Square one!

Where do I live? It's not in the flat in Leeds and it's not in the home I spent most of my early adulthood. It's not going backwards and forwards on the bus to Leeds and it's not drinking a beer in a bar or a pub. When I think about it it is the short period of time when Lola and I are together, alone, in the world and for the longer period of time when I'm walking alone in the world. For the rest of the time I'm anxious in the immense discord at play everywhere.

On Tuesday mother noticed how calm I was, and also yesterday, but by today we're back to loggerheads. Actually, I think it is my fault we came to the predictable distemper: hanging around for an hour more than I was being told. For her lunch she ate soup and watched the telly: "Can't pay? We'll take it away!"

This programme reinforces her intense dislike of Muslims and it must be no accident that a great deal of the cases, shown on "glorious" Channel 5 Spike, feature enough, of these deeply sinister and untrustworthy fellows, to get her blood boiling. But having worked in HMPs I can state that the numbers of British rednecks there are decidedly proportionate to the populace's ethnicity.

Most of the biggest crooks never get caught because they're the establishment and have protection in every layer of the onion they've sown, keeping their incredible selves from this "other" institution, and living in eternal bliss, while mother and I bicker about another Muhammadian breaking the law.