is reality, says Riverman, stopping to pat another cat. We’re walking back from the Anchor, I’ve bought him a couple of jars of IPA in the first sunshine day of July. He’s merry, crouching by the puss in his oily, ruined cord jacket and the jeans he’s worn through winter. Think of all the hours you’ve wasted checking the news this last week and two, he smiles, when you could have been dreaming up better stories. Current affairs is no more than fortune’s wheel, but people are scared of calling it that, they say it’s politick and important as though this world runs to a plan. There’s no plan.
I went on that march, I tell him.
Fat lot of good it did you, better off fishing. Nobody gets hurt fishing.
Bar the fish, I say. But he’s gone down the street chuckling, not listening, bow-legged shuffling to the next cat lying out in the late-afternoon sun.
