“I don’t go into shops.”
          “What?”
          “I don’t go into shops unless I can use the phrase “twenty Dunhill” and then leave.”
          “But what about all the other things you need… like clothes, and shoes, and… well… everything?”
          “I already have clothes.”
          “Surely you need new ones?”
          “No, I’ve got clothes.”
          “How old are they?”
          “The ones that still have my name sewn in the back are probably quite old.”
          “That’s from ten years ago…”
          “So? What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you sweat fucking acid?”
          “You have to buy new clothes every so often…”
          “These ones still do their fucking job and stop my cock and balls hanging out or my nipples being attacked by passing fucking birds.”
          “What is wrong with you?”
         
          This is when I ask her to leave.  There’s obviously no point in continuing this.  She’s obviously insane.  I refuse to have to go through this conversation just because my clothing is slightly older, perhaps has the odd tiny hole, and might not be the colour it started out as.  What kind of madness is this?
          I tried to buy new clothes once.  I went into the shop and they had stuff that looked nothing like the last time I bought clothes.  I don’t want new ones.  I want the clothes I want.  When the fuck did clothes that technically resemble the shape of the ones I once had suddenly develop patterns?  When did there become nine-hundred variations on a pair of trousers that now convinces me that any I pick up will be wrong.
          I have clothes.  They work. 

          I stare at the wall.  One coat of paint is enough.  There are bits with more paint and bits with less paint.  I’m going to have to decorate at some point in the distant future anyway so why not kill two birds with one stone.  
          I didn’t wash the coffee cup out before I put the coffee in it.  It tastes of cranberry juice.  Is this how they make those complicated coffees?  Do they just collect cups from around a toddler’s room and then blindly pour coffee into them?
          I’ve given up using the ashtray for the ash.  I pick it out of my lap and flick it over my shoulder.  You have to hoover when people visit anyway and so I might as well have something worth hoovering other than the usual change and trailing wires.
          Bits keep falling off the curtain.

          “Twenty Dunhill.”

          I leave the shop and am accosted by some kind of man in a hat.  Who the hell wears hats anymore?  I think about a world in which you could just throw people to the ground and scream “You will NOT.”
          He seems to want something.  It appears he wants me to sign my organs away to someone after I die.  I think that’s what he wants.  Or he’s threatening me.  I ask him what he thinks about this insane thing about buying new clothes when the old ones work.

          People seem to be making increasingly less sense.  I sit on the bench outside some terrible place that plays loud music and has rows of trousers outside.  People are going in there. 
          I am trying to watch a pigeon but people keep walking buy and panicking it.  There’s a sense of achievement when it walks nearer to me.  I consider trying to convince the pigeon to follow me around.  I can’t get a proper pet because it involves filling in a form I lost a while ago.  The pigeon would be alright though, he could perch somewhere and then walk along next to me when I went outside.  Girls would see me and ask me about my pigeon.  Then they would let me do things to them.

          “I think you need to get out more.”
          “Are you a Jehovah’s witness?  Why are you at my door?  Who the hell are you?”
          “I’m your friend…”
          “No, no you’re not… if you were my friend you wouldn’t make me go outside.”
          “You’re not outside, all you did was open the door.”
          “In opening the door I have made my flat part of the outside.  Do you not see how there is no barrier between the two?  You have exposed me to so many dangers.”
          “You invited me?”
          “No, no I didn’t… you said we should meet up and I obviously failed to make a convincing case to keep you away.”
          “You said it would be nice to have company…”
          “You obviously misunderstood me.  What I meant was it would be nice to have sex with a woman who would then go away.  That’s what company means.  What you’re talking about is something entirely different.”
          “We’re meant to be friends…”
          “Friends are women who refuse to sleep with me.  I don’t need those, they hurt my self-esteem.”
          “To sleep with women you have to go outside.”
          “Why must you shit on everything I do?”
          “Can I come inside?”
          “Who the hell are you?”
          “I’m your friend.”
          “Are you going to have sex with me?”
          “No, I don’t find you attractive in that way.”
          “Why?  What the fuck is wrong with me?”
          “I just don’t.”
         
          Whoever that was made me open one of the cartons of long-life milk.  It’ll now sit in my fridge and just slowly go off.  People should bring their own milk.  What kind of madness is it that we are expected to fulfil their urges?  If you go to a Chinese restaurant they won’t go and get you a vindaloo to go with your chips. 
         
          Is that the same pigeon?  Is he my friend now?  Oh, wait, he walks differently and isn’t as wide. 

          I go to the doctors and get things treated.  I feel like a loser going in there for something that is merely caused by poor hygiene or spores.  The doctor doesn’t have a single note in my file about a sexually transmitted disease.  He never even asks if I am at risk of getting any.  I think he’s laughing at me.

          I ponder the small painting I did.  I only do small paintings because it’s more expensive to get the bigger canvases.  I realise I have no actual talent but maybe I could accidentally do a good painting.  I really can’t tell.  I’ll have to come up with ways to try and make people look at it and try and work out if I should pretend whether it was a joke or not.  I didn’t have any red so I used tomato puree.  
          I really think it may be quite awful.  I should have used less paint.  The less paint and the less colours you use the less chance the chance of it going wrong.

          There’s a pigeon outside.  I look through the window.  No, it’s not the same one.

          God, the screws are falling out of all the furniture I so painstakingly assembled.

          Should I give up on the original pigeon and try and befriend one of the new ones?  Perhaps the original pigeon died.  But what if the next pigeon leaves me? 

back to duck.