alexander masters stuart a life backwards

It'll have big springs on either side what does the moving, and latches on the floor, because otherwise, it's boing, boing, whoosh.' In return for a crate of Foster's, Stuart explains from the kitchen, 'the bloke upstairs has promised to make me a James Bond mattress base that folds up against the wall, which will give me more room. He has thrown it at the wall twice and it still works.

I flop on to the sofa instead.Ī 1950s veneer side cabinet, with bottles and pill cases on top, is against the inside wall, and in the corner a big-screen TV standing on an Argos antique-style support. There is a single bed in the corner, a chest of drawers, a desk - sparse, cheap furniture, bought with the help of a government loan. Your fucking nine to fives! Someone needs to tell them! Literally, every day, deaths! Each one of them deaths is somebody's son or daughter! Somebody needs to tell them, tell them like it is!' I move into the main room. 'Cos there's so much misunderstanding,' he concludes angrily. Stuart pumps the toaster release and the slices fly high into the air. I want to thank them what got me out, like Linda and Denis and John and Ruth and Wynn, and me mum, me sister and me dad, well, I call him me dad, but he's me stepdad, if truth be told.' It's me way of telling the people what it was like down there. 'One of the few times I've been happy happy, the day I got this flat,' Stuart smiles at me. The window looks across a scrappy patch of grass to a hostel for disturbed women. Stuart stretches his hand to the other end of the kitchen, extracts a double pack of discount economy bacon from the fridge and submerges six slices in chip-frying oil. The kettle lead is discovered beneath a pack of sodden fish fingers. The scar extends like a squashed worm from beneath the tattoos on one ear to above his Adam’s apple.

He is a short man, in his early thirties, and props himself against the sink to arch up his head and show me the damage. Stuart pushes open the second reinforced door into his corridor, turns off the blasting intercom that honks like a foghorn whenever a visitor presses his front bell, and bumps into his kitchen to sniff the milk. 'It was cutting me throat what got me this flat.'

Alexander masters stuart a life backwards