Low sax lounge man drapes in past Saturday morning and into cello twanging evening before sitting down on my sofa and offering me a drink. I say I don’t want one, and that the best ones in the flat have already been nicked by parrot ladies necking down the crystal sauce before sleeping on the taxi ride back to the city. He asks if I’ve got anything else and I tell him that I dunno what I want cos who does really.

He squints and tells me that there’s a brand new place I should try in town and it seems like sticky seconds before I’m suddenly on the number 1 bus sliding across the fly-over and over Trent Bridge where black Victorian water shimmers back at my cornea with such mystique that I feel the need to turn round and ask sax man and ask why he’s laughing. He’s laughing at a book he once read and then he turns into a woman. It’s not long before we get off opposite the train station and she leads me to the canal tow path, opposite the glowing bee-hive pubs that scatter the way of the dark water-side smelling of hops and dry orange juice. She taps a brick in the wall and says ‘RHETORIC’ and I squash backwards in surprise and ask her “wasn’t that a bit loud for a secret password?’ She replies that it’s fine cos it was ironic which in turn made it legitimate and I have no idea what’s going on but the brick slides open and a man with a goat head peers out all wiggly like and softens a spit blow in his chops before snorting and opening the wooden door that looks like a wall. Nobody else sees us as we fall into the doorway and leave the canal street behind us and the big waterworks building.

When inside, she seems to know everybody and I don’t even know ‘me’ so I just stick my hand out randomly and before long this man who looks like a scarab clicks and shakes it and tells me his football team are never good this time of year and although I know fuck all about football I tell him that sport seasons are different from actual seasons. He squares up to me, sporting an Aussie accent and says he’ll break my back with his claw so I roll off into the hum. Sax woman finds me again but now she only has one arm and she leads me through an exposed brick corridor draped in velvet until I leap out of a wonky doorway and into a huge music hall that looks like a jazzy sewer and everyone says ‘Christ not another one’. The whole room is a bee-hive with someone singing on red stage in mellow suit with a four piece band all playing different sound desks, except for the woman who’s twanging a double bass with an ice lolly hanging out her jaw.

Sax woman says ‘you gotta meet Sol she’s legitimate’ so I sink onto a sofa while everyone else eats and smacks themselves off in the train station-esque, sewer vibing music pantry. This group of people are too confusing to really look at directly but they howl and chuck me a cig immediately before ordering me a drink called ‘sunshine’ which is guaranteed to make me feel like I have too much blood. We both sit and Sol, plus her two mates laugh themselves off a tangent before introducing me on my behalf, it leaves me dazed. Then Sol stops and says ‘let’s get down to business, what’s the deal with this one?’ to sax woman, who in turn opens her mouth and lets words spill out to re-assure Sol that I’m not gonna act up and get all logo-centric cos I’m not that kind of guy.  I’m just in the middle of simultaneously agreeing that I’m not that kind of guy and also asking what logo-centric means before my drink arrives and I sit nursing it thinking sweetness in the purple air as a train goes by overhead. I don’t know where though cos we’re under the bridge. Sol must read my mind because she leans over and says “it’s just a submarine, they come round all the time here”.

It turns out Sol is actually the new representative for our district and that although she’s a picture that’s been brought to life by a vast network of dataist pennants, she really wants to know what’s bugging me about my area. Sax woman is already deteriorating like a 1960s hospital and my mind is cooking me solid and sizzling my sinus like a stir fry so I quickly blurt out ‘parrot ladies’ without thinking because I have no idea what I think about anything.

Sol smiles but sax woman looks embarrassed, Sol’s mates have turned invisible and there’s a commotion behind us because the goat man and the fake Aussie tried to get it on by playing ice hockey on ice-white linen but they fell on an Italian-talking Doberman. Apparently goats don’t like Italian so goat man cut his kidney out in three seconds flat and it’s getting a bit leery over there generally. On stage everyone has gathered to feast on the double bass cos the player hid the body of their dead brother inside so everyone has meat and that’s nice.

Sol clicks her fingers and me plus sax woman fall into a private room and I’m out of my mind and Sol tells me that she’ll deal with the parrot ladies if I draw posters with Sol’s face on it an stick them up around all the city. Sax woman looks at me eagerly cos she knows I’ve been out of work lately. I fizzle internally and croak and Sol takes that as agreement. I’m now panicking like a sick sine wave about having to draw a flattering picture of Sol because I keep forgetting what she looks like. Mists whizz and time backflips 100 yards East and before I know it Sol’s waving at me and sax woman from under the water where the club must be and we’re back out by the canal.

Sax woman has ground up some marble, an old puppet, Codeine and some kind of sedative to calm my nerves. She takes a mouthful of sherbet before sauntering back to the steps up to the main road where the traffic frantically spins. Sax woman turns to me to me and says “you’d better do a good job of this y’know, she’s a big deal round here. She’s a new generation, she represents us.” I ask her who Sol represents and she tells me that people have to stick their own people and then she pulls out her saxophone  and plays it but all that comes out is water and the sound of a low-end synth playing A flat and I just stand there with boiling insides thinking and thinking and then I spot a camera crew opposite who are doing the morning news report about people who live underground and become addicted to sunlight and it’s only just 4am and I swivel to sax woman to cut through her saggy noise and tell her that I really really really don’t understand what’s going on.

She stops and starts to age horribly before mouthing “It’s never too late to join the bureau”. I ask if she’s from the bureau and she nods and I get coy cos the bureau have never asked about me but usually have something to do with my ‘circles’ but to be honest I’ve never been good at drawing anyway so fuck Sol and I tell sax woman that if she needs me I’ll be behind the bins soaking up the atmosphere of the morning yet to come. I tell her I’m not desperate enough to join those bureau pricks even though, secretly, I am. She materialises coffee out of blue fire and laughs before grunting-

“Kids.”