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After 60 years of daily perusal I have not tired of this wonderful panorama.

It takes in the vast and handsome sweep of the world’s greatest city.

To the east, the towers of finance, sprung like white corn from the old docks whence once the great ships bought cinnamon and nutmeg from Mollucca and the East.

To the West, receding in the pinky mists, the Thameside villages of pulsing Westminster, sweeping down to leafy Kew in hazy the distance.

Is there a better place for a man of letters to reside than here in his humble garret, in the back of an imposing house in North London? One feels fortunate to have come here in a time when artists could afford such luxury.

In the garden, Autumnal fruit hangs between leaves of yellow and burnished orange. Their moist flesh hanging temptingly like the fulsome bodies of pre-Raphaelite maidens.

I place as I always do, a single hobnob next to my mug of English breakfast tea, take up my fountain pen and prepare to write.

But suddenly I feel a familiar unease as, the flapping wings of foreboding beat insistently inside my ribcage.

I glance out of the window once more and there upon my decking stands the source of my discomfort, my nemesis, The Beast of Belsize.

He struts towards me, tail curled like the finger of a regency fop cocking-a-snoop and there then this tabby terror proceeds to exude a generous curl of fetid Faeces upon my newly jet-washed wooden ridges.

He regards me with a triumphalist sneer that says

“I shall shit whereso’er I desire and I laugh at your puny water pistols. Weak fool look upon me and despair!!!

So many years have I been tortured by this hellish creature that I do not know whether it is a third generation of mere earthly evil or an immortal messenger of the devil.

I only have a few weeks left now before my lease expires and soon I must move to the sheltered building in suburbia. But I have a job to do first. As I eventually learnt with Boothby Minor in the prep school quad, at the end a bully needs to be silenced once and for all.

I take up the brand-new crossbow beside me, my bow of burning gold, and select an arrow from the waste bin beside me which acts as my quiver. I know that Beast is arrogant enough to attempt to “stare me out” so I wait until he swaggers closer, a moment of delicious silence, and I let rip! Its over in an instant as the arrow flies straight between the miserable creature’s malevolent yellowing eyes. A screech, a frenzied death dance and he becomes still, a sack of fur and bones to be removed by the refuse men.

It is possible my relatives will decide to move me on more quickly than planned after the police interview in which I will put on my most unblinking dementia-mask. Just as with Boothby Minor nobody in their right mind will think I could be capable. But beneath the effete ineffectuality of my poetic appearance there resides the steely nerve of a killer.

Doctor AI informed him that ‘despite the common joke a poop deck has nothing to do with human excretion’. How prim-sounding that was coming from the supposed culmination (so far) in the evolution of human intelligence.

Having been asked by Vikram to ‘join the family for a week’s sailing’, Jimmy thought he had better look up a few things. You never knew with the very rich and the thought of doing something that disgusting out in the open was too much. He celebrated his relief with another Hobnob, then realised the corny word play. He could hear his dad say he was going to do that with his posh new friends.

He had met Vik on the first day. They had rooms on the same ‘staircase’ in Pembroke, which meant sharing the same ‘gyp’ (tiny kitchen) – so many new words, but Vik had been relaxed and funny, despite going to Winchester.

He and Vik slept together for the first time at the end of freshers’ week and gradually became a couple, though not a particularly open and demonstrative one. Not entirely exclusive either. Especially on Vik’s part. Jimmy was ok with that, though he was less inclined to take advantage of that aspect of the arrangement.

In a way he had been surprised at Vik’s invitation. They had both agreed to spend quite a bit of time back with their families during the ‘long vac’. More holidays than term-time his dad had rather predictably remarked. Jimmy found a job at the kiosk at the bottom of Primrose Hill and was resigned to quite a dull summer when the text came. ‘You would just need to get to Skiathos and we can pick you up at the port’, as if that was the simplest thing in the world.

But he was determined to do it. Why shouldn’t he? He could just scrape the airfare together. He told his mum first and she was quite encouraging, glad that he had made friends good enough to go on holiday with. He probably picked the wrong moment with his dad, who was knackered after a week working in some flats that were being done up on the Holloway Road. Ready for more bloody students apparently.

