StrangeReality

Welcome to reality etc.

A crowded week: change of job, change of shift patterns, new people to meet and get along with (or not), and, yesterday, one of those awful ‘team-building exercises’ that management-types are so unaccountably fond of.

A fleet of buses had been hired to ferry the whole department across to Birmingham - x number of miles away. There we were to completely redecorate an infants’ school that was located in an ‘underprivileged’ part of the city. Underprivileged: that’s contemporary Orwellian-speak for ‘poor’. I sat in my seat on my bus in a mountingly foul mood. Already there was [i]friendly rivalry[/i] building up as to which of the four buses would reach the school first. People bellowed at the driver to ‘put your foot down’ and so on. I had a book with me: The Zen Teachings Of Bodhidharma. Much mythologised since his historical lifetime, Bodhidharma was the Indian monk who introduced Mahayana (Zen) Buddhism to the ancient Chinese court. In Buddhist circles he is a Moses-like figure, and features in one of the more celebrated Zen [i]koan[/i] (teaching stories), known as ‘the bearded Bodhidharma’.

Here is the koan (if you can understand, or [i]see[/i], the essential truth behind this, you have understood [i]everything[/i], it’s said): A monk was meditating upon a picture of the bearded Bodhidharma, when his master came up and surprised him. The master, indicating the picture, said: “Why hasn’t that fellow got a beard?’ Whereupon the monk was instantly enlightened.

(The orthodox interpretation of this koan has it that no one really has a beard, because our true self is neither our physical appearance nor any of our supposed mental attributes. But it is one thing to ‘know’ this intellectually, and another thing entirely to ‘see’ it: hence the monk’s sudden jolt of enlightenment.)

But I couldn’t concentrate on my book. Everyone was being too lively, too chummy, too [i]enthusiastic[/i]. I knew most of them only vaguely, despite having worked in the same building as them for three years. I very much wanted to be somewhere else, yesterday, than where I was - a most un-Zenlike feeling.

We got to the school and the managers cheerfully unpacked the decorating equipment from the luggage holds. Dozens of tins of paint, sandpaper, ladders, brushes, and old cloths to cover the school furniture with. Work began immediately. I was assigned to a classroom with eight other people. We were to repaint it bright yellow, and the task only took us a couple of hours. I have never painted a room in my entire life, and ended up walking around doing not much at all but trying to look busy, and how successful I was in this ruse I do not know. ‘That Lord Strange? One [i]lazy fucker[/i],’ I bet they were saying to each other while I was outside on one of my half-hourly cigarette breaks.

Lunchtime was the worst. Everyone sat on chairs in the school gym, and munched their way through a company-supplied feast of sandwiches and cakes. Then somebody found a basketball in a cupboard, and a [i]good-natured game[/i] ensued… I sneaked outside alone. I walked across the playground and hoisted myself up on a low brick wall. The view was across the school playing field, down to a wooded area next to a large pond. Geese and ducks crisscrossed the water in their time-honoured serene fashion. The sun was high in the sky, prickling my forehead with sweat. I lit a cigarette, inhaled the sweet-tasting smoke, and thought about nothing at all.

Welcome to reality. Within 'reality' all kinds of things exist. The following is a random selection from reality.

So the alleged 'Government' has issued its official advice on dealing with the aftermath of a major terrorist attack. Presumably at great cost (relatively speaking: relative to the size of my own disposable income, that is), a short information film is to be broadcast on all channels this evening, and booklets are on their way to [i]every household in the UK[/i]. What is the crux, the nub, of this urgent message? Go in, stay in, tune in: this just about sums it up. What a piece of advice that is, what vision, what [i]wisdom[/i] is contained therein. In the event of a major terrorist attack, get indoors and stay there, and tune in to radio or TV broadcasts for the latest information. Wow. That's amazing. Amazing, because [i]it's exactly what the majority of people would do in any case[/i]. Even on Sep 11th 2001, when the terrorist attack was in another country, in another [i]continent[/i] for God's sake, this is exactly what I and everyone I know did: we stayed indoors for hours, watching TV.

So much for this 'advice'. It reminds me of the 'advice' given several years ago by a TV doctor, on the subject of coping with a heatwave. I remember that summer well: for three days the temperature topped 95 degrees Farenheit, and thus constituted a national crisis. One morning I saw, on a breakfast TV show, the resident doctor - a shop-window mannequin with dubious medical credentials, but that's another story: what he said about coping with the heatwave was aimed at car drivers, and it went as follows.

"If you're sitting in your car and you're feeling too hot, loosen your tie if you're wearing one, and wind down the window."

I waited. Surely there must be more? Some unheard-of miracle of medicine. But no: the subject rapidly morphed into the drearily familiar, annual ticking-off about too much sunbathing. I watched the doctor's smug face working away over there on my screen and I thought: [i]O you healer of men![/i]

Mm. So it's clear. Hot and bothered in the summer sun? Drink water, open windows. Nuclear bomb goes off in London? Go home, stay there, and watch TV.

[i]When he came to himself, he saw that the horses were taking him along an unfamiliar road. There were dark patches of copse on each side of it; it was desolate and deserted. Suddenly he almost swooned; two fiery eyes were staring at him in the darkness, and those two eyes were glittering with malignant, hellish glee. “That’s not Krestyan Ivanovitch! Who is it? Or is it he? It is. It is Krestyan Ivanovitch, but not the old Krestyan Ivanovitch, it’s another Krestyan Ivanovitch! It’s a terrible Krestyan Ivanovitch!” . . .[/i]

- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, [i]The Double[/i] (chapter XIII)


Lord Strange had a hangover. It was eight o’clock on Saturday evening and only now was the hangover starting to wear off. Last night, Friday night, with some workmates he’d gone [i]out on the town[/i], as people still, even today, said. Now, trying to relax in front of some random Saturday night TV show, he sipped a glass of water and lit a cigarette with still-trembling fingers. It had been a mistake, he reflected, to agree to go on with them all to the Planetarium nightclub, where the pounding dance music rarely, if ever, gave way to an actual song (and how dated, how [i]past it[/i], this line of thought made him feel). The place was indescribable: like a scene from some cyberpunk fantasy set in the 22nd Century. [i]Mad Max[/i] and [i]A Clockwork Orange[/i] and [i]Blade Runner[/i] all rolled into one and distilled into a nightclub. The bar was doing a suspiciously good trade in bottled water. Whenever Lord Strange had ordered his staple drink, vodka and coke, the bar staff raised their eyebrows - they actually raised their eyebrows. There might as well have been a sign above the entrance saying: ‘Welcome to the Planetarium: [i]X[/i] number of days/weeks since a drugs-related death.’ Lord Strange shuddered to remember it. How he had frequently lost sight of everyone, his workmates, and spent ages traipsing between locations, circling the heaving dance floor, flashed by strobe lighting, and loitering in stairwells wondering whether to just make a break for it and see them all on Monday. He never made a break for it though, and stuck it out to the end, until 4:00 a.m. Sometime before that, on one of his solitary sojourns, he had found a quiet corner to light a cigarette when a small, thin, young blonde girl stepped in front of him. Her eyes totally irised-out, she slipped one of her hands inside his shirt and started to rub his chest. Lord Strange offered her a cigarette and gallantly thought [i]Fuck, I’m in here![/i] They walked around together for a while, and amid all the dance-related racket he gleaned the fact that her name was Kate and she was a History student. He went to buy them some drinks and when he turned around she was gone. He drank her drink - the inevitable bottle of water - in a salute to her memory. Kiss me Kate.

But that was last night. Monday should be interesting at work. He had half-groped one of the girls, and been half-groped back, on one of the sofas in the ‘chill-out room’. Then a jeering trio of other workmates had materialised in front of them, seemingly via a [i]Star Trek[/i]-style transporter, and the moment was dissipated. Which, he had to acknowledge, was probably for the best. He smiled to think of it.

He turned his attention back to the TV screen in front of him. What was Lord Strange watching? On this Saturday night? He was [b]watching one of those worthy medical dramas where the patients all end up in protracted counselling sessions with the staff. You must know the kind of thing I mean: the divorced father who belatedly shows up at the school play, just as a runaway fuel tanker heads toward the place, pitching father and child into the arms of the waiting celebrity doctors and nurses. Hmm. I don’t like such shows and I have no idea what I was doing watching one last night. All day I had felt a little feverish, a little queasy, a little off. I think I was waiting to feel better, so that I could go upstairs and sit in front of my PC screen without feeling worse. Does that make sense? I think so, but I could be wrong. Not much makes sense to me anymore. I have lost my [i]sense[/i]-sense.

