downturn to infinity

Seemed like, the drawings we made kept matching. Cogwheel suns, Japanese Flag suns, shortcake wheels, picking up my heels in the brick lane and firing up - we were powder-kegs. And yet I had a lot of fun every day.

Why am I writing what I can't say to you? Why am I summoning the massed "other you" to your graveside to listen and to endorse me, that's exactly how guys are, each reflecting for example "As far as I am concerned, it positively reeks of accuracy"...

You know how I felt driving home that night. The roads were dark and grainy. Snowfall's lights are amazing, but all the same things came at me suddenly. On the dual carriageway I saw the biggest dead badger and it was, you know, the kind you look away from. Curtis was with me and he said you can see the pyjamas. I told him I didn't like that expression. I couldn't shake it though. The hare lay like a slipper-sock in the road and Bambi drooped up against the verge, staring with his blind eye.

Five miles later I saw another one. It was in bits across both lanes. The trees are all thin now, the dogs next door won't stop barking. I thought of all my near-misses recently and how that guy blundered through the trees at me when I went for a wee at the galleries, and I had one of those moments when I suddenly realized that science fiction isn't fiction, that it's now. And the rest, the cottage-garden life we construct, Snowfall's MOT, Julia's leaving do, Florida, Little Dorrit, pay by direct debit, - that's all what we're making up, so as not to know. My life covered my eyes. It had been going on a long time.

We ate under a blue awning at dockside, and you were being witty, you have an excellent sense of humour. It serves you well, you really need it because you are so afraid.