The Madness of King John

Back in Canary Wharf waiting on a mysterious doctor's appointment: a doctor Philips potentially on the 9th floor of my least favourite building in London. I'm early and enjoying my first Earl Grey of the day outside Canary Wharf people watching: if these are people.

Everybody is in business or in the business of selling food to people in business so everybody is corporated to the max. The only dash of colour is from Cleo Rocos' hair as she strolls past, arm in arm with an elderly woman whom I took to be a relative or possibly just somebody who got caught up in her personal gravity, stately as she sweeps past the charcoal drones. Suits are worn like armour here, with only silly old fallible human heads sticking out the top giving the game away. Men's shoes are positively medieval; great long black swords of shoes, conical and curling. Nobody looks comfortable, nobody can walk properly, shoe-horned into this hostile environment. Only the shoe-shine guy looks content, reading to himself as nobody bothers him; these people don't need a once over with a chamois, they need a hammer and a forge.

Had my first psychologist's appointment at Hell House. My brain had tricked me into believing that it was at 9.30 instead of nine, so I was late out of the door and no bus came. A good start; I barely had time to fill in the "Are You Going To Commit Suicide in the Foyer" pamphlet before the psychologist was on me. Her name is Alice, she had big sad Greek eyes and she barely said a word for the next hour as I took her on a whistle-stop tour of my life over the last couple of years. At the end she commended me for my "calmness" and recommended that I see her a lot more often than she had originally planned so either she is hot for my sad wisdom or she thinks I'm about to cut loose with a high-powered rifle from the roof of the Finsbury Park Mosque.

Doctor number two coming up now so lets see how that pans out...there is a history of this being pointlessly stress filled so we'll see what happens.