunching her skull in its powerful jaws, and it is then, only then, that she wakes.

Her heart is pounding. She tries to wake her boyfriend, but he snores and grunts, and will not rouse.

It’s true, Greta thinks, irrationally, in the darkness. She grew up. She carried on. She didn’t die…

She imagines the professor, waking in the night, and listening to the noises coming from the old applewood wardrobe in the corner: to the rustlings of all these gliding ghosts, which might be mistaken for the scurries of mice or rats, and to the padding of enormous velvet paws, and the distant, dangerous music of a hunting horn. She knows she is being ridiculous, although she will not be surprised when she reads of the professor’s demise. Death comes in the night, she thinks, before she returns to sleep. Like a lion. The white witch rides naked on the lion’s golden back. Its muzzle is spotted with fresh, scarlet blood. Then the vast pinkness of its tongue wipes around its face, and once more it is perfectly clean.

Wherefore in such efforts, O Chaldean ghouls,

Whiten ye the earth with the salt of your sweat?

—Therein we find ineffable pleasures always:

Odors of the ripe dead, and ancient spices,

Embalsam our sweat.