I’d dropped my papers at tists, and ing-room, or ‘parlour’ as o call it, , but it ime for a bit of grub. I don’t kno it into my o go into a milk-bar. to-ten-pound-a- ing-places in London. If your idea of t to spend on a meal is one and t’s eit’s t of bitter and a slab of cold pie, so cold t it’s colder tside t editions of the evening papers.

    Be red counter a girl in a tall  tiddle-tiddle-plonk, a kind of tinny sound.  to myself as I  in. tmosp t gets me doreamlined; mirrors, enamel, and ce  on tions and not all. Just lists of stuff  of pom stuff t you can’t taste and can ence of. Everyt of a carton or a tin, or it’s  of a refrigerator or squirted out of a tap or squeezed out of a tube. No comfort, no privacy. tall stools to sit on, a kind of narroo eat off, mirrors all round you. A sort of propaganda floating round, mixed up o t t food doesn’t matter, comfort doesn’t matter, notters except slickness and sreamlining. Everytreamlined no ler’s keeping for you. I ordered a large coffee and a couple of frankfurters. te cap jerked t me  as mucerest as you’d ts’ eggs to a goldfish.

    Outside tarnoosstanNERD!’ I saer flapping against  ‘legs’, you notice. It  doo t. ting-room, done up in a broions of tion o be so passionately interested in ted legs t t need any furtroduction. t  t. It’s queer, I t, as I ate a bit of roll, ting noting people up and leaving bits of t tryside. Not a patcic poisoning dramas, Crippen, Seddon, Mrs Maybrick; trut you can’t do a good murder unless you believe you’re going to roast in .

    At t I bit into one of my frankfurters, and—C!

    I can’t ly say t I’d expected to  taste. I’d expected it to taste of not t e an experience. Let me try and describe it to you.

    ter emporary teet muc. I o do a kind of sa before I could get my teet in my moutten pear. A sort of  stuff ongue. But taste! For a moment I just couldn’t believe it. tongue round it again and ry. It er, filled  up and raig  touc t migasted of.

    Outside tandard into my face and yelled, ‘Legs! ‘Orrible revelations! All till rolling tuff round my tongue,  out. I remembered a bit I’d read in t tories in Germany z, t. I remembered reading t t of fis, out of somet. It gave me t I’d bitten into t it ’s treamlined, everyt of someteel everyation left, everyted over, mock-turtles grazing under tral fruit-trees. But acks and get your teeto sometance, t’s . Rotten fising inside your mouth.

    teet a lot better. t nice and smoot sounds absurd to say t false teet’s a fact t tried a smile at myself in a s  of an artist and doesn’t aim at making you look like a toote advert.  s full of false teeto me once—all graded according to size and colour, and  like a je of ten eetural.

    I caug struck me t really I  suc on t side, admittedly, but not tailors call a ‘full figure’, and some o , I t. I remembered my seventeen quid, and definitely made up my mind t I’d spend it on a ime to  before t, just to baptize teeteen quid I stopped at a tobacconist’s and bougial to. t inceed pure he same as anywhere else.

    of t quite different.

    I’d s, teet of feeling. All of a sudden I felt kind of tful and p ly because I didn’t o do. My mind  back to ts of  in a kind of propic mood, t a certain kick out of it.

    I rand, and t o get t you can  your reaming up t, all of t insane fixed expression on t people reets, and traffic  red buses nosing tooting. Enougo  not to , I t. I felt as if I y of sleep-’s an illusion, of course. rangers it’s next door to impossible not to imagine t t probably t t you. And tic feeling t keeps coming over me no  round t  peculiar to me. e’ve all got it, more or less. I suppose even among t t moment t al pictures of ts and tever t you t at t. But t  except me. I looked at treaming past. Like turkeys in November, I t. Not a notion of o t  X-rays in my eyes and could see tons walking.

    I looked forreet as it’ll be in five years’ time, say, or time (1941 t’s booked for), after ting’s started.

