had been called “Collage and Sleep in Late European Cinema” and it was in this essay that Don had first put forward the idea that it was valuable to think of life as a film. Not that the individual was the star and there were cameras watching, but that our eyes and ears were a camera that was always recording. We had to make decisions about what our lives—a live broadcast, one-shot, uneditable film—were going to be about. In Don’s life-film, there was no sound track. He preferred the ambiguity of silence, he said. This was just one justification, of many, for why Don could not enjoy music.
He became irritatingly discerning, saying he would not consume toxic food or toxic culture, saying that nacho sauce,
Lethal Weapon 3
, and Margaret Thatcher all spawned from the same toothless maw. The UCI radicalized him. He knew by heart the trailers for
A Few Good Men
,
Batman Returns
,
Basic Instinct
, and
Aladdin
. He knew the taglines from numerous high-end adverts: Tanqueray, Omega, Bosch. When he was made redundant, he said this to his boss:
“Your mind—it is the center of your life. Everything you see and hear and feel. How would you know if someone stole your mind?”
It was from the trailer to
Total Recall
.
Freya worked in the admissions department of the School of Oriental and African Studies. Her two colleagues were married to each other and the office sometimes felt like an extension of their bedroom, with pet names and passive-aggressive whispering. The man was an alcoholic; five or six times a day they’d hear the conspicuous hiss of a can of Holsten Pils spitting froth onto the underside of his desk. It was never mentioned, though at the end of each workday he had the cans lined up by his feet. As far as Freya could tell, it had got to the point in their marriage when it was easier for his wife to pretend that the regular
kerrrr-chisss
sound was a normal part of the administrative bustle: keystrokes, photocopying, continental lager. As a way to feel better about her job, Freya stole and cycled home so much good-quality stationery that she started to get a backache. The notepads and rollerball pens would become key tools in planning the community.
Meanwhile, Janet worked in a vintage clothes warehouse. Campaigners used to come in and slash the furs. Addicts used to steal novelty ties from the one-pound bin. The clothes arrived in huge, tightly wrapped bales, which, once cut, flopped out, trebling in size: marshes of dead people’s dirty glad rags. There was no heating because heating was pointless in a space that size, so Janet had a permanent dust cough and sniffles and was eventually diagnosed with bronchitis.
This said, the three of them were reasonably happy: Freya and Janet bonded by jobs they despised while Don, newlyjobless, was the stay-at-home housewife, cleaning and cooking. Then Patrick arrived. The recession had hit the rental market and he’d had to sell off a property. They didn’t find out until later that the one he sold was the one he had been living in. He was homeless. They thought he would only stay for the weekend, but on Monday evening Janet and Freya came home from work to find he had laid out a bribe: two dozen oysters and a bottle of champagne. Since he’d quit cocaine, he had taken up eating. As Janet frowned and prodded at one of the frilled, quasi-testicular sacs, Patrick realized that oysters were no guarantee of seduction. Don, on the other hand, dove right in.
During those first two weeks, Patrick made himself indispensable, doing practical things like building plasterboard walls, which, Don claimed, were mainly motivated by his desire to achieve privacy with Janet. Then Freya got made redundant too and Patrick offered to cover the shortfall in rent, at which point he became permanent. While Janet went to work, the three of them explored free London: morning swims in Hampstead mixed-sex pond, lunch from the Hare Krishnas, museums in the afternoon. Each night, when Janet
He became irritatingly discerning, saying he would not consume toxic food or toxic culture, saying that nacho sauce,
Lethal Weapon 3
, and Margaret Thatcher all spawned from the same toothless maw. The UCI radicalized him. He knew by heart the trailers for
A Few Good Men
,
Batman Returns
,
Basic Instinct
, and
Aladdin
. He knew the taglines from numerous high-end adverts: Tanqueray, Omega, Bosch. When he was made redundant, he said this to his boss:
“Your mind—it is the center of your life. Everything you see and hear and feel. How would you know if someone stole your mind?”
It was from the trailer to
Total Recall
.
Freya worked in the admissions department of the School of Oriental and African Studies. Her two colleagues were married to each other and the office sometimes felt like an extension of their bedroom, with pet names and passive-aggressive whispering. The man was an alcoholic; five or six times a day they’d hear the conspicuous hiss of a can of Holsten Pils spitting froth onto the underside of his desk. It was never mentioned, though at the end of each workday he had the cans lined up by his feet. As far as Freya could tell, it had got to the point in their marriage when it was easier for his wife to pretend that the regular
kerrrr-chisss
sound was a normal part of the administrative bustle: keystrokes, photocopying, continental lager. As a way to feel better about her job, Freya stole and cycled home so much good-quality stationery that she started to get a backache. The notepads and rollerball pens would become key tools in planning the community.
Meanwhile, Janet worked in a vintage clothes warehouse. Campaigners used to come in and slash the furs. Addicts used to steal novelty ties from the one-pound bin. The clothes arrived in huge, tightly wrapped bales, which, once cut, flopped out, trebling in size: marshes of dead people’s dirty glad rags. There was no heating because heating was pointless in a space that size, so Janet had a permanent dust cough and sniffles and was eventually diagnosed with bronchitis.
This said, the three of them were reasonably happy: Freya and Janet bonded by jobs they despised while Don, newlyjobless, was the stay-at-home housewife, cleaning and cooking. Then Patrick arrived. The recession had hit the rental market and he’d had to sell off a property. They didn’t find out until later that the one he sold was the one he had been living in. He was homeless. They thought he would only stay for the weekend, but on Monday evening Janet and Freya came home from work to find he had laid out a bribe: two dozen oysters and a bottle of champagne. Since he’d quit cocaine, he had taken up eating. As Janet frowned and prodded at one of the frilled, quasi-testicular sacs, Patrick realized that oysters were no guarantee of seduction. Don, on the other hand, dove right in.
During those first two weeks, Patrick made himself indispensable, doing practical things like building plasterboard walls, which, Don claimed, were mainly motivated by his desire to achieve privacy with Janet. Then Freya got made redundant too and Patrick offered to cover the shortfall in rent, at which point he became permanent. While Janet went to work, the three of them explored free London: morning swims in Hampstead mixed-sex pond, lunch from the Hare Krishnas, museums in the afternoon. Each night, when Janet
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