The 2084 Precept

The 2084 Precept Page 12

by Anthony David Thompson

  ***

  It was raining again this morning, hard and wind-driven. I checked out of the hotel, slung my overnight case into the back of the car and drove across town to the industrial estate and into the car park of Clark's Industrial Adhesives & Fasteners PLC, the name of the subsidiary. It manufactures and markets industrial adhesives, glue to you and me, lots and lots of different kinds in lots and lots of different-sized metal containers and other forms of packaging. It also manufactures a wide variety of industrial rivets. This is admittedly an illogical manufacturing mixture, except for the fact that in many cases the customers are the same for both product types. The glue has high profit margins, the rivets low ones. If I were to stay involved long enough to be involved in some of the more strategic issues, I would have to look closely at what benefits and negatives this kind of production mixture was propagating.

  It was an unkempt, poorly maintained building, not unusual for a loss-making company with no money, but the sign with the company name brought a smile to my face, as it did every time I walked up to the entrance. When I arrived on the first day, the sign was off the horizontal, a letter had fallen off, it was grimy, it hadn't been cleaned in years, it was off to the side of the entrance and it was small, as if the company were ashamed of identifying itself, or even ashamed of itself, period. Now, in the scheme of things, while I agree that nothing could be less important than a sign, small items can often be an indication of how matters of greater consequence are dealt with. And there is something called pride, no matter what the situation is. And so I played my first card, I ranted on about the sign, I offered to personally lend them the cash to replace it with a brand new larger one—a no risk offer of course, there was no way they would accept such a thing—and I shamed them into doing something about it. And now we had something all the employees, all the customers, all the suppliers and anybody else arriving at the premises could appreciate. A huge new sign, yellow lettering on a dark red background, directly above the entrance and washed down once a week.

  This had nothing to do with improving operations or profitability of course, but it set the tone, here is a consultant who makes things happen. I walked past reception, no-one there. There should be, it's 8.30 a.m. I'll have to talk to them about that. I got myself a coffee at the machine and entered the boardroom, first door on the left. I was early, the presentation was due at nine o'clock, but I like them to see that I'm always the first one there, something else which sets the tone.

  In the first management meeting several months ago, two of them came in late, quite happy about it, full of the joys of life. "Gentlemen," I said, addressing everyone, "I have always noticed that people who arrive late for meetings are very happy. They are always smiling and laughing. But those who are sitting around doing nothing while waiting for them are not so happy. They are nervous, they are busy people, they have things to do all day long, sometimes very urgent things. Tell me," I asked the latecomers, "why are you smiling?" And that of course stopped any late arrivals in future meetings. Not very courteous, I admit, nor intended to be. But the intentions were good ones, setting the tone again.

  At five minutes to nine everybody was there and I switched on the beamer.

  HOW TO CREATE 17,000 ADDITIONAL PRODUCTION HOURS P.A.

  - AT NO ADDITIONAL COST

  There were six of them, CEO, CFO, V.P. Sales & Marketing, V.P. Production, I.T. Director and, yes you always have one, H.R. Director, all men. The latter certainly performs a necessary function but, believe me, any CEOs tend to come from engineering, sales or finance. Never from H.R. and quite rightly so, for reasons I prefer not to expound upon. And if I am wrong and somewhere you know of a CEO who came from Human Resources, then that would be the illustrious exception which makes up the rule. Yes.

  "Good morning gentlemen," I said, in my louder than usual presentation voice and smiling a big smile. I always smile, it sets the tone, and in any case this was a sincere smile, they were all pretty nice guys.

  "As you know," I continued, "we have implemented many things in recent weeks, fairly rapidly thanks to you gentlemen, and some are already having their effect on the P&L. Other items are still in progress. But there is more to come, and today is going to show us how we can create an estimated 17,000 hours additional annual production at no additional cost. Now I haven't spent my time attempting to value these hours but we're not talking labor productivity costs here which I would put at around £800,000 per year. We’re talking about what is the value of the additional production which would be achieved with these additional hours, in other words what is the value-added?"

  I clicked to the next image.

  £2.1 MILLION ESTIMATED ADDITIONAL PRODUCTION VALUE P.A.

  + ADDITIONAL MAJOR BENEFITS VIA IMPROVED

  PRODUCT QUALITY (NOT AT PRESENT QUANTIFIABLE)

  Nothing more, I keep it as simple as possible. I don't like my presentations to be full of script with me repeating parrot-like whatever is on the screen in case they can't read.

  "I have been doing some work on machine set-up operations and I have a comprehensive summary here showing set-up hours per year for each individual machine, the time each set-up takes, and how frequently the set-ups are performed on average per day or per week or whatever. As we know, setting up a production machine to make a different product, or produce a different product size, costs time. And during this time neither the machine nor the employee or employees involved are producing anything. This is, quite simply, lost production time." I handed six copies of the summary to the CFO on my left and they went around the table, each taking one.

  "But we're not going to bother dealing with detailed numbers in today's meeting. What I would like to do today is mention a couple of examples, show a video of another one, and then make three recommendations, followed of course by our usual discussion regarding your acceptance or otherwise of the recommendations and/or of any alternatives you may prefer. And, also as usual, whether you wish to handle the implementations yourselves directly or whether you would prefer me to do that."

  I certainly had their interest already, and with only a few words shown on the screen. They probably had their misgivings at this stage, at least with regard to the size of the obtainable benefits I was claiming but, have no doubt, that would change by the time the meeting was over.

  I clicked to the next image.

  A SCREWDRIVER

  A CLEAN-UP

  A MISSING TOOL

  Mystery headlines. Get their interest. And plenty of skepticism too. What on earth is he going to be waffling about?

  "These days, as you know," I went on, "many machines can be set up more or less electronically. But we have no such machines, nor do we have the resources at the present point in time to invest in any. What we do have, is we have 154 old machines of which well over half require regular set-ups, and as you can see from the schedule handed out just now, these set-ups amount to a total of around 34,000 hours per year. We are going to halve that at least, maybe more."

  There were disbelieving looks, what an overstatement, what an exaggeration. Very well guys; just wait, just wait and you will see.

  "Let me mention the smallest example first. I was chatting to an employee last week while watching him set up a small piece of equipment involved in a new production run. He had to dismantle the housing, then unbolt some surrounding components so that he could reach far enough inside and downwards to enable him to make the necessary adjustments to the machine, which he did, basically, using a screwdriver. Having done this, he had to reassemble the whole thing again. I asked him how long this usually took and he said about half an hour. I asked him how often he performed this task, and he said twice per day on five similar items of equipment. 'But, Mr. O'Donoghue,' he said, 'it really need take only five minutes.'"

  I paused. They were now mildly interested. What was coming next?

  "'Oh really?' I said. 'Yes', he replied, 'I just need a screwdriver with a handle about three feet long so that I can reach far eno
ugh inside without having to disassemble anything. You can't apply as much pressure with such a long handle but you don't need to, it's enough.' 'Well, why don't you put in a request to your supervisor for that?' I asked. 'I did,' he said. 'Twice. Three years ago. I heard nothing. I lost interest. If they don’t care, then that's their problem. Why should I care?' And so, folks, I did a quick mental calculation. With 230 working days per year, gentlemen, he is spending 1,150 hours performing work which, for the sake of a long screwdriver, should only be taking him about 190 hours. Nearly 1,000 hours of wasted labor cost, lost time—and therefore lost production—just on this one small item. Every year. Number 45 on your schedule, gentlemen."

  Nobody said anything, there was just a rustling of paper as they searched out the item.

  "Example number two," I continued, "are the Vatomats. We have ten of these and they are used, as you know, for mixing certain types of ingredients to produce a certain number of different types of glue…sorry, sorry, adhesive."

  There was some chuckling at this; after four months I still had difficulty remembering to use their preferred term.

  "As you know, the big blades which hang down into the vats to do the mixing have to be cleaned whenever a different product blend is needed in order to avoid contamination from the previous batch. Production is of course halted while the blades are unbolted and removed and then cleaned. This takes place on average once every day for each Vatomat and it takes about two hours of hard scraping and cleaning. At the same time, the vats themselves are scraped clean in similar fashion. Now…the solution in this example is simple. We buy up to ten spare blades, we spend fifteen minutes replacing them each time, and production restarts immediately, no need to wait. That would mean we would lose only 575 hours production time each year instead of the current 4,600 hours. In my view, this example alone is indicative of the fact that an overall savings target of at least 17,000 hours annually - for the whole company - is eminently achievable."

  "There is something I don't understand," said Ron Frisby, the production boss, "how can you restart production before you've finished cleaning the vats?"

  "Good point Ron, you can't. This job is at present done by hand. But using industrial grinders, the vat-cleaning job would also only take about fifteen minutes. Cleaning the blades is admittedly a more complicated task, intricate you might say due to their shaped design, but industrial grinders could also be used for that and overall I estimate it would take about an hour per blade. That means that in addition to the saved production time, you would also save a few thousand labor hours cleaning the blades. Then all you need to decide is whether the surplus hours can be productively used elsewhere, or whether it is simply better to reduce headcount."

  "But Peter, this really wouldn't be possible. These adhesive leftovers are highly inflammable, just a single spark from an electric grinder could cause a dangerous explosion."

  "Yes Ron, I understand that. But not if we buy the specially protected ones. The ones used, for example, to perform unusual or specific cleaning tasks on ships' tanks. Such tools are on the market, or you can even have them custom-made if your requirements are extremely exceptional ones, if there awkward angles to be dealt with and so on. I see no problem there."

  I looked at him to see if he had anything to add, maybe I had missed something—it certainly happens on occasion—but he didn't and presumably I hadn't.

