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pose). Holding his breath, Bobby listens really closely to the next four or five Drip!! Drip!! Drip!! Drip!!s, but it’s not that obvious which direction they’re coming from. His ears are ringing after listening to Metal Machine Music all night, and the drips seem to gain a more arrogant Splish! the more he can’t find them. The boiler: Getting desperate, Bobby starts to dismantle the Baxi, uncovering all the fancy copper pipes and investigating each one and each one’s little fittings for leakage, but unfortunately the plumbing’s faultless. Splish! The tinned goods: Losing it, Bobby scrabbles through the various tins of tomatoes and tats and Heinzes in the lone cupboard, as if they could seep enough drippy liquid to keep a grown man out of bed. They’re fine, of course. The floor: Bobby the Artist breaks down on the lino floor in a heap of argyle sweater and ball sac. His brain absolutely kills, and the wee droplets are now giant’s feet stomping all round the kitchen. Boom!! Bobby’s insane. He curls up in a ball, leaving snail-trails of sweat-marks along the plastic ground, totally exhausted but unable to drop off. It’s as if he’s forgotten how to fall asleep, and Bobby just sprawls there in a frustrating sleepy no-man’s-land. Boom!! He tries to count sheep but the drips come at such strange intervals his mind becomes a knot of numbers and splishes and he wonders if it’ll Boom!! ever unravel. The only consolation is that lovely colourful shard of daybreak squeezing under the curtain, and Bobby the Artist flicks his fingers through it smiling moronically. It’s such a beautiful spectacle that Bobby pulls himself from the ground and tugs open the curtain completely, and that’s when he sees the gorgeous bright rainbow arcing all the way from Berwick Hills to South Bank, and that’s when he sees the slight rainfall dripping every three or four seconds on the metal window ledge. Drip! The following night Bobby the Artist can’t sleep thanks to an obscure banging upstairs. Bang! It’s actually Johnnie beating the shit out of Angelo, throwing him against the four walls and battering his kneecaps and almost breaking his own wrist thumping him round the face. He bishes him and bashes him and boshes him. He doesn’t know for sure Ellen’s cheated on him, but the walls of this tower block are incredibly thin, which blesses (or curses) the inhabitants with a strange sort of psychic sixth sense – or rather a sort of uncontrollable nosy awareness of what everybody’s up to. Johnnie knows Ellen slept round Angelo’s last night – he heard her voice coming out of his ceiling. And he knows what red-blooded bloodhounds like Angelo try to do to girls when they’re in their pyjamas. Ellen came back this afternoon with her miniskirt on the wrong way and teethmarks on her Umbro top and pupils like coat buttons. Without even thinking, she told Johnnie Angelo was knocking out brilliant ecstasy, and maybe he should get hold of some of these ‘sharks’ himself. Just when she thought it was safe to go back in the water, splashing herself down on the sofa and putting an arm round Johnnie, her boyfriend leapt up, kicked an Americano box the length of the flat, then bounded upstairs to sort the cunt out for good. It’s bad enough Ellen being round the Sardinian’s all the time, but even worse is some prick like him stealing his pill business. Johnnie has a hard time as it is trying to pay the rent, but he credits himself with a good few volleys to Angelo’s forehead and a scream of, ‘You bastard!!’ He wants to kill him, or at least kill his good looks, throwing precision toe-punts into his great cheekbones and thick greasy locks. Angelo begins spewing up blood, nervously spasming to and fro in his apartment, convinced Johnnie knows about him and Ellen (a great shag; one hour and thirty-three minutes of missionary, doggy, legs in the sky, blow-job, cunnilingus, three orgasms for Ellen and two for Angelo, the only