After the rain Roy passes, wheeling Shirley along for her daily outing.   They are my nearest neighbours.  Shirley has had a severe stroke and they know that at any time she could have another and that would almost certainly be the end.  But out of this disaster they have, amazingly, lit a bright fire.  Roy wheels her along as if she were the Queen of England.  Not that you would know any of this from the way that they talk about each other.  They argue and shout constantly. ‘Madame ‘ere’ says Roy ‘doesn’t realize she’s defective in the legs’.  ‘And ‘e’s defective in the ‘ead. What can you do with an idiot like that?’ Shirley ripostes. They are from Bradford and, like exiles everywhere, they faithfully perform the rituals of their native land.  Every Friday fish and chips are partaken, the perfect archetype, the Platonic exemplar, the criterional metre kept in the vacuum in Paris, ‘them fish and chips we ‘ad in ‘arrogate that time’ recalled, the inferiority of merely Lancastrian fish and chips lamented. ‘What do you think of David Cameron’ I say to Roy as he passes.   ‘David’oo?’  They dwell on a remote island of love.

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