Sat at the counter of Sammy’s sandwich bar on the corner of the Aldwych, at one-thirty on a Monday afternoon. Scott has a great view across the traffic lights to Lancaster Place. If he turns his head slightly to the left, he can see down the Strand leading into Fleet Street and the law courts. The ominous Old Bailey. If he swivels right around to his left, he can see back up the Aldwych and the outlines of the world-famous Aldwych Theatre. The Strand to the right leading to Trafalgar Square is at too sharp an angle. Scott’s view is denied unless his neck were to become elongated like that of several giraffes. Time has become increasingly shredded and scattered. Advanced Art and the paintings on velvet were over eighteen months ago, though they still seem so alive and vivid to Scott, particularly so, right now. Drinking coffee, eating a cardboard-flavoured cheese and tomato sandwich and waiting ... He’s at last completed writing The Children of the Empire. What started out as the transcription of a clear picture of a fully-outlined story has taken him a ridiculously long time. Some of the last children born when the old queen and consort Elizabeth was still the Empress of India. The final children who gazed at world atlases in school rooms and were instructed by Edwardian born teachers that everything in red belonged to the British Empire. Over one quarter of the world’s land mass. Being at the end of something is a strange business. It’s like you have a foot in two different camps. The past is fed into you. As if the old generations refuse to let it go and glorify it out of all proportion. The Children of the Empire are neither fish nor fowl, stranded as they are in a time that is shredded beyond all recognition. The colonial days are over, kaput, finished ... as Scott sits waiting at the counter at Sammy's at the Aldwych. The Maltese Prime Minister Dom Mintoff is negotiating with the British Prime Minister Edward Heath to declare Malta a republic. First independence, now free republicanism. One of those places on the map of the world that was illustrated in red. People deserve to be free. The not-so-hidden history of the human race over the last ten thousand years shows just how many people lived as slaves. The Roman Empire ran on slavery. Many British Celts were slaves. It’s time to let it all go and fully support Prime Minister Dom Mintoff and fully accede to their wishes. The last Children of the Empire may be alive, but it's all over. Finished. Ancient history. Lost in time. Bossing other people around because you have a very powerful army and navy doesn’t seem right anymore. It never really did. People were just indoctrinated that way. Fed on a diet of Plato and Aristotle, Cicero and Horace, the comparisons with the Greek and Roman Empires. But across time, who could stand in the age of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, the Islamic swarms, the Mongol hordes and Old Bony himself. The Old World Order and letting go.

Scott shaken totally out of his glance through time. Holy Moly! Biting his tongue eating the cardboard sandwich. For there, walking slowly, three abreast down the Strand towards the beginning of Fleet Street and the Old Bailey, are the unmistakable figures of Christophe, Ali and Bernard. All correctly suited and booted. Their backs may be to Scott, but he would know them anywhere. Just in that one fleeting moment. In a fraction of a click of the fingers ... in a world of distraction at the sandwich bar counter ... a pretty blonde lady walking across the road in Lancaster Place ... he was meant to experience that moment. Almost a revelation. Scott sees everything. The germs of synchronicity written in large flashing letters on the advertising board of the Aldwych Theatre. These three, dark-suited figures inching their unwilling way towards the Old Bailey. Scott is transfixed, the pain from his bitten tongue forgotten ... Scott knows with an aching certainty, that they will all be found guilty of fraudulent tax evasion. Running an illegal door-to-door selling operation. Not providing signed contracts for their freelance, self-employed, company staff. Possible grievous bodily harm charges brought on behalf of knee-capped American Larry and who knows how many others. Scott has an endless list of crimes that he could lay at their feet. Christophe and Ali will probably be sent to prison for something like three years each. Bernard, if he’s lucky, just being the company accountant, may get away with one year. Truly, Scott liked Bernard, a lovely man, a dolphin swimming with sharks, and it got him into very deep and dangerous waters. Christophe and Ali are the sort of people you would leave out in the rain. Scott would lend Bernard his black umbrella. But for all that, a friendly nature and a gentle French smile won't cut any ice in the dock at the Old Bailey. Shudder at the thought ... Funny how that moment presented itself. To Scott it is synchronicity, though it may not fit in with Carl Jung’s exact definition. Maybe he just loves the word synchronicity … This is Scott’s only ever visit to Sammy’s sandwich bar on the corner of the Aldwych. Just that moment in time when he looked down the Strand ... Amazing. When Scott read some of Evelyn Waugh's early novels like Decline and Fall and Vile Bodies, he found the idea of a lead character continually meeting up with and running into the same people time after time over and over again, far-fetched. Well, it seemed contrived and thus unbelievable to him. But now, after this occurrence and a few other coincidental meetings and sightings of late, he’s not so sure. In fact, he’s changed his mind. Jung states that one of the strange things about synchronicities is that once you start to notice them they happen more frequently. Is Scott inducing them or were they there all the time. Unobserved. The more you start to glimpse them, the more they occur …

