One Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative¹
I
The Espresso machine behind my shoulder hissed² like an angry snake.
The noise it made had a sinister³, not to say devilish, suggestion about it.
Perhaps, I reflected, most of our contemporary noises carry that implica-tion. The intimidating⁴ angry scream of jet planes as they flash across thesky; the slow menacing rumble⁵ of a tube train approaching through itstunnel; the heavy road transport that shakes the very foundations of yourhouse… Even the minor⁶ domestic noises of today, beneficial in actionthough they may be, yet carry a kind of alert. The dishwashers, the refri-gerators, the pressure cookers, the whining⁷ vacuum cleaners—“Be care-ful,” they all seem to say. “I am a genie⁸ harnessed to your service, but ifyour control of me fails….”
A dangerous world—that was it, a dangerous world.
I stirred the foaming⁹ cup placed in front of me. It smelt¹⁰ pleasant.
“What else will you have? Nice banana and bacon sandwich?”
It seemed an odd juxtaposition¹¹ to me. Bananas I connected with mychildhood — or occasionally flambé with sugar and rum. Bacon, in mymind, was firmly associated with eggs. However, when in Chelsea, eat asChelsea does. I agreed to a nice banana and bacon sandwich.
Although I lived in Chelsea—that is to say, I had had a furnished flatthere for the last three months—I was in every other way a stranger inthese parts. I was writing a book on certain aspects of Mogul architecture,but for that purpose I could have lived in Hampstead or Bloomsbury orStreatham or Chelsea and it would have been all the same to me. I was ob-livious of my surroundings except for the tools of my trade, and the neigh-bourhood in which I lived was completely indifferent to me, I existed in aworld of my own.

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