He dived into the sea in his shorts, swam to the half mile marker, stopped for some breath and to look around at the birds that were nearby, which were some herring gulls and a cormorant. He lay on his back on the ocean and scanned the sky and spotted small aeroplanes criss-crossing the blue with the lengthening plumes of their tail fumes dissipating in the distance and some very high seabirds circling lazily. Lifting his head he trailed his eyes over the cliff face and the pine trees on it and other bushy vegetation, and the bobbing heads of pairs of walkers and their shoulders in light coloured garments and through gaps in the shrubbery alongside a path, a bounding chestnut coloured dog and a child with pigtails.

He was sculling lightly with his arms and occasionally scissoring his legs and feeling the sea life around him and the hairs on his shins and thighs wafting in the waves. He doubled forward and ducked his head down under the surface, suddenly experimenting with death by drowning but his heart and lungs prevented him dying, thrust him up spluttering and gasping and eyeing the sun once more, it sitting there in magisterial pose keeping a watch on his lonely activities. He took a huge breath and breathed it out in a sigh that sounded like something an animal might make, a quadruped with short brown hair, and he struck out for the shore.

On the beach he rubbed himself down with the socks that he'd stuffed into his crippled trainers and then hidden beneath a rock, and put on the short sleeved top - white with navy stripes - that was also there. It stuck to his still wet chest and arms and added sand to his skin surface. His legs shook off drops of seawater as he walked to the concrete path, his trainers tied by their filthy laces and hung around his neck. Bare footed he crossed the four lanes of holiday traffic going in and out of the town, past the neat grass of the public gardens - benches of pensioners and clutches of wheelchair travellers, families with young children still skipping along at this late stage of the afternoon, wanting to do things with balls and rackets, kites, things on wheels.

He avoided the gaze of people that he passed, who turned their heads to look at the overgrown urchin with his stubbly chin and dripping body. He let out three yelps and flapped his arms and more strolling visitors turned to glare or look alarmed. He kept on walking, occasionally skipping in a circle and practising boxing jabs, and there were tears pouring down his face, more salt water to leave white deposits when the sun quickly dried up the wet - tracks on his face and legs that later the beggar's dog would lick, lick as he sat beside him for a little human contact, a conversation about the planets, a reassurance that someone was even less in touch with 'reality' than himself.

In the town people were still buying bunches of grapes, umbrellas, crisps, flip-flops, cheap handbags and novelty items. There was a market in a cordoned-off street - all the stalls red and white striped and offering craft products that were things made out of other things - ornaments made out of mushrooms, mushrooms made out of clay. The traders were relentlessly amateurish and cheerful and, although it was nearly time to close, enthusiastically discussed their artefacts with whoever looked in the direction of their trestle tables.

The beggar was in his usual spot beside the telephone box. On a grey blanket beside him was the dog, a lean and hangdog creature that gazed up into people's eyes without raising its head. Its tail moved in an apologetic swish, brushing against the meagre woollen fibres. The beggar was reading from a chunky paperback. He wasted no time asking for money, simply kept a small plastic tub in front of him with always a few silver and pound coins in the bottom. He left it to the hound to accost the passers-by. There was too much reading to do.

The swimmer squatted beside him and greeted the dog and asked about the progress of the book.

Yeah - great, man, great. You want to read this. It's the bizz. What you reading now?

About dreams and shit. How you can influence your own dreams. How you can know that you're dreaming, while you're dreaming and make it go the way you want. It affects your waking life. And it kinda makes sense, cause what your subconscious is doing has a big effect on your actions and thoughts, so if you can get in there you can be in control.

Yeah, yeah - it's got to be right. But I can't remember my dreams, man, can you?

It's about training yourself. You've got to train yourself, and - anyway - you don't have to remember them, you just have to be more conscious when you're having them and then you can affect the outcome. Make shit positive. Talking of which - you've got a good wage today by the look of it.

Yeah, man, the dog done good. Me, I just sit here. Got to get this reading done. And it's a better set of punters this week. Not so many fuckin pensioners.

The swimmer slipped into sitting position beside the dog and the dog reached its head round and laid it on his lap and tentatively applied its tongue to the salty tracks on his thighs and calves.

*

He was in his small room and he'd slept and woken with a jump to find himself weeping again in his sleep and an ululating pain of fluttering panic wow-wowing out of his solar plexus and he turned to the penguin clock and it showed a time he could not recognize. He thought that now he'd entered another completely separate, but equally pain-ridden, slice of the universe, but he forced himself to focus in on the clock a second, third and fourth time. His head was aching tremendously, but on the fourth attempt, the hands and digits of the face finally re-ordered themselves and at last resembled a known hour. His pains receded one iota. He was still in this world. But so what? The world was still just random stuff.

His head ached in a big way. And his ribs were aching too, from the swimming and the running and because he'd been punched and kicked there on a recent night when somehow he hadn't been able to resist inviting a beating. Couldn't stop his mouth from setting right some mouthy cunt. Had to step in. Never walked on by. Being responsible as he was for the world and the behaviour of the people in it.

He thinks that all the injuries that have happened to his body have accumulated and reside in the memories of bones and tissues passed down through the generations of cells. Making certain parts more wary than others - ankles dubious, nose cautious, ribs retreating, head shaky - as they recall unconsciously blows dealt in dirty streets and rubbish strewn car parks and stinking back to backs and cells and vans.

And all the injuries to the heart and soul leave imprints in the brain so that forever he'll be a clever little cunt, clever little cunt, clever little cunt that everyone hates.