We need to “win or fall behind.” That is the mantra drilled into our heads. Marks etch themselves into the mind, colours drained from the brain. They know this, they use it.

Invisible structures suspend the markings aloft by a force we cannot hold. The system is set; milestones demand obedience. Fail them, and no bed will welcome us, no nourishment will sustain us, no peace will rest in us.

So we wear the colours, we project their lines, we carry commercial messages along or behind. The characters adopted become shields, they protect our inner, soft tissue boxes of grime.

Forward we go, trampling asphalt veins that transmit energy out and back. By dusk we dine again. By nightfall we fold into our organic cotton beds. Outside, the carcasses of life gasp their last breath in solitude while we tick off lists, adding to tomorrow’s To-Do lists; killing two peasants with one Range Rover, we think it’s for the many, not the few.