An extract from HEAT 19

My grandmother’s house is a diamond mine. To enter it I must dig through myself, till I find those objects I once touched or dreamed about as a child, even if I did not understand they were things I was dreaming over and even dreaming into myself. I spoke to the world and the world spoke back to me, I touched it and it shone. And then it disappeared.

To my surprise these ‘diamonds’ are still with me forty years later, and for some reason I am starting to dig them out at one am on a Friday night when I should be sleeping, lying here in the warmth of my blankets, when a black panther with white eyes and a blood red tongue and heavy stone paws comes stalking into my mind.

Aboriginal people say a kadaitcha man can turn himself into a dingo and move through your dreams to come and kill you in this same way. But this animal does not feel like a killer so much as a messenger, pausing for a moment on my chest, then slipping back into the dark­ness, before the sound of a car disappearing somewhere outside makes me slide back into myself as well.

I still have the panther, a ceramic figurine about the size of three bunched fists, sitting on a bookshelf in my office downstairs, gathering dust. He was the only thing I asked for, the only thing I inherited (apart from a Bible) when my grandmother died. When I show the figurine to people I always want them to be more impressed than they are – or at least to notice it, of their own volition, but they never do, it’s just a piece of kitsch to them, something ironic, I guess that’ s what they think, why else would I have it?

Every now and then I will pick the panther up off the shelf to wipe it clean of dust and feel its weight – not as heavy as it felt to me as a child, but still substance enough to surprise even my adult hands. I will think to myself, ‘this thing is as old as me’ and for some reason that feels amazing and rare. Mostly, though, I just forget about it, so I guess I’m as indifferent as everyone else. It’s only when I hold it that it becomes valuable, partly because then I am seized by a neurotic fear I will almost certainly drop it, and in doing so shatter whatever is left of who I used to be.