Bob Sykes was one of the chaps who always seemed to have money to spend. While the rest of us in the “gang “ had to wait for the next letter to arrive from Granny and the neatly folded ten bob note slotted in between the pages of Basildon Bond or an exeat Sunday with the parents and the loose change from father's pocket once the luncheon bill had been settled at the Lamb Inn, Sykes always had money in his pocket.
“How dew do it Sykesy?” we'd ask him. He always reply in that very annoying way of tapping the side of his nose and saying even more infuriatingly, “Take care of the pennies and the pounds will look after them selves.”
Someone in the gang, probably Blake, named Sykes “Ten Bob Sykes” because he nearly always pulled a crumpled ten shilling note from his right trouser pocket at the school tuck shop counter. The rest of us had pennies or a shilling or two if we were lucky but Sykes, “Ten Bob Sykes”, always managed to come up with the folding stuff.
It gave him friends of course but not real friends like me and Blakelock. Ten Bob Sykes so-called mates were brown nosing him just because he had money. Mind you he wasn't actually all that generous with it. I suppose it's because of that that the trouble happened.
If he'd been the sort of decent chap who'd have divvied up when a bloke was a bit short or if he'd lent a couple of bob without wanting it paid back the following week with interest, then he'd of been all right. Having the money gave him a sort of power I suppose. Having Blunt too, Blunt who was in the upper fifth and who boxed for his house, he was a bloke you wouldn't want to argue with. Blunt had bloodied Cunliffe and Cunliffe was quite a big bloke. Blunt had landed him one on the nose before chapel one morning and Cunliffe's nose didn't stop bleeding until after the last Psalm. He looked a frightful mess and he hadn't got a handkerchief so his shirt was covered and he got into a right state and a bollocking from Jones. Blunt was “Ten Bob Sykes” minder and collected the money that was owed to him when it was due. You didn't ever want to borrow money from “Ten Bob Sykes” unless you absolutely knew you could pay it back on time and with the extra required.
Mother always said, “Neither a lender nor a borrower be”, which was all very well for her to say but she didn't have to buy stuff from the school tuck shop every day or owe Dyer three and six for some quite rare Commonwealth stamps.
Anyhow that's how it was that I asked Sykes, “Ten bob Sykes”, if he'd lend me half a crown for two weeks. In two weeks I knew that I'd see my parents and that I'd be back in funds by then. No worries. “Ten Bob Sykes” reached into his right trouser pocket and produced half a crown. He tossed it in the air like a referee at the start of a match and coolly caught the spinning coin after it had arced its way upwards above both our heads. He caught it and quickly placed it on the back of his upturned left hand keeping the coin covered with his right.
“Heads or tails. Double or quits,” he said in his annoying voice.
“What d'you mean Sykesy?” says I.
“I call heads or tails. If you win you don't have to pay me anything but if I win you have to pay me back double.”
“Five bob if I loose?”
“Nothing if you win,” said “Ten Bob Sykes”.
“Why don't I just borrow the two and six and leave it at that Sykesy?” says I.
“It's a toss up or nothing,” said “Ten Bob Sykes”.
“Go on then, “says I at which “Ten Bob Sykes” scooped the coin from the back of his hand and flipped it up into the air again. Before it had even finished it's assent he shouted “Heads!” and sure enough the half crown coin landed heads up on the floor. “Ten Bob Sykes” bent down and retrieved his coin.
“That's five shillings in two weeks time and don't be bloody late. No excuses accepted.” He reached into his right trouser pocket and fished out a half crown coin and flicked it at me with disdain.
“Don't spend it all at once,” he said coldly. “Ten Bob Sykes” wasn't a nice person at all and I felt that I had perhaps made a mistake.
I paid Dyer another instalment for the stamps and stocked up with sherbet fountains and Caramac and had some left over for a couple of Battle Picture Library comics and a trip into town to the Rex cinema to see the Magnificent Seven.
It was a bit of a blow when Father wasn't well and he and Mother couldn't make it for the exeat as had been planned. Actually it was several blows once Blunt had caught up with me and the tooth that the dentist had filled last term needed to be done all over again thanks to Blunt.
“I'll be dealing with you every week until you pay up Sykes what you owe him,” was how Blunt left me spitting blood and saliva in the corner of the music room.
As luck would have it Blunt broke his femur in the inter house rugby match the following Saturday and was carted off to the RAF hospital where he was laid up in plaster for months. It was a bad break and we all heard the snap as it ricochet around the games field rather eerily. Blunt made a hell of a fuss.
Without his “heavy” support “Ten Bob Sykes” wasn't much of a threat. He sulked around and barged into me a couple of times saying “You owe me,” out of the side of his weasel mouth. But that was all. With Blunt out of the way at least there would be no pain and “Ten Bob Sykes” would just have to wait until my funds were once again in a liquid state.
“Ten Bob Sykes” didn't wait though. He went to Jones, who went to the Head of House to report that some of his money had been stolen. He said that he had seen me take a ten shilling note out of his pocket and that was that.
I was called up before Head of House and vigorously denied the charge.
“Well. Sykes has said he saw you. You say that you didn't do it. It is a serious charge and we need to get to the bottom of it. “
I could of course have told the truth about how “Ten Bob Sykes” had lent me half a crown and how I hadn't paid it back yet because of how my father being sick had meant that I hadn't got any more pocket money and that Blunt had beaten me up and all that. I didn't because you don't tell Jones or Head of House anything like that. You never tell them anything.
Any how the storm blew over. My desk and tuck box were searched but no money was found and the Head of House decided that under the circumstances he would be keeping a close eye on me and that for good measure I'd be gated for four weeks.
“I don't know if you did it boy,” he said to me, “But I don't want any of this sort of nonsense to happen again.”
I think it was Blakelock, my friend, who discovered that Sykes “Ten Bob Sykes, ” had a double sided half crown. It had heads on both its faces.
“How the hell d'you find that out?” says I to Blakelock.
“I saw Sykesy using it the other day when he was talking to Sparrow about something. It fell on the floor and rolled off and when Sparrow picked it up he said, 'Hey Sykesy this coin has got two heads'. Well Sykesy wasn't very happy and grabbed the thing back off Sparrow saying maybe it has and maybe it hasn't. And that was that.”
“The bastard,” says I.
After lights out one night me and the “gang” got around Sykes, “Ten Bob Skye's”, bed and we put a pillow case over his head, dragged him out and off into the bathrooms. Someone kept KV while three others held Sykesy firmly by the arms. I asked the questions.
“You'll get nothing out of me,” said Sykes, “Ten Bob Sykes”.
But we did. My father gave me one of those Swiss army knives for Christmas, the red handled thing, with lots of useful blades. It was with the combination of the sharp knife and the saw that I managed to cut through Sykes, ”Ten Bob Sykes”, little finger on his right hand. He howled like a baby but we put a pair of socks in his mouth. His blood, and there was a lot of it, turned the whole Swiss Army knife red, not just the handle.
The deal was that when he came out of the San he went to Jones and Head of House and told them that he'd made a mistake. He hadn't seen me take any money and he'd made up the whole thing.
His little finger had been caught in the dormitory window when it slammed shut and sadly no one could find the tip of it. I flushed that down the bog.
Sykes, “Ten Bob Sykes”, knew that if he didn't do what he was told he would loose another finger or worse. He did what he was told. I paid him back the half crown I owed him but he couldn't put it into the pocket of his trousers because his right hand was still bandaged up.
He always had money in his pocket but it stayed there for the rest of that term any way.
I think he became an investment banker where as I followed my father into the family butcher's business.
Wednesday, 16 December 2009
Thursday, 3 December 2009
HOW FISH GOT THERE.
After something like a three hour climb up through the woods out into the boulder strewn rough terrain, then scrambling further on up between the serious rocks themselves, the Lac Bleu is reached with a final assault that leaves the veins gasping for more blood and the lungs bellowing their hardest. The lake is deep and the water in it is unnaturally blue. Formed from the erosion work of long gone glacial cut and thrust in the Hautes Pyrenees, the expanse of ice cold blue water is imprisoned at over two thousand meters up the mountain. If you walked right around the edge of the lake you'd travel for maybe a mile or more. The water is freezing and even on the hottest mid-summer day the temptation to dive in must be resisted as a heart attack could result from the shock. Death could be fairly instant.
Graham did dive in. He ignored the warnings we gave him and stripped off and went in head first. If he died up there it would have to be a helicopter job to get the body down again. We weren't going to carry a stiff down. It was a hard enough job managing oneself. Anyhow Graham didn't die. He came out less than a minute later looking as blue as the water he had foolishly dived into. His teeth didn't stop chattering for an hour and we just looked at him and said we told you so you chump. His girl friend was a bit more sympathetic and tried to rub some warmth into him. It was a good job that they didn't want to go off behind a rock somewhere for a celebratory summit shag like some mountain climbing consenting couples do. Graham's girl friend wouldn't have found anything worth getting hold of between the guys frozen legs.
“There's fish in there,” said Graham when he'd got some of his senses back. “I saw one.”
“You were hallucinating,” said somebody. “There's never any fish in there.”
“There is.” Graham was sure he'd seen one.
“What sort was is?” someone asked.
“A fish,” said Graham. “About that long,” he held his cold shivering hands about eighteen inches apart. “It was a …...fish.”
“Bollocks,” said somebody.
“Pollock's,” said somebody else rather wittily.
“How do they get there?” Someone asked the question.
“I'll tell you,” said someone else and the group settled down on the rocks in the warm afternoon sunshine to listen to the explanation.
“Once upon a time there was this shepherd see. This shepherd looked after his sheep up here in the summer to stop the wolves from getting at them. There were wolves up here back then see. Anyhow the wolves would come up here at night and take three or four sheep and the shepherd couldn't do much about it see. The wolves could smell the flock see and they knew there was a square meal waiting for them. The shepherd had other ideas and he heard that wolves don't like fish see. So one day he bought up from the valley below a whole load of dead and rotten fish see and he covered his flock with them to hide the smell of sheep see. The wolves didn't like the smell and didn't bother to come up after a fish super see. Now some of the dead fish had eggs inside them and they washed off the sheep when they drank from the lake and that's how the fish got there see.”
“Bollocks,” said somebody again. “I'll tell how the fish got here, if they did.”
“The shepherd you've heard about spent day after long day tending his flock and all he had to eat was mutton, mutton and mutton. He thought to himself wouldn't it be wonderful to have something else. He began to hate the taste of sheep so much that it really was beginning to effect his job. Sod it he thought to himself. If the wolves really want a go at the sheep, let them. This was a dangerous attitude for a shepherd. There was nobody else on earth at that altitude who could kill and prepare a sheep in so many different ways. Roasted, stewed, curried, charred, slowly done on hot rocks, flash fried, deep fried, boiled and cold. There wasn't a way that the shepherd hadn't cooked or eaten bits of his flock and there wasn't a bit of the sheep he hadn't tried either. There was, he found, a rather distasteful film of sheep fat developing as a permanent feature on the roof of his mouth. He smelt of sheep, kept warm in their fleece, had sexual intercourse with them, ate them , counted them when he was awake, dreamt of them when he was asleep. He could hear sheep, he could smell sheep but above all he could taste sheep. And that's when it dawned on him that if he bought some live fish up from the river that ran through the valley bottom, he could enjoy the occasional fresh fish to eat. So that's what he did. The very next time he went down the mountain, when he returned he brought with him on his back in a milk churn filled with river water, fourteen trout he'd tickled from the river. He built a sort of keep net out of sticks and stones right on the edge of the lake to stop the fish from escaping out into the lake. He fed them scraps of bread and mutton and watched as they put on weight. One morning he found four floating on the top of his makeshift damn and he didn't know if they died because of the altitude, diet, disease or some unseen predator, although he couldn't find any out of the ordinary marks on them. The remaining eleven thrived and the shepherd enjoyed several gastronomic experiences with the fish. The last three mysteriously disappeared from their holding pool one night. Whether they leapt to freedom or more likely forced their way through the protective but weakened containment structure wasn't certain. What was however, was that three big trout had escaped into the lake and that was how the fish got there.”
There was a minor ripple of applause from some of the group.
“My turn,” said someone keen to have a go.
“The fish have always been there. You see when the lake was formed all those hundreds of thousands, millions even, of years ago it wasn't up here. No my friends it was down there. What happened was that the fish were already in the water when the lake, it was probably only a pond then, a puddle even, found itself pushed up with the emerging mountains. Bang went the earth's plates and up popped the Pyrenees with the fish trapped in the rock pools that were thrust upwards. It's as simple as that and that's how the fish got there.”
“Yeah, right.” said somebody obviously not impressed.
“It was the birds.” Somebody else spoke up.
“When the birds, the osprey and the like, used to catch fish for their young from the river below they'd fly over the lake and some of the fish would wriggle free from the bird's talons and drop into the water. Some would die but the strong ones, the survivors, spawned the shoal. That's how the fish got there.”
“Actually they came in from the rain.” it was one of the girls, the one from Tunbridge Wells who did lots of climbing.
“You know when it rains sometimes and you can almost smell the camels, see the red dust that the winds have blown over from North Africa, well it's the same here. The strong winds howl around these mountain peaks. They carry with them the detritus they pick up on the way. Tiny fish are scooped up and dumped here in the lake at that's how the fish got there.”
“Right. I think it was in the stomachs of animals that ate the fish, right,” said a lad who was convinced that it was in the stomachs of animals that ate the fish and was trying to impress the girl from Tunbridge Wells.
“Imagine the animals and birds that eat fish, right. Well they eat fish and some of the fish doesn't die, right. So the fish that doesn't die is alive in the gut of the animal or bird that's eaten it, right. Some hunter shoots the animal or bird that's eaten the fish and out pops the dazed but distinctly alive fish, right. If the animal or bird that's eaten the fish has been killed near the lake, right, then the released but confused fish could end up in the water. It could get revived, right, find a mate, right, and that's how the fish got there.”
The girl from Tunbridge Wells wasn't that impressed.
“They got there like they got into the sea.” It was the girl from Tunbridge Wells's mate, the one she'd arrived at Lourdes on the train with.
“How did the fish get into the sea? Well they got up here into the lake in the same way. Except of course that they are not salt water fish. Fresh water more like. But they got here just the same. And how did they get here? It was God that put them here on the fifth day if I'm not mistaken. He put all the creatures on the earth and all the fish into the sea. I remember how. 'Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven' He created great whales and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly. Abundantly seemed to be the word of the fifth day. And that's how the fish got there.”
“You've got a bloody good memory.” Somebody skimmed a flat stone over the surface of the still lake's water and it skipped off into oblivion while most watched.
Graham coughed. He was feeling warmer and the sun had helped.
“Actually they didn't fly down from the sun or walk there or were somehow dropped off and although I like the idea, I don't think the shepherd stories carry much weight. The fish I saw was probably a reflection of my own indulgence. Each time we think that something cannot possibly be there, it is. What we thought couldn't happen, has. Man becomes fish, fish becomes man. We're interchangeable.”
Graham slipped out of his girl friend's hand and dived back into the lake and this time none of the party ever saw him again.
It remains a mystery how fish got there.
Graham did dive in. He ignored the warnings we gave him and stripped off and went in head first. If he died up there it would have to be a helicopter job to get the body down again. We weren't going to carry a stiff down. It was a hard enough job managing oneself. Anyhow Graham didn't die. He came out less than a minute later looking as blue as the water he had foolishly dived into. His teeth didn't stop chattering for an hour and we just looked at him and said we told you so you chump. His girl friend was a bit more sympathetic and tried to rub some warmth into him. It was a good job that they didn't want to go off behind a rock somewhere for a celebratory summit shag like some mountain climbing consenting couples do. Graham's girl friend wouldn't have found anything worth getting hold of between the guys frozen legs.
“There's fish in there,” said Graham when he'd got some of his senses back. “I saw one.”
“You were hallucinating,” said somebody. “There's never any fish in there.”
“There is.” Graham was sure he'd seen one.
“What sort was is?” someone asked.
“A fish,” said Graham. “About that long,” he held his cold shivering hands about eighteen inches apart. “It was a …...fish.”
“Bollocks,” said somebody.
“Pollock's,” said somebody else rather wittily.
“How do they get there?” Someone asked the question.
“I'll tell you,” said someone else and the group settled down on the rocks in the warm afternoon sunshine to listen to the explanation.
“Once upon a time there was this shepherd see. This shepherd looked after his sheep up here in the summer to stop the wolves from getting at them. There were wolves up here back then see. Anyhow the wolves would come up here at night and take three or four sheep and the shepherd couldn't do much about it see. The wolves could smell the flock see and they knew there was a square meal waiting for them. The shepherd had other ideas and he heard that wolves don't like fish see. So one day he bought up from the valley below a whole load of dead and rotten fish see and he covered his flock with them to hide the smell of sheep see. The wolves didn't like the smell and didn't bother to come up after a fish super see. Now some of the dead fish had eggs inside them and they washed off the sheep when they drank from the lake and that's how the fish got there see.”
“Bollocks,” said somebody again. “I'll tell how the fish got here, if they did.”
“The shepherd you've heard about spent day after long day tending his flock and all he had to eat was mutton, mutton and mutton. He thought to himself wouldn't it be wonderful to have something else. He began to hate the taste of sheep so much that it really was beginning to effect his job. Sod it he thought to himself. If the wolves really want a go at the sheep, let them. This was a dangerous attitude for a shepherd. There was nobody else on earth at that altitude who could kill and prepare a sheep in so many different ways. Roasted, stewed, curried, charred, slowly done on hot rocks, flash fried, deep fried, boiled and cold. There wasn't a way that the shepherd hadn't cooked or eaten bits of his flock and there wasn't a bit of the sheep he hadn't tried either. There was, he found, a rather distasteful film of sheep fat developing as a permanent feature on the roof of his mouth. He smelt of sheep, kept warm in their fleece, had sexual intercourse with them, ate them , counted them when he was awake, dreamt of them when he was asleep. He could hear sheep, he could smell sheep but above all he could taste sheep. And that's when it dawned on him that if he bought some live fish up from the river that ran through the valley bottom, he could enjoy the occasional fresh fish to eat. So that's what he did. The very next time he went down the mountain, when he returned he brought with him on his back in a milk churn filled with river water, fourteen trout he'd tickled from the river. He built a sort of keep net out of sticks and stones right on the edge of the lake to stop the fish from escaping out into the lake. He fed them scraps of bread and mutton and watched as they put on weight. One morning he found four floating on the top of his makeshift damn and he didn't know if they died because of the altitude, diet, disease or some unseen predator, although he couldn't find any out of the ordinary marks on them. The remaining eleven thrived and the shepherd enjoyed several gastronomic experiences with the fish. The last three mysteriously disappeared from their holding pool one night. Whether they leapt to freedom or more likely forced their way through the protective but weakened containment structure wasn't certain. What was however, was that three big trout had escaped into the lake and that was how the fish got there.”
