It’s hardly as if, though, something very bad is slated to happen to me: no terrible storm is known to be breaking. It’s only just the thought that it might do, that’s all. Just the thought of it, you see … more than enough to lay me down low. An impending whatever they call that thing—cloud, if you like. Raincloud, sort of style. No—it’s more than that, more than even the blackest raincloud. Maybe the Sword of whoever it was who had a bloody great sword dangling away above him, poor little bastard. In the legend. Not Tantalus, was it …? No, don’t reckon so. Not Sisyphus either. They were just another pair of unlucky old sods, saddled with other agonies. Sadistic swine though, weren’t they really? The buggers who made them up, wrote them down, all these myths and legends. You don’t seem to get many happy ones, do you? Labors of Hercules? Not too happy, is it? No laughs there, I wouldn’t have said. Makes me sweat just thinking about it. Anyway—that’s the way of it, the way it’s always been.
