STAGE ONE Put on some really loud music. Beware that it'll set the mood of the moment, but there's been too much silence in the last 24 hours. "Whatever happens if you never come down?" Is a rough memory of what the tall guy from Pulp once sung. But I came down. Way down. "Oops I did it again" sung Britney, but I'm not going to play that either even if the words are true. So what's it going to be. Hmm. Perhaps this isn't wise, but my eyes just settled onto "Rum, Sodomy and the Lash" by the Pogues. First of all though I'd better skip out to the lavatory "The Rear" If you went to Eton or "The Bogs" if you went to my school (a comprehensive exercise in disinformation, but hey, I turned out real well adjusted erm... right) this is going to be something of a session. The headphone socket on the computer box is dodgy and needs some suspenders made of masking tape in order to achieve full stereo. I'd draw you a diagram but this is a plain text message. STAGECOACHES The stagecoaches were working on Monday, Tuesday and, for all I know all the way through 'till today which if my sources are correct is a Friday. The trains were not working on Wednesday so I was staying through in town but I wasn't working. I should have been but I went AWOL instead. Got driven back to the hotel by an engraver (a taciturn fellow) and the more expansive chap behind the actual wheel, who seemed to know alot about art. It was a wee red Peugot car and it was going from Barnton to Royal Terrace. It isn't a very posh hotel but it is a rather fancy Terrace. WAY OUT WEST: DEAD MAN Seen that movie Dead Man? That's a great movie. I knew there were going to be dangers in the Rum and Sodomy soundtrack: it's settling me into pub-bore mode. "I'm a man you don't meet every day" does have a melancholy charm, though. Hey, it even worked for me on... Tuesday evening. "Oh don't stare at me with your puppy-dog eyes!" But she was saying it with laughing eyes and a smacker on the lips shut her up for a moment. "I've lived *six* times before" "Well I lived only *three* times before but I had a better class of incarnations!". Her and her friends and some others all wander over to drink some shooter sort of cocktails with a rude name to discuss existentialism. Not that there's much to discuss. It's more just the fun to be had on a sinking ship. Take a risk and pay the price and get more life. (Interlude: I received some E-mails from people on this list and I shall get back to you as soon as I can. I find getting the right words in private more difficult than the public ones). OUT THERE ON THE BLUE HORIZON BACK TO THE SOAP OPERA The following night I got my wallet nicked. It was about 9pm and I was walking home to the hotel; plastered, and one gets expansive in these moods. So I sat down next to this homeless girl. Yeah: she was pretty etc. but I swear to you my intentions were honourable. Maybe it was a bit of a grey area like in that TV programme The Vice, where you secretly fancy her but where the hugging is mutual support and not a sex thing: not that she wasn't attractive in that way but someone in that station in life as been abused enough. She suffered from depression and we were just sitting having a chat. I gave her some cash so she could get a room for the night. Some of her mates turned up, and this made me rather relieved because she seemed awful vulnerable sitting there in the 3 degrees and falling. I think her friends (including her 'boyfriend') hastily thought I might be more part of the problem than part of the solution. He accepted my beer, though, and her two friends offered 'business'. Then one of them nicked my wallet: I knew she had but figured what the hell anyway and the the girl I'd been talking with wandered off in one direction whilst the other two and her 'boyfriend' walked off in the other. I considered chasing after the guy, but these folks know the street and I don't. So that was that. I don't have any regrets: the world isn't a fair place. However, I think it's true that one can become corrupted. Some people have a better balance between the desire for knowledge and the the sense to look after oneself. Perhaps people will get rather angry by me couching an act of drunken foolishness in such grandiose terms. But I don't care. AFTER, LATER OR MAYBE NOW A BLUE HORIZON Way down towards the bottom of Leith Walk, Where she wandered, Is a wide current of water, That reaches the sea. In the morning light, You could see it sparkling and beyond, North of the rising sun, Villages and bridges and aeroplanes: Even a dockyard that is slowly stopping making war-boats And becoming a home for ferries to abroad: If home isn't here, It's somewhere out there. Keep going 'till you find it and, All the while, I salute thee. Gordon _______________________________________________________________________ Never pay another Internet phone bill! Freeserve AnyTime, for all the Internet access you want, day and night, only £12.99 per month. Sign-up at http://www.freeserve.com/time/anytime +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. 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