Hair Trigger 2.0 Issue One

whose stench in the right weather conditions resembled what one imagines a third world prison
might be like. Indeed, the two sets of green, metal magnetic doors for which one required an
electronic fob to enter the complex were sturdy enough for use in a correctional facility and the
linoleum flooring of the communal landings would not have looked out of place there either. In
the morning I still woke up at six-thirty on my single bed, which I believed marked out my
vocation and served as a credible deterrent to any chance of a relationship with the many obese
ladies who lived on the estate. I rose, peed, and promptly went back to bed, unable to fulfil any
other function because of an immense depressive lethargy that weighed on my every movement.
There was a small IKEA desk, essentially a block of oak veneer atop four metal posts, which
Plato could never have contemplated. On it was my laptop, open as if I was ready to work, piles
of papers and a few unread books in the far left corner. For a month, I rose (in some sense of the
word) to the same routine, spending twelve, sometimes even sixteen hours in bed and the rest
watching TV or doing unavoidable activities of daily living.
Connor knocked on my door one morning. I cannot say what day it was, whether it was a
weekday or weekend, all days seemed pretty much the same to me at this point. He stood
awkward in front of me, chest leaning forward, feet splayed apart like a broken toy soldier, and
asked if I could come to his house to fix a broken shelf.
I walked behind him as he waddled ahead, a perverse duck walk. He was only thirty-two
and already had bilateral hip replacements, the one on the right hand side had been botched, so
he’d had to have a second operation to correct the first surgeon’s error. Early onset arthritis. It
also affected his knees but they were not yet so far gone he needed to get them fixed. Maybe it
was just bad luck, but he was a young man trapped in an old man’s body. The CCTV cameras
hanging in the landing to deter junkies, thieves, youths in for a quick bonk, and other
undesirables recorded our slow progress past the screen doors and finally into his flat, where the
state’s electronic surveillance might have stopped, but did not cease, for Connor always had
various engagements with social workers—for his children in care, the police—petty shoplifting
now and again, and the occasional domestic “disturbances” between him and his partner, district
nurses on home visits, and bailiffs who gave him the occasional knock for debts he could never
pay. The shelter itself belonged to the council and, for a man on the dole with some disability
allowance thrown in, one could say his entire life revolved around hopping between one
" 8 | Hair Trigger 2.0