  “And,” I finished, “we might also need to look at whether we can save even more money, for example by increasing the batch volumes and thereby reducing the number of times the equipment needs to be cleaned throughout the year.”

  "Peter," said Charles Goodridge, the CFO, "The idea sounds like it could be a good one but I seem to recall that those blades cost something in the range of £10,000 each and we just don't have the money to buy one, let alone ten. As you know, we have to scrape everything together every month just to meet our wage bill."

  "Charlie, it's good to have the finance guy always thinking about the money," I said with a smile. "But I think you will agree with me that for the past two months we haven't exactly had to scrape any money together. We're not making losses any more. The last two monthly P&Ls show a profit and we have a positive cash flow as a result of that. But…if necessary…with a first year payback for you of, let's say at least 400%, I could personally arrange financing for you or maybe even lend you the money myself for a cheap interest rate of, say, 5% perhaps?"

  He smiled back at me. "Point taken, Peter, point taken."

  Ron spoke up. "Tell me, Peter, how did you come across this subject?" Aha, looking to find out why one of his guys would have talked about it to me, but not to his supervisor. Or alternatively, why the supervisor had never mentioned it to Ron.

  "Well, I was just doing one of my walkabouts on the shop floor and I happened to see somebody cleaning a blade. And so I stopped, and I watched, and I started having some thoughts, possibly very naïve ones I thought to myself at the time. But asking never hurts anybody and so I started asking the guy some questions. And I found out that my thoughts were not necessarily naïve at all. I then discussed them with the foreman, and he couldn't find anything stupid about them either. And I then worked out the numbers. That's it."

  Ron didn't say anything. He looked a bit embarrassed in fact, not surprising with his boss sitting there. But in reality, he had nothing to be embarrassed about at all. It's easy when you are a guy from the outside, you start querying everything, some of your questions are amateurish or even downright stupid, and on the other hand some of them are not. More proof that consultancy is easy, if you ask me. Just walk around, look, ask questions, and listen.

  "Gentlemen, I am only giving us a couple of examples here today and it may well be that we need to look more closely at everything in my list. All of the listed items appear at first sight to be clear cut cases. But some might not be. The simple question today is whether you think they need looking into. And here is the last item I wish to show today. It is a video of another set-up. I had the video made six weeks ago after obtaining agreement from the works council and the employee himself and guaranteeing in writing that we would only make one copy and return it to them after we have finished with it. Mind you, I told them they might want to keep it instead of destroying it, use it for group training purposes. We will see in which way they could do that when I get to my recommendations."

  I switched on the video. It showed an employee starting to do a machine set up. After about ten minutes the employee suddenly straightened up and walked away, going off-screen.

  "What's happening?" asked Fred Staples, CEO, his first words in today's session.

  I stopped the video. "Well, Fred, he can't find a tool he needs and so he's gone off to find it." And yes, I knew what the next question was going to be.

  "But if he knew you were going to video him," said Fred, "why didn't he make sure he had the tool with him?"

  "Ah," I replied, "that is the point. That tool is supposed to be hanging up on a tool board a few feet away. Look, there it is in the video, quite a few empty spaces on the board. The problem is that other guys often take the tools they need for something they're doing and then they are supposed to bring them back and hang them up in their proper place again."

  "But they don't," said Fred.

  "But they don't," I replied, "at least often enough they don't. Our guy is now hunting for the tool in several of the different factory areas where he knows from experience it might be."

  "From experience?" Charlie this time.

  "Oh yes, this happens to him quite a lot," I said, "but this time he got lucky. As you will see, he'll be back in another two minutes."

  I retriggered the video and, sure enough, our guy eventually reappeared on the screen and continued working until his set-up was complete. It had taken him forty minutes. He turned and waved at the camera and strolled off in the direction of a coffee machine. I stopped the film again and told them that we had then formed a small group with this guy, two o
f his colleagues, and a lady from administration, just to analyze this single set-up operation.

  "Why a lady from administration?" asked Ron immediately. "Because ladies can have good ideas just as often as men, and sometimes better ones too, " I said, "and because people working in other areas might also see the woods that the others can’t see for the trees.

  They met twice a week for one hour—no more time available—with the goal of introducing improvements to reduce the time needed for this set-up operation. The costs of the improvements were not to exceed £4,000 maximum. We placed a factory floor office at their disposal for the meetings, and made sure that coffee, tea and biscuits were available.

  And after only four weeks they had not only come up with a lot of ideas but they had also implemented them."

  "This, gentlemen," I continued, "is how the set-up looks now." And I triggered the video again.

  The set-up took about eight seconds. Unscrew, slide into place, lock, screw.

  "Miss it?" I asked, "I'll show it again."

  Eight seconds.

  "That's it. They had some clever ideas and they hardly cost any money. One of the ideas was to create a forced locking point for the measurement gauge, no more need to keep adjusting it until it's right and," I added meaningfully, "the additional benefit is improved quality, which not only means happier customers, but also less scrap or rework. This gauge is now accurately placed to the millimeter, automatic each time, no trial starts to a production run, no re-feeding, no throwing defects away. Want to see it again?"

  I showed it to them again. Eight seconds. Nobody said anything.

  "And now to my recommendations, gentlemen. You may wish to consider setting up small groups of employees, each group being tasked with reviewing a single operation from the schedule I have given you. They will only be able to meet for an hour or so each week but, believe me, they will be really motivated, they will enjoy it, they are being asked to do something requiring a lot of thought, and they are away from their routine tasks. It's creative, and it is also pleasant for them to be able sit in an office once a week and have the company supply them with refreshments."

  I paused, waited for comments or questions. There were none, so I continued again.

  "My second recommendation is that we also study which of these set-up operations can be performed outside of production hours, i.e. either before or after production hours. That would further add to our production volumes and at the same time we wouldn't have a lot of employees hanging around doing nothing until someone has set up their machines for the next production run."

  I paused again but nobody was saying anything.

  "And my third recommendation is—remember the example of the guy and his screwdriver—that we set up an employee suggestion scheme. A permanent one. But a permanent scheme must be properly managed. Every employee must always receive an immediate answer to his or her suggestion, and be regularly informed of the situation until a decision is taken. And if the suggestion is accepted, he or she must be informed of its completion. With a big thank you. You may also wish to create a prize for the best suggestion or two each quarter, or once a year if you prefer, nothing expensive, perhaps a weekend for two persons in Paris via the Eurostar—or whatever. But, frankly, a prize is not necessary. Money is not the real issue here, money is not why most people make suggestions. Most of us make suggestions because it makes us feel we are contributing something, it makes us feel useful, and like everybody else, we like to know that we are at least being listened to, and we also enjoy receiving a small show of recognition from time to time."

  Nothing could be truer. I paused and looked at each one of the attendees, whose own particular enjoyment of recognition was usually to be found in the receipt of bonuses, stock options and so on.

  "But a word of warning," I continued, "most employee suggestion schemes eventually collapse, and sometimes fairly quickly. The schemes slowly cease to be managed and controlled properly. Management interest declines or wasn't sufficient in the first place, employees note the disinterest and the logical result is that the schemes just simply fade away. If this you think this might happen here at Clark's, if you are not convinced of the value of such a scheme, if you are not going to commit yourselves and some of your personal time on a continuous basis, then I recommend you do not even start. You would avoid the resulting loss of respect and confidence in management."

  I looked around me, smiled and added, "As and when our profitability is such that we can afford to invest in more modern machinery, then obviously a significant portion of this particular issue will resolve itself. In the meantime, we first of all have to create that kind of profitability, and this is just another of those areas in which, in my view, we can do some work to achieve that."

  I was finished, took a long swig of water.

  "Thank you gentlemen, I have kept it short, and now your comments, thoughts and criticisms would as usual be very welcome."

  There was some stirring around the table and a few sidelong glances at Fred.

  "Ron?" said Fred.

  "Hmm…well it certainly seems to be something we should take a look at. I'd like to discuss it with my shop floor supervisors. I'm not so sure about the employee suggestion scheme. As you know we tried that about five years ago. It took up a lot of our time and it didn't work."

  I'll believe that, I thought to myself. Like 80% of all companies they probably had no idea how to run it, and nowhere near enough top management involvement to ensure its ongoing success. I would have to help them on this one, tell them what needs doing, how to organize it, who has responsibilities for what, and make it clear that they had to devote some personal time, no matter how busy they were.

  "Go ahead and talk to your guys, Ron," said Fred, "but do it quickly please. It seems to me that this is something we should get moving on fast. Peter's examples appear downright convincing to me."

  He looked meaningfully at his production boss and then turned to me.

  "Peter," he said, "Many thanks for the presentation. I recall your first one, about three or four months ago I think, when we were all wondering what this 'consultant' with no experience in our industry could possibly bring to the table. Your subject on that occasion was product mix. That had us scurrying around checking up on your statistics and confirming what you had already told us: namely, that these were our own sales and marketing people's opinions in the first place. And, as you know, we took some important decisions as a result."

  Thus proving that yet another definition of consultant was alive and well. A consultant is a person who is paid a lot of money to tell management what their own employees have been trying to tell them for years.

  "Since then you have made several presentations and recommendations, and although we have not chosen to implement everything," and here he paused for a moment and grinned, "we have certainly chosen to implement almost everything. And you have also done a lot of the implementing for us."

  He paused again and looked around the table. There came an 'indeed', a 'hear, hear' and a couple of nods. Oh we're all the same, I love the recognition too, exaggerated or not, don't we all? Good for the soul if, as I always say, you happen to know what a soul is.

