It’s nearly five a.m. I stop a couple of cops I’ve seen across the roads all evening. Ask them about the West End—is there anything happening late at night? They say no, say the area’s still cruising on a reputation it hasn’t deserved for over a decade. They sigh, wistfully. “You may get the odd rent boy hanging round Piccadilly, but that’s all they do: hang around.”

They’d seen three people in their last sweep through every dangerous dead-end alley and mysterious Soho street. They’re almost as bored as I am; I’m probably the most interesting thing that’s happened to them all night. If I had a mobile phone I’d let them play with it. Five thirty, they tell me, things hot up; the cleaners begin to come round.

5:20 I pass a McDonald’s. Already the McPeople who work there are in, McScrubbing the McCounters and unloading McMillions of McBuns from the McTruck.

5:40 Ponder the touching concern in My Editor’s voice when I told her I’d wander the streets, her obvious worry that terrible things were going to happen to me. I should have been so lucky.

6:02 I’m in the taxi going home. I tell the driver about my abortive evening. “Fing is,” he explains, “everybody relates to Wardour Street, Brewer Street, Greek Street as where the action is. They fink people hang round the ’Dilly still, addicts waiting for their scrips. Fuck me man, you’re going back twenty years. Notting Hill, that’s where it’s all at these days. The action’s always there. It just moves. And the West End’s been cleaned up so hard it’s dead.”

Conclusion (statistical breakdown):

Originally published in Time Out, 1988.

III

INTRODUCTIONS AND MUSINGS: SCIENCE FICTION

“There are three phrases that make possible the world of writing about the world of not-yet . . . and they are simple phrases.

“What if . . . ?

“If only . . .

“If this goes on . . .”

Fritz Leiber: The Short Stories

I met Fritz Leiber (it’s pronounced Lie-ber, and not, as I had mispronounced it all my life until I met him, Lee-ber) shortly before his death. This was twenty years ago. We were sitting next to each other at a banquet at the World Fantasy Convention. He seemed so old: a tall, serious distinguished man with white hair, who reminded me of a thinner, better-looking Boris Karloff. He said nothing, during the dinner, not that I can remember. Our mutual friend Harlan Ellison had sent him a copy of Sandman #18, A Dream of a Thousand Cats, which was my own small tribute to Leiber’s cat stories, and I told him he had been an inspiration, and he said something more or less inaudible in return, and I was happy. We rarely get to thank those who shaped us.