While I was in London, celebrating… actually
I’m not sure celebrating is the right word, as I ‘celebrate’ way too often for
it to be considered special anymore. Anyway, one night in London I went to a
party at a building that, in my drunken mind, appeared to be St Paul’s
Cathedral, although for all I know it might’ve been a dark and dirty alley.
There was only a handful of people around me, and suddenly I was handed a
wristband while someone whispered in my ear: ‘here – this will get you into the
restricted areas…’. I started wandering around and walked into a few rooms
where I found some old ladies selling random items from their homes to tourists.
They were saying that those items were relics and vintage items when in
reality, or at least to me, they just looked like their old and unloved
crockery and other ‘rarities’. I carried on stumbling through the rooms, and
came across a room where an old lady was hunched over her stove. The door had
been ajar and I had assumed it was another room I could go into. I had heard
someone in the background, or in my mind, saying ‘don’t go in there, she’s
crazy’, but I didn’t listen. Curiosity killed the cat, but it didn’t kill me.
As soon as I walked in to this elusive room
because the old lady inside was cooking something so I asked if I could help.
She glanced over her shoulder in order to take in who the intruder was. She didn’t
say anything for a while, then finally answered: ‘okay, fine, but don't talk
and do as I say. You promise not to talk right?’. I just looked at her and
nodded. She brought out some ingredients from the pantry for what I could only
assume was French toast. She was a woman of few words and didn’t say much, but
I could see from the stove that she’d just finished a batch of French toast. As
she handed me the ingredients I began to question why she needed more of it.
She was quite a petite lady and I couldn’t imagine she would be able to get
through all of that food. Considering how drunk I was, I probably could’ve
eaten both batches though… that is beside the point of course.
As I started to make the recipe she seemed
frustrated and fidgety and said that I wasn't doing it the way her husband used
to. So I started talking and asked what I needed to do so we could get the
recipe right. She stood up abruptly and went back to the pantry from where she now
emerged with some old French toast she had saved. I must have had a disgusted
look on my face as she immediately stated: ‘This was the last batch my husband
made before he passed’. She said this matter-of-factly, as if this statement
was supposed to remove any feelings of nausea my face must have been
transmitting. I didn’t say anything so she carried on: ‘the one you’re making
needs to look like this’.
Once I’d had a long hard stare, my drunk
mind coming to terms with the fact that I desperately needed to sober up to
fully take in what was happened. The lady and I started chatting more. She
seemed to live in her own world, a world in which her only purpose was to try
and perfect this French toast. She admitted to me: ‘at my age it's so sad that
I always live in my own head’. And I said: ‘no at my age it's worse. I should
be off in the world living real life. Instead here I am wasting away my youth
getting drunk out of my face. I mean, I probably won’t remember most of this
when I wake up tomorrow morning’. Saying this immediately added to my
increasing sobriety and I went on to tell her, ‘you being in your own world is
actually kind of good. After years of acting logical and responsible for real
life things, it is rare for someone your age to have such a child-like sense of
wonder and imagination’. We then both sat there. Her living a fantasy life in
which her aim was solely to recreate the perfect French toast recipe that
reminded her of her husband and me outside of my head and connecting with
another person but also thinking about how much my head was going to hurt the
next day.
Thank you to Andrea Aguilar for the dreamspiration :)
