A Mexican Heiress, some underwear and a flea.

In 1978, a young man in his twenties attended the first ever International Conference on Fleas.

 

He was not overly interested in the insect but he was very much in love with the host of the conference, a Mexican heiress to untold wealth.

 

The young man had invented a prototype microscopic photography device, the size of two suitcases, and somehow the heiress had heard about this and invited the young man to photograph some of the fleas.

 

Which he did.

 

He was paid, handsomely, in pheasants which were delivered to his rented and shared accommodation in a chauffeur-driven limousine that parked on the double yellow lines outside.

 

The young man – let’s call him Pierre for convenience – didn’t really have anywhere to put the pheasants so he hung them over the stairwell alongside his flat mate’s drying washing, mainly underwear.

 

And then he accepted the chauffer’s invitation to be driven to the conference that was being held in a function room somewhere in Bayswater, London.

 

Pierre didn’t remember much about the conference except that when he entered the buzz of the crowded room he was offered a large glass of punch.

 

And another followed.

 

He got outrageously drunk and woke up hours later on top of the billiard table.

 

It was late afternoon, his mouth felt like the inside of a mouldy pumpkin and he was alone.

 

Sometime whilst he had been sleeping the beautiful heiress had moved to New York.

 

Pierre was in no condition to follow her as he only had pheasants to pay for an air ticket so he returned to his flat to consider his future. 

 

That afternoon he, his flat mate, the underwear and the pheasants were evicted as they hadn’t paid rant for several months and after dividing the underwear more or less equally, Pierre moved across town to a squat someone had told him about.

 

As chance would have it the squat was opposite a house where Marianne Faithfull the singer lived, and Pierre started to fall in love with her instead.

 

He never attended another International Conference on Fleas and is hard put today to say whether they continued as an annual event.

 

One could say that his interest in fleas, was fleeting.