THAT'S SCORN TOO FAR

All I did and she flipped her lid
was to pinch that other girl's bum
and it wasn't that bad but she went mad
when I said I fancied her mum.
She mustn't frown, please calm down
it was only a bit of a titter
when I said "Howdie" in the back of the Audi
to our regular baby sitter.
To damage the car is a stroke too far
and all the neighbours have seen us
and what on earth for did she get the chain saw
to cut off my wandering ......................

CHOPPER GIRL

It may sound flash

to be brash with the cash

but I'd rather travel by chopper.

She comes too

it's great for the view

just you try and stop her.

She must be daft

there's always a draught

the rotors spin and trick us

I don't know why

she's terribly shy

but she never bothers with .......................

THE BUTLER'S SON

Three Gilda's stand in their orchard at the centre of Carral

surrounded by the unfinished business of Spanish flats.

Gilda was the butler (and gardener too) at Maplesden

back in the day when Geno Washington had his Ram Jam Band.

Antonio and I as reckless youths went about in the grey mini pick-up

and tore through Sussex hedges.

We made silage and hay with grumpy Len

and sat in Mick's front cockpit

as the Tiger moth fell from its loop.

We drank pints at the Bridge and further a field

and plotted to get past Jeano (not Washington)

as she watched over those Stacey girls just playing with us.

Those were the days before

the times when the butler's son had perfect vision

and we both had healthy hearts and could walk, run anywhere we wanted

After the phone call and the flight to La Coruna

it was as though the years had done nothing to us what so ever

because we laughed and drank and slapped each other on the back

and Rose, beautiful Rose,

still called us "naughty boys" and wagged her finger at us because she can.

And we remembered to our hearts content

and dreamt a little of just what might have been.

TEN TEN TEN

Last Sunday was a date
with considerable fate
as all the tens lined up. It was their turn.

Nothing much occurred
the World remained unstirred
apart from birth and death and those that yearn.

At exactly ten past ten
my Sunday morning thing
with Captain Haddock and those Thompson twins

Put on that CD
had two cups of tea
got the phone. Had to 'cause it rings.

Jimmy tells his joke
he's quite a funny bloke.
It helps him overcome his awful stutter.

Freaky or what
or some conniving plot
I'm still not sure and does it really matter?

ten ten Tin Tin Ting Ting tea tea ring ring Jim Jim hee hee ten ten ten

ROAD WORKS. NO IT DOESN'T.

What can one do

stuck in a queue

with just a hard shoulder to cry on.

The kids in the back

a pain in the neck

and your wife who roars like a lion.

The sign for road works

is written by jerks

cause here we all are simply stuck.

The truth on the sign

is all very fine

do you think they give a flying .............

FOREIGN PARTS

Imagine my dismay

when just the other day

I took my holiday shots

to Sandra who works in Boots.

She said if I could pay

they'd be ready that same day.

She ticked the box for matt

and that was what I got.

Quite whose mat's in the shot

doesn't bother me a lot

what really gets my bile

is I cannot see the Nile.

I shouldn't have any qualms

the photo has some palms

but I certainly can't show Grannie

my picture with a ...........................

HOODIE

The man in the hood knew that he should

but couldn't see for the looking.

He eats special K every day

because he doesn't like cooking.

He could never quite see what he wanted to be

or taste with the tip of his tongue.

You know he is there with that terrible stare

and the tune he has stared to hum.

Stuck in the crowd the pointed white shroud

hints at something beneath.

Beware of the words like food for the birds

who peck without any teeth.

Don't give up hope let's pray for the Pope

he's good and earns his shilling,

but which is mitre, the sword or the writer?

Both in God's name appear willing.

PLEASE MIND THE GAP.

When driving in France

a good second glance

is often a tres bonne idee.

If you got in a hole

by loosing control

it might just ruin your day.

So keep on the right

and especially at night

beware of the unwelcome shunt.

What shame it would bring

if your ding-a-ling

was found in another girl's ....

BALANCING ACT

Hickory dickory dock
the girl slipped out of her frock
with amazing agility
and balance ability
she kept a firm grip on his..........

A protrusion that's hard as a puck
gives a girl something more than just luck
but if it's a sagger
you may need Viagra
or you won't be getting a.........

So be careful of such silly stunts
the bruises, the falls and the grunts
don't be gymnastic
just be fantastic
and you'll always find plenty of..............

THE GENIE AND GEORGE.

A girl went to stay in Tobruck
spent the night with a man in a souk
she said to the Arab
let me feel your scabbard
and he thought she wanted to cook.

He let her buff up his lamp
but half way through got cramp
she said "Oh it's weeny"
then up popped this Genie
who sadly seemed ever so camp.

"Your wish my dear I'll obey"
said the Genie in his own way
and with a limp wrist
and a puff of white mist
he turned into George Clooneigh.

Now the girl she purred like a cat
and the Genie took off his hat
as she hit the floor
shouting "More George, please more,
I'll show you my welcome mat."

The Genie he wasn't impressed
at the girl who was so undressed
To quench her ardour
he'd need something harder
this was a terrible test.

"Is it in?" screamed the girl out of hand
as the Genie or George took command
and with a great shove
said, "There you are love!"
She cried, "That's not me, it's the sand."

The moral can run rather a muck
at this tale of the girl and her luck
but one things quite clear
a Genie who's queer
will never give a good ...........

JAIL BIRD

What an awful to do,
Jake got a fuck off tattoo.
What he did for a bet
he'd never forget
if you saw it neither would you.

In the pub it was fine for a joke
the girl on the back of a bloke
but Jake did some bird
and the last thing we heard
he couldn't bend down for the soap.

HOW A GIRL'S BOTTOM CLENCH FORMED THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY.

Those Brooklyn barbers took too much off. They never listen. Albert Einstein rides the sub-way feeling grumpy. He stands like always. There're never any seats. There's a girl opposite and he looks at her but tries not to stare. She's just standing there, bolt upright, and when the train moves, lurches even, she doesn't seem to have any visible means of support. She just stays there planted to the spot. He marvels for a moment and then it dawns on him that the laws of physics are the same for all observers in uniform motion relative to one another. E equals mc squared he thinks to himself. Energy equals muscle control squared. That's it he thinks. His hair will grow back and he'll probably change his barber.

THE GIRL WHO WOULDN'T LET GO.

I met this girl and she wouldn't let go.
I said, "Relax and go with the flow."
She couldn't or wouldn't or just didn't care.
She got on the train and I guess she's still there.
She said she liked Poles but I am from Britain.
I'm sure she could see I was terribly smitten.
There was something about her, her absolute class
that and the thing she could do with her ...............

EDMONDO'S SIGH.

Old Edmondo was glad that winter seemed to be at its end. The months of cold and damp had got to him as never before. These days he couldn’t seem to get warm. The fire hissed at him, the reluctant logs too sappy, too wet to take up the offer at once and when the flames did lick into action beating the thick wood smoke to bring some flickering, dancing, brightness into the room, Edmondo couldn’t feel their warmth until he’d held his worn and wrinkled hands out towards them for a minute or two. Even then and almost stroking the flames, he had to rub his hands together, like dried leaves, to get the coldness out of the joints in his fingers. Those fingers that had gripped and toiled, clawed and wrung, pointed and poked and picked. Dirty broken nails and cuts and calluses from a life of manual labour, Edmondo’s hands were his tools, the tools of his trade and even more than the heavy lines on his face, his deep brow set above those watery old man’s eyes, his hands told his tale as a mountain man.

The lighter mornings meant that he’d be up, the dog fed, and chopping his kindling before seven with the first cup of sweet dark coffee and mouthful of bread by half past. It had been a long winter and the snow had covered the hill side for many months. From the back door to the wooden outhouse the ground looked surprised. Edmondo had cleared a path and even though the snow had tried to take control, the old man and his wide snow shovel had won the battle. The ground was dark, dirty and damp, like a scar, and the banked snow hung around at the margins, pock marked with cold grey ash from the fire, looking lumpy and off-white heaped there by the old man’s efforts and not by nature herself. The hillside was still muffled, blanketed in white, but Edmondo could just make out the sound of running water, the first sign of the thaw as the hidden stream took itself off down the slopes to the valley bottom. A sigh of relief from the running water that winter seemed to be at its end.

