off, like when you turn a telly off with a remote, goes to a flat line, then a dot, then flicker back on and there’s a camera inside an IKEA box, Ted opens it, starts pulling out planks of wood, it flickers, the box closes, back to blackness.
Music still playing, the characters are back on stage in their first positions, it’s Monday again, nothing changes, Ted ’s still at work, Charlotte is still in the classroom, Danny is still up sniffing lines with his mates. They look tired. Lonely.
End.
Notes
1 Magic FM: an independent radio station based in London that plays popular music. This station is also referenced on the track ‘The Truth’ on Tempest’s album Everybody Down.
2 Babycham: a sparkling alcoholic drink, popular in the 1960s and 1970s.
3 jacked: a colloquial term meaning ‘stole’ or ‘thieved’.
4 spliffs: marijuana cigarettes.
5 rock pipes: glass pipes used to smoke rocks of crack cocaine.
6 skunk: a potent type of marijuana.
7 pissed: colloquial term meaning inebriated by alcohol.
8 custard creams: a popular sandwich biscuit, with a firm cream centre.
9 skinning up: colloquial term meaning to roll a marijuana cigarette.
10 MDMA: 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine, a powder form of the recreational drug ecstasy.
11 joint: another colloquial term for a marijuana cigarette.
12 Peckham: an area of south-east London. Known in the late twentieth century as an ethnically diverse working-class district, it became increasingly fashionable in the 2010s and beyond as a result of gentrification and the wider urban development of London.
13 Ketamine: a hallucinogenic recreational drug.
14 killing each other over postcodes: refers to gang violence happening between young people from different districts of London. A postcode is a set of letters and numbers used to signify particular districts for the purposes of mail delivery.
15 Tescos: a popular supermarket chain.
16 Rizla: a popular brand of cigarette rolling paper.
17 munted: colloquial phrase meaning inebriated on drugs and/or alcohol.
18 bass heavy: colloquial phrase meaning that one can feel the throb on the bass of the music.
19 MDMA tics: the physical signs that you’ve consumed MDMA.
20 Croydon: a large town in south London, not glamorous; a flashpoint for the 2011 riots discussed in the CONTEXT section of the introduction.
21 booze: colloquial term for alcohol.
22 vin rouge: French for ‘red wine’.
23 Putney: a district in south-west London.
24 Fresh Prince of Bel Air: a popular 1990s sitcom, fronted by the actor Will Smith, with a novelty hip hop theme tune.
25 pie ’n’ mash: a traditional London dish of meat pie and mashed potatoes.
26 Full English: a traditional cooked breakfast usually including bacon, sausage, egg, beans and toast, with other optional elements such as tomato, black pudding, hash browns etc.
27 bubble and squeak: traditional British breakfast dish of fried leftover vegetables, usually including cabbage and potatoes.
28 caff: colloquial local pronunciation of ‘café’.
29 IKEA: a popular furniture store.
30 pill: slang for a recreational drug in tablet form, usually ecstasy.