 
Funder Chunder ...

reign asunder

A coollection of short stories, plays, novelettes, rants and insane beauty

By

L.V, Bollinger

Contains adult humour and scenes of violence

Published by

ISBN

G rant Bartley, Editor of Philosophy Now magazine, describes it as a " funny, quirky collection of stories, jokes and poems, and other literary items that are beyond identification

'funny and idiosyncratic, just like the Author".
Contents

Showcase –some of the stuff what I'm most proud of – hopefully will whet your appetite

Funder-Humorous skits and sketches

Chunder – Darker, more profane, bitter pieces – yes, I do need to be sent to a home for the criminally insane

Reign – Longer pieces- chapters and novelettes (includes plays and poems)

# Asunder – throwaway items –musing-ramblings-best kept for a wet Thursday

# 
Contents

Showcase –some of the stuff what I'm most proud of – hopefully will whet your appetite | Page 6 to 10

---|---

Funder-Humorous skits and sketches | Page 12 to 35

Chunder – Darker, more profane, bitter pieces – yes, I do need to be sent to a home for the criminally insane | Page 37 to 49

Reign – Longer pieces- chapters and novelettes | Page 51 to 177

(includes plays and poems)

# Asunder – throwaway items –musing-ramblings-best kept for a wet Thursday | # Page 179 to 192

Showcase

Best Dream

"Who are you?"  
"I'm your best dream"  
"Not my worst nightmare?"  
"Certainly not"  
"Oh, ...OK then, proceed"

"That holiday in the window?"  
"Yes" she smiled  
"Is that the price for one?"  
"No, it's only that price if there are two people going"  
"Oh...Then would you come with me?"  
"Sorry?"  
"So there's two people, I could get that price"  
"But I'm with someone, I have a boyfriend"  
"I would make you very happy"  
"You know what, I think you're right"  
"So you'll come?"  
"OK"

Her name was Beth.  
It said so on her badge.  
She learnt my name when my card was declined a transaction later.  
"Never mind" Beth smiled.  
"I'll pay" she said "We can sort it out later"

We had two idyllic weeks in Xavos.  
I never did pay her back.

And she agreed to be my wife.

The ceremony was modest.  
Only her friends turned up.  
My mum said that she hadn't received my invitation.  
But she had.  
I don't think Dad allowed her to come.  
Not since that incident with his bedsocks. And the neighbours cat Hilary.

Beth and I moved in to her mums.  
Beth gave up her flat to be with me so that we could save for a house.  
After a while her mum suggested that I should get a job.

It happened suddenly at breakfast one day.  
Just like that.   
It was round about noon.   
I'd just risen and was into my third slice of toast.  
I was concentrating on keeping the jam off my dressing gown.  
Successfully. Until Beths mum came out with.  
"You should get a job"

"But I'm not qualified for anything"

"Well, what have you got?"  
"How do you mean?"  
"Qualifications?"  
"Degree in biochemistry"  
Work experience?"  
"Twelve years as an investment banker on hedge funds"

She opened the paper and pointed triumphantly.  
"You'd be perfect for this"

So I became a social worker and in a very short time had risen up the ranks to become a very Senior Social Worker.

It seemed to be not so much what you knew, but how you documented it. I mastered the forms quickly and was tireless.

I found I was remotely making decisions which separated families at a stroke, or re-united families, all at a stroke of my pen.

The job came with a house.

Essential re- location.

Beth was delighted.   
So was her mum.

Everyone was very proud of me.

Beth decorated and grew ivy around the stone pillars outside the front door.

We employed a local man to do the garden.

We were very happy.  
And then the baby came.  
******************  
"Shall I stop here?" asked my best dream.

I rolled over.

"Where were we? Beth was pregnant, right?"  
"No, Beth had just given birth" said my best dream... "to Lucy"   
"Ah yes, I remember. And we were happy?"  
"That's right, you were happy, both of you, very happy"  
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGG  
Oh sodin sodin alarm, gota gan shitty job down pit.

Repatriation

Running cost

Cost £325.17  |

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Corporal Tucker is trapped behind enemy lines. | £325.17 |

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Cost £300.62 | £300.62 |

We must get him out. |

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Cost £118.09 | £118.09 |

Alert nearest platoon  |

Cost £25.46 | £25.46 |

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Platoon alerted-search party briefed | £1,305.39 |

Cost £1305.39 |   
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Search Party Mobilised | £16,111.42 |

Cost £16,111.42 |

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Search Party Day 1 |

Cost £3,016.09 | £3,016.09 |

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Search Party Day 2 |

Cost £3,016.09 | £3,016.09 |

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Search Party Day 3 |

Cost £3,016.09 | £3,016.09 |

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Additional Supplies dropped to Search Party Day 3

Cost £10,088.23 | £10,088.23 |

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Cpl Tucker Located |

Cost £188.33 | £188.33 |

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Cpl Tucker is Injured |

Cost £ 25.11  | £25.11 |

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Arrange Air Collection Cpl Tucker/ Search Party

Cost £1143.00 | £1,143.00 |

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Air Collection 1 (Aborted) |

Cost £5121.43 | £5,121.43 |

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Air Collection 2 |   
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Cost £35564.15 | £35,564.15 |

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Search Party Debrief |

Cost £512.14 | £512.14 |

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Cpl Tucker to Military Hospital |

Cost £352.48 | £352.48 |

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Cpl Tucker Amputation Right Leg

Cost £3980.12 | £3,980.12 |

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Cpl Tucker Return from Afghanistan to UK

Cost £2956.80 | £2,956.80 |

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Cpl Tucker Honourable Discharge and Citation

Cost £6922.13 | £6,922.13 |

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Cpl Tucker Compensation and Final Pay

Cost £1156.08  | £1,156.08 |

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Afghanistan TOTAL £ 95,244.42 |   
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***********************************

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UK Cpl Tucker Disability Allowance £80.25

weekly ongoing |   
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UK | ??? |

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Yule Log

Buried under the fallen tree in my garden lies a treasure.  
It's no longer my garden. It's no longer my house  
I sold the home it belongs to eight years ago.   
Sold it to a young couple Mark and Marjorie.  
They were surprised that the condition of sale included an additional clause.  
I had asked my conveyancer to include this clause:.

"that the fallen tree ( see map attached) stay.  
And that the vendor may return each Christmas day for perpetuity to stand in the garden at the fallen tree.  
This to be written in any subsequent title."

And that's what I do.  
Stand here in penance my head bowed.  
And remember you.  
My dearest faithful friend.  
Alive in my memory.  
Interred here 25th December 2000.  
Alive in my memory.

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Funder
Funder

# The Gospel according to Fred Part 1

#

## And so it came to pass  
that the cattle in the field  
were scattered in all directions

"Bugger" said Fred  
"we'll have to round them all up for milking"

But the Angel of the lord  
spoke saying "Fear not"  
because I can install four milking sheds  
One in each corner of the field"

A Management Consultant who happened to be wandering by asked  
"Would this be cost effective? surely there is an efficiency issue, both in production, and collection quadrants.  
As a logistical consideration it would appear..."

And both Fred and the Angel interrupted and spake  
"XXXX off, you interfering git

The Gospel according to Fred - Part 2

Fred left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his IPOD and his Blu-ray player.  
When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the marketplace, and many who heard him were amazed.

"Where did this man get these things?" they asked. To which Fred responded" I bought them on Ebay"  
And they asked "What's this wisdom that has been given you, that you can even do miracles!"   
"Well, I wouldn't call it miracles exactly, I just put in my bid right at the last minute"  
But they continued to press at him, prodding him with their questions" Aren't you an advanced ebayer, with great reviews and ratings?" to which Fred spake once again.  
"I am but a humble shopper" he told them.  
And they were cowed, like the beasts of the field.  
"But what if the seller only accepts payment by Paypal" challenged one unbeliever.  
And speaking thus Fred said unto them " If Paypal is the only acceptable form of payment, then that is the only way that one can pay"  
And those gathered in the marketplace marvelled at his wisdom, and said "He truly is a great shopper."  
But how come he gets all the bargains? And that we cannot them find?" said one of the Pharisees. And they took offense at him.

Fred said to them, "Only in this, my hometown, among my relatives and in my own house can I be a man with an internet connection, because I have roaming wireless connection from Vodafone and T Mobile."  
But he could not do any miracles there, as he could not get online. So instead he laid his hands on a few sick people in order to heal them. And he was amazed at their lack of faith because they summoned an officer of the law who accused him of bearing false witness and groping their bodies.  
And Fred was taken from that place in a chariot adorned with a flashing blue light.

---

##

##   
The elephant in the room

At first there were four of them, but then, out of of the blue, and for no reason that anyone could ever have predicted, Rob announced that he wanted to leave.  
" I have to go" he said.  
No one made a move to stop him as he gathered up his backpack, and put on his heavy blue windproof coat.  
"Are you sure?" asked Mike.  
Rob nodded back, a sad expression was on his face. "You all know what needs to be done" Rob told the trio as he opened the heavy front door.  
Without a backward glance he walked out into the full white force of the blizzard.  
After a while Mike spoke.  
"Without Rob," declared Mike, " I can't see why I should be here. I'm going to go too".  
"It'll be more difficult if you leave it just to us two" objected George, pulling at his own beard for emphasis.  
"Au contraire" responded Mike" it might just be easier with two, we'd only have gotten in each others way."   
Pete spoke next, "Okay Mike, if you want to go, you go, but if anybody asks us, we'll tell them, we will, exactly how you let us down."  
"Well, if that's the case...perhaps..." started Mike.  
"Don't bother yourself, just go" said George" we'll do it, me and Pete, just like we did last year.

"So it's just us then"  
"That's right, George"   
The pair watched in silence as Mike's image got smaller and smaller, eventually becoming just a disappearing dot on the horizon.  
The pair knew what had to be done, and how tough it was going to be.  
"Ok" said Pete, you wash and I'll dry."

**********************************************

In next weeks thrilling instalment George and Pete do the laundry.
Courtroom Drama (in one hundred words)

Int : British typical Court Room judge everyone wigged up/dressed up as expected

In the witness box a TORTOISE under oath

In the dock (3) SNAILS

ACTION

Prosecuting Council : "Are these (pointing to the snails) the three snails that attacked you?

Tortoise: I don't know, it all happened so fast
And what are you going to sing today?

Well. Simon, it's a song I wrote myself

OK, away you go"

Stagelights darken

A single circle of light picks her out.

"For lots of days, We'd stay near our villa,  
Staying here for you to listen to my song.  
So many dreams, I kept deep inside me,  
Alone in the dark, now you've come along.

And you light up my life,  
You give me hope, to carry on.  
You light up my days  
And fill my nights with song.

Rollin' at sea, adrift on the waters  
Could it be finally, I'm turning for home  
Finally a chance to say, "Hey, I Love You"  
Never again to be all alone.

And you light up my life,  
You give me hope, to carry on.  
You light up my days  
And fill my nights with song.

You, You light up my life  
You give me hope to carry on  
You light up my days  
And fill my nights with song  
It can't be wrong, when it feels so right

Cause you, you light up my life

Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep yeah

Mummy

I told my mummy  
"I've eaten something that disagrees with me"

"Oh no you haven't"  
rumbled my sore tummy.

Sharing Sweets

Sharing sweets is fun.  
But I don't like Johnny.  
Johnny says he'll swap but he doesn't.  
Last week he took my sherbet

Faulty Goods

Taking the wife back to the shop.

"What's wrong with her?"  
I demonstrated...pressing the remote control and I told him quite firmly, "Yes, I have checked the batteries - twice!"

"Volume control's gone. You can't shut 'em off, 's a common fault with these. OK, you got a receipt?"  
I handed over the Marriage Certificate.  
"Replacement?"  
I nodded.  
"Same model?"  
I nodded again.  
Eyes on his console, he punched a few numbers.  
"We're all out of the looks-like-a minx-but-is-really-a-viper. They're on back order"...

"How long?"  
Two weeks  
"What else've you got"  
"I can do you an upgrade"  
"I like the sound of that"  
"Saves you waiting"  
"Well, that's good, saves me another trip out here"  
"Don't you use Tesco's?" he said, pointing across the road.  
"No, I get all my stuff from Waitrose" not admitting to my budgets very own preference to Lidl.  
"Oh, ok,ok" He pressed a few more buttons."All done."he declared.  
"So what have I got?"  
"You've got the seems-really-cute-but-slags you-off-behind-your-back-and-sleeps-with-your-mates.

As I loaded the new Mr.s. into the front passenger seat and tightened the seat belt I was so very happy.

I'd always wanted a WAG but could never afford one.

Hi Dad

"Thank you for coming, did you have a good journey?"  
"All apart from Galilee, I missed the ferry, ended up having to part the Red Sea"  
"You're here now, that's all that matters, how's the rest of the lads?"  
"Good thanks, well most of them are"  
"Most of them?"  
"Well, Don't think bad about me, but I've got my doubts about Judas"  
" Well, I did warn you about him"

Deir Fiona

Dear Fiona  
c/o Sunnewspaiper

My slag of a girlfriend keeps calling me names  
We've been together ate yeers...

No - that'll never do

Let's try again

Dear Fiona

it has come to my attention recently that my civil partner, of whom we've been together eight years is aware that I've been listening in to his telephone calls.  
Why, only the other day he ...

No -that sounds far too pompous

They'll never believe that

What we need is the common touch that'll resonate with the reader

Dear Fiona

Can you help me and my partner? We've been together almost eight years and it seems that all respect has gone. I haven't been blameless but the other day I overheard him on the telephone telling someone that I was overbearing and also that I had a suspicious nature. How can I find out who he was talking to and why he was being so unkind?

Chris in Streatham

Now that's more like it,

Come on now Fiona, think girl, only another fifteen of these letters to do. A problem page doesn't write itself -don't you know.

Jeremy Kyle Show

well Jeremy  
It all started when .....  
blah blah blah...  
...I've been having sex with my sisters husbands wifes brother...

hold on - that's me,.. with me

WHATEVER

and I'm willing to take a lie detector test 'n' a paternity test Jeremy

blah blah blah

if the baby's white blah blah blah

....

where do I go get my twenty five quid?

Sometime in The Future

"Raavi, you're such an idiot, what is it about you men, that you prefer to be lost rather than ask for directions"

"OK, Harvinder, don't go on, you've made your point"

"Hold on, I bet he's local, wind my window down, I'll ask for directions... Excuse me, we're a little bit lost, which way is it to the Jane Woodie memorial garden?

"The Jane Woodie memorial garden? Oh I am sorry, Madam, Sir, I'm afraid it's closed to the public. Sorry if you've had a wasted journey"

***********************************  
FIVE MINUTES LATER another car talks to the same chap ...

"Craig, you're such a fool, what is it about you men, that you prefer to be lost rather than ask for directions"

"OK, Lucy, drop it, I'll find the way, I reckon it's just \- "

"Hold on, I bet he's local, wind my window down, I'll ask for directions... Excuse me, we're a little bit lost, which way is it to the Jane Woodie memorial garden?

"The Jane Woodie memorial garden, Madam, Sir ? three miles up the road, you'll see it on the left "

She must have looked like a dodgem

Walking out of B&Q

With a curtain pole behind her back – stuffed in her knickers

That's right.

She couldn't get in her car either

.  
She was there for twenty minutes trying to get it (and herself) into her itsy-bitsy no tax disc yellow fiatuno(-ini).  
You remember?

A big crowd had gathered enjoying the spectacle of red faced Molly getting more and more exhausted

Until the police eventually came and took her away.

Molly received a suspended sentence for stealing the two metre long, darkwood curtain pole.

Simple Things

We appreciate the simple things in life. Alix and I. Like Jet Ski-ing or Class "A" drugs.  
I was telling her that I'd been to Prada. We were at Harvey Knicks, Knightsbridge, or is it Kensington? Never mind.  
"Paris?" she asked.  
"No, silly, Prada's in Milan, you're thinking of Chanel, Chanel's in Paris."  
"Oh" she said. Her mouth made a round O.

I was telling her that we could link up our Blackberrys.  
Then we could have three way conversations with who ever called us.  
"It'd be fun" I said.  
Alix confessed that her phone was only an Iphone, so while it was great for music and for photo's, it didn't have the capacity to ... conference call.

"Well, you only get what you pay for, Alix"  
and I explained to her, at some length, that had she been a little more selective with her choice of phone, perhaps spent a little bit more on it, rather than just going for the cheapest option etc.  
At the taxi rank she trod on my foot, she said it was accidental.  
In the cab, the driver wanted to know our names. I ignored him, staring ahead with my chin up.  
Alix said "Oh go on Betsy, it'll be fun."

Well I think you know the rest.

If not, see tomorrows Sun and other tabloids.

That there Young Stud

Trevor, the prize Black angus stud-bull is being phased out.  
He has sired (sometimes donor not present) over eleven thousand offspring in a nine year career.  
Now his last remaining task is to show his young replacement Brad what to do.

Brad can't wait to get started.

"Look, Trevor" says Brad, "there's a load of females in the next meadow, there must be thirty of them, let's run over there, as fast as we can and do one or two each"

"Certainly not" responds Trevor "we'll walk over there and do them all"

When they finally get to the meadow Trevor explains.  
"The secret of my success is that I am most polite, I take my time and make them feel special, I always say thank you. You must rememember to compliment them and say thank you"

"OK Trevor, thanks for the advice"

"What we'll do Brad is we'll line them up, you start one end and I'll start the other. Rememember to compliment them and say thank you. We shall meet in the middle"

So Trevor started at his end.

"Well, that was marvellous, I enjoyed it tremendously, thank you so much"

and at Brad's end.

"S'lovely, thank you Mr.s"  
"S'lovely, thank you Mr.s"  
"S'lovely, thank you Mr.s"  
"S'lovely, thank you Mr.s"

and Trevor making his way towards the middle   
"Well, that was marvellous, I enjoyed it tremendously, thank you so much"

And Brad enjoying himself tremendously.

and at Brad's end.

"S'lovely, thank you Mr.s"  
"S'lovely, thank you Mr.s"  
"S'lovely, thank you Mr.s"  
"S'lovely, thank you Mr.s"

"S'lovely, thank you Mr.s"  
"S'lovely, thank you Mr.s"  
"S'lovely, thank you Mr.s"  
"S'lovely, thank you Mr.s"

and Trevor making his way towards the middle   
"Well, that was marvellous, I enjoyed it tremendously, thank you so much"

And Brad

"S'lovely, thank you Mr.s"  
"S'lovely, thank you Mr.s"  
"Whoops, sorry Trevor  
"S'lovely, thank you Mr.s"

Egyptian Nights

"The pharaohs came to me in a dream last night and mummified my right hand."  
And indeed it did seem to be so, for as the bandages were carefully removed by the teacher, the child's hand was clenched and most white.  
Presently circulation was restored and the hand was seen to open, its palm extended to face upwards. Therefore depicting great piety and honesty.

"And that is why I could not do my homework"

Shut up ewes

(liverpool version of the "Silence of The Lambs")

Carrying a sheep under his arm, he bursts in very drunk, to the bedroom. His angry wife, with rollers in her hair, sits up in the bed.

"This is the fat pig I shag when you've got a headache" he says

"Ha, "says the wife" you can't even get that right, that's a sheep"

"I was actually talking to the sheep" he says

Haircut 3

"Be careful with 'im, 'e ain't 'ad his 'air cut before"

"Dont you worry none, young lady. I'll be as gentle as a lamb ....  
.... Stop him thrashing about or I'll cut his other ear"

"Perhaps I shoulda gorn somewhere else"

"That'll be three pound fifty"

"Yer've gotta be jokin, you ain' even done 'alf of it"

"That's all I'm doing, three pound fifty please"

"Daylight bleedin' robbery that is"

"one two three ... fifty. What .. No tip".

"No and I ain' comin 'ere ever again"

"You'll be missed. Next please"

Haircut 4

"I'm not a mind reader. You should have said how you wanted it, I can't go sticking it all back on, can I now?"

"I'm not paying"

"OK,... If that's the way you wanna play it, I'll call the police"

"Fine by me"

"Get out of the chair then"

"No"

"I'll call the police"

"Go call them"

"Aaaah, you're a copper, aint yer?"

"I might be"

"Say we call it five pounds, not ten"

"OK, but I won't be coming back"

"You'll be missed. Five pounds then...  
Thank you. Next please."

Haircut 5

"I normally go to the barber across the road"

"hmmm"

"But he was closed"

"hmmm"

"Been going there for years"

"hmmm"

"He doesn't charge as much as you do"

"hmmm"

"He's very quick, quicker than you!

"hmmm"

"Shame he was closed, he does it much better than this"

"hmmm"

"Ouch, my ear, you've cut it. You clumsy oaf. It's bleeding"

"Finished, twelve pounds please"

"Here's your money, I won't be coming back. Ever"

"You'll be missed. Next please."

Haircut 6

"I normally go to the barber across the road"

"hmmm"

"But he was closed"

"hmmm"

"Been going there for years"

"hmmm"

"Him, he always asks me about my holiday. When he cuts my hair"

"hmmm"

"So aren't you going to ask me?"

"hmmm"

"About my holiday. Go on. Ask me about my holiday"

"OK, you been on holiday?"

"Yes, Australia, we flew Quantas. From Heathrow. Last time we went BA but Quantas was very good, although it's not BA of course"

"hmmm"

"We visited the barrier reef. Swam with dolphins. Do you know? They've got a restaurant there, only serves food made from crocodiles. And Gatorade, and Crocodile brand beer"

"hmmm"

"Sydney Opera House was fantastic. You should see it when it's illuminated at night. Oh, and that Sydney harbour bridge. We did a sightseeing tour. You know, open topped bus."

"hmmm"

"Then we went to Ayers Rock. That's spooky. I think they filmed that film there, you know, the one where they went camping, the one where they all disappeared one at a time like on the Marie Celeste"

"hmmm"

Guess what ? we also went to Brisbane, an Aussie Rules football game, you know, like our rugby but a lot more savage, they're the world champions, you know.

"hmmm"

"Then we went to Newcastle, it's very different to our Newcastle, full of kangaroos, not Geordies. Do you know, they can run faster than cheetahs, or is it leopards?

"Finished, twelve pounds please"

"Here's ten, eleven, twelve and a couple for yourself. Hold on a second...You havent even touched my hair. What's the twelve pounds for?"

"Listening to you running your mouth off. I ain't your bleeding biographer"

"Well, I won't be coming back here. Ever"  
"You'll be missed. Next please."

###

Regression (Past Lives)

Ladies and Gentlemen

I shall now demonstrate regression - with the help of this here - my lovely wife

Applause

When you open your eyes  
I want you to tell me who you are  
"I'm Napoleon"  
"And now -?"  
"Josephine"  
"Napoleons Josephine?"  
"Yep"  
A click of my fingers  
"And now -?"  
"Josephines vibrator"  
"You mean Napoleon's Josephines vibrator?"  
"Electric or Manual?"  
"Manual"  
A click of my fingers  
"And now -?"  
"I am the man who sold Josephine her vibrator"  
"Francs or Euro's"  
"Franc's Monsieur"  
"Sure you're not making this up?"  
"Non biensur"  
Ladies and Gentlemen  
I shall now regress the subject even further  
"You are going deeper, further back"  
"Who are you ? "  
"Genghis Khan"  
"And now -?"  
"Genghis Khan's girlfriend"  
"Does she have a name>"  
Yes, Britney"  
"And now -?" when I click my fingers  
"Britney's vibrator"  
"You mean Britney's vibrator?"  
"Yes, I have mongolian writing on me"  
"What does it say?"  
Made in Mongolia. Not suitable for children under thirty six months"  
Ladies and Gentlemen  
I shall now regress the subject even further

Ladies and gentlemen -where have they all gone?

X factor

Apologies to Abba

###   
I'm nothing special,  
In fact Im a bit of a bore  
If I start to sing  
You'll probably head for the door

So I'm on X factor, a wonderful thing  
Cause everyones texting when I start to winge  
I'm so grateful and proud  
All I want is to complain 'n' weep loud

So I say -  
Thank you for the programme  
The angst Im making  
Thanks for all the news that it's taking  
Who can live without it?  
I ask on ITV 3  
What would my life be?  
Without these hard luck tales  
What is me?  
So I say thank you for the programme  
For giving it to me

Mother says I was a pain in the ass before I could walk  
She says I began to "milk it" long before I could talk  
And I've often wondered, how did it all start?  
Who found out that nothing can capture a heart  
Like my tragedys can?  
Well, whoever it was, Im a fan

So I say  
Thanks for listening Cheryl to   
The shite I'm spouting  
My parents divorce  
And my Gay Outing

Who can live without it,  
I ask in all honesty  
What would life be?  
Without my coke-habit sob story   
What is me?  
So I say thank you Dani and Louis  
For giving airtime to me

Ive been so lucky, I'm the boy with St... st... stuttery air  
I wanna moan f.. f.. for free  
What a joy, what a show, what a farce!

So I say  
Thank you to the Judges,  
My column inches  
To Simon and his trousers  
I ask in all honesty  
Where would I be?  
Without my kids in police custody  
What is me?

So I say thank you for your text votes

I've made nine pouuuuuuuuunds forty three

Chunder

# No woman – no cry

An angry moment and no going back

Thank you lord for making my bed  
Thank you lord for the things you said  
Thank you lord for giving me this gun  
Thank you lord for the things you done  
Thank you lord for marrying me to this bitch  
Thank you lord for making my finger itch  
Thank you lord for loading the breech  
Thank you lord for the lessons to teach  
Thank you lord for making her squirm  
Thank you lord for helping her learn  
Thank you lord for making her confess  
Thank you lord - I couldn't care less  
BANG

Bound and Gagged

A Horror Story - the horror of being alone with just your own poisonous thoughts - and the clock is ticking

Chloroform makes the throat dry.  
Waking up thirsty.  
I want a cool clear drink. Of vodka.  
No drink.  
A bale of cotton in my mouth.  
Tastes like a sock and worse still, not a clean one. Unwise to gag.  
Best not to dwell on this, - perhaps it has a hair on it.  
Best not to dwell on this.  
Perhaps it's green, tastes green.  
Green fields.  
That's how I got here.  
She said "You could at least meet me, where's the harm in that, let's just meet"  
And so I arranged to meet

Come dine with me

Let me sink my teeth into your neck.  
Just deep enough to draw blood.  
That tells a story.  
Your story.  
In your room, your sheets show your struggles, the glasses your fears, the ashtrays the hours passed, the towels your tears.  
Oh shit- you're dead.  
Greedy, greedy me.

When's my inheritance?

When's my inheritance?  
the future you always told me I could have  
You remember?  
when you left my mum and ran away  
you told me you'd be back  
and you held my hand  
but you never remembered -not even a birthday card  
and I got tough - is that my inheritance?

Being tough?*

ALL THAT'S LEFT IS THIS -  
YOUR FUCKING GRAVESTONE

I HATE YOU

* and being cold and unfeeling –like you IS THAT IT?

IS THAT MY INHERITANCE?

IS IT?

Pity Me

I am the chicken that you got for free with a leg of lamb at Xmas  
From Iceland  
What was my life for?

What was my life for?

 |

---|---

Can you Hear me

You can hear me

"Can you hear me?"  
Voices in my head.  
Voices in my head.  
A corkscrew could get them out.  
3.15 a.m. the alarm.3 nights in a row.

Yesterday, the day before, and now \- today.

I set it for 7.45.You give it me 3.15.

"Yes, I hear you. What do you want?"  
"Look out of the window?"  
That pavement down there that's all there is-it's three storeys down, it looks hard and cold.

I'd laugh if I bounced, or if it was soft and embraced me like a feathered mattress.

You'd feel stupid then - wouldn't you?

"WHAT - You're buried there. Don't give me that. I don't believe you.

"Why not? It's possible."

I'm going back to bed, leave me alone.  
All right, not bed then, but I will make myself a drink and you and me, whoever you are, whatever you are, whatever you might be, well, we'll have this out. "One time and one time only. What do you say?, I can't be doing this ... 3 15 ... all my life, all my days."

"So who are you? Have you a name? Do I know you? Have I wronged you?  
Do I owe you? When I need you to talk to me, you don't , -... do you?"

OK, I'll be quiet. And wait.

"Your name is Alice, well, that's a start."

Anything more to say, sorry, I'll shut up.

"I live here"

"You live here - no you don't, mate.You might think you do but you don't, you don't"  
"Alice girl or Alice bloke? - like that rock singer.You don't know what I'm talking about. Well, you wouldn't, would you? So Alice, what gives? why 3.15.a.m. -that alarm?"  
Because I can.

"It's not funny Alice.

You try getting up for work when you can't even get out of your pyjamas, your car window shows you vectors, not streetlamps. And I'm that dog tired I make mistakes in my job."

"Have you a message for me? Or a warning? Have you got a message that you need to give to me that I have to give to somebody else? Why are you here? Have you a purpose? Once it's done, will you go away? Will you leave me alone, will you leave me be - in peace?"

"That's not fair Alice, I don't mind helping you if you don't mind helping me.  
Put yourself in my shoes. Forget I said that. It was stupid."  
So you're not going anywhere.

"So how does this end Alice?" You don't know. It's up to me-you say.  
If I go through the pavement I might join you in your grave  
"Is that it? Would that make you happy? Is that what you want?"

"Waste of a life."

"WHICH Do you mean..., yours, your life or mine?"...

That window opened easy. It's not like in the movies.

In the movies when people throw themselves out of the window, well, they just throw themselves out of the window.

But in real life,

" Yes, Alice, real life Alice, you have to get up on to the inner windowsill, scrunch down, stretch your legs and your bottom over the outer, hunker down and get your legs to dangle."

"Catch me Alice, I'm coming." 
Washed Up

When I wash up  
I more than likely do it different than you  
That's not to say my way's better  
It's not  
It's just different

Reading this Celebrity Interview book by Piers Morgan  
All these big stars - Branson, Brosnan, Brando, Wendy Richard etc all adore doing the washing up - strange eh?

Anyways hold the news, hold the front page  
Let me tell you my way, my methodology

I select all the cutlery that's there waiting to be washed and  
I immerse those cutlery items in hot water  
in a clean empty washing up bowl  
As the waters going in  
I give two squirts of Fairy brand washing up liquid  
To my mind "it does what it says it does on the tin" or bottle, flat bottle  
Other brands let the debris go back on to the clean stuff  
as you pull it out  
Fairy doesn't  
You might argue  
But that's what I believe  
and it works for me  
When the bowl is full and frothy  
I take all the "flats" :  
The plates and saucers  
dip and wash those using a plastic netty scourer  
Meanwhile cutlery items are soaking underneath  
Clever, huh?  
Answer me  
I said clever, huh?  
I'm waiting...

You agree - good  
That's better - thank you  
I can't do this without you

When all the flats are done

I move on to the "rounds"

Bowls, cups, glasses

What? I should have done the glasses first?  
when the water was hottest and cleanest

Other people have said that to me before  
They go on and on and on working their mouths

So now you - you're doing it too  
working your mouth  
You're so clever

You're with them - aren't you  
They're all you're mates?  
Aren't they?  
You go round their houses -don't you???  
They come round yours   
and admire your curtains

Don't they?  
They do  
Don't they?

Sorry -where was I? - I get so easily so distracted these days

Sometimes I don't have a scooby where I've been

or what I've done

Whoops- missed a big knife

That should have gone in with the cutlery  
Don't know how I managed to have missed it

Does that mean I've got to empty everything out and start again?