Overnight, I had succeeded in tunnelling all the way to the centre of Lord Strange’s mind, from where I watched all the goings-on, the sights, the sounds, the smells, the surface thoughts and the dark unseen desires. I mentioned the smells: have I said that Lord Strange [i]smells[/i]? He smells, he really does. He smells of his unchanged socks and his two-days-old t-shirt. He smells, in other words, like a single man. Take a man in (wait for it: there’s an obnoxious, italicised phrase coming up) [i]a relationship[/i], and the last thing he will do, for the most part, is [i]smell[/i] of anything at all. But I haven’t got time to take in all the smells, nor to compose a pithy paragraph or two about the styles and behaviours of the single man. Here is the centre of Lord Strange’s mind: look. Here is a comfortable sedan chair positioned at the centre of a gleaming white, indefinable space (of the type depicted in Hollywood films when the director wishes to represent Heaven, or simply to portray a generic dream-space). Next to the chair is a low table containing a bottle of vodka, a packet of cigarettes, and a Zippo lighter. I am grateful: I am seated. I know what I am about to do, and I [i]love[/i] it. I pour myself a drink, and settle back to watch the show. Bloody actors and their maunderings: who could ever believe that Parminder Nagra was actually a [i]doctor[/i] in an American hospital? I fear the worst for poor Parminder, for our very own Parminder: breaking through in America, in [i]LA[/i], is one thing, and the career boost provided by [i]Bend It Like Beckham[/i] must be capitalised upon, but really… Were there no other, [i]better[/i] offers on the table than this? I sigh, and am on the verge of settling into an extended internal soliloquy on the vagaries of fame (by rights Pam - that’s the familiar diminutive for ‘Parminder‘ - ought to be tearing up trees in Hollywood [i]movies[/i], for God’s sake), when[/b] Lord Strange became aware of a noise outside in the garden. It was a loud scraping noise, similar to the sound that a plank of wood makes when it is dragged across concrete. He stood up and went to the window. It was still light enough outside for him to see the cause. Not a reckless burglar trying to break into the garden shed, as he had thought it might be. Earlier yesterday, there had been half-hearted efforts to clear the garden of some nettles that had sprung up in random clusters, here and there. The uprooted nettles were transported, in bundles, to a rubbish skip in the road behind the garden. The sound that he’d heard was the garden gate, down at the bottom of the path, swinging to and fro in the wind. Someone had left the gate unlatched. He smiled to himself. So that’s exactly what the sound was, then: a plank of wood (the gate’s bottom plank), scraping back and forth on the concrete of the pavement. What a lucky guess. Lord Strange went outside to close the gate.

Then he turned around to walk back inside. On his way he noted the flickering glow of the television behind the window of the room he had just left. Some odd impulse made him angle over to the window, and he stood there looking inside. Through the vertical slats of the blinds he saw the TV, playing out its mute drama, and he panned his gaze across the rest of the room, past the small table with the glass of water on it, toward the armchair where he had been sitting. In the few moments before the area swung into vision, Lord Strange half-expected to see himself sitting in the armchair.

He was looking at the armchair. There [b]I was, sitting in my armchair, watching the TV medical drama with a pursed, sour expression on my face. Outwardly I gave no signal that I knew what I had done, that I knew Lord Strange was at the window watching, and that he was feeling a mixture of confusion and physical tension popularly known as [i]fear[/i]. I pretended not to know, in advance, that after a few minutes he would be standing behind me in the kitchen, observing the slight balding spot on the crown of my skull, and rubbing his own bald spot with cold fingers…

Eventually I could delay no more and without turning around I said: “I know you’re there. And, no, you’re not insane.” I had to laugh. “Or if you are insane, then so am I.”

He entered the room, the poor fellow, poor Lord Strange, unable to look at me. I smiled. You remember now? “You remember now?” I said. Mutely, eyes on the carpet, he nodded. I followed him upstairs where I supervised the packing of a bag. “Say hello to Phil for me,” I said. “And watch out for a weird bird called ’[i]Z[/i]’, okay?” Then I watched from the window of the room - [i]my[/i] room again - as he went away in a taxi. He looked back at me from the taxi window and I waved. I went back downstairs and caught the last minutes of the medical drama, which did not feature Pam in any way, shape, or form. See? It’s not even a great [i]part[/i], for God’s sake. Get out of it now, Pam.

Well, that’s that. What an odd, not to say [i]strange[/i], two weeks of my life it’s been. How happy it makes me to be able to say: Normal service can now be resumed. Tomorrow, I go to start a new job, writing letters to customers instead of the energy-sapping ‘manager callbacks’ on the telephone that I’ve been doing. I anticipate being much more lively in the months ahead. And with this anticipated increase of [i]zest[/i], I intend to ‘get something done’ - but more on that if and when the time comes. I once saw the actor Russell Crowe being interviewed about his future projects and ambitions, and in reply he said something that has a universal application, I feel. He refused to talk about his future plans, because, he said, if he talked about them it’d use up some of the energy and enthusiasm that he needed to [i]do[/i] them. A thing talked about is, in the mind’s eye, already done, at least in part: and so it’s best to keep [i]schtum[/i].

Where was I, before? StrangeReality92, wasn’t it? StrangeReality93 will follow, as surely as day follows night.[/b]

[Postscript: Lord Strange lay back on the bed and stared at the hotel room ceiling. One day, he thought, one day. This isn’t over.]

Lord Strange has a hangover.

[b]Sitting at the desk next to the window, where he had worked for 2 years, Lord Strange typed these words: “Please call this customer by 20:00 this evening or she says she will be going to the newspapers and/or to her solicitor on Monday”. He tapped Enter. The customer’s angry, screaming voice still echoed in his head, her broad Liverpool accent adding fire to scattergun expletives. Half an hour it had taken him to pacify her. A difficult case, but thankfully it was one of his last. He looked at the clock on the office wall. Two hours until home time. Around him his fellow workers looked busy, faces turned to screens as the Friday afternoon rush got underway. He took a moment to look at their faces and make sure that he would remember this moment. He would miss them all, even the ones he disliked. “Lord Strange,” said a voice behind him. He turned…[/b]

Sometime in the middle of last night I fell asleep on the bed in my hotel room. The door wouldn’t open and being scared of heights I was not about to climb down from the window. I had laid myself on the bed to think about the whole conundrum, and unaccountably I fell asleep. When I woke up it was light outside - or so I thought. I sat up to look at the clock on the wall. Then the quality of the light that was filling the room registered with me for the first time. It was not the milky blue of dawn but a deep, throbbing green light. Its source was above me, on the ceiling. I looked up. There was a hole in the ceiling and the green light was behind the hole. I stood up on the bed, and put my arms through the hole, and pulled myself through…

[b]“We’re all going to miss you so much,” said Lord Strange’s manager, “that we got together and got you a little something. Here it is.” Lord Strange looked around. Somehow, everyone in the department who was not on the phone had sneaked up and arranged themselves in a wide semi-circle behind him, all of them grinning like loons. Dean put a bag into his hand that contained a bottle of vodka, a Zippo lighter, and 20 Benson & Hedges. There was also a Good Luck card that everyone had signed in varyingly humorous ways. Lord Strange inspected the Zippo lighter. He brought it close to his face, saw his reflection in the smooth metal, and then he flipped the lighter open and ignited the flame. It was a thing of wonder. In short, measured sentences (he had been expecting a stunt like this), Lord Strange thanked everyone, said that he would miss working with them all, and then he cracked a few so-so jokes that he had carefully prepared beforehand. Appreciative chuckles rolled around the assembled audience…[/b]

I was in a narrow, cramped space that was bright green. I felt my way forward with my hands until I reached a solid surface. Then I backed up, selected another direction, and went forward again. The bright green light dazzled me: I shut my eyes tight, and fumbled for an exit. After an age, I met nothing but empty space, and continued forward until the light against my eyelids was less bright. I opened my eyes. I was in a large cave the size of a cathedral. Behind me was the tunnel I had just emerged from; dotted randomly around all the other parts of the cave were similar-looking openings into tunnels. I bent, peered back into ‘my’ tunnel. A poky, dark space. No trace of a green light. If I went back there, would I find my way back to the hotel room? Perhaps I should try. I stared all around at the huge empty space and I shivered. What had happened? I decided to move forward, not back…

[b]“… and so,” Lord Strange was saying in conclusion, “the leaving drink will start tonight, in The Silver Cross, at 8 o’clock sharp. We’ll see where the night takes us. Haha, if our legs will take us anywhere.” Referring to drunken nights past, present, or future usually elicited wolfish grins from people, he had long since discovered, and the group, as one entity, grinned wolfishly…[/b]

I chose one of the tunnels at random and set off down it. After not too long I came to an apparent dead end. But it was a strange dead end. The tunnel ended in featureless brown rock, but set in front of the wall were the following items: an ordinary wooden chair, a bottle of water, a bowl of red apples, and a pickaxe…

[b]No one was going his way at the end of the shift, so Lord Strange caught the bus home. He sat on the seat at the back, next to a young mother struggling to quiet a crying baby, and he turned the Zippo lighter over and over in his hands. Despite his relatively advanced years, he had never owned such a lighter. He was genuinely touched…[/b]

After a quick meal of apples and water, I heaved the pickaxe up over my shoulder, and swung it at the wall. Sparks and chips of rock flew. I did it again and again until I was exhausted and there was a hole in the tunnel wall about the size of a small kitten. I paused, hands on knees, to catch my breath. This was not going to be easy, and it was certainly not going to be quick. Should I try one of the other tunnels? No, for I had a feeling what I would find at the end of them: a chair, apples, water, and a pickaxe. This was a fiendish trick that Lord Strange had pulled: did he really want to keep me away from his - my - our - leaving drink that much? And just where was this place, exactly? I set to work again. After a while the hole deepened and the nature of the rock changed: it was spongier, more pliable. Great chunks fell to the ground and I kicked them behind me. The going was good. Two thoughts struck me, one practical, the other eerie. The practical thought was that Lord Strange was probably setting out to go to the leaving drink about now, and I was too late to join it. The eerie thought was that I was presently tunnelling through Lord Strange’s mind. This thought wouldn’t leave me alone: if true (and stranger things have happened), then it was over, I had lost. But what could I do. I swung the pickaxe, straight and hard…

[b]Lord Strange checked his pockets: keys, money, cigarettes, and the new lighter. Then he went downstairs and out of the house. Only 7:20 now. Plenty of time. He strolled up to the bus stop, smiling slightly into the low evening sun…[/b]