The buzzard mewed somewhere above the tree line, out of sight but up there circling slowly, hunting, looking from above at anything brave enough to break cover and dart across the white ground. A furry snack taken, stabbed to a violent death by the razor sharp swooping hooked beak and carried lifeless but still warm up the hill out of harms way for the big bird at least. Edmondo heard the call. He stopped and looked up, hugging the logs to his chest as though it was them being hunted, but he didn’t see the kill and shuffled back inside to stack the wood beside the fireplace so that it would start to understand its purpose, why it was there. He’d have that bird before spring was over. He’d have it before it could take any of the new born.

Edmondo wiped the end of his cold wet nose across the back of his cold, hard hand. The snail like trail rubbed off onto the well worn faded blue overall he wore day in day out and mixed in with the living culture that, like millions of hairy growing spores on a Petri dish, waved welcome to the new arrival. The cocktail of the grime from the mountain hut fermenting on Edmondo’s uniform was dust and grit and smoke from the fire, oil from the chain saw, grease, duck fat, sheep dip, grass, sweat, red wine, spittle, soot, blood, eau de vie, coffee, nicotine, paint, goats cheese, white spirit, creosote, diesel fuel, battery acid, urine, kerosene, candle wax, cassoulet, gun oil, dog hair, lichen, rat poison, honey, moss, WD40, saucisse, earth, cepe, tree bark, pot au feu, sawdust, butter, tobacco, salt, chocolate, semen, whiskey and shit. There was Brebis too and Edmondo cut himself a piece to go with the dry bread, already stale from yesterday’s oven. His teeth, like those of an old ram, pushed through the ewe’s cheese, broke the bread, and the Madiran, red and rough, washed round their jagged edges, a rising tide of Tannat grape juice off to meet and scuff the old pallet just like the start to most days. He spat back at the fire, a piece of reddened cheese rind, and spun another log into the big hearth. A shower of sparks stuttered upwards and disappeared around the greasy blackened roasting spit and up the dark chimney, up to the clean, fresh mountain air.

The sun came round and over the opposite peak at eleven and the shadows retreated across the hill side in a race to hide from the glare. The sun off the snow was as bright as a blast furnace. Edmondo squinted as he sat by the wooden table set up against the outside wall of the hut. The table he’d made served him well. He took his midday meal off it when he was there and not out and about on the hill side. He gutted rabbits on it. He fixed things on it, sawed wood or wired snares. Oiled his gun and drank his wine. He sat and watched as the sun crept nearer and nearer. His eyes watered, he blinked to clear them and then the rays met him, at first quite gently, and then, suddenly, full on. The warm spring sun shine, the first for months, poured into him. Edmondo felt its warmth. He closed his eyes. The sun licked its way into his old bones and he sat with his back against the hut wall, his face to the sun, his grey hair pushed back from his forehead, and he sighed. It was a big sigh, a sigh of relief that winter seemed to be at its end.

The sun kissed his closed eye lids so that he knew he was in the bright light rather than the dark interior of the mountain hut. The muscles in his face relaxed and a natural smile took shape on his cracked lips. He day dreamed and dozed and the rays wrapped him up and took him away.
He is by his fire, the centre of his life, the giver of heat and light and nourishment. Then there he stoops in the woods precariously balanced on the steep slope his chain saw shaking and cackling like a dreadful sharp toothed beast as he cuts what he chooses, slashes years of woody growth in just a few high pitched moments to give him the fuel for the hub of his life. The oil spits out off the flying chain when he guns the motor and makes its dark wet mark of warning, oil and grease, that vital cocktail for smooth running. He can smell the fat as it oozes from the duck breast cooking on the home made metal grill, the two pieces of iron work he crafted for the purpose between which he can burn his meat in the open flames of his fire. Cook his meat but not his hands. Bon appetite and then down to the penned flock and each animals submersion in the potent brew that kills everything and even gets to grown men in the end if they aren’t careful about protecting them selves. The sheep’s reward for the shocking dip, to be let out on to the grass, the mountain sward thick with a million flowers. And while the ewes settle heads down, the sweating labourer takes a sip or two of red wine from the leather gourd and spits at a job well done. The soot that marks the fleece of each and the blood from nicks when the shears have over done their cutting at the rear are washed away like the end of a good feast with strong white eau de vie, black coffee and a roll your own so strong it can strip the paint off an oak door. A wedge of goat’s cheese with the taste of her udders and dry hill side grass is cut with the Laguiole, the one with the bone handle, the one that he’s had with him all his life. The next chore to soften the round and stumpy bristles on the brush with white spirit and work in another coat of creosote to the out building’s wood. It smells strong like the diesel fuel kept in jerry cans inside the out building next to the defunct generator. It hasn’t worked for years since the battery acid had corroded the lead. He’s going to fix it one day. Perhaps. He stands and relieves himself outside before carrying in a tin of kerosene to fill the lamps. He has to light a candle to see what he is doing. The hot candle wax slides down his thumb and becomes firm like a raised white scar. It is later than he thinks and quite gloomy inside. Maybe cassoulet for supper, out of the tin or maybe the stew will stretch another day. First he’s going to clean the carbine and in doing so excite the dog, sulky for lack of gun, and jumping with false joy at the thought of the hunt at dusk. Instead he throws a stick and the hound bounds off to fetch and returns with the lichen speckled branch a testament to the pure air and the dog’s love of attention. He mustn’t get to the rat poison that killed his mother and extra care is taken with hiding the deadly bait. She’s buried up where the bees make their honey under a mossy bank with a simple stone to mark her faithfulness. As the light begins to fade the hands are cleaned with the spray from the can. WD40 smells as though it should be good and if it’s good for rust on metal it must make light work of dirty hands, no doubt about it. The lamps are lit and the saucisse taken down from the nail in the beam and sliced, thinly cut on the table top ready for the evening feed. The fire is stocked up with an earth covered log the size of a small tree, the one where the cepes grew and it won’t take without the help of the dry tree bark stacked under it to encourage the fire to life again. The pot au feu, made three days before, in its cast iron cauldron is slid onto the oven top and a handful of sawdust sprinkled into the mouth of the cooker to get the fire up and running under the big pot. There’s rancid butter with the stale bread tonight to make it less so. A cigarette is smoked almost with every mouthful and salt is plied to everything in handfuls. For afters it’s thick, dark, chocolate for the old man’s sweet tooth and out comes the dog eared girly magazine with faded photos of busty beauties with come to bed looks so that without much fuss he takes himself in hand, gives himself a little treat. Then another, longer lasting one, a glass of whiskey with no water in a strong, chunky, tumbler sipped with content and before bed, defecation.

Sitting in the mountain sunshine, warm for the first time in months, it was his time to go, a change to the routine. They found old Edmondo stiff as the boards he was leaning against.

Down in the village they say that if you’re up in the hills and you stop and listen carefully you might hear a sigh. They do say on the first day of spring you can hear Edmondo’s sigh.

MARKING THE TERRITORY.

When Dorothy bent over you could see that she wasn't wearing any knickers. It wasn't a pretty sight. It wasn't unattractive either. It was... well...a surprise. You didn't expect to see the secret kept undercover between grown girls legs. Dorothy was over eighteen so she could do pretty much what she liked. "Fan touché flashing," as she christened the act became a sport for one hot summer. Dorothy and her friend Charlotte liked to play when they were bored and the mood took them.

It was normally out shopping on warm Saturday mornings that the two girls set up the game. What had started out as a bit of fun became an art form and they took it in turns to photograph each other and their victim’s reaction to create an album. Charlotte called it our bum album. Their targets weren't random. They were in that the girls chose them from the milling crowds but each was picked in the same way a pick-pocket might select his quarry. The girls wanted to create an impression, didn’t want their efforts to go unnoticed and so choosing the right subject was every bit as important as delivering the visual display. Dorothy favoured men of a certain age, those that probably hadn't seen a “fan touché” for years. Charlotte didn't mind who saw hers. What both of them avoided was being exposed to anyone that knew them, the law or CCTV and they never performed in the same place twice.

