I am at my parents' house, drinking cider and looking at property prices for the local area (like some weird future-nostalgia, I imagine living in the memories of a past hometown, in a hypothetical future in which I have enough money to buy a house). One of the large country houses that I see has its picture at a 3/4 angle, from high above. Like a police helicopter filming a shooting. That guy who shot his family then burned his house down. He drove his car in front of his gate and set fire to it, but no one came to stop him, so it never served its purpose.

When I walk around this town my mind is heavy with old things. They build in me like constipation. I cannot shit here. It comes out in forced, painful meat lumps. Like dead sausage.

I try to explain it to my girlfriend. She says she knows what I mean, but you never know what someone else means.

I imagine how I could never work here, never really make anything here. It would be sucked in to the goo. French-cropped-macdonalds-paste.

A man in a service station without a top on. His fucking arse is fucking hanging out. He is disgusting. In my head I think, 'this only happens in Essex'. It doesn't. It happens everywhere. I see him a minute later, sitting in his car waiting for the car wash. This seems weird. Not exactly rank hypocrisy, but a definite paradox.

In a book, the camera zooms away from the action while the chracters are in mid-sentence. Suddenly you realise that their actions have no consequence and there will be no conclusion. This is how the book should end.