When I went to the hotel room door this morning I couldn't open it. I pulled the handle down but the door wouldn't open. I heard a sound outside. It sounded like Phil breathing just on the other side of the door. Phil breathes like this: [i]hssss-aaaaah-hsssss-aa aaaah[/i]. It's because of the brand of cigarette that he smokes. They're bad for his chest. He should smoke the brand that I smoke, Benson & Hedges. Not the unfiltered French ones that his brother-in-law imports illegally for him. But does Phil listen? No, Phil does not listen. So there was Phil on the other side of my unopenable hotel room door, breathing in a laboured fashion. I wondered if he had collapsed against the door. But that wouldn't stop me opening it: the door opens inwards. If Phil was on the ground outside, slumped against my door, and I tried to open it, then all that would happen was that he'd roll partway into my room in a semi-comical way. In this scenario I would lean down, very tentatively, not really wanting to touch him or deal with the situation in any way, and I'd say: Phil? Phil? And he would either not move and just emit a trickle of drool from his mouth, or he'd spring up in rude health and say: Aha! Aha! But this was not the scenario. Phil was on the other side of my sealed door, but he had not collapsed out there. He sounded like he was listening. I listened to Phil listening whilst he, presumably, listened to me. But I wasn't making any sound on my side of the divide, so I wondered in what [i]way[/i] was he listening to me? It was clear to me that Phil was listening to the absence of noise, which as every rational person knows is the hardest thing of all to listen to, due to it not making a sound. Perhaps I should [i]make[/i] a noise, just so poor Phil would have something to really [i]listen[/i] to? I [i]harrumphed[/i] experimentally, and listened as Phil stopped breathing, no doubt startled by the sudden noise a few inches from his head, albeit on the other side of a mysteriously locked door. Then I heard quick footsteps scurrying away over the thin carpet outside. And no one has been back since. It's dark (they, whoever they are, have turned off the power to my room as well), and I'm hungry. All I had with me by way of sustenance was a bar of chocolate and two extra strong mints. I ate them for lunch, eight hours ago. How and why I have been locked in here is anybody's guess. I have just gone to the window for the 129th time during my incarceration (I know because I've been counting, meticulously, as is my quirk...). Should I open the window, shout for help, try and climb down? I shiver as I think about the climb down: there are no obvious ledges or handholds. So: shout for help? No. I couldn't do that. It'd be embarrassing. Real men do not ask for help: everyone knows and believes that. So here I am. Help.

For some reason, yesterday was a day off. I don’t mean that it was a day off work or anything remotely as agreeable as that. I mean that it was a [i]day off[/i]… When I went to bed to sleep it was Monday night, and I had spent the day following Lord Strange at work as documented below; when I woke up the ‘next’ morning it was this morning, Wednesday morning. I had been [i]off[/i] for a whole day. Tuesday had never existed.

Phil stopped me in the lobby on my way out of the hotel. “Where were you yesterday?” he demanded to know. I just looked at him and he showed me the day and date on his newspaper. “Look, it’s Wednesday now. Last time you showed your face in these parts it was [i]Monday[/i]. So. Where the hell were you?”

“Strange,” I said, taking the newspaper and looking at it up close. Today was Wednesday July 21st. There it was, in black and white. “I seem to have missed an entire day.”

“Yes,” said Phil, nodding, “an entire day, [i]kaput[/i]. But why?”

“Nobody knows,” I said.

“No,” agreed Phil.

“Pointless to complain about it,” I said.

“Indeed.”

“Best to just get on with things, make the best of them.”

“That is an admirable attitude,” concurred Phil.

“See you later,” I said.

“If tBlog permits it,” said Phil quietly, taking his newspaper from my hands and sitting down in his chair.

“What?” I said sharply.

“Nothing,” he said innocently. “Just ignore me.”

“I [i]will[/i],” I said with spiteful force, and marched outside. It was a beautiful warm sunny day and the birds were singing in the trees. I headed for my old workplace, where Lord Strange continued to try and drum into Neville, his replacement from next week when Lord Strange would be changing jobs, a modicum of knowledge about what Neville’s new responsibilities would be. I lurked in the corner, behind a coat stand that offered more than sufficient cover from prying eyes. I watched Lord Strange for a while and then I got bored and drifted away.

I went outside for a cigarette. The bike shed was a busy place and people came and smoked and then left without seeing me. Lord Strange’s newfound existence provides me with a kind of existential dampening-field, which is a fancy way of saying that I am invisible when Lord Strange is in the vicinity. I thought about the decisive act that I had planned to carry out, that would resolve the Lord Strange scenario once and for all. But I couldn’t decide whether or not to carry it through. I couldn’t decide whether or not to be decisive. Perhaps I am enjoying myself too much with things the way they are.

Before I left to go back to the hotel for an afternoon nap, I popped back into the building. Lord Strange was not at his desk. Neville sat there alone, rocking in his chair like a mental patient. I tracked Lord Strange to the other side of the building where he had just completed some kind of errand. On his way back, he passed near to where Fiona was standing chatting to another member of staff. Fiona will be Lord Strange’s manager from Monday onward, so he thought it best to catch her eye and say hello. But she didn’t - wouldn’t? - meet his eye, even though he was walking past only two or three yards away. Lord Strange was about to give up and stride on, but then Fiona waved at him. She lifted her arm and waved at Lord Strange. Reflexively, he lifted his own arm and waved back. Then Fiona lifted her arm again, and waved again, and Lord Strange realised that she was trying to swat away a fly that was buzzing around her head. Not waving at him at all. Had she noticed that he had waved at her when she hadn’t waved at him at all, when she was only swatting a fly? He didn’t know and he didn’t wait to find out. Lord Strange cringed, and headed back for his desk.

Amused, I made my way ‘home’, to the hotel. Phil stood guard in the lobby as usual. In passing, I heard him mutter: “You should get a new header, buddy. The blues don’t match.” I ignored him and continued upstairs, lugging a bottle of vodka. Lord Strange is on the late shift tomorrow and I can stay up late until the wee small hours. A good night in prospect.

I followed Lord Strange to work today and spent some time spying on his activities and behaviour. It wasn’t that difficult to trail him from the shadows: I have become adept at the arts of concealment, elusion, evasiveness. Whenever he turned his head toward the street corner or the bus seat where I was, I sensed it in advance and I simply [i]wasn’t there[/i]. In this way I found myself in a dark, unvisited corner of the office, out of sight, invisible. Yet I was close to Lord Strange: close enough to hear him breathe.

This is his last week in his current job. From next week he moves to the letter-writing side of things. Lord Strange is happy about this. Today was the first day that his replacement, a melancholy-faced totally bald man called Neville, had started to sit with him to learn about the job. Neville is a direct promotee from the call centre and it’s all new to him. The notion that he will be able to make outgoing calls to customers is particularly hard to grasp. Lord Strange is patient and explanatory, illustrating points with concrete examples, and introducing Neville to all his contacts around the company. “The strength of the rapport that you have with these people,” said Lord Strange to Neville, “will determine how easy or hard your job will be.” Lord Strange is being vain: he wants Neville to be impressed, if not awed. Neville stares back at Lord Strange with the kind of blank, nodding expression that says [i]I’m not listening to a word you’re saying[/i]. From my hiding place I note Lord Strange’s mounting exasperation and I smile. I smile.

Lord Strange had lunch with three of the department’s dolly birds: Anna, Vanessa, and Tina. Leggy Amazons with wild tales of weekend exploits, at which Lord Strange [i]tuts[/i] ironically. He works his way through a beef pie that is indescribably terrible. Meanwhile I, sitting at the next table and hidden behind a newspaper with a rectangular spy-hole cut out of it, chew on a delicious spaghetti bolognese and cackle to myself with satisfaction.

Lord Strange gets up to go outside for a cigarette, and the three Amazons chorus a goodbye. They’ll be at his leaving drink on Friday. I’ll be there as well. Soon it will be time for me to leave Lord Strange for today. I am confident that I have stolen the impetus from him in our little interpersonal war. I have a decisive act planned for later in the week: an act that may be, well, [i]decisive[/i]…

After lunch he and Neville are reunited. Neville tells him a long and inexplicable anecdote about how he’d made his lunch sandwiches last night so that he wouldn’t have to make them this morning. “Great,” says Lord Strange in desperation as the anecdote nudges the ten-minutes-long mark. Neville shuts up and listens to Lord Strange droning on about how to break all the company rules in order to get a customer what they want as quickly as they want it. Neville takes out an apple and starts to munch on it. Little droplets of apple-spray spurt out every time Neville takes a bite. They land softly on Lord Strange’s cheek, but he doesn’t say anything. Tomorrow he might take Neville out the back and kick his head in, but today he doesn’t say anything. I smile.

Trees. There is a tree just to the right of my hotel room window. I have spent many hours at this hotel room window, shirt sleeves rolled up, smoking cigarettes. Many hours just looking down upon the street and contemplating things: life, the universe, trees. It makes me feel like the anti-hero of some French novel about existentialism and coffee and attractive sultry women named [i]Veronique[/i] who, despite one’s surly demeanour and anti-social ways, are unaccountably [i]mad for it…[/i]

I was there at the window just now, this afternoon, and for the hundredth or two-hundredth time my gaze swept left to right, right to left, along the street scene below. With it being Sunday there was little traffic in the road, few people strolling the pavements. I followed the progress of selected random pedestrians as they passed through my life and then out of it again. Here was a fat male jogger in a blue tracksuit, his red face gasping for air; two children with an ice cream each, walking along slowly, dawdling in the way that children concentrating upon their ice creams usually do; an entire family, mother, father, innumerable straggling kids, out for a Sunday excursion to who knows where - the park on the other side of the hotel maybe, where they’d had that festival thingum yesterday. (And where the Jamaican steel band had played all day and for most of the night. The strains of [i]All You Need Is Love[/i] were reverberating around the area at 2 a.m. It didn’t bother me as I am nocturnal at weekends. It bothered Phil, though, who headed over there with an AK-47, or at least I bet he wishes he could have done.)

