In town

We got here at last, night drawing in, and I'm now blogging this through the wonders of T9 predictive text, standing on a cobbled road in the outskirts of the old quarter.

This is Valve Street, and there are electronics shops each side, blinking and flashing from yellow-lit interiors. The shops have no front walls, they're all door, with a token territorial gesture of flaking metal-framed office desks across the front. These invariably piled high with winking and humming gimcrackery.

The shop I'm in front of has windows on the second story painted out red with white text, there's a light on behind - making signage.

The table of this one is spread with oily cogs, a spaghetti of wiring and humps of things that have the air (or ozone) of Tesla machines.

I would buy one, except I don't know what constitutes "one" in the pile - they all share tangled wires and bits of fatherboard (which is red, not blue), copper-soldered together. If I picked that one up, I think I'd trawl a dozen others dangling by.

The shopkeeper is a five year old boy, and like all his peers in this country looking like an angry angel, with mad big eyes and brows thick and in a V.

I smile, but the boy scowls more. Fusel takes me by the elbow, and leads me away. He mutters something to the boy and the boy smiles and nods.

Steve (the yak, remember) has just shit on the cobbles, and it's my job to clean it up.

So I'll phone in later, after I've dealt with the yak shit.