Coming Up for Air

by George Orwell

I’d just turned on some more hot water and was thinking about women and cigars when there was a noise like a herd of buffaloes coming down the two steps that lead to the bathroom. It was the kids, of course.

When you’re very small you don’t look into the distance.

But nothing is ever like those first years when you suddenly discover that you can open a penny weekly paper and plunge straight into thieves’ kitchens and Chinese opium dens and Polynesian islands and the forests of Brazil.

If the war didn’t happen to kill you it was bound to start you thinking. After that unspeakable idiotic mess you couldn’t go on regarding society as something eternal and unquestionable, like a pyramid. You knew it was just a balls-up.

I’ve got more the prole’s attitude towards money. Life’s here to be lived, and if we’re going to be in the soup next week–well, next week is a long way off.

In my blue suit I didn’t look so bad. A bit fat, no doubt, but distingué. A man of the world. I could pass for a stockbroker.