The streets groan with little Caesars ...

or, in full,

The streets groan with little Caesars,  Napoleons and cunts 
With their building blocks and their tiny plastic phones Counting on their fingers, with crumbs down their fronts 

from Darker with the Day, the last track on No More Shall We Part, the 2000 album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

Up until this year's extraordinary Skeleton Tree, I'd say that No More Shall We Part was my favourite Nick Cave album, closely followed by The Boatman's Call. One of the many things those albums have in common is Nick does a lot of walking.

No More Shall We Part is a very walking album. Darker with the Day begins "And so with that, I thought I'd take a final walk" ... he's just walking around, saying what he says.

It reminds me of running - running in the sun around Tooting, Wandsworth, Clapham Common, in the rain and snow around Sevenoaks, around Ashford and Willesborough.

Even on my best days, when there was a great big sun smiling down, I'd run with hatred and loathing, I'd run as if every amateur, dilettante, hack, cowboy, clone, little Caesar, Napoleon and cunt was my sworn enemy.

It can make one feel special, walking or running through the world, observing and thinking you and Nick Cave are the only ones who realises it's a world of hacks, Caesars, Napoleons and cunts, but, of course, everyone else is thinking it too. This is hardly one of Nick Cave's most insightful lyrics, but it's the sheer deliciousness of the juxtapositions and the annunciation which makes it such a joy. Cunts, he said. Oh, yes. To this stately, mournful tune, cunts. 

And then there's delight in the next two lines - the bit about crumbs down their front reminds me of a bit in Stewart Lee's latest Comedy Vehicle about Rod Liddle having food down his front. Sadly, it's not on youtube or anywhere, so you've either seen it or you haven't, there's no way to describe it.

So, it's been a shit year for good things, the left has lost, let's be honest, the balance has tipped and the window of hope has closed. We're back in some dark ages and they may be the darkest of the lot.

But there are still marvellous master craftsmen like Cave and Lee, there's still great joy in self-righteous loathing, sometimes I don't think I'd swap that for all the hope in the world ...