Whew, the day certainly had a funny colour to it – a harp light, but livid, bilious, as if some knot of eco-scuzz still lingered in its lungs

which they were billed to do in the scabrous hate-sheet tacked to the door

In the next booth along I caught a quarter’s worth of film with a sylvan setting: the romantic interest of the piece focused on the love that flowers between a girl and a donkey

‘I knew it would be you,’ she said, with urgent, husky restraint in her low louche voice.

I was still brimming with plangency, chockful of feeling

she’s blessed up top too, though perhaps not as fulsomely as I imagined

The adult movie was a period piece and more thoughtfully plotted than usual, all about a black plenipotentiary (Ottoman? Carthaginian?) and the appetites of his talented wife

You have to queue, and pay good money, to mingle with vituperative interpreters and flashlight-faced Japanese

they have what men call self-belief and blame you for your misprisions in their dreams

Martina stood silent on the terrace, in T-shirt and useful shorts, one arm akimbo as she trained her hose