Marks Brothers was ahead of it's time. Really healthy food and a cheap and cheerful young crowd without even a whiff of the Hipster era to come decades later. Sitting in at the back with Kiki, one of only a handful of female bike-messengers for company, I was enjoying my Friday. I was planning beers and hours in the arms of Morpheus. Kiki had other ideas. We had a josh about other bikies and plans for the new place she was moving into. One of the lads had joked that he'd have loved the contents of the hoover when Kiki was cleaning her old place up. She was planning to buy a motorbike to do bigger jobs and earn real money. We wolfed down our food and as I had just got paid I stumped up for lunch. It was good to have her rapier-wit and Scottish put-downs for company. She had just got back from the GPO after posting a cassette tape to one of her friends back home, filled with fifty quid's worth of cannabis and a whole lot of curry powder to throw the sniffer dogs off at the sorting office.
Fridays were always flat-to-the-mat. As if every firm in the city felt they had to show something for their salaries by sending documents post haste. Messengers could do savage numbers on that one day, saving a quiet week. Kiki was flat out too. After wolfing down her healthy grub she reached into her satchel and brought out a wrap of speed and unceremoniously emptied it into her orange juice, stirring it with a dessert spoon until it dispersed enough to swallow.
"Something to get me through...." And that was that. Kiki liked to party. A lick of amphetamine would get her through a manic working day and into Friday night where the real stuff started. Out Friday and Saturday and back to work Monday it was a vicious, candy-consuming circle. I was having lunch with her at the point when a little whizz got her through Friday, followed by a savage weekend with Bacchus as company. And Mondays needed a little pick-me-up to jump start the working week.
I was never into tarot card readings but that day I could have predicted the future like a clairvoyant.
No comments:
Post a Comment