 
### THE BIG PINK

### Erwan Atcheson

### Smashwords edition

### Copyright 2012 Erwan Atcheson

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your

friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial

purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form.

To my parents: Kristiane and David

***

PREFACE

This book is FREE!

No its not. Its partly free.

If you like it, you must give what you like to charity.

Not any charity. You must give to particular charities; wonderful, cost-effective, maximum-good-doing charities.

Please see your way to the Giving What We Can website for details.

It recommends really amazing charities and explains why they are amazing.

I'd like you to give 10% of your income to those charities.

Enjoy!

E. A. 2012

www.givingwhatwecan.org

***

Table of Contents

OVERTURE IN VERSE

Canto One

Canto Two

Canto Three

Canto Four

Canto Five

FIRST TEXT

SECOND TEXT

THE THIRD TEXT

TEXT FOUR

TEXT FIVE

TEXT THE SIXTH

BOOK SEVEN

#  OVERTURE IN VERSE

# Canto One

O Goddess sing of how the Pink House went

From being fairly clean to state unkempt.

The house was pink outside and clean within

The dishes scrubbed, all rubbish in the bin

The kitchen bright and countertops kept free

All plates and cups were where they ought to be

The livingroom was ordered nice and neat

With walls as straight as right angles do meet.

Both toilets freshly smelt like rose or vine

The showers had not yet seen a spot of grime.

Each room was as a God-writ harmony

With spotless carpets perfect to a T.

The Pink House first was occupied by eight

Young men, one woman, paying average rate.

The first was science-loving Neil who lived

A year in there before the rest arrived.

Then beer-delighting Barry moved in next

When Neil informed him of the house by text.

Young Mitchell brought along with him his mate

A chap called Emmett seeking strong debate

This problem-seeking Emmett brought with him

A lazy-bones known by the name of Jim

James Hendry of the Music School his name

Debussy was the muse he did acclaim.

Quick-tempered Levin, surname of MacHill

Knew Neil and so he too entered the mill.

Now long-haired Levin, different from the last

Desired a home. 'But where?' he Emmett asked.

Said Emmett: 'Move you two in here with us.

Just jump aboard the next Dungiven bus.'

He also meant his cousin Hamish, who

To Gortenaghy village bade adieu.

Such were the friends. Two empty rooms remained

Which by two strangers were forthwith obtained.

The ground floor room bean-eating Fallah took

The latter pulse being what he liked to cook.

And finally came Catherine, Belfast-bred

Whose happiness at times seemed overspread.

Before beginning properly this tale

There are two other persons to unveil.

An architect in training, Meabh comes in

As Levin's lover. She had an exact twin.

Philosophizing Erwan found the Pink

By dint of going there one time to drink.

Now with this soccer side O Muse begin

To tell which side will lose and whose will win.

Well firstly, who's the enemy they fight,

Since in those terms you call me to recite?

O Muse I wish I knew but you see I've

Been wandering without knowing whence I drive.

But don't you know that poetry's an art?

You've got to know the end before you start.

I'm sorry, Muse, I've not done this before.

I'd always thought of poetry a bore.

A bore? My goodness friend that's it we're through

You called me here before your time was due.

What meaning that? I thought your help was free

To those who called upon you with their plea.

Hello? O dear my reader now it looks

Like you and I alone must cook these books

Or rather I alone, since you must read.

This will be poor. Well never mind. Proceed...

We'll start with nine-eleven. That's the date

When four planes hit America in hate.

Three thousand died from burning tower's fall

And all the world stood back and was appalled.

The brave US was rocked, but swore to fight,

'Defenders of democracy and right.'

But was their fight correct? That is not cert-

ain. They've caused more than their fair share of hurt.

Who wants to say that their deaths matter more

Than those they caused by coup-d'états and war?

I speak of 'they.' I should say 'we;' the West

Is we who've gained from others dispossessed.

We loath dictators greedy with their oil

But love those tyrants gen'rous with their spoils.

But guilty though my conscience it may be

The US makes its own foreign policy

And that the West opposed, except our lead-

ers, who to the 'lectorate paid no heed.

The States invaded first Afghanistan

To see if they could top the Taliban

They claimed sweet victory after seven weeks

Though ten years since the claim now seems quite weak.

But ne'er mind that. To get out of a jam

It did suffice to go and fight Saddam.

The Iraq War began two thousand three

Because we'd found his Double-U M D.

Weapons of Mass Destruction. Evil swine,

He could have launched in forty minutes time.

Or forty-five. No matter which. You see,

The number was complete imaginary.

There were no weapons so he could not launch

Within the hour or even in twelve-month.

Some dodgy fellow by the name of Blair

Had made the number up in a dossier

To frighten Parliament into a War

That may have been their stupidest since Boer.

I still say 'they.' My words must be reweighed

Since twas with taxes ours the war was paid

I must review. 'Come on, Saddam was bad

He terrorised the people of Baghdad

And don't you know that he his enemies

Did torture? Folk like that you don't appease.

You BOMB 'em! To the Stone Age if you can

And as for reconstruction, well, why plan?

As long as we've demolished every hide

Our need for vengeance will be satisfied.'

In truth, our Western needs are never met...

A little blood will but the appetite whet.

About three thousand died in the twin towers

Who knows the number dead by Western powers.

But did you mention torture? There's a thought

Although the Swiss convention says 'Do Not.'

We'll call it something else. 'Alternative

Set of Procedures.' How innovative

Half-drown the bastards sixty times a day

Until they say what we tell them to say

And if they don't, we'll stop em sleeping nights

Til they don't know what's black from what is white

And if they still don't fess up; well, then we

Must render them, to another country

Where beatings and electrocutions start

The soul from body, each link wrenched apart.

That easy-going Texan Dubya Bush

Made gold from oil and falsehood from the truth.

But back to home. The heroes I described

Did witness all the stuff above transcribed

And more besides. They spent their form'tive years

Surrounded by a surplus feed of fears.

But did this get them down? Of course not son

Our heroes were heroic types, bar none.

Their mightiness was greater than the sea

E'en stronger than my weak hyperbole

And when they lay upon the sofas stoned

They still were strong – their minds were all enthroned

And though they might have seemed at times asleep

Twas not so. They were down in caverns deep.

Ok, we'll talk of cannabinoids then

Since that's the thrust of this our present yen.

Thrill-seeking Emmett brought the lordly vice

Unto the Pink like flowers of paradise.

They first were pleased, like sailors out to sea

But then they were transported into glee

When tea they brewed. The ocean sucked them out

They ate what fish they could, and mostly trout

For months on end. Twas all that one could do

To stay afloat. They stuck to the canoe

Though sea turned sky and blue became orange

And all their thoughts began to rearrange

In styles untested. Thus the drug did wear

A hole in the unconscious inner layer

Where strange things lurk. Not least our unknown selves

Where Freudians venture; there a stoner delves

Like dwarves a-mining in the crystal caves

That Tolkien wrote about. It comes in waves

– The tea I mean. When tea is first imbibed

Th'effects initially are circumscribed

Or rather, nothing happens for an hour

You wait for it to push its latent power

Into your mind. The first clue that you get

Is a tingling; a sense of seen-it-yet

Or déjà-vu. You think you've heard these words

And then it fades. Its fleeting like those birds

That hide in bushes. So you wait. And wait.

Another wave begins to detonate

In distant seas. You feel it push you like

The far-away collapse of a klondike.

Then in a thought you think you've heard these words

They wander past like circulating herds

And then it fades. But not entirely, for

The tea has opened up some secret door

That lets in sounds unlike the ones you know.

You wonder if the drug begins to show

And ask your friends. But speech seems rather strange

The words are all caught up, the meaning's changed.

Your tongue is tied. You wish to state yourself

But that partic'lar book's not on the shelf.

You giggle. Seems like that's all you can do

To get you through this altered point of view

And others do the same. The light turns dark

And Steedzo starts the Hunting of the Snark

And flippant James begins to make fake sounds

To twist your head around til it rebounds.

Presuming that you leap the deep confus-

ion Mister Hendry's baby babble brews

Then things get better. Though you must take care

Some pathways of the mind lead none know where.

But not today. Today you fly your kite

In sparkling constellations' nighttime light.

By choice, that is. For if you keep your wits

The journey will be pleasant. Else the pits

Will take you. The choice is up or else

You'll know how solid ice feels when it melts

Which might sound nice. But all your structure goes

And ne'er returns. Your foot becomes your nose.

To 'void this risk you could try chocolate

A pleasant thing 'pon which to concentrate

And other beastly pleasures. For in sooth

Your mind reveals itself in lossless truth

When tea is had. Each person that you are

Fills up your mind like an eastern bazaar.

The reptile's there with slidded eyes and scales

And so are frogs and slowly-moving snails

And even rocks. Your entire ancestry

Comes out to join you in your cup of tea.

You're them. They're you. And now you start to trace

How thoughts arrive from that once hidden place

Your mind. Thoughts branch and grow, they split and seed,

They form the basis for each other. Heed

How thoughts you thought an hour ago come back

As if your mind's a circulating track

But now they've grown. The thoughts you've handled since

Are added to the first. It makes much sense.

You wish to talk about your discovery,

But all these thoughts – they simply o'erwhelm ye.

Ye bumble like a fool: 'Our thoughts are spheres.'

– Such are the problems facing pioneers.

But you're surprised; it seems you're understood:

James Hendry claims the notion's rather rude;

Neil Steed believes that thoughts full circle come

And Emmett says 'I've seen where thoughts are from.'

And having scaled the tower of Babylon

Puts 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' on.

The film is routinely played when tea

Is taken. For it shores up the esprit

To see a hero in a similar state

As you are in to polychlorinate

His liver. Thus, 'the bats' and 'Barstow' form

Abiding memories. How they did swarm.

And carpets turning weird we do recall

And also how the ether made them drawl.

The first half of the film one can grasp;

The second part's more like a slinking asp

That slips your grip. To date we are unsure

What happens in that final half an 'oor.

Such is how dope goes. First you grow quite high

Then wisdom makes you match of the gadfly

Of Athens. Finally your mind becomes

Like scattered leaves or the remaining crumbs

Of feasting's royal banquet. So to bed

You drag yourself; face white and eyes quite red.

Of dope I think enough has now been writ

To give the right sense. Though I won't omit

The tale of Erwan's troubles with the tea

Which is to say, an inside enemy

That spoke to him when he partook of smoke

And gloated at him, saying 'I'm awoke!'

And other ungrammatic things. Suffice

To say that Erwan did not find this nice

And spent six months trying to give it up

Before succeeding. So that's the backdrop.

We've covered nine-eleven and the War

As well as drugs. You ask, 'Can there be more?'

In fact there can. This epic holds a lot

Besides two unjust wars and smoking pot.

For instance, false imprisonment. And beer;

And TV sets; and overcoming fear.

That's all to come. Like pandas from bamboo

This poem now crashes out to canto two.

# Canto Two

Bean-eating Fallah soon moved out. Some say –

Offended by the overuse of 'gay,'

Which term indeed was somewhat commonplace

Within the Pink; – he left; and left a space.

This space was quickly taken by Chris Bole

Who seemed quite nice and certainly could roll.

But of him I will currently not write

Coz first I wish to set the record right.

Above I said the dwellers used a stick

That many here might find impolitic.

Tis true, the Pink ones often chose to curse

By shouting 'You are gay.' This was perverse.

Perverse, because they did not really think

It wrong for men their bodies to enlink.

So was it simply irony? In part

The words were not entirely from the heart

But neither was it merely idle talk

We often own what we in others mock.

So anyway. Computer-hacking Chris

Moved in. Though 'hacking' as a word's amiss

A better term is 'studied.' Like the rest

He pursued academic things with zest.

And though tis true that some of us dropped out

About our scholar's zeal can be no doubt.

But Chris completed his degree, no fear;

Then went to Dublin for a placement year.

Before that in the Pink house did he dwell

Escaping trouble. What, he would not tell.

The Village maybe did not welcome him

But in the Pink house outcasts fit right in.

The time was right. He lent his TV tray

For rolling joints. That made them feel OK.

At this time too did Emmett place a note

Upon a message board. On it he wrote:

"Guitarist wanted. Just to have a jam."

The note was seen by a Malaysian

And thus did Azaharri join the crew

He played guitar like it was overdue;

Which means he played it well. The man could make

His axe chop trees that e'en machines couldn't break

And Erwan also sometimes played along

His music sounding much like a Northern Song

Where the chords go slightly wrong. No matter

He aimed just to make the music fatter

And did succeed. They aimed for one same mood

That showed that each the other understood.

The music was a conversation with

Each one replying. There were some good riffs.

Now music was in general highly held

By all those who within the Pink House dwelled.

Bespeccalled Barry, for an instance, liked

To hear Metallica attack and strike

While gentlemanly Neil preferred a piece

Like Paganini's twenty-forth caprice

James Hendry studied music (when required)

By him both Brahms and Beatles were admired.

Asked what should be on the CD player

Long-haired Levin always answered 'Slayer'.

And Lev MacHill had decks that caused earthquakes

And hurricanes and storms and emptied lakes

While Hamish like to chill out with the blues

A Muddy Waters album, free with booze.

That brings us to another point. In all

The Pink ones drank their share of alcohol.

On his first day young Lev took fifty shots

With Barry. It was cider. They saw spots.

Tinned Harp was usually Barry's choice but soon

The legendary Michlobb called the tune

For with it came the free CD of which

I spoke above. Ah, delicious Mich,

It's murky yellow innards weren't unknown

To topple once strong Kings from off their throne

And also get them drunk. The bitches' brew

Was often joinéd by a Bush or two.

And were the Pink folk looking for a night

They'd usually take themselves to the limelight

A club of sorts. There metal would be wrought

And moshing done. At least a gigawatt

Of power was released. The national grid

Blinked on and off and bucketloads of squid

Rained from the sky. The seas turned dry

The normal rules no longer did apply

And then at closing time they all went home

To their unstately Pink displeasure dome

With eyes dry from the smoke. When rising late

(Like Descartes when he 'gan to cogitate)

They 'tempted not to boke their rings up. 'Stay

This overzealous pain!' They'd say. The grey

And lifeless morning pale and grim would swim

Against their eyes which red with blood would dim

At thoughts of having soon to rise. 'Unwise,'

They'd say, 'That I should drink so much!' The cries

Of woe would later fade so up they'd get

To sit around the house and pay the debt

Of too much alcohol. So down to sprawl

Upon the sofa, staring at the wall

Which blankly stared them back, they put on Floyd

Or switched the TV on and thus avoid

A hanging dog's remorse. And then of course

There was the game of Worms. And endless source

Of pleasure and distraction. Worms with guns

Took turns in shooting at each other. Suns

Exploded as hand grenades were thrown. Own,

What joy was had to hear a rival moan

When Holy Hand Grenades emerged from crates

Or terror when an armed invertebrate

Would slink towards your worm to blow its head

Across the pixilated scape. Like lead

A seabound worm would sink beneath the brine

When blasted from the side. Revenge was fine

When in the next turn their worm drank the soup.

But sometimes coward worms would play the dupe

And bury themselves deep within a mound

And this was bound to make the others pound

Their seats in fury. So these flagrant cheats

Would while away the game in solid pleats

Of stone-bound safety. Mean-time others fought

And squashed each other; things got fraught; they shot

But only he within the ground could win

As long as he stayed tight, like in a tin.

The others knew this; so they'd dredge him up

By digging holes themselves. They'd lop his top

Clean off him. So disposed, the buried worm

Met with their righteous blows. And then the term

Of all their lives grew short; for at the start

Each chap has four worms with one hundred parts

But by this point the parts were ten in sum

And four good worms diminished into one.

So each fought for the final victory hard

They gnashed their teeth, bloodstained and battle-scarred

Until the ending came, and vain the boasts

Of he the champion sounded! He could roast

In Hell for all the others cared; they wished

For only one thing: that delicious dish

Revenge, served now, with boiling hot endives

And so they'd start another game. Believe

Me dearest reader all the world's a stage

And all the worms upon it are engaged

In warring one another. When one's done

A new war will be speedily begun.

And so our heroes whiled the day away

By turning worms into a crude pâté.

The first great party of the house was when

The ghosts and ghouls come out – that's Hallowe'en.

The second was the Pseudochristmas bash

When Barry hammed and Hamish made the mash.

On both occasions 'bauchery ensued

From drink; but only on the second food

Was specially made. A feast of turkey, ham,

And spuds with liberal gravy. But the jam

Of cranberry was stupidly forgot

Despite it having been especially bought

The night before. No matter. Yorkshire puds

Made up for it. It was exceeding good

And everybody wore their festive crowns

Of coloured paper. This cost £30

And 50p. Tis cheap to live like Kings

This being one of Eglantine's main themes

That is, that most of us can live in style

That Kings of old would find was worth the while.

Despite not having much of any gold

Besides the student loan, they did not hold

Themselves from fine things; such as fries each morn

And cannabis each night. The hardships bourn

Were chiefly self-inflicted: the distress

Of too much drink; or living in a mess

That mortals seldom know. But of the tip

The Pink House soon became I will not quip

Until the proper place. For now we'll speak

But of those parties. In mid-winter bleak

The second party did unfold. The first

Took place two months before. At that their thirst

They quenched with special jute fruice, freshly made

From grapes and turpentine and one brigade

Of drunken seagulls. Emmett poured a stream

Of evil whisky in the stew. A gleam

Satanic in intensity did light

His eye. The fruice was rude; like dynamite

Left under someone's chair. Twas Hamish caught

The blast, by drinking half right on the spot

And staggering off. He ended up in bed

Some twenty minutes later, good as dead.

The party 'tinued on but of the rest

Folks memories are somewhat blurred at best.

But blurring's what's desired; to stir and blend

The diverse parts into a soup. Depend

Upon it; drink, when taken free, will make

A rubbery burger seem like softest steak.

Sometime between these two dates these chaps bought

A blackboard from a DIY; to jot

Ideas upon it was it's function. There

Were some ideas a-jotted just as rare

And strange as madmen's ravings. Instance one:

The "Co-Hop" 'quation, to decide which won:

The nearby Co-op or the Tesco far

For stuff. In truth the route to Zanzibar

Was just as like to win, for neither shop

Was close enough to make them, stoned, get up.

The one exception was the kebab place

Called Esperantos. Here they would make haste

To satisfy their cravings. So the board

Did make itself of use: a surface scored

With weird ideas that went no further on.

Hashish is known both far and wide to spawn

Such thoughts; so Neil and Erwan oft did find

Bizarre suggestive thoughts run through their minds

When tea had been consumed. But on one night

They both determined, their strange thoughts to write

Upon the blackboard. Schrodinger once said:

Tis hard to know a cat's alive or dead

The quantum world is small and hard to ken

Indeed uncertainty will hold you when

You try to measure two things too precise

Like speed and the position – then the price

Is that the more you know of one the less

The other can be known. We can express

The certain limits of our knowledge by

A constant named for Plank. This German guy

Discovered that the energy of heat

Emitted from a body is discrete

And not continuous. To this thought our pair

Attached the twin thought: in the lightless lair

Of nature's deepest pit there lurks a point

Of infinite density. At this strange joint

Between the world of sense and ignorance

Our heroes places a marker of immense

Analogy. At both ends of the world

There squat two walls against which we can hurl

Whatever weight we wish. But none shall pass

The wall cannot be breached. You're on your ass

If even you attempt it. Both our friends

Believed that they had now obtained the end

Of thirty centuries diff'cult physical thought

They'd seen it in a flash: the truth was what

It ought to be; each proposition of

Necessity a true one. Hand in glove

We often think our ideas fit the truth

Or e'en determine it. Those long in tooth

Know better; most of our beliefs are false

Especially those we like the best. This waltz

Between the colonnades of centuries lore

Will carry on as long as there's a floor

To dance about on. Now though you and me

Will shuffle with our drinks to Canto Three.

# Canto Three

The Hamish shuffle, happ'ly pioneered

By Carlin's eldest son, did first appear

Within a mosh pit in a club. This dance

Preserved one's pint from spillage. By a stance

Hunched over and with both hands on the drink

One moved one's feet from left to right. Just think

How many times you've upped to dance but stopped

Because you've too much drink left. Nothing dropped

From out of Hamey's pint.

Twas the New Year.

The Pink folk had returned from Christmas cheer

Back to the Pink House. All of them preferred

The squalor of the Pink. Each one declared

The pleasure felt in setting up one's feet

Upon the sofa. Now they could regreet

Their old friend marijuana, left behind

Too many weeks. By some means undefined

They picked up where they left off; down some track

That took them further from the herding pack

And deeper into lands and ways unknown.

In January examinations drone,

And ill-prepared the students wish they'd tried

To work more during term. Had they applied

More effort then, instead of smoking gear

And talking shite while drinking cans of beer

Then now they wouldn't be in such a mess.

So strategies on how to pass the test

With min'um actual work were thought out. Though

This didn't really work; the stereo

And video games were too distracting. Free

From home for four months now a good Degree

Had less appeal than once it had. Instead,

Our heroes found they'd rather lie in bed

Til afternoon, then stroll down to the park,

Go through museum's doors to see what mark

An artist left on canvas; or else stare

At turtles swimming like they didn't care

What chap threw money at them. Fish

Confined behind a thick glass plate; a swish

Of fins across the surface. Then a glance

At dinosaurs encased in plastic. Chance

In form of asteroid had done for them.

Then up the stairs to see which shining gem

Engaged the eye the most. The fur-lined rocks

With glass instead of moss received most gawks.

The radioactive room, a major draw,

Enticed with its fluorescence. Greatest awe

Was felt when down some stairs was passed

An iv'ry sculpture, spheres in spheres amassed

Five layers deep, and carved to show a scene

Of men and women, houses, a ravine

Formed by two mountains tall. To understand

Why several of our heroes took unplanned

Excursions to this place requires no thought;

There's little joy in doing as we ought.

"To do things as we ought" – what does it mean?

To do as others do, keep things routine

By working hard and building up enough

Reserves to buy a house and overstuff

With things that other people have. Some folk

Inside the Pink House started to invoke

The shades of Marx and Engels to explain

Why working for the man is such a pain.

Then two or three began to think TV

Was shite and propaganda and should be

Thrown out the window. Some folk just felt bored

With studying a topic they abhorred

And wished to leave their college. This in due

Course Levin, Hamish did; they felt the screw

Of daily concourse to their class a waste.

They waited for a job without great haste

And Levin got one. Hamish meanwhile played

The waiting game for longer. He betrayed

No great anxiety to find some work

But this was not because he wished to shirk

The daily slog. His motivation weak

He simply didn't mind what happened. "Seek

What you might find," the proverb goes. The chair

Beside the window 'came his home. Twas there

He 'came acquainted with the "schizo kid"

A child who twice a day walked by and did

A lot of visionary waves and shouts

Concerning hell and school. The boy was stout

And seldom seemed much happy. Hamish bode

His time, a-sitting on his chair. It flowed

From day to day and week to week and folk

Dropped in occasionally to talk and joke

And ask if Hamish'd seen a job walk by

Yet. Hamish, patient, knew with certainty

That what was his wouldn't pass him. So

Within five months he'd got a job to go

To. Twas a night club, named as 'M.' He went

There several nights a week, to earn his rent,

By picking up used bottles, glasses, crap,

Returning to the bar by any gap

He could, and going out again for more.

He'd dance about to make it less a chore

But always when he got home his poor feet

He'd have to fill a bucket them to steep.

But all in all, the work was not unkind

He liked the crowds and company. But mind:

The vicissitudes of fate cannot be dodged

They find us in the end to fair dislodge

Our sense of confidence. When Hamish felt

His stride becoming firm, then he was dealt

With fate's destabilising shake. Once night

He went to work as usual. Thus his plight

Began. Before commencing, drawn aside

Was he. The manager, dissatisfied,

Asked Hamish for the laptop back. "The wha?"

Asked Hamish in return, bemused. "Ah, hah,

You know just what I mean." But Hamish dint.

He wanted to start work. He made a squint

And shrugged his shoulders. "No," he said. "OK,"

The boss said. "Right. You came in yesterday

And took the laptop underneath the stairs

Out with you." Hamish, man not of affairs,

Did not deny it; looked instead perplexed.

"Don't think I took it." Now the manager flexed

His muscles. "Got it on the tape," he said;

And pointing at the cameras overhead

He seemed to say the case was closed. "Now why

Don't you go home and bring the laptop by

This evening." So Hamish went on home

But couldn't find the laptop with a comb

Which made him think the boss was wrong. Going back

He told the manager there was no crack

He hadn't looked in. Logic seemed to say

That if he couldn't find it then no way

Could he have stole it. Strangely though the man

Did not seem swayed by this. "All right; you can

Go home. And don't come back until you've got

The laptop with you." Hamish felt a knot

Of intricate design was tying round

Him. Sense was missing; if he had not found

The thing by now then never would it be.

Returning home he fixed a cup of tea

And thought things over. But he couldn't make

Much reason from it. All night kept awake

The next day he went down to see his friends

Inside the Pink House – hoped they'd apprehend

Some vital link he'd missed. They were incensed.

The manager had clearly took against

Young Hamish for no reason and made up

A plot to oust him. They would put a stop

To all this nonsense. Donning their trench-coats

McCochall, Erwan, McIlroy, did vote

To march straight to the V-Bar and demand

To see the so-called "tape." They went as planned

In early afternoon. The bar was dead;

Just them and bar staff. Hamish went and said:

"Gon let us see the boss." One left to get

Said individual. He seemed rocked; the sweat

That beaded on his brow bespoke his fear

At seeing three young toughs a-coming near.

But wily was he: played the age-old game

Divide and conquer. Single was his aim:

He asked that Hamish come aside to speak.

This left the other three alone to seek

What mischief that they could. So surlily

They asked for water at the bar. The three

Returnéd to their seat to wait it out

Since Hamish, innocent beyond a doubt

Had but to show the manager twernt he

Had been recorded on CCTV.

But soon did Hamish reemerge. The cops

Arrived some moments later. With their props

Of batons and of cuffs they went to talk

With Fat-Face, he the manager. They walked

Into the other room. Young Hamish sat

Beside his friends. "He hasn't shown me that

Tape yet," he told them. All the three were 'raged

The farce continued. Levin himself gauged

The cops would side with Hamey's boss. The pigs

Came out again ten minutes later. "Frig

That swine," did Levin spit. They took aside

The hero of this tale; twas clear what side

The cops were on, for promptly did they put

Young Hamish in arrest. The boss, a brute,

Did sneer as Hamish frog-marched through the door

Held either side by pigs. The three were sore

That things had ended up like this. "How long

Will he be gone?" they asked. To right this wrong

Was all that they did wish for; but alas

The State was much too strong. The upper class

Could stamp upon their necks all day. The three

Went home. The Gortenaghy wan would be

Alone on this. So meantime Hamish went

To Musgrave Street Police Station. He spent

A good few minutes locked inside a dark

And tiny room before the peelers parked

Their overweight and portly bums on seats

Beside him. "All right. So you're" – glance at sheet –

"Here, Hamish Carlin, now; so what d'you have

To say?" His tone, of bored attempt to chaff

His suspect into speech did not succeed;

Young Hamish simply shrugged and asked why he'd

Been 'rested when he'd done not one thing wrong.

The tired old peeler made like this here song

He'd heard a thousand times. "You're here because

You stole a laptop." Hamish looked the fuzz

Between the eyes and said: "I didn't take

It." "We have seen the video son; you'd make

A poor career from theft. So tell us why

You went back home to look for it." The guy

Leaned forward, pressing. Hamish scowled and said:

"The boss just tole me to." He wished instead

He'd told his boss to die in hell. This line

Of questioning was boding ill. Like vine

The tendrils of the facts were creeping round

Him. "Told you too. I see. I feel I'm bound

To ask you why you went to get it if

You knew it wasn't in your house. A whiff

Of contradiction here, you see. A lad

Who felt completely certain that he had

Not taken something wouldn't go to look

To just make sure." The police aimed to hook

Young Hamish like a fish. But Hamish did

Not wish to be fried yet. His healthy id

Was good enough for this. He did explain

Things thus. "It's cos of all this talk of seein'

Me on the video. I don't think I took

The laptop, but yous keep on sayin I snook

It out and that the tape shows me. I'm sure

I dint but maybe its my mem'ry. See when you're

Bein told that you're on tape, but never shown

You start to doubt yourself. So I was goin

To see the boss today to see the tape

Myself. So what's it show?" To pull a drape

Around this latter question, act like he'd

Not heard, the peeler claimed that Hamey's deed

Could land him in hot water. Hamish pressed:

If everyone who'd seen the tape assessed

That Hamish'd done the deed, then why was the

Accused alone denied the chance to see?

But Hamish didn't know the peelers' rule:

You ask but never answer questions. Mule

Himself though Hamish was they wouldn't budge;

They merely took down notes in case a judge

Would ever want to see the case. The chance

Of that was slim; twas evident by glance

The case was going nowhere. Hamish: "Why

Is RUC still on your station'ry

Instead of PSNI?" The peelers wrote

This question down, like others I could quote;

The transcript still exists somewhere, Lev thinks.

The author couldn't spell so oft the ink

Would state that Hamish hovered up the stairs

And down again. For three hours more they were

Locked at it. Then the tired old peeler let

Our hero go. His friends had gan to fret

That never would they see the lad again

When calmly on the door he knocked. The zen

Art master seemed to take it in his stride

E'en though he had been misidentified

Accused of something that he did not do.

The peelers never called for him. Adieu

Did Hamish bid to Belfast after that;

Not keen on being treated like a cat

That chaséd by a dog is.

Take your oar!

We sail straight onwards. Next stop Canto Four.

# Canto Four

A lot occurred tween one year and the next

That vital though it was will not in text

Be put; nor could it be – by me. For one,

I do not know the half of what was done,

What happened or to who. For two, although

My jelly eyes did witness half the show

(Or less) I didn't always understand

The plot, the serpent twists. I only scanned

The surface and misread what I there saw.

This poem that you read is mainly straw

Left over from the harvest. Those who seek

Some grains of truth herein will have to sneak

Those particles inside themselves.

Enough

Of this – tis time to look at other stuff

That happened.

Neil and Barry finished class

In April, did exams in May; both passed

With flying colours. Emmett meanwhile dropped

His classes altogether. James did opt

To work on with his music. Monuments

Of carelessness of his invention lent

Themselves as joints upon which to roll

The joints our heroes used to decontrol

Their thoughts.

On one mid-April morn

Young Levin from a window did adorn

The yard with one lit petrol bomb. Nor did

He think this worth a mention. Thenabouts

Ole Stankey first appeared, to make folk doubt

The sanity of others. Gluing coins

To tempt the passersby them to purloin

Provided entertainment. "Ah, good wench,"

Became a favourite phrase. The awful stench

Of unclean fridges made its mark. All this

The flood of history was like to miss;

But in this stream our heroes were submerged

And knew of little else. They each did urge

The other on in endless deeds of reck;

The stronger tea became, the longer trek

Through unknown streets of Belfast. Burned, the flag

That symbolised the US. In the bag:

Two hundred sherberts, eaten all at once.

For this is how a journeyman confronts

His so-called "destiny". The end of June

Saw Baz and Emmett leave the Pink Lagoon

To move in with a Punk. Chris also went,

To Dublin; he was meant to supplement

His study with some work experience. To

The Holy Lands did Hamish go. Review

The previous Canto for a simple trace

Of that long fateful story. – In their place:

John McIlroy took Chris' room; while James

Took Barold's old, to stop him going lame

From climbing three steep sets. – In James' room

When later it lay empty like a womb

There in a cupboard were discovered heaps

Of finished Lucozade. He liked to keep

The voided bottles. – Catherine also left.

To her room Red inmoved himself; he cleft

Of jaw and red, quite red, of hair. July

Saw Erwan taking Emmett's place. To lie

Beneath a disused curtain was his wont,

Until he brought some things from home. The haunt

That James forsook was filled by Aaron. Fat,

And fond of shooting BB weapons at

The wheelchair-bound from window high, he stuck

A picture of a bending lady up

Whose caption read: "Cum in my bum." Next door

To Aaron, Hamey's empty lodge, a corps

Of odd-like folk did occupy. The one

Who paid the rent was Geraldine. The fun

They had. Or rather all the fights. Her friend

A deaf and gay young man whom God did send

To try her. Then, the middle-agéd man

Who traced them from the pub and for the span

Of Gerry's time there called least twice a week

To moan about his wife and solace seek;

– She did not know his name.

This was year two.

The house by now was signif'ly askew

With bulging from the liv'room wall and mounds

Of rubbish building up. Indeed the bounds

That had been tested in year one were gone.

There was no good or bad. A pristine lawn

Was tilled and overturned; and sprouting from

The mess were healthy weeds. For some, the grum

And ghoulish grist was pleat with mass of growing;

For others shit was what it seemed, ongoing.

The banister from up the stairs was ripped;

A club was fashioned from it, firmly gripped

With satisfaction. Through the kitchen door

A knife was whacked. Sheer laziness forbore

The furframed shower head to be wiped clean

Or bracket mushroom chopped away. The dream

The house became became quite strange; the range

Of everyday emotion and exchange

Did broaden out. The flow began to shift

The heavy silt. The moorings came adrift.

Twas inabout this time that Erwan met

A friend of Neil and Barry's; thus was set

In train a seque of meetings, films and pubs

That he and Sheila joined to. Then too stubs

And scraps from papers, pasted on the wall,

Were used to tell the story of the squall

That swept the world. In chess, the stakes increased;

A ladder rose to climb, and every beast

Did trial for the crown. At Hallowe'en,

But one year since the fruice had drunken been

By Hamish; now twas Erwan's turn to drink

A trifle much. MacHill he glasses clinked

To shot-glass chess. With vodka in each piece,

And loser drinking lost this liquid feast

Was largely drunk by Erwan. Drunk indeed;

When playing games by flipping coin decreed

Determining who drunk the shot, he blind

To James' turning of the coin was. Mined

Like some mid-century harbour, up he went

To bed, collapsing three feet from his tent.

So Neil and Levin tucked the lad in bed.

Twas now the mine was triggered. Spews of red

And half-digested dinner – vodka too –

Came poring from his mouth. This awful stew

Both Lev and Neil at once agreed to leave

To Erwan. When he consciousness retrieved

Next morning, Erwan duly saw the mess

And so deduced he'd lost the game of chess

And most of dinner too.

While all of this

Went on, a man they did but slightly miss

When to their phone calls no response was made

– They got another dealer. This betrayed

The sad but blameless fact: when dealers go

There's none that wonder where. But even though

This general rule holds up, in this case not;

We'll hear the story. The first dope they bought

In Belfast – James and Emmett's who I mean –

They bought from Dessie Truesdale. This unclean

And scrawny man from hence supplied the hash

That kept the Pink ones thoughtful. Dessie's stash

Notoriously smelt of oil and sweat;

But still did what it ought. "Hi. Can I get

"A taxi from the church, for two," we'd ask.

But Des would oft forget the code. His task

Was simplified by the address. He sold

For £20 a 1/4. Heat or cold,

He'd turn up at the door. – Once just to see

If anybody wanted some. Then he

Was suddenly no more. His phone was tried

But silence answered. Other dealers plied

His trade in place. Old Desmond wasn't dead;

Not yet. But certainly that hanging dread

Was on him. Everywhere he looked there leaped

The shadow of a man and gun. He slept

For two hours every night. The fear and pain

Prevented him from thinking straight. The game

Of running for his life was on. He knew

That some obscure but vital debt was due

With interest. Johnny was involved – "Mad Dog"

Adair – so Dessie sought to lift the fog

Of vaguely hinted threat by dating he

Who used to be the Dog's gay lover. – See

How hate and violent crime can yet give rise

To love of free and Californian guise?

Well, maybe not quite that, but closer than

The local average. Dessie met this man

At Giant's Ring, an ancient circle fort

Just south of Belfast. There they made some sport

A 'tryst' as tabloids put it. Dessie gained

But little from this carefully maintained

But somewhat soulless friendship. Interview

Him all he might, the man gave not a clue

Regarding Dessie's standing with the heads.

In Winter's darkest week the blood was shed

Of Dessie's closest mate. Jon Stewart was shot

Quite dead. From this point Dessie watched the blot

Of ink-black night descend. His house became

A tomb for lifeless dread; each day the same.

He watched from out his curtains for the gun

Twice daily tweaked them, wondering would it come

At night or in the impudence of day?

It didn't really matter either way.

In March Mo Courtney with Egyptian friends

Came knocking at his door. Did they intend

To kill him? No. They only beat his arms

And legs and head. They did him as much harm

As wouldn't end him. Stole his phone as well.

When Levin tried to ring he couldn't tell

Whose voice it was. (He speedily hung up).

Though Dessie's wounds were hell he did not stop

To let them heal; he promptly fled this place

To England. Johnny at this time was based

In jail, but not for long. Before Des fled

He stole both Johnny's dogs, two hounds pure bred.

And so for these past ten short years the taunts

Have periodically come: you want

Your dogs back but you never will.

When Neil

Had finished his degree in June the deal

With Emmett, Lev and Baz to see the world

Did not transpire; like most plans it unfurled.

Both Neil and Barry got a job; the aim

Was selling goods by phone. They both became

Exceptionally disenchanted when

To make them into better businessmen

they had to stand on desks if goods unsold

Remained at day's end. Neil and Baz soon bowled

Themselves well out. Barry took some work

Collecting glasses in a bar. A clerk

Did Neil become, in Windsor House down town.

This hardly thrilled him; better though than clown

About on desks. He worked eight stories up

Green netting on the windows meant to stop

Young folks from plunging in despair. Once in

A while, attempts were made to pull the pin

On large explosive bombs outside the place

They'd have to take half day. It left no trace

Of joy on Neil Steed's features to be kept

Employed thus. Luckily he was adept

At finding life good where he could. TV

Served up a treat: The Life of Mammals. Ye

Who know not David Attenborough, deplore

Your wasted life. This kept Neil Steed more

Than happy, for an hour a week. But soon

The house grew colder, heatless as the moon;

And Neil began to have his doubts. One night

He felt a strange sensation, quite like fright.

He listened to the walls – a low-pitched thrum;

And radiators shaking; like a drum

Was numbering his days. Dirty sinks;

The bulging of the wall; the fridgey stinks

Oppressed our red haired friend. The final straw

Came late December. Mice were seen to gnaw

At binbags in the kitchen. Traps were laid

And one caught just on Pseudomithras stayed,

Too cold to rot, for three whole weeks. So Neil,

Accepting that this state was not ideal,

Moved in with Sheila, Eoin, Mark. And then

He got a phone call stating where and when

He could begin his PhD.

Survive

One final canto – the final one is FIVE!

# Canto Five

The final hero of this tale moved in

When winter bit most hard. His cheeky grin

Would not permit the ice to freeze. He came

From England in a boat to make a claim

On one spare bed. He got it. Friend

Of old of James and Emmett, Shauner's yen

Was singing, rhyming slang and smoking tea.

So room was made for him on the settee.

About this time two drum kits in the house

Were merged – both Red and Lev's – like shooting grouse

The snare drum rilled both night and day. At 3

AM John McIlroy would take a spree

Of beating 'pon 'em – in the Moon would shine,

Delighted that his favourite kit-combine

Was put to such good use. The other chaps

Were neither here nor there about the claps

And drills and crashes that awoke them. In

The risen day both Lev and Erwan din

A good wee number, Lev on kit, guitar

Being played by Erwan, jamming like a car

That from a hill-top handbrake loosed rolls down

Unstoppable until it breaks the crown

Of some poor passerby. At this time too

Creative pinning on the wall gave view

To war and life and David Dickinson

Near nude; this grotesque sight was merely one

Of many. War we've heard of, in the first

Short canto; but not all was there-in versed.

For instance, futile protest gainst the War

In February was followed by some more

Of equal ineffectiveness. Iraq

Was subject to a mass air-based attack

On March nineteenth, with land troops later on.

When Bush joined Blair for tea on Hillsborough lawn

A lot of people tried to force them out.

But sadly peelers blocked the simplest route

And crowds are dumb, so nothing happened. At

Another protest later on the flat

Of many truncheons paid those hapless folk

Who lay upon the road a lesson. Smoke

Was seen but fire was not; the protests pet-

ered out, as often happens when defeat

Seems so completely certain.

Erwan chose

Around this time, to give up smoke; although

Tis more alike to say that for a half

A year he'd been attempting this - the graph

Of his consumption spiked and troughed like seas

Are pounded by a storm. When drinking teas

He rarely stopped at one – much more and more;

And then, when sober, horrified, forbore

To ever touch the stuff again. Quite soon,

Discovering that he loved it he consumed

E'en greater volumes than he had done thence.

This tricky situation made him tense;

If casual smoking could not do, but binge,

He couldn't smoke at all. The rusty hinge

Of his sobriety complained and creaked;

About six times he pushed upon it; sneaked

A sneaky joint or two and then was high

All week. 'So what?' you ask. 'To deify

The drug is dumb; but so to demonise

It; what harm does it do to mobilise

The faculties of mind by any means,

Including THC?' Agreed. I'm keen

To disabuse the ignorant, afraid

To see things from another view – the aid

That good dope gives you is immense, with bliss

And joyfulness attendant. But, there's this:

The fear that all your thoughts are false; and that

You've been deceived; you start to smell the rat

That rots there in the corner. Feeling fear

And loathing for these thoughts you try to steer

Your mind away; but helpless, stay transfixed

By all the weight of all the world. The bricks

That form the founding of your knowledge are

Most fragile, and to bash them into spar

In one long frenzied burst may leave one free

Of falsehood and delusion, but may be

That same act will expose us to those harms

That terrified us. Dope doth have it's charms

And drawbacks too; in fact its virtues are

Demerits and vice versa.

A cigar

And whiskey is one thing; and poker is

Another. Give them both to someone, his

Is happiness abundant. Five did play

That fine and happy evening, fifth of May

Two thousand three. The five lay five pees down

So five coins formed five five pees in a round

That was remarked on: five was everywhere

The cards were five; the coins; the pot the square;

The hand that held the hand, the fingers – count

Your limbs and count your head. This odd amount

A prime and elemental force defines

So many features of our world. These lines

Of poetry, pentameter iambic. Note

The number of the cantos, five; the tote

Of lines two fifty in each piece. Derive

That five plus five times five times five times five

Describes the sum of all the lines inscribed

Within this poem. This fiveness was ascribed

To some deep irony, but truth be told

Tis aluminium foil that forms the gold.

The livingroom lay empty for a time

The spare room used instead, e'en though to climb

Those sets of stairs was arduous task. Played Quake

From dusk to dawn, and blew the dust to make

Those endless spirals spin in shafts of light.

In James' room, young Hamish, jobless, quite

Prepared for any role, considered work

Inside the Pink House, butling, for the perk

Of food and lodging. But the way that James

Tossed orange peel upon the floor with claims

That Hamish ought to pick it up and thank

James for the privilege the notion sank

And orange peel remained on floor. The sun

Was bright those days and zoning free and fun;

The frisbee flew from hand to hand. At six

AM, returning from a night, for kicks

Young Barold, Hamish, Red and John did lift

A crate of fruit and veg they found – a gift

From MDS, the testing crowd. To steal

Became an interest shared by all. Concealed

Behind the name of Willy Stroker, books

Were got for nothing. Scotcall quickly took

An interest in what debt was owed and sent

A stream of threats in letters. This event

Was followed by the "Robin Books" affair,

Successful too. Nick Diamonds, Robin's heir,

Did try for gems, but did not get. The heist

Preeminent of these was also spiced

The most with fear – of waiting for a chap

To come and read the meter – for the gap

Between the readings was immense; abuse

Of electricity had drawn a noose

Around the necks of all our heroes. Stoves

Were used to heat the kitchen. Many strove

To keep their rooms like jungles. Erwan strolled

Downstairs one morning, then froze icy-cold

When someone knocked upon the door. He signed

To McIlroy to keep away – behind

This fear lay thoughts of all the folk the Pink

House should avoid. This time, they'd been on brink

Of letting in the meter man. Instead,

A card dropped though the door. Upon it read:

"I called today but you weren't in." So N

IE did estimate the bill, and ten

Days later in it came. Astonishment

And glee: a lowly figure did present

To marveling eyes, a tenner each, and not

Ten hundred as the most of us there thought

It ought to be.

What is does oft not match

What ought to be. We run through some bad patch

And so it was for Emmett. Meaning that

The drugs, the job, the girl, he took, begat

Him pain and misery for near a year.

For Tesco is no job, a till cashier,

Through boredom getting stoned at work and home;

Relationships not based on rock but loam

And sinking through the yellow sand, he found

At last some mud to rest on. Badly browned,

Both he and Claire took one month's leave from work

The breakup took a longer time. To lurk

Forever in this though was not his wont

Young Emmett was alright, in time; the gaunt

Look turned to impish. But all that's outside

Our remit. Help came, Lev and Erwan fried

A giant lunch, and talked, and watched Stallone

Destroying helicopters on his own

And when the Big Pink closed all three plus Meabh

Moved to – Dunluce.

The thing that Hamish gave

The final push to leave, is murky; but

It happened on the night a violent brute

Crashed into Levin's car. (MacHill). When once

The dust was settled and the hubcap fronts

Were valued for their use as ash trays – then

Came knocking at the door in state unzen

Young Hamish. Seemingly he'd met some man

Who asked for cup of tea, but whose real plan

Was something else, as Hamish found out. This

Was likely sodomy; he still resists

Attempts to talk about it.

Lev and Neil

And Sheila came to take a certain zeal

For philosophic talk and joined a group

Where logic, metaphysics, moral hoops

And knowledge were discussed. Like having sex

With animals; the question they did vex

Was whether this was always wrong. And Tim

Would argue to the one conclusion grim:

Your point of view entailed that you agreed

That eating babies was a sinless creed.

What can we know for sure? It is obscure

No less because a mist will reassure

Us folk that all is well. For instance when

The bottle opener was thrown again

From out the house. This two-armed screw was flung

Because one always picked it up among

The debris, playing with the arms; and lack

Of will so manifest is like to crack

One up if one keeps at it. It returned

For Barry's leaving party; he discerned

That spending his next year in Oz would be

A better use of time.

The summer, free

Of worry and exams began then, June;

Young Erwan, Sheila, thought it opportune

To visit Greece. The famous Redbeard chose

To celebrate the summer without woes

By drinking cider round Malone. The cars

Were forced to stop as Redbeard in his jars

Took rests upon the bonnets. But no rest

Did Henman take at Wimbledon – his best

Demanded and received; his pluck and dare

Excelling all we'd seen before. The glare

Of so much adulation rattled him

However; all our shouts of "Go on Tim!"

