Since the inception of the first cascade around the vicinity of the Round House Theatre, there has been a distinguished improvement upon previous years’ enhancements.
I’ve been watching for sometime and my interest lies not only with 
the PVC clad women, but with the delightful store holders who, to this day, invite me to purchase their wares.
I haven’t ever experienced quite such a performance from the general populous as I have from these individuals and one may think that my interest is purely carnal – but i can assure you, ladies and gentlemen, they are not.
Despite my current situation, sans robes, I work hard on this topic to provide you with information otherwise difficult to garner. Here, within these tomes, I intend to provide you with a brief guide to life in this not so sleepy suburb of the Great City Of London.
It was twenty years ago today that I first stumbled, wet behind the ears, onto the scene. Dragging me backwards in time to the dark days of adolescence was a pure faced but tangibly dangerous young thing whom intended to have me, regardless of cost. She wept when she could, to goad me into caring for her, which I did without hesitation or want. She caressed the inner most parts of my soul, she dashed me against the rocks of heart-ache and sorrow. And I loved her.
It was in these times that I had taken the time to establish myself as a courtier to the King and Queen of Camden – those fresh faced lovelies whom everyone envied for their love of one another and disregard for all else, for all traces of sense and decorum. They had taken me under their wing to teach me the true meaning of profit and loss – and with them an empire had emerged with me at the financial helm. Dealings in t-shirts, foreign spices, cloth, teas, coffees and, at times (although nobody was aware), such dangerous things as opiates.
They had urged me to get involved on the front line, but even then I knew that nothing good could become of this – nothing, except that is, perhaps, love. My love for her was, at first, a secret; she was a fair maiden in the mass of confusion and dealings who walked blissfully unaware of the seedy world that had started to envelop her. The pedestal that I had placed beneath her was far more substantial than that placed under the endless stream of party girls who visited the local taverns – whose platforms were only leather bound.
My eyes would wander far and wide to find her, like a mist within the maelstrom, searching her out as her innocence radiated to all those she came in contact with. If my business partners were the King and Queen of Camden, she was the Princess – and one whom must be treated with such delicacy, such consideration that even the most precious doily would feel envy for.
The softness of her lamp-lit eyes in the dark of the winter nights belied her nature – at these times her resolve to have me removed from office was at its strongest. One by one the orders came in from foreign investors, t-shirts seemed to be sold by the thousand, food was devoured at banquets and on the streets, spices and hallucinogenics went from the shelves only minutes after being stocked. But it was her, she was the force behind it all, she was the shadow chancellor eating away at our system, eating away at the profit margins and her plan was flawless.
It was not enough for me to love her from a distance, in time I had to find a way to meet her, to conquer her. I knew not of her plan at the beginning, but I now know she had captured my soul years before, in some way the like of which I still do not know. She knew my every move before I made it. Even when I did find her in the crowds she seemed to have let it happen – knowing that the familiarity I was breeding within myself would one day lead to the most devastating love of all.
It was a February night that the tidings of awfulness were becoming clear, the foreign trade collapsed and we had purchas
ed more goods than ever before to cover for the Easter break. Time dragged itself with the energy of a sloth as we saw our money reserves disappear on such feeble minded things as electricity for refrigeration and light. Trade was so diabolically slow as to cause the King and Queen to live in different residences with argument after argument over who and what had caused such a rift in the profit.
Negative figures approached, the pretties stayed at home in fear of the kind of desperate customers that were now on the loose – only bargain hunters, now swooping in to take advantage of our last ditch attempts at saving our sub-economy.
You see, My Love had ceased the additional orders she had been making, had sold back her stock to markets around the country causing an enormous proliferation of pound shops nationwide. She was devilish, and despite myself I started to realise that she was behind it all – why was there always that room in her shared house off-limits to all who visited? Why did she never take part in the sampling of the medicaments? Why was she studying accountancy in her spare time? Why was she… Oh, why she she her!
My anger with her was only matched by my love and both wished to seize her, to have her as mine – that intellect, that body, that innocence, that calculating brain; that full chain of pound shops waiting for a Managing Director.
The night came of our collapse – she saw by the change in my eyes that I knew of what she had done. She knew – and she was charged by it, she wanted me to confront her. But I could not, not yet…
To be continued…
Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card
' before - they tend to leave me with that feeling, 'Bloody Sci-Fi nutters - they'll read anything'; the characters are reasonably well 'explored', so there's enough there to empathise with (to use reviewers parlance), the sci-fi ideas (i.e. future technology) give the author plenty of scope to get his characters from one side of the galaxy to the other without breaking into a sweat (which ultimately lead you to consider faster than light travel and transportation via de-materialisation and re-materialisation). It's all good fun.
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