Frozen moments of a sad and happy life.

BELFAST

I like watching planes taking off from the city airport. I don't get to see them till they're clearing the office blocks from where they head into clouds like metal dissolving in acid. When I'm driving home from work the planes seem to be shooting out of the top of the Belfast Hilton like tennis balls from a practice gun. If the clouds are thin and wispy the planes just become ghostly, indistinct, shadowy and menacing, as they come and go for a while in the straggle of clouds. If the cloud is thick the planes just disappear with no trace.

ROME

The man in the apartment opposite comes home every night and irons shirts. Lots of shirts, and then he holds them up as if admiring them and chooses one, puts it on and goes out for the night. It's the same rigmarole every night and he always seems to end up selecting the same shirt as far as I can see. He always has his apartment well lit; there are no curtains on the opened window which he stands close to, and it's almost as if he's trying to point out the obvious - that he has somewhere to go, someone to meet, and I, quite simply, do not.

ALGIERS

Some boys (the ones I grew up with anyway) always have some masculine sounding word denoting action, courage and daring that they shout while accomplishing a heroic deed like jumping off a very high rock overhanging a fast, deep river or, I imagine, jumping from an airplane. Boys I knew had special words like "Geronimo" which were screamed loudly and aggressively. My word was ˜"dermatitis" and I can still taste it, so savoury and full of meaning while it rolled around my mouth before being whispered so that no-one else would hear while I rode my bicycle round the garden.

PARIS

Enzo and I went to visit his friend on a frosty night. We'd climbed the stairs and pushed open the rough wooden door and before us Pascal sat alone at a long, shiny dining table. The room was white and there was no furniture other than the table and Pascal's chair sitting on a highly polished parquet floor. A violin was playing quietly in the next room and there was a lit candelabrum on the table. Pascal was dressed for diner. Elegance, decadence. The small window was open and wine was chilling outside on the windowsill; the stars falling through the skylight and the decadence declared that I would come back to Paris.