The way Archie saw it, country people should die in the country and city people should die in the city. But Archie Jones didn't want to die in some pleasant, distant woodland, or on a cliff edge fringed with delicate heather. It was a place a man came in order to go other places via the A41. Squeezed between an almighty concrete cinema complex at one end and a giant intersection at the other, Cricklewood was no kind of place. Strange to the first person to notice his slumped figure through the windscreen, strange to the policemen who would file the report, to the local journalist called upon to write fifty words, to the next of kin who would read them. In fact it was a New Year's resolution.īut even as his breathing became spasmodic and his lights dimmed, Archie was aware that Cricklewood Broadway would seem a strange choice. He had flipped a coin and stood staunchly by its conclusions. A little green light flashed in his eye, signaling a right turn he had resolved never to make. He lay forward in a prostrate cross, jaw slack, arms splayed either side like some fallen angel scrunched up in each fist he held his army service medals (left) and his marriage license (right), for he had decided to take his mistakes with him. At 06.27 hours on 1 January 1975, Alfred Archibald Jones was dressed in corduroy and sat in a fume-filled Cavalier Musketeer Estate face down on the steering wheel, hoping the judgement would not be too heavy upon him.

The Peculiar Second Marriage of Archie JonesĮarly in the morning, late in the century, Cricklewood Broadway.

White teeth smith