Less Frivolous than its sounds. How a writer learns to cope with his limitations.

Goaty had a turgid frame, he stood awkwardly moulded from intertwined wires that seemed to have been stabbed heavily into the grassy bank. If anything, what he did do was to stand, ruminating a steady rhythm, head and body placid. At once he loathed his gorky architecture, but had long since conceded that surgery could be no improvement upon the original design - besides, he rather liked himself and the victory he had achieved over his own vanity.

Like me, Goaty was stubborn, and his eyes spoke of watery cynicism, his solitary outline stood proudly and remotely away from kith and kin. Over time his whiteness had browned, but throughout pain and passing his eyes still remained focussed on an event in the distance - only time and space denied him its inevitability. The eyes were golden green emeralds of objectivity, he seemed in some way to exude an indisposition to the more general duties of existence. And still he stood swallowing cudball after cudball.

The grass blades behaved as such, nipping clean slits in his soapy tongue, but to show feeling would be extravagant, after all, it had happened before. Catty might superficially be the same, but in actual fact, Catty had amidst its aloof pretences an extroversion and a desire to be loved. Goaty on the other hand, had never liked love. Goaty knew from the outset that his life would be a long hard struggle bringing little other than a few ifs and butts. The only question mark was that of the greener grass on the other side of the bridge, he pondered the future as waves of liquid gushed from his waste valve. An hour of total focus followed, until at long last Mr Fairytale began his descent.

Goaty set about the preliminary slope with uncharacteristic trepidation, but soon began to surge recklessly across the smooth rock outcrops, he could taste the gravity of the stones with his mouth, and foresaw imminent blood loss. 

His body was often called into action at sudden and random times, and standing still for long periods he should have considered warming up before starting downhill at such a pace from such an altitude. But dogged and pig-headed, he pursued his goal regardless. Rough chalk shale scattered from the impact of his swollen hooves, yellow crickets sprung violently all around as the mangy white beast clattered its temerarious musculature bottomward.

At the bridge, the troll had long since had its eyes poked out with horns, been crushed to bits and been tossed into the flow of the nearby cataract. So nothing to fear there - Goaty crossed with cacophonic resonance, echoing through the high walled valley and alarming the dainty.

On reaching the other side he felt like most of us do in the modern world, trapped in a valley of blinkered inertia swinging from one side to another like the relentless knelling of a Sunday School bell. Anything tangible had already been discovered, anything else was so high as to be inaccessible. This was an outrage - the chance of a novelty thwarted by physical deficit. Those peppy birds could go anywhere, and yet they still chose to bum around this disenchanted stamping ground - it really got his goat.

Time to return to the other side.