Doc Barbara has grown older since her last major exploit but her mind is as active as ever and her key beliefs are untarnished: free speech, compassion for worms and thick tights. She is often to be seen in the local park examining fungi or surreptitiously having a go on the swings and roundabouts. The latter she holds as an emblem of life: circling and circling but never arriving at anything sensible.
You all know what a roundabout looks like but have you ever seen a fungus like that? Rhetorical question.
She has since joined up with me in real life and will insist on helping me create my bog garden or look after my snails.
I did not invite her and I cannot decide whether she is my alter-ego or my doppelganger. Sometimes she springs up inside me and compels me to go and buy 6 galvanised buckets to grow organic clover for the snails. Her indomitable will always prevails.
Sometimes I seem to meet her appearing externally in order to block my saner enterprises so that she can substitute an off-piste idea of her own. Ignore the imagery: no-one would ever let her within furlongs of a ski-slope.
I cannot shake her off and have grown to be quite fond of her: anyway I can blame all my mistakes, failures and eccentricities on Doc B.
