Jem Rolls

I was slack-jawed and loose-limbed, gaga, aghast and agog.

Amongst all the shineless faces and the samified logo, Gore-Tex torsos, the self-narrowed limits on the rubbernecking guidebook minds, the bone-dry drone buys and the sing-song tour guide parotry, the digitalised instance and the slow-mo camcord no-time.

I was too many lifetimes into today and it was still refusing to die.

Why am I here?

Because I came.

Whose fault is this?

Mine or mine?

Doing this because it's done.

Ticking off a list of must-sees like the best of British bureaucrats.

Because here I am, stood in front of a large case of piss yellow 15th century porcelain.

And maybe if you're into piss yellow 15th century porcelain,

then you're in the right place.

But if you're not, and I'm not, and they're not, then you're not.

You're really not.

If there is a verb to not, then the present tense ending is nothing.

And we, my friends, are nothing.

The stewedness, the skewedness, the sourness, slowness, and scowlingness.

The real is made ersatz.

History is dimmed by the lighting, is merged yet divorced from itself.

I know less than I did an hour ago.