Concrete Pencil: The Devil's Own

We walked to the train station and a strange man in a long trench coat and a black hat was there, and he got off at our stop and followed us for a bit.

That - as we would have said then - quite freaked us at the time. Judging by the band's quite imaginable lack of success and the general unforthcomingness of the world's beautiful/filthy women since, I think it's safe to say that the man in the coat was not the devil, and Satan did not, in fact, want to buy our souls.

If I did sell my soul and what I got is the life of a workstation drone in Canary Wharf, then quite frankly I'd want a word with Old Nick. So maybe he sent round a surveyor, and noticed my soul was a bit leaky anyway, and maybe my lease didn't last that long.

But I wonder if He would be interested again now. (Let's flatter Him with some upper-case H, eh? What are you supposed to do - subscript?)

I could sit down at the Westferry roundabout and offer Him my soul again.

All I'd ask in return would be Canary Wharf. One Canada Square would be my house, all its workers my minions. I would sit on a throne on the 50th floor, where I would relocate Davy's.

Or I could be subtler. I could say that all I want is 1p off every transaction made in every bank in Canary Wharf for the rest of my life. Who needs a soul when you're creaming it in?

Or maybe I could ask that I never have to come to, or see, or hear about Canary Wharf ever again. 

(If you work on this paper you are cursed for the rest of your life to spot the shape of the letters that say Canary Wharf - look at them, like a little skyline. They leap off every page, like towers on a horizon).

I live on a hill in North London, so He'd have to build some bigger stuff around the towers to block my line of view.

A big sight screen would do, like they have in the cricket. It would have to move to accomodate wherever I went in London.

It'll certainly have to swing pretty sharply east when I helicopter in for the first gig of Mad Jack's run at The O2.