I have known for some time that nothing is real.

The space around me is not made up of real objects, places and people. It’s a set full of props and I’m an unwilling actor on stage, or on film, playing a part and waiting for someone to say cut. Maybe I am scenery, an extra. I don’t know when the switch was made, or if it even was. I think it’s maybe that the props, the sets, are getting cheaper or smaller, like someone can’t be arsed anymore. Objects don’t do what they are supposed to, this is not a deck chair (too big), this is not a phone (too much time), ceci ne pas une “Crushball.”

Nothing works like it’s supposed to, the old pub is now a gin emporium and cocktail lounge for scoundrels and vagabonds, a venue conceived by a bot or an alien, like an Etonian writing a scene set in the bronx. Tributes to things that never existed litter the high street. TV show bars. My Coffee wants to be my friend for some reason, or it thinks I’m lame I can’t tell.

The food isn’t right, boxes of pre made Mexican tribute food, playing a mutated cover of a meal from twenty years ago. Wheatgrass shots, twenty for a pound, in Heron: they never had that offer on again? A glitch? Can you perform holy communion with a “Taco Pocket?” (note to self, ask Joe or one of the other catholics)

So I tipped them all into the sink and drank it with a paper straw, one big drink, I ate the Chicago town, naked in my garden. I went jogging back in time in a three piece suit, and shoes clip clop, I performed communion on myself as I bit the old El Paso, I pull back the Duvet and I take my bow and let someone else take centre stage this isn’t 52 BC, you won’t pen me in so easily. Whoever you are.