peering at the pixellated screen. Not shadows on the cave wall, more staring at clouds and not seeing the dust particles. Too much to process. An immense, depthless blizzard of data. Too much detail to withstand, we find ways to paint it simple. But it peeps out through the cracks of the paperboard masks we fix in place. Even this key baffles me. The original is lost, the replacement has a collar that’s too close to the turn so it sticks in the lock. I grind it away with my files. With no collar it slips through the casing so I clad it in tape. What an ungainly, hapless tool I’ve crafted. And already with its history, stretching back from the turner in Kidlington to the van from the depot, the metalworks, the smelt or vice, the casual weld, the lazy finishing, the foundry, the boat across the ocean. What before that? Dug out of the Earth somewhere, chipped and hacked, then the unimaginably long sleep before it swirled and pressed and coalesced out of the chaos gap. And all the human interactions, all the grazed and burned skin, the packing and passing, the cares and work loathings, the gauging and positioning on its journey to my jeans pocket for six pounds fifty. Six fifty I could have spent on a paperback. And now worked into words with their own rough edges.