Blob Thing's epic walk with the refugees and their friends would soon be over. There ahead in the distance he could see the land of Shields. Somewhere within that place he would reach journeys end and in the hall of the Saint would be rewarded with a feast. Would songs be sung? Would epic poems be written about this day? Probably not. But maybe he would be able to write a blog post about it.
Blob says:
Oh yes. It had been a good day. I was so happy to have been able to walk up the coast along paths I hadn't seen when my person forgot to take me with her once. Walking with the refugee people was amazing too. The refugees could all tell stories and there were some brilliant people on the walk who devote a lot of there lives to helping. I'd been expecting to go to a rally and sing out for refugees that evening. A man called Mister Farage was speaking in Gateshead and I was going to go along and sing because I thought he was wrong about refugees. A group called the North East Socialist Singers would be leading that rally. I've written about it already with my person in a blog post. Yes, I enjoyed that evening a lot and keep telling my person that she should go and sing with those people again. They were ever so friendly and the singing was a lot of fun. And there I was that day walking for the whole day with refugees. They were ever so friendly too. It was a great honour to be able to walk among them.
I'd seen so many things and I want to go back and explore them some more. There are a lot of places I've seen that I want to go back to. And a lot of places I haven't seen that I want to go to even though I don't even know what I'll find there. I wonder where I'll be able to go this week. I'm a bit dependent on my person. I am not able to go out myself and get the bus and the Metro to places to explore them. So I find I'm sitting there having to bully my person sometimes and I have to keep telling her that we need to go out and have an adventure. She's getting to be quite good at it. But there are days on which going out at all is an impossibility for her and other days on which it's very difficult indeed and she can't be out for long or have a big adventure. Sometimes she gets into difficulties when out and although I do my best to help her there are days on which I wonder if we're going to be able to get home safely. My person looks after me very well. But there are times when I have to be the one who looks after her.
Some days are so hard. But the refugee day wasn't one of them. That day was a day on which my person could fight through any difficulties in her head and appear normal enough that someone didn't even believe she could be autistic. She did incredibly well that day. The next day she had to recover and couldn't do much but on that day my person - as someone put it - did amazing.
Now here I was and the walk would be over quite soon. I sat on a dune and thought about how wonderful my life is. I'm just a small pink soft toy. But I have a wonderful life and I have grown up into a person in ways that nobody could have imagined when I was created. Behind me you can just see a place close to where we were walking to. It's Tynemouth. At the mouth of the river Tyne. We had walked all the way from the river Wear to get there. Not far to go now. And then the walk would be over and I would say goodbye to these people. I was a bit sad because they were all going to get together for a celebration at the end of the week and I wasn't going to be able to attend. I was going to see my creator and I always like to do that. But it would have been nice to celebrate with the walkers.
I'd like to apologise. Sometimes my person is a rubbish photographer. Terrible. She's not good at knowing when something is flat. The sea doesn't actually sit at this angle. It's meant to be flat. On her behalf I say we are sorry. Sometimes she takes a good picture. But then there are rubbish ones like this. At least I am straight even in the sea has gone wrong. If the sea was really like that and you lived in the land at the bottom then all the sea would flow across your land and you would get flooded. You would either have to move, drown, build an undersea city, or develop the ability to breathe underwater. I think of those options the breathing one would be best. I think it would be incredibly exciting to be able to have adventures underwater. I could walk out and talk with the fish and visit the dark depths and I'd be very careful not to be stung by a jellyfish or to scare a pufferfish.
I don't know exactly what pufferfish poison would do to me but it's probably best to be careful if I saw such a creature. The internet says it's a thousand times more toxic to humans than cyanide. I don't know what cyanide would do to me either but I don't ever want to find out. Some humans are incredibly strange. I knew that already. But the internet tells me that they think pufferfish is a great delicacy. It also tells me that although it's prepared by highly trained chefs quite a lot of people die from eating it every year. Tell me, what possible tasty dinner is would risking death for? It's not just people being strange. It's stupidity. Pure, simple stupidity. I don't want to eat pufferfish. I'm not so stupid as a human.
Sorry. I was meant to be showing you a photo. I wasn't meant to be making my person type all kinds of things about pufferfish. And if you lived in the land at the top of the photo all the sea would have poured down to the other land and the smell of dead fish on the exposed seabed would be horrible. People would have gone to a lot of trouble to make the harbour walls at Tynemouth and South Shields and then there wouldn't be any sea because it would all be in Sunderland and Roker Pier would be useless at holding back that much water and Sunderland would be an underwater city full of humans with special gills and I would go and visit even if the glass centre had turned into a giant boat and sailed off to Norway. Sorry again for this photo. Next time I'll try to get my person to take a photo that shows the horizon properly. My silly person. She did a bad photo in yesterday's post too. Maybe she needs to take lessons. [Blob's person at this point is not happy with Blob. Not happy at all. She admits it's not the best photo ever but she's also taken good ones. The ones yesterday of Marsden Beach were decent. More than making up for the bad pictures. Blob needs to get on with talking about his adventure. Not about his silly person or about pufferfish. Get on with it Blob. Now!]
Okay. If you insist. Eventually the dunes came to an end and still the walk wasn't over. I was feeling tired by this point and I hadn't been able to have a proper rest. I was told that we wouldn't be able to have a proper rest until the banquet at the end and I wondered whether I could cope. I was determined. I may only be small but I would finish this trek.