There was a minor ripple of applause from some of the group.
“My turn,” said someone keen to have a go.
“The fish have always been there. You see when the lake was formed all those hundreds of thousands, millions even, of years ago it wasn't up here. No my friends it was down there. What happened was that the fish were already in the water when the lake, it was probably only a pond then, a puddle even, found itself pushed up with the emerging mountains. Bang went the earth's plates and up popped the Pyrenees with the fish trapped in the rock pools that were thrust upwards. It's as simple as that and that's how the fish got there.”
“Yeah, right.” said somebody obviously not impressed.
“It was the birds.” Somebody else spoke up.
“When the birds, the osprey and the like, used to catch fish for their young from the river below they'd fly over the lake and some of the fish would wriggle free from the bird's talons and drop into the water. Some would die but the strong ones, the survivors, spawned the shoal. That's how the fish got there.”
“Actually they came in from the rain.” it was one of the girls, the one from Tunbridge Wells who did lots of climbing.
“You know when it rains sometimes and you can almost smell the camels, see the red dust that the winds have blown over from North Africa, well it's the same here. The strong winds howl around these mountain peaks. They carry with them the detritus they pick up on the way. Tiny fish are scooped up and dumped here in the lake at that's how the fish got there.”
“Right. I think it was in the stomachs of animals that ate the fish, right,” said a lad who was convinced that it was in the stomachs of animals that ate the fish and was trying to impress the girl from Tunbridge Wells.
“Imagine the animals and birds that eat fish, right. Well they eat fish and some of the fish doesn't die, right. So the fish that doesn't die is alive in the gut of the animal or bird that's eaten it, right. Some hunter shoots the animal or bird that's eaten the fish and out pops the dazed but distinctly alive fish, right. If the animal or bird that's eaten the fish has been killed near the lake, right, then the released but confused fish could end up in the water. It could get revived, right, find a mate, right, and that's how the fish got there.”
The girl from Tunbridge Wells wasn't that impressed.
“They got there like they got into the sea.” It was the girl from Tunbridge Wells's mate, the one she'd arrived at Lourdes on the train with.
“How did the fish get into the sea? Well they got up here into the lake in the same way. Except of course that they are not salt water fish. Fresh water more like. But they got here just the same. And how did they get here? It was God that put them here on the fifth day if I'm not mistaken. He put all the creatures on the earth and all the fish into the sea. I remember how. 'Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven' He created great whales and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly. Abundantly seemed to be the word of the fifth day. And that's how the fish got there.”
“You've got a bloody good memory.” Somebody skimmed a flat stone over the surface of the still lake's water and it skipped off into oblivion while most watched.
Graham coughed. He was feeling warmer and the sun had helped.
“Actually they didn't fly down from the sun or walk there or were somehow dropped off and although I like the idea, I don't think the shepherd stories carry much weight. The fish I saw was probably a reflection of my own indulgence. Each time we think that something cannot possibly be there, it is. What we thought couldn't happen, has. Man becomes fish, fish becomes man. We're interchangeable.”
Graham slipped out of his girl friend's hand and dived back into the lake and this time none of the party ever saw him again.
It remains a mystery how fish got there.
Tuesday, 1 December 2009
TANGIBLE ASSETS
Tanya was undoubtedly a “big girl”. Her breasts went before her in a way that the figure head on an old ship might once have, proud and decisive above the foaming waves. It hadn't always been like that and at sixth form there had been nothing to write home about. Tanya's mother called her daughter a late developer. But as developments went even her mum had to admit that now Tanya's tits were Titanic.
Not the brightest button in the box nevertheless Tanya got a 2:2 at Leeds and through some family fluke landed an interview and a job in PR in London. Her personality was like her chest, big, and it won over all whom she met. Some would describe her as “bubbly”. Others as “over the top”. No one could call her dull. Tanya excelled at her job and it was through no fault of her own that she found herself in the firing line when the call came for redundancies as the company floundered in the credit crunch. Like hundreds, thousands, of others Tanya joined the unemployed.
Never one to sit it out Tanya took on various tasks that came her way. She worked in a charity shop and joined the amateur dramatic society to critical acclaim by the local Watford paper.
“Miss Worsenot gave a convincing performance as the heroine in the company's latest offering of the Dracula Spectacular. In particular her heaving bosoms lent a real sense of the fear of the Vampire at her neck and Miss Worsenot can surely go on with confidence to greater parts.”
The reviewer's words were prophetic and indeed Tanya did go on to “greater parts.”
Her family weren't particularly impressed with the page three photograph but Uncle Timothy approved although he didn't let on to his sister. As a result of the exposure Tanya found herself courted as something of a minor celebrity and her appearance out shopping in Watford with her mother gained her several sideways looks, most of them from admiring men. Tanya didn't have time for men and although she had boy friends, she'd never felt the need to indulge any more seriously than the occasional snog. At twenty her mother told her she was still quite young enough to “catch the one when he comes along”.Tanya had no doubt that her mother was right. She also had ambition, an overriding sense that it was her destiny to be rich and famous and that pursuit left little time for developing relationships.
Her first move into her own business came just before her twenty first birthday when she made an appointment with the local branch of the Nat West Bank and went to see a business development manager.
Sam was in his thirties and dressed as he was in the regulation dark suit and tie, looked the part. Tanya on the other hand looked more like someone who had just come directly from page three and several of Sam's colleagues were mildly disappointed that their first appointments on that Monday morning hadn't been with Tanya.
The business plan was simple enough. It involved Tanya's breasts and their ability to attract business. As she explained, “I'm not setting up as a knocking shop, a knockers shop if you like (here she laughed loudly at her own joke) but I think the idea has legs.”
Sam thought the idea had a lot more than just legs but thought it best not to say so.
“I'm calling the business “Tangible Assets” and propose to open my first branch in the High Street next month.”
Sam looked a bit gob smacked. Tanya continued.
“We'll be catering mostly for the male market and encouraging clients, we'll call them clients, to come into the shop for a touchy feely experience.”
“Touchy feely?” asked Sam not feeling particularly comfortable about where the interview was going.
“Yes,” said Tanya. “Touchy feely”. There was a pause between potential new customer and perplexed banker.
“I know that men and quite a few women enjoy the topless female form and all “Tangible Assets” will do is offer the chance for adults who want to to have a chat and a touch.”
“Is it legal?” asked Sam in a voice rather too high pitched and with eyes the size of oranges.
“It's not illegal. I've taken advice and what I'm doing is no worse than what the Sun newspaper or those top shelf magazines do. The touchy feely bit is done in private between consenting adults in “Tangible tepees”. We're going to call it in tents theraphy."
"Intense theraphy?" asked Sam.
"Yep," said Tanya not realising that she and the bank manager weren't exactly on the same wave length.
Tanya produced an artist's impression of the shop. It's front looked like a cross between Ladbrokes and Argos with a hint of Waterstones and Starbucks thrown in. The words “Tangible Assets” were in an interesting logo across the front window that looked like what it was trying to purvey. The letter “g” in the word “Tangible” was made up to look like the human ear and the three “S's” in the word “Assets” were formed in such a way so as to look like the naked female form. The inside was well lit with comfortable chairs and low tables and waitresses delivering coffee to the customers sitting at the tables reading magazines and browsing the “Tangible Assets” menu cards. There were five tepees erected around the shop.
Sam studied the artists impression and seemed impressed himself.
“Will it be like a club?” asked Sam slightly more relaxed.
“No. Not at all. It will be a shop. We'll be selling nice coffee and charging customers for a touchy feely session. Sessions will be strictly timed at one minute, two minutes or a maximum of three. Touchy feely vouchers can be purchased from the waitress and will be charged at five pounds a minute. A regular cappuccino, we call it a C cup, and a sixty second touchy feely session will cost six pounds fifty. A large cappuccino, a D cup, and a one hundred and twenty second touchy feely session will be thirteen pounds. Clients will be able to select the quality and size of the “Tangible Assets” they are being touchy and feely with and we'll produce menu cards of all the available assets on offer.”
Tanya pushed a menu card and the the cash flow forecast across the table towards Sam who couldn't decide on which set of figures to focus.
“Given an eight hour trading day we should turnover with only half capacity somewhere in the region of £6,000. That's five tepees working for four hours each at five pounds a minute.”
Sam looked at all the figures in front of him. He looked impressed with both sets although his attention was drawn to the more in your face set of five pairs of naked breasts that were displayed on the tastefully photographed and laminated menu. His eye fell on the description of one set.
“Feeling these firm 34 double D's will be an experience that you'll remember for ever. Treat yourself to the hands on experience that you'll never forget. Stroke don't poke, go gentle not mental.”
Sam had never seen a menu like it.
“I've worked out the worst case scenario,” said Tanya leaning forward to point out that particular set of figures. “The best nets us about £15,000 in a full day's trade.”
“What about your overheads?” Sam couldn't believe he was being serious about such an outrageous business proposition.
“To start with it'll be me and six willing, bright and well endowed girl friends. That'll allow one girl for each tepee and two waitresses. We'll obviously change the rota to prevent too much ware and tear so to speak”. Tanya went off into another of her laughs.
“Each worker in “Tangible Assets” will be paid a percentage of the prophets after expenses. It's as simple as that.”
“And what's to stop ...er....what shall we call it....er....hanky panky.” Sam was trying to be careful with his words.
“You mean what if the clients want a bit more than just a feel?”
“Well yes.” said Sam.
“Each tepee is designed to fit just two people sitting down at either side of a table. Each “Tangible Asset” in tents therapy session is filmed and the film apart from acting as a record of the event will be offered to the client at the end of the session as a memento for £10. If the client doesn't want it, it'll be destroyed. If a client gets out of hand..... (on hearing this expression an extraordinary image conjured up in Sam's minds eye).....then the film will have recorded the event and the appropriate action will be taken. Apart from that in each tepee the client's chair is discreetly wired up to a harmless but stunning electric shock system controlled by the "Tangible Assets" counselor, that's what we're calling the girls, and a press of the button will repel any unwanted or rough advances. Finally by paying for a touchy feely session each client agrees to be fastened into their seat for the duration. We don't want clients standing up during their sessions or leaning too far across the table. It's strictly a touchy feely therapy and not a chance for a bit of slap and tickle.”
Again the words that Sam was hearing played dangerously with his thought process.
“You seem to have thought things through Miss Worsenot.” said Sam trying to shake off the images of erect manhood and slap and tickle. “So what can the bank do to help?” (apart from provide one or two clients he thought to himself).
“You'll see in appendix three my cash flow predictions and the borrowing requirement. There is a set up cost but we reach break even after two months positive trading using the worst case scenario”.
Sam said nothing and looked from one set of figures on his desk to another.
“What “Tangible Assets” will be doing is offering the community a very good and much needed therapy service. We will be providing a unique, discreet and legal opportunity for people to feel the finest sets of breasts and talk with their owners, our counsellors, in the complete privacy of a relaxed High Street environment for a fee that is very affordable. Most men go through their whole lives without the chance to feel a really fine pair of breasts. “Tangible Assets” will be making that dream a face to face reality.”
Tanya sat back smugly having delivered her pitch.
Sam studied the cover of the proposal in front of him. “Tangible Assets” it said. “When feeling is believing.” was the strap line.
Of course the Nat West bank declined the opportunity to back the venture. It was perceived by the managers who sat up the food chain from Sam as being “too high risk.” More privately the view was expressed that if some page three girl was going to encourage the good men of Watford into her High Street parlour to drink coffee and agree to be tied to an electrically wired chair and only allowed to stroke the naked tits on offer to him across the table for a tenner, then what the hell was the real world coming to?
Tanya found the backing she and her friends needed from a private investor and the business opened as planned in Watford to much mixed media reaction and lengthy queues.
It didn't take long for Tanya to become the multi-millionaire she had always wanted to be. “Tangible Assets” was franchised in over thirty six countries and apart from giving rewarding and well paid work to hundreds of woman of all shapes and sizes, the global business helped to counsel tens of thousands of men, most of whom became much better lovers and husbands as a result. The police too were secretly impressed with what one Chief Constable called the "knockers on effect." The level of sexual crime against women dropped noticeably when "Tangible Assets" opened their doors in a neighbourhood.
Uncle Timothy, Sam from the Nat West Bank and the Chief Constable are still regular customers at “Tangible Assets”.
Last year Tanya Worsenot had a breast reduction operation and received an honour from the Queen.
Not the brightest button in the box nevertheless Tanya got a 2:2 at Leeds and through some family fluke landed an interview and a job in PR in London. Her personality was like her chest, big, and it won over all whom she met. Some would describe her as “bubbly”. Others as “over the top”. No one could call her dull. Tanya excelled at her job and it was through no fault of her own that she found herself in the firing line when the call came for redundancies as the company floundered in the credit crunch. Like hundreds, thousands, of others Tanya joined the unemployed.
Never one to sit it out Tanya took on various tasks that came her way. She worked in a charity shop and joined the amateur dramatic society to critical acclaim by the local Watford paper.
“Miss Worsenot gave a convincing performance as the heroine in the company's latest offering of the Dracula Spectacular. In particular her heaving bosoms lent a real sense of the fear of the Vampire at her neck and Miss Worsenot can surely go on with confidence to greater parts.”
The reviewer's words were prophetic and indeed Tanya did go on to “greater parts.”
Her family weren't particularly impressed with the page three photograph but Uncle Timothy approved although he didn't let on to his sister. As a result of the exposure Tanya found herself courted as something of a minor celebrity and her appearance out shopping in Watford with her mother gained her several sideways looks, most of them from admiring men. Tanya didn't have time for men and although she had boy friends, she'd never felt the need to indulge any more seriously than the occasional snog. At twenty her mother told her she was still quite young enough to “catch the one when he comes along”.Tanya had no doubt that her mother was right. She also had ambition, an overriding sense that it was her destiny to be rich and famous and that pursuit left little time for developing relationships.
Her first move into her own business came just before her twenty first birthday when she made an appointment with the local branch of the Nat West Bank and went to see a business development manager.
Sam was in his thirties and dressed as he was in the regulation dark suit and tie, looked the part. Tanya on the other hand looked more like someone who had just come directly from page three and several of Sam's colleagues were mildly disappointed that their first appointments on that Monday morning hadn't been with Tanya.
The business plan was simple enough. It involved Tanya's breasts and their ability to attract business. As she explained, “I'm not setting up as a knocking shop, a knockers shop if you like (here she laughed loudly at her own joke) but I think the idea has legs.”
Sam thought the idea had a lot more than just legs but thought it best not to say so.
“I'm calling the business “Tangible Assets” and propose to open my first branch in the High Street next month.”
Sam looked a bit gob smacked. Tanya continued.
“We'll be catering mostly for the male market and encouraging clients, we'll call them clients, to come into the shop for a touchy feely experience.”
“Touchy feely?” asked Sam not feeling particularly comfortable about where the interview was going.
“Yes,” said Tanya. “Touchy feely”. There was a pause between potential new customer and perplexed banker.
“I know that men and quite a few women enjoy the topless female form and all “Tangible Assets” will do is offer the chance for adults who want to to have a chat and a touch.”
“Is it legal?” asked Sam in a voice rather too high pitched and with eyes the size of oranges.
“It's not illegal. I've taken advice and what I'm doing is no worse than what the Sun newspaper or those top shelf magazines do. The touchy feely bit is done in private between consenting adults in “Tangible tepees”. We're going to call it in tents theraphy."
"Intense theraphy?" asked Sam.
"Yep," said Tanya not realising that she and the bank manager weren't exactly on the same wave length.
Tanya produced an artist's impression of the shop. It's front looked like a cross between Ladbrokes and Argos with a hint of Waterstones and Starbucks thrown in. The words “Tangible Assets” were in an interesting logo across the front window that looked like what it was trying to purvey. The letter “g” in the word “Tangible” was made up to look like the human ear and the three “S's” in the word “Assets” were formed in such a way so as to look like the naked female form. The inside was well lit with comfortable chairs and low tables and waitresses delivering coffee to the customers sitting at the tables reading magazines and browsing the “Tangible Assets” menu cards. There were five tepees erected around the shop.
Sam studied the artists impression and seemed impressed himself.
“Will it be like a club?” asked Sam slightly more relaxed.
“No. Not at all. It will be a shop. We'll be selling nice coffee and charging customers for a touchy feely session. Sessions will be strictly timed at one minute, two minutes or a maximum of three. Touchy feely vouchers can be purchased from the waitress and will be charged at five pounds a minute. A regular cappuccino, we call it a C cup, and a sixty second touchy feely session will cost six pounds fifty. A large cappuccino, a D cup, and a one hundred and twenty second touchy feely session will be thirteen pounds. Clients will be able to select the quality and size of the “Tangible Assets” they are being touchy and feely with and we'll produce menu cards of all the available assets on offer.”
Tanya pushed a menu card and the the cash flow forecast across the table towards Sam who couldn't decide on which set of figures to focus.
“Given an eight hour trading day we should turnover with only half capacity somewhere in the region of £6,000. That's five tepees working for four hours each at five pounds a minute.”
Sam looked at all the figures in front of him. He looked impressed with both sets although his attention was drawn to the more in your face set of five pairs of naked breasts that were displayed on the tastefully photographed and laminated menu. His eye fell on the description of one set.
“Feeling these firm 34 double D's will be an experience that you'll remember for ever. Treat yourself to the hands on experience that you'll never forget. Stroke don't poke, go gentle not mental.”
Sam had never seen a menu like it.
“I've worked out the worst case scenario,” said Tanya leaning forward to point out that particular set of figures. “The best nets us about £15,000 in a full day's trade.”
“What about your overheads?” Sam couldn't believe he was being serious about such an outrageous business proposition.
“To start with it'll be me and six willing, bright and well endowed girl friends. That'll allow one girl for each tepee and two waitresses. We'll obviously change the rota to prevent too much ware and tear so to speak”. Tanya went off into another of her laughs.
“Each worker in “Tangible Assets” will be paid a percentage of the prophets after expenses. It's as simple as that.”
“And what's to stop ...er....what shall we call it....er....hanky panky.” Sam was trying to be careful with his words.
“You mean what if the clients want a bit more than just a feel?”
“Well yes.” said Sam.
