Thursday, or perhaps Friday

Jefh Davies

March 2025

It was a Thursday, as far as I remember, but if it was, it was one of those Thursdays that feels like a Friday so I could be wrong.  It was at least a decade ago so it’s hard to say for sure.  I do know that it was around half past one in the afternoon, that I was on my lunch break, and I was in one or other of the little café-restaurants on Menorca Street, eating pasta.  Probably tagliatelle.  That was always my favourite.  I was also really looking forward to my romantic weekend in Norfolk with Dusty, so perhaps it was a Friday after all.  

It seemed like nothing much was happening on the street outside besides the normal to-and-fro flow of the usual mix of interesting, dull, eccentric, average, and fabulous people.  It being Menorca Street, the dull ones were in a minority, of course.  No cars, obviously. 

Then the rain hit.  Fierce and sudden.  Freakishly so.  Total torrential downpour.  The street streaming in seconds.  People scattering, sprinting, diving into doorways, getting drenched anyway.  A hullabaloo of hissing and splashing.  Not the kind of thing you forget.  Not as memorable as a hurricane, or a tornado, or maybe even a blizzard.  Not the kind of thing you tell your children about, or their children, when you’re old and they nod and don’t really believe you.  Fixed in the memory, though, by its combination of banality and extraordinary ferocity.  Amongst other things.  As prosaic as most rainstorms are, but taken to a degree of extravagance not normally known.  And yes, I am aware that I’m going on about it a bit, so I’ll just say that I didn’t make it to Norfolk that weekend, although I did get there eventually, albeit on my own.

I knew who one of the men was who burst in through the door of the café, soaked to the skin.  He was the owner of the corner-shop on my street, who I saw most days but didn’t really know – other than that was who he was.  I didn’t even know his real name.  I say “real” name because I did have a name for him, but it was one I’d made up.  It was a thing I did – and still do: making up names for people I sort-of know but not really: other dog-walkers, for instance, and just passers-by I see regularly and say hello to, or sometimes have a quick chat with about nothing in particular. 

My made-up name for the corner-shop owner was Bruce – after Bruce Willis, because he was bald and had a nice smile.   It turned out that the other man was his husband.  And that was a surprise, because he was very familiar, too.  And I had a made-up name for him as well:  it was the pet name I called him when we were alone.  He called me Dizzy, and I called him Dusty.  It’s funny, the things we remember, the things we forget.