Flat of Angles, Pt. 1 - Benedict Cumberbatch

[00:00.03]I hope you enjoy the finally files Late Night Tales selection
[00:03.29]Welcome
[00:04.74]To the first part of the four part late night tell story Flat of Angles
[00:10.03]Written by  Simon Cleary and read by me Benedict Cumberbatch
[00:15.55]I’ll miss you,
[00:18.75]I’ll miss our walks,
[00:22.60]trying to pretend we are in perfect step.
[00:25.28]Out of step now,
[00:28.25]sick on the floor,
[00:30.81]out of the room,
[00:32.63]fenced in, trapped.
[00:35.57]I can still hear the schoolchildren play outside at their usual 10:30.
[00:41.17]It always used to annoy me, as I was trying to sleep, but it doesn’t now.
[00:44.90]It seems alright.
[00:46.92]A replacement, a continuation.
[00:51.55]Their sound jangles around the room,
[00:55.12]it sounds so different from where I’ve been.
[00:58.14]A party, alone.
[01:02.35]Packed in with others, but never feeling so alone.
[01:07.41]People dance too close.
[01:11.60]She was there, I had only gone because I hoped she would be.
[01:19.33]I had arrived early, as the streetlights were coming on,
[01:22.85]so I took a long walk around the block,
[01:24.47]taking a few extra lefts and rights,
[01:25.99]taking a few extra lefts and rights,
[01:27.00]past the Chicken Cottage and the Costcutter,
[01:30.71]then along a crescent that arced me out of my way,
[01:32.59]past a group of figures huddled under the entrance to the flats,
[01:35.56]shielding the flicking lighter from the wind.
[01:38.35]This... area is little more than a traffic island,
[01:45.96]a triangle around which cars and coaches stream into town up the bleak Old Kent,
[01:52.27]or out into Kent and the coast.
[01:54.66]The same faces trudge around there for years.
[01:59.25]“Spare some change please? Much as possible.”
[02:01.72]“You want to buy some ****.”
[02:03.69]“Do you have a spare cigarette?”
[02:06.06]He always wants one.
[02:08.13]And that one about **** was not a question.
[02:11.12]There is a Samaritans office between two severely dilapidated buildings on a black-bricked terrace.
[02:18.75]It has a thermometer painted on a 10 ft wooden board nailed to the outside.
[02:22.70]There is red paint up to the ￡0 mark, and, an ambitious 10 ft higher,
[02:26.84]is written ￡200,000. It never got any warmer there.
[02:32.03]The Man begging in the corner makes me take a huge detour when going towards my flat.
[02:40.61]He looks up with a pitiful stare that makes me want to kick the misery out of him.
[02:46.82]His dipit wee cup of unwanted coffee.
[02:50.36]A child’s sleeping bag.
[02:52.22]JJB sports.
[02:53.58]A crack, a release, his poor exhaust.
[02:57.26]He was lost.
[02:59.08]The Broadway.
[03:03.12]The Town Hall, such a grand building, all nautical reminiscences, here, far from water.
[03:10.53]It would be quite a sight if you could get far back enough from it to take a look.
[03:13.45]But my back is up against the black panelling of the gay sauna opposite,
[03:18.26]a coach thunders by, and I run past the video shop that I owe ￡5 to.
[03:23.05]Meaning go way back.
[03:26.95]I may be becoming one of those people you see in New Cross.
[03:32.19]I have a book, peeping out of one pocket, at least want to look vaguely intellectual if someone I know or someone knows me walks by,
[03:41.03]I throw down the finished can into the pile between two walls, outside my flat.
[03:46.09]Look, there’s the hardware store.
[03:49.98]It has a large cutout of a radiant man and woman in overalls,
[03:52.70]the woman handing the man a tin of paint, up his ladder, beaming.
[03:56.18]It has faded in the sun.
[03:58.90]I bought creosote from there, once.
[04:02.12]What a night!
[04:07.26]Pure ment..!
[04:09.23]It was messy!
[04:11.07]It was out of hand! It was out of space!
[04:13.40]I rapped on that track once, at Bagley’s, remember it?!Skibbadee handed me the mic,
[04:17.32]I got him and shouted “IF I’M GONNA SEND HIM TO OUTER SPACE TO FIIIND ANOTHER RACE!”
[04:22.70]Absolutely fantastic, those days…
[04:28.19]The pills these days are not the same, they don’t work.
[04:31.33]No love.
[04:33.78]I was chatting to this bloke in the kitchen, and he said something,
[04:36.05]I can’t remember what,
[04:36.69]but I had to push him over, crashed his arse on the coffee table,
[04:39.73]ash tinnies and CDs everywhere!
[04:42.66]Spilled the lines too, the fat bastard.
[04:46.29]I can’t get you out of my head,
[04:50.98]your loving is all I think about,
[04:56.02]no I can’t get you out of my head,
[04:58.85]something something is all I think about.
[05:00.41]I can’t get this loop out of my head,
[05:01.88]no I think I’ll have to…
[05:03.54]I need to sit down.
[05:06.76]I can’t stop my leg jiggling,
[05:09.40]it wants to be somewhere else.
[05:10.23]I need to get out of here.
[05:10.88]I can hear sirens – can you hear them?
[05:11.88]Then again, they are always here,
[05:12.92]the background to day to day life here.
[05:14.31]When music is playing, and they come,
[05:15.82]they sometimes sync up.
[05:16.68]The New Cross Remix, I call it.
[05:19.01]I used to... call it.
[05:22.09]This isn’t how it advertised itself.
[05:27.32]It was fun, it was Technicolour, the music made me feel liquid,
[05:35.03]I melted into the company and was chief among them.
[05:37.15]I was in the kitchen, pouring pint after pint of water over myself, insisting to a stranger that
[05:43.71]“No, no… The drinks are on me!”
[05:47.38]I can’t remember what happened after that.
[05:50.71]Except her there. I had managed to talk to her,
[05:57.24]I was talking about an art gallery, I thought she’d be impressed,
[05:59.91]but her eyes kept dancing around the space behind me,
[06:01.83]smiles flickered on her lips as her eyes focussed on scenes I was oblivious to.
[06:06.12]I heard laughter. It was from my throat, but I didn’t feel it.
[06:10.75]I was just trying to breathe life into a long-dead persona.You've been listening to Late Night Tales.Music and stories worth staying up for.