“Each tepee is designed to fit just two people sitting down at either side of a table. Each “Tangible Asset” in tents therapy session is filmed and the film apart from acting as a record of the event will be offered to the client at the end of the session as a memento for £10. If the client doesn't want it, it'll be destroyed. If a client gets out of hand..... (on hearing this expression an extraordinary image conjured up in Sam's minds eye).....then the film will have recorded the event and the appropriate action will be taken. Apart from that in each tepee the client's chair is discreetly wired up to a harmless but stunning electric shock system controlled by the "Tangible Assets" counselor, that's what we're calling the girls, and a press of the button will repel any unwanted or rough advances. Finally by paying for a touchy feely session each client agrees to be fastened into their seat for the duration. We don't want clients standing up during their sessions or leaning too far across the table. It's strictly a touchy feely therapy and not a chance for a bit of slap and tickle.”
Again the words that Sam was hearing played dangerously with his thought process.
“You seem to have thought things through Miss Worsenot.” said Sam trying to shake off the images of erect manhood and slap and tickle. “So what can the bank do to help?” (apart from provide one or two clients he thought to himself).
“You'll see in appendix three my cash flow predictions and the borrowing requirement. There is a set up cost but we reach break even after two months positive trading using the worst case scenario”.
Sam said nothing and looked from one set of figures on his desk to another.
“What “Tangible Assets” will be doing is offering the community a very good and much needed therapy service. We will be providing a unique, discreet and legal opportunity for people to feel the finest sets of breasts and talk with their owners, our counsellors, in the complete privacy of a relaxed High Street environment for a fee that is very affordable. Most men go through their whole lives without the chance to feel a really fine pair of breasts. “Tangible Assets” will be making that dream a face to face reality.”
Tanya sat back smugly having delivered her pitch.
Sam studied the cover of the proposal in front of him. “Tangible Assets” it said. “When feeling is believing.” was the strap line.
Of course the Nat West bank declined the opportunity to back the venture. It was perceived by the managers who sat up the food chain from Sam as being “too high risk.” More privately the view was expressed that if some page three girl was going to encourage the good men of Watford into her High Street parlour to drink coffee and agree to be tied to an electrically wired chair and only allowed to stroke the naked tits on offer to him across the table for a tenner, then what the hell was the real world coming to?
Tanya found the backing she and her friends needed from a private investor and the business opened as planned in Watford to much mixed media reaction and lengthy queues.
It didn't take long for Tanya to become the multi-millionaire she had always wanted to be. “Tangible Assets” was franchised in over thirty six countries and apart from giving rewarding and well paid work to hundreds of woman of all shapes and sizes, the global business helped to counsel tens of thousands of men, most of whom became much better lovers and husbands as a result. The police too were secretly impressed with what one Chief Constable called the "knockers on effect." The level of sexual crime against women dropped noticeably when "Tangible Assets" opened their doors in a neighbourhood.
Uncle Timothy, Sam from the Nat West Bank and the Chief Constable are still regular customers at “Tangible Assets”.
Last year Tanya Worsenot had a breast reduction operation and received an honour from the Queen.
Friday, 27 November 2009
TESSA'S COCKTAIL.
The hotel stood a hundred yards up from the bank of the river. Ivy gripped and sucked at the flight of steps, down which with such a deceptive wildness it seemed to be flowing like a cascade. Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, was literally run off her feet. The famous group of writers were taking cocktails in “The Literary Bar”. It was what the hotel liked to call “Happy hour”, often a misnomer for both words.
“Isn’t it a piece of fiction short enough to be read at one sitting?” said Nadine in her clipped matter of fact South African accent.
“I think it’s probably more than that,” said Elizabeth plumb in mouth sherry in gloved hand.
“One needs to have been seduced as the sun set its light; slowly melted the landscape, till everything was made of fire and glass.” She paused for dramatic effect. “ One needs ..…. Irishness.”
“I’ll drink to that Miss Bowen,” said Joyce raising his glass of Guinness. “Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!” he uttered in corrupt Gaelic as a toast, the white froth sticking to his top lip.
“Chin chin.” Kipling tilted his London gin and let the exciting Indian tonic bubbles dance beneath his moustache.
“Novellas, a frenzy of writing, French language and a first-person narrative. They clothed me and gave me money. I knew what the money was for, it was to get me started. When it was gone I would have to get more, if I wanted to go on.” Beckett was being obscure.
“True words.” Borges cut in. “ If I had written in French they’d all be reading me enthusiastically in bad translations.” The Argentinean paused like a mathematician working out a problem and then re-emerged from his thought labyrinths. “ On page 278 of his book La Poesia , Bari, 1942, Croce, abbreviating a Latin text of the historian Peter the Deacon, narrates the destiny and cites the epitaph of Droctulft; both these moved me singularly; later I understood why.”
“London in the blitz did it for me of course and Boar’s Hill.” Elizabeth cut in. She was slipping back to memories of Oxford. Kipling nearly choked on his drink.
“Please reassure me my good woman that you are not alluding in any way to my stories from the Civil and Military Gazette, Plain Tales from the Hills.”
Elizabeth smiled.
“Why certainly not my dear Mr Kipling or may I call you Rudyard?” Kipling waved his arm with approval and Elizabeth continued. “ Far from boring. A colourful collection of stories in deed.”
“I tried. One of the many curses of our life in India is the want of atmosphere in the painter’s sense.” Kipling sipped at his gin.
“If I’m not mistaken” said Elizabeth “your collection is dedicated to the wittiest woman in India.”
“Argh yes madam. All things considered, she was under an obligation, but not exactly as she meant.”
“Mr Kipling makes exceedingly good fakes if you ask me.” No one in the room was but Nadine gave her opinion anyway.
“Nobel of you my dear” said Kipling generously.
“Nobel for us both” said Nadine.
“Snap!” said Beckett. The others laughed politely with the trio of winners.
James Joyce cradled his nearly empty beer glass and held it up to the light and studied the remnants of the black brew as it swirled under its white top. He spoke through his glass almost suggesting another toast.
“Gazing up in to the darkness” he took the final swig “I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger. I’ll have another Guinness.”
“Shall I fetch you another Joyce?” Beckett got up and headed for the bar a small gold coin shone in the palm.
Nadine lent across the table and grabbed a handful of nuts. She knew that Kipling had been to Africa and she was in name-dropping mode.
“The party was an unusual one for Johannesburg. A young man called Derek Ross had white friends and black friends, Indian friends and friends of mixed blood, and sometimes he liked to invite them all to his flat at once.”
Kipling tutted gravely.
“A man should, whatever happens, keep to his own caste, race and breed.”
“I agree Rudyard.” Elizabeth was trying to flirt. “Why not pick on some place where you know someone?” She aimed at Kipling with Nadine as the target.
“We were living in the Congo at the time, I was nineteen.” Nadine replied through a mouthful of nuts. She seemed to slip into a trance. “It is another world, that dream, where no wind blows colder than the warm breath of two who are mouth to mouth.” Nadine looked close to tears. The group fell silent for a moment and then Elizabeth struck.
“He was the password, but not the answer: it was to coarse finality that she turned.” Elizabeth was perhaps jealous of the way that Nadine had managed her sexuality. Politics too. Like the ivy on the steps one clung to the other with inseparability in Nadine’s plot.
Borges fingered his wine glass like a detective and put it down on the glass-topped table. He spoke like an educated Spaniard, his rich soothing tone a tonic for Nadine’s emotion.
“True also was the outrage she had suffered: only the circumstances were false, the time and one or two proper names.”
“Not Orphee.” It was the first time Alice Munro had spoken for a while. She pulled up a chair and joined the others placing her tumbler of Canadian Club on the glass tabletop.
“No. Never him” she reflected almost to herself. Borges seemed to consider the interruption but then carried on.
“Perhaps the stories I have related are one single story. The obverse and the reverse of this coin are, for God, the same.”
Beckett returned with two refilled glasses. “Always the poet Jorge Luis, always the poet. But then dear fellow I could not imagine sharing a prize with any one so worthy.”
“I can hear you Samuel but I’m damned if I can see you. Perhaps that’s the way you want it?” Borges eyes were not as sharp as his wit.
“Oui, C’est vrai.” Beckett started in French, then ran on in English. “The memory came faint and cold of the story I might have told, a story in the likeness of my life, I mean without the courage to end or the strength to go on. Here’s your ale Joyce.”
Alice Munro took some nuts. She had some other “big” names of her own.
“Dear R.” she looked at Kipling in an all too intimate way. “My father and I watched Kennedy debate Nixon.” Kipling looked as though he couldn’t have cared less.
“It was like the crowing of the cock.” Elizabeth laughed and her earrings wobbled in appreciation.
“Words, displaced and mutilated words, words of others, were the poor pittance left him by the hours and centuries. Nixon sucks.” Borges didn’t like American politics. Kipling was less direct.
“To rear a boy under what parents call the ‘sheltered life system’ is, if the boy must go into the world and fend for himself, not wise.”
Nadine agreed and nodded furiously. She didn’t often agree with Kipling’s view of separate development.
“It is not generally known – and it is never mentioned in the official biographies – that the Prime Minster spent the first eleven years of his life, as soon as he could be trusted not to get under a car, leading his uncle about the streets.”
Joyce was moved and in moving spilt some white foam from the top of his pint glass. It spewed down on to the glass-topped table and ran off on to the page with the typing on it. Joyce dipped his finger in the liquid trail and brought it up to his lips. He then uttered these words like an old soldier standing at a war memorial or as some dear friend might eulogise at a funeral.
“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
Joyce’s beer had made the words distort on the white page.
“I do not know which of us has written this page,” said Borges picking it up and waving it dry.
But had they looked carefully they would all have understood that each of them had had their part in Tessa’s cocktail.
“Isn’t it a piece of fiction short enough to be read at one sitting?” said Nadine in her clipped matter of fact South African accent.
“I think it’s probably more than that,” said Elizabeth plumb in mouth sherry in gloved hand.
“One needs to have been seduced as the sun set its light; slowly melted the landscape, till everything was made of fire and glass.” She paused for dramatic effect. “ One needs ..…. Irishness.”
“I’ll drink to that Miss Bowen,” said Joyce raising his glass of Guinness. “Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!” he uttered in corrupt Gaelic as a toast, the white froth sticking to his top lip.
“Chin chin.” Kipling tilted his London gin and let the exciting Indian tonic bubbles dance beneath his moustache.
“Novellas, a frenzy of writing, French language and a first-person narrative. They clothed me and gave me money. I knew what the money was for, it was to get me started. When it was gone I would have to get more, if I wanted to go on.” Beckett was being obscure.
“True words.” Borges cut in. “ If I had written in French they’d all be reading me enthusiastically in bad translations.” The Argentinean paused like a mathematician working out a problem and then re-emerged from his thought labyrinths. “ On page 278 of his book La Poesia , Bari, 1942, Croce, abbreviating a Latin text of the historian Peter the Deacon, narrates the destiny and cites the epitaph of Droctulft; both these moved me singularly; later I understood why.”
“London in the blitz did it for me of course and Boar’s Hill.” Elizabeth cut in. She was slipping back to memories of Oxford. Kipling nearly choked on his drink.
“Please reassure me my good woman that you are not alluding in any way to my stories from the Civil and Military Gazette, Plain Tales from the Hills.”
Elizabeth smiled.
“Why certainly not my dear Mr Kipling or may I call you Rudyard?” Kipling waved his arm with approval and Elizabeth continued. “ Far from boring. A colourful collection of stories in deed.”
“I tried. One of the many curses of our life in India is the want of atmosphere in the painter’s sense.” Kipling sipped at his gin.
“If I’m not mistaken” said Elizabeth “your collection is dedicated to the wittiest woman in India.”
“Argh yes madam. All things considered, she was under an obligation, but not exactly as she meant.”
“Mr Kipling makes exceedingly good fakes if you ask me.” No one in the room was but Nadine gave her opinion anyway.
“Nobel of you my dear” said Kipling generously.
“Nobel for us both” said Nadine.
“Snap!” said Beckett. The others laughed politely with the trio of winners.
James Joyce cradled his nearly empty beer glass and held it up to the light and studied the remnants of the black brew as it swirled under its white top. He spoke through his glass almost suggesting another toast.
“Gazing up in to the darkness” he took the final swig “I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger. I’ll have another Guinness.”
“Shall I fetch you another Joyce?” Beckett got up and headed for the bar a small gold coin shone in the palm.
Nadine lent across the table and grabbed a handful of nuts. She knew that Kipling had been to Africa and she was in name-dropping mode.
“The party was an unusual one for Johannesburg. A young man called Derek Ross had white friends and black friends, Indian friends and friends of mixed blood, and sometimes he liked to invite them all to his flat at once.”
Kipling tutted gravely.
“A man should, whatever happens, keep to his own caste, race and breed.”
“I agree Rudyard.” Elizabeth was trying to flirt. “Why not pick on some place where you know someone?” She aimed at Kipling with Nadine as the target.
“We were living in the Congo at the time, I was nineteen.” Nadine replied through a mouthful of nuts. She seemed to slip into a trance. “It is another world, that dream, where no wind blows colder than the warm breath of two who are mouth to mouth.” Nadine looked close to tears. The group fell silent for a moment and then Elizabeth struck.
“He was the password, but not the answer: it was to coarse finality that she turned.” Elizabeth was perhaps jealous of the way that Nadine had managed her sexuality. Politics too. Like the ivy on the steps one clung to the other with inseparability in Nadine’s plot.
Borges fingered his wine glass like a detective and put it down on the glass-topped table. He spoke like an educated Spaniard, his rich soothing tone a tonic for Nadine’s emotion.
“True also was the outrage she had suffered: only the circumstances were false, the time and one or two proper names.”
“Not Orphee.” It was the first time Alice Munro had spoken for a while. She pulled up a chair and joined the others placing her tumbler of Canadian Club on the glass tabletop.
“No. Never him” she reflected almost to herself. Borges seemed to consider the interruption but then carried on.
“Perhaps the stories I have related are one single story. The obverse and the reverse of this coin are, for God, the same.”
Beckett returned with two refilled glasses. “Always the poet Jorge Luis, always the poet. But then dear fellow I could not imagine sharing a prize with any one so worthy.”
“I can hear you Samuel but I’m damned if I can see you. Perhaps that’s the way you want it?” Borges eyes were not as sharp as his wit.
“Oui, C’est vrai.” Beckett started in French, then ran on in English. “The memory came faint and cold of the story I might have told, a story in the likeness of my life, I mean without the courage to end or the strength to go on. Here’s your ale Joyce.”
Alice Munro took some nuts. She had some other “big” names of her own.
“Dear R.” she looked at Kipling in an all too intimate way. “My father and I watched Kennedy debate Nixon.” Kipling looked as though he couldn’t have cared less.
“It was like the crowing of the cock.” Elizabeth laughed and her earrings wobbled in appreciation.
“Words, displaced and mutilated words, words of others, were the poor pittance left him by the hours and centuries. Nixon sucks.” Borges didn’t like American politics. Kipling was less direct.
“To rear a boy under what parents call the ‘sheltered life system’ is, if the boy must go into the world and fend for himself, not wise.”
Nadine agreed and nodded furiously. She didn’t often agree with Kipling’s view of separate development.
“It is not generally known – and it is never mentioned in the official biographies – that the Prime Minster spent the first eleven years of his life, as soon as he could be trusted not to get under a car, leading his uncle about the streets.”
Joyce was moved and in moving spilt some white foam from the top of his pint glass. It spewed down on to the glass-topped table and ran off on to the page with the typing on it. Joyce dipped his finger in the liquid trail and brought it up to his lips. He then uttered these words like an old soldier standing at a war memorial or as some dear friend might eulogise at a funeral.
“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
Joyce’s beer had made the words distort on the white page.
“I do not know which of us has written this page,” said Borges picking it up and waving it dry.
But had they looked carefully they would all have understood that each of them had had their part in Tessa’s cocktail.
Thursday, 26 November 2009
WRONG DIRECTION
The must have gift for Christmas that year was an in-car navigation system. Cynth gave Sid one. She bought it from Halfords, the biggish one out on the edge of town next to the new ASDA. Sid was thrilled to bits. He sort of knew that Cynth would go for it and get him the sat-nav he wanted. He’d given enough hints.
“You’re the worst bloody map reader in the world.” He’d told Cynth on many outings even though she wasn’t that bad.
“What we need is one of those in-car satellite navigation systems. They’re really affordable now and would save us a bundle on petrol.”
“How do you work that one out?” asked Cynth.
“Well it figures doesn’t it? The system will show us the shortest route to take so we’ll save on fuel.”
“Hmm,” said Cynth making a mental note to look out for one for Sid’s Christmas present.
Under the tinsel tree on its plastic stand Sid knew that the box wrapped in funny reindeer paper contained the sat-nav he wanted.
“You may as well let me have it now,” he pinned to Cynth.
“You can jolly well wait until Christmas morning.” came the reply. So Sid waited.
When Cynth and Sid emerged on Christmas morning feeling very much the worse for wares because of the Christmas Eve session at the Rose and Crown it didn't take them them long to open the few presents under the tree.
Sure enough Sid found the sat-nav he had wanted and he gave Cynth a big hug and a squeeze.
“Thanks honey,” he said and Cynth could see that her man was happy.
“We'll try it out when we go to Sal and Graham's for lunch.” Sid was keen.
“But we know the way to Sal and Graham's stupid,” said Cynth.
“Well we'll test it out all the same, see if it works OK.” Sid went back upstairs to have his Christmas morning shower and get dressed while Cynth put the best of “TakeThat” on the CD player and tucked into her bacon sandwich.
The mid morning journey to Sal and Graham's wasn't that far. As the crow flies it was about fifteen miles and Sid's Ford Focus knew the route off by heart.
“The car knows the way without that,” said Cynth as Sid plugged in the sat-nav to the hole for the cigarette lighter. He pressed the buttons and with Cynth's help from the instruction booklet the couple were soon being spoken to through the sat-nav.
“Oh err,” giggled Cythn. “She's got a funny voice.”
Sid rather liked her tone.
“She sounds a bit like Carol Vorderman off of Countdown.”
“Don't be daft Sid. She don't sound anything like that,” said Cynth as Sid slipped the car into first gear and headed off, actually “proceeded” , in the direction he'd been told to.
The instructions came thick and fast and Sid obeyed even though he wouldn't normally have taken that route.
“We don't normally go this way,” said Cynth.
“I know luv. That's sat-nav for you. It'll be taking us the quickest way, you'll see.” Sid was rather enjoying being told where to go by another woman.
“Aye luv.” He nudged Cynth in the ribs.”It makes a change from having you telling me where to go.” They both laughed.
