The Pure Life of Dreams

May 12, 2025May 16, 2025

Back in Love with Sophie Priest

Sophie Priest was from the Home Counties but when I first met her she was working as a librarian for John Lewis on Oxford Street. I had no idea why a department store would have need of a librarian but no matter.

As I described in my Asian stories, Sophie had a black centre-parted fringe which framed an angelic face dotted with light brown freckles under hazel eyes and I loved her, even though she did not believe it.

Sophie was now living in a flat share near the old house on Brookfield Avenue where Elaine and I grew up. I was back with Sophie on a trial basis and I still loved her so I was on my best behaviour.

(Although Sophie herself had been cut from the stories for reasons of expediency her description had been retained and attributed to Bertie instead.)

This evening I had to clear out my work place before going back to Sophie’s flat. Evening was already settling in and I was the only one in the office. Duc the Wanker (not Duc the Blind Rickshaw Driver) had just left.

From the window of our shared office on the second floor, I looked out across the housing estate rooftops with their burnishing remnants of sun, and called Sophie to warn her.

‘I’m going to be later than I thought,’ I told her with some trepidation. ‘Maybe seven o’clock?’ I added.

We were going to have dinner together. I pictured her picking up my call and leaning against the side table in the foyer corridor of her flat. Sophie would be wearing a white top and jeans, not the tight black wool skirt of old. Also her hair was brown now, she’d dyed it, and it was slightly wavy, not straight; and she no longer had bangs.

I preferred her old hair colour but as stated, I loved her anyway and wanted to make it up to her.

‘That’s fine,’ I heard her say from the the other end of the line. Then I put down the receiver and hurried out of the office to my car.

Traffic was heavy as usual along the M40, right up until the Hangar Lane Gyratory but the most annoying part was the final walk to her house. Sophie lived the same side as our old house but to get to her flat you had to walk up Hangar Lane to the top of the hill, then turn right into the estate, then walk back down again to her flat. There was no cut through from what I could see, and by the time I had parked and begun the walk it was already night.

I walked up the hill past the shops on the corner, along the tree-lined sidewalk and past the chain link fence of an ill-lit car dealership. A man was walking out from the dealership entrance and for a moment I thought he must have found a cut through – unless the other end of the dealership had another chain link fence.

I continued up the hill past an opening where large brown boulders interrupted the tree line. Perhaps there was a cut through there instead? If I climbed over the boulders? But I was already near the top of the hill so I kept moving. For some unknown reason I crossed Hangar Lane at the zebra crossing and when I saw the commuters spill from the tube station I caught up with a woman to ask her about the cut through.

‘Not that I know of,’ she breathlessly responded as she hurried into the station. As I followed her in, I wondered whether I should have entered the estate from the north, instead of walking south up the hill. It would have taken me past my old house, but that was fine.

I already had a tube pass so I pushed past the ticket booth and didn’t even wait for the elevator but took the stairs instead. The walls were still the brown and white tile of the 70s because the station hadn’t been refurbished like the others. And when I got to the platform I was disoriented and unsure whether I was standing on the eastbound line or the westbound. In the other tunnel across from the platform where I stood I heard the rumble of a train as it came to a stop.

Did I want that platform instead of this? I wondered.

‘Ealing Broadway! doors closing,’ I heard the announcer call out.

Damn it, and I hurried across the intersection to the other platform, which was slightly elevated from where I had been standing. Two men were helping to lift a disabled woman in a wheelchair onto the train by smoothing down a black rubber mat in front of the doors.

Would the doors close before I too could get on? Just then the men stepped back and I slid in next to the wheelchair and the doors closed. At the far end of the darkened carriage was a light marked ‘Ealing Broadway,’ and with relief I leant back against the standing rests at the front of the carriage.

I looked down, and in my hurry, I saw that my phone had pushed out a little from my front pocket. It could have dropped to the floor. I pushed it back into my pocket and now it was okay. Now everything was okay.

May 6, 2025May 13, 2025

Her Mouth Contorted With Rage

It started when Siobhan became annoyed with my attempts to help her on her computer.

She gritted her teeth in an ugly way that I had not seen before, her mouth contorted in a rectangle and her cheeks sinewed with anger, and she spat at me that she didn’t want my help. I was taken aback by her fierce expression and it made think to stop so I left and mumbled something loud enough for her to hear that she was being rude.

I left the house, and as I was leaving she suggested I go to the zoo.

The zoo was in Wimbledon but I went anyway and, as a peace offering, I thought to bring back pizza after my visit.

I was sitting on the train headed for the zoo when I realised how far I was from home; and it became clear that any pizza I would pick up at the zoo would be cold by the time I brought back the pies.

Upon my arrival at the zoo, I stood in the entrance hall. Through the doorway I could see the animals playing. I asked the door keeper if I could just order pizza now instead of going in.

‘It’s not usual,’ he said. But then he said it was ok and I called Siobhan to say that I would bring back pizza but it would take forty-five minutes to get back after it was delivered to the zoo.

‘Perhaps it’s better I pick it up in Ealing.’ I offered. ‘That way it won’t be cold.’

She got annoyed at my remark and snapped at me not to bother so I left the zoo without ordering pizza. I walked along a pavement alongside of the road that led away from the zoo then I turned left onto another street where there lay a large open green space on the opposite side of the road.

I passed by a woman in a white fur coat sitting on a bench.

The sun was already setting.

The woman’s coat looked like it came from a thrift shop. The woman had long black hair that was a bit natty and she seemed upset. I sat down on the bench next to her. For some reason I thought she was Russian. The woman lay her head on my shoulder and I asked her what was the matter. Then she turned to me and we kissed softly although she was much younger than me, being perhaps in her twenties.

