a forty eighth story...'f**k off, cliff'

Chiara didn’t want Cliff around.  If he invaded her air space, she would pout to one of her girl friends, turn on him and tell him to ‘fuck off’.  More often than not, Cliff dutifully fucked off. 

See Chiara was a woman, of that she was sure, an independent motherfucking woman who was at liberty to do what-in-the-hell she wanted.  ‘I’ll also fuck who the fuck I want too’, she boasted to Jemima and Christina, her post teen entourage.  They nodded, and cooed.  ‘And whatver the fuck I want!!’, Chiara extrapolated for good measure.

The thing with Cliff, before one immediately feels sorry for him, is that he had a screw loose, he was an egg sandwich short of picnic, a hatter shy of tea party; he may have had a sweet disposition, but he also possessed a plainly irritating ability to keep coming back for more.  Even if more simply meant to be told to go fuck himself again (something which incidentally he enjoyed being borderline autosexual). 

Cliff, with his soft round face, white teeth perfectly arranged like rummy tiles, straw blonde hair that curled cutely above his mother-me blue eyes, Cliff, had both the persistence and intelligence of a wasp.  Telling him to go away was as useless as educating his hymenopteran brother to whistle instead of buzz.

‘Fuck off, Cliff’.  His epitaph had already been chosen for him, and Chiara for one, as well as Jemima and Christina would have danced on his grave, so long as it did not involve getting their patent leather shoes all dirty.  So then, how did it come to pass that Cliff succeeded in persuading Chiara out on a date? 

~

After school was finished one afternoon, Chiara and the girls were hanging out by the lockers.  They were waiting for Finn, a sweet, bumbling classmate of theirs.  Finn was also handsome, or would have been minus the puppy fat.  Jemima had admitted to Chiara in one of the few moments they spent together where she was allowed five minutes to speak, and one of the fewer moments still when Chiara actually listened, and remembered something about someone else, that she, Jemima, had a crush on Finn.  ‘Innie the prettiest thing?’, she asked Chiara in hope more than expectation of any kind of encouragement.  ‘Huh’, had been Chiara’s monosyllabic reply.

Anyhow, as Finn loped around the corner into the corridor, where unbeknown to him, he was about to accosted by the Three Witches, enter stage left, Cliff.  Whistling tunelessly, Bottom from Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Chiara’s complexion darkened.  Jemima and the other one (Christina?) hadn’t noticed – in Jemima’s head Finn approached her in slow motion, satchel swinging behind him, as a romantic film score positively swooned to a crescendo..

 ..Finn walked straight past without so much as looking a her.  Pe-doing!!! Back to reality.  And now, in his place was Cliff, Jemima’s best friend’s nemesis-cum-stalker.

‘FUCK OFF, CLIFF!’, all three girls shouted in unison.  And yet, faced by this female hurricane, Cliff stayed rooted to the spot, without so much as a curly hair on his straw blonde head lifting in the feminine gale.  The girls gawped at him.  Chiara for one was somewhat taken aback, although she tried to mask this with her usual I’m-still-to-young-to-be-a-sex-kitten-but-so-fucking-what expression.  Cliff cleared his throat, and spoke, his voice as clear and thick as honey.  ‘Chiara’, he began, ‘I am here to ask if you will let me take you to dinner’.

~

Of course, Cliff’s middle name should have been Persistence.  He was a stubborn young man, a stubborn and determined young man capable of sensational thoughts, as well as benefitting from being entirely unhinged.  If Cliff had had a less comfortable and affluent upbringing, putting a gun in his hand could have resulted in mayhem, Columbine, Westfield High etcetera; mercifully, his father was very successful in Mergers and Acquisitions, and would you believe it, twice as belligerent, twice as cuckoo.  Nevertheless, Cliff had all the characteristics to make him a highly successful human being too, at least in terms of status and wealth. 

Cliff did well at school because he tried his guts out; Chiara preferred to write love letters to college boys she would never send, or, using a compass, scratch a tally of all the boys she had ever taken to bed into the top of her desk, the tally looked like this: I. 

For relationships to begin, and to give love any chance to put down her roots and blossom (I am using the analogy of a rose here!), there needs to be something of a catatonic moment along the way.  A moment when Shezamm! You realise right before you is the girl of your dreams, or the boy, depending on your sexual proclivity.  There and then, flanked by her post teen entourage, Jemima and Christina, Chiara was struck right between the eyes by a visitor from the future.  She came face to face with providence!

~

‘Fuck off, Cliff’.

