Apropos of nothing much, I remembered the time I was running down the sidewalk of Tiller Road, London, and woman shouted out of an upper window, "You should wear a bra. Den you woudn go bouncin' down de road!"
I remember it because I was wearing a bra at the time but couldn't work out how to get that information across while running for whatever I was late for. It's less memorable than the time I walked towards the stairwell, saw a woman holding a baby, and said, not unreasonably I thought, "Hello, baby." The woman replied, "F*ck off, you lesbian c*nt." Ah, memories of the East End.
The property was Hammond House, where students from Queen Mary, University of London were housed. It's on my mind because I'm writing a story about a garbage chute. A lot of the properties in London had them. They have access hatches in the stairwell on each floor, which you open and chuck your rubbish into. In theory, it goes down a kind of chimney and lands in a dumpster. In practice, it often looked like the photo below.
1 comment:
Ah, I see London is going the way of east coast U.S. cities and putting up new apartments that look like tall storage containers with balconies. The old Hammond House had lovely curved balconies, at least in 2009 if not in Tina's day.
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