A “bend over” that involved almost touching the toes was the easiest way to flash. It looked the most casual and innocent of the moves. It was most effective when performed inside and the simple act of bending over in a shop on the pretext of examining more closely the goods on offer could reveal the goods not on offer. It looked to the observer like an accident and on more than one occasion the victim had approached the perpetrator with almost apologetic advice along the lines of someone’s forgotten to put their underwear on. The sentence nearly always ended in “Dear” or maybe “Deary”, a condescension that certainly wasn’t applicable. The bending over display gave witness to a lot of naked bottom but if it was done with gusto and athleticism then something of the “fan touché” came into view as well. The bare rear on its own was not deemed as having gone far enough by the sporting girls. It was important to show “fan touché”. Fan touché scored points and points were prizes in the All Bar One or White Horse afterwards.

If the “bend over” was a shotgun that could sometimes reach a larger than intended audience, the “front flick” was a rifle with “in your face” precision. The more purposeful flick of the skirt or dress at the front left the onlooker with the impression that he or she had just seen something that he or she should not have. It often provoked the double take and was over in a flash so that the recipient was never sure if what had happened had happened.

Points were scored according to reaction. Those exposed to the experience were always their own living score board. The marks awarded were out of ten and to get top marks was very rare. Most were below five. Reactions ranged from nothing at all as though the recipient hadn't seen anything or, more skilfully, was pretending not to have seen anything. The marking process was conducted by the girl not "flashing the gash" as Charlotte more crudely described it. So as Dorothy lifted her denim skirt (it was blue denim that day) in front of a guy who looked about fifty-five wearing a waxed jacket and brown cords, so Charlotte observed and photographed with the long lens and marked. On this occasion the guy stopped dead in his tracks while his head swivelled so violently following the passing of Dorothy that his neck must have been stiff for a fortnight. The man stood gawping. Transfixed but gawping facing the way he'd just come from. Charlotte gave her friend a five for that. When Charlotte decided to bend over right in front of an older traffic warden the reaction was less interesting than if the uniformed guy had stumbled across an illegally parked car. Dorothy awarded one. In Curry’s a “bend over” to look at the base of a large plasma screened tele caused a ripple from three other customers and a whole new meaning to the expression “High Definition”. Dorothy got a six for that.

On some days the girls would do what they called “Fanny dress.” They’d deck their naked lower regions in fancy dress. Dorothy’s most elaborate was as a Mexican complete with mini sombrero and Charlotte got Dorothy to paint a giant colourful target on her bare bottom which of course provoked comments about scoring and the bull’s eye. Painting a fish so that its mouth looked almost life like was a favourite outing along with the speech bubble drawn on the high thigh, the talking fan touché, with the message, “Amazingly enough I don’t give a shit”.

Dorothy and Charlotte had fun. They were “good” girls from “good” homes and all they were doing was just having a bit of harmless pleasure with added adrenalin rush. They never did it when they’d had too much to drink and had they been asked to explain their actions by the local paper they would have said that they were performing street theatre or pavement art. Dorothy even thought about applying for a grant but Charlotte said she wouldn’t stand a chance and the next summer the weather was lousy and Charlotte went to the south of France anyway.

Dorothy married a barrister and became a JP. Charlotte got engaged to a land agent and had twins.

When Henry took his cock out, like a limp Conger eel, and waved it at the passing crowd before pissing into the fountain, someone told him to put it away and somebody else called the police. He told the court that he was only marking his territory but the chair of the bench told him that he’d already upset public decency and he’d have to pay a fine and that if he did it again he’d be in real trouble even though she remembered the time when she and her friend pranced the same streets on Saturday mornings that hot summer flashing at those that, mostly speaking, didn’t want to see what they weren’t supposed to. Henry hadn't done too much wrong. He'd just been caught doing it. Henry had hit the nail on the head. It was, she reflected, all about marking the territory.

THE BAKER'S SAGA

1.Deep and crisp and even.

While Gardenia had kept herself to herself for the first twenty two years of her charmed life, for the next ten she played the field with all her might and enthusiasm. Gardenia Racebottom was as bed worthy as a girl could be. Her welcome mat had seen the coming and goings of several invited gentleman callers and one or two less desirable types had also managed to coax their way into her affections helped in great part by that double edged sword, strong drink. It would have been unkind to suggest that most of her suitors were actually more interested in the Racebottom baking fortune rather than Miss Racebottom herself. But nevertheless if a survey had been conducted and the truth extracted from the respondents, the fact that Gardenia was the sole heiress to, at the last estimate, a two hundred and forty million pound inheritance would have been a big contributory factor to what went on after the lights went off.Gardenia was one of those girls that didn't really show much early promise. She was what was politely described as being rather a "plain" girl. She graduated from ponies to horses when the other girls at her boarding school were sliding into men from boys. At university she did get a boyfriend and the two of them read poetry together and went for afternoon tea at "The Olde Bunne Shoppe". Holding hands was as exciting for the couple as joining the extreme sports club was for others and the relationship was like that of brother and sister. Her "boyfriend" was the sibling she never had. Their first kiss was also sadly their last but Gardenia had tasted a hint of the cream on top of the milk. She thought that she would like more and set her milking stool out accordingly. Like Sandy in "Grease" she underwent something of a transformation and started to turn heads. Her light came out from under her bushel. Even her bookish tutor noticed the chrysalis to butterfly moment. Gardenia became sought after among her male colleagues and some of the female ones too.It was Jed who provided her with her first full on encounter and in his Austin Healy Gardenia succumbed to his eager advances. The sound and smell of leather car seats provided a backdrop to the whole mysterious act. Gardenia embraced the world of sex (she actually embraced Jed with such fervour that he couldn't control himself) and the more she tried it, the more she liked it. From “Early Doors” Jed there was Timothy, “Tiny Tim”, as she was to discover and from Timothy she moved on to Seb, “Sideways Seb”, who although wasn't the most active of partners did provide Gardenia with her first orgasm which she experienced quietly but with a great deal of pleasant surprise while astride the laid back Sebastian.Rupert, “Rubbish Roop”, was fun to be with but not very good at doing it and Craig, “Clinical Craig”, was just too experimental, too clinical. Quentin was rather rough and liked it from behind which didn't always agree with Gardenia's sense of direction. Brook was a great kisser and always bought flowers. Sammy, “Burgundy Sam”, smelt nice but tasted of wine sometimes. Don was moody and she discovered after some weeks married too. Brian snored and drank too much and Ben, “Big Ben”, didn't believe in any foreplay. Stan, “Stan the man”, had hard working hands and didn’t always shave and Chuck's breathe wasn't that pleasant. Trevor always said "Thank you" afterwards which annoyed Gardenia greatly and Simon, “Simon the sock”, used to keep his socks on and could never stay overnight. Frankie, “Frank the fuck”, was the best ever and she felt very comfortable with him until he told her, with some considerable embarrassment, to look out for his sexually transmitted disease. Luke wooed her back from a few months abstinence but his fondness for the wacky backy made him too silly and vacant so she had another brief fling with Sammy, “Burgundy Sam”, before Maxwell appeared.Max was different from all the others. He was older, nearly forty, and seemed to really care about Gardenia for the woman she was rather than the “bang with the bucks” as she’d overheard one of her briefer liaison’s describing her. (“Kneading the dough” was another she’d caught). Bit by bit she found herself falling in love with him. He was the man you could take home to meet Mummy and Daddy without any worries. Max always said the right thing. He had the confidence to get on with every body. Gardenia's mother was instantly won over although her father was less convinced."He's too damn smooth for my liking," he said to his wife after one Sunday luncheon.Gardenia’s father was like that with all Gardenias’ male friends and in his simple view there wasn’t a man on the planet that was good enough for his little girl. Had he any inkling about the sort of traffic that had travelled along his daughter’s carriageway or indeed just rested on her hard shoulder, then he would have been beside himself. It would not of course have been anything that Gardenia had done wrong. Far from it. His daughter was the apple of his eye or more appropriately, the bread in his oven, and she could do no wrong at all. He didn’t like Maxwell and that was that.Nevertheless Gardenia and Max became an item. The two of them seemed to enjoy each other's company and Gardenia put the lid on her sampling tin and became a one trick pony. At thirty two it was time for her to consider settling down and maybe Max was the man. He didn't show any traits that Gardenia could complain about and in her heart of hearts she couldn't wait for Maxwell to pop the question.Maxwell Deep (he was one of the Deep's from Hertfordshire) wasn’t as pure as the driven snow. In fact it was “snow” that was getting the better of him. He had acquired an expensive and addictive habit from his stressful hours in the City that involved sniffing white powder up his nostrils or rubbing it onto his gums. His nick name was “Deep and Crisp and Even” in a rather too obvious reference to the “snow that lay round about” when ever Maxwell or his mates took off for the rest room at work or in crowded places or virtually any hard flat surface in private.Max knew that Gardenia didn’t approve of his habit.“I can’t understand any man who needs to take drugs. It’s just a sign of weakness,” she said to Max and her parents one day. Her father, who was on his fourth large whiskey and soda, agreed. He didn’t disagree with anything his daughter said.Maxwell’s habit was kept under wraps from Gardenia and sure enough he proposed to her in Paris one week-end when the two of them took the Eurostar to the continent.The wedding was the sort that a wealthy father would put on for his only spoilt daughter. The “do” at Babington House, in rural Somerset, was a glitzy affair with a celebrity chef overseeing the menu for the four hundred guests. The marquee down by the lake looked like a mini canvass version of the Sydney Opera House and the tables, all forty of them, were themed around Aladdin and his Magic Lamp (or as one of the more inebriated guests rather unkindly put it Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda Camp). The bride’s look verged rather dangerously towards that of Little Bo Peep but the outfit pleased her beaming father even though several in the gathering thought mutton dressed as lamb.The wedding day would have been a wonderful occasion for all concerned and worth every penny of the five hundred pounds a head the event had cost. Most of the guests had a ball but when the bride discovered her groom snorting a fat line of coke in the en-suite, the tears came thick and fast. Gardenia’s father was of course outraged but even more so when, having decided to have it out with his new son in law, he found him in Babington’s billiard room straddled across Gardenia’s mother on the green baize with both of them obviously engrossed with kissing the pink.Gardenia slipped into depression, her mother into divorce proceedings and almost one year later her father had no trouble arranging the slipping of Maxwell’s tightly bound body into one of his industrial ovens, turning up the heat until the flesh started to bubble like a burnt pizza. Max was burnt to a crisp. The police couldn’t prove anything although there was a lot of finger pointing and some awkward interviews.Gardenia and her father felt that they had got even.“Deep and crisp and even.” Gardenia stroked her father’s hand and looked lovingly into his baker’s eyes. How could she possibly love any other man?

