Read Online Reading the Ceiling by Dayo Forster - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Dayo Forster
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lifts a tea towel, scrunches it up and throws it at me.
I stuff my lazy legs into jeans, my top half into a tight ribbed cream polo neck. I add a suede knee-length coat rescued from the heap of clothes behind my bedroom door. I am going to be late for my first lecture. I only found £2.89 so Iâll need to create some sympathy for me, somehow, during the course of the day.
Plan A. I could scrounge lunch off the Prof in the Senior Common Room, if I approach him about my dilemma over the future and murmur about needing to mull things over with him. Iâll mention that I am thinking through possible job applications but the Careers Office is no good. Their shelves are bursting with pamphlets about rosy prospects in Shell and Price Waterhouse . . . supplemented by thin, unappetising sheets about joining fancy non-governmental organisations that have set out to revolutionise well-building in Bangladesh. Hardworking African teachers have toiled to get me to the top of the educational heap. These choices seem a bit short of special.
They will probably have turkey (roasted) or pie (crusted) on the menu. And the Prof likes the occasional tipple at the end of the week. It being Friday today, if I get the timing right and turn up just before I need to rush off to a lecture, he will feel obliged to offer his ear, and his opinions, and that should be lunch. Guaranteed.
Plan B: I find Rifat, whose mum lives a stoneâs throw from college. She makes large, heartwarming casseroles with homemade bread and delivers them to his flat several times a week. I could offer to listen to his collection of David Bowie or to check out his latest game design, and the new graphics-rendering tricks heâs invented.
If neither of these work, I could always end up with the no-plan option, the default. I need do nothing and Akim will take me somewhere. A complete cop-out.
The tube smells of unwashed, flu-laden warmth. A woman sits across from me with skin that drips off her face in wrinkled folds, and eyes that bulge and seem to be looking everywhere at once. Very crone-like, very Hansel and Gretel bad-woman type, she clutches a tapestry bag with faded colours close to her chest as if it contains a great treasure. She rubs her hand over it occasionally as she munches on toothless gums.
A couple spill into the carriage with giggles and teenage cuddles and relentless touching and kissing. One of the pair is wearing large rectangular glasses and the other is pimply. I look at the two of them cavorting on the train seats, and although I feel a twinge at the loss of innocence, I donât feel envy. I look at them with eyes that search for the hidden, the unknowable between them. One or both of them will soon find out â itâs worthless. It all ends in pain.
It has been so easy getting involved with Akim. I let him see the bits of me that need not be cordoned off into little secret holes of self. He has access to the bits that I can make carefree, the parts I can laugh away. I mother him a bit. I have a flat where he can hang out, even if he canât spend an entire night in it. I cook food that heâs used to. He does not seem to mind me bossing him around sometimes. He has said, though, that most of the girls heâs met since heâs been here have only been interested in his car, his money, his ability to take them to expensive nightclubs. According to him, I have been the least resource-hungry girl heâs met for a long time. I wonder how different I really am from those girls. I like the fact that heâs got money. I like going to places beyond my means. The only hair split is that I refuse to let him buy me things. Iâve declined offers of watches, jeans, shoes. And heâs never seen that in a girl heâs dated. He sometimes seems Reuben-like to me, not in his clothes, but in his manner.
I get out at my stop and walk up the escalator, flashing my travelcard at the chubby-cheeked man leaning against
I stuff my lazy legs into jeans, my top half into a tight ribbed cream polo neck. I add a suede knee-length coat rescued from the heap of clothes behind my bedroom door. I am going to be late for my first lecture. I only found £2.89 so Iâll need to create some sympathy for me, somehow, during the course of the day.
Plan A. I could scrounge lunch off the Prof in the Senior Common Room, if I approach him about my dilemma over the future and murmur about needing to mull things over with him. Iâll mention that I am thinking through possible job applications but the Careers Office is no good. Their shelves are bursting with pamphlets about rosy prospects in Shell and Price Waterhouse . . . supplemented by thin, unappetising sheets about joining fancy non-governmental organisations that have set out to revolutionise well-building in Bangladesh. Hardworking African teachers have toiled to get me to the top of the educational heap. These choices seem a bit short of special.
They will probably have turkey (roasted) or pie (crusted) on the menu. And the Prof likes the occasional tipple at the end of the week. It being Friday today, if I get the timing right and turn up just before I need to rush off to a lecture, he will feel obliged to offer his ear, and his opinions, and that should be lunch. Guaranteed.
Plan B: I find Rifat, whose mum lives a stoneâs throw from college. She makes large, heartwarming casseroles with homemade bread and delivers them to his flat several times a week. I could offer to listen to his collection of David Bowie or to check out his latest game design, and the new graphics-rendering tricks heâs invented.
If neither of these work, I could always end up with the no-plan option, the default. I need do nothing and Akim will take me somewhere. A complete cop-out.
The tube smells of unwashed, flu-laden warmth. A woman sits across from me with skin that drips off her face in wrinkled folds, and eyes that bulge and seem to be looking everywhere at once. Very crone-like, very Hansel and Gretel bad-woman type, she clutches a tapestry bag with faded colours close to her chest as if it contains a great treasure. She rubs her hand over it occasionally as she munches on toothless gums.
A couple spill into the carriage with giggles and teenage cuddles and relentless touching and kissing. One of the pair is wearing large rectangular glasses and the other is pimply. I look at the two of them cavorting on the train seats, and although I feel a twinge at the loss of innocence, I donât feel envy. I look at them with eyes that search for the hidden, the unknowable between them. One or both of them will soon find out â itâs worthless. It all ends in pain.
It has been so easy getting involved with Akim. I let him see the bits of me that need not be cordoned off into little secret holes of self. He has access to the bits that I can make carefree, the parts I can laugh away. I mother him a bit. I have a flat where he can hang out, even if he canât spend an entire night in it. I cook food that heâs used to. He does not seem to mind me bossing him around sometimes. He has said, though, that most of the girls heâs met since heâs been here have only been interested in his car, his money, his ability to take them to expensive nightclubs. According to him, I have been the least resource-hungry girl heâs met for a long time. I wonder how different I really am from those girls. I like the fact that heâs got money. I like going to places beyond my means. The only hair split is that I refuse to let him buy me things. Iâve declined offers of watches, jeans, shoes. And heâs never seen that in a girl heâs dated. He sometimes seems Reuben-like to me, not in his clothes, but in his manner.
I get out at my stop and walk up the escalator, flashing my travelcard at the chubby-cheeked man leaning against
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