We Are All Made of Glue [antikvár]

The gluey smell The first time I met Wonder Boy, he pissed on me. I suppose he was trying to warn me off, which was quite prescient when you consider how things turned out. One afternoon in late October, somewhere between Stoke Newington and Highbury, I'd ventured into an unfamiliar street, and come upon the entrance of a cobbled lane that led in between two high garden walls. After about fifty metres the lane opened out into a grassy circle and I found myself standing in fi-ont of a big double-fronted house, half derelict and smothered in ivy, so completely tucked away behind the gardens of the neighbouring houses that you'd never have guessed it was there, crouched behind a straggly privet hedge and a thicket of self-seeded ash and maple saplings. I assumed it was uninhabited - who could live in a place like this? Something was carved on the gatepost. I pulled the ivy aside and read: Canaan House. Canaan - even the name exuded a musty whifF of holiness. A cloud shifted and a low shaft of sunshine made the windows light up momentarily like a magic show. Then the sun slipped away and the flat dusky light exposed the crumbling stucco, the bare wood where the paint had peeled away, rag-patched windows, sagging gutters, and a spiny monkey puzzle tree that had been planted far too close to the house. Behind me, the gate closed with a clack. Suddenly a long wailing sob, Hke the sound of a child