2.Easy over sunny side up.

Gardenia was off pizza. Since the betrayal by her ex on her wedding day who, with several lines of coke up his nose, had been caught in flagrante delicto with her mother on a billiard table, the bottom had fallen out of Gardenia’s world. Her self confidence was shot to pieces. Not even the love and over attention of her adoring father could bring her back from the “black dog” moment that had become her waking life. Her father had of course taken care of the wayward son-in-law and had had him baked from this world to the next with his body evenly and very finely distributed across the batch of pizzas that the Racebottom baking empire sent out to a willing and hungry population. The “interesting” new ingredient would have prompted comments among the pizza eating fraternity, most of them favourable. “Great new chewy topping” or “love the new salami” or “tastes just like chicken,” were complements that might have been heard and some that suggested, “…. that chef had been a bit too liberal with the pork scratching or what ever the ingredient was….” were heard and ignored. The ex son-in-law had slipped into the British diet, had become an unwilling participant in the food chain and had disappeared and been digested by those who had bought their frozen pizzas to recreate and consume at home from Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s, Morrison’s or the Co-op. The list of ingredients on the box from the well respected national baker didn’t tell the truth, the unwholesome truth or nothing but the truth and pizza sales were as buoyant as they had always been.Gardenia was off pizza and couldn’t stomach much food at all having lost her appetite. She sustained herself on milk shakes and vodka and chocolate, not always in that order, but little else passed her lips apart from the sleeping pills.It was her father who suggested a holiday, a trip to New York that would be a change of scene for his daughter and who knows, restore her to her former self. So father and daughter set off for the Big Apple and two suites of rooms at the Chelsea Hotel near Soho and Greenwich Village. The white stretch limo took them from JFK to downtown Manhattan and they were ushered into their separate apartments on the top floor of the impressive building. Gardenia rang down for a milkshake while her father fixed himself a stiff whiskey and soda from the bar in his suite.The New York trip would be more than a holiday for Mr Racebottom and he had planned a series of face to face meetings with the East Coast Baking Company that had aspirations to acquire Racebottom’s British business. A tough New Jersey operator called Sinus headed up the East Coast Baking Company or ECBC as it was referred to by those on Wall Street. Joseph Sinus had come up the hard way and was what was called a self made man. He’d joke about it in an American way.“Hey I’m a self raising guy,” or “It’s easy beasy,” he’d guffaw when ever he had an admiring audience around him. He was often surrounded by admiring audiences being worth “a cool” eight hundred million dollars. His “people” had identified the British opportunity and had arranged for him to meet up with the main man from Racebottom’s for preliminary talks.“These Brits got no idea how da make a pizza,” was what Joe Sinus thought.“Yanks and bread. Wouldn’t know a decent white farmhouse if it hit him ‘em on the head,” was what Mr Racebottom thought.It was going to be an interesting meeting.Gardenia was expected to be there. Her Daddy had wanted her to be there and besides she did have an interest in the future of the business as heiress apparent. She reluctantly agreed and would put a brave face on the meeting which was set for a famous restaurant just off Central Park. Joe Sinus was bringing his eldest son Sunny who was already taking an active part in the East Coast Baking Company when he wasn’t busy being an active playboy.“Gee pop I hear she’s as plain as a bag of flour,” said Sunny to his father when they were discussing the upcoming meeting.Whether it was a trick of the subdued restaurant lighting or the pre dinner cocktails or a combination of the two, Sunny found Gardenia rather attractive in a kind of quaint way. The fact that she didn’t show an immediate and limpet like attachment to Sunny was probably rather a novel feature which added to her allure. Women of a certain kind normally spread themselves willingly all over the playboy’s attention and it was rumoured that Sunny had bedded more women than his Pop’s firm made donuts. (“He’s bin through more holes than a frikin’ cockroach,” was how one of his jealous gambling chums described him). Gardenia too found herself mildly interested in the chisel featured American playboy who sat opposite her in his white tuxedo and jet black, slicked back hair. She almost expected a diamond like flash from the over white teeth every time a smile was issued and there were plenty from the performing playboy.The first meeting was pleasant enough and the two big bakers got on like a house on fire.“I could do business with that guy,” Joe Sinus said to his son in their limo on the way back across the Hudson.“I could give his daughter a good seeing to,” said Sunny.“Hey boy. You keep your dick in your pocket until the deal’s done.” Joe Sinus didn’t want his son’s pumped up testosterone to ruin his plans for an easy acquisition.“Once we’ve got them under our belt you can screw her till your balls drop off.” Joe Sinus wasn’t a man with a lengthy lexicon. His son however was a man with a lusty libido.Gardenia didn’t really stand a chance. First Sunny sent a truck load of fresh flowers to her suite, then a ridiculous present in a fancy box from Tiffany’s. He called her and asked her to a show and she accepted which was the thin end of the wedge. The helicopter ride over Manhattan at night was quite fun and the drive home in the horse drawn cab after the fine meal was good too. The next evening Sunny Sinus sent his chauffer over to pick her up for the theatre and then it was the sea plane flight off to the beach house and the trip to Atlantic City and the casino he and his friends liked to frequent. At first Gardenia didn’t yield to Sunny’s efforts. But one evening when the vodka had very nearly beaten everything else senseless, Gardenia and Sunny dropped into a big bed together and she rediscovered the real satisfaction that a fit man could offer to a willing girl. He’d made all the right moves and all the right noises. He’d said the most beautiful things to her and about her and Gardenia felt as though she was climbing back on top. He told her that if the two of them got together she could become the jam in his donut and the topping on his pizza. She told him he could be the fruit in her loaf and at once they both laughed out loud about that one. They both agreed that they could make lots of dough together and then without much ceremony they set about creating another sandwich. She felt that here at last was the cure for the “black dog” moments that had been with her since her brief marriage. In that big bed with that big Yank she’d had a ball (actually two) and quite willingly let the playboy overwhelm her on at least five separate occasions before it was time for brunch.It was such a pity that she overheard Sunny taking to his father on the phone. She’d come out of the shower and caught her new lover wrapping up his conversation.“Don’t worry Pop,” he was saying. “I wouldn’t touch the dumpy English bitch with yours. She’s as lifeless as that flat beer they drink across the pond. No worries our deal is in the bag.”His callous words stopped her dead in her recovery tracks, froze over her thaw and immediately summoned the “black dog” moment firmly back to heel.It was over breakfast on the Sunday morning before the day that the Racebottom’s were due to return home that Gardenia let slip the fact that Sunny Sinus had probably gone too far.“What do you mean Darling?” said Mr Racebottom over his eggs and hash browns. He was concerned that something was once again amiss in the core of the apple of his eye.“Well Daddy I don’t know what went on but I know that the American took advantage of me. That’s all.”Her father was on the phone to Joe Sinus in minutes and he told him in no uncertain terms that if he thought that he could ever contemplate doing anything even approaching a business deal with the Racebottom family then he better think again. Further more if couldn’t control his over sexed son who it seems was only after one thing then he could stuff his offer for the business up his own Yankee backside.Gardenia who was listening to the call got the general idea that her father wasn’t a happy man and she watched him as he left the table of the Village Brassiere in a huff to go back to the hotel. His interrupted American breakfast was spread over his plate like an accident. The eggs, both sunny side up, had lost their lustre and congealed like two dull yellow eyes thick and misty with too much sleep.When Gardenia returned to the hotel she saw the small crowd gathered outside. There were several conspicuous NYPD cars with their flashing lights and an ambulance with its rear doors wide and paramedics busy doing their job.Gardenia elbowed urgently through to the front of the crowd to make her way into the building but was stopped by the officer putting out police tape round the cordoned off area.“Sorry miss. You can’t go in there.”Apparently two guys had “gotten” into a fight on the top floor of the hotel and they had somehow ended up toppling over the balcony and falling down onto the side walk several storeys below.Gardenia looked on in horror as she realised that the two broken bodies not far from where she was standing were her father, bent and lifeless, face down and Sunny Sinus with a grotesque grin on his upturned face.The image of her father’s unfinished breakfast came back to her, easy over and sunny side up, and she turned away from the dreadful mess half screaming half retching and brought up her own undigested breakfast, eggs first, all down her quivering chin and over the new red shoes, the ones her father had bought for her the day before.

