Mrs P and I went for a long walk through Kensington and across the Thames into Battersea last week. It’s familiar ground for me. I used to live in the area. Just over three decades ago one summer, I strolled into Chelsea Fire Station., the one in the photo. It was all a bit awkward. It was three in the morning, and I was barefoot in my boxers and a t-shirt. Maybe a little intoxicated. The streets were dead, not a soul about. But there were half a dozen firemen in the station. Thank goodness.
At the time, I rented a bedsit just across the road from the fire station. It was on the third floor of a four storey building with a shared shower and toilet on the floor above me. That was a bit of a pain, having to leave my room and climb up the stairs in the middle of the night just for a wee. But it was either that or aim my pointing device out the window of my bedsit and water the back garden several storeys below.
One night three decades ago, I climbed the stairs, did what I needed to do and then descended to find I’d forgotten my key and as a result was locked out of my room. I returned ten minutes later with the aforementioned bunch of firemen. They looked at the door. One of them put his shoulder against it. And then violently forced it open with a hefty shove, splintering the frame and causing a bit of damage to the lock.
I didn’t really know what I was expecting. I mean, I could have broken through the door myself. It was far from sturdy. I just rather imagined that firemen would have a special toolkit full of magical devices. I’d assumed that I’d be told to look away whilst they deployed some top secret piece of home-entering kit to gain entry. I thought firemen were superheroes.
I went back to bed, a little more cynical with the world. And the garden three storeys below found itself well watered for the remainder of my tenancy.
The Mexile 
Game me a sense of the writing that sex “This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but with a whimper.
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That’s hilarious!
It reminded me of a time when I was young and lunacy came with a few drinks. After finishing a bottle of beer I’d swing it from the ground over my head and chuck it high in the air and just go back into the house. I was talking to a nearby shop owner a few years back who told me about one night he went out the back of his shop for a smoke. He had just lit up when this bottle whizzed down out of nowhere and smashed into smithereens beside him. He said he nearly crapped himself. It was just like in the war where all sorts of stuff fell from the sky without warning.
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I have a sneaky feeling that you didn’t tell the shop owner of your past habits regarding the disposal of beer bottles… 😂
Ya hooligan.
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Of course it was an eye opener, fortunately my beard hid any sudden flush on my part but you’re right and I felt bad for a second or two and I wondered what happened the others that mysteriously departed into the night on other occasions! Hopefully they landed in a hedge or harmlessly in someone’s garden. Most of the gardens where we lived were long and dark and filled with trees or shrubs.
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Upstairs window: I was about 14, staying at my cousin’s farm in upstate Wisconsin, working a few weeks of haying season. My cousin and I walked into town and had an evening of drinking with a few of the older cousins who were out on their own-I was not a very experienced drinker.
We arrived back at the farm, a six year old Holstein bull had escaped a double stanchion, was loose in the parking lot with the stanchions hanking about its neck. He was not a happy camper. At six years old, he was better than a ton. I hid under a truck, my cousin guided him into a paddock of heifers at the end of a pitchfork and he became a happy camper. He went to the slaughter house the next day. The window…The spinns took me hard after I went to bed. I ran to the window and sent the evening’s beer out the opening. Down the side of the house it went. After breakfast, I was scrubbing the clapboards.
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The best stories usually end with the drink of choice making a surprise reappearance… 😉
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Oh yeah…they can RESCUE A DAMN CAT OUT OF A TREE…but they can’t get a simple door open. 🍺🍺🏈
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😂
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