The ribbons dropped like glossy flyers from a crashing zeppelin, sucking up our mind void in a dreamlike loss of control. They were, probably, more like flyers than ribbons anyway. Ms. Lanyard watched, and so did Mr Pigskin and Mr Porkknuckles. Meanwhile the monkey was shot behind the scenes, without audio or video recording, without paperwork. If we had known, we would have not been happy with that.

The ribbons served a mere decorative function. They were there to be pretty, to rain with a positively cheerful attitude. The next night fireflies made their way down the motorway. We were inside one of those fireflies, had been for hours, but hadn’t been thinking about monkeys. Monkeys were one of the farthest things from our minds. Ms. Lanyard was thinking about how their melancholy was reinforcing itself, Mr Porkknuckles was pondering the A-Team, and Mr Pigskin had tomato juice on his mind. I was thinking about whether people could be lured to a good shoe shining by the scent of shoe polish.

SHOE POLISH, IMAGINE THAT?

We did make our way to Dubrovnik eventually.