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The Who: Imagine a Life Full of Heroes & Villains & Fools

Penny Valentine, Street Life, 1 November 1975

THAT summer: Tolliday and I roaming Soho’s warm night streets, swapping stories, putting each other in roles, lingering outside sawdust-floored Italian food-stores, sniffing in the peasant-smells of drying ravioli, hung hams, mountain cheeses. Teaching him the foreign Soho of my childhood – spent with loving titbits passed down over endless counters by unfamiliar laughing people for the ‘bella bambini.’ Eager to show him a glimpse, a taste, of where I’d come from, part of what had contributed to my middle class making.

Total word count of piece: 7853

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