Teeth, like the blackened keys of a smoke damaged piano, he smiled, bloodshot eyes swimming with disappointments.
Could he spare some small change? No he could not.
Had he had a nice Christmas? No he had not.
The streets were busy with anticipation, the annual bargain hunt, every shop window displayed plenty of pointers, massive reductions, sale, prices slashed, how much more subliminal instruction was necessary ?
The image of the dishevelled man, sat on the cold, grey pavement, hand outstretched, hair matted, unkempt, the frayed makeshift rope-belt, this was not a picture for use on next years Christmas card. Although it was a stark reminder of the falsehood Christmas really represented for Fraser Cox.

Fraser Alfred Cox, tall, handsome, politely spoken, and, according to a general consensus, of his employees, a right bastard.
Fraser’s style of business and people management was a product of the eighties. Twenty years on and numerous changes in government legislation, had not hampered his, somewhat, unorthodox approach to business and to his life in general.
Fraser’s view of life, a game of survival, what ever it took to secure what ever he needed, he took it and kneaded it.
The acquaintances he made were merely flashes, moments in the events that
made-up a bulging catalogue of happenings, indeed, an index, indeed, his life.
There was a numbness to his character, a detachment of emotion, a void, something missing. He no longer had an understanding of, happy, or sad.

There is feeling. A hidden treasure, deep in the depths of an insulated cavern. The cavern, a true subterfuge, brimming with unspent tears, overflowing with lost ambition and above all dammed by true emotions, now alien to his existence.
Suffering a loss, a bad childhood, maybe regret, something of each created the ballast of the dam, over the years boulders of disappointment further bunged a barrier of remoteness. All hidden, yet, there to be seen, not immediately apparent, streaks in the make-up of a perspiring clown.
To break the true foundations, set, hard and strong, years before, would take a team of psychologists. Armed with pneumatic mind-drills many sessions would be spent, only to dislodge fragments of the embedded debris of Fraser’s life.

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