To The Far, Faraway Towns

There are stairs. A lot of stairs. It seems like the house should have ended long before it does, the narrow, dusty corridors, carpeted and enclosed keep taking you up and up towards the habitually grey sky. A window here and there lets in light, filtered through the clouds, through panes of glass that could use a wash, or be replaced all together.

You've been here so many times. Memories blur. Do you really remember what it looked like? Was the bathroom tiled back then? The couch? Was it there, or perhaps...? The TV is new, definitely. The place almost looks lived in. Almost.

You're back on the stairs now, the final almost vertical leg that takes you into the roof, where there are piles of old carpet, flaked wall paper and other things you try not to trip over on your way to the double doors, smudged with finger prints that might be a decade old. Or older.

You've reached the top now, you can't go any further and you slide open the double doors that stick and jam, forcing you to squeeze through a gap that's almost too narrow to allow you to pass.

But you pass, you're at the top, and there's nothing between you and grey slate tiles that slope down, down, down towards the narrow lengths of grass separated by grey stone walls and fruit trees.

The church spire pierces the sky to your right, children in bright red pullovers scream and chase at it's base.

And over the rooftops you can see it, those few familiar shapes that tell you where you are, the life sized Monopoly board, just an hour away, if you've long legs and you're willing to sweat a little. From here you can trace the toy like skyline with a finger, looping up around The Eye, and down, up and down.

It's been too long, and you want a gin and tonic to remind you, a little bottle of duty free Bombay Saphire as fresh as the air your grandmother always said was cleaner up here, here by the Heath, under the church spire with the fruit trees and bushes out the back providing the filling for crisp crusted pies.

She'll be ringing the bell about now, if she still does that. You wouldn't know, it's been too long. Is there still a bell? The smell of porridge in the morning, the crackling of bacon under the grill? No longer do the petulant miaows of the ginger cat cut through the morning's stillness, you know that much, no more gentle buzz of an electric razor, grey hair collecting on today's copy of The Times.

But you can hear them all these sounds, arranged in a strange nostalgic harmony, first the sound of the big brass bell, accompanied by staccato outbursts of hot fat under flame, a tune in the key of feline chimes in, syncopated with the eerie echo of those now unused appliances.

Oh, London, you're going to have to stop calling.

Or I'm going to have to start leaving the phone off the hook.