Dead Men's s Boots

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Thanks to Jock for my first lesson in musical notation for drums. If I got it wrong, it’s not his fault. Thanks to Ade and Joel for raising my awareness of the weirder and more arcane bits of London, a process which is ongoing. Thanks to Gabriella Nemeth and Nick Austin for proofing and copy-editing this sprawling monster, and to Meg, Darren and George for their unfailing support.

I don’t do funerals all that often, and when I do I prefer to be either falling-down drunk or dosed up on some herbal fuzz-bomb like salvinorin to the point where I start to lose feeling from the feet on up, like a kind of rising damp of the central nervous system. Today I was as sober as a judge, and that was only the start of it. The cemetery was freezing cold – cold enough to chill me even through the Russian army greatcoat I was wearing (I never fought, but poor bloody infantry is a state of mind). The sun was still locked up for winter, a gusty east wind was stropping itself sharp on my face, and guilt was working its slow way through my mind like a weighted cheese-wire through a block of ice.

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