Neither the frog or the banjo are quite what you might think at first - a mystical pair who surprised everyone and taught a few lessons.
Somewhere between waking and sleeping on our journey towards the unfathomable deep, there comes a thin moment where we have one foot in the waking world and the other is in that other world where we relinquish conscious control.
Pausing here and straddled between two planets that drive one another like gears, the attentive traveler will notice a narrow door only wide enough to sidle through.
This is the border of sleep, where imagination and reality are braided together, a chasm in the crust of consciousness, venting the hot pumice of imagery into the irresistible magma of narrative.
Welcome to episode 47 of Stories from the Borders of Sleep, a podcast of curious tales from bordersofsleep.com featuring original stories by your host Seymour Jacklin.
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The beautiful soundtrack for this week's episode is by Jamie Sieber from her album Unspoken, which is available on magnitude.com so if you are ready to journey with me, then I shall begin The Frog and Banjo by Seymour Jacklin I picked this corner of this pub particularly for us to enjoy a quiet drink because there's a story relating to this place that's begging to be told.
And since you're new to these parts, perhaps you'll enjoy a little local history.
I'm sure you noticed the sign on the way in and that this place is called the Frog and Banjo.
The name is deliberately misleading, and the painted sign swinging on the wall outside does nothing to help a frog on a lily pad strumming a banjo.
But I'll let you into a secret.
In truth, Frog was a jockey and Banjo was a racehorse.
Banjo, that fine animal, had auspicious breeding.
His mother was Grace Elinwy of Sligo, whose hooves were said to barely touch the blades of grass as she sped over them.
And his father was that great Greek Arab, Spartacus Epiphany Taklamakan, a brown flanked warrior as wild and restless as the desert sands.
Banjo would rather have let the side down if he'd not grown up to be a champion.
He was well named for the four strings of his limbs were taut and snappy, his tuning was perfect and his rhythm unfaltering.
Frog was diminutive, as both his profession and his nickname suggested.