‘Did you know that my mum had to be rushed to hospital in 1989?’ Keith suddenly came out with.

‘Oo, what for darling?’

‘Her hand was slashed right open by a timblid’ he replied as a matter of fact.

‘How did it do it?’ I gasped in a shocked way.

‘It?’ said Keith in a cautious but quizzical way.

‘Yes! It!’

‘I think she was cooking and….’

‘It went for her’!! I volunteered.

‘What went for her?’

‘The Timblid’!

‘The what?’ Keith said.

‘The timblid’ came my nervous reply.

‘A timblid?’

‘Yes, a timblid’. ‘ Vicious little things, suddenly attacking people all unexpectedly’. Leaping out from cutlery drawers and medicine cabinets when you least suspect them’. I volunteered again.

Keith simply couldn’t understand what on earth I was telling him. Why should he? He’d never seen the nasty thing that did so much damage to his mother’s hand.

‘What on Earth are you going on about? he blurted out.

‘The timblid that attacked your mum and cut her hand. She’s lucky you know, it could have killed her in one quick shwoosh’.

‘NO! I said a Tin Lid, NOT a timblid‘. I think he was exasperated by this time.

‘Oh’ came my short reply. ‘I thought you said a timblid’.

‘Why would my mother by attacked by a timblid?’

‘Because they’re like that’.

‘Timblids’ he said.

‘Yes, vicious killers that hide in cutlery drawers and medicine cabinets and leap out of them when you least suspect them and that ride equities in to battle the way that men use horses in battle’.

‘I see’ said Keith, alll the while frowning in a what is he talking about kind of way crossed with this is going to be a long day sort of a way.

The day had just begun for Bahkti and Keith and one was going to have a longer day than the other it seemed.