We were in our blue lagoon at the time… It was raining outside but the lagoon was like a warm comforting bath (had it been a hot afternoon it would have been too hot for comfort!). As always, I busied myself with the pool net, removing every skerrick of fallen leaf or waterlogged fly, although I did so more from habit than need because the pool was as clear as a mountain stream; in fact, we mermaids rather enjoy the feeling of our arms stretching out, this way and that, through the water. Lorelle understands this very well – we are kindred spirits. So, I quite understood when my childhood friend (and mermaid) looked up at the palm trees by the pool and exclaimed, with horror:

“Oh no! I missed them, just look at that clump of flowers that are going to fall into the pool!”

Of course, everyone knows that floral flotsam and jetsam is anathema to a mermaid and her habitat. Lorelle (or should I call her Lorelei?) immediately jumped out of the pool and found her stepladder and long-handled secateurs. I smiled to myself as I remembered my own adventures with long-handled secateurs and trampolines when I was house-sitting for Lorelle some years ago (see chapter “Virgin on the Ridiculous” in my book “The Innocent Flirt Down-under”). And I took these photographs of a mermaid quite as at home out of the water and up in trees.

“You Jane,” I thought. I a Jane too, but you may already know that.