GRATITUDE

Above all, I have been
 a sentient being,
 a thinking animal,
 on this beautiful planet,
and that in itself has been
 an enormous privilege
 and adventure.
 
― Oliver Sacks, Gratitude

A short one-eyed naked alien steps from the shower, grateful for the tiny flannel with which to cover his dignity. Kadong#^ians cannot reach local towel rails.

The swatch of cloth, its ability to trap heat and wick away moisture unmatched, makes flannel fabric the go-to-material-of-choice for the alien armies massed around the orbit of the spaceport.

Interplanetary Space Station 5456 is a fashionable destination for short life forms, despite the height differential with the residents, who have readily been subjugated to the will of the titchy invaders. Masquerading as fictional, the Kadong#^ians can pretty much get the long pigs to do their bidding.

Orbital pods beam down highly improbable ZAP rays that regulate the inhabitants’ humours: instilling anything from exhilaration and euphoria through to docile jollity. The mood-altering beams work best on those who believe in the context. Those individuals capable of transcendence or overview are less prone to compliance.

D$gn^roi% has discovered getting the soap out of the white plastic tower is the easy bit. A sticky substance coats his 17-digit hands, leaving all three of them in a single messy coagulation. Kadong#^ian space-porters reach unimaginable speeds, but right now D$gn^roi% cannot even reach the tap. Getting back inside his Ewok is going to be a struggle.

Finally, emerging from the intersex bathroom, D$gn^roi% is just in time to catch a glimpse of pink fleece trailing from around both of G*ddrof7ng's delicate waists, as it trails into the women's lavatory next door.

The toilet attendant, posing as a humiliated bog troll from Sierra Leone, is actually a graduate from the College of Space Medicine and Alien Health Sciences. What an unlikely coincidence! Neither D$gn^roi% nor G*ddrof7ng have ever been so thankful in the entirety of their short lives.

As the attendant slowly unfolds around a score of paper towels, onto which she pours a gluppy, pale yellow emulsion, she smiles. Salad cream!

Fortunately, for G*ddrof7ng and D$gn^roi%, as well as for the financially desperate Dr Aminata Amokpogba, the ersatz mayonnaise, created in Harlesden in 1914, is just the job for de-greasing alien palms.

She has heard that the Kadong#^ians are great tippers.