“Is this how it goes?”

It had been some time since we had last met in person, but it was half past three and X’s greeting amounted to an admission that could not have been an easy one to make. "What else could I have done?"

The attention of X, having found no profit in trees, had turned to things that sought refuge in marginal and hidden locations – things generally regarded as unproven and outside the realm of scientific inquiry.

X took me immediately to that place which had once been deemed silly – the place that Old Jim had guided us to.

As a slow North-East wind blew up, X explained that they had recently found for the first time the touch of Cold Iron somewhere in the dark. It was this that had invoked such longing, such overwhelming nostalgia for the promiscuity of the pavement, to draw X back to the folk in housen.

"And that is how it goes.”