In an ideal world 0001.
It had been almost a decade since the organisers of the G8 summit had adopted their “give ‘em what they came for” policy regarding the inevitable protesting hoards. Over the years it had become clear that for the majority of protesters, the summit and traditional kick-off against security was a kind of festival of sanctimonious left-wing intellectualism complimented by a bit of ‘the old ultra-V’. A grand day out. Bring the kids. And so, controversially, it was decided to give them the fight they’d come for. After all, by this point, “I was tear-gassed at G8” buttons and postcards were selling well on culture-jammer websites. It was hard to tell if they were meant to be ironic, but the fact they were also selling bumper-stickers with the same slogans suggested that they probably were.
These carnivals of violence worked along the same lines as the bi-annual, smaller-scale riots induced by the police in unruly areas of low-socio-economic demographics. It was actually a highly-guarded secret. Sociologists had long prescribed a diet of lowest common denominator entertainment and consumerism to keep the sub-proles docile. Yet the manors continued to spiral down into further and more expensive criminality and unruliness. Faced with the hackneyed excuse that their dysfunctions were due to lack of material goods and children’s’ play areas (no matter how many of these amenities were provided and destroyed) the police began to covertly instigate regular riots and give the public a reason to pit themselves against a satisfyingly distinct and clear symbol of authority. It worked, a couple of big riots were much easier to handle than many little antisocial acts...

In an ideal world 0002.
The remnants of a very odd sunset combined with low cloud and the city’s light pollution was making the sky look remarkably purple. I suggested, as I am wont to do of everything, that this was a portent of the coming apocalypse. She concurred. It was so cold that the dogshit shattered like glass when kicked against the wall. Though I’m not sure what that signified. With numbed hands and faces we hurried onwards through the urban streets. Everything, everything had suddenly become charged with disquieting significance. A plastic bag blowing in the air seemed to move in a hitherto unseen pattern, as if the invisible convection currents had been reversed.
Clouds disappeared from one part of the sky and instantaneously re-materialised in another.
I noticed my grandfather’s initials scratched into a phone booth.
The more vague the significance, the more ominous they seemed.
Then she pointed out a couple across the street. To our shared horror, we recognised that they were an inferior version of ourselves. Verkitschene imitations, not quite as cool not quite as hip but close enough to make us feel deeply uncomfortable. Not nice to see yourself reflected so unfavourably, is that how others might see us? Are we so close to trashiness? The confidence-blow almost threw us off course completely.
But it would have been folly to deny that the end was nigh in the face of so much compelling evidence. All that was left was to suggest we spend our last night alive making love with wild abandonment until it hurt. Apparently, she’d been thinking I’d never ask. Embellishing our plan, she reasoned that money now being of no concern, we should take her credit card and check into the most expensive hotel in the area.
There was no question of going back to mine. The central heating had broken down three days ago making the general squalor finally intolerable.

In an ideal world 0003.
When morning broke, so did I. We disembarked the train into a terrain of barren mud as far as the eye could see. Which was very, no slope nor structure interrupted the rural flatness. There was a freezing cold wind but the sky was a featureless grubby white.
Trudging ahead to the engine we found it deserted as were the carriages. I felt the calm of the atmosphere was exactly opposite to the calm of a bomb. Absolutely nothing was going to happen here. So it was necessary that we move on. One has to chase down events, it’s like a taught connecting thread through my life. Purpose! Resolve! That familiar flicker of joy. I stood on the track and surveyed the view. No muddy direction looked any more attractive or forbidding than the rest so it was with impunity that I struck out at a right angle to the train and track. Jesse followed me without objection. By late afternoon, we came across a field of carrots but were at a loss as to how to get them clean enough to eat once we’d pulled them from the ground. Disgusted and thirsty, I tossed the orange root away. It was then that we were caused to look at one another. A distant baying of hounds and a horn being sounded. Unmistakeable, Hernes was abroad.

In an ideal world 0004.
An adolescent calla lily light in flesh but heavy in affect. Her lack of identity only served to intensify her cool self-possession. Groomed for bourgeois society life between inpatient hospitalisations, hers was an existence of pearls and antiseptic. We were together throughout the darkest days of the revolution.
I joined her in her hotel room on the night of the coup, she wore a pale dress of beads and chiffon, high heels clicked on the marble floor. I thought I detected the faintest notes of the French national anthem, I was right. The grammar phone was playing Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture. How bizarre to be looking over the twinkling city skyline to that. She scratched the needle off the disc and tossed it onto a pile of records on the bed. "They came with the room" she explained.
As she mixed a couple of martinis, carefully decanting Galliano from a tapered bottle I tried another record. It happened to be Wagner and could anything have been more appropriate? A no-brow Jugenstil "drama of the future".
We toasted postmodernism and drank our drinks while staring adoringly into each others faces. Then we left to join the revolutionary council, art-dealers and advertising executives in the conference suite.