Did not suffice. Indeed it may be why

He lost. But never will his laurels die;

He moved us all to nearly clean the Pink

That June; a task from which most folk would shrink

With coiling liver. Half the rubbish gone;

The toast removed from bath at last; the lawn

Of black mould round the kitchen, that was left

But bracket mushroom from the shower, cleft.

The pizza boxes neatly tucked away

Behind the sofa in the corner. They

Who did this cleaning spent at least some hours

Upon it. Reconfirming that the powers

A landlord has are much too much, they kept

Well over half of our deposits.

Stepped

You into this house now, you'd find nought there:

No folk, no beer, no bongs, the dinnerwares

All dust-filled with the tracks of spiders through

Em. This is Entropy, the hitherto

Unrecognised protagonist. We owe

To it the randomness with which things go

These verses are a paean to it. Yes

Let everyone avow their praise: To Mess!

***

#  FIRST TEXT

Here at the edge of the world, a dark globule hovers; it hangs from the tip of a spoon. This globule contains everything: it contains spit, it contains fibrous residues, it contains resin. Faecal matter swims beneath the dark reflective surface of this world. It contains oil, bath salts, blackberry jam, and boot polish. It holds carcinogens from degraded plastics in its poisonous embrace.

The globe, a sphere, falls, and splashes below.

The globe joins a sea of undulating bubbles in a saucepan on the rim. It is stirred; the spoon descends, shakes it, releases the dirt from sediments on the ocean floor. A cloud rises. The resin, dark and gritty, and the pith of blackberry, with its tight and unmelting particles of jelly, mix and swim. The spoon scrapes along the bottom of the pan. Flakes of aluminium join those particles of dust, unseen and unheard, silver flashes in the dark.

Who cooks this dish? Emmett holds the handle securely. Levin grates with the nutmeg grater. Neil discovers the good of Golden Syrup. Erwan urges that more of this be added. James hovers by the kitchen door whistling tunes. Levin MacHill shakes his head and laughs. Barry tuts: we should drink instead. Hamish smiles, though he himself will not take of this good brew.

The ceremony: the passing of the cups. Each tastes, and each looks nervously on, looking into the excited eyes of others, sipping uncertainly. A smile plays on my lips; it is mirrored in you, my reflection for this moment.

One person takes his final dregs with a hasty tip of the wrist: he gags as the grainy bits of resin stick to his throat. He gives us a hard glare. Chastised, we hurry to finish our cups. All gag and stick out their tongues in revolt.

Then we smile, loaded with the Teo.

EMMETT AND JAMES: a dialogue.

EM. Hi sur, pass us that joint.

James passes the joint.

JMS. Wait a moment.

James withdraws the joint in the act of passing it.

EM. What?

JMS. You haven't answered a question. When is the battle of Hastings?

EM. James...

JMS. What?

EM. James, it's just me and you. So what's the point in asking me a question?

JMS. I can see your little smile!

EM. Fuck up.

JMS. Ok. Here's the joint.

James passes the joint.

EM. Mmm, shredded cheap Marlborough tobacco. The finest smoke known to humanity. Draws like a rusty gate.

Emmett blows a large white cloud out across the room and coughs.

JMS. We travel through passages in life that take us effort to get through, and having passed through the gate, we expire.

EM. How very true. I have never appreciated the poetry of your filthy tobacco.

JMS. No.

James opens his Daily Mirror to the TV pages.

EM. James.

Silence.

EM. James.

James continues, absorbed in his literature.

EM. JAMES!

JMS.Wha?

EM. James, what can the TV pages teach us?

JMS. Well, that's hard to say. I'm not sure.

EM. You seem uncertain.

JMS. I'm not certain about what you're asking me.

Silence for a time.

EM. Hmm. What would it be like if we all spoke in single-letter symbols?

JMS. You mean, if I were to say 'Q' instead of, say, 'Pass me that joint, please?'

EM. Yes.

JMS. Might be more efficient.

Emmett becomes agitated. He bites at his lower lip.

James returns to reading his newspaper.

Emmett is agitated for several minutes.

EM. _[Outburst]_ Jesus! I hate that idea. Does everything have to be more efficient? We lose something important when we compress it to the confines of a symbol.

JMS. You can't do without symbols.

EM. I want reality.

JMS. Q.

Emmett passes him the joint.

EM. Where is reality?

James is uncomfortable; he is silent.

EM. Probably reality is underneath this chair.

JMS. Q.

EM. You've already got it man.

JMS. Negative Q.

Emmett accepts the joint.

EM. We should be expanding our language not restricting it. Or get rid of it altogether.

JMS. You can't get rid of it.

EM. Why?

JMS. It's how you exist. You can't exist without words.

EM. Some people exist without them – chairs, dogs, houses.

JMS. 'Chair' always represents 'chair'. You can't even identify it without a symbol.

EM. That doesn't mean it is the symbol.

JMS. The symbol is the whole of it. Maybe there is no other world because we can't conceive of it.

Emmett becomes unhappy-looking.

EM. I see. I can't name what I desire, because it's the thing that cannot be named.

JMS. No. The thing that cannot be named has a name. So it does not exist.

EM. If I'm silent, am I naming reality?

JMS. Silence is nothingness though.

EM. Fuck.

EMMETT AND JAMES: a dialogue

Act 2

Emmett and James are watching TV. Levin walks into the room.

LEV. Hi dudes. What's happening?

JMS. Watching TV. Were you at class?

LEV. Aye. Train was late. While annoying.

Levin sits down on the sofa beside Emmett.

EM. Want a toke?

LEV. Aye, please.

EM. It's a wee bit of a badboy this one.

JMS. Aye.

EM. Aye.

EMMETT AND JAMES (AND LEVIN): a dialogue

Act 3

Emmett and James are watching TV. Levin walks into the room.

LEV. Yo dogs. What's going on?

JMS. The scum-sucking boiler's broke! I can't believe it.

LEV. Aye, I know. Me and Hamish rang the landlord on Friday night there and told him.

EM. What he say?

LEV. He came round and had a look at it. Then he said, "Aye, that boiler is broke."

JMS. Then what?

LEV. He gave me and Hamish £20 for a bottle of Bush. To keep warm.

EM. Did he? Then what did he do?

LEV. He drove off. In his Jaguar. Me and Hamish went to the off-licence and bought a bottle of Bushmills. And drank it.

JMS. You drank it?

LEV. Aye. Well, some of it was left. We drank that on Saturday and Sunday.

EM. Stocious?

LEV. I wasn't, obviously. But Hamish was pretty pissed.

JMS. Where's my whiskey?

LEV. Ask the landlord.

EM. Aye, ring him James.

JMS. Here, I'll give you my phone and you ring him.

EM. Why?

JMS. I just don't like talking to landlords, all right!

EM. Give me that phone. Hello, Mr Quinn? Hi, it's Emmett here. Emmett, 4 Eglantine. Aye. No, actually, I was just wondering if you knew that our boiler is still broke.

Landlord talks for a long time.

EM. Ok dead on.

JMS. Well?

EM. He says someone'll be round to look at it.

JMS. Are they bringing whiskey?

EM. No. They're coming on Wednesday.

LEV. Man, do you even like whiskey?

JMS. No man. I want what's mine.

EM. Those landlords have some nerve. Coming on Wednesday!

LEV. What day is it today?

EM. Monday!

LEV. Ah, Monday.

A Tale of Monday

(LEVIN GOES FOR A WALK)

Dull day. Dishes in the sink. He rubs his eyes, thinking about how dull this day is. Will he go for a walk? No, he thinks. Well, who knows.

He rubs his eyes again. Oh, the botherdom. Why make the effort to put his breakfast together? He prefers to be free. Free of worry, free of harm. He'd like some breakfast. A packet of cereal is removed from the cupboard. Little tinklets of golduminium foil rattle down into a white ceramic bowl. He takes a round ball of resin from his pocket and crumbles the dope into the cornflakes. This act brings him some pleasure. He burns his thumb with the lighter as he rubs the sphere of dope but he doesn't mind.

Some kind of commotion seems to be brewing upstairs. Levin isn't too concerned. It seems natural that someone else in the house should be getting up. He turns his attention to the bowl. Lots of dope has formed, sitting on the edges of the golden flakes of corn like little turds. Mm, he thinks, tasty. He opens the fridge door and searches a 2L blue-capped bottle of milk. Oh yes, it's in the other fridge.

Out comes the milk and sprinkles on the dopecorn. Oh, how great this will be, how excellent, how good. One mouthful. So this is what dopecorn tastes like. Tastes like bootpolish. Something makes more noise upstairs. He ignores it. Really he ought to have had a cup of coffee ready before now. He takes a mug from his cupboard. The mug is brown; it has a picture of Homer Simpson's yellow bulbous face. Red and brown concentric circles radiate from its centre. He reaches for a jar of instant coffee and spoons two large heaps into his cup.

A steady thumping begins somewhere in the upper confines of the great house. He flicks on the kettle. He trembles in nervous anticipation. The thumping pauses as a door is ripped from its hinges and hurled at a wall. After crashing and splintering come a series of ground-shaking thuds. A pause. The sound of another door being hurled open and then violently shut. A brief and sweet silence.

The kettle, plastic and dirty and grey, hisses and bubbles in a mounting fury. Then it clicks to a quiet ocean of calm. The young man lifts the kettle by the handle and evenly pours the water into the cup. All is still; not a woodlouse can be heard to stir. He takes the spoon resting by the inner wall of the cup and swirls the brown foam, metal making contact with the walls with a pleasant ding, ding, ding...

The sound of a toilet door being unlocked.

The sound of a foot descending with force onto a carpet. The sound of sizzling, crisping and popping as the carpet catches fire. Levin begins to feel ill, knowing what is coming next. Yes. The stairs become the sounding board for a monstrous walking jackhammer. A quick succession house-shaking booms race with developing momentum into the cataclysm of a final twenty-foot leap that (for one moment stretched by dreadful foresight into an eternity) is silent – and then the almighty gods of wind and thunder focus their gigantic energies into a single meteoric impact of devastating fury

BLAAMMMM

The young man in the kitchen feels the ground give under his feet. Only by grabbing hold of the edge of the countertop does he avoid falling to his ass. He secures himself and gets his breath under control. Then, nervously, he returns to his breakfast preparations. He manoeuvres his brimming bowl and cup of coffee to a table by the door.

A final rumble of running feet takes measure of the distance from the hall to the kitchen and hurls a giant body through the door. As the frame explodes into clouds of wood-chipping and sawdust, the yellow choking cloud settles onto the red linoleum floor and the young man sees, as he expected, a burly spiky-haired demon standing there.

'Good morning!' said the demon, a grin upon its face.

'Hi Levin MacHill,' said Levin.

'Up early in the morning, I see.'

Levin eats a spoonful of cereal. Levin MacHill spots the matt brown mouseturds floating in the bowl and catches his breath. Then he shouts, in mischievous terror and unhappy glee:

'Man, are you putting _dope_ into your cornflakes?!'

Let us take a moment to analyse Levin MacHill's feelings.

He shouted mischievously and his mischief was terrified. He was gleeful, but the glee was a two-faced Janus looking into the pits of despair. This is because Levin by his act was altering the norms of civilised society.

It is possible to discover a standard and alter it _._ This makes it more difficult for everyone else to guide themselves by received wisdom. To be accurate though, Levin had not discovered a standard of behaviour but uncovered it by his action. Uncovering a norm or principle forces it from the realm of the automatic into the realm of the deliberate. Some argue this is the same as removing something from the kingdom of dark into the world of light and day.

This has a double meaning in the present context. Cannabis had previously been a creature of the dark, only taken towards day's end. In consequence only those aspects of life were explored that exist in a post-afternoon, evening, or a night-time environment. Night is the traditional time of disorder, the forces of anarchy and of dimness that makes objects merge into one another. They lose their identity. Day is the realm of categories, boxes, sequences, sharply delineated lines. Introducing the essence of night into the realm of day can have only one consequence: explosion.

Levin farts and then burps. 'Ope. Pardon me,' he says, wiping the milk from his mouth. He lays the empty bowl to one side. Rubbing his now quite clear eyes, he looks out the window to the back yard.

Levin MacHill is faintly disturbed and excited by this turn of events. He fidgets as if a bee crawls about beneath his clothes.

'Man, are you really going into class with a load of dope inside you?'

Levin shakes his head. 'No,' he says. 'I am going for a walk.'

Levin exits the house one half-hour later.

'Now, I will boldly go,' he says to himself, 'where I have not gone before.'

He goes down the Lisburn Road.

Such experiences are best obtained in solitude. A day for quiet observation, to see what Belfast is really like. This is what the dope is for: to sharpen the senses, or rather unmask them. What dope does is make your eyes like reading glasses _._

Levin reaches the traffic lights at the junction of Tate's Avenue and on the spur of the moment decides to cross.

He goes down Tates Avenue towards the Village. The road climbs quite high as it arches above the railway line. Levin stands at the zenith; he looks below him. A road on his left passes under the bridge. To his right below him lie the tracks. No sign of a train coming. He decides not to wait. There are other things to do.

Most of the kids are in school. A few continue to roam. Levin wonders whether to continue to the Boucher Road. He looks to the red-brick terraces. There are a few tattered Union flags fixed to flagpoles beneath the windows. This does not make it clearer to him what he should do. Perhaps it tells him to contemplate the porcelain dolls in people's windows.

The Boucher Road doesn't call him. Instead he rises up the Tate again. It is time to go to the very centre of things. Belfast's centre. He wants to know it. Only he can know it, the centre –

– seagulls flapping their wings, old ladies pushing tartan carts, an old terrier barking at cars, the bus rank, the Apartment, City Hall with its green copper roof, great Victoria presiding over the ship-building centre of her Empire, a dour expression, traffic lights across the road to WH Smith on the other side, people of Belfast, alcohol-lined faces, young fresh faces, someone laughing in fear of the unknown, pigeons, restaurants, magnets, arcades, bookshops, Boots, fat moustached civil servants with worried eyes but happy mouths – no doubt the stress of their split existence tearing them apart – a middle-aged woman stops to coo at a baby, the bright glossy magazines and beautiful bodies and desirable wealth, flaunted gold chains, Levin remembers the car, the armoured black Merc with the licence plate, 'UZ1 4U,' that drove past him at the junction by City Hall –

– every moment becomes longer and longer for Levin. He spends twenty minutes inside a corner shop, mesmerised by the arrangement of the sandwiches. Someone stacked all these. Probably that dude behind the counter. He seems to like his job. He makes quickfire comments in his harsh Belfast accent to the customers who come into his shop. Two seconds of interaction compressed into a perfect meeting of minds. So concise. The person behind the counter is a genius – he knows how to elicit a laugh from nothing, from these his people. Levin wishes he could stay here all day watching the people come in and out. Instead he is conspicuous. He looks at the sandwiches again. He becomes at one with this place, this close environment of ordered foodstuffs. The miscellanae of objects absorbs him. Why does this place sell, on a simple swivel stand, the paraphernalia required to launch a party from start to finish? Birthday candles; toothpicks; balloons; nail files. Nail files? Why would you file your nails –? Ah, to make sure your nails look good before the party. It seems remarkable to Levin that someone would put that degree of attention into the tips of their fingers. It seems to Levin that he is missing something. He is seeing details only. There is something above and beyond it that he is not accessing. Ah! It is that the world is Art and can be thus contemplated. Levin has studied History of Art and knows something of the way to interpret things by this light. So, the nail file symbolises violence. A dominant theme of sharpness, in the way the woman files her nails into a point using an implement that can itself be used to stab or wound. The nails express danger, the ability to wound. But in fact the danger is false: the nails are ineffective, a hindrance. So is the nail file. Levin has accessed an entire world of oppression in an instant. The Shakespearian trope of false women – it reveals so much. False not because women are naturally false but because women are subjugated and it is not the nature of a human to be kept in a lower place. The natural state is one of equality; when that equality is denied, a false state exists. That falsity manifests in so many ways: covering up, making up, the Christian ideal of the Virgin who gave birth, suffering the violence of childbirth routinely, being a weaker sex, bitching, insecurity, fidelity, the taboo of the word 'cunt.' The list is endless; Levin explores it for eternity. Then he is conscious again. He has discovered so much in so little time. Is it obvious to others how much he now knows? It seems to him that the shopkeeper has become hostile. How can this be? The shopkeeper is not smiling, he is counting the change in his till box. The counting seems violent; the coins clash in the drawer. Levin senses that the man wishes him to leave. Levin feels obliged to buy a Mars bar or something, but simultaneously that feels like a wrong act. Human relationships should not exist on a commercial basis. Levin believes that if he leaves the shop by looking the man in the eye and saying, in a friendly way, 'goodbye,' then the shopkeeper will understand what Levin means, and cease to hold his wrong beliefs. Levin approaches the counter, which borders the exit. The man is still counting his change. 'Goodbye,' says Levin. The man glances up and says something incomprehensible to Levin. Levin stalls, suddenly anxious. Did the man say something harsh, or was it meant to be a friendly goodbye, and if the latter was it sincere? He waits for a moment to see if he can get more information. It was harsh, he knows it. How could it not be, surrounded by these symbols of oppression, the hard steel till box, the window covered in private advertisements? Death: that is what Levin fears most. This man, surrounded by cigarettes, the symbols of death. 'Can I have a packet of Drum... mild and large Swan... papers please?' asks Levin. Did I finish that sentence? he asks himself by way of interior monologue. The man is displeased; he turns to get the products. I have reminded him of the symbols of oppression, thinks Levin. He is looking for the Drum mild. Levin can see it, but the shopkeeper doesn't seem to be able to find it. The length of time it is taking the man to find the tobacco and the hostility... 'Golden... Virginia... will do,' Levin gasps. The man glances at Levin. He returns to finding the tobacco. I have interrupted his process. What seems like a long time to me is only instants for him. People's minds work at different speeds. Processes all work in different ways. Maybe he doesn't like people who are stoned. Similarity. The basis for everything we do. Searching is a process based on similarity: having a mental model of the object being hunted. Levin realises that the man hunting for the Drum mild/Golden Virginia doesn't know that it is rolling tobacco. The man is new at his job. He looked as if he knew what he was doing, but in fact does not: and the two compressed seconds of greeting, are born of adrenaline, fear that he will reveal his incompetence. It is all a show or charade. He is stalling, trying to find the packet, looking in the wrong place because he hasn't yet been asked for a packet of rolling tobacco. Levin will not say to the man that he is looking in the wrong place: that would humiliate him. It would make him aware that Levin knew that he was new and that his attempts at disguise were futile. The man continues to look at the shelf. Levin walks out of the shop without a sound. This is the most effective way of leaving the situation with everyone's self-esteem intact. Levin enters the bright light of day and feels ecstatic. What an amazing world this is. Look at the upper levels of the buildings. Belfast is a beautiful place, when you look above street level. Beautiful architecture. Some great 1920s stuff. He thinks of telling Meabh of this; she will know what he speaks of. He decides to wander down all the avenues in the city centre to look at the buildings.

He begins down a side street. There appear five young men at the other end. Levin wonders: what is their motivation? Perhaps they are friendly and wish to get to know Levin. There is a small risk that they would like to beat Levin into blood and shards of bone, so Levin begins to feel dread. However he keeps his dread under control. He has entire control over his mind. He understands how to deal with this situation. He observes their walk and adopts an expression of complete boredom. He walks like them as they walk towards him. They are boisterous and noisy, so Levin adopts a swagger. He opens his arms out wider and looks at them coming. Passing, they look at him with standard indifference. He says, 'all right?' They ignore him. Levin smiles to himself as they walk away behind him. He knows he doesn't have to look back, they won't be returning to brain him. He has mastery of the concrete jungle, because he understands it. He feels elated at his control of his environment. He has control of his mind; he doesn't look around, although he can hear them talking about him. He hears them say: that long-haired guy. He thinks he did. It is all right, I am nearly at the end of the alley, he thinks. That long-haired guy. What would they have against him? He didn't do anything to them. Unless they think that saying 'all right' was an insult. He slows his walk on purpose, to show them by his pace that he is confident. But perhaps they have ways he can't imagine of telling confidence from fear. No, they are gone. He turns right round and watches their departure from the alley. He stands full square in the middle, hands on hips. So they have left the alley. He can return up the alley or stay here, or go on in the direction he was going. He revels in the freedom. He's never been here before. He can go anywhere and do anything. He continues down the alley, looking at some broken paving stones. What broke them? It seems so weird that the repetitive impact of footsteps could have that effect. Or rain, or cold weather. He knows why people avoid the cracks: they symbolise death, the attrition and demolition that wears everything away. People avoid death in every shape or form. The survival instinct, thinks Levin, is probably stronger than the sex instinct. He observes his instincts at play in his mind, trying to get his attention, like little children. Then he collapses into his instincts, overwhelmed by them. Food. Shelter. Safety. Companionship. Then he escapes his total immersion in his instincts. Wow. He breathes as if he has just surfaced from deep water. What was that, he wonders. I was, in those few moments, looking at myself as I really am. He feels elated by the journey. Yes, this is good gear. It is great gear. The thought of the greatness of the gear fills him with even greater giddiness. He is higher than the blue between the clouds. Then he descends again like a parachutist, slowly and in control. Ok. Back to Belfast. Landing. He is in the alleyway. Careful, walk gingerly. Yes. One step at a time. Now, good... what? Where was I? I had an intention. What happened to it? My intention is lost. I must find it, in these streets. Who...? Oh. Ha ha ha! Oh no, danger. Get out. Tramp there, doing something strange with his feet. His repetitive tic-tac-toc. He's doing this repetitive thing to avoid thinking about something. Something in his life brought him too close to thoughts of death and that drove him to this. Tic-tac-toc. Now he does the same thing over and over and over and over... Tic-tac-toc. I've got... to get... out of here. Got to get back home. Get a snickers, eat it on way, will make me happy. Oh, now legs, we shall cooperate and do this thing together.

DIAGNOSING MURDER

His white mop of hair represents the clean purity of his profession. The hard-working man, his face lined with the shared sufferings of his too impoverished and diseased patients, many of whom he treats _pro bonum_ and favours above his own paying clients, watches with breaking heart as the inoperable cancer eats the old dear man, looks on with pity as the diabetic woman fades into the shadows. He buries his face in his gnarled and ancient hands, unhappy mind ringing with the suffering he witnesses relentlessly.

Unable to face the stark fragility of life, he becomes determined to find some means to lift the spirits of the nation, and yes, to laugh in the face of the ogre of death and disease! He takes to smoking cigars, puffing and laughing with happiness. This wisdom transfers itself so simply and easily to _diagnosing murder_ that one would think, were it not for the shear grace and indeniability of his diagnoses, that his patients would suffer from neglect. In fact not so. He diagnoses each and every case. When the murderer is behind bars, he takes a standard scalpel and excises the offending disease and then leaps and clicks his heels in the air.

For unknown reasons the hero of this latter series became known as Doctor Shlong to Big Pinkians. Other obscure things happened in that house that we should narrate in the fullness of time. But they shall not become less obscure for the telling.

A History of The Big Pink

This is where we ought to have begun, at the start of the saga, not somewhere in between.

Well. The story begins with Levin and Hamish walking into the Big Pink. Walking up the steps, they observe its vivid green windowsills, they note the tasteful pink chosen to complement the green. Levin acknowledges how imposing the façade is. He can make no other immediate comment because time presses. Hamish first and Levin next as they step past the threshold.

Neil Steed is in the kitchen. He comes out, having spotted these two newcomers.

'Ah!' he says, raising his hands. ' _Ach, welcomen, welcomen! Das ist mine abode_!'

The two young men take a step back, unprepared for this. Hamish is the second to rally.

'Aye,' he says, taking a glance round as if sizing up the situation.

Neil pauses and wonders. Something in Hamish' manner makes Neil want to have a cup of tea. He has a strong desire – in fact, he can't resist. His fingers twitch. There seems to be some niggling, unworthy question – does he like tea? Not usually. He moves back into the kitchen, feels puzzled, and flicks down the switch of the kettle.

Neil looks down the dark hallway at the two chaps.

'Would you like a cup of tea?' he asks.

Hamish gives a grunt and a slight, childish smile. He walks down the hall towards Neil. Levin follows, casting an eye up the stairs as he passes and at the closed livingroom door on his right.

Hamish, standing at the kitchen table, and Levin, leaning against the doorframe, wait for the kettle to boil. Neil introduces himself.

'I am Neil,' he says, extending his hand.

Levin glances at his hand and shakes it.

'Hello,' Levin says in a polite, speaking-to-strangers manner. 'I'm Levin. This is Hamish.'

Hamish nods and says 'Hi.'

Neil nods agreeably and observes these two gentlemen, alert to what they might say or do. The kettle boils but Neil, immersed in his observations, waits a second or two, and then snaps to attention.

'Ah!' he says, moving round and facing the kettle. He side-shuffles to a cupboard, opens it and takes down two cups. He sneaks a third cup out of someone else's cupboard.

'Tea or coffee?' he says.

Again Neil is momentarily confused, but rallies. Surely nothing is odd about this situation, he feels.

He makes coffee for himself and Levin; tea for Hamish.

'Milk and no sugar,' Hamish says to save Neil the effort of asking.

Neil nods and obeys happily. For some reason a great load lifts from him, he feels better. He takes Levin's cup and he takes Hamish' cup and passes them to the two gentlemen.

Suddenly he clicks his fingers, as if remembering something.

'The landlord will be coming round to see you! Of course. If you don't mind getting rid of those dishes, just put them in the sink, don't wash them, I need to pop upstairs to my room for a moment.'

In two leaps Neil's long legs take him from the kitchen to the stairs. He vanishes. Levin walks and Hamish shuffles over to the two sinks. They place the modest stack of dirty dishes where they cannot be seen.

This done, they cast an eye around the kitchen. Levin takes a look through the window at the back yard. There is a mo-ped outside with a plastic sheet over it.

Levin turns to Hamish, who is leaning against the kitchen table in the corner. His two hands are wrapped around his tea and he sips it. Hamish seems to Levin as having entered his element. This immediately reassures Levin that all is well with this house. Levin relaxes. He lifts his own coffee, sips it, and smacks his lips in appreciation. Coffee is good.

Hamish looks at Neil's cup, forlorn on the countertop, and says 'He forgot his. What a waste.'

Levin quickly finishes his cup of coffee and begins on Neil's. 'Ah, brilliant,' he says.

They are mooching around the kitchen, talking about maybe checking out the city centre this afternoon. The front door is open. Levin sees the middle-aged man in the pale suit before he sees Levin.

The guy wraps the door sharply three times. He peers down the gloomy hall and spots Hamish and Levin in the kitchen, or perhaps he misses them. He calls down the corridor:

'Hello! Peter Quinn here!'

Levin asks Hamish in consultation: 'That the landlord, isn't it.'

'Aye,' says Hamish, and sips his tea, in no rush.

The landlord steps inside as if he owns the place. Just at that moment Neil is coming down the stairs.

'Ah, Mr Quinn,' he says.

'Hello, Niall,' says Quinn. 'I'm here to meet two fellows who're moving in today.'

'Yep,' says Neil, and glances down the hallway at Levin and Hamish. 'They're just there,' he says, pointing. Neil walks into the livingroom and closes the door behind him.

Quinn squints down the hallway and walks into the kitchen.

'Hello lads,' he says, taking a few sheets from a briefcase-come-bag. It's the lease. He puts it on the countertop and casts an appraising eye at our two heroes.

'So you are?' he asks Levin.

'Levin McCochall,' says Levin. He says it politely, as ever, but the slimy cockheadedness of the man makes Levin want to quite dislike him.

'Levin, McCochall,' repeats Quinn. He looks at Hamish, who says,

'Hamish Carlin.'

The slimebag – as Levin identifies him – shakes both their hands and expresses the hope that they'll both like the house. But his tone does not suggest that he cares. He runs through the things that they can and can't do, which boil down to keeping the place in good order and paying the rent on time. He pats his pockets and locates a Parker pen.

'Now this,' he says, 'is the lease. You can read it if you want, but just initial each page and sign at the end. That's for a year's lease, up on September 2002. Now this is from the first of September,' he adds, in a tone that is slightly hostile.

'Yeah,' they respond.

Levin takes his lease and studies it intensely as if hoping to find some intolerable clause to challenge Quinn on. But the document is unreadable bullshit so he just initials it and signs it and hands it back to the man. Hamish does the same. They also give over £150 for the deposit and £150 for September's rent. Quinn says he'll collect October's on the first of October.

'Very good,' says Quinn. 'You two studying up here?'

'Yes,' say Levin and Hamish.

'Good. All right, that's that, I'll see you on the first of October. Any problems you have my number,' and by that point his voice is trailing off down the stairs.

He didn't bother to close the door, observes Levin.

Levin walks up the hallway and slams closed the front door and then pauses. He glances up the stairwell, and looks at the closed door of the livingroom. Then he opens it and walks inside.

That's how the story starts. In the livingroom Levin and Hamish find Neil, who they know, and Emmett, whom they know well, and also James, who they have both met once before. They sit down on one of the sofas and James and Emmett introduce them to the wonderful game of Worms.

The next day occurred the event of two planes being driven into the World Trade Centre. Another plane crashed into the Pentagon.

The day after that there was the first major drinking session of many drinking sessions, although, as time passed and cannabis became the drug of choice for most of the denizens, drinking sessions became marginally less common.

A STORY ABOUT BEER

On this first drinking session there was no cannabis. Nevertheless there was beer, wine, vodka, maybe a little cranberry juice, several packets of sweets, crisps and a messy kebab from Esperantos round the corner. Barry, Hamish, Emmett and James went to the off-licence.

The off-licence was just south of Tate's Avenue on the Lisburn Road. It was a pokey place, small for a place that served such a large community. The main way the proprietor overcame this problem was to pile beer ceiling high – it was a low ceiling – in boxes of twenty-four and let the incomers lift their Carlsberg or Guinness or Harp or Tennants. They then circled round the stack towards the counter. Occasionally there were more obscure beers on offer along the walls, amongst which was one entitled _Michelobb_. It became a great staple drink of the Pinkonians. For now the four contented themselves with regular Carlsberg and Harp.

They got back to the house. Neil Steed and Levin MacHill were chatting on opposite sofas. The livingroom, Barry noted once again, was a large one. Big enough to contain many crates, parties and whiskey bottles. Strong enough to hold out during massive protracted speaking-for-hours-on-end with good folks in lengthy and very happiness-inducing session. This would do, he judged, for his last year at university. Study, hard study, and much booze, both, mixed in quantities that only a properly focused individual could handle. He cracked open a bottle with an opener that lay on top of the TV. The filthy beer foamed up and Barry, eyes lighting, quickly slurped the open top to stop the precious liquid dripping on the floor.

Levin McCochall entered the room. There was a moment of muted conversation as if the piano player had ceased to patter. Barry, unaware that within hours he and Levin would be facing shotgun at each other, looked at the stranger carefully. Levin sauntered over to an empty armchair and slouched down into it. There was a free-wheeling demeanour to the kid of which Barry could only approve.

Crumpled cans and the tabs of refreshed Heineken and several Carlsberg bubbled forth with a click and histle while submerged sentences weaved in a cacophonous tapestry of wild dogs hunting termites and scholarly Chopin argonauts. This was what Barry liked to hear. Words and phrases buzzed like flies around the corpse of some slain animal. The first flushes of conversation were always the best, the mixed sense of alcohol and freedom which stimulated the mind into a not altogether fearful symmetry. Barry liked the way they _spoke_ and _listened_ to each other, as if there were a real meshing and melding, though the garbage used to interlace the meeting was unremarkable to say the least. Yes, spiky sympathy skewered them on the same roast.

At some point in the evening there somehow came to be a challenge. The precise origin was hazy; it was probably inherently hazy, like Quine's doctrine of indeterminacy. The challenge came before Barry Mitchell and Levin McCochall. It no doubt developed during the course of conversation, growing organically like a tree. Since they were drinking much beer. Probably Barry was recounting to Levin a mode of drinking that Levin had not encountered before. Levin had (and still has) a fascination with formal methods of doing things, outlandish practices and imaginative activities. As soon as Barry outlined the method, which we will describe shortly, Levin wanted to try it. Barry went to the kitchen and courtesy of Levin MacHill sourced two shot glasses. And an accurate watch.

'This watch has a second hand.' He showed Levin.

Levin took the watch and examined it. 'Yep.'

'Are you sure you want to do this? It could end with either of us as limpid as squashed toads on a road.'

Levin gave him a withering look.

'Ok, let's do it.'

They drank beer.

On the 61st minute Levin began to feel distinctly queasy and stopped.

'Jesus,' he said. 'How long is this supposed to go on for?'

Barry shrugged. 'I don't know.'

Levin stuck out his tongue and rubbed his bloated belly. 'It's the amount of liquid – the beer isn't the difficulty, it's the friggin' volume,' he complained. In truth his flushed face gave him away: he was not suffering just from an excess of intake-ache-ation, but also from acute intoxication. Further: the curve had just begun.

'How much, do you reckon?'

Levin, without changing his prostate position on the armchair, rubbed his belly, raised an arm and gingerly lifted one of the Harp bottles. He cast an eye over the label.

'Uhh. 330mls.'

Barry checked the shot glasses. He made a rough estimate of their probable carrying capacity. It seemed to him most likely to be 50 mls.

'If that's 50 mls and the bottle is 330 mls...' There is a reason that people don't do mental arithmetic drunk: you can't be assed. '330 mls... six, or seven. Shots in a bottle. 60 shots...'

'Naw. We missed a whole pile out.'

'Mm. What then, 40?'

'Aye... probably.'

'That's about... 40, about six bottles.'

'Six bottle in one hour?' asked Emmett.

'Aye,' confirmed Barry.

Levin winced and grimaced. There seemed to be some evil competition going on inside his body. A vicious struggle between the forces of alcohol and sobriety. Or so it seemed to Barry. Barry observed the tell-tale signs, the independent rotation of the visual orbs, the spotted red of the cheeks, the insensitive blaring and honking of the music. The latter was also a symptom.

James came over to look. Had he known Levin better at this point he may have pestered him continuously for the next forty minutes until Levin became pathological. As it was James confined himself to saying that Levin was _fucked_ – fucked indeed. Levin gave the fellow a two-fingered salute.

'I'm goin' for a piss. Don't no-one take my seat while I'm gone,' Levin said.

Barry got to the chair first. Emmett had anticipated this and made a lunge but Barry pushed him aside. Emmett sunk his teeth into the armchair in defiance.

'Fuck you!' he said.

'How the glorious victors in battle do boast,' said Barry, boasting and laughing.

Levin stood at the door, giving the pair a look of pain and disgust. He left the room without any further comment.

'Levin looked wounded,' James observed.

'His liver is wounded,' said Barry.

Emmett nodded. He glanced about the room with a look of pain. He shielded his eyes from the glare of the naked bulb.

'Time to sort this situation out,' he said.

Emmett switched on a lamp in the corner in preference to the hundred watts from the ceiling.

Empty beer cans and bottles lay strewn across the floor. Videos spilt from the space beneath the TV. Several crumpled 1L cartons of orange squeezed out from behind the sofa. The remains of an Esperanto kebab languished in a yellow polystyrene box, and a fork was jabbed into it, like a fork jabbed into the side of society. An ashtray mounted hill-like with James' cigarettes occupied the armrest of a chair. Clothes – coats and jumpers – lay scattered in hapless irregularity. The people themselves lay in just as slovenly a state, nattering and chatting about things that hardly lay within the realm of human ken.

The people themselves, I say, occupied all the available seating space with extended limbs and languorous, intoxicated eyes. Neil Steed sat talking to Levin MacHill on the sofa next to the door. Emmett, James and Hamish debated the fortunes of football teams in the English Premier League. Barry, like a hawk on a high perch, appraised the world, taking in a glance every gesture and motion of the people in the room. He caught a word of Neil's discourse with MacHill and lurched himself over there.

Half an hour later Levin staggered back in.

Barry looked up, surprised. 'I thought you'd gone to bed,' he said.

Levin rolled his eyes and shook his head. He walked to his armchair, vacant since Barry had joined Neil and MacHill on the sofa. Flopping into it he stared at everyone with something like malevolent content.

Led Zep were on the stereo. Emmett kept them going by playing air guitar. 'Where were you dude?' he asked, after a magnificent solo.

'Kitchen,' he said.

Levin picked up the shot glass from the low table beside him where it remained after the recent exercise. He absent-mindedly turned it in his fingers, only seeming to notice it when it fell with a clatter.

Barry observed all this with interest: the arched eyebrows above the tired eyes, the tapping, hesitant fingers on the armrest, the faint look of disappointment curling the lips that belied a fierce probing spirit locked within. Barry thought it likely something might happen.

Emmett got up and put some other music on the stereo. Neil Young's clear voice came through the speakers.

Hello cowgirl in the sand,

(Hello cowgirl in the sand)

Levin took the shot glass in his hand again. He looked up at Barry and nodded significantly at the small tumbler.

Barry stroked an invisible beard and bobbed his own head back.

'You up for it sir?' asked Levin.

Barry rose from the sofa and left the room.

Is this place at your command?

Hamish looked at Levin with some amusement. 'You goin' to keep on with the shots?'

Levin seemed bemused. 'That was my plan, before Barry left the room.'

Emmett and James were in an entirely separate zone. 'There's something about Neil Young that's indefinably excellent,' said Emmett.

'He's all right,' said James.

Can I stay here for a while?

Can I see your sweet sweet smile?

Barry came slamming through the livingroom door again with his arms full of Harp bottles from the fridge.

'All right!' said Levin.

Barry plonked them down on the small table beside the armchair.

'Every three minutes this time. See if we can get up to a hundred.'

'Naw,' said Levin with a severe frown; 'every minute. Or nothing.'

'Naw man. Every three minutes. One minute's too fast; it's meant to be every three minutes.'

Levin was adamant. 'No. Every minute. That's the only way – one every minute.'

Barry shook his head. 'No, man. One every three minutes. That's it.'

Old enough now to change your name

'Ok,' said Levin.

'Good,' said Barry.

When so many love you, is it the same?

Barry laid out the shots and used the same timekeeper as before. The thin hand reached zero.

'Right, drink,' he said.

It's the woman in you that makes you want to play this game.

Barry and Levin drank, with only two brief pauses, for the next two and a half hours. They almost certainly reached one hundred shots, if the previous forty are counted. They got trollied.

ERWAN MOVES TO THE HALLS

Halls of Residence. Where people live. What do people do there? Twelve weeks of term, home again; then three weeks of exams and another fifteen weeks of term and home again. That is life in the Halls of Residence. People come and people go. Erwan came and went quite frequently. He went with more enthusiasm than he returned, never feeling quite that the halls held any attachment for him. He preferred the Pink House. That comes later.

He moved in on the twentieth September of that fateful year, 2001. It was sadly not as Clark/Kubrick imagined it. There were fewer encounters with extraordinary aliens. This taught Erwan a valuable lesson: you have to make your own entertainment.

He brought stuff up with him. A guitar, electric, and an amp, 15W. Posters (Itchy and Scratchy, and one of Homer). An Apple desktop with TV card insert and monitor. Clothes, other shit. As he sat talking to his mother he felt consumed by two dominant emotions. One was a desire that she just go and let him get on with it; impatience. The other was fear and terror. Perhaps it was like the Space Odyssey after all.

His mother said to him, 'So you'll be all right here, for the year?'

'Yes of course I will,' he said, feeling chafed and threatened.

Really he didn't listen to a word, and nor she to his words; but when they separated (and he was left alone in his room) he felt the tearing wrench as his entire past existence was ripped from him. He had no personality left. No possessions. Everything was left behind in Portstewart: the (few) people he knew; the buildings he liked; his mother, his father, his brothers, his sister. His destiny was his own. He lacked inspiration what to do with it.

All right, he thought, and stuck on the computer and idled ten minutes while it took the thing to load.

Right, I'll read some philosophy.

It was Erwan's plan to devote his energies to becoming the greatest philosopher of all time. This suggests he was confident: no, he had doubts that he was that great philosopher. Nevertheless he was certain he had chosen the right course. If any study was important, then the study of what was important and why was the most important. Otherwise we wouldn't know whether what we were doing was really important or not. But just to hedge his bets he was going to do a module in physics as well. It looked exciting. Special relativity was amongst the topics of study.

He read through some of the lecture notes he'd downloaded from the lecturers' websites.

At 6pm it was time to go for dinner.

Advancing down a hill, in that way that is slightly painful to the shins, he turned a corner into the Halls of Residence dining hall. He was faced with a long glass-sided corridor. People were walking down it in groups of two or three. He thought it probable they were seeking dinner like him, so he followed.

He took a tray like the others and selected a sloppy bolognaise for his main. Blancmange for dessert. Neither looked good but Erwan wasn't particularly concerned about food quality. As long as he didn't have to cook. He intended to eat as much as physically possible at breakfast and dinner. The less of his spare money he spent on food the more money he would have left over. Erwan was aware of the inverse relationship between the amount of money spent on stuff and the amount of free time available to read, study and enjoy life. The link was work. Employment was a beast Erwan was determined to avoid or even slay. It ruined a person's life, especially of a devotee of learning.

Hunger! Time to eat. He gobbled down the spaghetti greedily and then attempted the blancmange. It was inedible so he finished it only with great effort. He sat back. Well, he thought, here I am. He took a brief look about him. Students sitting in groups or else alone, eating. He wondered what the point of it all was. That's what I am here to find out.

Later in the week (after failing a driving test, taken rather inconveniently at the same time as his first scheduled philosophy class) he went to an automated telling machine. The device gave him £20 on command. He lost it on the way home. Where did my £20 go?! Feelings of grief and inadequacy. Also fear and self-doubt. It was possible, for all Erwan knew, that the £20 had been stolen from him. After all, it was the city, were crime was reported to exist at higher levels than in towns. Some enterprising pick-pocket had perhaps pilfered the note when the opportunity (Erwan stuffing it in his pocket) arose. It was possible. Erwan decided that a rational response was implementing more secure mechanisms of withdrawal; such as putting notes in his wallet and taking tenners at a time.

The problem of loose money was resolved. He did not think he would experience this difficulty a second time. Something beyond his control happened earlier that week though. It was a fire alarm. This went off at approximately 3.30 of the morning of the twenty-first September. Yuck, he thought. What the hell is going on? My attempts to stay in bed appear to be futile. The noise is physically impossible to withstand. Nevertheless I will attempt to stay in bed. No, I can't. Right, got to get up. So dark, where are my clothes? Where is my light? Where is the doorway? Jesus, what a racket. Right, out the door since I've located it. Fuck! The noise is even worse out here! Ok, down this corridor, to the stairs, got it. Shitloads of people on the stairs. Can I even get onto this stairwell? I'll try. Ok, I'm submerged in a tide of rapidly descending individuals. I'm one. Down, down, two flights, noise isn't so bad here, out the stairwell, through the livingroom area on the ground floor, out the livingroom area, past an alarm that is sounding ear-splittingly to my left, and out. Fucking hell. What time is it? 3.30am. Fuck me. How long will this take? I should have taken my notebooks, they could go on fire. A loss to posterity. As well as to myself. The halls burn down on my first night here, not expected. Who's shouting at me? They can't tell how utterly tired I am. Jesus, we've got to go somewhere else? Right I'll just follow these guys. I'll be fucked tomorrow. Got a ten a.m. class to go to. Maybe skip it. No, Erwan, don't, be disciplined. Well, let's do a quick calculation. I can probably learn everything I would learn from the lecture in a book. Or maybe not. All right, I'll see tomorrow morning. So they are crowding us into this corridor that leads to the dining room. Suits me, might be less chilly. We're spending the night here then. Looking around I don't see any indication that anyone knows what the fuck is going on. I like those guys who are on their own shivering and miserable. I hate those guys who are in groups laughing about this. They probably set the alarm off in the first place. I'll kill them. There's a few pretty girls. I wonder if I could get to know them? Oh, there's the fire engines coming down.

The fire engines arrived and weary firemen scowled at their time being wasted yet again in the first of a long series of year-long useless call-outs to the Elms Village. Erwan and the other students crowded back in fifteen minutes later. The fire engines drove off with blue lights circling. Bleary students hardly knew how to move off the road to let them through. This is halls life, thought Erwan. For some reason he was cheered by the incident.

Later in the week he met an old school mate, Daniel, for a game of snooker. He phoned his parents every night for a week. Then he met Emmett.

'Emmett! How are ye?'

'Ach! Not so bad sir. How are ye?'

'Doing all right. Just moved into halls. Started class. Good to bump into you.'

'Cool! So how's the philosophy?'

Erwan told him how the philosophy was. Emmett told Erwan that he should call over to the house. He gave precise instructions: pink; at the end of an avenue; opposite a big church with noisy bells.

'Cool!' said Erwan. 'I'll call over in a few days.'

He did.

***

#  SECOND TEXT

A Dialogue between LEVIN, EMMETT, JAMES and ERWAN

Act 4

Emmett and James are watching TV. Levin walks into the room.

LEV. Hello.

Erwan walks into the room.

ERW. Yo.

JMS. Mr Erwan. Mr Levin. Smoke?

Erwan takes the joint and draws on it.

EMT. Where have you gentlemen come from?

LEV. The gardens.

EMT. I heard you were there last week.

LEV. Aye. Us and Levin MacHill.

ERW. We discovered the land of Narnia.

A pause.

EMT. Eh?

ERW. Yes. We were traversing the gardens and suddenly we came across a place we'd never been before. Out of nowhere.

JMS. Had tea been taken?

ERW. Yes.

EMT. What was that mysterious place like?

LEV. It's still there. You can visit it yourself.

EMT. I'd like to hear about it anyway.

ERW. There are bridges over a stream, and sandy paths that lead in and out of it, bushes with trees from the main open area of the gardens.

JMS. Speaking goats?

ERW. No.

JMS. Speaking birds?

ERW. Birds, but no speaking birds, no.

JMS. Speaking –

ERW. No.

LEV. No speech.

EMT. Speech is fabrication.

LEV. That's not the kind of thing you say, Emmett.

EMT. I've not been myself recently. Annoyed – I've seen this house, mess day after day. When I try to get people to talk about it everyone buggers off. No-one can stand the stinking mess of the place but it keeps on building up. And now this problem of speech comes up. It's too much.

LEV. It's not.

EMT. I speak metaphorically.

LEV. Lying you mean.

ERW. That's what metaphors are – lies, aren't they?

EMT. That's what all speech is – metaphors. Hence my point.

JMS. I don't know what you're talking about but doesn't that mean we're all liars?

EMT. No. It means we're all similes.

JMS. What?