He hadn’t really come out to his parents, but he kind of thought that his mum knew. He wasn’t sure about his dad. The night before he was due to fly out seemed the right moment. He could talk about Vik and his family more freely, not to mention the sleeping arrangements on the boat.

It was an anti-climax really. As he suspected his mum already knew, probably his dad too though he didn’t say. No anger from him though, just a bit sullen. He seemed more concerned to make snide jokes about privilege and swanning about on boats.

As he went upstairs though he heard his dad on one of his whispered rants. He could only catch the odd words and was pretty sure one of them was ‘disgusting’.

Jimmy was nervous setting off very early the next morning. He would be travelling on his own, Meeting Vik’s family. Watching what he said. He needed to get away though. Time to move on.

‘Bye mum’ he whispered as he shut the front door.

Vignette

The floor is slippery and sticky with grease. Above the charcoal grill the dripping extractors roar but the heat is stifling. What a time to be so hung over. As often as I can, I sit on the floor next to the oven trying to quell the queasiness. Every few minutes I have to get up and stir the giant soup cauldron, and check the spare ribs. Opening the oven door brings another blast of heat and a fresh wave of nausea.

The manageress brings an order to the pass and gives me a withering look. I don’t care. I just need to get through this shift.

Downstairs a fairly relaxed lunch service is underway, as a smattering of Notting Hill trendies pick through the menu. Fashionable food, sloppily cooked by an assortment of wannabe musicians, student journalists, and hard-working young Indonesians on their way to unknown destinations. Maybe even some others for whom this is their job.

The bright August sun streams through the windows and hurts my eyes. The smell of burgers and steaks on the grill almost ends me. My fellow chef, another displaced Yorkshireman with the telling nickname of ‘Chalky’, flirts with the manageress, who will subsequently accuse him of unfaithfulness. Their relationship will last all of two months. I haven’t really grasped it yet, but eventually I will realise that I loathe him. There’s nothing as detestable as a member of your own social group who you despise.

There’s a waitress at the pass now – Sophie, a typical product of the affluent NW11 class, private school educated, a bit entitled, pleasant enough but clearly no idea what she’s doing with her life. Why else would she be working here? The final damning fact is that she’s my current girlfriend – we all know how that goes. Slightly modified Northern vowels together with membership of an aggressively ambitious band have a certain cachet with these bored, spoilt girls, but eventually they will wise up.

The owner is an old hippie who has discovered an easy route into capitalism. His laissez-faire attitude extends to providing beer by the case for the kitchen staff, who efficiently work through it over the course of the evening. It’s a young man’s game – and this being the 1980s, it’s all men in the kitchen, and all women serving the customers. There are a couple of guys in their 30s – dinosaurs! - who are part of management and work the cocktail bar. None of this is seen as anything other than the natural order.

I navigate this social landscape much as I imagine a lesser creature would have tackled the primordial swamp – short on reflection, eyes on the prize, any prize.

Eventually six o’clock rolls around and I am released from my sisyphean nightmare.

I head straight to the pub where the Dickensian characters are all in place – Dave The Car, Young Steve, Jumbo Jet. The first drink washes the fog away and the cycle begins anew. Youth – wasted on the young.

"A bathysphere is the pinnacle of 1930s oceanic exploration," Pierre spat out his cigarette butt, "a 2-ton steel sphere with quartz portholes, bolted shut before being winched into the depths, probably safe to a thousand feet." His snooty French accent was grating.

"Smells worse than a poop deck in here," muttered Sasha, and held her nose. "Are you sure this is ready?!" A wave crashed against the ship's hull, and she quickly climbed inside, her feet sticking to the floor, Pierre slammed the hatch shut behind her.

"Putain," Pierre rolled his eyes and began securing bolts in place, "It's poupe, not poop, uneducated American. It's the bloody stern deck."

She couldn't hear him, but his face said it all. Pierre and his fucking obsession with naval terminology. Sighing, loud inside the steel vessel, she removed a skull from her satchel.

Outside, rain lashed and lightning leapt across the sky, as Pierre struggled to fasten the bolts. Before she could do anything, another huge wave crashed onto the deck, Pierre was swept away, just as the final bolt was locked in place, but not tightened.

