"Albert, the kid is ghosting...." In Paris, this would be surreally hip and intelligible only to the select ; in London, it would pass muster as a Banksy slogan, and certainly as a wacky band name; in LA, I could comfortably imagine this line from a forgotten film, but I saw this on a bridge parapet in Doncaster....

Now Doncaster has a certain charm, it's own signature, but prone to gnomic statements like this ? In South Yorkshire, facts are most certainly facts, and this sounds way too avant garde for the good burghers of that town.

Donny folk specialise in bluntness, rough kindness, telling it like it is. These five words have that abrasive texture if you look at them individually and say them separately; it's the fact they're arranged, like ducks in a row, in a declaration I just could n't imagine anyone there saying, but someone did, so what's it all mean. This will be bugging me for days.