the Department of Nothing
there's a name for all this: most people call it real life, but actually it's called the Department of Nothing. it's not just one department, but loads of mini departments. the broccoli and haddock and meat with vomity white bits get made in the Kitchen of Nothing. school is the Paper Department where they have this special doompaper so that anything you write on it is doomed. then there's the Waiting Room of Nothing where you get told "not now", "i'm busy", or "you're not old enough yet", and all that, and this is also where all the punishments come from. and then the Department Vacuum Cleaner comes and sucks up all the second halves of stories and games, so you can never find them again. grown-ups think they are the controllers, but they're not really, because it's the Clock Department who have all the actual power; marching grown-ups around like sergeant majors to "one two, one two". absolutely everybody lives there-unless they go to grandma's room, which is the only way out of the department-except nobody knows that, even though it's blatant. the trick is holding on to the magic to get you through the Department of Nothing. the luckiest thing is that stories come right at the beginning of the day. stories are the best thing in my life.