Gonna have to be careful with that puppy when I pull it out  
It's serrated  
That means it doesn't cut - it saws  
Shark fins of glinting stainless steel  
Quite compulsive, hypnotising when you look at them   
I could look at those sharky fins forever

OK you win  
I've emptied everything out  
and I've started again

So I'm doing just the glasses  
On their own

I feel cheated  
You got your way after all

I'm disappointed  
I'm doing it your way, the washing up  
Not my way  
Like that time my Dad made me learn to tell the time  
when I was four  
and I kept crying and pulling away  
It was too difficult  
And he had hold of my wrist   
and he wouldn't let go  
wouldn't let me turn away  
Kept turning my head back to see his wrist  
"LOOK AT THAT WATCH"  
"What time is it" he'd say and he worked the winder  
Turned the hands  
"ten to eight Dad" I said eventually  
"How can it be, ... look the big hands on the bluuuh and the little hands on the zzzzzzzzz"

I learnt eventually

Now there's a word

Eventually

Maybe my life will work itself out eventually

So glasses are done

Can I put the cutlery back in now?

Thank you - you're too kind

Want me to kiss your bum? too, eh?

Therapeutic this  
A bit like I imagine it is going to confession  
Not that I've ever been to confession  
Closest I got was the Psychiatrists at the Prison Hospital  
but they're not like they are on the telly

They tell you to tell them your innnermost thoughts  
Your darkest thoughts  
"You sure?" I asked the first one  
"Of course," she smiled, she was about twelve years old  
with curly brown hair and buck teeth and freckles

Was that fair?  
Because when I did tell her -what was on my mind  
like she asked, like she told me to do   
The guard pinned my head to the floor while she exited in a hurry  
I can still smell his shoe leather  
and his plastic sole

Can I do the "rounds" now?  
Or do you want me to do the "flats" ?

"Rounds" or "flats"?

You're in charge

No, I mean it

If you said stick my head in the gas oven  
I'd do it

OK, so it's an electric oven -smartarse

But you know exfkingzactly what I mean

All right I'm calm now

Almost finished

That first hand of mine came off easy  
Now how do I cut off the other one?

Oxymoron

"You move like an ox and you're a moron"

"You're also nocturnal" father went on.

He liked to use big words on me.

When I looked in the dictionary I saw he was right. Nocturnal meant that I was active at night. Better than him, who would fall asleep with a whisky in his hand, anytime, night or day, in any room he happened to be in at the time, in our large and multi passaged country abode.

But I knew the meaning of the word dead.

And so did he when I stoved his sleeping head in, with a lead pipe, in the ballroom.

Take that, dad, or should I call you by your military title, Colonel Mustard.

Pity Me

I am the chicken that you got for free with a leg of lamb at Xmas  
From Iceland  
What was my life for?

What was my life for?

---

reign
Puppy Love

#

A double whammy, kids grow up so fast these days, or do they?

"Who else knows?"  
"No one else" she pulled at her lip" well, almost no-one, I think mum's got an inkling!"  
"Your mum, she's the last one that should know"

************************

Myra sat on the bed. She wasn't proud of herself. The pregnancy test had proved positive. It was one of the new ones, saying nine weeks along and sex:M.

Myra traced her finger along the grid on her "Take That" calendar.  
So thirty weeks on would be October, the fourteenth.  
"Great" she thought to herself "me and the kid can have the same birthday".  
Robbie smiled down, Gary Barlow didn't look quite as pleased.

**************************  
At Sam's house, he was telling his sister Jude about Myra.  
"She's up the duff, and guess what, she thinks her mum knows"  
"Who else knows?"  
"No one, just her, me and now you"  
"Is it yours?"  
"Yes, of course it is"  
"I think you should tell mum"  
"No" said Sam firmly."I'm going to deal with this"  
"Sam, you're only fourteen, tell mum"

**********************************

"Mum"  
"Yes Sam"  
"Can we talk?"  
"If you're after money again... then"  
"No, not money, perhaps you should be sitting down for this"

After he'd told her, she struck him. Upside his head.

"What were you thinking of?"  
"Nothing, I wasn't" he said, rubbing his reddened ear.  
"If your dad was still alive, he'd have something to say"  
"I know. I know"

***********************************

Back at Myra's, she wasn't faring any better.  
Myra's mum said  
"I found this on the bathroom floor", she was holding up a blue and white box.  
The legend on the box read "Home Predictor - right first time, every time."  
"It's Sam's" Myra lied, " he brought it round for a laugh"  
"Myra, no one does that for a laugh, I think you should tell me what's going on."

**********************************

Myra's mum phoned Sam's mum as Myra nursed her very own reddened ear"

"I smacked him" said Sam's mum.  
"Ditto"   
"Well, what do we do?"  
"I was hoping you'd have an idea"

***********************************

Ten minutes later the two adults, their progeny, aged fifteen and fourteen and their nine week old seed male, sat at the kitchen table in Myra's mums house.

"You can't keep it" Sams mum said.

"So the sooner we get it sorted, then the less damage done" agreed Myra's mum.

Myra and Sam sat pale, frosty faced, at the sides of their respective mothers, The two youngsters were sat bolt upright, glassy eyed, not quite able to meet each others eye.

"So what about you pair of idiots, haven't you got anything to say for yourselves"

Eventually Sam said "Sorry mum"

******************************************

"Two halves to Brighton"

" You sure about this ? Sam "  
"Of course, I'm big for my age, and there's loads of jobs in Brighton, I went there at Easter."

"You really sure?"  
"Of course"

After all, he was fourteen and he didn't want another smack off of his mum.

He hefted the case up. It contained two days of clothes for each of them.  
If they were careful, the thirty seven pounds and some shrapnel he'd emptied out of his mums purse would keep them going until they could get on their feet.

"Myra, look at those two saddo's" Sam pointed at the two men over on the adjoining platform.  
The "saddos" were wearing identical cream coloured raincoats. One was portly, the other tall with a moustache. Boycey and Del boy.

The Boycey and Del boy look alikes left the platform. And re-appeared via the sunken stairway on Sam and Myra's side.  
"We're British Transport Police" the tall one informed the couple.  
"And" the shorter one continued, flashing a yellowed warrant card from his open wallet "we've been asked to stop you travelling"  
They led the couple to a doorway, the sign above the door read "PRIVATE - STAFF ONLY" and the shorter man opened the door with a yale key.  
The room hadn't been used much, it smelt musty. They were beckoned to sit down.  
Myra complied with their instruction and settled herself on a sparse wooden chair.  
It was then that Sam realised that he'd left their suitcase behind.   
" I just need to get my case. If I lose it, my mum'll kill me"  
"Leave it, no one's gonna take it." the tall policeman said.  
But Sam had squirmed his way out of the door, out of the room and was running.  
The smaller, fatter policeman gave chase.  
Sam got to the suitcase first, and scooped it up with his right hand.   
Somehow he lost his footing, stumbled and scraped on his knees to the edge of the platform just in time to fall below the incoming train.  
The same train that he had planned would be taking him and Myra to Brighton.  
His last thought was about whether the thirty seven odd pound was enough for their trip.

***************************************

Back at seventy three Myra asked her mum,  
"Can I keep it? I want to name him Sam"

*************END******************** fade to grey

### The Sound of Typing

I'm nostalgic for the sound of how an office used to sound  
How it used to sound before computers  
And the telephone didn't ring as much  
Even before VDT's orange or green on black screens  
There was the sound of typing  
Electric typewriters would sound the same as the manual ones  
The flying fingers from the massed banks and hierarchical ranks of ladies  
Unheard of for a man to type  
Questions about their sexuality if they knew anything of the key layout  
So everyone knew their place in this labour intensive office  
And I long for the sound of the "ping"  
The "ping"  
Telling the typist to return the carriage so that the next line could be typed  
Enough typists and enough skill speed and energy that in the height of the working days the pings were comings so fast and furious it was like a xylophone concert  
Slow at first at the start of the day and just after lunch  
Then building to a crescendo mid way through the morning or afternoon session  
And waning as lunch or regular and moodily resigned as hometime approached  
Sometimes lunchtime the lonely solemn irregular ping of an inexpert typist soon to be ex employee trying desperately to catch up by typing instead of eating  
Or the regular ping regularly after home time of the boss's secretary keen to keep her position at the top of the dynasty by typing his irrational urgent work that everyone knew he wouldn't need so desperately, if at all, the next day

Those warm fuggy pointless days

I didn't realise how much I missed this buried memory  
Until I went to a restaurant and ordered a solitary meal in the almost empty diner  
As my food cooked, I realised I had nothing to read, my phone was out of battery and the waitress had taken the menu away so I had nothing to read, nothing to do

First I went out and got a newspaper but the table I'd selected was too small to open my paper out on  
So I read snatches but found it and the news within tiresome

So I went to the toilet which was outside down a corridor and past the kitchen where my food was being prepared

As I washed my hands I heard the unmistakable sound which evoked these memories

It was the bell of the microwave announcing to the world that my food was ready at last

And you've guessed it

It was a 'Thai' food restaurant

Ah - the sound of Thai Ping

My new neighbour

I like the way she does her hair.

My new neighbour.  
I wonder what her name is.

We haven't spoken much.

Not had a chance.  
She only moved in yesterday

But I could tell that she liked me.  
I waited at the top of the staircase.resisting that sudden urge.   
Waiting, resisting - as she struggled up those stone steps clutching heavy looking black bin liners,  
one in each hand.

That sudden urge to squeeze past her. On the stairs.

In my minds eye I visualised electricity - sparks would be arcing as our bodies touched.

Instead -

I engaged her with my captivating conversation.

"Hi, you moving in?" I asked her

"Yes," she replied, her voice sounded a bit wheezy  
(still - we are three storeys up and there's no lift, just stairs)

I listened for traces of accent, she sounded local.

"Number Twelve, eh?"

"Uh huh" she murmured.  
She set down her black plastic bag cargo. And waited.

"I'm Brian" I told her "I'm in Fourteen"

She seemed impressed.

"Where are you from?"

"Oh, just local" she responded.

"Me too. When I moved here, I came from local, too."

I laughed in a friendly way, hoping to put her at her ease   
"That's something we'll have in common" I continued.

"Brian,"

I liked the way that she said my name.

"Yes"

"Can you get out of my doorway? So I can get in with these bags."

I stepped aside. She made her way around me and she entered her home.

When I got downstairs and outside I saw a scruffy man sitting on the open tailboard of an orange Laundry van.   
Behind him on the lorry was a silver washing machine and other heavy items.

The van itself was parked outside on the yellow cross hatched area reserved for Ambulances.

We get a lot of Ambulances come visit our block.

The man beckoned me towards him with a cupped hand motion.  
A cigarette hung limply from the corner of his mouth.

"Hi, you moving in too?" I asked him

"No, just my sister"

"She said she's local"

"What's it to you?"

"Nothing, I'm just being friendly, I'm in Fourteen, I'm on the same landing" I extended my hand for him to shake.  
"My names Brian, sometimes Bri for short" I smiled.

He misunderstood my outstretched hand and reaching behind him, grabbed two heavy black bin bags and swung them towards me.  
"I can't manage the stairs" he told me, and with his heel he ground out his cigarette butt.

"Oh no, I can't." I said "I'm on my way out".

He continued to hold the bags out to me.

"I've gotta go into town.You see, people are expecting me."

"What's she been saying to you?"

"Well, nothing yet, we've only just said hello"

"You keep your distance from her, you hear,  
she's been through a lot, It's not been easy for her"

"Oh ... ok"

"It... wouldn't... hurt... you... to... help"  
he said it slowly.  
As I watched, he lit another cigarette and twitched it in the corner of his mouth,   
It seemed to underline his words.

"Look, I'd love to help but as I said I'm expected - in town"

"Bah" he responded, dropping the bags at my feet.

"Isn't there anyone else helping?" I asked.

"My sons are coming by later. It'll take forever at this rate"

"Look I've got to go" I explained through the haze of his smoke  
" if you do still need a hand when I come back, then I'll be only too happy to help"

"Very gallant of you, Lord Fauntleroy"

"Look mate, courtesy costs nothing, right?  
I don't know what's got your goat, but don't take it out on me"

He stood up and I then realised how very big he was, compared to me.

His breath smelt of drink. Beer.

"Wanna make something of it?"

"Whoa, hold on, I'm just an innocent bystander"

"Well, if you ain't gonna help, fuck off out of it"

"Allright, I'm going"

And I slunk away.

*************************

I made sure that I lingered longer than usual in the launderette, the Greycliffe Washeteria,  
Hopefully the removal would be done  
and gone when I went back.  
I like the Greycliffe.  
It's much better than that other launderette I used to go to.  
The nice thing about this one, the Greycliffe  
is that you meet a better class of customer.

It costs me nothing to sit in here, and it's warm.

As usual, I'd brought nothing with me to wash.  
Or to dry. I never do.

For me a launderette is not for my laundry.

It's for my hobby.

All the other customers assume that I'm here, just like them - brought my washing or drying in.  
And that I'm sitting here, as they are, merely waiting for the washload to finish.

I have a higher purpose.  
My hobby - Ladies.  
I come here to look at Ladies.

I enjoy the glimpses, glimpses of Ladies and their underwear, particularly their panties.

There are two varieties of glimpses as classified by me.

One "Off the bone" and  
Two "On the bone.

Number one - "Off the bone" 's the scanties bound for the washing machines or the driers,

Or Number Two - Lingerie "On the bone"  
\- the smalls they're wearing,  
large comestible portions of which are on show  
as I watch from behind -

They crouch in front of me unaware of my interest  
as I observe them loading or unloading, tending their machine.

I drink in their loveliness.

Sometimes for me, and I must admit I enjoy this especially, there's even a sighting of that little "T" prominent above the beltline, The little "T" atop the thongs.

I've made it my business to observe for "opportunity".

The spill or the miss is what I'm after.

The "opportunity" enables me to introduce myself.   
I watch intently for it, - presaged by a spill from baskets, or perhaps it could happen when clothes miss the door on their way to the machines.

I race to pluck those misdirected items from the floor.  
Before they can.

And then I ingratiate myself.

"You dropped these"  
"Oh"  
"Hallo, I'm Brian"  
"Thanks" invariably that comes with a smile  
"No probs" I smile back as I hand them the stray garment.

Nothing's come of it yet.  
But so far there's been at least one "opportunity" per visit.

This is my fourth visit.

One time I thought I'd struck lucky.

I helped a red haired beauty.  
A Lady.  
Helped her to fold her oversized bed sheets.  
The bliss. For me.  
Our hands touched as I passed my end of the folded rectangle over to her.

I looked deeply and longingly into her eyes.

I was sure this was it, my moment.  
But the words wouldn't come  
and while I dithered she packed her bags.  
And went, leaving me feeling and looking foolish.

Nothing came of that

Nothing comes of anything I try

That's why it's important that my new neighbour likes me.

If I'm alone ( and this has happened before ) at the Washeteria then I close my eyes and I fantasize  
about seeing Lady Horse Riders.  
On the road when I'm out driving in my car,   
Slowing down -  
(I will have a car when I can afford it -  
and learn to drive one day)

Waving them past

Oh, the smell of fanny and leather.

When I got back to my tenement  
the orange Laundry van had gone.   
I was relieved.  
I had not been looking forward to a  
second meeting with Beer breath.

But I was keen to find out what had been going on  
at Twelve.

Better still. perhaps, right, at that very moment my new neighbour could be standing knocking on Fourteen. my door.

"Ooh Brian" she'd be saying.

Possibly begging a cup of sugar.

When I did reach the landing though, no lights were on,

No light spilled from that crescent of door glass below the Number Twelve.

And as i turned the corner I saw no one standing outside my Fourteen door. Damn!

I was disappointed.

But not put off.

I checked my watch, only a few minutes past seven pm,  
OK to knock.

"Hallo, remember me, I'm Brian"...

"Brian, I'm glad you knocked"

She was wearing a dressing gown. Pink with a tasselled woven belt. She was barefoot.

"There's a window I can't close, it's blown right out with the wind, I'm too little to reach it."

"That happens, these windows are old"

"Could you give it a try, Brian?"

She stood aside, letting me in to her home, she'd put her hair up, piled it high on her head, and there was a sort of spring loaded clip on top of it.  
It being her plus-longer than shoulder length brown straight hair.

"Nope, can't reach" I told her.

The window was almost folded back on itself,  
it had blown out so hard.  
Thinking about it, she wasn't that much smaller than me.  
Our reach would have been about the same.  
If she couldn't pull the window closed,  
then the chances are I wouldn't be able to succeed.

"Oh shoot, I'll have to sleep in the lounge,  
be too cold otherwise.  
I'll get in touch with the landlord in the morning"

With a start I realised that I was in her bedroom.  
Her flat was laid out differently to mine.  
There were lots of boxes and bags  
stacked around the room.   
My eyes focused on a black lacy bra sticking out and hanging from one of the cartons.

She followed my gaze. Her face reddened.

"Still, you must have a lot of things you need to get on with, Sorry that I'm holding you up" she said hurriedly.  
And as she said it she propelled me,  
with a hand to the small of my back, towards her front door.

"I could try the window again, I don't mind" as my feet scrabbled.

Too late,  
I found myself in our communal hallway.  
her front door closed, excluding me.

*******************

My last thought before I closed my eyes for sleep last night.

I like the way she does her hair.

My new neighbour.  
I wonder what her name is.

A Future Re-written

The door opened and we were met with an icy blast from an obscured door recessed into the corridor.  
A few short seconds passed. Then a tall caped figure came in, her features were cowled in dark lambskin.

"This is my wife, Gwendolyn" I told the Notary.

The Notary Major put down the white feather of his pen into the groove of a gold curved tray. He stood, resting both his pink puffy hands on his large green leather inlaid desk and let out a a weary sigh.

"Thank you for coming, and for making the long journey here,"

He went on" I understand Madam, from your Husband, that you've come here all the way from the other side of Islington"

Gwendolyn made no reply, but instead just made her way to stand alongside me, a little to my right.

The Notary jiggled his white powdered wig of office. Specks of chalky powder joined the mist of breath to play in front of his face as he spoke.  
"Madam" flipping open his heavy silver pouch pocket watch, and glaring over his steel spectacles  
"We are now in close proximity of being joined by my next engagement. I do not see why your five minute journey here should have delayed your husband and I. We have been waiting for you" he said imperiously" for over forty minutes."

Gwendolyn made no gesture, no apology or any indication that she had heard his testy admonishment.

"Perhaps it would be better if you were to sit ..."  
and with an imperious gesture he stretched out his arm, directing Gwendolyn to a small plain chair, in a dark recessed corner.

His gaze travelled up exaggeratedly to view the hands of the marqueted ornate clock, apparent over her shoulder.

When Gwendolyn made no move towards the seat that he had suggested, he looked to me for support.

I kept my features neutral.

After a while he realised I was not about to support him, nor reprimand my wife.

"Can we, at last, proceed?"  
he asked, as he adjusted his bench and straightened the heavy tome which he had tilted from his desk and now supported across the knees of his satin britches..

"But of course. It is my wish" I told him

"Now, where were we?"  
he asked himself, as his finger traced the hand written entrys, before coming to rest a few mides down the second column of copperplate.

He lightly rested a finger in the place which would annull my destiny.  
In his right hand, in readiness, his quill writing pen hovered over.  
the leather trimmed blotting pad.

Gwendolyn and I held our breath as a small droplet of gunblack ink tumbled on to the absorbent tablet.

"I am to remove your name?"

I nodded

Again he looked over the rim of his owlish eyeglasses.  
"And replace it with that of your wife?"

Gwendolyns finger tips touched mine.

"Yes, that is my wish"

"And it is to be dated tomorrow, not today"

"Yes"

He looked up one last time. from under the steel rims.

"I have no change from your forty guineas"

"Keep it for your inconvenience" I told him

"Very well"

Gwendolyn and I watched as the Notary crossed through the entry, the horizontal line out of place amongst it's flowery scripted neighbours.  
A dab from his stamping blotter to dry and seal it before he proceeded to write.  
After a few moments of scrawl he looked up.

My children, my fortune, my home, my familys home since generations immemorial, everything I had, no longer mine, were now hers.

Who would have known that my drunken frolic, with her one time best friend, could have laid me so low. Taken me from heights, power, majesty all but near to this.  
My pleadings to Gwendolyn had been in vain.   
Marian, my tryst, had also suffered fearfully at Gwendolyn's hand.

"There, it is done" He told us both.  
"My clerk will see you out."

In the vestibule I said to Gwendolyn "Will I see you again ?"

"There is no need now, not any more"

"Tell the children, I thought it would be for the best"

"They already know that"

"I wish it could have been different"

"It's too late"

"You know, if I had my time again..." I began

"Shhh" she interrupted me

"There isn't anything that I can say, is there?"

She shook her head. There was nothing.

She turned and was gone.

In my pocket my cold fingers jiggled coins all that was left of my inheritance.

My King would never see or speak to me again. He had sided with Gwendolyn. Everyone had.

I was no longer to be trusted

France beckoned.  
Perhaps I could regain my estate there.   
Perhaps Gwendolyn already knew that was where I was headed.

Being Aged Seven -When Other people Aren't

"I bet you I'm even less competitive than you are."  
"What's that supposed to mean?" -asked Uncle Peter, aged Thirty Two, pale, fat and no big brained giant-no match for my genius.

I said it again, reading from last weeks Radio Times, saying each word slowly , emphasising the word "less" as if it really mattered, as if it would explain everything - then I was silent. Silent for what seems a long time when you're seven. Uncle Peters' brain wrestled with it for a while - He looked at the telly- opened his mouth as if to say something- looked around the small carpeted brown airless living room -back at the telly and then closed his mouth - before giving up.

I'd won. Spreading myself over the sofa and taking up as much of it as I could was my reward - my small feet pushing big him into the tiniest corner where it was stained.

He let me do it - he knew I'd won again - but I could tell by the way his left hand held the knife and his candle grey wax right hand stabbed the fork at the 49p for 6 "mum's got it all at Iceland" grillsteak on his plate that as far as he was concerned this wasn't over - not by a long chalk.

Uncle Peter and Aunty Mary were my third set of foster parents. I'd been with them for a year - funny to say -even though Aunty Mary hadn't. She'd been gone for most of last school term. Uncle Peter said I shouldn't say she was gone to anyone - and especially not to the Social Worker who was supposed to call -but didn't.

It wasn't a bad life. Me winning my little battles against Uncle Peter.

Never sure if I had a war with him - or not.

Compared with my other two Foster Home's this one was second. Not as good as the one at Braintree - where I'd had the whole sofa to myself. But better than the one in Epping where I'd not been allowed on the settee.

Round Two

Uncle Peter - straight into the attack. Fixed me with a glare, "Okay smarthouse" he said,"Here's one for you" "When you go to the toilet - right ?"

All the warning bells sounded inside my head. I didn't like the sound of where this was going. But I thought I could play for time, maybe distract him, if necessary, grab the knife off of my plate, stab him in his little piggy eye.

My escape plan in my head - run upstairs out of the window where he was too fat to follow -stand on the windowsill and shout till Superman or 999 - whoever was quicker-came to get me.

"When you go to the toilet right" -he continued -a sly smile on his face  
"What hand do you wipe your bottom with?" Ah-it's a joke - he's telling me a joke. It's not what I thought. Not what the wardens in Cell Block H Ilford had warned us against or we kids used to tell each other in the dormitories late at night after lights out about homes we'd been to. Their hands on our shoulders - being our mates- all matey, smiling and happy. Being something different when only we two were in the room. Hadn't happened to me - I'd been lucky this far yet - but lots including my friend James Simpson and his brother Trevor Storey were less lucky.  
They can't be in any any closed door room anywhere now -those two.  
Back to the now. What does he mean? "What hand do I wipe my bottom with?"  
Choices.

Run through my alternatives.

a) Get him to Repeat the question - that really winds Anne Robinson up on Countdown - it wouldn't wind him up though- he's so dumb he'd just repeat it!  
b) Say Left.  
c) Say Right.  
d) Cry tears.  
e) Stay silent.

He's not moved from the tiniest bit of settee but somehow he's towering over me. Looking up I can see the mixture of grey black unshaves from his neck to one of his chins. He's enjoying this. He thinks he's won. Then I got an idea.  
Lets call this one idea (f).  
Idea (f) What do you mean - when I go to the toilet -what hand ?"  
I went with that. He just repeats the whole thing -slowly-emphasis on the word hand. For a moment we could have changed seats; me the stupid adult and him the 7 year old kid - and relishing his power. Run through, consider my alternatives again. Under time pressure now

Out of the corner of my eye I see "Robot Wars" my favourite telly program starting to begin. Craig Charles -my hero -introducing the contestants.  
Concentrate-lets get this over with. I picture myself with the toilet paper -crouching to reach under my leg -then up.  
"Left " I say -under pressure. Triumphant - Uncle Peter -the biggest smile on his fat greasy chops.His eyes completely disappeared, crinkled away somewhere under his puffy cheeks now -no clue for where they are if I had to stab them-I'd need a map like George Clooney on E R to find them.  
He's enjoying this too much. He's laughing so much that for a second or two I forget that he's never this jolly.

Is he laughing or having an asthma attack?. Because there's no sign of him stopping. Perhaps I should take his pulse - or give him a heindrick manoeuvre I'd heard about somewhere - whatever that is.Eventually it subsides. Here it comes - like a Spanish matador he delivers the killer blow-his punchline. "What -don't you use toilet paper like everybody else" he yells. And goes back into his gales of laughter. It was good -he got me this time - I grant him a little more of the settee and turn the full power of my intellect to Robot Wars - Robot Wars and Craig Charles - until next time.

Until next time

## He That Was

Fed up with your life?

Then go get a new one

## Synopsis

Heavily in debt and with nothing to lose, Michael Donovan decides to re-invent himself... with the help of a snake.

"Is that snake dead?" asked Michael.

"No sir, that's not a snake, it's a shroud,...that was his skin, he's shed it, shed his skin" explained the Zookeeper.

"So where's the snake now?" in response the Zookeeper pointed.

And Michael said "yes of course, I can see him now, he just blends right into the background, doesn't he?"

"That he does sir...that he does"

That night Michael slept fitfully in his single bed, dreaming of being a snake and shedding his skin, just like the snake that he'd seen in the Zoo.

At one stage he woke up, his bedside clock said 3.07 am.  
As he switched the little bedside light on, and saw on his pad the £307 total that he'd written down for himself earlier.  
He had absolutely no way of repaying it. He looked from the red digital display to the green ink written on his pad. 3.07 am, and £307,000 , three hundred and seven thousand, that was what he owed. To various people.

"What a co-incidence" he thought sleepily as he switched off the light

**********************************************************************

When Michael woke at 7.15 a.m. he found his thin cotton base sheet had come away from its tuck.  
Somehow he'd wrapped it tightly around himself. Awkwardly he shrugged his shoulders free and was then able to climb out of the cocoon. He smiled as he freed himself. It was then he knew what he could do.  
And what it all meant.  
Some internet research on his laptop confirmed what he hoped. For a small fee he could change his name. That would be a start.

By nine thirty he was at a local solicitor who had assured him that they could produce a document that he only needed to sign twice, once in his old name, once in his new name to shed his skin.

Michael Donovan walked into Gately Law LLP and twenty minutes later emerged as A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PERSON.

The completely different person decided to do completely different things. Deliberately he walked past Mcdonalds, and the big breakfast that he usually consumed.  
Instead the new person crossed the road and entered a posh cafe - Le Folies Auberge.  
He marched up to the counter. Like Macdonalds.  
And waited to place his order

After a while a jacketed waiter came up to him and told him   
"Do be seated sir, the waitress will be with you shortly, she will take your order at your table"

He studied the menu "I'll have a latty" he told the waitress

"Do you mean a lar tay sir?"  
"That's what I said" he told her curtly

When she brought it to his table, he waited till she had gone and then he walked out without even putting it to his lips.  
And without a backward glance.  
After all he was a new person. No one had challenged him about it.  
He'd gotten away with it.

He walked down the steps at Wanstead Tube station and after a short escalator ride boarded a train without having purchased a ticket.  
He made several random changes and eventually disembarked at an unfamiliar suburb, Mill Hill East.  
He marched past the unattended turnstile and into a nicely kept street of terraced houses with red roofs.A woman approximately his own age was tending a small front garden. She was kneeling, a trowel in her gloved left hand. He engaged her in conversation.

"Gardening eh?" he said brightly.

Startled, she scrambled to her feet. She pulled her red long cardigan tightly around her and folded her arms.

"I've just moved in around here, "he invented "nice to see a neighbour, I always come home so late from work, that I never get a chance to meet, to say hallo to anyone""

Whereabout's is it you work ?"

"One of the city banks, Statibank, we're a merchant bank"

"Sounds too rich for me," she smiled" Barclays is about my limit"

"Nothing wrong with Barclays, apart from the pens"

"That's what I always say, why don't they ever have any pens, - always those long chains and no pens on the end"

"Exactly. You lived here long?"

"Yes, I grew up here, she pointed back to her open front door, her red cardigan flapped around her, Mum and Dad bought this in the twenties. Mum and Dad are long gone now" she sighed.

"Where are you?"

"Sorry""Oh I didn't mean to pry. You said you lived round here. Where have you moved into?"

He gestured with his thumb "Around there , you know , the Crescent... y bit"

"I don't actually" she laughed" I hardly ever go anywhere"

"Well perhaps you will now, now..." he smiled, "that we're both friends".  
She relaxed, her arms fell to her sides "I'm Katie" she extended her ungloved hand.

Quick as a flash, he grasped her hand and then her wrist with his other hand.  
"Stop it, you're hurting"  
He looked up and down the street before stepping over the low fence that separated them and dragged the shocked woman through her own front door and into the hall of her own home. He released her. And slammed the door shut with his heel.

"What do you want? I'm going to call the police" she rubbed her wrist.  
"Katie, do you know what my problem is?"

"No" she replied.

He hit her with a closed hand.  
"Let's start again, Katie. Katie, do you know what my problem is?"

This time she said nothing.  
"That's better Katie, don't you be answering me back anymore"  
She had curled into a ball. Offering no resistance, her back was to him."Now let's see what else you can do"

********************************************************************

"Does it count as disposing of the body?"Michael laughed to himself, as he folded Katie around the boiler, in her boiler cupboard"if you don't actually dispose of it?"

At his leisure he explored Katies home. He laughed to himself, often.  
She was an old boiler and now she was with the old boiler.  
He learnt all about Katie and re-invented himself according to the things in her home. She was single, not a picture of anyone, anywhere, not even of herself. She was childless, now and there were no signs that the house had contained any youngsters.  
The spare room contained a bed, an empty wardrobe and some empty jars on a shelf. She'd said her parents had both died, and it was as though they'd never been.  
The only testament to them was the paid up mortgage. The letter from Bradford and Bingley on the kitchen table invited her to re-mortgage at their competitive rate. A rate only extended to homeowners fully settled before 1990, ten years before.   
From what he could see, she had no pets. No close friends either. Not even a church goer, no sign that anyone would miss her.But she had kept a full larder. Food seemed to be her outlet and delight.It would keep him fed while he waited for the replies to the letters that he'd sent , each bearing a studiously copied facsimile of her signature, authenticating her new relationship. He extended her assets into joint assets. With him. Each evening he opened the boiler cupboard door and kept Katie up to date with the replies.  
"Barclays has sent us each a card" he told her, "do you mind if I use your one as well?"  
The next evening he had to drag her sagging body around the boiler jacket. He inserted her arms through the holes against the metal to stop her from slipping down again.  
"Santander've sent us the pin numbers" he told her brightly.

