Tiger, Tiger (My Once Upon A Deadline story)

Part 5: Re-Configuring at the Library!

RESHUFFLE!

Because of the 1500 word limit, the flower shop had to go – so sorry ladies! Maybe Tiger and Lil will come see you in another story. Here’s what I’m working off now, 3 hours 14 min into One Upon A Deadline. Got a serious case of coffee stomach too. I need to eat! Maybe they’ll have a snack for me at my next stop – the police station!

The first thing I see when I come to London was this sign. It was the first thing I read. It said,

‘Russell Henderson 1924 Musician and Pioneering Pan Artist’.

‘What the fuck is a pan artist?’ Tiger said.

‘I dunno,’ I said, imagining something with frying pans and meat in it, like really good bacon.

The second thing I read was another sign, it said, ‘Total Bitch Club’, with a sign over it like on twitter, like #

We walked down this street that looked like it was out of Harry Potter.

‘Look at that shop,’ said Tiger.

It said ‘Book and Kitchen’.

‘I bet that’s well posh inside.’

‘Yeah,’ I said in a small voice.

‘Let’s go in!’

‘No, Tiger!’ I reached out for him but he’d already hopped off. He was like that. Bouncy and unpredictable. I sometimes called him Tigger, but only very quietly and when he was in the right mood. The thing about Tiger was that he was always full of beans. Most of the time that was wicked and fun. Everybody gets a bit sad sometimes though. Tiger never slumped like most people, he just got mean and yelling and slapping things, like kitchen cupboards and people and stuff.

Inside the shop it looked like where someone rich would live, like an old lady who was still actually really good-looking in a way, and always sat up straight and drank tea and wrote things next to her thin glass window with the white lines across it. It looked like the kind of place you sometimes see in those films set in Notting Hill.

‘Are we in Notting Hill?’ I said.

‘Don’t be thick,’ said Tiger.

‘Yeah but are we?’

Tiger shrugged and grinned at me to tell me that he didn’t know. Suddenly we were in that bubble again, just the two of us, with all the camaraderie and the greatness and the knowing what each other is thinking and thinking the same thing at the same time. We stood there looking at each other, with our eyes all crinkled up at the corners.

‘May I help you?’ said the man at the desk.

We both looked at him liked he’d interrupted us and we hadn’t thought he was there before.

Which was sort of true. He just looked part of the furniture of this amazing world we weren’t a part of, like there’s all these polite books in their neat jackets and there’s this polite guy in his neat jacket.

‘Yeah,’ Tiger said after a minute. ‘Where’s the kitchen in this Book and kitchen then?’

The man smiled really nicely which was probably a massive effort cause Tiger looked so out of place.

‘Downstairs, let me just show you,’ he said, and then he walked down half the stairs and held his arm out like we were fucking royalty.

‘We’re not fucking royalty,’ Tiger said, and I said quickly:

‘He’s joking.’

Downstairs was actually way different from upstairs. There was loads of colours and loads of books and a lady who looked like she could be your Mum or maybe your Mum’s sister, if your Mum looked a bit haggard because she had loads of kids, but her sister was still pretty young looking.