The Blueprint Read Online Free PDF

my words.
    ‘Is it
coffee-date time yet?’ he asks, ambling over to me. I mime checking
my watch.
    ‘Looks that
way.’
    Charlie’s been
calling our little mid-afternoon meet-ups ‘dates’ ever since he
found out the term sends Liz mental. About twice a week we’ll join
up in town after lectures have finished - mine, not his; he’ll meet
me when he’s woken up - to spend more money than we can afford on
caffeine-based potions or fast food, and sit there for a couple of
hours solving the world’s various problems. On occasion, Charlie
might invite one of the homeless people he’s made friends with to
join us: partly to get a third perspective on things; partly to
boost his public image after all the shoplifting, and partly
because it amuses the hell out of him to see how awkward it makes
me when the other people in Starbucks stare at us.
    ‘What did you
get, then?’ I ask, once we’re a safe distance down the street. He
opens his coat. I can’t help laughing at him.
    ‘If you’re
going to steal, at least steal something that we don’t already
own.’
    He looks
crestfallen.
    ‘You’re
fucking kidding me.’
    ‘Nope. We
watched it last week.’
    He bends his
neck to look inside his jacket.
    ‘Oh, fuck! ’ he exclaims. ‘I thought I got the second one!’
    He drops the
DVD into a passing bin.
    ‘We might have
to pop back in on our way home; I won’t have many more chances to
bulk up my DVD collection before Netflix hammers the last nail in
that particular coffin.’
    ‘I can’t
imagine you’re helping them, there,’ I reply. Charlie shrugs.
    ‘If they
didn’t want me to steal from them, they should install CCTV.’
    ‘They do have CCTV.’
    ‘Seriously?’
    ‘Don’t act
that surprised; there’s one up there watching us, now.’
    He looks
up.
    ‘And there,
and there, and there:’ I add, pointing out the rest. ‘We’re the
most watched nation on Earth, mate. Which kind-of begs the
question: “ How the fuck have you never been caught? ”’
    ‘I don’t know,
but in hindsight can we say I haven’t been doing it for personal
gain, but to protest the fact that Britain’s turning into 1984 ?’
    ‘Have you ever
noticed that you always play the Orwell card when someone’s trying
to stop you from committing crime?’ I ask. ‘People who voluntarily
put naked pictures of themselves up on Facebook, such as yourself,
have no right to complain about invasion of privacy when they’re
caught doing something wrong.’
    ‘Aha, but
therein lies the rub,’ he says, twiddling a finger at me. ‘Who gets
to decide what’s wrong and what’s right?’
    ‘I think even you realise that shoplifting’s wrong, deep down.’ I look up
and see the mischievous grin stretching across his chops. ‘Way
down, I mean.’
    ‘Freddy would
have something to say about that,’ he returns. I can’t argue with
him, there. Freddy doesn’t believe in the concept of ownership.
Quite how he expects the world to function without it I’m not sure,
but that is, nonetheless, what he claims to believe. One upside of
having a roommate with Freddy’s, shall we say, blinkered idealism,
is that it gives me and Charlie a watertight defence for the times
when we come in at 4AM and steal all his food. And since Freddy’s
dad is a member of one of the social classes Freddy himself claims
to despise, his food is usually a great deal more interesting than
our own.
    ‘He did tell me an interesting fact the other day,’ Charlie remembers.
    ‘Hmm?’
    ‘He reckons
that the average office worker in the UK spends more on coffee a
month than the people who produce it earn in a year.’
    ‘I neither
know whether that’s true nor care enough to find out,’ I reply.
    ‘Pretty
shocking, assuming he isn’t lying,’ Charlie remarks quietly, as we
pull up outside Starbucks.
    ‘You want to
take our money elsewhere, then?’ I ask him.
    ‘Nah, fuck
that; I’m not doing any more fucking walking,’ he says, bowling
through the big