Low life | 26 November 2011

For 21 years my bike has leant against the wall just inside the garage door. On Monday morning it was gone. Nicked. I loved that old Dawes Galaxy. But I couldn’t work myself up into a state about its theft. I tried anger, I tried indignation, but without success. Good luck to them, I thought. I might be a fool, but I try not to be a hypocrite as well.

Besides, I was elated and humbled that morning because the postman had delivered another packet of your jokes; the biggest yet, containing about 60 letters, emails and postcards; all of them miles too late, unfortunately, to be entered in the competition to win a party invitation. The party had been and gone, and in the minds of those who had any recollection of it, was already a distant memory.

I took the packet down to the town library and sat at the reading table with the usual collection of well-informed tramps who go there to peruse the broadsheets.