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Chapter 5

I'm stopped in the street by a bronzed, a blond young man. Levis, T-shirt, designer stubble. 'What's that over there?' he asks.

His accent is English. 'It used to be a museum,' I tell him, 'and to the left you've got your carillon and war memorial.'

'Cool,' he says. 'Thank you.'

I walk along Arthur to the top of Cuba. On the corner is the house in which I spent the first few months of my sobriety, living above an empty shop.

It remains a sooty, dim, Dickensian address. Soon to be stomped by the new, obliterating motorway. In a bedroom at the rear, I finished writing Tartan Revolver, the first of my three published books. I'd bought for the purpose a fat little manual in two tones of grey; when you pushed the plump red lozenge of a certain mysterious key, its carriage would track from right to left with an oily sort of thrum: yoddle-oddle-oddle-oddle-oddle.

Behind that window up there, I completed a vivid, skinny novel, yes. And it might be fun to get a picture, to take a photo of those doomed, disappointed-seeming panes. A Fujicolor disposable would do the trick, but I'd have lots of film left over.