There is an eyelash on your cheek, but I’m not going to brush it off, because I haven’t seen you in a while and I don’t know if we’re there yet. And I don’t want to offend you. Tell you your lashes are falling off like leaves in September. Remind you that summer is over and it’s getting colder.

And anyway you’d have to make a wish, and maybe blow your lash from my finger. And maybe this isn’t the right time for wishes. Wishes are addictive but they are not real.

So instead I keep my gaze on your eyes as we talk, and occasionally glance down at your cheek to check that the lash is still there, and it is. And I try to speak with a bit of gusto so that I might accidentally blow it off, but it doesn’t work.

But then you start to cry a little and you wipe your face with your palm and you take the lash away. I make a little wish on your behalf.

Every second person on the tube is reading a different book about a 31-year-old woman from Hackney. They are all different books about different 31-year-old women from Hackney, written by different 31-year-old women from Hackney. They all have a different one or two word titles and matte block colour cover, and effusive one-sentence reviews from other 31-year-old women from Hackney on the back. Not everyone who is reading them is a 31-year-old woman from Hackney. And not every 31-year-old woman from Hackney is reading one. I, for, example, am playing Bejeweled Blitz.

Dad used to walk to Bakewell every Tuesday to see a man about his head. He’d set off about 2:30pm and he’d usually pick up a coffee on the way there. A half-choc mocha. Still refined. Manly but with an extra little something.

He’d put it in the calendar as “Barry – woodworking.” A little joke or his way of lying low. We didn’t know. But he always came back at 4:30pm a little lighter, a little looser, with a lemon meringue pie or something from Randall’s for us.

There was a little shop at the end of the road. It sold the sorts of things that little shops at the ends of roads sell. Milk. Peanuts. Watermelon vapes. Tunnocks teacakes. Blue WKDs and Jacob’s Creek. Little bags of safety pins.

There was a little rusted metal ring outside, fixed to the wall, that, sometimes, people would tie their dogs to. The little shopkeeper didn’t mind if the dogs went in the shop. “I don’t mind,” he’d say, if someone asked, “can I bring in my dog?” But people tied up their dogs anyway.

On Sundays the shopkeeper would sit outside the shop while Jane worked the till and Abdul stocked the shelves. He could have done it himself but he liked a day off. To kick back, sip a blue WKD and hang out with some tied-up dogs.

I found an opaline angel on the bus from CenterParcs. A little hook in its head.

At first I gave it to the bus driver. He said he’d dispose of it. And then the doors closed and I walked away with my little red suitcase. Who am I, the Chancellor of the Exchequer?

I am not the Chancellor of the Exchequor.

The Chancellor of the Exchequor is Jeremy Hunt. Jeremy Cunt, the Hulture Secretary. Previous Hulture Secretary. Not any more, obviously.

Who am I the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I said to myself, with my hands empty except for my stupid little red suitcase. So I walked back just as the bus was pulling off, and I knocked on the pneumatic doors, and Craig, that was the driver, Craig stopped the bus and opened the doors. And he gave me back my opaline angel.

She couldn’t sleep, because there were more important things to do and her brain knew it. So periodically, after a few tosses or turns, she’d whip out her Galaxy Tab 10 and ask important questions on the internet.

has anyone survived being in a dishwasher, she typed into the Google.

“Could a human sit inside a dishwasher and survive a cycle of it running? Would they be able to get out from the inside?” replied quora. Wendy Brown, former retired nurse, said:

A person inside a dishwasher would be scalded terribly by the very hot water. They might be alive when the cycle was completed, but in horrible pain and in dire need of emergency medical treatment, with a very long stay in a burn unit to follow.

That is, if they did not suffocate first, as a dishwasher is a sealed, waterproof and air-tight box, and an adult would take up a lot of space, displacing most of the air.

There is no mechanism inside a dishwasher that would allow someone locked inside it to escape.

Wendy Brown, former retired nurse

She didn’t believe Wendy Brown, of course. So she went to try to get into her dishwasher. Her dishwasher was quite big, and she was quite small. And there wasn’t much in it. She took out two plates so that she could just about get in. And she just about managed to close the door. Then she realised she had forgotten to put a Finish Powerball in. But she couldn’t open the door. Sadly, she died.

Gail weeps as he wipes the sick from her chin. He turns on the shower and helps her in. There’s some nice imperial lather shower gel on the side. He opens out her hands and pours it in. She’s shivering. The shower takes a little while to get going. But it’s getting warmer. The shower gel smells of various tropical herbs and berries that may or may not have been invented by the Imperial Lather marketing team. What would be the harm? A little taste? No one would notice. She wretches again but nothing comes out. He fetches her a cup of cold water. Gail’s not in a good place. But he doesn’t mind. Because he still really fancies her.

Helen’s head felt tight and hot. And strange. As if there was another tongue inside it, deep inside her brain, all squished up with rusty bits of iron and out-of-season conkers that had been stored there by a squirrel, perhaps working in conjunction with a magpie with low standards. In this economy it makes sense to share. And you’ve got to make do with what you’ve got. Helen sighed and rubbed her right eye. The left eye was still trained on the sandwich counter at Tesco, where she was trying to decide between Hoisin duck wrap and cheese and onion triangles.

He has to be careful when he’s out and about.

Fortunately in the supermarkets and bars they don’t play Banghra Knights that much any more. It’s too 2003. And that wasn’t a great time for anyone, really.

If he heard it he’d zip back, uncontrollably. To who knows what time within his life. All of the steps and missteps and wonder since, erased. And he’d have to do it all again. With no memory, only a vague sense of the paths taken before.

Sometimes he fucked up. And he’d whack it on. And give it all another go. It was a good get out of jail free card. Sometimes literally.

2003 was particularly hard. Because it was always on the radio. It took him many trips back and forth, to last week and last month and last whatever to finally realise what was going on. And when he did, he got on a plane to Finland, where he hid out for six years, listening only to the wind and the water and the warblings of the Helsinkian carpenter in the flat downstairs.

A man with a woollen hat kicked a pebble at a pigeon. The pigeon wasn’t paying attention and got bashed in the eye. Serves the pigeon right. Pigeons should pay attention.

A pigeon with a woollen hat kicked a pebble at a man. The man wasn’t paying attention and got bashed in the eye. Serves the man right. Men should pay attention.

A pebble with a woollen hat kicked a man at a pigeon. The man was surprised, and the pigeon was surprised too. And angry and a bit sad. That’s twice today something’s been kicked at a pigeon. Pigeons have rights, too.