“Take the next available turning on the left, “ said Carol Vorderman and when the next available left turn appeared Sid swung the Ford Focus round the corner.
“This can't be right.” Cynth sounded more than a note of caution. “Are you sure you've set the sat-nav up right?”
Sid was sure.
“I did everything the book told me to,” he said.
After nearly an hour of driving and following precisely the instructions from the sat-nav Sid and Cynth were getting more and more tetchy with each other.
“All I said was why don't we stop and look at the map.” Cynth was trying to be helpful.
“We don't need a friggin' map.” Sid wasn't in the mood for Cynth's helpfulness.
“We're normally there in forty minutes at the most.” Cynth was looking at her watch.
“I know we are,” shouted Sid drowning out the latest instruction from Carol Vorderman. “Now you've made me miss the bloody turn.” Sid had missed the turning and was asked to do a U-turn as soon as possible by the unflustered guide.
“There's no need to shout at me like that,” Cynth was beginning to get very upset.
“Well you bought the bloody thing,” said Sid firmly passing all the blame on to his wife.
“You were the one who had to have the bloody gadget in the first place. I want it . I want it I want it.” Cynth mimicked the pleading of a spoilt child.
“Don't be such a pratt.”
“Pratt's are useful.”
“WELL YOU'RE FUCKING NOT.” Sid screamed at Cynth with such rage that the car swerved in sympathy.
“WATCH YOUR FUCKING DRIVING.” Cynth screamed back.
“IF YOU DON'T FUCKING LIKE IT YOU CAN FUCKING WELL WALK.”
“RIGHT.” Cynth screamed.”I FUCKING WILL.”
Sid brought the car to a sudden halt and even before the tyres had finished their squealing Cynth had leapt out and slammed the door with the sort of force that could be heard several streets away.
Sid sped off not really giving the Ford Focus any time to think about being stationary at all.
“Take the next turning on the right” said the sat-nav and Sid did as he was told at speed.
“In two hundred yards you will have reached your destination.” Sid didn't recognise where he was. His blood pressure was as high as his engine's revs and he was very angry.
“You have arrived at your destination.” The sat-nav was quite clear as once again Sid applied the brakes with force slidding along side a covered bus shelter. The car behind only just managed to avoid running into the Ford Focus and hooted past as Sid jumped out.
“Where the fuck are we?” Sid asked out aloud to no one but himself.
There was a well dressed woman waiting for the bus and Sid decided that he would ask where he was.
“Excuse me luv,” he said. “I'm lost.”
“No you're not,” said Carol Vorderman in her unmistakable Countdown voice.
“You've found me. Happy Christmas.”
“You’re the worst bloody map reader in the world.” He’d told Cynth on many outings even though she wasn’t that bad.
“What we need is one of those in-car satellite navigation systems. They’re really affordable now and would save us a bundle on petrol.”
“How do you work that one out?” asked Cynth.
“Well it figures doesn’t it? The system will show us the shortest route to take so we’ll save on fuel.”
“Hmm,” said Cynth making a mental note to look out for one for Sid’s Christmas present.
Under the tinsel tree on its plastic stand Sid knew that the box wrapped in funny reindeer paper contained the sat-nav he wanted.
“You may as well let me have it now,” he pinned to Cynth.
“You can jolly well wait until Christmas morning.” came the reply. So Sid waited.
When Cynth and Sid emerged on Christmas morning feeling very much the worse for wares because of the Christmas Eve session at the Rose and Crown it didn't take them them long to open the few presents under the tree.
Sure enough Sid found the sat-nav he had wanted and he gave Cynth a big hug and a squeeze.
“Thanks honey,” he said and Cynth could see that her man was happy.
“We'll try it out when we go to Sal and Graham's for lunch.” Sid was keen.
“But we know the way to Sal and Graham's stupid,” said Cynth.
“Well we'll test it out all the same, see if it works OK.” Sid went back upstairs to have his Christmas morning shower and get dressed while Cynth put the best of “TakeThat” on the CD player and tucked into her bacon sandwich.
The mid morning journey to Sal and Graham's wasn't that far. As the crow flies it was about fifteen miles and Sid's Ford Focus knew the route off by heart.
“The car knows the way without that,” said Cynth as Sid plugged in the sat-nav to the hole for the cigarette lighter. He pressed the buttons and with Cynth's help from the instruction booklet the couple were soon being spoken to through the sat-nav.
“Oh err,” giggled Cythn. “She's got a funny voice.”
Sid rather liked her tone.
“She sounds a bit like Carol Vorderman off of Countdown.”
“Don't be daft Sid. She don't sound anything like that,” said Cynth as Sid slipped the car into first gear and headed off, actually “proceeded” , in the direction he'd been told to.
The instructions came thick and fast and Sid obeyed even though he wouldn't normally have taken that route.
“We don't normally go this way,” said Cynth.
“I know luv. That's sat-nav for you. It'll be taking us the quickest way, you'll see.” Sid was rather enjoying being told where to go by another woman.
“Aye luv.” He nudged Cynth in the ribs.”It makes a change from having you telling me where to go.” They both laughed.
“Take the next available turning on the left, “ said Carol Vorderman and when the next available left turn appeared Sid swung the Ford Focus round the corner.
“This can't be right.” Cynth sounded more than a note of caution. “Are you sure you've set the sat-nav up right?”
Sid was sure.
“I did everything the book told me to,” he said.
After nearly an hour of driving and following precisely the instructions from the sat-nav Sid and Cynth were getting more and more tetchy with each other.
“All I said was why don't we stop and look at the map.” Cynth was trying to be helpful.
“We don't need a friggin' map.” Sid wasn't in the mood for Cynth's helpfulness.
“We're normally there in forty minutes at the most.” Cynth was looking at her watch.
“I know we are,” shouted Sid drowning out the latest instruction from Carol Vorderman. “Now you've made me miss the bloody turn.” Sid had missed the turning and was asked to do a U-turn as soon as possible by the unflustered guide.
“There's no need to shout at me like that,” Cynth was beginning to get very upset.
“Well you bought the bloody thing,” said Sid firmly passing all the blame on to his wife.
“You were the one who had to have the bloody gadget in the first place. I want it . I want it I want it.” Cynth mimicked the pleading of a spoilt child.
“Don't be such a pratt.”
“Pratt's are useful.”
“WELL YOU'RE FUCKING NOT.” Sid screamed at Cynth with such rage that the car swerved in sympathy.
“WATCH YOUR FUCKING DRIVING.” Cynth screamed back.
“IF YOU DON'T FUCKING LIKE IT YOU CAN FUCKING WELL WALK.”
“RIGHT.” Cynth screamed.”I FUCKING WILL.”
Sid brought the car to a sudden halt and even before the tyres had finished their squealing Cynth had leapt out and slammed the door with the sort of force that could be heard several streets away.
Sid sped off not really giving the Ford Focus any time to think about being stationary at all.
“Take the next turning on the right” said the sat-nav and Sid did as he was told at speed.
“In two hundred yards you will have reached your destination.” Sid didn't recognise where he was. His blood pressure was as high as his engine's revs and he was very angry.
“You have arrived at your destination.” The sat-nav was quite clear as once again Sid applied the brakes with force slidding along side a covered bus shelter. The car behind only just managed to avoid running into the Ford Focus and hooted past as Sid jumped out.
“Where the fuck are we?” Sid asked out aloud to no one but himself.
There was a well dressed woman waiting for the bus and Sid decided that he would ask where he was.
“Excuse me luv,” he said. “I'm lost.”
“No you're not,” said Carol Vorderman in her unmistakable Countdown voice.
“You've found me. Happy Christmas.”
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
GUN DOG
There is something rather reassuring about an obedient gun dog. Each owner will tell you that he has the very best of the breed because as we all know, dogs take after their masters and in some cases vice versa.
John's new Labrador was something else. Sitting tethered by the side of its shooting owner, whenever a bird flew over, the dog would offer up advice, tips on how to deal with the shot.
“If that one was flying backwards you'd knock its beak off,” was how it started.
“What!” said John with so much surprise that he missed at the next attempt as well.
“Why don't you take up tennis?” said the dog under his breath.
“You cheeky bugger!” shouted John and he kicked the black dog at his feet.
The Labrador learnt not to be critical just for the hell of it and because the wrath of his owner would only invite unwelcome retribution. He decided that constructive comment would be a better course of action and so began a relationship between dog and gun that made a perfect combination in the sporting field.
Not surprisingly John's shooting accuracy improved almost at every outing thanks to the dog's considered instruction. John became a very good shot.
“You were under that by a gnat's cock,” said the dog adding “ You must move your feet. Don't be afraid to move your feet.”
John did move his feet and he swung when swinging was in order and always maintained his lead when following through the bird.
“Bum, belly, beak, bang!” growled the Labrador as John connected with another bird at least sixty yards away.
Now the normal bond between a man and his dog relies on one of them, normally the man, always holding the upper hand. The best relationship's are those where the dog does exactly what his boss wants him to without question and with total devotion. In exchange for obedience the dog receives a daily square meal, the occasional admiring glance and a pat, a rub down with a dirty towel when wet, the chance to run about in the countryside retrieving dead and more often wounded birds and periods of lengthy isolation being locked up in the back of a four by four. There are moments of sheer bliss when the owner's other half or offspring will “make a fuss” of the dog but these are as rare as the scraps from the Christmas dinner table.
When the Labrador talks, familiarity breeds contempt. And so it was with John's dog.
“You missed in front of that,” said the dog on the first drive of the day on a Devon shoot.
“Rubbish!” said John who was feeling more agitated than usual.
“I saw the pattern of the shot leave the gun and believe me you were in front,” said the Labrador in a way that John just knew was the truth.
“All right , all right,” said John and he yanked rather too hard on the choke chain around his Labrador's neck.
“There's no need for that,” said the dog shaking his head.
“Look. You might think you're the dogs bollocks when it comes to shooting but you're just a bloody Labrador when all said and done. Now sit there and shut up!”
Not another word was said and at the end of the drive the dog was let off the lead to go and pick up the dozen or so birds that John had despatched. The woods that ran behind his peg fell away to the valley bottom and the dog bounded off through the trees in search of his master's quarry. He didn't come back. Despite John's high pitch whistling and energetic shouting, the dog was gone.
“Well we can't stay here John.” said the host. “We've got to move on to the next drive. I'm sure we'll find him before the day is out.”
No one was quite sure how it happened. Standing at number eight on the end of the line and hidden from the sight of his neighbour at number seven tucked as he was around the corner along the ride in a wood, John was really out of the shooting. He had a go at something half way through the drive and at the end, after the keeper had sounded his horn to tell everyone that the drive was over, they found John slumped on the brown stained ground where his blood had soaked into the earth and, red on green, where it had congealed on the grass as a result of the dreadful shot that had blown half his face away.
Sitting up next to his master's dead body was the black gun dog.
John's new Labrador was something else. Sitting tethered by the side of its shooting owner, whenever a bird flew over, the dog would offer up advice, tips on how to deal with the shot.
“If that one was flying backwards you'd knock its beak off,” was how it started.
“What!” said John with so much surprise that he missed at the next attempt as well.
“Why don't you take up tennis?” said the dog under his breath.
“You cheeky bugger!” shouted John and he kicked the black dog at his feet.
The Labrador learnt not to be critical just for the hell of it and because the wrath of his owner would only invite unwelcome retribution. He decided that constructive comment would be a better course of action and so began a relationship between dog and gun that made a perfect combination in the sporting field.
Not surprisingly John's shooting accuracy improved almost at every outing thanks to the dog's considered instruction. John became a very good shot.
“You were under that by a gnat's cock,” said the dog adding “ You must move your feet. Don't be afraid to move your feet.”
John did move his feet and he swung when swinging was in order and always maintained his lead when following through the bird.
“Bum, belly, beak, bang!” growled the Labrador as John connected with another bird at least sixty yards away.
Now the normal bond between a man and his dog relies on one of them, normally the man, always holding the upper hand. The best relationship's are those where the dog does exactly what his boss wants him to without question and with total devotion. In exchange for obedience the dog receives a daily square meal, the occasional admiring glance and a pat, a rub down with a dirty towel when wet, the chance to run about in the countryside retrieving dead and more often wounded birds and periods of lengthy isolation being locked up in the back of a four by four. There are moments of sheer bliss when the owner's other half or offspring will “make a fuss” of the dog but these are as rare as the scraps from the Christmas dinner table.
When the Labrador talks, familiarity breeds contempt. And so it was with John's dog.
“You missed in front of that,” said the dog on the first drive of the day on a Devon shoot.
“Rubbish!” said John who was feeling more agitated than usual.
“I saw the pattern of the shot leave the gun and believe me you were in front,” said the Labrador in a way that John just knew was the truth.
“All right , all right,” said John and he yanked rather too hard on the choke chain around his Labrador's neck.
“There's no need for that,” said the dog shaking his head.
“Look. You might think you're the dogs bollocks when it comes to shooting but you're just a bloody Labrador when all said and done. Now sit there and shut up!”
Not another word was said and at the end of the drive the dog was let off the lead to go and pick up the dozen or so birds that John had despatched. The woods that ran behind his peg fell away to the valley bottom and the dog bounded off through the trees in search of his master's quarry. He didn't come back. Despite John's high pitch whistling and energetic shouting, the dog was gone.
“Well we can't stay here John.” said the host. “We've got to move on to the next drive. I'm sure we'll find him before the day is out.”
No one was quite sure how it happened. Standing at number eight on the end of the line and hidden from the sight of his neighbour at number seven tucked as he was around the corner along the ride in a wood, John was really out of the shooting. He had a go at something half way through the drive and at the end, after the keeper had sounded his horn to tell everyone that the drive was over, they found John slumped on the brown stained ground where his blood had soaked into the earth and, red on green, where it had congealed on the grass as a result of the dreadful shot that had blown half his face away.
Sitting up next to his master's dead body was the black gun dog.
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
WARTS AND ALL
Like a crossword puzzle, Filly's face wasn't the sort that jumped out at you in an obvious way. Study provided its features with focus and for example the mouth which at first encounter seemed like something rather unfairly stuck on with haste, did develop a charm all of its own with increased exposure and of course, subdued lighting. Unkindly Filly was referred to as having been built for comfort rather than speed. It was true that she was well upholstered but there again most preferred the deep pile cosiness of several feather cushions to the less yielding basic thin wicker seat.
Filly's looks came into their own at Halloween. Like the stopped watch, her timing was spot on once every twelve hours. Unlike her friends she wouldn't need the help of spooky make up to go out trick or treating.
“You can take the mask off now,” was the unkind shout from her mate Stella who had herself dressed up as Dracula's bride. Filly wasn't bothered and said so.
“Am I bothered,” she said like the TV character played by Catherine Tate. “I am not bothered.”
But she was. Deep , deep down she was. She was the event horizon. Sucked in, she felt normal but she was heading down incapable of ever getting out. It was as though a truck had hit her at three hundred thousand miles an hour and she'd joined Einstein in the centre of his black hole.
Like a falling rain drop on the roof of the world, when F equals O and physics breaks down because gravity is infinite and time stops dead. The singularity is when you don't know what to do. The singularity is warts and all. Nature breaking down.
Ten years before her, he proved a black hole couldn't exist. With extra terrestrial physics the super massive black holes appeared with lots (thousands) of stellar black holes all around. Like ladies in waiting.
It was all about quantum mechanics and how quantum mechanics and gravity could live together.
Filly thought that quantum gravity was God and besides, she could just about see a halo under the shadow, like a crossword puzzle. Warts and all.
Filly's looks came into their own at Halloween. Like the stopped watch, her timing was spot on once every twelve hours. Unlike her friends she wouldn't need the help of spooky make up to go out trick or treating.
“You can take the mask off now,” was the unkind shout from her mate Stella who had herself dressed up as Dracula's bride. Filly wasn't bothered and said so.
“Am I bothered,” she said like the TV character played by Catherine Tate. “I am not bothered.”
But she was. Deep , deep down she was. She was the event horizon. Sucked in, she felt normal but she was heading down incapable of ever getting out. It was as though a truck had hit her at three hundred thousand miles an hour and she'd joined Einstein in the centre of his black hole.
Like a falling rain drop on the roof of the world, when F equals O and physics breaks down because gravity is infinite and time stops dead. The singularity is when you don't know what to do. The singularity is warts and all. Nature breaking down.
Ten years before her, he proved a black hole couldn't exist. With extra terrestrial physics the super massive black holes appeared with lots (thousands) of stellar black holes all around. Like ladies in waiting.
It was all about quantum mechanics and how quantum mechanics and gravity could live together.
Filly thought that quantum gravity was God and besides, she could just about see a halo under the shadow, like a crossword puzzle. Warts and all.
Thursday, 22 October 2009
PRIVATE DICKS
These days he was never too sure where his wife was or what she got up to when she wasn't with him. Their marriage had been a “good one” and for ten years they had enjoyed each other. Their relationship hadn't been passionate although in the beginning there was lust. Sex on the freezer had been quite hot and the dinning room table had seen some decidedly intimate and different culinary episodes. But that was back then. Now a days it was a Sunday morning squeeze if the dogs would allow it or the occasional grapple in bed when the lights went out if he hadn't drunk too much and she didn't have a headache. Admittedly she would have liked children but he wasn't so bothered by the lack of them and besides they did have the Labradors.
Recently she had joined a health spa which in itself wasn't a bad thing as it kept her away from him when he wanted time to himself. Time to himself however got him thinking about why she had wanted to join a gym. The thought grew and like unchecked ivy spread around the trunk of his thoughts, climbed up the bark of his emotions and threatened to strangle the fruit of his reason. That terrible suspicion brewed up by jealousy began to get at him.
“Oh I won't be long darling.” She sang to him as she almost skipped out of the front door. “See you later,” she called as the thing slammed shut cutting off her cheerfulness and trapping his suspicion.
He wasn't happy. He'd been toying with the idea of following her but knew that she'd be on the look out if she was up to no good and besides the Rang Rover Sport with his personal number plate was a bit of a give away.
He grabbed for the Yellow Pages and looked up detective. He found detective agencies after design consultants and before dieting and weight control. There were several listed most featuring logos with either drawings of a magnifying glass or a close up of the human eye. One even had the picture of a blood hound and most were endorsed by something called the Association of British Investigators. He chose one of these and dialled the number, straight away hanging up when he heard a female voice answer. He was being ridiculous and he had no reason at all to suspect his wife of anything.
“Good god man,” he said to himself. “You're becoming paranoid. She's just out getting fit and that's all there is to it.”
