Do they still sit and dream on the Parkinson Steps?
Past the late night Warsaw Stores at the end of the road, across the street from the Sikh temple by the traffic lights. Did the sign in that cafe really say Only one fork per plate ? Later, sitting around the kitchen fireplace, at the house we shared off the Chapeltown Road, we’d make French toast, drink cheap black coffee and watch unwanted lecture notes burn in the open grate, as we’d talk long into the night… about back-to-backs, Hunslett legs and the Quarry Hill flats.
You were reading medicine, I was studying politics but that was the day before yesterday – half a lifetime ago when we were both still so young and cool and wild and free.We’ve long since fallen from each other’s radar screens. You never found that cure for cancer, I never changed the world. It’s been over thirty years since I last made French toast – and I don’t take my coffee black anymore.
back for a class reunion
the only face I recognise is mine
• OK, this is a bit of a cheat as it's by the editor Charles Christian however it was originally published by Blithe Spirit in June 2006