  "And," continued Fred, "regarding today's subject matter, I think we will pursue your recommendations ourselves. I believe there are one or two other items you are still working on?"

  "Yes, Fred," I replied, "There are still a couple of areas where I believe I can contribute, but due to the postponement of Friday's H.Q. meeting until next Monday, I have no idea whether the bosses will wish me to continue or, if so, for how long. In the meantime I'll be spending a few days at home in Germany."

  "Well, with the hours you've put in here, I am sure that none of us will be grudging you that. No problem, we'll wait to hear either from you or from Roger himself—but in the event you are not to continue, you would hopefully drop by to say cheerio?"

  "Fred," I said, "I wouldn't dream of not doing so. All of you guy
s, and your staff, have been incredibly cooperative, courteous and friendly towards this disruptive intruder here. You have made my stay a really enjoyable one. I would hope that the very least we can do is sink a couple of pints before I disappear into the mists of time."

  "We'll do our best on that Peter, but let's hope you will be with us for a while longer. Any more questions or comments, folks, before we adjourn?"

  There were no more questions or comments. Best wishes for an enjoyable few days in Germany, see you soon, and that was that.

  I grabbed a coffee at the machine, chatted with a couple of staff members while drinking it, and stepped outside. The rain had stopped and the sun was even shining. I smoked a cigarette and got into my car. Checked my watch, 11.45. I decided to take the slow road back to London, relax, see what's going on in suburbia, and stop for lunch at a decent restaurant I know on the river. The A4 takes you past the turn-off to Windsor and its castle, past the M25 ring road and past Heathrow airport. It takes you through commercial centers, some looking O.K., and others looking extremely not O.K., and it takes you through different ethnic areas, some with only a few white faces, the world is global sure enough.

  I stopped to tank the car. The petrol pump didn't work. It's the electricity, I was told, it doesn't work sometimes. I drove on to the next station. Their pumps worked but their automatic carwash was defective. Nor did their machine accept my Maestro card. It's a foreign card, said the cashier and I wasn't about to tell him that it works throughout Europe and it works everywhere else in England. It is not a good idea to start up that kind of conversation in the U.K.

  I paid cash and drove off. Immediately after passing a Hindu temple, I saw a manual carwash operation. I drove in. There were about eight dark-skinned employees dealing with a small queue of cars and cleaning them inside and out. The boss man, who wore a turban, took the customers' money—cash only, but only £6—and I had the cleanest exterior and interior I've had in a long time. The interior, you understand, is always a problem for us smokers.

  I turned off after passing Chiswick but before reaching Hammersmith, found a parking spot in one of the side roads close to the river, and walked on down to the restaurant.

  I smoked a pre-meal cigarette, went inside, ordered a chicken salad and a glass of red and looked out at the river, with the amateur joggers trotting by—the fat and the obese ones staggering and swaying along in their desperate and doomed attempts to achieve they know not what, and the real runners getting in their training time. What a way to earn another €1,200 today—I will just have to add in another few hours 'analytical' work on the good old time sheets. The time sheets are neither necessary nor required of course, but good old Peter O'Donoghue always hands them in together with his invoices—it shows honesty and transparency to the guys who are forking out the money. And that analytical work is honest enough in its way, I sometimes do do some thinking about the day's issues or finish creating a couple of statistics. And why should anyone care if I happen to do it in a pub, so what?

  My meal arrived quickly. I got to thinking that I could be out of here by about 2 o'clock, which meant that I could drive straight to the M25 and be in Dover at 4 p.m. or near enough, and therefore home before midnight. Or soon after, you lose an hour on the time zone difference.

  But…why kill myself? Back to my nice hotel, enjoy the evening, up early tomorrow—but not too early—drive down to Dover, lunch on the ferry, pretty ghastly food but they do serve mushy peas, and home at around 8 p.m. And another €1,200, they pay my travelling time.

  Unless…unless I go and take another look at Jeremy Parker. A waste of time of course. But also interesting. And fun of course. And then, there is that chance of the €100,000 payment. About the same chance as my lottery ticket back in Germany, with its odds of 140 million to one for the jackpot, but I'll be checking up on it nevertheless, oh yes, you never can tell with the mentally damaged.

  Well, I don't know, we'll see. So…tonight is decided, I am going back to the hotel. And tomorrow it will be either Jeremy Parker and Germany, or just Germany. Depends how I feel.

  DAY 5

  I woke up at 8 o'clock, had my poached eggs, toast and coffee and decided to take a cab for another chat with friend Jeremy, see what he had to say for himself this time. Pure curiosity. Curiosity kills the cat, they say, an aphorism of such brutal punishment for a totally harmless sentiment that I ignored it as a child and have continued to do so ever since.

  I decided to check out of the hotel in case I wanted to head back to Germany straight after the meeting. I stuck my luggage into the car and went back up to reception.

  Little Miss Ugly was at the desk, she hoped I had enjoyed my stay, she hoped they would be seeing me again soon, she was probably hoping I would throw her into bed the next time at the first opportunity. Yes, I said, I'll be back, I wouldn't want to miss enjoying this great desk service again, it made my whole stay. I looked straight at her and held the smile. She went red in the face but managed to say 'Why, thank you sir". Flustered she was, but with a dreamy smile. Dream away baby. Spread a little more happiness, that's my motto, keep the world turning on a well-oiled axis.

  It was raining again, but no problem with cabs at this hotel. I arrived at the Royal Strand Towers about 10 minutes early and decided to wait a few minutes in the reception area, still raining hard. I sat on a sofa and stared at the porter behind his desk. And he stared back at me. It beats me why some of them have a birth defect preventing them from saying something as simple as good morning. But no time for training today, not the place for it either, and in any case not in the mood. I took the stairs up to the first floor and into Obrix Consultants.

  Well there was certainly activity here today. A couple of telephones were ringing, some people were going in and out of the offices down the passageway, I could hear voices. I could also see the receptionist behind her expensive desk. Hats off to poor, mad Jeremy, he had hired a female who probably had the customers asking where to sign the contracts before they had even said hello. It wasn't just the way she looked, which was like a film star or a model, a non-skinny one that is, it was this aura of eroticism which poured out of her in flowing waves like the gamma rays from an eruption on the sun.

  And it wasn't as if she was consciously doing anything to try and create this impression. Some women are just born that way, and some are not. She was.

  She was doing absolutely nothing except sitting there being quietly professional and even her smile was a politely restrained one as she enquired, "Good morning sir, may I help you?" Well yes, she could of course, she could start by wiping away my metaphorical sweat and then going on to perform other loving tasks. Except she wouldn't, I didn't think so anyway. Her list of Tarzan-type boyfriends must be a mile long, or at least a kilometer. And even if she would (perform loving tasks), having to live with a permanent and massive quantity of virile competition is not my thing, I don't need it. "Good morning," I said, also with a smile, also a restrained one, while doing my best not to melt away into something like Jeremy's swamp scum, "I have an appointment with Mr. Parker."

  "Oh yes sir, Mr. O'Donoghue isn't it? Mr. Parker asked me to show you straight through to the meeting room. If you would come this way, please."

  Automatic check, an obsolete one nowadays, but no rings on her fingers. I followed her down the corridor, transfixed on the rear view, a mobile version of a sexual heaven, she had to know what havoc she was creating in her wake, she's been doing it all her adult life, and maybe since before then. And the legs, oh yes. I wouldn't die for them of course, but I would honestly and sincerely be prepared to undergo a considerable amount of excruciating torture—within limits—to be allowed to get anywhere near them.

  She knocked on the meeting room door and opened it. "Mr. O'Donoghue, sir," she said and then she disappeared, quickly, quietly, smoothly, and—although I didn't get the time for another look—no doubt erotically as well.

  "Good morning, Mr. O'Donoghue, I am extremely happy to see yo
u again, I must admit I was somewhat uncertain as to whether you would decide to come or not."

  Jeremy stood up, indicated the same chair as the one I had occupied previously and sat himself in his chosen place, one space between us. Good. He was wearing a grey suit today, thin-striped, an expensive air about it, obviously tailored, and a bright red tie, some flowery design on it. Otherwise he looked the same, short blond hair, pleasant moon-shaped face, as immaculate as on the previous two occasions.

  "Shall I call for some coffee?" he asked, "or are you O.K. with water or a soft drink?"

  Coffee would mean that dream coming into the room again, but I said water please. I wanted to get through today's bit of fun as quickly as possible and then off on the open road to all points south.

  I watched the rain bucketing down between the two buildings as he went over to the corner table, opened two bottles and brought them back to our table together with two glasses. I hoped the rain would let up soon, it makes a big difference. I drive fast when it's dry and slowly when it's not.

  "Well, Mr. O'Donoghue……"

  "Peter is fine by me, not so formal, if that's O.K. with you of course, Mr. Parker."

  "Naturally, naturally, absolutely. Much more sociable. And I am Jeremy of course."

  He beamed at these pleasantries. I have to concede that he really came across as a fully agreeable and courteous person. And a perfectly normal one if you didn't know better. But with lunatics you have to be careful, they can be smiling and full of the joys of life one minute, and the next thing you know, they've pulled a submachine gun and started to mow you down and everyone else in sight to boot.

  "From now on Peter," he continued, "you will be doing most of the talking in our meetings. I will just be putting in a few questions here and there. And to start us off, I have prepared a small list of subjects for the first few meetings. These initial subjects are generalized ones, macro items you might say, and we can continue subsequent meetings with some more objective items. More targeted ones would be the best way to put it, depending on which subjects I wish to pursue on a more detailed level."

