A lifetime of pin-ups

I was there again last night.

It looked a bit like old Sydney as I remember it from the fifties, before they pulled it down in the name of progress. But wasn’t it more like the badlands of San Francisco, that once beautiful city that is infested by beggars and muggers and is sadly now past redemption? It was only vaguely familiar, yet the neighbourhood was strange and inimical. In my dream, I am always in an unknown part of town, well off the beaten track, a no-go area of half-demolished buildings and menacing tatterdemalions. I am very frightened.

Then a stranger approaches me and whispers, ‘Haven’t you got a show tonight?’

Of course I have! It hits me like a thunderbolt.

But what time is it? And how far away is my theatre?

I rush out into the street, brushing aside those clawing hands of the which want