Inside, the world lurched and suddenly Sasha was weightless, the skull floating with her, before the sphere hit the waves, and Sasha's head hit the deck.

When she came to blue light played against the wall, and she could see the Explorer outlined on the surface above, which she knew should not be possible, as portholes are oriented horizontally, not vertically.

"Shame that," said a voice. "Got a hobnob?".

She jerked to one side, the Explorer forgetting, and stared into floating skulls eyes. Skulls famously cannot talk, as they lack the requisite meat parts, also they were dead.

"No?!" Muttered Sasha, panic subsiding.

"You don't seem sure."

"No!"

"You are not sure if you don't have a hobnob?"

She blinked, confused and ran her fingers over her scalp searching for a bump that would explain it. When she found none, she did the thing when you know you're dreaming, and attempted to wake herself up. No result. She looked at the skull; it was smiling.

"It's grinning, not smiling, luv.. Get your words right."

"Are you not smiling?"

"I suppose I am, it's the assumption that bothers me, ya know…"

He was right, she thought.

"Damn straight."

"Hold on a damned minute." Sasha struggled to control herself, this is Pierre all over again, "Can you read my thoughts?"

"Every spirit can read another spirit's thoughts. How else do you expect us to, ya know, commune?"

Couldn't argue with this, she thought.

"Also, I ain't Pierre."

This had to be a hallucination then.

"Well, no… I am more of a guide of sorts."

"A guide?" She felt around the bathysphere for her satchel to put over the skull when something warm coated her fingers. "A guide for what?" This all felt very real, she had to admit.

"For the dearly departed, luv." The skull angled downwards and Sasha followed his gaze.

"Oh,..."

"Oh, indeed."

Within two blinks, Jamie rustled and was perfectly awake. A glance at his phone and a fumble for his vape for sustenance. It was near 4am. In the audible silence and cloudy darkness of the bedroom he gently inhaled and sighed in anxious contemplation.

He carefully swayed his hips and rubbed his buttocks back and forth against the bed sheet checking for pain. There it was, a sharp jolt in his lower back, a corporeal reminder of his own ticking clock. Followed by the voice. Not only were you unable to get a job Jamie but with the recent episode of erectile dysfunction, coupled with lower back problems from frantic and futile masturbation, you really were a useless excuse for a man.

His mind gear-shifted to more pecuniary matters. Like the farmer looming at the auction gate, he could hear the voice further summing up. You have maxed out your only credit card, failed to make the last payment on your mortgage and spent the last of your savings on Class B drugs. Do you see where this is heading Jamie?

Caroline would be awake in a few hours. He was now a hostage to time best spent flogging himself for the situation he now found himself in. The shameless Dairy Lea Triangle in a shop full of artisan cheese.

Perfecting his multi-tasking skills, he suckled on his vape like a kid goat and toyed with his itchy balls. Scratching away at his moist scrotum with one hand and checking his phone with the other, for any sign of deliverance. Alas no such luck, he was now, however, itch-free and up to speed on the plight of the Houti rebels.

Caroline was beginning to stir. It was past 4am. This meant he had even less time to summon a rescue package that would avoid the excruciating beg to his betrothed for a bail-out.

His initial thought to avoid the inquisition was to run to the hills, quite literally as he had acquired a wooden lodge near Loch Lomond as a retreat from family woes, financial vicissitudes and the daily existential threats posed by Sky News.

He would gather the hounds, fire-up the wood burner, and bang the brews, hobnobs and spliffs into him. His only companions, the dogs and Inspector Rebus, until he could drift away on a raft of unmitigated sleep.

It was only Tuesday. How would he account for his time whilst his dutiful wife was at work, slaving over a hot desk at home?

Ah yes, the poop-deck. The one thing that Caroline had insisted upon at the Lodge if they were to traipse the dogs with them.

‘So how was your day and what have you been up to? ‘Asked Caroline sincerely.

‘Been flat out fitting the poop-deck up at the lodge. Honey, you would not believe...’ Said Jamie straight-faced.

Caroline acknowledged him with a nod and a beaming smile.

‘Do you fancy a sticky bun?’ Jamie asked playfully.

‘Don’t be disgusting Jamie!’ Caroline retorted.