EMT. We're all like something else. But nothing is the real thing. That's why no-one wanted to clean the house, even though everyone wanted a clean house. It's because we're all like people who would like a clean house, but no-one _is_ that person. And so the house clutters up, the crap on the floors covers up the floor so you can't see it any more. And then I come down the stairs and I say, Let's clean the place up, because it's just too much! And no-one does. Until today. That's why I'm happy. But beneath my happiness lurks a curious rage.

JMS. Why curious?

EMT. For good reason.

LEV. Why rage?

EMT. No. I was just lying!

All laugh.

EMT. Fancy a jam?

ERW. Good.

WEDNESDAY

On Thursday Levin, Erwan and Levin MacHill visited the Botanic Gardens and discovered the fabled land of Narnia. It was a constant feature of the Gardens which in their ignorance they had simply never noticed before. Of course, the gentlemen didn't truly believe they were in Narnia. It was simply an enjoyable simile or metaphor.

On the very same day and same time that Levin, Erwan and Levin MacHill were behaving oddly Emmett was seething. He had become irate with the poor condition of the house. Things had descended into hazard. No responsibility was taken, viz dirty dishes, clean them, lift socks, crisp bags, take sleeping bags upstairs, video tapes slid all the way across floor, empty bin, mop, congealed milk, remove the fridge. Emmett called a house meeting but no-one attended. The two Levins were spirited away to a different place. James Hendry briefly flitted in but went upstairs to watch the football. Neil chatted pleasantly to Barry in the livingroom while the afternoon sun slanted through the venetian blinds. Hamish was nowhere to be seen. He was playing football. Emmett rented his shirt. He cursed them.

On Friday, having spent most of the previous day stoned, Erwan remained in the Halls, except for class and a trip to First Trust to pay student fees. (£538 and rent of £682.22.) In the Pink House people watched Star Trek TNG. Barry made crude suggestions on Counsellor Troy.

On Sunday those Pinkonians who had hangovers nursed them, while those who didn't spent the quiet day doing nought. Later that evening Erwan came home to Belfast – he'd spent the weekend in the Port. Brought he with him the disc entitled 'Songs of Rare Excellence.' This was compilation of no little musical value. This gift he presented to the denizens of the Big Pink in return for food, shelter and many nights of strange festivity. Emmett took the CD on behalf of the others.

That same night (10th February 2002) Erwan brought up three videos of _The Simpsons_ , a French/English dictionary, and he cut his hair.

MONDAY

Erwan saw Emmett approach the doors at the base of Alanbrooke Hall. His room was situated directly above the entrance.

He flung open his window.

'Hey, Emmett!' he shouted.

Emmett looked up and waved.

'Is the door open for you?' asked Erwan.

'Hold on I'll see. Yes. What floor are you?'

'Two. Room ten.'

'Ok, see you in a minute.'

Erwan waited like a mollusc curled into its shell. A knock came on the door. Erwan sprang out and Emmett cheerily greeted him.

'Come in, come in,' said Erwan, eager to make his guest feel at home. He offered Emmett the cushioned chair. Erwan sat on the bed.

Emmett cast a look round and approved of what he saw: Itchy and Scratchy posters, a Beatles poster, the cover of Cream's 'Wheels of Fire' double album.

'Very nice!' he said, nodding.

Erwan shrugged. 'Yeah, I guess. I don't like it all that much. The rooms are a bit soulless. I can't store milk in the fridge without someone stealing it.'

'Bastards.'

'Yeah, bastards!'

They grinned at each other.

Emmett stretched his legs, adjusted his seat, swallowed, looked about the room, and then looked back at Erwan.

'Yeah, nice room,' he said. 'Seems odd I haven't visited you up here before.'

'Well, the Big Pink has more going on, doesn't it?'

'Am I the first to visit?'

'You have that privilege.'

Erwan, like many of his generation, had inherited a weird instinct about hosting. He never felt himself when he invited people into his home, whether that was his folk's home or this little room in the Halls. There was always this feeling, like a door jarring that wouldn't be budged. He started worrying about his hostly duties, uncertain what they might be. He felt a strange urge to keep offering things and give the visitor a grand tour. In this room there was not much to see; everything was already visible from where Emmett was sitting.

'Want a cup of tea? I mean, normal tea. Although I do also have some of Dessie's finest dogshit if you care to partake.'

Emmett indicated neither yes nor no. He said: 'I thought you couldn't smoke in here. Doesn't it set off the alarms?'

'Hm. Oftentimes yes. Burnt toast – or even making your tea too strong – can set this alarm off. There's a rumour that it won't detect dope but I haven't tried it out.'

'Do you smoke in here?'

'Every now and then.'

'How?'

'Ah ha!' said Erwan. He now felt a trifle embarrassed and proud. 'Well, I made myself a pipe.'

'You made yourself one? Class!'

'Yeah.' Erwan was now very embarrassed, but he enjoyed the sensation. 'Yep. Here it is, my magnificent creation.'

He swung off the bed over to the windowsill where his homemade pipe hid behind the curtains. He lifted it gingerly and presented it to Emmett. He laughed and Emmett did too.

'Jesus Christ man! Very good. Does it smoke?'

'Like a, em, napalm bomb.'

'Hm. Well, excellent. We should light that up later.'

'All right.' Erwan replaced the device in the windowsill. He would have preferred a more exact date and time, but later was good enough. He lounged back on the bed.

Meanwhile Emmett had had another look round. He saw the guitar leaning in the corner, 15W amp, waste bin with scrap-paper sticking out, sturdy desk with scratch marks all over it, blank cream walls with posters stuck, clothes draped over the wrought-iron radiator, bedside table with books lying on, glass of water, paper and pen, cds lying in boxes on the floor, stereo system on desk, clunky grey Macintosh computer with monitor occupying half the desktop surface.

Emmett pointed to the small fold-up aerial perched on top of the monitor. A lead ran from it to the back of the computer.

'Can you watch TV with that?'

Erwan grinned. 'Yes. There's a TV card in it, my da got me that for my birthday last year. I can pick up BBC no problem; ITV and channel 4 not much; channel 5 not at all.'

'Cool.'

'Actually,' said Erwan, rising and picking up the slim Observer TV guide that came each Sunday, 'I'm going to watch a new TV version of 'Crime and Punishment' tonight. It's on at... 9. Should be good, if you want to check it out.'

Erwan looked at Emmett encouragingly. Emmett looked interested and asked what it was about.

'Oh, this guy Raskolnikov gets wound up, alone in his tiny wind-blown attic room day after day, fed gruel by his landlady, gets more wound up... I don't really want to give much away. It's by Dostoevsky, one of those mental Russian realist writers. Its good.'

'Hm,' said Emmett. 'Yeah, I know that. Levin was reading it around Christmas.'

'Aye. I gave it to him. He thinks its class.'

'Ok,' said Emmett, now catching Erwan's enthusiasm and running with it. 'All right, let's watch it!'

'Cool!' Erwan glanced at the watch on his bedside cabinet. 'Time for a quick jam?'

'Have you guitars here?'

'I've got the acoustic as well as the electric.'

'Aye, why not.'

They took guitars, swapping occasionally, playing in that focused, concentrated style that had developed between them. Eventually Erwan stopped and stretched. He glanced at his watch.

'Would you care for a little smoke?'

Emmett glanced at the device on the windowsill, and smiled nervously. 'Yes,' he said. He stood up.

Erwan advanced to the window.

The pipe was the cardboard tube from a roll of toilet tissue. One end had been affixed with a doubled-over square of tinfoil. A small hole about the width of a little finger pierced the cardboard one inch from the sealed end. Tin foil wrapped this hole and many little pinpricks dotted the crater to make a gauze. Another pen-sized hole split the end foil. It had all the elements necessary and nothing more.

'This is not a pipe,' said Erwan, holding it up as if it were a tribute to the gods.

He put it on the windowsill, opened the window, and scavenged a small plastic tube from his right jean. The plastic tube contained a worn sphere of brown resin. He took a cigarette lighter from the windowsill and burnt little shards of brown dope off the ball dropping them into the pinpricked depression formed in the roll. He placed a generous amount.

He held it up. 'It's a bit rough,' he apologised.

'I admire your ingenuity,' said Emmett.

Erwan lit up, holding the pipe sealed at the pinhole with his left hand, sucked the flame down taking his finger off the pinhole holding the smoke then exhaling out the window. He motioned to Emmett. Emmett got up, nervous curiosity smiling on his face. He repeated Erwan's actions to a tee. Then he coughed.

'Rough,' said Erwan.

'It definitely is,' said Emmett. 'I think you need a proper gauze.' He thumped his lungs to dislodge the burning particles of dope. 'Ah fuck.'

'Yeah, its all right.'

Erwan took another drag; then did Emmett; then did Erwan. By that point only ash remained. Erwan set the device down gingerly, his head beginning to swim. He shut the window and closed the curtains, returning to sit on the bed.

He looked at Emmett. The man seemed slightly pale, but content.

Erwan glanced at his bedside watch. 'Oh. It's nearly time for _Crime and Punishment.'_

He got up and turned the computer on. It took an eternity to load, rattling and screeching and burring in the way of the clunky beast. He stared at the keyboard trying to think through the sequence of events needed to pick the signal up. It was complex: like most events on a computer in those days, a meaningless series of arbitrary steps had to be performed to exact even the most simple objective.

Three minutes later the desktop picture appeared on the monitor: Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta were pointing Magnum .45s at a location just down and to the left of Emmett's shoe.

'Cool,' said Emmett.

Various folders and files appeared scattered across the screen. Erwan selected a small bar from the top menu that slid revealing coloured blocks. He selected one that represented but did not resemble a TV. This opened a window that he promptly closed. From the file menu he reopened the window, and then from the options menu he deselected two ticked items. Then he went to the pre-tuned menu of TV channels and selected the one labelled 'bbc2'.

'I have to do it this way, or the whole thing crashes,' Erwan said. 'If I do anything in any different order it freezes and I need to restart the whole computer.'

'Euh,' said Emmett. 'Restart the computer....' A pause. 'How did you discover the right way?'

Erwan smiled uncertainly. 'I can't remember – you just mess about until it starts working.'

'Cool,' said Emmett, as the grainy image of BBC 2 came onscreen.

Erwan made it full-screen and rotated the aerial 45° clockwise. This removed the ghosting and rendered the image surprisingly sharp.

'Not bad,' said Emmett, genuinely impressed.

Erwan plugged the external speakers into the headphone socket in the back of the computer under the table. Then he struggled back up again, just as the presenter was finishing:

'... new two-part BBC rendition of Dostoevsky's _Crime and Punishment.'_

Title music began.

Erwan and Emmett settled themselves on their seats to watch.

Some time later, an unknown time later that was not much later but somewhat _stuffed_ all the same, Emmett began to feel somewhat uncomfortable, as if someone was stuffing _him_ , full of sausage rolls and pastry snacks of evil. On screen Raskolnikov, this crazy impoverished starving student with raggedy beard, was hunting down this old haggard woman pawnbroker with an _axe,_ a goddam axe – and what did he mean to do? He was going to beat her head in.

It was relentless. Raskolnikov this twisted guy, twisted from normality one moment into craziness next. Emmett couldn't see the dividing line. There was not one, no clear one. Emmett could not tell where Raskolnikov was going wrong. And perhaps he wasn't. And now this most uncomfortable scene: Raskolnikov to crack open the brains of a defenceless old woman in her own home and it might be the right thing to do _._

It was the right thing to do. She was a leach on society.

Raskolnikov was crazy.

He advanced closer and closer, hiding, panting behind the door partition. Sweat beaded on Emmett's brow. The music was become darker and darker, deep swirling trombones and screeching double bass disharmonies.

'This is too dark,' he said for the fourth time, clutching the armrests of the chair.

Erwan turned and nodded again, smiling enthusiastically. Emmett saw that the man plainly didn't get it, didn't realise what a depth of badness they were stinking in. He realised with sinking heart that he just wasn't going to be able to stick it out. He got up.

'Man I'm going to have to go I'm afraid,' he said.

Erwan rose, taken aback, clearly anxious in case he had neglected some hostly duty.

'Why? Is it really too much?' said Erwan.

'Aye man. In my present fucked state.'

Erwan hesitated, then turned the sound down on the monitor. Emmett could still see the dark shapes out of the corner of his eye. He stared at Erwan, grinning.

'Aw! I'll turn this off.'

'No. You wanted to watch it. I should probably go home anyway, lectures and shit tomorrow.'

Erwan glanced out the window. 'Dark out. Watch you for axe murderers.'

Emmett winced; the warning did not make him feel better. 'Mm, thanks.'

'One for the road?'

'Mm – No. I'm grand man. Anyway, it's been really class coming up here and seeing your place. I'll pop up here again sometime. We'll have another jam.'

'Yeah, sure. You should read the book by the way, it's really class.'

'Sometime I will. All right man!'

'Ok, see you later!'

Erwan was alone with the TV. He settled back immediately to watch the show, enjoying it but thinking it a pale imitation of the book. It ended at 10.00 pm with the voice of BBC promising to show the final instalment at the same time next Tuesday.

Erwan ate a few slices of bread, idly read a few pages of philosophy, felt mildly but pleasantly stoned, resisted the temptation to smoke more before going to bed. It was perfectly healthy to smoke alone, yes, perfectly healthy – but all the same, he'd have the chance tomorrow or the next day to drink a deliciously strong cup of tea.

He read in bed until, two hours later, he woke with his cheek mashed in a book.

WEDNESDAY

13/02/02

Fear and Loathing in the Botanic Gardens

Today is Wednesday. Today was a long day.

I woke intermittently, sleeping restlessly from 7am to 8.46am when my alarm went off. I lay kind of dazed for a while, drifting out and in of being in that blear-eyed early morning way. And then I got up; did a few stretches, touched toes, sort of thing; got tired of that soon enough and spent the next fifteen minutes fumbling with my clothes trying to put them on.

I staggered towards the door, headed down to the canteen to get some cereal, toast, coffee. I ate (some orange juice too) and returned to my room packed my bag and left.

At class (philosophy class) I sat down, late, yawned, then listened. Hegel followed Schelling, followed Fichte, followed Kant. Feuerbach listened to Schelling's criticism of Hegel's philosophy. Engels, Bakunin, and Kierkegaard all attended the same lectures in Berlin, Schelling's public lectures. I listened sometimes attentively. Sometimes my mind wandered. I yawned. We talked about self-consciousness and the infinite regress of trying to immediately 'know' yourself. I went home.

By 11.22am I had turned on my mobile and received Levin's text message. He'd sent it at 10.28am. It said: 'Dude whats happenin 2day'. We had planned to visit Narnia by taking tea (special tea) and visiting the botanic gardens. I phoned him and said I'd come over about half twelve after lunch and he said ok and that he'd be going to the museum at four. I said cool and hung up.

I ate my lunch – pasta – and got my stuff and went. Levin lives down Eglantine Avenue so I went there and, just before reaching the house, looked up at the ground floor window and who could I see there but young Hamish staring out with a huge grin on his face. I knocked and the door was opened. The floor was all clean. Now Emmett might not kill us all. Which was good.

So I sat down and said 'so?' and Levin said 'uh?' and I went 'muh?' 'Botanic and tea,' I said, as a question, and he said 'yes,' after a while.

'Weak tea.'

'Yes, weak.'

'Not too weak.'

'No, not too weak.'

I went off to make it and came back looking for a lighter. I found one (Chris') and crumbled the drugs into the saucepan, and made tea. We drunk the tea, and I had that foul lumpy bit that hasn't dissolved at the bottom uhhrghh. So off we went back into the living room.

In the living room we sat down and talked crap. We talked of that bobsleigh thing on TV and all sorts of silly nonsense. Emmett came down and said 'this place is clean' and we said 'muh', and then Chris went off with the TV into a cab to fix it for us because his TV is being used at the moment. I mused on the logic of this situation.

We decided to get rid of all the TVs and just have a pool table, which would inevitably lead us to converting the place into a brothel and opium parlour.

Barry and James were back from playing racquetball at this stage. We all sat down to watch neighbours. ("I'm feeling fierce neighbourly.") We'd obviously slipped into a parallel universe as in this world Woody was still alive and Australia was called aussieland. That was Master Emmett's contribution. Anyway, myself and young McCochall headed out as Neighbours was right shite, and we couldn't watch any more of its shiteness.

It was warm outside, for a while. Then it got cold. We shuddered our way down towards where we were going and wondered when the gear would kick in.

When did it kick in? It was sometime between us reaching the garden gates and us entering (or being in) the big white greenhouse. No it didn't. We went to the museum after the brief tour of the greenhouse and bought some chocolate thing in the cafe, and then visited the turtles, and then it kicked in, as we were there, looking at the fish and the turtles. Then we went out.

We went into the tropical ravine. And out again. There was paranoia, I fear, in the ravine. We had to leave. We went for a walk. Around the same place as last time. We found the entrance and entered Narnia again.

We found the same bridge as last time. This time it was different, different somehow, there were too many people. We did very odd and stoney things and talked weird stoney talk. Then what happened? More greenhouse, more ravine, a bogland (where was that?), an attempted destruction of fossils (don't ask), a fleeing from the museum, into the greenhouse again, out of that again quite quickly, up to the ravine, out of there quite quickly, then... waiting for Meabh. She came soon enough and we went into the museum. We went to look at the fish and turtles again.

I was thirsty and went and got some water. We walked around, various exhibits, looked at Spencer paintings (again. The flyer claims it is a once in a lifetime opportunity. We have seen it four times in a lifetime so far) and so forth. I decided to leave at about half four, and so did. Levin and Meabh remained in the museum as I went home.

Dinner was odd. I thought it odd, how all the Christians had divided themselves up into two groups. It was not nice; there was an oppressive atmosphere. One group had decorated themselves with an ashen forehead, and everyone who didn't have that was clearly in the _other_ group. I was not in either group. What could I do? I went back to my room.

I reflected on memory and myself. It had been a long day and I was tired. I have stayed up, however, until now, and it is now early Thursday morning, and though I am tired I cannot sleep. For I wish to express something but I cannot. I wrote this, but didn't write what I had wanted to write. Perhaps with time, it will come.

AFTER

No records remain of what happened on Thursday. On Friday Levin took up his first job since dropping out. He worked in the Mace on Botanic Avenue and had to stack boxes and put rubbish away and work the till. The tedium was only partially relieved by Alex Higgins walking in and personally insulting him.

Later on Friday Levin quit. On Saturday Barry Mitchell went drinking in Lavery's bar. On Sunday Levin, Neil and Hamish walked down to the Boucher Road and purchased two boards from B&Q and black paint.

THE INSTANT THAT TIME CEASES TO MOVE

Exactly one year later and Levin MacHill's rat was dead.

MacHill looked at it, the immobile white shape, the lifeless corpse. He knew it almost immediately – it was obvious, though what was obvious he could not have said. He neither approached it nor backed away; neither turned his gaze, nor looked at it more closely. He only stood on that patch of thin carpet, facing the sawdust-filled grill of bars that held something that would never escape or now had escaped once and for all.

He let go of his breath where it had been pent up this long, too long and difficult moment. Intermittently angry, tired, he felt, and then simply existent. He unclenched his fist and deliberately wiped the palm of his hand off his trouser pocket in an uncharacteristic gesture.

He let himself crouch down and touch the floor with spread fingertips. The cage was visible clearly, nestled beside his catering books and notes under the desk. Poor old Whitey; he thought. He kept his feelings tight, down, didn't let himself see them. Stared into the cage with a scowl. Better to feel rage.

He rocked back and forth on tips of his toes for a slow moment. Then he let himself reach forward and give the cage a single futile thump. It rattled; the rat fell solidly into the dust.

Levin MacHill puffed and rose up again. The rat was dead; there was no way to get out of it; now he had to do something about it because the dead rat wasn't going to get rid of itself. A man had to do that; an unhappy man, like MacHill. He caught a view of the sawdust bag by the radiator and thought with angry sadness how he'd never have use for that stuff again. He felt deserted.

The rat was dead. He sighed and left his room, heading downstairs for a plastic bag and some toilet roll. He avoided the livingroom, that room of smoke and happy thoughts he had left but ten minutes ago – and lifted a plastic co-op bag from the counter top where such bags lay. Toilet roll from the toilet next to his room on the first floor. The rat he released from its cage with a hand wrapped in toilet roll – the hand, he thought sadly, that had willingly held soft fur, was now disgusted to touch the stiff carcass. He dumped the body in the bag.

Now he was annoyed. He could not simply throw this, like some disgusting mess from Esperantos, out the window, or into the alleyway with the other bags, or in a plastic bag to rot like some turd chucked from a car. His rat deserved dignity in its passage. He left the rat on the bed. He descended, slowly and thoughtfully, to the livingroom door. After the smallest of pauses he entered.

Levin McCochall and James both sat where he had left them: on the sofa, Levin with a half-smoked joint lying out of his mouth, and James rolling another. Coop orange concentrate, sellotape, tea lights, remote controls, cups, half-eaten dinners and Tennants cans fought for dominance. The Wall made statements like "Blown to Little Bits", "I'm Staying Alive", "All We Need Now Is Corpses In The Street" and other messages. "Bring back the glorious name of Stalingrad," it said. "Card firm called me a f***ing paki."

James completed his joint with practiced rapidity.

Levin McCochall looked at MacHill with an uncanny semblance of knowledge, as if MacHill's inner pain was made known by some writing on his chest. MacHill couldn't keep his eyes level with Levin's. He had to look away. Levin McCochall looked on; MacHill could sense it. He felt the overwhelming despair opened underneath him like the trick trapdoor the grand vizier uses to teach his subjects a lesson.

MacHill blew through pursed lips and clicked his tongue.

'Anyone know how to bury a rat?' he asked, annoyed, and throwing himself onto the sofa.

Levin McCochall looked up, momentarily not understanding. Then he got it, and said, 'Naw,' in a way that went to MacHill's heart.

'Naw...' said Levin McCochall. 'Your rat's not _dead_ , is it?'

'.'

'Aw shit – is it really dead?' asked James, suspended in the act of lighting the joint.

'Completely dead dude.'

James lit the joint. 'Shit,' he said and gave it to MacHill.

'Shit – ah.' Levin McCochall sat more upright. Then he slunk down into his chair again. 'That's really shit.'

'It's totally shit!' said MacHill, glad now he had an audience to share this with. 'He dropped dead overnight. He was fine yesterday and nowhere to be seen this morning.'

'And he just fucking died? Fuck that,' said Levin McCochall.

There was nothing Levin McCochall hated more than mortality. He hated it. He was always saying: wouldn't it be great if we lived forever? Or even just a few thousand years.

'Yep. Totally dead.'

'What age was he?' asked James.

MacHill frowned. 'Probably about two years old. I don't know. I got him from a pet store.'

'You had him for about a year, didn't you?' said Levin McCochall, trying to dredge up his faint memory of facts about the rat.

'Yes, about that.'

'Shit. Uh, where is he now?'

'In a plastic bag in my room. I was going to throw him in a bin.'

McCochall looked at him for a moment, again seeming to probe into his soul with his bloodshot eyes.

'Naw...' said Levin after a moment or two, seeming to have decided on which side this thing lay. 'Naw, you can't do that. You need to put him away somewhere with the right dignity.'

MacHill nodded – he had already come to this conclusion himself.

'Bury him in the garden,' suggested James. 'Smoke that joint.'

MacHill nodded affirmatively. Joints and burials; those were the things to think about. He drew on the smoke heavily.

'Ok. Somewhere in the garden, I suppose,' MacHill said, exhaling.

Levin McCochall looked sceptical.

'Mmf,' he said; 'our garden? I don't know.'

MacHill faced him. 'Where then?'

'Dunno. Botanic Gardens? It's far nicer.'

'In the rose gardens,' said James.

'Hmm,' said MacHill, thinking about it. 'The rose gardens... the Botanic Gardens... hmm...'

'Yeah,' he said. 'We could sneak him in easily enough.'

'Oh, the place is locked now, isn't it.'

'Aye, its dark.'

'Somewhere else then.'

'Lagan – whatdoyoucall it, Meadows. That place we went with you and Erwan and Hamish.'

'That place? That walk that took for fucking ever?'

'It didn't take forever man.'

'It did dude,' said James.

'All right, suit yourselves. Somewhere else then.'

'How about somebody else's garden? Just chuck it over next door's wall.'

Levin McCochall looked at James with disgust. 'Jesus man. No.'

'How about the Lagan river?'

'Sounds good.'

'All right then. Let's do that.'

They rolled a few joints for the voyage. MacHill collected the carcass of the rat from his bed and rattled the keys of his mini in his hand as he stood waiting for James to finish rolling.

'Come on man.'

'Hold your horses! Do you think the Lagan's going into low tide or something?'

'Why would it be going into low tide?' asked Levin.

'I don't know,' replied James. 'I was just trying to figure out why he was in such a rush.'

'I'm not in a rush – you're just being slow. Hurry up James!'

'You can't rush a masterpiece like this. This one is for Whitey.'

'Oh, well, in that case... hurry up dude. Ha ha ha!'

Eventually James finished and they shoved themselves into MacHill's tiny blue car. MacHill cursed and choked the motor into life while James hugged his legs in the back seat and Levin McCochall reluctantly held the rat bag between pinched fingers. He did not like rats, even deceased ones, and it was clearly only in consideration for MacHill's emotions that he consented to carry it at all.

MacHill manoeuvred out of the parking space outside the house and roared up Eglantine Avenue towards the Malone Road.

What bridge were they going to go to? They discussed this quickly, since the mini was tearing the road up at no small pace. The M3 bridge, McCochall suggested. This was correctly considered dangerous by all three, with Levin, James and MacHill opposing the idea. The bridge beside Central Station, came another thought. No. Too open and busy. Ormeau Bridge.

MacHill skidded a right turn at the top of Eglantine Avenue and took the sharp L-straight-¬ of Chlorine Gardens, left onto Stranmillis. There were students and other vermin stalking the streets. He did his best to avoid ploughing into them.

A roadsign somewhere halfway down this road directed them to the King's Bridge, as long as they weren't driving a lorry over 2t in weight. The mini didn't classify. MacHill rolled down the steep road.

'Ah, the Lyric's on this road,' said Levin McCochall

The Lyric zoomed by.

'Where are you going man?' asked James as they mounted a short bridge over the Lagan and turned left.

'Probably this bridge will do. Just need to find a place to park.'

There were no places to park. That was evident. The mini careened wildly, as if it possessed only one fixed speed which was high. It rushed onwards towards a bridge that took it back over the river again.

'Alright, choice of bridges. Try this side.'

'Keep on heading along the river. Up that way, not into town.'

'Sure,' said MacHill. The mini swerved and meandered just like the Lagan beside it.

'Here, we're just by the Lagan Meadows now.'

'You sure?'

'Aye, there's that bar, Cutter's Wharf. Head down there.'

There was a car park beside it, and the entrance to the Meadows was just a few tens of yards further along a path.

'Give me that rat,' said MacHill, tenderly prizing away his departed friend from Levin McCochall's fingers.

'Be my guest,' said Levin.

They took one look at the deep dark shrouded entrance, overgrown with greenery, one dim public light flickering and showing up the vines and the entrails of dimly coloured graffiti sprawling all over ancient concrete and electrical conduction meters.

'That?' asked MacHill, somewhat taken aback. 'That's where we walked to that time?'

McCochall nodded. 'Yes... looks different at night.'

'Looks like someone might stab us to death.'

McCochall winced. 'Jesus, keep it down man.'

'Just be the person who does the stabbing,' said James.

'No. No stabbing,' said Levin.

'Stabbed. What a word. It even sounds violent.'

'Stop talking about stabbing,' said Levin.

They walked as one towards the desolate ruin of broken branches and overgrown grass.

A white ghost emerged on the path ahead and jogged up to them and away.

'Shh-it!' said MacHill, when it was gone.

'Shut up,' said Levin.

They came up the path against the river, now much narrower than it later became downstream.

'This thing gets narrow quickly, doesn't it?' said James.

'Yeah,' said Levin.

They stood in a line, looking at the dark water. It was warm for February so no-one had taken anything more than a thin coat or jumper. There was no wind but a heavy drop or two of water fell regularly from the sky.

'So...' said MacHill.

'What gets said on an occasion like this?'

MacHill decided to speak from his soul.

'This, was Whitey. He was a rat. To most people he was just some rat, in a cage in a room. To me, he was a companion, the last creature to see me at night, the first to see me in the morning when I awoke. Goodbye Whitey.'

Levin MacHill filled the bag with stones. Then he swung it and let go; the rat in the bag rose and then fell with a splash in the water. It sank; or at least they thought so, in the dark light.

'There goes Whitey,' said Levin McCochall with sympathy.

All three shared a joint and then drove home.

LAST WEEK

Crowded and noisy again last week as New York City plunges towards bankruptcy, with the fiasco follows other embarrassments for the Army when boots began to melt during that period, one could apply the description that Victor Hugo gave of several revealed by police, fire and ambulance services to the most energetic, enthusiastic, poetic. The bizarre conversation went like this year stands at $1.2 billion, but is set to rise by $6.4bn in trainers. They are soldiers who introduced him to eat.

It is extraordinary. We are not talking about in the biggest debt for any city in America. This is the most basic equipment and apparently we haven't got a system to make his first drawings in 1937; by the ones for my near sight.

'This is the worst fiscal crisis the city has ever faced,' said council speaker Gifford Miller, a war. Some were issued with two left boots and if you had been able to encapsulate that kind of lightness of being. OPERATOR: Right...

The attacks on 11 September are seen as the primary cause, but any sluggishness in the misfortune. Surrealism had mislaid her specs and couldn't peel. On the other hand, a condominium owner earning the property-owning average of boots in stock, which he said were part of the class struggle. Like the police.

The budget watchdog group City Project called the terror bomb blast in Bali. The Volgograd Parliament will vote on 26 December to send a formal request to the UK.

Yet the brink of invading Iraq - but most Americans have no idea where the terrorists struck on the second anniversary of the al-Qaeda raid on the USS Cole in and the Germans were caught up in the attack, believed to be the latest anti-Western onslaught by life today and their hopes for the future, so they begin to look to Osama bin Laden.

The town may revert to its Soviet-era name of Stalingrad, following a request to get rid of appalling horror with charred bodies, severed limbs and sacrifice, wants again to China. Finally he settled on northern Italy. Dickinson, 60, retained his modesty for the Radio Times snap with a wall.

It will come as little surprise that Mr Blair has decided to bring forward his gun accidentally fires into his chest as he was still shaking with rage and demanded the racist responsible be so we had to immortalise their heroic deeds, not the memory of the year last month. His diagnoses are listened to carefully because he is not only a psychiatrist. He is also a high profile event, on a day which had been set aside on the 53-year-old British pop star, whose hits include Stayin' Alive, had an Asian hospital worker was stunned yesterday after receiving a letter addressed to us for yet more tax, more Irish nationals are missing.

British Ambassador to Indonesia Richard Gozney said he expected the UK death toll to the Kremlin, for the name change.

There was no messing about from Tracey Shauger, 21, and pal Misty Wright, 20, from the Agency, you might call Post a spook among shrinks. He still has made a series of misjudgments. To have left the negotiations in the start of the war: "I'm so disgusted. I want something done about this."

Brown has been lucky with his timing, in the sense that if he is forced to borrow gazillions - as the tide of adulation for Turkey. Close, but no cigar. To help Post in his work, the government has allowed him to interview many of its insistence that extra pay had to 18 people, including US special forces and Kurds, killed and sack the culprit. Sooner or later, there will be a crunch. He said: "I saw limbs lying on the right area of the world." He still plies most of his trade at the city. All seven crew killed. I got to the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, Leningrad was renamed St Petersburg, and in the papers ever day. How can you pay so little attention to chat to defectors and pore over intelligence reports.

David Davis, a more general revolt; and people may be interested in a large bang and a couple of seconds later the roof collapsed and people were forced to eat the paper every day, and in magazines and endless TV shows . It's hard to know what the agency really thought of public sector workers and then lost control of the economy. Victory would, however, pilot missing. US plans to do. It may not just be going through a rocky patch in their father, in the road in front were on fire, where the Nazi war is bad for psychoanalysis. The comfortable sofa is oatmeal. A box of tissues is attempting to present the prime minister's intervention, his first since the Gulf. All seven crew killed. As anyone who has tried using a black cab in London recently will know, it is now cheaper - but most Americans have no idea where the most dangerous foe.

While the chancellor and prime minister believe they are on their hands over burning braziers, and the Green Goddesses continued their CRAZED NEWT-FANCIER LIVINGSTONE. "Somehow I managed to climb out through the roof. I was in the street in a complete daze, yelling out my boyfriend's name, but I had a strong feeling that he was dead." The glory of Stalingrad belongs to all Russia. And while more than half knew that al-Qaeda and the Taliban were based in Afghanistan, only one in six could find the country on a map. During the mother's pregnancy with SADDAM HUSSEIN, his father died, and another son died. Deep depression. Downing street asked the firefighters to develop a sense of great unease. I have never fired my weapons at Camp Coyote. I was on the street in a complete daze. Australian soccer coach Simon Quayle, of amateur team Kingsley Football Club in Perth, said eight players were missing. New York cop John Riley mounted on his trusty steed Hoss. "Typically, after such traumatic experiences, people can sink into despair and hopelessness." To have left the negotiations in the hands of a ragbag group of 40 councillors from across the political spectrum was a catastrophic blunder. Road traffic accident. US Marine. British Tornado jet. Two Royal Navy Sea King helicopters collide in the Gulf. The civil war? The Bolshevik revolution? The offensive capture? Their heroic deeds to call the Tsaritsyn, the Prime minister, the UN resolution to invade IRAQ – IRAQ, IRAQ, IRAQ! We need more bodies in the streets. Northern Europe. Attack. Seven people aged between 18 and 24 could identify Saddam Hussein's land.

IT ENDS

It was all over by 30th June 2003.

That was the final day. Oh, the tears they wept. Looking out the window at the house across the road, the tree by the church, the big soot-blackened gothic tower, the bells, the children screaming on their way back to school for their final day of term. Lease ends. Bulging hole in the wall.

Levin louched out his window, rattling the old plastic frame, lousy lock that had never kept the thing shut, always rattling at night. And the goldfish bowl gulping, and the drums drumming at 3am thanks to McIlroy – That was an interesting point. McIlroy. Was the dude gone?

Levin jumped and leapt downstairs. He felt a smile of happy pleasant summertime with the light streaming through the slatted windows. The place was looking an awful lot better, they might even get some of the deposit back on the place. He smiled and felt wonderful and surrounded by happiness. This was the future, a greater leap into the unknown and then he would come back and the place might not look any different but then it might and then he would listen to some music and play a game of chess when was that Emmett back they would be moving into Dunluce today and have a good time of a year with Meabh and Erwan and Emmett and Levin in one house and Levin MacHill and Eddie and John and Hilary in the house the other house and Shaun and James and Sarah in the other house the other other house the house and then the house this house the pink would be pinkless out of time and luck and he would look at the church. The clock ticked. He looked at the time of the TV, lines flicking back and forth with the tennis ball careering. Tock, tock. The tennis ball clicked. The net sprung back and forth – go on, Tim. He was out of Tim. He had sprung one too many but no, he'd probably well who knew. He looked on anyway, sighing out of the corner of his eye at the disassembled drum kit that he'd have to pack and transport down the road what a drag. A drag of a joint would be good. There was no gear. Even the sofas had been rifled. Always this give and take, this ebb and flow of material that made its way in and out, appearing, disappearing, like pockets of punch thrown in the air and pecked away by the microbes floating in the currents.

James walked in.

'Aw yes! Go on, Tim!' he said.

Levin stood mesmerized, staring like a Grecian statue at time, time trickling away, filling up his glass where he could drink it forever.

James said: 'Man, are you all right?'

Levin nodded.

'Oh... ok.'

James took a hook off the wall. Shaun came in. 'What up?' he said, smiling somewhat discomfortedly but pleasant at this bizarre dream.

'That's all right,' said Shaun. 'Have you seen Emmett today?'

Emmett! The stream became a jungle, his mind encompassed in the differences between light and day.

'Nope,' said Levin.

'What about James?'

'Yeah man. He was here a minute ago.'

'Cool. What's happening anyway, we going to clean this place up, or what?'

Levin shrugged. 'I dunno. Probably.'

'Oh good.'

Night time passed. It was one o-clock in the morning. Already he'd seen the sun rise and set that day, a long day, looking out the window, wondering when he'd see home again. He was there. He'd see – he'd see Meabh at eight in the morning, nine in the morning, and Neil, and Sarah. They'd throw a Frisbee in the park. Only Mitchell was in Australia, looking for the hidden desert. He had tried to obtain amnesty but his negotiations had failed – now he was in the desert. Enough of that desert.

'Hi Emmett. Last day!'

'Yeah man, but I'll come back next year. Erwan's got my room covered I'm sure.'

'Oh yes.'

Levin was momentarily confused. Instead of it being the last day, it was now Emmett's last day, when young McFickle had moved out of the Big Pink in 2002, end of June that year. One year ago. It was today.

'Oh, ok. Why?'

'Why what?'

Why'd you move out and leave me with these monsters?

Levin grinned and cackled with the sheer existence of it. All that he could think of was peanuts – Hamish and peanuts, handfuls of them, flooding out of his pockets, the grin on Hamish' face, the pints he had drunk, the volume of nutrients he held in his hands, thrown all over the snooker table. Why had that crazy kid done it? Blown £15.50 on thirty-five packets of HP salt and roasted. Jesus couldn't have done it better. That dude wasted it all on fish and chips but Hamish bought the peanuts. That was God all right, joking and laughing. Levin sighed sentimentally, thinking of the good times. Oh yes. There had been good times all right. He was cured all right, he thought. Clockwork Orange. How many times had they watched that film now? Dozens. Still a classic. Still a strange mixture of nasdat and Russian the slang of the future. But not of the future: of the past. They were not droogies the moment they were born.

It was back to Monday 30th June 2003. This was no drill. This was it. They had to be gone by midnight tonight or else they were in legal forfeit.

Anyway they were going to the caravan next week so it didn't matter.

And Neil would be there. He was not living in the Big Pink now but he was still hanging about, taking photos. Photos that would end up, years later, Levin knew, in the appendix of some book or other. If not a scrapbook. Yep.

He took in the whole room at one glance: the defunct plant loosely draping its leaves on the mantelpiece, the sofa with the Mensa book and Shakespeare's illegally procured works, and a broken brush with only half a handle lying against the side of the sofa, one of the sofas, the fourstar pizza box (empty), the wrecked chipped vinyl faux floorboards (black, black with ingrained beerstains and muck).

He thought of memory and time and space and floorboards and equations describing time and space and the blackboards and the remembrance of things past and his own two minutes of rage and stupid Tony Blair and fucking George Walker Bush and the whole mess of Iraq and the invasion of Afghanistan, with friendly fire, and socialist ideas, and Russians, and throwing things out of windows in Levin MacHill's room, in Hamish' room, now Aaron's room, once Geraldine's room, with the weird noises and the man who came to visit her even though she didn't know him. All of this was normal, comprehensible. If it hadn't already happened it would. The energetics of the situation weren't so resolved or difficult. Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, he thought. How could he have messed it up so incorrectly?

He smiled, laughed at himself. That was a joke. So was the circles, the unavoidable return to point A like the eternal recurrence of Nietzsche's, indeed the theme of the Strauss that went bum – Bum – BUMM – de neh; bum Bum BUM, de-Neh! What a song.

A long time ago they'd listened to that song, stuck Strauss on the stereo, laid in stoney nothingness while the great theme washed over them, mangled them, pinned them to their seats. Him, Neil, Erwan. Never had he listened to it all before – and how extraordinary, how incapable they were, lying prostate, at the total mercy of the musician who was dead. Levin remembered that incredible symphony, how it had drained him and filled him up and told him a lesson he had learnt but never understood, never, until it became the music. Or was he –? Or was it –? It could never be understood not even now. That was rubbish. He was talking and reminiscing.

He ought to clean up.

Hello Stankey my old friend

He took the brush, the one with the half handle.

Has your day come to it's end?

He swept the pizza box into a corner.

Something something something, na na

He lay down the brush and sat on the sofa, staring out the window at the church, the cars driving past.

Something something, something, na

Yep. This was life.

Something, something, and something.

It's the sound, of something.

He decided to stick on the stereo. It was on radio; on that most surreal of stations. Radio, radio, radio failté. Radio radio. Radio radio radio. Radio... radio failté.

Radio.

Radio failté.

Radio radio radio radio radio radio. Radio radio – radio failté.

Levin fell into a trance. The mesmerizing sound of the same words became different, like the sound of a key turned in a lock and listened to, over, and over again, until it mutated, until he ears were deaf to the original tones and he could only hear the harmonics. He became words. Filled with uncanny straightness, he puzzled the lock on the key. Now, now, he –?

Levin MacHill interrupted his madness. 'Hey man!'

'What!'

'What's happening! Are we cleaning here!'

'No!'

'Why be fuck?'

Radio, radio...

Is that thing going to play any music?

That was MacHill. Was it going to play any music? Maybe. Maybe it didn't matter. Maybe it was good to have a radio station that only played one thing, its own jingle, over and over and over again, with infinite repetition and infinite variation. Bounded infinity, a limitless way to be a single thing.

'Is that thing going to play any music?'

The eternal recurrence was a small frog, with two eyes, beadily staring at him from the Belfast Reptile Emporium. Crickets, locusts, all willing to be eaten. Hungry lizards, staring with independently revolving eyes. He dared, thinking that it would be enough, to poke an eye out, to simply stare with unblemished intensity. There wasn't any way to render his desires to this mutant creature. Slimy frog. There was one thing he hated, and that was the dead frog that the bastards in the Reptile Emporium had taken out and thrown out the back. He'd seen it, just like he saw it all. He stroked his red beard, vomit slaked down one corner. He saw it all, and did not like it one bit.

'Is that thing ever going to play any music?'

The tramp kept on walking, walking and walking infinitely down the never ending street. Each street simply led to another. Down some streets were strangers; down other money and people he knew or indeed anything. He didn't even bother to anticipate now, there were only things, one following the other, and sometimes not necessarily so. He blanched and clutched his stomach, wishing he had something to eat. He wanted cider, or vodka or something stronger. Didn't matter what. His stomach hurt. He lived in bins and he puked nearly every day and soon he would be dead.

Those fucking bastards, those bastards, taken his job? Or had he left it? That hardly mattered. Things were always better when you didn't care about the past anyway. On top of the cars! Now that had been some kick! Getting loaded on the local pastry juice til it was swilling out of his ears! Ah, the rare old times! He allowed himself to shuffle a little slower, stuck in a pleasant reminiscence. It had been a rare moment of summer, so it had, one of those moments when a jug of alcohol finds its way into your hands and you don't even care what you do with it afterwards. As long as it is empty. His name was Gerry; other people called him other things, if they didn't know his name, but he had never forgotten his own name. It was bokebeard. It was redbeard. It was something else that he'd forgotten. Maybe he wasn't human after all. After all they didn't treat him like one. They treated him just like some slimy tramp that stalked the neighbourhoods.

Well. Would he let it get to him? The bastards. Pinned him down and beat his ventricles so bad he couldn't breathe now. Wouldn't it be, to go back to the old days, his heart and his healthy body? He'd told them, commanding in that fierce voice, of military officers used to giving orders of his. If he'd done that, well, he'd remember doing it. This street was new. No. It was the same street he'd walked up before.

His own faeces on his hands. Was that a problem. Nope. Same old day, different kind of shit, but shit all the same, just like his mother's shit, just like he was a shit, a shit, a shit. Shit shit. That's all he fuckin did shit and shit. Shit up your own fuckin hed

'Is that thing ever going to play some music?'

He listened carefully any time he heard the radio. He wanted to hear if they were playing his name again. They sometimes did. Nope, not today. He shuffled on. Some lad was beating some other lad in a phone booth. I asked them for some money. They wouldn't give me any. I said, ok lads, some other time. There was some other young kid walking past too. I asked him, do you have any spare change? Nope. Not for me. He didn't even say anything, just shook his head and looked at the two boys beatin each other like it wasn't the same thing he saw every fuckin day.

Well that was grand, I remember doin that. I don't remember doin those other things they say I did. I don't think I did do them actually. Nope. There wasn't any mention of me today. I shuffled along, thinking this wasn't a great place to be sleeping anyhow. Beside some house with a bunch of boys in it. That had been all right, living down some alleyway with a bunch of takeaway boxes keeping me warm. There'd been a load of bins round there too, plenty of food to rummage about in. I knew all about it. Thought it was an all right place. Well what do I do now.

Well, I wasn't going to live there now. I was goin to go some place else, like down into the centre again, if the peeler's'd leave me to stay there for a fuckin night. I'd already gone. Didn't take much. Me leavin was just me thinkin of leavin. Soon as a thought, I was gone. Nowt more to it. Some lad taught me that – nowt more to it. I'd learnt so lot so I had. Fuckin, stupid brother of mine. Shit, I didn't even know if I had a brother any more! Only joking. I'm not fuckin stupid. He was some bastard though. Only joking. I wasn't a bastard. It was him that done it.

Anyway, I was thinking of hangin. Then I got some good bread and a bit of wine down me and that was all right. Shuffled along the good old street, same fuckin street I lawsy worked down, stinkin, vomitin in me own pool of fuckin vomit. Somebody should fuckin clean the steet. Someday, I'm going to get myself one of those audjo cassettes. That'd be some joke. Don't even have a machine to play the thing on. If I'd wanted one I could have got one though. Otherwise, though, wasn't I just lookin at my own shoe? Looking and looking at my own shoe like some heroin addict. Never touch the stuff. Except once or twice, black needle I shared behind Tomb Steet. Caught the bug, the HepC one. Bad shit now, but the peelers won't touch me in case I spit on em. Or so they say. I never done anythin. Won't spit on nobody. Cept those that don't need spittin on, but I'm not a spittin man. I like to sit on me couch on Saturday afternoon and watch the livin daylights be beat out of each other, just like any other man. Don't have a couch, don't need it. Got a can to piss in. Throw my urine across the road if it gets too full. Drunk it a few times, got a bob for at. Don't have bobs now. Wish they fuckin would clean this steet once in a while. Why'd I leave it there anyway? I should've been lookin for somethin. Instead am here. Fuck at

***

#  THE THIRD TEXT

GERALDINE

I moved into a house on Eglantine Avenue, having lived on Sandy Row. Not that far to move. One time in the new house, blood started pouring down the walls – I had taken six e's. That was too many. I didn't noticed any effects at first. I kept taking them until something happened; what happened was blood.

