-Hello, Jim, he says in his little but usually too loud voice. Cathy is sitting on the step and smiles, cheeks happy under gold-rimmed glasses, shading her eyes from the sun as she watches the two of us, Danny and I, with bemusement. She knows we're mad, but it doesn't matter because she wonders if it's really just herself, lost in a private hang-up and burdens that I know she wants to share but can't, yet. She works and tries to be happy, and maybe she'll never know how much we love her.

I know her because Jack, her husband, is a mature student on the course I was doing at University until I dropped out under the pressure and hassles of the outside world and internal storms. He's intelligent, more than me because he knows how to study and learn, how to think which I'm too fickle to do, I'm too childish in my attention and love of life. He always wants to know more, understand more on the path he's set himself, to think about as much as possible at any one moment until everything is complete in his head and then he'll understand, -O! It was there all the time. But you can't tell anybody this, no-one can pass on that much understanding, it can only be shared, offered as I try with what I paint, open in the hope that (secret and dreaded) someone will see who you really are, past all the lies and pain and into the love, the real, the bit of you yourself that is never lost, never understood or perceived under the tumult and fall and rise of thoughts that you think really are you and you pretend to follow them, but really they are just as random as any part of life, just as unreal, just as impermanent, just as sad.

-Why aren't you working? I ask.

-I haven't got anything to do at the moment, and I'm looking after Cody. It's too nice a day to work.

Cathy works from home as a freelance copywriter, she has to support her family and tries hard, unlike me she does kind of enjoy it, but she has more interesting work and more freedom around and within it than I do. She gets up, Cody watches us not playing anymore.

-Do you want a cup of tea, then, she asks, knowing that it's pretty much all that Danny and I drink.

-What a good idea, replies Danny.

We go inside, Cody starts riding up and down the path again shouting at his mum to watch him.

-I'm just making some tea, Cody.

We sit down in the front room that is just big enough to be both lounge and dining room, with a big table in the space made by the bay window and most of the room arranged around a low coffee table piled up with magazines and paper. I sit in the armchair with my back to the outside and Danny sits on the two seat sofa opposite me that is uncomfortable because the cushions slide forwards. While waiting for the kettle to boil Cathy sits on the air of the other sofa next to the kitchen door from where she can see what Cody is doing. The only exits to the room are upstairs, the small kitchen and back outside. The walls are decorated with a Chinese painting and calligraphy, memories from our time in China as a part of the University course. The little portable television is out of sight on the other side of the chimney flue and is almost never on and inside the cupboard on which it sits is a stereo.

Cathy disappears briefly to make the tea, Danny looks at me questioning and makes a gesture with his fingers, I nod and motion him to ask,

-Is it all right if we skin up? he says.

-Of course it is, Cathy laughs back from the kitchen.

-Do you want to do it? he questions me.

-OK. I pull out my tobacco and papers and he chucks me the bag with the lump of hash in it that he's got left from last week. -We'll definitely have to get some more off Owen later.

Cathy comes back into the room with three cups steaming and places them on the table next to each of us as she sits down again.

-None of you take sugar do you?

-No, ta, says Danny.

-That grass he's got is pretty poky, I tell Dan.

-So you're going out tonight? asks Cathy.

-Yeah, going ravin', dropping some E and dancing the all night hopefully, replies Dan.

-Sounds like fun, Cathy uncertainly replies. Where will you be going?

-We don't actually know yet. I say. -We were supposed to be going to this special night at this club in Morley, but it's too expensive and starts too early. We've got to wait for Liam, he'll know about something.

I grab a hard book from the shelves to my left, close my eyes for a few seconds as though remembering tonight has reminded me how tired I am after weeks of working. I take a sip of my tea, set the things I need out on the flat surface of the book, which is on Russian revolutionary art, and stick some cigarette papers together.

-Who's going, is Cait? she asks.

-Yeah, Liam, Jo, me, Dan, Cait and Sasha.

The slate softens under the flame from my lighter and puffs up softly under my fingers as I crumble it into the folded paper, repeating the action until there's enough there.

-What time do you leave? I ask her.

-It's supposed to be about seven, but whenever Jack turns up I suppose. Do you still want to stay here tonight, then?

-Yeah, if you don't mind.

-Of course not.

We've asked to use this house tonight, partly to look after it while they're away and stop it from being burgled, partly because it's so much nicer, more civilised and quiet than any of the houses any of us actually live in. My own house has no lounge or comfortable chairs so it's nice to be able to come here. I separate the tobacco and add it over the hash.

