My brief stay at the hospital had already convinced me that the medical profession was an open door to anyone nursing a grudge against the human race. - J. G. Ballard

Their period in the apartment together had been one of almost narcotic domesticity.

In their eyes I must have appeared like some kind of nightmarish totem, a domestic idiot suffering from the irreversible brain damage of a motorway accident and now put out each morning to view the scene of his own cerebral death.

The Thames Shouldered its way past Blackfriars Bridge, impatient with the ancient piers, no longer the passive stream that slid past Chelsea Marina, but a rush of ugly water that had scented the open sea and was ready to make a run for it.