POSTER & ERIC

Eric could hear someone in the garden, it was three in the morning. He opened the bedroom window, there were four cops outside. They were all bent double laughing. Their car was pulled up, blue lights still flashing and a scooter lay across the pavement. They’d been chasing a thief when he jumped off the stolen bike, leapt over Eric’s garden wall and escaped across the neighbour’s patio. One policemen, in not so hot pursuit, failed to scale the wall and now sat breathless, surrounded by bricks and rubble while his colleagues looked on, convulsed with giggles. After they’d composed themselves they took a statement so an insurance claim could be made for the collapsed wall. They sat in Eric’s kitchen under his poster of The Who’s ‘Sell Out’ album. One of the policemen, it turned out, was a fan of The Who. He offered to buy the poster. Eric agreed, he’d bought it on a whim from a brocante in Toulouse. But the policemen never called back, the thief, as far as Eric knows, was never caught and the poster was never claimed.

08 Dec 2013