City of Chances

Friday night and the streets of Central London are saturated with
the heavy scent of perfumed rain.I'm tired and lashed with the kind of
British dampness that I had long since resigned to another's
lamentations. We stand at the long bar, sipping Kirin and dripping
rain-grease onto the parquet flooring, lost in a cyclonic conversation
about bits of life and parts of people, and how usual it is for the men
to increase a collar size or two when they reach their thirties. Then
the Russian waitress seats us and smiles and hands us menus and asks if
we'd like more drinks. Fundamental to my continued existence, that you
know. Drunken drivel, the only testiment to this little miscreant's
once semi functioning neronal network, gushing grace through a social
faction, talking guns and chained tyres on open top cars before
eventually departing, some twenty minutes after the corporate credit
card had taken a brutal pounding. The early hours of the morning are
upon us too soon .The night ebbs like a young life burning out in a
flash of mad passion

Out in the dark old passage, I sigh to taste the lingering aroma,
ethanol lightly lingered, that itchy warm suffused. Beer and wine, the
feather fragrance sedates, though lightly. I do not sleep, I drift, I
dream, I coast homewards on a tide of solidity, a city permanance
etched into the concrete labyrinth. Tonight we celebrated our lottery
win without spending the money. So it was only four numbers matched,
less than a hundred quid between us, but a slimmer than a one in a
grand chance that we potted, and we were filled with high hopes for the
future.I point out that we are only two numbers away from the jackpot,
smiling internally at the knowledge that the chances of matching six
numbers is one in about fourteen million. The conversation soon
degenerates into what we'd do if we did win the jackpot, If I couldn't
buy love, I'd buy a warm arm to envelop my sobbing shoulders in the
days of abandonment.

This is the city of chances, especially in the semi conscious light of
a January morning, everyone had a ticket of some kind, otherwise why
would they bother staying here, amongst the washed out greyness? Whats
yours? Lottery ticket, scratchcard, stolen wallet, curriculum vitae,
travelcard to tout ? Lady luck smiles of us this morning. Praise to the
godess, the fullness with food, the drink I drink too much, the soft
touch of friends.