‘Don’t underestimate the power of good, my friend. All you need is hope.’

     ‘Or love, according to John Lennon. And look at where that got him. Sorry, but you’re wasting your time and mine.’

     I turned and walked towards the cafeteria, stopping to buy two coffees. As usual after such encounters, I had mixed feelings. It would be truly wonderful if what these weirdoes preached were remotely possible, but life wasn’t like that. In time, everyone would have to accept that my way was the only way. But for now, they could bloody well get on with doing things their way, and take the suffering that inevitably came with it. I’d made my small contribution, no doubt to negligible effect, and now I was going to stand back and grab a little happiness while I could.

     I reckoned I’d earned it.

     It seemed a shame to wake her. I left the drinks under the van to cool and continued my morning constitutional, inspecting the Sunday papers. The tabloids displayed their usual obsession with the royals, television ’stars’ and the alcohol-soaked nightclub antics of sporting nonentities, but the broadsheets were taking a more serious line. One headline read ‘P.M. Hints At State Of Emergency In Capital’.

     Heavy stuff, I thought, indignant at the mess into which the authorities had allowed the greatest city in the world to sink. Anyone could have seen it coming. I’d been concerned for years about how vulnerable all that historical and cultural heritage was, surrounded by a population which, in common with the rest of the country, grew steadily less civilised every year.

     I scanned the story. As usual, the tough-talking rhetoric of the politicians made me want to scream. Perhaps they would give serious consideration to actually using the odd tear gas grenade when the National Gallery was burning.

     A Very Profound Thought had been undergoing gestation somewhere near the back of my mind. Its abrupt birth, displacing my disgusted reaction to the events in London, nearly made me burst out laughing.

     It was so ironic that the disposal of Lay’s corpse had only been made possible by the existence of private transport and the ability to go anywhere at any time. These gigantic privileges were regarded by so many, and Lay had undoubtedly been among them, as basic human rights. It was the gloriously surreal vision of attempting to move the D-I-Y coffin from the Home Counties to the shore of a Scottish loch by public transport which had almost reduced me to hysterics.