Shame it was a Saturday...

It was just gone half past ten on Saturday morning and the sun thumped down on the Old Kent Road’s grime and dust splattered concrete slabs. It was just gone half past ten on Saturday morning and my brain felt like someone was laying razor wire around it and my stomach seemed to believe I’d drunk battery acid the night before. It was just gone half past ten on Saturday morning and my creased and crumpled shirt was gaining embarrassing sweat patches, I had a particularly bitchy hang-over and I was struggling to walk home.

Fifteen minutes earlier it had seemed a bit of an adventure as I’d squeezed myself between two long ago prised apart iron railings at the base of a block of flats and then jumped down four feet onto the pavement below. There must have been another way out, but that was the way I’d gone in and I couldn’t be bothered to look for an alternative. But when I almost landed on an elderly man, and all I managed to croak was ‘morning,’ rather than a witty aside, I began to suspect this was going to be more difficult than I’d thought.

I stood on the corner and looked left and right for a road name, or some indication of which way to go. It all looked vaguely familiar, as though I might have been there in another life, but truth be told its uniformed red-brick, late-nineties renovation and wide angled roadways could have been anywhere in the world. I was ninety-nine percent certain I was still in London. My internal compass suggested that right was probably south and although alcohol had confused the compass in the past, I had little else to go on.

Right it was then.

As I paused at a pedestrian crossing, my arm raised for my hand to shield my eyes from the unsympathetic sun, a Ford Fiesta approached with the windows down and the system up, some unknown pulsing dance-pop suggesting that it was still summer belting out. ‘Whoy-aye-ay, son,’ the skinhead with the wrap around shades hanging out the passenger side window shouted at me. Quite what this meant, I haven’t a clue.

By the time I reached the recognisable bright murk of the Old Kent Road I was reasonably sure that I’d emptied my Oyster Card the night before and appeared to have done the same for my wallet. There was little alternative, but to walk the whole god-damned way home.

So, as I strode out blaming the bitter stinging behind my eyes of warm Californian rosé, the sensation that I might keel over at any moment on the fact that I hadn’t had anything to eat for over twenty-two hours, I curdled with self-awareness. All around were throngs of t-shirt and shorts glad weekenders whilst I remained in my rumpled suit and shirt, the jacket hanging from my limp hand, trailing in my wake.

Still, at least there was all the myriad beauty of London to keep me entertained.

It was one of those morning where I passed every facet of life all messed together in a short-breathing, long lasting ménage of existence. Everyone, from the sinewy guy helping set up the church charity sale tables, his bare arms raggedy and blistered, a can of K cider always close to his lips to the young couple emotionally fighting outside the self-storage depot, the tears of anger on her cheeks, his crossed arms and sulkily pouting lips failing to disguise his own distress. A gaggle of red t-shirted, black jeansed lads sat atop the roofs of cars outside KFC watching the world trundle by, watching and waiting for what I couldn’t even guess. The couple walking along, holding a tom-tom out as though it might bite, loudly looking for Commercial Road. I tried to point them in the right direction, but didn’t seem inclined to listen; not that I can blame them.

By the time I reached New Cross my energy levels were depleted. Sticky, salty sweat stuck to my brow, my insides grumbled incessantly and I felt dirtily ostracised from reality. I paused to drink the last half mouthful of day old tap water from a plastic bottle in my bag. When I looked up, a battered school uniform red Volvo estate was mounting the pavement rapidly. I stepped out the way just in time. The little old man driving lifted up an official looking placard reading ‘Courier on Delivery,’ replete with corporate logos along the bottom and stuffed it onto the dashboard. Then, he got out the car, with a little difficulty but certainly no package. He was smartly dressed in a suit far flashier than his choice of wheels, but also a jumper that matched the car’s colour and seemingly ignored the soaring temperature. With a deft turn his flicked a trilby hat onto his head and lit a cigarette – all in a single movement.

He marched briskly towards an alley where a man a few years younger than me sat slouched on the floor, lazily smoking and looking in the other direction. The older man cuffed the youngster around the back of the head.

‘Sorry, boss,’ the younger man said as he scrambled nervously to his feet.

The older man swore vehemently in what sounded like Italian and stormed off down the alley.

I shuffled on past, watching intrigued until the menacing glance the now alert younger man gave me, and the movement of his hand inside his jacket, suggested I should look away.

I did and struggled the rest of the way home desperate for a shower, some toast and bucket of coffee, but I couldn’t help wonder exactly what had I seen?