  He handed me a sheet of paper:

  Interaction with Other Species

  Interaction among Selves

  Social and Organizational Characteristics

  Environmental Management

  Beliefs and Superstitions

  Well, well, well, well, well. Just how deluded can deluded people get? He was certainly living on a detailed level in that little lunatic world of his. Amazing, the various ways in which the aberrations of the mind can manifest themselves, the specialists in that field have a fascinating occupation, no doubt about it.

  "As you may have noted in our last meeting, Peter, I know a few things about your planet. Quite a lot, or not very much, depending on how you look at it. My research has been extremely limited due to setting everything up you understand, the takeover, if you will, of Jeremy Parker, finding an apartment, organizing a bank account and other administrative necessities, the acquisition and building up of this group of companies, the search for an interviewee and so on, and…"

  "But," I interrupted, and this one will be interesting, "with your alien brain, you probably know more than any single human being on the planet already. You probably have banks of computers set up somewhere and have absorbed and memorized immense quantities of information and continue to do so on a daily basis. In fact…"

  "In fact, no, Peter," he replied with one of his particular moon-face smiles. "Certainly our brains are more knowledgeable than yours, they are more advanced and they are better developed; but then you would expect that. We have, after all, been around for a lot longer than you. Our civilization will soon be celebrating, as you would term it, 2.5 billion years as a species. But it doesn't mean that our brains are bigger or faster than yours. Quite the contrary, they are very much the same in those respects."

  Amazing, the intricacies he has conjured up and stored to sustain his alien theory and, in this case, to explain why his superior, but temporarily earthbound, alien brain is neither bigger nor faster than mine.

  "What do you mean, 'as we would term it?'", I asked.

  "Why," he said, "if your species survives for as long as we have, a possibility about which I have sincere reservations by the way, you would be more intelligent than you are now and you would not be 'celebrating' anniversaries of any kind. A waste of time, a pointless and meaningless exercise, serving no identifiable purpose and yielding no discernible benefits."

  "And so," he went on, "I have learned a lot about your planet and your species but there are a lot of things I don't know. And in any case, I need at least one inhabitant's views on everything, whether pertaining to the facts I already have, or to ones of which I am not yet aware. This is a dissertation requirement. It not only provides an insight into examples of social, psychological and philosophical behavior and thought, but it also serves to provide a contrast between the facts as we see them, and the facts as they are seen by the species under study. But let us move on. This first set of meetings will take time, several weeks, I would think. I may need to take a few days in between each one to research the matters you raise and the information you provide. This confirmation of the facts as you see them is a necessity. I cannot transmit any unconfirmed, unsupported or unanalyzed transcripts to my professor, you understand."

  Transmit? To his professor? Oh dear, oh dear, oh dearie me, Krishna, please help me. Krishna, as you probably know, is one of many Hindu gods and is usually portrayed as a child and a prankster and he is therefore what seems to me to be an appropriate choice here. Krishna is in fact the eighth incarnation of Vishnu, one of the 'great gods', the main god of Vaishnavism in fact. He has four arms and still has another incarnation to come. So it is said. But I probably could have requested assistance from an even more pertinent god had I known who they all were. The Hindus believe in around 330 million deities, or so it is said. It is also said, however, that this was due to an error in the translation of the original scripts and consequently many of the Hindu sects nowadays believe in a mere 33 gods. Whatever. I haven't the faintest idea and, need I say it, I couldn't care less. I looked out of the window. Still pouring.

  "If you would kindly return the list to me, Peter, I would be grateful."

  Certainly my friend, your property. I handed him his list.

  "Thank you. And now off we go on the first subject. I appreciate that your knowledge may be far from comprehensive on all or any of these subjects, but that doesn't matter at all. You are my interviewee and it is your personal understandings that I am after. As I have just said, I'll be doing any necessary follow-up research on them afterwards. Please go ahead, try starting things off on our first item."

  Well, I've come this far, let me give him what he wants. Amazing though, how anyone so mentally damaged could act and look and sound so sane.

  "Interaction with Other Species," I said, "In other words, how we relate to the other animals on our planet. I have a few facts, I wrote a couple of articles on animals once, but they are all fairly negative facts, I'm afraid."

  "That doesn't matter," said Jeremy, "just fire away."

  I took a long swallow from my glass and started off.

  "First of all, I said, "you need to understand that there are now over 7 billion of us human beings on this lump of rock, and you need to understand that, as a consequence, every year we are killing more and more of our planet’s remaining species. That is to say, of those species we have not yet already slaughtered into extinction. We kill over 160 billion animals each year. And we subject hundreds of millions more to physical and mental abuse and torture. Every year. And increasing."

  "To put it another way," I continued, "we kill 438 million animals every day. That's 18 million animals per hour, or 300,000 animals per minute, or 5,000 animals per second. Or if you prefer to consider only the land animals, 2,000 of them per second. Of the annual 160 billion, 100 billion are marine animals, including of course marine mammals
such as whales, seals and so forth. And of the 60 billion land animals, about 50 billion are chickens, and I mean chickens by the way, not hens. We breed them, we give them four weeks of life, a grisly parody of a life at that, and then we kill them. That's all they get, hardly a life at all really."

  Jeremy was giving me an expressionless stare. "Did you say 50 billion chickens? That seems like a huge number."

  "Not really," I said. "You shouldn't forget that the human population has gone from 2 billion to 7 billion in one single human lifespan; since World War II in other words. Completely mad, yes, but what else can you say? If you subtract the billions of male chickens which are killed when they hatch—because they don't lay eggs—it's only about one chicken every two months for each adult human."

  "Even so," said Jeremy, "how can you manage to kill so many?"

  "No problem," I replied.

  And it wasn't a problem, I had researched this for an article I wrote as a teenager. "Human beings are expert at killing anything, including—just by the way, Jeremy—themselves. First of all, we use machines to catch the birds, including, for those birds lucky enough to be allowed to wander around outside, machines which resemble harvesting machines and weigh five tons. They are fitted with rubber prongs and scoop up about 100 birds per minute. The birds are rammed into large crates and then transported to the slaughter house. Here they can wait for up to ten hours without food or water before they are moved into the plant's 'live-hang' area. In that area, moving conveyors clamp their feet and hang them upside down which causes severe damage to their legs and hips, the agony of which is even worse for those caught by only one leg. The conveyor then takes them through an electrified water trough, which paralyzes their muscles. This serves to prevent them from thrashing around when they get to the slaughter line. It also has a couple of handy side-benefits. The muscles of their feather follicles are also paralyzed, so the feathers come out more easily after they have been killed. Also, by not being able to flap their wings while they die, there are no broken wing bones. That is important, Jeremy, as broken wings cannot be marketed to consumers of 'buffalo wings'."

  “Buffalo wings?”

  “That is what they are called. And a lot of these animals are killed to meet the requirements of human ‘eating competitions’. The ‘Buffalo Wing Eating Contest’ is one of many held annually in the U.S.A. Thousands of participants scoff as many wings as they can within a ten-minute time frame. The winner has usually managed around 1.3 kilograms and there are prizes from corporate sponsors. Truck tires for example.”

  “And you kill vast quantities of birds just for that?”

  “Well, for eating purposes in general, yes.”

  "And these birds are still alive while paralyzed?"

  "Oh, very much so. They are paralyzed, but they are fully conscious as they are moved onto the next step in the process. This next step is a rotating machine blade which cuts both carotid arteries. It is important to keep the birds alive during the slaughtering process so that their hearts will continue to work to pump out the blood. And the next stage is the so-called bleed-out tunnel—they are still hanging upside down—where they are supposed to die from blood loss after approximately 90 seconds. Unfortunately, millions of birds do not comply with this timeframe, particularly those with one or two arteries missed by the cutting machine. But dead or alive, the birds are then swept into tanks of scalding water and the live ones are scalded to death, thrashing and kicking and with their eyeballs bursting out of their heads."

  "And these birds are sentient throughout the whole process?" Jeremy asked.

  "Indeed they are," I replied. "They have a central nervous system and they have the same biological reactions as we do. They experience pain and they experience fear and they know what is happening to them. They try to get away from the killing machine, but they can't. And while they are bleeding, some of them even try to hide from you by sticking their head under the wing of the chicken next to them. But of course their muscles have been paralyzed and so that doesn't work properly. But their eyes still work. You can see their eyes. They are looking at you."

  "And there is no better way to do this?"

  "Not really, Jeremy. Death by gassing or decompression has been tried and may still be used here and there, for all I know. As for the older hens, the so-called 'spent' hens which slaughter factories don't want, they are more often than not simply buried alive in landfills. And of course, it's even easier with newborn male chicks. As I have mentioned, they don't produce eggs, and so most of them are just thrown into a shredding machine straight from the shell after birth. It's just like shredding paper in an office. Alternatively, they are simply thrown back onto the pile of discarded eggshells from which they have just emerged and disposed of with the rest of the trash. But to be fair, Germany and one or two other countries are researching methods to identify and kill the males before they are born. We can really be quite considerate when we want to be, you see."

  Jeremy did not appear to be affected one way or the other by any of this. "I see," he said. "You appear to have it all pretty well organized. Quite efficient. Mass slaughter experts. Perhaps we could move on, Peter?"

