In Summer 2006, my wife and I ran a project at the Port Eliot Lit Fest. My wife's class of 7-8 year olds designed five letter boxes which we left around the festival site with pens and paper asking people to donate a favourite word. 204 people contributed words and the following piece has been written around them. Yes, it's a bit stilted at times, but how on earth else can you include the words 'palimpsest', 'moist hell' and 'super-blah-blah' without sounding rather odd.

Natural History Museum (2006)

Connie & Mally are old friends – at one point, they were having sex with each other – who have met at the Natural History Museum to take Connie's daughter, Lottie, and her son Andy and Mally's nephew Jago. They are sitting down to lunch in the restaurant as this scene takes place.

Lottie: Mummy? I don't have to eat the tomatoes, do I?

Connie: But, darling, they're sun-blush. They're ever so succulent and really rather scrumptious.

Jago: And what's that yellow sludge. That's not some sort of cheese is it?

Connie: No, Jago, that's pumpkin. But there's Philadelphia cheese if you want some real cheese.

Jago: Nah.

Mally: Jago, say no thank-you.

Jago: No thank-you.

Mally: That's better, bazilchops.

Connie: Honestly. These kids. If it was up to them, they'd just live on snacks, sweets and sausages. You really have to manoeuvre them into eating any actual real food.

Lottie: I like sweetcorn, though.

Connie: That's right, fluffkin, you really like sweetcorn don't you. And fish. You know, I didn't like fish at your age.

Mally: Oh, I don't know. If I could be so audacious as to say, I think a fatty pitsal or two every once in a while doesn't hurt anyone. You don't want emaciated kids, after all, do you?

Connie: Well, there's hardly any danger of that!

Andy: I want to try eating bear.

Jago: Yeah, and I want to try eating butterfly. And pony.

Lottie: No. You mustn't eat pony.

Andy: Do you know what I had for breakfast?

Mally: No, I don't Andy. What did you have.

Andy: I had breakfast for my breakfast.

Lottie: Oh-ga-be-go-li. Oh-ga-be-go-li. Wallydiwally.

Andy: And I know LOTS of really cool words. I know sclerophyllous and I know sesquipedalian and I know fulcrum.

Connie: But do you know what they mean?

Andy: Most of them.

Jago: You don't know what they mean because they don't mean anything because you're making them up.

Andy: That's balderdash. And you don't know what they mean because you're stupid.

Jago: And you don't even have a TV.

Connie: That's enough from both of you boys. The end. El fin. Finit. I'm quite flabbergasted by your behaviour so consider this a warning – if you don't behave in a fantastic, super-brilliant way, there'll be no chocolate on the way home! Now calm down and eat your lunch.

(There's a brief, terse silence.)

Mally: So how's the old illustrating childrens' books game going?

Connie: You know, I'm quite sick to death of it. I've been stuck in that depressing house, up to my eyeballs in legends of dragons, fairies, mermaids, magicians and Rumple-sodding-stiltskin for what feels like forever. All the words are onomatopoeic right now – some yampy government directive or other is to blame, I suspect – and it's all set in Palimpsest, which I loathe. Only it's turned into such a fiasco, it's sent me quite bonkers. I feel like I've lost my identity. All I ever seem to do is embellish, embellish, embellish.

Mally: Had you thought of changing where you work. So you don't lose that sense of enchantment, that glee you always used to get?

Connie: I did used to love it didn't I? God, I never thought I'd get filled with nostalgia for only two years ago. No, changing where I work doesn't make any difference. I've tried every room in the house. Even Andy's bedroom. The veranda works best, but it's too cold and windy most of the year. In the winter, it's a moist hell.

Mally: That's not quite what I meant. You've got some money stashed away. Why don't you blow it on a trip abroad? Reconnect with your passion. Get back your ataraxia. I don't know, lie out in some field full of fluorescent violets, out in the sunshine. Go up into the mountains and shout at the moon at equinox. Visit some ancient hilltop village full of history and magic where it's over a hundred Farenheit in the shade.

Connie: That all sounds just a little bit too delectable. But, knowing my luck, if I tried lying down in some field or other, I'd either end up with a squelch in puddle or getting trampled by cows. Anyway, I have to be careful with my money, Mally. I have to look after these two, you know. Especially with the palaver I have in store for me with the series of ops when they try to put these widgets into my foot and my elbow. I'm not a bulldozer. I'm a bit more tender than I think you sometimes realise. I lack elasticity. I snap.

Mally: I've blatantly made a guff, haven't I? Here I am, giving you some honeyed soliloquy and all I've done is made you go all lachrymose.

Connie: Oh, no, Mally. Not at all, although you've never been known as the most subtle of people. I mean, I really do have a desire to get away, but it's not like it's any great heartbreak having to kick around Hampstead. And anyway, these aren't tears. My eyes are moist and sticky because I'm allergic to all the dust lurking in here. The air in this place could go on the Antiques Roadshow, I swear. But you've been travelling to some pretty swish and funky places recently. Tell me all about them. I want to know everything.

Mally: Well, after making my way down the Tyrian coast, I was in Ayia Napa for a bit of euphoric phillobollucky with all the nincompoops from my schooldays, but once I'd got there, I felt a bit old for their kind of gallivanting, to be honest. No, these days just give me your quintessentially ancient market, some rough-cut turquoise, psychedelic purple drapes and silver urns, clouds of myrrh and then I'm happy.

Connie: Oh, I know exactly what you mean. That sounds like happiness in a jar. You want to hear my credo? I did this weekend retreat to find a credo. It's very powerful.

Mally: No, tell me you credo!

Connie: Enigmatic senescence and randomness. Well, that and arohanui.

Mally: Arohanui?

