Scuppered

My name is Brim Miscovich and I have a small flat in South London where I have lived for many years. The street where I live is a main road and it’s become increasingly busy since I arrived. I have a job cleaning an old café that belongs to an elderly gentleman called Boris Salvo. Boris saved it from demolition when it was under pressure to make way for new office space. At the back of the café are four apple trees that were planted as a small orchard in the seventeenth century and a young friend of mine made a very short film there. He told the story of a little girl who was orphaned during the blitz. The girl took up refuge in the orchard which had miraculously survived the bombing and took a bite out of every apple that hung from the trees while she was there.

Last week the council removed some things from outside of my building. They weren’t harming anyone and they were strapped safely to the brickwork with a proper binding that I had learnt to tie as a merchant seaman. I am always very careful about these things and here is a list of the things that they took:

• My collection of plastic crates
• Forty metres of binding rope
• Ten lengths of 4x4, 6ft ply
• Plastic sheeting
• A large collection of used plastic bags

Since the road has become so busy over the years I had started on a bridge project and I had only got so far as the foundation structure. Once it was completed it would have enabled me to create a pulley system that would have taken me over the traffic with plenty of space below for everything to pass by safely underneath. I had no intention of causing any trouble to the traffic below or indeed to endanger my feet. I don’t like to use the Zebra crossing at the junction.