Let me introduce you to Victor Skynnard, the mixed ability parasite, radical, socio-irritant and spiritual bomb-thrower who came into the café that day.

After leaving the Head in the Sand café Victor headed straight home and sat in front of the computer in his study. The thin academic and scribbler leaned back and picked up a cheque that his father-in-law had given him, examined it and placed it back on the desk. The cheque was for less than he had hoped.

The house where he lived in Camden Town was part of a terrace of down-at-heel, white-painted houses with steps leading up to the front door and paint flaking off the portico pillars of the porch. Enter almost any such dwelling and you are likely to come across one of those pale utopian sceptres from the mausoleum of seventies radicals. Enormous uncurtained windows let in the baleful light of morning. Skynnard's complexion in the pitiless daylight was tallow. His greying hair formed a cobweb of light frizz so pale as to be almost colourless, like a dandelion puff-ball. His forehead, high enough to have been elongated by a distorting mirror, puckered with concentration on nothing in particular.

To read the first two chapters of Eating Air click here

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Last modified on September 5, 2011  | © Telegram 2005