‘The what?’ I asked in return.

‘Enough of your tomfoolery,’ said she, and she hoisted me from my chair and propelled me from the kitchen and into the hall.

And from there through the open front doorway.

‘You will find yourself regular employment,’ she told me. ‘Today,’ she told me. ‘At all costs,’ she told me. ‘Or I will be forced to inform upon you.’

This she told me too.

‘You will do what?’ I now asked of her.

But she slammed the door upon me.

It is funny at times what sticks in your mind and what apparently does not. I had lived for all of my life thus far in this Brentford backstreet named Mafeking Avenue, but I had never noticed before that the street sign was bilingual – English below, and above that, in the distinctive Gothic font that says ‘German’, what I took to be the German equivalent.

I viewed this with some surprise. How had a thing like that managed to slip by me for all these years? Or was it perhaps new? I stood and I viewed and considered that, no, it was not.

I shrugged and considered my hangover. And as it did not seem to be worthy of consideration, I dismissed it from my mind. What I needed now was breakfast. A brisk walk, then a bellyful.

Upon the rooftops and up in the trees, sparrows sang the songs their mothers had taught them. And as I breezed along in the unfailingly cheerful manner that is natural to me, I joined these jolly birdies in their choruses.

And as I breezed along a-whistling, a thought came unto me regarding the smoking of cigarettes. I had for some time been thinking about taking up the smoking. The smoking was a manly thing; so much was clear from the shop window advertisements that extolled the virtues of the smoking. Men admired and ladies loved a smoker. A man without a smoke was not quite a man.

The most famous brand known unto me was Wild Woodbine. Then at the very peak of its popularity, Sir Edmund Hillary had brought fame to the Wild Woodbine a decade before when he smoked them as he conquered Everest (some twenty years after Hugo Rune, it should be noted, and Mr Rune smoked his Woodbines in an ivory cigarette holder on the way up).

Ah yes, the Wild Woodbine.

I paused on the corner of Mafeking Avenue and considered the brief twenty paces to the Ealing Road and the corner confectioner’s, tobacconist’s and newsagent’s that was Old Mr Hartnel’s shop. Old Mr Hartnel always went angling down at the Grand Union Canal on Monday mornings with his best friend Far-Fetched Frank. And left the shop in the care of his son Norman. My friend Norman. My friend Norman who would surely sell me some cigarettes, even though I was underage.

Hm.

I did bobbings of the head. If I was to make an attempt at securing regular employment today, then surely my chances of securing it would be greatly enhanced if I turned up for the interview with a Wild Woodbine sticking out of my face. Of course it would.

So, Wild Woodbine first and then the full English.

Sorted.

Old Mr Hartnel did not hold with modernity. His corner shop had hardly changed at all during the preceding thirty years. It was all indeed what the past had been, but right here in the present, and I loved it.

I pushed upon the shop door and the shop bell rang. A clarion clanger announcing that one had entered from the outside world into this world where all time stood still and the past was ever-present.

And you can smell the past, you really can. The past smells like the interiors of old wardrobes. And the lavender bags that perfume the drawers of your aunty’s dressing table. And mothballs and musty tweeds and cigarette smoke on net curtains, and wax furniture polish and Brasso and sometimes baking bread.

And as the shop door closed behind me, I stood in the uncertain light that struggled to gain entry through rarely washed upper windowpanes and I breathed in that smell of the past and said-

‘What is that terrible pong?’

And behind the ancient counter Norman grinned. He stood and he grinned before those shelves that held those jars with their nostalgic-looking labels and their humbugs and sherbet lemons and rhubarbs and custards and hundreds and thousands and Google’s Gob Gums.

And all the other wonderful sweets within this wonderful shop.

Norman wore an old-fashioned shopkeeper’s coat. This had been a present from his father for his sixteenth birthday. As Norman had outgrown the one his father had given him for his tenth birthday. And Norman wore this and grinned a bit more and then he said, ‘Hello.’

‘Hello to yourself,’ I said to the grinner. ‘And once more, what is that terrible pong?’

‘It is sulphur,’ said Norman. ‘Or brimstone, if you prefer.’

‘I exhibit no preference,’ I replied. ‘I simply abhor its pestilential pehuverance. Could you not open a window? Or something?’

‘I tried something,’ said Norman. ‘I tried opening my mouth. But it hasn’t helped. And I’m not allowed to open the windows. My daddy says that the ambience might escape if I do.’

‘Your daddy will not take kindly to you poisoning his ambience with brimstone,’ I suggested.

‘You’re right,’ agreed Norman. ‘Which is why I shall not be mentioning it to him.’

I opened my mouth to give voice to the obvious, but instead asked, ‘Wherefrom comes this pungent pong?’

‘From the Bottomless Pit,’ replied Norman. ‘I have discovered its entrance upon upping some tiles in the kitchenette. Just as predicted, I hasten to say.’

‘By whom?’ I enquired.

‘By me. Through a fastidious study of the Book of Revelation with the aid of a pocket calculator that I built from Meccano and more judgement than luck, in a nutshell.’

‘Right,’ I said. And I nodded my head. Not fast, but somewhat sagely.

‘Doubting Thomas,’ said Norman.

‘Not a bit of it,’ said I. ‘Conduct me to the kitchenette and I will cast a glance at this pit.’

‘Regrettably, no,’ said Norman. ‘I am not allowed to leave the shop unattended. Perhaps some other time.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘When I have completed my experiments, which are presently ongoing. I have tipped all manner of toot into that pit and as yet I have not heard one thing strike its bottom.’

‘Which does not necessarily mean that it does not have one,’ I said to Norman. ‘It might well have one a good way down that is soft and absorbs sound. Have you considered that?’

‘Naturally,’ said Norman, and he drummed his fingers upon the countertop to the tune of Hubert Parry and William Blake’s ‘ Jerusalem ’. ‘It is the real McClooty. The biblical Bottomless Pit, wherein lurk the demonic beasties that frequent those unholy and unfathomable regions.’

‘I frankly have misgivings regarding this,’ I now said. ‘I fear that catastrophe awaits you, should you not cover up this pit hole posthaste. Beasties and unfathomable regions notwithstanding, yourself, or your daddy, might step or trip unwarily and-’ And I mimed the tumbling down and down.

‘Nice miming,’ said Norman. ‘And point well taken. But considering the benefits to Mankind that my discovery will bring, I can hardly just cover it up again, can I?’

I did shruggings of the shoulders and set free the hint of a sigh. ‘Do pardon me,’ I said, politely, ‘but what, precisely, might these benefits be?’

‘Oh, do wake up,’ Norman said. And he tapped at his left temple with the forefinger of his left hand. ‘It is the Bottomless Pit. Which means that anything you dump into it will keep falling for ever and ever and never hit the bottom.’

I shrugged once more.

‘Which means,’ Norman continued, ‘that it could become the most valuable resource on the planet. How ironic, eh? That something deemed so evil can have the potential to do so much good.’

‘I am perplexed,’ said I.

And, ‘Rubbish,’ said Norman.