ALWAYS WEAR GLOVES

Tonight, I savour my last evening of a week away from work. Well not quite away; I live in a flat above one of our branches but since Sunday last, I've not concerned myself with anything that could pay the rent or trouble me in a professional sense. Instead, I've indulged my base and venereal impulses, with wine and women and other such trifles that cost more than my monthly budget would strictly allow. Bear with me, please. This week, I reconciled with my troubled girlfriend and then promptly dumped her again on the friday. We've had many ups and downs in our time together. In the end it was more downs than ups, often originating from the neccesity of me having to leave her whilst 'on call'. Of course, I could argue that her sense of abandonment stems from the acrimonious loss of her father at an early age, but having to leave our shared bed at all hours over a considerable period and neccesarily devoting so much of my time to my work has some impact. I've seen...

My life has a very tight schedule right now. Moving from my home that had all of my suits and shirts and socks and shoes neatly tucked away in my nice and tidy closet has not served me well. My roles are now fractionalized into little parts in much the same way. Where my clothes used to be all in the same place and seamlessly moved from one day to the next I now find my roles jumbled in the same way. Time and schedules are my life. I don't like it very much but this is what I have chosen and I shall persevere. When I was living in ________ I worked for a big university. My job was to receive, embalm , catalog, maintain and store the dead human remains of those who had donated their bodies to science. My other duty was to make these bodies ready and available for thousands of students to dissect and study. It went sort of like this: Being on call those days was simply wearing a pager and possessing a huge notebook filled with names. These names belonged to those who had successfully...