    No, not all smaso pieces. Only a little altered, kind of cy-looking, t empty and so dusty t you can’t see into treet ter and a block of buildings burnt out so t it looks like a oote. It’s all curiously quiet, and everyone’s very toon of soldiers comes marcreet. ts are dragging. t’s got corkscreac oo and  a coug almost tears o ba tyle. ‘Na yer ‘ed up!  yer keep starin’ at t of cougcries to stop it, can’t, doubles up like a ruler, and almost cougs out. urns pink and purple, acer runs out of his eyes.

    I can  our glorious troops aken a op-floor-back in Birming of bread. And suddenly t stand it any longer, and s it, ‘S your trap, you little bastard!’ and ts bottom  any bread and isn’t going to be any bread. I see it all. I see ters and tor oil and truncing out of bedroom windows.

    Is it going to ’s impossible to believe it. Some days I say to myself t it’s just a scare got up by t.

    doion of t tAtEMENt. ter caugPONED. King Zog!  a name! It’s next door to impossible to believe a c isn’t a jet-black Negro.

    But just at t moment a queer t I suppose, as I’d already seen times t day, it raffic or tarted memories in me.

    t is a curious t’s ime. I suppose an  your t en or ty years ago, and yet most of time it’s got no reality, it’s just a set of facts t you’ve learned, like a lot of stuff in a ory book. t or sound or smell, especially smell, sets you going, and t doesn’t merely come back to you, you’re actually IN t. It  at t.

    I  Lo y-eigo outill rand, fat and forty-five, eet, but inside me I , Lo ! You knoy, decaying, sis of smell. touc, and per’s a bit overlaid by yello predominantly it’s t s, dusty, musty smell t’s like toget’s powdered corpses, really.

    In t four feet anding on to see over t, and I could feel Motockings pulled up over my knees—o  ton collar to buckle me into on Sunday mornings. And I could  t nobody else got mucer, taker. to sit opposite one anot t. Ser  man ac kind of fell ae different. , gaunt, po sixty, iff grey ly like a skeleton. You could see every line of t, and  lantern jaeet like ton in an anatomical museum. And yet rong as iron, as to be a  ce different, too. Ser e, agonized bello  and  letting out  yell for  etremendous, c o and fro underground.  out, you aly more in reserve. tummy.

    to get up a kind of antip, especially in t  e life, but in my kid’s o imagine t trying to s one anoter  ‘tely. You aler. I used especially to look foro t psalm t  about Sies and Og t King Zog’s name er art off es’, t of tion singing tidal remendous, rumbling, subterranean barrel-noise t  into t

    later, , I formed a picture in my mind’s eye of Si Egyptian statues t I’d seen pictures of in tone statues ty feet ting on te one anot mysterious smile on their faces.

    came back to me! t peculiar feeling—it  describe it as an activity—t o call ‘C corpsy smell, tle of Sunday dresses, t of lig it across t traordinary performance ook it for granted, just as you took t in big doses in texts on every . by . Even nos out of t of til to Beerse  ood it, you didn’t try to or  to, it  a kind of medicine, a queer-tasting stuff t you o so be in some raordinary rigmarole about people iff garments and Assyrian beards, riding up and doemples and cedar trees and doing extraordinary t offerings,  in fiery furnaces, getting nailed on crosses, getting she organ.

    t  back to  King Zog. For a moment I didn’t merely remember it, I . Of course suc last more t later it y-five and traffic jam in trand. But it  a kind of after-effect beimes rain of t you feel as if you er, but time it , it   I’d been breato speak, all tling to and fro, and ters and trol-stink and to me less real ty-eight years ago.

    I c noroug-place ts nose- bag. At t-s a iger sitting being-sergeant in  jacket, tig, is strutting up and doing ac indsor, God’s in ’s on tes and Og tting on t one anot doing anytly, just existing, keeping ted place, like a couple of fire-dogs, or the Unicorn.

    Is it gone for ever? I’m not certain. But I tell you it o live in. I belong to it. So do you.