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and the whole house fills with dust from the lime mortar crumbling away. Walls and boards are peeled back, the rooms take a battering, just the promise of new shapes and coverings to come.

three flights and a walk up the hill to the cathedral, the tour ends at another gallery. You have to go home and try to write. You have to unpick Alexander’s knot, leave your sword in its scabbard.

to catch the Rothko you missed, then to wander the Picos and drink cider, watch the sea etching the Costa da Morte. Money’s tighter than ever, but time’s tighter.

he says. I haven’t spoken with another living, breathing thing for ten days. Nothing helps. Not even Rilke.

I can’t take a tear, that would kill me. Let’s ride out, I try, I’ll buy.

I’ve never been this bad, he says.

I could tell him the 30 fronts I’m fighting and how I wake up a-tremble every dawn, made worse by that feeling I’m letting everyone I care about down. I could tell him lots of things but it won’t make a difference.

Let’s ride out and sink a few. Don’t shame the sunlight.

And he takes the bait.

earn their keep from the flow and those who ferry about. Riverman makes a buck helping out at the narrowboat yard, he knows engines. And he can live on five pounds a day, alongside barter and a few veg boxes. He’s alone, even catless, and you can’t get any lonelier. He has time to read Mervyn Peake and David Jones, books he borrows from my not-yet shelves, myself being starved of time, though compared to many my afternoons are endless and indolent. If only my scribbled daydreams stood worth recording.

no warning, just a scratch in my chest but that night I pulled the covers tight, shivered and hacked in the fever-tossed sheets. Next day I was wheezing, lungs bubbling and ticking, too hot or too cold, hypothalamus shot. I’d been working hard and long on the pages, exhausted, a bad batch of words had infected me. That night I dreamed of log cabin hideaways and clearings in the firs, wolves padding nearby and a last match to strike for salvation. And then today I surfaced for a walk in the woods, came upon a tree uprooted. My kid shot up there and froze on the descent. I had to make my way up the trunk to the rescue, legs wobbling, old boots worn glass-smooth from wear, from too many long roads and wrong turns. But I got her down. And we climbed out of the valley, light spilling from everything, air clean and fresh after the fug.

there is violence…crazies rushing in from the dark. London doesn’t need me,

but I need London.

to say goodbye to a friend. And a nod to the sea, been landlocked since I was out with the whales a half year gone.

in the night tunnel. Two of us alone in the city, dark house avenues and the magnolias unbuttoning, the stage is ours.

the approaches. I only spot him as I turn. The world scrutinized by hidden furballs and other sentients, the ones I don’t discover, lurking deeper in the ferns.