Chiara is sunning herself by the infinity pool, wearing nothing but pearly white bikini bottoms. 

Thirty years on, there is irony in her voice. 

Cliff, dutifully desists from splashing water over her, and goes back to swimming lengths, up and down in the shimmering blue, the midday sun kissing off the marble front of the Rhode Island mansion behind.  Soon the monotony of light exercise is superseded by memories of his first date with Chiara; her feigned disinterest, her pouting silence, her extravagantly bored monotone and the fact she didn’t finish all of her Chicken Foo-Yung, and didn’t even lick the spoon of the ice cream sundae that followed for dessert. 

And, inevitably, how they shared their first kiss on warm leather seat of the taxi cab back home.        

a forty seventh story...'how I learned to love celery (and stop worrying about 'the bomb')'

Dear Lord:

Up until recently I have been an unreformed individual, living a life without flavour, without meaning, without the One True Entity.  I sowed but never reaped, I was blinded when I should have been seeing with mine eyes.  And I ignored at least three of the fives senses: touch, taste and smell. 

For what is the Holy Trinity without IT? What is a good risotto, so to speak, without the One in Three.  You may use fennel instead and feel self righteous, but self righteousness is without humility, the humility of the humble carrot, the humble onion.  Doth the average working class consumer cook with fennel bulb?  Of course not!

But why cook?  Why adulterate raw sincerity, when to devour fresh fills one with vigour and vitality of spirit!  The clean crunch, the aftertaste of aniseed, pure and unaccompanied by temptation, in the malignant form of seventies incarnations, including A Thousand Island Dressing and Hollandaise Sauce.

Where once I might have crossed the River Styx for a Mars Bar or a packet of Quavers, now I sit content after my lunch time sandwich and munch earnestly on this celestial creation.  Apium graveolens! Now my heart is full.

Amen

a forty sixth story...'things were broken'

Things were broken, didn’t feel right.  Celebration days all gone, belonging to an irretrievable past, the night.  Time had wiped them out, now time was moving too slowly.  The house, quiet and empty, ringing of loss, traffic outside the window, hushed, lowly.  Life, once alive with possibility, chance. 

Piotr took a long drag on his cigarette and stirred his coffee, reflected.  He knew what was missing, but not how or where to make any kind of rediscovery.  Change was necessary and yet change was hard, carried with it risk, and perhaps the prospect of failure; hoping, waiting were easy, perhaps a mistake.

Jeanne.  Why it turned out the way it did no longer mattered.  Where she was now, living somewhere in London with someone, or no one – no, someone, mattered.  And so did the courage to get in touch, so too the shame of it being a last resort, a sense of guilt, of being unhappily alone.

He wanted to phone, Piotr, at that moment, more than anything: anything, anything, anything, but he had been cursed with an imagination.  In his mind’s eye, she was getting ready to go out, beautiful, made up, his call, a cry from the wilderness, met with disdain or worse, indifference.  Piotr carried his baggage around with him, slept in the same lived-in clothes, felt like a burden on the people he loved, his love sharp as a needle, with a measure of pain.

Piotr’s face was long, thin, expecting rain, there was red skin under his eyes, he rubbed them too much.  His weary eyes, dark, sad, the light extinguished, gone out.  Jeanne.  He longed for her once loving touch.  She had been his torch bearer, the Olympic flame.  Jeanne, electric blue. He loved her so much.  For Piotr, things were broken.   

a forty fifth story...'arthur c bojangles on the legacy of the earthling 'pop' band, the beatles'

Judy loved the Beatles.  She grew up in Liverpool, and was a teenager during the sixties.  The decade of Pop Goes the Weasel, sexual awakening and so on.  Every Earthling ‘Friday’, Judy would head to the Cavern Club and dance to Mersey Beat with the local boys dressed in winkle pickers* and drainpipe trousers**.  Together they would bob up and down, up and down, to rock n’roll, fresh off the boat from the Big Apple***. 

Boing, boing, boing!  It was an innocent time, and a right old jolly.

Back then there was something appealing about dressing up like a BBC+ executive among the young, and the Beatles did much to perpetuate this fashion, or rather their manager, the fastidious homosexual++, Brian Epstein was perhaps responsible.  Leather was out, ironed white shirts and black tie was in!

If the Beatles twisted, you shouted; if the Beatles asked to hold your hand, you came over all wobbly at the knees and fainted.  If John Lennon said the Beatles were bigger than the prophet Jesus, then they were; if McCartney was the Walrus+++, then he was. 

