specifically desired ice-cream. Then it occurred to me that perhaps I was having sympathetic cravings, just as some men have sympathetic pregnancy pains. Whatever the reason, I wanted ice-cream and I wanted it now.
This was one of the few instances I found living in the capital to have its advantages. Nottingham had nothing at all resembling the all night shop, which was a shame, because the 7-Eleven (so called because it’s open 24-hours a day, seven days a week. Well done, Misnomer Man!) was a pretty good idea, probably in the top ten most brilliant ideas humanity has ever had – not as good as the Walkman or the answering machine, mind – but for that matter not that far behind either.
Fumbling through the clothes that constituted my pillow I located my trousers and proceeded to look for a jumper. The only one I found that would protect me from a bout of hypothermia was a cable-knit sweater Gran had made me a long time ago. It was during her frantic phase of making things out of wool: dolls for her next-door neighbour’s kids, a bobble hat for my dad and a pair of trousers for Tom who, even at the age of ten, had the good sense to realise that woollen trousers were the kind of fashion mistake that followed you about for the rest of your life. Despite the cold I didn’t bother with socks as I couldn’t find any of the little sods. Instead, I pushed my bare feet into my laced-up burgundy brogues, ignored the sound of my mother tutting as she said, ‘No wonder all your shoes fall apart if that’s how you treat them,’ and went out of the door.
The silence of early hours Archway was beguiling. Take away the sound of far-off traffic and the odd taxi or bus and this was the quietest North London ever got. The coldness of the night air heightened my sense of isolation – no one would be out in weather like this unless they were mad or in search of ice-cream. My ankles were so cold that they felt like they had ice cubes rubbing against them. Standing on the door-step, I watched the vapour from my first outside breath disappear heavenwards before launching myself into the night.
The streets were empty. Most of the revellers from the Irish club up the road would have been asleep for at least an hour or two. The chip shop on my side of Holloway Road was closed but the one farther down, past the dry cleaners, was still open, although technically speaking, it wasn’t a chip shop – the name on the front of the shop being Mr Bill’s Fast Food. The nearest they had to chips were French fries which, five minutes prior to ordering, lay in a bag with thousands of other grim-looking bits of frozen potato.
Walking briskly I reached the top of the road in a new personal best of eight minutes and thirteen seconds! A couple were huddled together in the doorway of the snooker hall near the intersection of Holloway Road and Junction Road. The man was in his mid-thirties, but it has to be said that I’m notorious for not being able to tell the age of most people over the age of eight. I once thought one of Simon’s ex-girlfriends was fifteen, when she was actually twenty-five. I spent weeks congratulating myself on how liberal I was being, not asking her how she was getting on with her GCSEs or being less subtle and referring to her as jail-bait.
It began to rain as I walked along Junction Road and passed the Athena Kebab and chip shop opposite the tube station. There were no customers inside, but one of the men behind the counter stared at me menacingly as he diced cabbage. For some reason this scene seemed so ridiculous that I burst out laughing like some care-in-the-community patient.
Mr 7-Eleven didn’t look up from his magazine as I entered, but I got the feeling that he saw me anyway. Simon once had a job working behind the till of an all-night garage off Jarvis Road. He insisted that while working night-shifts he discovered an uncanny ability to predict the make and colour of the next car to pull onto the petrol station
This was one of the few instances I found living in the capital to have its advantages. Nottingham had nothing at all resembling the all night shop, which was a shame, because the 7-Eleven (so called because it’s open 24-hours a day, seven days a week. Well done, Misnomer Man!) was a pretty good idea, probably in the top ten most brilliant ideas humanity has ever had – not as good as the Walkman or the answering machine, mind – but for that matter not that far behind either.
Fumbling through the clothes that constituted my pillow I located my trousers and proceeded to look for a jumper. The only one I found that would protect me from a bout of hypothermia was a cable-knit sweater Gran had made me a long time ago. It was during her frantic phase of making things out of wool: dolls for her next-door neighbour’s kids, a bobble hat for my dad and a pair of trousers for Tom who, even at the age of ten, had the good sense to realise that woollen trousers were the kind of fashion mistake that followed you about for the rest of your life. Despite the cold I didn’t bother with socks as I couldn’t find any of the little sods. Instead, I pushed my bare feet into my laced-up burgundy brogues, ignored the sound of my mother tutting as she said, ‘No wonder all your shoes fall apart if that’s how you treat them,’ and went out of the door.
The silence of early hours Archway was beguiling. Take away the sound of far-off traffic and the odd taxi or bus and this was the quietest North London ever got. The coldness of the night air heightened my sense of isolation – no one would be out in weather like this unless they were mad or in search of ice-cream. My ankles were so cold that they felt like they had ice cubes rubbing against them. Standing on the door-step, I watched the vapour from my first outside breath disappear heavenwards before launching myself into the night.
The streets were empty. Most of the revellers from the Irish club up the road would have been asleep for at least an hour or two. The chip shop on my side of Holloway Road was closed but the one farther down, past the dry cleaners, was still open, although technically speaking, it wasn’t a chip shop – the name on the front of the shop being Mr Bill’s Fast Food. The nearest they had to chips were French fries which, five minutes prior to ordering, lay in a bag with thousands of other grim-looking bits of frozen potato.
Walking briskly I reached the top of the road in a new personal best of eight minutes and thirteen seconds! A couple were huddled together in the doorway of the snooker hall near the intersection of Holloway Road and Junction Road. The man was in his mid-thirties, but it has to be said that I’m notorious for not being able to tell the age of most people over the age of eight. I once thought one of Simon’s ex-girlfriends was fifteen, when she was actually twenty-five. I spent weeks congratulating myself on how liberal I was being, not asking her how she was getting on with her GCSEs or being less subtle and referring to her as jail-bait.
It began to rain as I walked along Junction Road and passed the Athena Kebab and chip shop opposite the tube station. There were no customers inside, but one of the men behind the counter stared at me menacingly as he diced cabbage. For some reason this scene seemed so ridiculous that I burst out laughing like some care-in-the-community patient.
Mr 7-Eleven didn’t look up from his magazine as I entered, but I got the feeling that he saw me anyway. Simon once had a job working behind the till of an all-night garage off Jarvis Road. He insisted that while working night-shifts he discovered an uncanny ability to predict the make and colour of the next car to pull onto the petrol station
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