Week after week Jimmy’s life became more and more unpleasant. It wasn’t an experience he was able to forget. His influence on the team was swiftly eroded by simple reassignment of jobs and reporting lines, leaving both mentor and protégés afloat without anchor. The relevance of his vision within the organisation declined more slowly, but, to his horror, equally surely, thanks to a concerted standardisation and conformity initiative: the security blanket of the congenitally obtuse; the clumsy foot on the windpipe of all the poor souls who mean to find and publicise the innate beauty in even the superficially mundane. Doolan was efficient, he would give him that much.

It was no contest. Jimmy knew exactly what was happening but was powerless in the face of the purblindness of his professional puppeteers. Things had been fine as long as he was under his parapet, but as soon as his head peeped out, curtains. It was just a question of whether it was lopped off decisively by a mighty claymore or simply allowed to atrophy, diseased and untreated in the unforgiving winter chill.

The method mattered little to Jimmy: he knew that any organisation which allows those values and those people to rise through the soup is not going to provide an environment for him to thrive. The inevitable culmination arrived on schedule. Jimmy couldn’t grieve. He knew himself better than most, and that’s not always a bad thing.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Back to the start of Kid A again, head down, he stole an eyes-half-shut glance to his right. Doolan’s gaze hadn’t shifted from the page and the page hadn’t moved an inch.