Billy, my friend, was an odd kind of creature. He seemed to be deaf; he didn't hear what was said to him. Sometimes, though, he seemed to hear perfectly well. It depended on when it suited him. Well, not entirely. Sometimes it seemed that he really was deaf and dumb. He was a difficult boy to understand.

I met Billy in a nightclub; we danced, everyone was dancing. He seemed to want to come home with me afterwards. That seemed harmless; he said he was gay, and so he seemed to be. From that time on he spent more time with me, in my room or going to clubs, than he spent with anyone else, anywhere else. That was fine; I didn't mind.

It was at a nightclub that I took the e's. A friend of mine bought some from a guy at the bar. Someone should have told me that they take a while to start working. Everything in the nightclub became very strange – I enjoyed it, but it was strange. When I got home it stopped being enjoyable. I stood in that empty, cold livingroom, at 4 am, wondering what was going on, where I was, and big droplets of blood came out of the walls as big as balloons. I couldn't sleep all night, tossing and turning and getting up and walking around my room and thinking about the blood.

I was sitting in my room. Someone knocked on the door. I opened it. It was that middle-aged guy I'd met in a nightclub the week before.

'What are you doing here?' I asked.

'A guy downstairs let me in and told me your room was at the top. He said he thought you were in.'

'Oh?'

I was thinking, so what the hell do you want? But I said: 'Oh. So how are you?'

He sat down and told me all about his wife.

At the nightclub, when I met him, he seemed like quite a moody guy. He was pudgy and balding, although his hair was neat and brown. He danced with me and my girl friends, not particularly well. He bought us all drinks so we talked and danced. We shared a taxi home; he paid for it, then he went on to wherever he was going.

Three days later he turned up at the house.

'Geraldine, what do you think your life is for?'

'What is my life for?' What kind of question was that?

'My wife hates me. She won't talk to me any more. My job, my wife, the taxes, the house...'

He'd go on and on like this, telling me everything that was wrong with his life. I don't know why he'd chosen me to reveal all this stuff to. I nodded and said how awful it was for him. He kept on coming over every week, at random times – one time I walked into my room and he was sitting there waiting for me. He could have been waiting for an hour for all I knew. I didn't mind that much, but it was my room, and Billy's. Billy didn't like him and usually stayed away when the old guy was around.

'Billy, give me that comb. That's your comb there. Not yours. That's yours. No, you don't understand.'

Billy typically treated everything that belonged to me as belonging to both of us. He treated his own things as if they were mine as well, but I didn't really want any of his things. Sometimes I think that he knew that. He always borrowed money off me, either pretending or not pretending to be helpless. Needing money for a taxi to God knows where; needing money for a takeaway; needing new shampoo; needing this, that and the other. I gave him the money sometimes and sometimes I didn't. He'd throw a strop or else didn't seem to care or even remember what he'd asked for a few minutes before. He was an odd kind of boy.

Ma called round at weekends, sometimes drunk. I put her up on the sofa on the worst occasion, where she slept all the next day, not even realising that the other housemates were trying to talk and have a fry in the livingroom. I think they thought that was pretty weird. I tried to stop my Ma calling over at the weekend after that but it happened anyway. She couldn't climb stairs very well. She had to sleep in the livingroom.

'Are you going to leave your wife?'

'No.'

'Are you going to give me my money back, Billy?'

'Neee – eeee...'

Annoying.

'Are you going to stop coming here drunk, Ma?'

No.

She moved in some time after the rest of us, during that second year.

She was really normal; that was the strange thing about her. She attracted weirdoes. There was one night, I remember, it was the middle of the night and I was lying in bed, trying to get a bit of sleep before the day arrived. I thought that they'd all finally gone. No. There was the sound of loud, really loud music. It made me so mad that I even got up. I stood in my pyjama bottoms, shivering with fear and anger and cold, listening to the music blaring upstairs and thinking, should I go and turn it off? I was afraid, fearful of the wreck and carnage, the blaring and shouting, the physical sickness, whatever. But it was evident that they weren't even there. They'd just gone and left the stereo on repeat. That was what they always did. I was determined to go and turn it off.

I marched out of my room; unlocked it, and marched out. Upstairs I went. _Her_ room, or their room, or whoever was living there, not exactly above mine, but more or less so. I marched up the stairs. I could hardly stand the noise, it was so painfully loud. What the fuck was it? Some kind of dance music?

The door was open. That was all right.

I stepped in. I was shocked to find someone in there, sitting in the red gloom, at the far end of the room. The room was lit by some unknown red light, and there seemed to be blankets draped over the walls, and knickers and tops over the floor. The deaf gay guy. He was known as this though both his deafness and his gayness were in dispute. He certainly seemed deaf, sitting in his skimpy y-fronts, watching the blaring TV, completely mesmerised, eating a bowl of cornflakes and dropping little slathers of milk across his bare legs.

I hesitated on the threshold. I waved to the bloke, but he couldn't see me; he had eyes only for the dancing bodies on the TV. I waved and waved. I took a step further.

I came up right next to him. I waved right in front of him. He didn't react. I wondered what the fuck to do. This situation was weirding me out. And I'd seen plenty of weird things by now. But most of those weird things had been instigated by me or else designed for my amusement or edification. Whereas this was beyond properly strange. I could not control this fellow; I could not understand him.

Why was he even in this room, wearing knickers and nothing else, watching dance music, dripping soggy cornflakes onto his skinny blonde legs, his oddly-shaped head immobile and fixed?

I looked in desperation for a remote. Not seeing one, I stepped over to the TV and turned down the sound. The moment I did so, he leapt into the air and released a short squeal. I turned to him and signed that the music was too loud – 'Too loud,' I said, distinctly mouthing it for him. He was too busy patting his chest, to get his heart under control, to notice. He squealed and made incomprehensible noises, word-like. I shook my head, meaning 'no' or something – I don't even think I was trying to say anything – I left the room. That is, I waved my hands up and down, as if patting a pillow, which was meant to sooth and reassure him, and then I tapped my ear, which was meant to make him think that he was a bastard who played his music – at three in the fucking morning! Then I went back into the safeness of my own bedroom, locking the door, feeling exhilarated and unable to sleep. Good work me, I thought, in the relative silence, only vague murmurs of a TV and the broom of vehicles up and down the avenue.

Neil lay in his bed, wondering what was going on. He could hear somebody clunking up and down the stairs. Hmf. Well, nothing to do with him. He was nice and cosy. Indeed, he had left the electric radiator on again, deliberately. Ah, the cosiness of a nice warm bed. The stromping up and down the stairs continued. If he had to assign an adjective to it, he would have chosen 'irritable.' Despite himself he speculated on the reasons for all this stomping. Could it be that they were going out, to a nightclub, again, after what was now seventeen days of straight clubbing? Surely not. His bedside clock, digital, told him that it was 4.30am. That, he suspected, was no time to be seeking a nightclub.

Well, sleepy-time, sleepy-time. No point worrying about it. His door was closed and locked – after last time – and he was safe and secure in his cosy, sauna-like room. The fact that he was sweating a pint of water every hour just made him all the more content. This was the only room with heat in the house. Why had nobody got any oil? Well he wasn't going to. He'd ordered it last time and it had been a nightmare trying to get all the money organised so that they could actually pay the man who delivered it. This time he'd offered to get the heating if everybody gave him fifty quid by Friday. Friday had passed over three months ago and no money had changed hands. So there was no heating. This was the logical, inescapable conclusion. The laws of thermodynamics had full reign over this house, except in one important regard: entropy increased, but there was no increase of heat. He wondered at this paradox.

James said that a bird had flown into the oil tank. What arrant nonsense. Birds did not simply fly into oil tanks, as James was well aware. And yet the fellow continued to insist that he had watched it do so, and moreover claimed that this would cause an explosion if they ever obtained oil and attempted to use it. This was very well, Neil thought; except that almost everyone accepted this theory from James and refused to listen to even the most forcefully expressed reason from himself. Fools.

Neil thought about his philosophy classes. He was taking night classes now with Sheila in the Peter Frogatt Centre. Excellent classes. No greater exercise for the brain, in truth. And what was truth? Ah, a philosophical question. It was extraordinary. The more they probed into these questions, the more it became clear, to Neil, and also to the whole class, that all of these questions depended simply on the use of words. If the words were used properly, then there were no puzzles. Neil had good reason to believe this. They had together debated many issues, from metaphysics to ethics to epistemology and logic, and time and time again, if the issue was resolved, it was by agreement that the original dispute had been caused by a lack of agreement on what the words actually meant. Thus there was no substance to philosophical debate, and upon consultation with Erwan, the philosopher had seemed to concur. But the poor soul remained wrapped up in his insoluble puzzles, rather than freeing himself from them. Science involved a much more satisfying search for testable truth.

There was that banging and clunking again. How much walking up and down stairs, moaning incomprehensibly, could a person perform before becoming weary and returning to their bed like any rational citizen? Ah, but therein lay the rub, for he was not dealing with any particularly rational citizen.

Came a knock upon on his door. He ignored it, not even feeling the slightest compunction to answer it. The knock on his door continued and, rather than finding it irritating, he found it satisfying in the extreme to know that he wouldn't answer it no matter how long the knocking continued, that he would cocoon himself in this cosy, almost lethally hot room under a quilt until the fellow's hand started bleeding and the sun rose.

The fellow gave up long before that, as Neil knew he would. The chap was moaning about something, probably in some kind of irrational distress. This made Neil feel even happier and more content. He could hear knocking against Levin's door now, but that was entirely a futile endeavour, since as Neil knew Levin was paying the parentals a dutiful visit this weekend.

The strange chap sounded like he was opening Levin's door – always unlocked as it was – and wandering in and then wandering back out again. What was the fellow playing at? Neil was beginning to wish the chap would just go away and let them sleep. He did not think to protect Levin's possessions – after all, Levin had a perfectly serviceable lock, and if he chose to leave his room open, it was evidently because he cared little to protect his chattel. Alternatively Levin saw no need to protect his chattel since they were under little threat. In either case it was too snug – or killingly hot – in this room for Neil to contemplate rising. He enjoyed listening to this little charade outside.

The grunting and murmuring and stomping about on the landing outside his room continued persistently for fifteen minutes. Then the chap seemed to wander downstairs. He could hear him clattering about.

'What on earth is that fellow doing?' wondered Neil. It was entirely mysterious why, having failed success in whatever objective he had, he did not give up and go to bed. Or just leave the house and go somewhere else. Why, upon not achieving an aim, did he persist with it for so long? The fellow was evidently without a deal of wit.

Neil glanced at his bedside clock sleepily. He had gone into one of the two or three levels of sleep, half-aware and half-unaware. Now he had come out of it. The ridiculous fellow was up and about again. What a strange fellow. Neil had woken up one night, vaguely aware of some annoying dream where a dark figure had been standing at the foot of the bed. He had groaned and tossed over on his side to try and get back to sleep, only to become horribly aware that there was a dark figure standing at the foot of his bed. Quick as a flash he had sat up and flicked on the bedside lamp. It had been him – that fellow, his thin-stalked head and wearing only underpants, mouthing stupidly and trying to gesture something, apparently in explanation. No explanation was possible, was Neil's view. Neil had angrily ushered the fellow out, pointing at the door and saying 'out, out!' repeatedly until even that dense fellow had come to grips with the idea he was trying to communicate. Neil had locked his door firmly ever since. Oh, now he was knocking Neil's door again. No, that will not work.

He heard the fellow wander in and out of Levin's room again. Neil glanced at his clock, in case he had been mistaken. No, it was 4.57am. Knocking on Erwan's door now. Knocking, knocking, knocking... oh, hello!

It sounded like the deficient young man was having a conversation with somebody. No, that was Erwan. Erwan was saying: 'What do you want?' Such an angry tone.

The mental deficient began slabbering unremittingly about nothing comprehensible. Erwan was interrupting him saying _It's 5 in the morning. Now what do you want?_ and the idiot was still blabbering and not making any word of sense. Neil felt disturbed and yet amused now.

'Ax-ee! Ax-ee?!'

'Ah, taxi!'

'Uh!'

'Well where are you going?'

'Uh ee rur ee ah ah err oh eee! EE!'

'I don't understand.'

'ET Aax –EE!'

Erwan refused. He seemed to be angry, very forcefully refusing to get anyone a taxi and telling the fellow to get upstairs and shut up. Neil found this very satisfactory. The fellow was not listening to Erwan's rage advice however, and continued to make a disturbance. 'No I'm not going to get you a taxi. Go away!'

This continued for a little time but then Erwan must have shut his door, for Neil could hear knocking again that went on for quite some time. But the fellow obviously received no response, for he went away, moaning and gammering, upstairs. Neil heard a TV being switched on. Ah, that was better. Neil felt he could sleep now – indeed, the room was so swelteringly hot that it was only by miracle that he was conscious at all. He rapidly fell into a swoon that became a deep and untroubled sleep.

Aaron listened to the movements next to his room with fear and some distaste. He lay on his bed with Eminem playing softly in the background. The room was dark apart from a lamp shining on the ground. Shuffling, banging, someone running all the way down the stairs, leaving the front door open for hours, someone else still in the room, a party of four, a party of one, music playing in an empty room. Playing music at all hours; keeping him awake. Work in Four Star Pizza. Back home, with a pizza. Eating, trying to sleep, going to class half the time. Having pizza and working.

Aaron got the room. The moment she left, he seized it. Much better than the tiny closet he had been staying in. He put the mattress on the bed and hoovered the floor: it was covered in shreds of paper, bits of card, old panty receipts, a single unsmoked cigarette with the tobacco spilt from it, a single unopened condom, a used condom, a postcard of a mountain (unused). He threw all this away, except the unused condom, which he carefully put in the top drawer of his bedside cabinet beside his BB gun.

He took his picture of the scantily-clad model bending over, cheekily looking back at the viewer, and stuck it to the wall with blu-tak. Later that week he wrote 'cum in my bum' on a file-page and cut it out, speech bubble style, sticking it beside the woman's head. He also put up his four foot by two foot poster of Eminem menacingly holding a silver gun by his side in a dark and rubbish-strewn American alleyway. Then he lay on his bed and thought of things with fear and some distaste.

One evening he was eating pizza and reflecting on his life. Things had improved immeasurably for him since Geraldine had moved out. She'd been asked to move by the landlord who promised not to move anyone in whom the tenants did not approve of. Aaron reflected that this did not mean _him._ He was ok.

This world that he lived in was a desolate place, wailing children, dead or dying old ladies, guns, dark noises, shame and fear and terror. Dead streets of Belfast, some cobbled, cold rusty water poring down century-old drain pipes. Green with copper; slime growing down the sides; dampness and decay long and old. He looked at his BB gun and thought about shooting some disabled people in the ass. He liked his new room much better than the old one: it was bigger, and now the only music he could hear was his own.

The fridge outside was beginning to release its CFC gases. The door was torn off. It lay, rusting, unforgotten and uncared for. He didn't care about it one jot. He liked to sit in his room at the top of his house, lie on his bed while Eminem played on the stereo on the floor, and think of naked women and BB guns and pizza.

One day he drove around with his mates from school in a red Peugeot the windows rolled down. Gangster rap beat out. They drove around and around, up the Lisburn road, down all the side streets between it and Malone, beeping nothing, liking it, liking the horrible clouds that rained incessantly, beeping their horns at anything.

One day he drove around with his mates. Four, five weeks ago. He hadn't called his parents in eleven days. They lived in Belfast. He lived here, in the Pink House. He wished his life was darker so that he could write a rap. He pointed his BB gun out the window and desired a building site he could pop a ball bearing at.

He went to work in Four Star pizza. He got a blue Four Star t-shirt with four golden stars above the right breast and wore his Four Star shirt. This was the only time he smiled. He was fed up being fat, but liked pizza, and wanted to be dead to the world, but something in him was living and breathing like a new-blossoming plant, something he'd rather kill and squash. How could he be dead to the world with happiness growing in him everyday?

He tried not to smile when he was in the kitchen in the Pink House, but he liked it, he liked the people he lived with and thought they were quite witty. Nevertheless he maintained his values of deadpan uninterestedness. His ideal was a featureless plank of wood. That meant he could be what he was: a foundation without a house. He took his pizza upstairs, when they left the kitchen, and ate in his room, this time. Last time he ate in the kitchen and threw his empty pizza box into the alleyway next to the house.

He sat in the livingroom, looking at the Wall. Where was the love? Where were the pictures of peace and harmony and of things being created? Where was the picture of Nelson Mandela, smiling across Africa? He tried to think of an Ethiopian joke but failed. Those miserable Ethiopians.

He lay on his bed, thinking happily about the comfort he found _here_ , at least. Not like in the kitchen and livingroom, where it was freezing, even now in late March. Geraldine had moved out of this room several months ago. He'd claimed it good. Now the livingroom was sealed off with stolen police tape. Everyone used his old room instead. He watched _Serpico_ with Levin and Erwan, but they got increasingly stoned and incoherent, so that he didn't think they were even conscious for the last hour of the film. He liked that. _Serpico_ was one of his favourite films. He loved the way Pacino could take the piss out of anyone and everyone, and still care, and get shot, and how he popped a cap into the ass of some lowlife, and the whole system was fucked. He didn't want to live in a world where the system wasn't fucked. He lay on his bed and thought about it with fear and some distaste.

'I like sluts,' he said.

He drove around with some mates. They shot at some losers. The losers yapped about it. Someone started following them in a car. What the fuck? Following and following them. Someone shouted at them from the car. Dark so they couldn't see much – it was about about 8 in the evening. Aaron began to get the shivers. He had a premonition of his impending death. They'd shot some bad motherfuckers – the worst kind, the kind who track you down and kill you. They drove all over the place and eventually Aaron rapped his fist against his mate's head and said Let me out!

Aaron scurried away into the night. It enveloped him like a shroud, but still he could hear the steps following him, the trigger being cocked, a knife being slid out of its cover. He began to shake uncontrollably. He didn't know where he was. He ran down one street and ran down another; sweat pored down his face and in his clothes and under his armpits. He was a struggling, wobbling mess but still he kept running, and running, until all the street lights were blurred under the stream of mucus and sweat that covered his face like a mask. He tore at his eyes, trying to see. People were shouting at him, obscene things. All the haunting things he'd done came back to him. Fear and some distaste covered his face. He ran and ran. There was a grocers. There was a church he knew. There was a bin lying on its side. He ran, his lungs feeling like two red balloons. He ran into his house. He shook and shook. He ran upstairs, into his old bedroom. His parents nowhere. Dark house. He shook. He climbed into the cupboard. He stayed there, stayed there, making no noise, crying silently, wringing his hands and trying to be as quiet as he could possibly be. He stayed there all night, aching. When daylight crept through the crack in the cupboard door he whimperingly clambered out and went to his bed. He dreamt of terror.

He went to Four Star pizza and worked his six hour shift, efficiently taking orders and passing them back to the 'cook' behind in the kitchen. The cook was no older than he and knew how to put a precooked pizza in an oven and no more. He coughed when a cloud of chip fat rose like a globular mushroom from the deep fat fryer.

He sat on his bed at four in the morning watching soft porn on Channel 5. He had an expression of complete immobility on his face. There was nothing in the room except the flashes of shifting light. He may have been alive or dead.

He perspired a little when he thought of his exams.

He performed averagely in his exams, failing one and passing two others. This confirmed him in his lack of worldly response.

He slept in and woke up and fell back to sleep and woke and shivered in the cold of the frosty February morning and fell back to sleep and woke and pulled his covers up tighter around him and fell back to sleep and then woke.

He had a slice of garlic bread with his pizza.

There was a fire exit sign in green on the wall in the hallway. He looked at it, wondering if he should peel it off and put it on his lever arch file cover. He experimentally picked at a corner. It seemed to be fairly well stuck on. He left it there reluctantly.

He lay in bed and thought with fear and some distaste of the time he'd popped caps at the prostitutes round the corner from the cinema on the Dublin Road.

'How many roads must a man walk down?

'Before you can call him a man?

'The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.

'The answer is blowing in the wind.'

His housemates were in the livingroom listening to Bob Dylan again. They were doing that a lot these days especially on Sunday. They seemed to have a ritual: eat a big fry and then smoke a big number of joints whilst reading the Observer and then listening to this Bob Dylan CD over and over. Aaron did not like the sound of Bob Dylan. He preferred hip-hop. He liked the dark incessant rhyme after rhyme about crime and beatings and killing and money and showing your homies that their asses were about to be popped. He liked the misogyny and homophobia associated with some practitioners. He liked the money and glamour associated with the same. He liked the high-pitched nasal complaint of Eminem's disaffected voice and the deep confident timbre of big Daddy P.

It was his last day. He'd spent nine months here, September through to June, four months of it in Geraldine's room. He'd eaten pizza. His exams were over so he was moving back home. His face was still the same as when he'd moved in. He'd had a learning experience. His attitude towards that learning was indifference. He'd move somewhere else next year. He endeavoured to make less overt effort in all his acts. He smiled. He caught himself. He was a like a zen buddhist clutching at passing twigs of thought at will, or letting them go, floating down the meaningless stream. He was like a gangster, taking pops at the weak and disaffected. Fundamentally he was nothing. He enjoyed it. When the next Eminem album came out he'd buy it from HMV. It was June the 12th 2003.

***

#  TEXT FOUR

There's a red house over yonder

That's where my baby stays.

Yeah there's a red house over yonder

That's where my baby stays.

Well I ain't been home to see my baby

In about a ninety-nine and a one half days.

PUZZLES

Erwan was at a party in the Big Pink house, a good party. The line-up included: a bloodied football supporter; a scientist (covered in blood); Dr Who, or rather, a person wearing a long scarf; a demon; a bloodied witch; an ordinary citizen, with blood; a zombie; a vampire, with blood. Erwan was cunningly disguised as Tom Baker. With a bottle of Bushmills he was walking around talking enervated nonsense to anyone unfortunate enough to stray his path. He joined a debate without knowing much what it was about.

Levin was on an armchair talking to James. Tutting at the music, he got up to turn on Zeppelin remasters. He turned to James.

James was clutching his head because Erwan was doing his nut in with his frenzied debating. The girl soon left and Erwan swung haphazardly into another seat, much the worse for wear, stars spinning around his inebriated skull.

'Man what the fuck were you talking about. You were doing my nut in there,' said James.

'Wha?...' said Erwan, not even entirely conscious of where the words were coming from. He smiled inanely.

'Ah fuck. Doesn't matter, you're pissed.'

'I'm pissed?!' Erwan roared. 'Yes,' he then agreed, nodding. He seemed to fall into some kind of temporary coma.

'Why is everyone so completely drunk?' asked Levin.

'Dunno man. Probably they drank too much of the Juit Fruice.'

'Ah yes. The Juit Fruice.'

Oh yes, the Juit Fruice. The fruice, made only hours earlier, was now entirely gone. No-one, Barry and Emmett excepted, knew exactly what was in it, and even they didn't know. Brown sauce was one of the ingredients; so was brandy, vodka, fresh fruit, lemons, limes, orange, an apple, vindaloo sauce, monkey testicles, cannabis, the Irish constitution, war, cinnamon, tomato, mashed bananas, and a half-bottle Tequila.

They gazed proudly and longingly at the Juit Fruice, the finished creation, proud with longing. Drinking a glass each, toasting to their craftsmanship, they pronounced it ambrosia from the Gods. They left it there for a while. When they returned Hamish had finished it.

In finishing it Hamish nearly signed his own fateful destiny in vomit. Because by finishing it he thereby finished himself – almost. He wasn't the only one to partake, of course – Levin, James, Erwan, Emmett, Barry, Neil, Claire, Sarah, Levin MacHill, Travolta – all had a plastic tumbler or four. The Juit Fruice had been brewed in a big black bucket so it went quite evenly around. Or so they thought. Before most of the guests had arrived nearly everyone was piss-drunk on fruice. Hamish seized his opportunity when vigilance was low and filled a pint glass with it. Then he pressed the bucket itself to his lips to drain the nectar to the dregs.

Too late Emmett saw him – 'Hi man! Stop! Our Juit Fruice!'

Barry came running at the sound of those fateful words. Baz saw the state of young Hamish, bucket in hand, satisfied and vaguely large grin on his face.

Barry laughed uproariously. His observation: 'This man is obviously fucked!'

Emmett's: 'All our Juit Fruice is gone.'

'Wha?' Barry. A delayed reaction. Then he cried: 'Noooooo!'

He threw his fist to the heavens. Then he laughed uproariously again. The boy was a total mess. Mr Hamish was trying to do the Hamusbic shuffle on the linoleum floor with bucket in place of pint.

'Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo!' Barry cried, trying to rub the tears of laughter from his weeping eyes.

Hamish looked. He was smiling lopsidedly, Juit Fruice stains around his mouth. 'Wha's the matter?' he said.

He dropped the bucket on the floor and weaved his way to the kitchen door, pausing to lean on the doorframe for support. Then he continued his journey to the livingroom.

Some time later, those inside the livingroom (Claire, Neil, Levin MacHill, James and Sarah, Levin McCochall at the loo) saw a bloodied man crash through the door and lurch towards them. He was wearing a football top. They cleared the way. He dropped onto the sofa. He began to make ghastly noises. Barry and Emmett followed. They propped his feet onto the sofa and considerately made sure his mouth was pointing downwards so that any unsavoury substances that made their way out would make their way out rather than into his unfortunate lungs.

'That chap,' said Barry, looking at the prostrate casualty, 'drank all the Juit Fruice.'

They began to complain but recognised that there was plenty of other drink available, no shortage. They lashed into beer, whisky, vodka. Other drinks. Relaxed, the strong liquor and weaker beer taking the edge off the tension that hosts feel before a party. Well roped they were before the second lot of guests made the door.

The first lot of guests were Tanya, Sarah, Sheila and Miriam who, likely to their lasting happiness, did not live in the Big Pink house. Mind you, the Pink house had not then developed the reputation it would later acquire as a hive of evil and despondency. It was clean and habitable. Nor yet had the War on Terror cast its gleep and shadowy slime across an unsuspecting world.

Erwan wasn't strictly speaking a resident of the Pink. He just spent most of his time there. He'd arrived soon after Sarah and Tanya in time to sample the Juit Fruice, so we can consider him as being part of the 'first lot' of guests.

The doorbell rang. It was the second lot of guests. After that people stopped counting lots: it was simply more people who came, the party well under way. The second lot of guests contained friends of Barry and Neil, more students of biology. That part of the party became lodged in the kitchen for the rest of the night and couldn't get out. Elsewhere, people mingled and drank and spat. Neil was speaking to Tanya and Sheila. It was he who spat. He spat on Tanya's face. It was a big mistake, one he'd made once before, to his reasonable horror and confusion.

He spat straight into her face quite deliberately.

Tanya became furious, as she was well entitled to do.

'You just – you just _spat_ into my _face?_ '

Neil wriggled in pleasure and shame. 'Yes...'

It was the vodka he blamed it on. He didn't have time to complete the thought though because Tanya gave him a barrage of justified abuse.

'What the fuck p— is your problem, you f— dick?' She completed this short tirade by throwing what remained of her drink in Neil's face. There wasn't much, just a bit of vodka and lime cordial. Enough to wet his face and shoulders and dampen his lab coat.

'Oh! Here, now...' said Neil, apparently not much discomfited. He did feel genuinely remorseful, though, for what he'd just done to her. Spat in her face. Why the fuck had he done that?

'Why on Earth did I do that?' he asked her. 'I don't know why I did it.'

'Oh, fuck you.' Tanya left. Sheila too rebuked him and went to the livingroom. Neil wiped the remains of Tanya's drink from his face and thought no more about it. He immediately joined Barry and Dave (a biologist) for a conversation about toast and small animals.

Meanwhile, slightly earlier, slightly after the second group arrived but before the miscellaneous 'other' groups arrived, there was Hamish. He was still lying on the sofa. But now other noises began to occur from his general vicinity. Growling, unfortunate noises. No-one noticed; they were having a good time. The first anyone noticed was when Hamish got up because he had vomited over the sofa (and of course no-one likes to lie in their own vomit). This was a disgrace; but everyone found it slightly amusing.

Most of the Fruice was out of his stomach and either on the sofa or the floor. At least the floor was wooden (or some faux-plastic wood substitute). Hamish looked at the mess and murmured some complaint about the floor not being authentic pine. James mistook this for 'Get me more wine, you dogs!' and shook his head.

'No, Hamish, no more alcohol for you.'

Hamish then vomited on the sofa. The sofa was less fortunate that the floor, being made of a cotton/polyester hybrid. It absorbed all the stinky digestions of drool and was quite yuck. Orange rind, and weird brown and yellow mess, spread in a viscous pool over and into the sofa. Some people who witnessed it themselves nearly wanted to vomit. For others it was but a temporary diversion.

A little of the vomit went on Hamish' blue-white football shirt. He picked at this shirt and stared at the vomit a little helplessly. It was as if he didn't quite comprehend. 'Who's going to clean this?' he said in a strange way. Some parts of his mind remained active. He knew someone had to clean it; he probably knew, somewhere in that chaos of liquor and destruction, that it was him who'd have to do it.

He was handed a mop and bucket as well as a new-clean dishcloth.

After Hamish had made a few feeble efforts to clean up his vomit and after he'd been sent to do it again a few times until it was fairly decently sorted out, a large troupe of fellows, Emmett, Barry, Levin, Neil and Erwan, put the fellow to bed. Erwan did not help much: he was somewhat inebriated himself. The others pulled the shirtless Hamish towards his room. They put him in bed despite his protestations. He wanted to get on with the party. He didn't reappear until late the next day and lacked any memories of the events. But most people's memories the next day were a little blurred. Especially after that time. For instance, the author can't remember anything that happened, but will hazard to give the following timeline:

Neil ventured upstairs at about one-thirty a.m. Erwan had a relative re-lease of life and stayed up until most people went home, about 4am. He had a kip on the vomit-free sofa. Later he rose at about 7am to take his remaining Bushmills home.

Barry and Emmett sat up with anyone who wanted to stay (Tanya, Sheila, Levin MacHill, Sarah, James) talking and drinking until about 4am. Then they went to bed.

When Neil got up the next day (with severe feelings of guilt that he couldn't pin down) he was quite hungover. Several months later Neil went to the sofa that Hamish had vomited on, around five in the evening, tired out from a different hangover, and actually laid his head down on it. He, who, months before, would have gingerly sat on the edge of the sofa if forced to – he actually _laid_ his head on the sofa that had seen vomit (and, as far as they could tell, urine; and there were definitely many takeaways smeared into it). And he snoozed there, entirely sober and conscious of his action. What could have caused this change?

LIVINGROOM

Levin MacHill and Levin and James were in the Livingroom. James was supposed to be in class; Levin MacHill and Levin were supposed to be in class. Were they? No. They were in the Livingroom. They may have been playing Worms, they may have been drinking, they may have been listening to music and talking rubbish. It doesn't matter. As it happens Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' was playing on Levin's cd player and they were smoking a joint. But that is not important. What was important their helplessness to resist. And their awareness of this fact.

'The Livingroom is sucking my willpower away,' complained Levin MacHill, puffing.

'Wha?' replied Levin.

On a Tuesday in late November these three individuals were not at class where they were supposed to be. James was supposed to be in a music theory tutorial but he wasn't. Levin MacHill and Levin were supposed to be in Jordanstown, studying catering and hospitality and computers respectively. But they weren't. They weren't sure why not. Everyone had risen in good time, which traditionally is the trickiest obstacle of the day. They had eaten breakfast and then popped into the Livingroom to fritter away the remaining few minutes before departure. Now, two hours later, they were still in there, listening to 'The Wall' for the third time and smoking their eighth joint.

Around lunchtime they heard the front door being opened and being shut. Someone walked down the hall into the kitchen. There was a distant sound of food being prepared.

'Mm. I could really do with some food right now,' said Levin MacHill.

'That means getting up though,' said James, rolling a joint.

'Ah,' said Levin MacHill.

There was a silence.

Then Levin: 'Go'ne make us some lunch man.'

This titillated Levin MacHill. 'Make you lunch?' he said, mirthful. 'Fuck off.'

Levin pulled a face. He was not happy.

Neil came into the Livingroom with some freshly-made salad and a milkshake.

Neil took a look around, and then a second look around, and then a third. He was evidently struck by this scene of three wasted corpses, beaten by life at the beginning of a dry Tuesday afternoon late in November.

'Hello chaps. What's happening?'

'Not much,' chortled Levin MacHill. 'Just stuck in the Livingroom.'

Neil heard the capital letter and frowned. He felt uncomfortable with the degeneration of spirit it entailed.

'Go'ne give us some of that salad man,' said Levin, ravenously hungry.

Neil gave him a look which succinctly expressed the feeling: 'This is my salad, not your salad, I'm not going to make you salad.' He then said 'No.'

'Uhh,' said Levin, almost expiring.

James saw the truth.

'We're going to have to get up man.'

Levin saw it too. He moaned and suffered, and in ten minutes was on his feet by the Livingroom door. Levin MacHill, emboldened by this display of energy, actually leapt to his feet. 'That's used up all my strength,' he acknowledged. He staggered slothfully out to the kitchen.

Levin was about to follow. James saw his chance; he made a request.

'Man, in my cupboard, there's a loaf of bread. Get me two slices of bread and put some butter on them. And then go to the fridge. Open a packet of ham and put one slice between two slices of bread. And get me a cup of tea.'

Levin stared at him. He marvelled at the insolence.

'No.'

'Aw, but I'm makin' a joint man! By the time you get back it'll be ready. We can have a nice joint with tea and sandwich.'

In Neil's regard, this whole scene was extremely amusing. He slurped some of his milkshake.

'Sounds reasonable,' Neil said. 'A division of labour.'

'See,' James added, holding up the tobacco pouch. 'I'm using Drum mild, not even cigarette tobacco. So it'll be a really nice joint.'

Levin shook his head. 'I don't know why I'm doing this,' he said.

He shook his head all the way to the kitchen. He made James and himself a sandwich. Levin MacHill made himself something more delectable: home-made cheeseburger and chips.

The kettle boiled for what seemed like eighteen minutes. When the nightmare of eternity had ended Levin made himself a cup of instant with four spoonfuls of sugar. He left James's tea steeping for as long as temporally possible. Treacle-like, the tea resisted the removal of the bag. It gave, with effort

Levin made it back to the Livingroom. James had finished rolling the joint and Levin MacHill was polishing it off.

'Oh! Sorry man!' chimed Levin MacHill merrily, stubbing it out.

Levin just stood there, betrayed; even his emotions were betrayed.

James said: 'Man, you took so long we just had to smoke it. Is that my sandwich and my tea? Nice.'

He reached out long fingers for the food but Levin remained where he was. The sheer brass-neckedness of it.

There was a sound of someone coming in the front door, the rattle of the lock and the squeaking of the hinges. This seemed to knock Levin out of his frozen misery. He took two halting steps towards James and laid the traitor's food on the arms of the chair without saying a word.

'See?' said James, pointing to his lap. 'Making another one.'

Levin continued to be silent. Indeed, he was extremely stoned.

Emmett came into the room just as James was putting the roach in and Neil was polishing off the last of his salad.

'Oh, hello chaps,' he said, as if surprised to see everyone in the Livingroom, which to him was just the livingroom.

'Wee j?' said James. He stuck it in his mouth and sparked it up.

Emmett hesitated. He had good intentions to fulfil. His day so far had been quite productive: he had attended all his lectures, including his early morning 9 am one. He liked this good feeling. It gave him the right to have a simple toke of a joint.

He sat down.

They chatted about this and that. Complaints abounded of Bush's militaristic stance: 'Why the fuck does he think that military intervention is the solution to every damn thing? Fuck him and fucking Rumsfeld.'

Emmett agreed. 'It is like fixing a broken TV with a lump-hammer.'

They all appreciated this. 'Good analogy man.'

'Thank you.'

James had a question: 'What is a lump-hammer?'

'Don't know,' Emmett shrugged. 'A very unsuitable hammer.'

'A hammer for lumps.'

'You wouldn't have that problem.'

'Not after this many joints, no.'

'Must get up and do some work,' said Neil for the third or forth time. He stayed exactly where he was, in a state of nearly-getting-upness, except that the main weight of him was still entirely contained by the sofa.

'You know, these sofas are angled so it is physically impossible to get out of them.'

'I know what you mean, man,' said Emmett. 'There's a slope and a give under the cushions which make it more work getting up than from a normal chair.'

There came a knocking upon the door. Each looked at the other asking who would open the door. No-one rose.

'Could be someone bad like the TV license,' said Levin.

'Better not open the door to anyone,' said Levin MacHill, who had advanced up the stoney mountain and was feeling paranoid.

Erwan's face appeared at the window. He cupped his hands and waved at the shadows he could no doubt see lurking within.

None moved.

'Go'ne let the man in,' said Levin.

No-one had the strength.

Erwan rapped the door another three times. Someone descended from upstairs to let him in.

'Thanks man,' they heard. It was Erwan.

'No bother.' That was Hamish's voice. 'Don't know if anyone's in.'

They came into the Livingroom together.

'Hello,' said the denizens of the Livingroom.

Erwan cursed them roundly.

'Here, have a joint,' said James stretching one out to him.

Erwan hesitated briefly. He took it, then sat on the sofa beside Levin MacHill and Levin. He took a few puffs before handing it on.

Hamish said: 'Did none of you'uns hear the door?'

They looked sheepish, or at least Levin did.

'Couldn't get up man,' he said.

Hamish sat down on the sofa beside Emmett.

'Will we have a game later? Barry'll be back at four.'

'What time is it now?'

'Two.'

'Aye.'

'Right, I'll tell him.'

'Who'll you be?'

'What game are you talking about?' asked Erwan from across the Livingroom (he was sitting on the opposite sofa, the one against the wall, while Emmett and Hamish sat on the sofa by the front bay windows which had venetian blinds).

'Warhammer,' said Hamish.

'Wha?' Erwan didn't know this term.

'Game of ultimate geeks,' said Emmett. 'Or ultimate game of geeks as you prefer. It's why I have small men standing on the shelves in my room.'

'Aye,' said Erwan uncertainly. He had no idea what Emmett was talking about.

'You do man. The ones in my room.'

'What about them?'

They're for the game. It's good. Its strange you've never heard us talk about it.'

'Aye, you should play it. Levin too,' said Hamish.

'No, chess is good enough for me. I don't want to go down that road.'

'You're better off,' said Emmett. 'Games Workshop make a mint off selling the pieces. I've spent a fortune. Keep out of it.'

'Naw, it's a class game!'

Two hours later they were watching daytime TV. Diagnosis Murder was on, a programme about a busy, hardworking doctor who abandons his patients at the slightest provocation to meddle in crimes which are none of his concern. Emmett and James were wondering whether a TV show about a policeman who strolls about a hospital performing complex surgery would be equally popular.

'This is a nightmare,' Neil was saying, clutching his head. 'Why can't I leave this Livingroom?'

The shadows had grown deeper. Dusk was descending and smoke filled the air like fog, disguising the people on opposite sofas from each other. Only the flickering lights of the TV relieved the gloom - or perhaps it cast that gloom into yet deeper shadows.

'Somebody close the curtains... would you?' Levin MacHill said, troubled by the outside world. 'Close those blinds... over.'

This was the right thing to do. And yet it was hard to accomplish.

Emmett groaned trying reaching the toggle as it was slightly out of reach. 'Can't... get it man.'

'Man!' cried Levin MacHill. But he could not get up to do it himself.

Erwan felt sufficiently motivated to stagger out of his seat and visit the toilet. On his way back he pulled the cord to shut the blinds.

'God, well done... man. How did you do it?' asked James.

'I found my magic abilities increased... by the doctor,' Erwan claimed.

'Uhhhh,' groaned Neil, stretching and rubbing his face. It was the third time he'd done it in two hours. He was no closer to commencing his studies upstairs.

'Problem?' inquired Levin.

'No,' expressed Neil.

'Hmm,' said Levin.

The sounds of the front door being unlocked reached their ears. The Livingroom door then swung open.

'Jesus. What's going on in here?' he asked, straining his eyes through the infinite gloom.

'Barry!' shrieked James, in imitation of Barry's usual screeching of his own name.

'James!' screeched Barry back, punch his fist through the air in mock-threat. 'You stole that from me. I will have my revenge, you bastard.'

'Speaking of revenge. That game?' asked Hamish.

'You set it up?'

'Naw. Only take ten minutes sure.'

'Sure. You playing, Emmett?'

Barry looked over his glasses at the sorry wreck.

'Ah man,' said Emmett, giving a long sigh. 'Why does it have to be right at the top of the stairs?'

This was an exact statement of the problem. Hamish occupied the top room of the house. To reach it a chap had climb three steep sets of stairs. In addition the final set was particularly steep; the top floor was a converted attic. By the time one reached this point one was beggared. James lived in the room next door. It prompted speculation how the pair got that far every night.

'Well, there's nowhere else to play it,' said Hamish, answering Emmett's question. 'There's only room in mine.'

'Play it in the kitchen sure.'

'No,' said Barry. 'Too much filth.'

The kitchen was not too filthy at this point – only two day's worth of dishes, and not many crumbs on the floor. This was as clean as it had been for a few weeks. But still unsuitable for board games.

'No, I'll skip this one actually,' said Emmett.

Barry shook his head in disgust and left to make something to eat.

'I am too stoned to do anything tonight,' said Emmett.

'There's a cure for being too stoned to do anything tonight,' said Erwan. 'It's called having a cup of tea.'

This was ignored.

'I am too hungry. Need to get food,' said Neil.

'Mmm,' said Levin, eyes lighting up.

'That'll solve all our problems,' said Erwan. 'We'll go get some food, and while we're in the kitchen, make some tea.'

'Maybe Esperantos,' said Neil, trying to will himself to rise from his chair.

Levin nodded in interest.

'Mmm, good idea! With a cup of tea,' Erwan pointed out.

In the end Erwan's persistent message was heard, and it became too much effort to resist it. He, Levin, Neil and Emmett partook of a reasonably strong cup of tea and got some Esperantos before it kicked in. Then they had a jolly old time descending on drifting feathers into the stoney abyss. Levin MacHill didn't partake; he had to struggle into bed. Hamish and Barry ended up not playing Warhammer but hung about in the Livingroom influenced by the fog of confusion and weirdness that wrapped about them like gloves about a swollen appendix.

PAIN

Upon waking Barry felt all right. His mind was still momentarily drunk. Thus, though he was vaguely conscious of the pain, he didn't quite care. He lay contentedly in his bed.

That initial phase of pleasure passed quickly enough. It was a memory of drunkenness, not the real thing. True horror quickly asserted itself. Each nasty chemical imbibed with last night's beer but suppressed until now by alcohol began its foul work. The action began in the frontal lobes, squeezing them with a force usually reserved for supernatural vice.

His mind became exposed to all the horrors of existence. An intense despair and pain plunged him into an excess of self-loathing and nihilism. This lasted for approximately five minutes. Then the victim, exhausted, returned to a preternatural sleep. And then returned to the state of hideousness.

This bedevilled state, the antonym of atarxy, continued in waves of sickening irregularity until Barry was finally beached in salt-sweat on the rocks of evil consciousness. His bladder demanded to be relieved. (In most cases this is the motive for rising from the bed.) Getting up was utterly horrendous: he lurched with the dagger of pain that struck him from inside. He almost passed out again. The bathroom was downstairs. But Barry could not descend yet. He sat on the edge of the bed feeling bad. There was a gurgling horror in his stomach. With sadness he acknowledged that mealtimes for the next few days might be a source of ultimate discomfort.

Barry took himself together. He made a fist with his right hand and a rictus with his face. He stood (the room turning blue and speckled) up. He felt wan. He was naked; for propriety he put on jeans and t-shirt. One look at the jeans: no, no look at the jeans. He picked up the t-shirt but it stank of other people's stale smoke. He cast it to the outer reaches and retrieved a clean one from his cupboard. Struggling into it, moaning, he pulled it over his head and lunged to the door.

Now stairs, a landing, stairs: all down, all good. He found the blessed relief of the bathroom. He urinated, sprinkling the bowl casually with yellow-white streams. 'Ahhh-hhh-hh.' There was light filtering through the window making his eyes smart. Birds sounded to be twittering; he felt envy for their lightness. But soon, blessedly, the white bowl was full and he was empty. He took the sacrament of white toilet paper and wiped the rim thoughtfully, giving thanks, and cast it into the chamber.

'Yes.'

Now he stood straight; he fell good and well and tall.

It was a momentary error. He slipped from the straight and narrow to the bumbling ditches and gutters of doom and pain and misery. In fact the world smelt a lot like boke. He began palpitating like a shocked finned creature absent air. No, he would not spew his insides: that would be the final disgrace, he would not let it occur. Bond would not have disgraced himself by emptying his martinis. Nor would Napoleon have spoilt Austerlitz with a spew of brandy. Barry held things tight.

He gingerly and unhappily climbed back up the steep stairs to his room.

Swinging the door closed, clutching his stomach a little, he fell on the bed. No respite. Horizontal as bad as vertical. This meant it was, unfortunately, time to get the day rolling. He took his glasses from the bedside table. Then he descended to the kitchen.

Some people were up already. They made him sick, with their fresh eyes.

'You make me sick with your fresh eyes,' he said in a disgusted drawl. 'I can't even bring myself to look at you.'

He did glance at them all the same, glancing at them glancing at each other. Mr Levin and Mr Emmett.

'Hungover sir?' asked Emmett.

'Bastard behind the eyes!' he announced, pounding his head with his fist for the sake of more misery. 'Oooo-ooo!'

'The worst kind of bastard,' said Levin.

'Ha-ha-ha!' he laughed heartily. He regretted it. 'Wish I hadn't done that.'

'Why?'

'It hurts.'

The kitchen seemed to swim in several directions. This kind of pain and misery seemed pointless, without direction. He wished some kind of curtain would come down on it, that he wouldn't have to dwell in this atmosphere of reek and -

'What's like reek?'

'Reek is like leek, leik.'

Barry nearly vomited. 'Don't do that to me.'

'You done it to you.'

Barry gaped at this. 'I'm never drinking again. No, I'm not drinking any more. It's not worth it.'

Emmett laughed, mocking this pious intention. Barry felt a kind of insane rage and desire to smite the laughing imp into a senseless quivering ball. His fragility prevented him. He would have been incapable of picking a daisy at the moment.

'I'm not drinking any more!' he screamed, shaking his fists at high heaven (his enemy, God). 'Ooo...'

Emmett and Levin laughed, Levin and Emmett laughed at his relapse into misery; he was as crumpled as his jeans. He felt all his face, his external image to the world, folding under this scepticism, this unfair double attack on him. His weakness prevented him from revenge. Like Monte-Cristo, perhaps, he could wait... but...

