Steve tip-toed barefoot into my shop; he was bleary eyed and disheveled.\u00a0 Clearly, he had just tumbled out of bed.<\/p>\n
\u2018Hi mate\u2026..got any milk?\u2019<\/p>\n
I pointed to the chiller at the back of the shop. The young man walked delicately over the wooden floor past the shelves of Whole Earth peanut butters, the sugar-free jams and the wheat-free pastas.<\/p>\n
\u2018Any regular milk?….you know\u2026not\u00a0 this organic stuff or soya?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Sorry Steve, that\u2019s all we have. Try Iceland across the road,\u2019 I suggested.<\/p>\n
\u2018Never mind. Can\u2019t be arsed with that\u2026I\u2019ll take a pint of this\u2026\u2026errmm, can I pay you later?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Sure.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Oh,\u2019 he said turning back at the door, \u2018there\u2019s like a damp patch appearing on my ceiling\u2026..just above the window. You couldn\u2019t take a look at it and let the landlord know, could you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Will this evening be a good time?\u2019 I enquired.<\/p>\n
Steve, an under-graduate studying French at Goldsmiths College, lived in the flat behind my wholefood store. I was unofficial caretaker to the property, a role Mr Markovic had somehow tricked me into.<\/p>\n
When I got to the flat that evening, Steve was out but Justine, his girl-friend, was there.<\/p>\n
The flat was a mess. Clothes lay strewn all over the floor, you could barely see the carpet. There were trousers and shirts draped over the furniture too. Justine mumbled her apologies as she tried to clear up the cups with ancient tea dregs and cigarette butts in make shift ash trays. The smell of cigarette smoke pervaded the air. I peeked into the kitchen. The sink was piled high with unwashed crockery, saucepans and cutlery. A little saucepan with dried pasta sauce over the edge lay on the cooker which had not seen soap or scourer in a while. What could one expect anyway? It was a student flat after all.<\/p>\n
By the exhausted sofa lay a beautiful guitar on a stand. I drew a finger across the strings and it sang its E tune.<\/p>\n
\u2018Please don\u2019t\u00a0 touch,\u2019 admonished Justine. \u2018Alex\u2026.I mean Steve, doesn\u2019t like anyone touching his guitar.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018I didn\u2019t know he played the guitar,\u2019 I said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Yeah,\u00a0 he\u2019s in a band and all and they\u2019re going to be famous, you know?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Really?\u2019 I said, disbelieving. \u2018I hear him and his mates listening to ABBA over and over.\u2019<\/p>\n
She ignored my snide comment\u00a0and pointed to the patch on the ceiling. Despite the landlord\u2019s attempt to tart up the flat with his job lot of magnolia and white there was something\u00a0 Dickensian about it all. You could smell the damp and the mildew. A crop of mould had worked its way through the paint in areas. The chip wood wallpaper, designed to conceal bad plaster work, bubbled and peeled in places.<\/p>\n
I gathered a pile of clothes sat on the chair and, handing them to the girl-friend, dragged it near the cracked sash window and stood on it. I put my palm against the patch on the ceiling. It was wet and cold.<\/p>\n
\u2018Yes, looks like a slow leak. I think it might be a pin hole in the lead pipe leading to the tank just above here. These old lead pipes can\u2019t take it any more. It\u2019s happened before. I\u2019ll let Mr Markovic know.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Thanks Des, \u2018 she said.<\/p>\n
I picked my way past the detritus on the floor and left.<\/p>\n
A week later Steve came over to thank me for sorting things out and to pay for the pint of milk. He was fresh this time and looked his handsome self in a casual sort of way, his shock of hair draped over his left eye.<\/p>\n
\u2018By the way, who\u2019s Alex? Justine\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018That\u2019s my stage name,’ he interrupted. ‘It\u2019s \u2026.errrr\u2026it\u2019s a literary reference.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Oh. She tells me you\u2019re going to be famous. What\u2019s your band called? \u2026.so I can keep an eye out for your name in the bright lights,\u2019 I said cynically.<\/p>\n
\u2018Ya, I play bass. We\u2019ve been signed up and everything. Big bucks coming our way and I can get a mortgage soon\u2019.<\/p>\n
Mortgage? Now that doesn\u2019t sound like rock and roll to me, I thought. Was he being ironic?<\/p>\n
As it turned out, Steve and his mates\u00a0did go on to become world famous as a Britpop band. A couple of years after fame, world tours and fortune the band performed at the Goldsmith\u2019s College union bar and half an hour after\u00a0that gig Steve, aka Alex, came down to our shop and asked for me. I was not in. When I did get in my staff, mostly young Goldsmith\u2019s students, were beside themselves and breathlessly asked: \u2018How do you know Alex James of Blur<\/em>? He came down here this afternoon specifically to see you!\u2019<\/p>\n My minor claim to fame is that Alex James lived behind my store and he did say nice things about me in \u2018Bit of A Blur\u2019<\/em>, his memoir, too. That\u2019s my 5 minutes of fame done; another 10 to go, Warhol.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n *NB: these scenes are composites.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Steve tip-toed barefoot into my shop; he was bleary eyed and disheveled.\u00a0 Clearly, he had just tumbled out of bed. \u2018Hi mate\u2026..got any milk?\u2019 I pointed to the chiller at the back of the shop. The young man walked delicately … Continue reading