W,'s ill and I'm ill, and it's his fault since I caught it from him. My thighs ache, I tell W. on the phone. I'm staggering around like Widow Twankey. So do his, W. says, but he's unable to rise at all. He's bedridden, he says, and all he can see is the rain streaming down his windows.
These are the End Times, he sighs. His End Times, and the End Times of the world. What will become of us? Oh I'll be okay - I'm robust in my idiocy, he says, but he probably won't be, coughing up green phlegm and internally haemorrhaging as the financial markets of the world haemorrhage.
Luckily, he has Sal to look after him, who pays no heed to what he says about his End Times, or the End Times of the world, W. says.