Gradually he emptied her cupboards, sold her possessions to Cash Converters and blended into her background.  
For devilment, he greeted his new neighbours in the street, hailing them and shaking their hands.  
"Hi, I'm Katie's better half, you'll have to come round to tea"  
"We will, when we get time"  
"Make sure it's soon, real soon, we're thinking of having a street party, Katie wants us to get one of those long tables, with all the bunting, a proper street party, get everyone to meet each other"  
"Yes, that'd be lovely, we'll definitely come"  
"Great, toodle pip"   
"Toodle pip to you too" they toodle pipped back and told each other later what a nice man he seemed.

He even knocked at the homes of the ones he'd not yet met, knocked at these other neighbours home and regaled them when they answered their doors, with tales about his childhood crush on Katie,  
"You should have seen her then, "he laughed" at St Alabaster's school, she was quite a looker then" and how they had met again only recently: "She walked into my bank, I almost fell off my podium, she looked exactly how I remembered, it was like we were young again",  
and how they'd hopelessly fallen into a headlong affair.  
"She didn't know what gilts were, I had to explain it, then our hands touched"  
He pressed details on them, saccharine sickly "She so loves the cinema, we were going to watch that new Pacino, but then she said..."

A typical response to him was "We really have to go to bed now, thank you for calling round"as they in turn pressed their door closed against him.

*******************************************************************   
"My love, we're going to open a business" He used the equity from the  
stake he had in her fully paid up home.  
The bank was more than willing. Katie put up no protest when he brought home young hookers from the local pub.  
"Thank you, my love" he told her afterwards as she leaked into the boiler cupboards linoleum "you're just so understanding"

He reported Katie missing, first to the neighbours.  
True to form, they were unconcerned.  
"Katie's gone" he told the ones that he knew,  
"Don't worry, I'm sure she'll be back soon, Toodle pip"   
They told each other later what a nice man he seemed, what a nice couple they were and what a shame it was, although it would all come out all right in the end.

He knocked doors  
"Have you seen my Katie?"  
A typical response to him was "We really have to go to bed now, thank you for calling round"

He called the police in, and invited them into his home.He made the young policeman that they sent him a cup of tea and supplied him with details  
"Eight days now, we had a helluva row, we must have woken half the neighbours"   
The young pc scribbled in his notepad. At his knee.  
"What was the row about?"  
"Cinema eh? You ever heard anything so stupid? she had her heart set on that new Pacino film, but then I said that Pacino was the poor mans De Niro and it was then that she went and flew right off of the handle"  
"What did she do?"  
"What didn't she do? She started pulling all my stuff out of the wardrobe, cramming it into a suitcase then she said "no, no, why should he go, I'll go" and she emptied the suitcase, right there, at the top of the stairs, filled it instead with her stuff and just slammed out, she didn't even take her gardening gloves, she loves to garden"  
"Eight days?"  
He wrung his hands."Eight days, four hours and eleven minutes. Would you like to check out the house?"  
"Whatever for, sir?"  
"Clues, look for clues, leads, isn't that what you do?"  
The young pc laughed "That might be what they do on tv. You've been watching too much telly"  
" I suppose I have" and they both smiled. And laughed.  
"Do let us know when she comes back"

"I will" he smiled and patted the exiting policeman on the back. Like a son.

That night Michael slept happily in Katie's parents double bed, dreaming of owning a snake, just like the snake that he'd seen in the Zoo.

At one stage he woke up, his bedside clock said 4.07 am.

As he switched the little bedside light on, and saw on his pad the £407 total that he'd written down for himself earlier. He looked from the red digital display to the green ink written on his pad. 4.07 am, and £407,000, four hundred and seven thousand, that was what he had. All to himself.

"What a co-incidence" he thought sleepily as he switched off the light.

## Mum

I grew up in a broken home. I broke it.

I grew up in a broken home. I broke it.  
When I told my Dad,  
"Mum's been kissing Uncle Ricky"

Ricky wasn't my real Uncle, he was a neighbour.  
But I was in a child in an era when out of politeness you called adults Uncle or Auntie.

Dad went white when I said it,  
and I'd said it quite innocently. Looking up from my one hundred and forty four piece jigsaw puzzle.  
"They were kissing, they do it all the time when you're out"

"What?" he asked me.

"In the back room, when you're down the cash and carry" as I located the top left corner piece of the puzzle, showing the flag above Winchester Cathedral.

Mum was in the room. I remember she was standing, awkwardly as if caught in mid step in a dance, in slow motion, her left heel was raised off the floor.

Time seemed to stand still.

Eventually he asked me " Kissing?"

"On the lips" I answered brightly and placed two more edges down the left side of the cathedral, one showing the steps, the other was a picture of half of a lady with a red coat.  
"...and rubbing each others clothes"  
I demonstrated rucking up my T shirt over my midriff.

He turned to my Mum.

She was like a statue.

"Is this true? Mary, tell me she's lying"

Mum just looked at the floor.

"Treasure" Dad said, Treasure was his pet name for me "Go upstairs and play with your toys"

"But Dad, I'm doing my jigsaw"

"Upstairs now" he said, in a colour of voice I'd not heard from him before.

**************************************

"When I came down, Mum was gone and Dad was cooking, burning the pan.  
The smoke alarm went off.  
But he didn't seem to hear it.  
When he served the food from the pan it was so burnt, that not much came out and he had to scrape it out with a spoon.  
His hand was trembling. I remember that.

"Where's Mum? She does the cooking" I said as I pushed the Spaghetti Hoops around the plate. On the label they're Orange, you know, Heinz ones, fifty seven priorities, in the sauce.

These ones, were in a brown sauce, and smaller, as if shrivelled.

"Can I have some Tomato Sauce?" I asked.  
"I can't eat them like this"  
I pulled the lever on the fridge door and reached for the glass bottle.

"Your mother and me," my Dad said in a strange voice, " we were never partial to foreign food. I thought we liked the same things. I always thought we always liked the same things."

***************************************

As I laid in bed that night, I thought to myself  
"Spaghetti Hoops aren't foreign. Spaghetti's English"

Warming the Needle

When happiness is a small prick

Sterilisation is important.

When you're doing "sloppy seconds" - using a needle that you find in a squat.

The big questions;  
how long has it been here?  
who's used it before ?  
what exactly is it that's in the transparent barrel? are questions pushed to one side, as you look carefully, at the condition of the syringe.   
...

Is it going to be "sloppy seconds"  
are you ACTUALLY the second user  
or the third  
or the...

"Shut up, doubts" you tell yourself as you tie the strap round your good arm, the good one with the available veins.

And apply your lighter, back and forth over the needle until the tip glows red.

"Strike while the iron's hot" you joke and prick the orange peel skin. Then slowly, with authority and grandeur, you push the plunger at the top of the barrel.  
Sticky pink colour seeps from the wound entry point. You know from experience it's not the safest discharge, it's a bad indicator. A bad omen.

However...

Nevertheless...

Notwithstanding...

"God. that feels good" you tell yourself, as the rush of achievement, the feel of a job well done, fills you.

While the magic works its way you can think. You do think. Big powerful thoughts that make you bite your tongue, but there's no one here. To hear them.

You start to plan.

Ambitious plans involving the theft of an ice cream van late at night, selling lots of ice creams through the night. To the flotsam and jetsam people outside the train station all night long.

Returning the van before anyone knows it's gone first thing in the morning.

It's foolproof.  
Nobody'll even know it had gone.

"You'll be a millionaire" you tell yourself," a fuckin' millio n a ..."

Harmless

If you're happy and you know it clap your hands

He'd never self harmed before.  
And so he was inept.  
He'd deliberately avoided the big veins in his wrist but he'd been clumsy, just above the elbow.  
The bicep, he thought it was called.  
Yes, that's it, the bicep, he told himself.  
Hell, there's a lot of blood.  
He contemplated calling 999, as the carpet reddened.  
Or should it be 911, he mused. He was in America.  
And he was suddenly thirsty. He walked to the minibar, a trail of claret shadowing his shadow as he plucked the pineapple juice miniature from the tiny fridge. And opened it. A spurt from the cut.  
He punched buttons.  
"911"  
"Yes"  
"I've done something silly"  
"I'm sorry, caller, I can't understand your accent, is there anyone else there?"  
"No, just me"  
"Can I speak to Jeffrey"  
"I didn't say Jeffrey, I said just me"  
"There's no need to shout sir, just pass me to your friend"  
"Oh, never mind" he said as he returned the handset, red and sticky to the cradle.  
A tourniquet, occurred to him and criss crossing his red carpet trail he headed for the small bathroom.  
"Don 't be afraid" he told himself.  
But the towel was too big, and wouldn't tie, not even the little hand towels.  
Lay on the bed, gather his strength.  
Closed eyes, he played the movie in his head.  
She'd told him, she loved him but she didn't like him, only stayed with him because of the kids, would have left him long ago were it not for the kids.   
She said," I've packed your case for your business trip"  
"Perhaps I wont come back" he'd told her.  
"Now now" as she kissed him on the cheek, "Don't make promises you can't keep"

"Don't use big words you don't understand, - like love" was his best rejoinder, over his shoulder, as he hefted his case down the stairs. And out of his marital bliss home.

And as four thousand seven hundred and ninety three miles away, he bled to death in a lonely hotel room he smiled.

"Perhaps I won't come back" he said to his very tired self.

"can't wait to see her f a c e ....!!!"

Best Dream

"Who are you?"  
"I'm your best dream"  
"Not my worst nightmare?"  
"Certainly not"  
"Oh, ...OK then, proceed"

***********

"That holiday in the window?"  
"Yes" she smiled  
"Is that the price for one?"  
"No, it's only that price if there are two people going"  
"Oh...Then would you come with me?"  
"Sorry?"  
"So there's two people, I could get that price"  
"But I'm with someone, I have a boyfriend"  
"I would make you very happy"  
"You know what, I think you're right"  
"So you'll come?"  
"OK"

Her name was Beth.  
It said so on her badge.  
She learnt my name when my card was declined a transaction later.  
"Never mind" Beth smiled.  
"I'll pay" she said "We can sort it out later"

We had two idyllic weeks in Xavos.  
I never did pay her back.

And she agreed to be my wife.

The ceremony was modest.  
Only her friends turned up.  
My mum said that she hadn't received my invitation.  
But she had.  
I don't think Dad allowed her to come.

Not since that incident with his bedsocks. And the neighbours cat Hilary.

Beth and I moved in to her mums.  
Beth gave up her flat to be with me so that we could save for a house.  
After a while her mum suggested that I should get a job.

It happened suddenly at breakfast one day.  
Just like that.   
It was round about noon.   
I'd just risen and was into my third slice of toast.  
I was concentrating on keeping the jam off my dressing gown.  
Successfully. Until Beths mum came out with.  
"You should get a job"

"But I'm not qualified for anything"

"Well, what have you got?"  
"How do you mean?"  
"Qualifications?"  
"Degree in biochemistry"  
Work experience?"  
"Twelve years as an investment banker on hedge funds"

She opened the paper and pointed triumphantly.  
"You'd be perfect for this"

So I became a social worker and in a very short time had risen up the ranks to become a very Senior Social Worker.

It seemed to be not so much what you knew but how you documented it. I mastered the forms quickly and was tireless.

I found I was remotely making decisions which separated families at a stroke, or re-united families, all at a stroke of my pen.

The job came with a house.

Essential re- location.

Beth was delghted.   
So was her mum.

Everyone was very proud of me.

Beth decorated and grew ivy around the stone pillars outside the front door.

We employed a local man to do the garden.

We were very happy.  
And then the baby came.  
******************  
"Shall I stop here?" asked my best dream.

I rolled over.

"Where were we? Beth was pregnant, right?"  
"No, Beth had just given birth" said my best dream... "to Lucy"   
"Ah yes, I remember. And we were happy?"  
"That's right, you were happy, both of you, very happy"

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGG

Oh sodin sodin alarm, gota gan shitty job down pit.

The Casting  
"Sit down, sit down"

"Thank you" said George taking the back of the chair that was offered, in both of his hands.

He moved the chair slightly to the left so that when he sat down, they would see him in his best profile,- from the right. Not leftwards, not seeing that mole, the one on his left cheek.  
The blemish was far from ugly, he'd been told several times. Maisie at the soup kitchen said she liked it, she said that it gave him more character.  
He worried though, perhaps it could be Cancer.  
Or what George liked to call the precursor of Cancer. A carcinoma.   
He had found himself worrying about many things lately.

George sat himself down slowly, not wanting to appear too eager.

Nor too needy.

"Can we get you something" The Casting Agent asked.

George had difficulty making out his questioners features. Shafts of sunlight were coming at George from the huge high window above and behind the Casting Agent.  
George could make out just the mans general outline.  
But not the mans features.  
Shadowy figures seemed to flank the man; his host and questioner.

The unseasonably bright sunlight hurt Georges eyes, causing him to flinch.

"Some cold water would be nice" George said.

"Melissa, some "nace" cold water for Mr. Marley"

The woman to the right of the Casting Agent spoke.  
"So, it says on your Actors Guild card,  
George Marley, nineteen seventy seven, so that'll make you thirty two - by my reckoning"

"That's right, well thirty one , I'll be thirty two in November, next birthday"

"Make a note of that Fiona," the Casting Agent said "Thirty one - we don't want to get anything else wrong. -"

A note was scratched, somewhere off to Georges wide left, in the shadowed part of the room.

"George " the woman resumed  
"George you remember me; I'm Jill Norman, ...   
You Read for me before, for the part of Marty in Questionville."

"I remember, I wasn't very well that day. Was I?  
Ms Norman, How are you? How have you been doing?"

A glass of cold water with a slice of lemon had appeared as if by magic, at a small table by the side of George.  
A slice of lemon floated listlessly on the top of the water.  
The glass had been placed against Georges knee.

Before Jill Norman could reply the Casting Agent picked up the interview with a question.

"Tell us. What are you IN George ? At the moment?"

George hoped that they wouldn't notice him shifting his weight upon the seat of his chair. Careful not to jog that glass of water.  
He realised, with a start, that his chair was smaller than theirs. Theirs had arms. His didn't  
It was also a much lower chair than theirs,  
And the lighting was against him,  
They were in near darkness.  
He was lit up like a science exhibit.  
Even his bald spot was on show despite his attempt at a "comb-over"  
The bald spot had surfaced -as a surprise to him just this week.  
"Well, thank you very much life"  
He'd told it, the bald spot, his new best friend  
" just when I thought things couldn't get any better"  
He felt belittled -this "sun roof" that had erupted in his hair - on show to them.

" ?... At the moment George?"

George broke out of his reverie.

"Well, nothing at the moment," he lifted the glass to his lips. The water wasn't cold, it was warm and tasted greasy.  
"But I do have many generical irons in the fire, a variety of diverse projects.   
However at the moment though,   
I must admit that I am waiting for Call backs"

"Call backs?" This from Jill Norman.

"Just waiting by that little old phone. You know.  
For the Call backs"

"When was your last Call back" the Casting Agent prodded.

"Well, my Agent..." George countered.

"I don't mean to cut you short " A third voice said "  
But Mr. Marley, it does say on your Resume'.  
The document that you personally have provided to us,  
for the purpose of today.That you represent yourself,  
\- that you don't actually have an Agent "

"Well, not technically, but my Sister..."

"Is an Agent?" This third voice again.   
Jill Norman's voice had been friendly whereas this womans tone was anything but friendly.  
She sounded to George like she belonged in a Court Room.

George himself had appeared recently at a Court Room.  
For Recovery of Arrears of Rent on his apartment.  
He'd acted for himself that day.   
And delivered his Opus Favorabiliia.  
Consisting of his compelling and tear rendering account of "why he couldn't pay" and even moreso how dire his circumstances really were.  
The tears flowed freely.

From George.

He was quite overwrought.

His acting must have been good though:

It convinced the Judge that he should be allowed more time to pay.

Five of the six weeks that the Judge had granted him had elapsed. He was still in no position to pay.

Perhaps he should tell the Casting Panel today about that,  
Add it to his repertoire. And his resume'.  
They might give him more respect for that  
If they'd seen him IN that.

This womans cold, clipped voice continued.  
in her educated, precise, pedantic tones.  
"You were explaining to us about the role that your Sister fulfills in your affairs?"

"No, my Sister..."George picked his words carefully  
" She's a Care Assistant - but she did date George Clooney, ... when he was fourteen"

"George, do you even have a sister?"

"Well, no Miss Norman. Not technically, I made that up.  
I was embarrassed you see, you caught me lying.   
But that was impro, right ?  
Shows my ability to improvise, ... think on my... feet"

"Interesting. " said the Casting Agent"  
Let's talk about your recent career George.  
Have you been IN anything lately?"

"In a Revue, off Broadway"

"When?"  
"Last year"

"When exactly was that?"

"March, I think?"  
"Think again George"  
This came from Mr.s Legal Woman.  
Damn her eyes , thought George to himself.

"OK, OK... it may have been March or February, ... the previous year"

"Anything that I might have seen?" asked Jill Norman.

"No, just that, that was the last thing I was IN, as I said -Recently I've been "Resting".  
But I did do Damien, i was Damien Murphy, in Nuts.  
You remember -"Nuts, - the movie" -1984, ...ID pictures.  
Did you like me in that?"

"Not a great deal, I'm afraid." Jill Norman responded

" And the last time that you worked? Since "Resting"  
\- this Revue, the one that you allegedly performed off Broadway- nothing since?"

"...No, Marm "

"When you said off Broadway. Do you mind if I ask you? How far off of Broadway, it was ?" the Casting Agent continued.

"Can we talk about something else,..please?"  
George slumped in his little chair.  
The glass of water jogged against his knee and fell to the floor spilling its contents.

"Fiona, get Housekeeping up here"

The Casting Agent sighed  
"Sure George, what would you like to talk about?"

"This role, Ms. Norman, Jill -"  
George directed his comments towards her and smoothed out the rolled up sheath of papers he'd been grasping   
" I've been looking over that Script you sent me. For the past four days. Can't you see?  
I'm perfect for the role of the Young Mervyn "

"So Mervyn, that's a major role. We didn't see you as Mervyn. The Studio saw you more as Edgar" the Casting Agent responded.

"Sure, I can see where you're coming from, but Edgar, Edgar...he's such a loser. " George whined  
" He's always feeling sorry for himself, he's all doom and gloom, all the time. And he gets written out about fifteen minutes into the story"

"Edgar" said the Casting Agent, with finality.

"OK, I'll do Edgar. Are you offering me the role of Edgar"

"Let's come back to that"

"I still get to Read for you, though, - Don't I?"

"I said. We'll come back to that." The Casting Agent told him.  
"We'll let you know when - and if - we want you to Read.

Jill Normans smiled kindly. Although he couldn't see her face clearly, her white teeth gleamed at him.  
"So George, How have you been keeping body and soul together?  
California is an expensive, not to mention very expensive town to live in."

"Well, I do some waitering, Jill, waiting at table.  
What with that and the tips, I get by"

"So the shiny seat on your trousers, your trousers that are almost worn all the way through, that's getting by, is it ?"  
Spiteful words from the Casting Agent.

"Now hold on"

"No you hold on George" the Casting Agent insisted  
"You can't even pay to have it fixed; that hole on the sole of your left shoe. That's another example of "getting by", is it?"

"How did you know?"

"Well, you don't have to be a Genius, George.  
Look behind you, "  
said his host.  
"Look at my four hundred dollar per square metre carpet, Look at the pattern your wet foot has left, those footprints, a wet "O" you make with every second footstep"

And as George turned in his chair he saw that it was so,  
his soggy left sock had left that tell tale trail.  
"Well, it's raining outside"

"It's not been raining all day George, you could have brought a jacket, selected different shoes"

"I don't have any other shoes. When I left the house it wasn't raining. I've been standing outside your front door all day. Hoping that today was the day that my life would be turned around...  
Things have been a bit tough for me recently"

"Now we're getting somewhere. George ,  
...George, ...look at me,"  
said the Casting Agent with a little more warmth in his voice.  
"Let me cut to the chase. And I speak for all of us here.  
We've got something else in mind for you.  
Have you ever appeared in a Snuff Movie?"

*******************************

"A Snuff Movie. Doesn't everyone in it get killed?"

"Well, that's true George,"

"So if I had, I would have been killed"

"That's right George, you're right again"

"So ergo" Georges voice was rising  
" If I'd been in a Snuff Movie and got killed, would I be here now? I wouldn't. Would I? I'd be dead"

"You put that very well George" said Jill Norman."I can see you in the part"

"Like I'd sign up for a Snuff Movie. It's signing my own death warrant. Like I'd be that stupid. You go figure"

George was surprised that the trio had stood up behind the desk and were clapping him. Loudly.

"Bravo" shouted Jill Norman

"Let's talk money" said the Casting Agent

"I haven't agreed" said George  
"In fact I'm going. This is insane"

"Can I remind you. You are contractually obliged to remain here, to read for the part of Edgar, that is your undertaking. If you leave now, know that we will consider an Arraignment. In Breach"

George had started to rise but sat down again quickly.  
The little chair wobbled.

"George, try it from the top. As Edgar"

George squinted and concentrated hard on the paper he'd brought.

"I'll be Ella" Jill Norman told him

George squinted and concentrated again. He started to Read.  
"Oh Miss Ella, Miss Ella, I've got cards"

"Cards, Edgar?" Jill Norman supplied

"Cards for sorrow, cards for pain"

"Yes Edgar"

"All my life, I've felt that I've been outside, outside in the sleet and in the rain"

"George"

"Yes sir"

"George, your voice lacks a certain timbre, could you project a mite rounder"

"Like this"

"Yes George. Much better. Continue"

"I've known sorrow and I've known pain"

"George"

"Can you amplify? And make your Mark "  
the Casting Agent stepped toward George  
" From there."  
He pointed to the shadowy corner where Fiona had been.

George made his way around the Panel's desk. And took his mark facing out, towards the back of their desk.

"Here?" George amplified roundly.

"Perfect" cooed the Casting Agent."Carry on, from where you were"

"But Edgar, things will get better, you'll look back on this and you'll laugh, you hear me, laugh"

"Fiona, How far in are we?"

"About fourteen minutes, Mr. Vernon"

"Thank you Fiona"

With a start George realised that Fiona was there, standing right alongside him.

"Edgar, sorry to interrupt, pray go on"

"OK Mr. Vernon"

Mr. Vernon , so that was his name. George picked up his lines, and resumed reading "Edgar" off of the now darkened page from his mark, in this new corner.

"I don't think things will ever improve, Miss Ella"

"Fiona, stand aside"

"Yes, Mr. Vernon"

And release the concrete block"

"Yes, Mr. Vernon"

George had only an instant of realisation that a concrete block was falling on him. And crushing the life out of him.

"Cut. That's a wrap" announced the Casting Agent.  
And turned to the dark corner of the room.

Did we get that on film?

"Yes, Mr. Vernon"

"Fiona, get Housekeeping up here again"

"Yes, Mr. Vernon"

"And, once they're done, call in the next Edgar please"

Hurt

I'm hurt and overwrought.

When I'm hurt and overwrought I make lists.

At my makeshift kitchen table, a slab of wood on an open tea chest, my cup of tea's getting cold.

A film of scum has collected at the top.

The stub of pencil I'm using hesitates, hovers over the back of the envelope I'm writing on.

This envelope had contained another final demand. Turning it over I see it's one from the Gas people.

Still it's fit for the purpose.

My list's entitled:

Who did what to me and when

Maisie - "I never want to see you again"  
-that was nine days ago  
My mother "You'll never amount to anything - you'll always struggle"  
nine years ago  
Barclays Bank " take your overdraft elsewhere"  
nine months ago  
Julie "I'm pregnant and it's yours"  
nine months and four days ago

That one had prompted me to go to Barclays

I'm just getting into my stride: I'm big on introspection and the whole self pity thing, when my entire train of thought is interrupted by a knock at my front door.

Well, blow me down, it's Maisie. Who'd have thought it?

I open the door, searching for some clever words to say to her, words that will make her smile, the right words at the right time.

Words that will bring her back to me.  
Instead the best I can come out with is:  
"I thought you said you never wanted to see me again"

"I don't" she tells me, "here's the last of your stuff,"

And she places in my hand the hooks of two wire hangers.

Each hanger holds three ironed shirts of mine.  
They're secured only by their topmost buttons and the shirts and their arms flap stupidly in the breeze.

I'm sure that the imagery's significant and make a note of it, to muse upon it later.  
In my other hand she places my keys and a greeting card that I recall I sent her for no reason other than my adoration of her, a fit of passion some time ago.  
"Is there anything I can say" tears forming in my eyes. my vision blurring.  
By way of answer she turns her sheepskin jacketed back on me.

Again.  
and walks out of my life to her small car that we used to share. Again.

Soon after this I return to my list.  
I can't write any more

The paper's soggy with my own tears and my blunt pencil just carves holes.

Why does everything I do turn to shit?

Why don't the people that I love, love me back?

The whisky helps, the first one burns like a very coarse whisky, the second swig transforms into a fine single malt which tells me things can only get better.

The third mouthful convinces me that things have actually got better.

"My Girl Alcohol" I sing to the tune of my "My Girl Lollipop"

"She makes me giddy up", she does, you know

And I'm up and dancing, careering through my small kitchenette.

It's only when my wayward elbows clear the unwashed cups off of the draining board that I realise perhaps I am getting just a little too frisky.

I'm starting to gather up some bits and pieces of Maisies,  
I'll take them round to her, I decide.  
See how she deals with an unbidden me on her doorstep.  
Like she did to me.

By the time I've gathered the Domestos, dusters and Custard Cream biscuits that she's bought and paid for, it occurs to me that it'll take me ages to get over to her place. She's got the car.

And I'm discouraged by a vivid picture in my head of me, knocking her awake at two in the morning.

That might not help my reconciliation attempt.

Perhaps Julie will take me back.

Ha Ha!

Perhaps pigs will fly.  
She lost the baby and she still blames me.

I'll stagger myself to bed, get me some sleep.  
The whisky tells me it'll all be better in the morning.
The Stowaway

James Emerson5 sits at the dials of his fully automatic one man spacecraft. It's an unglamorous cargo carrier, with just enough fuel in it for this tiny inter-stellar hop. His cargo, as far as has been explained to him, is 1.755kg of archive; paper documents, bound for the nearest possible destination, a star, Star 22.The vessel is automatic, there is little for Emerson to do. His duties are not to steer or make decisions, just to sign that the cargo is on board, travel with it and gain a signature for it's transfer at the other end. The ship has no distraction or entertainment. In keeping with the austere rationing the ship has been streamlined for maximum fuel economy. It is stripped of all unnecessary embellishments to be as light as possible and save fuel.

One of the reasons Emerson himself is able to gain employment on board is his small skinny light frame. He is alone with his thoughts. Were it not for the signatures they wouldn't need him at all, the thought gives him no comfort.

The chair, a synthetic wicker, lightweight raffia, James morose and bored, the dials flashing green for OK. Distance to go, speed, fuel, and bearing. Green, green, green, orange.

The first inkling that anything is wrong .James taps the errant screen. It remains orange. If the message is true, he is off course with no means to correct it. He taps it again, - no change. Obviously an instrument malfunction, he re-assures himself. Later the speedometer joins in with the bearing dial. They both flash orange. Tapping the toughened glass helps not. The wires are cased and inaccessible.

Perhaps there is a problem. Moments later and the fuel dial also shows orange.Only one conclusion. A stowaway, and there is only one possible place that anyone can hide.When James removes the panel, there she is, no more than sixteen earth years and very frightened. Large eyes, curled on her side in the foetal position. He motions her out and up, but she is too frightened, paralysed with her fear.

"I won't hurt you" His own voice, rarely used, rarely needed, sounds strange to his ears.

After a while she emerges. A small yellow puddle and a trail behind her.

She is taller than him, just. Perhaps heavier. She kneels, out of reach, at the side of his chair .James shifts his feet to face her.

"Do you know what you've done?"

She nods slowly.

James waits for her to speak.

A small voice "I'm sorry, I know this'll get you into trouble, you can tell them it's my fault"

"And that's it, ....... is it?" James is angry but his voice is still level "You thought this would be a telling off?"

"Yes, I've an Aunt on Star 25, she'll pay my bond"

"I'm afraid it's more serious than that, we're not going to Star 25, in fact very soon we''re not going to be going anywhere"

He points to the four orange dials.

"We're off course, we have no fuel, we're losing speed, and we're too far away from anywhere for anyone to help us"

"I'm ....sorry" she ventures

"You've said that" James interjects" Not that it matters, why did you do this?What were you hoping to gain?"

By way of answer, she rolls up her sleeve. At first, James thinks that she is showing him an undergarment, soiled and bloody,he then realises with a start that her skin is not there. It's like an anatomy diagram; muscle, blood vessel and bones, that he remembers from a school lesson.

"This is how my uncle enjoys me" she says" he flays me with a whip, that's how he gets his pleasure, he calls me his manx cat, my back and my sides and my arms. Never my face or anywhere that it might show"

"Oh, my dear god" is all James can say.

"Everyone thinks he's a saint for giving me a home when my parents died forty one days ago.He knows what he's doing to me, he's told me I can lose up to forty per cent of my skin and still survive.I wasn't going to hang around and find out. That's why I've done this, don't you understand?"

"I do understand," responds James and searches his brain for the right words to explain that he does. The right words don't come.

She speaks again "I'm Sandra, what's your name" and she says it brightly as if they are friends and this is a normal trip.

No reply, so she goes on " This isn't much like I thought it would look, I thought it would be huge and luxurious, like on the movies, when do we eat, I'm starved"

"Sandra, there is no food here, there's not much of anything."

"So what do we do, how do you pass the time?"

"It passes, OK" James starting to become irritable "Sandra, I'd like you to listen to me and listen very carefully"

"OK"

"There is no cure for what you've done, this vessel is built for one. We can't both survive"

"But you can radio for help, yes"

"No, there is no radio, it would add weight to the ship"

Sandra tries again "An escape pod, that'd be exciting"

James shakes his head dolefully "Not even a space suit"

The gravity of the situation suddenly becomes clear to Sandra "You mean"

"Yes" James nods "that's what I've been trying to tell you"

He takes one last look at her face before he ejects himself into the inky blackness, his final thought is that she might just, somehow or other make it , alone.

Needs Must (when the Devil drives)

I had just finished fixing the elevator by the time she came to the hotel lobby.

She was making a show of drying her mountain of glossy black hair on two large fat blue towels and she was cursing.

"Diz you do this?"

"Diz you do that? fucking moron, why can't he speak properly?"

"Perhaps because he's Polish" I ventured as I studiously packed away my tools in their individual earmarked slots. Each one into their rightful place in the roll up of oilcloth that was my toolbox.

In truth, me fixing the lift had been no more than me having to press the "reset" button, in the elevator cupboard. However I wasn't going to let anybody know that.

My time sheet, for trumped up (hours and hours of) labour and the extensive expensive list of materials that I'd used were already clear in my mind, for my invoice later.

It was going to be a hefty one.

This had been a rare, first co-incidence.

She and I had both been called in to work, separately.

In the same hotel, at the same time.

And finished, at more or less, the same time.

I wondered who was charging more for their services. Her or me?

I had no idea.

Like strangers, we walk out to my car, she takes a curved route, I've gone straight. I'm a man after all, I can't (shouldn't) be doing with these games.

Her? She doesn't like to be seen, associated with me, unless it suits her!

