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“What do you see in those heavy waters?” I ask.
“Nothing but a bureaucrat from the ministry poisoning the buttercups with a new defoliant.”
“What’s that I hear?”
“The sound of Gershwin on his ghetto blaster.”
“What else?”
“The atom splitting.”
“And the whispering?”
“Half truths spilling from the minister’s case, wriggling in the blinding sun.”
“What are they saying?”
“All’s well. No comment. Some of them are silent.
“Ah, there’s the guard.”
“What’s the password?”
“Evasion.”
“What else do you see?”
“Lies, flowing through the national grid. And bribery.”
“All’s normal then.”
“Yes.”
“Where’s hope?”
“The little white lies have carried her off beyond the cabbage patch.”
“They murdered her?”
“Yes.”
“And tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow’s been cancelled owing to lack of interest. You saw the graffiti years ago on the Euston Road and didn’t believe it, what proof do you need? The world’s curling up like an autumn leaf, the storm’s coming to blow it into the final winter. Can’t you feel the days are getting shorter?”

–   Derek Jarman, The Last of England, 1987