no thanks , i 'd rather be out in the air , digging or working for me , not for some huge 'concern ' , just me , minding my own business , master of my own life , abiding by the laws of nature only , keeping time by the light of day , wind on my forearm , sun on my neck , soft springy soil or a rocking boat beneath my feet , wiggling my toes in the nylon socks my aunt july bought me , feeling the sweatiness these smart , hagley insisted leather lace-up shoes create , polishing them every sunday with my father supervising , mother teaching me to tie the laces and make a tie , so that , eventually , through trial and error and forced correction i could tick-tock away my years bathed in artificial light , tapping a pencil , dreaming of a birth right i never had , more a child of plastic spoons and y-fronts than peat , salt or bird calls , clear cold bird calls that punch holes of musical simplicity in the heady back-cloth sky of streaking nimbus dissolving into dark damp distant bogland , out on smug , artistic wings across the heaving demented sea , curling and rising with the wind , a perfect geometry of flight to adorn the serious landscape , a landscape of reality and sense , not this absurd , commercial joke that nobody laughs at except perhaps mr hagley himself whoever he is , or was , a portrait hung in a dull and lifeless boardroom where loyalty and service to cash is the key credential , a bevy of vacant , well-shaven , greying dignifiedly at the temples with fine gold-rimmed bespectacled heads , vying and lying and counting the cost of keeping me here , in the empty aquarium , breathing and speaking like a fish , like a moron , like a salesman .