If absence makes the heart grow fonder then the husband didn't have a heart. His wife's increased time away was in direct proportion to his increased concern and the relationship was beginning to suffer.
“I'm surprised you haven't waisted away completely with all that exercise you're doing.” It was the combustible comment like the scraping of a Swan Vesta which lit that particular fire.
“Don't be so bloody silly. If you took the time to do some exercise yourself you'd probably be less bolshy and a bloody site fitter.”
“There's nothing wrong with my body.”
“That's a matter of opinion.”
“Oh yes. Whose?”
“Mine. For a man of your age you are getting too fat.”
“I'm perfect for my height.”
“Not for mine.”
“What?”
“Nothing. It doesn't matter.”
“It bloody well does.”
“It's just that I'm keen to keep fit and you don't seem to care any more. You're just letting yourself go to seed and....”
“And you want to run about in your bloody skin tight leotard with your personal trainer ogling at your tits...”
“Don't be silly. It's not like that at all....”
The row went on like that until she went off to bed leaving him to Jeremy Paxman.
The next day she went out after a light breakfast and didn't come back until four in the afternoon.
“Good session?” he asked on her return in a way that implied more than a work out on a treadmill.
“Yes thank you,” she replied as though she'd been sitting innocently astride a rowing machine.
Her morning departures and evening arrivals continued and he became as wound up as the grandfather clock that stood in the hall. He called another detective agency listed in the Yellow phone book and arranged a meeting with them that day.
“You can come here,” he said undeterred by the response of , “OK sir. How do we find you?”
The interview was pretty straight forward and the fresh faced private investigator who looked as though he'd come straight from college took notes and a recent photograph of the wife as she appeared in her bikini on a beach in Barbados.
“You'll know her when you see her,” said the husband rather obviously and the private investigator agreed that he would.
After a week there was nothing to report. The private investigator returned to visit the husband and delivered his findings which basically were that there was nothing to report.
“She just spends all the time at that bloody gym?”
“Yes.”
“And there's no hanky panky with anyone there?”
“Absolutely none at all. I can confirm from someone on the inside and from at least two other reliable sources that your wife spends her time working out in the gym, using the pool and the spa, that is the sauna and steam rooms and twice in the week she had a massage, again kosher, and on three occasions went to the restaurant for the healthy option luncheon. It's all here. Written down by the hour” The fresh faced private investigator handed over a brown A4 envelope and looked very pleased with himself.
“So she's not up to anything at all?”
“No. Nothing out of the ordinary. She's obviously very keen on keeping fit and I'd say you're a very lucky man.”
The private investigator was given a cheque for his company's services and his opinion about his client's luck was noted but not agreed with.
Despite the written evidence the husband wasn't convinced. His wife had the sort of spring in her step that reminded him of their early days together. He knew that she was playing away but couldn't prove anything. So another phone call produced another private detective who was briefed on the job of wife watching.
“Make sure you keep an eye on her in that gym because I know she's up to no good.”
The newly commissioned private detective was an ex-army type and he was determined to apply his military precision and years of training to the job in hand. His ex-Sargent Major's moustache stiffened in anticipation of the new task.
His report too confirmed that nothing was going on.
“At ten hundred hours the quarry was seen entering the Hotel Spa reception area. At ten-o- three, having signed in, the quarry received a white towel, a standard spa issue white towelling dressing gown and a white pair of towelling flip flops and proceeded to the ladies dressing rooms. At ten seventeen the quarry was seen entering the gymnasium complex where she mounted a static bicycle and proceeded to pedal for a period of fifteen minutes. The peddling started at a fairly slow rate timed at thirty revolutions a minute and this went up to..........”
“Yes. Yes.” said the husband completely exasperated by the private investigators delivery. “I know all that. Was the bloody woman caught with her knickers down?”
The ex-Sargent Major confirmed that at no time had the quarry been caught in a “compromising position”.
Duly dismissed the husband considered the latest report on his wife. The description of her as “the quarry” did nothing to alleviate his doubts. The picture in his mind of someone mining in the quarry became rather too vivid so he called a third agency.
The private investigator arrived (this one looked rather like John Humphries of the BBC) and he was taken through the same brief that his two predecessors had been given.
“Right ho then. I'll keep an eye on the good lady for you,” he said in a way that sounded a bit like John Humphries from the BBC.
A week later and the report from the John Humphries look alike confirmed that the suspect under surveillance was just keeping fit.
“Is that all?” said the husband in complete disbelief and almost disappointment.
Determined not to be beaten, like a man on a mission, the husband sought help from a top team of private investigators from London. On the recommendations of one of his chums in the Bank, and without actually disclosing the real need for the service (he made mention of a lost Labrador), he got in touch with an agency that advocated the use of “hunting in packs”. As the MD of the firm told his new client,
“It's our firm's creed that three heads are better than one, that's why we call ourselves Sixth Sense.” The husband didn't get it and looked momentarily puzzled. “Three heads equals six eyes and six ears, hence Sixth Sense. With our team you get three private investigators on the job.”
The trio were set to work on gathering evidence. They looked like Essex night club bouncers with shaved heads and the sort of physique that said, “Don't muck with me.”
Two weeks later back in the offices of Sixth Sense the news about his wife's activities was no different. The black binder with neat typed script and photographs confirmed that it was keep fit on the agenda and nothing in the form of any unusual extra curricular activity.
The husband was mortified. He was also getting somewhat concerned about the thousands of pounds he was spending having his wife watched. Money didn't grow on trees although in his case it did accumulate rather nicely from the hedge fund.
“If you want a job doing properly, do it yourself.” The idea came to him one evening when he'd been leafing through “One Thousand Drawings by Tracey Emin”, a fat book printed on thin paper that confirmed to him that he could draw every bit as well as Miss Emin. He decided to join the Health Spa.
One morning after his wife had left with her usual sing song, “Byeeee,” an hour or so later he set of for the health spa. He parked his Range Rover next to her red BMW and went in to the reception for his induction programme.
“I don't want my wife to know I'm here,” he said to the pretty receptionist. “I'm going to surprise her with my new keep fit regime.” The blonde smiled knowingly. She'd seen it all before. Men trying to get fit for their women. Eric, in his smart track suit, showed him around and took him through a programme of exercises on the gym equipment.
“In just a week or two you'll notice the pounds dropping off you,”said Eric unaware of the thousands already spent by the new member just watching the place.
Eric left him to master a weight lifting machine and quite soon he had worked up a decent sweat. A dip in the pool would be good followed by a session in the steam room and then he'd go and find his wife and surprise her.
It was quite a surprise for all concerned. As he pushed open the door to the steam room and the wall of foggy heat hit him, he could just make out the shapes of some other bodies in the hot house. Sitting on a wooden bench with nothing on at all was his wife and around her in a sort of admiring, dripping semi-circle were six naked men. A sweaty fresh faced boy, an ex-Sargent Major with a very droopy moustache, a damp John Humphries look alike and three Essex night club bouncers each with a hard, glistening head.
“Hello there. Always room for one more,” said his wife through the thick, hot steam.
Recently she had joined a health spa which in itself wasn't a bad thing as it kept her away from him when he wanted time to himself. Time to himself however got him thinking about why she had wanted to join a gym. The thought grew and like unchecked ivy spread around the trunk of his thoughts, climbed up the bark of his emotions and threatened to strangle the fruit of his reason. That terrible suspicion brewed up by jealousy began to get at him.
“Oh I won't be long darling.” She sang to him as she almost skipped out of the front door. “See you later,” she called as the thing slammed shut cutting off her cheerfulness and trapping his suspicion.
He wasn't happy. He'd been toying with the idea of following her but knew that she'd be on the look out if she was up to no good and besides the Rang Rover Sport with his personal number plate was a bit of a give away.
He grabbed for the Yellow Pages and looked up detective. He found detective agencies after design consultants and before dieting and weight control. There were several listed most featuring logos with either drawings of a magnifying glass or a close up of the human eye. One even had the picture of a blood hound and most were endorsed by something called the Association of British Investigators. He chose one of these and dialled the number, straight away hanging up when he heard a female voice answer. He was being ridiculous and he had no reason at all to suspect his wife of anything.
“Good god man,” he said to himself. “You're becoming paranoid. She's just out getting fit and that's all there is to it.”
If absence makes the heart grow fonder then the husband didn't have a heart. His wife's increased time away was in direct proportion to his increased concern and the relationship was beginning to suffer.
“I'm surprised you haven't waisted away completely with all that exercise you're doing.” It was the combustible comment like the scraping of a Swan Vesta which lit that particular fire.
“Don't be so bloody silly. If you took the time to do some exercise yourself you'd probably be less bolshy and a bloody site fitter.”
“There's nothing wrong with my body.”
“That's a matter of opinion.”
“Oh yes. Whose?”
“Mine. For a man of your age you are getting too fat.”
“I'm perfect for my height.”
“Not for mine.”
“What?”
“Nothing. It doesn't matter.”
“It bloody well does.”
“It's just that I'm keen to keep fit and you don't seem to care any more. You're just letting yourself go to seed and....”
“And you want to run about in your bloody skin tight leotard with your personal trainer ogling at your tits...”
“Don't be silly. It's not like that at all....”
The row went on like that until she went off to bed leaving him to Jeremy Paxman.
The next day she went out after a light breakfast and didn't come back until four in the afternoon.
“Good session?” he asked on her return in a way that implied more than a work out on a treadmill.
“Yes thank you,” she replied as though she'd been sitting innocently astride a rowing machine.
Her morning departures and evening arrivals continued and he became as wound up as the grandfather clock that stood in the hall. He called another detective agency listed in the Yellow phone book and arranged a meeting with them that day.
“You can come here,” he said undeterred by the response of , “OK sir. How do we find you?”
The interview was pretty straight forward and the fresh faced private investigator who looked as though he'd come straight from college took notes and a recent photograph of the wife as she appeared in her bikini on a beach in Barbados.
“You'll know her when you see her,” said the husband rather obviously and the private investigator agreed that he would.
After a week there was nothing to report. The private investigator returned to visit the husband and delivered his findings which basically were that there was nothing to report.
“She just spends all the time at that bloody gym?”
“Yes.”
“And there's no hanky panky with anyone there?”
“Absolutely none at all. I can confirm from someone on the inside and from at least two other reliable sources that your wife spends her time working out in the gym, using the pool and the spa, that is the sauna and steam rooms and twice in the week she had a massage, again kosher, and on three occasions went to the restaurant for the healthy option luncheon. It's all here. Written down by the hour” The fresh faced private investigator handed over a brown A4 envelope and looked very pleased with himself.
“So she's not up to anything at all?”
“No. Nothing out of the ordinary. She's obviously very keen on keeping fit and I'd say you're a very lucky man.”
The private investigator was given a cheque for his company's services and his opinion about his client's luck was noted but not agreed with.
Despite the written evidence the husband wasn't convinced. His wife had the sort of spring in her step that reminded him of their early days together. He knew that she was playing away but couldn't prove anything. So another phone call produced another private detective who was briefed on the job of wife watching.
“Make sure you keep an eye on her in that gym because I know she's up to no good.”
The newly commissioned private detective was an ex-army type and he was determined to apply his military precision and years of training to the job in hand. His ex-Sargent Major's moustache stiffened in anticipation of the new task.
His report too confirmed that nothing was going on.
“At ten hundred hours the quarry was seen entering the Hotel Spa reception area. At ten-o- three, having signed in, the quarry received a white towel, a standard spa issue white towelling dressing gown and a white pair of towelling flip flops and proceeded to the ladies dressing rooms. At ten seventeen the quarry was seen entering the gymnasium complex where she mounted a static bicycle and proceeded to pedal for a period of fifteen minutes. The peddling started at a fairly slow rate timed at thirty revolutions a minute and this went up to..........”
“Yes. Yes.” said the husband completely exasperated by the private investigators delivery. “I know all that. Was the bloody woman caught with her knickers down?”
The ex-Sargent Major confirmed that at no time had the quarry been caught in a “compromising position”.
Duly dismissed the husband considered the latest report on his wife. The description of her as “the quarry” did nothing to alleviate his doubts. The picture in his mind of someone mining in the quarry became rather too vivid so he called a third agency.
The private investigator arrived (this one looked rather like John Humphries of the BBC) and he was taken through the same brief that his two predecessors had been given.
“Right ho then. I'll keep an eye on the good lady for you,” he said in a way that sounded a bit like John Humphries from the BBC.
A week later and the report from the John Humphries look alike confirmed that the suspect under surveillance was just keeping fit.
“Is that all?” said the husband in complete disbelief and almost disappointment.
Determined not to be beaten, like a man on a mission, the husband sought help from a top team of private investigators from London. On the recommendations of one of his chums in the Bank, and without actually disclosing the real need for the service (he made mention of a lost Labrador), he got in touch with an agency that advocated the use of “hunting in packs”. As the MD of the firm told his new client,
“It's our firm's creed that three heads are better than one, that's why we call ourselves Sixth Sense.” The husband didn't get it and looked momentarily puzzled. “Three heads equals six eyes and six ears, hence Sixth Sense. With our team you get three private investigators on the job.”
The trio were set to work on gathering evidence. They looked like Essex night club bouncers with shaved heads and the sort of physique that said, “Don't muck with me.”
Two weeks later back in the offices of Sixth Sense the news about his wife's activities was no different. The black binder with neat typed script and photographs confirmed that it was keep fit on the agenda and nothing in the form of any unusual extra curricular activity.
The husband was mortified. He was also getting somewhat concerned about the thousands of pounds he was spending having his wife watched. Money didn't grow on trees although in his case it did accumulate rather nicely from the hedge fund.
“If you want a job doing properly, do it yourself.” The idea came to him one evening when he'd been leafing through “One Thousand Drawings by Tracey Emin”, a fat book printed on thin paper that confirmed to him that he could draw every bit as well as Miss Emin. He decided to join the Health Spa.
One morning after his wife had left with her usual sing song, “Byeeee,” an hour or so later he set of for the health spa. He parked his Range Rover next to her red BMW and went in to the reception for his induction programme.
“I don't want my wife to know I'm here,” he said to the pretty receptionist. “I'm going to surprise her with my new keep fit regime.” The blonde smiled knowingly. She'd seen it all before. Men trying to get fit for their women. Eric, in his smart track suit, showed him around and took him through a programme of exercises on the gym equipment.
“In just a week or two you'll notice the pounds dropping off you,”said Eric unaware of the thousands already spent by the new member just watching the place.
Eric left him to master a weight lifting machine and quite soon he had worked up a decent sweat. A dip in the pool would be good followed by a session in the steam room and then he'd go and find his wife and surprise her.
It was quite a surprise for all concerned. As he pushed open the door to the steam room and the wall of foggy heat hit him, he could just make out the shapes of some other bodies in the hot house. Sitting on a wooden bench with nothing on at all was his wife and around her in a sort of admiring, dripping semi-circle were six naked men. A sweaty fresh faced boy, an ex-Sargent Major with a very droopy moustache, a damp John Humphries look alike and three Essex night club bouncers each with a hard, glistening head.
“Hello there. Always room for one more,” said his wife through the thick, hot steam.
Wednesday, 21 October 2009
BLIND FAITH
The minister had been a big hitter. As Home Secretary he’d been tough on immigration, tough on the causes of immigration. He’d beefed up the police force and, if the figures were to be believed, had reduced reported crime figures by nearly two percent. The Prime Minister thought of him as a jewel in the cabinet crown.
Of course his blindness, his lack of real vision, was what had got him the job in the first place. He was a natural for providing the Government with a smoke screen to hide what was really going on. Being blind the minister couldn’t actually see and had therefore to have total faith in what his advisers told him.
“Are you sure this is a library?” he asked his aide.
“Yes sir.”
“Bloody noisy for a library. And quite a surprise they’re serving champagne too.”
“Yes sir.”
His college at the Foreign Office was stone deaf. He was totally reliant on sign language from his advisers.
“So you’re telling me that there are weapons of mass destruction.” He signed.
“Yes sir.” The sign language answer was quite clear.
At D.E.F.R.A. the minister with responsibility was dumb.
“Have you taken every precaution against the spread of this outbreak?” asked a journalist.
The minister just nodded rather unconvincingly.
Of course his blindness, his lack of real vision, was what had got him the job in the first place. He was a natural for providing the Government with a smoke screen to hide what was really going on. Being blind the minister couldn’t actually see and had therefore to have total faith in what his advisers told him.
“Are you sure this is a library?” he asked his aide.
“Yes sir.”
“Bloody noisy for a library. And quite a surprise they’re serving champagne too.”
“Yes sir.”
His college at the Foreign Office was stone deaf. He was totally reliant on sign language from his advisers.
“So you’re telling me that there are weapons of mass destruction.” He signed.
“Yes sir.” The sign language answer was quite clear.
At D.E.F.R.A. the minister with responsibility was dumb.
“Have you taken every precaution against the spread of this outbreak?” asked a journalist.
The minister just nodded rather unconvincingly.
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
LOOKING A GIFT HORSE IN THE MOUTH
She loved her horses and had grown up with them right from the first “My Little Pony” to the hunter she now clung to as often as she could, a birthday present from her Daddy. Running the company as she tried to, the one her Daddy had started almost twenty years ago, meant that she didn't have all the time to herself and her horse that she would have liked. None the less there were the odd days or half days when she could scive off on the pretext of seeing somebody about something to do with work. No one really asked what the MD was doing. No body questioned her ability or at least not to her face. There were some, senior management and co-directors but not share holders, who muttered behind their hands about the MD's commitment to the job.
“Where's Miranda today?” The question would be asked even though the answer was a foregone conclusion. Miranda was most likely out with her horse.
The company had been successful. Certainly in her Daddy's day the firm had prospered. Making profits was getting harder and harder and Miranda didn't have the business acumen that her Daddy had once shown. She didn't have the drive or the hunger that her Daddy had used to grow the turnover every year. Basically Miranda wanted the perks of her position without the pain of office. She had grown up spoilt and as one ex-employee once said, “The first generation makes it. The second spends it.”
Ex-employees under Miranda's watch were getting to be more plentiful than current employees. Her record at HR (human resources) and hiring and keeping “good people” was abysmal but like the days off no one said much. Like an over indulged child with a new toy, she soon got fed up and wanted to move on to something new, something different. Being MD and a major share holder gave her the power, that dreadful inherited strength, to play with other people's lives as she saw fit to do. If your face didn't fit then you were in and out of the job before you could say, “Where's my desk ?”