Presently the street cleared and my attention returned to the tree. I never know the names of trees: perhaps it is an elm. Or perhaps in the world of trees its name is Graham. Who knows what kind of society trees have?

It is tall, as tall as my second floor hotel room window, and its leaves are a brilliant green in direct sunlight, and a dull heavy green when in the shade. I thought about several things to do with trees. Of course, as ever, I reflected that the tree would probably outlive me, that in 60 years it’ll still be here, sprouting its leaves in April and shedding them in October. I had some stereotypical pseudo-profound thoughts about that one. (Including this one, which I owe to the Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges: that the supposed certainty of your eventual death is solely based on hearsay, and everyone runs the [i]risk[/i] of being the first immortal…)

Then I thought about how I have never climbed a tree in all my life, and nor have I ever seen a real actual treehouse, much less been in one. I thought that the whole business of tree-climbing and treehouses in general are a popular fiction, beloved of story and TV show alike. Then I stopped thinking about that.

I had glimpsed Z, that mysterious, traitorous woman, lurking in a doorway further down the street. She ducked back when she noticed me noticing her, and then she emerged and walked away quickly, without looking back. I raced downstairs and out into the street, and sprinted after her, but she had got away. I walked back, panting heavily after my exertion. I looked up: there at the window of a house was a man in shirtsleeves, smoking a cigarette and watching the street. He looked back at me for a few moments. From his perspective I was just a random sight on a tranquil Sunday afternoon.

When I got back to the hotel I was covered with mud and grass stains acquired during my long escape over the fields. Lord Strange’s abandoned warehouse had been in the middle of nowhere. I walked for hours along an unlit road without seeing any traffic. It became dark, and then light. Sometime in the late morning I reached the city, and headed tiredly back for what I called ‘home’.

Phil was on duty behind his desk in the lobby. On my way up I paused. “The woman in room 102,” I said listlessly.

“Checked out last night,” said Phil without looking up from his tabloid.

I nodded, and went upstairs to my room. I slept all day and all night. When I came down the next morning the hotel lobby was swarming with children. “What’s happening?” I shouted to Phil. He shook his head. The noise, the hubbub, the [i]tumult[/i], was too much for him as well, I could see. “Some kind of carnival outside,” he shouted back. “I don’t know.”

I stepped outside. In the park opposite the hotel there was indeed some kind of festive occasion underway. Triangular union flags strung on lines from tree to tree fluttered red-white-and-bluely in the strong breeze. Several stalls were in position near the park gates, selling cakes, biscuits, honey, that kind of thing. Painted clowns patrolled the borders, scaring and entertaining the young in equal measure. A Jamaican steel band had set up on a grassy knoll: they were playing the theme from [i]Hawaii Five-O[/i].

I went back inside. “What’s it all in aid of? What’s it for?” I asked Phil.

“I have no idea,” he said helplessly, spreading his hands.

“I need a drink,” I said.

“Step this way,” said Phil, and he gestured me into a back room. I followed, and he closed the door behind us, muting the sounds of the festival. “The hotel bar,“ explained Phil. It was murky here despite the sunlight blazing through the bay windows. Thick films of dust covered every surface. Some of the furniture was overturned and broken. As if a fight had taken place the last time this room was in use, and no one had bothered to come back since. There was a long counter at the far end, and stools arrayed in front of the counter. Phil moved behind the counter and waited for me to take a stool. He waited with both arms braced on the counter surface, and a peculiar smile.

“What’ll it be, sir?” he said.

I ordered a large vodka and coke. “And have one yourself, Phil,” I said, suddenly warming to the string-vested oddball. Phil’s the sort of bloke who reads books about special forces in Iraq, but live and let live I say. He nodded and poured himself a large whisky, neat, which he placed on the counter next to my vodka and coke. He stood behind the counter and cocked an eyebrow.

“So, what’s on your mind, sir,” said Phil.

“The internet,” I said. “More specifically, the conduct on the internet of certain types of people. Whenever I play multiplayer games on the internet, I’m struck by - ”

“Whoah,” said Phil, showing me his palms. “Why are you talking about the internet? You’ve been here nearly a week now and you haven’t been near a computer as far as I can tell. There isn’t any internet access from this hotel, and there are no public libraries or internet cafes in the neighbourhood. So just what the hell are you talking about?”

It was the longest and rudest thing he had ever said to me. I ignored him and went on:

“For more than 20 years I have been an enthusiastic player of computer games. Recent years have seen a major innovation: the advent of the worldwide web, and with it the ability to play real people in real time at any game of one’s choosing. In the past couple of months I have partaken of the internet multiplayer phenomenon and I am sad to report that it is distinctly [i]lacking[/i]. Anybody wondering why computer gaming is still widely perceived as the pastime of geeks, weirdoes, social misfits, sexual inadequates and the like, need look no further than the average multiplayer chat lobby for ample proof of their thesis. Nine out of ten people in there are morons. Pure and simple: they are morons. [i]SUK MY KOK! UR MUM IS GAY![/i] And these are the more edifying contributions. The common perception that the majority of computer gamers are below the age of 16 or so is not correct and therefore cannot be offered as an excuse for their behaviour. Reliable market research shows that the average age of the computer gamer is approximately 25 years. So youth, with all of its attention-seeking immaturity, is not the reason for the objectionable conduct of mutiplayers. Let me say, Phil, that I am not offended by any so-called bad language or any of the actual comments that the multiplayers come out with. For myself, I have been known to fling the odd [i]fuck[/i] and [i]cunt[/i] or two into a normal everyday conversation like this one in a bizarre hotel whilst hiding out from my perfidious alter ego, Lord Strange. No: what I have against the multiplayer morons, why their behaviour is moronic, is that it seems to be the sole reason they play the games. They do not play for the game’s sake, they play for the opportunity to type into chat [i]HAHA YOU SUCK YOU COCKSUCKER[/i]. And so I fear that one of the potentially greatest pastimes of the modern hyper-technological age will forever be mired in its participants’ inability to just get on and [i]play the bloody games[/i]…”

Phil was nodding vigorously. “I agree, Socrates.”

I finished my drink, thanked Phil for his time, and left the bar. Outside in the park the steel band was playing [i]Rock Around The Clock[/i]. The melody followed me all the way back to my room, and was cut off when I shut the door.

Lord Strange was on the late shift at work and so he spent the morning asleep. While he was asleep he dreamed about his brother-in-law, Jeff, who had died a few months ago. They were never particularly close (in fact there was nobody with whom Lord Strange was particularly close) but Jeff’s death had caused certain kinds of ripples that were still being felt. One of these ripples was a heightened awareness of the poignancy and fleetingness of life. In Lord Strange’s dream he met Jeff in a room at a house party. Lord Strange knew that Jeff was dead and that therefore this must be a dream. As he looked at Jeff, thinking this, the dream-Jeff, too, suddenly remembered that he was dead. A look of utter sadness came to Jeff’s face, and then his eyes rolled upward in his head, showing only the whites for one long, chilling moment, before he keeled over. Lord Strange stood there in the dream, in the dream house, at the dream party, and looked at Jeff laid out there on the floor.

A clammy, cloudy day. Lord Strange arrived at work following yesterday's unexplained absence to a chorus of friendly Hellos and How are yous. “What happened to your hand?” some people asked. To which he would only reply: “I injured it.” There was an impressive amount of bandaging on Lord Strange’s right hand. “Will that be a problem for you on the keyboard?” his manager asked him. Lord Strange just held up the hand and energetically wiggled his fingers in his manager’s face. He was in no mood for small talk today.

There was a general office meeting in which several ‘issues’ were given an airing. The managers looked vexed and pursed their lips and frowned at the floor, before giving in on most fronts. Yes, there would be free salt and pepper provided for people working on late shifts to use on their packed lunches. No, it was forbidden to smoke cigarettes outside reception at home time. That kind of thing.

“Is there anything else?” someone asked near the end.

Lord Strange couldn’t stop himself. “Yes,” he said loudly. All heads turned in his direction. “I want a golden elephant. And my own private hammock.”

Silence. People just looked at him. Some people muttered to their neighbours.

He sighed. Whenever he made jokes like that, people never understood. Lord Strange should know better by now.

At 8:00 p.m. the day was over. One of the girls gave him a lift home. He walked up the path, opened the front door with his key, and went inside.

“When I was a young boy,” said Lord Strange, “possibly the most important event of my life took place. It was my discovery of a well-known story about the ancient philosopher Lao Tzu. Are you listening to me? Wake up and listen to me. Here is the story: Lao Tzu fell asleep one day and dreamed that he was a butterfly. When he woke up he wasn’t sure if he was a man who had dreamed that he was a butterfly, or if he was a butterfly who was dreaming that he was a man. Do you see what Lao Tzu was getting at?”

The drug had worn off almost completely. I didn’t know where I was - indoors somewhere. My head was slightly fuzzy and my wrists hurt where they were tied together behind my back. But otherwise I felt fine. I kept my eyes closed and listened to Lord Strange’s voice. He sounded cheerful and complacent, a man totally assured of his victory. But perhaps I was stronger than he suspected.

