They say it’s the sea but it is not, it’s an estuary, a big river, kind of sea-like. You couldn’t call it an ocean. The fishwives are tiny, they carry huge wicker baskets on their backs with a strap on their forehead to hold it in place and they wear such old-style clothes it’s like they are existing in a whole other time alongside us. They wear long skirts, shawls, they spit, they smoke, they pray, they swear (all at the same time). I wouldn’t fight one. A fishwife marched past me today going up a hundred stairs twice as fast as anyone else and not only was she carrying a basket (about at least as big as you) filled with fish – she was knitting! I think she was about a hundred. Fast as hell. Her hands just battering away – double stitch, pearl and whatever. I was so impressed, I called after her to have a good day ma’am and she raised a hand and kept right on walking. When people talk here they sound angry even when they’re not. I’ve gotten used to it. Every morning I hear water being poured upstairs in a sink, a little while later the stair door closes below, everything arrives and departs at No. 10 Luckenbooth via the stairwell – news and gossip, fear, post, furniture arrives, or is taken out, lots of bags of coal. The stairwell steps are made of stone and they are worn with footsteps from decades of wear, so many people have lived out their lives here, children, old people, friends, lovers, unwanted relatives, a dog on a string, a doctor, an undertaker. How many bodies have been carried out over all that time? How many babies born? As the building gets higher the apartments get smaller. The residents less wealthy, I should be on the top floor, I’m only staying on the third because my employer leased it to me whilst his nephew is away. Further up the building they have four apartments per landing. If you took off the entire front wall of No. 10 Luckenbooth Close you’d see the basement, stair, floor, room, light, ceilings and repeat for nine floors. None of us would be surprised by the others’ habits. The man on the fifth floor (as he is doing right now) plays his piano on a Sunday, his wife’s parrot is allowed to fly around their apartment, there would be different wallpapers, at least twenty-three beds, a few tin baths, fireplaces, rugs of assorted design – there is a prayer group meets on the sixth floor on a Wednesday, a card game is run from the landlord’s fancy apartment on the first floor, he is paler than bread – except for his nose which is red as claret. I walked home last week and found him carving a pictograph at the front door, it is a tiny goat girl, he was drunk and it’s his building! I guess he can scrape goat girls into stone if he wants. He is getting work done on the building just now. I chatted to the stonemason just the other day – a nice guy, his name is Jim Kane, he plays records in a local bar on Wednesdays, he said I should go in so me and the postman will go along for a dance and a drink there sometime soon. As I say I spend my time thinking but I also like to talk to a good-looking woman and sink rum and Coke and wake up with a feeling of overwhelming dread.