End of an era

Monday 29 May.

5.33am.

It’s the end of an era, she says.

She is right.

Cherice was talking about David. He is on his way to Tenerife to work for the summer.

David has worked in Caffe Nero on Frith Street since the dawn of time. Well, since I started working on the Rickshaw anyway.

It seems like a lifetime. Especially after five solid nights cycling drunks and junks up and down roads, taking their abuse in the streets, occasionally cracking and wanting to drag them down an alleyway and set on the disrespectful fuckers with a rusty box cutter, as a lowly football fan did to me some 16 years ago.

David. Italian. Free coffee. Good man.

We met one night when he and friends wanted a free ride home. He gave me coffee and biscuits and I cycled them all past Warren Street station from Soho.

From then on I never paid for coffee again and cycled them home any time they wanted.

But it worked out more coffee than rides home.

No complaints.

Just a down-to-earth damn nice guy. Good looking too. Man, the ladies in Tenerife will be storming for him.

End of an era indeed.

Friends come and go, slipping in and out of your instalment of life like fine dreams in sleep, the ones you can remember in the morning.

Way home now.

Dawn.

Desperate need of sleep.

Five days now. Working constantly.

Journalism, Rickshaw.

Journashaw, Rickalism.

Tired eyes.

Burning knees.

Not enough to pay the rent.

Ghosts of the past appear.

Like hallucinations from strong drink or drugs.

Human de-ja-vu.

Seen those people before.

But it can’t be.

No. Never say never.

Nothing is impossible in this life, right?