Nervous

I was talking to himself before making him a cup of tea. Somehow we got talking about someone being 'nervous'.

He gave me that head cocked on one side quizzical look meaning he hadn't heard. I upped the volume.

 'NERVOUS' I said.

Still the quizzical look.

'NERVOUS' I bellowed.

Still not sure he says back full volume, 'VERMINOUS?'

I crease up laughing and that brings on the coughing. 

Later I say, 'China Plate'. He looks quizzical again.

'I mean', I say, 'did do have rhyming slang in Sydenham. Plate/Mate and all that carry on?'

He says, quick as a flash, 'No. Because in Sydenham we had the Crystal Palace to look at.'

 Which gets me laughing and coughing again. 

And he tells me how, one evening at about eight o clock, he went to post a letter at the post box across the road from their London County Council flat on Sydenham Hill.  And he saw that the Palace was on fire. He went back into the house and told his Mum.

'What', she said, 'burning?'

He told her he was going to watch it and she said, 'Don't be out late'.

He came back at 1.30. And she was there sitting up waiting for him.

He said,

"The way she said, 'Don't be out late' I knew she'd wait up for me. She wasn't cross. Just there. Waiting."

It was 1936 and he was 15. I could almost smell the smoke in his clothes. And hear his mother shift in the chair, glad he was home.

(Which has nothing to do with the emergency blip above but spoke of a quiet love remembered over aeons of time. I swear he is the living Samuel Beckett. )

Update: I just posted this to the Blipfoto Friends Facebook page


Here's a turnup for the books. I downloaded for £1 the last Annual Return of Blipfoto Ltd filed on 10.07.2014. from Companies House.

This document says, to my surprise, that the 85,534 convertible redeemable preference shares owned by the Polaroid holding company, PLR IP Holdings have 'full voting rights' and that the amount 'paid per share' was £2.74 and that they entitle the holder 'in respect of capital to a full participation in a distribution (including winding up)'.

I wonder - does that mean on winding up that Polaroid Blipfoto owed PLR IP Holdings owed share number x amount paid per share = £234,363. Is that how it works?