-Can we put some music on?

-U-oh. I suppose.

We grin at each other because Cathy doesn't like a lot of the music I listen to. I look at Danny, -Some dub or something, Jack's got a couple of tapes or there's what I've got. Which I point to my satchel by the table. He gets up and rummages it with a rattle of cassette boxes, I roach the cigarette paper packet and stick it in before I roll it together because I think it's easier that way.

-Lee Perry?

-Yeah, that'll be great.

Roll it up and lick stick it all together. Danny puts the tape into the machine and starts it playing, I light the now-finished joint and take another sip of tea just as the music begins.

Sometimes, when you're feeling a bit down or tired or sad all you need is a good cup of tea or coffee, a spliff and tunes that swing and jump to lift you up and carry you along; reggae, rave, jazz, it's all in the music, a pure reflection of life in art, fluid, abstract, music is consistently the most intense part of any day. The sheer beauty of a tune can build you up over and over again. More than anything else it's the most real, it's the most natural appreciation that all art heads to achieving. Nowadays, with perfect recordings and digital amplifiers, we control music as a part of our environment like nothing else. Music can be a part of any experience we choose to add it to, high, low, on the side, like a soundtrack, a ride in a car, a party, lying in the sun, painting and art. And now there is so much music tastes and scenes, what's in, who's out, all that fragments and becomes meaningless. We can go anywhere, hear anything, do anything.

-I finished your portrait last night, I tell Cathy.

-Great, when can I see it?

-Whenever you want, it'll have to be when you get back I guess.

-It's really good, Danny says. -It's the best one I've seen. You've improved so much this past year.

I look at him with a smile, I know that Danny is my most honest critic amongst the friends who are really interested in what I do because in a sense he is the most practical minded. He doesn't judge me on my talent or potential but on what I actually produce.

-I mean that stuff I saw after I got back from the States last year was all right, but I didn't think it was that special, just nice.

My smile broadens, every word is a blessing that penetrates behind my ego to where it really counts because it is honest.

-But now, you're getting really good. It's just amazing how you can change, improve so much from picture to picture.

-I can't wait to see it, says Cathy.

-Well, I begin, I've really just been messing around I suppose. Now I'm really starting to put all the different influences together and find out what I want to do for myself. I think I've stopped living in other peoples shadows, I feel confident enough to just do what I like, something that's becoming new not what someone else has already done. I mean, there's still influences, but they are a part of me now, not something that squats outside for me to pick up and try out. You know what I mean?

-Yeah, I can see that. he says.

I pass the spliff to Cathy.

-I gave Dan that poem you wrote for me, Ten Years, he says he likes it a lot.

-Do you really like it? she asks him.

-Yes, I thought it really worked. I spent an hour with me mum discussing it and she thinks it's good as well. I'd like to see some of your other poems if I can?

-Well, there's a few on the computer upstairs, I'll get some print-outs for you.

-Thanks, it doesn't have to be right now.

Suddenly Cody shouts from the garden, -Mummy!

-Yes, Cody? She turns to look straight out of the door, straining my neck I can just see him through the window, standing over his tricycle, his face an honest reflection of his demand and need for attention, imploring.

-Can you sit on the step, mummy?

-O, Cody, I'm trying to talk to Danny and Jim.

-Mummy!

-Look, why don't you come inside and I'll get you a drink? Are you thirsty?

He thinks before replying, -All right, then.

He gets off the trike, already forgotten and runs out of my sight to the steps re-emerging inside the door. Cathy passes the joint onto Dan and gets up. Cody follows her into the kitchen, from where we hear glasses clattering and the brief conversation over what type of juice to have. I watch Cathy fill the glass from the sink which is by the doorway and passes it to Cody, steps back into the front room and flops into the chair. Cody stands still and grins at me from behind his drink. After a few mouthfuls he lowers it and walks back in as well to put the glass on the table. Jimmy hands the spliff back to me and Cody leans on the arm of my chair to watch me and the smoke. His little hand, stretched out, waves through the cloud I breathe out.

-Smoke, he says, almost absent-mindedly.

-Yep. (Changing the subject) -Have had a good day?

-It's been OK (emphasising -Kaay)

-Have you been to the park?

-Yes, I played on the swings and the slide.

He's watching just the smoke now, hardly paying me any attention at all, fascinated by the curls and twists he makes with his fingers moving through it.

-He seems so much older every time I see him, says Danny. -Even if it's just a couple of weeks. It doesn't seem so long ago he couldn't even talk and now he's chatting away happily, you know?

