The city gives off a sigh or perhaps a yawn. Industrial grey sits like a vast, immobile gloom; immovable even.

Fog rises and lifts, leaving silty smoke to be breathed in by joggers and those more pedestrian, more resigned to respiratory problems. They are dotted around snaking lines of traffic clogging arterial roads, slowly vapourising fossil fuel.

Everything happens ten minutes in advance on a Monday in the city but takes twice as long. Out of kilter thought processes and routines are numbed with faintly alcoholic breath and heavy, purpled eyelids. Desultory stares exchanged like change at the newsstand on a particularly unfriendly corner of the high street. There truly is a strong barrier to emotion and expression.

Against the odds, clutches of weeds force themselves through the cracks in the paving slabs, providing green against the grey. Along with the remaining detritus of the weekend, they are ceaselessly trampled underfoot.

Margaret observes this familiar scene from her balcony. She shudders, callously flicking her cigarette onto the street below. Her bare feet are cold and she withdraws inside to her bedroom, collapsing into the tangle of white sheets, pulling them over her head. This will be the third week that she has called in sick. With every passing day the chance of her return to work becomes increasingly remote.