mouse arrest

I am being held hostage to a mouse, a big mouse - I hope it is a mouse - which is sitting on the steps outside my flat. I can see it from my window. I have knocked on the window. It is ignoring me. I am playing Roni Size with the bass turned to "defibrillate" in the hope that the vibrations will drive it away: I have heard that a mouse's heart beats many times faster than a human's. Perhaps Roni Size's vibrations will send its little mousey heart into a spasm.

I have not left the house for three days. Luckily, I work from home.

I have enough food to last until Thursday, when a friend is dropping off her dog Jess for me to look after. Jess, a terrier, is mad for mice. But I am running out of cigarettes. Perhaps this is a sign I should give up.

At the wake for J's mum, who died of liver and lung cancer, we all stood in the garden, drinking and smoking. I ran out of cigarettes. When I left for the shop to get more, a shop I'd been to before, I got lost. I passed a man working on his car, bonnet up, head buried in engine. I called to him and as he turned to me I saw that he'd had a tracheotomy. When I asked for directions to the shop he had to press a little button on his voicebox before he could speak.
"That way." he said.