This piece is from Oh Comely Issue Twenty. You can buy the issue here or subscribe here. 

Ray Davies walks past my window like a fretting crow or an askance look. It is an afternoon in spring and he is wearing an old overcoat and a worried face. His glasses are tinted and his hair is thinning, but he is still Ray Davies from The Kinks who wrote all those songs in the sixties, and so he is still beautiful.

We have been neighbours for some time now. I would like it if we could become friends, but when I walk past him on my way back from the bus stop, we pretend not to have seen each other.

Even though we pretend to see little of each other, I feel as though I know him. When there is an interview with him in a magazine, I always make sure to read it. This is how I know what he was thinking about when he wrote Waterloo Sunset. “I reckon we’d probably get along,” I think to myself, sitting on my sofa, reading the article for a second time. Down the street, I imagine Ray Davies is also sitting on his sofa, reading the same article for the second time, although I doubt he is thinking of me.

I walk alone through Highgate Village, rehearsing what I would say to him. “I will start by telling him how much I love his recorded output, 1965-68,” I think to myself. I imagine that would be his favourite period as well. But then I start to worry. Do I sound too formal? Will he think I’m a bit full on? “Maybe I should just say something really thoughtful to him instead,” I think. “Something about the passing of time, perhaps.”

My friends tell me to stop worrying about it so much and try to offer me advice. “Maybe you should just talk to him about the things that you talk to your other neighbours about,” they say. “Like your other neighbours or the weather.” What silly ideas people have! It is like they have not even noticed that he is not a normal neighbour--he is Ray Davies from The Kinks who wrote all those songs in the sixties, and I want to talk to him about life, not about my other neighbours, or the weather.

Since I cannot decide what I should say to him, I have decided I will instead have to come up with different ways of making him realise that we are kindred spirits. They are very subtle. For example, I have decided to start doing my hair in a similar style to the one Peter Quaife is wearing on the cover of Something Else by The Kinks. It does not suit me particularly well, but I think it is a worthwhile sacrifice.

In years to come, I imagine us laughing about this as we take afternoon tea in my living room. “I was so lonely until I saw you with your hair all done like Peter,” he will say, as crumbs fall from the custard cream he is eating and into the creases of his smart trousers. “I am so grateful to you for reaching out.” I will play him a song I have written and he will smile, showing me the gap between his front teeth that I have seen in the old photographs that they put in the interviews I read. “You and me, Ben, we see the world in the same way. And you have made me realise I was wrong to do that song with Mumford and Sons. I let myself down there.” I will look kind and modest and ask him if he has kept the hunting jacket he wore in the early days, and if he minds me borrowing it.

Conversation is always easy in daydreams, and your heroes never disappoint. Back in my real life, Ray Davies walks past my window wearing a pair of large white trainers and a tired look on his face. I realise that in all the time we have been neighbours I have never seen the gap between his teeth that shows when he smiles and that I will never ask him what is on his mind.