Everybody's lyin' and skivin' and dyin'

Around Shepherd Market, down Curzon Street and several other places on my way home, some attractive new varieties of outdoor heater. Rather than the orange glow reminiscent of an early January morning in a station waiting room, a gas flame leaping yellow. The first I thought was an installation with that silk-like material that represents fire, but encountered closer it was real and beautiful and warm.

There is a part of England for which there is no positional reference point, being neither North, nor Midlands, nor East. A flat land awaiting rightful return to its proper status of seabed. A few days ago it was the epicentre of a small earth tremor: locally numerous acts of habitual incest were disrupted, and habitations damaged to the cost of literally dozens of pounds.

I'm due to fly from Heathrow's T5 just a week after its opening. Of course it will all fall apart in a farce of faulty software and things getting stuck or breaking off, so that by the time I arrive the accumulated passengers will form a vast refugee camp surrounding the terminal building, huddled around burning stacks of mis-sorted luggage in the freezing Spring rain. The first cases of typhoid and cholera should just be breaking out.