She doesn't drive, the expensive lodges and mountains aren't always accessible by taxi. So it suits her, did I tell you I have a car? – that I put petrol in – that I pay for!

Ergo, she's my friend, or something like that..

"Where to?" I say as I open the passenger door, for her, of the expensive sports car that I intend to own one day.

That's provided I can clear the three payments I've missed.

Aaaaaaand keep avoiding the repossession men who think they have more right to it than I do.

I stow the oilcloth in it's correct holdall in the boot before sliding into the drivers seat.

God, I love this car.

The woman, I can take or leave,... possibly.

She discards the hotel's towels in a heap, against my seat.

"So do you know where you want to go to ?" I fold the towels in my lap and stew.

Impatient, I've been up since five a.m..

My belly was growling, no food for nine hours.

"Oh, just drive around, I'll think of somewhere."

Every fibre of me goes ""you what? You what?" you don't drive around for pleasure here. You go somewhere. Or somewhere else.

Instead I ask "So, can you speak Polish?" as I negotiate the car down the winding road that leads to the beach.

The hotel that we'd come from, the Excelsior, showed smaller in the rear view mirror.

It sits looking what it is, an expensive exclusive sweet confection on it's very own snow covered (but mossy) mountain top

"What's that got to do with anything?" she petulantly flips the top of her jewelled cigarette box, breaks out one of the black cigarillos, that I dislike so much. She lights it in her glossed lips from the tiniest Dunhill lighter. It's the size of a speck of dirt.

I cointinue."Well, you're slating him for not speaking our language properly, you couldn't put two words together in his, could you?"

She throws her head back, blows out a plume of purple acrid smoke in my direction.

"You're still angry with me about yesterday !" she says.

"Of course I am."

"Well, don't be, .. learn to live with it, deal with it" she laughs

I reach across and try to pull the cigarillo from her hand. As I drive.

It's a tricky road, even though I know it like the back of my hand, it still requires lots of my concentration

She resists and sparks of tobacco fill the air.

I grabbed again at her smoke, keeping one hand on the wheel and my eyes on the treacherous road ahead.

I wrestlle and win, GET IT, more sparks fall but I keep hold of, and then throw the offending article behind me over the car's rolled up soft crème ( shade 1402 additional fourteen hundred kroner oooow ) leather tonneau.

It's her turn to sulk.

She's perfected sulking.

Her shoulders hunch into the seat away from me and she made herself as small as she can.

"It's for your own good, you know those things'll kill you."

"You do that again, I'll fucking kill you." she tells me. And you know what? I really do believe her, she means it.

It's some minutes before she runs her hands through her hair and then re-applies her make up.

I noticed that there were little pin holes from the dots of tobacco in the polyester of my trousers.

I don't dare look, see if my soft white leather interior has also suffered.

Feeling the seat around me there seems to be no damage.

I cross my fingers for luck.

With her make up armour back on she resumes.

"Oliver's, we'll go to Olivers" she commands

"But that's back up the hill, why didn't you say that when we were passing his turn-off twenty minutes ago."

Ignoring my rebuke she continues. "We need to get him a peace offering, I can't just turn up empty handed."

How about a couple of soggy Excelsior towels, he'll like that" I ask reaching across ,and dumping them in her lap.

"It is about yesterday, isn't it?"

"Yes" I reply "and all the other yesterdays."

"Well, if you don't like what I do for a living, you don't have to put up with me, there are plenty of others willing to take your place."

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

With the burst of adrenaline that I should have used to punch her, I should say here and now, I have never and would never hit a woman.

A little voice in my head says"well, there's always a first time" and it's friend; another little smartarse voice (that unlike me, has just had it's tea – which it enjoyed thoroughly) , which is on a three wheeled bike says " she deserves it, go on just once, DO IT, DO IT NOW, you know you want to"

I ignore them both, knowing that if I don't, then their mate's gonna arrive any minute with an iron bar for the use of.

And.

So ... I handbrake turn the car, overtake a dawdling Sunday motorist before switching back to my side of the road and approach the hairpin bend that takes us back up the mountainside

Her lips have whitened as she contemplates her future, or lack of it.

I continued to throw the responsive steering so that she was jerked around in her seat. Like a rag doll. Yep, that's fine .. bitch.. I'm happy doing that.

She's not.

"Olivers, it is then" I said through gritted teeth.

We arrive at Olivers in less than seven minutes.

"I haven't got a gift," she reproaches me, as she levers herself out of the body hugging passenger seat.

"Well, you'll have to think of something fast, here he is - and he does not look happy."

MICHAEL MILLER - ...A REAL LADY KILLER

Chapter One - Do you know the way to?

"Can you tell me how to get to Blondin Street?"  
"I can do better than that, I'm going that way myself, why don't you walk along with me?"  
"Well, if it's not too much trouble"  
And that was how pretty young wife, Liz Abbler aged twenty two met the man who was going to kill her and then wear her clothes.  
"Are you going for a job interview?" Michael Miller asked Liz, He was a deal older than her, a friendly father or uncle figure.  
The sort of chap people take to.  
"Oh no" Liz responded. She unfolded a letterhead and read the companies name out loud."S K Hawes and Sons. I'm temping"   
"Ah" said Michael and they walked on. And on.  
"It's a lot further than I expected" Liz ventured.  
They had walked for some minutes in what had started out to be a comfortable silence. The business area of town was behind them.  
They were now in a residential street with terraced houses. Each had a small front garden.  
"I just need to nip in here" Michael told Liz."... won't be a moment"  
"Is this your home?" Liz asked.  
Michael didn't reply.   
He opened the waist high green wooden gate and made his way away from her down the path to the front door.  
The gate sprang shut.  
"I could carry on, on my own if you like" she called out to him as he walked away from her,"Just point me in the general direction, I'm sure I'll be OK"  
No reply. Perhaps he hadn't heard her, she thought.  
So she waited.   
She saw that MIchael had not produced a key or knocked at the terraces door.  
She stood uncertainly at the gate to the little front garden as he made his way back to her.  
"Just point me" she smiled at him, gesturing with her brown gloved left hand.  
Instead of coming back through the gate Michael walked to his left towards a bin in the front garden.  
On the other side of the hedge that obscured her vision of Michael, Liz could hear him retching.  
With concern she opened the little gate and walked up to Michael joining him at the large grey plastic tub of a bin.  
He'd taken the plastic lid off of the bin and was doubled up over the bin making loud hawing sounds.  
"Haaww" he went.  
With genuine concern Liz gingerly touched Michaels back.  
And it was then that he turned suddenly, the bin lid large and heavy in his hand. And hit Liz on the head with it, hard.  
When she came to, she had a metallic taste in her mouth.  
She saw some six feet away from her, her coat.  
Liz noticed that it had been folded carefully, its silky lining outermost.  
She had pain across her eyes and found difficulty looking up although it wasn't a sunny day.  
Looking down she saw blood on her blouse.  
"This will never do for work" she told herself, ineffectually brushing her hands over the blot. She suddenly remembered that she was on her way to temping, a new company, one that she'd not been to before; SK Hawes, they'd be wondering where she was.  
She tried to get to her feet, and fell. Awkwardly. Partly due to the shock and loss of blood. Partly due to the strap of her handback twisted twice to encircle her ankles.  
Quietly she started to cry. She did not know where her gloves were. She was sure she'd been wearing gloves. They were a present from Alastair, her husband. He'd be angry. He said that she was always forgetting things.

Later that day, a small man sat at his fireside chair.  
A nice small man, his hair side parted and combed shining with brylcreem, the type of man you'd expect to see perhaps in the nineteen fifties. He'd wear a cardigan, and have a pipe in his mouth and slippers on his feet.   
The brown stain on the white blouse he was wearing seemed out of keeping with the dustbin lid on his lap.  
On the arm of the chair was a very nice ladies camel coat, folded expertly. It was a little too small for him when he had tried it on.

Chapter Two - Am I On The Right Train?

"Am I on the right train for Amersham?"  
"No, but... I'm going that way myself, we have to change, this is the Uxbridge train"  
"Oh, shoot, I've not done that before; the changing, where do I change platforms ?"  
"Well. you can either do it at Ruislip or Northwood,  
I do it all the time, I can show you"   
"Well, if it's not too much trouble"

And that was how thirty year old Carla Hennis, a spinster, lonely but hopeful, met the man who was going to kill her and then wear her clothes.

"Would you like me to carry your bag, it looks heavy?" Michael Miller asked , He was a deal older than her, a friendly father or uncle figure.  
The sort of chap people take to.  
"Oh no" Cl responded. She lifted the bag shoulder high and showed that it wasn't heavy." i was going to bring home some files from work to go over later on tonight. I'm an Accountant at a big London store and it's our year end. In the finish I put everything on disk, I am silly, I didn't need the files at all. It's a lot easier \- and this way a lot lighter"   
"Ah" said Michael and they travelled on. And on.  
"Shouldn't we have changed trains before now"   
Carla ventured, as Michael led her off the train. At Uxbridge Station.  
"It's easier this way" he told her, with a winning smile.  
They walked for some minutes in what had started out to be a comfortable silence.  
They had come to the end of the platform. A red light heralded the dark tunnel.  
"It's just through here" Michael told Carla."... look, that arch there..." he pointed "it goes straight from here through to platform six."  
"Should we got through there. Isn't it private?" she asked.  
Michael didn't reply.   
He sidled past the red signal and made his way away from her down the narrowing path of the platform.  
"I could carry on, on my own if you like" she called out to him as he walked away from her,"Just point me in the general direction, I'm sure I'll be OK"  
No reply. Perhaps he hadn't heard her, she thought.  
So she followed.   
She saw that MIchael had not gone any further. He had removed his coat in the dark, and put it over his his arm.  
She stood uncertainly behind him as he turned back to her.  
"Just point me" she smiled at him, gesturing with her bag.

Instead of replying Michael hoisted his coat high and hung it over the lens of the CCTV camera.  
He then bent forward as if to pick up something at Carla's feet.  
The light was dim and Carla bent to see what it was, what he was reaching for.  
And it was then that he stood suddenly, the top of his head connecting with her unprotected chin. Hard.

When she came to, she had a metallic taste in her mouth.  
She saw some six feet away from her, her coat.  
Carla noticed that it had been folded carefully, its silky lining outermost.  
She had pain across her eyes and found difficulty looking up although the tunnel was in semi darkness.  
Looking down she saw blood on her blouse.  
"This will never do" she told herself, ineffectually brushing her hands over the blot. She suddenly remembered that she was on her way home, her cat was going to be misbehaving. He'd taken recently to scratching the furniture and the wallpaper. She was going to buy him some dry food, it could be his diet. She couldn't go into Tesco and buy the cat food in this dirty blouse.  
She tried to get to her feet, and fell. Awkwardly. Partly due to the shock and loss of blood. Partly due to the strap of her handbag twisted twice to encircle her ankles.  
Quietly she started to cry with a sense of loss. It was double Tesco points this week. She did not know where her Tesco loyalty card was. She was sure that she'd meant to take it when she'd left home that morning.

Later that day, a small man sat at his fireside chair.  
A nice small man, his hair side-parted and combed shining with brylcreem, the type of man you'd expect to see perhaps in the nineteen fifties. He'd wear a cardigan, and have a pipe in his mouth and slippers on his feet.   
The brown stain on the grey blouse he was wearing seemed out of keeping with the wicker holdall on his lap.  
On the arm of the chair was a very nice ladies grey coat, folded expertly.The label said Harrods. It was a perfect fit for him when he had tried it on.

Chapter Three - Is this the right bus stop for...?

"Am I at the right stop for the two two six? I always get so confused when there's more than the one bus stop in the street"

"I know what you mean, it can be confusing, particularly since they've pedestrianised the Town Centre. Where is it that you need to get to?"

" Westerham, and then I'm not even sure that I'm on the right side of the road"

"You're not, you'll have to cross the Town Square to be on the right side. These buses here would be taking you further away"

Oh crikey, thank you, the other side of the Town Square? How do I get there? ?"

"You're in luck, I've got to go that way to meet a colleague,   
I can show you"

"Well, if it's not too much trouble"

And that was how thirty six year old Jenna Forbes, a young red haired divorcee who had given up on men, but still liked to go bowling, met the man who was going to kill her and then wear her clothes.

"Would you like me to carry your bag, it looks heavy?" Michael Miller asked Jenna, He was a deal older than her, a friendly father or uncle figure.  
The sort of chap people take to.

"That would be kind of you" Jenna responded.  
She passed the bag to him with a sigh. It was heavy.  
"I was going to return some wallpaper, I'd bought too many rolls. When I gave them the measurements the dickhead behind the counter said I'd need eighteen rolls, turned out I only needed eight. Men eh?"

"Perhaps he was on a bonus to sell you more than you really needed" said Michael

They both laughed.

And were smiling as they made their way through the homebound crowds spilling out of the office buildings at finishing time in the Town Centre.

They travelled on. And on.

" I think I know where to go now" said Jenna brightly and she reached for her bag.

"I've come this far, let me at least see you safely to your stop" he told her, with a winning smile.

They set off again and had walked for some minutes in what had started out to be a comfortable silence.  
They had come to the end of the Town Centre.  
And crossed a wide road into the bus terminal building,

"Well, thanks for everything" said Jenna" you've gone some way to restoring my faith in men"

"The terminus is one thing" Michael told Jenna."...now we need to find your stop" he pointed  
"I think it's just through here" he said leading the way down a deserted corridor.

"Should we actually go through there? Isn't it private?" she asked.

Michael didn't reply.   
He carried on, her bag in hand.

Jenna stifled a tremor in her stomach, a chemical misgiving but stoically followed Michael, she wanted her bag back.

"I could carry on, on my own if you like" she called out to him as he walked away from her "Just point me in the general direction, I'm sure I'll be OK"

No reply.  
Perhaps he hadn't heard her, she thought.  
So she followed.

She saw that Michael had not gone any further.  
He had removed his coat in the dark, and put it over his arm.  
She stood uncertainly behind him as he turned back to her.

"Just point me" she smiled at him, gesturing with her finger.

Instead of replying Michael hoisted his coat high.  
He hung it over the lens of a CCTV camera, hiding it's small flashing light and lens.  
He then bent forward as if to pick up something at Jenna's feet.  
The light was dim and Jenna bent forward over him, to see what it was; what he was reaching for.

And it was then that he stood up suddenly.  
The top of his head connected with her unprotected chin. Hard.

As She fell forward Michael swung the heavy bag of wallpaper in an arc connecting, as she almost touched the ground, with the red crown of her hair.

When she came to, she had a wallpaper taste in her mouth and a dull ache in her head.  
She saw some six feet away from her, her coat.  
Jenna noticed that it had been folded carefully, its silky lining outermost.  
She had pain across her eyes and found difficulty looking up although the passage was in near darkness.  
Looking down she made out spots of blood on her blouse.  
"This will never do" she told herself, ineffectually brushing her hands over the spots.  
She suddenly remembered that she was on her way to change wallpaper. She started to panic; had she brought along the credit card that she had paid for it with? Which one was it that she had used? She knew if she didn't have the right card, the one she'd made payment with, then they wouldn't refund her. They wouldn't credit the money back on any other card, nor in cash neither. It would all be a wasted journey. She couldn't go into the store though. Not in this dirty blouse.

She tried to get to her feet, and fell. Awkwardly. Partly due to the shock and loss of blood. Partly due to the strap of her belt tightened and twisted twice to encircle her ankles.

Quietly she started to cry with a sense of loss.

She saw Michael standing over her. She struggled to remember who he was or why.

"Can you help me, I seem to have fallen down" she asked him, and her voice seemed distant to her, far away from her ears.

Michael bent over her and unbuttoned her blouse.

Jenna thought rape. A sense of outrage started to rise within her but fizzled out.

She was doing her best to think. She seemed to remember that the good advice was to shout "Fire" not shout "Rape".

The words formed in her throat "Fire, fire" but it all seemed too much effort.

Like a kind caring parent Michael carried on and removed her cardigan, blouse and bra. He was now attending to her other clothing, lower down her body.

"You'll not get away with this" she meant to say but the words came out slurred.

Michael smiled benevolently and carried on undressing her. She saw that the rolls of wallpaper had been tipped out from her store branded re-usable bag. It was now loaded with her clothes. Apart from her shoes.

Presently her shoes joined her clothes and decked the top of her bag.

She started to scoot away on her bare bottom, away from Michael, sculling with the palms of her hands. Her flesh made sucking sounds on the cold stone floor as she went.

Later that day, a small man sat at his fireside chair.  
A nice small man, his hair side-parted and combed shining with brylcreem, the type of man you'd expect to see perhaps in the nineteen fifties. He'd wear a cardigan, and have a pipe in his mouth and slippers on his feet.   
The brown blots on the blue blouse he was wearing seemed out of keeping with the bright Ikea branded carrier bag on his lap.  
On the arm of the chair was a very nice ladies cream coat, folded expertly. It had been a little bit too big for him when he had tried it on.

For the first time he had a sense of foreboding. He felt as if he'd been watched!

Peeping Tim

Peeeping Tim Chapter 1

Peeping Tim sees all.  
Peeping Tim feels nothing.

Peeping Tim tells all.

************************************

Martyn Charles is surprised by Tim.

Martyn's on the bus, heading for work as a toolmaker.

An ordinary job in Ordinarytown is how he's always described it.

He's deeply into his newspaper, the "Sun", the sports pages. England have won again, Capello's quite the man.

Martyn's just considering the big dilemma; can Cole and Gerrard operate in midfield or is it best they're selected separately?

As he's mulling this over with the gravity it deserves a small man in his fifties takes a seat next to him on the same bench.

The bald cinquegenerian pushes Martyn further along the bench, encroaching Martyn's half of the the seat, pushing Martyn towards the window wall of the bus.  
Martyn re-adjusts, pulls his elbows in and resites his newspaper so that he can continue reading.

As the edge of the "Sun" passes his eyeline Martyn sees that all the seats ahead are unoccupied.

"Why didn't the little sod sit there?" he thinks to himself, as he tries to resume his reading.

Now a nudge in his ribs.

Martyn doesn't turn. Staring stoically ahead he maintains his reading pose. He can't focus on the words, they're blurred.

"Was she good?"

Martyn can't believe that he heard the words. Perhaps he imagined it.  
Turning his head he looks out of the window. The Boulevard. Only two stops, only five minutes and it will be his stop.

The thought comforted him. In his minds eye, he saw himself squeezing past the little man, - and continuing his day. No damage - no harm done.

Another nudge in his ribs.

He's not imagining this.

"I said -was she good?"

Martyn can't maintain his reading pose. He crumple folds the paper and turns to his aggressor.

Martyn looks at him for the first time.

A bald man, pale white skin with a round mild jovial face. Bright blue eyes behind thickish tortoiseshell framed glasses.An open necked blue small-checked shirt under a grey pullover.

Under a sensible off- white wind cheater jacket.

" Are you talking to me?"  
"Naturally" the little man responds brightly.  
"What do you want?"  
"I want to know, was she good?"  
"Who are you? cause if you've been sent by her old man..."  
"It doesn't matter who I am, tell me, was she good?"

Turning away from the little man, Martyn looks out of the window. Salvation. Highlands Road, just one stop away.

A sudden thought enters his head. He can get up, get off now. Finished, finito.

He doesn't have to tolerate this any longer.

He tries to stand. The little man has anticipated this and he's moved his small body over and tight against Martyn..

The bar is on the little mans side with the ring bell.

Martyn reaches for the bar, for the bell.

With a pleasant smile on his face the little man pulls Martyn's arm back and down.

He finishes by forcing his arm pointedly down into Martyns lap.

With a final flourish the little man takes Martyn's hand and pushes it between Martyn's legs close to his crotch.

The little man removes his hand.

Martyns distressed.

He knows that he should be able to pick up this tiny nuisance, and throw him out of his way, even off the bus if necessary.

He could even alert someone else, one of the other passengers.

But as he rehearsed what he might say, he realised he couldn't say it "Help, I'm being assaulted by a little old man". Big strapping lad Martyn, no one could believe him, they'd just laugh - if they take any notice of him at all.

"Who's gonna defend me?" he thought.

He looked at his fellow passengers,.

"Which one?"he thought.He saw that only one passenger had got on ahead of him, in his eyeline. An old woman, her hair dyed an unlikely shade of red, the hair showing under her almost transparent headscarf with her blue leather look plastic shopping bag on wheels. "She'd be a lot of help," Martyn thought.

The oppression of the little man discouraged Martyn from looking behind him or even sideways for help.

Looking out of the window, Martyn sees his stop whizzing by.

"That's my stop" he says loudly.

Mr.s Red Hair didn't even acknowledge his voice.

The little man just laughed, laughed out load

"So she was good, wasn't she?" he resumed.  
"Yes, if you must know" Martyn said quietly, out of the side of his mouth, embarassed.

He was painfully aware of the way that the little man had folded him, Martyns hand was still wedged under his own thigh, and the pressure on his side was beginning to be uncomfortable.

"Well, we've established that she was good" the little man said as he produced a small paper bag of wrapped sweets from his windcheater far side pocket. He twist unwrapped one of the boiled sweets from it's transparent wrapper and popped it in to his mouth.

"Where are my manners?" he said lightly, the sweet clacking on his teeth, offering Martyn up the bag of black and white striped sweets. "They're Everton Mints" he clacked at Martyn. Pushing the sweet with his tongue to the cheek cavity of his mouth, he continued more easily "You can't get them in a lot of places, I have to go into Bullshill. There's a little newsagent there who still serves them out of jars, you know, the old fashioned way."

After Martyn had made no move toward the sweets, and had said nothing, the little man wound the lip of the paper bag closed and stowed the bag neatly back into his left pocket.

Martyn glanced right and saw the bus leaving the outskirts of town. He knew it was now headed for the terminus, not too far away.  
After a time the little man had sucked his sweet down to a comfortable level so that he could talk easily.

"So, she was good, does Roger know about you two?"  
"Roger?   
"Yes, Roger, her husband, Roger, who is your father in law to be, which Roger did you think we were talking about"

"I don't know" Martyn said glumly.Alarm bells ringing in his head.

"But she said she was going to tell him" the little man pressed on.

"Only if I stopped servicing her, you know... that's when she was going to tell him" retorted Martyn.

"Marvellous" the little man clapped his pink doughy hands together" we now have a conversation going on" and he nuzzled down further into his three- quarters of the bench seat, increasing the pressure.

"And, of course, Maria knows!

"You leave Maria out of this" Martyn bristles, twisting ineffectually in his seat.  
"I don't think you could leave her out of it, what with you due to marry her in November, at St. Asprey's Church. She'll be in white, not creme , you know, but that's another story. I don't think you could leave Maria out of it especially if you brought her back a nasty little disease. How would you explain away a bout of say, chlymidia. I'm sure Maria would enjoy that. Chlymidia, it's such a nice word, don't you think? I think so, you could even name a child Chlymidia and they'd thank you for it when they grew up. Or you could use it for some food item, you'd be sitting round the dinner table with your family, or perhaps even Roger's family, at their table where you and your Mum in - law to be have been intimate the night before. she likes you to bite. And at that table, you'd say to Sonia, "pass the chlymidia". And she'd say. Mindful of the night that you'd just spent together, while Roger was working nights,Sonia would say, I'll just go in the kitchen and make some more chlymidia, it could happen, \- remember when Mars renamed Marathon, that became Snickers, don't you know?"

Martyn reeled in shock. He knew it all, this nasty little man,

If this was all to come out, he'd lose everything, he'd be fianceless, homeless and in danger of serious retribution.

He'd seen Roger when he was angry. it hadn't been pretty.

Martyn was aware of movement. He half expected the little man to produce a Snickers bar from his pocket but instead the little man had fished in that far pocket again and come up with a mobile phone. An IPOD phone.

"Very trendy phone for an old man," Martyn thought. I've got one just the same.

"Hold on, it is mine." Martyn thought.

" I partcularly like that text the day before yesterday, you know, the one to Sonia where you texted about tearing her knickers off with your teeth." the little man smiled and he thumbed the phone expertly and read from the list.  
That was just after the text where she told you Roger had just texted her. Do you remember that one?"

"No" Martyn replied, through gritted teeth.

"He'd texted her," the little man reminded him "that Sonia had put salad cream on his corned beef sandwiches in his lunch pail. He only likes mayonaisse, he can't stand salad cream."

You and Sonia were laughing about that TXT by TXT. You said you'd see her L8R."  
"I remember now"  
"Yes, Sonia must have been distracted, Lord only knows why. What a foolish mistake to make, perhaps subliminally she wanted Roger to starve and to die, so that she can be with her true love, Martyn Charles who now lives under her roof, in her own family, her own daughter's boyfriend, formerly of 32a Marlborough Place, BS 11 1AN, formerly of 17 Stroud St, Bath.

"How do you know all this"

"I know everything" the little man purred, and his voice rumbled with pleasure  
"I know all about you, Martyn "National Insurance no YW12 34 23 B" Charles, blood group A negative.

"Why are you doing this?" Martyn asked. He was sweating. The pressure and the contortion of his spine really hurting.

"What do you want"

"I don't want anything, I just want you to know, that I know."

And with that, as the bus pulled into the terminus, the little man relaxed and relieved the pressure on his victim. so suddenly that Martyn almost fell, by recoil across the seat.

"I'll be watching you" the little man called over his shoulder as he walked with a bounce in his step, past the bus driver-operators booth and out off the bus through the open folded doors.

Martyn retrieved his mobile phone. It had been left for him.

The little man hurried on.

To the other side of the bus stand, where several buses were waiting at their stops, to start their journey.

He had to take the 114 bus to Brislington.

Elsie Corringham had just got on. He'd seen her when she'd been stealing again from Iceland. She'd left some tell tale clues He couldn't wait to tell her all about them.

Peeping Tim

Chapter Two - the 114 bus to Brislington.

Peeping Tim sees all.  
Peeping Tim feels nothing.

Peeping Tim tells all.
Chapter Two - the 114 bus to Brislington.

Elsie Corringham had just got on the bus.

He'd seen her when she'd been stealing again from Iceland.

She'd left some tell tale clues.

He couldn't wait to tell her all about them.

...

"Hallo, Elsie"

Elsie looked up, saw who was addressing her, and then slowly and purposefully heaved her heavy shopping bag to fill the bus seat space next to her, so that no-one could sit down there.

No one, next to her, at all.

Without even acknowledging Tims presence, she then turned away, and stared stoically out of the window.

Undeterred, Tim sat himself down next to Elsie, crushing the contents of her heavy tartan bag which she had placed on the seat.

"Now come on Elsie, don't be like that, you know we're old friends" said Tim, as he settled himself more comfortably and more heavily on the unzipped blue tartan.

"I think I heard a crack there " Tim continued innocently, "Did you have eggs?.. by any chance"

"Yes, I have eggs" she hissed out of the side of her mouth "now go away, leave me alone you hear, you'll just embarrass me again."

" I wouldn't embarrass you, ... Elsie" said Tim brightly " you might embarrass yourself.. though"

Tim hadn't bothered to keep his voice down.

Tim stood up.

As he did so, Elsie inspected the ruined wet top of her hold-all. She saw inside that the cracked eggs had run their contents down, yellow and snotty white over her Jammy Dodgers and over her plasticoted large leg of lamb placarded green red and white "deal of the week, just £9.49"

"Ladies and Gentlemen" Tim announced. In his best stage voice.

The bus was filling up, twenty or so passengers had filed on to the bus after Tim and most seats on the lower deck were now occupied.

They looked up. Tim had their attention.

Elsie hung her head in shame, certain that Tim was going to name her and shame her.

Tim went on "I have an announcement ... on behalf of your Bus Driver."

A loud explosion of relief and air from Elsie.

"Because it's a cold day, and because it's raining" Tim continued"our bus driver has kindly allowed us all to sit on the bus, rather than be out in the cold and in the rain. When he comes on board, I'd like us all to give him a loud cheer, a clap and to remember to thank him for his kindness

Please also do remember to PAY, it is a crime not to pay - and of course it would be a very bad thing to do, not pay, in return for this, his kindness.

He turned to Elsie, " that would be a bad thing to do, NOT PAY, you know it's only right that you pay ... Elsie"

Turning back to the passengers with a flourish worthy of Sir Laurence Olivier in his heyday, Tim walked theatrically to the stairwell and called up the stairs.

"Did everyone get that, up there?"

A chorus of yes's, will do's, right-you-are's, affirmed that they had.

"That is all " he told his audience "... you may carry on" he concluded rather grandly.

Heads went down as people fished for their hankies, mobile phones, and cough sweets.

Tim smiled broadly at a job well done and resumed his seat, this time sitting next to Elsie on the chairs red tartan fabric.

Elsie had moved the shopping bag away to now be on her side, under her legs.

"You're too kind, Elsie" he told her

"Tell me. Did you have a receipt for those eggs?

I think I've got enough time to whizz them back to Iceland,

and get them changed over, for unbroken ones.

I'll tell them that it was my clumsiness"

"You know I ain't got a receipt" she hissed out of the side of her mouth.

"Marvellous" Tim purred as he clapped his pink doughy hands together" we now have a conversation going on, I do soooo love a conversation" and he occupied more of the seat squeezing Elsie against the frame of the bus so that she couldn't stand, nor escape.

Tim nuzzled down further into his three- quarters of the bench seat, increasing the pressure.  
"Well, we've established that you don't have a receipt from Iceland" he said as he produced a small paper bag of wrapped sweets from his windcheater far side pocket. He twist unwrapped one of the boiled sweets from it's transparent wrapper and popped it in to his mouth.

"Where are my manners?" he said lightly, the sweet clacking on his teeth, offering Elsie up the bag of black and white striped sweets.

"They're Everton Mints" he clacked at her.

Pushing the sweet with his tongue to the cheek cavity of his mouth, he continued more easily "You can't get them in a lot of places, I have to go into Bullshill. There's a little newsagent there who still serves them out of jars, you know, the old fashioned way."

After Elsie had made no move toward the sweets, and had said nothing, the little man wound the lip of the paper bag closed and stowed the bag neatly back into his left pocket.

"So, apart from the eggs, what else have you got in there? It looked pretty weighty when you hefted it up. Let me guess, a side of beef ?"

"Leg of lamb, if you must know" Elsie hissed.

"So that's about £15 worth so far. I've got you down Elsie as a "£30 a visit" woman. You know, like those posers who say "I don't get out of bed for less than fifty quid, except in your case, Elsie from Corovale Road, Bullshead, age fifty four, you'd say I don't rob a shop for less than thirty quid"

Tim was interrupted by a loud rumble of cheers and applause from the other passengers.

The driver had, at long last, got on to the now full bus.

He stood puzzled and embarrassed as passengers approached him, patting his shoulder and thanking him. One passenger was heard to say "it was right nice of you, you're a champion lad."

Many were now queuing to pay, and to give their thanks.

They each had a pious self righteous air.

"I'll get yours" said Tim "I know you don't like to pay, apart from that suspended sentence from 2010. I bet that still hangs over your head Elsie, that one, that suspended sentence, from Judge Roy Timmis, case 3842 of 2010, Poundstretcher versus Corringham.

Costs £60 you had to fork out. Which of course is the equivalent of two visits of yours to Iceland.

Tapping a young lad (who was passing) on his shoulder

"Can you get us two tickets – adult ones to Bath terminus please? I'd go myself but I do have such a bad leg"

Handing the lad a five pound note" you may even keep the change" Tim told him grandly.

"Bring us the tickets back though before you get off. We may need to show everyone that we've paid. you will do that, won't you. Say I promise "

" I promise" the youngster repeated and set off to do as he was bidden.

