Do you ever think about how thoughts are connected? One minute you’re sitting on a bus, looking at traffic outside, the next minute you’re thinking about apples. How do we go from traffic to apples?! Trains of thought have always fascinated me. Problem is whenever I try to ride one, it stops. It’s like it only works if I'm unaware of it. Last night I was washing a spatula and I started seeing fish swimming around underwater. But amazingly this time I knew how I’d got there. I’d managed to sneak onto my train of thought, unnoticed!

I'm washing a spatula and it makes me think of the person who gave it to me, my grandma. As soon as I think of her I can see her pouring herself a cup of tea in her kitchen. I'm looking at her from the entrance to her kitchen. Now I'm thinking of oranges and I'm yanked back in time to when I'm tiny and I'm sitting on my grandparents’ bed, looking up at my grandma who is pealing oranges. Juice drips from the segments as she gives them to us. I can taste her hand cream. She has the satisfied smile of a grandmother who has managed to trick her grandchildren into eating something nutritious. I'm happy because it’s my turn to sleep in the middle next to my grandma. My grandfather has been banished from the room on account of his unbelievably loud snoring. My other cousin sleeps next to me and the other one on the floor next to the bed. Next weekend the floor sleeper will sleep in the middle and the other two will move down a space each. That’s how we do it, unless someone is sick or has had a particularly bad injury or a nose bleed that day. These are the kind of things that can instantly bump you up to a middle-sleeper. Now I'm sleeping on the floor in the space between the bed and the radiator and I'm looking into the dark under the bed and I see two gleaming eyes looking at me. The eyes belong to Poochie, my grandfather’s bad tempered black poodle who loves my grandfather but absolutely despises all other human beings. Now I'm thinking of cucumbers because Poochie loves cucumber skins. I see my grandfather holding a long piece of cucumber skin and Poochie jumping up in the air and snatching it from his hand. Now I'm thinking I wish I had cucumbers to put in Dara’s lunch box for tomorrow and so I'm picturing his lunch box which has lots of different fish on it. Now I'm thinking of fish swimming underwater.