Miranda didn't like doing the dirty work herself and always got her long suffering FD (financial director) to clean up after her. He was a well meaning accountant that her Daddy had taken on years previously and who'd become the typical “Yes” man that didn't always suit the business as much as it suited Miranda. It was the FD who had on countless occasions asked hapless candidates to meet him upstairs in the Board room to face the process of redundancy or similar. The Board room actually became known as the Departure Lounge amongst that part of the chattering work force.
Unfair dismissal usually followed unfair dismissal and always Miranda's Daddy would dig deep to settle Miranda's whim, paper over the cracks in her poor decision making. Most victims would disappear without a fight some happy to be let free from a job they didn't much enjoy and some (the more senior) with a little tax free pay in their pocket and a few weeks gardening leave because Miranda didn't want them reappearing in the competition's camp straight away.
One day in January, just when every one had started back after the Christmas break, Miranda asked her FD to get rid of Billy. Billy she had decided was no good at his job in the warehouse and his position could easily be made redundant saving a few grand a year and helping to cut the overheads in an effort to shore up the business against increasing losses.
“Billy is surplus to current requirement,” she told the FD, “so please get rid of him.”
Now even though Billy appeared a bit simple and was the sort who'd never look at you when being spoken to, he didn't take what the FD told him about the job being made redundant as obvious.
“Who's going to drive the fork lift?” he asked the FD who in truth couldn't answer.
What Miranda had failed to tell her FD was that she had promised a friend of hers, someone's son from the riding stables she used, that he could have a job in the warehouse for less than Billy had been paid. What she didn't know was that Billy and the new boy drank in the same pub and that only the night before Billy was invited by the FD to the Departure Lounge, he and the new employee had been toasting their new working relationship together.
“That's a bit of a cock up.” said the FD when the truth came out. “You can't make a role redundant and then take someone on for the same job.”
“I know that. I'm not thick. ” Miranda knew that she had made another mistake. She also worked on the premise that the best form of defence is attack.
“Billy won't do anything about it, “ she said to her FD dismissively.
She was wrong. A letter came in from Billy's solicitor, the one he went to see and the one who was happy to take on his case.
“We'll sack him then,” said Miranda annoyed that this hick-up was anywhere near her desk. “Let's do him for gross misconduct or anything. There must be something on him we can get him for.”
The FD's task was to find something on Billy and the witch-hunt began. There was a verbal warning on his personnel file when he'd parked his red van in one of the Director's car parking spaces that time he was late and couldn't find another space anywhere. He'd meant to move it but had forgotten and by mid-morning the question had been asked, “Why is that tatty red van parked in the Director's car parking space?”
He had too been told not to drive the fork lift so fast and without a hard hat on. There wasn't a paper trail on this but the warehouse manager (he hadn't been in the job that long) remembered that Billy had been told.
“Put everything in writing,” said the frustrated FD who put everything in writing.
What got him in the end was the misuse of company e-mails. Billy had sent an e-mail from the company e-mail address to a mail order company asking for some sexual enhancing pills to be sent to him at his place of work so that his mother, who he lived at home with, didn't get to see the packet that the postman eventually delivered. She would have opened it as she did with most of Billy's post. It was, so the FD told him, a serious breach of his service agreement to use the company e-mail system for unauthorised personal use and as such Billy was going to be suspended.
Sadly Billy's case never went to the tribunal that considers such things. Billy couldn't afford the fees that his solicitor needed to fight his corner.
“You might have a good case for unfair dismissal,” said the lawyer, “but I'm afraid that it's a case I cannot take on if you're not insured.” Sadly for Billy he wasn't.
Miranda brushed aside the affair and Billy's departure made way for her friend's son, the one she'd promised the job to. She met her at the riding stables and her friend thanked her for giving her son the job.
“I'm not the managing director for nothing,” said Miranda as she set off on her high horse , set off for her usual decent Monday afternoon's hack in the country-side.
Miranda didn't see the thin wire stretched tightly between the two gate posts at about hock height. Her horse who'd been encouraged into a decent canter didn't either and as the wire sliced neatly into its flesh the animal crashed to the ground with an ungainly lurch that put its rider clean over its head so that when the two had finished sliding along the firm ground both had broken their necks. They lay together, face to stunned face, head to bleeding head, in grotesque close proximity.
No one saw the tatty red van as it pulled away from the lay-by not far from where Miranda was looking a gift horse in the mouth.
“Where's Miranda today?” The question would be asked even though the answer was a foregone conclusion. Miranda was most likely out with her horse.
The company had been successful. Certainly in her Daddy's day the firm had prospered. Making profits was getting harder and harder and Miranda didn't have the business acumen that her Daddy had once shown. She didn't have the drive or the hunger that her Daddy had used to grow the turnover every year. Basically Miranda wanted the perks of her position without the pain of office. She had grown up spoilt and as one ex-employee once said, “The first generation makes it. The second spends it.”
Ex-employees under Miranda's watch were getting to be more plentiful than current employees. Her record at HR (human resources) and hiring and keeping “good people” was abysmal but like the days off no one said much. Like an over indulged child with a new toy, she soon got fed up and wanted to move on to something new, something different. Being MD and a major share holder gave her the power, that dreadful inherited strength, to play with other people's lives as she saw fit to do. If your face didn't fit then you were in and out of the job before you could say, “Where's my desk ?”
Miranda didn't like doing the dirty work herself and always got her long suffering FD (financial director) to clean up after her. He was a well meaning accountant that her Daddy had taken on years previously and who'd become the typical “Yes” man that didn't always suit the business as much as it suited Miranda. It was the FD who had on countless occasions asked hapless candidates to meet him upstairs in the Board room to face the process of redundancy or similar. The Board room actually became known as the Departure Lounge amongst that part of the chattering work force.
Unfair dismissal usually followed unfair dismissal and always Miranda's Daddy would dig deep to settle Miranda's whim, paper over the cracks in her poor decision making. Most victims would disappear without a fight some happy to be let free from a job they didn't much enjoy and some (the more senior) with a little tax free pay in their pocket and a few weeks gardening leave because Miranda didn't want them reappearing in the competition's camp straight away.
One day in January, just when every one had started back after the Christmas break, Miranda asked her FD to get rid of Billy. Billy she had decided was no good at his job in the warehouse and his position could easily be made redundant saving a few grand a year and helping to cut the overheads in an effort to shore up the business against increasing losses.
“Billy is surplus to current requirement,” she told the FD, “so please get rid of him.”
Now even though Billy appeared a bit simple and was the sort who'd never look at you when being spoken to, he didn't take what the FD told him about the job being made redundant as obvious.
“Who's going to drive the fork lift?” he asked the FD who in truth couldn't answer.
What Miranda had failed to tell her FD was that she had promised a friend of hers, someone's son from the riding stables she used, that he could have a job in the warehouse for less than Billy had been paid. What she didn't know was that Billy and the new boy drank in the same pub and that only the night before Billy was invited by the FD to the Departure Lounge, he and the new employee had been toasting their new working relationship together.
“That's a bit of a cock up.” said the FD when the truth came out. “You can't make a role redundant and then take someone on for the same job.”
“I know that. I'm not thick. ” Miranda knew that she had made another mistake. She also worked on the premise that the best form of defence is attack.
“Billy won't do anything about it, “ she said to her FD dismissively.
She was wrong. A letter came in from Billy's solicitor, the one he went to see and the one who was happy to take on his case.
“We'll sack him then,” said Miranda annoyed that this hick-up was anywhere near her desk. “Let's do him for gross misconduct or anything. There must be something on him we can get him for.”
The FD's task was to find something on Billy and the witch-hunt began. There was a verbal warning on his personnel file when he'd parked his red van in one of the Director's car parking spaces that time he was late and couldn't find another space anywhere. He'd meant to move it but had forgotten and by mid-morning the question had been asked, “Why is that tatty red van parked in the Director's car parking space?”
He had too been told not to drive the fork lift so fast and without a hard hat on. There wasn't a paper trail on this but the warehouse manager (he hadn't been in the job that long) remembered that Billy had been told.
“Put everything in writing,” said the frustrated FD who put everything in writing.
What got him in the end was the misuse of company e-mails. Billy had sent an e-mail from the company e-mail address to a mail order company asking for some sexual enhancing pills to be sent to him at his place of work so that his mother, who he lived at home with, didn't get to see the packet that the postman eventually delivered. She would have opened it as she did with most of Billy's post. It was, so the FD told him, a serious breach of his service agreement to use the company e-mail system for unauthorised personal use and as such Billy was going to be suspended.
Sadly Billy's case never went to the tribunal that considers such things. Billy couldn't afford the fees that his solicitor needed to fight his corner.
“You might have a good case for unfair dismissal,” said the lawyer, “but I'm afraid that it's a case I cannot take on if you're not insured.” Sadly for Billy he wasn't.
Miranda brushed aside the affair and Billy's departure made way for her friend's son, the one she'd promised the job to. She met her at the riding stables and her friend thanked her for giving her son the job.
“I'm not the managing director for nothing,” said Miranda as she set off on her high horse , set off for her usual decent Monday afternoon's hack in the country-side.
Miranda didn't see the thin wire stretched tightly between the two gate posts at about hock height. Her horse who'd been encouraged into a decent canter didn't either and as the wire sliced neatly into its flesh the animal crashed to the ground with an ungainly lurch that put its rider clean over its head so that when the two had finished sliding along the firm ground both had broken their necks. They lay together, face to stunned face, head to bleeding head, in grotesque close proximity.
No one saw the tatty red van as it pulled away from the lay-by not far from where Miranda was looking a gift horse in the mouth.
Friday, 9 October 2009
TROPHY WIFE
The Honourable Angus was tremendously proud of his collection. Over the years he had harvested a herd of trophies mostly from Africa but there was a smattering of taxidermy from South America and three tigers he had shot illegally in India. In pride of place over the big stone fireplace, firmly set between two magnificent lions heads, was his rogue bull elephant, the tusks protruding right out into the room seven foot or so above the floor so that for a party piece he could, when encouraged by too much whiskey and the shouts of his chums, perform a sort of gymnastic stunt by gripping each tusk in his hands and lifting himself up off the ground. The skill was to see how many lifts from the floor in front of the fireplace the Honourable Angus could perform before his muscles wouldn't let him do any more. The whole stunt wasn't always done just for show and would on occasions involve serious competition with anyone foolish or drunk enough to issue a challenge. The Honourable Angus though was so far unbeaten in the “Jumbo squat thrust stakes” as he called the exercise or as his long suffering wife named it, his “tinkering between the ivories.”
“How much do you want to bet this time?” The Honourable Angus was goading Jonny.
“Fifty quid,” said Jonny with more confidence than his wallet should have allowed.
“Oh Jonny don't be a fool. He's bound to beat you.” The Honourable Angus's wife had a soft spot for Jonny and she knew her husband would win the bet.
“Fifty quid.” Jonny confirmed the wager and the Honourable Angus removed his jacket ready for the trial.
It was another easy fifty pounds and the Honourable Angus managed fifteen lifts to Jonny's twelve. The two men slumped exhausted by their efforts into the leather arm chairs in front of the fire place.
“I'll bloody well beat you one day,” said Jonny.
“I doubt it,” replied the Honourable Angus. “But you're welcome to keep trying.”
The two men drank far too much whiskey and the Honourable Angus's wife probably over did it on the fizzy white and she tottered her way up to bed relieved that Jonny had decided to stay the night rather than risk the breathalyser.
The Honourable Angus came up several hours later and collapsed onto the bed in a state of drunken dishevelment. His wife tried to undress him but the decidedly unfriendly grunts and groans that he uttered put her off the job and she left him on his side of the big bed to snore with a token bit of the duvet over his dressed body.
She got up and went to the adjoining bathroom, squatting down, as she always did, without touching the seat to pee. Like her mother before her she had never liked contact with the seat of a lavatory, home or away, and so avoided it.
She hadn't heard Jonny come up and decided to go and see if he was alright. She padded along the landing and found the spare rooms empty with no sign of any life at all. The door to the guest's bathroom was open and she peered in to the empty room calling out his name in a half whisper. Heading down the main stairs in her bare feet, she pulled the pinstriped shirt, one of the Honourable Angus's old ones which she had adopted as her night dress, more closely around her shoulders and neck. She could see the dim light from the slightly open drawing room door way and she entered quietly.
At the far end of the long room she could see the figure of Jonny as he pulled himself up and down between the elephant's tusks. She stood quite still and took in the show before her. Jonny had no clothes on. It was , she began to realise, quite erotic watching Jonny, dear Jonny, straining with his back to her, the moisture on his body glistening in the warm glow of the table lamp that had sole responsibility for lighting the room. She could feel his efforts, see his sinews as they strained to lift and lower his undressed body. The biceps muscles on his arms tensed and relaxed as he went up then down, up, then down. His shoulder blades moved like metal plates beneath their taute skin covering. The hollows of his buttocks puckered, in then out, with every rise and fall. The Honourable Angus's wife felt as horny as the big Elephant's tusks she saw Jonny, dear Jonny, swinging his neat, naked body between, so beautifully in front of her.
She approached very quietly on bare tip toe and when he had lifted himself up off the floor once more, reached around his hips with her outstretched arms to feel for that most sensitive area of Jonny's anatomy, dear Jonny's anatomy. The effect of the Honourable Angus's wife's touch was electrifying. Jonny leapt and danced like an enraged cock salmon hooked on a fishing fly and fell to the floor uttering the words “Fuck me!”, a command that the Honourable Angus's wife didn't disappoint in carrying out almost as soon as Jonny had hit the floor.
And so it was that the Honourable Angus's wife and Jonny became lovers. In the very early hours under the watchful gaze of that vast grey head, the Honourable Angus's wife had the best sex she had had probably for ten years. It was as though the rogue bull himself was taking her and indeed at one stage a ménage a trois developed with the Honourable Angus's wife hanging on to the tusks while Jonny took full advantage of what was so obviously on offer just above him.
“That was the best tinkering between the ivories I've ever had,” she said to Jonny as the two of them sat spent together in the old arm chair under the twinkling, smiling, knowing eyes of that old rogue bull and the two lions. What comes round goes around the animals thought and how appropriate it was that justice had been done and the Honourable Angus's wife had been stuffed and mounted too.
“How much do you want to bet this time?” The Honourable Angus was goading Jonny.
“Fifty quid,” said Jonny with more confidence than his wallet should have allowed.
“Oh Jonny don't be a fool. He's bound to beat you.” The Honourable Angus's wife had a soft spot for Jonny and she knew her husband would win the bet.
“Fifty quid.” Jonny confirmed the wager and the Honourable Angus removed his jacket ready for the trial.
It was another easy fifty pounds and the Honourable Angus managed fifteen lifts to Jonny's twelve. The two men slumped exhausted by their efforts into the leather arm chairs in front of the fire place.
“I'll bloody well beat you one day,” said Jonny.
“I doubt it,” replied the Honourable Angus. “But you're welcome to keep trying.”
The two men drank far too much whiskey and the Honourable Angus's wife probably over did it on the fizzy white and she tottered her way up to bed relieved that Jonny had decided to stay the night rather than risk the breathalyser.
The Honourable Angus came up several hours later and collapsed onto the bed in a state of drunken dishevelment. His wife tried to undress him but the decidedly unfriendly grunts and groans that he uttered put her off the job and she left him on his side of the big bed to snore with a token bit of the duvet over his dressed body.
She got up and went to the adjoining bathroom, squatting down, as she always did, without touching the seat to pee. Like her mother before her she had never liked contact with the seat of a lavatory, home or away, and so avoided it.
She hadn't heard Jonny come up and decided to go and see if he was alright. She padded along the landing and found the spare rooms empty with no sign of any life at all. The door to the guest's bathroom was open and she peered in to the empty room calling out his name in a half whisper. Heading down the main stairs in her bare feet, she pulled the pinstriped shirt, one of the Honourable Angus's old ones which she had adopted as her night dress, more closely around her shoulders and neck. She could see the dim light from the slightly open drawing room door way and she entered quietly.
At the far end of the long room she could see the figure of Jonny as he pulled himself up and down between the elephant's tusks. She stood quite still and took in the show before her. Jonny had no clothes on. It was , she began to realise, quite erotic watching Jonny, dear Jonny, straining with his back to her, the moisture on his body glistening in the warm glow of the table lamp that had sole responsibility for lighting the room. She could feel his efforts, see his sinews as they strained to lift and lower his undressed body. The biceps muscles on his arms tensed and relaxed as he went up then down, up, then down. His shoulder blades moved like metal plates beneath their taute skin covering. The hollows of his buttocks puckered, in then out, with every rise and fall. The Honourable Angus's wife felt as horny as the big Elephant's tusks she saw Jonny, dear Jonny, swinging his neat, naked body between, so beautifully in front of her.
She approached very quietly on bare tip toe and when he had lifted himself up off the floor once more, reached around his hips with her outstretched arms to feel for that most sensitive area of Jonny's anatomy, dear Jonny's anatomy. The effect of the Honourable Angus's wife's touch was electrifying. Jonny leapt and danced like an enraged cock salmon hooked on a fishing fly and fell to the floor uttering the words “Fuck me!”, a command that the Honourable Angus's wife didn't disappoint in carrying out almost as soon as Jonny had hit the floor.
And so it was that the Honourable Angus's wife and Jonny became lovers. In the very early hours under the watchful gaze of that vast grey head, the Honourable Angus's wife had the best sex she had had probably for ten years. It was as though the rogue bull himself was taking her and indeed at one stage a ménage a trois developed with the Honourable Angus's wife hanging on to the tusks while Jonny took full advantage of what was so obviously on offer just above him.
“That was the best tinkering between the ivories I've ever had,” she said to Jonny as the two of them sat spent together in the old arm chair under the twinkling, smiling, knowing eyes of that old rogue bull and the two lions. What comes round goes around the animals thought and how appropriate it was that justice had been done and the Honourable Angus's wife had been stuffed and mounted too.
Thursday, 1 October 2009
THE WRITER AND PLAICE
THE WAITER AND PLAICE.
THE WRITER AND PLACE.
Chick was dyslectic.
Chuck was dyslectic.
Some tomes he just couldn’t ream a worm but on other occasions he would
Some times he just couldn’t read a word but on other occasions he would
very nearly make the end of a long lane. It was only the rotten world he
very nearly make the end of a long line. It was only the written word he
wood fund difficult. With spanking he hid no problem. Chick could convert
would find difficult. With speaking he had no problem. Chuck could converse
without paws, torque four ours. Chick’s emission was to become a waiter.
without pause, talk for hours. Chuck’s ambition was to become a writer.
