Steve Urwin, County Durham

I always feel greasy when I wear this coat; I can smell the wax on my hands. And the onion-breath clouding my speech as I regret these hours; cobblestoned streets and freezing sleet as I stand huddled in some doorway gnawing at the thick wedge of stotty oozing bloody sauce and grease. Double steakburger and...grease? No, I don't think I asked for that. Regret; I always feel it when squandering is the order of the day and the weather is of little ease. And the cocksure little students--well-versed in Eliot and Shelley, Wordsworth and Byron--pretty little things, storing up data and spewing out fact--not an ounce of soul between them... Bitterness, bitterness, here it is; the bitterness born of insecurity. I always feel it. I always feel greasy when I wear this coat and it rains and Durham is my destination; scurrying like a demented rat, from bus station to burger stall; from wet street to Waterstones--and trips to the cash-point inevitable. Ah, the guilt. The smell, the wax. This rat; my greasiness.