Mystery Lane

S’a strange thing to be walkin’ east-west through this town and to know that there is a lane, a cut, part of the medieval grid that can get you shortcutwise into town BUT when you return i.e. west-east, the lane has gone, disappeared, not to be found despite lengthy meanderings up and down the locale. Yep, jus’ gawn. Medieval alchemy and divination at work? Some wrinkled furrow-brow sitting in his garret with the stench of quicksilver ‘n’ lead pouring forth in the lee of the Norman gate, putting a curse on some enemy and ne’er getting it off again so we still tumble down the confusion centuries later? I think so. Yes. So Whiting Street and Bridewell lane be accursed! Sheesh. Disorientation, enthralling disorientation like Alice, up and down we go without any real chance of deciding for ourselves . . . who shall we be following, sirrah?

The party howlers arrive and disgorge their fat love in the living room, urinating epithets of mutual appreciation and pseudo-celebrity love-in-ness. Fantasy island in the Suffolk hollows . . .

And bleary eyed ne’er do wells linger in the doorway eager to fry the fat and taste it too. Shittin’ a brick for jesus replacements and other class A’s. S’all in there for a few hours. While the older man upstairs, his lingering scribe ancestry depleted for an evening, sleeps fitfully, disturbed by their reverie and calls out (unheard) for the world to shut its mouth til morning and leave him in peace approximately. Oh aye! How they move these magi. Wandering and arched down Sparhawk Lane or lost in the Kevelaer shadows, with the brook idling in their ears and the sweet marjoram stuffed in gills and nostrils.