Not just a ran of the mall waiter but a grope one like Earning Hummingway
Not just a run of the mill writer but a great one like Earnest Hemmingway
or Martian Aimless. Chick tired. He tired very herd. He would cry and
or Martin Aimess. Chuck tried. He tried very hard. He would try and
wrote a sentence hand show it to his mother who, of curse, could not make
write a sentence and show it to his mother who, of course, could not make
hood or toil of it.
head or tail of it.
“You’ll never be a waiter as long as there’s a whole in your apse,” said his
“You’ll never be a writer as long as there’s a hole in your arse,” said his
ma scaring the yang Chick.
ma scarring the young Chuck.
Under toured he purse severed and with the skull and patients of a stain,
Undeterred he persevered and with the skill and patience of a saint,
his early Tudor, Miss Anthrop, got Chick threw. He bosomed like a prize
his early tutor, Miss Anthrop, got Chuck through. He blossomed like a prize
moron at the haughty cultural sock eighty anal slow. Chick’s closet fiend
marrow at the horticultural society annual show. Chuck’s closest friend
was his spell cheque, the won on his lip tap. If he pinched the worm into his
was his spell check, the one on his lap top. If he punched the word into his
quay bored and it wanked, this was the whey to smell properly. He could,
key board and it worked, this was the way to spell properly. He could,
with the heap of madden scents, bee come a waiter.
with the help of modern science, become a writer.
Chick’s stale, his pros, got him father then oven he had him aged.
Chuck’s style, his prose, got him further then even he had imagined.
Tea cheers wood cool him on the fern washing to sea his writhing. Chick
Teachers would call him on the phone wishing to see his writing. Chuck
had celibacy state arse.
had celebrity status.
Of cause Chick became a collage lecher and torte, but in his spire tame he
Of course Chuck became a college lecturer and taught, but in his spare time he
was a writer in a fish rest rant.
THE WRITER AND PLACE.
Chick was dyslectic.
Chuck was dyslectic.
Some tomes he just couldn’t ream a worm but on other occasions he would
Some times he just couldn’t read a word but on other occasions he would
very nearly make the end of a long lane. It was only the rotten world he
very nearly make the end of a long line. It was only the written word he
wood fund difficult. With spanking he hid no problem. Chick could convert
would find difficult. With speaking he had no problem. Chuck could converse
without paws, torque four ours. Chick’s emission was to become a waiter.
without pause, talk for hours. Chuck’s ambition was to become a writer.
Not just a ran of the mall waiter but a grope one like Earning Hummingway
Not just a run of the mill writer but a great one like Earnest Hemmingway
or Martian Aimless. Chick tired. He tired very herd. He would cry and
or Martin Aimess. Chuck tried. He tried very hard. He would try and
wrote a sentence hand show it to his mother who, of curse, could not make
write a sentence and show it to his mother who, of course, could not make
hood or toil of it.
head or tail of it.
“You’ll never be a waiter as long as there’s a whole in your apse,” said his
“You’ll never be a writer as long as there’s a hole in your arse,” said his
ma scaring the yang Chick.
ma scarring the young Chuck.
Under toured he purse severed and with the skull and patients of a stain,
Undeterred he persevered and with the skill and patience of a saint,
his early Tudor, Miss Anthrop, got Chick threw. He bosomed like a prize
his early tutor, Miss Anthrop, got Chuck through. He blossomed like a prize
moron at the haughty cultural sock eighty anal slow. Chick’s closet fiend
marrow at the horticultural society annual show. Chuck’s closest friend
was his spell cheque, the won on his lip tap. If he pinched the worm into his
was his spell check, the one on his lap top. If he punched the word into his
quay bored and it wanked, this was the whey to smell properly. He could,
key board and it worked, this was the way to spell properly. He could,
with the heap of madden scents, bee come a waiter.
with the help of modern science, become a writer.
Chick’s stale, his pros, got him father then oven he had him aged.
Chuck’s style, his prose, got him further then even he had imagined.
Tea cheers wood cool him on the fern washing to sea his writhing. Chick
Teachers would call him on the phone wishing to see his writing. Chuck
had celibacy state arse.
had celebrity status.
Of cause Chick became a collage lecher and torte, but in his spire tame he
Of course Chuck became a college lecturer and taught, but in his spare time he
was a writer in a fish rest rant.
KINGCOMBE OAKS
How many drovers before took their rest right here
sat beneath the spreading bows to sip October’s air?
How many felt the leaves turn crisp waiting for the word
to float and kiss the earth below, a counterpane for sward?
Raucous crows still shout like louts, applause from rasping jays
they sense the combe is spewing forth its food for winter days.
And short horns moan and munch the cud still fattening out at grass
but drovers now won’t come this way to tramp this ancient pass.
These Hardy oaks have weathered years, a century or more
while modern droving rushes by upon its four by four.
And have we all forgotten as season’s ebb and flow
Just what it was that drovers had not many years ago?
Kingcombe oaks remind us, stout guardians gaining girth
those drovers and the meek man shall inherit all the earth.
sat beneath the spreading bows to sip October’s air?
How many felt the leaves turn crisp waiting for the word
to float and kiss the earth below, a counterpane for sward?
Raucous crows still shout like louts, applause from rasping jays
they sense the combe is spewing forth its food for winter days.
And short horns moan and munch the cud still fattening out at grass
but drovers now won’t come this way to tramp this ancient pass.
These Hardy oaks have weathered years, a century or more
while modern droving rushes by upon its four by four.
And have we all forgotten as season’s ebb and flow
Just what it was that drovers had not many years ago?
Kingcombe oaks remind us, stout guardians gaining girth
those drovers and the meek man shall inherit all the earth.
ROLLOVER
Jake was feeling in a good mood so he bought two lucky dips from the nice girl behind the fag counter in Martin’s the newsagents. He told her his pet joke too.
“Man goes to a zoo but there was only one dog. It was a Shitzu.”
The nice girl behind the counter wobbled with laughter. She handed Jake his lottery ticket and wished him luck. She wished most of her customers luck. Those that spoke politely to her, made an effort at conversation, showed they were human, not just impatient shoppers in a hurry.
“If you win the jackpot will you share it with me?” she said. She said it to lots of punters and they always smiled back at her. Some said “Of course love” without meaning it but most just smiled back at her. The young men thought that if they won, they’d get shacked up with Abbie Titmuss or any bit of decent totty, rather than the nice girl behind the fag counter. The nice girl behind the fag counter wasn’t a looker. Some said, rather cruelly, that she needed to carry a government health warning. Jake, on the other hand, came from the school of you don’t look at the mantle piece when you’re poking the fire. There was something he quite liked about the nice girl and he didn’t care about health warnings.
“If I win you can have half but you’ll have to make a honest man of me.” He said and the nice girl giggled at the idea. She liked Jake. As her customer’s went, Jake was all right. She quite fancied him.
Jake didn’t win. Only one of his numbers came up and he screwed up the phoney bit of paper-thin dreams and chucked it in the bin, the pedal bin next to the kitchen sink. It lodged between a smeared tin of meatballs and a wet bottle of Beck’s. The discarded knot of paper, the one that had been bought with so much optimism, lay scrunched up next to a damp Typhoo tea bag and a three quarters eaten apple tart in its tin foil dish. The little piece of printed hope had turned into no hope when six numbered balls spewed from Sir Gallahad at the press of a button by the smiling, fat, Irish TV man who spoke those meaningless words, “Good luck everyone.”
Jake felt robbed. It had been a rollover too. Twenty three million pounds and he hadn’t won a penny. Someone had though and the next time he called at the newsagent the talk from one of the girls who worked with the nice girl was that the winning ticket had been purchased from them.
“Just imagine that,” the girl who worked with the nice girl said to Jake as she passed him a packet of Marlborough Lites. “Some lucky bugger’s won the lot and we sold them the ticket.”
“How d’you know?” asked Jake.
“Lottery HQ tell us,” replied the girl who worked with the nice girl.
The local rag was full of it. Who, asked the headlines, was the mystery winner? No one came forward and within a week the search was forgotten and the headlines roared about a local lad who’d been killed in Basra.
On the Saturday evening, two weeks after the big jackpot, Jake breezed into the newsagents and waited until the nice girl was free. He’d got a plan.
“It was me.” He said to her almost too quickly.
“What was?”
“It was me that won the rollover jackpot.”
“You can’t have done,” said the nice girl.
“I bloody can,” said Jake. “What time d’you finish work because we’ve got some planning to do.”
They met in the snug bar of the Rose and Crown. The nice girl had a Cinzano and lemonade and Jake had his usual pint of larger. They got on well and after nearly too much to drink they walked back to Jake’s flat with a large Domino’s Pizza to share.
After the feed, the nice girl let Jake take advantage of her. She undressed and the two of them embraced on Jake’s old sofa and one thing led to another.
“Roll over,” implored Jake as he wrestled with his shirt. “I want to take you from behind.”
The nice girl let him and Jake had his way selfishly and in a matter of moments. Less time than it took to pick the six lucky balls.
“Right.” He said after he’d got himself dressed. “You’d better be going.”
“What?” said the nice girl somewhat taken aback. “Not even a cup of coffee.”
“Have a cup of coffee by all means. But then you ought to go. By the way I never won the lottery. I lied. I just wanted to shag you that’s all.”
The nice girl looked at Jake with pity. Pity turned to disgust and then disgust turned to amusement. She started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” said Jake.
“Nothing really,” said the nice girl. “ It’s just that it was me that won the rollover.”
“Man goes to a zoo but there was only one dog. It was a Shitzu.”
The nice girl behind the counter wobbled with laughter. She handed Jake his lottery ticket and wished him luck. She wished most of her customers luck. Those that spoke politely to her, made an effort at conversation, showed they were human, not just impatient shoppers in a hurry.
“If you win the jackpot will you share it with me?” she said. She said it to lots of punters and they always smiled back at her. Some said “Of course love” without meaning it but most just smiled back at her. The young men thought that if they won, they’d get shacked up with Abbie Titmuss or any bit of decent totty, rather than the nice girl behind the fag counter. The nice girl behind the fag counter wasn’t a looker. Some said, rather cruelly, that she needed to carry a government health warning. Jake, on the other hand, came from the school of you don’t look at the mantle piece when you’re poking the fire. There was something he quite liked about the nice girl and he didn’t care about health warnings.
“If I win you can have half but you’ll have to make a honest man of me.” He said and the nice girl giggled at the idea. She liked Jake. As her customer’s went, Jake was all right. She quite fancied him.
Jake didn’t win. Only one of his numbers came up and he screwed up the phoney bit of paper-thin dreams and chucked it in the bin, the pedal bin next to the kitchen sink. It lodged between a smeared tin of meatballs and a wet bottle of Beck’s. The discarded knot of paper, the one that had been bought with so much optimism, lay scrunched up next to a damp Typhoo tea bag and a three quarters eaten apple tart in its tin foil dish. The little piece of printed hope had turned into no hope when six numbered balls spewed from Sir Gallahad at the press of a button by the smiling, fat, Irish TV man who spoke those meaningless words, “Good luck everyone.”
Jake felt robbed. It had been a rollover too. Twenty three million pounds and he hadn’t won a penny. Someone had though and the next time he called at the newsagent the talk from one of the girls who worked with the nice girl was that the winning ticket had been purchased from them.
“Just imagine that,” the girl who worked with the nice girl said to Jake as she passed him a packet of Marlborough Lites. “Some lucky bugger’s won the lot and we sold them the ticket.”
“How d’you know?” asked Jake.
“Lottery HQ tell us,” replied the girl who worked with the nice girl.
The local rag was full of it. Who, asked the headlines, was the mystery winner? No one came forward and within a week the search was forgotten and the headlines roared about a local lad who’d been killed in Basra.
On the Saturday evening, two weeks after the big jackpot, Jake breezed into the newsagents and waited until the nice girl was free. He’d got a plan.
“It was me.” He said to her almost too quickly.
“What was?”
“It was me that won the rollover jackpot.”
“You can’t have done,” said the nice girl.
“I bloody can,” said Jake. “What time d’you finish work because we’ve got some planning to do.”
They met in the snug bar of the Rose and Crown. The nice girl had a Cinzano and lemonade and Jake had his usual pint of larger. They got on well and after nearly too much to drink they walked back to Jake’s flat with a large Domino’s Pizza to share.
After the feed, the nice girl let Jake take advantage of her. She undressed and the two of them embraced on Jake’s old sofa and one thing led to another.
“Roll over,” implored Jake as he wrestled with his shirt. “I want to take you from behind.”
The nice girl let him and Jake had his way selfishly and in a matter of moments. Less time than it took to pick the six lucky balls.
“Right.” He said after he’d got himself dressed. “You’d better be going.”
“What?” said the nice girl somewhat taken aback. “Not even a cup of coffee.”
“Have a cup of coffee by all means. But then you ought to go. By the way I never won the lottery. I lied. I just wanted to shag you that’s all.”
The nice girl looked at Jake with pity. Pity turned to disgust and then disgust turned to amusement. She started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” said Jake.
“Nothing really,” said the nice girl. “ It’s just that it was me that won the rollover.”
SOUND RELATIONSHIP
Wah, wah, wah,
start-up sound of life
gas and air have done their stuff
so too an old midwife.
Pooh, pooh, pooh,
messy sleepless nights
Calpol and the Bugaboo
cot death night-time frights.
No, no, no,
you can't have any more
well because I say so
and you've eaten twenty-four.
Kiss, kiss, kiss,
it's time to say good night
don't forget to clean your teeth
and mind the bugs don't bite.
Sob, sob, sob,
it really isn't fair
he did it to me first
by pulling out my hair.
Shan't, won't, can't,
I hate you anyway
now you're not my friend no more,
I never want to play.
Ha, ha, ha,
he, he, he,
goodie goodie gumdrops
granny's come for tea.
Hug, hug, hug,
I’ll always love you mum
you’re the best there is
you’re the number one.
Why , why , why,
oh please do let me go
I will be home by half past ten
I cross my heart you know.
Slash, slash, slash
dying at the scene
cut by mindless violence
Scream. Scream. Scream.
start-up sound of life
gas and air have done their stuff
so too an old midwife.
Pooh, pooh, pooh,
messy sleepless nights
Calpol and the Bugaboo
cot death night-time frights.
No, no, no,
you can't have any more
well because I say so
and you've eaten twenty-four.
Kiss, kiss, kiss,
it's time to say good night
don't forget to clean your teeth
and mind the bugs don't bite.
Sob, sob, sob,
it really isn't fair
he did it to me first
by pulling out my hair.
Shan't, won't, can't,
I hate you anyway
now you're not my friend no more,
I never want to play.
Ha, ha, ha,
he, he, he,
goodie goodie gumdrops
granny's come for tea.
Hug, hug, hug,
I’ll always love you mum
you’re the best there is
you’re the number one.
Why , why , why,
oh please do let me go
I will be home by half past ten
I cross my heart you know.
Slash, slash, slash
dying at the scene
cut by mindless violence
Scream. Scream. Scream.
GLOBAL WARMING
He quite often got rather hot under the collar. But then Donald would. He’d developed a bad temper. “Got out of bed the wrong side, ” was how his wife Eve described his mood some mornings when Donald was obviously not on top form. “Grumpy old bugger” was what she really thought.
Donald didn’t used to be like that. Circumstances had made him. The wear and tear of life had got to him. The mortgage, the bills, the job, the sodding neighbours, speeding cameras and bloody parking tickets, the crap on the TV, immigration, Iraq, Tony fucking Blair, soft Judges, the lack of local police (“When on earth did you last see one in our street?”) and the price of petrol; everything had just piled up. He couldn’t put his finger on the actual date when things had changed. They had though. Rather like his thinning, grey hair, it had happened gradually. He thought it was somewhere between fifty-four and a half and fifty-six that things had probably really got worse. He didn’t really enjoy sex with his wife anymore and didn’t think about doing it with any body else’s either. His waistline could no longer be pulled in for any length of time and he had become pear shaped in both senses of the word. He looked stupid in jeans and ridiculous on any beach. But by far his biggest worry was climate change.
“Well what can you do about it dear?” said his wife to him when Donald read out aloud anything pertinent to environmental issues reported in the Daily Telegraph.
“We just can’t let the third world do what we did. They can’t be allowed to make the same mistakes.”
“What? You mean we can use their oil, mine their natural resources, but we mustn’t let them drive cars or have dish washers.”
“Something like that,” said Donald.
They liked their holiday’s abroad. Donald spent hours leafing through piles of glossy brochures, putting post-it notes on those pages he thought might be of interest. They’d been to Santorini in the spring, the remneant of a volcano set like pumice stone in the Aegean Sea. They quite liked it but Donald thought that it was being ruined by tourism. In February they chose Zanzibar, the Spice Island.
When their battered mini-bus had been stopped on the bumpy dirt track en route from the airport to their resort hotel, the angry crowd terrified Donald and Eve Global. They were abducted and taken off into the bush by a group of machete wielding natives. The ritualistic way in which they met their end was taken straight off the pages of history. The Acting British Consul in Stonetown had never seen anything like it before. Donald and his wife were boiled alive, each cooked in an old oil drum filled with salt water and heated up on a fire of broken wooden pallets, rubber tyres and old tree stumps.
Donald didn’t used to be like that. Circumstances had made him. The wear and tear of life had got to him. The mortgage, the bills, the job, the sodding neighbours, speeding cameras and bloody parking tickets, the crap on the TV, immigration, Iraq, Tony fucking Blair, soft Judges, the lack of local police (“When on earth did you last see one in our street?”) and the price of petrol; everything had just piled up. He couldn’t put his finger on the actual date when things had changed. They had though. Rather like his thinning, grey hair, it had happened gradually. He thought it was somewhere between fifty-four and a half and fifty-six that things had probably really got worse. He didn’t really enjoy sex with his wife anymore and didn’t think about doing it with any body else’s either. His waistline could no longer be pulled in for any length of time and he had become pear shaped in both senses of the word. He looked stupid in jeans and ridiculous on any beach. But by far his biggest worry was climate change.
“Well what can you do about it dear?” said his wife to him when Donald read out aloud anything pertinent to environmental issues reported in the Daily Telegraph.
“We just can’t let the third world do what we did. They can’t be allowed to make the same mistakes.”
“What? You mean we can use their oil, mine their natural resources, but we mustn’t let them drive cars or have dish washers.”
“Something like that,” said Donald.
They liked their holiday’s abroad. Donald spent hours leafing through piles of glossy brochures, putting post-it notes on those pages he thought might be of interest. They’d been to Santorini in the spring, the remneant of a volcano set like pumice stone in the Aegean Sea. They quite liked it but Donald thought that it was being ruined by tourism. In February they chose Zanzibar, the Spice Island.