  "Certainly, Jeremy. Each year we also kill about 2.5 billion ducks, 1.5 billion pigs—we allow pigs a life of about 6 months, not too bad—1 billion rabbits, 800 million turkeys, 600 million geese, 600 million sheep, 400 million goats, 350 million cows and their children, 80 million rodents, 80 million birds, 25 million dogs, 9 million horses and donkeys, 5 million cats, and so on. Every year. In fact there is nothing we don't kill on this planet, Jeremy. We kill every living species. It is just the way we are. Every single thing that moves. We do it either on a vast scale or on a limited scale, it depends on the species. And, because there are so many of us now, we no longer have enough animals for our purposes and so we need to 'create' more, or breed more as we prefer to say, it sounds nicer. We have animal 'farms' as we call them, including for dogs. South Korea alone has over 17,000 dog farms, many of them raising over 1,000 animals each. At $150 for an average 30 kilo dog, business booms throughout Asia. And for marine life, we have 'fish farms'. Actually, we have a much nicer word to describe the latter. The word is ‘Aquaculture’ and, as the U.N. ministry responsible for this activity proudly states, this now accounts for close to 50% of our total worldwide fish and seafood stocks."

  "Created in order to be killed," said Jeremy.

  "Yes. And we also love killing just as a form of entertainment, to the extent that we have created sports whose sole purpose is to allow humans to enjoy the act of slaughtering and butchering animals to death, either as killers or as spectators. Firstly, there is the 'normal' hunting sport, usually lots of males wandering around the countryside or forests looking for something to kill because it makes them feel good, allows them to experience power, makes them into real machos. In most parts of the planet, we have what we call 'hunting seasons' That sounds better than 'killing seasons'. A lot of excuses are invented to pretend that the killing is necessary for 'animal nuisance control' or 'environmental protection purposes', most of which is a load of crap, if you will pardon the expression Jeremy. The fact is that the 'killing seasons' do not exist in order to reduce the number of animals and birds. You could do that at any time. On the contrary, they exist to ensure that not too many are killed, or killed at the wrong time of the year, which would negatively affect their procreation rates. Which would mean there would not be enough of them around for us to enjoy killing the following year, or the years after that. Of course, some of the guys who enjoy performing the killing say that they don't. They say that they are forced to do it or that they are merely trying to help the human race. And it is not just the killers, oh no. The whole killing exercise is authorized by bunches of pin-striped birdbrains, sitting comfortably in their chairs in comfortable governmental offices, and who decide exactly what and how much killing should be permitted. All over the world. That is just the way it is, it's all more or less thoroughly organized.
The animals don't have a chance, they don't have a say in the matter."

  "Interesting," said Jeremy. "Not very pleasant, but interesting from a psychological point of view."

  "Interesting indeed it is," I agreed. "We also have other sports involving animal deaths. We cage dogs, we starve them, and then we stage dog fights with them. To the death. You can place bets on the outcome. We do the same with cock fights and so on. We also have a sport called bull fighting which involves a bull fighting for its life—hopelessly and impossibly of course—against several human beings. Thousands of spectators watch these shows and therefore the show needs to be made to last for longer than a couple of minutes. We have invented a long, slow, agonizing death process which completely ignores the terrible suffering it causes the animal. We breed special bulls solely for this purpose. And we don't even make it a fair fight either, that would be too dangerous for the human beings. We can't have that, it would take the fun away. So before the bulls arrive at the arena, we shave their horns to reduce the risk of injury to their assassins. And once in the arena, the bulls are then tormented by humans on horses who drive spears into their necks in order to weaken the neck muscles, make their heads hang low and cause a loss of blood. We then goad them into chasing the bullfighter for as long as it takes to for them to exhaust themselves totally. The spectators love that. And finally the slaughterer kills them by driving a spear down through their hearts. Except that it doesn't always work. Last year, one of the bullfighters who had missed the heart stared down for a long while at his bull, which had sunk to its knees, blood pouring out of its ears, refusing to die just yet, and then proceeded in a rage to kick it and kick it. Which didn't work either. In the end, an assistant slaughterer had to jump into the ring and drive another spear into the animal. Which of course only wanted to die anyway, get away from the humans."

  I got up and fetched myself another bottle of water. Jeremy was looking at me in a thoughtful, perhaps disbelieving way.

  "But you kill a lot of the animals," he said, "in order to be able to eat them, isn't that so?"

  "Yes, Jeremy, that is so," I replied. “We even eat dogs. We even eat monkey brains…”

  “What?” he interrupted.

  “Live monkey brains too…in fact, a lot of live creatures are eaten all over Asia. We…”

  “WHAT?” he interrupted again. “DID YOU SAY LIVE MONKEY BRAINS?”

  “Mostly rhesus monkeys, Jeremy. In restaurants in China, the Philippines and so on. It’s a delicacy. They have special tables there with special fixtures to hold the horrified and screaming animals in place, allowing only their heads to poke up. The diners then watch while the kitchen chef opens up the head and they then eat the live animal’s brain.”

  “This is more than difficult to believe,” said Jeremy. “Are you sure you aren’t exaggerating, Peter?”

  “No, I am not exaggerating at all, Jeremy. You are paying me a lot of money and I am replying to your information requests with facts. Like many things nowadays, you can probably just google it. Or maybe there is even a YouTube video of one of these screaming animals being restrained at the restaurant table, opened up, and the live brains being scooped out of its skull. You can also probably watch us eating other live creatures. Have fun.”

  Jeremy was sitting there without moving. He was possibly sitting there thinking about the human species. And possibly about the fact that I am a member of that particular species. Who knows?

  But, true to form, he spoke quietly and politely. “I apologize, Peter. I didn’t mean it in that way.” There was a pause, quite a long one, and then he said “Please do continue.”

  “But we also kill them for a lot of other reasons as well," I said.

  "We do? Such as?"

  "Such as because we like their skins. Such as because we like their fur. Such as because we like to use them to test for possible deadly effects of new medications. Such as because we like to give them cancer and perform cancer tests. Such as because we like to test newly researched cosmetics. And the law requires that we test new household products. And so on. We have a lot of reasons, you name it. And we justify all of this by saying that God put the animals here for us to do what the hell we feel like with them. And so that is exactly what we do."

  What a depressing subject. Particularly if, like me, you are not convinced of the existence of a God. Or of any of our gods, take your pick.

  "Let me tell you about the baby seals, Jeremy," I continued. "Baby ones. We love to kill baby seals also. We do it year in, year out, non-stop. As usual, on the one hand you have the suit and tie brigade, the politicians, the birdbrains, who authorize it, flap, flap, and on the other hand you have the killers themselves who lovingly perform the job. The latter are not a problem to find, there are plenty of human killers available no matter where you go. They are not forced to do it, on the contrary they are very happy to do it, often just for the money. Now, these birdbrains authorize the slaughter of around a quarter of a million of these baby animals each and every year, on average. But birdbrains in general rarely know how to enforce any of the decisions they manage to take, it's too difficult for them to figure out, they have created too many holes and gaps and there is no exception to that maxim on this occasion either. The death ‘quotas’ are consequently exceeded by an average of 40% each year. The favored killing weapon is also authorized by the sit-on-your-pinstriped-ass brigade, to use another of my friend Steve's nomenclatures. This is called a hakapik, and it is a heavy wooden club with a hammer head and a curved metal hook on the end. This is the last thing the babies see, or feel, before being dispatched back into non-existence. Those that are lucky that is, investigations show that 42% of the babies are skinned alive and this is also condoned by the aforementioned brigade, whether willingly, because of incompetence, or simply due to inertia, I am not in a position to know. And of course, thanks to certain other activities of the human race, the poor seal mothers nowadays have difficulty in finding enough ice floes to give birth on in the first place. And the reward for those which achieve it is to witness the appearance of the human being and his clubs, and the subsequent slaughter of their babies."

  "Extraordinary," said Jeremy. "Your species is certainly an unusual one. Quite brutal. And it doesn't sound to me as if you yourself are much in favor of some of these activities. Terribly ruthless ones, I must say."

  "Jeremy, I am just stating facts, those few facts of which I am aware. Whether I consider the way we deal with animals to be a laugh, a great piece of fun, a necessity, or whether it disgusts me to the core, is unimportant. It is unimportant because I cannot change the human race. If the human race is a cruel race, and if it commits abominable crimes against the other defenseless cohabitants of its planet, I just accept that that is the way it is, that that is the way we are. I am neutral on the subject. I am just providing you with the facts, the ones I know, anyway."

  "But do you kill all of the other species or just selected ones?"

  "More or less all of them as far as I am aware. As I said before, if it moves, we kill it. Legally or illegally, it doesn't matter. There may be some exceptions but I can't think of any at the moment. We even kill species we don't know about yet."

  "Really? And how do you manage that may I ask?"

  "Marine fishing," I said. "We fish heavily using a method called bottom-trawling. This is done using a trawl, basically a heavy fishing net which is dragged along the ocean floor. It functions as a plough, stirring up the seabed itself and scaring the fish toward the mouth of the net. In fact, it is like fishing with a bulldozer. These nets catch or crush everything in their path, including exotic squid, sea spiders, crustaceans and many of the estimated two million marine species we have not yet discovered, or not yet catalogued."

  "And this is also an authorized activity?"

  "Yes, Jeremy, authorized by the same elected clowns—more of my friend's terminology—whom I mentioned before, and implemented by those for whom killing is a profession for which they get paid.
"

  "And nobody tries to stop it?" he asked.

  "Oh yes," I replied, "but unsuccessfully of course. Typical of the human race, always arguing with itself. There have been many proposals to the U.N. in recent years for a global ban on deep sea trawling but, you guessed it, they have all been blocked by those U.N. members who prefer to continue with the destruction."

  I stretched myself, drank some more water.

  “There have also been proposals to the U.N. to reduce the killing of sharks, Jeremy. Useless, as usual. These creatures have lived in the planet’s oceans for 400 million years, and the human race is now slaughtering over 100 million of them every year.”

  “Every year? 100 million of them?”

