Postcards from Pimlico

Outline for ‘ Postcards From Pimlico .’

A story about belonging, the fragility of friendship, and divided loyalties.

In 1982 amongst the doom and gloom of recession hit Britain, desperate to leave the comfort of his suburban family home behind, Ben agreed to share a flat with two public school boys Charles and Monty.
As students of life; freedom, independence and survival beckoned in the hub of a pre- Aids throbbing metropolis.

Nearly thirty years have passed since Ben walked up the steps to a sleazy flat in West Kensington, thirty years since he saw the other two members of the ‘Pimlico Posse.’
When Charles’ twin brother John tragically dies a few months short of his Fiftieth birthday, the three of them arrange to meet up again at a wine bar in Cheshire.

Monty has spent many years setting up hotels in Asia, ‘ sharpening his pencil’ he says, in the massage parlour’s of Thailand. He has just returned from Nevada, where he was being used as an extra in a low budget Zombie film directed by his step brother, a wannabee film maker of low budget porn. He still stands to inherit millions when his sick Mother dies but currently lives alone in a rented house in a forest in Sussex.

Charles married his college sweetheart and stealthily took over her Father’s business. If not following his obsession for extreme sports he spends time with his family in remotest Shropshire. He still lives life on the edge and shortly after his brothers death, unbeknown to his friends, suffered a terrible ski accident. He required life saving surgery to stem internal bleeding on a ruptured bowel and arrives at the wine bar with his arm in plaster and abdominal stitches and scars to prove it.

As for Ben he begins to wonder what he has been doing with his life, because in 1982 he was always regarded as the wild one.

The shadow of John’s funeral means an inauspicious start to the anticipated storytelling but over the course of the evening the three men revisit the time they spent together in London all those years ago. As they reminisce individually and collectively about the flats they shared, the wild parties, the drinking contests, and the conquests entered in the little black book, Ben realizes how little they have all changed and how special their friendship was. One question however still remains unanswered, why didn’t they come to that final get- together at ‘Baz and Annies.’

It will be an evening they will never forget……….