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 the streetlights were coming on, [01:22.85]so I took a long walk around the block, [01:25.99][01:24.47]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 yeas. [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 everely 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, [03:41.03]I throw down the finish 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 to shout “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.