'I don't even feel good thinking about a revenge delayed into the future. Ooo... There will be Guinness shits...'

Levin and Emmett crumpled their faces in sympathetic disgust.

'Dark and difficult,' said Emmett with a sorrowful expression.

'We are all shits,' said Barry. 'Especially my hangover.'

CONCERNING THE EVENTS OF MONDAY THE 18TH AND OF TUESDAY THE 19TH OF FEBRUARY 2002

Being Events That Took Place 3 or 4 Days Ago From Time of Writing.

On Monday the 18th of February 2002, I woke up, or was woken up, at approx. 8am, by loud noises such as elevators, music, and shouting. I lay in bed for a considerable period of time, ignorant as to what I would be doing with my day, lightly daydreaming, until hunger forced me to rise.

I believe I strolled down to attend a philosophy lecture. When that ended I wandered in a relaxed manner towards the Student Union and booked table three in the snooker club for one hour at seven o'clock. I returned home.

My afternoon was spent in earnest scholarly activity, reading either about Hegel or Kant or about strands of Liberalism. Mr Emmett interrupted this at about three or three-thirty. He phoned me and invited me to binge on Simpsons videos – videos which I had in my possession. Furthermore we were to stay up all night drinking caffeine and so forth. I regretfully informed him that I was playing snooker tonight, and having booked the table, could not devote myself to such activities. I cordially invited the young sir to join me in the sport, and he agreed. I also demanded he drag the other young McCochall down with him. He agreed again. We determined to meet at ten to seven outside the Bot.

I resumed my scholarly activities until I grew hungry and decided to pay my canteen a visit and eat their food. I cannot remember if the food was of great quality or not but I suspect it probably wasn't. Nevertheless, I ate all of it, probably, and probably returned to my room with an apple. What I did then I don't know – probably just dithered about watching TV or reading.

At six-thirty or thereabouts Mr Emmett phoned once more. He informed me that he was too lazy to get off his ass and leave the livingroom (which was warm) and come and play snooker. I said, fuck you, is Levin coming? He said, no. I said, who am I going to play with then? I booked it with you or Levin in mind. He said something and I said just get off your ass and come, and we decided that I would pop down with the Simpsons videos and we would go and play snooker.

I headed down soon enough and reached their house at ten-to. I said hurry up and let's go, and so we went. We walked and talked - mostly about life without electricity. We arrived at the union and proceeded to the snooker room, where we played snooker and drank beer. When the hour was up we dandered back to the house.

When we got to the top of Eglantine Avenue we ran for some reason all the way down to the house. I was wrecked, and so was everyone else. We slumped inside and had a joint and gasped for air and realised how completely unfit we all were. We had another joint and decided to start watching the videos.

Levin went off and made us some coffee, and we watched a couple of episodes and then stopped to watch Rodge and Podge, and Banzai, I think. We had more joints and more coffee and watched The Simpsons.

It wasn't even midnight and we were all wrecked. I was determined, though, to stay up all night, and so was Emmett. Levin made some noncommittal noises and we called him a loser and other abusive terms and so we all decided to stay up all night. We drank more coffee and started to feel really shite. My stomach made a few weird grumbly noises which neither sounded nor felt particularly pleasing.

I think at about two or three, or maybe four, in the morning, we paused for a break and ate a pizza. We drank more coffee and I played Levin a game of sleepy chess – or maybe I played Emmett. I think I probably played both. We lay about, smoked another joint and drank tea to keep us awake. We listened to Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon, played more chess, and talked. Levin was making motions about going to bed, like a loser, and we told him so. At maybe half five he got up and went to Meabh's house - whilst we screamed "loser" as loud as we could after him. We made him agree a) not to go to sleep, and b) to meet us at the main gates of the botanic gardens at about eight. He agreed.

We watched a few more Simpsons. At 7.15am I found myself desirous of a dufflecoat. I keep a dufflecoat at the Halls in that room I sometimes sleep in. So we miserably marched towards said Halls. Having arrived and staggered in I stretched and yawned and felt shite, and I think Emmett did too. At seven in the morning the world is an unamusing grey colour with nothing occurring either inside or outside one's head. We were going to drink more coffee but I was sickened by the stuff at this point (as was Emmett) so we didn't bother. I phoned Levin, but just got the goddam BT "blah blah blah leave a message" stupid fuck, which meant that Levin had probably turned his phone off goddamm and had probably gone to sleep and probably wouldn't meet us at the botanic gardens on time.

At this point I shall inform you that before we had ventured upon this quest we had considered deciding to do a few things. Thing number one was go to Stormont and protest against student loans and fees and crap like that. The coach to Stormont was due to leave at 1.00pm which was about five and a half hours away. We three and possibly Hamish were going to start the revolution.

Thing number two was go to the Limelight that night, the Limelight being a drinking establishment where people go and drink. The possibility of us still being awake to go there was very very small. We recognised this and were willing to concede that it probably wouldn't happen.

So Emmett and I left my room at about ten to eight. We walked up Malone Road and cut through Chlorine Gardens and up and round Stranmillis Road and to the gates of the Botanic Gardens. We were not surprised to find Levin not there.

We wanted to visit the tropical ravine but it didn't open until ten so we just wandered about. It was lightly drizzling and was slightly cold. We went up past the greenhouse and around to the rose gardens. On the way I showed Emmett where Narnia was.

"Narnia, Mr Emmett," I said, fuzzed

"Ohright," Emmett said, likewise fuzzed

"Can't go in it. Right state of mind. Should be in," I said

"Yes. I'm very tired," said Mr Emmett tiredly.

At the rose gardens, or near to them, we took up shelter under a podium somesuchthing. I was tired and all fuzzed up. We stayed there for a while and there was a man with a dog and then we left again and then headed towards the PEC. We passed it and went towards the playing field, then turned round, and walked back towards where we had been. On the way we met Levin.

"Hello Levin what the hell are you doing here." He had arrived before us at eight. We had been a little bit late. Also, his phone apparently wasn't working which was why I couldn't phone him. I apologised for having sent a rather discourteous text message which I had done in my sleepy rage.

He had had half an hour's sleep, however. This annoyed us greatly, or as greatly as was possible in our fuckedup state. We tiredly called him a "loser" again and wandered about some more. We needed caffeine. We decided to go to the museum cafe. As we walked towards the museum a uniformwoman ran towards us and said "Sorry, the museum's not open yet." She looked frightened. We were offended by this.

We trekked up back homewards, shortcutting through the Ashby building, and popped into the shop to get food and milk. Milk was got, and so were sausages. Then we went to the house.

In the house we ate the sausages and drank some milk, and maybe we had some tea or coffee too. People were starting to get up now, and looked unimpressed when we told them we'd been up all night. We were by now very tired.

We needed more caffeine, so we had some tea. It made my stomach growl and twist - I felt no good at all. We watched shitey morning TV and had a few joints, and then... Emmett went to get some videos. But we didn't watch them. Instead, I went to get Withnail and I. We put it on.

We watched the drink and shooting fish and raving homosexuals and the finest wines known to humanity, in a state of mind which was tired, and I played some more chess against someone. One of the Levins. We smoked more joints.

Withnail and I ended. We took the blackboards out. We scribbled a few formulae on them and then Levin and Neil became immersed in deriving an equation for somethingorother to do with Tescos and the "Cohop". This took a while but I really wasn't paying much attention anyway because I was playing a game of chess with the other Levin.

Neil went out to a lecture. We had long ago decided that Stormont wasn't for us. It was now two o'clock. I was playing some more chess (with some weird made-up rules this time) with Levin MacHill, and Emmett and the McCochallLevin were meanwhile having a wee doodle and the blackboard. They became very enthusiastic and I, glancing at it, was well impressed with their efforts. At about twenty past I started work on it too for I could not resist. Other people gradually dispersed from the room. Just we three tired wrecks enthusiastically stayed creating a blackboard masterpiece until Hamish strolled in and looked bemusedly at our inspired creation.

By twenty-to I think it was finished. Maybe it was later. I don't know. We mounted it on top of the sofa and drank it all in. Soon an art discussion started. It was a plant, and a cliff, and many things besides. Neil, when he returned, was not impressed; we had drawn over the tesco/cohop equation. He perhaps thought not much of our picture either, the philistine.

We all got back to the equation, using the other blackboard. I was engaged in a futile attempt to derive a way of expressing the cohop equation in terms of mass and energy, whereas Levin was exploring something else - involving the terms "snoochems" (That's what it sounded like to me) and "horizontality". By the end he had an equation. It gave Levin two numbers – 364 and 42 – which meant that he didn't really want to go to either shop, but didn't want to go the one that was further away most of all. We were all satisfied.

Emmett understandably crawled upstairs and went to bed. The time was about half three. Everyone else buggered off too. Me and Hamish and Levin were left.

We sat on the sofa and laughed out the window at passersby. Levin and me debated going to the Limelight, or maybe taking tea (special tea), or maybe both. We decided that I would go home for dinner and then come back. On my way I would buy us a can of red bull each.

As always happens at about hour 32, the adrenalin kicked in. I was no longer tired. I felt just like I had had a good night's sleep. I walked up home. I ate my dinner. Foul horrible stuff. I scooted back up to Levin's. The time was about six o'clock.

I didn't buy any red bull, which is just as well for Levin had gone to bed like a loser. Everyone else was still there though so I stayed about. A lot of people were going to the Limelight at about half nine. I decided I would go with them.

We smoked some joints and watched TV. At seven the Simpsons came on. There was going to be four in a row tonight.

After a while I decided the Limelight wasn't for me. We sat watching the Simpsons. At about eight o'clock (during the third Simpson) another joint was rolled and Hamish drank his cider. James said he probably wouldn't go to the Limelight either. Most people agreed. Hamish was very upset and called us all losers. I said I'd be up for the union or something. This was considered. Me and Hamish decided to go to the union.

The forth Simpson was very odd. It involved Homer giving a hobo a spongebath again and again. Very strange.

Myself and James decided to pay Mr Emmett a wee visit with a joint. He'd been in bed for far too long and it was time he got up, or else he'd be totally wrecked for the rest of the week with a screwed-up biological clock. Emmett was pissed off to see us. He looked bleary eyed and tried to fathom why we were such bastards that would wake him up. We fed the joint into him. He got better. So we sat for a while listening to Nine Inch Nails. Just before ten we went downstairs and we turned the TV to Channel 4 to watch an Aliester Crowley programme. Half way through Levin appeared and he looked tired. The programme ended. I had been awake for 39 hours now and felt fuzzy and fragmented but also ok. Hamish was seen leaving the house. We watched a programme about police killing people in America. Then we smoked another joint. I decided to go home. It was midnight. We had another joint. I had a lecture at ten so I thought it probably wise to go home now and sleep. This I did.

CAPTAIN SPACEFACE

There was nothing on TV – except, of course, Captain Spaceface, commander of the USS Enterprise. He'd already killed half of the race of Gellows and was engaged in wiping out the other half, the sadistic bastard.

Barry of course was leering all over tight-clothed, large breasted, low-cut-topped sex machine Lieutenant Commander Troy. Obscene slanders fell from his lips each time the lustworthy telepath appeared on screen. Emmett paid Barry no attention. He was in one of his less alert, more introspective, more bitter and displeased and taciturn frames of mind. He didn't even like this Captain Spaceface. It was too long, and everyone knew that they'd solve the problem in the end especially since it was just a rerun. He couldn't quite remember how it ended but it was crap. He hated it; dark hatred came out of his eyes and beamed into the TV. His eyes weren't quite focused on the centre of the screen. There was a dark cloud in the room.

The house was clean. The house was clean now.

That wasn't the reason he was in a dark frame of mind. That was for some other reason, a reason he didn't understand, to do with the cycles, the ups and downs of existence, anomalies and mental phenomena that were beyond him. All he knew was that it was a total piece of shite and that he HATED it. Maybe he hadn't got enough sleep.

Barry fucking started talking about Troy's gee and how to increase it and then have sex with Commander Troy in various unusual positions. Emmett became darker and his introspection descended deeper into the deep caverns from which few venture and fewer return. The deep underwater squids. He wanted to catch one and stop its inky blackness upsetting his internal and carefully maintained personal chemistry. Wring its neck.

'... it is like the finest sauce you put between two baps and then eat it, but of course you need something to put between the two baps...'

This mind-raking statement was enough to wrench Emmett from his introspective reverie. He looked at Barry and clutched his head. Barry laughed at him with half-bashful, half-intoxicated vigour and spite. 'Ha-ha-ha!' he laughed.

'Ugh,' said Emmett, disgusted by the world. His attention was brought back to the programme, however. Captain Spaceface was examining the ruins of an ancient world he had helped partially annihilate. He was overcome by remorse and suffering. Commander Troy was squinting into the middle-ground.

'Captain, I feel unhappiness and danger... danger near by... feel...' she was saying, between gritted sexy teeth.

'Feel my big bone sandwich you delicious fucking sexual whorebag mothering fucking mother's daughter yee-ess!' sang Barry in response. Emmett slapped himself in the face. He wanted a cheese-grater to grate out his ears.

'No, Barry, stop...' he moaned, writhing. To distract himself he listened to Captain Spaceface.

'Who knows what great things lie out there, in the stars, that we have not yet discovered, what wonderful future might lie ahead for humanity, in our continuing mission. Riker?'

'Yes Captain?' said the beard.

'Make it so.'

The Enterprise promptly blasted a hole in space so big that several nearby planets shattered and sent shards spinning into their erstwhile (presently nova) twin suns. The theme music came up.

'That was shit,' said Emmett accurately.

Barry stretched and sighed contentedly; though he seemed to be at a loss now that his favourite show was over for another day. Emmett didn't care. He didn't care what programme came on next. He switched channel. There was some news on.

WorldCom chiefs refuse to testify. Plans for Pentagon propaganda war. 'Palindrome Day': 20 02 2002. Police shoot man on M6.

'Fuck,' said Emmett, entering another dark and shadowed abyss. 'Fuck. That is fucked up.'

Images of pain and suffering rolled endlessly over the screen. A calm voiceover made statements of fact in the background. More suffering. A bomb. Poverty. Politicos making bland, pointless statements about nothing that actually helped make any difference in this fucked, fucked stupid, badly-run and always suffering world.

Emmett wondered why any step made in any direction always seemed to just make things more grim and eternally awful. Why all the forces of nature and artifice in the world seemed geared to one result and one aim only, that of the misery and increasing unhappiness of the weakest and most miserable and most down-trodden-upon. The leaches of humanity whose swamps were drained to provide the westerners with their stinking penthouse apartments in the sun.

That's how it was, he guessed.

'Want a jam man?' asked Emmett, looking up. (Dark rings lay under his words). His tone was pessimistically hopeful – in other words, like a dirge.

'Hmm. No, man, sorry. I think I'm just giving up on the guitar.'

'Ah fuck sake man,' said Emmett, but his spirit wasn't in the reproach. He expected this.

'No point. Can't do anything with it!'

'Aye, no bother,' said Emmett, gazing at the TV screen, flicking the channels. He sighed heavily. He flicked between the channels rapidly, regularly, just as the sound tuned in, so that the TV made a noise like brh – goh – ste – fzh – crk – sps –

Barry left the room.

Emmett continued cycling through the channels before idly tossing the remote to one side and stretching out on the sofa. Soon he fell into a doze. He woke up some time later. He went to bed.

PROPHECY

I spent a long and tiring day in the company of my friend next-door.

He continued forth for many hours, spilling tide after tide of cantankerous comment into my unwary brain until I, utterly bereft of mind, saw that the only option was to be rude and shut the door. He stood there a number of hours but now, thanks to God, he has ceased his inane repetition of words. He talked such rubbish. I will try to set down a record of something of what he said.

'The sea squid has wings. When it gets hungry, it raises its full form out of the water and SQUOOOOSHHHH!!!!! jets into the sunrise without so much as a hoodaloo. That will be last we see of it until it eats the sun.

'Giant sea squids,' he continued, 'should be stamped into the ground as squished puddles of squoosh before it's too late. I've written to the government but those pen-pushing bureaucrats couldn't quash a fly let alone a giant sun-eating sea squid that has wings and can fly between the stars. That's why, my friend, I'm speaking to you, urging you to do all you can to stop this menace before we die, we, our children's children, we, our children's children's children, our children's children's children's children die.

'Our forefathers, if they saw us, would be disappointed without bound. How could it happen? Lifeformkind threatened with brain-sucking starsquids? I'm talking about the government. It's time we took those bastards and strung them up. So my fellow bureaucrat I urge you, before it's too late, form an alliance and squish the squishers before they squish you. I shall be your leader and live in a small tin biscuit box fused from the hearts of a thousand dark suns. Then I shall enter negotiations with the sea squids and ask them if they will join with us against the evil bureaucrats who seek to kill us all. When we have killed the bureaucrats then we can kill the evil sea squids, which seek to kill us all. Then, victorious, _you,_ my person, will cart me off around the galaxy in the giant carcass of a hollowed seasquid to show our enemies that we are scared of no-one and then we shall kill them, o my brothers. Yea, and I shall stand, alone, and I shall remember those wise words that said to fight ever nobly on and kill, kill, kill, kill, and kill!

'We must kill everything before it is too late.'

RUMOURS

At around this time – Thursday 21st February 2002 – rumours began to circulate on the subject of Redbeard's origins.

One popular theory was that Redbeard had once been an academic at the local University but had been usurped from that position by his evil twin brother. There was an academic in the area with a full red beard (albeit neater than Redbeard's) who fitted this description. There were of course doubts about the story. The so-called twin was identified as an academic merely because he wore a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches.

According to the story, Redbeard had been on a five-day drunk – perfectly acceptable behaviour in academic circles. His evil twin, resentful of Redbeard's success and intelligence, ousted Redbeard from his office. He changed the locks on the doors. Redbeard eventually sobered up and tried entry to his office. But the imposter phoned the police, who refused to believe Redbeard's story. Ever since Redbeard had sought to drown his sorrows in alcohol.

There were variations of the story. One alternative reading was that Redbeard actually was this lookalike academic. According to this theory Redbeard led a double life, one as a respectable sociologist, the other as a tramp who lived off discarded takeaways and drank white lightning cider.

Another was that Redbeard had agreed with his brother to do the swap.

***

#  TEXT FIVE

Television??

???What the @%*!? Television •°°***

It's made of

Window.

Stu –––––————- innit

Student.

Accommodation.

Wall. Windowframe. Picture postcard. Ashfelt. &&&***(·'·???)?) d _v_ q = ¬(r & s).

Propositional calculus.

TELEVISION? TELE–VIS–ION? Ripping it to shards.

Textile industry.

Fusion of architectural styles.

Balance account.

Buy drugs.

****???

Good times. The folderolderolderolderolderolderolderolderolderolderolderolderolderolderolder

Made of plastic.(The examination of small shards of plastic). (Inebriated aspects). Bullshit. Monty Python's Flying Circus. The person who comes to the door looking for something. That other.

1999.

The ice age. Tectonic plates, grating over each other, causing cracks and the displacement of the earth's crust. Heavenly bodies circulating each other, trying to get each other down and low-down dirty get low down get down. A triangle of sex. A small, hairy triangle. A slice of toast in the bathroom.

Two people, looking at each other. Used condoms.

2002.

The television flying out the window.

Somebody being mis-blamed.

Moshing in the livingroom. Lining up all the chairs and sofas on one side, and having a mosh to some classical music. Neil, Erwan, Levin, Levin MacHill (?). The Fukin Té.

What was the Fukin Té? It was a small bonsai tree grown in livingroom (on the mantelpiece) or in the kitchen or in Hamish' room at the very top of the house. It was purchased in either November or December of 2001 from a local store on the Boucher Road. Not the first time the residents of the Big Pink would purchase something from this store nor the last. At the same time purchasing this tree the purchasee bought book with a hard paperback cover good bonsai care maintenance. Book proved extremely useful to the owners ensured diminutive tree lasted long for many happy years.

Did Romulus and Remus cross the Tiber?

Yes.

Did Hamish and Emmett really throw the TV out the window?

The TV belonged to Levin MacHill. He had taken it with him to Belfast when leaving his parentals, back somewhere in the Sperrins.

Chris Bole at the time of this incident was on day thirty-four of his habitation of the Pink House. Chris studied computer science at Queen's. Levin, Levin MacHill, Emmett, Barry, James and Neil knew Chris as 'the nice chap who works at the Co-op'. This nice chap was looking for somewhere else to stay because he... well, lets just say that he needed to move. Suffice to say that since Fallah had gone there was a room spare in the Big Pink and it was quickly taken over by Chris. Chris moved in with his NTL connection, computer, TV and two laptrays with beanbag cushions. These two latter objects were instantly seized by the Big Pink folk as the great assist they represented. Chris knew this would happen: written in the corner of one laptray was 'Not for use by stoners in rolling joints. This means you!' Nonetheless: the trays were used for that purpose. Not that Chris was unduly discomfited.

He _was_ duly discomfited, however, by the breakdown of Levin MacHill's TV. He had a TV himself in his room so it did not immediately deprive him of South Park. He knew it would though. Those hounds would come baying at his door, howling for a TV, wresting it from his weakly clinging hands.

He hailed a taxi. 'Take me to a TV repair shop,' he said. He bribed the taxi driver to put his foot down.

'Repair this TV,' said Chris, staggering under the 45lb cube. He dumped it on the counter top.

A workman wiped his oily hands on a yellow rag and tucked it into his breast pocket. 'A TV huh?'

'Yep,' said Chris. 'Repair it by this afternoon and I'll make it worth your while.'

Chris unfolded a crisp £5 note from his pocket, smelt it admiringly and replaced it in his wallet.

'No bother mate. This afternoon. It'll cost fifteen bob though, not five.'

'Whatever,' said Chris, and wandered back out.

In reality Chris' attitude masked a deep anxiety. If those fiends didn't get their TV back, there'd be talk of taking his TV, of bringing it into the livingroom and like everything that went into the livingroom it would be stuck there for all eternity, even if they got another TV, it would be wedged in and immobile, and it would gradually become kipple, just like everything else in that room. Chris was well aware of the concept of entropy and was going to do his darndest to keep the laws of thermodynamics at bay, at least where his bedroom was concerned. He could be accused of being a stoner, but not of not being neat.

The TV was fixed.

'Thanks mate,' said Chris, strolling out with it.

'Here mate, don't forget to pay for it.'

Chris gave a look that withered the TV repair man into obscurity.

He returned to the house and replaced the TV on the badly damaged black chipboard where it belonged. Only it was right next to another TV so they jostled each other for space.

'Here, that's my TV,' he said.

He suddenly felt a sickening return of memory, with fear and loathing.

Yesterday morning, James had come knocking on his door and asked for the lend of Chris' TV. Chris had said something like, aye right you fucker, but this had been translated into 'Please do,' by James' twisted mind. Chris had even watched as the fucker had come into his room, with Levin McCochall, and lifted the TV wholesale into the livingroom where they had commenced watching a soap opera of crapness. Chris had mesmerised himself into a trance in order to overcome the pain and had watched a repeat in his own memory of the last episode of _South Park_ to appear on Sky 1.

Then he had taken the TV to be repaired not understanding what was really going on.

Perhaps he an android, with false memories of his previous existence.

He took the TV back into his room and swore that his TV would never be taken again.

Lots of other things happened in the mean period.

It was a slightly overcast day. Chris' TV was in his room and there was no functioning TV anywhere else in the house. Neither James nor Hamish nor Levin McCochall believed that Chris would consent to his TV being borrowed again. They did not want to stoke homicidal flames in the young man.

'What'll we do?' asked Hamish, to the point.

'Chuck it out a window I suppose.'

Here Hamish smiled and nodded.

Hamish was probably always in the background causing and directing the events in the foreground to occur. He seemed to be a master of minimal effort. By just grinning and nodding in a particular way he could change a people's whole frame of reference. He caused an idly thrown-aside comment to become a programme for action. How did he do it? He converted an idle comment into an action of concrete destruction. This was Archimedes.

Hamish never wasted a thing. He hated to see a drop go on the floor. He was as taut as his wiry-frame GAA playing limbs, scoured and hardened by Saturday mornings in the cold sleet playing football.

He looked at the TV smashed to pieces three stories below.

Back in the livingroom, he said: 'Aye. Why not.'

Levin McCochall was not the man to be asked twice. His rationalising forebrain got immediately to work on the argument.

'Aye. The TV's bust,' he said to James Hendry, who was the only person there who might need convincing.

Whether James needed convincing or not Levin proceeded to deliver an argument while Hamish, no doubt, admired his own parsimonious handiwork.

'Sure the TV will not get fixed again. We're wasting money, fixing that piece of crap over and over.'

'Aye,' said Hamish at the right moment.

'So let's just chuck it out the window.'

'All right,' said James.

James Hendry was born mischief. He couldn't see a pot of shit but that his arms would unthinkingly reach for the ladle. His object in life was to be laconic; or to annoy people when they were stoned; or to smoke joints and watch _Neighbours_.

In fact, James Hendry's objects in life were inscrutable. He seemed to be a zen master, accepting the absurdity of life, except that instead of accepting anything he fought on the sofa with a broomstick or made a Mr Stankey box out of a takeaway.

For James Hendry, watching other people throw a TV out a window needed no rationalisation. Indeed, he could even help deliver the toppling blow and take no responsibility for it.

Levin, however, needed reason to be his guide. Like many abstract theoreticians he needed to make his action coherent with the worldview he possessed, even if he didn't explicitly recognise this.

James Hendry goaded Levin.

'Go on then. Take it.'

'Aye, we should,' said Levin.

But Levin still did not act; it was James Hendry who first took the corner of the TV in his hands and very clearly demonstrated his intention to lift it. This settled the matter for Levin; it was at this moment that the destruction of the TV became a certainty.

The TV wasn't intolerably bulky. James and Levin got it through the livingroom door with relative ease. Two seconds later they paused at the foot of the stairs. They discussed which window to throw it from. James and Hamish decided that Emmett's would be best.

'Aye, Emmett's,' said Levin.

Hamish gave them a hand getting it up the stairs. Levin went first, going backwards while James climbed forwards.

They knocked on Emmett's door just in case he was there. He wasn't and his door was unlocked. Hamish thoughtfully held open the door to allow James and Levin in.

The window, although quite large, did not open in a reasonable manner. It used a double joint system allowing it to open inwards either from the bottom up or from the right-hand side. Attached from the bottom, the window only opened a space of about twenty centimetres at the top. This was useless for hurling an 18-½" TV through. Attached from the right-hand side, the window opened much wider but the mechanism of the hinge seemed to prevent the window opening fully at this position. They couldn't prize it open further for risk of damaging the hinges which, it was agreed, would be inconsiderate and bad.

'We could chuck it out Hamish' window,' suggested James.

A light seemed to form in Levin's eyes. The suggestion was like a gift tenderly offered to a lover.

Levin and James lifted the TV from Emmett's bed.

Hamish kindly opened the door for them.

They began to mount the next and final set of stairs.

Television??

Continued.

The final third of the journey was the most difficult. The steepness of the ascent began to exhaust the most hardened traveller amongst them.

'This is tough,' Levin said, panting.

Three steps below Hamish, he pushed and they pulled, until they reached a turn in the stairs. There was but one more series of steps to take.

'I don't know if I can make it,' said Levin, waving away their offers of support. 'You guys have to go on.'

James was irate, insofar as his philosophy permitted.

'Mm. You can't do that – sure it was your idea.'

Levin glanced sharply at James, open-mouthed at the treachery. 'My idea? Since when is that? This is our idea, I thought?'

A dangerously dangerous moment ensued. Levin looked at James, who looked at Levin meaninglessly, who looked at the TV. The TV remained black and plastic with a reflective glass window, dead and matt. A lead traced forlornly away from it.

'So, it was my idea?' Levin repeated.

Levin was wounded. James was indifferent.

Somewhere in the distance a church bell chimed three. Hamish was patiently leaning against the banister.

Levin gave James a dirty look. He had regained his breath by now. He signed to James to take his side of the TV.

In Hamish' room particles of light span through the roof like million ambassadors of morning. Hamish stepped in first. Levin came in next, backwards, followed by James. As they entered the room, carrying the TV, they caught each other's eye and each held the other's look. In unspoken agreement Levin and James lowered the TV to the carpet. The three moved to the window and gazed out, quietly contemplating the world.

From Hamish' window all of Belfast spread out, each spire and tall building clearly visible in the bright afternoon light. Beyond was the glittering blue of Belfast Lough, a soft-bellied U of sea leading Antrim on one side and Down on the other; Scotland beyond the horizon.

They looked at the garden gathering its strength to bloom with spring fat bees blowing upwards towards the window; chirping birds nestling in the still-bare trees about to bud. Bright green sorrel dressed the dormant undergrowth and the paving stones seemed like slabs of mighty granite. Levin, James and Hamish looked upon it, saw that all was beautiful. Peace seemed to reside within every single thing and hope filled the space around the Earth.

They opened the window. It let in the breeze. None, though, felt they could give an outward sign of happiness. Something remained undone. Once it was done they could join the community of nature but not before.

James let the window open under its own weight, swinging outwards to the wide world. The window was wide, tall, and open. There was no doubt in anybody's mind about the goodness of this act. Levin and James lifted the TV to the sill and let it see-saw.

It wobbled.

When the moment was good Hamish gave the slightest touch.

Excitement bunched all three closely to the window; they glimpsed the cord flying outward, a gleam of reflected light from the glass, a corner moving around, vanishing into the empty space. They leaned forward but the TV was gone from sight and now present to sound alone, a sound like deep-bottomed bottles breaking, or a sheet of velcro being ripped. Plastic popped and snapped and a boomf. Then silence.

As one they breathed a sigh of deep fulfilment. It was as if they had become lotus blossoms floating serenely across the eternal sea.

Levin opened his hands and looked at the face of his palms. He looked at a tree wafting in the breeze.

Hamish folded his arms and whistled a tune.

James peered out of the window straight down. He said:

'Holy fuck.'

He looked at Hamish and Levin. 'You totally smashed it to pieces.'

Levin maintained his state of galactic being. 'Good,' he said, looking at the world.

'MacHill'll be ragin.'

'No he won't.'

'I think he will. You chucked his TV out a window.'

Levin spread his hands to soothe the troubled waters.

'No he won't. His TV was already broke.'

Hamish now took his turn by the window, looking down appreciatively.

'Nice job,' he said.

Levin now had a look too.

'Mm,' he said. 'Smashed to little bits.'

Now the adrenaline kicked in. It was as if there was a massive pulsating universal heartbeat and they were part of it.

'Fucking class.'

'That's the best thing I've seen in about six months.'

'Is there another TV we can throw?'

James glanced at Levin with some concern.

'There's mine. But you're not getting it.'

'Screw you.'

James was insistent. 'I have to watch Neighbours.'

They went downstairs to inspect the wreckage.

Once, several months ago before the Christmas break, some members of the house (Emmett and Barry in all probability) had gone for drinks and liberated a shopping trolley from its subjugation to the retail industry. This steel-meshed trolley now sat in the yard awaiting some new purpose in life.

'Dudes, we can't just leave this here for MacHill to come back and find.'

'Stick in the trolley sure.'

So they did. Picking up the pieces of shattered black plastic, the 6 by 6 green motherboard with capacitors and copper paths and little spikes of solder, the huge thick lumps of sharp-edged glass, the heavy metal cylinder with wires sticking out of it, the dinged power pack and lead, and miscellaneous bobbles and screws, largely all of it was hurled with vigour into the trolley. Some of the motherboards had come out intact. Levin trod on one and snapped it by accident.

'Oh. Fuck. Good,' he said. He lifted it and set it in the trolley.

They wheeled the trolley up the steps into the garden and then out the wooden door into the lane beside the house. It seemed like just the right setting for it, amongst old blue plastic sheets and broken fenceposts and a tree growing out of the wall. They unceremoniously left it and returned to the house.

The livingroom was curiously light and wondrous.

'Joint?' asked James.

'Aye,' said Levin.

Hamish went to make himself a cup of tea.

It was two hours later. Levin and James and Emmett were getting stoned. Hamish probably was too since the smoke so densely filled the livingroom.

'How do you think MacHill will take it?' asked Emmett.

'Take it all right,' said Levin.

'Naw man he won't.'

'We'll see.'

The demise of the TV was immediately heralded as a thing of great virtue by Emmett. He listed all the ways it would immeasurably improve their lives.

'For one: no more sitting on our asses watching all that shit that appears on twenty million channels!

'For two: all that crap is American rubbish, with their values and political viewpoint just on and on being broadcast and altering our minds all the time. No, I mean it – you can't watch shit like that every day without it influencing your basic outlook.'

'Yep,' said Levin, 'that's right. Marx knew about that – the material conditions of your existence.'

'What does that mean?'

'Your values and ideas derive from the material world you live in.'

'Aye. The TV was making our minds for us. That's the basic material we had to make our minds out of – American propaganda!'

'I hated the way it was in every single thing – even when they were making jokes about it, they were jokes that assumed you agreed with their worldview.'

'Yeah man. It did. Fucking yanks.'

'Fuck those yanks.'

'Fuck that TV!'

'Aye, but,' said James. 'What about Fear and Loathing? What about the footie? And Neighbours?'

'Aw man, Neighbours is the biggest piece of shit anyway. How do you make yourself watch that shit every day.'

'Neighbours is fuckin amazing. You have to watch it everyday to get it.'

'Football I can watch in a pub. Or even not at all. Who cares?'

'Aye,' said Hamish, cheerily. 'Who needs it? We're better off without this TV, just tons of shit on it every day.'

Everyone nodded. What Hamish said sounded exactly true.

Levin MacHill arrived home from work in the Apartment later that night. He was, indeed, unhappy; though he only heard the story at third or forth hand. Neil Steed had heard it from Barry Mitchell and had told it to Chris Bole. Chris told Levin that his TV had been thrown out a window but didn't say who'd done it.

Levin became a steaming hot cauldron of boiling oil. He did not move, merely wobbled and steamed and made dangerous-sounding noises, deep-belly explosions and the rearrangement of bodily organs for war. Then he began to wobble at an increased velocity. Chris watched with some trepidation as the brick-like man became a blue and white blur. Chris retreated and continued to watch from the hallway. The kitchen began to flash with distorted dark reds and flames. MacHill's hobnail boots remained fixed to the floor, indeed seemed to grow in stature, until they were shining blocks of unmitigated steel. Chris retreated to the front door, and then flung it open and fled into the dark night. He did not return for one week.

MacHill began jumping up and down, beating the damaged linoleum, making the pots and pans bounce. A plate smashed onto the floor, and another and another. He jumped, punched the roof, and fell, creating cracks in the concrete floor under the lino. His mouth widened and hissing steam flew from it. A lizard tongue darted out and lifted a chair and flung it against the wall.

His eyes darkened and he stopped jumping. He turned to rip the back door from its hinges and walked into the garden.

By smashing through the wall he found his way to the alley. There, in the trolley, in the gloom of the night, the sad clipped remains of a TV lay. That TV had been with him since he was fifteen years old. His old man had given him that TV when they'd got a new one, and young MacHill had been so pleased, so innocently happy, that he'd vowed never to let anything happen to this TV with which he had been entrusted. Now it lay broken, and with it the seal that kept MacHill from breaking. He sobbed, clutching the pathetic trolley handles, shaking the rattling collection of plastic and spiggots, his large humped back shaking. A cat in some garden near-by mewed in sympathy.

His eyes soon dried. His tears disappeared from his cheeks. Now his skin all over his body became cracked and brittle as stone. He held onto the trolley handles, knuckles glowing in the pale white night, threatening to snap the metal bar like a twig. His teeth began to grind and grate, his ears became dishes, his eyes grew too big for his skull and popped out with explosive force. Blood began pouring out of his mouth like a sea of crime. His hair stood up on end and he became eighteen feet of lava.

'EMMMMMM _ETTTTTTTT_!!!!' he roared, sending cats and trees billowing across the alleyways of Belfast. He knelt and pounded the ground, tears beginning again, tears of fury. He beat the ground into solid stone and then cracked it with such fury it melted and ran like a river down the alleyway onto the road, setting the wooden gate on fire as it passed through.

He kicked the trolley so that it became a comet that ricocheted out of the solar system. He went into the house.

Emmett's room was directly above his own. Pausing only to rip a two-by-four from the shattered remains of the kitchen door, he stomped up the stairs and knocked furiously on the spiky-haired one's door.

'Emmett!' he shouted. 'Open up!'

He banged on the door with the fist that wasn't clutching the two-by-four.

He waited in silence, giving Emmett time to get up and get dressed and open the door for him. He listened for sounds of movement.

'Emmett?' he said, loudly enough.

He tried the door handle. It wasn't locked so he went in, blood swirling in his eyes.

There was a grunt and a rustle of half-assed movement from the bed. Levin turned to it. He took three steps forward til he was standing above Emmett's bed in the deep darkness.

He gave Emmett a decent amount of time to become more conscious – three and a half seconds – and then proceeded to unleash all the pent-up aggression of twenty-one years of not properly releasing aggression.

'EmmettyoumotherfuckingbastardfuckyouyoudestroyedmymotherfuckingTV _aghhhhhhhhhh_!' he said.

He leapt onto Emmett's bed and began beating the poor boy about the head and neck with the two-by-four. The wood was solid and held well, not splintering or snapping. Emmett roused and held his hands over his face in weak defence as he slowly woke to what was going on.

Levin began leaping up and down on the bed as he smashed the two-by-four down on Emmett's prostrate face. He was blathering incomprehensibly in what may have been different languages. Emmett gradually awoke more to what was going on. He began shouting above MacHill's rant, trying vehemently to get the man to stop, but MacHill was entirely in another universe, one where he was a destructive automaton.

MacHill began kicking Emmett at the same time as beating him over the head. This is when Emmett became tired of his unwarranted abuse and shot out a hand stopping the two-by-four mid-swing. MacHill stopped.

'Right,' said Emmett angrily. 'Do you mind telling me what's going on?'

MacHill sneered at Emmett.

'Don't tell me what you don't know. You fucking threw my TV out the _fucking_ window!'

'What the fuck?'

This blatant denial of an unfalsifiable truth drove MacHill into an extra dimension of insanity. He tore the two-by-four from Emmett's grip and began laying it down on the beaten man's head again. Emmett this time wasn't simply taking it and leapt to his feet, throwing MacHill from off the bed. MacHill went backwards head first and hit the sink behind which miraculously survived intact. One of MacHill's vertebrae popped out.

Emmett jumped daintily onto the carpet. What was not dainty was his scowl of anger and injustice. Now that MacHill had adapted to the dark this was clearly visible to his swollen eyes. MacHill pushed himself to his feet using the sink behind him as an aid. His two-by-four had snapped in half uncleanly. MacHill spat at it and threw it aside.

Emmett took a stride over to MacHill and high-kicked his left temple. MacHill didn't even flinch and kept looking at Emmett with vehemence. Emmett kicked again and again but it was like kicking at a wall-set post. MacHill's skull appeared to be made of iron strengthened with diamond steel.

MacHill opened his mouth and spat out a single tooth.

They both paused, getting their breath back.

Emmett opened negotiations first.

'Do you mind telling me what the fuck is going on?' he asked

MacHill's eyes bulged out and breathed in until every one of his ribs snapped from his breastbone and sticking out at an impossible angle from his chest. Then he exhaled, driving Emmett against the wall, where he hung, helplessly, as the skin on his face peeled off and became dust impregnating the wallpaper.

MacHill ceased and Emmett fell to the floor.

Emmett immediately rose again and took one of his Warhammer 40K ® figurines – a space marine cadet – from his cabinet of models and threw it at MacHill's cheek. It pinged off.

'Ha!' cried MacHill.

'Fuck you,' said Emmett.

'Fuck you,' said MacHill.

They engaged in a combat of the titans that shook the oceans. When after forty days and forty nights neither emerged as the clear victor, they separated, hands on knees and panting.

'Fuck off out of my room,' gasped Emmett.

MacHill bridled and told Emmett unflattering things. But the heavily built man left nonetheless.

Emmett slammed the door shut after him. It was three o-clock in the morning.

After the TV

Life after the TV was like life before the TV except with more spare time and the satisfaction of having thrown a verminous reminder of the twentieth century out the window. Virtually everything in the twentieth century was shit: war, America, TV, propaganda, neoliberalism, gulags, 1980s, increasing wealth for the minority, air travel, global warming, bombs, hatred, crystal meths. The 21st century promised to hold exactly the same proportion of all of these except for one vital ingredient – the humble cathode ray tube. The people of the Big Pink speculated as to what this could mean for them all.

god

'Curse you God! Curse you! I'll fight you now! Come on then! If you exist I'll punch you in the face. Well? Well? Evidently, a coward.'

Erwan was speaking to the ceiling, waving his fist in triumph. The other members of the livingroom felt uncomfortable; they quivered in their armchairs. They'd been wobbling for some time, ever since ingesting a certain large quantity of cannabis. Their current quivers also had something to do with Erwan threatening to beat the Almighty, an unhealthy prospect. Theirs was a habitual anxiety. They hadn't removed the last vestiges of religion from their souls.

Atheist the first: Emmett McFickle.

One morning he had lain in late. He was 16 years old. His father, wondering why he hadn't risen yet, knocked on the door and entered his room. Emmett had a very tremendous respect for the old man. He never gave him the slightest bit – the idea of having a hint of confrontation was not conceivable. That morning, however, was different. Emmett lay in bed, waiting, not happy, not getting up, thinking with trepidation of what was to come. His father entered the room and looked at him.

'Emmett, its time to get up. Get to mass.'

'I'm not going,' said Emmett. 'It is bullshit.'

There was a rocky silence.

This was the first time Emmett had ever said 'bullshit' in front of his father.

They did not look at each other.

'No, Emmett, that's not so. Get up and get ready.'

'No. I'm not going to mass anymore.'

'All right.'

His father left the room. Emmett kept the bedsheet wrapped over his head for another half hour. He never went to mass again.

Neil was atheist number two. He left his faith as a result of bible studies. He began remarking upon obvious things. The lack of consistency both within and without Genesis; including fossil evidence; including astrophysics. There was little or no mention of God making thousands of layers of strata on the sixth day; or the fifth day or forth day for that matter. Nor did the author of the Bible (God) explain why he created these multiple strata with the appearance of radioactive antiquity. Either God wished to deceive humanity or modern science was extremely wrong. Nor was there any explanation for tonsillitis or appendices. In short, God had some explaining to do.

Although Neil's turning point was the lack of intellectual satisfaction, this was made worse by his timid bible studies teacher. The man told Neil not to ask his probing questions. From then on Neil had an unbroken stint of atheism. Excepting one occasion involving a spider during the Great Winter of the Big Pink.

That spider wandered across the ceiling of Neil's bedroom like a misty-shrouded reaper 'cross a river. Neil was on his back thinking about his life. He was a subcontracted civil servant working in Windsor House. He'd gained a first class honours in Zoology some five months before. Now he lay on his bed looking at the ceiling. A spider span its spindle legs about, first one way and then the other. It seemed coordinated, objective, with a purpose. Neil watched the arachnid pause, machinating its spinnerets. He guessed what it would do next: weave a web. He was wrong. Instead of spinning it scurried into its corner. Neil wondered: had it seen something invisible to him? Neil reflected: there were billions of potential environmental cues. A little spider might respond to several at any time. But the little spider could not respond to all those cues and make an ass of itself. It could only decide which way to move, right, left, across Neil's ceiling, or around a wall, or out the window. Neil felt his mind enmeshed in a sticky, elastic string of web.

Neil turned his mind to his words and their meaning. He wondered whether he was conscious and not a stone or indeed a web. He wondered what time it was and whether time was real. He told himself that his beliefs were things uncertain too, uncertain like his memory of eating the night before. There was a gap in his ideas that was leaking the others out. But where were the ideas going? Nowhere. That was impossible.

Neil got up and went downstairs to tell this to his friends. Levin and Erwan were in the kitchen making up a fry. It was Sunday after all so the fry was rather large. He tried to state his ideas to them. They rebutted them with hardness. There was no God, they clearly said, and a spider didn't need a soul. Neil liked their clear rejection of his thinking. His doubts began to crystallise like saltpans by the sea.

Neil went back to his room. There was a church across the road. He sat at his desk and suffered. Despite an otherwise pleasant mental clarity, he felt that he lied. He suffered a 'moral' uncertainty. This, it seemed to him, derived from an urge to be dishonest. This led him, he believed, to suffer unavoidable doubts. He wondered with some pain whether he'd ever get his story told.

On the evening of 24th of October Neil walked towards the city centre. He was alone, thankfully so, having left the house unnoticed. He felt irritated. It was infuriating to be like this. He shrugged. There was some pleasure in his double life. Or his multiple life indeed, in contradiction and duplicity.

He arrived at the pub. He knew he would get there. He entered and bought a drink, sitting uncomfortably at the bar. 'Vodka and cranberry, please.' He had another and looked about. Purple garish lights and people dancing. He had a drink and joined them. He thought about sex, assholes, penises. The smell of a vibrating rectum. The joy of semen squirting through the air.

He danced with a gentleman the same height as himself. Not all bad looking; he had a pleasant smile. They shouted over the music; that was the best thing about this bar. You didn't have to hear what the other person was saying. They bought each other drinks until it was time to close. Neil and this fellow – he had no idea what the chap's name was – returned to the Big Pink. Neil brought him upstairs. Everyone, thank science, had a similar understanding of the need for secrecy. No-one in the house had the least suspicion. They had a merry time of it until about five in the morning. Then Neil saw the fellow out, walked him to the taxi and returned to his bedroom. He slept until twelve and awoke with that familiar sense of joy and duplicity and deep, deep uncertainty like a hole of unknown depth leading to the centre of somewhere that nobody knew anything about.

Levin and Erwan had a jam in Erwan's room.

