(Published 'Purple Patch' 1990)
The streets were so narrow, the tall arched windows of the buildings stared greyly eyeball to eyeball, as if confident that taxes would ever be on doors rather on them.
"Oi!" said one greasy individual, "time was when you had to pay the government for every chimney you had on your roof."
"Oi! Oi! That's because people were religious in those days and didn't want God to get a cough as a passive smoker."
An oaken door creaked on rusty hinges, yawned wide to feel the spray of drizzle upon its vertical tongue.
"Oi! Don't give me that, doorways haven't any tongues," said a shoe which happened to be passing, fastened to someone or other's foot.
The smell of an evening meal wafted out into the narrow street, making the drains water.
And passers-by galore turned up their noses (and some their toes). One particular portly party got his belly stuck between the sides of a servant's entrance, so narrow the owners didn't have to pay so much tax on it.
There were grunts of people arguing around the next blind corner.
Oi! Oi!
