Happiness: An Apology

It turns out that contrary to my twitchy, unproofed posting last night there may indeed be such a thing as tender sadness... So behold (and in memoriam) the "Smokers' Corridor" at 6:00pm, June 30th, 2006:

 

Now this passage through which I pass into work each morning must be known simply as "the Corridor". And that's that. The end.

At work today they put me in the "Bubble."
It is a closet-like, triangular room with a two-way mirror that enables you - by the depression of a foot-pedal accompanied by shrill, pre-recorded screaming - to superimpose your own face onto the reflected faces of punters lost in the Mirror Maze adjacent. Scarily. Like a film by David Lynch in fact, if you found the right face. The Bubble's a little claustrophobic though, I think because of the shape more than the size. Rooms shouldn't be triangular.

If prison cells were triangular... spacious but still triangular, still a shape that no room in which you are to spend a great deal of time normally comes in... would it be more difficult to become institutionalized? - I just thought: You can't smoke in prison anymore. Or was that the case anyway?

And so much for the Smoking Ban deadline I had set myself. I was meant to have finished my radio play about Frida Kahlo. I haven't even started it. Nobody knows who she is.

And so much for setting fire to myself in Parliament Square in protest... I could probably have managed the dousing, but would never have struck the match. Imagine standing there, defeated and stinking of fuel. And imagine the journey home, desperately trying to remember the least flammable route.

Here's that picture closer up: