Rapid Response

there will be tired lines written about keys turning and the obvious metaphor of the open road, an american dream, ironically and we will, of course applaud, because what else can you do? You should applaud however small the advance maybe they'll find it encouraging, maybe next a little less brutality and less the day after maybe by inches you can rebalance the world maybe but it's hard not to think that little has changed hard to applaud loud enough to encourage

They're setting up the seating and somewhere down there the chef's shouting a missing fish order, the notes are re-checked my son, eighteen months is learning to make words he say soo for shoe, uss and nooo we're building a language I encourage him shoe, I say, shoe brexit, she says, brexit checking the notes checking them again (the fish order's turned up and the chef is now stressing over 300 ravioli of oxtail) up, says my son holding his arms out pleased when I pick him up he immediately wants to get down and walks off, satisfied slowly, language coheres it swims into focus at least, that's the theory eventually my son will say justified, carbuncle, dichotomy brexit, she says, means (downstairs there's a howl, as forty litres of bisque are ruined by too much salt)

i.m Frank Vincent stoical about pigeonholes he bore his beatings lightly the serial deaths charting the inventiveness of violence but there are only so many ways to get your head smashed in crushed by an SUV is a coup de grace, its hard to die better for effect actions and reactions, it seemed like justice, Joe Pesci buried alive Frank getting his, for once it's a curious thing to cheer horror and more curious to co-opt entirely alien cultures for immersions everyone at school was a wiseguy for a couple of weeks broad cornish accents saying bada-bing, whaddyatalkin about westcountry gangsters - "go home, my lover and get your fucking shine box"

succumbing to hope to the notional scripts of potential hisories the circus, a spy, any solid reason the sudden biographies displaced memories a trail of family photographs you can barely recognise the clothes there's a hole in the story where the rain gets in the past bursting the preoccupations and details, you can't move he might not find you he still has a key

it is the right in darkness of any man on the day when he remembers to sit and commemorate in any way he cares to it is the act of memory which is as malleable as conscience so when you want to honour the dead view "unnatural acts", it's an option as sane as any and your inalienable right indeed, what better way to defy religious extremism than brother on sister action?

It sounds like Walpole, standing astride London A Pitt (take your pick) disputing a King iDisraeli v Gladstone, a charged House gaslight, the Great Repeal, a porterhouse steak and cabs to Soho when the vote is done It's not, whatever you may think an unseemly grab at power a panic-stricken life-raft or pissing in the wind they called it Great, after all so think of the resonances of the Mother of Parliaments and try to squint, to see Boris as the statesman he imagines himself to be, not a stool, rattling around loosely in the bowels of power

mass havoc wind unleashed fall the rain the stripped land bare the weight of wind "Refunds depend on who you booked with"

A blackboard outside a palace familiar names and odds and a steady queue of punters backing Alice, Arthur, Mary a few, more sporting risk Diana at 14/1, short odds to my mind, as I pull out a fiver what price on Crystal? The bookie, carefully blank offers me 2000/1 I think again. Rihanna? Jayden? the same number offered you're not showing much imagination I say, offer 10,000, get the punters in, make them feel part of it it's the People's foetus, after all and you're giving me Victoria, Elizabeth, Frederick I mean, Frederick? At sixteens? You're having a laugh unless it's some subconscious hankering for Saxe - Coburg - Gotha doesn't seem likely to be honest, I mean they've dropped primogeniture hardly likely to go back to the Vaterland this is a forward looking monarchy equipped for a new world, broad sunlit etc cheer up, we'll all be fine I thought we wouldn't for a bit but this kid's a commodity, a ...

Some disasters are unknowable mere statistics but disasters that happen in English now that's narrative It's so much more poignant when a prom queen dies it can move the Queen of England to tears