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In The Hole in the Wall, over lunch on a Friday afternoon, after the Union meeting on pay had been cancelled. Smogmonster gets the round in - Becks, Guinness, cider - then tells us that when he was up in Management's office he noticed that they had two Union-related books on their shelves, both smaller than A5 pamphlets. One was called Negotiation Tactics & the other Managing Chaos . Laughing into the fresh pints Pityakker says the Union should bring out a title of our own - and call it Talking Cobblers

Before the John Kinsella reading I go to The Hole to catch-up with the Union Reps - Pityacker and Smogmonster. Smogmonster has been away for a few weeks so I fill him in on movements among the piano-fingered professionals - the Oxygen Thieves - over two pints of Guinness. There is just enough time for him to tell his joke that not everyone was pleased when the Pits closed : he once spoke to an out-of-work canary. The Hole has changed since the smoking ban, the front room in the commuter hour used to be a workshop in tokable choices - cigarette, roll-up, cigar, pipe, cigarello - an Arcadian plume of passive exhalation. Now it is clean the only smell is bad food. Smogmonster puts the pressure on to ditch the reading & have a few more pints, watch the Man U V. Roma game. I challenge him to say what he's thinking about me going to a poetry reading - he smiles : fuckin load of bollocks mate. And this from one of the most intelligent people I know - in argument, numbers, negotiation,...