Author: Samuel Potter (---.bbtec.net)
Date: 07-03-05 08:28
I read the post about paying for editors and someone mentioned it's a good idea to post an excerpt and get some feedback. Please feel free to comment on the following. (Note; English spelling)
Sorry for posting in the literary agents section originally!
NINE ~ THE EDGWARE ROAD
They mimic me, the butterflies in my stomach, flapping in an exhaustible panic at the sight of all the scantily clad women in their lascivious poses. Just act normal, I tell myself. After all, I mightn't be doing anything sinister; I could just be ringing my mother on her birthday, or arranging to meet a friend even. There's no reason why I shouldn't be, except of course that the phone boxes on the
Edgware road tend to be plastered from top to bottom in salacious call-cards and their very local phone numbers.
The traffic seems to be particularly heavy around here. Surely continents move faster than this? A skinhead in a white tank top sounds his horn relentlessly at the car in front, which refuses to move though the lights are on green. As they go red again, he winds down his window, leans out and yells '****in tip-cal womn driva', all the time screwing his right index finger into the temple of his head to make sure she knows exactly what he thinks of her. I'm a little puzzled myself -- it's bumper to bumper ahead. Finally, he retreats back into his D reg Cavalier: I guess he's got a reason to be pissed off after all.
A fire engine with sirens to stir the deaf navigates its way through the parting traffic as if being swallowed by some sort of mechanical peristalsis. A black Escort cuts in and tails along behind it, braking and accelerating hard in a bid to stay tight and leaves a
trail of gesticulating fingers and fists in its wake: I suspect the other drivers are mostly pissed that they didn't react quickly enough to do the same.
Throngs of Arabs sit outside shoddy cafes, puffing their elegant water pipes between mouthfuls of honey-soaked baklava, the apple tobacco aroma combining with the exhaust excretions to create a stifling atmosphere made worse by the unusually hot weather for April. And a Saturday too; the weekend skies are usually fully booked up by particularly horrid weather at this time of year.
On the other side of the road, two old-fashioned telephone boxes stand face to face as if they themselves are in conversation with each other. A middle-aged man, his grey T-shirt tucked in to threadbare jeans in an effort to keep his gut from spilling out further, occupies the box on the left, the handset wedged between his neck and shoulder as he writes something down in a notebook. He stops writing and starts prodding his forehead with the end of his biro and checks his watch. It's 2.43pm; I've been waiting nearly ten minutes for him to leave. A noxious odour alerts me to the fact I've lit the wrong end of my cigarette for the umpteenth time in my smoking career. I break the crumpled filter off and smoke the rest straight; I could do with the head-rush anyway.
He finally vacates the box and a rush of nerves fizzle up from my stomach to my chest like champagne bubbles as I set off across the road, trying in vain to avoid eye contact with the occupants of a double-decker bus, who stare out with paper faces, searching for incident to distract them from the chronic tedium. The ring of a bell stops me in my tracks as a bicycle whizzes past in slow motion, leaving a series of blurred images in it's wake; calf muscles, flexed and oily, pumping like pistons. Quickening my pace to the pavement, I step up to it with purpose and head resolutely for my target like a heat-seeking missile, and as the post-impact panic subsides and the dust settles, I find myself standing to attention with handset to ear and the line already ringing.
Over to you,
Samuel
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