So as we agree to meet later on at Tommy’s and smoke this stuff. I head back home for a bit, I was still living at my ma’s by this point but she was away out for the night so as I thinks to myself, I should just smoke myself a wee doobster, just to acclimatise myself to it, like. So I roll myself a wee joint, about two inch long. Mix it with some tobacco. Open the window and take a hit.

Nothing. Nadja. Zip. Then I start to minding stuff. Next thing it’s a flood of stuff. Then it’s like too-much-stuff, like a river of stuff, a river what has burst its banks and what is sweeping everything up in its wake and plus the waters are filthy in this river what’s coming back to me in a dream. I nip out back to the toilet. We still had an old freezing outdoor loo in them days. I go out there and I lock the door and I light the candle and I take a look in the mirror. Holy fuck. I’m not kidding. There’s nothing there. It’s like an ice rink. Frozen. Empty. There’s no face, just thick fucking ice that has frosted over the mirror. I’m stood there staring into this frozen mirror at my own lack of a face for I don’t know how long. Where’s my face. Where’s my fucking face, Samuel? But then these little colours start to form on the mirror, these spinning little colours coming through the ice. And now I can see it. It’s little girls, starting to appear, little girls come in colour, dancing and spinning and coming through the ice like in an old Disney cartoon, in colour. I sit down on the can and I watch them, beautiful, inside the mirror, is a splash of colour, spinning, and skating on one leg, the other leg raised into the air behind them, and some of them are pirouettes, spinning, and there’s music, somewhere far away there is romantic music, and I think to myself, this is Central Park, I says to myself, it’s that ice rink at Central Park, Samuel, the one from the movies.

And now it is snowing’t

The soft snowes,

falling’t,

on all the little girls,

spinning’t this way an

that,

I had always dreamt of New York. My ma was in love with America. She had a picture of JFK above the cooker. It’s like Doctor Who, Samuel, I says to myself. This toilet just went and teleported you to New York, I says. There’s one girl in the middle, spinning on the spot. I feel as if I know her. Even though I can’t get a good look at her I feel a great connection. Little girl is a whole new possibility, Xamuel, I says to myself. Faceless girl, in a frozen mirror, coming through in colour. And now it’s spinning faster and faster. Now the whole place is vibrating. I curl up on the floor and I hold on. I can’t move. I’m fixed to the spot. There’s nothing I can do. And now it feels like we’re flying.