When their battered mini-bus had been stopped on the bumpy dirt track en route from the airport to their resort hotel, the angry crowd terrified Donald and Eve Global. They were abducted and taken off into the bush by a group of machete wielding natives. The ritualistic way in which they met their end was taken straight off the pages of history. The Acting British Consul in Stonetown had never seen anything like it before. Donald and his wife were boiled alive, each cooked in an old oil drum filled with salt water and heated up on a fire of broken wooden pallets, rubber tyres and old tree stumps.
GAME BIRD
It was still quite early in the season. The leaves were on the trees and some, those from the old school, said that pheasants shouldn’t really be shot at until the branches were bare. None the less a day out in October got one into the swing of things for the big days in January. Josh was delighted to have been invited to shoot with Ben. More to the point he would have been very offended had he not been. Ben had been his guest several times before and a return invitation was nearly overdue.
They met at the pub in the village and sat down to a full English of ridiculous proportions with lashings of tea or coffee. The talk was the same as when any group of like minded men congregate before a sporting event. The pleasantries out the way, the hand shakes and hellos yes we met at so-and-so’s, and the slap on the backs for those that most certainly knew each other, the talk started. It usually concerned people’s dress sense.
“Bloody hell Dick. Got your wife’s trousers on again I see!” Dick liked fairly garish plus fours. He also like dressing up in his wife’s clothes but no one but him knew how near to the bone the statement was.
“Where on earth did you find that tie?” Ralph had the image of a nearly naked woman emblazoned done his tie.
“It’s the closest he’ll get to a bird all day,” said Michael, his own tie covered in birds of the sort he was hoping to start killing soon.
“Your waistcoat looks like a fucking table clothe!” Rupert was pointing at Larry’s considerable gut.
“ Well at least I made the bloody effort.” Larry was wearing a three-piece shooting suit. “You, you poor hairy arsed farmer couldn’t afford a bit of tailoring of this quality.”
“Oooww,” went the school boy noise from at least three or four of the party.
“Who’s not turned up yet?” Michael asked the day’s host.
“Lucy,” said Ben.
“Who?” said Michael and two others.
“Lucinda. ” Ben smiled as he said her name again.
“Bloody hell.” Michael expressed what several of them felt. “She’s not shooting is she?”
“Yes she is,” said Ben.
“She’s bloody dangerous,” said Michael.
“Not with a gun,” said Ben.
“I didn’t mean with a gun,” said Michael. The others sniggered.
“ Who’s she shagging currently? ” asked Larry.
“No one I know,” replied Ben.
“Fair game then,” said Ralph.
“You keep your gun in its sleeve,” said Ben. They laughed.
“She can shag me any time she likes,” said Larry making one of those clenched fist gestures men do when they are talking dirty.
Lucinda arrived looking gorgeous. Had there been a prize for the best turned out gun, she would have won it hands down. She kissed the host Ben warmly on both cheeks and did pretty much the same to Michael, Larry, Ralph, Rupert and Dick. She shook Josh by the hand.
“Very good to meet you,” she said to him and he got the impression that she really meant it.
The keeper arrived.
“Shed be wend.” He announced the stillness in the weather although to some his dialect was impossible to understand. Ben called for hush and explained the day’s rules. They were eight guns moving two. They were shooting good pheasants and partridge, no woodcock and no ground game. The keeper’s horn would sound the start and end of each drive. If any antis showed up, guns were to be put away in their sleeves and the shoot would be suspended until the police arrived.
“Be better all round if we just added them to the bag.” Michael interrupted Ben’s speech.
Enjoy your day was Ben’s final instruction before he passed around the little leather wallet from which each gun pulled a number. Who stood next to who was always a source of considerable interest, particularly today. All the men wanted to be drawn next to Lucinda.
The guns moved off from the pub in a four-wheel vehicle convoy and headed for the first drive. Lucinda was in the pound seat. She’d drawn number four and straight away she went to work killing everything out in front with the sort of precision shooting that she had become famous for. She only killed birds going away if her neighbours had already missed them. It gave her an enormous sense of satisfaction to wipe the eye of a male gun standing next to her in the line.
The day progressed as shooting days do, with some drives better than others, some shots not as accurate as others and as a result, some guns enjoying themselves more than others. The drink, swing adjuster as Ben called it, was taken after each drive from various flasks and bottles. Larry had brought champagne, which he opened and offered around after the second drive. He held the bottle of bubbly in one hand and a bottle of sloe gin in the other. Some had the two mixed into their glass.
“I call it a sloegasm.” Larry was generous with his income, good with his words.
“Haven’t had one of those,” said Lucinda when it was her turn. The men knew that she was probably not talking about the cocktail. “Important to try everything,” she added which confirmed it in their minds.
The last drive took the bag to over two hundred and Ben and the keeper were both pleased with the day. Everyone headed back to the pub where a private function room had been prepared and a big table laid for the eight shooters.
“Cracking day!” said Larry.
“Hear! Hear!” agreed Michael and they all raised a pre-meal drink as a toast to Ben.
“Thanks for the invitation Ben,” said Josh.
“It’s not over yet,” said Ben with a smile.
After the drinks the party sat down.
“I don’t care who sits where as long as I sit at this end and Lucinda sits at the other.” Ben’s instructions were obeyed and the guests sat down at the table accordingly.
The French onion soup was fine and the beef rare. The vegetables were organic and not cooked to a pulp. The wine was from Burgundy and as soon as one bottle was empty, another took its place. The conversation flowed like the drink and at times everyone seemed to be saying something and then it was just one person holding the talking stick. The late afternoon became evening and after the bread and butter pudding and with the cheese, the port arrived.
“Let’s play a game,” suggested Michael. “Let’s have a sweep on the number of drops that are left in the decanter when we think it’s empty.”
“Don’t be a silly bugger,” said Dick. “When it’s empty it’s empty.”
“No it isn’t,” declared Michael confidently with a slur. “I’ll call fifty dropssh and here’s my twenty pound note.”
Everyone put twenty pounds into the middle of the table and Michael wrote down the eight guesses. Ben elected to perform the pouring ceremony once the decanter was empty and he tipped the cut glass with his steady hands over an empty wine glass and as each drop dripped out the whole group shouted the number in boisterous unison. It was amazing. From a vessel that looked empty, the little drops of dark red liquid continued to emerge. Thirty-seven drops splashed into the wineglass, the last few with a painfully slow reluctance as though they wanted to remain embedded in the decanter forever.
Ralph was the nearest with thirty-six, his age, so he picked up the £160 from the table with much merriment all round.
“I’ve got a good game.” Lucinda’s announcement shut up the general hubbub.
“Go on,” said Ben.
“It’s called cock roulette.” Josh swallowed rather too loudly. Michael nearly choked on his drink.
Lucinda continued to explain the rules to the very captive audience.
“Every one apart from me puts twenty pounds in the kitty. The lights are turned out and the door locked. No one must utter a sound. Everyone changes seats in the dark. Every one sits down and unbuttons or unzips their fly. Everyone gets out his cock. I get under the table and select one lucky member at random and give that member a blowjob. The lucky recipient mustn’t say a word or make a sound. If he does, I stop what I’m doing and he has to pay a forfeit of double what’s on the table. Make a noise and I stop and move on to another contestant. The game is over when the job has been successfully completed without interruption and I turn the lights back on. If you don’t want to play you have to leave, after paying up forty pounds and being clucked out of the room like a chicken.”
Dick looked decidedly uncomfortable. Ralph straightened his loosened tie and chucked a twenty on to the table. Rupert coughed. Larry grinned from ear to ear. Josh thought he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Michael undid his fly and Ben sat quite relaxed at the far end of the table with a bemused smile.
“There’s only one winner of course but I get to keep all the money. Do you understand gentlemen?” No one said that they didn’t. Most just froze like rabbits caught in a headlight.
“Right. Let’s play gentlemen.” Lucinda pushed her chair back from the end of the table and got up to switch off the lights and lock the door.
The room was pitch black and once the men had stopped bumping into each other and found a new seat, an unnatural calm came over the place. Breathing, heavy breathing, was the predominant sound around the table, backed up by the occasional nervous sip taken from a drinking glass. Someone belched loudly and there was a lot of surpressed giggling.
“The game won’t start until you shut up.” Lucinda’s voice came at them like a schoolmistress through the dark.
It wasn’t that difficult to work out who was sitting in which seat and Josh found himself latched on to and sucked and blown to oblivion. He didn’t make a sound. The job done, after a few moments the lights went on to general guffaws of drunken laughter, shouts of oh no, looks of relief and some of disappointment.
“Well who’s the lucky bugger then?” said Michael.
“That’s presumably for him to know and you to find out.” Lucinda sat down again after scooping up her pile of bank notes.
“Obviously not you then Michael,” said Larry adjusting his dress.
“Can we have another shot?” asked Ralph waving another twenty-pound note wildly.
“Sorry to disappoint you boys but I’ve had all I want thanks.” Lucinda licked her lips and drained her port glass.
The party came to a gradual end and everyone drifted down into the car park. Josh said his goodbyes and when it came to Lucinda kissed her on the cheek and whispered in her ear.
“I didn’t do anything!” Lucinda replied honestly. “I just set you up. It’s always the same. Call it my party piece. I get you men to part with your money and leave your egos and fantasies to do the rest. I just stay in my seat and it works every time. Over a hundred quid just to switch a light on and off and a lot of fun watching you boys drooling like you always do.”
Josh didn’t believe what he was hearing once again.
“But if it wasn’t?” Josh was wide-eyed and worried and left his question unfinished.
“Not me Josh. I promise you.” Lucinda kissed him goodbye.
“Great day. Thanks for having me.” Josh shook Ben by the hand in the pub car park and somewhat confused and bewildered got into his car.
“Thanks for coming,” said Ben after him. “I thought you shot rather well.”
They met at the pub in the village and sat down to a full English of ridiculous proportions with lashings of tea or coffee. The talk was the same as when any group of like minded men congregate before a sporting event. The pleasantries out the way, the hand shakes and hellos yes we met at so-and-so’s, and the slap on the backs for those that most certainly knew each other, the talk started. It usually concerned people’s dress sense.
“Bloody hell Dick. Got your wife’s trousers on again I see!” Dick liked fairly garish plus fours. He also like dressing up in his wife’s clothes but no one but him knew how near to the bone the statement was.
“Where on earth did you find that tie?” Ralph had the image of a nearly naked woman emblazoned done his tie.
“It’s the closest he’ll get to a bird all day,” said Michael, his own tie covered in birds of the sort he was hoping to start killing soon.
“Your waistcoat looks like a fucking table clothe!” Rupert was pointing at Larry’s considerable gut.
“ Well at least I made the bloody effort.” Larry was wearing a three-piece shooting suit. “You, you poor hairy arsed farmer couldn’t afford a bit of tailoring of this quality.”
“Oooww,” went the school boy noise from at least three or four of the party.
“Who’s not turned up yet?” Michael asked the day’s host.
“Lucy,” said Ben.
“Who?” said Michael and two others.
“Lucinda. ” Ben smiled as he said her name again.
“Bloody hell.” Michael expressed what several of them felt. “She’s not shooting is she?”
“Yes she is,” said Ben.
“She’s bloody dangerous,” said Michael.
“Not with a gun,” said Ben.
“I didn’t mean with a gun,” said Michael. The others sniggered.
“ Who’s she shagging currently? ” asked Larry.
“No one I know,” replied Ben.
“Fair game then,” said Ralph.
“You keep your gun in its sleeve,” said Ben. They laughed.
“She can shag me any time she likes,” said Larry making one of those clenched fist gestures men do when they are talking dirty.
Lucinda arrived looking gorgeous. Had there been a prize for the best turned out gun, she would have won it hands down. She kissed the host Ben warmly on both cheeks and did pretty much the same to Michael, Larry, Ralph, Rupert and Dick. She shook Josh by the hand.
“Very good to meet you,” she said to him and he got the impression that she really meant it.
The keeper arrived.
“Shed be wend.” He announced the stillness in the weather although to some his dialect was impossible to understand. Ben called for hush and explained the day’s rules. They were eight guns moving two. They were shooting good pheasants and partridge, no woodcock and no ground game. The keeper’s horn would sound the start and end of each drive. If any antis showed up, guns were to be put away in their sleeves and the shoot would be suspended until the police arrived.
“Be better all round if we just added them to the bag.” Michael interrupted Ben’s speech.
Enjoy your day was Ben’s final instruction before he passed around the little leather wallet from which each gun pulled a number. Who stood next to who was always a source of considerable interest, particularly today. All the men wanted to be drawn next to Lucinda.
The guns moved off from the pub in a four-wheel vehicle convoy and headed for the first drive. Lucinda was in the pound seat. She’d drawn number four and straight away she went to work killing everything out in front with the sort of precision shooting that she had become famous for. She only killed birds going away if her neighbours had already missed them. It gave her an enormous sense of satisfaction to wipe the eye of a male gun standing next to her in the line.
The day progressed as shooting days do, with some drives better than others, some shots not as accurate as others and as a result, some guns enjoying themselves more than others. The drink, swing adjuster as Ben called it, was taken after each drive from various flasks and bottles. Larry had brought champagne, which he opened and offered around after the second drive. He held the bottle of bubbly in one hand and a bottle of sloe gin in the other. Some had the two mixed into their glass.
“I call it a sloegasm.” Larry was generous with his income, good with his words.
“Haven’t had one of those,” said Lucinda when it was her turn. The men knew that she was probably not talking about the cocktail. “Important to try everything,” she added which confirmed it in their minds.
The last drive took the bag to over two hundred and Ben and the keeper were both pleased with the day. Everyone headed back to the pub where a private function room had been prepared and a big table laid for the eight shooters.
“Cracking day!” said Larry.
“Hear! Hear!” agreed Michael and they all raised a pre-meal drink as a toast to Ben.
“Thanks for the invitation Ben,” said Josh.
“It’s not over yet,” said Ben with a smile.
After the drinks the party sat down.
“I don’t care who sits where as long as I sit at this end and Lucinda sits at the other.” Ben’s instructions were obeyed and the guests sat down at the table accordingly.
The French onion soup was fine and the beef rare. The vegetables were organic and not cooked to a pulp. The wine was from Burgundy and as soon as one bottle was empty, another took its place. The conversation flowed like the drink and at times everyone seemed to be saying something and then it was just one person holding the talking stick. The late afternoon became evening and after the bread and butter pudding and with the cheese, the port arrived.
“Let’s play a game,” suggested Michael. “Let’s have a sweep on the number of drops that are left in the decanter when we think it’s empty.”
“Don’t be a silly bugger,” said Dick. “When it’s empty it’s empty.”
“No it isn’t,” declared Michael confidently with a slur. “I’ll call fifty dropssh and here’s my twenty pound note.”
Everyone put twenty pounds into the middle of the table and Michael wrote down the eight guesses. Ben elected to perform the pouring ceremony once the decanter was empty and he tipped the cut glass with his steady hands over an empty wine glass and as each drop dripped out the whole group shouted the number in boisterous unison. It was amazing. From a vessel that looked empty, the little drops of dark red liquid continued to emerge. Thirty-seven drops splashed into the wineglass, the last few with a painfully slow reluctance as though they wanted to remain embedded in the decanter forever.
Ralph was the nearest with thirty-six, his age, so he picked up the £160 from the table with much merriment all round.
“I’ve got a good game.” Lucinda’s announcement shut up the general hubbub.
“Go on,” said Ben.
“It’s called cock roulette.” Josh swallowed rather too loudly. Michael nearly choked on his drink.
Lucinda continued to explain the rules to the very captive audience.
“Every one apart from me puts twenty pounds in the kitty. The lights are turned out and the door locked. No one must utter a sound. Everyone changes seats in the dark. Every one sits down and unbuttons or unzips their fly. Everyone gets out his cock. I get under the table and select one lucky member at random and give that member a blowjob. The lucky recipient mustn’t say a word or make a sound. If he does, I stop what I’m doing and he has to pay a forfeit of double what’s on the table. Make a noise and I stop and move on to another contestant. The game is over when the job has been successfully completed without interruption and I turn the lights back on. If you don’t want to play you have to leave, after paying up forty pounds and being clucked out of the room like a chicken.”
Dick looked decidedly uncomfortable. Ralph straightened his loosened tie and chucked a twenty on to the table. Rupert coughed. Larry grinned from ear to ear. Josh thought he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Michael undid his fly and Ben sat quite relaxed at the far end of the table with a bemused smile.
“There’s only one winner of course but I get to keep all the money. Do you understand gentlemen?” No one said that they didn’t. Most just froze like rabbits caught in a headlight.
“Right. Let’s play gentlemen.” Lucinda pushed her chair back from the end of the table and got up to switch off the lights and lock the door.
The room was pitch black and once the men had stopped bumping into each other and found a new seat, an unnatural calm came over the place. Breathing, heavy breathing, was the predominant sound around the table, backed up by the occasional nervous sip taken from a drinking glass. Someone belched loudly and there was a lot of surpressed giggling.
“The game won’t start until you shut up.” Lucinda’s voice came at them like a schoolmistress through the dark.
It wasn’t that difficult to work out who was sitting in which seat and Josh found himself latched on to and sucked and blown to oblivion. He didn’t make a sound. The job done, after a few moments the lights went on to general guffaws of drunken laughter, shouts of oh no, looks of relief and some of disappointment.
“Well who’s the lucky bugger then?” said Michael.
“That’s presumably for him to know and you to find out.” Lucinda sat down again after scooping up her pile of bank notes.
“Obviously not you then Michael,” said Larry adjusting his dress.
“Can we have another shot?” asked Ralph waving another twenty-pound note wildly.
“Sorry to disappoint you boys but I’ve had all I want thanks.” Lucinda licked her lips and drained her port glass.
The party came to a gradual end and everyone drifted down into the car park. Josh said his goodbyes and when it came to Lucinda kissed her on the cheek and whispered in her ear.
“I didn’t do anything!” Lucinda replied honestly. “I just set you up. It’s always the same. Call it my party piece. I get you men to part with your money and leave your egos and fantasies to do the rest. I just stay in my seat and it works every time. Over a hundred quid just to switch a light on and off and a lot of fun watching you boys drooling like you always do.”
Josh didn’t believe what he was hearing once again.
“But if it wasn’t?” Josh was wide-eyed and worried and left his question unfinished.
“Not me Josh. I promise you.” Lucinda kissed him goodbye.
“Great day. Thanks for having me.” Josh shook Ben by the hand in the pub car park and somewhat confused and bewildered got into his car.
“Thanks for coming,” said Ben after him. “I thought you shot rather well.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
