"I'm not going up those steps again!"
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"Well. you should have said that when he invited us again!"
"Even if I wanted to climb those bloody steps sitting in that Villa perched on a cliff top its just too much, it really.is. You'd have to be part Eagle to live and sleep up there, perched inches away from the abyss."
"Come on, the steps are good for your fitness and its...well...an experience, isn't it."
"But he is weird... what is he a frustrated poet?"
"More like a London cabbie....all those London districts he reels off, so precisely."
"Well. where would he get the money to buy a villa like that?"
"I'll ask him, come on."
" I am wheezing, is that me making that sound?"
"Come on. Nearly there".
"To live up here like this...like having your own Ibizan, Berghof."
"Shut up and come on....nearly there."
"What the fuck was that?"
"What?"
"At my feet?"
"That...it's a lizard...look how green it is, how beautiful."
"Climbing to Heaven's Door with lizards around our feet...the air is thinner up here...I need oxygen."
"Shut up and come on."
Now we are in the living room of his Villa. I can hardly look out the window at the panoramic bay
below in case I get dizzy.
And our host after offering us refreshments is off...this is a man who misses London.
"Yes, I recall once, one of my more vivid memories, being on a bus in Streatham.
Just there by Streatham Hill Station, do you know it? There's a large arterial road...what its called now?...Leigham Court Road....yes. Leigham Court Road...lots of shops there...full of bric a brac. Anyway, that's bye the bye....I was fourteen at the time...and I was on this bus...a 137 if my memory serves me rightly and I had this bunch of flowers in my hand....I was bringing them over to my sister who had just had her first child....and these boys got on at Battersea...at Lavender Hill as I recall, nothing lavender about this group of ruffians, and you know they started mocking me, giggling and pointimg at me...why because I was holding a bunch of flowers...no more no less...and
I thought if these street kids could apply their brain academically instead of using all their brain power on getting one up on their fellow citizens the UK would be a land filled with PhD's. I mean how Machiavellian they are, how sly, their trickery, what's the word for them...casuistical....yes a non academic casuistry.
Anyway it was a relief to arrive at the King's Road, I got off at the Fire Station and there is a little park with benches alongside there...do you know it?....and I just sat there fuming...that I had not said something to them...suffered from l'esprit d'escalier for days, you know...theaftethoughts of what I should have said....."
"I am not going up there again, I'm really that is that...listening to the bloody ramblings of a mad man."
"Why didn't you ask him what he does".
"He never stopped talking that's why."
"Maybe he lonely. Who is this friend Finbar he has invited us to meet.
"I'm not going up there again....Finbar is probably as mad as he is."
"I don' think he is mad...I just think he is lonely."
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"Well. you should have said that when he invited us again!"
"Even if I wanted to climb those bloody steps sitting in that Villa perched on a cliff top its just too much, it really.is. You'd have to be part Eagle to live and sleep up there, perched inches away from the abyss."
"Come on, the steps are good for your fitness and its...well...an experience, isn't it."
"But he is weird... what is he a frustrated poet?"
"More like a London cabbie....all those London districts he reels off, so precisely."
"Well. where would he get the money to buy a villa like that?"
"I'll ask him, come on."
" I am wheezing, is that me making that sound?"
"Come on. Nearly there".
"To live up here like this...like having your own Ibizan, Berghof."
"Shut up and come on....nearly there."
"What the fuck was that?"
"What?"
"At my feet?"
"That...it's a lizard...look how green it is, how beautiful."
"Climbing to Heaven's Door with lizards around our feet...the air is thinner up here...I need oxygen."
"Shut up and come on."
Now we are in the living room of his Villa. I can hardly look out the window at the panoramic bay
below in case I get dizzy.
And our host after offering us refreshments is off...this is a man who misses London.
"Yes, I recall once, one of my more vivid memories, being on a bus in Streatham.
Just there by Streatham Hill Station, do you know it? There's a large arterial road...what its called now?...Leigham Court Road....yes. Leigham Court Road...lots of shops there...full of bric a brac. Anyway, that's bye the bye....I was fourteen at the time...and I was on this bus...a 137 if my memory serves me rightly and I had this bunch of flowers in my hand....I was bringing them over to my sister who had just had her first child....and these boys got on at Battersea...at Lavender Hill as I recall, nothing lavender about this group of ruffians, and you know they started mocking me, giggling and pointimg at me...why because I was holding a bunch of flowers...no more no less...and
I thought if these street kids could apply their brain academically instead of using all their brain power on getting one up on their fellow citizens the UK would be a land filled with PhD's. I mean how Machiavellian they are, how sly, their trickery, what's the word for them...casuistical....yes a non academic casuistry.
Anyway it was a relief to arrive at the King's Road, I got off at the Fire Station and there is a little park with benches alongside there...do you know it?....and I just sat there fuming...that I had not said something to them...suffered from l'esprit d'escalier for days, you know...theaftethoughts of what I should have said....."
"I am not going up there again, I'm really that is that...listening to the bloody ramblings of a mad man."
"Why didn't you ask him what he does".
"He never stopped talking that's why."
"Maybe he lonely. Who is this friend Finbar he has invited us to meet.
"I'm not going up there again....Finbar is probably as mad as he is."
"I don' think he is mad...I just think he is lonely."
Peter Cheevers short stories and journalism published by Ether Books at:
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