3.The icing on the cake.

It was, so they said, “a frickin’ miracle”. The fierce struggle between the two men had turned from fisticuffs into a schoolboy wrestling match. Sunny Sinus locked his arms around Mr Racebottom tightly, in a grizzly bear hug, to prevent the British baker’s flailing windmill like arms from damaging the playboy’s prospects. When the two men reeled, spun and spilled over from the balcony, they headed downwards stuck together in the vice grip to hit the ground like a ball of fresh dough. It was Sunny that reached the pavement first cushioning a lot of the impact for the body locked on top of his. The American playboy took the full force of the ghastly collision and as a result literally slipped from this world to the next in a very unglamorous and out of shape fashion. At his send off one of his gambling chums (the same one who had commented on his sexploits) whispered rather too loudly and in very poor taste, “Pretty typical of the sun of a gun but at least he left us sunny side up.” At the over-the-top cremation where the floral tributes reflected the deceased’s colourful past there were several black and white floral “lucky” dice. A giant donut made from carnations and inscribed from the head office staff with the words “Sunny, you’ll leave a hole in all our lives,” was by far the biggest floral tribute. There were fourteen aces of varying sizes and colour with the biggest pink ace of hearts from someone signed Mimi. A garish sports car was crafted from red roses and an enormous green flowered bottle with the word Sunny spewing out of the top like foaming Champagne came with love from all the boys in Atlantic City. Sunny had died on the sidewalk while Mr Racebottom was carefully scooped up by the paramedics and whisked off to the nearest Emergency Room and held in limbo on a life support machine. It was touch and go for forty eight hours but the fight in Mr Racebottom was considerable and with his daughter at his bedside the British baker “hung on in there.”“Daddy, daddy. I thought you were dead,” sobbed Gardenia when on day three her father eventually opened one of his eyes. Gardenia looked dreadful (but not as bad as her father). The bedside vigil had taken its toll and since the accident she hadn’t done much at all other than sit in a chair by the sick bed. Her father’s first view back to the conscious world was of his daughter’s red shoe still with the dried remains of egg on it.“Your shoe,” he tried to say as though it was important. But the oxygen mask made the two words sound like a sneeze.“Bless you daddy,” said his daughter squeezing his bruised hand.Recovery for both of them was a slow process. The Racebottoms returned home to England, father in a wheelchair and daughter further scarred by the trauma of unsatisfactory relationship and her father’s near death experience.Joseph Sinus didn’t take the death of his eldest son very well at all. He felt responsible and he felt that the “Brits” (those “Shit Brits” as he called the Racebottoms) were even more responsible. Some close to him told him that his son was on a path of self destruction any how and that Joe should just try and put the whole thing behind him, get on with his life. There were others though who pampered to Joe’s darker thoughts and his ingrained desire to get even.“If I ever see ‘em again they’re toast,” he said rather ironically. Gardenia had to take a more hands on role with the business and was appointed the CEO while her father became the one day a month Chairman. Over the months she had some good ideas for driving the business into new areas. She brought a strong woman’s touch to the decision making and soon surpassed her father’s reputation as a tough cookie to deal with. She didn’t find much time for anything outside of work and had no time for men in her life other than her invalid father. His seventieth birthday party was a quiet affair but Gardenia’s PA had arranged for an elaborate birthday cake through one of their London bakeries and it arrived in one of the familiar company vans, the ones shaped like a loaf of bread. The whole fleet of vans and trucks had been designed to make people stop and point. “Man cannot live by bread alone,” was the slogan emblazoned on each vehicle’s side together with a shopping list of all the other things the Racebottom baking empire provided besides just bread.The birthday cake was a work of art. Apart from the obvious reference to the number seventy there were some very intricate details highlighting the landmarks in Mr Racebottom’s life so far. There was an accurate mini Buckingham Palace with the date picked out in a different coloured icing. This was the day Mr Racebottom had received his OBE from Her Majesty for services to the British Baking Industry. There was, of course, a tiny cradle and the date of Gardenia’s birth. No mention was made of the marriage to her mother but rather all the happy things that had happened in the baker’s life. The winning race horses at Ascot, the several awards as Best British Baker, the Freedom of the City of London and the landing of the thirty pound salmon on the Spey. All were lovingly recorded in icing by an amazingly talented hand. It really was a cake that looked too good to eat.“What a beautiful cake,” said Gardenia when she saw it. “I want to speak to the person who did this and thank them.”Her PA got onto the case and it was soon discovered that a newly recruited apprentice baker, one from America, had done the job. His name threw Gardenia into a frightening rage and the beautiful cake into a broken mess of marzipan, icing sugar and fruit against the back wall and hearth of the big empty fireplace. What had taken several weeks of painstaking work to create was destroyed in seconds. She demanded to see Silas Sinus at once.Silas looked nothing like his elder brother, Sunny, apart from the clean cut chisel chin.“What the hell do you think you’re doing worming your way into my business?” Gardenia screamed at the American in front of her desk.“I’m sorry mam. All I want is to create some of the finest cakes and confectionery that a man can and I don’t want anything that happened in the past to get in the way.” The young American looked close to tears.“So you know all about our terrible trip to New York?” Gardenia remembered it as thought it was yesterday.“Why yes mam. Pa told me all about it but he and I don’t see eye to eye and from what I hear my big brother shouldn’t have tackled your pa the way he did.”“It was a dreadful business. My father nearly died and your brother ended up…well… like a pancake.” Gardenia was thinking about eggs again rather than any soft sentiments Silas might have had for his departed brother“He got what was commin’ to him and I never want to see my pa again. If we can let bygones be bygones I’d be happy to hone my skills in your business. You’ll have a willing worker in me mam and I’d be happy indeed mam, to be of service.”Gardenia wished he’d stop calling her “mam”.“Please don’t call me mam,” she asked and he didn’t again for some time.She studied the figure in front of her. Silas had his big brother’s charm and way with words and Gardenia’s initial anger subsided and she found herself looking at the American as a man, not a viper at her bosom. He was good looking and probably nearly a dozen years younger than her. He had something of a Californian surfer look about him and there was definitely more than a hint of a message that Gardenia was getting that seemed to be saying, “Surf’s up.” It was agreed that Silas could stay on for a while and as long as his work permit lasted but Gardenia didn’t think that she’d bother telling her father about the new talented icing man on the payroll. She’d keep a close eye on him. And so she found herself thinking more and more about him as she remembered the good time she had had, albeit briefly, with his brother. She found an excuse to visit her London bakery where Silas was working. The visit lead to lunch; lunch to supper and supper to a hastily booked bed at the Dorchester. Gardenia found that Silas wasn’t just an artist with the icing sugar but that his delicate touch could make her glaze over with sheer pleasure. He buttered her up and turned on the charm to way beyond gas mark five and she melted accordingly. He rose to the occasion and she found herself done to a turn.Telling her father that she’d found the man of her dreams and that she planned to marry him was nearly enough to kill the old man and it set him back so that when he wasn’t bed bound he sat in a wheelchair with a vacant gaze on his lined face. No one really knew if he understood that the man his daughter was marrying was the son of Joseph Sinus but it didn’t really matter.The talented cake decorator surpassed himself when it came to the wedding cake. The enormous tiered affair was as substantial as a small building. (They said afterwards it looked uncannily like the Chelsea Hotel in Downtown Manhattan).The happy couple cut the cake with much flashing of cameras from the small group of guests and then the caterers cut it up for everyone to eat. Silas looked proud and Gardenia radiant as she fed a piece of the cake into her father’s lopsided mouth.The poison that had been mixed into the icing on top of the cake did its wicked job and everyone that ate it died either at the reception or on their way to the hospital. Gardenia too had bitten into a large piece of her new husband’s creation and very soon felt the gripping effects as the poison worked its way into her nervous system and the uncontrollable froth started to stream from her gasping mouth. It was as though the celebratory champagne she had consumed couldn’t contain itself any longer.Silas put his arm around his wife and looked into her dilated, terrified eyes.“The icing on the cake, mam,” he whispered and then he burst into tears.


