Entry #89

At The World’s Feet
by Ayodele Morocco-Clarke


You will never again look at the blighted contraptions in the same way. Ever since that day you attempted to board the moving stairs, clutching tightly to your carrier bag heavy laden with groceries.

You remember the first time you set foot on an escalator at the age of ten in Harrods with your daddy. Many years later, you and your mates had still not tired of taking a ride on the famous escalators. You spent hours going up, then down, then running against the flow and often got chucked out of the store. Your favourite game was giving the security men the slip while dashing up and down the escalators.

There were no signs that this particular day would be any different. Okay, at Seventy-Eight, you are not as spritely as you once were, but surely that was no excuse. Before you could gather your wits about you, one leg had left the other behind, forcing you into a split, the likes of which you never did even when you were ten. You felt like one leg was pulling out of Kings Cross Station leaving the other leg stuck behind on the platform.

Nobody came to your rescue. Instead you saw a group of teenage lads converge at the base of the escalator guffawing. Armed with mobile phones which had cameras, they proceeded to take photographs of your shame. Whatever remained of your pride was left behind lying at the feet of those ignoble rascals, alongside your groceries.


(Ayodele Morocco-Clarke is a Nigerian of mixed heritage currently living in the United Kingdom. She is a multi-award winning Solicitor and Advocate of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. Some of her work has been published in literary magazines and others are forthcoming in anthologies of short fiction. She is currently working on a short story anthology and hopes to publish a novel in the not too distant future.)