Red bricks and cabbage ...

Image courtesy of Magpie Tales

There it was. His first apartment when he arrived in New York City.  Brickwork dull, dark and dingy, just as it was all those years ago.  He noted the rickety staircase. He recalled clandestine lovers with stiletto heels in hand; giggling, ‘shushing’ and exiting sharply before the dawn chorus.

Danny was sure he could smell cabbage soup from the apartment below. Mrs. O Shaughnessy was not a cook. The stench of over boiled cabbage lasted for days. He had never known anyone cook and kill so many cabbages. He hated cabbage.

The old bicycle sign remained, now like him, a little worn and weathered by life’s storms. Robert Sullivan, the cycle saviour made bike hire affordable at weekends. On Sundays, Mickey Dillon and him cycled miles out of the city.  

Today, he returned with his student daughter.  She moved to a studio apartment.  Now settled in a fashionable part of town. It looked nothing like here. More glass, grey concrete and characterless.  

What stories might the old apartment tell if those red bricks could talk?