by Kik Lodge
The man – whose eighteen oysters helter-skelter through his insides, flumed by dry white, and who says Norsemen, did I know, were enshrined in large butter-tubs to slide into the afterlife, the man who fondles a cloudberry, wink-slurps and tells me how these østers lie leagues above any others – has choked on a pearl, or on a crust of bread, or on my ‘no’, and so here I am in the picturesque surroundings of a fishing village, our waiter shucking out back, wondering how I got coaxed into this, and the practicalities of butter burials.