Shall I pour&hellip,? Yes comes the harsh answer. Clink-glug-glug-clink-glug-glug. With the accuracy of a bar maid I pour 2 generous quadruple measure.... Looking at the clock I see that its 8pm, time to pop over to Kats house. Its only across the hall but it feels a million miles away from my dreary home. Bright colours, laughter and delicious food give me something I cant find anywhere else. Even the family cat shows me affection. Tonight its rice and chicken, with a homemade tomato sauce.. ’ Impulsively I blurted, ‘I’m Phil Stockton. Why don’t you come to my place and have a cold drink?’ She stared at my face, but it was obvious she hadn’t heard me. Panic was now winning over despair. I grabbed her arm and suitcase and pulled her towards my apartment. She didn’t resist. I sat her in a kitchen chair, turned down the thermostat to seventy, and filled a glass with ice and water. She took the glass and drained it. I refilled it and sat across from her. ‘It’s none of my business, but. Over the next few days, the six devoted their free time to setting up their surprise for viewing from downtown Columbia’s Flat Branch Park. Directly, and through Bub, she and Violet warned everyone to keep well clear of the launch and viewing sites until the afternoon and evening two days away.Sugar had planned an afternoon-long picnic and provided menus and recipes to the squads of cooks and food preparers for the Fourth of July celebration. Ribs, brisket, hotdogs, baked beans, slaw, potato. Krill bought a newspaper from the newsagent. It usually depressed him, but occasionally a good, uplifting story appeared. He liked to hear of vast resources spent rescuing a cow or a dog; perhaps there was a hidden bit of the old world left if they valued a single animal so much. Or the campaign to save Old Wood on the other side of this very town; the developers said it was not as old as people thought, the trees were not ancient woodland. But that was because it had been felled in the 1700s.