montage

#1: A cluttered room with an unmade bed in one corner, book shelves stuffed with cups, boxes, magazines and newspapers, the occasional book. A bulky old TV weightily sat on a stack of three: VCR, DVD, Sky. An occasional table with a pint glass three-quarters full of whisky. A floral sofa, shiny with dirt at the usual places of contact. Sitting on the sofa, the corpse of a hyper-inflated, naked man, his head angled to the left, his eyes and mouth closed, the lower surfaces of his body marbled with post-mortem staining, the remote control in his right hand partially subsumed by the rolling tympanic volume of his abdomen. A technician holding a clipboard and prescription sheet with one hand, pen in the other. A paramedic pulling back a grey net curtain and reaching through to open a window. A housing warden with a mobile phone to one ear, checking his watch.

#2: A gaunt man in a light blue windcheater and silver glasses, propped up against a low wall in the street, his bald head glazed by the sun. He is smiling bravely at the technician kneeling beside him, holding his wrist. There is a paramedic standing next to a line of three young women, all with their arms folded, looking down at the man like the chorus in some new, street adaptation of a classic Greek play.

#3: The strip-lit lobby of a dark block of flats. The lift is open, and four people are striding out: a technician with a baby in his arms, a woman in a light pink tracksuit and a paramedic carrying a red response bag and a cylinder of oxygen. The baby is wearing an unbuttoned white sleep suit; its arms and legs thrown out to the side and its head tipped back in the classic falling posture of the startled newborn.

#4: A silver saloon car outside a pub, its hazards on and all its doors open, no one there. An ambulance alongside it, headlights wig-wagging and blue lights sparkling, the back door open and the step down. Four men in blue football shirts walking into the pub, passing behind the vehicles. The second one is slapping or pushing the first one on the shoulder, but neither have turned to look inside the ambulance. The third one has his hands in his pockets, looking at the tarmac. The last and youngest one has his face turned to the dark interior of the ambulance; the compulsion to know holds his expression like a mask.