“Albert,” said Alice, “we need your help.” “It’s the people downstairs,” added Jane, “they do strange things in the night.” “I can’t help you at the moment,” I said, “John usually takes me in the car, and he’s not here.” Alice smiled, and she and Jane dissolved into a swirling mist of scarlet. “Have you locked up?” George asked, “and put up the CLOSED sign?” “Not yet,” I answered. “the key wouldn’t fit the door and the postman hasn’t called this morning; it’s getting far too complicated with all this bad weather.” “That’s the van key,” sniffed George, and picked up the poker. Good, I thought; when THEY arrive George has the poker to defend himself and I have George to defend us both. I turned away from the front door and looked back into the shop. Must get new glasses, I told myself, everything’s getting hazy and the hall floor is curving slightly, dipping into a flattish u-shape. Maybe we should just go down the new corridor that has just appeared with its green walls, brown skirting board and gravel-grey linoleum, but it can’t be the Labour exchange even though the colours are right because they were done away with long ago and they were never lit with all these silly little yellow candles that go on for ever and ever inbetween the black and white pin-up pictures of long-dead film stars. It all feels so alien, and – “Watch out – THEY are here!” screamed George. “George!” I cry, “Attack! Charge!” “Charge?” THEY query. “Three and six” I demand. “Too much,” sniffs George, “I’ll give you half-a-crown and not a farthing more.” “Too much,” the tall guard agrees, beaming down at me as I lie in the middle of the u-shaped floor; “too much morphine, and no valid ticket for this train.” “Now lad,” the Captain looks at me, “it’s all this thinking you do, you know. You think too much; thinking is bad for you, gives you ideas. Too many words filling up all the spaces in your head. But we can help you. We can empty your head of all the little things that are upsetting you, like your multi-coloured cooking-pots, indecipherable signs and strange noises that fill the sky with of lights.” I suppose I should be grateful for their help as they lift me to my feet. But I’m not. No. This world is too full of THEM. Alice takes hold of my left arm and Jane my right. “Here we go,” they chime together, “let’s go and search for your lost soul, Albert.” Maybe I’ll remember where I left it; it will be in a room talking to my shadow. The bottle for cleaning the sink pipe said Stura Valandrina; she’ll be an opera singer, like the one I asked to sing “Gern hab’ ich die Frau’n geküßt” all those years ago and she looked at me as if I was daft. The trouble with having an open mind is that people come along and stuff ideas into it and all the ideas clash and I don’t know which are my ideas and which are theirs and whether any of them are worth more than the tuppence-ha’pny it used to cost me to get to Rye Lane on the tram and oh is this our stop let me get off here before the whole world sinks into the quicksand …