Metrocentric

First train out of La Bocca not until a little past five and I knew them just about well enough and it gets to the point where… it’s the worst of the English, but you don’t have to struggle with another language. I expect this is what it’s like for expats.

We had been talking about alcorexics. He’d spoken of sweating at his desk of a morning, she’d recounted hunching over on the TER of a morning so’s not to faint. I mentioned a bit of documentary about the Tube I’d recently seen on the computer: a paramedic run all over the Bank attending to ladies swooning in the rush hour who’d had a large night, no breakfast.

There was music and it was all over the place, that Duck Sauce track that follows me about, and Prefab Sprout: two or three of theirs in a row. Then, I’d not heard it since it was contemporary and that’s a long time: coming out of car radios all over Zone 2, Tenor Saw’s ‘Golden Hen’. The memories: sun setting over Coldharbour Lane and rising over shops at the fringe of Herne Hill. And also, I did not realise until later, several lines almost spot-relevant to what we’d been talking about.

1. An African couple, both in late middle-age, are walking slowly, he is talking. He wears a suit that has seen better days, her dress is brightly coloured and in its prime. He pauses, both in speech and in step, it is evident that he is searching for his next words. Then it seems to come to him: “…Guillaume Apollinaire!”. He grins broadly, and they move on.

2. The following afternoon my hotel room windows are open and the sounds of the kitchens and living rooms of the apartment block across the courtyard drift in. A female voice calls from the habitations opposite, “Derrida! Derrida!…”. Followed by what I cannot translate but has the unmistakeable tone of endearments bestowed upon a favoured feline or canine companion.

A very elderly woman walks with the support of another woman who is also not young - possibly her daughter. It’s early in the morning and they are passing the place where minicab drivers gather in the night.

“Look,” she says, “those flowers. They are so vivid. Aren’t they?”

Onto the bare earth of a flower bed the dark red paper napkins supplied with takeaway meals by Maroush have been scattered. They are the only colour on that stretch of mud at the foot of a hedge.

“Yes,” replies the younger woman, “yes.”