August 19th 2013. Kimpton Park.
I’m dashing around London trying to complete a crossword puzzle. It is part of a competition, the prize, if won, being a trip to France on a hovercraft. Mik T & Angela F join me on my travels around the city. Mik T is upset with himself as he has given me the wrong answer to one of the clues. I tell him that it doesn’t matter as I am able to erase the answer.
I’ve won! We are waiting for the hovercraft on the dockside at Tilbury. Angela F suggests (with some authority) that we take our shoes & socks off & dip them into the water – this will ‘prepare’ us for the voyage across the channel. “The water will be very cold,” she says. I worry about losing my socks. As the hovercraft docks to take us to France an official comes over & says that Mik T’s first answer (‘Purest Time’) was actually the correct one!
August 21st 2013.
I start a White Stripes tribute band, but we are shit! So, we call ourselves The Brown Stripes!
August 22nd 2013.
I pop round to Jon R’s to say hello. Jon R lives in a house that has no front door. Instead there is a sheet of corrugated iron that leans over the space where the door should be. He lifts it aside everytime that he wants to enter or exit. It is very heavy & cumbersome. I wonder why he doesn’t just get a new door? Jon invites me in & shows me around. The whole house is a mess! Suddenly, I realise that I’m supposed to be elsewhere, so I say goodbye. But, for some reason, I cannot leave without Jon. “I must tidy up first,” he says. So I help with the extraordinary task of cleaning his house. In one of the rooms we find his girlfriend. Her room is immaculate! “Very girly,” I say (although it isn’t particularly). Eventually, we pull the iron sheet across the doorway behind us. “I would give you a lift,” says Jon. “But we are going somewhere else.” They get into his car & drive away.
Now I am at someone else’s flat. I am in a panic as (obviously!) I don’t have any keys to get in. I remember that I have left them at Jon’s. Joel R turns up. He is with a baby; a girl. A passerby lends Joel £100 & we take a taxi back to Jon’s. I slide the metal sheet away from the door & go in. The whole house is a mess again – as if it had never been tidied up! I begin a long search for my keys.
(* Interestingly… Later that day, awake, I end up cutting Jon R’s hair. He arrives at the shop & tells me that he has split up with his girlfriend & that straight after his haircut he is going round to their flat to pick up his keys.*)
nickreeves 