Stoke Dream #3

I'm cycling through a sprawling metropolis, rushing to get to a meeting on time when I take a series of wrong turns and end up in Stoke, in a complex of pink, high-density high rise apartments not unlike those found in Hong Kong. Inside the complex, rows and rows of pink and red clothes hang from washing lines that criss-cross from building to building. Weaving through them, I find the door of an apartment and decide to see if I can cut through the flat to get to the other side. The door is unlocked and as I carry my bike on my shoulder through the tiny apartment, I notice that the living room is tiny with the floor plan shaped like a diamond, with only a TV in the corner and two raised doorways side-by-side leading into it. I hear faint music and head towards a narrow corridor at the opposite end of the living room when out from one of the doors emerges a youngish lookng-man in his thirties. Unfazed by the sight of a stranger in his living room with a bike, he asks if he can help, to which I admit that I'm lost. He takes me out of the flat and points the way out of the complex. We begin chatting and he tells me he works in business. I ask what kind of business and he replies, "pure business." When I explain I'm a documentary photographer he interrupts, "oh yes, my grand-father was Stanley Matthews don't you know." Amazed, I explain the documentary we're doing in Stoke, and ask if he'd like to have his portrait taken. "Only if I can see your place" he replies. Keen to explore this new relationship with a potential subject, I agree and we return to my two-up-two-down which is a very long terraced house and looks like it's been furnished entirely from an ILVA catalogue. I show him the marble walls which have just been installed and the antique though rusty motorbikes parked in the conservatory, which he takes great interest in. It's then that my mother walks in and he embraces her hand, creepily continuing to kiss the length of her arm. My dad arrives and wonders who this man is, at which point things start to get awkward. We say our farewells and the man leaves. After a heated exchange in which I justify to my parents who and why this man is in my house, I head for the back garden and stop at the motorbikes, realizing one of the tires has been slashed and is leaking air.