3a

It is one of those bright sunny summer's days when everything is exposed: all the mesmerizing hope and frantic yearning, all the beauty, pain and ugliness. Shimmering facades concealing maggots.

Mostly out of guilt I venture out, confronted by the flagrant sun and my own, suddenly incontrovertible decrepitude, imprisoned in my bloated, fetid, seemingly omnipresent flesh.

A man with a moustache walks by, bewildering me. A young mother with angelic arms, and a tattoo that metamorphoses into a belt buckle, presses against her destiny.

I cross the road, anxious to at least endeavour to escape the inevitable despair, the feelings of regret that sometimes seem to represent my whole existence.

Skin, I realise, is just a metaphor for the importunate inevitability of the grave, which I sometimes think might not be quite the consolation I imagine, as I meander, not quite aimlessly, through Newport Cemetery, amused by all the meaningless headstones. 'Here lies Albert Fraser Langley, born 1919, died 1983, and Rose Josephine Langley, wife of the above, born 1923, died 1990 - Reunited in the arms of the Saviour.'

Millions of years of evolution, and still we lack the courage to confront things as they are.

I go back home. Too much exposure can disable. The blazing, irridescent sun, though not quite forgotten, can briefly be ignored, and I can don my loose fitting trousers again as though my flesh, and insight, have once more shrunk to manageable dimensions.