Ruby and the Stone Age Diet by Martin Millar Page B

am very pleased with the result. When I give it some water and three carefully-measured drops of plant food I am sure I can hear it saying thank you.
    ‘Grow me a little flower,’ I say to it. ‘I am fed up with not being able to eat and thinking that every person I see is Cis and being sad all the time. And it’s all your fault.’
    And then I have nothing to do. I rummage through some papers in my cupboard. I find a homemade ticket for one of our gigs, and a love poem. Ha Ha.
    Cynthia, still sad, exhibits a social conscience and kills everyone in a wine bar
    Cynthia calls in to visit her Uncle Bartholomew. He is having some trouble with his plumbing. Cynthia, fresh from
eating some plumbers, knows all about pipes and drains, and fixes it
.
    ‘
I’ve come to say goodbye,’ she says, wiping her tools. ‘My true love doesn’t want me anymore. I’m either going to kill myself or become a pirate. I haven’t made up my mind which
.’
    ‘
Goodbye,’ says her Uncle, unable to help her decide
.
    Down the road Cynthia develops a powerful hunger. She changes into wolf-form and sniffs around
.
    There on the pavement is a shabby tramp. He only has one foot
.
    I know I shouldn’t eat humans, thinks Cynthia. But no one will miss him
.

     
     
     
    ‘Stop, Ruby,’ I say. ‘Don’t make Cynthia eat the tramp with one foot. I get depressed just thinking about him.’
    Ruby looks up from her story.
    ‘Yes,’ she reflects. ‘So do I.’
    We saw him last week in New Cross. He was lying on the pavement with an empty can of Special Brew cradled in his arms. His crutch was leaned up against a shop-front and his ankle stump stuck naked out of his filthy trousers.
    ‘Another one slipped through the welfare safety net,’ said Ruby, hunting in her bag for a little change.
    ‘OK,’ she says, looking back at her story. ‘How about this? “Cynthia, moved by sympathy for the one-footed tramp, immediately bursts into an elegant wine bar just round the corner. She savages the rich customers to deathand steals their wallets. Stopping only to eat a spare plate of soup, she gives all the money to the tramp, and also a few bottles of wine.” How’s that?’
    ‘Fine. I like it.’
    ‘Right. But don’t expect any more social conscience. Cynthia is crazed in love, and is not responsible for her actions.’
    ‘Sit down comfortably,’ says Ruby, opening her book of myths and fables, ‘and I’ll tell you a story.’
    ‘Does it have a happy ending?’
    ‘Yes.’
    I sit down comfortably.
    With all the standing around sorting mail and loading up trucks in the warehouse my knee starts to hurt continually and I begin to hate business magazines.
    There is nothing interesting to read in the magazines, nothing interesting to look at in the warehouse, nothing to do but look forward to the next tea break or the end of the shift.
    Where the truck comes in there is a metal door that opens by hydraulics, but at some time in the past a truck has run into it and ripped one side of it open so the warehouse is always cold.
    One night a fox ran past the entrance and I foundsomething funny in a magazine. Even businessmen need cartoons.
    I show it round but it turns out that three of the other four people on ‘E’ shift can’t read. This is embarrassing and the embarrassment seems to be my fault. When there is a radio quiz on and I say some of the answers out loud I am generally mocked for being an intellectual. I am also mocked for my Scottish accent. In factories and building sites I am always mocked for my Scottish accent although it is usually friendly, people calling me Haggis and Hamish and saying ‘Och aye the noo.’
    ‘Abeline,’ begins Ruby, ‘a minor music deity who once used to play the harp to amuse Zeus on Mount Olympus, came to Earth looking for some adventure. He was bored after centuries of bliss on Mount Olympus and also annoyed because Zeus kept on doing terrible things to women he was attracted to, like pretending he was a