" I promise" mused Tim as he re-focused his unwanted attention on Elsie" ... I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That's the oath they have in court, isn't it. You'd have had to say that, and you'd have had to say that three times in 2009 by my reckoning. How would you say that when you know you're about to lie out of your... um, how shall I say this politely, I know rectum, your rectum. That's the right word, isn't it?

The lad had returned with their tickets which he handed to Tim.

"You didn't hear Uncle Tim say a bad word, did you, sonny ?"

The lad shook his head , no.

" That's good, off you trot"

The lad played with the one pound ninety of coins in his pocket, £1.90 that he'd just earned.

"Here's your ticket, Elsie"said Tim as he re-focused his unwanted attention on Elsie "it feels good to pay. You'll have to try it one of these days.

Now what I'm particularly interested in Elsie, is exactly how long you worked your scam, that one you did with your niece."

"Don't know what you're talking about" Elsie hissed.

Turning his head toward the passenger on his left Tim patted the man on his leg.

Reaching across the aisle.

"This is Elsie" he told him, as he beckoned with his head towards her.

"Hallo Elsie" the tall stranger responded brightly.

"Elsie used to work with her niece, at Iceland"

"That's nice" responded Mr. Tall

"When I say worked with" Tim explained, he had worked his sweet down to a manageable size now "it was only her niece who worked at Iceland, she worked on the till and served many customers, including her Auntie, her Auntie Elsie, our Elsie here"

Elsie was now trying desperately to stand, using her side of the bus to push against Tim. She was straining hard, red faced.

For all her efforts though, it was having no effect upon Tim who was now in full flow and continuing.

"But her Niece whose name was Sharon Brindley, B- R- I –N- D- L- E –Y- " Tim spelt out" kept giving all the other customers, the right change, but when it came to her Auntie, whose name is Elsie, Elsie here, she always gave her far too much change. Example: Elsie would have six pounds forty of shopping and give her niece Sharon a ten pond note. Sharon would then only swipe three items , miss three items, if you see what I mean, and when Auntie Elsie paid for only half the items with a ten pound note, she would give her Auntie here forty pounds in change, for Elsie here, to take away with her, after her purchases."

"Oh" said Mr Tall. He hadn't been expecting that.

Neither had the other passengers around, behind and in front of Tim who had tuned in to Tim's loud voice and were now listening intently.

"Sharon's in Cleethorpe Prison now, at the moment, but the word is that she will be out before Xmas, earlier even with good behavior. Elsie tells me she's getting her a turkey crown, for Xmas dinner, not a whole turkey with legs etc to celebrate Sharon's release

( subject to Parole board and other administration close brackets)"

"I didn't tell him that at all" Elsie squawked loudly "he's making it up, he's making it all up."

" Why a turkey crown? I prefer a whole turkey, my husband likes to have a leg, the brown meat" asked a small old lady behind Tim.

" Because it's easier to hide up your jumper, if you don't intend to pay for it" answered Tim happily.

"Aaaah" said Mrs old lady.

"Why did she only charge her for some items, not others?" asked another.

Elsie was ineffectually trying to climb out of her seat. She was making mewling noises.

Tim turned and noted her very apparent distress.

Perhaps he had gone too far.

Tim decides to defuse the situation.

"She's right" said Tim, "I was making it all up, it was just for laughs and giggles."

The swell of interest subsided. People went back to what they'd been doing. No scandal, no tittilation after all.

Elsie looked exhausted, a frond of her red dyed grey hair had come unclipped in her efforts to escape, making an eyepatch, like that singer Gabrielle.

"You horrible man" she told Tim.

" Don't worry Elsie, I think I pulled it out of the bag, as they say. Did you recognize the way that I said that I was lying, lying out of my rectum. I didn't like that feeling, but I thought to myself Tim, you must defend this lady's honour, that's what I told myself. It's a bit of a new sensation for me, this rectum thing, I must say"

"Thank you, I think" said Elsie.

"So how long with the Sharon till scam?"

"Eight months, we got shut down in November of 2008"

"What happened? Why?"

"The manager was doing it too, with his mum, for his mum like. It was all great till he left, then they got a new manager, who actually put tape in the cctv cameras"

"So why didn't you go down, like Sharon?"

"Sharon plea bargained, dobbing in the old manager so I could go free"

"Wow, what a story" Tim laughed, and he rocked back and forth in his seat

"That's wonderful" he said eventually, when he'd finished rocking"

"So that's how it all worked out?"

"Yeah"

"Elsie, I take my hat off to you" Tim said "if I was wearing one which I'm not"and he laughed and laughed. And then laughed some more.

Cobham Road stop whizzed by without anyone requesting or hailing. Just three stops to the terminus at Bath, Elsie thought, and then I'll be rid of him.

And now, because I defended your honour, you owe me Elsie. What I'd like in return is to know how you do it? That Iceland thing, these days?"

"You know very well, it's not difficult. I just walk in, bag what I want, walk out"

"It can't be that easy. They know you, the staff, they know all about you. They have CCTV. There's even a picture of you on the tills entitled " use automatic doors to prevent this woman leaving"

"It is. It's as easy as that, ...it's not difficult. I just walk in, bag what I want, walk out"

"Now Elsie, we both know that can't be true. How's it done?"

"It is, I tell yer"

"Elsie, Elsie, Elsie, do you think I was born yesterday?"

"Well, if yer don't believe me..."

"Elsie, this is Tim you're talking to, do you want me to tell you instead?"

"Yeah go 'n if you're so bleedun clever"

"Elsie, You have help on the inside. You can't even go inside Iceland"

"Go on clever dick"

"Ooh Elsie, I've hit a nerve, haven't I? A little nervie wervie, tell me Elsie, am I getting warm?"

"Yer might be"

"Elsie , I know I am"

The terminus came in sight and passengers around the couple were gathering up their belongings, in anticipation of embarking.

"Elsie, Sharon's son Vernon steals to order and stacks it in Iceland bags outside the back of the shop. You phone him the day before, tell him what you want him to steal, he collects it gradually each time he goes out to replenish the shelves, he then texts you from his phone, "Mishun Accomplished. Doesn't he"

Elsie reeled in shock. He knew it all, this nasty little man.

"Vernon's surnames different to his mum, she remarried and changed her surname. Vernon was already at school when it happened so he didn't get his name changed. That way they don't even know at Iceland, even now, that they have a jailbirds son. Whose mum used to rob them blind. And he's taking revenge for his mum by robbing Iceland blind, While she's banged up. And once again you, Elsie, get the benefit. It's sublime or ironic, or something. A sort of poetic justice"

Elsie reeled in shock even more. He knew it all, all of all, this nasty little man.

"Elsie, it's been both a treat and a pleasure. By the way your Vernon's been arrested and right about now, he'll be giving up names and shaming up shames. You won't get far with that heavy bag, where could you go, anyway?" Tim laughed as he got up, striding energized from the emptying bus.

Without a backward glance, and again with the feeling of a job well done Tim strode towards the Terminus Café.

"Tim Morris" a hand on his shoulder. A navy raincoat, and an unsmiling tall gentleman"We have a warrant for your arrest, on harassment charges. You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say will be taken down in evidence. Anything that you rely upon in court in evidence will have been noted"

"Ouch, don't hit me again Officer"

"Very funny sir, do come this way"

Chapter Three

Tim has been arrested by the Police for Harassment and is at the Police Station.

Martyn Charles has been in earlier that very day to place an allegation of assault.

From the description that Martyn has given, and the type of assault that has been perpetrated on Martyn's person, the aggressor can only be one person: Timothy Morris.

Tim is well known to the local Police.

Having been read his rights, Tim's interview under caution has commenced. With Inspector Jessop.

Inspector David Jessop is a family man, or should be.

He is a Plain Clothed Inspector, with twelve years service on the force and five promotions under his belt.

He and Tim have sat at these desks before in the Interview Room. Several times. On previous occasions the citation has been for Causing a Public Nuisance.

Tim is a mild mannered man in his fifties dressed conservatively in his quiet blue checked shirt and pullover. Over these he wears a sensible off white windcheater jacket.

With them both in the Interview Room is fresh faced young Constable Stephen Purdon.

Once the paraphernalia and protocol of the interview has been said, and the interview is underway Tim points out a technical "faux pas" on the Police's part.

He has not been offered his telephone call.

"Constable Purdon" Jessop turns to his uniformed colleague  
"Is this correct ? Has Mr. Morris been told his rights and offered his telephone call?"

"I'm not sure" responds Purdon. "He's had his rights." he says, checking his notepad.  
He chews on the stub of his pencil and flicks through the pages of his small jotter" I don't think he's had his call.  
I didn't offer him a call. I assumed it was already done by someone else out there." Purdon waves his fingers at the outer office.  
"You know. Before I brought him in here." he finishes lamely.

"Oh that's brilliant. Now we'll have to stop everything and give him his call "  
Jessop looks sternly at the Junior Officer.  
He is annoyed at the break in proceedings.

"I believe it is my right, gentlemen, I am allowed the one call"  
Tim presses home his advantage, increasing and enjoying their discomfort.

"I'm sorry, Inspector Jessop, I should have checked" Purdon admits.

"OK... Interview paused two thirteen pm."  
Jessop tells the tape with some exasperation in his voice.

"Purdon." he asks" Will you assist Mr. Morris?"

And to Tim he says "Go make your call"

Jessop presses a button on the tape machine.

"You're just too kind" demurs Tim

The piano key on the tape recorder is clicked back into place.

And the hum stops.

Tim exits the room with escort from Purdon.  
Purdon takes Tim along the long main internal corridor and through the Operational Offices

"Sorry about the telephone call thing"

"No problem" Tim waves his apology away "heat of the moment, a mistake anyone could make."

"Strictly speaking, "Purdon confides, dropping his voice to a whisper" we should go out of the back of the police station and all the way back in again from the front so that you sign in through the enquiry desk. By rights you should sign in again - but as it's raining I'm taking you through the short cut"

"That's very considerate of you. You're a kind hearted young man"

Tim is accompanied through several offices. Some of the offices are a blur of activity. Others are unoccupied. On the way Tim notices a huge whiteboard on the wall of one of the empty offices.

He sees large writing on it, capital letters in blue marker pen.  
he stops Purdon with a hand to Purdon's arm and studies the board. Photographs are blue-tacked to the whiteboard.  
Red marker pen lines extend from the photo's to other parts of the board.  
Green asterisks are dotted here and there,  
Along with purple question marks.

"That's very colourful," Tim remarks to Purdon   
"What is it?" he asks of Purdon, indicating the wall.

Purdon, young and eager to please, explains,  
"It's an Operations board"

Tim feasts his eyes "So that's what it is".

Would you like one of these? "Tim asks him as he produces from his windcheater pocket a small white paper bag.  
Tim opens the lip of it revealing several transparent-wrapped black and white striped sweets.

Tim studies the board with interest as he holds the bag towards the young man.

"They're Everton Mint's. You can't get them everywhere"   
he entices.

Purdon takes one of the proffered sweets.  
.  
The two twist unwrap their sweets and start to enjoy them companionably.

Tim closes the bag and stows it safely back into the left pocket of his jacket.

The pair suck at their confectionery and his sweet clacks on his teeth as Tim restarts their conversation.

" I have to go into Bullshill to get these, there's a little shop there, where they sell them out of jars, you know, the old fashioned way"

Purdon nods, enjoying the mint.  
He's starting to take a shine to the small genial man.

"It's got a lot of telephone numbers on it" Tim observes, pointing back again to the wallboard.

"Yes" agrees Purdon.

That's your home telephone number, isn't it?  
Just there, where it says; Purdon, - six three oh seven eight two,?" says Tim, nodding toward one corner of the board..

"Yes" clacks Purdon, agreeing again

"Why's it up there?"

"In case we get a "Shout". For fast response, get the team together, briefings, that sort of thing" Purdon clacks back.

"I see. And look, there, - that's Inspector Jessop's home number, isn't it?"

"Yes, we're on the same caseload"

"Um... I see. Should I have seen that ? Should all that information really be on display? "

"Probably not" concedes Purdon.

Tim has memorised Jessop's home number.

And Tim uses his one telephone call wisely.

Checking that he is alone, and unobserved, Tim punches the number that he has committed to memory.

"Hallo, ... Mrs. Jessop?

"Yes, who is this?"

"Hallo, ...Mrs. Jessop? It's Tim ," he explains truthfully"   
"I'm telephoning you from your husbands Police Station" .

Tim pushes his heavy tortoiseshell glasses a little higher up on the bridge of his nose and waits.

After a while "Oh good... thanks for phoning me, he went out without saying what time he'd be coming back, will he back shortly?"  
Hope for an affirmative answer sounds in her voice.

"I'm afraid not, he's got rather a lengthy interview going on at the moment,"

"I suppose it would have been too much to hope for, it's like he's married to his job, not to me"

"Oh my, that is a shame, Does he do this a lot ?"

Although Tim's voice remains even, he's as happy as if he's scored a goal. For England.

"You probably don't want to hear all of this" Mrs. Jessop ventures.

"Oh but I do. I do" Tim is in seventh heaven.  
This is meat and drink to him.

"Please do go on, Mrs. Jessop"

"Well, I don't suppose you have time for all this, but Tim, it is Tim, isn't it? Tim let me tell you, I am fuming"

"Oh my" Tim is euphoric.

"I am beside myself. His own daughters seventh birthday, and he won't even take today off"

"Well that's just terrible" empathises Tim.

"And I'll tell you another thing..." says Mrs. Jessop, warming to her topic and sensing a sympathetic ear.

And she does. And then she does some more.  
At length.

Tim laps it all up, grinning ear to ear.

Tim replaces the receiver and indicated his readiness to Purdon that he is done.

The little man is energised, he has a pronounced bounce in his step.

Jessop is drumming his fingers with impatience as the pair resume their seats. And he re-activates the tape machine.

"Interview reconvened at two fifty eight" he says, looking at his shiny new watch.

"So, where were we? Ah yes, Tim, Tim, Tim, You've been up to your old tricks again"

Aren't we forgetting something?" responds Tim brightly.  
There is a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his face as he says this.

"Forgetting what?" asks Jessop with no show of irritation in his voice. However, a small tic that belies this is starting to play in a vein on his forehead.

"We're re-convening" says Tim

"Yes. What of it?"

"But I didn't get my phone call"

"Don't go there, we've dealt with that"

"So when you started this interview just now, it was invalid"

"Ye..ess, well I suppose it was invalid... technically"

"So you need to re-start this interview"

"Yes, although I would prefer it if we were just to continue"

"And restart the tape"

"Why?" Interjects Purdon, young and keen to learn.

"Because you need to read me my rights again." explains Tim reciting the regulation number" Oh, and do make sure that you insert a fresh tape"

"Is that correct?" asks Purdon of Jessop.

With an abject nod, Jessop signals Purdon to find a fresh tape.

Tim is right, pedantic but right.

Eventually Purdon returns, having located a new tape from an adjoining office drawer and hands it to Jessop.

Jessop loads the tape and sets it in motion.  
Once more there is the sound, a low hum of the tape turning slowly, in the room.

"Interview commences three oh six, Mr. Morris has been offered and has had his telephone call.

"And now you must read me my rights again" Tim says helpfully.

"Constable XD3542 Purdon, will you read Mr. Morris his rights?"

Puffing out his chest, Purdon begins "...You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned anything which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence"

Jessop asks "You do understand your rights, Mr. Morris, do you have anything to say?"

Tim smiles back archly" Lots"

"Go on"

"Don't hit me again, Inspector Jessop"

Angrily, Jessop clicks the tape machine off.

"What are you playing at?" and he leans forward aggressively, his face nose to nose, in Tim's face.

"Nothing, I know you didn't hit me. I've just always wanted to do that"

Jessop grinds his teeth. "Another fresh tape if you please Purdon. Now"

While Purdon is out of the room, Tim makes conversation.

"Will you be more late today? - when you get back home today, than you were, for your son Owen's school nativity play last Christmas?"

Jessop is taken off guard  
"What?" he blusters

"Well, you missed the whole school play last year, you got there just as everybody was coming out, didn't you? Believe me, you were not too popular "

"No, I saw the play, Owen was brilliant."

Purdon has re-entered the room.  
He has a cellophaned multi-pack of tapes in his hand.

He is confused at what he's seeing.  
Jessop, normally composed, is standing there red faced and arguing.

In contrast he sees Tim seated, relaxed, his features lit by a smile beaming up at his Inspector.

"Are you sure? Tim continues"What role did you see your young Owen in, in the play?"

"If it's any business of yours, which it isn't, he was a shepherd."

"Wrong, he was Joseph" corrects Tim.

Purdon is too polite to interrupt. He stands awkwardly with his tapes.

"Owen was supposed to be a shepherd.  
But at the last minute, Joshua Stern, Owens classmate who was set to be Joseph pulled out, Joshua was ill on the day, you see" continues Tim, his voice rumbling with pleasure."  
So your son Owen got promoted. Owen played Joseph"

Jessop is open mouthed. Purdon is still confused.

"Oh, I do like a conversation," says Tim and claps his little doughy hands together with pleasure.

Tim continues "Owen was good though.  
Apparently there was no room at the Inn when your son Owen asked.   
He said his line beautifully. You'd have loved to be there, he did it so well, and with so little practice.   
Joshua's parents were heartbroken, little Joshua had been practising his Joseph line all week "Is there any room in the Inn?"  
Joshua had been perfecting it on his mum and dad all week. You know how children can be. Very serious about these things.  
At first Joshua's parents thought Joshua had the mumps," Tim explains, getting into his stride "but it turned out to be just a tummy bug, that he was suffering from.  
New subject.  
Do you think Mr. Purdon here would like to hear about your Wedding Anniversary celebrations last month.  
Your wife was very disappointed.  
Have you bought her a present yet?  
She got you one. Took a lot of time and trouble over it, too"

Jessop glances guiltily at the shiny new watch on his wrist.

He is still red faced and struggling to regain his composure.  
He's not enjoying being embarrassed in front of his Junior Colleague.

"Mr. Morris, I assume that you know all about what went on.  
I also assume that Constable Purdon would not, in any way whatever, be the slightest bit interested in my domestic personal Wedding Anniversary arrangements.  
I do assume Constable Purdon, that you would want to see this interview get back underway - properly.  
Wouldn't you, Purdon?" he asks pointedly.

"Assume this, assume that." laughs Tim "Everybody assumes things. That's the trouble with people today, they assume. It's all a bit like that Doctor Hook and the Medicine Show song."

Both Policemen look at Tim quizzically.

"You know; the second line thing: Everyone assumes it's   
""everybody wants her, everybody needs her"". But it's not.   
It is actually ""everybody wants her, everybody loves her, everybody wants to take your baby home""  
Hey, do you know what day it is today, Inspector?"

"It's Thursday" replies Jessop abruptly.

"Correct - but not just any Thursday, it's a special Thursday.  
Do you need a reminder ? -  
it's your daughter Gwendoline's seventh birthday,  
but then, you're far too busy for that event today, aren't you? Do you recall that you were also too busy last year for Gwendoline's sixth birthday? When she was six.   
Do you know your wife has deliberately not even written your name on Gwendoline's birthday card this year ?  
Lord only knows what the other parents will be saying when they arrive with their children to birthday tea at your house. And they all see that there's not even a card, let alone a present from her Dad."

Jessop has decided this has gone far enough.  
He knows that thanks to Purdon these revelations of his personal life will be all over the Police Canteen. That they'll the subject of conversation and derision all over the Police Station for weeks to come.

It could affect his chances of (another, his next) promotion.

The Chief Inspector is proud to be a happily married man. He does like his up and coming officers to be paragons of domestic bliss and harmony too.

"Purdon, will you leave the room please? "commands Jessop, and Purdon exits as bidden.

Once they are alone Jessop declares."I think this interview is at an end. This interview is over"

"So we'll consider it just a warning then" says Tim.

"Yes" agrees Jessop,

Tim smiles genially and tells the Policeman firmly.   
"Consider yourself warned."

"Ooh, one other thing" says Tim, taking a notebook and pen from his pocket and hastily scrawling a note. He folds it and hands it to Jessop. Jessop opens the door and calls to Purdon who is waiting outside in the corridor like a naughty schoolboy.

"Purdon, destroy the tapes. Today never happened. Make sure Mr. Morris is taken where ever he wants to go"

Alone in the interview room, Jessop leans on the wall, feeling as if he's gone fifteen heavyweight rounds with Mike Tyson.

He opens the scrap of paper.

And he reads "  
She's forgotten the candles. You'll need seven, NOW.  
You're not too late"

*********************************************

Chapter Four

Tim had planned to take the single- decker, the One Two Four bus to his next entertainment.

This is far better, far nicer, he thinks to himself.

"Elmondbury please driver" asks Tim and snuggles down into the extraordinary soft leather of the unmarked police car.

" Would you like one of these, driver ?"

From his windcheater pocket Tim brings a small white paper bag.

He opens the lip of the bag revealing several transparent-wrapped black and white striped sweets.

The driver checks Tim in his mirror, checks his road mirror and pulls the car carefully into the kerb.

He slides the glass screen which separates him from the passenger seating.

Reaches in and takes a sweet.

"Thank you."

"Leave the screen thing open, we can chat as we go. My names Tim, by the way."

"Yes I know" said the driver. "You're a bit of a living legend at our station. Some of the lads think you're Batman, a sort of moral crusader "

"Well, I do my best" Tim chortled, the sweet clacking in his mouth." What do the others say about me?"

"You don't want to know sir, you really do not want to know" the driver laughed back.

" These sweets. They're Everton Mints . You can't get them everywhere"   
Tim closes the bag stowing it safely back into the left pocket of his jacket.

Tim's sweet clacks on his teeth as he explains." I have to go into Bullshill to get these, there's a little shop there, where they sell them out of jars, you know, the old fashioned way"

The pair suck companionably.

After a while, the driver spoke" I'm Matthew, I'm a special constable. I don't actually do policing things. Not yet anyway. Most times I just update files on the computer. First time I've had you in the back of my car"

"Nice to meet you, Matthew. So go on, do tell, what do the others call me? I promise I won't get offended."

"Lots of things. Mostly Teflon Tim. Nothing ever sticks to Teflon Tim, that's what they say! How many times have you been pulled in to the station"

"This week? Or in total" enquired Tim

"In total."

"Forty four so far this year "laughed Tim "Then again it is only April. Over two hundred times last year. I should have a frequent visitor loyalty card"

"And yet every time you just walk away"

"Yes. I'm doing nothing wrong, as I see it. Just amusing myself"

Matthew joined Tim in his laughter, and then asked "Why Elmondbury?"

"I have to see a banker" declared Tim

"Is he in trouble"

"He will be" said Tim pleasantly

"What's with this banker"

"He has been suffering from bad dreams."

"So you're going to help him"

"That's right , I'm going to help him"

"So you're a sort of dream therapist? Is that your day job"

"Oh no, I'm not a somnologist, far from it" Tim chuckled.

"So what sort of dreams does he have? and more interestingly how do you know what sort of dreams he has?"

"So many questions Matthew. But I do so love a conversation" says Tim and claps his little doughy hands together with pleasure."He has bad dreams, Matthew, in which he has a castle, but his castle crumbles, and all his friends are fat black cats, fat black cats who fall off of the castle's cliffs."

"Does it have a meaning?"

"Yes it most definitiely has a meaning, but forgive me Matthew if I don't tell you. Not yet anyway. One day we shall meet again I'm sure and I'll be able to tell you all"

Tim settles into the luxurious leather, feeling as celebrity as Simon Cowell, in his pre- shoulder- trouser trauma days

.

And thinks to himself, going over the facts that he knows.

These are:

Here we have a banker, Ralph Emerson, a merchant banker, a pillar of the community, fine wife, fancy homes 2.4 children and holidays on the Algarve, frequently, golfing frequently.

Good old Ralph.

But...  
Ralph's fortune, his career, his standing in the community, perhaps even his personal liberty are all at risk.

His personal fortune, however gained, is stuck,  
Ralph's "stash" that he has acquired from bonuses that he's dubiously earned is somewhere in Cyberland, - in the ether.   
His recent commission rewards for lending out his banks money where that money should not have gone is stuck also somewhere in internet transfer land.

He knows not where.  
Other concern's haunt him.

Who else knows?  
Has he been too talkative ?   
Has anyone noticed that he's smudged the paperwork?

Ralph suspects he has not dotted all of his "i's and maybe not crossed all of his "t"s?

Tim has a bulging satchel of dots, as well as a large carrier bag of crosses.

Tim's looking forward to sharing them. With Ralph.

Tim is brought ut of his reverie.  
"Elmondbury sir. We've arrived. Where would you like to be dropped?

Tim points to the leafy offices ahead and says "there please, fifty yards on the left"

Matthew calls "Good luck" as he opens the door for Tim and sees him out of the deep upholstery.

"Yes" purrs Tim " He's going to need it.

Guinness Merchant Bank (established 1962) staff are all craning their neck to see who the big shot is, the man who's just arrived in the impressive large car.

He seems disappointingly small as he is buzzed through to reception.

A small bald man, pale white skin with a round mild jovial face. Bright blue eyes behind thickish tortoiseshell framed glasses. An open necked blue small-checked shirt under a grey pullover.

Under a sensible off- white wind cheater jacket.

And he's moving fast. Not telling anyone his business.

Without announcing himself, Tim walks past the stupefied receptionist and opens the door to his left admitting himself to the palatial office beyond.

The single occupant, Ralph Emerson, is startled.

"Ralph Emerson? ...I'm Timothy Morris" Tim announces.

"Timothy Morris?... Do you have an appointment? How did you get in here?"

"I've just come from the Police Station" Tim says truthfully.

"Sit down, Mr. Morris," and then pressing an intercom button " Margaret, hold my calls, cancel the Depositor meeting, and shut the door to your office... from the outside. I'm not to be disturbed"

"Well, Mr. Morris, what can I do for you?"

"As I said, I've just come from the Police Station"

"Do you have ID? A warrant card?"

"I don't carry a card"

"So this is informal?"

"Yes. Just a "Heads Up." I do so love a conversation" says Tim and claps his doughy pink hands together.

" Would you like one of these?"

From his windcheater pocket Tim comes up with the small white paper bag. He opens the lip of the bag revealing several transparent-wrapped black and white striped sweets.

Stiffly, Emerson responds.  
"No thank you. What is this all about?"

"Well, as I said, Ive just come from the Police Station. They're Everton Mints by the way . You can't get them everywhere" he entices, offering up the bag for a second time.

Emerson helps himself to a sweet at this second bidding

Tim closes the bag stowing it safely back into the left pocket of his jacket.

Tim's sweet clacks on his teeth as he explains." I have to go into Bullshill to get these, there's a little shop there, where they sell them out of jars, you know, the old fashioned way"

The pair suck companionably.

Emerson, a rotund well dressed John Prescott lookalike, relaxes visibly. He places his elbows on the green leather topped desk. There are dark rings under his eyes.

"So what brings you here, Mr. Morris?"

"I was planning to take the one two four bus, the single decker " Tim answers truthfully.

Emerson laughs out loud, his jowls wobbling.

"But in the end they insisted I came in an unmarked police car. It was quite luxurious." Tim explained truthfully

He went on "You've not been sleeping well, you look tired"

"It goes with the job, I'm responsible for a great deal of our customers money"

"Responsible. Now there's a word"

Tim rolls the word on his tongue" Responsible " he continues.

"Meaning?"

"I've read about you"

"So... the Police have a dossier on me. At the Police Station?"

"Presumably" Tim answers truthfully.

"How much do you know?"

"Everything" and as he says it Tim's voice rumbles with pleasure

Ralph Emerson rises quickly to his feet, making his way around his huge desk he walks to the door of his office, opens it and checks outside. Eventually he is satisfied no one is lurking. Taking his seat again, he checks that the intercom on his desk is not open, not broadcasting out.

" When you say everything...How much do you actually know?"

"Try me" Tim invited.

"So where's my internet transfer? It's not shown up in Iceland"

"Your personal money"

"Yes, my personal money Mr. Morris, I earned It"

"Call me Tim. Tell me though, May I call you Ralph? Ralph...Would your superiors see it that way?"

"Well, there's always an element of risk when a bank lends money"

" And the riskier it is, the more the bank charges?" asked Tim.

"Of course" agreed Emerson.

"And the higher the security required the higher the value of the loan, more "brownie" points?"

"Naturally"

"And then more arrangement costs?" asked Tim.

"The arrangements have to be made, it's a requirement, a sub-prime loan calls for a lot of paperwork"

"So a loan that has a high element of risk, calls for security and complicated arrangement is more lucrative for you personally, say, than a straightforward loan. It's more lucrative for you?" pressed Tim.

"Of course"

"Is that the sort of loan your head office in the USA of America like you to get involved in?"

"No, they'd like it all within their business model. They're risk-averse, they run a mile from risk. But it's my job to give the customers what they want and... to make sure that my UK division hits their profit targets"

"So what you're saying is the Guinness UK bank, the operation that you run, charges a lot more .So you personally get extra commission for authorising those deals that other banks step away from?"

"It's a commercial decision, I make funds available for people that need them. That's what I get paid for"

"And especially lending to organisations that other banks won't go near. That they wouldn't ever touch them with a barge-pole"

"Where are you going with this, Mr. Morris?"

"Tim please. Please call me Tim. So Ralph, do you ever help with the paperwork, give it a special zing, amend a few things"

"Minor corrections, yes"

"Total re-writes?" asked Tim.

"Never"

"Are you sure Ralph? Cast your mind back. How about ... the case of ... Ashford and Pugh?"

"That was just once. I did it to get a colleague out of trouble"

"What sort of trouble were they in?"

Given the chance to be expansive, Emerson opens up. He places his palms face up on the leather surface.

"My colleague, no name, no pack drill, he didn't know that he was approving funds for an arms deal.

"Or was it a drug deal or a bit of each? An arms deal and a drug deal? "

"I didn't know at the time"

"But you did know. You knew when you spoke to the other banks who'd refused these "people", and I use the term loosely these "people" You knew that full well when you looked into it. You also knew that the security for the deal was going to be the deeds for a non existent factory. A factory that only existed on paper. A factory that didn't exist in real life."

"All right, but I was doing it for a colleague. it was a one off."

"Does the name" passing a piece of paper to Emerson "Вы былидураком" mean anything to you?"

"Yes" replied Emerson" I recognize the Russian symbols, that was the holding company that collaborated the deal. I don't know what it means in English, or how to say it but I definitely recognize what you've written down"

The Russian translation, purred Tim " which sounds like Vy byli durakom phonetically means in our English language that you and I share is "you've been a fool""

Emerson stood up suddenly, as if he'd just received an electric shock.

His face reddened and he was visibly angry.

"It was a one off, with, he looked at the paper, read the legend Вы былидураком that Tim had written for him, tested the pronunciation on his tongue, then thought better of it, and finished lamely "with those Russians"

"A one off, hmmm. " rejoindered Tim "How would you explain the six consecutive advances that you gave to them within four months. That's thirty thousand Sterling each time for you that you raked off for yourself"

"I've heard enough now. I don't have to answer your questions." said Emerson sharply "You told me that it was an informal visit. I'd like you to leave" and he walked stiffly to the door and held it open.

Tim calmly told him." Ralph, you've been a fool, but you really don't need to carry on being a fool. If you've a smidgin of sense, which I think you have, then you'll close that door. You must surely be wanting to know where all your money is"

"Yes" agreed Emerson abjectly" You can stay. I'm sorry" he mumbled. "I've been under a lot of stress"

He ran his hand through his hair for emphasis.