(E-extract from ‘Swinging Sixties: a Descriptive History of Ancient Earthling Paradise’ by Arthur C. Bojangles)

~

..It may surprise you to learn, I am writing this from the far flung future.  The Beatles are ancient history nowadays, and they and Judy are piles of dust, or worse a series of astro particles dispersed into the gravity free atmosphere of the solar system.

When I was walking my lunar pet, Bubba, only seven Fyre ‘hours’ ago, I came across a Time Capsule embedded in a bank of sand.  At a distance it looked like just another piece of lunar rock, but something drew me to it all the same; up close I could see what I had thought to be a lump of lunar rock was, in fact, a metallic container.  Now it stands in the lava lamp lighting of my lunar living room, with all the sand atoms removed by an electromagnetic scrub.  I have also managed to wrench the door open with an animatronic beak. 

Inside, would you believe, there is a cathode ray tube, a grammar phone, a piece of vinyl, a Cavern Club membership card with a bunch of boy’s (?) telephone numbers scrawled all over, a couple of grainy sepia photo portraits, and an old earthling print (yes, print!!!) newspaper front page with a vengeful editorial against the aforementioned John Lennon.

You see, I am a historian of earthling popular culture.  Earthlings would have called me an anthropologist.  My speciality is the sixties, or ‘swinging sixties’, to use an ancient phrase from the era.  In spite of the millennia separating you and I – you at home, in the 21^st century, seated on your cushioned ‘settee’; me, hovering on what you might consider a ‘magic carpet’, writing this communiqué to you using my telekinetic powers and expert knowledge of Olde English – Fyrians still love to learn about the Beatles, the Cavern Club, Mersey Beat, Brian Epstein, hell, even the lives of everyday ‘working-class’ gals such as Judy.  Or at least enough of us Fyrians do to afford me to live on more than a diet of Mars Planets (the oldest known and most intergalactic confectionery in the universe, as well as the cheapest).

On your earthling calendar you will note it is the earthling month of October, the year 2012.  If you venture into one of your earthling record shops, you will likely find a big glossy poster of the Beatles tacked to the show wall – it’s their fiftieth anniversary.  On my Fyrian calendar time is more of an abstract than it is to you, but if the Beatles had been cryogenically preserved, in earthling terminology I am living through their five thousandth anniversary.  Talk about leaving your thumb prints on ‘civilisation’!

By the way, the prophet Jesus, has almost altogether disappeared from the annals of history, along with Adolf Whatshisname, the comic actor, famous for his slapstick mime.  Besides, no one, to ‘date’, has put a Jesus record in a Time Capsule (not even Cliff Richard) and, I’m told, film (including The Great Dictator) of Adolf Whatshisname has largely been deleted from the vaults of Christendom’s library, or at least from the main hub on Cloud Nine (there may be some bootlegged versions floating around in Space).

So, I have often wondered, dear Ancient Earthling, why the Beatles remain effervescent, still written and talked about; heck, some of us Fyrians even listen to their music – our favourite? ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?’.  A spiritual throwback if ever there was!

Why then is this? 

Here is a summary of my theory: because, whatever ancient earthling Anabaptists, Rolling Stones, distant relatives of Mike Love (who wrote Back In the U.S.S.R, my polkadot arse!), the creators of the now outlawed suckmybeatles.com, ancestors of Sharon Tate, Charles Manson, contend…the ‘fab four’s’ pop jingles never actually hurt anyone. 

Pete Best excepted.

In short, the Beatles music represents colour, fun, delicious, artful simplicity, togetherness, love and hope – qualities of our existence, Fyrians and Ancient Earthlings share, and always have shared (save perhaps, the artful simplicity).

Yours ever,

Arthur (or Art)

END COMMS.

~

*Ancient earthling headgear, looked great, but pinched your ears rather

** Ancient earthling legwear, looked great, but were so tight around the crotch area as to limit ancient earthling reproductive capability among the male species

*** Ancient earthling citadel in the ancient earthling land of England, a little way east of Liverpool, the capital city

+ British Broadcasting House: providers of pornographic material for undersexed male and female ancients

++ Ancient earthling term for entrepreneur

+++ A small, toothless ancient earthling rodent, around the size of a small pebble, but with up to one hundred legs

Alfred's Method - Phil's latest story

Alfred settled back into the leather armchair, which was rubbed to a shine on the arms and seat from all the powerful and self-regarding bodies that had sat in it over the years, and resolved to change things.  He was a man with a plan, or rather a scheme. 