  "That is the number, Jeremy, check it out. Anything that moves, Jeremy, anything that moves. Even the raccoons in Germany."

  "There are raccoons in Germany?"

  "There are indeed, thanks to us. Raccoons were imported into Europe in the middle of the 20th century so that we could breed them and then kill them for their fur. We created cleverly designed death factories for this purpose. Of course, some escaped, reproduced and became a nuisance. How dare they bother the human race like this? Who do they think they are? And so we do what we have always done with things which bother us, we kill them, 70,000 last year in Germany alone. Appropriately approved by the birdbrains, flap, flap, the killers appropriately paid, thank you very much, and everything quite as it should be.

  "Hmm. O.K. Fair enough. I think I can say that I've had my fill on what appears to be your species' congenital predilection for killing. But you also mentioned that you torture millions of animals as well. Now I find that equally as interesting. Why would you want to do something like that? Isn't killing them enough? What exactly is it that you do, and what for?"

  Boy, is this a heavy session. I am not exactly enjoying it to tell the truth. It is depressing. It is also really weird to be explaining to a deranged person what it is that actually occurs on his own planet. But in for a penny, in for a pound, as the geriatrics still say. I looked out of the window again. Hey, no rain! And sunshine! Intermittent, but it's certainly a bonus, sunshine always cheers me up, you too presumably.

  I took a deep breath, drank some more water, and got back to the job at hand.

  "This is an unpleasant meeting Jeremy, not your fault, the subject matter is not very gratifying, that is all. It is unpleasant because you have to understand to begin with that the human race is a harsh, merciless, unpitying race. To be able to properly understand our species' capability for unrelenting and endless cruelty, not only toward the other more helpless inhabitants of our planet, but also—you better believe it—toward ourselves, you would literally need to be clinically insane."

  "Which you still think I am, Peter," interrupted Jeremy, a broad grin spread across his wide round face.

  What a blunder, stupid of me. But deranged or not, he is no fool, obviously not, he knows what I'm thinking.

  "Well, I wouldn't quite say that," I said, politeness to the fore, smiling back, keep this meeting on an even keel for goodness' sake, "otherwise you would be able to understand what I am about to explain, which I don't think you will." I got out of that one quite nicely, I think.

  "I'll start off the easy way," I continued, "with something that most human beings do not in fact consider to be torture. Zoos."

  "Zoos?"

  "Yes. What happens is that we kidnap, capture is a more tender word, large numbers of land animals, birds and fish, we place them in cages or water containers, and we transport them away from their own natural habitats—the few remaining ones they have—to our own world; our own soulless concrete world, thousands of kilometers away from their homes, different temperatures, different smells, different everything, and we put them into prisons, often concrete ones, for the remainder of their natural lives. They lead a cold, artificial and lonely existence. There is nothing for them to do and there is nothing for them to eat except what we humans give them. And then they die. Actually, we also kill them. The slaughtering of—for example—healthy young imprisoned giraffes and the feeding of them to the equally imprisoned lions is a cost-effective nutrition method used by some zoos. The international press was recently heavily criticizing a zoo in Denmark for doing this."

  "And why do you create these zoos, Peter?"

  "We do that so that our human offspring can gawk at the animals, some adults too. But usually only once or twice during our lifetimes."

  "You put these animals into prisons for the whole of their lifetimes, just so that you can look at them once or twice?"

  "Yes, that is precisely what we do. As I told you Jeremy, we do whatever we want with them. We don't think there is anything wrong with it. It is our God-given right, you see. We also capture animals in order to put them into cages in places we call circuses. These animals are put through strict training programs to force them to perform tricks which go against their nature, but which are fun for our offspring to watch. And because the tricks are unnatural ones, the training has to be strenuous and disciplined and it frequently involves the infliction of pain as often and as severely as necessary. For example, the only way to get an elephant to do a handstand on command, Jeremy, is to train it by beating its genitals and ears with an iron bar. This usually works. The animals are then released from their prisons from time to time and compelled to perform in a small arena in front of screaming human children, after which we lock them up again until the next performance."

  "You do this to them, destroy their lives, just in order to amuse your children?"

  "Mainly yes, but there is also a sprinkling of adult humans who like to be amused in the same way."

  And do you really need to amuse yourselves in this way?"

  "Need? No, of course we don't need to, Jeremy. The problem lies with our mentality, we convince ourselves that we do need to do it, we need to amuse ourselves and our offspring in this way. It's real fun. We have decided that other forms of entertainment, those not involving animals, do not constitute a wide enough variety for us on this planet, and so we have to do this as well. Plus, they're only animals, what on earth is all the fuss about? That is our attitude toward the whole matter, Jeremy. Same as with the animal actors."

  "Animal actors?" asked Jeremy. He wasn't raising his voice, he was clearly interested, but there was a touch of bewilderment about him, amazement perhaps, maybe even stupefaction.

  "Yes, well…we also capture animals and transport them here to be actors. Mainly chimpanzees. We also imprison them in cages of course, put them through disciplined training programs, dress them up in our clothes and force them to be actors in our movies and commercials. Very funny, we think."

  "And may I ask," said Jeremy, "for how long you force them to do this?"

  "Well, in the case of chimpanzees, they last about six years as actors. At around that time they become too strong-willed, too willful. Too stubborn. And so, as thanks for their contributions, we then either kill them, or we put them behind bars for the remainder of their natural lives. Which can be for up to around forty years."

  "Poor unfortunate creatures," murmured Jeremy.

  "Perhaps, Jeremy, but those animals are the lucky ones, believe me. We do far worse things. We put other wild animals into even tinier cages and these cages are in places we call laboratories. Cold, barren, lonely places. Minuscule cages. And we permanently hold over 200 million of them like this, including primates, and they never, ever, see the light of day again."

  I finished off my water, went and fetched another bottle from the table, brought one for Jeremy too.

  "These creatures are locked in and subjected to horrific experiments, living a life of such pain, fear and loneliness that it is impossible for us to imagine. Not that we attempt to, of course, we are not interested, why should we be? As I have mentioned, the human being uses them to test the effects of things like new household products, new cosmetics, new medicines and anything else he feels he would like to test. These a
nimals are forced to inhale toxic fumes, they are subjected to corrosive chemicals, they are force-fed pesticides, they have electrodes and other objects surgically implanted into their bodies and also into their brains. And they are often operated on, sometimes repeatedly, usually to remove a certain organ or organs for inspection. Many of these creatures are also dissected and, whether you want to believe it or not, sometimes while still alive. Those animals which don't die as a result of these loving ministrations end up being poisoned, blinded or worse, and any survivors are killed afterwards anyway. Others simply die from the cancer or other horrific illnesses we have injected them with. The end to a life of psychic terror, incredible pain and heartbreaking loneliness. Many of them literally go mad, they spin around and around non-stop in circles, they rock permanently back and forth, many constantly self-inflict major wounds by repeatedly biting themselves, and most of them shake with unimaginable terror whenever a human being walks past their minuscule prison. And this life of theirs can, and often enough does, go on for as long as fifteen years. Or even more, for all I know."

  This really was hard going. Really hard. Jeremy was now just sitting there looking at me. He wasn't saying anything, anything at all. Another swig of water, carry on.

  "All of this happens in company laboratories, private laboratories, university laboratories, school biology classes and so on. Much of it is subsidized by every single one of us taxpayers, thanks to the decisions taken by the birdbrains, flap, flap, as to what should be done with the taxpayers’ money. As you can see, this is something we humans really excel at, torturing and killing. We are really very good at it, very good indeed. And I include myself, I am part of the human machine, I pay my taxes."

  Jeremy had now decided he had another question. "But surely," he said, "not all of you hold these views? Some of your fellow humans would describe your views as an exaggeration I would think."

  "What views?" I asked.

  "O.K., the facts you have mentioned. Surely some of them are overstated?"

  "No, they're not. You'll be doing some research, Jeremy, you'll be able to check it out."

  "But I would nevertheless still hazard the guess that there are plenty of humans who view these facts in differing ways."

  "Oh yes, you're quite right on that one Jeremy, quite right. There are plenty of people who view this whole thing as fully justified. They say the suffering is exaggerated by, wait for it, ‘do-gooders’. These people hold directly opposing views to those who would like to have it all stopped. But there it is, you see. Never has the human race ever agreed on anything, there is nothing we won't argue about. Look at our politicians, flap, flap, any day you want, in any country you want. Arguing, arguing, arguing and arguing; that, basically, is what they do. And sometimes we do our arguing with weapons, then we call it war. And so yes, there are those who support all of this, the terrible torture is O.K. if it's for the benefit of the human race, these things are necessary, a bit unfortunate for the victims, but there you go, life is tough. And even if I were to mention other examples, I could take the bears, there are still those who would say how terrible it is, and there are still those who would say but that's just the way it is, that's the way it has to be, it's all unfortunately necessary."

  "The bears?"

  "Yes, the bears. Let me tell you about the persecution and torture of the bears, broaden your picture a little bit for you, Jeremy. This is a form of criminal torture which only the fascinating human race could be capable of, yes, and like all other activities it requires the involvement of the usual three types of human being for it to be able to occur. Just a reminder as to what the three types are. First of all, the torture of the bears is formally approved by the various bunches of pin-striped assholes who run things on this planet, we simply cannot function without them by the way. Flap, flap. The torture itself is then carried out by those among us who are happy to do it, usually for money—and there are always plenty of those about no matter where you care to look, and no matter in which era you care to look, including today of course—and finally there are the masses, the majority of the population in each of their applicable regions, who have freely elected the sit-on-your-ass birdbrains into their secure, well-paid positions, in order for them to do, more or less, whatever they want."

