LITMIR.BIZ

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lift doors open revealing Sue and Roger leaning heavily on each other, each clutching onto a child for support. If it had not been for their false pride, Roger would have been out and back in that door, like a honeymoon dick. Blind paranoia has Sue by the throat like an enraged boa constrictor.

      “Using children as an excuse for covering our fear of heights is pathetic,” Roger mumbles.

      “Agreed, but doing it crouched on the floor of the lift is not a pretty sight either,” Sue admonishes.

      “This entire outing is becoming even more of a cluster fuck than I envisaged!”

      “It was your silly idea to visit this damned tower.”

      “Experts say with heights you need three points of contact.”

      “You should be alright then, because counting your knees and forehead — I count seven.”

      Sue makes a dash for a security rail, and then pauses before venturing towards the entrance to the skywalk.

      Roger meanwhile resembles a giant crab unwilling to leave the security of the lift wall. It is only after he has circumnavigated the lift more than once he chances to exit. If only the message he is sending to his feet would not be ignored.

      Less than one minute in to their visit Sue turns to Roger.

      “I have to get down now,” she is dragging Jayne and James back in to the lift. Roger is hot on her heels. A couple of people pass them without making eye contact.

      “The nightmare trip down seems interminably long.”

      “Where the hell is the ground?” Sue sobs.

      He is so nervous by the end of their trip down that had there been a water feature out front he would have been tempted to use it as a lavatory. Dimes to doughnuts he feels as jittery as an old maid balanced on a picket fence.

      Madame Tussauds completes their outing of outings.

      “It delighted me as a younger man,” Roger explains optimistically.

      “The Chamber of Horrors looks awfully macabre, Roger.”

      “That’s because it is, Sweetheart. It’s not widely known but they used to run competitions with prizes for anyone who could stay in here alone all night!

      Few were successful unless they downed enough whisky to put Falstaff to shame.”

      “It is very dark, Roger.”

      “You’re right, maybe a bit too realistic with all that imitation blood and gore and creepy noises.”

      “And their spooky music! Really? Men hanging from obscene hooks isn’t a place for an impressionable young child, Roger. Actually, it’s no place for any child. Not for me either! I refuse to venture in, with or without, the children.”

      Even Roger feels disturbed; they peruse the less controversial exhibits. Even those are daunting to younger minds, and that done, decide to call it a day.

      On the way back to the hotel, they sport themselves a taxi to avoid the hassle of buses and tube trains.

      The driver speaks what sounds like the English language but being dragged through a pit filled with sludge. Roger has difficulty understanding what he is saying.

      “I take you — only £5.”

      “Can you improve on that?” Roger asks hopefully.

      “How’s about £10?”

      Their fare-inflated route further boosts the meter with the taxi inching forward at the pace of an asthmatic snail.

      “His gearbox has a whole lot of gears slower than the postal service,” Roger whinges aloud.

      “Not helped by his clumsy left foot,” Sue replies.

      While forward progress is accompanied by the odour of burning oil, the driver tries to become, albeit temporarily, part of their family.

      Roger is intrigued. He notices the driver has a strange name, and wonders if his swarthy complexion precludes western European origins? An Asian appearance, or Arabic maybe? He is certainly not dark enough to be Nigerian.

      The taxi stops with greater ease than it moves.

      Genuinely curious about the driver’s background, paying him Roger asks, “What nationality are you?”

      Surprised, his injurious response is, “I’m Engrish!”

      “Good to know,” Roger, covers his faux pas with a handsome tip they can ill afford, at which point the cabbie’s frown softens into a leering gap-toothed grin.

      Roger barely manages to close the taxi door before he speeds away leaving devils in his wake.

      As they enter their hotel bedroom, Roger feels moved to postulate.

      “You know, if ever we needed a more fitting epitaph of our final night in the old country,” he spouts on, “I doubt we’d find anything better than being told by a toothless, migrant cabbie, ‘I’m Engrish!’”

      “Oh well, sums it up, but on the bright side at least we found out why Tooting Bec is so called.”

      “Agreed. Who would have thought it’s named after Bec Abbey in Normandy as part of the land carve up after the Norman conquest. Such evidence of bottom line shenanigans is everywhere in the Old Dart, even back then.”

      Exhausted after their day’s misadventures and apprehensive, they try to sleep.

      Finally their big day arrives.

      Roger stares into the bathroom mirror absent-mindedly. His thoughts instead of about money, sex, and food, are about Australia. A strange land down under to where they are about to transport their small family.

      “My shoulders feel tighter than balls of wool held together with knitting needles,” Sue confides.

      Nervously they take deep breaths and enter Heathrow Airport.

      “It appears functional,” Roger comments, “not an attractive place.”

      “I’m sure most airports are ugly, Roger. ‘As pretty as an airport,’ isn’t an appropriate saying anywhere!”

      “I’m amazed at its bluster, people everywhere, and all in a hurry.”

      Roger is a little solemn, “As our suitcases are headed to Australia, I suppose we are too.”

      “Take heart,” Sue offers, “if half what we hear is true many might have just discovered their luggage has not landed with them.”

      “Oh, the full horrors of tourism. No change of undies for some!”

      “James being one year and seven days old qualifies him for his own seat on the plane, today,” Sue beams.

      Roger smiles at his son. “You get a birthday each year, James.”

      “I want one too,” Jayne declares.

      “It’ll be expensive but we’ll stretch to one each year for both of you, provided you behave,” Sue smiles warmly.

      Their formal goodbyes are confined to a few family members gathering around to hug and kiss them and their babies.

      Roger’s grandparents are absent but excused, as they would have had difficulty with the return journey by expensive convoluted public transport.

      Through all the pain and mental anguish, Roger is trying to remember his Dad fondly. Named William Edward, everyone calls him Edward, rather than Bill.

      Once his best friend, Edward had always talked with his son, even confided about his career as a Lancaster bomber pilot in WWII, telling Roger the gory truth about war. Often at dinner parties when others told jokes, Roger would tell one of the wartime stories his Dad had told him. This suited him well as he is incapable of telling any joke successfully, usually forgetting the ‘punch-line’.

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