“Chinese philosophy, broadly speaking of course, is a systematic compromise with the alleged unknowableness of one’s true identity. Lao Tzu was able to live with the uncertainty of not knowing what he was,” said Lord Strange, his voice altering in pitch now, becoming more wistful. “As far as he was concerned it didn’t [i]matter[/i] whether or not he was a man or a butterfly, or which was dreaming which. The old, dead, simple fool…”

I opened my eyes. I was sitting on a chair beneath a naked light bulb in the middle of a large, echoing, dark place.

“It’s an abandoned warehouse,” said Lord Strange, snickering softly. “Yes, they really do exist outside the confines of [i]Lethal Weapon[/i] movies. I thought it would appeal to your indefatigable sense of pop culture, and to your irony of course. Mustn’t forget your fucking [i]irony[/i] now, eh?”

I was starting to dislike the escalated edge of malevolence in his tone. He had been pacing in a circle around me, like an interrogating Nazi officer in an old war movie. Then he paused somewhere behind me. [i]What are you going to do[/i]? I wanted to say but my voice wouldn’t work. I could hardly breathe as it was.

“If Lao Tzu were here now,” said Lord Strange, appearing at my side and bending low to mutter into my ear, “he would approve, I think, of what I am about to do. And who’s to say that Lao Tzu [i]isn’t[/i] here? After all,” and he stood now in front of me, “it could be said that I am a man who once dreamed that I was Lao Tzu, who in turn once dreamed that he was a butterfly. For you, though, there will be no more dreaming…”

In his hand Lord Strange held a syringe and a small brown glass bottle. He inserted the point of the needle into the bottle and drew some of the liquid into the syringe. I began to tremble, against my will. The body has its own agenda in the vicinity of its death. My body knew what was coming before my mind did.

“I should really be wearing black gloves to do this,” said Lord Strange conversationally, “to complete the villainous effect, of course. But I couldn’t find any in time. Oh well. Raise your head please.”

I lifted my eyes to look at the syringe. Lord Strange held my head with one - oddly cool - hand, and brought the tip of the needle to my jugular vein.

“Soon it will all be over. One of us had to go, after all. You knew what had to happen, and so did I, and I’m the one with the gumption, the [i]balls[/i], to do it. Hold steady now. Good lad.”

I was immobile as I felt the needle touch - but not pierce - my neck.

“[i]We are such things as dreams are made on, and our little lives are rounded with a sleep[/i],” said Lord Strange, quoting who? It was too late to remember anything now. Too late.

I leaned my head forward, clamped the back of Lord Strange’s hand between my teeth, and bit down as hard as I could. The syringe dropped to the concrete floor. I heard the tinkle of glass breaking. And then, a moment later, Lord Strange screamed.

and then late in the evening it was around 9:00 I went out of the room and turned left and walked up two flights of stairs and turned left again at the top and walked to the end of a corridor where I came to room 102 a peeling brown door that I knocked upon twice like this bang-bang bang-bang and after a moment or a few moments I’m not sure now the door opened and a woman said Yes and I asked Are you ‘Z’ while holding up the note for her to read and she looked at it for a while a few minutes actually so long that I began to feel embarrassed standing there waiting for a reaction then she said Yes come in so I went in half expecting to see Lord Strange there on the bed and if so I’d have frozen solid just like before and no sound would’ve come from my throat but it was okay Lord Strange was not there it was a room just like mine but with a view south across the park behind the hotel instead of west across the noisy main road that thunders with container trucks all night long keeping me awake but I digress the woman ‘Z’ was a tall lithe woman with a mane of jetblack hair with a dyed-red livid streak running through it and she patted the bed and said Sit down we’ve got a lot to discuss and I said I’d prefer to stand thank-you and she said Be like that then and she laughed and poured herself a drink from a bottle of wine I don’t drink wine I said and she said That’s all there is and I shrugged and so we got down to business with her saying I know Lord Strange of old and I said That’s not possible and she said Anything’s possible and I snorted a laugh at this cliché but before I could say anything she took from a bag a photograph of herself with Lord Strange in Paris I think she said it was or Rome or Prague or somewhere like that anyway I couldn’t take it all in I just stared at the photo of Z and Lord Strange standing smiling in a sunlit town square one random Wednesday five years ago I think she said it was and they both looked very happy We were a couple said Z and I couldn’t think what to say she put into my hand a large glass of wine which I never drink but I drank it all down in two gulps three gulps four gulps spilling some down my chin and I said Then logically we must know each other but Z stared at me and said I have never seen you before in my life and I thought this wasn’t right and said So how did you know to leave me that note because I assume you must’ve seen me entering the hotel and she said I’ll explain everything when you wake up and I was even more puzzled and I said Wake up what do you mean I’m not tired and then the room blurred and looking down at the wine glass I saw a trace of powder at the bottom and then I said You drugged it I don’t believe it and Z was rubbing my forehead with her soft hands as I lay there unable to move and from the borders of my vision grew an all-enveloping blackness and

Yesterday I was sitting on the bed watching TV in the hotel room. The 6 o’clock news was on and, as ever, I was only watching the news in order to find out what most people think is ‘happening’. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say. In reality, of course, strange or otherwise, nothing at all is happening [i]except for your own life[/i].

My mobile phone rang and I switched off the TV before answering. This was an odd thing to do, to switch off the TV before answering my phone: it’s the kind of thing that characters in films do, not real people. I thought to myself: I’ll have a think later on about whether I’m a real person or a character in a film. The phone was still ringing. There was no time to think.

“Hello?” I said into my phone.

“It’s me,” said Lord Strange.

“If it’s you,” I said, “how is it that I can speak?” My voice had been paralysed on Saturday night, when Lord Strange first appeared.

“Because I’m not physically near you right now,” said Lord Strange. “Therefore the physical inhibitor-effect that my supernoumenal mass inflicts upon you is dampened by the lack of a negative feedback loop on the supra-existential plane. Got it?”

“What?”

“You’ll work it out,” said Lord Strange. “Now, listen. You changed all the bank account details. I need money. I know where you are. Don’t make me come round there.”

I swallowed. Of course, he would need cash if he was going to carry on with my life without anyone knowing the difference between us. I said: “First thing in the morning I’ll call the bank again…”

“You do that. The working life ain’t cheap. Bus fares, meals, bills, miscellaneous outgoings… God, that it [i]costs money[/i] to [i]earn money[/i]…”

“It’s a con,” I agreed.

“It is,” he said. “I’ve got to go now. I’m heading into town for a drink with Rick, my oldest friend in the world. Suggestions?”

I couldn’t speak.

Lord Strange chuckled. “Thought not. Good night to you. We’ll speak again soon.” And he hung up.

I lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. What was I going to do? This state of things could not continue indefinitely. I could not go on living this secret life for very long. At some point, there would have to be a decisive confrontation between my arch-nemesis and myself. A showdown, from which only one of us would emerge in reality. But I was tired - I was suffering with a cold, and I was tired. I picked up my meteorite from the bed table and absently turned it in my fingers. I wondered what Phil was doing right now. Would he be up for a drink at the pub, a game of pool? Probably not: he was the hotel doorman, after all. Not that this hotel appeared to have any, or many, guests.

I turned on my side and found myself looking at the note that somebody calling themselves ‘[i]Z[/i]’ had left for me that morning. I was to go to room 102 at 9:00 this evening, it said. We had a common adversary, ‘[i]Z[/i]’ and I, it said. Intriguing.

I opened a packet of sandwiches and turned on the TV. A couple of hours to go.

I was awoken this morning by the following unusual method.

Several million miles from Earth, a thousand or more years ago, two lumps of space rock - asteroids - collided and burst apart, scattering fragments of debris in all directions. One of those fragments, a chunk of asteroid no larger than, oh, a [i]marble[/i] or something, was ejected on a millenia-long course that brought it, this morning, into Earth’s atmosphere. As the globe turned, the line between night and day turned with it, illuminating cities and entire continents as it cast others into shade. The asteroid particle raced with this line - the [i]terminator[/i], I believe it’s called - as it headed for my neck o’ the woods. Shortly after 6 a.m. the lump of asteroid crashed through the roof of the cheap hotel where I have been staying ever since Lord Strange cast me out of my real life. It made a neat circular hole in the roof and another one in the ceiling of my room. Then it impacted with the soft mattress where I lay. I opened my eyes. Several millimetres from my eyeball was a softly sizzling, black chunk of asteroid, about the size of a marble, or something.

I took it down to Phil. “Does this happen much here?” I asked him. He took the [i]meteorite[/i] (I have just recalled that ‘meteorite’ is the proper name for chunks of space rock that fall to Earth) from me, and held it in his fingers for a few seconds before dropping it.

“Ow,” he said, sucking his fingers. “Hot…”

I made a generic sound of impatience - [i]tsk[/i] - and stooped down. The meteorite wasn’t hot: it was cool to the touch, like a marble again, as I keep saying. “Do I get to keep it, then?” I said. Phil didn’t answer me. He was still sucking his fingers with a wounded expression on his face. Tears welled up in his eyes. I was about to ask him what he was doing up at this time of the morning. But I wanted to get back to my room and think about the meteorite.

I turned to leave, but stopped:

“Message for you,” said Phil.