Slim, grey-haired, with compact features and a neat, unfussy dress sense, Alfred was relaxing in the company lounge.  It was a broad low room with soft, easy lighting and a fully glazed end wall, offering a panoramic view over the city.  The lounge was scattered with easy chairs and dark wood coffee tables.  It was a little early for lunch and a little late for morning coffee, but not many people in the company could touch Alfred.  He had a near-flawless record, yet he was known as a workhorse rather than a creative savant, and this meant he was just outside the top spots.  He was a partner, but not a senior director, a position he coveted.  There was a rumour, fanning out from the water-coolers, that a place at the big dicks’ table would be available sometime soon.  Mr Claridge was surely ready for retirement; that heart scare last year, grandchildren arriving, and so on and so on.  However, Alfred well knew that there would be competition. 

As he was pondering this, Alfred’s foremost rival entered the company lounge.  Jeffery Sharp, ‘Jeff’ to all and sundry, was younger than Alfred, and much bigger.  He was a fat man, but not with big wobbling rolls.  He seemed to have a solid cushion under his shirt, extending all the way down from the top of his chest to below the waistband.  From this wide jar of flesh, his legs tapered rapidly to narrow ankles.  In his preferred black pinstripe suit, he was a geometry lesson; in profile, a cylinder balanced atop two scalene triangles, finished with a squat pint-glass of a head, missing only a handle out of the back. 

Jeff loomed over Alfred as he bellowed, “Morning Alfred, you’re taking it easy already?”  He spoke at high volume in any context, which did nothing to diminish his air of self-importance. 

“Why yes, Jeffery.  Would you join me?” replied Alfred, in a far more considered tone.  “Let’s have a drink; it is Friday after all.”  He knew this would get the other man sitting down.

While Jeff made himself comfortable in the chair opposite Alfred’s, Alfred collected two glasses of scotch with a drop of water from the minibar in one corner.  Knowing Jeffery wouldn’t know the difference, he poured Jeff the cheapest blend, and himself a Campbelltown single malt, which was older than his daughter by a few years. 

Sitting back down, Alfred asked, “How’s the Fincher account coming along?”  He was aware that the combination of alcohol and the chance to share his own brand of pugnacious self-promotion was the best way to loosen Jeff’s mind and tongue. 

“Smashing, old fella!” yelled Jeff. “Should be able to drain at least another half a mil out of that one, and still leave satisfied customers behind!”

“Ah, well done Jeffery.  That will be very helpful for the company, I’m sure.”  Alfred allowed his eye to slyly run up and down his adversary, noticing with distaste how Jeff’s trousers pulled tight at the crotch, his belly resting heavily on the top of his thighs, completely engulfing his belt. 

Jeff gulped noisily.  “What is this fine stuff?”

“You’re drinking a 18-year-old Speyside single malt there,” Alfred lied.  “One of the few independent distillers left in the region.”

“Excellent!  I should learn more about whiskey.  I’ll bet they are always on it up there.”  Jeff’s eyes went skywards; the senior director’s lounge was directly above the one in which they were sitting. 

Alfred could sense his opportunity.  “I suppose you’ve heard all the juniors’ chit-chat?”

Jeff entered his element with a harrumphing sound.  “Claridge is done!  I couldn’t be more sure.  The old bugger is just clinging to that table upstairs with his fingernails!”  He paused.  “You wouldn’t be interested in… taking his place, would you, old lad?” 

Alfred and Jeff connected gazes for a moment.  Alfred considered whether he had misjudged this man; perhaps he was craftier that he had taken him for.  He would have to move carefully.

“Oh, I’m not so far from retirement myself…  But if the company could benefit from my experience, I couldn’t turn them down.”

Jeff sat back and laughed, a performance of a laugh, room-filling and aggressive.  “Ho, nice dodge my man.  I’ll be less coy – I deserve a seat at that table.  When Claridge shifts out, I should be in there.”

He swigged at his whiskey, proud of his challenge to the other, tasting the thrill of his unabashed mercilessness. 

“In fact,” said Jeff conspiratorially (if such a loud voice could be considered conspiratorial), “I’d say there’s already room for someone like me.”

“Oh, do go on,” invited Alfred, crossing his legs and looking deliberately dandyish.  “Let us speak… freely.  You believe you could replace any one of them.  Could you rank them?”

Jeff licked his lips.  They had hit on one of his favourite topics.  He had spent many hours considering the precise nature of the incompetence of each senior director.