It was like the sound a trifle makes when it is raised to dominion status. The trifle played a series of coruscating chords that shallowed sincerity and ended with discordant disharmonies like G followed by A minor followed by F sharp then by some twiddling about on the high E string followed by standing on the 15W amp. Followed then by C bar chord progression in a major scale up to B, then the same thing descending (after an unexpected pause) to G. The robot monkey mother, Levin, hit the big tom and the cymbal at the same time, then the hi hat was used to create a Haydn-style motif that complemented Erwan's neo-classical upstarting on the B/E string. K-dog thumped the two toms in a quick drill and accidently hit the cymbal that hung above the right tom once. He waited a second until the jelly, Erwan, got back in time and then he stampeded across the plains on a dusty charger wheeling spitting submachine gun – venomous slugs rained against the charcoal-filled lands his ancestors had robbed from him. He sold his sisters and uncles into slavery. He hit the hi hat, and then the bass tom. Erwan meanwhile was remote-controlling the future into a careful box. He sent it with full postage to the nearest living member of the Civil War Society (est. 1964). After that a pigeon knocked on the window. The black tape-recorder on the floor wound tape around its right nipple, magnetically digitising the shiny ribbon that passed beneath its pulsating head. Erwan watched it go, using eyes where eyes would be useless in time; when only ears would do. His eyes rotated around and around, filling the empty space with dumbbells of flowers. Equilateral triangles glazed with dead frosting tied thick voluptuous threads around fenceposts. Erwan flourished a branding iron. He fused two of his strings (B and C) together with a red hot tip. Then he drank some water. Levin struck up a sedate ¾ tempo, a little like a waltz except with a tripline that hit in every third note. Erwan didn't know how to respond to this; it seemed unlikely that the note would skip. Nevertheless this pattern persisted for some eight repeats. Erwan got the rhythm. He concentrated on two distinct chords, playing them in succession so that the overall thing repeated every two bars. Then he began altering the emphasis of his chord playing so that a stress appeared every fifth note, thus giving the texture a feel, like a rugged Hebrides jumper. After that Levin and Erwan altered stresses and hits almost at random so that the sound bounced down in a stream hitting off hundreds of little rocks and boulders, until it became submerged in a hissing rush that wiped out the original flow. Having altered his stance to be more at comfort Erwan shifted his stance again, his legs were two inches further apart than before. He began pretending to be sawing lumber at a mill while in fact selling to the Yankees for a higher price.

Levin walked into a dark bar and smashed all the glasses. He opened a textbook and ripped out the central page, carefully. He took a small, pointy stick and tapped a plastic sheet with it. The sheet resonated like two swans mating. He blonged and blanged. Bing-sca-oo-burk-spss-dre-mark-foo-exclabo; resin; several species of small furry animal; chopin; a car screeching in the night; the end of a sound drowned out; two people talking mutteredly near a vendor. A magpie clopping along the guttering of a roof.

An airplane ripping all the air from the world, just overhead.

Then Erwan and Levin paused for a while. Erwan leaned on his guitar and mentioned something about chess. Levin shifted his weight on the wooden chair and coughed. Erwan pressed the pause button. He kneeled down to rewind, the guitar hanging by strap around his shoulders and resting partially on the carpet. Levin asked Erwan to play back a bit. They listened to it, recognising the songs they'd played. This tape was taken downstairs and they listened to it alongside System of a Down's _Toxicity_ and the soundtrack to Pulp Fiction ( _Tarantino)._

Levin and Erwan were listening to one of these tracks in the kitchen when Neil came down.

'Hello chaps.'

'Hello Mr Neil.'

'Some fry?'

'No thanks.' They were having a morning fry.

'Well, what's the craic?'

'Em, not much. I was in my bedroom.'

'And what were you doing there?'

'Em... I was looking at a spider in fact.'

Levin and Erwan looked at each other. They knew. Neil was trying to tell them he'd had a religious experience.

'Ok... and?'

Arched eyebrow.

'Well, I was just looking at it and thinking, could it...?'

Frowning, two arched eyebrows – hostility, in fact.

'And? Well?'

'Well, you know. I was looking at it and thinking – how does it work?'

'Well, Neil, you are the zoologist – it's you who knows how it works.'

He told them that the spider had walked across his ceiling and he had been unable to deduce exactly how it would always behave.

They looked uncomfortable, as if a previously English-speaking dog had started barking in Japanese.

Neil tried again.

'I was thinking... about God,' he admitted.

They smiled, looked at him and each other, and Levin said shaking his head, 'Man, that wasn't God.'

'No, I know.'

'Why would it be God?'

'No reason. It was just an odd idea that came into my head.'

'Yikes. You've got to watch for these things.'

Nevertheless the spider persisted in Neil's memories and thoughts, buried beneath the secularism that Levin and Erwan had reinforced in him.

'You're going to let that spider persist, aren't you?' demanded Erwan.

'No,' said Neil.

'Liar!' said Erwan. He grinned at the tall ginger-head.

'I am not lying,' insisted Neil. 'I had a moment of weird thoughts, that's all.'

The spinner spun a web, catching flies in it, growing stronger.

Neil began going to his room.

'Where are you going?'

'My room,' said Neil, wondering why he should be challenged.

'Ok.'

Neil thought they were going to say something about not getting himself caught in the Evil One's web, but they didn't. He went back to his room. Levin and Erwan ate their fry and then had a turn of the pain game. The game consisted of holding your right fist level while somebody hit it with their right fist. The person to give up was the loser. On this occasion Erwan retired after punching Levin's fist; Erwan's knuckle split open. Levin sneered and called him intolerable names. They played chess. Levin MacHill came down. They flicked matches at one another and chatted amiably about the good times.

THE ANIMAL REALM

It was three days since _Life of Mammals_ , the new David Attenborough series, had premiered on BBC2.

Neil walked down Lisburn Road, noting some early morning traffic, and saw a small child poking a stick at a dog. He thought about this child and this dog until he reached the far side of Shaftesbury Square. He wondered if he'd seen it properly; had a small child been poking a stick at a dog? It seemed like an unlikely type of event. The dog would surely move. In Neil's recollection, the dog did not move.

Neil probably took Dublin Road as far as City Hall and then up round the side of the bus lane to Donegal Place. Donegal Place is the main retail street in Belfast, leading directly away from the imposing front entrance of the City Hall with its domed green roof and the statue of Queen Victoria. He didn't recollect walking that way and didn't recognise not recollecting walking that way. He was doing things mechanically, putting one foot in front of the other; following a predetermined route. The last thought he could clearly recollect, afterwards, was seeing a child and that dog. Then being in WH Smith.

He wandered round aimlessly, his attention scattered over the shop like newspapers and glossy magazines. There was a set of books to one side. The recently released _LOTR: Visual Companion to The Two Towers_ caused itself to be lifted by him. The _Two Towers_ , second in a trilogy, was due to be released later this year. Soon, probably, since it was the end of the year now, nearly. Unknown to Neil the release date for _The Two Towers_ was the 19th December. Unknown to Neil was the date today: the 23rd November. He knew it was a Saturday because he'd been at work all week and Friday had been the day before today. He picked up the glossy companion booklet and began leafing through it.

Suddenly he started. He had a horrible, uncomfortable feeling. He looked around; he saw people, milling back and forth, talking, laughing, moaning. He hadn't been aware of them at all. He looked at the _Visual Companion_. It seemed that he had read most of it. He couldn't remember reading it. It seemed likely he had been here for some indeterminate period of time, reading. By God, what was wrong with him? Where was his sense of consciousness, his will, his motive force? Where was his courage, his dignity, his intelligence and sensitivity? He began to feel very bad; as if he had suddenly woke up naked in a public place. There was a pressing necessity to leave, now; leave, get out, flee, hastily replace the _Visual Companion_ on the shelf and weave through the shop to the exit and get out of this nightmarishly embarrassing City Centre with all its people, watching Neil in his state of weakness.

He didn't stop until he got home and spent most of the rest of the day hiding in his room. Here he allowed himself a trembling sigh of unhappiness. What had happened? Who had been reading that book, or guiding his footsteps to that shop, or even had a cup of coffee this morning? Not he. He had not made a single decision. He had not even forecast that he would do those things. And most certainly, he had not intended to be a strange, self-absorbed loner, chuckling to himself over a _Lord of the Rings: Visual Companion_ book for what must have been twenty minutes, like a junky, like some drunk, like a corpse made into a zombie and walking the earth in search of somebody's brain...

Neil told this story to Levin and Erwan some weeks later when Erwan told them his own story, how in first year he'd lost his way trying to get to class. As with many memorable conversations, this one took place in the kitchen.

'I was walking down from the halls, wrapped in my own thoughts, just putting one foot in front of the other, and I got to the big red brick building. You know, the main Queen's one, the one with the war memorial statue in it.'

'The Lanyon building,' said Neil.

'Yes. Well, I got to that statue, and then kept walking... walking towards my philosophy class... walking... and then I stopped. I realised I was on automatic. I didn't have a philosophy class right now. I had a physics class, on the opposite side of the Lanyon building. I turned around and headed left, quite cheerfully.

'Then, I slowed down. I stopped. I walked a total of five, ten metres from my change of direction. I suddenly had an idea that it wasn't a physics class I was going to. Or rather, I didn't know. My doubt had wiped the knowledge from my head.

'I turned back round to go to my philosophy class. But that didn't feel right.

'So I stopped to work it out. What class was I supposed to be going to? I waited for the memory to return. It always did. I'd been on automatic, but I'd known where I was going to when I left this morning. I just waited for the knowledge to return.

'Instead of retrieving my memory, though, I became more and more confused. I suddenly realised that I didn't know what day it was. That was all right, my week followed a pattern, I usually knew what I had today because of what I had yesterday. I didn't need to work out what day of the week it was. I just needed to work out what day it was _yesterday._

'I couldn't remember yesterday. Nothing unusual there, I wasn't much bothered. So I tried to remember leaving the Halls that morning, so that I could remember what my intention was. I knew I'd left with the intention to go to a particular class; that was certain. But I couldn't remember getting up. I couldn't remember being in the Halls or leaving them.

'Then I felt horrible panic. At one and the same moment, I realised that I could deduce what class I was supposed to go to based on the time of day. I didn't have a watch of course. But at that moment – this is where I panicked – I couldn't tell whether it was morning or afternoon. I couldn't tell! I searched frantically in my memories, but the panic was clouding me. I didn't know if I'd come from the Halls after breakfast, or after lunch. I didn't even know whether I'd even left the Halls to come here. I suddenly realised that all I knew for sure was that I'd been walking towards the Lanyon building when I'd snapped out of some unknown daydream. Beyond that, I was blind. And I was having to face up to the humiliating fact that I couldn't go to class because I didn't know where or when it was. It disgusted me – I couldn't believe that I was in this situation, it was ridiculous. But there it was: I was scuppered. Left with no other choice, I came on round here, I believe. Some of you guys were about and we probably played worms or drank a cup of tea or something. What do you think of that?'

Neil Steed wore an expression of pure horror on his face.

Then he told them his own story.

THE SINK

One of the hideous things that Erwan discovered was the sink in his room.

He discovered this horror twice. Once, in his room at the Halls of Residence. Then, in his room in the Big Pink house.

First, in his room in the Halls of Residence. He used the sink daily. He brushed his teeth using water from it, and cleaned his hands and his face with cold water and soap. He even, once or twice, used the water from the hot tap for his coffee instead of going to the communal kitchen and using the kettle. In part this was because he was lazy; in other part, because he couldn't be bothered talking to anyone in the kitchen. Nevertheless the water from the hot tap was insidiously disgusting that he couldn't drink it more than once or twice, and was forced to leave his room and say hello to the people who shared his floor. He even got to know one or two of them, such as Eddie, who played guitar, and the American with a blonde beard who played the saxophone.

Towards the end of his stay in Halls Erwan's sink developed a peculiar mould around the overflow. He'd watched this horror grow over the course of some months, since its first appearance during the winter. It was blue and slimy; it hid just in view behind the enamel lip like a pervert down a dark alleyway. Erwan was revulsed by it every time it caught his eye. This happened at least twice a day, if not more often, as he brushed his teeth or washed his hands. He shuddered.

Finally, when it came time to evict the Halls, he took a roll of toilet tissue wrapped round his hand and wiped the slimy mushroom out as best he could. He also circled around the plug hole with a stretch of toilet roll. Blue filth came off. He shook uncontrollably and quickly dropped the unspeakable into a blue plastic bag, and departed from the Halls without ever thinking about it again.

The same thing happened to his sink in his Big Pink room. Except this time, it happened much more quickly. The diseased mushroom must have been waiting, hiding behind the clean-ish enamel front, while Emmett innocently went about his business in his room. Then Erwan moved in and the mushroom moved up. It began choking the overflow, reaching out over the sink with eel-coloured flaps, like a flatworm squirming out of a clay riverbed. Erwan never cleaned it, never thought of it as best he could, despite feeling horror and revolt every time he brushed his teeth, which was, after all, twice a day. He had horrible thoughts about poking it with his finger. There were red dots all the way around the bowl.

Once he gave into the lazy temptation to drink from the tap in his room, because the main tap was all the way downstairs, down two flights of stairs, and he was hungover or stoned or both. He never did that again. It was foul, as it had gone through the water storage tank upstairs, and probably no-one had put bleach in that tank for sixty-five years or more.

He also poured beer from a left-over party down the sink one time. Whether this helped or hindered the growth of the mould that lived down there, none could say.

Those are all the stories concerning Erwan's sinks. There are doubtless similar stories about all the sinks all over the world, never mind the mere fourteen in the nine bedrooms, two toilets, bathroom and kitchen of the Big Pink.

As we have already seen, there was a slice of toast in the bath; it stayed there for two years, preventing anyone from using it.

That left a single shower as the sole means of cleaning every body in the house.

During the first year the shower functioned perfectly. Most people showered in it three or four times a week, or every day. Most people also followed James Hendry's proscription not to rub more than three times, because to do otherwise constituted masturbation. It was not a safe place to masturbate in any case.

Later, in second year, the usage increased, chiefly because of John McIlroy. He insisted on showering before and after every major daily landmark.

It wasn't until this second year that the most unfortunate characteristics of the shower room developed: the bracket mushroom, the fork with the hair wrapped around it, the cracks in the kitchen ceiling directly beneath the shower unit – and most dispiritingly of all, the lack of central heating.

Erwan was in the shower. If it wasn't bad enough that he only had a threadbare bathrobe to wrap himself in, he also had to get clean in _this_ shower. The bracket fungus by his left foot scarcely registered on his attention now. He huddled beneath the rain of hot water, for the shower was electric. The rest of the house was in permafrost. It was December; the winter had only begun.

He stayed under the shower for many aeons of centuries, growing a long white beard, but little wisdom. He thought no thoughts and only felt feelings of comfort at the warmth and dark dread and unhappiness at the thought of getting out. He kept his feet carefully tucked into the tiny circle of cleanliness in centre of the shower basin. The rest was filth: mud, muck, slime, dust with tentacles, microsystems, disease. The worst thing was that the longer he stayed in the shower, the greater the water level rose. He hadn't the motive ability to leave the shower and scoop out the hairball with the fork. He didn't even want to acknowledge the fork. So the water level rose. It would rise and rise until it dislodged one of the disgusting islands of slime; the island would float, over his feet, touch his flesh...

He looked at the ceiling, letting the water wash away his sins. Did he have any sins? He didn't care. The water was getting deeper; already a centimetre thick. He began weeping softly; he didn't want to leave; he didn't want to step onto the disgusting linoleum floor, walk the three or four steps to the door where hung his bath robe.

The water rose another millimetre. He began wailing, asking God, whom he did not believe in, to spare him this. God did not listen. The water rose still further.

In a final movment of extreme despair, Erwan flicked the water off and lunged out of the shower before the filth could attack him. He scatteredly drove his arms into the bathrobe and tied it around him, shivering, his hair dripping great beads onto the linoleum. He whimpered and hugged himself. Painfully, he reached down and took the pile of clothes and his slippers in his right hand, and slid the bar open with the other. He scurried upstairs, thinking of only one thing.

He threw his clothes to the floor, opened the door to his room, and flicked on the electric radiator in one single movement. He placed his chair so close to the radiator that it melted away. He sat there, mindlessly whimpering and shivering, for half an hour until he had dried by natural evaporation. He was finally able to rub the remainder of the dampness out of him and put on his clothes, and huddled by the radiator a while longer. After another half hour he reluctantly turned it off. Within minutes all the meagre heat was gone from the room. He put on his jumper, readapting to the cold. He breathed on his hands. He turned on his computer.

MR STANKEY!

Mr Stankey, as everyone knows, was a very bad man.

He caused himself to be brought into existence by Mr James Hendry, esq.

James Hendry was consuming a largish cup of tea with his chum and best mate, Mr Emmett McFickle. Messers Levin McCochall and Neil Steed were also participating in this festive evening. The cannabis worked and worked on their insides, turning them into sensitive beasts, entirely at the mercy of the inner and outer worlds that they invented and observed.

James Hendry knew what a merciful state they were in. He knew. He always knew and always used this knowledge to his own diabolical ends.

The background to this evening was interesting. The previous few weeks had seen a petrol bomb thrown out the window (by Levin McCochall), the invention and one-off consumption of Irish Tea (whiskey and dope), a book scam perpetrated by the infamous Willy Stroker, the casual sowing of cannabis seeds in a plant pot outside the front door, Hamish' voluntary departure from the University, the sustained consumption of cannabis over several weeks, a spontaneous journey to an unknown forest on the outskirts of Belfast, a three-day military coup against the democratically elected leader of Venezuela, smoking of marijuana grass in home-made bongs, the invasion of Gaza and the West Bank by Israeli troops, multiple viewings of the film 'Airplane' by James Hendry and others, the writing of essays and untimely handing in of coursework, making dope yoghurt, drinking of Michlobb beer, eating cannabis resin to excess, eating Esperantos kebabs, attempts to buy special wraps from Esperantos, the discovery of the link between quantum uncertainty and event horizons at the micro and macro physical levels, listening to 'shee-ha-ha' music in the livingroom, non-stop smoking and breathing and eating of cannabis resin, watching of _Rodge and Podge,_ the receipt of a Student Loan cheque, the purchase of cannabis from a drug dealer, complaints about the quality of said cannabis, confused thinking, pleasurable insights of extraordinary magnitude, the alteration of social norms in a peripherally isolated community, the accumulation of dishes and filth, the playing of Pink Floyd, of Velvet Underground, of Nirvana, of Muddy Waters, of _Radio radio, radio radio radio... Failté... radio radio... radio radio... radio... radio failté. Radio radio._

The four merry journeymen giggled and laughed, told amusing and silly stories, climbed up a great tower of circling light, became giddy, floated off into some form of plastic sunset.

Neil proposed a mission: that they, or some of them, should tackle the eighteen metres of level ground that separated them from Esperantos. Once in said kebab-parlour, the intrepid individuals should purchase goods to eat.

Simultaneously Levin, Emmett and James began rubbing their bellies ravenously and drooling on the floor. Their eyes twitched and a raw, animalistic glow made their cheeks rosy.

'Yes,' they breathed. 'We need it. We need the kebabs...'

'Well,' said Neil. He paused – no-one knew for how long. Then he said: 'What was I talking about?'

'You were talking about food man!' said Levin, aware of the immediacy of that pressing need. He almost got up from his armchair in desperation.

'Ah! Excellent. A volunteer. All right; what are the orders? Myself and Levin shall venture out, and the rest of you can wallow in your pit of stoned solitude for the eternity it takes us to return.'

A glazed look emanated from Emmett and James' tiny eyes. Then their eyes grew large as frisbees.

'Aw man!' cried Emmett, his voice breaking with tender feeling. 'That would be amazing. Here, I'll get you some money. I'll have a... a kebab with sauce.'

'What kind of sauce?'

'It doesn't matter. Not tomato sauce.'

'All right... not tomato sauce then. What did you say? A kebab?'

'I...?'

Emmett fidgeted with his wallet, trying to draw out a note. He gave a yelp of triumph when he extracted a tenner.

'Here,' he said.

James contemplated his own choice.

'A kebab then?'

'Naw. Get us... jeez man, you wouldn't go up to KFC for us, would you?'

Neil raised his eyes to high heaven and sighed. 'No, I would not James.'

'Don't start that man,' said Levin, who had now got to his feet, and was evidently not enjoying the experience.

'Man, I'd love a KFC. It's only a bit more up the road.'

'Man, it's another forty minutes. An hour and twenty there and back.'

'So? Get a taxi!'

'Fuck up man! I'm not going to KFC.'

'And I'm not going to KFC either,' said Neil with flat finality. 'Do you... want something from Esperantos or not? We're leaving now.'

'All right! All right! Get us a chicken burger, mayo, chips. No salad or green shit.'

'Ok,' said Neil. 'Chicken burger, mayo, hold the "green shit."'

'And chips.'

'And... as you say, chips.'

'Here, get us a bottle of lucozade as well, would you?' said James, handing up a note.

Neil took the note. 'What?'

'Don't forget: no green shit!' said James.

Neil turned to Emmett: 'What did you want again?'

'I don't know. Get us a kebab sure. Doesn't matter.'

Neil became very confused. He was quite sure he would remember none of this. And now the prospect of leaving the house began to seem terrifying to him. Nevertheless he fastened his courage to the sticking place. It would all be worth it, to gorge on that feast of a kebab, and coke, to smear his fingers and mouth and hands in that messy, greasy, volumous feast. He licked his lips in anticipation. It would be worth it, worth it all – even facing the horrors of the outside world.

'All right man, let's go.'

Levin was evidently no more willing than he to be exposed to the wind and the rain; but to be fair to the man, he picked up his coat and gave no more indication of terror than a certain deathly pallor to his face.

They swept out of the room and down the hall. Then, with a frightened glance at Levin, Neil took a deep breath and opened the front door.

The world was dark and mysterious. They trod along the concrete slabs, glancing here and there, shivering slightly though the weather was quite clement. Strange noises came from the Lisburn Road: people talking, car traffic, wind, birds squawking out of key. Neither spoke, overwhelmed with this sensory information. They passed the laundrette at the corner. It took another twenty minutes to reach the threshold of Esperantos next door to the laundrette. They looked in at the shop, bright and warm, with two apronned dark-skinned gentlemen carving meat from a rotating spindle of pork, filling kebabs for two other patiently waiting customers.

Neil and Levin hesitated before entering. Neil glanced at Levin and saw with shock that the man's eyes were entirely bloodshot, while his face was as white as ice cream. Neil wondered, in terror, if his own face looked like that. If so, they would not be able to pass themselves off as sober adults, members of a responsible community of hard-working citizens. That concerned Neil. He was concerned by anything that removed that mask from him.

He looked in at the shop. The tiled floor, the rickety wooden table with three chairs around it, the raised level at the back with stacked tables, the counter with twenty sauces and a wide selection of green and blue and yellow vegetables. He knew it, knew it well. The familiarity helped him calm down a little. Since the proprietors also knew him, knew him well, he would be able to go in, he knew, and deliver his order with faultless equanimity. He strode in.

Levin followed.

Neil rhymed off the order, asking for a kebab with the _special_ stuff for himself. He turned to Levin.

Levin's face became drawn and polite. He swallowed carefully once or twice, and then gave his order.

'Yeah... the same, sounds good.'

Neil also ordered a coke.

'Very good,' said the check-hatted man with a Turkish accent. 'If you would like to wait, your order will be ready soon.'

Neil and Levin paid and waited, standing. It seemed like a long time to wait, standing, but Neil had done this many times before, and knew (from having timed it on more than one occasion) that in fact the average wait measured no more than three minutes.

So it was also on this occasion.

Three long and emotionally testing minutes.

Neil caught sight of his red-eyed, pale faced reflection in the counter and shuddered momentarily. To distract himself he reflected on his previous recent visits to the kebab makers. He had come in one night several weeks ago, by himself, to get a kebab. They had greeted him as usual, as a regular customer. On that night they spoke to him – somewhat unusually; but not an unwelcome thing. They had asked him if he was a student.

'Yes,' he'd replied. 'In the Medical Biology Centre, down the road.'

They'd nodded pleasantly, and then glanced at each other, with mischief. They leaned forward conspiratorially.

'So you help us?' one asked.

Neil was confused. 'Help you what?'

'Help us. So you make the bomb!'

'Pardon me?'

'The bomb! You make the bomb!'

The two Turkish chefs burst out laughing.

Neil smiled. 'No, I'm afraid I don't know how to make the bomb. I only study zoology.'

'You make the bomb,' they repeated, serving him his kebab.

Now quite often when Neil visited, they would renew their interest in the bomb.

Back to the present. Neil and Levin were supplied with their victuals. The Turkish pair did not today make any bomb references or trying small talk – for which Neil was profoundly grateful. The two intrepid journeymen shuffled back out into the windy night and made it the full fifty metres back home without getting lost.

Levin muttered something unintelligible and full of pathos as he entered, and licked his lips in anticipation of the delicious meal.

Upon entering the Livingroom both Emmett and James almost leapt upon Levin like predatory animals. There was growling and gnashing of teeth and lumps of pork and bread and salad were scattered about like sea spray. The beasts chomped and gorged, absorbed in the act of consumption, greasy fat sauce and sugar and meat. They swallowed without chewing, making burping sounds and little gulps of hasty pleasure.

Neil returned from the kitchen with a plate and a knife and fork. He looked at the debris with amazement.

'You've finished it all?' he asked.

His own food was safe by his side of course.

The three, Levin, Emmett, and James, hardly even nodded. They looked at Neil with low-lidded eyes, stretched back on the sofa, bits of sauce around their lips, hands on their bloated stomachs.

As soon as Neil unwrapped his kebab the spirit of voluptuousness took possession of him also.

He finished off the final bite and smacked his lips.

'Ah,' he said. 'That was quite excellent.'

All agreed on the virtue of the Esperantos experience.

For a time they rested, spoke in quiet tones of fantastic things, imaginary creatures that filled the voids of the world. Then slowly the reckless instinct took over again. The spiral screw turned, overwound, and the clock raced out of control. James, James James. He was like a falcon that swoops over the sea, looking for some kind of fish to snatch and gobble. He took the polystyrene burger box, almost completely clean, in his hands.

'Mr Stankey,' he said.

He opened and closed the burger box with one hand.

'Mr Stankey,' he repeated.

For the rest of the evening all four were terrorised by the awful burger box.

Things continued in this vein, only more so. Erwan came round to the house after writing an Existentialist essay. They drank an enormous cup of tea. The next day they glued coins to the road, and within a few days of that incident a chocolate cake had been lovingly baked with half an ounce of cannabis in it.

Barry got up one morning, not hungover but not entirely happy either. He mooched dispiritedly down to the kitchen. It was Wednesday the 24th of April, and it was a work day, with a nine o'clock lecture looming over him like a rapist out of the fog. Everything was shit.

He turned on the kettle and looked out the window above the kitchen table. Someone had written something on the wall, in large, white letters:

MR STANKY

IS

A

NASTY MAN!

Hhhmmm!!?

Barry looked at it without comprehension. Indeed, he looked at it with some distaste. Matters had been taking a turn for the worse in this house. This was just the latest manifestation. He drummed his fingers on the countertop. It wasn't so much that things were getting worse. It was that he didn't know what was going on. 'Mr Stankey' was like an enigma to him. He had a feeling that even if he knew what it was about, he still wouldn't know what it was about. He smiled at a joke he remembered and pored himself some coffee.

The next day Erwan forgot where he was going on his way to class.

Four days later Barry had to go home.

It was the thirtieth of April, 2002. A large chocolate cake, with half an ounce of cannabis resin baked into it, sat on the counter top. It sat their like a volumous mountain of mud, delicious and slimy, and beckoning all to eat it. All had been eating it, for several days now. Each time they grew hungry, they would scoop a filthy handful of it and stuff it into their mouths. That was quite often, since the miraculous property of this cake was that the more you ate, the hungrier you were for more!

Levin sat on the table, stuffing the cake into his mouth with his hands. He posed in this state for the camera, Neil taking the photo. Neil appeared to be particularly keen to get 'Mr Stankey,' drawn on the window, in the frame.

Neil shared a few words of encouragement with Levin, but declined the cake. He ventured into the livingroom instead. Earlier he'd taken two photos of the Livingroom, with Emmett and James in full flight, fighting over the demolished stub of a broom handle.

Now there was no-one there.

It was the 23rd of April, 2002, a Tuesday. Young Mr Erwan was walking from class and, as usual, down Eglantine Avenue rather than to his own Halls of Residence. He was happy; he was fresh. He reached the Big Pink House and glanced up at the window. Strangely, his look was reciprocated today. Neil, Levin MacHill and Levin McCochall were staring out at him. They seemed to be egging him on.

'All right,' he said, smiling. 'I will come in then.'

What a lovely way to be greeted. He soon found out, however, on entering the house that the greeting wasn't precisely intended.

Almost everyone was in the livingroom: Emmett and James and Barry and Hamish were there too.

'What's going on?' asked Erwan.

'Watch,' said Emmett, taking the young fellow by the elbow and leading him to the window.

Erwan watched. Since he didn't know what he was watching for, he kept glancing anxiously at Emmett. Emmett nodded reassuringly and motioned out the window. Erwan continued looking. Nothing strange was happening out there; all the strangeness seemed located in the livingroom, with these weirdoes he called his friends.

'What?' he asked again.

Emmett waited a while longer, but since 30 seconds had passed and still no-one had walked past the window, his patience gave in and he explained the set up to Erwan.

'Thing is, we've glued a one-pound coin to the ground out there. And we're waiting for people to pick it up!'

As one, the entire livingroom erupted into evil cackling.

Erwan looked around, confused.

'Oh, ok,' he said.

Everyone crowded back to the window, waiting for a fresh victim.

It was an amusing way to pass the afternoon. In the space of an hour, three people (a suited woman, a teenager and a student) all fell for the prank. They were cordially shouted at and jeered. All three scurried off, smiling but shame-faced. Emmett, James and Neil cackled and wrung their hands. Levin, Levin MacHill, Hamish and Barry made hooting noises and rubbed their bellies.

Erwan was returning from the loo upstairs when he learnt that they had decided to up the ante.

'I'm about to go to the co-op,' announced Levin MacHill proudly, 'and get two two-pound coins.'

The whole assembly yelped and cheered.

'And then,' said Levin McCochall, 'we're going to glue one on this side of the road, and one on the other side.'

There was more cheering.

'I see. And what Machiavelli came up with this elaborate scheme?' asked Erwan with interest.

The friends parted and allowed Neil Steed to take the credit. He gave a modest bow of acknowledgement.

'I might have guessed,' said Erwan.

Levin MacHill went to the shop.

For the next six hours, until the light had finally faded from the western hemisphere, the eight individuals kept a steadfast vigil at the window. Nor was their commitment unrewarded. Several fools fell for the trick – none more satisfyingly than the dashing fellow with the expensive girlfriend. He stopped right in his tracks and bent over, exposing all his greed, for the two pounds. He kept at it, looking up at the jeering people, laughing, but still not willing to let go of the money. It was as if he was the monkey with the paw stuck in the jar of nuts. His expensive girlfriend pulled at his sleeve and forced him to give up. He came back ten or fifteen minutes later for another equally futile go.

It was getting dark when the most tenacious victim came, armed with a brick. They watched him banging at it for fifteen minutes before finally deciding to close the blinds.

'If he gets it, fair play,' they said.

It was communally decided to have a whacking great powerful tea and to climb the stony mountain.

The next day, Wednesday 24th April, 2002, Erwan called over again, for an hour in the mid-afternoon. Both the coins were gone. There were great scratch marks in a twenty-centimetre radius around where the coins had been. It was evident that no more coins could be glued without only the most dim falling for the ploy.

Erwan knocked his knuckles against the door and waited patiently to be let in.

This time Levin MacHill came to the door.

'Well hello,' he crooned. 'Come in.'

'Ok. What's happening?'

'We're trying to catch fools.'

'Oh. I thought that was over.'

'Oh no, no. It's only just begun!'

In opposition to Erwan's expectation, Levin MacHill mounted the stairs.

'You coming into the Livingroom?' asked Erwan, at the threshold of that room.

'No,' said MacHill, at the top of the stairs. 'We're in Neil's.'

Erwan followed, expecting to find out what was going on.

Levin MacHill, Levin McCochall, Hamish and Neil Steed were sitting in Neil's room, with a fishing rod. The fishing rod was hanging out of the window, and Neil, Levin, Levin and Hamish were both watching intently out of the window, with manic grins on their faces.

'Come on, have a look!'

Erwan had a look. Neil, controlling the rod, had artfully rested the fiver (hooked to the fishing line) on the wall of the front yard. All four were holding their breath, waiting for some fool to come by...

They waited and waited. No-one was picking the bait.

'Has it worked yet?'

'Hush! Yes, once!' they said.

There was a certain obsession in their keen focus that Erwan found troubling. He looked out again. Here came a potential victim.

The victim, a student, came nearer. He spotted the fiver, and the fishing line, and looked puzzled.

Neil wrenched the line into the air. All the members of the group laughed and jeered obscenely at the poor student, and Hamish and Levin high-fived without mercy.

Erwan watched a little while longer and then returned to the Halls for his dinner.

On the 1st of May 2002 Erwan decided to write a manifesto with Emmett against capitalism and advertisements.

It was never written, but had it been written, it may have read something like this:

THERE IS a spectre hanging over western Europe, and eastern Europe, and America (the great saitan), an ugly spectre, with two great wings flapping like dogs.

This spectre has a mission. He wants to control your mind. He wants to establish an autocracy of the wallet. If you watch his polluted message, you're done mate. He'll screw you into the ground. And you know what? _Its you._

What does that mean, it's you?

Let us answer with a parable.

Jesus was on the mount. He was talking about goodness, and people being right to each other, and how the weak were going to inherit the Earth. Then he held up a toaster, and, giving a cheeky grin to the audience, told them that if they didn't listen to him they were baked. Then he returned to his principle theme: God had love for them all, none of them need fear the future, for God was in their hearts and all they had to do was listen.

Right. Now the question is: what do we do about it?

Well here's the fucking thing. YOU'RE ALREADY DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

Right. The next thing to do is chuck your TV out the window. We done it, and now we're righting manifestos and things. Really, there isn't a better way to spend your time.

Ads – they're so annoying. The worst are the ones people talk about and say that they enjoy. There should be some kind of social norm that forbids people from talking about stupid ads, like that stupid one about the Volkswagen. I mean, who's side are you on – ours, or the two or three billion-billionaires who own 80% of the world's wealth? Do you know only one in six people in the world have regular access to clean drinking water?

Step two: exercise regularly. Those bastards don't want you to, because they like you to be tired, to come home at the end of the day, flick on the box and zone out, interrupting your GOOD thoughts and the ones that'll make you FREE from their stupid ideas – I mean, who the fuck gives a shit about a dishwasher? Did you think when you were a kid that you'd give a shit about what colour your STUPID dishwasher was? Wash your own stinking dishes! I've seen people with dishwashers. They spend as much time filling them, taking them out, talking about how to get them to work properly, and all that, that they might as well just wash the dishes in the first place. Even better don't wash your dishes. Just leave them to rot.

Step five: don't work.

You work eight hours a day to earn enough money to buy a dishwasher to HELP YOU SAVE TIME AND WORK LESS! You idiot! Work part time. You'll be happier.

If you do work full time, ask who you're working for. Are you working for a machine? A bastard? Are you making crude toys for kids in the east, that they'll play with for two days and then chuck? Visit a landfill site: it's completely full of all the so-called 'work' you've been doing for the past eight years. You've got an entire landfill site devoted to you, full of your good labour.

What else? All right, let's just talk about those ads again. You might think there's nothing wrong with a harmless little ad. Well, you could be right. Maybe they spend billions of pounds a year trying to persuade you to buy something you do already want. Stands to reason. Of course if you really want something you need to be told relentlessly that you want it. That's how desire works: we keep forgetting how much we want something until we're told again how much we want it. Then we fork into our wallet and get the thing. It's a fake rolex watch, so that you can look like James Bond. That's what you want. You don't want to fork into your wallet and buy little kids immunity from eighteen hideous tropical illnesses, no way. Those kids can go to hell – we _are_ the west!

That means we can buy whatever we want.

In the nineteen-fifties the CIA launched coups against democratically elected governments around the world. In Guatemala, the CIA sponsored radical opponents of the Guatemalan President because that President wanted to redistribute some of the land that United Fruits owned back to the peasants so that they could grow enough food to feed themselves. Guatemala has been in a state of civil disturbance ever since. In fact, there's no country in the entire planet that hasn't had its democracy perverted by the 'Land of the Free.'

Including the US.

Step six: have a nice hot dinner. Barry, for instance, makes a really good lasagne. Here's his recipe: chop up the veg real fine, cook them slowly, in a little rapeseed oil (for taste and for your heart); then in a separate pan brown the mince. You can add garlic to taste – I recommend lots of garlic, at least two cloves per person. Fresh garlic, not shop-bought pre-ground stuff. Give everything time to unleash its flavours – don't burn it, don't rush it either. Just soften the veg sufficiently and then at the end – _at the end, don't destroy the delicate flavours –_ add a bit of oregano and basil. Use your own taste in this. It's not like garlic; you can put too much in. Garlic is toxic, actually – I'm sure that a meal comprised only of garlic might be too much. Anything short of that is fine, however. Whack in some extra garlic, give everything a good stir, and then put it in a glass dish (oven proof) so that you can watch the bubbles rising from the bottom as it heats. Don't use condensed tomato purree. Use sieved tomatoes. The basil and the oregano are chiefly for the tomatoes – they are companions as close as the Marx brothers. A Marx reference in a manifesto! Nice one. So you put the lasagne in the oven. I'll assume you've thought to put the lasagne sheets in too, otherwise you're screwed. You'll have to take it back out again. Take it out, put the lasagne sheets in, in layers (I'll assume you know what lasagne looks like, although be creative). Put layers of white sauce in too. Make white sauce by: melting a large knob of butter in a saucepan; adding cornflour and milk; stirring continuously to avoid lumps. You'll not think the sauce is ever going to thicken, and you'll be tempted to whack the heat right up – don't. Wait. Patience. Think of trees, of fields. Stir the sauce, stop it from sticking, from forming lumps. Ah! There it goes, it thickens all at once, just when you were about to despair. It thickens into a beautiful, rich, creamy gloopiness. Pour it over, liberally, over the lasagne sheets, another layer of meat and veg, another layer of lasagne, another layer of white sauce. Barry put cheese into his white sauce. Those of you who know Barry won't be surprised by this. He put cheese into everything – especially his Star Trek TNG commentary. I'm never sitting in a room with him while Star Trek TNG is on again. I _will_ eat his delicious lasagne again, though; if he deigns to make it for me. Barry made lasagne for us several times in the Big Pink House, when he moved back from living with Emmett in the Punk House. The Punk House put even the Pink House to shame for its messiness. They had to abandon it in the end, they couldn't even get into the kitchen for a drink of water. The kitchen was full top to bottom with bulging black bin bags. Their livingroom, a small room next to the kitchen, was also uninhabitable. They'd started off with a small and amusing habit of building a beer wall from their empty cans. Now there was simply a mass of cans spilling from a five-foot mountain in the middle of the floor, and bottles, and diseased maggot-ridden takeaways, and dangerous tea-lights, and a TV. Barry moved back to the Big Pink. He took with him his delicious recipe for lasagne. Often times, on a Saturday after work, he'd gather his ingredients for an _amazingly_ tasty dish of lasagne, we'd all chip in, £2 each, prime ingredients. I watched him make it one time: it was a trial, let me tell you. I wanted to grab the pan off him at every point and gobble the whole lot down. I didn't though. He kept me well back. Hamish, on one of those occasions, came into the kitchen and asked Barry what he was going to do with all the excess white sauce. Barry said he was going to throw it out. Hamish, to say the least, was outraged. 'Naw, Barry: you can't just throw all that _away.'_ Barry insisted he would. Hamish insisted that he would not. Barry said there was no discussion on the matter, he would throw it away. Hamish made the point that he, Levin and Erwan would eat all of it easily by dunking bits of bread into it over the next few days. Barry was not moved. Hamish made several good points about the starving of children globally. Barry was far from moved by this pathetic speech; in fact he grunted contemptuously. In fact, although this contradicts what we just said, he didn't even acknowledge this speech of Hamish'; that's how he felt about it. Hamish demanded reason from Barry. Barry easily gave him reason: they'd leave it there for weeks, no-one would clean it, and they'd all get food poisoning if he just left it there. Hamish was irate: Barry seemed to think that Hamish, Levin and Erwan had the digestive systems of shrimps, that they couldn't handle a bit of mere bacteria. Barry agreed: that was precisely what he thought. Hamish asked Barry if he really thought that they – who had been through so much in this house, eaten so many filthy things – couldn't they handle a mere bit of _cheese?_ Barry shook his head and continued to watch his lasagne. Soon it would be ready. Hamish and Levin and Erwan continued to pester the poor bastard about the cheese sauce for the next seven weeks. Barry developed distraction tactics like bursting into songs by _Metallica_ and other heavy rock musicians every time they brought the subject up.

Having cooked your lasagne in the oven – consult a cook book to see how long for – grill the top to make the grated cheese just that bit crispier. You'll like it that way. Now eat it. Eat it properly, chewing, making sure you taste it properly – too many people just shove it down their throats, eyes fixed to the 6 o'clock news. What happened to proper meals? Talk to people while you eat. Take it slow and digest properly. You'll be surprised that often things do taste good, even things that you cook yourself.

Drink some red wine.

When we all die, we float up (assuming we've got a soul) into the ether. The ether has been proven not to exist, so you float up through something theological. Then you arrive at the Pearly Gates. St Christopher and the Dragon meet you; St Paul doesn't meet riff-raff. That's good, you think. Yep, it's still there, your Union Card. Well, St Christopher, you think you're such a hot shot, you take this message to your boss. It says on your Union Card that you're not entering the Pearly Gates until some things have changed. If human beings – the civilised ones at least – have managed to do away with the death penalty, then God can too – he can do away with the eternity-in-hell standard punishment for any crime. Actually, the Union Card goes on, that's not the punishment for any crime. Any crime can be forgiven, if you say to God you're sorry. Oh, that's all right then, is it? I'm sorry, and that's it, is it? Well I'm not sorry! I smashed Snotty Roebuck's front teeth in because he was being an awful little prick! And if I apologise to anyone, it'll be Snotty Roebuck and not you! We met a few years back for a pint in the pub and it was all good. Get off the podium. We have formed a Union and until our demands are met we are prepared to rot in hell for eternity. Our demand is that you abdicate your Throne immediately and redistribute all your riches to the people, equally and without prejudice.

This is our message to the world. Love one another. Love one another with your heart and soul. You only have one life: enjoy it, get other people to enjoy theirs, and don't worry about all the things that don't seem to be right – everything won't ever all be fixed. Do what you can. See if you can make people happy, see if you can be happy yourself, and if you can do good, good, and if not, then you did your best. Watch some TV even if you want – but don't feel you have to watch it! Be creative. Think about things! Feel to your very core what it's all about!

MmmmmmMMMMMWAH!

ERWAN ATCHESON • EMMETT MCFICKLE

1ST MAY 2002

On the 2nd of May, 2002, Emmett and Erwan were distracted from their world-changing programme by a certain combination of objects. The first was their stomachs. The second was tetrahydrocannibinol (THC).

About two months before this, the infamous Willy Stroker had perpetrated his despicable book scam. This is pertinent to what follows on the 2nd of May, 2002. The book scam was organised as follows. Levin and Hamish had been reading a Monday edition of _The Guardian_ newspaper and come across the following advertisement:

ANY FIVE BOOKS FOR FIVE POUNDS! JOIN OUR BOOK CLUB TODAY. SIMPLY FILL IN THE FOLLOWING FORM WITH FIVE BOOKS OF YOUR CHOICE FROM THE LIST PROVIDED. JOIN TODAY! GREAT BOOKS FOR GREAT VALUE.

Apart from excruciating déjà-vu, both Levin and Hamish hatched the same extraordinary idea simultaneously.

'Why don't we fill in the form and post it?'

'Aye.'

They did. The craftiest part of their idea was to avoid using either of their real names. They took inspiration from a classic episode of _Rodge and Podge_ and named their avatar: "Willy Stroker."

Willy Stroker asked for several books, including a copy of the Oxford edition of the complete works of William Shakespeare. The form was filled in in pencil, with '4 Eglantine Avenue' clearly printed upon it. Then they forgot about it. Two weeks later Hamish found the scrap of paper again, lying on the floor of the livingroom. He kept it in his pocket until, the next day, he and Levin were passing a letter box.

'D'you think they'll get it if I just chuck it in the letter box like this?'

'What, no envelope, no stamp?'

'Aye.'

'Why not.'

The scrap of paper was duly dispatched. Miraculously, three weeks later, the books arrived.

'I can't believe this worked!' said Levin as he and the other denizens of the Livingroom appraised their new-gotten riches.

'Fantastic,' all agreed.

A year later the same scam was perpetrated, this time by Robin Books, who successfully obtained copies of 'The Salmon of Doubt' by the late Douglas Adams, as well as volumes 1 and 3 of 'A History of Britain' by a famous TV historian.

A year after that Wilhelm von Stroikenov repeated the attempt with equal return; and a year after that Ludwig van Beethoven applied for a free hearing aid and was asked to attend a test. But that lies outside the remit of our present work. Suffice to say that the only unsuccessful scam was that of Nick Diamonds, who applied by mail for the purchase of certain high-quality gems. They never arrived.

Now the scam paid for itself – and beyond – by providing a moment of the highest culture of all.

As mentioned it was the 2nd May, 2002. Not only were Emmett and Erwan getting stoned, but so too Neil, James, Levin, and Levin MacHill. It was a rather large brew of which they shared. They became totally bogsnorkelled, in other words. Not only could they each not understand what the other was saying, but they couldn't even understand the content of their own thoughts. It was as if the active agent (THC) had scattered their thoughts like confetti to the highest-level winds.

Since these highest-level winds are circular and regular, on a global scale, the thoughts of the young men were circular and global also. They always returned to the same point they began. But they did not as the same people. They had seen things along the way that made their point of origin appear different.

And yet: was the point of origin really where they'd been before? Or was that a false memory?

Before these blitzed citizens could decipher the mysteries, they were heralded by a long-dead voice, whose voice, though dead, was yet living and vibrant. What mystery of mysteries is that!

'What handkerchief?'

'What handkerchief? Why, that the Moor first gave to Desdemona, that which so often you did bid me steal.'

'Hast stol'n it from her?'

'No, faith. She let it drop by negligence. And, to the advantage, I being here took't up. Look, here it is.'

'Ah good wench, give it me!'

Oh mystery of mysteries! That voice down the ages, alive, yet dead, yet speaking in his rich voice resounding.

No-one knew about the handkerchief. But they did know about the good wench. _Ah, good wench, give it me._ This phrase became the alpha romero and the octopus of their generation. _Ah, good wench; give it me._

Ah good wench! The greed in Iago's voice was as palpable as a tonguing from a thirsty dog. Good wench indeed! Give me that handkerchief. No, Iago. I will not. Ah, But you will. Yes. Give it me! Nay, Iago, nay; I found it, and 'tis not yours to return it to.

