Aladdin-Sane

Simon had been stranded in the moors for eighteen hours when he spotted the tent. It stood like a house-shaped bon bon amid the dead trees and bracken - a fluorescent pink poof at its peak knocking in the breeze.
'Oh thank God' - said Simon.
Not 48 hours prior Simon's blonde locks had shimmered in the sunlight as though he were the poster child for a shampoo commercial. His blue jeans had been creased and his sneakers all but blindingly white. He had embarked on an afternoon stroll in the fields at the back of his office - hoped to get a breath of fresh air before getting stuck into another set of spreadsheets.
Now though matted hair plastered his cheeks and recalled the colour of algae. His jeans were ripped at the knees and plastered in mud from the ankle down. His sneakers he'd had to abandon to avoid being sucked into a bog some miles back.
It had not been a pleasant afternoon stroll for Simon.
He fell to his knees and clasped both hands above his crown.
'Thank God' - he rasped. 'T

Letter from Rodion Raskolnikov to Sonya Marmeladova
13th January, 1867
Siberia
Dearest Sonya,
There resides through the window of my prison cell a mud track, often taken by the peasants. They traverse by this route, in their horses and carts, the distance separating their landowner's estate from their farms. I'm not certain what it is they freight back and forth - their barrows are covered by those coarse blankets such people favour – and it's not something with which I'm concerned.
What is of greater interest to me than the peasants themselves is the highway by which they travel.
It is the product not of new technologies, about which our St. Petersburg engineers are so verbose, nor the result of a proclamation by local authorities. It is barely more than twinned parallel lines in the snow, pressed into existence by the routine of the peasants who use it. No one condones it, officially at least, but it continues to exist.
Situated happily in the expanse of white t