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Greaseproof tumbleweed skits across Castle Square. Clopping hooves in the pedestrianised area. The bins freeze, mid-vomit, dripping polystyrene and strawberry milkshake. Nutrition speckles the paving: unwanted slats of limp gherkin. The jockey rides in topless, his muscular, pitted chests thrown back with each five-fingered pull from a Marlboro red. Poppered trousers tucked into white socks. A matted horses rustled from Mayhill scrubland. The boy gunslings a bottle of Fairy Liquid, beaming lime in to the fountains burbling fringe. Things turn a bit sci-fi. An octopus froth swells from the depths. Glooping out in all directions. The jockey looks around to see if anybody has anything to say. We watch him, disapproving and jealous as he gallops home passed John Lewis.

In the tobbacconists she always kept a fistful of change in a paper bag her present from ambivalent parents measuring out attention to their children like bio food, as the day and her lips gathered

goggle-eyed fish and things

Another day, another weasel...

Webster tells no lies

A ghazal is an ancient form where each stanza must be a self-contained 'idea'. In some versions the poet's name must feature in the final line. How cool. Here's an extract: I'm changing. The bible is an excellent book, full of intertextuality and foreshadowing.

I am governed by an image of a picture that is hung in the galleries of my mind. An entire room is devoted to it, with high white ceilings and acres of floor.

VOID My life is empty No laughter lies here Just pain and misery And plenty of tears Happiness is a word Sorry is its friend I wonder when my sorrow will end What do I do to find blue skies?

Chapter 3 Lance Lance got up at 5am, picked up his papers and headed for his car, he had to be in Nottingham by 9am and usually left at this sort of hour to beat the traffic, he could work on the way up, which today meant write the speech he was going to give to a group of Nottingham worthies about the new education bill, as if he gave a shit about education, all his kids had been privately educated, mostly paid for by his wife, who