Then two Indian men came by and started to argue with the woman. They were about her age, shorter than me and a little stinky. They wore shades. They told the woman to come with them and she stood up to leave.

As the woman walked away I saw that she left some keys on the bench. I got up to hand them to her just as she was leaving although it occurred to me that she’d left them intentionally. But the woman span round as she walked away and indicated that there was a phone there too. So I sat back down on the bench, and sure enough, tucked behind a white seat cushion was a pink older model smartphone.

I started typing on the phone and the keys did not work well but still I got the words out that she would be ok. I don’t know why I wrote that. After I’d finished typing the two Indian men came back, and this time they had a third man with them, the same age as them.

They saw me with the phone. One of them snagged the white cable attached to the phone and tried to pull it away from me. At first I held on but then I figured I didn’t need the cable so I let it go and the cable came loose from the phone.

I followed the men to a house where I figured I could take them on, for all three of them looked stocky and unfit.

They stood together in a dark hall that led to a wooden barn and despite the darkness of the hallway the first two still wore their shades. Only the third man did not wear shades because he wore regular glasses.

The three of them crowded around me so I tried to push the the third man’s glasses off his head. Even though they were close they still did not seem threatening so I swiped again at the man with the glasses. And with each attempt to knock the glasses off his head he ducked just enough that I would miss. So I tried again, this time aiming to get two of the men with one swipe.

Then I tried again. Then I tried again.

Photo by Isabelle Carin via Pexels.

November 18, 2022April 18, 2024

Gluten Free Pizza and Other Light Quandaries

I had returned home to my old office in New Malden.

We went for lunch across the street because I was told that there was a place that did great gluten free pizza. So we got in line and ordered a small pizza, which Mr Thanh, whose shop had been there for many years, served by splashing it out on the table.

October 11, 2022March 30, 2023

Tottenham Court Road Ain’t What it Used to Be

We had been on a plane to London with two flight attendants, blonde ladies with beige Hubert coats and a confident swagger. And when we got out of the terminal it was already night and there was a light drizzle. It must have been two or three in the morning.

A black cab pulled up and one of attendants turned back to us and said “I feel we know you already, seeing as we’ve spent the last four hours together. More, if you count the hours before the plane.”

Then they got into the cab and were whisked away.

September 23, 2022October 21, 2022

Fire in the Warehouse

I am working in a large warehouse of dark iron walls, muted colors, dark orange, dirt brown, heavy blue.

As we work, I see a shaft high up on the wall has caught fire. Flames lick the grill. It looks like it cannot be put out.

My colleagues are looking to see what they can do. They kick at the metal grill. And I go to the fire alarm, a small rectangular red box on the opposite wall.

Break glass for alarm, it says.

I push on the glass, but instead it yields to my push, it is more like plastic than glass. I keep pressing until finally I hear the alarm. It is distant at first, it comes from other rooms but then I hear the sound nearer.

The smoke gathers, thick and grey, curling from the ceiling.

“We got to get outta here!” I yell.

I run through different rooms, see fire spreading from the walls. In one room, an entire iron faced wall is pockmarked with fire and red embers, a large fireball rolls behind.

I climb up and out of the warehouse, into a front yard, into air. People have already started to gather there.

A colleague, Derek, stands waiting. I think to tell him that it was I who set off the alarm. But then he might think that I started the fire.

He has long curly hair and a round pudgy friendly face. “Do you have a hair band?” I ask.

“A what?”

“A hair band.”

He doesn’t know what I am talking about. He bends forward, tosses his hair over his head as he straightens up again.

“A ponytail band,” I try.

“Oh,” he understands now, and fishes in his green bomber jacket for a ponytail band in his jacket’s deep pockets.

“I used to have hair like yours, and I could even get it into a ponytail” I explain. “Just.”

And I realize I have only a tee shirt on. The shirt is a dark camouflage green but it is also thin and it will get cold, the longer the fire goes on. Fireman have only just arrived and our colleagues are gathering in a shed at the front of the garden. The shed has big open windows and banquettes so it will be comfortable but it will still be cold.

“Come on,” yells a new man, “We need to get something for our wait.”

He and one other person starts the climb back down an iron ladder, back into the warehouse.

I climb down with them and both sides are filled with fire and heavy smoke. I hesitate to go any further, plus there is a second set to climb down.

“Over here!” beckons one of the men, and he disappears down the next set of rungs while the other man goes into an adjacent smoke filled room on my level.

I peer into the room but the smoke is impenetrable. Embers flick red and black lace on a dark blue wall.

I turn around, and look down at the ladder that the first man took. The ladder is burnt orange with double wide rungs and I can see him already at the bottom.

But I cannot climb down for my fear. I have to turn around, the heat is suffocating, a middle eastern heat to my face, and I climb back up to the surface, where Derek is waiting.

I am standing with him when the men return, and finally, then do I relinquish; it is too late. One of them carries a thick lambs wool coat and the other squishes a big thick square black and white pillow to his chest.

“This will keep me warm’, he boasts as he struts past me.

Then I see my old friend Dave M.

“Here,” and he hands me a chocolate bar, square and wrapped in plastic. I look down at it and as I look down I notice that I am wearing Derek’s dark green bomber jacket.

Derek’s black wallet pokes out from the bulging right pocket. White papers poke out the wallet’s fold.

I will be warm now, I think; I feel a tear coming on, and begin to cry.

Photo by J Jakobson via Flickr