"Bad dreams, eh?

"I should say" agreed Ralph.

"Castles, crumbling castles, black cats, cliffs, black cats falling off of the cliffs"

Emerson is open-mouthed. How could this little man, this horrible little man know all that?

"What do the dreams mean, Tim? What do they mean?"

"Well, I was just saying to Matthew in the police car on the way up here, he's a special by the way, he updates files at the police station and whatnots. I was saying to Matthew that I'm not an expert on dreams. But if I was, my guess would be:  
The castle means two things." said Tim continuing smoothly as if there had been no altercation.

Your castle, your home, your estate

And secondly

Your standing in the Community

At the Golf Club

With the expats who you hope to become one of, in the Algarve"

"But they crumble..."

"Oh yea his castle crumbles, your castle crumbles Ralph"

"But Tim..."

"There are no buts, these things will happen.

and all your friends seem to be these fat black cats, and your family and all who know and misguidedly respect you, believing you to be something you're not.

Your wife fat and black and a cat.

Your two children, fat and black cats, that your wife knows about.

At their pretentious boarding schools, fees £64,318 each per year, not including sports dress and equipment.

And...

The point four of a child your wife Alice knows nothing about. The little mongrel stray that you sired on a Hooray Henry Champagne ridden night. Now aged four. Have you put her name down for a good residential school, Charnley or Haberdasher Askes?"

"Catherine" trembled Emerson

"Catherine School, I've not heard of that one Ralph. Is it a good school?"

"No, Catherine, her name is Catherine"

"Charlotte, I think you mean Charlotte. Your daughter, Ralph, is called Charlotte. My gods and little fishes. When a father can't even remember his misbegat daughters name. She could come visit you here, with her " you called her low life" mum Kylie. That would be nice, wouldn't it? She could tell you her name a few times so that you might then be able to remember it. Charlotte daddy, Charlotte daddy, Charlotte daddy, Charlotte daddy, Charlotte daddy."

"Perish the thought" said Emerson. The blood had drained from his face.

"All these fat black cats, your family, your friends, people who respect you in high places, they're the ones who join you as you fall off of your castle's cliffs."

"Oh my god. So that's what it all means , the dreams"

"Yes Ralph. But let's us move on now to happier things.

Where were we? Oh yes. You could have said no. You doknow that, don't you?"

"By then, I was in too deep. They'd threatened me."

"So after that you then financed all their friends"

"Yes. I did"

"With none of them, apart from the first time, signing anything at all. You did all the paperwork, you did all the signing"

"Yes"

"And did your customers reward you? As well as you being paid by your employer"

"No, I'm not allowed to take money from the client. It would be a conflict of interests. it would be wrong of me to do that"

"So the money you sent to Iceland is purely from your pay. So it would be made up only of your salary, your commission, your over riders and your bonuses"

"Yes"

"So it should all be in Pounds Sterling? Or Sterling and Euro's. Yes?"

"Ye...esss"

"Not Roubles, nor Kruger rands nor Libyan money"

Ralph Emerson crumples. He puts his head in his hands

"Ralph, you can't even lie straight" Tim chortled

"They threatened me. They made me take the money. If I didn't they said they'd make it all public. In the papers. It would ruin me, if any of this came out"

He knows it all, Emerson thought. This horrible little man, he knows it all.

"Where's my money? Where's it gone?" Ralph asks plaintively.

"Ashford and Pugh. They've taken it all back. You don't think they'd let you hold on to those gifts."

But I sent it to a bank ... in Iceland. I was recommended to send it there... by my friend, my colleague, the one I helped... out.

"Funnily enough, I've just come from a lady who had dealings in Iceland. It turned out badly for her too, by the way."said Tim mildly

Tim then pressed ahesd" But back to what we were talking about, and more translations. To translate.

What's Icelandic for" you've been a fool?"

What would be the Icelandic name?"

"Don't know" said Emerson glumly.

It would be "Pú hefur verið heimskur" Tim purred. He puffed out his chest theatrically and waited.

As Emerson, his lips moving, mouths the Icelandic translation,

"That's the name of the bank I sent ALL my money tooooooooooooo"

He realises that he's been set up. He's been a pawn in a game that was never designed to benefit him. Tears fill his eyes and he leans forward to within an inch of the green leather in front of him. He rocks back and forward slowly, his head colliding with the desk muttering "Oh my God."

After a minute or so Emerson regains his composure. He takes a large white handkerchief from his trouser pocket and rubs it around the back of his neck inside his shirt collar, where he's been sweating.

"And what of you, Tim? What do you want?"

"Nothing. I just want you to know that I know. And that I know it all. Every little detail"

"Is that it?"

"What should I do? Tim. Tell me what to do?"

"You are a big boy Ralph, you got yourself into this, you can get yourself out"

"Do you mean suicide"

"Perish the thought, as you said earlier, perish the thought, Ralph"

"And what of you, Tim? What do you do now?"

"Nothing. I just wanted you to know that I know. And that I know it all. Every little detail. Yes. Just that. I shall be watching you. Do enjoy the rest of your day"

Tim rises energised, from the chair and exits via the quiet corridor.

Back into reception, and unchallenged Tim walks out of the office building.

To Tim's surprise, Matthew is waiting for him in the big expensive shiny car.

"Where to, Tim" he asks from the open drivers window.

"Well home, Matthew please, if you'd be so kind"

As he settled himself back into the sumptuous sweet smelling leather Tim said through the open hatch." I really wasn't expecting that.

"Nor me. Inspector Jessop phoned me, on the car phone, he said that I was to look after you. Apparently you saved his life, whatever that means. He didn't explain."

"Well Matthew , this is fine, really fine"

"Tim, can I ask you something?"

"Of course, dear boy. What is it?"

"Can I hang out with you? I think you're cool, like you've got it going on"

"I'd be honoured" purred Tim sincerely" What did they call me at the station"

"Batman"

"In that case, we'll be Batman and Robin"

Matthew laughed "What's our first adventure, Batman?"

"Well Robin, we, you and I are going to visit a pharmaceutical factory"

"What do they do there, are they testing on animals, or is it illegal stuff? "

"Matthew, or shall I call you Robin from here on in" Tim laughed" you'll just have to wait and see"

Ram Raiding

(ram raiding - stealing from a terrified woman after deliberately crashing into her car... twice)

We're going ramraiding later, wanna come?"  
"How does that work?"  
"We spot a woman alone, driving like, in her car, chase her down a blind alley where Mickey's waiting in his motor, 'n' crush her car, Mickey goes in front, we hit her from behind, it's well sweet"  
"What do you get?"  
"Enough for an eggy"  
"An eggy?"  
"Yeah, where you been, Planet Zog?"  
"What's an eggy?"  
"Class A whiteys, pizza n cider for four, five if you're coming"  
"What do I have to do?"  
"Cashpoint, Mickey'll get the card off her, 'n' her pin, you scarf up, rinse that till, my friend"  
"And she'll give you the pin number?, just like that"  
"Never fails, 'spesh if they got a kiddie in the back"  
"Count me in"  
"Great.What's your name again?"

************************************

" I still don't understand why they call it an Eggy"

"Shush Ronald, I'm concentrating, waiting for the signal"

"Thought you just chased them"

"Nah, it's scientific, calls for precision, Three cars and close radio contact at all times, Give us that phone up"

"K"

"Mickey, you in position... K...' I'l phone Tommy, over n out , and redial calling Tommy, Tommy, Hey Tommy, you got one yet. Naah, K, OK man, we'll wait. Ronald, Ronald, you sure your folks didn't name you after a TV rat?"

"That's Roland, not Ronald, my parents called me Ronald"

"K, toucheee, keep your hairs on"

"So this Eggy thing...?"

"Like n Easter Egg, innit, like you open it up n it's a present inside a present what's inside another present or summat. Mars Bars or Chocolate Buttons."

"Oh, hey,the phone, they're ringing"

"Give it here... yep Tommy - gaaaame on, we have ignition, chase her down bruvva.., Roland, look out for a brown Ford Focus... shiiiiiiiiiiit, here she comes"

"What, this one?"

"Thats'er, what's up darling? can't get through there, can you? we can 'n' now you can , turning you left honeybun, don't want to go there - oh yes you do, Here, have some hooter noise, good girl, move your arse, now we're turning you right, down that little culdy - my darlin', dowwwwn you go, Phone Tommy for me - tell 'im good work - Tommy, we're on her tail"  
"Hey, slow down"  
"Ladies and gentleman, we have impact"  
"Gnurrgh"  
"Oh BTW, seat belt on next time Roland"  
"I hit my head on the screen, I'm bleeding"

***************************  
"So how d'you enjoy it?"  
"I'm still groggy, 'n' I've got a headache"  
"Don't be such a baby, eat your pizza"

CHAPTER TWO

Ram Raiding (Extended) - The Thrill of the Chase

"Hi, Mr.s Whittaker, good evening to you, and a very pleasant evening it is too if you don't mind my saying, is your Ronald in"  
"I'll call him- Roooonaaald, ah here he is"  
"Thank you, Mrs Whittaker"   
********************************************   
"Listen up Roland. Fuck me, have you heard, they've only gone and fingered Tommy"  
"No shit, keep your voice low, bruvva, my mum's got like X-ray hearing, no shit "  
"I shit you not, he's a safe geezer though, he won't grass us up"  
"He better not, my mum would throw a jeezing fit, she'd chuffing throw me out of this house, I'd be on the streets"  
"Take a chill pill Roland, Tommy won't talk, we're safe, we're cock gobbling home safe and hosed"  
"How can you be so sure?"  
"I grew up with Tommy, it's cunts like you I'm not so sure about"  
"Meaning?"  
"Meaning how come you're in tonight? Weren't we supposed to be meeting outside the Paki Offy at seven thirty and looking at my Joe Timex... I see it's fucking seven forty five prompt and here you are at home, without even your pissing shiny patent shoes on"  
"It's my mum, she wouldn't let me out, said not until I was finished my history assignment"  
"So a history assignment's more important than your mates, thanks Pal, now I know where I fucking stand"  
"She was pissed about that gash on my head too, I told her I got it playing football at school, I wouldn't grass on you, you know that"   
"Little comfort, little cheer, you're a scumbag, go do your history"  
"What time you there till? I'll come out as soon as I can,.. if she'll let me"  
"Whatever, just fucking whatever"  
*************************************************  
"Hi, Mrs Whittaker, good evening to you again, seems like only last night I was on this very doorstep, is perchance your young Ronald in"  
"I'll call him- Roooonaaald, ah here he is"  
"Thank you, Mr.s Whittaker"   
*************************************************  
"Thought we weren't mates anymore"  
"We're not, but we're in trouble, apparently some stupid muppety wanker remembered his scarf but forgot his gloves"  
"You never told me anything about gloves, I didn't think"  
"That's the ace fucking problem, you don't think, do you and now we're all gonna get sodding mugged off"  
"But you said Tommy didn't , wouldn't say anything"  
"He didn't have to,... your numbers on his phone and the boys in blue, they've got his phone"  
"What about yours?"  
"My numbers "Pay and Go" I've dumped it, I paid cash for that phone, you owe me Ronald, I don't even know why I brought you in to our team, you're a waste of fucking space "  
"So what happens now?"  
"We wait for the knock on the door, a knock that will surely happen,but let me tell you straight, when the filth come for me I'm offering you up"  
"Why"  
"Why, because I've already got form,and 'cos I'm older, old e-fucking-nough to do a spot of bird, I'll go straight to the stripey hole, they'll bang me up. You, you fucking pussy, I'll bet it's your first offence, you'll get a slap on the wrist from a mealy mouthed lettuce"  
"And if not...?"  
"Feltham for you, young offenders, don't worry none , I've been there it's a boot camp for sissys like you"  
"So why are you here?"  
"Just to let you know, if you grass me up I'll , hey... you seen one of these before, see it ducking close up Ronald honeybun, it's named after the other David Bowie, it's a Bowie knife and it's as sharp as a ginger whores pubes, I'll cut you with it from ear to ear, you'll smile like Jack the Nicholson in flucksucking Batman"  
"K...What about Mickey"  
"You never met Mickey, you don't know Mickey, you never heard of Mickey, I'm your sweetest fucking prince compared to what Mickey would do for you, imagine your worst nightmare and double it to the power of ten"  
"... ... K..."  
"Goodnight, Dear Roland, sweet dreams"   
*************************************************  
"Mum,"  
"Yes what is it?"  
" Mum, can I talk to you?"  
"Of course, what is it?"  
"Mum, I've done something so bad, so stupid..."  
"Can't be that bad, dry your eyes, come on then, out with it"  
"Mum, it's bad, it's so fucking bad"   
"Ronald, I'm shocked at you, you don't normally swear"

Mumbai Calling

CHAPTER ONE

Mumbai Calling

"Hallo, Mrs Rees,"  
... "yes"  
"Mrs Gill Rees"  
"yes"  
"I'm phoning you today from TimeShare Double Glazing, my name's Ravshreemaj - "

CLICK

"-treetor"

The supervisor wearily took off his headphones and indicated to Rav that he should do the same

"So taking everything into account, how do you think that went?" he asked his new recruit

"Well, not good, not too good at all"

"You did well Rav, some people can't even pick up the telephone. So you did very well, you weren't frightened at all.  
What I suggest is, try the next one to phone, but this time just be Rav, just tell them your names Rav"

"But my name is Ravshreemajtreetor "

"Call yourself Rav, trust me, it'll work better "

"OK here goes"

The pair put their headphones back on and consult the rolodex

Rav dials

"Hallo, Mr.s Young,"  
... "yes"  
"Mr.s Gaye Young?"  
"yes"  
"I'm phoning from TimeShare Double Glazing, my name's Rav "  
"yes"  
"You bought a toaster from Argots"  
"yes, that was a while ago"  
"Well, the warranty is about to run out, and the reason I'm phoning you from TimeShare Double Glazing, is that with TimeShare Double Glazing you can have an extended warranty for another two years for just one payment of £8.74"  
"But I only paid £8.99 for the toaster in the first place"  
"This will mean that your toaster is protected against any and all mechanical faults excluding negligence on your part until October 2012"  
" I don't think I will, but thank you for phoning. Bye"  
CLICK

"So taking everything into account, what do you think that you could have done better?" he asked his new recruit

"Well, I read it from the script you gave me, just like you said I was supposed to"

"You did that well Rav, some people can't even read from the script. So you did very well, you weren't frightened at all.  
What I suggest is, try the next one to phone, but this time just be more confident, see your commission, that next call could earn you 13 rupees, if you make a sale. Use your imagination, what could you do with 13 rupees? "

"I'll try "

The pair put their headphones back on and consult the rolodex

Rav dials

"Hallo, Mr.s Holland,"  
... "yes"  
"Mr.s Noreen Holland?"  
"yes"  
"I'm phoning from TSDG, my name's Rav "  
"yes"  
"You bought a toaster from Argots"  
"yes, that was a long while ago"  
"Well, the warranty is about to run out, and the reason I'm phoning you from TSDG, is that with TSDG you have won £11,000, can I have the long number on the front of your visa card to put the money into your account? "  
"Well, this is a shock. What a lovely surprise. I only paid £8.99 for the toaster in the first place, you know"  
"It's good isn't it? what's the sixteen digits on the card?"  
"XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX"  
"and the start date"  
"XX XXXX"  
and the expiry"  
"XX XXXX"  
"and the name on the card"  
"XXX X XXXXXX"  
"registered at your home"  
"yes, £11000 you say?"  
"Thats right, can I have the last three digits on the back of your card"  
"XXX"  
"Thank you, by the way you'll see an £8.74 charge on your credit card, this will be for insurance, it will mean that your toaster is protected against any and all mechanical faults excluding negligence on your part until October 2012"

"Well, Rav, that seems a smaIl price to pay, all things considered. I can't wait to tell everybody, whoo £11000, thank you for phoning."

******************************  
"Sorry, I had to look after one of the other team members, how did you get on?"

" I got one"

"Never, show me"

"Look, here's her card details, it all went through"

"Way to go, you'll be a supervisor soon at this rate, let's hear it for Rav.  
Rav, ring your little bell"

ting a ling a ling

CHAPTER TWO – Mumbai Calling

Slumdog Rav

Follow on to "Mumbai Calling" an earlier short story

The supervisor says "Cut that call"  
He describes a cutting motion.  
Across his own throat. A knife.

Rav is disobedient

One minute more, he thinks, ...almost there!  
confidence high, close to yet another sale.  
could be his fourth, in this, his first week.

He's in the zone.

So Rav presses on -----------

..."is that with TimeShare Double Glazing you can have an extended warranty for another two years for just one payment of £8.74"... and that will mean that your toaster is protected against any and all mechanical faults, - excluding negligence on your part-, until"

The Supervisor leans over and angrily snatches  
the headset off of Rav's head.

He brings the flat of his left hand down  
on Ravs telephone cradle

CLICK

"When I say cut it, Rav, I am meaning cut it.  
Don't ever be doing that to me ever more again.  
You understand my saying?"

Rav meets his gaze, can't hold it, and looks away.

"But"

"No but's"

"OK"

"Good, Do what I say,  
we'll get on the perfect well.  
I want you to come with me Rav. Now"

"OK"

The Supervisor leads Rav out of the crowded noisy office through two doors and into a shadowy corridor.  
It's cluttered, untidy with bits of telephone, bits of headsets.  
On various mismatched tables  
A communication graveyeard. Gathering dust.

"I've not been in this part of the building.  
Where are we going?"

"Nothing bad Rav, I think you'll like this"

"OK"

"incidentally, we've changed the name of the company"

"Again?"

"Yes, when you phone you must be saying you're phoning from "Time Share Double Glazing Toaster Warranty." Can you do that?"

"I'll try"

"No, don't be trying. Just be doing"

The Supervisor leads Rav into an office, where the hugest Punjabi man that Rav has ever seen, sits at a large single desk.  
The Punjabi is sat way back from this desk, talking,  
on a call,  
His voice radiates - slow, melodic, controlled.  
It sets Rav thinking of tasty molasses in a honeyed syrup.

The large man, without breaking his soothing rhythmic delivery, indicates welcome.  
His hands are surprisingly small.  
The palms look soft and puffy.  
"Sit, sit" his hands say, indicating the two plain chairs set to the side of his desk.

Rav and the Supervisor sit as bidden.

From his side view Rav can see the full extent of the mans huge belly. It strains under his white shirt, which touches the mans desk.  
An extra long headset lead connects his headset to its mother, the cradle on his desk.

Their host ends his call, "So that will be £26.22 for the three toasters. I shall now play you a short message which will explain the Direct Debit process "  
He clicks a mouse like device in his shirt pocket.  
The call purrs on, continuing in the headsets via the remote command from the mouse.

Smiling, the man turns to them, showing huge white Bollywood star teeth.  
His small hands stretch up and over.  
He removes his headset and rests the device on the belly shelf of his shirt, - close to where his ribs might be.

"So this is Rav"  
His voice is different now, cold and emotionless,  
now that he's off the phone.  
Punjabi Thuggi, thinks Rav they are the worst caste. Hostile. Menacing.

"Yes"

"Rav, It is my pleasure for me to be introducing you to meeting Uri. ... Uri, ... Rav "

"Hi Rav" deadpan. Unfriendly.

"Ravshreemajtreetor. My names Ravshreemajtreetor"

"Now now Rav. Don't you be putting on the airies, and the gracies. He's quite the little joker Uri. He's a shiny star with us in the making.Three sales from Rav making calls this week and he's only been here the four days.   
I'll leave you two alone.  
Rav I'm sure you'll learn a lot.  
From Uri. Be enjoying"

And with that the Supervisor exits, leaving the pair alone.

"So you're a big shot. The next great white hope"  
Uri says, using his Punjabi cold voice.

"i've worked hard" Rav says - defensive.

"Hah, show me what you've got"

"Sorry"

"Make a call, I'd like to see you in action"

"OK"

"Go there" This from Uri, handing Rav his own overlarge headphones.

The pair consult the rolodex.

Rav dials:

Uri clicks his pocket mouse, selecting a different button, it engages a loudspeaker, broadcasting the call.

Sound echoes in the office as the call clicks through.

"Hallo, Mr.s Tripp"  
... "yes"  
"Mr.s Gail Tripp?"  
"yes"  
"I'm phoning from TimeShare Double Glazing - - Toaster Warranty, my name's Rav "  
"yes"  
"You bought a toaster from Argots"  
"Yes, I don't have it anymore, it broke. I threw it out."  
"Oh"  
"Are you going to give me another one?"  
"Well, not exactly, - the warranty is about to run out, you see, and the reason I'm phoning you from TimeShare Double Glazing - - Toaster Warranty, is that with TimeShare Double Glazing - - Toaster Warranty you can have an extended warranty for another two years for just one payment of £8.74"  
"But I only paid £8.99 for the toaster in the first place"  
"This will mean that your toaster is protected against any and all mechanical faults - excluding negligence on your part - until October 2012"  
"But I don't have the bloody toaster anymore.  
Weren't you listening?" ...

Sweat forms on Rav's forehead and upper lip.

...

He looks beseechingly at Uri.  
No help is forthcoming.

"Mr.s Tripp, you will be covered, your toaster will be covered till 2012. October"

"Rav, is it?"

"Yes, Mr.s Tripp"

"Can I speak to your Supervisor?"

"He's not available at the moment.  
He'll only tell you the same thing.  
The same thing as me"

"Look Rav, you seem like a nice young man, I'm going to go easy with you for that reason, but if you ever phone me again, I'm coming to your office in Zaire or where ever you are in the world, and you will wish you had never been born.  
Do you catch my drift, Rav?"

"Yes, Mr.s Tripp"

"Have a nice day. Goodbye Rav"

"Goodbye, Mr.s Tripp"

CLICK

Uri is laughing, rocking dangerously in his chair  
His small hands flutter across his massive belly.  
Their are tears of mirth in his eyes.

He stops rocking suddenly. Abruptly.

He asks Rav.  
"So taking everything into account, what do you think that you could have done better?"

"Well, I said it from the script, just like I'm supposed to"

"Listen Rav, learn to walk before you try to run"

"You'd do it different"

"But of course"

"I'd like to hear that," says Rav, his face burns with embarassment.

The pair consult the rolodex.

Uri presses his mouse again, it dials:

Using his honeyed voice Uri begins:

"Hallo, Mr.s Hoooooooper,"  
... "yes"  
"Mr.s Eileen Hooooopeeer?"  
"yes"  
"I'm pho-o-o-o-o-o-ning from ...

As he listens to Uri, Ravs eyes become heavy.

He realises that he is just so so tired

******************************  
"Three two one - you're back in the room"

"Sorry" Rav rubs his eyes, sits upright in the chair, he is aware of a cramp sensation in his neck. As if he'd been sitting awkwardly for a long time.  
He looks at his watch.  
It is well after the time that his shift should have ended.  
Myrnhashreemajtreetor will be worrying, he thinks to himself.

"What happened?" Rav asks

"You had a very enjoyable afternoon" responds Uri pleasantly in the syrupy voice.

"I did?" Rav can recall nothing.

Uri's syrupy voice helps Rav to fill in the gaps.  
"You heard me make several exceeeeeellent calls"

"Yes I did" Rav finds himself agreeing, although he's not sure why.

"You will tell everyone that asks that I aaaaam excellent in my teeeeeeechnical ability and competeeeeence"

"Of course. I will, I will" Rav agrees

"Now Rav, you will return to your office"

Robotically Rav exits, finds himself out in the corridor. It is now dark.

He stumbles back to familiar ground.

Back in the large multi occupancy office his Supervisor is still there, alone.   
His feet are on his desk, and he is staring into space.   
His shift team have long since finished and been sent home.

How did you get on?" the Supervisor asks.

" He is excellent in his teeeeeeechnical ability and competeeeeence"

"Yes, everyone says that, you know what Rav, I just am not knowing how he does it"

"No, neither do I "

 Baby "G"

Chapter One

Joe turned up with bruises again today.

Joe Ganster is a little over two years old and he's been coming to Buster Bears, our Kindergarten Nursery since he was a papoose. A papoose is our code word for a baby too young even to crawl.

My name's Zoe.  
I started work at Buster's myself the same day as Joe first came, on that very same day.

Buster Bears is the first and only job that I've ever had and some of the girls that have joined Busters recently have worked in other jobs, Leanne, she's been in retail seling mobile phones (and accessories,) she never says mobile phones on it's own, always mobile phones and accessories, and there's Catherine who was a vet nurse and they seem much more wordly wise than me. They both wear make up even at work and take their lunch breaks together most times without me.

When I first started here back in 2006 straight out of sixth form, my Mum who I live with now, was chuffed.

Much of my own childhood was in children's homes and foster homes, until she came find me and we were re-united. The worst type of foster home I stayed in, is those where they've got their own natural children. There was always a divide in those houses as to who belonged to which pecking order. I always was way down that stick.

So one of the things that got me the job here, was my fierce response, when I convinced Linda who runs this Busters of my views that all children should be cared for the same, that none should be any more special than the other.After the interview and I'd started here she told me that my stance on equal rights was what got me the job. And although she didn't say it my willingness to work for £5.53 an hour didn't hurt my chances of being taken on either.

The pays gone up since, I've had a couple of annual increases, but the moneys not that important to me and I reckon I do as many hours almost as Linda who is a self-confessed workaholic herself. Linda spends her money on her car which is her pride and joy.  
Me, I give most of my money to Mum to help her get by. Other than that I don't do much other than work and watch TV back at home. At the back of my mind I know there's a world out there waiting for me but my life suits me as it is now and I reckon I'm young enough to have it all happen to me later on, when I feel ready for it all.

Having said all that I did say at the interview I know I shouldn't have favourites myself, but with little Joe Ganster, him starting on the same day I did he has always been that bit special to me out of the six who are my group.

My children have blue clothes pegs, and I have a blue badge, that's how Busters works.

Recently I've been concerned about Joe.

Joe was brought in by Michael , a man he calls "Dad" again today.  
Joes red coat, which I know is his second-best, was buttoned up all wrongly, not lined up properly, giving him an extra button hole on one side and a button with no hole to attach itself to on the other side.

I was fretting because I'm getting worried about him, suspecting the worse because of the bruises as well as my angst that he's been arriving later and later each day.  
This time today, it was well after nine o clock. His choice of clothes were haphazard today and the way they'd been put on was unusual for him. Joe is normally spick and span. His outfits are always chosen carefully by his mother Tracey. This fashion aware mum dresses him in a way that sets little Joe apart from all the other children we look after. She selects and colour co-ordinates little Joe and so he always looks as though he's straight off the Littlewood catalogue fashion pages or as if he's a child of Victoria and David Beckham. Not a kid off Bellingham Road, which is where Joe really comes from.

Bellingham Road's not the worst place in the world but it is a mixture of nothing special. It's packed solid with Council houses, mainly two bedroom semis or houses that were Council Houses but had been bought, sold and sold again these days to young couples as affordable housing.  
There's also some young single mums planted there by the Council. Tracey was one of those single mums, certainly not a Beckham but she does make the effort as far as little Joe's concerned.

Joe is the apple of her eye.  
Tracey would never ever have put his red coat on with what Joe was wearing. Orange jumper and red trousers with a red coat. Navy jumper and blue trousers with his blue coat. You get the idea, that's her style

Up until Monday Tracey has always been the one dropping Joe off with us. She's been regular as clockwork, you could set your watch off her, her dropping Joe off with us at Buster Bears at the stroke of eight each weekday morning. His absences or late arrivals have been few and far between, and when they have happened she always phones ahead to let us know exactly what's going on with him.

But she's not been here for Joe of late.

It's been Michael and it's been bruises. Call me overly suspicious but I'm sure that the two are connected.

Tracey's not been bringing Joe or for that matter collecting him for the last few days, not since Monday of this week. So since then, Tuesday onwards, Joe's been arriving with this man he calls "Dad". Joe's been collected and leaving with him too. I'm not sure he is Joe's dad though, I've seen Joe's dad before.  
He's different.

This guy, the new guy, he's called Michael and he's weird. He's not been on the scene long. And I'm sure that he's only been seen at Busters recently, for the last two months.

How do I know it's two months?

I can tell you categorically that it's exactly two months to the day. He arrived on the day of my finest hour.

The first time he showed up; this Michael, that was the day little Lukey Stiles and me were rushed by Ambulance to Hospital with the handle of Lukey's lunch spoon trapped up his nose.

I remember being quite the Celebrity, telling everyone all about it that day. And I do recall particularly telling Tracey about it that day, because when I was telling her something strange happened.

With this Michael.

I was excited because I'd been entrusted with travelling with Lukey in the Ambulance and my job was holding the spoon out of his grasp so that he didn't cause himself even more damage. He'd been very distressed and on the journey had been loud and thrashing about. He was desperate to pull at the spoon.

Linda, my boss who runs Busters, had read me the riot act while we waited for the Ambulance to arrive. She told me as she wrapped Lukey's arms and his little body tightly in a blanket that I was to listen to her carefully.  
Linda held him wrapped tightly in that blanket in her office as we waited for the Ambulance that she'd summoned. Linda looked me in the eye and told me sternly."Zoe, you keep him wrapped in this blanket, no matter how much he cries or struggles. You understand me. With your other hand I want you to keep the weight off the spoon. Don't push it in but keep the weight off it. When you get to the hospital don't let him out of your sight. Wherever he goes, you go. You hear me"

I remember nodding, watching impatiently over Linda's shoulder out of the window blinds for the Ambulance to come by. At that stage Luke had cried himself out and was in a trance like state.Linda gently handed him over to me.

Anyway I remember that after that event I was quite the heroine that day and lots of the parents congratulated me when they came to collect their own kids, for keeping a cool head when I discovered what Luke had done. I had half expected that there would have been a big hue and cry and fingers would be wagged about our lack of watchfulness to have let this happen. The opposite ocurred. the parents were very sympathetic to us and agreed that it was difficult to keep an eye on children all the time. Even those of them that had just the one child.

When I was telling Joe's mum Tracey, she picked up Joe and cradled him against her right shoulder. He was in his all blue "designer" outfit that day.  
She said to him "You wouldn't do that, would you Joey?"   
He just sucked his thumb. I don't think he was even aware of all the hubbub over Luke that had happened earlier.  
For Joe it was just another day.

I noticed Michael this new guy, with Tracey for the very first time here, that day. His arm was around Tracey's other shoulder, as if he owned her. They made an odd couple, him standing so much taller than her. Tracey and me are about the same height tall and this guy was big; broad, not fat and a lot taller than us.

He seemed very interested in what I'd done at the time and although he was there for Joe and he was with Tracey he took a lot of interest in what had happened and asked me several questions about what had happened, long questions, complicated things like how Luke's accident had happened and how long the Ambulance journey took - if I remember rightly.  
"Did you have to carry him into the hospital, or did they come get him, roll him out on the stretcher?" he asked me. That sort of thing.

I remember that when I replied, that he seemed to get all excited by my answers. He kept licking his lips and I can even see now in my minds eye the way that his over red tongue seemed too long and narrow for his mouth. It was like a Lizards tongue, pointed.

While Tracey fussed over her childs bits and pieces, finding his blanket and his favourite toy; his torch from home for Joe's homeward journey Michael took me to a corner of the cloakroom so that we were on our own.  
I was on the inside in the corner, hemmed in by this big man, looking out or trying to look past him, anyway.  
I remember feeling a little bit frightened, as he was so big and I felt cut off from the rest, from Busters. I really couldn't see around him, nothing but him, Michael.