Maybe that's how shredded time works ... hopping across moments into spaces ... nothing is discarded ... used fragments of images and moments appear, just when somebody needs them ... Scott, still sat on a stool at Sammy's sandwich bar counter, waiting. Looking left out the glass doorway to the busy junction of the Stand, Lancaster Place and the Aldwych. All these people criss-crossing at this juncture. Hustling to and fro at a few minutes before two on a Monday afternoon. To Scott’s waiting eyes they resemble a human time machine. Thousands upon thousands of different images, times, moments, thoughts, loves, touches and caresses. Playing through all those hearts and heads in a human tidal wave ... You wake up in the morning like Scott and you are still half-caught up in your dream. You get up sleepy-headed, wondering why you were wearing that red-and-blue striped outfit that you were saddled with as a small child. Characters you haven’t thought about in years people your dreams. You sit down to breakfast like Scott and for some reason the quality of sunlight shining through your kitchen window, dappling the kitchen floor, sends you spinning back to a long ago picnic.

There, you are sat on the edge of a beige-coloured blanket, laid on the grass under the shade of an old oak tree. The murmuring waters of Beverley Brook. Eating a slice of Victoria Sponge Cake. Drinking a cup of tea. Liz, Judy, Sue and Scott. Liz, Scott’s mother, and her best friend, Judy, and her daughter, Sue. Scott and Sue are both four years old in that moment. The beautiful quality of light and sunshine. They have that idyllic spot by Beverley Brook all to themselves on a Monday afternoon in July. There is something truly magical about the time and feel of that moment. Everything seemed to be touching the senses. The magic of the sunlight and shade. The soft sound of the burbling brook. The answer and call of songbirds in the old oak tree. Blackbirds fluttering. A confident sparrow on the grass looking for crumbs. No sound of traffic from the Roehampton Vale Road. A smell of scented air and everything so sharp-edged and clear. It is so perfect you want to stay in that moment forever ... The heightened images, the sensation of being truly alive is almost an out of body experience. A blessed occasion. Potent. Timeless. By Beverley Brook that afternoon, time seemed to change, stand still. Scott could see strands of time running through everything. Threading the world on the song of a blackbird. Why, even young Sue, a girl he never really made friends with, though they spent years of their respective childhoods thrown together, seemed attractive and happy for once. Looking at Scott with whispering eyes ...

Everybody, like the restless tidal wave of lunchtime people outside the glass doorway of Sammy’s sandwich bar, interspersing right now. Carrying thousands upon thousands of such wondrous moments with them. The active remembrance of childhood. Somehow drifting by just below the surface of consciousness, subliminal, and arriving unannounced, all jumbled up and parading in dreams. Others are liminal, buried so deep they cannot be recalled. So far down and out of time we can never, ever catch even a fleeting glimpse of them. But they are with us all the same and still have some effect on our everyday lives in a meaningful way, even though we don’t suspect them. Never remember at all. We are unaware ... shredded time experiences raining in on us from across the cosmos of our own dreams. The collective human consciousness of zillions upon zillions of remembered and carried images across time ... The Children of the Empire are playing with their heightened images through the excessive use of drugs, meditation, dream recalls, group therapies. Living in communes, where each person takes it in turn over breakfast to recount last night’s dream to the rest of the assembled group. No interpretations placed on them. No comments. No sniggers or asides. Just straight dream recollection ...

