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Home
I hadn’t been living there long. Some things still confused me about the block, and the silent people with whose indifference I wasn’t entirely at ease. At times, I felt like an interloper. The building manager, Barry, was cordial enough, but I suppose for him I was just one of an endless stream of tenants, passing through to somewhere else, individually inconsequential so long as we broke none of the block rules and didn’t have rowdy parties.
But, already, my habits were being established.
And I was on my way to buy chocolate.
I usually bought chocolate in a shop which is a few streets over. There’s nothing special about the shop except its location, which is just so, at the crux where two roads each running down either side of the hill above meet. It’s the perfect place to stop, to decide if one intends to ascend into suburbia, or curl back downwards into town. But, whatever decision one takes, a visit to the corner shop for some snack or other would seem essential.
Inside, is the predictable chaos of English corner stores, where a man, usually with south Asian features, wearing an expression of infinite boredom, leans on a worn counter messing with a cellphone - barricaded behind ranks of shelving containing mainly junk food, cheap sweets, potato crisps, cigarette lighters, batteries and grimy stationary. Guarding his front are a vast variety of chocolate bars arranged like regiments in a too-crowded parade ground on the national day of a banana republic.
And all these condiments are a weird mixture of artificial syrups, milk fat solids- whatever they might be- tiny fragments of nuts, toffees or bits of wafer and almost no real chocolate instead some sort of cocoa powder substitute. It’s better not to read the ingredients on the labels, in truth.
But I did read the labels and in an impulse abandoned my original plan and instead plucked from the shelf:
BASSETT’S LIQUORICE ALLSORTS
I took myself to a little park, so filled with joyful anticipation that I could not stop myself from singing out loud “Good old Bertie Bassett, he’s Britain’s greatest asset.”
In the park
Grey broken winter trees. That damp grass.
A middle aged man with a miniscule dog, big pink bows between its ears. He carried it then put it onto the thin grass where it squatted. The owner held a bag close to the anus of the creature to receive the serpentine turd. “Oooh it’s a biggy! Good girl!”
Relieved, the dog then stood on its tiny legs. It saw me.
“Yap, yap, yap, yap, yap,” echoing throughout the park.
“I think he wants one of your sweets.”
I watched the hairy, barking cockroach.
“Come along Sandra. Daddy’s got sweeties for you at home.” And he picked up the dog in one hand, turd swinging in a dainty bag from his wrist. And off he went.
Silence. A breeze rippled the grass.
A bench in a muddy patch beneath a leafless sycamore: I sat down.
“Psst!” a loud whisper to my left.
A man had come and seated himself beside me with such stealth that I was taken by surprise.
He squinted at me.
“Hey!”
“What?”
“I’ve got something for you.”
“What?”
“Look.”
“What?”
His face was thin and his hands were thin and his clothes were thin. “I’ll show you.” He pushed the box forwards. “Here, see.”
“Why?”
“Go on, have a look, it's for you.”
He gave a grin. His teeth were yellow stumps.
I looked down at the box.
“Closer.” said the man, pushing the box more towards me, his hands set to open it.
I looked down and he raised the lid.
“See!”
A dark coil.
He tapped the box.
“It’s sleeping.”
He tapped it again, It jerked forwards.
“Christ.”
“Python,” said the man. “It's yours.”
The snake looked up, opened its mouth, revealing razor fangs: a vicious, hissing sound.
“Are you crazy? Fuck.”
I picked up my sweets and scurried off.
I got out of the park. I saw an underground sign and ran towards its chambers. I put coins in an automat and got a ticket and descended to the train. London’s austere tube system. Sad rounded tunnels and a yellowish light and old signs.
Curving platform empty.
A train came.. Settled in the tiny chair, I tore the bag open: a variety of coloured sweets in geometric forms, some striped cubes, alternating liquorice layers with a white spongy matter, others flattened balls covered with tiny sweet pink or blue grains, or long long black writhing snakes.
I put into my mouth first a black cylinder, then another cubic Allsort. My mouth filled with liquorice juices then moulten sugar making a thick liquid of my saliva. I begin to chew. Then another sweet, now with a slightly rough texture and glucose and aniseed flavourings flooded onto my tongue.
The rocking of the train, then a sudden jolt, then the lights went out. A loud creak and a shuddering halt. A slow acceleration and the lights came back, but then we were stationary again. I became conscious of another man in the carriage. A bearded man. He came over and was now holding on to one of the bars with one hand three feet away. The lights went off again. Then on, and in front stood the same man except now with his penis, unusually large, exposed.
“Jesus, I said. You’re disgusting”
He laughed, “Sorry you feel that way, mate.”
In a series of jerking movements we arrived at the next station. My station.
Home
I got out. And made my way back home. Near the entrance was Barry, removing old notices from a board.
“Good afternoon.”
“Good afternoon,” he replied. “What’s up? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Well,” I said, “not a ghost. A flasher. On the train.”
"A guy with a beard?"
"Yes"
“Oh him,” said Barry. “He’s been around for years”. He continued tidying the board. “You could report it, I suppose. But I wouldn’t bother. Seems harmless enough. You know what they say. It takes all sorts.
And with that, I became part of the neighborhood.
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Read to: Sit down, shut up and write, 29 August, 2021 and Albuquerque Cyberscribes, 30 August, 2021
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