A) I am

I am listening to the sound of a grey suited Oxbridge educated but
now frustrated newsreader through the floorboards from the concrete
designed for the retired flat below. Renee, our elderly and quite deaf
neighbour is catching up on the sordid days event from around a sad
world.
If I choose to go out into the cold clear night and face the long rows
of front-lit planes circling coming in for their 2 mile Gatwick landing
I could go around the corner to our newly opened cosy woody style bar
and enjoy a lovely Budvar drunk from a frozen glass. That is to say
that when the glass is handed to you and the temperature is right it
will stick to your hand like putting bare flesh on a deep freeze car
bonnet in mid-January in continental cold.
China was cold like that when I was there, with its Gobi sand spitting
slice wind. The balance to this dry desiccating being a hot topped cup
of jasmine tea available throughout the nylon static banked carpeted
hotels.
New year is soon when the moon is gone from a dark vacant sky like
Kim's game.
Kim was a beautiful old Golden Labrador who walked the grey dirt dust
paving stones of Sparkhill during the war. Walford Road ran north to
the industrial goal of the bombers with smashed glass as arrows.