Holloway in Christmas ormanents looked, I could not help thinking as a trickle of icy rain insinuated itself into my yashmak of Jane Carr scarf, like a turd in a spangled catsuit. I could stalk the wet streets all day like a beige ninja if I liked, but my plan for Lulu had already caromed into the usual bulwark. I had no idea how to start.
System, perhaps, would save me. Lulu had pinned her trembling favours to one thickset victualler. Surely Holloway could boast another. “Come ye husky mongers!” I cried, quietly, and the clarion stirred my heart. Lifted as if by a great wind, I floated serenely the length of Holloway Road, from Harry’s Hut to the warty Ezekiel bouncing declamatory indictments off the Tube-station tiling. Righteous conviction coursed through me too. I half-expected a crowd to gather, a steaming ring of husky vendors, candesced with fleshly ardour. This did not happen. My wild flight commenced its descent on Chillingworth. By the time I cleared the boarded frontage of Blood Brothers, tattooists lately fled, I was a shell. That the Bloods broke camp from disgust rather than any shortage of human vellum was confirmed by the jersey-clad balloon animals who eyed me with witless malice from the filling station’s canopied forecourt. Titian would struggle to fill those sallow acres.
There was nothing for it. Our merchant community had let me down. I found myself hunched outside Borset’s, transfixed by a shin-cut’s bone eye. Borset himself bobbed before me, essaying a timid wave. Even as I welcomed the distraction I was conscious of a sadness in his demeanour.
“Come in,” he mournfully mouthed. I went.
Flowers of Boredom 