We left the beach behind and walked into a place very different. There was a lake and a railway and quite a lot of people. Many of them had ice cream but I wasn't allowed to get an ice cream. I do like ice cream but I have to be careful with it otherwise it makes me very dirty. It would be a bit easier now. My dress got fixed recently so now it doesn't keep riding upwards and covering my mouth, my wonderfully gorgeous smile. I like smiling. There is always something to smile about, even on the hard days. This year my person has set herself a challenge to post online every single day with things she is grateful for. Some days have been extremely hard but she tries to do it anyway. Because there is always something. Right now we're in a nice house, on a comfy chair. There is superb music playing - it's by Simon Thacker who you almost certainly won't have heard of. There is light and the option of going to make tea. We have my person's phone with us. We have books. We have pretty things. A stone and candle display we bought nine days ago and a lovely painting of standing stones we bought on a difficult day this week.
My person wasn't coping well that day. She had gone into town to do one specific job. But when she got to the place for the job she was already struggling and then being there was far too overwhelming and she had to leave. One job. And she couldn't do it. She ended up wandering in the streets feeling rubbish and not knowing what to do. Eventually she took refuge in a quiet shop. A charity shop she had never seen before. It was nice in there. Quiet. So quiet. And they weren't playing music. My person still had her headphones on though. And in that shop was this very nice framed print for three pounds. And a brand new friend, a giraffe called Gerry. He was beautiful and he's a lot of fun to have around. He only cost a pound.
I worry sometimes about the ethics of such things. Is it really right to buy and sell friends? We are people too. Should we be counted as property in this way? I know we're usually bought by good people who offer us some love but that's not the point. Friends are people. And I have issues with the buying and selling of people. We're friends. We're not property. Humans shouldn't be able to own friends. They should be friends of friends and care for us as we care for them with our cuddles and the way we happily participate in imagination games. But legally, under British law, we have no rights whatsoever. People are allowed to treat us badly. They can throw us away. They can neglect us. Sometimes we're even burned or ripped apart to make beds for humans. We have no rights. And that makes me, as a living, thoughtful soft toy sad and more than a bit cross. I don't expect I can do anything about it though no matter how unjust the law is and how much it allows friends to be oppressed by powerful humans.
[The adventure, Blob. The adventure.]
Oh yes. I was on a walk and then away from the people I saw something very frightening indeed. I saw some kind of dragon. Or some kind of human. Or some kind of something. It was as if some evil scientist had combined several creatures into some kind of hybrid, a strange chimera, and the result was a monster. A fierce monster ready to destroy the land. A Herma Merma Dragora. Yes, that's what it was. A Herma Merma Dragora. Frightening to behold and I was scared because I thought it was going to rise up and destroy everything between Sunderland and North Shields and all the beautiful things I had seen would be gone by the end of the day.
But I am a brave friend. I decided I would fight the Herma Merma Dragora. I would fight it and I would in. I had to. There was no other choice. I would vanquish this creature and would be hailed as a hero and all my friends could come and live with me in a magical castle full of light shows and sensory rooms and quiet places and a big cinema to watch our favourite things and we would live happily there forever and only come out so that we could have even more exciting adventures than I already have. There was no other choice. I, Blob Thing, hero of the Shields.
I approached the Herma Merma Dragora carefully. I didn't actually know how I was going to vanquish the creature. I didn't even have a sword. But I would find a way. My person wasn't quite so brave. She just stood back and took photos, a record of my heroism. Something to include in the Blob Thing museum that people would undoubtedly want to establish.
My person got a bit scared at this point I think and she ran off and took a picture from further away. She didn't want to get eaten or burned. I think that's why she went to take this picture anyway. She probably has a different story.
I was about to strike a fatal blow into the heart of the Herma Merma Dragora when it spoke. I was ever so surprised. It said, "Please don't kill me. I'm not dangerous. I'm the friendliest Herma Merma Dragora in the world and I've chosen to be here to protect the Land of the Shields. I won't hurt you. If giant dragons invade or aliens or if the ants ever rise up into an army and try to overrun the land I am the one who will fight back and keep the people safe."
It was a great relief. It meant I didn't have to vanquish the Herma Merma Dragora at all. It meant that instead of a triumphant pose over the body of a monster, I had found a friend. It was true that it also meant that there would be no castle to share with my friends with lots of sensory rooms but that didn't matter. Finding a new friend is far more important than gaining a castle.
Here I am with my new friend. I still think it looked like a fierce, dangerous monster. But that just goes to show doesn't it? You can't judge a person from how they look. The Bible says that God doesn't look at the outward form but at the heart of a person. I think in this way we should emulate the God of the Bible. Don't judge from outward form. Find out who someone is instead. Some Christians treat my person according to her outer form rather than according to her heart. They say she isn't a woman because she was born with a penis. They say she has to repent of being a woman. Foolish Christians. Lots of other Christians don't make that stupid mistake. My person knows quite a lot of those other Christians. They're much nicer than the foolish ones who say she has to be a man.
Yes. Treat people according to their heart. They may be a Herma Merma Dragora. They may look incredibly scary. They may look like they would prefer to eat you than smile at you. The Herma Merma Dragora can't smile at all. But it has a beautiful heart. It's heart is full of smiles. I could have hurt it. I made a mistake in making the judgements I made about it. And now it is my friend and I am very proud of it for everything it does to keep the Land of the Shields safe.
Friends with a Herma Merma Dragora. I couldn't have imagined that at the start of the day.
Sadly I had to leave my new friend behind. It might have followed me to the banquet but it wanted to stay and keep being sentry against whatever threats would arise, be they ants, giants or aliens. Farewell kind friend. I'm sure we will meet again.
I think I've talked more than enough. I should stop for today. Thanks for reading. I know I say a lot of odd things and have some quite strange opinions that I voice without any shame and with knowing that people may strongly disagree. For today it's time to stop, safe in the knowledge that the horizon is still flat and a Herma Merma Dragora still protects the land.
[2821 words. Yep. 2821.]
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