Читать книгу Is Shane MacGowan Still Alive? - Tim Bradford - Страница 30

Outside it’s a typical summer’s day. Cold and windy with a promise of rain. Across the street an old man stands in a doorway, with an old black beret on, watching. He has a long nose and ears that drop down to his elbows. He’s got a proud look in his eye. I imagine that he’s been a ferocious Republican warrior in his life. I walk down the street and suck in the damp air. Saturday morning. The most perfect feeling. Kids in last season’s Man United shirts are playing with a half-inflated football in the street, bouncing the ball against the wall of a kebab shop. They never stop playing, even when someone walks past. Sometimes people get the ball blasted in their ears, and the lads are all apologetic. They stop occasionally, such as when a car turns into the street.

Further up, a small bald man tries to start his car, which sounds like an old asthmatic, or a faulty chainsaw. Or a car that won’t start. In the newsagents I ask the fat guy with the shaved head and ’tache behind the counter if there are any Guardians left. No, he says. It’s the Irish Times again. He’s got a few odds and ends of food, soup, mouldy fruit, packets of cereal. Like the old grocers I used to frequent, who stocked only a few tins of Oxtail soup, a couple of bread rolls, Quaker Oats (not Scotch Porridge Oats, only Quaker) and a Battenburg cake. Is that from the house of Battenburg, I wonder? Were they like the Hapsburgs? Perhaps that’s why the Hapsburgs declined, because they hadn’t got a fancy cake named after them.