Monday 1 June 2015

The Day I Met My Hero

For audio click here
This is based on a true story.
I hated days like these, it was St Swithin's Day, July 15 and it was 30 degrees in the shade. London was sweating, more precisely London Liverpool Street Station was sweating. Whoever the architect was who had designed the reconstruction of this elderly train station, obviously hadn't thought through the greenhouse effect on days like these. I’d dragged myself across London on the sweltering tube and now I was waiting for my train to Diss and beginning to understand how tomatoes felt.

Foreheads of the passers by glistened with sweat, while dark patches had formed under armpits and where rucksacks had been. It felt like little time bombs were ticking inside everyone's minds, that there was an accident waiting to happen. I could feel sweat dribble down my inside leg and yes that was as unpleasant as it sounds. The only thing keeping me on the right side of sanity were the dulcet tones of Billy Bragg playing in my ears.
‘It's that summer of the evening,’ the bard sang, it's that summer over-heating, I corrected him, before humming along to the rest of the song. I looked up at the screen, still no platform number for my train. I looked at the other passengers around me looking for inspiration for a story or poem.
Jesus fucking Christ there he was, the man whose songs were playing in my ears was standing right next to me. The man who had provided the sound tracks to my life was within touching distance. The man who had given me the songs to help me celebrate falling in love and whose songs had provided sympathy in break ups was waiting for a train as normal as you like. This man was my hero, this man was the reason I was a writer and this man was sweating next to me.
What should I do? Should I say hello, thank you or murhmurph? Should I ask for his autograph or a selfie? Or, just be cool and say nothing. After all I wasn’t some 13 year old One Direction fan I was a big boy now. But I should say hello shouldn't I? I looked again at the tall bearded man next to me. Maybe it wasn't him, maybe it was a lookalike, a tory voting lookalike who hated it when commies like me mistook him for the Bard of Barking, giving them a dose of the short sharp shock when they said hello. And it couldn't be him There was no guitar, surely Billy went everywhere with his guitar so it could apologise on his behalf.
Oh what to do, I wanted to say hello but  I was scared and we all know fear is a man's best friend. What if my hero wasn't the milkman of human kindness and told me to walk away; gave me the short answer. Then without warning Billy took a great leap forward, his platform had been announced and he was off to get on his train train. I shook my head in disappointment, and went back to wishing this day away.


If you enjoyed this story why not check out my novel Maggie's Milkman. 

All the words in bold are Billy Bragg song titles or approximations of, all the words in italics are lyrics or approximations of.

1 comment:

  1. Petra Goláňová5 June 2015 at 16:45

    I like these lines:
    "London was sweating, more precisely London Liverpool Street Station was sweating. Whoever the architect was who had designed the reconstruction of this elderly train station, obviously hadn't thought through the greenhouse effect on days like these. I’d dragged myself across London on the sweltering tube and now I was waiting for my train to Diss and beginning to understand how tomatoes felt.
    The only thing keeping me on the right side of sanity were the dulcet tones of Billy Bragg playing in my ears.
    It¨s that summer of the evening,’ the bard sang, it's that summer over-heating, I corrected him
    Jesus fucking Christ there he was, the man whose songs were playing in my ears was standing right next to me. The man who had provided the sound tracks to my life was within touching distance. The man who had given me the songs to help me celebrate falling in love and whose songs had provided sympathy in break ups was waiting for a train as normal as you like. This man was my hero, this man was the reason I was a writer and this man was sweating next to me."

    ReplyDelete