Jack Vettriano night in the City

planets are something of a luxury commodity you see ..." He paused and looked at Arthur. "You know we built planets do you?" he asked solemnly. "Well yes," said Arthur, "I'd sort of gathered ..." "Fascinating trade," said the old man, and a wistful look came into his eyes, "doing the coastlines was always my favourite. Used to have endless fun doing the down into the crater. "Is that robot yours?" he said. "No," came a thin metallic voice from the crater, "I'm mine." "If you'd call it a robot," muttered Arthur. "It's more a sort of electronic sulking machine." "Bring it," said the old man. Arthur was quite surprised to hear a note of decision suddenly present little bits in fjords ... so anyway," he said trying to find his thread again, "the recession came and we decided it would save us a lot of bother if we just slept through it. So we programmed the to revive us when it was all over." The man stifled a very slight yawn and continued. "The were index linked to the Galactic stock market prices you see, so that we'd all be revived when everybody else had rebuilt the economy enough to afford our rather expensive services." Arthur, a regular Guardian reader, was deeply shocked at this. "That's a pretty unpleasant way to behave isn't it?" "Is it?" asked the old man mildly. "I'm sorry, I'm a bit out of touch." He pointed