The Heat is On

We sit opposite each other in our usual spot of the long table by the window and drink tea or pineapple juice or coke or lime and soda or sometimes a beer, and we start by talking to each other about life, like Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro in Heat.

Staggering Coincidences

It was dark and cold and windy. Heavy rain soaked me to the bones.  The full moon was swallowed by Wagnerian storm clouds as I hurried through the night, wishing I had taken the bus, or that I had the foresight to wear an overcoat, or that I lived with a harem of the world's most beautiful and brilliant women in a chateau near a sun-kissed beach in the south of France, and that my aimable fiancée was perfectly happy with such an arrangement.  There is a hole in the bottom of my shoe, and my back hurts.

Euphemism City

At dusk, golden light spills onto the river as the galleries and bars switch on their night illumination, and Bristol is lent a soft romanticism.  I stand on the bridge, briefly, pausing my journey to watch rowers pull their little boat through the water; they are perfectly in sync, each oar cutting down and pulling up at precisely the same time.  A thin cloud crosses the bright moon like a tentative brushstroke, and the first stars flicker in the ultramarine night.  Then someone violently throws up a lamb Donner kebab, someone else starts shouting drunk obscenities at a defiant bouncer guarding a cheap pub, and urgent police sirens pierce the air, mingling with the cries of angry gulls.  Ah, Bristol, at 7pm on a Monday.  It never loses its charm.