With his uninjured hand he opened a drawer beneath what passed for his ‘desk’ (an ordinary kitchen table with an office chair, and a portable set of drawers-on-wheels tucked in underneath). He took out a white envelope and handed it to me. I opened it there and then, awkwardly cupping the meteorite in my fist. Inside, there was a handwritten note on plain paper:

[i]I too am a guest here. I must meet with you. We have a common adversary. Come to room 102 tonight at 9. Z. [/i]

“Who is ‘Z’?” I demanded of Phil, but he shook his head and said something about ‘customer confidentiality’, so I gave up and went back to my room. I folded the note and put it on the table. I would think about that later.

I have a slight head cold today. It started on Saturday night, the same night that Lord Strange materialised from the nethersphere, and assumed sole responsibility, it seems, for my so-called real life. No work today for me, then. Let [i]him[/i] go. Let [i]him[/i] sit in front of the radiation-pumping VDU for 8 hours. Let [i]him[/i] munch on the slops served up at the alleged staff restaurant. Let [i]him[/i] be the only one to laugh at his own feeble jokes for a change.

I climbed back into bed. There was no need for me even to call into work sick. It was 6:30 a.m., and Lord Strange would already be on his way. I set my mobile phone alarm for 12:00, rolled over, placed the meteorite chunk on top of the folded-up note on the bed table, and went back to sleep.

Picture the scene: a rainy, windswept bikeshed outside an office building. This is where I used to go and smoke while I was at work. I say 'used to' because Lord Strange now goes to work in my place. I saw him there today. I had got up early in my hotel room and dressed for work, because I didn't know whether Lord Strange would go to work or not, and if he didn't go to work then it would mean that his invasion of my life is not all-pervading, and I still have some of my life left. So I was in the unusual position (for me) of hoping that I would be able to go to work today.

I strolled through the hotel 'lobby' - a shabby space about the size of a small car - without seeing Phil, the surly doorman who is now my friend and servant. I heard the tinny sound of a television playing at high volume somewhere. Logic would dictate that Phil's room was nearby, and therefore the sound was Phil's TV, and Phil was watching it, but who knows? What has logic got to do with anything now?

The hotel is not too far from my old home, so the bus I caught into town was the same bus. I had already got on the bus when I realised that I had run the risk of encountering Lord Strange. My stomach lurched as I rapidly looked at all the other passengers. But I didnt see my strange twin, my sinister [i]alter ego[/i], among them. I don't know how I know this, but I know that if I see Lord Strange again - or to be more precise, if he sees [i]me[/i] - then one of us may not survive the encounter. I may be wrong about this. I hope so.

I took my seat, and got out my mobile phone, and called my bank. I changed all my security passwords and access numbers for my account. Lord Strange would not be laying hands on my cash.

Time passed - I forget how time passed. I must have got onto the company minibus and travelled in it to the office complex just outside the city boundary. How else would I have got to work?

Sometime in the mid-afternoon, I find myself circling cautiously around the perimeter of the vehicle yard. This is where the company engineers park their trucks in between jobs. I was using the trucks as cover, concealing myself from all those who were standing at the bike sheds, smoking. I edged along the side of a huge digger, in the shadows, and peered around the corner.

There they all were.

I could see Lord Strange among them, smoking, and talking with my old colleagues, and friends, as if nothing was different. Lord Strange looked just like me: it was incredible. His clothes, his hair, his hunched posture, his gauche demeanour - all identical to mine. I was close enough to overhear the conversation.

"How was your weekend?" asked Sonia. She was [i]this close[/i] to Lord Strange, close enough for him to smell her perfume and see the unripened zits on her forehead. He likes Sonia, not in [i]that[/i] way, but as a friend. He thinks that if (when) he leaves this company, Sonia is one of the few with whom he would strive to keep in touch.

Lord Strange shook his head. "Quiet," he said. "I was in bed all Saturday with a fever. You know, one of those fevers that makes you dream strange dreams." He shook his head again. "Gave me the horrors, it did."

Alison was nearby and she butted in with: "Whisky's good for that kind of fever. Knocks you right out."

"Oh, no," said Sonia. "Brandy! Gotta be brandy..."

And Lord Strange stood there, smiling a little foolishly, at the epicentre of a raging debate about the best alcoholic drink to nurse a fever with. I was enraged. The [i]liar[/i]... Quiet weekend, was it? Slight fever, hey?

I should have rushed out from my hiding place and struck down Lord Strange there and then. But I didn't. It would have taken too much to explain things to people. There would be questions. I couldn't handle the scrutiny. The attention.

I slipped away quietly. I backed up stealthily, ninja-style, on tiptoe. As I turned, I locked eyes with one of the company engineers, who was sitting in the cabin of his truck, stolidly munching his sandwiches from a red plastic box. I stopped still and waited. He must see me. He must. But although his eyes were pointing directly at me, he didn't react. He hardly moved, except to raise his arm to his mouth, wherein he shoved an ever-diminishing slab of bread and meat. I moved again, after a minute. Behind me the door opened and closed, and the voices of Lord Strange and his colleagues and friends died away. It was just as if I was invisible, as if I wasn't there.

The slight feeling of queasiness, of fever, that I mentioned before is developing into a cold. My throat is dry and sore and my head feels fuzzy. I assume - I [i]hope[/i] - that Lord Strange also has this incipient ailment. Certainly he has everything else of mine at the moment. In which case I am faced with a twin quandary: not just the question of [i]which[/i] of us is going to go to work tomorrow, but even [i]if[/i] either of us is going to work tomorrow. Tomorrow being Monday the 12th of July.

The novelty of my hotel room has worn off and I miss my home, I miss my own room, and my familiar bed, more powerfully than I ever would have thought possible. I miss my books on their shelves at the foot of my bed. I miss the way I could walk into the kitchen any time I wanted to and make a cup of tea or something to eat.

Here, I have to phone downstairs and ask Phil to bring me things. The surly fellow in the white string vest: he’s Phil. I found this out today. After last night’s goings-on I didn’t get to sleep until after 6 a.m., when the curtained window was already a bright blue square. After I got up I called down on the phone and the same voice as last night answered. “What?” it said. I asked if I could have some breakfast. There was a silence. “What do you think this is,” said the voice, “a hotel?” [i]Click[/i].

With Lord Strange as my adversary I was in no mood to put up with such petty indignities, and pulled on my clothes and trotted downstairs. The corridors of this hotel are as cheap and dank as its rooms. On my way I saw no one and was seen by no one. Perhaps I am the hotel’s only guest: I don’t know yet.

At the front counter, I confronted the doorman. Still wearing his trademark white string vest, he looked up from his newspaper. I’ll describe him some other time. “What?” he said again in the same voice. Taking a deep breath, I made a few choice points about customer service and my expectations of him and of this establishment. He listened with an ironic cast to his brow, nodding every so often as if in appreciation of the rightness of my argument. When I had finished he stuck out his hand and said: “We have an understanding, you and I. I’m Phil.”

I grasped his hand, shook it, and told him my name in return. Then I went back to the room. Twenty minutes later, there was a knock. Phil entered bearing a tray containing a large plate of bacon, sausage, beans, mushrooms, tomatoes, and toast. There was tea and orange juice as well.

“A meal fit for a thing,” said Phil, smacking his lips with gusto. He picked up one of my slices of toast, dipped it in the beans, and ate the newly-glistening corner. “Mmm,” he said and rubbed a circle on his stomach.

“You can go now, Phil,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Anything you need,” he said, “just call.”

I ate my breakfast and wondered what Lord Strange was doing now. I still had my mobile phone. I dialled my old home number and let it ring until the sound cut out and the recorded message asked me to try again later.

So - will he go into work tomorrow, instead of me? I sit here now, at 10:30 p.m., with my throat itching uncomfortably, and I wonder. My belief is that he will. Lord Strange will go into work tomorrow instead of me. This should be good news: it means I don’t have to go to work. I should be happy for myself. But I am not.

I have decided what to do. Sore throat or no sore throat, in the morning I will rise, wash, dress, and travel to work. No doubt I shall encounter Lord Strange along the way. Well so be it. Let it come down.

This is not going to be short, but you must read on, all the way to the end, and then come back tomorrow for more. I swear that all of what follows is the truth. Something completely unexpected and inexplicable - something [i]strange[/i] - has happened. I am sitting in a cheap hotel room at 5 o’clock in the morning, writing this in the old-fashioned way, using a pen on paper. From now on things are not going to be as they were.

It started yesterday evening. Saturdays for me recently have been days of the week just like any other: I watch some TV, I mess about on the PC, I read a book, I yawn, I go to bed. More or less. Last night, at around 9 o’clock, I was sitting in the armchair downstairs in my house. I forget what television show was on. Perhaps it was one of those worthy medical dramas where the patients all end up in protracted counselling sessions with the staff. You must know the kind of thing I mean: the divorced father who belatedly shows up at the school play, just as a runaway fuel tanker heads toward the place, pitching father and child into the arms of the waiting celebrity doctors and nurses. Hmm. I don’t like such shows and I have no idea what I was doing watching one last night. All day I had felt a little feverish, a little queasy, a little [i]off[/i]. I think I was waiting to feel better, so that I could go upstairs and sit in front of my PC screen without feeling worse. Does that make sense? I think so, but I could be wrong. Not much makes sense to me anymore. I have lost my [i]sense[/i]-sense.

I had just poured myself a Guinness and was waiting for it to settle in the pint glass, when I became aware of a noise outside in the garden. It was a loud scraping noise, similar to the sound that a plank of wood makes when it is dragged across concrete. I stood up and went to the window. It was still light enough outside for me to see the cause. Not a reckless burglar trying to break into the garden shed, as I had thought it might be. Earlier yesterday, there had been half-hearted efforts to clear the garden of some nettles that had sprung up in random clusters, here and there. The uprooted nettles were transported, in bundles, to a rubbish skip in the road behind the garden. The sound that I’d heard was the garden gate, down at the bottom of the path, swinging to and fro in the wind. Someone had left the gate unlatched. I smiled to myself. So that’s exactly what the sound was, then: a plank of wood (the gate’s bottom plank), scraping back and forth on the concrete of the pavement. What a lucky guess. I went outside to close the gate.

