I was feeding ducks in the park. It was quiet enough, a drizzle was falling, keeping the plebs away. It’s been raining non-stop for a months now. I think it’s making us all mad. I was realising some stuff. Mainly that I am bored. I miss my job. How ridiculous is that. I went to mine and Gerts office, where Gert is stuck nearly everyday, running the minutiae that keeps our empire together. It’s been agreed that that’s what he does. For a wage. In essence he works for me. After twenty minutes he kicked me out. I was getting in the way. This is my business empire, I didn’t say. Gert was busy arranging some bands for some piece of shit tv special. Every band, three bands removed from talking head, but all sounding like talking heads. Taking their lead from a band that’s ripped off a band that sounds like Talking Heads. I was glad to see it all working. Until I realised that it wasn’t, was it. GreyArea Promotions was taking a backseat to Gerhardt Andreas Beckers GABB! Promotions. Am I paying the opposition? I asked. You’re not paying me, he says. These things take work you do fuck all. Well, I says, I’m a man of leisure now, I’m gonna come in and make this work. Don’t bother, he says, your name is worth fuck all. I’m getting somewhere, tho. Uh huh, I says. Really? Yeah. Well. I’m paying rent on this office. Oh it’s about the fucking office is it? I’ll go sit on the bench in the park if it makes you happy, he shouted. FUCK YOU, I said. I’LL SIT ON THE FUCKIGN BENCH.

And here I am.

I’ve decided that I need a crises to galvanise myself. As a child, in secondary school, I made a ‘bomb’ from the innards of and old phone, a digital watch and some playdough. For further fun I hid it in the school and phoned in a fake bomb alert. We Irish were all into bomb making and bomb alerts. I didn’t claim to be the IRA or anything, although I did put on a comedy Norn Iron accent. The school was closed, the suspect device was destroyed, the brothers we’re apoplectic with a righteous rage. I had enlisted no help for my japery. No lieutenant to rat me out. No coadjutant to crumble under the heavy questioning and half rape the brothers were renowned for. Nope, just me. Keeping my mouth shot. The veil of suspicion didn’t even cover me, as it fell upon so many. Eventually the stitched up some poor cunt for the job. Poor kid. Probably a drug addict now.

And what with the fun occurring across the water, oh, tonight they’re gonna party like it’s 1974, with burning cars full of turbans crashing into public transport, and Brazilians with backpacks eking life onto the footworn floor of public transport, I dreamed of all the opportunity to redeem with one selfless act of heroism. I see myself, sometimes, as the guy on the bus who takes command as it topples over, or explodes, or, less likely, finds itself inexplicably in another dimension, where dark betentacled things caress the windows. Whatever. The women love a man who takes control. I want to be that guy. Mister in control. Mister rugby-tackles the arab. I want to be that hero. So I wonder, how can I save these people? Me, with mt toy bombs? What I need is a real fanatic. Or a real bomb. I look out across the park, across the pond. It’s wet, my hair is no adhesed to my head.

Gert calls.

“maybe you should work for me?”

Sigh.