GOOD OLD JAMES

Combined with the title, James Stevenson's cover sketch of a balding man on a leafy, late afternoon front porch, sets the irresistible tone for this short, bittersweet profile of oldish James who quits his job so that he can do what he feels like when he feels like it, then sells his house and travels around only to find that ""Every place I go there's something there I don't like. I'm one restless man, that's for sure."" Unable to get either his house or his job back, lames settles down in a hotel room with kitchen, and it's there that he meets the fly who annoys him at first but eventually becomes his pet/companion: ""James named the fly Gwen and grew deeply attached to it."" A minimal Harry and Tonto perhaps, the reduction being the affecting point.