Breaking free from the constrictions, the controlling mechanisms and societal structures of the rat race. That haunting, gnawing, ever present need, inbred and inculcated from birth, to succeed and achieve. The expectations heaped upon young men and boys which is where Scott came in answering that full page, reverse type advertisement in the Evening Standard. ‘Act now! Do you wish to be a success?’ Just who is going to refuse that question? People trained as rats from an early age to grasp every opportunity thrown at them. Indoctrinated through all of those Hollywood films in full blazing technicolour. You too can be like Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Faye Dunaway and Ali MacGraw. The television, advertisements with their none-too-subtle hints. The constant pressure on young women to climb aboard the love machine and produce. The theme of the love-dream running through so many films, books, plays, poetry, music, match-making bureaus, dating agencies. Newspaper and magazine columns with the studied advice of so-called love experts like Marjorie Proops. It is everywhere when you look for it. Shredded time, like an endless machine programmed to provide perfect human beings …

The Children of the Empire are going to have to carry all of the sins committed by their forebears over the last three hundred and fifty years with them, whether they like it or not. There is no escaping history, no matter who wrote it. Everything is perception and images and moments that stick and get reproduced daily for mass consumption. Each recital, reference and record strengthens the past and how we are all supposed to perceive it. You try to shed the past and ignore old history, but it persistently clings to you like aging barnacles encrusting on layers of skin. You think you can brush them off, act differently to your ancestors, but you find out like Scott that there is really very little difference, it's all perception and reaction,when you strip away all the trimmings. Fancy clothes, gadgets and machines don't actually change anything deep down ... For the Children of the Empire any privileges that were theirs by birthright will be slowly normalised and thus eroded - and that is how it is, is it not? Already, the ways of the last three hundred and fifty years are starting to change. Rampant class snobbery is less prevalent though still in obvious operation. Even some working-class heroes have appeared like The Beatles, David Bailey, Michael Caine, Twiggy and Terence Stamp. The Children of the Empire will have to learn to adapt and forget. Re-educate themselves to the modern way of living. The future is close, but not nearly close enough …

Scott is still waiting at the counter in Sammy’s sandwich bar at the Aldwych. He’s on his third cup of coffee. He looks at the cakes under their plastic coverings, but they seem very unappetizing. The two staff have turned from fairly friendly to resigned and indifferent. It’s not as if Scott is taking up valuable space, Their rush hour at the sandwich bar, as the name suggests, is between twelve o'clock and two o’clock. Catering for the lunchtime crowd. Scott is now the only person left in Sammy’s sandwich bar. It’s gone two-fifteen and he is still waiting. He hates it. Scott is always uncomfortable in arranging to meet anybody, anywhere. Never, ever, is waiting any pleasure or excitement.

Scott, as a seven-year-old boy, was invited by his Auntie Daisy to come round for tea and watch the television. It had already happened on a couple of occasions when she had collected him from home. Scott has no television in his house so it's a real treat. Auntie Daisy is being kind and generous because Scott was very ill recently. Placed on open order at St Stephen’s Hospital where apparently he'd almost died. He likes his Auntie Daisy. She’s not his Auntie Vi, but who’s counting favourites when you are only seven years old? It’s just that he knows by instinct which one he would go to first if, say, he badly cut his knee ... Auntie Daisy makes an arrangement: On Wednesday, early evening at five o’clock, when she's been up-town to the department stores, she will come by the street where he lives. Scott is to stand by the entrance gate to the estate. She will come along and collect him at five o’clock and take him home for tea and the television treat.

Scott, as a seven-year-old in grey short trousers, makes his way expectantly to the estate entrance and gets there early. It’s about five minutes to five. The eagerness of childhood. Scott is watching in anticipation for Auntie Daisy. People are starting to come down the street in greater numbers. Men and women beginning to return home after a hard day’s work. Scott is drawn irresistibly to look into the eyes of every passer-by. He doesn't have to. Auntie Daisy is an unmistakable figure not to miss. Bright blonde hair, glasses, very large and round. Scott can’t help himself. He just has to watch everybody. One of the advantages of being a seven-year-old boy is that nobody pays you any mind. You can stare all you like for all people care. You don’t count ...

Time seems to stretch out before him and Auntie Daisy must have got delayed. Trapped in Selfridges by the bargains on offer. Caught up in the beginnings of the evening rush hour on the underground. At first, Scott’s hopeful face shows no signs of disappointment. By what must now be approaching five-thirty on an early Wednesday evening in May. The numbers are starting to gather apace. Twos and threes are turning into fives and sixes. It’s as much as Scott can do to keep up and watch everyone ... More and more people are coming, thick and fast ... Men in dark suits. Women in grey frock coats. Builders in large, dusty-looking boots. A policeman with a truncheon at his belt. Some young children caught up in this homecoming march who laugh and giggle and seem to be the only ones who notice Scott ... Still no sign of Auntie Daisy ...

