Happy such and such.

“Hey, come on in. No, no. You’re not late.” The door swung shut as though it was the end, not the beginning. In the background music played –familiar but indistinct, broadcast out of time. “Yeah, they’re a bit of an odd crowd, but mingle around and see who you get on with.” David shrugged. “Sorry, that’s just how it is. Here, have a beer.”

Graham’s skin was leathered by a dozen suns, darkened and bitter, but his eyes sparkled like He knew that there was no point. He poured himself a scotch and soda anyway.

“Sorry, old man,” he wheezed, “absolutely exhausted. Caught the red eye in from Cuba last night. Incredible. Still suffocated by the shadows of another century. Still,” he smiled, “that can be useful to a chap. Makes certain there’s good scotch for one thing. If you know the right hotel to go to and the right man to give the nod to.”

The ice cubes in his glass clinked like souls looking for redemption when he took a swig.

He eyes darted from side to side, suspicious of anyone leaning in closer, he lowered his voice. “And the women! Everything you could possibly want for just a few coins.” He flushed slightly at the look of bemusement returned. “Come now. We’re all men of the world. We must be allowed to indulge. It’s just a little... Indiscretion? Without them where would be?”

Eric, meanwhile, huddled in the big, tatty armchair as close to the fire as possible. He gave of the impression that, had it been big enough, he would have clambered inside and let the flames clean him. He lit a cigarette, inhaled and then coughed heavily into the palm of his hand. His whole body shook as he retched.

“I’m all right. Really. Just don’t seem to be able to shake this tickle.” His index finger brushed through his narrow moustache. He repeated the action; a fidget, like he had something to hide.

“Still, I’ve got it better than a lot. I thought it was bad before, but things might get a lot, lot worse. I have waking dreams of tired, dirty workers crammed, thirty to a bedroom. Meanwhile, the undervalued library is reduced to only opening on a Tuesday morning just when it’s needed the most. Lurking around the public reading room keeps a man with no function away from the cold and the temptations of boredom.”

Another deep drag, another cardiactric cough.

“It’s like I said – idealists, rebels, we all eventually morph into what they were fighting against. Our greatest weakness is that we can’t change the herd’s mentality. We can’t curtail the desire for self-comfort at the expense of others.”
Paul was smoking too, but in a different way. After each inhalation he would extend his arm as far as it would stretch and angle the cigarette, tilting it slightly, changing the viewpoint. All the time he smiled to himself. He moved his hand again and examined the smouldering tip for the answer to a mystery that only existed in his head. His eyes might have told a story in themselves had they not been hidden behind a pair of sunglasses.

“I miss Brooklyn,” he whined with a vague drawl. “That’s where I’m at my most centred. My wife and I live in this apartment, in a brownstone, in what you might call a colourful neighbourhood. Did I say I was a writer? No? Well, I am. I sit in the back room and compose novels and poems in these really specialised writing tablets that I’d normally describe in intense detail. And I deserve to be a writer. I inexplicably managed to survive for years in Paris and New York neither earning much money nor accepting handouts nor doing any work of a non-creative nature. No, I’m not sure how I didn’t starve to death, either. Luck, perhaps? Or something more mystical? Who has the right to say? But, my dedication has paid off and now I’m fabulously successful.”

He paused, and tried to look enigmatic.

“Of course, none of this is true. It’s just lines from a novel I’m writing.

Existence is a fictional reflection of a certain version of reality.”
James looked older than anyone could have imagined he’d be. His white-grey hair billowed outwards, absorbing endorphins from those who got close enough to listen.

“The impression people have of me is as a drug guzzling, perverted anarchist. That seems somewhat unfair. I don’t even like coming into the city. Urban life, an outmoded concept that small minded unadventurous people cling onto. The suburbs are where the revolutions of the mind will emerge. Where there is space for change to exist. Inside the pillars of concrete car parks shamanic fetishism can absolve our inhibitions. That’s why I live in Shepperton.”

He looked out of the window for a passing idea.

David appeared out the bustle and whispered. “Everyone thinks his fascination with car crashes is weird, but have you ever noticed how absorbed he becomes by corpses? It’s like he tries to inject the dead with his memories of the living.”

“What-ho!” a forced voice said.

“Oh,” said David covering his eyes. “I’d forgotten he was coming.” He raised an eyebrow. “Yes, okay, so he is tremendously silly, but he’s just too endearing to not invite.”

“I say, spiffing soiree you’re having here, old bean. It rather reminds me of the shindig Bunter Biggins had back in whatever non-specific idealised timeframe we’re referring to. Absolutely smashing. There was music and gambling and snidey butlers and farcical levels of coincidence in abundance. A couple of the chaps and I managed to put several whole sheets to the wind, I’m afraid,and before we knew it we’d swapped a policeman’s helmet for a duck-billed platypus. Well, dash it all, if the beggars didn’t see the funny side of it all and I spent the night in the Charing Cross cells drying out. Still, never mind. At least there weren’t any girls about to confine a chap’s curiosity of life. Chin, chin, eh?”

Iain didn’t look like anything. Or rather, perhaps, he looked like everything – like he’d absorbed the collective history of a city, but the populous had left the lights on and now they shone through his skin.

“I walked all the way here. All the way from Hackney Marshes. On the way, I encountered several fascinating characters from a thirty-year old maybe-mythical counter-culture, but I’ll suggest that I’ll come back to them on another page.” He stretched each of his fingers individually as though they had their own postcode. “Walking through cities is the only way to travel. Preferably bare-foot. The city talks to me, whimpers its secrets and I pass them through a slightly skewed refraction and onto others. Things got a bit tricky when I reached the Thames, but in the end I just kept on walking and faith in the life of London carried me across.”

Grant looked like a secret agent. Or so he wished. Immaculate white suit, black shirt, wrap around shades. He smelt otherworldly, but he looked liked the colonial gent reproduced in a nineteen-fifties three-d magazine, layer of self slipping across one another, and he sounded like a Glaswegian bruiser.

“I’ve news for you: This is a gun in my pocket and I’m not glad to see you,” he announced and people had to listen. “It’s not a bullet gun. No, this baby shoots ideas sperm. All I need is a sticky head shot and one of these babies will down load intra-virus-nano-tech straight into your central cortex. The resulting freedom will enable you to harness chaos magic and rewrite yourself into the fabrics of alternative versions of what’s possible. It only works, though, if you truly believe it. Otherwise it’s just a banana.”

That was enough. The beer was finished and the empty bottle deposited on the table. There was time for a handshake and David asked: “Do you have to go? They’re not all like this. Some of them are almost normal. No. No, it’s okay. I understand. You were only dropping in for a quick one. Fair enough. Hey, keep in touch, you hear?”



With apologies to Graham Greene, George Orwell, Paul Auster, JG Ballard, PG Wodehouse, Iain Sinclair and Grant Morrison who have been picked on somewhat randomly. And, indeed, to Paul Jenkins whom it appears had more or less the same idea and probably did it better more than ten years ago.