I had to go to Russia to see a man about a dog. I decided to walk. Admittedly, I wasn't long into the journey before I gave up and cried. I spent too long standing where I was, in the middle of a field. I watched the stars coming out, and the blue fading from the sky. In my experience, if you spend too long in one place, someone will come along and lecture you about politics. This is what happened in the field. I was lectured by a man who spoke with exclamation marks after every second word. My enjoyment of the evening was ruined by the exclamation marks embedded in my face, like staples from a staple gun. The exclamation marks became sharper when he started talking about the flag he made to express his relationship with the state he lived in. The situation got even worse when he unfurled the flag. He had to take off some of his clothes to get it out. I couldn't see it very clearly in the fading light. I remember there were gold cows in a red field on it because he started crying when he spoke about them.
   This was when I felt that I had the upper hand. If I was careful about the positioning of my metaphorical legs I could form a certain stance and pretend I thought there was something weak about a man who cried because of the gold cows in a red field on a flag he kept down his trousers. I stood up to my full height (I had only been using two-thirds of it before) and I lectured him on history. I spoke until after midnight, and I spat out razor sharp exclamation marks. His head was bowed, and he had folded up his flag, but I inadvertently used the words 'a bit stinky', and suddenly the tables were turned again. He smiled and he grew four feet taller. I shrank to half my height. He looked down on me, took a deep breath and he was just about to unleash something pointy when I ran away. I shrank even more as I ran. I had to wait a week before I returned to my full height.
   A few months later I saw him in the field again. He was lecturing a woman about politics. This time he was holding a handbag. When he took the flag out of the handbag I knew I'd be able to form a stance against this. As I grew taller my shadow reached across the field, covering the ground around his feet. When he saw me he ran away. He looked as if he was running very quickly because he was shrinking as he ran.