The Elephant On The Roof!

We decided, my client an I, that an elephant jumping from the roof of a six storey building would make a very big splash on the road below.

We also decided that we would not like to be in the clean up crew that had to deal with it.

At the time we were eating bacon sandwiches in a small cafe just up a side street of a welsh coastal village.

I no longer remember how we, in our minds that is, managed to get the elephant on the roof or why we would want it to commit suicide, but somehow we did.

I remember my client had just told me about a row over a cup of tea and the ownership thereof.  There were words, the tea was spilled and, for a while, he and a friend stopped speaking to one another.

Then suddenly .... there was an elephant and it was on the roof about to jump.

But how we got to that point is a mystery to me. I must have dozed off!

When working with people with learning difficulties, you have to be ready for sudden changes in conversational direction.  A degree of mental agility equal to that of a gymnast is required in order to keep pace at times.

One moment, as was the case recently, I would find myself discussing the benefits of a nice cup of tea on a cold day, only to have the topic of conversation change in mid sentence to election manifestos and why none of the major parties include a policy of 'being more helpful to people who have lost their train ticket'.

You never see the changes coming ... but you have to try to react as if they are normal when they do.
You have to make the flow from one subject to another seem .... well, seamless, and although you may think the conversation you are having is illogical and disjointed, you have to remember that to your client it is all logical, well thought through and in need of being said.

Meanwhile, back on the roof, the elephant is still teetering on the edge.

I have to admit that I made no attempt to talk the elephant down to safety as our topic had already been changed to the subject of buses (why do they have to go down narrow lanes?) and had moved on to post offices (why is the government closing them all?).

I wonder if the elephant is still up there?