-It's surprising how much he picks up, really, says Cathy. -The other day he told me off for saying shit, and that I should say drat instead.

Cody looks around at his mother with a mischievous grin.

-Drat! he says, then runs towards her. -Drat!

She leans quickly forwards with her arms out to catch him as he half launches herself at her. -Drat! S/ugar!

He's wriggling around as they hug, escaping downwards to the ground with a giggle. Then he stops, drinks some more of his juice and I pass the joint over to Cathy again. She accepts it and then glances outside.

-Hello, she shouts. I look out behind me again just as I hear the gate unlatched and swing open to see Jack, Sasha and Cait happy in the sunshine, a little flushed with alcohol and the hot walk, stepping quickly up the path and through the door. A mass of hellos as people sort out their seats and Cody runs around trying to get everybody to look at him and pay no heed to anyone else. Cait sits next to Dan and gives him a quick peck, Jack sits with Cathy and Sasha pulls out a chair from the dining table by me.

-Have you had a good time? Cathy asks.

-Yeah, we just stayed in the Union.

-Are you drunk then?

Jack pauses as if trying to work it out, rubbing his hand over his dark shaved hair. -A little bit, I've only had a couple, though. Is that what I think it is?

He accepts the joint off Cathy with obvious relish and leans back in the chair with a sigh. Cody stands looking around for something to do until his mother gets up asking him if he wants a jam sandwich before they go in the car. He says yes and she goes into the kitchen again. I turn to Cait, who looks small next to Danny, her long, thin blonde hair clipped back between her shoulder blades. I got to know her through Cathy and Jack and we have become good friends, especially since I introduced her to Danny.

-Written anything lately? It's almost a joke question because, though she is good she doesn't write very much but especially lately because of the exams that have only just finished. She scowls at me,

-No, I've been a bit busy, you know?

I nod, pushing it a little further, I'm always trying to force my friends to do what it is they claim they want, like with Cathy and her poetry, everybody'll too busy to spare time doing what they enjoy.

-I've finished my portrait of Cathy.

-But I haven't seen it yet, Cathy says as she walks back and puts Cody's sandwiches on the dinner table. Cody goes and sits on the chair next to them and starts to eat.

-Mmm, these taste good.

Everybody looks at him and laughs. Jack offers the nasties to Dan, but he turns it down so after a last quick drag Jack stubs it into the ashtray.

-Aeroplane, says Cody.

He's demanding we look at him as much as the aircraft, sitting at the table he's on the edge of the circle of adults in the room, he feels we are ignoring him, he wants us to take his reality for ours because he doesn't understand that we all have our own realities that don't always join together with his. Different people have different states of awareness at different times, an adult knows very different things to a child. If we ignore him, he'll carry on demanding until we pay attention, possessed by emotions and thought he can't express, even to himself, that's why he's so vocal. It gives an illusion of control. Have you ever noticed how quiet people often seem more in control of themselves than loud braggarts? Even though it's just as much of an illusion, quiet people can be without control in other ways, in thoughts or in clumsiness. Often we're just unaware of what is really happening, we react just as blindly to the world around us as Cody, without caring because we know we are right, we feel it.

-Look! There's an airplane!

-Very good, says Jack, to keep him quiet, but he doesn't look. None of us bother because we've seen it all before, anyway. We know who we are, where we are going.

Students are very open to criticism because a lot of them are little more than children, adolescents, wankers. They sound so self-righteous in spouting verbal garbage that bears no relation to the real world beyond the confines of a false University or college life and we laugh or curse at them. A lot of my friends are students, but they tend to be the ones who stay on the outside, who see University as an inconvenience a little like I look upon work, even though they might enjoy studying, they have no time for the crap that goes with it. Many of them drift with us into a subterranean world that most people stereotype students as, hippies, crusties, punks, but the majority of students are just ordinary. It is these ordinary ones who offend me. They make such a big thing over the little things they get accomplished, drinking and sex and the whole goddamned spectacle they submerge into appears as pathetic, they look like fools who will graduate and become suburbanised. They are supposed to be intelligent, they are supposed to be adults, but I can't always see it beyond the few good people I know. They get stuck in a mad adolescence of being beautiful people that I suspect lends the middle class it's modern aura of hypocrisy.

But they are just a microcosm of what we all are, childish and selfish, refusing to accept responsibility for ourselves, for our own problems. We try to put all the blame onto someone else, we deserve everything for nothing. How many of us have really grown out of adolescence into adulthood and not just compromised with the world instead?