He told me that I'd been upstandingly brave, upstandingly was the most strange word, I remember thinking at the time.

He said it again.

Then he pressed something hard and cold into my right hand.  
When I opened my hand I saw that I had a shiny fifty-pence piece in it. He crouched down so that our faces were almost touching.  
"It'll be our little privacy secret" he told me, then he straightened up returning himself to his full height.

I protested and told him that we couldn't take money.  
"We're not allowed to" I told him and I gave it back to him, offering the coin up, shoulder high for me, back to him. Surprisingly He took it back, plucking it between two of his giant fingers.

I thought that was the last I'd see of Michael that day but I was wrong.

When I left Busters for home that evening I was surprised to see Michael step out of the shadows at the end of the little path that leads down to our gate. It's the gate that we lock when all the children have been collected. This gate leads on to Bellingham Lane, Bellingham Lane leads into Bellingham Road. Tracey and Joe live right the other end of Bellingham Road.

He told me that he'd been waiting for me

"Zoe" he said "it is Zoe, isn't it?"  
When I recovered from my surprise I nodded,  
he'd given me quite a start.

"Zoe, I couldn't get what happened to you out of my head. There's so much I want to ask you "

I started to say that it was nothing but he made a shushing face, squinting his eyes.  
At another time it might have been a funny face, might have made me laugh but it was getting dark and he'd already spooked me once that day. That time though, it had been in broad daylight and with other people close at hand

"You were upstanding Zoe, I know you're not supposed to take money but...  
and he opened his monstrous palm, revealing a large Mars bar for me to take.   
Hoping that I could make my excuses I took it nervously.  
To my surprise, that was it, that was all that he'd come for.  
He turned on his heel and without another word went off down the Lane.

Me, I went back in to Busters, and without knocking (which we're always supposed to) I rushed into Linda's office, burst into tears and collapsed into the visitors chair which is set at an angle beside Linda's desk, the same chair Linda had been in when she'd wrapped Luke up that very afternoon.

It took Linda fully fifteen minutes to calm me down.

After the event she told me that I'd nearly been hysterical. When finally I could talk, I told her all that had happened. I tried not to miss anything out.  
When I finished she handed me several tissues, a handful from the large box that she kept on her desk. She put her arm around me and crouched down so that she was talking calmly and soothingly into my ear.  
Her voice came out gentle, like a sigh," Zoe, you've had a very big day, a tiring day. I'm sure you're just a little bit over wrought. This man, he's Joe's Dad, I'm sure he wouldn't do you any harm.

I didn't correct her, that I knew that he wasn't precisely Joe's Dad.

The clock above Linda's head, above Linda's window showed it was after six o clock. I knew that Linda was always the first one in, she had been there since before seven in the morning.

I can recall seeing that I was now making Linda late away, and I felt guilty about that. Now that she'd said it, perhaps she was right, perhaps I was over re-acting. I trusted and idolised Linda entirely.  
The more I thought about it, the more I was sure she was right.  
I was just being stupid.  
She sat down, wheeling her big leather boss chair around so that she was opposite me and waited for her words to sink in.

She watched my face intently.

When I looked at the clock again, ten minutes had passed.  
Linda broke the silence, "Zoe, we're not leaving here until you're OK,"  
She followed my gaze, my eyes again on her clock

"The time doesn't matter" she said again.

When I pulled myself together, she offered to phone my Mum,  
I said no, and then she insisted that she drive me home in her car.

I was grateful to accept, her cars lovely, and in her car I stroked the leather seat. It felt cool and re-assuring, like a cocoon.  
The car smelt like a pine forest. I was tired, I just wanted to close my eyes and I wanted to sleep in it.

Although she never took her eyes off the road once, Linda talked happily and chirpily non-stop about all kinds of other things for the whole short journey back to my Mums.

The journey wasn't far, I'm only local.

When I went to get out Linda put her hand on my arm."Zoe, I'm sure it's nothing, but from now on, if or when this Michael does come back make sure you stay well out of his way, or better still make sure that if you do have to deal with him, you're with one of the other girls, Leanne or Stacey. If he upsets you again, then you come straight to me.You understand"

She then took her hand off my arm.  
"Go in now, tell your mum what a hero you've been with little Luke" she smiled.

I'd completely forgotten all about Luke.

When I got in my front door Mum called out to me from the front parlour:  
Where had I been so late?,  
she'd put my dinner in the oven and that there were two people who had phoned for me.

"I'm going straight to bed, Mum" I called back without even putting my head round the lounge door. I rushed straight upstairs, into my dark bedroom not even stopping to put the light on. I plunged straight into my unmade bed, not even taking off my shoes nor even my bright yellow Buster Bears sweatshirt.

I pulled the nest of blankets up around me and was asleep instantly.

I know I had a bad dream that night.

That bad shrek Michael grinning, his huge tongue curling around his scary face, while he cradled two papooses, one in each arm.  
His tongue in my dream was longer, redder and forked like a snake. In and out it curled in front of his mad face and the babies changed back and forth into Mars bars or fifty-pence pieces and then back again.  
I can see it even now when I close my eyes as if it's been painted on the inside of my eyelids.

From that day to this Tuesday Michaels only been back twice, twice in just under two months, always with Tracy and only evenings when she was collecting Joe.  
Up to this week, any road.

As per Linda's instructions I've made sure to keep myself well out of his way. I'm glad to say that Michael hasn't sought me out, and when I've asked, none of the other girls who have dealt with Joe on the two ocassions said that there was anything out of the ordinary with him or about him, when I asked them.

But that was up until Tuesday, this Tuesday.  
No sign of Tracey, Joes Mum since, and I'm bursting to ask exactly where she is.

My boss Linda's taken Stacey and Leanne into her office and explained to them that I'm not to receive or despatch Joe to Michael. So they've been interfacing (I'm doing NVQ2 half a day a week and they encourage us to use the proper words) interfacing with Michael, not me.  
But I am responsible while he's here, for Joe, as well as little Lukey since the accident and also for four other two year olds who have blue pegs.

Each day since Tuesday I've seen new bruises on Joe. Tuesday was a purple crescent between his shoulder blades.  
I asked Joe about it and he just looked up, smiled and said "cuddles".  
The next day, Wednesday, I noticed that he had sore red bracelet marks on his wrists. When I asked Joe about these marks while I was setting him down for his nap after lunch, he just looked at me blankly and then wandered off towards the toy corner. I retrieved him and after a while had him settled down again.

Busters, our Nursery have a "best read" policy and we only have a certain number of books that we are to read to each age group.  
Head Office even tell us what stories to read and on what day.  
Today they'd decreed Red Riding Hood and I sat cross legged on the floor (another Buster Bears instruction) and read the story to the children until they dozed.

To my mind Red Riding Hood is a frightener and should carry an 18 rating. Look, you've got a wolf, murder, deception, an innocent and it all ends in a bloodbath. hardly fitting fare to be read for impressionable two year olds to listen to, or learn from.  
But it's what Head Office want and that's what they get, Goldilocks, Red Riding Hood, Grimms Fairy Tales and Aesops fables were what they have decreed and that's what we deliver. So that's what I read them. I'm relieved that none of my charges have turned into nervous wrecks or axe murderers- yet.

Joe sucked his thumb as he slept. I checked all my gaggle of toddlers were similarly settled, and then I went and knocked at Linda's office door.  
I could see through the glass that she was on the telephone but she beckoned me in and bade me sit down.

Listening in to Linda's side of the phone call I could tell she was having one of her regular arguments with our head office.  
Buster Bears are part of a group and Linda doesn't complain often but if there is one thing that gets her dander up, it's her battles that she fights with Group HQ.

From what she's told us, all the Buster Bear locations, have to do everything the same, perform to the same standards et cetera, even if it's not right or doesn't apply to us.  
This time her battle was about the window cleaners. She was saying  
" I don't care if we're supposed to use Excelor like all the other Busters, they've let us down too many times"  
Her voice got louder "I'll use who the hell I like" she told the voice at the other end of the phone.  
"Just make sure their invoice gets paid."  
She slammed the phone back into its cradle, without pleasantries.

When her call was over I asked her to come see, look at the marks on the sleeping Joe and told her of my concerns.She came with me to the rubberised mat where the toddlers were sleeping.

"Zoe,"she whispered "I think you've got a bit of a vendetta going on. These could have been caused all sort of ways". She came and looked at Joe though.  
I showed her the marks on his wrist. She said nothing.  
I started to lift his shirt at his back. He slept on, his thumb sucking becoming just a little faster and louder.  
Linda mouthed at me "no" and I returned Joe to his foetal curled position.  
She motioned me to follow her back to her office.  
She closed the door after us. When we were re-seated Linda said  
"Zoe, I was looking today - at holidays"  
I stared at her blankly   
"You know you're entitled to twenty days, twenty days holiday, you've only had four, four days all this year. The years almost up. Will you talk to your Mum, sort something out, eh?"   
"Is that it? You're not going to do anything?"  
"Zoe, Zoe, Zoe, there's nothing to do"  
"Linda, I'm nineteen years old, I don't need this, this ... shit"

I don't normally swear but Linda didn't register any re-action.

In the same even tone, she said to me "Zoe, it's great you care, I've seen Joe, and I know he's special to you, but in my opinion those marks are very slight. Toddlers are always knocking themselves about , it's just part of being a toddler, it is really.  
But I really do think you've blown this out of all proportion.  
Listen to what I've said.  
Do you know? -you could be sitting in this chair before you're too much older, and you'll need to be much more steady. "  
She smiled sweetly  
"Time off, that's what you need, Zoe, go do something with your life, you're only young the once"  
That was Wednesday,

As a result I didn't say anything, didn't show Linda, but yesterday, Thursday I saw clear as daylight, the marks on the back of poor little Joe's legs.

I was hoping that one of the other girls would notice, see these marks without me prompting them, see poor little Joe's injuries. At lunch Stacey and Leanne were all over the kids like a rash.  
Why couldn't they see what I see?   
These injuries are obvious to me but invisible to them.

It hurts to bite my tongue, to say nothing, but that's just what I did. I said nothing.

Today I've decided to take matters into my own hands.

It's plain as the nose on your face, to me but not to anyone else. I'm certain that this child is in danger.  
Even if no one else is going to listen I can see it, it's abuse and I can't just let it lie.

I've given this some thought,  
I think Linda will be annoyed with me if i raise it with her again, but then if I go to her boss Maria, who's our regional liaison at HQ I am sure Linda will hit the roof.   
Also, get this; what happens if I tell Maria? And she reckons I've been OTT.  
Maria with Linda on her back and bingo, I'm out of a job.  
Bear in mind this is the only job I've ever had, and jobs are hard to get these days.  
I like it here, I'd be in pieces if I didn't work here.

I started to tell Mum about it at Breakfast today but she doesn't really listen. We've fallen into a bit of a pattern.  
I say something, whatever it is she says "Did you, love?" When I carry on, she says "That's nice, love"

This can take place at the breakfast table or while we're in the dark at night, cosy watching tv. I tested it once:

"Mum, I found a cure for cancer"  
"Did you, love?"  
"They want me to go up to the moon in a space shuttle rocket from NASA next Thursday and deliver a lecture to all the Worlds Leaders"  
"That's nice, love"

So I'm kind of - on my own.

If nobody does anything and I'm right then young Joe Ganster is in mortal danger and the only one who can do anything -is me.

This morning, more marks and the one's on Joe's backs from Tuesday are no longer purple, they've turned yellow and I'm sure there's fresh ones.  
Yes, they're fresh, they're purple and finger shaped.  
Big fingers, big bad fingers.   
I knocked at Linda's office door.  
Through the glass she beckoned me in. I didn't sit down, she motioned me into her visitor chair,  
I sat.  
"Yes"I've been thinking" I told her "about what you said. I'd like to take a few days off.  
Would it be OK""  
"Sure, when have you got in mind?" Linda punched buttons and side on I could see the holiday calendar come up on her computer screen.

"Next week""

"That's a bit sudden, are you sure? HQ rules clearly say you should give at least one month notice, but you know what I think of Head Office "

She looked up"That'll be fine"

She punched some more keys.  
"All sorted." A final key tap.

When I didn't rise from the chair, she looked at me and said "Tell you what, take an extra day, go now, we're top heavy with staff, we can manage without you, what with that new batch of trainees and those erks, the spotty work experience schoolkids. If you don't say anything, I won't say anything. Go now, get packed or whatever."  
"You sure?" I asked "See you in two weeks" she nodded, smiling.

Mum was out at work when I got home.  
My first job was to get a hammer from the box of tools we keep under the kitchen sink and hide it under my Buster Bears top.  
It nestled snugly in the elasticated waistband of my standard issue uniform trousers, handle down. Within moments I was back in Bellingham Road..

Chapter Two

And as I hurried toward Tracey's home, I realised that I didn't have any clear idea in my head of what I could expect.  
Also I wasn't at all sure what I meant to do once I got there.

All too soon I'd reached the far end of Bellingham Road and found myself at Tracey's door. Traceys car was in the driveway.  
Surely she should have been at work. Not knowing what else to do, and starting to feel more than a little foolish I rang the door bell.

No reply.

Perhaps I should have left it there, but I didn't.  
Something inside me goaded me. Those bruises, Traceys absence, surely there really was something wrong.

I made my way around the side of the house and found myself at the rear of the little house.  
I was in the back garden. An unlikely scene greeted my eyes. Michael, the giant of my nightmares, out in the back garden was wearing a frilled apron several sizes too small for him. He was hanging out the washing on a washing line.

He'd set a slatted white plastic tub of clean washing on a concrete flagstone of the path.

He was unaware that I was there.

This incongruous figure continued dipping into the tub, crouching down to select an item, and then hanging it out on the line. He was using pegs that he fished out from the big front pocket of the blue apron he was wearing. As he was so tall and the apron so tiny the peg pocket was across his chest.

He carried on as I watched until the white tub was empty.  
He was so tall that even at the highest middle point of the line he was able to reach up easily to secure the clothes. This was even achieved despite there being a long stick hitching the line up high at the mid point.

When the basket was empty he turned back towards the house and saw me for the first time.

He didn't do a double take but his brow furrowed in the same kind of furrow as the kids brows do when you ask them where they left a toy, when it's missing from the toy corner.  
I could see his lips moving as he read the Buster Bears logo emblazoned on my chest. Then he smiled, that horrible red tongue flicking across his lips.

"Hi" he said pleasantly as though this was the most natural thing in the world.

My eyes flicked from him to the washing line, all the clothes line, the whole length of it pegged up with ladies clothes, ladies dresses, ladies bras. ladies knickers but all huge, nothing that someone small like me or Tracey could wear.

"You're the girl from Joe's Nursery. Aren't you? Is Joe OK?" Concern flashed across his features.

I couldn't find my tongue.

He went on "Why are you here? Come on, tell me"  
I turned to run but my legs felt like lead.  
He proved to be faster, stronger. In three big strides he placed his big hands lightly on my shoulders.  
I offered no resistance as he turned me round with no extra pressure, and propelled me indoors. My brain like my legs didn't seem my own. I know now that I was paralysed by fear. I couldn't even think straight.

Through that back door he continued to gently hold my shoulders and steer me through the little kitchen to the corridor which led us back to the front door and to the rest of the house.

In the small rectangle at the foot of the stairs I found my voice. I turned under his grip and faced him. The hammer I was carrying had shifted in my waistband reminding me that it was there.  
He released the light grip on my shoulders. My voice came out small and it echoed.

"I've come to see Tracey"

"What is it? Why didn't you just phone?"

" I came to see Tracey" I repeated, a little firmer.

"Whatever it is" the tongue again, the lip licking, he's enjoying this" you can tell me, anything you've got to say about Joe, you can say it to me"

"Where is Tracey"

His tongue moistening his lips. In out, flick to the left, flick to the right.  
Reaching behind him he untied the apron strings high at his back and slipped the halter of the apron forward over the back of his head.  
I saw he was wearing man clothes.

Totally unremarkable man clothes.

For a brief instant the apron was in front of his face, his view momentarily obscured but I didn't have the presence of mind to make my escape or reach for my hammer. He screwed the apron into a ball and cast it down to the floor by his side.

He smiled, showing teeth and the tongue.  
Pleasantly he spoke again.  
"Zena"  
"Zoe" I corrected him  
"Zoe, ah yes, I remember now, little brave upstanding Zoe. Are you here officially?"  
"Officially?" a question in my voice.  
"Yes, officially, on Nursery business, upstanding Zoe, meaning this; you don't normally come to see Tracey. Do you? I don't think you've even been here before. Do you make a habit of coming round the back of your clients houses ? Are you here on your business or did the Nursery send you?"

"I need to see Tracey"

He waited patiently. Seconds passed heavily. Just the rhythmic  
movements of his tongue. With difficulty I pulled my eyes away. I saw that my exit to the open kitchen door was blocked by his bulk. My eyes were pulled as if by magnets back to his face and his tongue.

When I spoke again I had difficulty making sense even to myself of what I was saying  
" It's only Tracey I can talk to. You see, it's about something she asked me" I lied.

"Something about Joe?"

"No, not about Joe, he's fine, it's about the Nursery," I started to embroider the quilt of my lie  
" She wanted some information for a friend"  
"And you, Zoe, you thought you'd bring it around personally? That was very, very kind of you "  
"Yes"

"Wasn't it?... Are you in the habit of doing this, why aren't you at the Nursery now?"  
"I'm on holiday"  
"So you're on holiday, is this how you normally spend your holidays"

A voice in my head. "Zoe, Zoe, Zoe," it said in Linda's voice "why do you get yourself in these scrapes?"

Looking at Michael I replied " I just called in on my way back home. I was going home to get changed and then I'm off on my holiday. With my family." I added. " They'll be wondering where I am"

"And where exactly is your home, Zoe?"

I said nothing but I was painfully aware that my eyes had flickered towards home, to the left, back down Bellingham Road, back down towards Buster Bears Kindergarten Nursery. Back down, towards safety.   
"So coming here, it's not exactly on your way home, is it Zoe?"  
"I had to go to the shops"  
His eyes flickered to his right, my left, back down Bellingham Road, back down towards Buster Bears Kindergarten Nursery. Back down, towards safety.   
He did it again, mirror mimicking my earlier giveaway action.

Laughing, he said "Zoe, I don't know what upstanding mission you think you're on, but you and I both know the shops are at your end, near..." he flickered his eyes theatrically"  
your house, near..." he flickered his eyes again even more theatrically, he was getting a hell of a kick out of this." Bastard Bears Kidhouse"

I shouldn't have been shocked, but I was.

All of a sudden this enterprise seemed more than foolish.

It had become dangerous.

"Bastard Bears" I repeated before I could stop myself. Bastard is a word I would never use."

Yes, Bastard Bears, Zoe," his red tongue doing overtime, flicking at the white froth that had appeared on his lower lip.  
"Bastard Bears for Bastard kids. You know Joe isn't mine. He's a Bastard, Zoe, you know what a Bastard is, don't you Zoe"

Linda's sensible voice again in my head. "Get out Zoe. Get out now" It commanded.

I reached behind me trying to remember from the brief glimpse I'd had where the front door handle might be.

Suddenly he was friendly again."Listen Zoe, as you've come to see Tracey, why don't you go see her? " He raised his voice and called up the stairs  
" Whoo-oo Tracey, you've got a visitor"He sang  
"Whoo-oo Tray-cey, you've got a visitor, it's little Zooo-e, she's from the Nurrr-sery,"

Pleased with himself, he smiled down at me

"You know what they say Zoe? if the mountain won't come to Mohammed,"

"No. What do they say?"

"Then Mohammed must go to the mountain"

"Tracey's upstairs?" I asked him

With one hand behind my back I was feeling for the front door handle. It was high, higher than I could reach. I'd have to turn.

Again, his big paws rested gently on my shoulders.  
"Let's go up, I'm sure she'd like to see you"  
and once more he turned me and he steered me. Once more I was in front of him, walking slowly up that staircase, unable to do anything other than what he compelled me to do.

At the top of the stairs I was uncertain of which room to go to and turned to Michael for guidance, perhaps even for instruction. He was in no hurry to help me.

He just stood watching me, one hand on the banister, towering above me, although he wasn't even at the top step. I noticed his tongue was still for once. He had just that pleasant smile on his face.

After opening a door which turned out to be the door to a cupboard, and then the door to Joe's bedroom, a room decorated with Mister Men wallpaper, there was nothing untoward. The bathroom door revealed a room housing not just the bathroom but the toilet itself. This too seemed to be just an ordinary room.

Only one door remained.

The main bedroom. When I tried the handle the door didn't open. I could hear a loud clicking and clacking from within.

"You'll need this" said Michael, who had appeared at my side.He pressed a key into my hand, a flashback of his fifty pence piece from the first meeting that I'd ever had with him went through my mind.

I turned the key in the lock and twisted the door handle.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

The door opened.I walked into a bright airy bedroom.

A little old fashioned dark wood dresser with a main mirror and hinged to it, two smaller mirrors stood at the bay window end.  
The mirrors reflected a woman.

A large woman sitting up in bed, at first glance certainly the equal size, if not even bigger than Michael himself, judging by the size of her hands and the bulk of her beneath the old fashioned covers on the bed.

She was a woman I'd not seen before.

She was wearing an old fashioned white linen bonnet on her head, wisps of grey hair protruded and she was sitting up in bed, knitting. She wore a sensible night dress, also white linen buttoned all the way up to her neck.

A picture from one the books I read out loud from at the Nursery came into my head. This picture was out of the story of Red Riding Hood, the picture of the wolf just after she'd eaten Red Ridings Hood's granny, and put on her clothes and climbed into her bed.  
Her knitting needles clacked together as her brow furrowed with concentration.  
She ignored my intrusion.

From behind me Michael said "This is Tracey"

The woman was still not looking at me. She continued to knit furiously, staring straight ahead.  
"That's not Tracey"  
"Not the Tracey you know. I grant you" Michael laughed, he sat himself on the embroidered eiderdown, his tongue going nineteen to the dozen.  
"This is Tracey's mother" he guffawed."She's also called Tracey. It's not a crime you know for a mother to name her child after herself." "But..." I began.  
"Look Zoe I think you've bitten off more than you could chew. You deserve an explanation, I think you could do with a cup of tea too."

And before I could say another word he led me out of the room.  
At the top of the stairs he took my small hand in his big hand and led me, him first this time down the stairs into the small kitchen.  
With paws on my shoulders again, he gently pushed me to sit at the small kitchen table. He filled the electric kettle, reconnected the lead and pushed the switch for the water to boil.

While his back was turned I contemplated my escape through the open back door, out via the garden or alternatively I could whip out my hammer.

Given our height difference I don't think I could have given him a blow to the head.

When the water was boiled Michael took three clean cups from a cupboard, made three cups of tea, each with it's own tea bag. He put lots of sugar in one, stirred it and offered it to me. Hot as it was and despite no saucer I grabbed it unquestioningly.

"I'll be down in a tick" Michael smiled and took one of the cups, heading upstairs. Now that my escape was so easy, I realised that I never had been a prisoner. I sipped the hot tea and waited for Michael to return.  
After a few minutes I heard his heavy steps on the stairs. He resumed his seat.  
" Tracey's also my mum"

"So you and Tracey, Joe's mum,... she's your sister"  
"Got it in one" he smiled "What was going through your head?"

"Lot's" I took a sip of the tea. It was hot and very sweet. I didn't normally take sugar.  
"But Joe calls you Dad"  
"He calls every man Dad, sometimes he even calls some of his toys Dad. Surely he must do that at your Nursery"

"Now you come to mention it, he does. You're right. Sometimes he runs around at Busters with a toy helicopter in his hand shouting Dad, Dad."  
"So it all comes back to the sixty four thousand dollar question, why did you come here, Zoe?

I screwed up all my courage "I've got one important question fo you first, it's what's brought me here!" I told him.

"Go on" his face was very serious. He took a slurp of tea  
."Joe has bruises, how did he get them?"  
"Our mum has Alzheimers"  
"I wanted to know about Joe, about the bruises" I reminded him, trying to be as firm as I could.

"I'm telling you" he replied.  
"Mum has Alzheimers, it's become advanced very suddenly very recently. That's why I've moved down from Carlisle to come to live here, to take care of her.  
There's only two things in her life as far as she's concerned right now, her knitting, which as you've just seen, she does non stop, ... and Joe. Everything else is lost on her. She doesn't talk any more. She just stares straight ahead. She doesn't move from the bed, she messes in that bed, I change her six, seven, eight times a day. Sometimes she holds Joe too tight. That's all it is. She loves him, she holds him too tight. We've had to unpeel him from her. I know all about the marks it leaves."

Casting my mind back, I remembered Joe saying "cuddles" and I also remembered all the grotesque ladies clothing Michael had been hanging out on the line. Six changes a day. He was a hero to have to cope with that.

I felt my suspicions fade and my fear of Michael change from fear to sympathy for his situation.  
"Surely Joe would have been terrified, if she's been leaving marks like that on him"I went on to explain to Michael about what I had seen. How I'd first noticed on Tuesday  
"His back" I told him "and his little wrists, and his legs,"  
I started to cry, howling, loud to my ears.  
"Shhhh" He leaned over from his chair and still seated he put his arm around me. "I've been so frightened for him" I said, through my snot and tears."Zoe it was brave of you" Michael said, and then he used that word again "upstandingly brave of you"  
" He can't go on being bruised. There's no excuse for Joe's bruises. I won't have it" I told him.

"It's gotta stop" I went on  
Michael slipped his arm from my shoulders

" Zoe, it took a lot of guts for you to come here. And you're right. Zoe, for that I'm going to need your help

"I wasn't sure where this was going.

"Go on" I said carefully

"We're taking steps, the lock on Mum's door, you know what that's for?"  
"No"  
"It's to stop Joe walking in to her. He loves his Nan. She's always been around. He was in and out of her room all the time with impunity, without fear, innocent. In innocence.

Of course, back then,we didn't have to worry.

But she's gone downhill so quickly and things are not the same for him, for any of us any more.

He doesn't realise how she's changed, So we've put a lock on her door, for him, for Joe, for his safety. He doesn't understand that she's dangerous, if he walks in... It broke my heart to put that lock on. It breaks my heart to see her like this. Zoe, I don't know what to do"

And then before my eyes, this big man's face crumpled like a child's, and he offered no resistance as I cradled his giant head against mine and we rocked in unison seated at the table, for what seemed a long time.   
After a while Michael disentangled himself, wiped his eyes and nose on the sleeve of his red tartan shirt and stood to refill the kettle at the sink.  
He couldn't meet my eyes. He looked down and caught sight of his watch  
"Shit" he said "Look at the time, I've got to get Joe."  
"What time is it?" I asked  
"Quarter to five, what time does your place close""We like the kids collected by five thirty, six at the latest" I told him  
"I'd better get down there, Oh Christ, I should have fed Mum,"  
He started digging for saucepans, in the low cupboards, things falling out around his ankles, he seemed to have difficulty reaching down for things, like he'd had difficulty reaching down with the washing when I'd first seen him today.

"Here, let me help" and I stood up from the table.

As I did, the hammer that I'd brought from work fell to the floor and skettled across the floor towards Michael.

He jumped up as if he'd been stung.

Turning to me, he pointed his finger at me accusingly " Zoe, what did you plan to do here, what the hell was going through your head?"

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry"  
"You were coming here" his voice rose in pitch, his voice raised in volume, his eyes narrowed to little slits "You were coming here to sort me out, you thought I was a child molester, you thought I'd hurt a hair of little Joe's head. You've got me wrong, so wrong"

He dipped uncomfortably to retrieve the hammer and put it on the table between us.

For the first time for a long time there was an uncomfortable silence between us. We were like statues, for a long time, both of us just standing there breathing hard. Suddenly he laughed, then laughed again, and kept on laughing. After a while he rocked with his laughter and then grew silent, holding his sides.

"Come here, you mad fucker" he told me.

He said it in a kindly voice.

He held out his huge arms and I stepped into them, his arms He held me tight to him and planted soft kisses on the top of my head. It felt good to me. Good and right and safe.  
He looked at his watch again "It's half five" he said " I haven't fed Mum"  
"I'll see to her," I said "you go get Joe"  
"You're an angel Zoe," he grabbed his coat from a hook in the hall"  
I'll wait for you, I'll be here when you get back"  
"You're upstanding Zoe, you know that" he called over his shoulder as he closed the front door

Chapter Three

Michael and I are now an item.

We're a couple. It's raised a few eyebrows, he's so much taller than me. He's so much older than me, but he fills a need in me and I've never had a man to hold me before.

It feels good.

I love him.

Together we look after his Mum, who miraculously, from her shitty bed, (I can say the word now, being with Michael's grown me up,) from her shitty bed she casts on, knits purl, plain, cross stitch all on the same garment, furiously, all out of the same ball of wool. She stares straight ahead. She never blinks. As well as sharing the feeding of her, the endless changing of clothes for her, we have to put drops in her eyes to lubricate them for her. I sometimes do the eye drops.  
I spend a lot of time in Joes home.  
Michael's met my Mum.

In a guarded way because she's fearful for me, she likes him or at least she says she likes him when I ask her.  
Conversation goes like this:

"Mum, Michael and Joe's here, they've come for their tea. I asked them to come."

"Did you, Dear?"

When they were out of the kitchen, waiting in the front parlour.  
I said to Mum.

"We're an item, Mum. He's my boyfriend"

"That's nice, Dear"

I couldn't let this be just another one of our conversations.  
How would Linda do this? I know

"Mum, listen to me"

"Did you, Dear?"

"Mum, I need you in the room with me"

and I waited for her glazed eyes to re-focus.

"Mum, you're forty nine years old. You're too young to be so vacant"

"That's nice, Dear"

I'm going to have to work on this.

I fear for my Mum, I fear for her for later when she goes old and mad like Michaels Mum.  
Will I be able to give up everything, like he did? He had a house up North, he tells me. He was an electrical design engineer, a good one, he says, says it with pride and when it got all too much for his sister Tracey he gave up his job just like that. For her. For Joe.

Apparently he and his sister made their Mum a promise long ago that they would never let their Mum go into a home. Michael's very big on promises.

Very serious. He calls it the sanctity of promises.

We don't talk about his sister Tracey.  
It's the one subject that's off limits, with Michael. WE NEVER TALK ABOUT HIS SISTER. WE NEVER TALK ABOUT HIS SISTER.

Her cars still on the front drive at Michael's Mum's little house. Rusting.  
I don't know what's happened to her.

Or if she's coming back.

Reigns Plays

# Strange Bedfellows - The Play

Scene and Lighting A darkened curtained bedroom with a king size bed  
A single panel of light playing on the bed through a gap in heavy dark curtains.  
Heaps and scatters of hurriedly discarded clothes around the bed

Characters Mimi , Theresa and Sonny are all in the one bed  
Mimi and Theresa-thirty something girls -appearance not crucial  
Sonny, a big man, with a big belly and a broad crescent scar running  
right to left across his back,

# Scene One

Action All are prone - only Mimi and Theresa are awake

Mimi (up on one elbow facing Theresa) The difficult thing about getting dying cancer patients to appear on television is that unless they're a card carrying equity member we just can't use them."