4.Buns in the oven.

The thing about orgasms is that amyl nitrate makes them so much better. The sweet smelling vapour had slipped up Gardenia’s nose and down into her lungs like foggy honey and she was suddenly very keen to get Silas on his own and as soon as possible. She had been going to save the “popper” for the bridal suite later that night but the Champagne had rushed her plans forward. She wanted her man right now in the cloakroom surrounded by the touch, feel and smell of other people’s coats. Aided by the drug in her heightened sense of arousal, making sudden and passionate love in a small cloakroom would be as illicit as performing live sex in front of an invited audience. Her heart was starting to race and although she’d never tried any stimulants before to enhance what came pretty naturally to her, she wanted to please her younger groom and had read somewhere that the contents of the file she’d inhaled would make the earth move as it never had before. In giving herself the extra pleasure she was, she reasoned, giving her new husband a post nuptial bonus, a kick start to many happy years of wedded bliss. She hadn’t bargained for the cyanide laced icing on the cake as Silas’s wedding gift to her. But for the amyl nitrate’s accidental antidote to the poison, Gardenia would have joined several of the guests and her father in the hospital mortuary.The Silas crocodile tears were short lived. Gardenia heaved her guts up all over the groom’s as he held her in his arms. The foaming sick came up like a train and Gardenia’s violent pink complexion retreated to its more normal hue so that she didn’t look like the colour of the icing she had just consumed. At first she thought that her increasingly breathless state was a side effect of the drug she had quietly taken. She didn’t realise that the icing she had chewed was responsible. Then, like a very bad dream, she became aware of people around her, her daddy included; wobbling and collapsing into comas and Silas’s whispering about the icing on the cake and that vile word, “mam” again became the starting pistol’s shot. As she retched once more she reached for the big knife that moments earlier the couple had been grasping together as man and wife. With all her force she plunged the blade into Silas’s neck just below his Adam’s apple and was surprised just how easily the sharp steel slipped its way into her husband’s throat. He too grabbed the bloody handle of the knife and husband and wife grappled and sawed their way clean through his jugular repeating their earlier cake cutting efforts but on this second occasion with less unison than on the first. It was the blood’s turn to flow like Champagne and it gushed from the dreadful open wound in the groom’s neck and streamed down Gardenia’s sleeveless arms and onto her already heavily stained, no longer white wedding outfit.When the paramedics arrived they hurried on to a set like a scene from inside a slaughter house with the most gruesome centre piece the bride and groom locked in each other’s arms, cemented together in blood and gore and icing, a grotesque giant version of the tiny replica of the wedded bliss from the very top of the killer cake.“What a bloody wedding!” was the accurate comment made by one of the ambulance drivers who acted as the shuttle service between the wedding reception and A&E.The inquiry that followed the unusually high profile wedding and one that Gardenia herself had wanted to keep as a low key affair was full of the sort of gossip and speculation that had camera men attached to long lenses teetering on their ladders outside the Racebottom residence. The Director of Public Prosecution to whom the case was referred by the police deliberated and decided that no further action would be taken. The Coroner reached a verdict of unlawful killing of thirteen persons by the American Silas Sinus and further recorded an open verdict of suicide on the same man.At another stroke of misfortune Gardenia had gained and lost a second husband and lost her father with a dozen of her friends and relatives. Across the Pond, old Joseph Sinus was as distraught as a father could be at having his other son untimely taken from him. He blamed himself of course but nevertheless felt doubly cheated that his youngest son had not been able to avenge the death of his eldest. There was much to grieve about in the baking world on both sides of the Atlantic.Gardenia turned into a reincarnation of the Virgin Queen, except for her virginity which was long gone, and set about excluding relationships with men from her life all together just like the good Queen Bess. She became obsessed with protecting and building the Racebottom baking empire so that every crumpet, flapjack, pikelet, loaf of sliced or un-sliced bread, hot cross bun, finger roll, iced bun or fancy from Land’s End to John O’Groats had at some stage of its life been through the Racebottom bakery system.It was probably a big mistake agreeing to see Joseph Sinus. The father of the two boys that Gardenia had briefly dabbled with, and then killed, was in town and wanted to say “Hi.”“Hi,” said the greying American baker.“Hello,” said Gardenia getting up from behind her desk to greet the visitor.The two bakers moved carefully to the comfort of the arm chairs and settled like falling soufflé’s into the rich leather. Chinese tea and Racebottom digestives were brought into the room.“Shall I be mother?” said Gardenia.“What?” said Joe in some surprise.“Let me pour the tea,” she said realising the American had thought she had been talking about something else.“Yeah,” he said. “You do that honey. I take mine straight from the pot.”“Actually,” Joe moved in his seat as though he wasn’t settled. “It was about that that I wanted to see you.”“About what?” said Gardenia as she let the smoky smelling liquid flow from the spout.“About you being a mother.”The pouring stopped abruptly.“What on earth do you mean Mr Sinus?” She sounded like a news reader.“Well there you go honey. You keep your hair on kitten. It’s just that I been thinkin’ about how you and me could come to some arrangement about how our two businesses could git it together like what your dear daddy and me had plans for before my boys went and messed up the whole job.” It wasn’t a pretty sentence but it struggled to mean well.“I’m always keen to explore the ways in which business can be improved. “ Gardenia sensed she had nothing to loose. “What had you in mind Mr Sinus?”“Hell honey you can call me Joe.” Not waiting for a response Joe ploughed on. “I’ve done me lots of thinking and I’m not getting any younger so I want our off spring, the fruit of our loins, the semen from my sack and the eggs from your fillopinun to produce us a child who will grow up to take on the whole kitten caboodle.”Gardenia’s mouth was wide open. The Racebottom digestive hovered in mid air held in the motionless and incredulous hand, stopped on its way by Joe’s extraordinary words.“That’s the most preposterous proposal I’ve ever heard.” Gardenia really thought that it was and she’d heard a book full.“Arw come on honey it’s not that out of line. I’m not asking you to marry me or anything. I’m not even expecting to get my leg over that tidy rump of yours. I’ve put some of my semen in one of those ice banks. You could say I’ve made a deposit and it’s got your name on it just sitting there waiting for the withdrawal at any time that suits you honey.”Gardenia was amazed and amused, disgusted and distrusting all at the same time.“Let me get this straight Mr ….err…Joe…..You want me to undergo artificial insemination to produce your test tube baby?”“Guess that’s about the size of it honey. The off spring will be ours and he or she will take on the ownership of the whole of our joint baking empire. The child will become the biggest baker in the world. Now that’s what I want and I’ve an idea that’s what you want as well.”Joe Sinus looked more comfortable and sipped his tea in the way a man might just having secured a very big deal.His “people” drew up the papers with her “people” and the turkey baster like AI device fired up with Joe Sinus’s seed was introduced into Gardenia Racebottom’s front bottom in the dispassionate manner an uncooked pizza is shovelled into a bread oven.After the first visit to Harley Street it was confirmed that Ms Racebottom was pregnant. As she told her PA rather matter of factly later that day, there was indeed a bun in the oven.What the scan would show in some week’s time was that Gardenia Racebottom was actually carrying a baker’s half dozen inside her.“A womb with a few,” was how her genial gynaecologist broke the news to the swelling baker not really sure of the response he was going to get.