-I've finished. Cody jumps down from his chair while Cathy cranes to check his plate which is empty apart from the crusts. His face is sticky so she stands saying,

-Do you want to come upstairs and wash your face, then we can go in the car, OK?

-OK.

She follows him out of the room. When we look at the answers we think we have, when our assumptions are challenged we run into a lot of problems that we don't want to face. No-one is really in control of their lives, few people even really want to be, they just assume it. We kick and scream, we struggle to swim and think we're doing fine. I don't want to think of myself as a very small person in a very big world, I don't want to be humble, I'm too proud. We hide in television, in drink, in marriage and affairs, in homes stuffed with junk and memorabilia bought after a bus ride into town. We devalue our lives to make ourselves feel important. The world is so unhappy, I don't want to feel like that, I want to ignore it. I look at Danny,

-Where do you feel when you're in love?

-Everywhere, he replies.

I nod, I understand him because he understands me. We can use each other to look inside ourselves, but only if we are honest enough to be ourselves, to lose ourselves, to just shut up and listen to the flow of tears that envelope us all. I laugh suddenly, -Man, we've got so much to do, then.

-Here you go

He frowns at me, -Do you mind doing it?

-Sure, no problem.

I bring the book back to my lap and start getting another one together. -So, what are we going to eat tonight?

-I've got some food in the car that I got form home. Veggie gack then. Well, I thought I'd make a curry.

-Great.

Many of my friends are vegetarian, in fact I'm the only one in the room right now who eats red meat and even that I do only very occasionally, usually because I'm at somebody else's house for tea. I was a vegetarian for a couple of years and that's really the only kind of food I can cook with any real confidence. Everything I know about cooking I've learnt off Dan, who's parents are ex-hippies and he's never eaten meat in his life. Most vegetarian's are quite relaxed about it, but there's been a change in attitude to the whole thing over the past few years and it's almost regarded as normal not to eat meat. Most restaurants have a specific vegetarian menu, which is something you won't find in many other countries.

It's all really a part of the game though, knowing which products you can and can't buy, which E-numbers are made from animals and which brand name's are responsible for oppression in some part of the world. It shows you care, makes you feel good and, well, you're doing your bit by rallying against animal testing and condemning the vicious slaughter of cattle, it's so easy, I've done it, there's even books on it now.

But when you refuse to take the blame, when everything is somebody else's fault, how can you hope to get involved? You're out of it. Morality is not as cut and dry as people like to think. It doesn't exist, we make it up, and it's ours. But some people take it and hide behind it as a way to ignore the problems they have to face. It's an excuse, because it's not who they really are, it's who they project themselves to be. An image in other words. I've met vegans who thought they were so good, who had no compunction in condemning someone because they had butter on their toast and talk about nothing but animal rights. Yeah, it's important, but what about that speed psychosis you're developing their, Tracy? What about the family next door that is eating crap because it's all they can afford? What about the people dying in prisons under torture in Xinjiang, do you think you understand them, do you feel for them?

I don't know. I've met nice vegans and I've met nice steak eaters. Not eating meat is a good thing for your health, I reckon, but it's too confused and vague, the boundaries are too flimsy, like whether to eat eggs or not and all the other little conscience markers that defy rational judgement. I'm happy not eating meat, I enjoy the food, but I don't see why I have to be vegetarian anymore. Why should I blame the rest of society for my problems? It's not just rebellion anymore, it's revolution. And look how most revolutions turn out.

Cathy, Jack and Cody all file back downstairs, each carrying a bag or two that they are taking with them.

-You all off, then? asks Cait.

-Yep, we'll leave you to it, whatever it is you're going to do. grins Cathy. -Don't piss the neighbours off too much, please (looking at me lighting up the spliff).

-Me!? What would I do? It's got nothing to do with me.

-The keys are on the table, Jack tells me. I glance to make them out,

-Right, I reply.

We all stand up to see them out of the door, watch them get into the car and then drive away. The music has stopped, Sasha goes to the toilet and Dan pops to the car to get his stuff.

-Get that Sky High tape as well, I shout after him.

Cait and I both sit back down. She smiles at me,

-You all right?

-Yeah, I reckon. Just tired.

Cait is a real carer. She used to be in an almost permanent state of depression, like with most people, but she isn't self-obsessed except that her hope always lie with other people. She's always prepared to listen, to try and help, she's always interested. She can gossip, she likes to know things and talk, but not really in too bad a way. I hate gossip, I don't like people who don't know me at all judging me on things they've have heard. This has spread so I don't really like other people knowing things without my actively declaring it an open topic. But Cait is more of a sharer than a creator of malicious designs that I create out of my paranoia whenever people find things out about me. I pass her the joint.