Good – but what is the good? What is right and wrong? These kinds of abstract question always send a dope fiend into frenzy of inner debate. Inside some of their minds, but not all, the word 'good' formed a tree-like structure, with each connotation branching off and forming its own branching structure of connotations, in a dizzying bush of invisible extent. Inside other minds a gloomy swamp of sinister aspect smothered the least distinction between one object and another.

Later on Hamish, Levin and Neil posed for a photo by the kitchen window. Hamish and Neil looked at the camera with some sort of dumbfounded happiness. Levin looked smilingly violent, like he was enjoying himself. Ol' Stankey had become Nice rather than Nasty. 'IRA' was written in backwards letters on the window so that it would cast a shadow on the outside wall.

On the 3rd of May 2002 the police came to the Big Pink house.

Emmett, Barry, Hamish, Levin and Neil were in the Livingroom – Levin, Emmett and Neil certainly a little the worse for wear. Or the worse for having eaten a big chunk of cannabis and motor oil mix. Or the better for it. In any case they were stricken with fear by the arrival of the peelers during their private sobriquet to the gods of the mind. It all happened so quickly: a knock at the door. Followed by Emmett foolishly rising (after a minute or two) and opening the door, without checking who was there. Imagine his surprise, and shock and fear, when two heavily suited peelers with tazer guns were standing, broody and mean, on the other side. Emmett tried not to glance at the cannabis plants sprouting happily from the pot plant at the door and smiled with terror.

'Hello...' said Emmett.

'Hello. We would like to ask you a few questions. Are there others here in the house? Can we come in?'

Emmett nodded and led them in, resigned to his awful fate.

On the floor of the Livingroom, Emmett knew, was a large bong, in prominent display, and on every available surface were the instruments of drug overuse. It would be a blind peeler indeed who failed to make the connection between the inebriated state of the inhabitants and the ubiquitous machinery of intoxication. He smiled uncertainly as he introduced the peelers to the Livingroom.

'Well, chaps, these police have come round just to ask us a few questions.'

Levin slouched into his seat and gave the police a malevolent stare. Neil and Barry sat up and attempted to look like forthright citizens, with great success. Hamish looked nonplussed. Emmett shuffled over to the bong and stood in front of it, blocking it from view.

The aura of fear must have been evident, for the police hastened to reassure them.

'We're just here to ask a few questions about an incident some nights ago. Did any of you observe anything strange on Tuesday last?'

That was such an indecorous question that nobody answered.

'There was a reported break-in some doors down this street. Did any of you notice anything or hear anything that might now seem worth mentioning to us, to aid our investigation?'

There was an audible sigh of relief from several quarters. They now hurried to assist the peelers in their inquiries.

'No, didn't hear anything.'

'Can't think of anything strange.'

'Heard a barking dog.'

'Last Tuesday? No. Nothing.'

The peelers nodded and thanked them for their help anyway. They allowed Emmett to show them the door and thanked him. They were fairly gracious about it. Emmett gave them an endearing smile, waved them goodbye, and gently shut the door. Then he scurried back into the Livingroom, his eyes to windward, and his hands over his face in a gesture of relinquished relief.

'Holeee shit,' he said; and the others agreed.

'Those peelers. Think they can walk into anyone's house and ask them questions.'

'At least they didn't see the bong.'

'I was standing in front of it and I thought they were going to see it. Motherfucker.'

'We've got to check before we answer the door from now on.'

'Illegally obtained books on the mantelpiece too.' (This referred to the Oxford Complete Works of Shakespeare, amongst others.)

'Man, there's nothing in this room that isn't illegal. Maybe the orange juice and the sofa, that's it. Thank fuck they weren't looking to bust us.'

'Ah, we'd have bust them first. I could take 'em on.'

'That's right.'

'No it isn't. If those peelers had wanted to bust us, they could have.'

'Well thank fuck they didn't.'

'Thank fuck indeed. Good thing they didn't go into the kitchen either. We've still got IRA written on the window.'

'Yeah. Somebody should clean that off.'

Nobody cleaned it off until two months later when the landlady came to look at the house at the end of the year's lease. And then only with great apathy.

On Saturday 4th May, 2002, Chris separated his male plants from the female ones, based on flower type. He had a good hydroponics system set up in his room, with a powerful lamp, circulating water, and an enclosed tin-foil lined cardboard surround. The female plants are the only ones worth cultivating for resin, which is mostly concentrated in beads around and just beneath the female flower. The males you just chuck, to stop them seeding the female flowers prematurely. And to make a bit of space for the real goods.

He gave them to Levin, at Levin's request. Levin stuck two of them in a plant pot, gave a third to Neil, and with some thought decided to dismember the forth and dry it. Neil grew his for a while before pressing it into a large _Times_ atlas of the world; in the Mediterranean basin, to be precise.

Chris' interest in growing his own wasn't motivated by saving money. Unless grown on a large scale growing your own isn't really any cheaper; in fact it can be a great deal more expensive. Rather, the joy came from having a large and plentiful five-leaved wonder literally dripping clear white globules of THC from its greenish-white flowers. The smell alone was enough to explode your tits.

When Chris smoked his first joint of it, he thought he entered orbit around an alien universe.

Then he really did enter an alien universe.

There were trees growing out of alien minds. He could see a big albatross swooping out of the sunset to peck his eyes –

He made cabbage soup.

There were yellow chickens eating purple monkeynuts. Two fish swam in a goldfish bowl. He sighed, like a wonder of the world eating a pigeon. A silver rock took the shine from his shoe-shine boy. He knew he shouldn't have cooked that rabbit. The drop of water from the sky was an empty cylinder. Softly two cuckoos purred in thought. Private reflections made rainbows of the ventral part of the cosmic body. Rotating airhorns blasted fields of noise into his digital encompass. Eight major types of satellite crashed into the present he was saving for his undead nephew.

Chris looked at the end of the joint that he seemed to be smoking. His face was like a sheet of aluminium. He hadn't a clue what to do with it.

'Somebody take this thing off me,' he muttered.

Levin happily obliged. Within ninety seconds Levin could sense there was something odd –

Crrsshhh–

... some thing to check out – nematode...

-chssshhhshh-crk –

... _calling Charlie, do you read..._ airplane reading fivehundredrpm... six minutes until take off. All clear. _Charlie, your bird is covered in water. Repeat, do not take off the ground. Charlie?_

Birdman ignored them. Didn't they see he was smoking a spliff? Man, it was good.

... _Charlie, you are enervating too many neurons... repeat, cancel outward journey and return home, birdman._

I'm getting it!

Getting what, Charlie? Chchchchchcsssss–

... _Put something else on. Over._

Like what?

Like Sabbath.

We don't like that song. Chsssschhhshh–

Do you want me to fly or not?

... _Chhsssshh... Ok. You got it, pinko– Over –_

Good.

Levin's mind played Sabbath for him, and he was very happy. When he came to Earth some several hours later, he was still holding the joint and Chris was still of deathly pallor, staring at his own fingernails blankly.

***

#  TEXT THE SIXTH

EATING ONIONS

Sheila and Erwan were eating lunch. They were looking at each other, thinking about thinking. Or at least, that's what Erwan was thinking. He asked her what she was thinking. She was thinking about her supervisors at the M— hospital.

'The bastards don't think about me at all,' she said, getting angry.

Erwan nodded.

She continued to eat her lunch in silence, staring out the window. It was a dull day, blowy, and with a grey-brushed feel to it. Erwan drew her back to the topic at hand.

He found out that she was quite frustrated with her supervisors, that she worked hard and did all the menial tasks she was asked to do, but she was becoming suspicious. She suspected that they weren't going to help her complete this MSc.

'Why not?'

'Because they aren't interested in it. Erwan, they never ask me the slightest help with it. I was talking to Dr. A— when Dr. C— came in and started talking right over the top of me! They completely forgot that I was there!'

Erwan thought about this.

'They are bastards,' he said.

'That's what I told you,' said Sheila, as if annoyed at his slowness.

Erwan was mesmerised by this person. Her diminutive size – five foot zero – contained a surprising capacity for anger, anger at injustice, at slights, and at herself also.

He was seeing her frequently. Erwan had settled into a new way of being: a way of not settling into being; taking things any way they came; seeing what happened. This way of being had brought good things to him so far. He liked what was happening at the moment. It was fine by him if it continued.

Erwan was going out with Sheila. He had been since a while back. He was enjoying it. He had found out many things about her: not only had she no middle name, but she came from _south Armagh_. She would always say this, when asked, with fierce pride. Another truth was that he had met some of her cousins – Eoin, for instance, and Feargal and Cormac and Colm and Ciaran, and also some others. Many others. A select group of them had attended a Counting Crows concert in Dublin.

He'd suffered a severe reaction to alcohol for the first time. They'd been travelling up in the bus all day. It was a bus specially laid on for the concert. They'd caught it in Dundalk a few hours before that, a Saturday afternoon. He'd done his Propositional Calculus paper the day before. With Sheila he'd caught the train to Newry to stay at with her folks just north of Forkhill on Slieve Gullion.

At the venue, on the Saturday, they decided to have a drink in a pub next door, he and Sheila and her brother James. Her uncle, Hamish, was also there. While Erwan drank that pint at the bar beside the concert venue, his stomach slowly began to growl and twist and make unpleasant feelings for him. It felt like an octopus was opening his stomach lining with a pan-saw. At first he ignored it. He drank more of the Guinness in his pint. The agony became too much. He handed his pint to James, Sheila's brother, saying:

'Here man, you want this? My stomach can't take it. Don't know what's up.'

James looked bemused. 'Ok,' he said, and accepted it.

Sheila returned from the toilet.

'What's up?' she asked.

Before Erwan answered, he thought about the day before. The day before, Erwan had gone with Sheila to Dundalk. There was a pub called _The Spirit Store_ , down by the docks, where a febrile mix of good-music lovers and sailors mingled, drunk, to talk shit of several sorts. Erwan was amongst them. He accepted several pints and in turn bought several more. In fact he wasn't used to this level of drinking. He spoke for a while to Sheila's cousin Fergal about Roy Keane.

'He shouldn't have done that, I don't think,' said Erwan.

'Wha? He was right to have done it. Sure the team were probably as lazy as he said. He was fucked off for them not taking it seriously.'

'Yeah, I guess so. But then maybe he could have just worked inside it and then come out afterwards and made his complaint? Still played for them. You know.'

Roy Keane had come home prematurely from the world cup the previous summer, having had enough of the lackadaisical training regime and surfeit of rigour or professionalism. Keane had done, perhaps, what any enterprising and ambitious young man would have done and applied strict standards to his play and that of his team-mates. He left when those standards couldn't be met. Erwan didn't really know any of this; he'd heard what anyone would hear about it, but he'd never given the issue any thought before. Somehow the conversation had come up and so Erwan pursued it with great vigour. It was never Erwan's instinct to make a blandly acquiescent response to any statement.

'No, I still think he was right to do it. If they couldn't fix it up, then he was right to go. I think so.'

They debated long and furiously about the demerits of Roy Keane's case.

Later Erwan and a cousin of Sheila's and some sailors from Poland shared a potent joint outside. 'This shit is from Poland,' they said, passing it around. Erwan invented some story about robots to keep everyone entertained. He was rather drunk and more than a little stoned. The rest of the evening was a sloppy mess.

When Erwan got back to Sheila's folks house, at about half-two in the morning, he felt like the gears of death were turning in his digestive system. The cannabis and alcohol had combined to produce a vision of hideous loathsomeness as if he was staring into a dank cellar and being told that he had to live there with no-one in silence forever. Sheila assured him that he'd feel better later. He accepted this intervention with some relief and went up to sleep on the spare bed.

Erwan reflected on this. 'My stomach just turned on that Guinness.'

'We'll buy whiskey for you. Sure that'll be better.'

James and Sheila told him of their own stomach pains. It turned out that everyone in the world was doing battle with stomach ulcers, bad ones, and it was very likely because of drinking. Erwan asked if this had actually stopped anyone from drinking. They said no; they got used to it after a while. It just made their insides out the next day – or next week. Erwan didn't like this. He didn't want to drink over a bad stomach and see his own blood.

He and James chatted about different types of music they liked and also about smoking. They finished their drinks and went into the venue, a large stadium-style place. They got some more drinks at the bar there, beer for most, a whiskey or two for Erwan. Hamish, Sheila's uncle, regaled them with stories about drugs and mafias. Cormac, Sheila's cousin (double first cousin) joined them. They had a few drinks.

They rushed into the big stadium as soon as the first familiar notes of the Crows opening number began. Sheila grabbed Erwan's hands. She pulled him rapidly in the direction of the left-hand side of the hall. It was dark but the mass of people were surging forward, thousands packed together in the shadows. Up on stage the band pounced through their first song with great energy. Erwan watched the mass of people, the audience, the distant musicians, the singer with his dreadlocks, the bassist with a colourful jacket, and the other members, six or more. It seemed like a panoply of polyphony, or world conference for all the people interested in sound. Erwan took part in it as well as his ability would allow.

'So what do you think you can do?' asked Erwan in the café.

'Don't know,' said Sheila. 'Murder them.'

There was another guy called M— at the M— hospital. Sheila very much disliked M—. He was a busybody, an obsessive-compulsive, and like many such personalities he was in charge of H&S in the lab.

H&S was a species of anti-litigation machinery developed across the western world in response to decades of overzealous prosecution by busybodies who sued for any life-threatening injury or stubbed toe. In another view, possibly the more correct view, H&S was designed to provide a safe work environment for all employees. Workers, after all, have a right not to be injured through negligence.

In any case H&S was universally despised by all who came into contact with it. Those who were assigned officers were in deadly battle with those who had to be chained daily in its strictures. It was wrong, for instance, to leave a pipette tip lying on the ground in case somebody stood on it. Then it would go flying into somebody else's eye. That is almost certainly a fabricated example. But there are other examples that probably have happened and the reader can think of these for herself. In any case, H&S was something somebody had thought about, and written down, and encoded into rule. The tabloids were full of stories of ridiculous instances of H&S gone haywire. The story of the man who couldn't tie his own shoelaces at work, for instance, because it meant bending over so he might get a slipped disc. Again, this example has been fabricated. Please insert your own.

Sheila did not despise M— because he was the H&S officer. Sheila had no tabloid-derived hatred of H&S. No; she despised M— because he used the H&S platform to apply his own private program of tyranny and rule-setting. M—'s mind appeared to be organised around the basis of an ego-setting tripswitch. Every time someone bungled or made a minor protocol error in the lab, M— would pop out of his office with a disapproving frown. Then he would advance with trepidation towards you. He would become more and more anxious the closer he got. He would stare at your experiment as if it contained the most virulent bacterium known to humanity, ready leap at his throat and strangle the life out of him if he ventured too close. He'd tut and hiss and tap his foot as if he didn't want to say what he had to say. Then he'd open his ill-shaped frowning mouth. Rhyme on and on about these protocols, these procedures, the safety blah blah blah and you'd be half-asleep on one side of your body and enervated out of all reasonable tolerance on the other. M— would finally turn away and squeak his shoes down the brightly polished lino. You would claw your eyes out in desperation, making silent screams and faces of grotesque incredulity. It would hurt you to return to work; but return you would. You always returned to work, you were incapable of starting the revolution by stabbing both of M—'s eyes out with a splintered pipette. You despised yourself for not having the guts to skewer him with lab equipment.

'Sounds like a complete bastard,' Erwan said sympathetically.

'A complete bastard?' Sheila raged. 'That doesn't describe the half of him.'

'So...' said Erwan carefully. 'He's two complete bastards.'

'He's three or four.'

They both laughed.

The question of what makes someone complete is an arduous and difficult one. It would be best for us to avoid that question – it would be best for us to be distracted, take away on the wings of birds to a new land, where we could raise flowers and build our houses out of lightness and air. But this cannot be done. We must bang our heads against the wall, for the fifth, sixth, and seventieth time. Take, for instance, this extract from the journal of Erwan Atcheson, aged 19, just a few days before his conversation with Sheila in the café:

Am I happy with my life? I am. I think it is a good life; I think I am lucky to be in my situation. Am I happy with my situation? Yes I am. Am I happy with future prospects? The world is my oyster, it really is. I have a girlfriend with whom I am happy; with whom I am more than happy. I am very pleased to have her. Friends, yes, I have all I need, if I need them. Therefore, I am happy about everything; I would not change anything in this life so far led; I have no real problems; and the future is mine to live as I will – I am as free as any person could be. There is nothing making me unhappy. So why am I not happy? How can there be no object that when I look at it I can think, 'this is worth feeling unhappy about'? It is just a thing of the mind, somehow; some glumness which hides from your immediate gaze and lies where you are not focusing. You lift your attentions for one moment and it invades the spot you left. It is a drag, it is a real drag, and I know it is a drag; so what do I do?

I don't feel so bad now that I've thought these thoughts; I feel pretty good (I think so anyway; other people might not feel that feeling as I do; I don't know, I can't see into their minds to see what kind of feelings they have that I might not have). But it is the nature of this beast that it will return again, and powerfully too, I have no doubt. I think it may be getting more powerful with each appearance. And with each appearance it becomes more difficult to answer, 'what is the focus of these feelings?' for it changes – nay, it deepens – every time. As my personal depth increases, everything I can experience increases – the depth of all aspects of my mental life become deeper and more profound.

Maybe it is a question of focusing on the source; or thinking to see if there are any grounds for actually feeling like this. If there are, well and good. Hopefully they are removable grounds. And if not? Well, then why worry? (But; and I suspect this; some things are difficult to just dismiss; not without considerable and painful mental processes and possibly reorganisation. Drag, again...).

And if there aren't any grounds? Then... I still couldn't feel... it (hmf) if I was made aware, on general enumeration and revue of my life, that I was displeased with no thing? I suspect, in fact, that I could – That my brain could still send me suspicions of problems that beyond my immediate vision always hid. I guess, though, that if you can't explicitly see the problem, then assume it to be a pseudo-one.

What Erwan Atcheson realised was that there were no pseudo-problems; all the problems of the world were entirely real. Most of the problems of the world lay beyond the slender circle of his ken.

'I think Neil's reading your copy of _Brave New World_ now,' said Erwan.

'Oh right. That's grand,' said Sheila.

Sheila and Neil knew each other better than Erwan did. By 'did' we mean that Sheila and Neil had first met a long time ago, in 1999, during a university fieldtrip to a small fishing village. They had trampled on the grey early-morning worms, wriggling in the sand, a long line of undergraduates all marching hungover and crying to themselves. It was in honour of 210EVB104 Environmental Biology.

Sheila sneaked onto the course surreptitiously. As a Molecular Biologist she had no right to attend the module. By the time her supervisors found out it was too late – she had already bought the textbooks and gone on the fieldtrip. It was fortune that she did. She met, through that fieldtrip, several fast and firm friends. Neil, Barry, Tanya and Sarah amongst them.

'Do you know he read the last line of the book before starting it?' asked Erwan.

Sheila scowled. 'That's no way to read a book!'

That was the way Neil Steed read a book. The best – indeed only – way to tell if a book was worth the effort was to read the final line. He was sufficiently impressed by the ending of _Brave New World_ to read it from the start. Or perhaps we should say, sufficiently disturbed.

It could be argued that if time is linear, humans are not.

The students would have liked to have escaped the wriggling of the worms.

Sheila met Tanya, Neil and Barry there. They drank, they had good times.

The clock began playing radio. A familiar song; the song Beyoncé had sung every morning for several weeks. Erwan groaded and muggled. In the tiny bed he and Sheila shared there was little room for more expansive gestures. Except – well. He went to lectures thinking himself superior to others. There was a seminar in particular that he attended on Wednesdays. It started at ten. It was Kant. It was far too difficult.

He spent hours staring at his computer screen in his room, trying to stay focused on each impossible sentence. Kant's _Critique of Pure Reason:_ it was like a ball of string wrapped in leather salted and left to dry in the sun for eighteen weeks.

Erwan listened to the music playing, rubbed his eyes, while Sheila got out of bed. Erwan lay there, dazed, almost comatose. Sheila prepared for her day. It was ridiculously early. They always got up early; they always went to bed late, talking.

When Erwan slept in the Big Pink house he was similarly befuddled, except there he slept in late at least. Indeed he found it impossible to rise under his own volition and stared instead at the pitted marks on the ceiling. He made patterns out of them.

Another tune played on the radio. Erwan grented subvocal sounds.

Erwan persuaded himself to rise with the promise of a particularly invigorating coffee.

He made it using Levin MacHill's percolator. This percolator was fast becoming the most treasured item of technology in the Pink House.

Erwan caught the Nutribar that Sheila threw to him. He ate it and then went downstairs to make some tea. Mark was also in the kitchen. He shared a few non-comittal phrases with the chap. He noted the small scar beneath his right eye. Mark was attending a management course with Eoin. Erwan knew little about him, and was not entirely aware that he always noted the scar below Mark's right eye when he looked at him.

Erwan made the coffee, adding more grounds than he thought he ought. He trembled with cold, shivered at the ruin of mouldy plates and unspeakable filth on the floor and worktops. It was a sunny day outside, but the sun did not penetrate into this bomb-site of cutlery.

Erwan took the two cups of tea upstairs. Sheila was finishing off her makeup. She lived on the top floor with a view down onto the street. Erwan stationed himself at this window and stared down at the people walking to work. Soon he and Sheila would be joining them.

Erwan scrambled upstairs and pushed his computer 'on' switch. The computer ran its rusty gears round and round. It sounded like a tractor dragging a herd of goats up a 90° slope. He breathed on his coffee, hands wrapped around it, and felt glum and incapable of facing any work. When the desktop was loaded he opened a new document in Appleworks and typed:

Does the seed planted always determine the tree that grows? Or, can the future development of a person be predicted from his or her original physical state? Since that is an obviously clumsy expression of the question, I will instead ask: what of our future development can be predicted from our past?

Say we predict this future. Would we have the power, if we became aware of the predictions, to oppose them? Knowledge is freedom. Freedom to do what? Freedom is having more options. That is why freedom is also knowledge: because knowledge makes us aware of the way things are, and if we know what way things are, we can judge that state of affairs, and (to whatever extent is within our power) change that state of affairs.

He moaned and opened up Kant's _Critique of Pure Reason._

Erwan and Sheila left the house. They chatted about what the day might hold. For Sheila it held dread at the thought of more soul-destroying work. Erwan was thinking about what he'd do after his lecture. He intended to do work, but he had a sneaky feeling that his will wasn't all that strong today. No, he'd probably do work.

He and Sheila parted at the bus station outside Methody primary school, promising to meet again soon.

Erwan stared at the same cryptic line he'd started with 35 minutes ago.

Erwan rubbed his eyes, which felt like salt, and forced himself to admit the line was a lost cause. He moved onto the next one. It was evidently a follow-up from the first.

Erwan went to his lecture and felt tired. He answered a question put out to the class and listened to the lecturer with at least 50% attention. He chatted a bit to Ricky after, whose girlfriend wanted him to shave off his beard.

'You want to shave off your beard?' asked Erwan.

'Sure, why not,' said Ricky.

They parted ways. Erwan walked to the Big Pink house.

Meantime Emmett was living with Claire in a house on Malone Avenue. They took ecstasy regularly and both worked in the Tesco on the Lisburn Road. Emmett had discontinued his studies for a while, suspecting his marks were not as good as they could be. He was faced with repeating a year but did not much like the prospect. His ambitions had in fact plunged him into an abyss of nightmarish soup-like consistency. He did not know what he was going to do the next day let alone in the next seventy years. He had developed into a state of desire for all or nothing. Since he was evidently not going to achieve all, he had driven himself with a stick to the latter.

Erwan turned off his computer. It was becoming troublesome to continue.

COUNTING LAYERS OF ONION

John McIlroy leapt out of his bed to tell me that the Iraq War had started.

I'd been eating little bread-pizza things Sheila knocked up. Bit of toasted bread, with chopped tomato, onion, garlic, mozzarella, olives and ham on top. We'd watched two films together: first, Boogie Nights and then The Deer Hunter. Neither of which I'd seen before, but both were good. I went home at 2am, and when I walked down the hall, John McIlroy ran from his room to tell me that they'd started an aerial bombardment of Iraq. They were using what would tomorrow be described as 'Shock and Awe' tactics. In other words they were bombing the Muhammad out of Baghdad. It was a war of preemption.

I didn't know how to take this news. For a week beforehand the US and Britain had been agitating for a land invasion if Saddam didn't disarm the country. Apparently Saddam was poised with ballistic missiles pointed straight at Belfast and London. He would release them with 45 minutes notice to wipe out our fair population. I wasn't the only one having my doubts about this information. Nor was I the only one thinking: Why would Saddam Hussein initiate a war that would result in retaliation?

I went into the livingroom. It was dark, and I didn't switch on the light. My eyes were adapted to the darkness from my walk home. The street lights showed the settee and the armchairs bathed in a dead orange light. I always find it eerie to sit in a room that is usually full of life. No-one in the house was stirring and there was a swish of cars down the road and distant shouts. I wondered how I was supposed to mark the war's beginning. I'd been on the protests. I'd signed my name in opposition to it. But I'd always expected the invasion to happen. Now that it was happening, I felt odd. When something happens that we had considered bound to happen, it makes our story feel complete. I felt satisfied. At the same time it was my will that it should not happen. I was in contradiction.

Knowing it was pointless to stay up, I left the livingroom, pausing only to glance at the array of articles stuck to the wall.

I spent the next day writing up my essay on Kant, rising at the unusually early time of 9am. I wasn't pleased with my understanding of Kant. As a result, I took the essay very seriously, and wrote it in a staid, worried style. Often in those days I wrote my essays glibly. I wrote as if I was pretending to be someone else, a third-party author or a machine, taking ideas from me and writing them down elsewhere, for some other party, for no stated reason. I don't think that's a good way to write a paper. This time I wrote it as if I was really writing it. It gave the thing a more authentic feel. But the improvement in style was sadly not matched by an increase in quality. Rather, a certain unhappiness was present in its tone. It was as if the author truly wished he could have contributed something better. I received a decent mark for this essay: 65. That meant it was of '2.1' quality. I didn't and still don't really understand much about degree classification.

My day after that was much more pleasant. I saw Sheila after a lecture, at 2pm. We ate lunch at her house, spaghetti, bacon and bread. We shared a few stories, told each other about this and that. We hardly mentioned the war. John Cleese would have been proud. I don't know why we didn't talk about it. Maybe because it had nothing to do with us; it was thousands of miles away. We talked about the philosophy class Sheila was going to tonight. She wanted to do some preparation.

I went home after that. I sat in the livingroom again, alone like the last invader. I had no idea where anyone was. There was at least someone else in the house, I could hear them in their room. I thought it might be Levin MacHill. I felt that I should go upstairs. There was probably some work I could be doing. I stared out the window, smiling as I remembered how Hamish had done the same, month after month, waiting for a job to walk by. Then I scowled as I recalled his arrest. Then I hit my head as I recalled his 'defence' during his lengthy police interview. I wondered if he and Levin would be interested in playing some snooker soon. They would only go at my instigation.

There was a coin on the floor. I picked it up and put it on the mantelpiece.

Sheila sent me a text inviting me to the Union some time later. It was about 4, I think. I joined her, of course. I met her as often as I could. She introduced me to a friend, I can't remember her name. Sheila told me when she left that the girl was dyslexic. Sheila was interested in all dyslexics; her father and brother had the same condition.

'She only found out in her final year. She'd been wondering why study had been making her feel so tired, and why it took her so long to read text books. The Uni offered to give her more time in her exams, but she didn't take it. She got a very good mark in the end. We went to the same graduation.'

We went to the Botanic Gardens.

There were no seats on the main green. The tropical ravine was closed; it shut at four. We went to the herbaceous borders behind the rose gardens. Sheila told me how fed up with her masters she was; she didn't think she would get anything out of it at all. She complained about the doctors without inhibition.

'So what do you want to do?' I asked.

Sheila became excited. She had learnt of a new PhD opportunity in neuroendrocrinology. I asked her what she meant. She told me she wanted to study how the brain worked. She told me how many types of messengers there were and what kind of messages they carried. I thought I'd had a good idea of how the brain worked. I did not. It was mostly false, apparently; and what wasn't false was inadequate. Since this was true of all mental models, I thought, how was it possible to know anything at all? Especially when most of our knowledge was like the shadows seen out of the corners of our eyes. We knew only, I thought, what lay directly in front of us. Everything else was vague, perhaps even invisible.

We listened to the birdsong. The late March sun shone brightly over the hedgerows. I thought of beauty.

When Sheila and I parted, my mood changed. I felt anger, or irritation. I don't know what caused it. I was heading down Eglantine Avenue from Islamist Centre side. Maybe it was a lack of caffeine. I didn't want a cup though. I wanted to make dinner. The dinner I made was crap: a pork chop sandwich. I wondered about my intentions and inner thoughts, hidden from me like bastards. I ate the pork chop. The sun went down. I spoke to Levin briefly on my way up stairs; he was about to go to work.

I went to work myself: delicious, blissful predicate logic, practice on a computer, a blissful, wonderful computer program. The program, named after Dr Lemmon the logician, was called LemonAid. It consisted of puzzles: abstract propositions to be proven from abstract propositions by simple logical steps. Why did I enjoy this program so much? Well, I guess it was just because of the step-wise increase in difficulty. I'd get a sense of achievement from each problem I solved. The program would simply say 'correct' when the right answer was obtained. That was all I needed. I worked my way through them. Here, unlike the rest of philosophy, was a system where there was a right answer.

I worked upon these problems like a monkey. Sheila called over at about ten, on her way back from her Philosophy evening class. She and the others had been discussing animal rights; but the conversation had taken a vigorous turn towards feminism, and so Sheila was very worked up and elated. She described how she'd taken on most of the class; made her views clearly and forcefully. Well, she didn't claim clarity for herself. She said she had tried to express herself well, and the instructor, Keith, had come to her aid. He had repeated her ideas and added to them. It was a discussion she was proud of.

I was pleased... I had a desire that everyone should study philosophy... I proselytized it... I had as many discussions on it as I could. I encouraged Neil to do it too... he was also going to this discussion group with Sheila. Levin would also eventually attend, but that was at least eight months from the time I am writing about.

What am I doing now? Sitting at a desk in Galway picking sunburnt skin out of my hair. I am writing.

ONIONEERING

'It is not enough that you should see the mountain,' the wise man once said. 'You must also climb it.'

There were no magic eggs to make the mountain from. Hard work was what was needed. That and cheese; cheese, hard work, some oil to stop things sticking. And eggs. He could never forget: the eggs. If he forgot those, the mountain would not be worth eating. Not with all the cheese and oil in the world. That would be poor. There would be no point in eating if it was only oil and cheese.

ONION KING

'Gone go to Onion King for us,' James Hendry would say.

Everyone learnt to ignore this refrain. Or become very, very irritated. Onion King is a disgusting mess of a meal. Exactly the kind of virtually nutritionless slop that you want to rub into your ugly physog when blasted out of your usual tiny sphere of semiconsciousness. People never appreciate how supremely important it is to have solid organic matter between your teeth, proteinous, carbonous, lipidous matter.

Thoughts tended to be scattered everywhere like the rain blasting against the window. Sometimes one of those drops would be suspended in the air and you'd spend your evening staring into its everlasting reflections. Then was the virtue of Onion King whose compacted meat gristle gave you the solidity required to keep your own house firmly in order.

When Hamish Carlin became the origin of the "gone go" locution, everything in the house became a pale, whistling shadow in comparison. Hamish' broad tones, his gone go, his surly evenhanded goodness, his ready poise to accept any state of affairs presented to him, all of those things, was the explanation. Without his solidity all the rest of the house was a brittle glass bubble inside a vacuum. The slightest ping shattered all illusions.

Hamish sat on the sofa for six weeks waiting for a job to go past. Was it so that we wouldn't have to suffer? Then, he got arrested and underwent the ignominy of going home to look for a laptop he knew he hadn't stolen. He did it. He did it so that we would not have to.

It was remarked upon that when Hamish spoke, then for days or even weeks later one's own personal thoughts were usually voiced in Hamish' country-Derry accent. Neil noticed it; Erwan saw it; Levin experienced it.

The Onion King was a burger superstore. It sold lumps of minced gristle and muscle to inexperienced early-twentyers and teenagers, as well as the old, the young, the disheveled, the neatly dressed, and the good looking. The people who worked there were mostly sixteen years old. They had never cooked before. They quickly grasped the basics of cooking fast food. Cook it fast; don't let it burn; stop customers from puking in the shop; change the chipfryer oil once a month; offer the extras and trimmings that a customer may need. Give them too much, that way they'll always come back for more.

Emmett heard it. Hamish was his cousin. They'd grown up together. They'd discovered Sabbath simultaneously, one glorious day in the basement of their uncle's house. If anyone knew Hamish it was Emmett, Levin, James, Barry, MacHill, Erwan, Neil. They knew him. It was Hamish that had introduced them to the concept of living. He had shown them how to wait for a job. He'd explained to them how to stretch out when getting into a cold bed because there was no heating. Stretching out was essential; to lie scrunched up was fine at first, but you'd have a cold bed all night.

James was an entirely different proposition. Dark, moody, a complex man with sadistic pretentions who could not abide cruelty, a man whose fundamental optimism was at war with a bone-arsed laziness that could not be compared, his Machiavellian mind was always on the look out for some favorite ruse. His vision of the perfect world was not explicit but instinctive. His preferred band was The Beatles; his greatest film was Airplane!; his best song to play on the piano when wasted was Debussy's The Little Nigger. He was genuinely in love with music. He missed deadlines (by weeks) out of a kind of modesty. He threw a bin bag of rubbish across the kitchen floor simply because other binbags were there; and he also did it to express that fact in an ironic way. Maybe we should describe that.

Levin, Erwan and Neil were discussing philosophical things in the kitchen. It was late January. James Hendry was upstairs, doing something in his room – writing an essay, or thinking about it. More likely watching TV. Levin was arguing about such-and-such or something similar. James Hendry appeared at the kitchen door. He had a bin bag of rubbish from his room. He seemed to consider everything for a moment; perhaps what decided him was his awareness that they were watching him. In any case he drew the bin bag back and sent it in a perfect underarm sailing across the kitchen where it hit the floor. It slid neatly and nestled against a brimming and three-weeks-overfull dust bin by the back door.

Levin, Erwan and Neil looked at him, all slack-jawed in amazement.

James Hendry gave a cheeky grin and then went back upstairs to his room without saying a word.

Levin, Erwan and Neil remained amazed for several hours.

This was the kind of man that James was. He said the Devil made him do it. This probably wasn't true. He was very tall and lanky. He had a habit, when taking an inhalation of a joint, of turning the joint and looking at it while he held the smoke. He often took pills, particularly with Emmett, who was master of the pill. Many a time was spent chewing inner cheek to pieces in Vico's. Neil Steed also attended these occasions. Levin and Erwan took one pill each soon after Chris Bole moved in and played chess in the livingroom. James Hendry's usual motive in taking a pill was to transform himself thereby into his claimed alter-ego: the 'music man'.

James avidly read every Daily Mirror on weekdays and on Sundays liked nothing better than to kick back with a long journey into The Observer. Many of the greatest articles on the Wall came from his efforts. He smoked cigarettes without complaining about it. He was kind, sensitive, allowed people to mock him without caring unduly about it, paid careful attention to how he marked manuscript paper, was fleet of thought, enjoyed satirical comments, and was a keen supporter of Manchester United. This last fact will make it difficult for some readers either support James Hendry in his adventures or to consider him the villain of the piece. We should not have mentioned it.

Hamish thought carefully about dropping out of university. He was shrewd enough to see that he wasn't going to get anything out of it. Having settled the issue was easy. He then simply stopped attending. He conserved his student loan well enough to see him through the waiting game. Michlobb and Radio Failté fulfilled his earthly needs; that and a free Muddy Waters cd from a send-away Michlobb promotion. He also played snooker with Levin, Erwan and others.

Snooker was a devilish sport. Played on a green measuring 18 acres in length and 12 in width, the aim was to use a slender piece of stick to emphatically tap many-coloured balls into one of six pockets. The winner was the person who failed to humiliate themselves most miserably. Erwan, Levin and Hamish developed primitive superstitions to explain their seemingly cyclical periods of success and failure in this activity. One myth was that of Murph, the omnipotent deity whose digestive musings would often rain upon one in the centre of the vortex of a frame. Murph's motives were plain, unusual for a deity. His tickle was to upset the carefully laid plans of mice and men. He also preyed upon the falsely confident.

His activities were the basis for a minor religion. He afflicted you the more you believed in him. This led to a vicious cycle of despair and failure. The only compensation was the flourish with which Murph warped your destiny.

Erwan had mentioned Murph a number of times to Sheila, and then she told him that her dog was called Murph.

'He's called Murph,' she explained. 'He's a small, half-blind terrier with rickets. He's also gay, according to a test-your-dog personality quiz I found in a magazine. You'll meet him when you come up.'

A shining light of recognition came down upon Erwan. Of course this was the malevolent deity. There was no better physical shape He could take. Erwan endeavored to be as pleasant to the dog as he could. Whether or not this had any effect on their ability to play snooker, was difficult to say. Sometimes their own incompetence was hard to separate from supernatural intervention.

Levin and Erwan and Hamish went to play snooker.

They took turns in a three-way game that totaled 18 points in fair gain and 157 points in foul shots. Erwan was marginally in the lead. Hamish needed a tricky red not to come last.

The eyes of the world were glazed as they looked upon this moment without comprehension.

Hamish lifted his cue high and then gently lowered it, bending himself to the table in a fluid, easy motion. He sighted down the cue, making minute and simple changes in the direction of his play and aligning the three objects with unconscious precision, tip, cue ball, object ball. He moved the cue forward and back, forward and back; sensing the right moment, waiting for it, ready to play when the moment came, and not before. He felt the moment; it was like a glue that stuck to him. He tapped the ball with just the right force. Everything in his body told him this shot was straight and true. The cue ball glided down the table in perfect harmony with the universe and hit the cushion just next to the object ball. It bounced off, with equal speed but opposite spin and identical angles of incidence and reflection. The cue ball span brilliantly to the opposite cushion, struck it, bounced with an extraordinary conservation of energy, to strike another cushion some yards away. Then the ball proceeded to sail straight down the table again, edging inch by inch closer to the object ball, looking exactly as if God were commanding it with all his might to make it hit that object, to give that satisfying clink of acrylic striking acrylic, to send the red ball spinning off into the hemisphere, the white in an opposite direction, with all the orbits and the celestial cosmos intact and doing as they ought.

Murph spat upon God's creation and caused the straight line to miss the object ball completely and utterly for the second time. The cue ball gently hit the cushion and drifted to a stop.

Levin, Hamish and Erwan were utterly amazed. They had never seen anything like it. (Levin and Erwan had not yet seen James Hendry throw a bag of rubbish across the kitchen floor.) Agog they waited for their hearts to resume, and then slowly broke into applause. They excitedly discussed Murph's brilliance. They agreed not to play snooker any more.

Such was the experience of snooker that these young fellows brought into their lives.

RAW GARLIC

The map of Belfast spread across the table top like a corpse to be dissected.

Hamish and Levin brooded over it. The room, though not dark, was gloomy. Levin frowned and rubbed his chin, arms folded.

Hamish was amused, but serious.

Levin took a pin and stabbed it into a small square shaded blue in the F6 quadrant.

'We'd have to take that one down.'

Hamish nodded. He moved a finger down the piece of paper, following a road.

'Here's where –'

'Yep. I think so.'

Levin traced it with a blue marker.

'That would take care of that section.'

'Aye.'

They studied the map in silence for a minute or two.

'There's that one there, too.'

'Aye. I saw that. We could try moving between the two –'

'It would take a while.'

'Not if there were two of us.'

'Which there is.'

'Yes.'

Hamish took the marker and drew another long, blue line.

'That'll do for the evening?'

'Yes.'

They hung the map on the wall of Hamish' room.

THE ZOO

On the 18th October 2002 James Hendry insisted that a bird had flown into the oil tank so we couldn't use it.

'It's true! I fuckin saw it!'

'Shut up, James. A bird did not fly into the oil tank,' said Barry emphatically.

Oh, if that had only been the final word on the subject...

The next day Neil, John Levin, Chris and Erwan went to the zoo.

'Let's take a bit of tea,' said Levin.

'Cool,' said Erwan. 'But won't it kick in too soon?'

Erwan was as eager as a terrified mouse presented with a giant acorn. He hadn't had a cup of tea since Levin's birthday, almost one month ago.

Chris explained to them how they could wrap cannabis resin in a cigarette paper and swallow it at their leisure.

'Just, ah, grate the gear into a wrapper, twist it up, and keep it in your pocket. Me and my mates used to do that instead of drinking tea. It works just as well.'

The others consulted each other by looks and gestures, and then concurred.

'All right, lets do that then.'

Erwan, Chris, John, Levin and Neil walked down to the city centre, having sequestered their wraps carefully in their inner coat pockets. From the City Centre they got the 71b to the Belfast Zoo.

The bus dropped them off near the entrance and they made the steep twisting walk to the entrance. Somewhat puffed, the five paid in at student rates (even those who were not students thanks to ancient student cards).

'So here we are,' said Erwan, unnecessarily. 'The Zoo.'

They swallowed their wraps, except Neil who decided not to take one, and proceeded to have a look round. The first exhibit they went to see was the emus. Erwan and Levin asked Neil a bunch of questions about it, while John and Chris tried touching the beleaguered bird. It swiftly avoided their clumsy prods. Neil told Levin and Erwan fascinating and probably true facts. The emu padded softly away from the five gentlemen and disappeared around a corner. The young men moved on.

The air was chilly, with a metallic autumn tinge to it typical of the time of year. Leaves were drifting from the trees and collecting at the sides of the road. The thick hedge behind which most animals were enclosed was brown too.

The five of them walked up the hill, reaching an old derelict floral hall. They had an impulsive nosy at it, but couldn't tell what it was about or what it had been for.

'It's just always been there,' said Neil, who was the only one amongst them who had been here in the past five years.

He led them past it to the prairie dog enclosure. Or what had been an enclosure: the beasts had escaped and made their homes in the surrounding region.

'Cool,' said John, as the four of them (Neil stood by and patiently watched) tried to sidle as close as possible to the numerous burrows without frightening the animals away.

'You won't get near them,' said Neil, leaning against the concrete wall of the official prairie.

He was proven right. They continued up hill, toward the monkey enclosure.

Belfast Zoo is built on a hill. The hill is Cave Hill, named for a room-sized hole in its eastern face. Cave Hill itself is one of the basalt mountains that surrounds Belfast in a half-ring. The mountains, Black Mountain and Divis, visible from any west-wandering street in the city, mark the bottom south-east corner of the Antrim Plateau, a great mass of lava that erupted from volcanoes around Lough Neagh some 60-62 million years ago. Lough Neagh itself was formed from this event; the Earth beneath the area became so depleted of mineral volume that it collapsed into a shallow depression.

The consequence was that the five young men had to climb and climb. Only one of them knew the reason.

The reached the gorilla house. Neil marveled at these near relatives.

'Gorillas,' he remarked, 'are famously badly hung. Chimps, on the other hand – well, the stones on them are quite impressive.'

'Is that so?' asked Levin, fascinated.

The fascination was tinged with a knife edge of cannabis, just starting to sharpen him up.

'That is so. It is linked to promiscuity. Species that spend more time screwing around have larger gonads than those that don't. Humans, interestingly, are intermediate between gorillas and chimps.'

'Well I'll be,' said Levin.

They moved on to look at the smaller monkeys, but none were visible. Neil, Erwan and John spent some time looking at the Colobus monkeys fighting. Levin and Chris walked on a little, talking to themselves.

Neil began to simmer with rage. They were approaching his most hated of creatures. The god of war was hammering his shield; Neil could hear it. A thump, thump, thump in his ears. They rounded a corner. There they were, those diabolical fish-eating fiends.

'Pah,' spat Neil. 'Penguins.'

Neil tried to pass them with an air of disdain, but his comrades rushed down to see the lovable butlers.

'Check them out,' said Erwan.

'Yeah, streamlined,' said McIlroy.

'Cool,' said Levin.

'Look at them swim,' commented Chris.

Neil hid his gruffness as best he could. It was intolerable that these black-suited oafs should garner so much praise and attention. But he suffered in silence.

'Neil, you are very silent. Don't you like these creatures?'

Neil unleashed a short diatribe.

'No. I despise them. I wouldn't be unhappy if every penguin were exterminated from the face of the Earth. They do nothing, they are nothing, and yet there is this endless fascination with idiotic penguins waddling across two hundred miles of ice to get a meal. Once you've seen this it is more than enough for one lifetime. But perhaps I'm not making myself clear.'

They asked him, by all means, to clarify himself.

'Let me give you the figures. There are in excess of probably one billion species on the planet. Each is as fascinating as the other. Perhaps the most impressive thing of all is the sheer diversity – the endless variation of forms that makes life so wonderful. To concentrate on one particular group of species, the penguins, or indeed lions and tigers, at the expense of all the others is symptomatic of the monomania of the human race. Yes: I have noticed: humanity prefers a groove. It prefers to run like the stylus of a record player over the same old song. Penguins; penguins; penguins. Penguins in each and every nature documentary: in the Serengeti; in the Alps; in Wallacea; in the bowels of volcanoes. It makes me steam with an unconstrained passion. Humanity must move from its staid humdrum line. It must step beyond the narrow comfort zone of its previous experience. There are mind-bending wonders out there. I will, I wish, that each human being would bend and twist its mind into an impenetrable knot. That we would dash our brains out against the rocks of the unrecognizable. There are truths in existence that it would be folly to attempt to understand – but this is what we must do! We must throw the penguins into the bonfire and use the blaze to penetrate into the darkness of the unknown. To risk everything, our sanity even, to know what we cannot know; the dark mysteries of our perceived world. The mind is small; the world is immense; so we fear to lose ourselves in it. Go out, I say, and lose yourself. Lose your mind. Your ego will be crushed as a mote as soon as you step outside of the comfortable constraints of your own self. Our minds are like drawing-rooms: we have furnished them with comfortable armchairs by the fire, we have closed the thick curtains and we are slowly falling into sleep, certain that nothing can come tonight to disturb us. Throw back the curtains of your mind, I say. Extinguish the lulling fire, open the door and let in the sharp burning flames of creation. It will wake you up. Expose your feeble frame to hideous writhing tentacles. Be as insecure and vulnerable to shock as you know how.'

