Once upon a time there was a young man who became an heir to a massive, if unexpectedly bequethed, fortune. Unexpected, only in it being so sudden. The heir, Sebastian, was an only child. Among many other things, he inherited a very large country estate in the improbably sylvan valleys to the north of the city. With the estate came a lifelong servant / butler / groundskeeper / cook / nurse / handiman – who was called: – it doesn’t matter; Sebastian never used the man’s correct name and merely refered to him as Paddy… “Go blow dry the fucking lawn, Paddy,” he bawled down the phone, from his bath, one morning, “I’m going to throw a fucking party, okay.”

It is war. The general leaves the barracks and walks to the trenches. A recruit follows him. In war there is no rest: if you are not shooting, you march or you clean your rifle, march or take a drink. The general marches to the trenches. There is a din of gunshots, a bomb or two, maybe even cannon fire. The recruit follows him, nervously, his hand on his head because he has not put his helmet on right. With the other hand he clutches a rifle. He is far too young, he trembles. The general is experienced, he does not tremble. He marches and is not bothered by the shoes, helmets and cadavers he tramples over, the bodies are stacked against the fences in piles that bleed just like a Pollock painting. The general jumps over the dead as if it were a game, and the recruit follows, cowering, spluttering in the smoke. In next to no time, the general stops beside a pile of badly stacked sandbags. “This is not protected,” he says, but he does not crouch down. He is brave, or perhaps he is just a hard man, he no longer feels anything.

To realise that you are but fragments, that the short and the longer and the longest of times are nothing but fragments … that the lifespans of cities and of countries are nothing but fragments … and the earth a fragment … that development in its entirety is a fragment … that perfection cannot be … that fragments came about, that they continue to come about … no road to travel, only to arrive … that the end is without consciousness … that then nothing can be without you and that thus nothing can be … Those people who die without having known their illness, their mortal ilnesses … life would then be unbearable… The stream has frozen over, the spring has frozen over, the summer has frozen over, the winter has frozen over, people, animals, sensations, everything … that spoken word that just shuts the world off …

Six months ago, in January, I was lying in bed with the flu when I looked out the window and saw cows on a roof. There were two, black-and-white, painted on the side of a water tank of a Georgian building across the canal and a few houses up. They were facing each other. One’s head was lowered to the other. How funny! I thought. Who’d bother painting cows on their roof? You can’t even see them from street-level. I smiled. Crazy neighbours, I thought. I sneezed. I picked up the novel I was reading. My spirits were uplifted by the thought of eccentric people living in close proximity. I got on with recovery. This sunny June morning, I’ve noticed them again. I woke up with a stomach ache and decided to stay in bed. I’ve had plenty of opportunity to contemplate the cows since January, but the fact that the trees have come into full leaf obscures them from easy sight. Plus, I rush to get ready in the mornings. In the evenings I don’t spend time in my bedroom until sundown.