{dedicated to Ragnarr, who's mind is perpetually fishing around in shrubberies, well ok, bushes.}

The Mexican lady in question wasn't a "tour guide" at all, though she was, as she often explained to anyone interested enough to listen for the half hour, "eeen dee entertaighnmeent eeendustraigheee". She worked in Disney World of course, in the Epcot park to be precise, which is ironically both industrious and entertaining.

For those of you with the ability to reproduce sound effects from old 70's TV shows, this might be a good time to dig out the Steve Austin 6 million Dollar Man sound effect, you know the one..... "wang ang ang ang ang ang ang ang". Trigger it or imagine it triggered (for those without such facilities) on the words "slow motion".

Anahi paused, finally deciding that whatever the milky-white tourist was looking at was 'nowhere' to be seen. She stepped back and almost tripped, standing on something unexpectedly soft and then staggering backwards in slow motion. Her devastatingly disorganised reflexes swung her arms outward in hope and quite pleasant surprise as both were immediately well received and supported. She continued to fall for a little while longer whilst her catchers subconsciously calculated her body weight and applied just the right amount of resistance to cushion, suspend and then begin to raise. She felt safe as she gently floated back to her normal standing position, calm.

time to turn that sound effect off, that means you too Lilly, 33 times is simply overdoing it, hmm, thank you.

For a split second nothing happened, she flipped from perfectly calm to red-faced flustered as embarrassment took over, causing her to look around quickly and irritably, and become immediately conscious of those standing around her, way too close. From under what seemed like a thousand dark-haired fringes, a thousand eyes peered back and fixed on the 'drunken tour guide', wide and blinking slowly in the intense Florida sun.

She took a few dramatic steps, slowly and cautiously making her way to the edge of the fountain outside the entrance of the Muppet 3D Theatre, trying her best not to step on anything soft, leather, foot or animal-like en route. She made it, and slowly sat down on the fountain's outer rim. She gazed between the gaps in the 15 fully equipped, equidistant Japanese tourists surrounding her and watching inquisitively. The milky-white tourist was as "nowhere to be seen" as whatever it wasn't he'd been staring at, just ten minutes ago. This was probably for the best.

"sankyuo, aaim sawreegh to caughus you trable" said a very disoriented Anahi to a very confused group of tourists. A pause, everyone looked at everyone else, then just as if a switch had been set to "on" a volley of questions, about Kermit, Jim Henson, the sell off to the German TV company and the recent attempts to buy things back again, the changes to the henson.com website which have rendered it unusable, and the crippling exchange rates which make Disney World Orlando 3x more expensive for your average Japanese visitor than say, Tokyo Disney Land.

Anahi did her level best to answer all their questions but found it increasingly difficult as her group began to argue amongst themselves with unnerving intensity. She got irritated and said something through her teeth whilst maintaining a fake plastic grin, waited a little while, then tried to sneak away, moving swiftly on towards the park exit. Sadly she got tailed, her new family scuttling and squabbling behind her over the translation of 'eeev haghd enough of dees! aaaye downght caghre abought your styupeed exchayghnje raightes'.

Oblivious, Cagey stepped out of the back of the theatre into the blinding Florida sunlight, "ouch!" he thought as he was forced to close his eyes for a brief second's relief. When he reopened them the scene had changed dramatically. He blinked in confusion. Again.

Today was indeed a strange day, one minute he's seeing something huge and incredible hovering over the Muppets 3D theatre, an hour later what looked like a very small man in a silver suit picking a very small shiny metal object out of an un shiny but beautifully trimmed shrubbery, right in front of his watering eyes. Cagey remained convinced, recalling the moment and the way the little guy clumsily wielded a pair of those long reach litter-gripper things, poked and prodded at the shrubbery with absolute total un dexterity, like he was trying to pick a bottle of tequila from a tree using two tennis rackets and yet somehow managed to collect the item and then, simply, vanish?....

time passed.

Somewhere East of the Muppet 3D Theatre a tall broad figure stepped from a fairly inconspicuous looking family saloon, returning from what he hoped would be his final trip, at least for today. He threw down his jacket and sunk back into his favourite chair, with thoughts of his wayward friend from a distant land, he began to fall asleep....softly breathing as the evening sun shone its last, calmly warming the air conditioned room and casting long shadows over the furniture, moving gently across the floor and the discarded jacket and causing the shining small metal object pinned to the lapel of the discarded jacket to glint. If shiny small metal things could say 'look at me!, I'm here' then this one would have, right now as it glinted again, but as this is a serious work of literary genius (not a tacky Disney screenplay, and the author refuses to stoop to such low levels of object personification, camera trickery or reader involvement) it didn't ;-)

Though now, reader, your perception (may I call you reader?) has changed, like it or not, as you are here, involved in the body of the text, immortalised in the threads and twists of its inner workings and acknowledged by its incredibly handsome author. ....and what of your future? ....you may return, or you may be discarded, tossed aside on the scrap heap of bit part actors, actresses and superfluous shiny metal objects.

Think yourself lucky, it could be worse. The dashing, firm buttocked author could have left you out of the scene all together, much like he did our hero. Had Cagey been "in" this scene, he might have noticed an uncanny similarity between it and the one in which the small gleaming man fished about in and unsuspecting shrubbery, unfortunately his perceptual powers were about as un enhanced as his breasts.