as I ride out into the cobbled nexus south of the station, with thoughts of the bewitched Anselmus and his whispering Serpentina so fresh in my mind. It’s early and the turns are quiet, only a few solitary laggards from the big night out thrashings timidly pacing home, or still-waking girls off to start their shifts at the counters and tills. Down the alleyways I ride, musing on the shapes stirring behind blinds and shutters, lives being lived out. It would only take a glance or tiny call for help from one of the rare passers-by – a Brief Encounter speck of dust in the eye – to start the story, but of course it doesn’t happen. That’s for the books. And the daydreams, of other lives and futures lived out on pages.
