Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
'Ready?'
'Ready!'
I threw myself backwards off the wall.
Jim caught me - well, broke my fall - and we ended up sprawled in the middle of the
road.
'You okay?' Jim wheezed.
I rolled over and stood up. 'Seem to be. You?' I put out a hand and helped him up.
'Fine,' he said, limping to the pavement with a pained look on his face. Then he
grinned at me triumphantly. 'See?'
I shook my head. 'You're aff your fuckin heid, pal.'
We walked on, only stopping at one of the high flats further up Adelaide Road to try
to get out onto the roof to look at the view of London By Night. We hauled ourselves up
through a hatch into the lift machinery space, but that was as far as we got; the outside
door was locked.
(I asked Jim to look over this story to make sure I wasn't getting anything wrong and
he said that for him the funniest bit was right at the start, when we'd been walking up the
road. He must have been looking at something across the street or otherwise have become
distracted because he didn't notice me shinning up the bus stop and climbing to the top
of the wall in the first place; he thought I was still walking along beside him and when he
turned to talk to me couldn't understand where I'd gone. I seemed to have disappeared.
He stood there confused for a few moments, looking all around, then shouted 'Banksie?'
I said, 'Hello,' - wittily, obviously - from above head height and that was when he real-
ised where I was. Jim also claims the wall was only eight feet high, but - ha! - he wasn't
the one standing up there.)
'Banksie, what's this thing here that says “Palm”?'
'Oh, that's for the Palm Tungsten handheld thingy I got for going on the Trans-Siberi-
an. I should have returned it and got my money back after we junked the passports but I
kind of took to it. Especially the wee fold-out keyboard thing; that's just totally brilliant.
I mean, I've never actually used it, but … Anyway, that folder on the laptop called Palm
is for the software that lets the laptop and the Palm talk to each other.'
'Awright. Not porn, then.'
'Eh?'
'Not porn.'
'Of course not porn; I don't
have
any fucking porn.'
'What, really?'
'Really.'
'You serious?'
'Yes I'm serious.'