Connie: It's a maori word. It means a love for all things. Sort of like compassion in Buddhism, but so much more, I don't know. Raw.

Mally: That?s a cool word. Verily.

Lottie: I've got a favourite word. Do you want to hear my favourite word?

Connie: Of course, darling.

Lottie: My favourite word is ravense.

Connie: Oh! That's a smashing word.

Mally: Lottie, do you mean 'ravens'?

Lottie: No, I don't I mean ravense.

Connie: Lottie, what was the French word your Grandmaman taught you last time she rang?

Lottie: I don't remember.

Connie: Yes you do. It means 'flying mouse'.

Lottie: Ooh. Ooh. I know. I know. It's colibris.

Connie: Very good, ma cherie.

Andy: And I know the German word for 'Tadpole'.

Jago: Me too. It's le tad-paul, innit?

Connie: Shhh, Jago. And you, too Andy. In a minute, I'll go berserk at the pair of you.

Mally: So what is the German for tadpole, Andy?

Andy: Kualkappe.

Mally: Very impressive.

Jago: Shut up and give me a poppadom!

Mally: Whatever, Jago.

Jago: Hey, Andy, my Dad got me Monsters Inc and Pink Panther for PSP. They're wicked.

Andy: PSP?

Jago: Don't you know what PSP is?

Mally: Jago, that's enough.

Andy: But I want to know what PSP is. What is it?

Jago: It's a Playstation! Play. Station. Plus. You know what that is, I hope.

Andy: Of course I know what a Play Station is. It's...

Jago: (Interrupting.) Hey, what's your football team?

Andy: (Trying to sound cool.) Plymouth Argyle. Plymouth Argyle are da best.

Jago: (Incredulous.) Plymouth Argyle?

Andy: (Crestfallen.) So what team do you support?

Jago: Arsenal. Arsenal are class for life. Plymouth Argyle are just nesh.

Andy: What's nesh? It's not a real word is it. Not like antidisestablishmentarianism.

Jago: That's not a real word either and, anyway I know an even longer word. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. There!

Mally: You're incorrigible, Jago. I hope your beloved PSP deserves to go down with a cyberclysm for saying that.

Connie: You need to play nicely, Jago, or I'll let on to your Mummy that you've been mean.

Jago: That's not fair! I always try and be nice. I hate violants. Altruism is one of my main skillz.

Mally: I don't think you mean altruism.

Connie: Now, look. Seeing as you guys have finished up, do you want to go off so Mally and I have a chat? And take Lottie with you, only be nice to her, you hear?

Andy: Hey, let's go and play on that tractor!

(They go.)

Mally: So what's the latest with Bill?

Connie: Well, after I kicked him out, he disappeared into the ether for a whole year. Everyone said he was drinking heavily, studying kabala - an agnostic no longer, apparently - and living on people's sofas like some North London peripatetic. As soon as the divorce came through, though, next thing I know, he's snooping around on the street outside the house wearing huge saggy, pull-overs with this stupid twinkle in his eye and these flowers start arriving with anonymous notes about how he still feels adoration for me, I'd enraptured him, how voluptuous I look, what a fecund woman I am, how he misses my moles, if you can believe it, and then, one blazing hot day he's out front wearing a smock of mine that I'd thought had gone missing the previous week. Well, I called the police but Toby wouldn't wait, just walked straight out, gesticulating like a madman, and said if he didn't get stuffed, he'd spiflicate him on the spot. I still don't know what he meant by that, but it seemed to do the trick. Next day – yaysles – I get his wedding ring through the post and that's the last I ever heard from him.

Mally: Christ, Connie, you don't half know how to pick them.

Connie: Tell me about it. That same night, Toby said he'd been utterly priapic since telling Bill where to go, confronted me about why I wouldn't let him perform cunnilingus on my – he called it my clunge. I mean, yuck! It made me feel quite gopid.

Mally: Personally, I prefer the word yoni. Funny how the word one uses for female genitalia has become a sort of shibboleth. Toby's misogynist tendencies have often been mooted. Followed closely by his misanthropic tendencies. So what happened to dear old Toby?

Connie: Well after that, he became unbearably curmudgeonly so I let him know that sex with him was not so much being ravished as encroached on and then he called me obsequious and then he called me loquacious – I mean, as if it's possible to be both at the same time. So, after not very much pontification on my part he was out on his ear that night, capricious little pachyderm.

Mally: What a bastard! How long were you two together?

Connie: Long enough! Nine months - and in that time he'd been unfaithful to me not only with Madeleine, but with Mandy, too! It feels more like nine years, the amount of emotional baggage I've accumulated. I mean, Bill, then Toby! It was like being sucked, skimble-scamble, through a series of ever-smaller funnels! It was such serendipity bumping into you in Watkins, wasn't it?

Mally: For sure. A really wonderful juxtaposition of fate. I can't believe we were both looking for books on anamnesis.

Connie: Ironic isn't it? With all I've been through, you'd think I'd want the absolute obverse; amnesia! All I ask for is someone normal. That's not too much, right? Someone sensitive. Someone with who I can just potter through life, on whom I can depend. Someone free of all that super-blah-blah that most men spout. Someone who understands the art of a good tickle.

(Connie reaches over and touches Mally's hand.)

Connie: Someone like you, Mally.

(The three children return, making a lot of noise.)

Andy: We saw some prilocilts and some ammonites and we played on a tractor.

Jago: And tell them the name of that rock you really liked. You have to tell them the name. Andy's remembered it specially. Tell them, Andy.

Connie: What was the name of the rock, then, Andy.

Andy: Cummingtonite!

Connie: (Trying not to laugh.) Oh. That's nice dear.

(Jago and Mally crease up with laughing.)

Andy: What did I say? It's just the name of a rock. What's so funny?