London in the Summertime

“I’m bored,” whined Guy. “Bored, bored, bored, bored.”

I looked up from the book I was failing to read and gazed out of the semi-opaque window. The dull grey light bathing the East End battled against the months of grime, and eventually gave up, dispirited.

“It's still daylight,' I said, desperately hoping I had guessed right. “We could still go and do something before Brian comes round.”

“Yeah, like what?”

“Well, Carver's always busy, ask him.”

“Carver, in case you haven't noticed, isn't here. His Giro arrived, and so he's gone off to score. And even if he was here, he'd only be getting doped up, shagging Rachel or reading Lord of the Rings for the umpteenth time. Whoopie-do.”

“You could revise for your resit.”

'Hmph.'

'Well?'

“I’m going for a fag.”

I watched Guy take up his normal position perched on the wall at the front of the house, sucking hard on the cancer stick. The summer holidays were really getting to him. Of the people we knew in London, virtually none of us had found work.

Admittedly, one acquaintance had found himself a reasonably successful career as a male prostitute in a brothel, but that, to be frank, was not an option that appealed to many of us. Bar a brief week Adrian had spent working for an accountant, none of us had managed to earn a penny since term ended. One way or another, we were scraping by financially, but the biggest problem was boredom.

Carver had been the least affected, having spent the last year doing absolutely nothing, and he seemed intent on doing even less in the year to come.

“Well, if I can, like, get through the year OK, Patty will have graduated, and she'll, like, set up her hippy commune, right?” he’d said, on his return. “It’ll be, like, the bollocks. Really easy, like.”

“Haven't you noticed, Carver? The Tories are saying that they're going to clamp down on New Age Travellers.”

'Yeah, but we won't be travelling, right? No Travellers, no problem?

“Erm…”

“I don't really think it's a problem, whichever way you look at it,” muses Adrian, lifting his head from the style pages of the latest GQ. “The Government might say that they're going to clamp down, but do you really think the civil servants in the dole office are going to be able to? I mean, don't they have enough to do already?”

“More every month,” I comment. “The recession's on, you know, and not everyone's rich enough not to care.”

“Hey, it's not as if I don't care. For the unemployment figures to come down, the recession's got to ease, hasn't it?”

“Yeeees…?”

“Well, unemployment is a transitional cost we pay to lift us out of recession, so it will, eventually, cease to be a problem in of itself, so why worry?”

He leans back with that certain air of smugness that only Kenneth Baker has ever really mastered, leaving Carver looking confused.

“Does that mean I'll get the dole or what?”

“Filthy, scrounging layabout trash.”

The phone rings. We all make a dive for this brief flash of excitement that has entered our lives, but Guy gets there first.

“Hello, Clowns for Crime Inc., Bozo speaking. How can we help you?’”

He looks down at the receiver with astonishment.

“They hung up.”

“Oh, big surprise. What if that had been important, you plonker?”

“Yeah? Who important is going to be phoning you, Adrian? A woman?”

That was nasty — Adrian's last girlfriend had dumped him only a couple of weeks before, for reasons he wouldn't explain, but which were rumoured to involve constant demands for activities David Mellor is known to have enjoyed. His shifty reaction is enough to tell us all we need to know.

“You have, haven't you? Who is she?”

“And will she, like, suck your tootsies, man?”

“Bastards.”

“Well, come on, who is she?”

“I’m going for a fag,” snarls Adrian.

The door slams shut behind him, leaving a set of giggles in his wake. This eventually lapses back into lethargic silence as boredom once more reasserts itself. Carver lies back on the sofa, trying his best to think of nothing, while Guy toys irritably with a paintbrush. Something is clearly worrying him.

“Wait… Adrian doesn't smoke!”

“After him!”

The sight of three people trying to sneak up on a phone box is not a common sight, but this being the East End, it's usually better not to know.

The sight of three people trying to sneak up on a phone box is not a common sight, but this being the East End, it's usually better not to know. Adrian, sweetly oblivious, talks excitedly into the mouthpiece, and seemingly unaware of the fact that she cannot see him, gestures frenetically with his hands.

“Listen, Jilly, I'll see you on Tuesday at… gmmmph… aargh!”

The wildly struggling Adrian is dragged from the box, and another hand takes up the receiver.

“Ady? Ady? Are you there?”

“Hah, you may have heard our little traitor squealing, but it is too late for you. Tomorrow we unleash Microbe X and the world will be ours!!’”

Click.

“Guy, man, you are weird.”

“Well, thank you. I didn't know you cared.”

And so day passes into night, and the four of us find ourselves sitting at the front of the house. Carver and Guy sit in the window ledge, smoking, while Adrian and I perch precariously on the wall bounding the two square metres of front garden.

“I still can't believe you did that”, says Adrian, idly toying with the string holding the wall together.

“Well, you're still seeing her tomorrow, aren't you?” replies Guy, an angelic smile spreading across his face.

Adrian really shouldn't have told Guy where and when he was meeting her. He'll regret it.

“Hey guys, does this, like, remind you of anything?”

“Like what, Carver?”

“It's just like being in the back of a black cab, isn't it?”

Adrian buries his head in his hands, but Guy likes the idea.

“Well, yes, but our house might actually go south of the river at this time of night.”

“But would it go to Dulwich?”

“Only if we tip well.”

Unseen, Brian makes his way up the street towards the house, disbelief camping out on his face.

“Yo, guys, what are you doing?” he calls.

“Driver, driver, stop the cab!!”

“Brian, how you doing? Fancy a trip to Dulwich?”

“Is it just me or are you all bored?”

Guy looks puzzled by this.

“Dunno,” he says. “Ask the driver.”