If it has to be this bad, can't it be in black and white and have a decent soundtrack?

I'm tired and scratchy at the moment and I'm seeing the world without all the usual filters, pretence at civilisation for the use of. I sometimes do this on purpose when "I'm being creative," which can be interesting and useful. It's a bit unnerving when you find it happening of its own accord.

Mid-evening, on my way home from the nightmare factory, post-tea-time so the street's quiet. Or relatively so: two streets down a car alarm is going and someone, somewhere is playing an Abba compilation. The first jarring note came at the corner: I don't recall having seen that somebody had jemmied that garage door. The family's in the house, though: one of the kids is yelling up the stairwell at somebody or other. So that's OK then I suppose. How come the crisp packets you see blowing round the pavement are never any that you see in the shops? I happen to know that down this street there lives a ginger tom, a silver tabby, a sort-of-tortoiseshell with ginger ears, two silly-looking things with wide eyes and an excess of hair in the ears, and a Persian cross that looks like a Merseybeat wig on a bad hair day. Today all I see are black and white cats with Hitler moustaches, five in all. At first I thought it was one and the same, but then I saw three of them together, sat sitting on the front lawn like so many china shepherdesses. The new slates on the roof of the first terrace make a perfectly-regular lozenge. The discoloration of the slates on the next house spells 'Lido' in Palatine type.

And there's a deckchair in the middle of the road...