Technology and Magic Update

Things were going brilliantly for a while there. Me and the Barracuda were getting on really well. I’d even started to call him Barry – and he’d got over his step fetish and was behaving beautifully. His robotic charms were fully on display.
But those days are gone. Now he won’t do anything. He just sits sulking on the bottom of the pool. He’s dug his toes in this time, (and, yes, I take your point, but if a tube can have a memory, it can certainly have toes, don’t you reckon?)
It all started when he swallowed a stick one morning. He shut down completely, so I fished him out. I got a knife from the kitchen and poked it right down him. I don’t think he liked the way I did that.
‘This is secret men’s business,’ I think I heard him muttering. ‘I’m not dealing with this stuck-up Sheila any more. I want that bloke back who usually looks after me. He’s the boss, and he’s a proper man’s man.’
So now we wait, Barry and I (and to make things worse, I have a feeling he lets some people in the family call him Bazza), until his master makes it home while the sun’s still up one day.