“Well… Anyone would put Smythe rock bottom.  He’s a yes-man, never pushed a client for more cash his whole career.  He’s a total flop, couldn’t negotiate his way through a turnstile.  By all accounts, useless with women too.  Smythe is only up there because he was a bootlicker for Clarendon-Smith for so long.  You no doubt heard about how he let the Festinger account go?  What a drip.”

Alfred gently touched the tip of his nose with his finger and gestured for Jeff to continue.

“That old battle-axe would have to be next worst.  Mrs Hampshire, Havisham more like!”  Jeff guffawed at his own literary cleverness.  “I just imagine her as some kind of spinster dominatrix, whips and chains, probably using them on old Rupert Ritherdon!  Ha ha!  She’s a right old sort, eh?  I love how she browbeats the big clients, makes them run home to their mummies.  She’s a hack, though; doesn’t know the first thing about the nuances of international trading.”

Jeff was warming to his theme more and more.  Alfred sat quietly, paying out the rope, counting off the knots as Jeff accelerated his rhetoric. 

“Third worst would have to be Danielson.  Oh Danielson, he’s a slippery one, no mistake.  Have you heard how he schmoozes with the big money?  He’s all over them with gifts, trips to see the dancing girls, and his promises of a ‘personalised service.’  As if mate.  He can’t keep them happy for more than five minutes.  He barely knows the numbers, let alone how to smooth over them for clients.

“So that just leaves Ritherdon and Clarendon-Smith, apart from Claridge, who’s out of the picture anyway.  The two don’s!  Ha ha!  In their dreams.  Ritherdon’s the weaker of the two, I suppose.  He’s never aggressive enough.  He puts on a show but can’t snare the really lucrative deals.  I’ve made twice as much for the company as him.  No balls, that chap.  At least he has a bit more business acumen than Danielson, although that’s not saying much.”

“Indeed,” Alfred murmured, sipping his whiskey.  His eyes flickered towards the ceiling, confident that all the directors were in their lounge above.  They tended to review the week’s successes over coffee on Friday mornings, so they could get away early to their second homes on the coast for the weekend. 

“Clarendon-Smith,” Jeff continued, “is a slightly different animal.  He is the only one of them who’s any use.  I can respect a man who drops a client or a consultant like he does, when he’s finished sapping them dry.  I’d say he’s the only one roughly on my level.  So he’ll top my ranking.”

There was a pause, during which Jeff drained his glass.

“Well, thank you for sharing your insights,” said Alfred, working hard to mask the sarcastic slant of his voice.  “You seem to have it all worked out.”

“That’s right!” shouted Jeff, standing up.  He had made himself heard, imparted some wisdom to someone less capable than his magnificent self, and thus he was done.  “Now, old chap, good chat, must get back to the desk.  I have a conference call with the Beijing office.”

With that, Jeff Sharp departed, leaving a deep dent in his armchair and an unpleasant lingering odour of egotism. 

Alfred sat very still in his seat for a minute or two, expressionless.  He listened to the muffled, yet obviously raised, voices from upstairs.  Then, gradually, he permitted himself a smile that began slowly at the corners of his mouth, and spread over his whole face. 

He recalled his little visit to the senior director’s lounge just thirty minutes ago. 

Alfred had opened the door ever-so carefully, confirming there was no one inside.  He checked the telephone in the corner for its extension number, since the line to the senior director’s lounge wasn’t listed in the company phone book.  He found the digits displayed on its little rectangular screen.  Then he dialled the phone in front of him from his mobile.  As soon as it rang, he hit the speaker button and said hello into his mobile, to check it came through clearly.  Alfred sat down on the arm of one of the chairs across the room, and slid the mobile underneath.  He spoke to himself at normal conversational volume:  “Jeffery Sharp will never enter this room,” twice over like a mantra.  The telephone on the table in the corner repeated his words along with him, Alfred noted to his great satisfaction. 

He stood and smoothed off the arm of the chair where he had reposed; then Alfred left the room silently.  He walked downstairs to the junior lounge, holding his mobile phone with care so as not to accidentally cut the connection to upstairs.  Alfred settled in his chair, slid the mobile underneath and waited for his opponent’s arrival.

