And so, cock robin...

I took a flask of O to the cemetery. In truth, as we stood listening to another African song (hardly an expression of Colin's soul, I have to say, yet certainly indicative of his contemporaneity), I took a quiet blast of O, less to stifle my grief, but the better to experience it. I also wanted the O to muffle a certain preoccupation I was having. I couldn't stop asking myself what the collective noun for a group of therapists would be. An alliance, perchance? A hum? Eventually I came round to exactly where I stood, a funeral of therapists. Appropriate and accurate, if entirely meaningless. And so later, I casted around for any old uncles, retarded sisters or pervy cousins, anything to give a real whiff of Colin, or the hinterland he'd polished away, both in therapy and half a life consorting in cosmopolita. There was nothing, there was nobody. He'd filled the church with friends and, of course, contemporaries. Even Gareth was restless.

I shall break into his room and steal one of his books.

God knows, I'll inscribe it to myself.