DEPARTURE

Downtown Manhattan and the early alarm call sounds like a road drill.

"Arrrgh" comes the groan from deep within as you turn in bed and fart with a vengeance. Indigestion’s calling card. There’s no one there to hear you so you let it rip. Actually even if there was someone next to you, you probably wouldn’t try and silence it too much. Although that would depend on how well you knew them, but if they were sharing a bed with you then you probably knew them pretty well, so it wouldn’t matter, would it? Let them see you as you are, that sort of thing. Thinking about it, maybe you would try and hold it in, clench the buttocks politely. No one likes sharing a bed with a farter. But men fart and are proud of it where as women don’t or don’t admit to it if they do. It’s probably one of those urban myths found in the "strange but true" column snippets you might read in the Daily Whatsit. You’ve never heard a woman drop a decent one, drunk or sober, and yet at boarding school Liversidge (or was it Kenning?) could fart God Save the Queen after lights out every night. Come to think of it, he (Liversidge or Kenning) never changed his repertoire. It was always God Save the Queen followed by a good night to each member of the dormitory, a fart after their name.

"Good night Cavanaugh." Fart!

" Good night Jones." Fart!

" Good night Russell." Fart!

You wonder what he’s doing now (Liversidge or Kenning)? Probably an investment banker, civil servant or, you smile, working at the Met office.

No, men fart, women can’t. That’s what you think and you do another just to prove the point and roll over to think about the day ahead.

It’s too bloody early. Ten more minutes wouldn’t hurt, so you get as comfortable as your body lets you, curl into the foetal position and close your eyes. Did you have a dream last night? Yes you did! Sometimes when you wake up you remember your dreams and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes it’s not until you’re in the bath or munching your Kellogg’s that you remember. But you remember last nights, or bits of it and you open your eyes to try and make it clearer. It was vague. Faces and places, undefined but not threatening, colourless somehow but not in a land of black and white. Surreal springs to mind but then so does Ulrika Johnson. What the hell was she doing there? Percy Thrower too, the last century’s Alan Titchmarsh. How strange the brain becomes when the body sleeps. Wasn’t Percy Thrower trying to force geraniums out of Ulrika’s arse or was it the other way round? You don’t remember. What you do remember was the last bit of the dream. You were falling. In the last minutes before the early alarm, you were falling and they do say that falling, to dream of falling, means something, but you’re not sure what. You can’t remember what they said it was supposed to mean. Never mind. Another night. Another dream.

You stretch the length of the bed and turn and turn again. Acid indigestion runs up and down. Sleep has had enough of you and even though you really don’t want to, you’ve got to get up. You’ve got to burst out from beneath your cover, fix bayonets, blow the whistle, go over the top and charge at the day ahead. Another day. Another dollar.

Your meeting with First Commercial isn’t until 8.30 and as you run the bath you sort of imagine your opening pitch. You see yourself, smart suited, word perfect, confident, proud and loud, not giving an inch just going in and getting the business. The bathroom fills with steam long before the bath itself is ready and you wipe your hand across the misted mirror to reveal your face. It’s all there, pretty much the same one you went to bed with and, like scores in bathrooms across the city, you do your early morning acting. When Michael Cain gets up and goes to the bathroom and examines his face in the mirror, who does he think he is? My name is Albert Stinkridge he might say in his Michael Cain voice, which wouldn’t be right at all. This morning, this September morning, you are Adolf Hitler. The bristles of the electric toothbrush, a mean Nazi moustache and your hair ordered to the front sweeping down to the right eyebrow threatening to invade it.

"Seek hile," you say softly to the mirror clicking your bare heels together on the bathroom floor.

"Seek hile," you say once more creating a bad impression.

Baths are so much more than showers. You get intimate with them. A bath is more like making love where as a shower is at best a quick shag. You sink in for your session, half man, half water and you sink and think.

The First Commercial meeting could go one of three ways. You could come out with the deal. Unlikely. They could say thanks but no thanks, but that was not on the cards as they had called for this other face to facer. What they were probably going to do is say go away and sharpen your pencil, redo your sums and come up with a better offer. If that were the case you’d have to really cut the cloth and look long and hard at cost savings. To work on a margin of less than three percent would not impress the board. You’d have to do some pretty smart talking to get around that one. Get your ducks in line, convincing Richard that it was a deal with a future worth having. Once Richard was on your side, the others, F.D. included, should all agree. Your rock bottom line was two point two five percent and if they wanted you to beat that, then you’d just have to turn and walk. You’d know one way or the other by ten. Fingers crossed and all that, it would be great to pull off another Afghan deal. Selling arms to the third world is a tedious business but it pays the bills. You pull the plug and the used bath water starts to disappear off out to the Hudson you suppose.

You wet shave in Hitler’s old mirror and as always, you marvel just for a brief moment at how the can, the Gillette shaving can, can hold so much foam. How do they get it in there? Why don’t you read about them blowing up with the pressure, covering bathrooms in crazy foam? Perhaps they do but you never hear about it. Crazy foam terrorists aren’t news worthy.

You dress in the uniform you chose last night. White Oxford cotton button down shirt, pale pink silk tie and the Gieves double-breasted pin stripe. Polished black Church’s for the feet, you remember your Mother’s words about how you can always tell the quality of a man by the quality of his foot ware.

By seven you’re ready to leave. The driver is in the lobby at 7.20 and you take the elevator down to meet him. The raucous roar of the Upper West Side hits you as you slip from the air-conditioned building into the back of the air-conditioned limo and off to the World Trade Centre.

Your driver is pleased to see you and yes, you are enjoying your visit to the Big Apple and yes, you will be going on up to New England and no, it isn’t as beautiful as it will be next month in the Fall. It’s small talk in a big car.

You never discover which way First Commercial really wants to play it or who their clients are. The deal is never done. Something atrocious happens. You leave without a word and you’re never seen alive again. They put your possessions in a jiffy bag the only sign that you were ever there, your things and the silver Cross fountain pen, the one I gave you last birthday with the initials on it, the one they took from your suit pocket when you arrived at the St James Infirmary, dead in the back of the limousine. Your heart must have known all along and kept you from the horror. They said that you had had a massive attack on your way to what they now call Ground Zero.

ARRIVAL

Helpless rivals. They both knew that Martine had been seeing another man. "Seeing" was far too nice a verb. Like "nice" itself "seeing" was just grammatical laziness, an unwillingness to describe the real act. Loving was somehow too grotesque, ones own intimacy defiled, with the image of another where your body should be, shaking and stirring that awful, awful chemical cocktail of jealousy somewhere in the gut. But Martine’s magnetism, her spell, her warmth, her passion, her way, had both men captivated, caged, bound and gagged.

Alan fell in love with her in Morocco. North Africa, tinged with exotic imagery. Kasbahs, Rick’s Bar, Berbers and Ali Ba Ba’s. Souks, Tajine and couscous, thuja wood and kellims, Mosques, Medinas, Mogador and Marrakesh. Sunshine and clean, clean air unpolluted on the Atlantic coast, windy so the palm trees clatter and the Hitchcock gulls surf the breeze above the fish gutters on Essaouira’s skala du port. Alan and Martine, unlike the rude and noisy sea birds, took their pick from the eager fish grills, moving crabs, white fish, lobsters and silver sardines by the boat load. Giggling, biting into the shark wondering if they’d the jaws for it, all served at the communal sunlit table with a plastic cover and cheap tin forks, illegal wine siphoned into green Fanta bottles and a simple salad of onions and red tomatoes oiled up to slip down with the barbecued fish. Martine flirting with the young fisherman come waiter and slipping him some extra Dirham as he led her to the stand pipe to wash her hands. She stooped smiling to splash the silver sunny water, a Kodak moment if Alan had had one.

