Shopping for the Artist

Self-evidently I am a fan of the artist. But I am also a fan of life. This life thing is often tested, though: as perhaps it should be. In the heart of the capital for example I see two military Chinook helicopters cross the sky, following the course of the river. They splutter with perhaps necessary gusto. I see eagle-eyed police with MP5s (machine guns) slung over their shoulders, waiting by a main railway station. I step past a building where I know major suspects are questioned and a pub once destroyed by a different type of terrorist. After passing a newspaper vendor selling images of a bio-security breach, I make it to the art shop. Therein, tools to all manner of expressed conflict are available, and the counter where I buy them is made of stainless steel. It is where I imagine T.S. Eliot’s 'patient' - the evening - 'etherised upon a table’. Anyway, opposite as I exit the shop is a club owned by people who also bought the house of a famous poet who drank himself to death and turned it into a drinking establishment. I wait for the speeding police van to pass and cross by some roadside flowers. A mother berates a boy with a small toy gun. I still have some reference images when they are ready to collect for the artist. An old man with a philosopher's face next to the developers leafs through a bin. While waiting for the images I drink coffee opposite an old Victorian workhouse. A young woman in the queue, I notice, quickly pops in her mouth a famous antidepressant – I see the packet - and downs it with designer water. Just then, my mobile phone rings. It is the artist. I am asked how I am. Not bad, I say. Not bad.