Blue Moon – By Paul Burns.

Time as it always does, marches forward inexorably. A full century has passed and there’s been a seismic shift, driven by necessity, in what we eat and how it’s grown. Everything now is hydroponics, fungi and invertebrate.

Dudley town centre, from Top Church all the way to Castle Hill, a specialist hub for all things insect and invertebrate. With market stalls offering everything from processed ‘Inverta’, protein shaped and processed to resemble chicken cubes or minced beef. Hot food stalls sell spicy, sizzling hot scorpions, or other large critters on skewers.

“I need a pollinator for my allotment,” he asks. “A Blue Moon.”

A Blue Moon is large cricket, named for the short, rounded and dark blue abdomens of the males.

“Nah, mate,” the reply.

Passing from stalls selling tanks, lights, filters, and fungi feed, his request is met with the same response or the shaking of heads.

“Nah, mate, ain’t seen one of them in years.”

The pale granite structure of the fountain still towers over the market. The twin pools at its base now home to a range aquatic species. A sign that some things never change; one of the two figures atop the fountain, wears a tatty and weatherworn woolly hat. This the most recent one, placed there no doubt by some adventurous youth, probably as a dare.

“Most people prefer the smaller, easy-to-breed ones now, mate.”

“I know, but it’s a colony me Gran left me,” he says.

Eventually, near the far end of the market, someone tells him.

“Big Dave, in the Trident centre, he’ll have one.”

Directed to a dark corner of the old basement car park, he finds what he’s been looking for.

“Tiny, compared to the females, ain’t he.”

As Dave hands over our man’s new pollinator, secure in a small plastic tub.

Keen to get his new pollinator to his allotment as soon as he gets home, he heads straight upstairs, then up the folding steps to his attic.

There he’s greeted by the warm nutty smell, the gentle hum of the fluorescent lights, the soft whirring sound of pumps. To one side of his allotment, he has hydroponics and the other the stacked tanks of his colonies.

He knows to be careful introducing the Blue Moon, the females are as likely to think him food as a pollinator.