Fantasy Dinner Party: The Goddess Athena takes TfL’s commissioner to task 

My life is fine, more or less. I’ve got a job, good friends and I live in Camberwell, which I enjoy. It’s not gentrified to hell like Brixton to the west and the pubs are open late.

There’s just one problem. Despite repeated considerations, we still don’t have a tube, and Camberwell Station has been closed since 1916. This is more than just a personal grievance, it’s symbolic of a protracted immurement campaign by City Hall against London’s south-east, which they’d presumably rather sever from the capital for good. Luckily, I’ve a plan to rectify this and have managed to convince Andy Lord, TfL’s commissioner, to join me for dinner.

I’ve decided to host at my flat, as I think it would help my pitch. My flatmate, the head chef at a local restaurant and a talented amateur chemist, has agreed to cook. Due to spatial limitations we’ve angled the dinner table through the window and on to the roof of the flat below.

I’ve curated the crowd for grit and persuasive ability. The first guest to arrive is Ignatius J Reilly, John Kennedy Toole’s elephantine protagonist. I’m almost done squeezing him through the window when, in a flurry of harps and golden light, the Goddess Athena lands in my hallway with the a smile upon her immortal countenance. If she, in her infinite wisdom, can’t convince Lord, no one can.

Next to arrive is Ian Nairn, the architectural critic who chronicled 1960s London. I’m hoping some of his enthusiasm might rub off. Sadly, I’d forgotten Nairn held a similar affection for beer. He arrives drunk, cradling a keg of Whitbread bitter. Then comes Celia Sánchez, the largely unspoken hero of Fidel Castro’s revolution. She is surprised to find a portrait of herself mounted in my living room.

At last, the bell rings announcing Lord. He’s cordial enough, and I offer him a seat between me and Sánchez. Misunderstanding her double-cheek kiss, he accidentally lands a peck on her nose. She stares daggers at him until the starter comes, a Persian noodle soup called Ash Reshteh. It has a strange, metallic aftertaste that I choose not to query.

I decide it’s best just to get Lord as drunk as possible, and perhaps I’ll trick him into signing something. I refill his glass over and over. We’re crashing headlong through the Olympian white Athena keeps conjuring in luminous carafes.

I gesture to Nairn, thinking he can talk some sense into Lord, but he’s speaking to Sánchez about brickwork. I can hear Athena giving me telepathic advice, her eyes darting between the guests, but it’s no use, just a jumble of Ancient Greek and English. Something about a plague on the Locrians? Reilly’s pyloric valve is acting up. Not good.

The seal is broken when my flatmate emerges sheepishly from the kitchen to explain that the equipment for preparing an authentic Persian meal and for his secret hobby of synthesising mescaline via methylation may have overlapped slightly.

My first concern is Lord. Mescaline is a nine-hour high, and he’s got an early meeting with the union bosses tomorrow. He’ll be torn apart if he doesn’t get himself together. Looking to stabilise things, I beckon my guests inside. I want to put on a record but all I’ve got is Glen Campbell and the soundtrack from the 2002 real-time strategy game, Age of Mythology. I pick the former and we all sing along quietly, holding hands.

Goddesses, it turns out, aren’t used to Schedule I substances. It messes with their metaphysics

The air grows thick. Time starts to bend crudely in on itself. For some reason Lord, Sánchez and I are unloading her rifle at stacked cans of tinned tomatoes, cackling madly. At least, that’s the last thing I remember before Athena malfunctions.

Goddesses, it turns out, aren’t used to Schedule I substances. It messes with their metaphysics. I watch as she changes shape, glitching impatiently between the cosmic and the possible. Suddenly, everything seems to be splitting open, and there’s a great, unbroken sheet of silver light. I grab Lord by the jacket and shake him. “Andy! There’s no time! You have to approve an extension of the Bakerloo line to Camberwell! Do the right thing, Andy! Do the right thing!” Then nothing.

I wake in some kind of broad field with Lord, who’s sitting cross-legged, considering the sky, but there’s no sky, just a thick, grey fog. We’ve lost Nairn, Sánchez and Reilly among souls who move vacantly like sleepwalkers. Presently, Lord begins to cry, and I crawl over to him, stroke his head. Then I cry too and we’re crying together, listening to the faint sound of an underground train rolling somewhere far away.

Miles Ellingham is an FT editorial assistant

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