Toast-to-Bacon Ratio

It's fogging! Goddamn this paper - failing me and Year Zero. How to sleep in this light-speed anxiety? I was asleep then and the whole failure of the country came to me in one jolt, like a bullet to the chest, throwing me back into the bed. I imagine it pushing me down, through the bed, through the floor and the earth and The Earth, mantle, core, mantle and out through the sea that is our antipodes. I am swimming with the fishes, the strange, deep-living, white-scaled, aquatic exotica that darts about this sea trench. And then in one glorious moment my head comes above the water and I think now that I might make it. Even alone with the sharks and no water and sunburn, I have made it through the planet, so I must survive. On the horizon, a white dot, a tanker - by my wondrous luck heading straight for me. It must see me. I know it will see me. And now I am up the ladder dripping and happy and safe for here there are beautiful people, rich people taking slow trips round the world, roughing it and reading in the shade, the throb of turbines far below lulling them to worry-free sleep. And then I know I must be still asleep, in the scruffy sheets of many nights occupation, but the dream does not go away. It feels real. It feels real.

Soft and sweet are the biscuits in Georgia, just over the state line, severing this warm peninsula from the dry mainland. I watch the forests fly by in a blur of green, seeing the roadside stalls that offer us everything. Biscuits and lemonade, general sugar and comfort. It is midday, sun high and hot but cool in here with the shadows of bridges flashing by like film shutters. Humans are not designed to process fast-moving images; a dart of the eye across the scene, leaves no sense of movement, just a blank space in memory, a split-second removed from time. Maybe if I keep my eyes moving like some child's idea of a spy, I can make the day pass faster. But here in this bus, moving at a speed far faster than we were meant to, whole counties fly by in the space of mind diverted by a thought from a book.

In the back of a rubbishy van. Five of us, me obviously, your all-seeing narrator, one who knows the thoughts of everyone he describes and the entire four-dimensional whereabouts of an entire school. I know this because I invent them all. No one here exists or ever existed. They all despair of ever being real but that is the fault I give them. Deep down they worry about this while obeying what I tell them. None of this will make it through to the final tale, but it is the foundation on which everything they do is based.

Last ten minutes. Here is Mary, months older than me, long-legged, black-clad and trying to be cool. Whether she succeeds is defined by how close you are to her. In this van she is a cool quiet icon, our almost-silent leader, brought up short by having to deal with people she does not know. But if black clothes are a mark of cool, then we are all sub-zero for black is our uniform, all black from shoes to tie and even hair, most of us being good local Celts. Mary is teaching the baby to swear while her mother is inside the shop. And the rest of us being well-brought up boys, are trying to suppress our discomfort at this and snigger along with her as the baby refuses to play along; the words are just too complicated and we are happy to leave the possibility of outraged elder aunts to later in our common life. To be honest any of Mary's aunts would happily join in with the subversion, most of them having fled to the rougher parts of the country to bring succour to the masses it seems and each picking up a trooper's vocabulary along the way. And of course her parents won't be bothered either so we go along happily with this half-hearted, obscene education. Still more minutes. So who else is here? There is our mad drummer, an artist and faker who alone amongst us favours bright colours, cricket jerseys and tartan trousers which make him look more like Roy Castle than Johnny Rotten but we cannot tell him that of course. The baby you know about but being so young he does not speak and does not know yet what colour clothes he likes. These four are the people in this van. But Mary has a friend, not invisible but not human either. Her friend is her comfort, her nighttime security, to be checked before sleep and laid to rest like a child - her baby. And her friend is our friend coveted and loved unrequited.