You wanna know what I do for a living? I’m a little bit snowed under actually but I’m a good man so…
How long could this take?
It’s easy when you know what you’re doing.
I work at The Land. I inherited it and have to maintain it. I live right next door, at Frank’s Land. A wall separates the two. A huge black one that you can’t see the top of. There is a top though. It’s like the sea past the horizon. You don’t need to go there to confirm that there’s more sea.
The job’s as easy as pie: I show people around The Land. My Land. I know it inside out. I don’t charge a standard fee for entry. It’s a ‘pay what you want’ scheme. All online. If I wanted, I could go online and check things like who is paying the most per entry at the moment but I’ve not got time for that. Besides, it’s blatantly obvious. To begin with, most wear a uniform. Bowler hat? You’ve got yourself a Big Spender. Bowler hat and Sketchers. That’s the drill. Stripy shirts. Those white cuff and collar things. Get close enough and you’ll smell them too. Rotten insides. Coffee. They don’t shower. Clean-shaven though.
You can also spot a Big Spender by the influence they yield. They’re not just paying the standard entrance fee. They’re paying for Sanctuary Visits, they’re re-plumbling and re-piping buildings, they’re setting up new systems, they’re demolishing buildings and building new ones and they’re paying all the additional fees that that incurs. I couldn’t survive without them.
They tend to be guys. They come, get obsessed, disappear. That’s their style. Watford pays the most at the moment, then The Nurse and Ziva.
Watford was organising a half marathon and he wanted me to be a part of it. I’m a good runner. I won it last year. But he was pestering.
You haven't signed up. Come on it's only 5K. You don't have to run it fast. It's such a shame: I can't get anyone signed up for the big race. What's the point of this place if I can't do what I want?
He started to loose his temper. I kept it cool. He has a point. But he also doesn't. He can do what he wants. That's what he comes to The Land for. And my job is facilitation, within reason. And for Watford, that's where reason ended. I'll have heart attack if I run the race. I told him so. But he still pushed. For that heart attack. There'll be no one to show you around The Land if I'm dead, I told him. Nothing. He didn't get it. The Land is The Land. I'll just find someone else to show me around, he said. Bit of a trigger for me that one. Summons the cats. So that was that for him. Everyone clenches their teeth. I sneeze the cats out and they do the rest, leave nothing but teeth. The last words always come from the teeth on the floor. I sweep them up, put them in the pit with the rest of them. Compost.
I can't get the cats back right away. That's the trade-off with a summoning. Everything has a cost, don't you find that to be true? There are no shortcuts. Just different types of transactions. The cats go AWOL and I end up up all night trying to catch them, failing, and having to clean up the mess they make so I'm ready for the customers the next day. They're eating leaves on trees, pulling down hedges. I'm typically pruning through the night anyway. Hard to say that I sleep like I used to before work got so full-on. I get the bikes out. Prune the foliage. The wrecking ball. The cherry picker. Combine bloody harvester. All the toys. If theres a game to be played, we play it, don't we? Destruction and construction. The only constant is change. That's what I've been told and I tell it to the customers. Don't be scared of it.
They wrecked the electricity that night, the cats. I had to go to the central hub, this big cake of a building with a candy cane on the top. I fell asleep whilst I was there and Ziva joined me. I always sleep with a customer on my nights out fixing. I'm sleeping with everyone. Different people, different places. There's co-ordination between the customers. If I've slept with a customer somewhere, they always show up there long after they've stopped being a customer anymore. So I was fixing the electricity and Ziva was warming up under the bed. That's where she likes to do it. Then Clock shows up and tries to get involved with his sausage fingers. It made sense because he liked coming round to learn some electrical jobs back in the day, but then Balloon shows up, this kid that was a customer way back. I could barely remember what he was interested in, what I would do with him. Only that he was shy. Then he pushes Clock away from Ziva. He did not like those fingers going inside of her. He bangs Clocks head against the wall and Clock goes all fetal position on us, bugs bursting out of his nostrils. I think he just came around and was fine, otherwise maybe he died.
There’s always the company of MyCon. More time awake at night means more time with MyCon. Sitting on the toilet? MyCon. Waiting for the kettle to boil? MyCon. But bedtime is peak playtime. I'm averaging 53 notifications per day and I'll cycle through all of them at least 5 or 6 times in bed before I go to sleep. Impies and Throwbacks are my specialities. Who's got time for the boring stuff? I'm obviously nailing it when the cats are AWOL. More time to work out the link between the Impies and Throwbacks.
After the cats battered Watford, there was a throwback about Captain. He came to The Land for 2 years. Big Spender. He had mad stubble and a horn growing out of his forehead. His clothes were baggy but it wasn’t a style choice- he just thought his body was bigger than it was. Never changed. Chewing-gum grey shirt with yellow pinstripes and sweat patches. Bowler hat obviously. Sketchers. And dark blue jeans with high-visibility leg bands, those things that prevent your pants from getting grease from the bike chain when you cycle. The guy was a wreck. I try to accommodate everyone at The Land but in the end I had to exclude him. He paid so much for entry that people turned into him. Everyone became anxious and depressed. I'm nothing without my guests. I have to look after them as a community. I can’t let one Big Spender make the other paying-customers deteriorate.
The Throwback was easy. It always is when you know it. It was Captain when I first met him at The Land. He was dragging a little suitcase up an escalator in his usual wrong-sized clothes, boxer shorts hanging out at the back, and I chased after him. I needed to talk to him about his behaviour with the other guests and how all his spending was having a negative impact. I have one rule, he said, and that is that you don't sleep with any of the other guests. It was funny because he was sleeping with everyone. He'd obviously forgotten that I have cameras everywhere. I see everything. If I want. And sex is a particular trigger on the surveilance system. He had money enough for these endeavours and he was worried about competition. That was it. That was the link. Captain was worried about competition from me. And Watford was the same. That’s why he wanted the attack. He knows how fast I am. He knew there was less chance he’d be in the first team if I was running. Pretty smart when you think about it. I’m good at knowing how to respond to each guest in a persanlised way, suited to their individual needs. Credit to Throwbacks though. Credit where credit's due.
Published 1st August 2026