Gustave Doré, 1886.
In a good mood, then, I leave my wife dawdling over the pram in the more sanitary side of town and duck into the supermarket.
Our sage bag of tricks has piled on one and a half lbs in the course of one spare week. Something less by metric alchemy.
I do not find what I am looking for.
"DOYOUDOSUSHI?" I enquire. Karaoke out a Can. Barry Sheen, after a stroke.
We kick-start the pram and travel in caravan to the park at the top of the road. By the time we get there I could eat a horse. As it is, we prowl around in search of a dry bench and fall upon the sushi. Devouring every shard.
It is all right.
I do not care for George Osbourne. I do not like him at all. An 18th century engraving of a man divested of powdered wig and rouge. Ankle breeches. Buckled shoe.
Give his coalition seven more months, and there will be a poor house back on every corner. Jacobins swinging in Tyburn.
We take a meandering route back home past vast Georgian houses hugging avenue and circus, a puzzle of lanes. This part of this city I am largely unfamiliar with. An adjunct to its commercial heart. Among the nursing homes and divided lets, an odour of squandered wealth persists, blackmail, sculduddery; under quarried flagstone and vans deploying fibre to the curb; out of rockery and reclaimed wind.
When Gilmour's charge did dandle, Parliament Street did blush;
Should Lutyens' stone be littled, with swords brought forth be hushed.
We open the door on mail forwarded from our old place.
A solicitor's letter on behalf of the utility company demanding £154 on top of all we fed in to its niggardly prepayment meter in the course of this year past.
This, despite a credit carried over in that last quarter of some £56. Plus a £20 late payment surcharge; £30 court fees; £50 solicitors costs. Oh, and £1.14 statutory interest.
Just one more reason we are forever in debt.
▼ THE FALL: I AM DAMO SUZUKI from "This Nation's Saving Grace" LP (Beggars Banquet) 1985 (UK)
