THREE O’CLOCK. If anything, the world had gone even deeper into its womb. My coffee was cold, and I lacked the energy to get up off the couch and put the kettle on again. Every five minutes, despite my conviction that I would honour the little comedian’s appearance by not working that day, my heart clenched like a jellyfish poked with a stick. Responsibility. To slough it off was to slough off the very fibre of my being. I couldn’t face – “Face! Face!” – my own wild hunger. After all, those young strangers out there in the city night rightly expected a basic level of mid-life maturity from me. The low growl I kept hearing must have simply been the appetite of my childhood self that I had lost the ability to satisfy.
A clatter of trash cans suddenly broke through my self-absorption. I tens
