Skippy Dies

by Paul Murray

and it had just happened, one event in a long muddled train of events, without any great catharsis or epiphany on his part, without any interior transformation or evolution whereby he might have known anything worth teaching; instead it was like calling one of the kids from the middle row of his History class and asking him to take over, and while he was at it pay a mortgage, and fret over whether or not to get married.

She gots the assitude/And I gots the latitude / We in-ex-tric-er-ab-ly linked, like heart attacks and fatty food…

For Sarah!

‘Life makes fools of us all sooner or later. But keep your sense of humour and you’ll at least be able to take your humiliations with some measure of grace. In the end, you know, it’s our own expectations that crush us.’