  I looked directly at Jeremy. He was sitting there quietly, adjusting his tie, patiently waiting for me to continue. A moon-shaped poker face.

  "On this planet, Jeremy, the masses actually believe they have a say in what goes on, because they are allowed to vote. Not for whomever they wish, oh no—they are given a small list of names from which they are allowed to select—but they truly believe that they have a hand in influencing events. And then they find out that the guys they voted for have lied to them, they have not done what they had faithfully promised to do, they have also done what they had faithfully promised not to. They have committed immoral acts, sexual and otherwise, they have sent young people off to get killed in faraway wars, they have even started wars themselves for goodness' sake. And then they—the masses—start to complain. Which they shouldn't. They should keep their mouths shut. They put these guys into power, they stopped their opponents from putting their guys into power, they are the ones who caused it all, they should therefore quite simply shut up. But all of that, Jeremy, would be another story."

  "Coffee, Peter?" Jeremy asked.

  "Thank you," I replied with a nod. Coffee relieves depression. I think.

  "You were going to talk about bears," Jeremy reminded me.

  "Yes, well, and I'll try to keep it short. Frankly, this is also relatively depressing. What happens is, we capture lots and lots of bears and we put them all into cages. Cages designed not to allow them to move at all."

  "Designed not to allow them to move at all?"

  "Not at all. And when putting them into the cages, we make sure they are lying on their backs. We do this so that we can easily drill a hole into their abdomens."

  "Drill a hole into their abdomens?"

  "Drill a hole into their abdomens, Jeremy. This enables us to insert a tube into the hole and ram it into their gallbladders. The purpose of this is to be able to extract the bears' bile, an extremely painful experience for the bears and let's not forget that they can't even move, which all animals, including human ones, would want to do in a desperate attempt to alleviate the suffering. At the same time, specific organs are sometimes surgically removed from the bears without, it goes without saying, the help of anaesthetics, no point in wasting time and money, is there? After all, the bears can't move."

  Jeremy remained perfectly calm and collected while I was describing this delightful human activity. I guess some forms of insanity can have a restrictive effect on emotional reactions. But he was certainly staring at me, possibly in disbelief. As my father would have said—he was from Lancashire—his eyes were standing out like chapel hat pegs. Of course, my father couldn't know that chapels would not have hat pegs nowadays. Or that most of the chapels would no longer be called chapels.

  "And what kind of a purpose does this serve?" he asked.

  "None," I replied. "None at all. The birdbrains authorizing and performing this torture believe in a myth, an age-old doctrine which maintains that the bile and the organs have useful medicinal applications, that they provide certain medicinal benefits. But this is total crap, scientifically proven crap, please forgive the choice of phrase, Jeremy. And in any case there are strong and efficient chemically manufactured products which provide far more powerful benefits than would be possible even if the quacks’ false claims for the bile and the organs were true. Which they are not.. And so the bears are subjected to this horrifying treatment over and over again for years on end, and, great though the ongoing physical agony is, it is nothing compared to the mental agony which they have to suffer. They undoubtedly go mad in the same way as the monkeys do in our laboratories. Except that with the bears you can't see it. Because they can't move, you see."

  "And so how many bea
rs do you do this to? And for how long do you do it to them?"

  "Oh, the average number being tortured in this birdbrain-approved horror movie is about 10,000. At any point in time. And they live like that for periods of up to 20 years. Can you imagine having to live a life like that, the torment involved, the pain, the terror, the immobility?"

  "No," said Jeremy slowly, "no, I can't."

  "Nor can I Jeremy. Nor can the sit-on-your-ass representatives of the masses. In fact, they call it bear-farming! These are bear farms! And bear farms pay taxes, old chap! Yes they do! Everything is fine, perfectly in order, well justified, thank you very much."

  "So you were wrong when you said it serves no purpose. It in fact provides a payoff, money, for both the perpetrators and the approvers."

  "Jeremy," I said, "you are right. That is exactly what it does. And the same goes for all kinds of animal torture, including the silver foxes and the rest."

  "The silver foxes?"

  "Yes Jeremy, the silver foxes. It's only one more example, I don't know why I mentioned it particularly. But here is the news on the foxes. On average we hold about 100,000 silver foxes in captivity at any given point in time, waiting to be killed and skinned, sometimes even the other way round. And this is a more cunning kind of torture. The silver fox is a 'running animal', an animal which requires continuous movement, it's part of its nature. So what do we do? We put them into cages. But not just any old cages, oh no. These cages are about 1 m3 small, all wire mesh including the floor. No toys, no stimulation of any kind. In one way the foxes are luckier than the bears, they can spring up and down and around and around in their prisons while they become insane. And whether this is a temporary or a permanent kind of insanity, we will never know, it's not something you can check up on after you've killed them. And they call this fur-farming! These are fur farms! And they also pay taxes, whoopee, better believe it!"

  "Fur farms."

  "Yes, Jeremy, just as with domestic cats."

  "Domestic cats."

  "Yes. China, the world's largest exporter of fur products, skins about 2 million cats per year, not to mention hundreds of thousands of dogs. The pelts are sold overseas or to their own domestic textile industry and end up as decoration on inexpensive fur hats and jackets and winter shoes, and as tassels on berets and so on. This created a huge scandal in Europe last year and caused more than one well-known clothing chain to withdraw certain products from its stores. These products' fur had officially been described as 'manufactured fur'."

  "Two million every year," said Jeremy, "that sounds a lot to me, Peter. Where do they all come from?"

  "The majority are bred in so-called fur factories. Their short lives are spent squashed together in terribly cramped cages and they are killed as demand requires by a knife cut to the groin. This allows them to bleed to death without damage to their pelts."

  There was a knock on the door and the dream appeared carrying a tray with a pot of coffee, sugar, milk, two cups. She was an impossible creature, damaging to the eyes, grave risk of excessive optical dilation, dangerous strain on the iris, cornea, retina, whatever. Where and how did Jeremy find her?

  "Mr. Parker, sir, I was making some coffee and it just occurred to me to ask if you and your visitor would perhaps care for some?"

  "Why yes, thank you Miss Goodall, very thoughtful of you, much appreciated, kindly just leave everything on the table here. Thank you so much."

  "My pleasure," said the dream, didn't even look at me, well why should she, her laptop at home was running out of gigabytes, clogged up with details of male acquaintances. Or maybe female ones, who knows…now there's a nice erotic thought to help carry me through the remainder of today's session. And then she did her trick again of retiring fast, noiselessly; a smooth personal assistant indeed, elegant, sophisticated for sure, cultured, doesn't intrude, but I got a quick look at her legs this time, man oh man.

  Jeremy poured the coffee and handed me a cup. I checked the window again, great, sun still there. I won’t tell him that the humans also eat cats, I’ll just leave him with the monkey brain example. But wait a minute, wait a minute, I do have a question here.

  "Jeremy, you never called for coffee. Don't tell me you were up to your mind-influencing games again, computer-hacking Ms. Goodall's mind? Tell me you simply forgot and that it was just a coincidence her coming in, correct?"

  A bright look lit up his face, his eyebrows lifted in an enquiring manner, his mouth spread itself into one of its polite smiles, but he made no comment, just took a sip of his coffee.

  "Peter," he said, "I think I get the message. You kill billions of animals and you torture millions more of them before killing them as well. And you do it all the time and in vastly increasing numbers. Now as far as I am aware, there are few, if any, dominant life forms in the universe committing these kinds of atrocities on their fellow inhabitants, none that have appeared in my studies anyway, and none that I have ever heard of. I really don't think I need any more examples thank you. It doesn't make for pleasant listening and presumably you are not exactly enjoying the telling of it yourself. I'll be researching some of this of course and if I need another example or two, it sounds as if there will be plenty for me to choose from."

  "Yes," I replied, "there will be plenty for you to choose from, don't have any doubts about that. And if I may make a suggestion, why not add a little color and interest to the text of your thesis? Why not try animal pornography?"

  "Animal pornography? Did you say animal pornography?"

  "Sure," I said, "certainly I said it. You'll find it via the Internet, no problem. And if your computer were not properly secured, you would be receiving non-stop emails with some fairly disgusting attachments illustrating the subject. Animal pornography is alive and well in most parts of our world and some of it involves torturing the animals to death as part of the sexual act. And if your professor is not averse to a modicum of black humor, factual black humor I hasten to point out, then you should take a look at the country I live in. As in several other parts of the planet, Germany has a law forbidding the distribution of animal pornography, but—wait for it, Jeremy—there is no law forbidding the act itself! Flap, flap. Another of the birdbrains' masterstrokes. True! And as a consequence there are animal bordellos in Germany! Believe me. Check it out."

  I'll be out of here soon, he can't say I'm not giving him his money's worth, can he? Or maybe he can. What money anyway?

  "Peter, are you trying to tell me that your whole species is like this? I mean that your entire species is either involved in, or at least in agreement with, what is going on?"

  "Well, we allow it and that is a fact for sure," I said. "It depends on how you wish to interpret the situation,” I went on. “All of us eat meat, the entire species as you put it, except for a few vegetarians of course, and we are all fully aware of where the meat comes from and how. But none of us particularly want to know much about it. Certainly we would have no desire to spend a few days watching fellow human beings conscientiously working away in a slaughterhouse, we wouldn't want to stomach the smells or listen to the screams. We wouldn't want to spend a single day there, not even an hour. If we had to perform that work ourselves, most of us would become vegetarians. But the filet steaks are good, so is the veal escalope, so is the chicken pie, so are the pork chops and, oh yes, the hamburgers. Ignore and enjoy is our motto."