Theresa (sits up in their bed as if stung) My mum had cancer, she was on television, she never had no card, you're a bloody liar

Mimi There's always one slips through the net - I grant you - I audition them, it's my job

Theresa Nobody 'd 'ave a job like that, you don't, - you're just a sick liar

Mimi Well - it's no lie, with tubes in place,and drips plastered to their noses, they look the part - everybodies happy

Theresa Must be something wrong with yer, you're a ghoul if that's 'ow you earn your living,

Mimi OK, what about you then, I guarantee you're no better than me.

Theresa I told you last night .... You seemed interested enough when yer and yer charming boyfriend 'ere were chatting me up

Mimi I do remember but I've forgotten for the moment, God, it's dark in this room. Is he still asleep?

Theresa  Me, I'm an Ambulance Driver

Mimi Ah, an Ambulance Driver - so, you save lives?

Theresa Not so's yer'd know, my passegers are already dead

Mimi So why ambulance drive them? Where do you take these dead bodies?

Theresa I drive for the Pristei, I drive 'em in circles round and round and round, and then I take 'em back.

Mimi That makes a lot of sense,.... NOT.....Just for the record though - he's not my boyfriend,  
I met him, just like I met you, for the very first time \- last night.

Theresa  See, you are sick, who else but a sad sicko like you would shack up in bed with ter people she'd only just met?

Mimi Well,.......you did

**********************************************

Sonny turns in his sleep, grunts himself surprised awake. Sits up in bed, grins, looks right and left, right again. His grin grows to be a broad smile.

Sonny Hi and what are you two warring about ?

Mimi Nothing, denara, what time do you have to get up?

Sonny I go whenever I want to go, I'm with the Ministry

Theresa (pulls coverlet tighter makes the sign of the cross-wails) Oh, my gawd, yer a man of the cloth !

Sonny (laughing) No, Not that sort of Ministry, a Government Ministry, - I told you both all about it last night.

Theresa I don't remember that

Mimi Nor Me neither -well, we were all pretty slaughtered last night

Sonny  So what were you two arguing about really, I was well cosy - dreaming of maxing out all my credit cards, but you two were louuuud ! - you were really having a ding-dong

Mimi We were just talking about our jobs. Was nothing really.

Theresa (angry) Weren't bloody talking, She was lying, she was lying about 'er job

Mimi Enough. I was telling the truth, - it's what I do

Sonny What's your job?

Mimi ( exasperated) Why doesn't anybody listen to anybody these days? Like I didn't tell you and...( jabbing a finger at Theresa)..... I didn't tell you either, all last night, I cast cancer sufferers for TV ads

Theresa Except they ain't real, they're bloody phonies -ain't they? -tell 'im

Mimi So you're saying that you would prefer we put real sufferers through all the TV shame and humiliation?

Sonny (rolls over pressing Mimi into Theresa- his back is to them, words over his shoulder carrying to the two women) So, if they're not real cancer patients, then who are they?

The sunlit panel picks out his scar, it still looks recent, livid purple with the margin around the stitches white skin against ebony skin .

Mimi Actors, luvvy, they're actors

Sonny So the whole things cooked up then?

Mimi Of course

Sonny (rapidly- excitedly) My government department. We're looking for a new project. If I cared anymore this'd do nicely. It'd be huge - PRCP we'd call it. Project PRCP or PRCPTV. Process Real Cancer Patients for TV. Interfacing a whole new army of government personnel - checking out claims with GP's and specialists. Equity applications on compassionate grounds. Tribunals. .Appeals. Posthumous awards. Compensation claims. Co-ordinating, cross referencing.Formalising IT systems. Forms, more forms, Reports, reports, reports about reports. It' s brilliant. -I must get to a phone

Mimi, from under her pillow, and Theresa offer Sonny their mobiles.

Sonny takes both their proferred phones, and he presses buttons on both which illuminates them. He studies the lit devices.

Releasing Mimi he sits up in the bed.

Mimi Well?" (when it becomes apparent Sonny isn't doing anything)

Theresa I knew you weren' gonna make that bloody call

Sonny Under other circumstances I would, it's really not important anymore, not today

Theresa You, you're a bleedin' typical civil servant, wasting our tax money on you being that bloody decisive?

Mimi leans behind Sonny inspecting his back with her fingers. She shifts clothes and finds a small bedside lamp. She turns it on and turns the flex head closer to the marks from the surgery.

Mimi (voice, heavy with concern) Who did this to you? it looks so angry. It's cracked and bled crusty, some stitches have broken, others are not even in the right place, what have they done here? - Theresa, What say you have a look at this, you being in the medical profession"

Theresa Whoa, I never did say I was actually in the medical profession, I'm little more'n a chauffeur

Mimi You never did explain, you just drive in a circle?

Theresa S' complicated, I'll tell yer later

Mimi We have time, not like we're going anywhere. He's crashed out again, at least he doesn't snore

*************************************************************  
Theresa You know the Pristei religion, that's 'oo I drive for

Mimi The Pristei, aren't they some weird cult in Chelsea?

Theresa Not just Chelsea, they're everywhere, an' they own most of London's Riverside rented apartments and penthouses, they make their money by letting 'em out

Mimi I thought that was the Jews

Theresa It was, was the Jews long ago. These days it's the Pristei

Mimi So these Pristeis, this is the bunch that looks like Old World Quakers

Theresa Yep, with a bit of fiddler on the roof fashion thrown in

Mimi I still don't get it, why drive their bodies around?

Theresa Promise you won't tell no one?

Mimi Cross my heart, hope to die

Theresa I need a bloody pee, tell you when I get back - where's the toilet 'ere?

Mimi I don't know, I thought this was your place

Theresa Where ever d'you get that in yer 'ead, I thought it was your gaff, we'd better wake 'im up

Sonny takes some waking, Mimi and Theresa start gently then increasingly stronger pulling at his other shoulder, the one without the angry welt. Eventually they desist - he will not be roused.

Theresa Sod it, 'e's dead to the world, I've gotta go, I'll find it

Theresa steps from the bed, letting natural daylight flood into the room as she turns the door handle.

Theresa If I'm not back in twenny minutes, send out a search party

She gathers up a dress she hopes is hers, holds it against her and marches away down the corridor.

## Mimi's mobile is still in Sonnys giant paw, it flashes 11.32 a.m

********************************************************  
Mimi (Talking and shaking Sonny ) C'mon baby wake up C'mon baby wake up  
Mimi (louder) C'mon baby wake up

Sonny sits up suddenly, drops her mobile, his right hand clenches into an aggressive fist.

Mimi (reclaiming her phone) Glad you're with us. This place - it's your home?

Sonny ( unballs his fist, taps his nose) er .......No, it's not mine, -hold on a minute------- were'nt there two of you - or did I just dream that ?

Mimi No, you're right , she's gone, she's off to the toilet

Sonny What's her name?

Mimi Theresa, it was round her neck. Saved me having to ask.

Sonny I'm Sonny

Mimi Well, I know that

Sonny So how come I don't know your name?

Mimi You do, it's Mimi

Sonny What's that short for?"

Mimi It's not

Sonny OK, so that's the introductions over, mind if I go back to sleep now?

Mimi (puts a strong hand on Sonny shoulder) I do actually. I've got a one o clock appointment in town

Sonny (Sonny extracts himself from Mimi's grasp and tries to lie down again)  So have I

Mimi Whereabouts?

(no reply-)

Mimi (louder) Whereabouts?

Sonny Golden Square, Piccadilly

Mimi Is your first name Evanson?

Sonny Yes

Mimi Well, well. What a small world, we don't either of us have to go to Golden Square

Sonny What, I'm due to see you! Tell me that this isn't happening

Mimi It was fate, Kismet perhaps brought us two together. So if you're down to see me you must have yourself an Equity card? Didn't you say that you were a Civil Servant though?

(And then to Theresa as she re-enters the room)

Mimi Hey you Theresa - guess what; this man and me, we're due to meet up in town in an hours time, not last night at all. Did you find the toilet?

Theresa Yeah, I foun' it, and what a dirty shithole it was, 'ow do you live like this?

Sonny Don't ask me - it's not my place

Mimi Turns out he's an Actor too.

Sonny Not quite an Actor

Theresa You on the fringe, mate?

Sonny(stepping into large white "Y" fronts) You could say that - I organise London conferences for the Government Ministers. They gave me a card as I'm on screen sometimes pinning on microphones, handing out clipboards and suchlike

Mimi So why come to see me?

Sonny I have cancer

Mimi Oh, I didn't realise, that explains why you were flashing your money about all last night, as if it was your last day on earth,

Theresa I thought the bar was going to run out of champagne the way you was buying it for everyone.

Mimi Now I know why you were spending money like that, I wish I didn't - I'm sorry, really -truly sorry

Theresa So you're like me mum, dying from Cancer?

Sonny Yes

Mimi Cancer -well, if something else doesn't get to us first we'd all get it eventually

Mimi is the only one in bed now.

Theresa searches underneath her side of the bed for her Ambulance keys and after some seconds her fingers come up with them.

Theresa  'Cept the Pristei.

(Mimi's turns to watch Sonny. He doesn't look as if he understands any better than her.)

Theresa Pristei don't accept there is Death and they don't accept there is Cancer. That's why I drive them around.

Theresa  (to Mimi) You said you'd keep a secret.

Theresa - (to Sonny) - What about you?

Sonny What sort of secret?

Theresa Does it matter? You're dying. You ain't in a position to be picky

Sonny You make a good point, OK I'll keep your secret

Theresa Good. Okay - here it is. There's two of us, my partner and me. He should have phoned by now (pushes buttons on her mobile) He chloroforms 'em while I drive

Sonny Say that again. Slowly this time,

Theresa Which bit? ( looks up from her phone) Oh --About the chloroform. OK. I go to clubs, where the beautiful and...(fixing on Sonnys bloated frame) the not so beautiful people of London come

Mimi. (whisper)And then............

Theresa We get to be friends, really enjoy ourselves - just like this, it was fun, weren' it?

Sonny OK - and then?.....

Theresa And then my friends become donaters

Sonny Donaters? I hear the words but I can't make this out (Sonny is completely dressed by now. Suited and booted he looks more regular than regulation. A bowler hat would not be out of place on his tight curls.)

Mimi  If you weren't sleeping so deeply you'd have heard how this one is a body transporter for the Pristei

Sonny I still don't get it, call me slow or something. Is this anything to do with what happened to me a couple of weeks ago? Have you deliberately come for me again?

Mimi And what about me, you're not planning to do anything with me, are you?

Theresa Don't you worry a pretty little 'air on your 'eads -but I will need your home addresses shortly. You, big man, I think we akready have yours.

Sonny But two weeks ago, I was in a club, I had a whale of a time and the next thing I know I'm back in my own bed in a fever and three days have passed. There was a bottle of pain killers on the bedside table. I'm still on them. They're marvellous.( He produces a brown bottle from his jacket pocket and opens it. He takes two tablets and crunches them dry in his mouth)

Theresa Pristei people don't believe they die. As long as their organs are shared, sewn in amongst their families and loved ones they figure they're still around. But their old body, that's gotta be buried whole, that's why they need donaters -so they can be whole when they're buried.

Mimi And that's why you drive them around, so you can reload them while they bleed

Theresa Exactly and Now you know (Theresa smiles ) The Pristei owns most of the Thames Riverside luxury homes. Those that are rented out anyway. If I pull that curtain back we'll have some lovely wavy stuff ter look at

(and to underline her point she opens the curtains wide. A panoramic view of a boat filled Thames and Thames riverbank life flows by the floor to ceiling extent of glass window. Judging by the massed boat clubs, the location is somewhere between Richmond and Kew).

Mimi and Sonny together (wail in unison).What's to become of us?

Right on cue Theresa' s partner, scalpel in hand enters the room, accompanied by his protectors, two giant dark coated enforcers who would put last night's bouncers to flight. One of the henchmen sports a baseball bat. His partner gingerly holds a steaming chemical pot at arms length.

Theresa  Now you know what we are, now you know what you are.The Pristei thank you for your donatering. I'll do me best with your needlework !
The Clock

Int: Present day,in the front room of Kevin's house twin brother Lawrence, also aged 33 (by some co-incidence) has called unexpectedly and walked straight in despite Kevin smaller weaker trying to stop him)

Lawrence: (pointing to wall) This, this, all the time you had it, you told me you never told me you had it

Kevin: No I never

Lawrence: You've been keeping this from me, how long have you had it?

Kevin:Since just after she died

Lawrence:I bet you didn't even wait for her to get cold

Kevin: She wanted me to have it

Lawrence:Oh yeah, when did she tell you that?

Kevin: Just before she died

Lawrence:That's rather convenient, was anybody else there?

Kevin:Yes, Uncle Alby

Lawrence:Figures. He's dead too,I want it (reaching up to the wall and pushing on the securing bracket)

Kevin:Leave it

Lawrence:Or what? What you gonna do about it? (turns to Kevin, pushes him in chest)

Kevin: (takes a step back, stuttering) y, you you leave it alone

Lawrence:You gonna stop me? (hands on hips belligerent, staring Kevin down)

Kevin: (meekly) Perhaps we can share it

Lawrence:Like what, half each, (shouting now) cut it down the middle (louder) are you crazy?

Kevin:(not meeting Lawrence's bulging eye stare)No, what I meant was you have it weekends, I have it weekdays?

Lawrence:(still loud, laughs) Ha, like you do with your kids?

Kevin:(indignant) That's a cheap shot, you know Cathy wants full custody now. I'm not going to be able to even write to them if she gets her way

Lawrence:Perhaps you should have thought about that before you took up with that trollop from the Co-Op

Kevin: (rising to full non impressive height) She's not a trollop

Lawrence:Whatever, ... you gonna give me this clock ?

Kevin: Mum wanted me to have it, you know why

Lawrence:Of course, you were the suck up

Kevin: You know that's not true, I tried harder, all you've ever known is how to break things, how to hurt

Lawrence:(gently) Would it help if I said I was sorry?

Kevin: It would be a start (he extends his hand to shake)

Reigns Poems

Round Six

Like it here.

Safe - my corner.  
Thirty seconds - no one hit me.

Tired hurting. Too old this shit.   
Crowd pays ,crowd loud.   
For blood.  
Anybodys.  
Mine.  
Ta crowd, happy - oblige.

Sag stool prop sorry arse.  
Gulp big wet breaths.   
Lay sore elbow gentle second rope.   
Nice, feels nice.   
Look through good eye -sea of faces,   
Know not any 'em.

Helper holds yellow pail.   
Spit mouth - sticky red pap - two broken teeth.  
Mouth tastes metal.

"Keep away from his left" hoarse urgent advice Manager.

Fifth round - best he can come up with?

"S'not his left, getting me wit' his rightun " tell Manager

Number two, heavy man girls voice whirls knotted towel - over head wind, me breathe by.  
Looks good, helps not at all.  
No air -no air this ring.  
,   
"Manager - need plan "B"

"Yeah, right, use the ring, wear him down dance him, one more round, right you'll get him.right You're doing good,"  
.   
"Hear that, Manager? Helicopter inniit? or 's it a wasp?"

Card girl does circuit, big oversized six card holding .  
Smelling salts. Lively.  
Bell rings.   
Manager push gumshield sore silver mouth.  
"Go get him, Tiger"  
Heaves up - feet, go.  
Supports retreat - place of safety.   
All alone  
Ting a ling -musicalful -second zout.   
Push gloves together  
Say myself "You're Man"

Big Man

Big Man  
Hit a woman till she cries  
Blacken both her eyes  
Big Man

Big Man  
No food in the house  
Not enough to feed a louse  
Big Man

Big Man  
Drinking with your pals  
Benefits spent on ales  
Big Man

Big Man  
Out tonight to rob  
Un arsed to get a job  
Big Man

Big Man  
Burgling like a prick  
They hit you with a stick  
Big Man

Big Man  
Cocked it up again  
Serving eight to ten  
Big Man

Wakefulness

Hovering between awake and asleep  
Uncomfortably  
Too early to rise  
Too late to sleep again  
Yesterdays concerns  
Become today's tribulations  
Too real  
Too instant

Struggling for the right words  
Helplessly  
To solve this mess  
Before it's too late  
Kind words  
Were never said, never heard  
Too late  
Too hurtful

Yule Log

Buried under the fallen tree in my garden lies a treasure.  
It's no longer my garden. It's no longer my house  
I sold the home it belongs to eight years ago.   
Sold it to a young couple Mark and Marjorie.  
They were surprised that the condition of sale included an additional clause.  
I had asked my conveyancer to include this clause:.

"that the fallen tree ( see map attached) stay.  
And that the vendor may return each Christmas day for perpituity to stand in the garden at the fallen tree.  
This to be written in any subsequent title."

And that's what I do.  
Stand here in penance my head bowed.  
And remember you.  
My dearest faithful friend.  
Alive in my memory.  
Interred here 25th December 2000.  
Alive in my memory.

### Despondency

A kind word never heard  
Approval often sought  
Not forthcoming

Grey day unrelieved  
By a touch  
Or recognition

No future hopes  
For long term  
Nor today

No good reason  
Not to end it  
All

Red Suds In Soapsud Alley

The workers national strike of October, 1923 Ignorance, Greed, Exploitation, Death and Sorrow.

The strike originated in South Acton in London.

In the aftermath of England's Post War Depression work was hard to find.  
Across the land people were starving and paying for it with their lives.

Yet in one small pocket there were jobs to be had.  
Jobs for washerwomen in the streets of what is now known as the South Acton Industrial Estate.

The laundries there benefited from a natural spring below the land \- of the highest quality soft water.  
With soft water - one level teaspoon of red carbolic soap powder fizzes bucket after bucket of thick rich velvet lather.

Huge potential profits were to be made from this phenomenon.

In the 1920 's rich gentrified families owned the huge London homes (that are each now 27 flats)  
Those that could had child after child to outstrip the infant mortality which took one in three babies

The mortality from disease was said to originate from poor hygiene. Sterilisation and pasteurisation became a regime in these homes.

This intelligence spawned an enormous demand for a service and continual fresh supply of boiled clean soft terry toweling nappies.

Ruthless profiteers built a "gold rush" of laundries to cash in on the soft water.

The laundries run by evil overlords also benefited from a horde of unemployed hands who would offer themselves up for work each morning.  
They were willing to do anything in the most awful conditions to earn a pittance - so that they could eat.

Turnover was huge as the workers contracted severe disease from exposure and poor hygiene.  
It was only a matter of time before a worker contracted highly contagious occupational dermatitis

Any girl showing the slightest symptom at the daily inspections was sacked on the spot.

So there were always jobs to fill.

Washerwomen were needed and coming from further and further away

Our story starts in Wales :

Megan had sent word back  
"Work's here in London Town"  
Doris Morgan sick and starving  
Forced herself t' come on down

Joined army of Welsh women  
Walked a hundred seventy mile  
Fortnight pain, her worn out boots  
Fixed her face with a hopeful smile

Empty seam of coal mined valley  
The only place Doris had ever known  
Kith kin family school friends husband  
Fourteen years old never to return home

Exhausted arrived in South Acton  
"Soapsud Alley" named the street  
White acre cloth drying in sunshine  
Wind billowing away th' cost of heat

Knee high foam greywall buildings  
Laundry of names we'd know at once  
Smarts, Sunlight, Initial, Spring Grove,  
Sketchley, White Knight and Advance

Several lesser known washhouses  
Crowded with them onto the estate  
Foam spilled Roslin to Stirling Road  
A hive of industry laundry profits great

The clothes they all washed was  
Nappies - not those of the hoi polloi  
But those of the rich lauded landed  
The wealthiest little bundles of Joy

The privileged could afford it  
To send their dirties to the van  
That called upon them each week  
Driven by the smiling laundryman

## Doris had someone literate  
Read the largest laundry case

On her next monthly afternoon off  
Thumbed her way to Artillery Place

## Grandeur gated house before her  
Breath taken by tree filled street

Governesses their arms full of babies  
Toddlers as ducklings all around their feet

Doris couldn't get the picture of  
The rich trappings out of her mind  
Just the one baby would make her  
Happy if life could ever be that kind

The napkins kept the wives in work  
on those Southernmost Acton streets  
Doris was one of a thousand labourers  
Ankle deep in brown smells at her feet

Laundry owners didn't work there  
For they were far too rich and grand  
They just employed the cruel harsh men  
Told them "Drive the profits to my hand"

Health and safety wasn't a factor  
For as Doris found out to her cost  
Even from an economic viewpoint  
Many many woman hours were lost

Laundry management competed tireless  
Implementing machinery and automation  
Many machines were tried - Amongst these  
Came Doris's Welshmade coffin "The Irrigation"

The Irrigation - twenty feet high  
Tunnel conveyor belted machine  
A giraffe of hooks, and tunnels  
Galvanized welded panels a-gleam

The Irrigation part-stitched the nappies  
And then they went by it's gaping maw  
Disappearing up into it's dark innards  
From there - they were seen no more

This perfect trail of soiledness  
bathed thrice in different strengths  
And came out separated one by one  
Ev'ry nappy back to it's perfect length

They calculated the Irrigation device  
Could save between 30 and 40 per cent  
It'd give them the edge over neighbours  
In nine short weeks repay their investment

They hadn't calculated on the risk  
To life n limb - the despair it'd create  
When they sent young Doris to her death  
Because the deliveries were running late

The Irrigation had hit a problem  
The nappies in it there were stuck  
Instead of a strip they'd formed a ball  
Became clear the extractor wouldn't suck

They helped Doris volunteer to sort it  
Although she was happy in the road  
Thinking of how she might dress up offal  
Lights for tea how she'd serve them cold

No one had tested the temperature  
Or the lack of air when they inserted her  
They made her bind her crown of red hair  
So that she didn't get it stuck in the roller

She made it almost to the end  
And had freed the final obstruction  
And it was in climbing out she caught  
And set the machine switch into action

And processed the young Welsh girl  
Under five feet tall only small and light  
Washed rinsed packed her to the sound  
Of piercing screams out into the night

Doris was never to knew that the baby  
She yearned for was nestled in her womb  
Boy child seeded by dear Welsh husband  
Died before her, both trapped inside the tomb

The Soapsuds ran red in Soapsud Alley  
Everyone from all around came to see  
And they all marvelled at automation  
And whispered about carnage and grief

## They would have to close the laundry  
So they'd telephoned the owner at first

But the owner said he wouldn't hear of it  
And insisted that the decision was reversed

So when they opened next day  
The Irrigation stood in it's usual place  
But no girl would go anywhere near it  
Let alone that she'd look hard into its' face

Until the rich owners accountants  
told him that productivity was down  
He needed to know why for himself  
So he made his way to Acton Town

Mill Hill Park station he walked down  
Bollo Lane his ankles deep in suds,  
Puzzled no idea what they were for  
Or the girl army with washing boards

He had difficulty finding his way -  
He knew his way round London the Tate  
But this could have been another continent  
The Great South Acton Industrial Estate

Not a place where the gentry went  
And of course he could have no idea  
Why an army of girl workers pressed him  
Waved banners and kept wailing in his ear

They'd figured him for the owner  
For him they had many demands  
Bodies rough pressed against him  
All the whilst shouting out their plans

He was rescued, brought inside  
And given Sherry by the cruel men  
Who explained about the Disaster  
Repeated over he still couldn't take it in

Things like this didn't happen at Ascot  
Nor at Lords, Marlborough or Badminton,  
He couldn't understand that the girls death  
Could have anything to do with him

But profits were all, and profits were down  
and "that's it men" "the long and the short"  
He showed them finance journal extracts  
From the ledger pages that he'd brought

We can't restart the Irrigation  
we'll have a mutiny in the street  
\- "If you don't you'll have no bonus"-  
Said the owner as he got to his feet

So they re-started the machine  
and advertised hard for honest men  
The cruel men worked it up to then  
Closed their eyes 'n' ears to the resentment

The girls at other laundries learned  
And they formed a bodily barricade  
In the road around the stricken laundry  
Called for sister pickets" join the blockade"

All work on the estate ceased  
Laundry vans were blocked to load  
Times headlines "THE LAUNDRIES STOPPED"  
Letters page -"we can't get down the bloody road"

The Times was known as "The Thunderer"  
and it thundered on and on  
About ungrateful shop girls  
And the war that we'd just won

By Thursday next West London  
Then down to Western Super Mare-  
All of Kent itself had joined the strike  
There were a lot of fruit pickers there

But no-one up to Birmingham  
Or the West was showing up for work   
The whole country festered stank mildew  
As the whole of England had shunned their work

They say the death of a Welsh girl  
Compromised a profit crazed industry  
And that workers rightful anger endured  
To bring this uncaring nation to its knees

# The strike at Soapsud Alley  
Had brought the country to its knees  
Turned out to be greater than a hurricane   
And even more wide spread than disease

asunder

Here

"Touch me here, here and here, but not there, that's still tender"  
After they had given me my £50 and left, I went into Linda's room to cry.  
And wiped my eyes with their five £10 notes.  
Then the bell rang, I was needed again.

Candy often says

Candy often says that I talk too much.  
Perhaps I do.  
But I don't need her telling me off, in front of other people.  
I take her into the hall,  
"Candy" I say, I count to ten and take hold of her wrist and press hard on her pulse, until she raises her face to mine.  
"Candy, don't you ever embarrass me like that, ever again, in front of my friends."  
She wriggles free and spits into my face. It feels like a gallon (5 litres) .Where does she get a gallon?  
Then she's gone, leaving me sticky faced, with her foul sputum.  
When I re-renter the room, having cleaned myself up, the atmosphere has changed.  
"Thanks for a lovely evening, Will" Ben says as he and Helena exit. The other two couples impart similar vagaries as they make their goodbyes.  
Alone with Candy, Candida, my Candida.   
"Thanks for that, Candy" I tell her.  
"No problem" she replies" everyone knows you're a boring twat"  
"Perhaps I am, but you know what they say, takes one to know one."  
Later on when I'm doing the dishes she wants to make friends.  
Leaning into me while I'm elbow deep in suds,  
"You know what Will," she tells me" it's not you, it's them, it's them that makes you boring"

Your Arse

At long last, the stage of my life where I get mad at the adverts

"because I'm worth it "

Wakefulness

Melancholy

My recipe  
yours-you might do differently

Get a melon  
and a cauliflower -cauli for short  
I think you know the rest.

But seriously

Real sadness. When nothings wrong.  
And yet you can't be happy.

you'd rather be sad.  
Looking out the train window on a rainy Thursday. Wet on the glass.

Thinking about sad thoughts.

And enjoying it.

Winston Churchill called it his black dog.  
But two Rizlas, a twist of Old Holborn and some of the private stuff you get from Morris and you're back there.

A kitchen sink drama, at the kitchen sink.

"Why do you leave it so greasy?"

"it's not greasy" you say as you lift the yellow washing up bowl and ...see that she's right.

You might change the subject but she brings you right back like you're a bull, with a ring through your nose.

Thank god, I can't afford to pay for her to go to Matador school.

Angus Mcintyre

Sells time share with flair

Angus Mcintyre  
Hires and fires  
Virgins, missionaries and habitual iiars

Today it's journeymen, holiday overstayers  
Fresh from the beach  
Fetund unhealthy and surely to leach  
Timeshare cabana sales  
For Angus to teach

"Competition winners  
Are our bread and butter"  
Free flights out - selling them  
Hovels from the gutter

"£99 down  
no more to pay  
O% interest   
for a year and a day"

Sell ten a week  
You'll be a star  
Twenty a week  
We'll give you a car

Go there, my darlings  
See what you fetch  
Scratch cards a ready  
Seminar bookings steady

Warn you now  
Fuck it up  
You'll be my  
Anonymous  
Dead on the beach  
A lesson learned  
For others to teach
i'm just trying to take care of you

I sometimes think I hear you in your mind

perhaps it's too late to APOLOGISE  
but you drove me here  
you took every essence of me  
and made it into you  
and i lost my identity  
lost my hey watch do you know what the time is?  
roses are red  
violets are blue  
it's all over town  
it's explainable  
been happening a lot lately

but it's not a get out of jail card

Fathers Day

A rant

Fathers Day?  
Fathers day !  
Why bother  
My kids didn't  
It's their place to contact me  
Not me them  
They're cold they're bitter  
Just like their mum  
God I hate that bitch  
hate her to death  
They say I'm cold and bitter  
But they made me like this  
It's not my fault  
It's theirs  
Theirs - you hear?  
Well, do you ? do you?

Another Day in Paradise

She's hungry but she doesn't know what she wants. To eat.  
She's watching a film that she thinks i want to see. I don't. I tell her that.  
"Don't what?"  
"I don't want to watch this film. Go back to your Poirot"  
"No, it's OK, honestly, I missed the start"

Why are we being so nice to each other?

During the advert break, we get to the heart of the problem.

God Help Us

A fire station in Co Down has been destroyed along with two fire appliances in an overnight blaze. Around 20 firefighters were called to Rathfriland Fire Station at around 4am on Friday morning. A person living near the station which is based in the &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Big Man

Big Man  
Hit a woman till she cries  
Blacken both her eyes  
Big Man

Big Man  
No food in the house  
Not enough to feed a louse  
Big Man

Big Man  
Drinking with your pals  
Benefits spent on ales  
Big Man

Big Man  
Out tonight to rob  
Un arsed to get a job  
Big Man

Big Man  
Burgling like a prick  
They hit you with a stick  
Big Man

Big Man  
Cocked it up again  
Serving eight to ten  
Big Man

They who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing

Cost £325.17  | Running Cost

---|---

Corporal Tucker is trapped behind enemy lines. | £325.17 |

 |   
 |

Cost £300.62 | £300.62 |

We must get him out. |

 |   
 |

Cost £118.09 | £118.09 |

Alert nearest platoon  |

Cost £25.46 | £25.46 |

 |   
 |

Platoon alerted-search party briefed | £1,305.39 |

Cost £1305.39 |   
 |

 |   
 |

Search Party Mobilised | £16,111.42 |

Cost £16,111.42 |

 |   
 |

Search Party Day 1 |

Cost £3,016.09 | £3,016.09 |

 |   
 |

Search Party Day 2 |

Cost £3,016.09 | £3,016.09 |

 |   
 |

Search Party Day 3 |

Cost £3,016.09 | £3,016.09 |

 |   
 |

Additional Supplies dropped to Search Party Day 3

Cost £10,088.23 | £10,088.23 |

 |   
 |

Cpl Tucker Located |

Cost £188.33 | £188.33 |

 |   
 |

Cpl Tucker is Injured |

Cost £ 25.11  | £25.11 |

 |   
 |

Arrange Air Collection Cpl Tucker/ Search Party

Cost £1143.00 | £1,143.00 |

 |   
 |

Air Collection 1 (Aborted) |

Cost £5121.43 | £5,121.43 |

 |   
 |

Air Collection 2 |   
 |

Cost £35564.15 | £35,564.15 |

 |   
 |

Search Party Debrief |

Cost £512.14 | £512.14 |

 |   
 |

Cpl Tucker to Military Hospital |

Cost £352.48 | £352.48 |

 |   
 |

Cpl Tucker Amputation Right Leg

Cost £3980.12 | £3,980.12 |

 |   
 |

Cpl Tucker Return from Afghanistan to UK

Cost £2956.80 | £2,956.80 |

 |   
 |

Cpl Tucker Honourable Discharge and Citation

Cost £6922.13 | £6,922.13 |

 |   
 |

Cpl Tucker Compensation and Final Pay

Cost £1156.08  | £1,156.08 |

 |   
 |

Afghanistan TOTAL £ 95,244.42 |   
 | £95,244.42

***********************************

 |   
 |

UK Cpl Tucker Disability Allowance £80.25

weekly ongoing |   
 |

 |   
 |

UK | ??? |

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 |

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 |

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