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After around thirty seconds or so of this bleak silence the phone startled into life, seeming almost more shocked that it was ringing than Sam was. He casually reached for the reciever knowing it could only be one of three people: His mother, who Sam would have put money on, seeing as it was his birthday and she'd no doubt been waiting since about half past eight to call him at a suibtable time; His old college friend Tully, who called every now and again, simply to prove his own personal statement that he'd 'Keep in touch with everyone!'; or his boss, a rather plump man who would no doubt be calling to ask if Sam could cover a shift, probably so that the afore mentioned plump Albert Sturrock could race over to his mistress' house as fast as his small little red legs could go.

You pull me over like a blanket...asking me to speed it up

what if i dont want a pretty face?

My watch strikes midnight I watch as time holds hands As I slow dance With Cinderella Developing a fine romance Without slipping on the sole Glass slipper on her toes So, consider this an ode To the everyday Joe Who feels like Clark Kent On a park bench Before he starts to enter The pay-phone

there you were standing in the middle of a Salzburg afternoon

An old poem re-draft. Not much better.

Imagine it. A large gloomy council estate in the poor part of a big town. The kind of place where there are gangs of children or glum teenagers and stray dogs everywhere no matter what time of day or what day of the week. The kind of place that policemen would pretend didn't exist, knowing they would have a field day if they had the courage to search it, but never having the courage. The kind of place where every boy over the age of nine or so carries a knife and every woman has a horde of children, rarely with a father in sight. The kind of place where people don't live, they survive.

Edited version (original is in my collection, Chapter 15)

I thanked him for taking the time to talk to me, and walked back to the entrance of Alpha Bar, thinking about everything he had said. There was so much to think about ' mainly the fact that Cee and Peto had so obviously got together somewhere else before they got to Alpha ' the story that they had been drawn together by the fight was not holding water any more in the way that I had been told it, though of course it was probably the fight that was the catalyst for turning an evening out together back into a full relationship. I knew that they were probably worried about me ' if they were thinking about me at all ' I had been outside talking to Mwale for over an hour, but I wanted some time to think, so I leant against the railings and thought about what he had told me. The girl ' he called her a working girl, but that is just a euphemism, and quite a nice one ' the prostitute, Gertrude ' I thought then that she was the one I had to talk to. If Mwale was right and Peto, the Rastaman, and the English guy were all her regular clients, and they were all there, in the club, on the night of the fight, then that would have been a potential spark, something that could have kicked the whole thing off. And then there was Peto arriving with Celianne, and Gertrude already there, waiting inside the club: another flashpoint, another reason for there being trouble. In trying to work out what had happened that night and where the tension and trouble started, who started the fight, I realised as I finished my cigarette, I would have to first understand the country and the culture. I mean: for a start, this girl Gertrude ' if that really was her name ' I mean, what was Peto doing with her? Why does she do what she does? What was she doing with the Rastaman and the English guy? And after he had been with her, did Cellianne, my Cee from so long ago, really want to be with him? But then ' and this was a difficult question, a question that had started nagging at me while I listened to Mwale, and was becoming more insistent as I smoked ' did I really know Cee? Did I know or even start to understand her ' or anyone in this country ' after all this time?