Oscar, The Evil Sulphura and I have gone to see the new Bond film, Casino Royale. The first ten minutes takes place in a men’s bathroom, in which a fight involving broken urinals and wildly spraying plumbing leads neatly into Bond’s iconic flip-around-and-shoot-the-cameraman move.
It is exciting and violent and it awakens an urge deep in my bladder.
The LaTrobe Reading Room at the State Library of Victoria is possessed of such a tranquil, scholarly ambience that, in order to remind the reader of the perfect serenity he or she is privileged to enjoy, it has had to be randomly seeded with unoiled chairs which scream at the lightest touch like a bed full of climaxing banshees.
‘The thing is,’ says Oscar, draining his coffee, ‘is that the British one pound coin is very thick, and around the edge it has something written in Latin.’
‘Right,’ I say.
‘Or Welsh.’ He orders another latte. ‘One of those two. Which is the one with lots of ‘w’s?’
“Well, the more coffee I drink the more impulsive I become and the more coffee I order,” explained Oscar, “so by late morning I tend to feel connected to the here and now, the ghost of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and a quasar at the edge of the known universe I’ve decided to call Ian.”
“I’ll get the bill,” I said.
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