At the end of today, I was a few calories short of filling up my rings, and my dog didn’t feel like going out, so I went for a walk by myself, at night, listening to good music, as I used to do when I was a teenager.

Now, Billy Idol’s Cyberpunk (1993) is probably the best record I know of. It is just incredible. The Paris suburbia I grew up in is not exactly The Sprawl, and yet, listening to this record while striding empty rurban streets used to put me in a perfect Gibsonian mood.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work as well tonight. It could be because my bourgeois neighbourhood is impervious to Blade-Runnerization, no matter how good your soundtrack is; or maybe, after a few decades, the weight of the years anchors your mind too deep for your imagination to carry it away that easily. Or maybe I was just distracted by my uncomfortable socks.