White Teeth by Zadie Smith

“Every little trifle, for some reason, does seem incalculably important today, and when you say of a thing that “nothing hangs on it” it sounds like blasphemy. There’s never any  knowing how am I to put it? which of our actions, which of our idlenesses won’t have things hanging  on it for ever.” Where Angels Fear to Tread, E. M. Forster i The Peculiar Second Marriage of Archie  Jones  Early in the morning, late in the century, Cricklewood Broadway. At 06.27 hours on i January 1975,  Alfred Archibald Jones was dressed in corduroy and sat in a fume-filled Cavalier Musketeer Estate  face down on the steering wheel, hoping the judgement would not be too heavy upon him. He lay  forward in a prostrate cross, jaw slack, arms splayed either side like some fallen angel; scrunched  up in each fist he held his army service medals (left) and his marriage licence (right), for he had  decided to take his mistakes with him. A little green light flashed in his eye, signalling a right  turn he had resolved never to make. He was resigned to it. He was prepared for it. He had flipped a

coin and stood staunchly by its conclusions. This was a decided-upon suicide. In fact it was a New  Year’s

resolution.