  I drank some more coffee. Good stuff. If he's as good in business as he is with his selection of coffee and secretaries, Jeremy here has to be running an extremely profitable group of companies, bonkers or not.

  "At the same time, most of us know about the baby seals and the torturing of animals in general, but we don't let that worry us too much either. There is nothing we can do about it, say the voting masses. If the morons we've voted into power allow it to continue, that's just the way it is. And they're right on that one, Jeremy, they can go on voting until they're blue in the face, but they'll never change anything for the simple reason that they
can't change the human race. Plenty of them have tried and plenty of them have even been killed for their troubles, your Jeanne d'Arcs, your Rommels, your von Stauffenbergs and untold thousands back through history. Laudable people, all of them, but all they succeeded in doing was to die before their time. They didn't change the human race. On the other hand…"

  "But you are a member of the human race yourself, Peter. Yet you almost talk as if you consider yourself to be separate from them."

  "Correct, Jeremy, I am a member of the human race and just as much a part of everything that's going on as anyone else. But I am a cynic too, an unashamed one. I have read history, up to and including the most recent century, and I have seen that we don't change; I have seen that in fact we cannot change, and so I have stepped aside, taken a seat in the theater so to speak. I watch some of my fellow creatures doing their best, if you want to call it that. And that's why I don't vote, I never have and I never will, I leave it up to the voting masses. One half argues one way, the other half argues the other way, and both halves try to force their views onto everyone else. And who is to say whose views are best? Sometimes the first half wins, sometimes the second half wins, and so it goes on and on. A naïve and ridiculous procedure. All we do is argue and argue and argue; as I have said, sometimes with the use of weapons and sometimes without. You cannot realistically expect anything sensible to come out of such a process, can you? We read about what happens in our newspapers, day after day for decades, and then we die. Nothing changes."

  He asks a question, he gets an answer. It's a fair deal. And in any case I am only an interviewee in this fantasy world of his. He gets the facts as I see them. And they may be right and they may be wrong, but who cares? Not me. They are facts. They don’t upset me, it's the way things are. And today's good mood, although suffering from a sprinkling of depression, was still going strong, assisted, don't doubt it, by occasional thoughts concerning the dream and her possible lifestyle. Yes, and also by the fact that the rain had stopped.

  "On the other hand," I continued, "as I was saying, there are indeed some humans who are extremely conscious of the state of affairs regarding the murder and torture of other species, and these people have achieved the creation of several 'nature reserves' in order to protect a few of the animals from the human monster. To help them avoid extinction. Or at least to give them the chance of avoiding extinction. Of course, this doesn't work properly either. The laws are broken, there is poaching, humans break in, they commit animal kidnapping and other atrocities, they kill elephants either for their tusks or even just for the sport of it. Over half of Africa's elephants have been killed for the ivory trade since 1987. And in addition to the legal slaughter of the elephants, there are another 30,000 of them killed illegally each year. Western Africa's black rhinoceros was officially declared extinct not long ago. And, sadly, the list is a long one and it's ongoing. Nature reserves are now basically places where you can go to experience the past, but without the past’s plenitude of wildlife. The British environmentalist Max Nicholson once referred to them as living museums."

  "You mentioned killing as a sport before."

  "So I did, Jeremy, I apologize. But please don't consider that I was exaggerating. All kinds of human beings do it. Only recently in fact, the elected honorary president of the World Wildlife Fund itself, King Juan Carlos of Spain, proudly appeared in colorful photographs together with his slaughtered elephant. And by the way, we don't call these killing jaunts 'killing jaunts', Jeremy. We call them 'safaris', it sounds nicer."

  I finished the last of my coffee. "So to summarize, Jeremy, no we are not all like this. A small minority fights to save a few of the creatures. They have also set up 'rehabilitation homes' for the animals their fellow-humans have tortured, mistreated or abandoned—a plentiful supply of these as you may imagine—and they are always generally trying to do their best."

  "Well, I am pleased to hear that," interjected Jeremy, "although at the same time I have difficulty in coming to terms with the revolting horrors you have depicted, and which make protective care attempts a necessity in the first place. An extraordinary planet in this sense, absolutely extraordinary. For my own particular species, in fact for any of the universe's intelligent species, it is a fairly sickening tale—an abominable, repulsive and immoral tale—and I will need to reinforce my memorized notes with plenty of research or my professor might query the reliability of my facts. He might accuse me of distorting the truth, of factual exaggeration in order to enhance the dynamics of my thesis. But if I may say so, Peter, you personally do have views, that much is clear from several of your comments, and it would seem to me that you find these activities to be exceedingly abhorrent, is that not so?"

  "Yes Jeremy, it is. But again, my views are irrelevant. It is the facts that count. I cannot change the human race. I cannot change the way things are, and so my views don't worry me. The subject doesn't depress me either, except perhaps in an abstract way while describing it all. And so it doesn't prevent me from enjoying life. There you are, that is the way I am."

  "Interesting, interesting. Well, I think I can say you have given me enough of a broad overview, so how about we call it a day? Or would you like another coffee, a spot of lunch perhaps?"

  Spot of lunch? No thank you very much, got to be joking, enough is enough, no coffee either, back into reality, that's what I need, out into the sun where normality reigns, normality such as it is of course. The main thing was to remove myself from this white asylum-wall environment. I checked my watch. Just past midday. Great. End of the story, goodbye Mr. Parker, vaya con Dios. Maybe I'll head straight off to Germany, still make it home before midnight.

  "No thanks, Jeremy," I said. "It's been a pleasure. 'Interaction with Other Species'. An interesting subject, I hope I was helpful. Ignore my views, my views are incorrect ones often enough. Just stick to the facts and you'll be O.K."

  I stood up, stretched, I could do with a cigarette. Two, in fact.

  "Our next meeting," he said. "I'll need time for the research on this one and in any case you are travelling back to Germany for a few days and, if I recall correctly, you have a meeting in London on the Monday. So how does Wednesday of next week sound to you? My agenda is rather full for that morning, so… 2 p.m. perhaps? Or would you prefer the Thursday?"

  Keep him happy, no need to create waves. Peace on earth and leave quietly, that's the plan. But a last bit of fun would not be amiss, it wouldn't do any harm, would it? Isn't that what I came for in the first place?

  "Jeremy," I said, "if I decide to continue with these meetings, and I understand that I am under no obligation to do so, they are going to cause some considerable disruption to my life. Right now, I don't know whether I will be loaded up with work next week here in the U.K. or whether I will be starting off on a new assignment in Spain. But either way, I shall be working full blast, and to have to absent myself from work when I shouldn't could have undesirable effects. I earn a considerable amount of money in my business and I like to conduct it professionally, as I am sure you do yours."

  I paused, I looked at him. He looked back at me. He was thinking. Maybe he was even thinking the word 'money'? He thought some more.

  How much?" he said.

  "I am not a bargaining man, Jeremy. I am not an Arab in his marketplace. Not my type. To adequately compensate me for the risks involved, my remuneration would need to be increased to €800,000 from the €500,000 previously offered."

  Let's see how his tiny fantasy world deals with this one. An intriguing little exercise. Interesting, does no harm, just how much of his illusory money is he willing to throw around?

  He continued to look at me, drank some coffee, placed his elbows on the table, looked at me some more, and did some more thinking.

  "Peter, I am not a bargaining man either. Irrespective of how much you earn, I consider your risks to be minimal and I cannot accept the amount you mention. Nevertheless, as I would prefer to retain your services, something of which you
are well aware, I would for that reason alone be prepared, for the period of time involved, to raise our agreed fee to a total of €600,000. And as I judge you to be a reasonably honorable person, I would also be prepared to transfer this additional sum of €100,000 to you immediately, today in fact. In return, however, there would need to be a change in our contractual conditions. Namely, your right to resign before our meetings are completed would be canceled. And the penalty for breaking this new condition would be the return of the two advance payments already made. This is a take it or leave it offer. I too trust that you understand my reasons for this."

  No, Jeremy, I do not understand your reasons for anything, anything at all, you are a mobile madhouse, I have to leave, I could get infected.

  "O.K., Jeremy. I made an offer, you made an offer. No bargaining. I accept your fee and the change in conditions. Next Wednesday at 2 p.m. will be convenient to me. See you then?" I said.

  Exercise completed. Another mythical €100,000. Like Bitcoins in a way. Wherever I'll be next Wednesday, it won't be here. I gave him a nice smile, and got to my feet.

  He also smiled, stood up, we shook hands, he accompanied me through to reception, a couple of staffers were there chatting and drinking coffee but not the dreamy Ms. Goodall. Maybe she was at lunch, what a pity. He said goodbye, thank you for your time, have a good trip, and I was gone, out of the door, down the stairs and out into the street. Some cloud, some sun and some people, normal ones no doubt about it.

  Whew! What an absolutely fascinating experience. And no weird happenings, no strange occurrences, no fending off of maniacal assaults, everything as formal and as un-embarrassing as a talk with your doctor. Assuming that the talk is not about prostate or erectile dysfunction problems of course. I imagine those must be quite embarrassing talks. But who cares, for me that's far away in the distant future, or I might die before I ever get there. Or I might be one of the 20% who live to be a hundred and never notice a thing.

  The cab could wait. I needed a cigarette. I lit one up, considered whether to go back to Germany today or leave it until tomorrow. I checked the time. 12.40 p.m. Early enough. And I'm not too tired…let's go.

  I finished the cigarette, hailed a cab in the Strand, back to the hotel. Went straight to the garage, hung up my jacket in the back of the car and drove out using the prepaid ticket given to me by Little Miss Ugly. Lit up cigarette number two.

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