Wednesday 27 March 2024

Ecliood


I am on a train and (an as old as he is now) Clint Eastwood is there (to be interviewed). He sits semi-side on with his back to me, partially reclined, his legs up and bent. It seems as if random people on the train are asking him random questions. It can't be very interesting for him as Clint falls asleep! The trains stops and several passengers, including Clint, shuffle off into the night time snow to go to the toilet, the scene framed by the open carriage doors. Clint, a tall, identifiable figure in the distance, starts to run back towards the (leaving) train. I remark that, 'it'd be just the thing if he falls', and splat! He tumbles flat onto his face. He stands up and while he makes the rest of his run he makes up a snowball that he throws at me. I manage to elicit a rare, deadpan smile from Clint by commenting that, 'not many people can say they've been hit by a snowball by Clint Eastwood.'-

There is now just a handful of us waiting to change trains on what seems to be a low-level/underground platform. (Also a sense we are wandering a dark-ish main street in some town, looking for a Heston Blumenthal restaurant.) I meet my friend Ay Arr on the steps up from the platform and stress to him how surprised he'll be when he meets... Clint! - who stands a full head taller than Arr. I then meet and bring down my father, again emphasising the surprise. My father approaches Clint from behind and, realising who he is, shakes him warmly by the hand. Clint, however, suddenly arches backwards, a cut (from the fall? now) clearly visible on his right temple. As he falls to the ground he says, 'I don't feel so good.' A crowd starts to gather and I am desperate for someone to dial 999 for an ambulance. I run upstairs to the girl in the ticket booth and ask her if she knows First Aid. She does not but instead directs me to the woman in the William Hill betting shop across the road-

I dash across but it seems to simply be the back rooms of a Chinese restaurant. Until, that is, a kindly old chef, mighty cleaver in hand, tells me, 'downstairs'. The William Hill is painted white throughout with a low ceiling and a thick carpet on the floor. A few men lounge in Jabba's Palace-esque booths of sorts – the place feels more like a private sex club. Indeed, the guy I ask about the WPC(?) seems to have on stockings below the waist. He directs me to the WPC but she is not there, just a bunch of random photos/flyers with a face on them that I leaf through in vain. One seems to have the slogan 'no line' and another reads 'sticky marshmallow end'-

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