Scott is becoming exhausted by now. The different types of people just merging into one moving mass. He seems to have been standing here for so long. He doesn't feel cold, thirsty or hungry. Hope and expectation have a way of overriding basic concerns …

By what must be six o'clock, it’s a pounding stream of feet. Just where do all these people come from? Why don’t they make way and let Auntie Daisy through. She must be doing her level best. Caught up in this endless charge to get home in time for tea ...Scott starting to feel a slight chill in the early evening air. A sinking feeling is beginning to grow in the very pit of his stomach. He’s trying to ignore it, but it just won’t go away. He hasn't given a thought to anything else but waiting for the arrival of Auntie Daisy ... That sinking feeling is starting to turn into despair. Scott doesn’t know it, but it’s six-thirty now and the homecoming crowd has thinned out somewhat. Back to the beginning, over an hour and a half ago of ones and twos ... Just where could Auntie Daisy have got to? Horrible thought that she may have had a bad accident. Be laid on a stretcher somewhere or, worse still, flat on her back, dead some place she'll never be found ... Scott’s quite chilled by now, inside and out. Forlorn disappointment must be etched on his face. Suddenly there is no one else to look at. The faces have all gone home to tea. It’s seven o’clock of an evening and the street that was heaving with people an hour ago is virtually deserted now. With a heavy heart, Scott joins them and heads back home. One last hopeful look over his left shoulder for a sight of Auntie Daisy …
“You’re back early, boy. Did you enjoy yourself then?”
‘She never came.”
‘What!”
‘I looked hard for Auntie Daisy, but I never saw her.”
‘You mean to say you've been stood by that entrance gate all this time! What on earth were you thinking of! Right, my lad. You can go and sit down in your chair in the lounge. It's about time a boy your age learnt to tie his own shoelaces properly. You can sit in that chair until you do, otherwise you won't get anything to eat and drink. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mum.”

Tough love. Scott found that within ten minutes of desultory attempts, he could at last tie his own shoelaces properly and was rewarded with something to eat and drink ... Some few years later, Liz told him that she never waited for anybody. If someone arrange to meet her at some place, say a railway station, at seven o'clock, she would always arrive with at least two minutes to spare. If the person was more than one minute late, she would go. It didn’t matter if there was a rail strike, an incident as the train authorities like to refer to them. Maybe the car broke down and all the clocks stopped. The Martians have invaded and Dan Dare and Digby are nowhere to be seen. No excuses of any kind cut any ice with Liz. One minute was all they got and that was that ... Of course, young Scott soon found out that Auntie Daisy wasn't hurt or dead. She had simply forgotten, thats all...

Scott has never been able to wait in peace for anybody since. Scarred for life. Always that terrible sinking feeling when the person or persons go past a minute late. But he just can't do what Liz advocated. He has to stand there grimly and bear it and look into every face …

It’s been a strange Monday so far for Scott. Sat at Sammy's counter, the two staff starting to whisper about him behind their hands. He's still waiting for his new girlfriend, Miriam. Still stunned at seeing Christophe, Ali and Bernard walking towards the Old Bailey. It's been a day of major coincidences. He ran into a distraught-looking Francois having his breakfast in the ‘Way-In’ cafe in Harrods only this morning. It's not that extraordinary, Scott has seen him a few times in the past eighteen or so months since Advanced Art days and leaving the Milner Square squat.
“Old Chap, Old Chap, how very good to see you. Please sit down ... All is lost!”

