It all happened very quickly. One moment, he was walking down the street, ambiently wondering what to do with this free afternoon. The next, he was being given very explicit instructions to carry things. Apparently, someone was moving house, prompting into being an inordinate number of boxes of varying weights and sizes. Boxes which had to be carried to and fro. Also, furniture. Lots of it

Not having in anything particular to do or get to, he joined in. Some glanced at him in surprise, but assumed he was some distant association brought in for the occasion. Only at the post-move pizza was his true predicament revealed; upon considering his heavy lifting, everyone concluded that this was as good a way to meet a new friend as any

I Ching sign: 2

Thunder rolled overhead. As approaching storms went, this was a big one. If the forecasts were correct, the storm would loom ever closer and continue its ponderous rumblings well into the night. Almost like in one of those novels where the manor on the moor got a surprise visitor on that one dark stormy night, who turned out to be implicated in an overly ornate plot whose slow unraveling somehow transpired at a sustained breakneck pace once it got going

Putting out her cigarette, she stopped pondering the storm, and closed the window. The play was about to start, and she had every intention of acing the opening line

I Ching sign: 1

In a flash of reminiscence, she suddenly remembered a dish that she used to eat all the time, then stopped for some reason. This memory, being both vivid and inspiring, prompted her to prepare it that very same day. Every step of the process – getting the ingredients, preparing everything, instinctively knowing which setting the stove had to be on – brought back a trickle of memories of those long past days, and the emotional resonances that moved things along. A culinary trip down memory lane, it was

That is, until she took the first bite, and suddenly – in a slightly longer flash of reminiscence – remembered just why she didn’t eat this any more