Cog:

ohgodohgodohgod. Blimey, that's torn it.

What's this flashing up before my eyes? It's mother... she's leaning over me, picking me up and dropping me into a coal-scuttle. Now she's taking some money from that man who has Professor Beagleweed's Medical Research Laboratories written on the side of his wagon. I'm peeking over the top of the coal scuttle over the tailgate as we lurch away, mother is brushing her hands off against each other so busily she forgets to wave. There are monkeys and white puppies in the wagon... now I'm waking up in my bunk, I'm being shaken by boney, yellow-stained hands, it's the Professor, he's saying, "why aren't you at work, are you trying to ruin me? Get to work"... this must be the labs, I'm taller now and most of the puppies have grown into big dogs, and the monkeys have grey hair, the ones who haven't gone bald that is, and we're sitting in line smoking these brown leaves the Professor sells in the market. I can see him through the smoke, he's talking to one of the illusionists from the Advertising Agency, he's telling the Professor he will sell more leaves to people if he lets the images get more surreal... now I'm running away with one of the monkeys, we get to the canal but she goes back to the factory 'cos she's forgotten her lighter, and I'm calling (quietly) No! No! You can use mine, when I see the Professor's special wirefence flash blue and I know that she touched the edges of the hole we'd cut so I'm diving into the canal on my own... and this is the Cobble-Scrubbing Academy, I'm wearing my new dungarees and bowing to the District Mayor who's giving me my Road Hygene Scholarship...and here comes twenty years of scrubbing cobbles, happy, happy days, fascinating work, rain or shine, no two cobbles are quite the same when your face is that close to them, and now I have a coin in my hand, there are lanterns flickering and fiddle music fiddling and songs singing and it's the Travelling Fayre! I'm tossing the coin at a jar, it rolls around the rim of the jar, once, twice then it falls in, I've won, I've won, it's the Greatest Day of My Life, I've won a goldfish, it's delicious, but now I can't pay to get into the Bearded Woman's tent, the ogre at the front won't let me in without a ticket, I'm pressing against his legs but they're massive and I'm being lifted and oh! I'm drop-kicked through the air... so now I'm unpicking the stitching in the back of the tent to get in and there's a flash and the smell of cordite or something, and I turn round and there's a tabloid sketcher, and a tall ridiculous man standing behind him in tight trousers and pointy boots but I can't see his face because it's in the shadow of his huge brimmed hat, just the glint of his grinny teeth. And he holds up the sketch, and I think, If this gets back to the Cobble Scrubbers' Governors I'm ruined, and the tall man seems to know what I'm thinking and he gives the greasy sketcher a copper coin and sends him off and motions me to come this way...