Are the Vietnamese prone to such exaggeration? Even the half-French ones? Fate has taken a hand and Francois is in her clutches - Scott, having decided that Fate is female, listens to Francois. He recounts very thoughtfully, almost mournfully. The previous Friday morning when he'd arisen as usual in his lovely little flat in Pratt Street, Camden Town. Occupying the second floor of a private house with a view across the street to the All Saints’ Greek Orthodox Church ... Francois dressing in one of his many made-to-measure three-piece suits and setting off for work as usual to the Indian-owned antique emporium, located near the rear of Knightsbridge underground station ... When Francois reached Harriet Street he discovered two police cars and a large police van parked right outside the antique emporium. The Lakshmi shop has been sealed off. Francois spent over two hours being interviewed by the police. The Fraud Squad no less! ... Francois sipping his coffee, as if to make it last longer, explained that at times it felt more like an interrogation. All the antiques in the Lakshmi emporium have been confiscated and impounded by the police, subject to a covert hearing fixed for next month. The rich Indian moguls are nowhere to be found …

Francois looks carefully around, with those beautiful black eyes of his, as if the other habitues of the Way-In can hear his every word. Francois whispers to Scott ‘Switzerland’, as if it's a miracle word that explains everything. Following those awkward few hours last Friday, Francois no longer has his fine position at the Lakshmi antique emporium, but at least he still has his lovely little flat to go home to ... Francois is walking along Pratt Street on the same side as the All Saints’ Greek Orthodox Church. There are three fire engines in the street. Smoke pouring into the air as firemen fight the flaming blaze with their water hoses. Francois cannot enter his flat. The house is on fire. By two o'clock in the afternoon the blaze is finally put out, but the entire house is semi-gutted …
“All ruined, Old Chap. One morning you get up bright and early. You feel cheerful. All is fine with the world. You live in Candyland and life is sweet. Within eight hours you’ve lost your fine job and income, and the house that you live in has been partially destroyed!”

Francois looks at Scott with those large, black, doleful eyes. He will have to start all over again. Maybe go back to Paris. Perhaps be forced to reapply for a job with Roche Bobois. He will be required to return to London for further interviews with the Fraud Squad and have to appear in court. He is the only representative of the antique emporium they have been able to find ... Francois raises his hands heavenwards. With a managerial position comes such responsibilities.
“All is not lost, Old Chap.” But to Scott’s ears, it sure sounds like it. Life can be treacherous at times …

Scott is still sat waiting at the counter in Sammy’s sandwich bar. It’s now a quarter to three, and the two staff have taken to ignoring him altogether, as he ponders whether to order a fourth cup of coffee ... It seems to Scott that everybody is leaving, going their separate ways. Scott has landed an appointment with a literary agent for tomorrow morning in Jermyn Street, Soho. The agent sounded friendly enough on the telephone, but she has already hinted that she has some reservations about the manuscript. Something about ’The Children of the Empire’ needing changes and tighter editing. Scott doesn't hold out a lot of hope. You get all excited only to have your expectations dashed to smithereens. The best you can hope and pray for is a fortuitous chance encounter. Serendipity, Some kind of meaningful connection. Without contacts in the publishing world you don't really stand an earthly. Lucky if someone even takes the time and the trouble to read your work. All the brilliant books that never see the light of day and end up discarded in wastepaper baskets ... Scott is just hopeful, drinking his fourth cup of coffee, that all these finely shredded moments will finally come together and reveal a truth. But shredded time is perpetual. Forever, ongoing, splitting up into so many meaningful seconds and minutes in a day. Past, present, future. Dream lands, fantasies, false recollections …

Scott is still waiting for Miriam. It's now past three o'clock in the afternoon and in a minute these two disgruntled sandwich bar employees are going to ask him to take out a mortgage on his bar counter stool ... Miriam is an actress in a play that is transferring from the Royal Court Theatre to the world-famous Aldwych Theatre. The play has been some kind of critical success. The cast are meeting the new director today …

Been waiting in Sammy’s sandwich bar for well over two hours now. Seems to Scott that he is fated to spend the rest of his life waiting for actresses who always arrive late or never show at all ...

Editor's Note
It's been nearly 30 years since the untimely death of Cameron Strange. In late 1995, his body washed up along the Thames at Rotherhithe. It had been in the water for a considerable time, thus evidence as to the cause of death was unforthcoming.

Sometime around 2015, several boxes of Cameron’s copious writings, all in almost indecipherable longhand, were recovered from the attic of the flat in which he’d resided at the time of his death. The owner of the flat, not a literary man, attempted to sell them to various publishers – to no avail. The boxes were eventually donated to the English department of xxxxxxx University, where they slumbered for a further five years until an entirely innocent PhD researcher, xxxxxxx xxxx stumbled unwittingly into an ongoing mystery … Read More