When you wake up on Sunday morning and decide that you'd rather wake up on
Sunday afternoon, but nonetheless your flatmate has woken up, it's a good
idea to perform the magic of suggestion. Try to transmit the thoughts
`croissant aux amandes' and `pain au chocolat' without actually uttering
the word `Barringer's', and then go back to bed for a bit. If you're lucky,
or just very good at it, you will wake up a few hours' later to discover
that the relevant items of patisserie have arrived. Possibly, the coffee
will be ready.
Montrose Terrace is also the only place in the world where you can get
Semi-Permanent Make-Up. Don't ask me how, but this stuff lasts five
years. There's a gang of sixteen-year-old young ladies who
wear white stilettos and very little else. They lurk in the shadows
waiting for any foolish sixteen-year-old girl who eats croissants
and wears boots and talks about things other than boyfriends and
refuses to pretend to be utterly vapid to come walking
by all by herself. Then they jump out and grab her
and superglue white stilettos to her feet and handcuff
her to a chair in the Face-it Beauty Salon. When she eventually
emerges, she has no choice but to spend the next five years looking
like a young lady. Eventually she starts acting like one.
If you think this sounds uncannily like the plot to Flash McVeigh,
then you're right, that's exactly what it is: uncanny.
Down to London Road.