TheESSEX

Where is Wickford?
Where is Shenfield?

What do these places mean? What should they mean to me?

There's engineering work on the trainlines so I have to get a replacement bus on my way east to visit the niece, my brother and sister-in-law. Its a warm day, you are my indian summer, maybe the last of the year, the citizens of Wickford and Shenfield are out with their friend nd loved ones, drinking and holding. I am on buses and trains on my own, scribbling.

It didn't have to be this way.

Months ago I bought a new mobile phone, a Sony Ericsson K800i, with the intention of being able to send emails and update my various blogs whilst out and about

Those bastards at CarPhone Warehouse sold me a pudding. Battery life is down to 8 hours now, thats with using it for one phone call and two text messages a week, the memory is too small to surf the web and email is impossible to set up. The wee cover of the camera is badly designed, it keeps sliding open in my pocket and taking photies of my shrapnel. How can something be designed and sold so bad?

Those bastards.

Also my own fault for not taking it back to the shop.

CarPhone Warehouse = bunch of cunts

Sony Ericsson K800i = shittest phone ever

...

A girl sits next to me on the bus, lack of empty seats. She's tall, in her early 20s, blonde hair and kind of stocky. I think I'm in love with her.

Pale skin, small delicate hands, she keeps adjusting her top so it covers the way her tummy bulges over the sides of her jeans.

My mind keeps drifting to wrapping my arms round her, her body soft under my fingers, kissing her neck.

I wonder what she smells like.

Crikey I need a girlfriend.

...

Back to reading this book, The17. Bill, the narrator, has just moved to east London in it.

At exactly the same I was driving to south London from Glasgow.

What went wrong?