Labyrinthodon: having the enamel folded and sunk inward. Labyrinthodonty... dinousaur dentures... There is a sub-tropical and almost somnambulant character to the sound of underwater bubbles and an endlessly repeated chordal duo from the strings pre-set of a synthesizer on the default channel of the Hilton's TV set. I write at a desk topped in whirly walnut veneer with marquetry in ebony or somesuch before the blonde oak. The lamp is a ghoulish affair in brassy corinthian but sports, above the capital, an energy saving bulb: the result of an environmental audit of fevered men on a mission and promotion, ticking boxes on photocopied forms from independent bodies brought from high. One thinks of the pretty Hilton sisters, quite oblivious, making tasteless jokes whilst simultaneously re-kick0starting the Manhattan restaurant scene, but my reportage is rusty: that was, so like, several days ago and I wasn't even there. I'm here, looking over wet flat felt roofing and a city blocks' worth of car-park: like the afforementioned metropolis, Glasgow is also in a Grid-Iron plan, except where it meets the Green, where the 'Housing of the Future' development stares shinily across to the People's Palace in commie red Glasgow sandstone with the Big Yin's banana boots inside. The synths continue their rise and fall with the aqualung loop in the room with no character except for the fluid international corporate balm, which reminds me to make haste stealing the elongated vessels of bath foam &etc. that I'm not ever going to use: give 'em to mum and in any case they're pretty. My CD player, by Sony, has a 'hold' function designed for joggers rather than people like me, who sleep and leave CD players in rucksacks. It has chosen play mode, chosen to 'hold' it all night so my glimpse of Heather Nova this morning has a battery life of about 5 seconds... enough for one of her lustful scrawling on the face of an octave. Ah... the Bermudan angel. It is now 11:08 and I have a choice of places to go on level two before mid-day. Level two is, actually 'ground floor' in English parlance and 'Garden Level' in EMBT's Catalan, which is rather sweet, don't you think? In any case, said level claims to accommodate Raffles, Minskys and Camerons. Three continents, right? Raffles it is: the man of Singapore, but more of Cameron's (sic) Bloody Mary than Pink Gins for me. The aqualung twitches. Raffles has mock wickerwork, real wickerwork and a two foot fringe of fake corrugated iron in line with fret-cut softwood dyed with dark stain above an opening into an area housing an ill-tuned piano and some 'oh so tropical' louvered doors. Whiny scotch pop in the Travis format drifts from the tannoy. My eyes cast around for a celebrity or two, but it's B-grade territory: either at home, asleep; walking a dog, say a wolfhound, around newly acquired wooded policies in Gloucestershire or Upstate or, alternatively residing in a more discreet hostelry such as One Devonshire Gardens. Each room there is individually decorated. Wow. Anyway, it's not so bad, wittering here with a wonky fountain pen whose cap keeps falling off- the weight of the cap is supposed to balance the writing tip- on linen embossed *Toile Swiss* paper with HTML aspirations, in order to re-state my case; this time with fake fringes and a cocktail umbrella. Stating so much dyspepsia belies ghosts of a quiet beauty. All is not destroyed, and what remains might live. 'No man is an island, entire of himself' said Donne (forgive me if my memory is faulted at this instance). The world is too cynical to recognise a straightforward failure and too daft to see a subtle success. I'd be the world on both points were it not for... dreams. Last night, I bumped into the Dudley Corps in full, tight flood. I apologise for not expecting it 'me of little faith' but you were darned good. I've seen plenty of basements in my time but I'm counting on two fingers the last times I've seen musical quality of the sort that was thrown from the speakers. One corporation has done well. Hovering around, a full sinister picnic's worth of familiar faces plus STACEY, the globetrotting dahling, no less. Then I went mad. One of these links to hell engaged my brain. I don't know if I conjure them or they conjure me, but they aren't phantoms at the time. Thankfully, two people who I shalln't mention by name were extremely kind; a kindness which reverberates I 'check out' then discover that the room of the ill-tuned piano actually has some surprisingly well-stocked bookshelves- the kind of leather-bound multi-volume sets that can be purchased by the foot and are favoured by members of our legal establishment. So I pick 'Law and Government- In Principle and Practice' but, firstly, I'm interrupted by the vain desire to write this down and then, by my mother. Had she arrived seconds later, I'd have stood up and offered some tea... as it was, I was half way through a sentence and raised a finger, rather than my head. Pretty rude, I suppose... wrong priorities, I suppose... what do all these suppositions add up to, except mistaking giving for taking? Next was the Western General, ward 3, on a floor trapped between floors as one would percieve it from the lift at the main entrance. A maze results in the interstitial conveyor, and my father's mother is looking good and I attempt sweet-talking her to move nearer us (the other place is a den of incompetence and snobs) and my dad has arranged a nice room in bread-throwing distance of the duck-pond. The almost limbic thrill to be attained when being chased by 70 ducks is quite re-affirming. So that's then. This is now. Transcribing this has made me very late for work, but made me feel better, and it's better than not going to work at all. This morning has more Heather in it which is, in general, a good thing. To paraphrase, in a somewhat underhand manner, Evelyn Waugh, rather 'love-making'. Were that a substance! Some dreams are lovely. Gordon. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. 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