The sandy beach to the south of the cannon lined old Mogador walls is where the locals play on Sunday. Dozens of unofficial football matches without referees or linesmen, no sponsor’s shirts nor baying crowds, a hundred barefooted Beckham's dribbling on the sand, not on one side nor the other but opposite the Sofitel, playing with the wind a distinct advantage. Playing too in the Sunday morning big French bed, Alan and Martine laughed and cried. After at café Ben Mosapha Leonard Cohen sang Suzanne and slipped them back to the sixties when Peace and Love Man roamed the old streets then pretty much as it does now. Hendrix ate at Chez Sam’s, or so the fading photo implies, and they did too on an exquisite sea bass boned with experience at the water’s edge, table’s edge with spoon and fork. They could almost hear the man himself, "Are you experienced, have you ever been experienced?"

Back in the hotel Alan stashed the wooden trinkets he had bartered for and the rug too. Martine had wanted the carpet and the street vendor had read the buying signals to his advantage and Alan's eventual cost.

Martine came out of the en-suite bathroom dust free and glistening damp without the Sofitel white towelling robe. Alan stopped what he was doing. He loved the look of Martine naked and the little shimmering beads of shower water gave her complexion a diamond dusting. He walked over to her and taking hold of her hands with both of his coaxed her gently to the bed. Her suntanned body followed his lead but as he tried to pull her down towards him as he sat on the edge of the king size, she pulled away and skipped out to the balcony that overlooked the long beach below. Alan followed kicking off his espadrilles and the loose dark blue linen chinos. He came up to Martine from behind and slipped his hands around her, gently cupping her white breasts, her nipples like cherry stones pressed against his palms.

"People will see you," he said softly in her ear as though he didn't care if they did.

"Let them," she replied and Alan felt his hands tighten automatically without warning. He kissed the nape of her neck at that part where the spine is closest to the brain and even though he couldn't see it, Martine closed her eyes. It seemed the most natural thing in the world taking her from behind and she loved every stunning moment of it on that balcony above the long beach. They made love in equal measure, neither being selfish but both being greedy in roughly the same proportion so that neither one felt the slightest bit let down by the other. No one saw a thing. Anyone in ear shot could have heard even though at the climax Alan had clamped his hand, precisely but nicely, over her mouth to muffle the expressions of her excited pleasure. He had just bitten his lip. The two giggled about their al fresco episode that evening in the restaurant as they drank and planned the rest of their lives together.

Martine had said to meet her at the Hotel du Palais in Biarritz. Alan was making his way. At thirty eight thousand feet over the Guggenheim, the newer one in Bilbao, Alan’s shredded carrot slipped down to thirty seven nine hundred and ninety eight thousand feet. As happens during meal times, the man in front declined to eat and reclined his seat just at the precise moment Alan’s shredded red carrot from the chicken and tarragon meal (CP0508 TQ04/05 use by 31 October 2004) was making its way to Alan’s mouth at thirty eight thousand feet. The impact of the jerk from the jerk caused the instant drop in altitude. What a pity, thought Alan, that we didn’t leave him like a Bogey on the runway’s tarmac in Casablanca.

Pierre-Jean had proposed to Martine in Nimes. Given her the ring in the ring. Down on one knee like a moonlit Matador. She had snorted like a bull, tossed her pretty head and kissed him hard in the white dust of the arena. Their hotel, just off the Roman amphitheatre was where the bullfighters stayed. Its small reception full of posters of men with looks like Pierre-Jean dressed to kill. The thin walls of their room could not hide their noise and the two had behaved without reserve, giving and receiving, so that at le petit dejeuner, they wore the blame when people spoke behind their hands or shook Le Monde even more than it deserved. They would have stayed in their room if the hotel had let them. But bullfighters don’t tend to take their breakfasts in bed.

They killed six that day in the arena and Martine leapt each time like the bull taking the coup de grace, jolted by the final lunge, the killer’s sword in the beast. She had squeezed Pierre-Jean’s hand so it went white with lack of blood as each horned warrior had succumbed and been dragged as dead meat through the sand and dirt leaving a red scar as the Corrida band struck up with their brassy notes. The arrogant victor strutted his stuff like a caped crusader with a dead bull’s ear held high in the air as a salute to the crowd. Same arena, different time, same desire.

That evening after all the crowds had gone home, they slipped back into the arena, past the inattentive attendants and right out into the dim ring. Martine shivered in the cooler night air surrounded by the Roman stone lit in part by the dappled street lights and the more distant moon. Pierre-John shuddered too and put his arm around the bare shoulders of his girl friend to keep them both from the ghosts, keep them both together.

"How many have died here?" She said it as though she knew the answer.

"And all in the name of love." Pierre-John replied quietly.

"Love?" Martine questioned.

"Love of the sport, of the spectacle."

They strode together as one joined at the shoulders kicking through the sand like a two headed beast. Suddenly he turned and kissed her and their two bodies swayed not certain which way to go. He fell down at her feet on one knee and produced the ring and she stooped and kissed him hard as they crumpled into a heap somewhere in the middle of the arena. Pierre-Jean's reluctant tongue found Martine's and his big hands, gentle as a giants, felt for her smooth skin and made her feel almost sick with wanting more. She lead him on, forced his touch beneath her skirts, those Spanish folds she had worn for the bulls, and up to where her thighs were taught, standing to attention on parade. Pierre-John had fingers the size of beeswax dinner candles but they were the nimble fingers of an artist, no hint of roughness. Big and bold but smooth and slow. Martine knew they were magnificent, felt their magic ; manipulative magic magnificence in that bull ring in Nimes.

Martine had said to meet her at the Hotel du Palais in Biarritz. Pierre-Jean was gunning his way along the trans Pyrenean payage, the Porsche purring without effort at 150 kilometres an hour. The snow capped peaks looked like a fairyland frontier away to the left. Jonnie Haliday sang out of tune, Dax and the Basque country danced by to it.

The Hotel du Palais on the front at Biarritz calls itself one of the leading hotels in the world. It’s setting is pretty impressive and the building itself is an over-the-top pile created from the ashes of the Villa Eugena built for his Empress by Emperor Napoleon the third. The hotel’s brochure is as lavish with its language as the interior is extravagant with its fittings. "Cradled for over a century by ocean waves playing court to its golden beauty, Le Palais is the embodiment and fulfilment of a long ago promise, an invitation to taste the sweetness and harmony of the land, where the gentle caress of Time gives way to a full appreciation of the magic of the moment… multilingual ballets of images and ideas move around intertwine, enlightened and enlivened by everything from gourmet refreshments to the preprandial tournaments in the Rotonde, the heart of the hotel"

Sod the preprandial tournaments, thought Alan. He was here to see Martine. His taxi had brought him from the airport not fifteen minutes away and he was excited. His heart raced in anticipation of being with her and he sat in the cocktail bar like an expectant Father, dry mouthed even with the drink.

Pierre-Jean’s Porsche pulled up to the hotel’s barrier and the gatehouse attendant pressed the switch after a glance, checking out the clientèle, letting them know just who was boss at these pearly gates. Pierre-Jean too arrived, nervous, weary, but pounding for the chase.

Through the windows of the bar just next to the Rotonde, the mean Atlantic surf played up onto the beach and the two men drank at separate tables oblivious of each other, one sense on the time and all six on the entrance. Same time, different arena, same desire.

Then across the polished lobby the bellboy strutted absurd in his button hat, brocade and tight green bum boy trousers. He held aloft like a Centurion’s standard his ornate crier’s pole with two words, hand written in felt tip pen upon the portable message board.

"Martine Insoumis".

They both saw it and each other in an instant. Recognised themselves without the secret handshake, wink and knowing nod. Bonded in that moment they came together uneasily, questioning, not like fighting cocks with sharpened spurs ready for the blood, but rather two lost schoolboys waiting for their nannies to collect them for an exeat. Waiting alone, all the rest had gone as the chilly wind bit between the long grey socks and the short trousers, and its just the two of them waiting in the courtyard, waiting for warm hands to hold, waiting for someone to arrive.

The two men sat like crows on stumps, perched next to each other.

"Do you think she’s not coming?"

"Perhaps" said Alan not sure himself but trying hard to show that he didn’t care one way or another.

"Hmm" said Pierre-Jean.

They had arrived for her. Helpless arrivals.