65 MILLION YEARS TO EAST SUSSEX

A new species of dinosaur was found in one of the pits at the Ashdown Brickworks near Bexhill, East Sussex.

Marvin was a dinosaur and he knew it. The modern, fast pace of life didn’t really suit him. He looked back fondly upon much simpler times when going out for a light snack meant chasing down a few smaller reptiles and washing them down with a couple of hairy mammals for dessert, but those days were long gone, and unlikely ever to return.

That had truly been his idea of a moveable feast, one that ran and needed to be caught. Being presented with a chocolate bunny by his manager once a year didn’t really cut it, especially one with those irritating little bells around its neck that he’d obviously picked up at the petrol station on his way to work in the morning. He blinked away a small tear at the thought of the petrol, remembering again how it was actually the compressed remains of all of the world he’d once known.

Easter was thankfully a few months behind him now. He’d never found it to be his favourite time of year, what with that four-day break to spend kicking around the house suppressing the urge to run rampant and eat a few passing tourists, and as for the eggs… Did these “people” have no shame? Tactless so-and-sos, munching away on the effigies of the children he could never have. He was too many million years away from his mate and all of his offspring had choked along with everyone else when the asteroid hit. All of the other few survivors had upped and died as soon as their time came and future generations had started shrinking and growing feathers and all kinds of other things so that eventually, far from being one of the tiniest of the terrible lizards, he’d found himself to be the largest.

He smiled at the memory. There had been good hunting in those days.

His stomach gurgled.

He looked about him amongst his fellow commuters standing alongside him on the platform to see whether anyone had noticed, but nobody had. It was strange, he always thought, that there he was, a six-foot lizard in a business suit, and nobody felt any need to remark upon it. This is why he liked living in England, people had learned to mind their own business. He snuck a tentative claw inside his briefcase and pulled out a raw chop to suck on, and the taste of the flesh in his mouth satiated the craving for a while. A bowler-hatted gentleman standing next to him, his eyes fixed on the pages of the “Financial Times” newspaper held open in front of him, tutted slightly as a small droplet of fat splattered onto the page he was engrossed in, but he failed to acknowledge Marvin’s apologetic glance and carried on reading.

Marvin glanced at his watch. He should really have bought a paper. There were still a couple more minutes before he would have to cram himself in with all the others for the stifling 45 minute journey to the city. They were quite lucky living this far out really, as you could usually at least guarantee a seat, and unlike most of his fellow passengers, Marvin quite enjoyed the stifling heat, especially at this time of year. He enjoyed much less, of course, the sweating it tended to cause from everyone else, but not because of the smell. That really didn’t bother him at all. It was because it made him so very hungry. Luckily a few chops defrosted overnight tended to settle the cravings, but he did wonder whether, if there was too long a delay one evening, he might very well finally lose all control and snack on a few of his companions.

He never really understood why he hadn’t gone the way of the rest of the dinosaurs. Perhaps being right at the very epicentre of the blast had saved him, he was never really sure, and it wasn’t the sort of thing you could just go up to someone and ask them about. One thing he had learned during his surprisingly long life was not to draw attention to himself. Living a quiet life like the one he currently did in his little house slap-bang in the middle of the East Sussex commuter belt was fine by him.

It was an odd life that he was living for the last of his kind. He’d spent hundreds of millions of years just refusing to evolve anything but a few of the more useful skills, whilst all of his friends had curled up and died. It had taken him a while to realise that he seemed to be living a very long time because the concept of time hadn’t really been something that he and his fellow dinosaurs had thought about all that much back in the swamplands. To be honest, they hadn’t thought about very much at all, not like nowadays. These days he did a lot of thinking, about things like his own remarkable survival. That had, perhaps, been something to do with the asteroid, he supposed. Back in those far gone times, of course, most of their days had been spent merely thinking about and then finding things to eat and how to avoid being eaten themselves, a lifestyle not dissimilar, he noted with a slight grin, to his more recent life working as an accountant.

At last the train rolled into the station and, pausing only to let the gentleman with the now crisply folded copy of the FT climb aboard and take his usual place next to the aisle, Marvin got on the train, and headed once more towards the urban jungle.