things move around

My friend’s lumbar problems continue to worsen, despite courses of massage, physiotherapy, yoga and more abstruse techniques including electrical stimulation and chiropractice. His absence, now into its second month, is attested to by the pile of subscription periodicals, on the subjects of investing and personal finance, slowly spreading across his desk like mold.

My friend tells the story of his time in London in the sixties, when he would go occasionally to the Billingsgate market at four in the a.m. to buy sacks full of crab, which he would boil that same evening in an enormous wrought-iron cauldron and share with seven or eight acquaintances of both genders. The implication being that when all the crab had been eaten, or everyone’s appetite for crab satisfied, whichever was the sooner, various romantic activites would ensue, in keeping with the temper of the times.