Imagine the clouds dripping.Dig a hole in your garden to put them in.

"In the film Citizen Kane, there’s that scene where Kane is dying, clutching a snowstorm globe. As he dies, he drops it on the floor and utters the word ‘Rosebud’. Because when he was a kid he had that sledge, ‘Rosebud’, that he used to bomb down hills on, and he really loved it. In spite of the fact that in later life he became a millionaire and built a business empire and had all that power and all that success, when it came to the moment of his death, it was being a child on that sledge that he remembered. Perhaps for all of us there is a moment that epitomises our lives – a moment when you’re more yourself than at any other time, an instant of absolute self-realisation. Well, that was Kane’s, and this is mine . .

It all began with a nice old man who lived on our street, talking to me about some flowers that he’d grown in his garden. I think over time I have perhaps, if not sanitised this old man, at least Disney-fied him. For now, in my mind’s eye, when I cast my thoughts back, I see a twinkle-eyed Geppetto character, smoking a pipe and wearing lederhosen as he tends to his nasturtiums. They beam back at him and grin – perhaps even jigging about like the battery-operated dancing flowers that were to become popular a decade or so later. The passage of time has also allowed me to lacquer the memory with the old man’s unexpressed suspicion that I were in need of a patriarch, a father-figure, and him being all kind and guiding me towards an understanding of nature.

As I recall it now, he put a fatherly arm around me, and what he said next could almost be a song from The Lion King about the cycle of life. ‘And these flowers grow, and one day they die, but they’ll grow again. These flowers are perennial. Their seed is eternal. Flower begets flower and on we must go – from now until the end of time. Always it were thus, like a line of human bellybuttons stretching back to Adam and Eve.'

Then, the old man paused. ‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘I’ll just pop into the toilet for a wee . . . Don’t stamp on those flowers, will you?’

‘Don’t stamp on those flowers . . .’ Why say that? Had he not parted with the words, ‘Don’t stamp on those flowers’, I wouldn’t have. It just wouldn’t’ve occurred to me. I might have stamped on one to make an example of it. But in the sentence, ‘Don’t stamp on those flowers’, the word ‘don’t’ is feeble, impotent and easy to ignore. Whereas ‘STAMP ON THOSE FLOWERS’ has a real linguistic verve; ‘stamp on those flowers’ could be a slogan, a catchphrase, a banner under which nations could unite. So the moment he shuffled out of view, all old and friendly, I stamped on them flowers. I stamped ‘em till there was naught but mush, till they were but a memory of flowers; I stamped with a ferocity that meant that flowers everywhere would never again feel safe. It was a floral 9/11. I knew it was bad but I couldn’t deny the urge; I know why them medieval loons were so keen to believe in demonic possession because I gave vent in that moment to a timeless darkness, the parameters of which extend beyond my being and transgress the very borders of evil itself.

I was angry towards them flowers – just growing there, thinking they were better than us. It was a bit like in Stanley Holloway’s rendition of ‘Albert and the Lion’. My dad was obsessed with that poem – he made me recite it with him, verse for verse, at one of his ill-advised weddings. There’s a line where the little boy, Albert, takes umbrage at the lion’s lack of gusto: ‘Now Albert had heard about lions,/How they was ferocious and wild – /To see Wallace lying so peaceful/Well, it didn’t seem right to the child.' Well, it didn’t seem right to me that the flowers should be there, all peaceful and beautiful. The poem continues: ‘So straight’way the brave little fella,/Not showing a morsel of fear,/Took his stick with its ‘orse’s ‘ead ‘andle/And pushed it in Wallace’s ear.’ My memory of the poem has spanned decades in which the marriage it was learned to serve could’ve played out a dozen times.

I took my cue from this brave young protagonist of this famous tale and stamped down on that beauty: stamped it into the soil. Them smug, up-reaching flowers, greedily sucking up the sun. 'I dont know what photosynthesis is, and I don't know what's in it for me, because I've never felt any of its advantages. I think it's a cruel trick...' So I were satisfied to stamp them down, and then waited with a churning gut for the old man's return.

He came back, beaming and benevolent, still with his leathery face and furrowed brow and them sort of thick, dirty fingers and leathery palms that old men often go in for; it seems somehow satisfying to smell their jumpers and fall asleep on their laps. He trundled back down the path, all warm, avuncular, and glowing. He glanced first at me, and then at his devastated flowerbed; all ploughed up and butchered, like a Ripper victim - like Pearly Poll, lying gutted in Hansway Street, Spitalfields. And his anger grew the same way he'd explained to me that flowers grew. First there was a tiny seed of rage - "Oh Russell, what did you do that for? I thought you were a good boy - a nice little boy.' Swiftly came the spring and his anger bloomed into raging triffids. And suddenly this warm man, this gentle man, was shouting and screaming at me, incandescent with fury. I can still remember his roar - this visceral sound booming up from his guts - 'GET HOME!'

I raced home, a refugee from the botanical carnage, to sanctuary; only the pathologically mischievous know the relief of closing the door behind them, locking out the world and its tight angry fist clutching dockets and penalties for parental perusal. I was excited by what had happened, but also sort of sad."

hahahaha i really enjoyed this book. i've been trying to find time to share the backlog of snippets from the ebook collection on my tablet - a little more inconvenient because i've got to type them out into this box word by word, unlike the various dregs of material already on the interwebs.  here's the first!