So let's just say I was posting something of considerable importance. It wasn't a spy code or anything but it was important. And what's more, it wasn't just what was inside the brown envelope that was important, I also wanted it to look good from the outside, not to the extent that I wanted it gift wrapped, bowed and scented but I didn't want it to look like it had been addressed and sealed by a messy child with three hands. If I was trying to compare it to something, it would be a job application: chances are, it's going to be ripped open by some temp-slave like you or I who might chuckle at a really disgusting parcel all slewed over in tape and spat on but they're not going to ruin your life are they?

There were some things inside that I needed to get photocopied. I went to the place and Wayne did my photocopying, but he stopped doing it for a while to talk to two girls who flounced in on off the streets and one of them was going away for a while, so Wayne said wow, why don't you write down your number and when you get back we could...? And she said yeah have you a pen? And Wayne said yeah I've got one, write it down here and laters I'll have a butchers and the girl said, by the way have you met Leanne? And Wayne said, oh, nice to meet...

I didn't get pissed. I'd left plenty of time for the photocopying but Wayne did barney on and let his mind wander so when I got home and pulled out my warm, coy, flat and bulldog clipped papers they all had a big black line down the middle.

Back to Wayne and the place and his boss who looked like a thief. I've been in there before and the boss is not good. He's got a beard which isn't a beard. If a beard is a bush or a shrub or, if you're someone dead fancy, a flower, the thief-boss had a beard like the grass in your local park, short, tough, grey, brown. So the boss does the copying and sells me a shoddy envelope which doesn't stick.

With the weather like it is, I don't know how people are always dressed right. For me, the clouds arrive. I reach for my jacket. I step outside, the clouds are blasted away by hot air and suddenly I'm disgusting. Many other people I see are dressed better, cooler, closer to the temperature. They all look very relaxed. Do they walk around and work closer to home? Do they just nip home and adjust? Lay-er off please. Thank you.

I was heating up when I dropped a pound coin outside the post office. I didn't have much change and post offices are difficult like that. But the coin didn't bounce and skip down the road. In fact, it barely bounced at all, which was not very annoying but still a bit scary. I walked into the post office to send my parcel and I pulled it out of my bag just have to one last check of everything. Because the envelope didn't stick and I hadn't been concentrating in the photocopy place, all my papers just rushed out of the upside down envelope with a whoosh and fanned out, swinging to the floor and settled. Someone skipped past my kneeling form to move up the queue and my god was it hot in there. Bag restuffed I lounged against the wall and then heard a voice, "Why are you standing there?" I ignored it. It was a woman's voice, she couldn't possibly... I am not doing anything wro.... I am trying to recove.... But no. Things being how they were she was talking to me quite definitely. I looked round and saw her, head under scarf, glasses with a separation for her different eyesights, craggy, make-up-horrible face and very deliberate look in her wierd eyes. I did what she wanted me to do, which was move six inches to the left while she tutted at me like I was a moron.

Then to the booth and I borrow some sticky tape to seal my bashed parcel. The helpful grandfather figure behind the glass pushed it through on the tray and I made a little prayer, "please sticky tape, be easy on me..." No. Half a minute later there I was, at the end, on my own, in a quiet corner, trying to rip and bite my way through the sticky tape as it hysterically twisted into sticky twine, ratty and covered in my greasy fingerprints. I tried cutting it with my keys, hunched over, begging, and all I got was a bundle of metal in glue, adhering strongly to my fingers and t-shirt. Finally, I posted my parcel, laid it out in the metal serving hatch. There she lay, strips of sellotape wrenched across her, petering out pathetically at the edges, whirled into horrible straws by hot and exhausted fingers. Then I walked home and saw all the tramps on street corners, one with a hand deep in his pocket, old sports jacket buttoned up, back arched improbably, looking up at the sky like Nelson at a cocktail party, dirty hand wrapped round some Pilsner. Then another one, on the bench, face between his knees and his friend next to him with a supportive hand resting lightly on his doubled over comrade, legs crossed camply and eyes quizzically looking out.

Time to go.