-It's just funny trying to figure out what I'm going to do with myself now, over the summer. I haven't really got the money to go away. All I have to do is paint and I feel a little guilty because I enjoy it. You know what I mean?

She laughs -But isn't it what you want to do?

-It's the only thing I want to do. I feel like if it's all I have someone will try and take it away. It's almost too precious for me to carry.

Her laughter has broken through my vibes, though. My eyes turn manic and cheered as Danny comes back in, closing the door behind him. He chucks me the tape, takes the spliff off Cait and goes into the kitchen. I get up and put the tape on.

-Your mood always changes so quickly, Cait says as I start dancing to the kitchen to check Danny's OK finding everything.

-Yeah, it's the only way to stay interested, it's in the music. You got everything to need?

-I think so, says Dan.

-How about milk?

He checks the fridge. -We could probably do with some more.

-I'll go down to the shop and get some.

-Do you want some of this before you go?

-Cheers. I take the joint off him and go back to the lounge as Sasha comes back down.

-Can I have some money for milk? I ask Cait.

-And bread, calls in Danny.

I grin as Cait reaches in her bag and gets her purse. She gives me a couple of pounds and I lean over to pass the joint to Sasha.

-Ta-ra, then, and I go out the door. The track that's just been playing is still bouncing around my head as I go over the road and down the hill. The pavement is broken, littered with dogshit, and I have to duck under overgrown bushes. Past the graffiti that asks the world -Do you eat or drink soup? I turn right to a row of shops, video hire, fast food, off-licences and the international supermarket. It doesn't appear very big, but it's about the size of four big shops put together and it has everything.

The inside is not exactly dingy or dirty, but it is far from the aseptic, over-lit ugliness of a big supermarket. Things are stacked and labelled more haphazardly, the items are mostly brand names I've never heard of, bread (I get wholemeal) and cakes, cheap tinned tomatoes from Italy, margarine in rows for soya, vegetable, sunflower or buttermilk. On the edge of each shelf a cheap computer-printed label tells you each thing's price. The fridge nearly fills up the whole wall on the right, up the length of where the windows should be, including frozen snacks and meals, ice-creams, soft drinks, cheeses and milk, which I pick up. There's bags of rice and flower stacked in a corner, after the wall with Chinese essentials, soy sauce, noodles, Sichuan-style vegetables, like a supermarket in Chinatown in Manchester. There's breakfast cereals, pots and pans of all sizes and descriptions, woks, earthenware bowls, cleavers, wooden spoons, pestle and mortars. I see some naan bread, it's only seventy pence for two and I pick some up to go with the meal, a treat. There's the smell of a hundred different spices, Turkish coffee, there's tins of ghee, vegetable oil, olive oil, sauces in bottles, okra, mushrooms, aubergines, Spanish onions, apples, bananas, kiwi fruit, packets of crisps from ready salted to spicy tomato, chocolates, cough mixture, cigarettes.

The tills are modern with infra-red bar-code sensors. I stand in the queue with two people ahead of me, an old Asian woman who's having a chat with the lady behind the counter while her bill is logged on, and a young man, probably some kind of professional who hasn't been quite sucked into settling down, buying a couple of packets of spices that he needs for the meal he's preparing tonight, a special meal perhaps, he already has a bottle of wine in a plain green plastic bag that bangs against the side of his leg as he shifts his weight, wanting to get served but polite enough not to get annoyed at his own impatience. I don't see any of this, I feel it.

He steps forward as the woman steps away with her goodbyes and regards, he hands over more or less the correct change after he is told the amount to hurry up his getting back home. The old, quiet matriarch behind the counter, always looking sad, counts out his change which he accepts and he drops the things he's bought into the carrier bag he's holding. I move and put the loaf, naan and pint of milk into the top wire basket of the pile left on the counter by previous customers. For some reason I never think to pick up a basket on my way in here because I always feel I'm not buying enough to need one, though it would be a lot easier if I did, especially because I always buy more than I intended. I search for Cait's money loose in the corner of my trouser pockets and get the change I have left in my wallet, which together just cover the bill. I'll have to go to a cash machine later, I hand it over and accept a couple of pennies in return. She offers me a bag but I decline, picking my stuff up bit by bit to get some kind of balanced bulk, bread and milk in one hand, naan in the other, and I head the short way back to the house.