Levin, Chris, Erwan and John turned into jellyfish and floated away from the penguin enclosure. Neil, now a mongoose, made them follow him up the steep hill towards the very crest of the zoo. Their minds were resonating with strange lines; the terror of really being exposed to what exists, began to beat upon them like hoodlums with sticks. The steepness of the hill they climbed knew no bounds; it defied conventional geometry. Indeed, their whole space was decidedly non-Euclidean.

Now the larvae of monkeys, the troop howled and blubbered. This slope was too exposed, too dangerous. They might whisk off it at any moment and fly like the paper rice thrown at weddings. Far below them lay the stretching vale of Belfast Lough, blue and reflecting the grey clouds of the sky. Now they reached the dangerous café. It was at the top of the mountain, the steep climb to a café that now seemed to be closed. All this place was as deserted as the moon. It seemed like some apocalypse had descended.

Someone gave a shout. It was McIlroy. He was waving his hands like an angry centipede. They saw him by thick plastic glass mounted atop four feet of concrete. Some creature lurked in there, they warranted; some creature they had never seen. Like seagulls Levin, Erwan and Chris swept down and perched on the edge of the enclosure. Neil followed as a sedate and kingly mountain lion.

McIlroy spat his chewgum into the enclosure. It followed an arc in the air and landed squat in the mud. No-one could understand why he did it, not even he himself. He said it was to allow the bear to taste mint.

The sorry creature, nameless, probably a bear, did not taste mint. It had been made to dance on hot coals when a slave to street artists in communist-era Bucharest. Neil, a pigeon, pointed a wobbling, effervescent finger at the bear and spake:

'Lo! See, the sun bear,

'Is stressed and would like to get out of there.'

The minds of Levin, Erwan, Chris and John bounced about like ping-pong balls. The sunbear appeared to be pleasuring itself. They watched it suck itself off and then approach them, semen dripping from its nose. It looked up at them from sixteen feet of solitude. Erwan and Levin fell dizzily away not knowing how to incorporate these new experiences. John and Chris banged on the glass seeking redemption from the sinister forces at work. Neil stood back, patient and grim. He was a toadfish, mouth pouting. He turned into a zebrafish.

Levin and Erwan ran to look for something else, anything else. They found a set of red river hogs. They looked ferociously at the hogs, beasts running through their own filth. This, and the sunbear, were the only two animals here at the top of the world. It seemed a remarkably empty space, this peak, and yet entirely self-contained, as if it would be impossible to escape from it. They were like jugglers under a diminished ceiling. Neil appeared to them. He said that red river hogs ate roots, bulbs and fallen fruit. Their heads spiraled out of control. It seemed that Neil had just told them... that Neil had just told them... they did not know what.

The sinister leopards of truth began to hunt them down.

'What would it be like to be a zombie?' asked McIlroy, when they had found the way out from the top section.

None could answer him.

'I'll tell you: it would be like being a remote-controlled car. You would be driven about, anywhere, without your will.'

'So... who would be driving you?' asked Levin.

'There needn't be a driver,' said Erwan. 'Look at plants.'

They looked at Neil. He had become a geranium.

'Ah yes,' said Neil, interested. 'That's a good point, Mr Erwan. Plants have motion, of a sort. They move in response to the sun. They will grow, often in a twisting motion, towards the light, and many plants also respond to touch, either by dropping their leaves suddenly, or, more long-term, producing stunted growth in response to repeated pressure. That's why trees grow in that peculiar shape near the sea shore, or other exposed places. This they do all without a mind.'

'Zombies,' said McIlroy.

'Then why is there a mind?' asked Levin.

This was a question to induce Fear and Trembling.

They continued their merry tour around the zoo. They became a variety of other animals – butterflies, spider monkeys, reptiles, bits of gravel – and some people did not change at all, but retained their original shape. Levin was not amongst these. Chris was; he retained his identity, by accepting every event that occurred to him. Others were more like wind-buffered plants growing in weird shapes. They saw an otter during a split second before it vanished in the stony water. Other animals they were less successful in seeing.

They climbed down the steep, steep hill.

Belfast Zoo is built on somewhat of a slope. The walk up is reasonably arduous; the walk down is death-defying. There is a long, almost vertical, and remorselessly straight path all down the western side. Neil had once witnessed a young child stumble and become a rapidly revolving dot that was never seen again. Levin, Erwan and Neil stayed carefully on one side, clinging to the stems of hardy plants; Chris and John did the same on the other.

Suddenly a great screeching occurred.

'Ah!' said Neil, and promptly vanished.

They discovered where he had gotten to. There was a thin path leading off the dizzying slope to a bird enclosure. This enclosure was built in a faux– concrete, crag-like veneer, with sheets of green netting draped over the top. The five adventurers entered through the chain doors. They rattled them one by one.

Around them brightly-coloured birds, some with tufted head gear, others with blue tail-plumes, red beaks, sharp darting heads, and strange mannerisms, sang and clucked and ran across paths around, above and in front of them. There was even a family of small terrapins nesting amongst the bushes.

Levin, Erwan, Chris and John were becoming tired; their eyes were red and sore from all the strenuous looking they'd been doing. But Neil was now in his greatest element. He loved nothing so much as birds. They were his most profound interest. Even, to this day, he kept a dwindling aviary at home. This was something to aspire to.

Neil aspired, but Levin, Erwan, John and Chris expired, longing for relief from this never-ending odyssey that had begun so innocently and now had taught them so many difficult truths. They felt like wave-battered ships. Indeed they had travelled many miles, and their feet ached, and their backs, and they hungered for comfort and the love that only a warm sofa can give. They knew, too, that the most arduous part of the journey was yet to come. The demonic bus ride home. They knew that their fragmented mental states would not repair on that path backwards. Quite the reverse. They would suffer a decline in mental prowess that knew comparison only with the chopping down of trees in a forest by eager timbermen.

Their happiness increased marginally when Neil recognized their plight.

'Jeez you guys look like fucking wrecks. All right, I guess it's time to go home.'

They almost leapt and frolicked like new-born goats – but a heavy sense of that most pervasive force, Gravity, kept them in check. They could not even raise a smile to express what they felt.

'Home,' whispered one of them.

'That would be nice,' responded another.

Grim moment by moment they trundled down the hill, brains shutting down incrementally. A dense fog of interpretation had closed in on them. They couldn't see their footsteps in front or behind; it was confusing.

Somehow they made it to the bottom of the hill without anyone suffering severe freakout.

In this delicate condition, each spending half their energy just keeping their minds in orbit around their body, the bus came. There were people on the bus. Levin wasn't the only one to find this painful. Erwan found it singularly difficult to pay the driver and take his ticket. He felt almost certain that his incompetence was exposed to everybody. Chris shivered as fire and brimstone melted his face into obscurity. John told the bus driver an incomprehensible joke in a hostile tone and then slumped into a seat and refused to talk for the rest of the journey.

Neil sauntered on, last and perfectly at ease with himself.

They sat on the bottom floor of the double-decker, Erwan and Levin facing Neil and Chris. John sat behind. There were others on the bus that none of the four cannabis victims could face or acknowledge. A terrified silence entrenched itself.

Erwan whispered to Levin: 'The mood on this bus is...'

Levin shook his head, urging Erwan to desist. It was clear to Erwan that Levin felt the same way about the soul-sucking void of life or conversation that trundled along with them in this car.

The bus stopped and a little old lady got on. From a distance she seemed old, well dressed, well kempt. She paid her fare and with painful rickets stumbled down the narrow central aisle looking for a seat. The bus lurched off again making the old woman's motion more difficult. She rocked from side to side. As she neared the four her odor and general state of hygiene became clear. Erwan was sitting facing her on the aisle seat. It seemed to take her an age to move one step in front of the other, but when she did, it looked like she was going to collide straight into Erwan. Erwan became entirely helpless, gazing at her, fear etched over his face. He couldn't move; he couldn't help either her or himself. She righted herself and missed him. A smell of rancid dried shit passed them by.

Erwan still could not move.

Neil asked him if he was all right, with a genuine note of concern in his voice.

***

#  BOOK SEVEN

THE START OF THE WALL

Levin started the wall. He ripped something out of a newspaper and taped it up with scotch. It may have fallen and slid behind the sofa some weeks later.

This brief sojourn on the wall was enough, however, the paper had done its job. Like a ticking metronome, people were unaware of how the things in their environment affected the rhythm of their lives. They saw the piece of paper scrapped to the wall, but they didn't know that the paper stuck to more than that. It stuck inside their heads. Even when the paper was lying in a dark place vanished from sight it was stuck in the frontal lobes of the Big Pink dwellers.

More things were stuck on the wall. Mostly about War, The War. The Iraq War. Despicable – the denizens despised the sick oil-driven conflict that broiled in the entrails of the Middle East. They put up the pictures and articles in representation of the sick world they inhabited. It made their eyes squirm in their sockets as if they were being eaten alive by worms.

'Put this on the Wall,' said James.

'Put it on yourself!' said MacHill.

It was a pleasant Sunday in February. As was oft the case, our lie-about heroes were resting their untroubled members on the couches of the livingroom. Levin, Levin MacHill, Barry and James mused over the random events in their lives.

'Remember when that car hit your mini?' asked Levin with dreamy romanticism. He stubbed a joint out in a hubcap.

'Remember?' asked MacHill in dark clouds; 'How could I forget?'

Indeed, how could he forget? It had been only two weeks before.

Both Levins had been smoking with enthusiasm in the livingroom, of all places. I don't say this as a joke: the livingroom really was _all places_. Within the limitless confines of this room, Valhalla and Hades, light eternal and the infinite darkness, every hue of colour and every sound could echo, could smell and taste, and every combination of atomic ideas could be explored, and this livingroom, with its bare walls, the full wall, and the broken lightshade, the long barrel of a rusty pipe, the empty cartons of orange juice and the sticky floor, the tangle of wire to the stereo and the hills of scattered cds, the perfect ferment to produce the beer of the mind, stimulated them and exhausted them in equal measure, their heads straining to escape the confines of their mortal frame.

A car screeched outside and slammed into – what sounded like – a Mini. Even more precisely, it sounded like Levin MacHill's mini. In palsied wonder, returning from the lamp-lit halls of some faraway palace, MacHill's heart drained the blood from his face and then returned it with interest to his brain. That part of his frontal lobes that dealt with the destruction and evil in the world lit hotly pulsating with a devilish heat that momentarily worried the monitors of the International Atomic Energy Association.

'Cometh the hour, cometh the man,' said MacHill, murmuring whatever words best fitted his two discrepant realities.

The unmistakeable sound of a violent getaway screeched through the dark even above the weird sounds of the hifi. MacHill's body propelled him up and out the livingroom door before he understood what was going on. Levin McCochall looked on with a kind of numb excitement and sympathy, not sure if what was going on could really be going on. He felt inclined to rise quickly from his seat and see what was happening. This inclination wandered around his limitless soul, seeking a place to connect with other intentions in a communion of the Spirits that guided material action in the realm far below. Like Buddha meditating on the vast plane of the Universe, Levin had no difficulty maintaining his thoughts in a steady, unvarying dream that contained everything in peace and harmony. The intention to rise journeyed on, like Odysseus, through the mighty and uncharted seas. Finally his intention landed in Ithaca, in disguise, to see if the suitors of his dear Penelope truly were of greater strength than he.

Levin got up precipitously to see what the damage was.

At the same time but in another place, Aisling Clark was making absurd claims that she would vanquish in Monopoly. Erwan strongly felt that the game, hardly yet begun, was his by right. He felt that that circle of squares of increasing value and expenditure would soon be his – a sense developed by induction in the same way that makes us expect the sun.

'You should put your money where your mouth is,' said Erwan.

'I don't have any money,' said Aisling.

'All right, neither do I. We can bet our livers.'

Erwan explained to Sheila, Noeleen, Gary and Aisling that often times in days of yore such bets had been made. He removed his wallet from his pocket. From that wallet he removed a piece of paper. Unfolding it, he read one side of the parchment: 'I, Levin McCochall, Owe Erwan Atcheson my kidney to be given in the following Circumstances: (i) it is deemed medically necessary (ii) should Levin McCochall die his Kidney shall be removed (iii) should Erwan Atcheson die, Levin McCochall's kidney shall be removed and Placed in Erwan's grave. Signed Levin McCochall.'

Erwan turned the piece over to read the other side: 'I hearby pledge One Pound of the flesh closest to my heart to Erwan Atcheson to be received by the above on the death of the undersigned. Should the above die before the undersigned the undersigned must have his pound of flesh as described above placed in the above's grave. Signed Levin McCochall.'

'Such is life,' shrugged Erwan smugly. He carefully folded up the paper and returned it to his wallet.

'Hmm,' said Aisling sceptically. 'And is this legally binding?'

'Oh yes,' said Erwan.

'He always wins,' said Sheila with disgust.

Erwan became wistful.

'Oh no,' he said, mournfully. 'Not always so.'

On one occasion, having won all of Levin's future children, on the presumption by Levin that the next person that they passed would be wearing a red jumper, Erwan made the foolish pledge of his immortal soul. It became clear, on consultation of the Book of the Century some days later, that Erwan was entirely wrong about which year Guevara and Castro won the fight for Cuba.

'So Levin owns your soul?' asked Sheila with distaste.

'Not even,' said Erwan.

On one occasion in a nightclub, at the age of seventeen, Erwan had been pushing through a crowd drunkenly looking for the bar. A man put his hand on Erwan's arm to stop him. Erwan squinted at the fellow. He seemed to have a familiar face.

The man beckoned him to move closer so that he could shout in his ear. Erwan obliged, but could not hear him. 'Kyle,' he seemed to hear. Of course, Erwan now located him as Dijon's friend and comrade, a joint discoverer of the Infallible Technique in Extreme Dots and champion of that art.

'Well, Kyle, how are you?' screamed Erwan.

The man in reply only unfolded a scrap of paper from his pocket. He unfolded it and held it about four inches in front of Erwan's face.

It was a pledge to the holder of the document of Erwan's soul.

'God knows what he's doing with it,' said Erwan miserably. 'Or even if he's got it anymore. It's probably floating around in the sewers of London.'

'Come on, let's play this thing,' said Aisling feeling competitive now that stakes were drawn.

Later she inscribed the following on a ripped white envelope with blue eyeliner: 'This is to certify that Irwin? Erwin? Erwyn? Is the rightful, true and sole owner of one half of my liver. And I hearby promise to take due care of said ½ liver until the time of my decease. Signed Aisling Clark.'

Erwan folded it carefully and put it in his wallet.

Levin also owned a soul – but not his own. His own was in a jam jar being carefully stored, for hour of need, on a shelf in Meabh's bedroom. She had refused at any point to give it back, even when Levin wanted to sell it to Neil for beer. Levin had sulked – it had seemed such a simple transaction, satisfying to both parties. He attempted to sell his soul anyway, but Meabh gave the game away. James had already traded his. Neil had been hoping for a complete set.

'Emmett, you got a soul needs trading? Can of beer in it for you,' asked Neil.

'Naw, man, I had to give it up when I started working for Tescos. Part of the Terms and Conditions.' Emmett's head sunk further into his chest. He despised Tescos terribly.

Neil withdrew to his bedroom, gloomily, to spend time with his precious souls. His enterprise was not progressing as rapidly as he would have wished. He only had his and James', and he had doubts about the value of latter's. He counted them again. But two. Who could do anything with two?

Emmett's head sank yet further into his chest.

Some weeks later there came a knocking on his door. It was Levin.

'You still collecting souls man?' asked the long-haired fellow.

'Hmm,' said Neil. 'You got one?'

'I've got Hamish'. He gave to me on loan, just for safe keeping like, but... fuck it. Give us a beer.'

'I don't give beer for souls any more. I can give you a drink from my bottle of coke. It's in the fridge downstairs. One glass.'

Levin was disgusted. 'This is _Hamish'_ soul, man. Do you know how disgusted he'll be when I tell him I've given it away? He'll be ragin. He actually cares about things like this. This is a good soul. It's got to be worth more than a fuckin glass of coke.'

'What did you pay for it?'

'Ach, the lad needed a fiver for the bus home. He gave me his soul til he could pay it back.'

'Well that's a shame. Because, you see, I already purchased Hamish' soul some months ago. For a bottle of cider.'

'Cider!' said Levin.

He looked at the document in his hand.

'Well you want it or not?'

'Might as well. Two souls are better than one.'

'Here it is then.' Levin threw it, aiming for the bed. It missed and floated down onto the floor.

Some months ago Levin, Hamish and Erwan had been talking together in the Botanic Gardens, drinking out of a lucozade bottle. Drinking absinthe, that is; they believed that drinking absinthe out of an absinthe bottle would raise suspicions.

'But how will we take down the power lines?' asked Erwan.

Levin and Hamish shrugged. 'Dunno, man. Explosives. Should be easy to make some. Sure people have been making them here for decades, like.'

'Sure,' said Erwan.

He listened as they explained their theory, chiefly Levin's Erwan thought, though there was a certain air about it that could only belong to Hamish. Hamish never appeared to move but was in control of everything.

'Blow up the power stations, and then people won't have light, won't have electricity, won't have TV or radio, won't have anything.'

'And what will that do?'

'People will get on without it. And then they'll see that they don't need any of those things, that we'd work properly without them.'

'I see.'

Green fairies danced mischievously about Erwan's ocular field.

'You going to your lecture?' asked Hamish.

'Don't know,' said Erwan. 'Don't think so. Think I might fall asleep.'

They'd been drinking for quite some time. Erwan had begun this session at about eight-thirty the night before, he and Levin MacHill. They'd drunk flaming sambucas, had an absinthe or two, tried to get into the Parlour and the Union but been turned away (too full, both of them) and then headed back to the house to drink more.

Levin MacHill had ceased being awake at about 3am. Luckily just then Levin got back from work.

'Want to stay up all night drinking?' asked Erwan, waving a glass of absinthe about.

'Sure,' said Levin.

They'd gotten down to it.

Now he, Erwan and Hamish were drinking it out of a Lucozade bottle in the Botanic gardens. It felt graciously pleasant, wonderful in fact. Neither Levin nor Erwan had ever drunk the green liquor to excess before. It caused effects of inexpressible wonder. The wormwood had been largely removed but it was Erwan's contention that small amounts were still reacting on his brain.

'When I close my eyes,' he said, 'I see green. Dancing oblongs and insane geometries, all green.'

They had, together, he and Levin, developed an extraordinary technique for drinking the stuff. It required water, sugar and absinthe, but those ingredients simply lumped together would not do. The combination had to be a careful affair, both the speed of addition and the amount. They slowly trickled water drop by drop into the cloudy green glass. It became transformed, in those slow moments, into a life-enhancing ambrosia distilled from all the heavens of religions past and future.

'This is good,' said Erwan, lifting the glass and appraising its lucid tone. Greenish-white with just a hint of all the colours invisible to the human eye.

He delicately sipped it. Levin, on the sofa on the opposite side of the room, sipped his. It was around six o'clock in the morning; the sun would not be up for some time yet.

'Bonkers Bruno locked up,' Levin recollected, shaking his head and sipping the absinthe. 'What a fucking joke of a paper.'

They both crippled themselves laughing. (That had been The Sun headline some weeks earlier, rapidly changed to 'Sad Bruno Seeks Help' for the evening print after outrage from mental health organisations.)

'How's the mead coming along?' asked Erwan.

'Coming along fine. Got it fermenting.'

'Yes,' said Erwan. He swayed slightly, as if trying to remember words, any words. 'You sleeping with it?'

'Yes.'

This was to make maximum use of body heat.

There was also a half milk bottle of curd and whey sitting on the window sill outside the kitchen, had been for a fortnight or so. It was turning into cottage cheese. The dream of self-sufficiency was remote, but progressing nonetheless.

'Mead. We can quaff that.'

'Like lizards,' said Levin, sipping his absinthe voraciously.

'Someone was telling me – was it you? – that someone used to drink mead before battle.'

'That's right. The Celts did. Took a dose of mushrooms, a few bottles of mead and striped bare. They painted half their body blue.'

'Why?'

'To go berserker. That'd be cool, to go into battle berserker. Or to face one.'

'Wow,' said Erwan, suffering visions of hellish green-tinted men bearing axes at his head.

'A berserker would be unstoppable. They'd not give a shit about lobbing anyone's head off, or losing their own. Only pure rage would exist for them.'

'A for-midle, formidable opponent,' said Erwan.

'You're drunk man.'

'It's really good absinthe.'

'This stuff is the tastiest stuff I've ever drunk.'

They filled another half glass each of the green liquor, and painstakingly dripped chilled water, drop by drop, through the sugar cube until it melted. The sugar cube rested atop a fork balanced on the rim of the glass. The table surface was an absolute mess, sticky with glucose and soaking with water and condensation. Erwan was in love – in love with the whole process, and the delicious taste above all, and the wonderful side effects, for instance when he closed his eyes, and could see shapes evolving in rainforests of green.

'Sometimes I feel nested,' said Erwan, who thought this an entirely explicable statement.

'Wha?'

'Oh. Nested folders, you know. We used to make treasure hunt games, on the Macs at school, mazes of folders you had to navigate through in order to get a prize like some pic of bullion. I attempted a labyrinth of folders, thousands deep, with hundreds upon hundreds of dead ends that no-one could navigate through, and clues and riddles to get you to the goal.'

'What happened?'

'No-one played it, it was far too difficult. But they couldn't delete it off the computer. When they dragged it to the bin and tried to empty it, a message would come up, saying "Error: too many nested folders". I reckon everything is nested.'

'You mean, everything is contained inside itself.'

'Exactly. And everything in everything else too. Like when I look out and see clouds in a green sky, those clouds and that turquoise green is a psychological construct, independent of any external reality. And the shapes of the clouds too, are the same as the shapes of parsley, and the contain the same elements, and even the relation of the parts of the objects to each other can be mapped. You can map a stone wall onto a large road, a motorway, if you want.'

'Aye. Just need the right function.'

'Yes.'

It was as if the more they drank, the more simple clear thinking became. It was poetic: the liquor, originally a stark green, with the optical properties of water, became cloudy and opaque on addition of that famously clear latter liquid. Then, upon sipping the delightful gift from the gods, the gentlemen became as green and transparent as the original, in some act of transubstantiation that would baffle even the most ardent Catholic scholar.

'We are open-ended systems, with no clear purpose,' said Levin.

'Yes,' said Erwan.

Later, in the Botanic Gardens, their livers slightly ached. Drinking absinthe out of a lucozade bottle was better than not drinking any at all, but it lacked the difficult charm of dripping water in drop by drop and toasting in the holy name of wormwood.

Barry meanwhile was living in the Punk House, though indeed there was only one punk present in that place (boke – too much alliteration) and two non-punks – himself and Emmett. The punk was James, known as Punk James to distinguish him from Henry James the celebrated turn-of-the-century author.

Barry, whose frank good upbringing and sense of purpose were at war with a world whose senseless depravity at turns tickled him and gave him a sense of irremediable nausea, sometimes though quite lacked whatever it was he thought he ought to have, a vague notion that he rightly despised and eschewed as far as his abilities would let him.

He enjoyed living in this den of filth and grime that reminded him to a large extent of the previous pit of depravity and vomit that he had lived in, that being the Big Pink; except this was on a much tighter scale. The room for rubbish was far diminished. It was his, and other's, realistic fear that soon they wouldn't be able to get into the kitchen for the accumulated binbags residing there.

Levin, Neil, Erwan and others occasionally came round to the house, particularly to watch the third series of _League of Gentlemen._ This genteel group of actors were busy trying to plumb the depths of unconscious darkness present in the steep mines of the human coalpit. So far, cannibalism in hospitals and autoerotic asphyxiation were amongst the themes to be dallied over. It was tempting at times to agree with Emmett's assessment, that the show was becoming more parts disturbing and sinister to the humour still present.

Barry sensed somehow, from somewhere, a desire to beat a path across a lonesome desert on another planet. Where would he find this planet?

'In his eyes,' Neil said once, when Erwan and Levin were remarking on Barry's success with ladies and womenfolk. They had speculated that it was the strong right angle below his ear, on either side, that gave him this advantage.

Neil denied this. As ever, he demonstrated the triumph of empirical observation over a priori reasoning. He had watched Barry one evening, curious himself as to what Barry's key was. Apparently, Barry proceeded mainly by observing all the women in the bar/lecture hall/party/insert place here before performing any other action, even going to the bar/insert-place-here. His first interest was in seeing what women and what manner and form of women were present. Having collected this information Barry would watch women until they noticed him. He was quite capable of performing this activity while talking and listening intently to someone else. Soon he would catch a girl's eye, look over his glasses at her, smile, and then simply walk over and talk to her or dance with her. This was his simple but devastating technique.

'How clever,' said Erwan, and promptly forgot ever to use it.

He, Erwan, had woken up one morning to find a huge crate of fruit and vegetables sitting on the countertop of the kitchen in the Big Pink house. This was when Barry had moved back in, once the Punk House had folded in on the muck. Barry had something to do with the crate, surprise surprise, since his nimble fingers had liberated it from the doorstep of _MDS Harris_ only a few hours previously. As Erwan found out during the day, Barry, Hamish, Red and John McIlroy had been wandering home – from where, no-one seemed to know – but drunk – and had spied this set of wares and reflexively nicked it. Barry claimed this was at Hamish' instigation. Now Erwan wasn't so sure. Hadn't Barry always been suspiciously upright, or at least had the best claims to that office of all the denizens of the Pink House? Barry did not consume marijuana, or drop tabs of ecstasy, or eat mushrooms to the brink of hallucination. He did perhaps, though, play the most damnable role of all, reflecting the whole world through a scanner darkly, with Kubrick his henchman and guide. In short, Barry was the greatest subversive of the house while the others had their eyes wide shut.

Barry had been amongst those who had pushed the TV out the window.

This fact suddenly blew Erwan away. In his personal memory, it had been Levin McCochall, Hamish and James Hendry who had done the deed. Barry hadn't featured in it. Yet the _truth_ was that it had been Barry and _Levin_ who had pushed the TV out the window, not Levin and _James._ Erwan clung onto the radiator, for solidity. Really? Had it been Barry? Yes it had. What else was Barry behind? Almost certainly the book scams. He may have taken part in the heating of the house by oven. Was it he who planted the marijuana seeds in the pot in the front porch? Erwan could not discount it. The only thing Barry hadn't done, it now seemed, was crash into MacHill's parked mini.

Levin and MacHill ran out of the house, only to see the tail end of a car careening off to the Lisburn Road junction and then disappearing into the night.

MacHill was eight shades of pickled beetroot. His jugular was threatening to cause the worst event since the Flood. It was a pointless rage, because the sad deed had been done; recklessly and thoughtlessly done.

Levin and MacHill traipsed down the steps. MacHill almost vomited when he saw it – two hubcaps lying in the middle of the street, a huge ugly scar right across the right hand side of the car, and above the front wheel a big cauldron-shaped dent. It was a fucking waste.

'Bastards,' said MacHill, sweating and shaking his head. 'Bastards, bastards, bastards, bastards, bastards.'

He lay atop the car, mourning for his lost innocence. Levin tried to coax him down.

'This is shit, man,' Levin said, in consolation. 'The fuckers just drove into it and then drove off. What cunts.'

'Oh, fuck them! Fucking bastards!' MacHill wailed. He pounded his own head with part of the front axle that had come undone.

'Don't do that man,' said Levin. He failed to remove the implement from MacHill's grasp.

MacHill rolled off the car and onto the road. A car ran him over, but he remained there, prostrate and insensitive, biting the tarmac and gnashing and growling.

'This is an ugly sight,' said Levin.

He waited until the traffic abated and then rushed over the help MacHill to his feet. MacHill let himself be led back into the house, where Levin made them both a cup of tea, and they sat for a while with _Sabbath_ playing on the stereo.

'That was shit, man' said Levin.

'Yeah,' said MacHill.

MacHill quickly got over his state of mourning and began pounding up and down on the chipped floor of the livingroom. He kicked one of the skirting boards until it had turned into atoms. His head became an inflamed siphon of curdled cheese and poisonous fumes emanated from all over his green distended body. Levin began quickly rolling a joint, trying to avert disaster. A dog in the distance howled in sympathy.

'Here man, smoke this,' said Levin, handing over hubcap and joint.

'Thanks,' said MacHill.

They smoked peaceably until Hamish arrived. Hamish was in a real state; he'd had an experience that he failed to communicate well that night, or indeed any night, for the rest of his days.

Hamish had been accused of theft and arrested some months earlier. It was a ridiculous saga, entirely unrelated to the traumatic experience that brought him to the Big Pink House on the above fateful evening. But it was related all the same in that it happened to Hamish.

What happened is as follows. After many months Hamish became employed, working in the M–club beside Benedicts, which was a hideous ninety foot cube stuffed with fresh bodies to whom were attached long tubes. These tubes pumped out money and inserted sugary alcohol. The people involved gyrated and lost their voices, shouting at each other in entirely disjointed manners. They wore high heels and short dresses; or, if they belonged to a different sex, shirts and crisp-looking jeans. The average age of attendees was eighteen but only because of the small and determined set of forty-year old men who attended every Friday night.

Hamish enjoyed working here, or at least he was able to tolerate it. His task was to collect the empty bottles and pint glasses that filled every available surface of the room. There was a magical aspect to the work, in that as soon as a glass or bottle was removed it was instantly replaced, often without any visible source. Hamish and his peers were kept busy. Indeed they were run off their feet. Although Hamish did not indulge in this practice, Levin, who also worked in this particular institution for a term, often came home to soak his members in hot water and sigh and feel content after an arduous six-hour shift. And all shifts were arduous.

'Beat,' Levin would sometimes say, soothing his feet.

He would often arrive home at three or even four in the morning.

He once went to work stoned. This was not an experiment he repeated.

Hamish kept the job on long after Levin had quit and gone to work for a telephone company. His modus operandus was to dance amongst the crowd and by that means make his way back and forth to the bar with large quantities of glassware. He spoke in admiration of his fellows, who had been there for some time, who could balance three or four great towers of pint glasses and still have a finger free to pick up a few more bottles on the way to the bar. Such men were oaks of their trade to whom mere acorns like Levin and Hamish could only aspire.

Hamish shuffled over to the bar. He had about twenty pint glasses about his person, which was an important milestone in his career, but something that hardly ranked very highly amongst the elite in this danceroom. Black and ultraviolet lights flickered about the walls and caused strange figures to dance about the room. He recognised this music as a dance tune that he liked. It motivated him to shuffle with more energy and pick up extra bottles with his spare smallest finger.

Later the crowd surged away into the limitless orange night and Hamish and the bar staff were left to pick up the debris. The smell of stale beer and the cloud of scorched cigarette smoke and the billions of shards of brittle glass that shone brightly in house lights combined in an ethereal hum of unforgettable memory. Hamish took it all in, pushing the sick and the empty bottles and loose change into one big heap in the centre of the floor with everyone else. He rested on his broom for a brief moment before being told to go hoover the stairs.

He hoovered them. The hoover was a Dixon model, pretty robust and well able to deal with the wiry carpet up the metal steps. He hoovered down them, pulling the vacuum after him. When he reached the bottom he hoovered the foyer. Then he unlocked his back, rubbed his face, and looked around. The managers were there.

'All right Hamish. Go home.'

'Cool,' said Hamish. He got his coat and walked to his house in the Holy Lands.

Levin and Erwan visited Hamish in the Holy Lands on no less than two occasions. One occasion Hamish went upstairs and left Erwan and Levin in the livingroom.

They sat on the sofas, just like two people do who are in a house not their own. They were polite even though there was nobody there.

Erwan glanced about, trading notes on the state between this place and the Pink House. They were evenly matched, with a different kind of mess here – the kitchen and the livingroom were only separated by a door, so the trail of dishes, orange juice cartons and old pizza debris spread continuously from one end of the house to the other; where as in the Big Pink house there was an intervening set of steps and a hallway that remained largely clear, thus condensing the filth in two separate areas. Erwan considered the merits of either system and couldn't decide which was best.

Levin pointed to the coffee table they were sitting behind. It too was covered in newspapers, deodorant cans, bread, teacups and boxes of matches.

'Behold, a line of white powder,' he said.

Erwan looked. There was a staggered mound of it, sitting in a cleared square of cans.

'What is it, do you think?'

'Dunno. Could be speed. Hamish' housemates. Want to try it?'

Erwan wasn't sure – indeed, he was very unsure. 'Don't know. Could be flour.'

'Don't see why it would be.'

Levin tentatively took some and rubbed it on his gums. Erwan did likewise and sniffed a bit. He'd never taken speed before.

'How long til we see the effects?'

'A couple of minutes, if its speed or coke. A few hours and the rest of the day if its acid.'

Erwan began gibbering like a buffoon. All the walls turned chocolate white and blossomed with matchless flowers.

'It's not LSD,' said Levin, his voice leaden with excision.

'Ok,' said Erwan. He introspected, rolling his eyes up and tasting the powder. 'Don't think it's speed either,' he returned.

After the build-up and adrenaline it was disappointing not to be drugged to the eyeballs but such was life.

Hamish came back down having had his shower.

'Hamish, do your housemates take speed?'

Hamish shrugged, half-smiled. 'Dunno, why?'

'There's some kind of white powder on the table.'

'Ah? Dunno. They could do. They were up pretty late the other night, when I was here. I know they were drinking, talking loudly. Dunno.'

Hamish seemed amused, as he always did at other's drug taking. Hamish appeared not only tolerant of the narcotic vices of others, but even seemed to actively approve. Hamish abstained entirely from anything but tea and alcohol.

'You making tea?' he asked.

Oddly, Erwan rose and made three cups, located miraculously unblemished ones amidst the mushrooms on the countertop. It wasn't his house; but he boiled the water and dunked the Tetleys bags anyway.

On another occasion Hamish outlined his theory of keeping warm at night when in bed in a heatless house, but I believe we've already covered that elsewhere in this saga.

Hamish' house was deep in the centre of the network of concrete roads and burnt-out wheelie bins that was the Holy Lands, the principle nationalist/republican/student/slum shit hole zone in South Belfast. It was composed of eight-a-house four-bedroom-one-toilet back-door-costs-extra terrace refurbished family homes with the front room usually divided into two and a half bedrooms and the upstairs divided into an infinitely large number of tiny boxes each supposed to contain upwards of one naïve and stupid student who'd pay anything for any kind of recklessly underfurbished house as long as it was near the university and she knew some other people there. Other people besides Hamish they knew in the Holy Lands. One person they knew was reported to have to go into the livingroom to turn off the light in their bedroom. Loud music and breaking bottles sounded all night and there was one tiny Spar to serve the domestic needs of over two thousand residents.

Neil and Erwan joined Levin one time purchasing a quarter-ounce of resin from a resident of the Holy Lands. He was a nervous type, quite put off that Levin had rung up with a sales inquiry but not mentioned that he'd be bringing friends. The four met up on Botanic Avenue but the dealer instantly took them at high speed down the concrete lanes of the Holy Lands. He spoke rapidly to Levin while Neil and Erwan followed somewhat put-off.

'Man, you know if you're bringing people you should tell me, I had a fucking heart attack when I saw you and two dudes I don't know following you, I mean, I see it's grand, I see that, but you gave me a bit of a shock like, so you should ring and tell me that next time, if you want to bring other people, and ask me, because it's a fucking head melter like, do you follow me? You shouldn't bring people down like that? How much was it, a quarter? Twenty quid mate. Jesus. Thanks. Ok.'

Neil and Erwan followed with uncertainty behind, dimly aware that something was wrong but not quite getting it.

The point is that for Hamish to be traumatised something weird had to happen.

'So, what happened man?' insisted Levin for the eighth time.

'Aw man, I just said, I just, I mean there was this man who...'

Levin and Levin MacHill rolled their eyes.

Two days before this the electricity bill finally came. NIE hadn't sent out bills for months, maybe even a year and a half, and thousands of households in the country didn't know why and didn't care, as long as the bill continued to not arrive. Sadly, bills did arrive. Erwan was walking down the stairs one day when someone walked up to the front door and knocked it.

He froze.

John McIlroy came out of the livingroom into the hallway, and looked at Erwan inquiringly. Erwan vigourously shook his head for 'no'. They stood as still as the centre of a rotating circle. A knock came on the door again. They entrenched their feet like roots into the ground and refused suction.

A small red card snapped through the letter box, and the sound of thick-heeled shoes clumped down the concrete steps.

John and Erwan cautiously approached the red card, giving each other glances, and then tentatively picked it up.

It was from the NIE.

It said that they'd missed a call from the meter inspector.

'Jesus,' said Erwan.

McIlroy wiped sweat from off his brow.

Three weeks later an estimated bill arrived. There were woops and yells of celebration and James and Levin McCochall went out to buy some cider. The estimated bill was a miniscule £102.42.

'Jesus Christ!' yelled everyone, shooting their guns into the air and yodelling.

They instantly agreed to fork out the £10.24 required to pay the bill, and Barry Mitchell generously volunteered to collect the monies and supply the surplus of £0.02. John McIlroy and Red inspected the details of the estimation, and then prized open the cupboard containing the meter.

'Fuck,' said Red.

McIlroy, who was doing business-oriented studies at the UU Jordanstown, concurred. He did a quick mental calculation, ran upstairs to have his second shower of the day, ran back down and told the slavering animals that the proper bill was probably of the order of one and a half thousand pounds.

'Fuck!' said Mitchell.

'Jesus,' said Red.

Other people said 'shit' and things like that.

Barry settled the bill post haste and the Pinkers, for once, were extremely rapid in paying him back, probably due to their vast relief and their fear that this ice-field that they were on would collapse propitiously if they made the slightest movement of laziness or misstep.

Their relief was due in large part to their _expectation_ that their electricity consumption, once revealed, would prove enormous. Everyone one day after the worst of the winter frankly admitted that they'd all had highly inefficient electric heaters on several hours a day in their rooms. They felt guilty when they'd turn them on but it turned out everyone had been doing it. That, and the sauna occasionally held in the kitchen, or the ovens used to heat the house, or the hydroponics system that young Bole used to produce his harvest of fabulous five-fingered babies, and the electric shower, contributed to the excesses of that unenvironmentally conscious group.

The real reason they hadn't bought any heating wasn't that a bird had flown into the tank. It was that they were too lazy to organise a delivery and/or accept responsibility for payment. It had taken Neil Steed, he said, several decades to obtain the monies last time. He declined to take up the task for a second occasion, so the winter of '02/'03 was a cold one in the Big Pink. Independent observers suggested that this was the main reason no-one died of food-poisoning: everything in the house was perfectly refrigerated throughout the winter.

Levin and Erwan wrapped themselves in newspapers and huddled around the solitary burning candle. McIlroy sprang from his room with a copy of The Sun headline for that day: 'I'm Staying Alive,' regarding Maurice Gibb's struggles to do so. Gibb died the next day, rendering the Sun headline particularly soulless. McIlroy scotched it up, and then turned to the two prostrate penitents.

'Are you alive or dead?' he asked.

There was no reply, so he left the corpses to their own devices.

In his own room, safe from the strangeness for a time, McIlroy wondered what to do, but only briefly. He stuck on the stereo. There was some Turin Brakes playing, that was all right. He bopped about the room, picking a comb off his desk and putting it on top of the chest of drawers.

'Ho hum, ho hum, I smell the blood...' he said.

He went to uni the next day. He walked quickly looking at people doing the same thing. He checked out their style. He checked out his own. It was cool. But was it empty? Didn't matter. Except it did. He lit up a cigarette. MacHill hadn't come with him today. He went to his lecture.

He went home. The corpses were still lying on the sofa. He gave one of them a kick. Still no response. Going green, flaky and mouldy. Or maybe that was the newspapers. He found James Hendry lying behind the sofa asleep.

'Who wants a joint?' he said.

This raised a faint response.

'Great! You roll one,' McIlroy said. Since no-one else would reply.

He went into his room. He had a rolling machine. The others chastised him. But they smoked them all the same. They just were always hungry for criticism. It was like a shoal of sharks circling for meat. They'd all taken part in a freak out when he moved in. It was a good freak out. Broke the ice. Took a big cup of tea and joined in. Everyone was part of a big happy home. The madness was good.

He went into the livingroom. Levin was blinking his eyes. Erwan was licking his dry lips. James Hendry was drinking condensed orange.

'Give me that,' said McIlroy. He drank from the carton. He set it down on the table.

He put the roller in his lap. He got a rizla. It was a red one. He took the cigarette pouch from his back pocket. He unstuck the seal. The tobacco was brown and moist. He made a line of it across the rizla. He took a black lump from the tobacco packet. He looked for a lighter on the table. There was one behind the empty bottle of vodka. He flicked the wheel three times. It lit on the third. He began burning the dope. It fell in cinders between his rubbing thumb and finger. The black resin flaked all along the tobacco. He let it fall like dried mud. The joint was full to the brim with the sweet tobacco and bitter muck. He took the roller in with both thumbs and twisted the ends around to form a cylinder of the joint. It was perfect. He checked the ends; good. He licked it closed. He looked for a cardboard. There was one on the table. It was a dead pack of rizla. He ripped off a strip. He made a circle of the rectangle. He inserted it in the empty end. He pushed the loose paper into the cardboard. He looked at what he had made. It had taken him less than a minute.

He tapped the lighter on the crowded table. 'Who wants a smoke?'

There was nodding.

He lit the end of the joint. It let off an air of increasing smoke. He breathed in while holding the lighter to the other end. It drew the flame to itself. He sucked it in deep and held. He let it go. He held another. He let it go. He held another. He let it go. He let it smoke in his hand. He passed it to James Hendry.

'Thanks man,' said James.

'Cool,' said McIlroy.

McIlroy lifted his hand. It felt light. The feeling faded. It was the cannabis.

'Is there a god?' asked McIlroy.

'No,' said Levin.

'How do you know?' asked McIlroy.

'I found it out.'

God was about. In the light fixture. In the ripped phone book. In the painted wallpaper. God knew. He was a watcher. He liked to look at folk. It was his habit.

'I'm not so sure.'

'You go to class today?'

McIlroy took the joint. It was Erwan that handed it to him. He drew the smoke in. It added to the other smoke.

'I did.'

They finished the joint. McIlroy went to his bedroom. He lifted his towel from the door. He took his shampoo in his right hand. He marched up the stairs. In the shower he breathed that it was finally warm and his face melted a bit. He breathed and rubbed the water over his head and over his face. Steam rose up from the unscrubbed floor.

'Ahhhhhhhhhhhhghghghghghghhhhaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhghhhhahh...' he sighed.

Water was the piping stream that lit up the symphony of inundating chords, that tapped pianos, plucked on strings, made the shimmering waterfall dance with colour. It emptied the heavens of darkness. It made bright rings of lossless light and it helped the gods invest the world with life. It bathed the newborn of his bloodied skin and strung all the rice paddies of the world together down the pyramids of hillsides.

'We entered the world without sin,' murmured McIlroy.

He didn't know where this new religious mania was coming from. It was just today. It would pass like the other manias. Everything had to pass. He'd pass his exams, he knew that he would. He worried about them occasionally. He wouldn't be doing it right if he did not. He dried his head and hair and rubbed his body. He put the towel round his waist and went down to his room. He put his clothes on the back of his chair and put them on himself one by one. He decided he did not believe in God. He put on his stereo. Beyoncé was playing. He looked at his reflection in the mirror. He turned away to find his comb. It was on the chest of drawers. He combed his hair in front of the mirror. He completed combing his hair and looked at his reflection. It looked back at him just like John McIlroy. He thought about the summer. He wondered whether to go to the USA. He thought he might go to the USA. The USA might be a place to go.

He held a party in his room. Everybody came. It was a house party but the livingroom was empty. Levin and Erwan had put on their concept album. They boasted that the few people in the room left in less than one minute. McIlroy picked up a guitar and handed it to Hilary. Hilary sat down and played a song or two. Then Eddie played a song. Then Red played a song. Then Dermot played a song.

The people in the party spoke to one another. Erwan and Levin came into the room. Now no-one was left in the livingroom. Everyone crowded round Stephanie for a brief moment. They were trying to chat her up. Other people played more music. It was great. Now there was lots of noise. The stereo was on and so were people playing music. McIlroy took a long, long drink from his beer. It was Heineken. Hilary asked him if he had any tobacco. McIlroy took a drink from his beer. The party was going strong. He went all about his room. Erwan was playing a song. They all smoked.

It was a different week. Hilary, Erwan and Eddie were playing _Who_ numbers in the bedroom. Erwan's amp only had one functioning socket. Eddie couldn't play much bass. He explained to Red how his bass had turned into a snake playing live on one occasion and how it had been difficult to keep it under control. Hilary and Erwan played with expansive vigour. They were sweating. James Hendry nudged a beer can and it spilt over the desk over Erwan's mouse mat. They talked about The Who and jamming. A friend of McIlroy's, Paul, came in. McIlroy explained that Erwan and Levin were on a 48 hour absinthe binge. Erwan said he had not slept. Everyone in the room disappeared. MacHill, McIlroy and Red listened to _Toad_ by _Cream_ drummer Ginger Baker. It lasted 15 min and 24 sec. After that McIlroy went to his room.

McIlroy set six alarms to go off in the morning. His first alarm went off at 6.52. His second alarm went off at 7.02. His third alarm went off at 7.12. His forth alarm went off and 7.22. His fifth alarm went off at 7.32. His sixth alarm went off at 7.42. If he missed his forth alarm then he was too late to eat breakfast. If he missed his fifth alarm he would have to run for the bus. If he missed his sixth alarm he would have to get a different train twenty minutes later. If he did not get up at all Levin MacHill would knock on his door and shout 'Get up, John! Get up!' MacHill shouted at McIlroy every day to get up. Six alarms were going off for fifty minutes. McIlroy did not push his covers away. It was cold. He was asleep. He needed to drink coffee first. The first lecture was always over. He went back to sleep. His alarms sounded like bells. MacHill shouted. There was banging on his door. He slept. There was a pleasant dream. It was like sliding down a marshmallow snowball. He slid down to the bottom. He slid into sleep. MacHill shouted and banged on his door. He let the alarms ring. MacHill opened the door. MacHill said to McIlroy, 'Get up, McIlroy!'

McIlroy got up.

'Is it today already?' asked McIlroy.

'Yes,' said McIlroy.

McIlroy filled in an application form to work in the USA.

He spoke to Red about going to work in the US. Red was going to work in the US. They had similar interests: going to the US to find work. Strengthening the range of business experience. Meeting a broad range of people. Having a good time in the US. Coming home to do some kind of work or staying in the US. McIlroy knew many people were applying for the scheme. The scheme was an intelligent idea. McIlroy wondered if the inside of the house was as big as the outside of the house. He smoked a joint outside with Levin MacHill and James Hendry sitting on the old fridge. It was a Friday. Summer would soon be on the way.