The evening air was cool and the wind was brisk. The sky was dark blue with low heavy clouds. It would rain later that night, the kind of tropical-style rain that you would go to a window to look at, and feel glad that you were not out in.

I pushed the gate to and latched it securely. Then I turned around to walk back inside. On my way I noted the flickering glow of the television behind the window of the room I had just left. Some odd impulse made me angle over to the window, and I stood there looking inside. Through the vertical slats of the blinds I saw the TV, playing out its mute drama, and I panned my gaze across the rest of the room, past the small table with the untouched Guinness on it, toward the armchair where I had been sitting. In the few moments before the area swung into vision, I half-expected to see myself sitting in the armchair.

I was looking at the armchair. There was Lord Strange, sitting in my armchair, watching the TV medical drama with a pursed, sour expression on his face.

I froze. I couldn’t move or speak or look away. The wind tugged at my t-shirt and I shivered as though someone had just walked over my grave. As I watched, Lord Strange leaned forward in my - in his - chair and picked up the pint of Guinness, which he raised to his mouth and drank from with obvious relish. As he replaced the glass on the table he absently wiped his lips with the back of a forefinger, just as I would have done. Then he took his - my - cigarettes out of my - his - jeans pocket, and lit one up. Numbly, I reached for my own jeans pocket, and patted the rectangular shape there. I took out my cigarettes and looked at the box. What was happening?

The initial shock was past. Treading very softly, I went back inside the kitchen, and closed the door behind me very carefully, without making a sound. I peeped around the corner into the room where Lord Strange sat watching TV with the back of his head to me. He picked up the Guinness again and drank another couple of mouthfuls. The glass was half-empty now. Oddly, I could not take my eyes from the slight bald spot on the crown of his skull. I rubbed the top of my own head, felt my chilled fingers touch the bare skin, and I trembled.

I had become insane. Finally, after so many years of teetering on the brink, it had happened. Nothing from now on would be easy or plain or pleasant.

“I know you’re there.” said Lord Strange without turning. “And, no, you’re not insane.” He laughed. “Or if you are insane, then so am I.”

His voice was my voice, but it sounded so different, lighter in pitch and less [i]booming[/i] than I had always fancied it to be. It was like hearing your own voice on a tape recording: without your own skull bones vibrating in sympathy with it, somehow it just doesn’t sound like your voice.

“You’d better come in and sit down,” said Lord Strange. “We’ve got some things to discuss.

I sat opposite him in the twin of his armchair. I couldn’t look him full in the face, but nor could I [i]not[/i] look at him. It was like looking into a mirror, and it was [i]not[/i] like looking into a mirror. When you look into a mirror, you see your image in reverse on the vertical plane, and so you take that image to be your true appearance, until you see a photograph of yourself in which the lines and contours of your face are subtly different from the ones you’re used to seeing, and you feel that you don’t really know yourself at all.

Lord Strange was smiling at me. He - I - really need(s) to see a dentist, I thought.

“Well? Used to the idea yet?” he said.

I couldn’t speak. I wanted to speak - in fact, I wanted to seize him, this impostor, this [i]usurper[/i] of my physical form and identity. I wanted to grab him by both arms, by the neck if need be, and manhandle him to the front door, and eject him from my life. More, I wanted to [i]kill[/i] him.

“It’s over for you,” said Lord Strange with a simple confidence that I had never possessed. “If you do not get out of this house and out of your former life within, oh,” - and he peered at the clock on the wall - “fifteen minutes, you will deeply, deeply regret it. I promise you this.”

He stood up and stared down at me impassively. Lord Strange was a man of medium height, who looked about 30 years old but was probably a few years older. His face was broad and he was not taking his blue eyes from mine. I would have to leave - clearly there was no choice. Lord Strange had irrupted into existence from whatever niche of unreality he had formerly occupied. My presence here was awkward and superfluous and I had to leave, right now. Lord Strange had decreed it.

I wanted to ask some questions. For example, I wanted to know what would happen on Monday. Would he go to work, or I? Was I allowed to carry on seeing friends and family, or would he take sole responsibility from now on? And perhaps most importantly: what did all of this [i]mean[/i]?

I opened my mouth but no words would come out.

“You cannot speak in my presence,” said Lord Strange, “because it is [i]I[/i] who am real, and [i]you[/i] who are the figment. You are a bad piece of fiction, an illusion that I can do without. Now get moving.”

And as though he had unfrozen me with his command, I found myself able to move, and bounded up the stairs two at a time, to my old bedroom. Lord Strange followed me close behind. As he looked on, I stuffed a bag with some clothes, a toothbrush, a spare pair of shoes, and then I paused in front of the bookshelf.

“They’re mine,” said Lord Strange.

I looked at the PC.

“Mine,” he said.

I went to pick up my wallet, but paused and looked at him. He just shook his head, with his eyes half-closed. I thought for a few moments, then I picked up the wallet anyway and put it in my pocket. I would not starve or go without shelter out there, not for anyone, or anything. Lord Strange’s mouth tightened and he took a step towards me, but I stood firm. He stopped, regarded me thoughtfully for a second, then stepped back, relaxing. He grinned, in the way that women used to tell me was appealing… “Ha ha,” he said - not laughing, but actually saying the words [i]Ha ha[/i].

He walked me to the door of my house. I was being ejected from my own life by a simulacrum of myself who was telling me that [i]I[/i] was the simulacrum. My head was spinning.

At the door he placed a hand on my shoulder and said “Have fun out there”, and then he slammed the door shut behind me. I hailed a taxi that had chosen that exact moment to swing into the street. “Take me to the nearest cheap hotel,” I said to the driver, my voice magically active once more. As the taxi bore me away I looked back at the house. There was Lord Strange at the window of my bedroom. He raised his arm and waved farewell.

[i]This is not the end[/i], I thought with bitterness. How dare Lord Strange do this to me? Who does he think he is? I rapped on the plexiglass that separated me from the taxi driver. He turned his head a fraction and I said: “Hurry up, please, I’ve got work to do.”

And so this concludes the first chapter of my new life. I booked myself into this hotel at 11 o’clock last night - the doorman was a surly fellow in a white string vest who barely uttered a word as he took my deposit and handed over the room key. When I got to the room - bed, table, TV - I looked around for a drinks cabinet, then remembered just how cheap this place was. I picked up the courtesy phone and said into it, experimentally: “Room service?” It was partly a joke. The surly doorman’s voice said: “What?” I said: “Is there any booze up here?” He answered: “Look in the cabinet beside the bed.” Still holding the phone to my ear I opened a cabinet and looked inside. There was a dusty Bible and nothing else. “Not [i]that[/i] one,” said the voice, “the [i]other[/i] one, on the [i]other[/i] side…” I walked around the bed and opened up the first cabinet’s twin. Inside there was a bottle of Smirnoff vodka, my favourite brand. There was a glass and a bucket of ice as well. “Thank-you,” I said into the phone, but the doorman hung up without a word.

I poured myself a drink and thought about Lord Strange. I sat in the dark for a long time, hearing the night sounds outside, traffic, sirens, people’s shouts and laughter, and I thought about Lord Strange. In the deep of the night there was a tropical-style rainstorm that I watched from the window. Something in the rain’s ferocity inspired me: I reached for my bag and opened it up. Inside was the notepad and pen that I had slipped in when Lord Strange wasn’t looking. I started to write. He is not infallible. He can be defeated.

Welcome to reality. Within 'reality' all kinds of things exist. The following is a random selection from reality.

A philosophy forum where I'm an occasional poster recently had this topic: IS REALITY REAL? This was a perfect topic for me because I perceive that reality is [i]not[/i] real, in the usual sense of the term. By the usual sense, I mean 'reality' in the sense of 'me [i]in here[/i] and an independently-existing external world [i]out there[/i]'. Let me expand on this. We commonly perceive ourselves in two conflicting ways. Either we percieve that we are somebody who is inside our body, or we perceive that we are our body: these two [i]interpretations[/i] of phenomena are so commonplace and accepted that they are conceived without us noticing that we are conceiving them. I.e., we simply accept them as 'just so', and we think no more about it, and any differing proposition is reflexively dismissed out of hand as preposterous, fanciful, immature, and all the rest of it.

Here's the differing proposition. (NB: [i]The 'I' in the following sentences applies to the one who is reading them: Namely you. Yes,[/i] [b]you[/b]...) I am not something that is inside this body; neither am I this body. When I consider phenomena without any preconceptions about them, I see no reason other than convention to distinguish between me and the supposed external world. I am everything that I see, touch, feel, and think. I am also all other people. Whether [i]they are also me[/i] I do not know - for it is best not to speculate....

Not too hard to conceptualise, is it? And no, this idea was not innovated by 'The Matrix': it is as old as the wheel. [i]Where do I exist?[/i] The conscious individual - namely you, reading this - does not exist [i]in[/i] reality: you [i]are[/i] reality.

The resistance that is felt to the idea is only a disguised form of peer group pressure. Because [i]most people[/i] wouldn't entertain the idea for a second, one feels somehow unclean to consider it oneself. The stigma!

