My grandparent’s blue velvet chaiselongue now belongs to the cat. We are sitting together. I’m here on sufferance and only in exchange for work. I’m getting braver as I get to know him and I’ve realised that he’s ok with me really working on the clumps of hair he has in his belly so that’s what he’s been making me do. We’ve broken the back of the worst one this evening, but now he’s a bit freaked out by noise so we are having a rest.
Below us, the Chelsea Spring evening is shattered by the banging and spluttering and whizzing and screeching of tyres from morons with maseratis. Thumping grindhouse is pumping out of the top end stereos in their shiny sportscars, huge bangs come from the exhaust along with all sorts of other weird deliberate noises, shouts in languages familiar and unfamiliar on the night air. It’s ten to twelve. It’s all carrying up through the window and into the pussycat’s ears. Usually they do this shit later in the year, on the truly balmy nights. The crap male children of the generationally rich congregate around Chelsea Bridge and do donuts and be ostentatious in their egregious unearned sports cars. For some reason the boys have come out for Easter. The cat and I both rather wish they hadn’t.
I went out for Easter in my Audi though, ragging the low end acceleration with the vim of somebody that knows it’s the last diesel engine he’ll ever own. I spent time with Max and the family. His eighteen year old appears to be gravitating towards media. “It’s not a career,” was the received wisdom at my school, but that’s because they all ended up as estate agents. If I’m going to lie to people I’d much prefer to do it while telling them a story than while selling them a house. He’ll do well in media I reckon, and he’ll find his way. He’s incomprehensible to his parents, but just very young to my eyes and like some of my friends were at his age. Awkward but charming. He’s only eighteen, and he’s sheltered. Much as I try to wear a hat that makes me look like I’m worldly nowadays, I was probably more of a gimp at eighteen. I literally didn’t have a fucking clue and thought I knew it all twice.
I’ve dropped off the box of coppers with his daughter. She bought a lizard by running a racket in the playground where she flogged interesting coins to other kids for a bit more than they were worth. You can tell from that sentence how she’s related both to the entomologist and the grifter actor type fellow you’re consuming with your morning kippers. She’s going to sort them, give me 90% of the value and then flog them. Maybe she’ll end up with another lizard.
Happy Easter darlings. I’m gonna get back to my duties with the cat. He’s just started mangling the chaiselongue again.
AlBarclay 