I had my lucid moments. With a measuring wheel and a Husky hand-held computer, a robust black chunk of plastic and rubber, I was paid to patrol the unclassified roads of Norfolk, the English county that makes that curve out into the North Sea. I tapped in states of surface wear, dimensions of the wayside ditches and vegetation classifications on a ten point code system. Tramped pleasant miles each day along tiny, tree-roofed lanes or round the backs of blocks of public housing where the garbage bins hung out.

During the solar eclipse of 1999 I sat down on a grassy bank and watched the birds flop up into the trees and the darkness come down, the sky go lilac. Sat down in my yellow patrol rain skin. What better? I had a lusty Vauxhall Brava utility into which, each night, I threw my measuring wheel and went off to some hotel where the team met up to download the figures to head office.

The next job I got I drove round like a private dick in my own pale blue twin carb Ford Sierra. Hunting for phone wires fixed to houses. I rewarded the owners who had wires on their chimneys, on their chicken sheds. They called it wayleave. The clever man who had started up this company had dug out this legal right to compensation and hired sixty scouts. Claims flooded in, within three weeks the telephone people had changed the rules, the bubble burst, my firm packed it in. During those three weeks I disturbed only one millionaire having his naked morning swim. For the rest I can't remember, I made about six hundred pounds, good money for me.

Those two jobs teed me up as an outdoor worker. The next was with a brand new outfit, Warmfront, set up to run the government's energy saving measures. We checked out peoples homes and gave them stuff to keep warmer, a new boiler, insulation, at the very least a lo-energy light bulb. I had a goodly part of East Anglia to cover. I went down as far as Huntingdon and up as far as Boston; the territory early Americans came from. Whole days out in the white box van, hundreds of fast miles expertly timed. Much of the Fen country a watery district, cut off till the eighteenth century, land with nowhere to hide, the grid of dikes and washes, flat roads on straight causeways, the endless skies, the abandoned bomber strips. People with disassembled motor bikes in their kitchens, an old man (a sky warrior's half-caste) alone in a bungalow hung with miniature jet fighters on dusty threads.

You broke in to their lives. Entering peoples houses, their dog smells, everything, fiddling with their central heating boilers, measuring the walls, checking the attic, seven or eight a day for eighteen months. Work it out how many.

Remember perfectly well the day I was sacked. Hassled the line manager and upset the office, so I was ready for it. I'd just finished a house survey. The woman wore a woolly hat and leant in with me into the cupboard her central heating unit sat in. It was a nice moment. I polished her off and went to lunch. Spam, tomato and chips at a holiday makers eatery on the Newark Kings Lynn highway.

The line manager, a Scot, caught me on the phone before I got there. I drove a Renault Kango, really lively. I slewed into a pull-off just past Sutterton,

"All your appointments are cancelled. Get yourself off home and don't use your van for any reason. We'll be over to collect it"

Did I get over it? I cut my hair badly and slept out drunk in the greenhouse. People came and went. Then I picked up another job. Outdoors again, on my own checking stuff. This time it was birds. Birds and planes. Keep the birds away from the planes and if you can't do that keep the planes away from the birds. What they don't want is an engine throat full of feathers. The firm was called Safeskys.

Safeskys had the contract at RAF Marham, a military airfield ten minutes from where I lived. A good square mile of grass, concrete, brick and bullshit. I loved it.

We were call sign Sappho. There is a radio call sign Sappho on every UK air base round the clock. Bird watch and checking the runways for debris before each take off - metal objects, dead hares. It is not a job for nitwits, you have to be awake at the wheel of your pint sized Suzuki jeep with Tornado jets chasing you down.

I could have stayed there for ever. They put me on permanent. The boss was a New Zealander with a black beard, cheerful, hardworking, generous - an ex-postie.

Safeskys had its own bunker in the middle of the field, broken armchairs, dog eared technical papers. Mostly you could sleep nights but you always had to be ready to get up and go out and clear a runway. Like when the Russians came in, Gulf War transport.

I stood off about fifty yards watching the loading, the Russian crew in bulky suits standing off, smoking. The Ilyushin Il-76 went right far far up to the end of runway Alpha, even over a bit onto the grass perhaps and then came back down the slight slope oh so slowly with the eighteen wheels rumbling, still oh o slowly past me. The plane hit what we called the hump and then just a bit of daylight under it but slow and yet it lifted enough to clear the pine trees the other side the main road. Here's something I wrote then,

I had black flags, white flags, avian distress calls on a CD and a gun.

Prince Charles came in and stepped out fifty yards away - a tall smooth dab of light chocolate cashmere coat.

I was in a position to get myself a lifetime of care but right then I was in love.

In the garden we built a sweat lodge to her instructions. She’d been with the Indians. I got willow branches, bent them over, twelve of them to make a cage and loaded on old blankets and that blue tarpaulin I thought was cheap.

I made a big wood bonfire and roasted stones. My lover went into the sweat and called out for the stones one by one. It was difficult to drag them out of the fire onto a spade and then carry them over the hummocky garden up to the sweat. And then fiddle with the folds, lifting the flap with one hand and push the spade weighted with the hot stone.

I could hear the steam hiss and the low chant as I turned back to the fire. The fire kept going and when it was dark she called me in with the last of the stones. I stripped off and crawled in. My head burnt until I could get myself low against the side and she slopped water and steam must have rushed up in the dark and the wave of heat flickered lower and sweat did come.

When we came out the stars were high above the garden and two Tornadoes from the base were circling way up high.

When I worked nights I sat in a pillbox and waited for the radio to call me to sweep the runways - looking for hare carcasses and metal lumps. Sometimes I’d lose myself and looking in the mirror of the patrol truck would see the prehistoric silhouette of a Tornado advancing on me as they taxied to take off. I’d wrench the wheel and swerve off track.

I touched her skin running with sweat. In the starlight her breasts hung large - light scooped out of darkness. We lied to each other in the usual way,

“I love you”

“I love you too”

We pressed up together, muddy feet finding each other and the slow sliding together of each others bodies. She got her hand down to my hook and we fell to it on the ground. Once in we rocked gently her breasts swimming and the cold air making us clammy. I heaved back looking at the stars and the green and red lights of the warplanes circling widely like strange gems. She moved against me growling high and we came slow and long.

I loved the way the smoke drifted about us as we went indoors.

excerpted from forthcoming ebook Tap once if you're human