Having come from Stoke’s Independant Film Theatre where they showed Sean Penn’s Into The Wild tonight, I had major plans involving the dramatic quitting of academic jumping through hoops, the poignant good byes to family and friends and the burning of my worldly monetary savings. Before taking off into the wild. On my little ownsome, with a jangling backpack and a brown bear or two for company. Hitchhiking better than Sissy Hankshaw, despite my thumb being nothing on hers.

Instead I find myself with carpet burnt elbows peering under Chrisie’s bed as she lunges head first into the detritus of old school books, scrumpled tissues, stale peanuts and one lone strap of an old bra. An integral element of operation Wild Hamster Chase. As close to a brown bear as I’ll get tonight.

With drunken, distressed cries of come back, Fatty, Chrisie wriggles her entire self into the gap between floor and bed. I provide the background noise, the one muscular men at the gym make in between staring lovingly at their macho reflections and dropping with heavy thuds dumbbells larger in circumference than their own heads. Tsssschhhhhhhhhh, as if this expulsion of air from between teeth might have the power to prevent me from buckling under the weight of the wooden frame, and effectively squishing my sister.

How did he get out? She lies in wait at the far end of the bed, a cat without a tail. Poised, ungainly, wobbly. She swears loudly when Fatty appears suddenly at the wrong end. Mumbles something about the barcadi in the fridge and sleeping at the wrong end of the bed and waking up and the cage being ALL WRONG! She laments prematurely Fatty’s death.

And lunges. We have him.

He spits an old, chocolate-covered peanut in Chrisie’s hand. I drop the bed with a heavy thud. My elbows are on fire. She cries with relief, and says BAD Fatty. No sleep for helpful sisters, oh no, but squeaky, persistent hamster wheels at three am.

So not quite me and my toothbrush trecking across Alaska.

People are beginning to sense my restlessness. I cannot go for a walk by myself without returning to looks askance and the hurried smuggling away of the Travel section of the weekend paper. It is possible that I’m getting things all wrong.

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…here my fingers rant for half an hour. I will not subject you to it. I subjected myself to it, and I wish I hadn’t. The outcome of practical Joe-advice…

“Keep your fingers warm.”

My fingernails are purple.

I am not wearing nail-varnish.

Brrrrr.

Maybe Alaska would not be such a good idea.

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(That goddamn hamster wheel.)