Vanilla icecream was the top selling flavour, but the Kitten Farmer didn't want to admit to his own loneliness by buying something that could suggest he was trying to be part of a larger group, a group to which he knew he didn't belong. So he asked for the Mint Choc-Chip, resting in the knowledge that this excusivity, like every other exclusivity in his life, was his own choice.
It was nice to pretend.
As he walked along the Seafront of Giggling Hippos, he tripped over a gargoyle that was embedded into the pavement. The speech written on the nose of this gargoyle was too long to read in half an hour and the sun was high, so the Kitten Farmer took a photograph for later reading (he was glad to have a camera phone).
Continuing his stroll, he saw an old woman knitting a lime.
She'd been sitting there for at least thirteen weeks knitting the lime and still hadn't managed to get a song out of it. How long she had tried and how long she had repeated the magic keyword for the song to begin. However, nothing except the long and tedious clickety-click of her knitting sticks came.
A sports car drove past the Kitten farmer as he walked passed the Old Woman (who was knitting a lime). In the car was a weeping man and his sulking daughter. They drove past at such a high speed that the sound of the sea was sucked out of the air and into the Kitten Farmer's satchel. The Kitten Farmer and the Old Woman (who was knitting a lime) watched as the car drove up the street, performed a handbrake turn and drove back, to stop at the park bench upon which the Old Lady (who was knitting a lime) was sitting.
"What lovely sunshine" said the woman as she was knitting.
"Yeah!" said the driver, "I s'pose it's ok. Gimme the lime".
"Why of course" said the lady, "you can have it for it is of no use to me".
She cut off the unused wool from the lime, as a doctor cuts off the umbilacle from a child, and handed it to the weeping young driver of the sports car.
A fog descended from the heavens. The Kitten Farmer was in awe for such a fog he had never seen, not even during the great fog of 1978 where he lost thirteen Kittens from the ninth Kitten Field. He asked the weeping young driver if his name was Nillby. The weeping young man said "I cannot tell you that it isn't. Why ask you such a strange question?".
At this, the Kitten Farmer silently stole the lime from the weeping young man and said to him, "Indeed, you have nappy rash and need the application of lime, but this is not the lime which you seek. You seek a silent lime, not this musical lime".
"But that lime has never made any noise" said the old Woman. But as the man held the lime in the still air, behold a sound as faint as the breath of a cat's yawn was heard. It was a melodious sound, it was a sound that started with such a simple tone.
The weeping young man started to shout, but his daughter told him to be quiet for she had found this sound, although faint, had lifted her countenance. Even in the fog, the Lonely Kitten Farmer could see her eyes sparkle as the sound got louder and sweeter. It never got painful, even though they stood there, listening to it get louder and louder and louder. After twenty eight days, the lime's sound had reached a level like no other noise on eath. It shook the air of the whole earth, yet nobody was in pain, the weeping man wept for his sorrow, the Old Woman wept for joy, the Sulking Daughter sulked no longer and the Lonely Kitten Farmer........ remained lonely. For even here, in this collective joy, each person was conscious only of themselves. In this, sat under the ministry of the music of the lime, held high by the Kitten Farmer, each person had become more lonely than ever before.
The fog lifted and the Kitten Farmer felt his feet were wet. Looking down, he saw that water was pouring out of his satchel. Opening the satchel brought forth such a flow of water that the lime was washed away.
The sound ceased, the fog lifted and the weeping young man drove back home where he was keeping his Glitterball safe from the burglars who were looking for Glitterballs.
The Old Woman was gone, but the clicking sound of her knitting sticks remained. And so the time came for the Lonely Kitten Farmer to go on his way and seek another truth, seek another vegetable rack and seek the glory of an ointment to cure his eczema.