The Quiet Moments

In the early hours I’d taken a break from the monitors and gone outside to spark up, standing in the still warm night air, looking up at Orion shining down through the breaks in the cloud, taking time to mull things over.

Hours later, once the computer was powered down, I figured there was time to head into Central London and trawl through the bookshops. As a plan it was workable, if I had taken into account the time of day.

I got into town earlier than expected, too early in fact, so breakfast seemed like a good idea: a proper breakfast, which meant finding a proper old caff rather than some gussied up sandwich bar or coffee shop that advertised different coffees or the availability of fucking ciabatta bread.

I very rarely eat a cooked breakfast. In fact I’m probably still recovering from eating at a Denny’s close by Cape Canaveral which stomped hard on my arteries – and that was over eight years ago. Right now I needed the fuel.

It took a while, wandering around the empty streets on the northern fringe of Covent Garden, before I found the right kind of place – where the bacon looks like it came from a pig that didn’t go down without a fight, the accompanying coffee is so damn strong it makes your pubes spike on end, and brickies come in to order a selection of bacon and sausage sandwiches, teas and coffees to go.

Even after that – with the smoking ban no longer affording the luxury of sitting back and nursing the coffee once the last of the egg yolk was mopped up with a round of toast - there was time to kill before the stores opened. I went for a wander. The annexe of The Esteemed School of Art where I served my three-year sentence was pretty much just around the corner. For a long time now it has been an H&M clothes store, but the building remains.

Going to work, going to meetings, or simply joining people for social occasions, the concentration is always on getting from A to B. Without that distraction, with traffic still remarkably light and the first wave of office drones the only real pedestrians, it afforded me the luxury of just taking in the surroundings I rarely paid any attention to.

I ended up in Soho Square, sitting in view of St Patrick's Church, solving The Times sudokus while a gardener wandered around ineffectually blasting a leafblower over the grass, and hoping that I wouldn’t bump into any of the TACs*. With everything else to do, I’m behind on the script and I have doubts. Not that it isn’t good enough, but that, as a character piece, it isn’t different enough from what else is already out there and what has come before.

There’s always the need for new product that the audience can feed on but... how can I put this? I don’t see the point of having your name up on screen just for the hell of it. Anyway, I didn’t get the book I was looking for. Instead I went to an HMV then a Virgin then another HMV before heading home. Each time I was very bad. But it was for reference. Honest.


* Work out the acronym if you want. I really can’t comment.