I joined the discussion in the forum and was rapidly 'flamed' out of it again. Apparently I was guilty of [i]defending solipsism[/i], which as everyone knows is not something that any serious person could entertain seriously. I tried one gallant defence: that perhaps there were different kinds of solipsism. The well-known, popular kind says: [i]Everything is my dream[/i]. I do not perceive that everything is my dream, so I would defend the other, more objective, 'stronger' kind of solipsism: I also am a dream, and the dreamer is unknown. There is no self-love involved in 'strong' solipsism, no egoism, just an honest appraisal of the objective facts. [i]Thou art that[/i], as the Upanishads say simply.

But, no, that didn't go down too well either. The fact that I had Occam's Razor (the philosophical principle of parsimony, where one disposes of unnecessary, hypothetical concepts, such as a 'real' external world for example) on my side didn't help me.

One rival poster filled two screens with logical equations that proved there is a real external reality which I and you and everyone all inhabit. I replied: [i]You mistakenly assume that logical rules have an [b]a priori[/b] application to phenomena[/i]. That was my best shot.

The exchanges degenerated into outright abuse, which I enjoyed more than the debate itself, to be honest. I hadn't wanted to convince anyone of anything anyway.

Welcome to reality. Within 'reality' all kinds of things exist. The following is a random selection from reality.

I wanted to get two days' holiday from work next week, but the staffing levels are currently low, what with other people's holidays and sickness and the rest of it. So I knew that I'd have to use a bit of [i]schmooze[/i]... I knew I'd have to lie, and pretend the holiday was urgently needed, in other words.

The manager who controls all of the related spreadsheets and work estimates and resource plans and whatnot - the manager whose decision it would be - doesn't like me, nor I him. I sent him my e-mail requesting the leave and a few minutes later he arrived to speak to me. "Do you really need the time off?" he asked, his face the very image of business-related concern. Without having prepared a cover story in advance, my brain came up trumps with the following: "Yeah, I've got to go to Nottingham and get a passport. My current one's expired." This was plausible, but I hadn't yet explained why I needed two days rather than one. "Me and my mate," I said, improvising, "are going to hand in our applications at the passport office and then wait in a pub while they're processed." It generally takes several hours for hand-delivered passport applications to be processed - again, so far so plausible. I added: "We're gonna get completely [i]pissed[/i] out of our heads. So I'll need the second day to recover." The manager smirked rogueishly at my mention of getting [i]pissed[/i], as I knew he would, and he nodded slowly. "Okay," he said, "I'll amend the rota."

The holiday was mine! At the height of summer, I had fooled the powers-that-be, and booked holiday! Gloria in excelsis!

The manager was walking away. Inwardly exultant, I felt the need to say something extra. I said: "I really need that passport. I mean, you never know when you're gonna have to flee the country at short notice, eh?! Hahaha...."

He turned sharply, unsmiling, with an odd little frown on his face. He didn't perceive my remark as humorous. It seemed a little [i]off[/i] to him. I had struck a wrong note.

Did he think I'd meant it? Probably not. But it just goes to show you: people will take you seriously when you wish to be playful, and will take you playfully when you wish to be serious. Many's the time I've said something either half-jokingly or outright seriously, and set off all the folk nearby into fits of laughter.

The manager walked back to his desk. What if something in his reptile-like, alleged 'mind' had been triggered, some shred of suspicion, and he went to my manager with his concerns? Ten minutes later I checked the rota. Next week's shifts had been changed around. There was my holiday, booked in, immovable, in black and white.

Welcome to reality. Within 'reality' all kinds of things exist. The following is a random selection from reality.

On the late shift at work today. At 19:30 hours, one of the call centre supervisors approached me nervously and announced a manager call takeover that I had to do. The customer was a properly foul, unreasonable, demanding [i]cow[/i] who seemed to want the moon on a stick and wouldn't settle for anything less. For twenty minutes I explained, cajoled, apologised, sympathised, and finally we said Goodnight on more or less equitable terms. By the end my already-tickling throat was burning and outside, at shift-end, waiting for my taxi home, I walked a little bit away from everybody else. It's customary to stand around and have a little chat, but I wanted to give my voice a rest. I smoked a cigarette, standing behind a group of trees near the entrance gate. It was a fine sunny evening tonight and the sun was warm on my face. I heard a step behind me. "What are you doing hiding here?" said Anna. And I said that I didn't want to talk to anyone at the moment because I was sick of talking to people. "Okay!" she said brightly, and about-turned. She walked away back to join the others. I peered through the branches. There was a knot of about ten people all standing swapping call centre stories. I thought that I should go after Anna and apologise, but then my taxi swished around the corner and through the gates. It stopped right in front of me. I got in and came home.

Welcome to reality. Within 'reality' all kinds of things exist. The following is a random selection from reality.

Two of the girls at work have got it into their heads that they should 'fix me up' with a woman. Any woman, so long as she's female, and hungry for a piece of Lord Strange. I tried to dissuade them from their Quest. I explained that I am a natural born loner, and to be (groan) [i]in a relationship[/i] is about as appealing to me as scabies. I have become accustomed to spending my free time alone and doing what I want to do, I told them. They chuckled as if this was a fine joke that I didn't really mean. They have spent the last week sounding out potential ladies within the office. They have also mentioned me to their own friends outside work, they said sinisterly.

Currently they have set themselves the goal of getting me together with Lucy, an elf-like little blonde from the call centre with whom I often have a joke in passing. This is clear evidence that we belong together, apparently, and so there are whispered conferences, exploratory e-mails, and soundings-out of third and fourth parties. Nothing concrete has come of it yet, but it might. And Lucy's a very attractive young woman, so... But no, no, no, no. I want this to stop. My destiny is mapped-out. Solus Rex. Do not disturb. And so on.

Why are they doing this to me? I suppose it's partly because I showed resistance when they initially mooted the idea, and so for them to carry it on is a bit of a laugh. But also I suppose it's mainly down to the fact that it [i]is[/i] odd, from their point of view, that I should be so resolutely single. I am 34 years old and there isn't really anything wrong with me, apart from slightly thinning hair, dodgy teeth, and a chronic dislike of being near people when I don't have to be, of course. None of which have deterred my would-be matchmakers.

This is all inexorably heading toward some kind of disastrous blind date. Watch this space.

Welcome to reality. Within 'reality' all kinds of things exist. The following is a random selection from reality.

The various characters that we play: how many are there, and do we really [i]like[/i] any of them? Somebody, I forget who, once remarked that [i]Society is a hall of distorting mirrors[/i]. Which I take to mean that the self we portray to others, in society, alters and adapts to fit each new social scenario that we encounter.

I think that this is universally true and can be easily observed in other people as well as oneself. For example, when I am with my old schoolfriend Rick, I am one type of character: let's call him Lord A. Now, introduce a third person to the scenario - a distant cousin whom I have not seen for 10 years, say. With Rick and my distant cousin both in the vicinity I am no longer Lord A. I am a variant of Lord A, with certain attributes suppressed or eliminated altogether, and others amplified to the maximum. Now take another example completely: the character that I am at work. This persona is so different from my other personae as to be totally unrecognisable to those who are accustomed to Lord A or any of its variants. Lord B, my work persona whom I must portray every day, is livelier, more immature, more sociable: a bit more likeable than Lord A, in truth. I have chosen two examples only - Lords A and B - but in reality the number of different selves that we portray are innumerable.

The psychologist Erving Goffman developed an entire theory around this (quite commonplace) observation. He called it the [i]dramaturgical model[/i]: in our daily lives among other people we are always on stage, we are always [i]playing ourselves[/i] in a variety of ways.

And then when you close the door behind you and stand in your room alone, the masks drop and you are yourself. You are the person that you rarely, if ever, dare to be in public.

Welcome to reality. Within 'reality' all kinds of things exist. The following is a random selection from reality.

Rain, rain, rain, rain. Rain, rain, rain. Rain.

Thunder, and lightning.

And rain.

It started about twenty minutes ago, following a day of humidity and low, threatening cloud cover. I was watching TV and the rain started drumming the window glass, with many large heavy drops coming through the open part of the window and wetting the wallpaper (now streaked tobacco-brown. I [i]really[/i] shouldn't smoke so much in this room). I closed the window tight and watched the weather show for a few minutes. People outside were running for cover from the Biblical deluge. Water fell in a near-solid sheet, from right to left as I watched. It struck the ground with force, creating a fine mist at knee-height. During heavy rainfalls the road outside always floods, because we're at the bottom of a slope and the drains can't handle the amount of water. (I originally wrote just there that the drains "can't cope", but then realised that I had used the word "slope" previously in the same sentence, and for a minute I agonised over the dilemma, then decided to cut the "can't cope" part and go with the weaker "can't handle" - and people wonder why I'm still single...)

I got bored with the rain and turned away just in time to miss the first flash of lightning. I started counting, and had reached 8 when the rumble of thunder came. I sighed. Once again I was [i]not[/i] at the centre of a thunderstorm. In all my life I have [i]never[/i] seen lightning and heard thunder at the same time. I grew up loving those old Hammer horror films with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee (just how many variations of 'Dracula' is it possible to have?): in them, the thunderstorms were always directly above the action, and the lightning bolts split the clouds and made their thund'rous roar [i]at the same time[/i]. I have never seen this in reality. Today being no exception.

What else? I dunno really. There's the semi-final of the European Championships on tonight. Czech Republic versus Greece. Kick-off in, oh, about 1 minute from now. The Czechs have played football like artists in the tournament so far and they are clearly the favourites, but the Greeks have got nothing to lose as the underdogs and they may spring another surprise.

What else? Nothing much. Life is slow today. It's not raining so hard now.