Chapter 43

David was seated at his small desk within his cramped student digs attempting to avert his gaze from the hall of residence window which gave him an excellent view of the end of the M275. This was the main gateway into Portsmouth. If he leant back in his seat he could glimpse the edge of the naval dockyard and the ferry port whisking their passengers across to St. Malo in France and Bilbao on the north coast of Spain.

Try as he might to focus on his engineering coursework, which was totally theory based for this semester, he could not concentrate. He just wanted to put the theory into practice.

David was a practical man. He loved configuring the elements required for an engineering machine to work. One of his highlights as a child, even though he was brought up in a number of homes, was a sponsored trip to the Science Museum in London.

This had been an exciting break to the standard routine. Whilst football was fun each week, London and the Science Museum was an unknown.

Having started life in East Anglia, everyone he knew had talked about the Big Smoke as another world, where glimmering office skyscrapers gave way to the pedestrian multitudes shopping at the beautiful high street shops and boutiques of the West End. They talked about the hordes of tourists viewing the sightseeing highlights, – the Tower of London and its Beefeaters, the imposing grandeur and austerity of Westminster Abbey, peering through the gates of Buckingham Palace from the Mall for a view of any of the Royals. They had joked about feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square and perhaps daring to go on a scary trip into the London Dungeon or having an introduction to many of the world’s most famous people at Madame Tussaud’s. David had been able to play with miniature red London double-decker Routemaster buses and black London taxi cabs whilst a very young child, so the thought of seeing the real thing had given him palpable excitement.

To think that he was to be on a day trip where all of these activities lay only a stone’s throw away had given David a focus. More importantly, their home was to be visiting the country’s premier technical museum, which again had had wonderful reviews from everyone he knew.

David had not been disappointed. Staring at the exhibits, soaking in how a steam engine works, he could directly change the amount of water and fuel being provided to the engine and this was a thrill that he would never forget.

He had left the Science Museum with special memories and was even more determined to pursue a career as an engineer and solve practical problems through his ingenious mechanisms.

Any concentration that he had had for the textbook soon evaporated. He stood up from his desk chair and wandered down his third floor hall of residence bedroom corridor to the communal kitchen. He put the kettle on and hunted for some bacon that he was sure he had left in the fridge from the previous week. He smiled to himself, it was still there. It was rare in student halls for partially opened food to remain lying around, especially as he had not put a sticker on it with his name.

As his nostrils were taking in the delights of the bacon cooking, two of his corridor colleagues popped in.

“We need some more smoke, Davey. Can you sort us out some? Here’s a twenty.”

“Whoa, whoa, I’m really not the man, and you should be more careful than just casually asking me for this.”

“But you so are the man, Davey, everyone knows that you can fix anything.”

David huffed but pocketed the note and looked away from his two student colleagues. In the distance he could hear sirens. They were becoming louder and seemed to be heading for this central area of Portsmouth.

Just another day, they all thought, sirens were always going off in the centre of Portsmouth.