Petherton Throat Singing Ltd.

Ho, ho, ho
It's magic, you know
Never believe, it's not so
It's magic, you know
Never believe, it's not so

Littlest Loki riding with her bike attached to mine via the ever-splendid trail-gator (recommended to parents everywhere) yelling out Pilot's Magic at the top of her voice while we pass the hinterland between town and country at the Durleigh /Bridgwater divide and then Middle Loki, up front and pedalling like a mad fast Cody on his BMX wrongturns into a council estate and it's very much not magic because here's the kind of rule of Lore that determines that soon poison-filled Craft Cockney Darts sets will be flinging out of broken windows, that oily siblings with quaintly alliterative names will be hurling themselves at us like the blindies at the start of Day Of The Triffids...

This is a place where the cul de sac becomes the dead end; Deliverance country near the edge of town, the place where Ligotti puppets take over the world and all we notice is a slight reduction in the Turkey Swizzler share prices...

Pilot - Magic

A Yousendit Burlesquivel

There's Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight again. Christ, I gotta get me a canoe...

Duelling Banjos

Some of these other kids are smiling and waving, they've not seen a bike like this before, never seen such speed...Littlest Loki cranks up the singing to appease them but they're running towards us now, hungry like the wolf and covered in jam...

This place is turning into a labyrinth with mini-Minotaurs before Middle Loki finds a gap in the hedgerows and heads us out of the Estate towards the canal and the Sustrans cycle route, stopping only so i can take a picture of a half-arsed anarchy in the uk slogan sprayed across the wall under the A38 bridge. Everything is going really well for a mile or so (operationalised as the number of times Littlest Loki does her Homer Simpson whoo-hoos) until our path is blocked by a slow manoevering wide-load of a woman who's dangling a fishing rod (odd, you hardly ever see women fishing, not even in Bridgwater where the female/male divide can be easily breached) and apparently throat singing, first at her dog and then at Littlest Loki. This is all done in a manner I find impossible to judge: she could be being friendly but her expression is so wrinkled (dried fruit, Summer lawns 1975) that it's impossible to tell which crack might be the smile.


We're not too far from the Acorn turnoff now so I tell her what i know about Throat Singing - i.e. Tanya Tagaq Gillis, who was on Medulla - in an attempt to find some common ground but it doesn't seem to mean anything to her, perhaps because she's done with that commercial shite:

Tagaq - Sila
Tagaq - Quimmiruluapik

And so we have to try and force our way past the woman on the outside, a task made inestimably more difficult because by now Littlest Loki is onto The Banana Splits and this is bothering the woman's medium-sixed but frothing dog enough to make it jump up towards Middle Loki who falls over sideways and gets stung in places he hasn't yet discovered.


The Banana Splits - The Tra La La Song

Tommorow, we're on a Riddley Walker style expedition into the hart of the wud, wish us well...