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to your bones and to every asphalt crack and dimple on your lonesome night ride. Rain sighs through to dawn in a drip and gurgle symphony of gutter demon mockery.

jump me at the bike shed. In jungle alert primal mode I turn to the flash of green and violet on the lawn, but the brown Mallard is prowling on the roof behind me, Ghost and the Darkness style. It bats my helmet with a wing and joins its mate. Foiled by a duck. Why a duck right now, crashing my morning fumblings? Viaduct for deep water. Vy not a chicken? How will they get over the Victorian walls? It’s OK, they’re building a tunnel in the morning. Groucho is fresh on my mind, clear as the first time I saw the grainy black and whites, lost afternoons when the Yorkshire rain was too thick to get out in. Groucho in the crowded ship’s cabin, two perfect minutes pushing the impossible situation ever further…”Did you want a manicure?” “No, come on in.” And you see it in writers, the masters pushing the sense and power of a sentence, building to a great line and then adding even more. Melville’s lashed sea’s landlessness. All in a day’s work.

up on the guttering, as I ram the broomstick into the downpipe, trying to free the pine needle gloop. The junction springs loose and I have to fashion a hook from some door trim and lean out further, while the storm builds its charges. At the first dazzling strike I note my metal pole, a lunatic on the roof with his beckoning rod and each flash a crack in the sky. It can go too far, this caretaking lark. I pause and take stock, retreat for a mug of Monsooned Malabar.

but I’m a romantic. There’s a Portakabin polling booth up in the sports field, under a fine silver sky. Stout Brits are out walking their dogs, dropping in for their inalienable right. And I’m thinking of Marlowe…

What right had Caesar to the empery? Might first made kings…

and Machiavelli finding solace from exile in his study, wandering the corridors of the Library of the Dead.

don’t share their secrets, they send no letters. I bet this growler’s ranged far, picking out the air tunnels in the blackout using those scanner whiskers. I wonder if he logged my ride-by midnight whoosh, fresh from a trouncing at the quiz night. Too many smart cookies in this dorf. My cat’s sensor rig humbles all of them. I lie in bed waiting for the 4a.m. birdsong and I can feel the soft cool of the breeze on my face, first sign that you’ve killed the night, like Hem in the Madrid caldera, but I can’t build a picture of the air and how it moves around objects the way growl cat does. Outsmarted on all fronts.

to insulate with books. The days flutter on and the mountain is my loomings. Until then I’ll take the meter readings and gather quotes for cranked steel lintels.

to gaze upon a bluebell? Value’s set by the purchaser, weighed in coin and sacrifice. And even the rarest things, outside their momentary sparkle the value lies in depriving others of that they crave. Power by special possession. A walk through the woods is ownership enough for me. The profs get to stroll for free, if they flash a uni card. I, being uninitiated – but no less arcane – have to drop a fiver at the gate.

for old pedals. This car and I share a disdain for motoring. Morning smoke from the turbo, fuel lines and cables aching. I should wash the mats but I’d rather be reading or daydreaming. Rather be in a couchette, porthole onto the taiga, white drapes and goose down against the creeping ice. Cocktails later, joining Burroughs in the dining car to compare notes on The Outline of History.

sun swaggers out. I follow the birdsong along the rail-fence avenue, alone, skirting the flood. All of yesterday I was haunted by quarter-century old ghosts, ’till I heard a song on the radio that lifted me out of the mire, a song from those same days. What I thought I wanted never happened, but it’s dumb to pine for something I never knew. And I met other singers, heard other songs. The memory of those encounters should be sweeter than all imagined futures unexplored or barred to me. Step on, no turning back against this planet’s space-flung spin and the paths and turns it gifts you.

and offers glimpses, things you still want to try. Stare to the sparkling sea and I dream of the mountain I’ll soon visit, Ruskin’s noblest cliff, the fabled circumnavigation of the alpine valley eden and nations around its base. Each face a compass point and a white supernal dome of cupped lenticular clouds. If only I was on the tour. But I’m passing through on a three-day pass, hoping for fair weather and a view down the valley. And then on to Pollock, whispers of paint in my rain circles and window gazing, always rushing. It’s the best I can hope for, and just as I’d wished.