Now, after Sharp’s departure, he chuckled to himself, reaching underneath his chair and hanging up the call that his mobile phone had been making for the past half hour.  Alfred went back to the minibar and poured himself another scotch; it tasted all the more gratifying as he reflected on the now inescapable demise of one Jeffery Sharp.  

a forty fourth story...'better than ___'

You’ve fancied her for ages, but actually acknowledging this makes you feel eleven years old all over again.  And there’s a game on – your team is playing.  And it’s not just any game, no, it’s against them.  The best moment of your life came when your team was playing against them, and while avoiding defeat against them can bring an enormous flood of relief, winning brings a kind of ecstasy you just don’t experience anytime, any place else.  It was four years ago, the best moment of your life: three minutes left on the Anfield clock, the league to play for, a late corner, flicked on at the near post, a poke of that long leg of his – the bloke who’s now at Sunderland – a connection, the sweetest connection and WOOSH! To infinity and beyond! (at least for a tumultuous minute, before you remembered you still had the slowest one hundred and twenty seconds in human creation to endure)..

..‘I didn’t know you were a football fan’, she says, as your eyes are drawn from the screen to her, to the screen and back again; your personality tugged from one extreme to the other – the sensitive, interested, intelligent young man and the monomaniacal, obsessive compulsive football supporter. ‘Yes, I’m afraid so’, you find yourself apologising, thinking at the same time, if we ever become bedfellows, you’ll have to get used to the fact there’s no I in threesome. 

‘I think I could get into football’, she continues, smiling up at you as you bob this way and that as your team attacks, as if it’s really you weaving in and out of the opposition defenders.  ‘You could?’, you reply half in hope, half in the knowledge that getting into football is a damaging psychological activity that will end up affecting your central nervous system far more emphatically than any form of new fangled amphetamine, not to mention having a deleterious effect on any potential relationship.  

‘Yes, my father used to play.  He was a defen---‘.  ‘AARRGH’ She is cut off, mid-sentence as you grab her shoulders, completely by surprise, completely unintentionally: the opposition keeper tips a swerving shot from your man, your boy, onto the cross bar and out for a corner. ‘Oooh’, she exclaims, but luckily, luckily for you, you feel the shock leave her body and she relaxes. 

But while, in the normal course of events, you might put your arm around her and offer a pseudo romantic apology, this, THIS COULD BE THE MOMENT.  ‘Oops’, you say instead, flashing a lunatic grin at her and turning your full, and I mean FULL attention back to the screen.  Your boy is placing the ball in the corner circle and your man, THE MAN, Van The Man, is lurking in the six yard box.  He’s a ghost, he has all the stealth and ruthlessness of an assassin from the very top of the Assassin’s Fucking Guild.  You’re super-glued to the screen.  Pupils as big as buttons.  You’re sensing the adrenalin building in your stomach, you know your boys are capable of Great Comebacks.  You recall once again the GREATEST MOMENT OF YOUR LIFE, you think to yourself: to hell with the girl, she can go hang..if..IF..please, pretty please, your team scores at this moment.  This moment I shall hereby remember and cherish for the rest of my life, you think – if, if, if we score. 

~

Then everything happens very quickly, the cross..the movement across the opposition defender, the diving header..YESSSSSSSSS! FUCKING YEESSSSSSSSSS! UNBELIEVAALBLE! The boys, the boys, the boyZ! Brief visions of you as Kenneth Branagh playing Henry V flare in your minds eye.  ON ST CRISPINS DAY! 

YESSSSSS.  Van Persie.  R O B, V I P, Van Persie is the man for me - it’s a silly chant you made up yourself, but what do you care? You’ve done it, you’ve done your bit for the boys.  You bask in victory, beautiful, sweet, warm, delicious, delectable victory. 

~

..About five, perhaps six hours later, when the trip is over, the realisation strikes that the girl your future happiness could, in real, every day life depend on is no longer with you, and that you’ll have to explain later, in a quiet and intimate moment, in some more welcoming public drinking establishment (maybe one of those ones with an expensive wine list, and Pre-Raphaelite paintings in the loos), using all your philosophical nous, why you went AWOL and ignored her for the rest of the evening; why your team scoring a winning goal against them is better, far better than sex, better than sex on your wedding night, your honeymoon, better than being at the birth of your first child. 

Better than flying to the moon.

a forty third story...'there's kids in here'

..There goes someone, at it.  Havin’ it.  You feel a spike of hatred, blind fury, rage.  But first time you catch yourself.  Perhaps the lad behind has got Tourettes, or some form of learning disability..And here go the opposition, streaming forward again.  Your fingers are crossed, your arms are folded, your body contorts with every cross that drops into the box, every near miss.  It’s agony.  Watching your team – the weekend revolves around it.  But at moments like these, you wonder why.  You wonder: why do I even like football?  Then again you know, you have to be there for your boys, in front of that screen, in that pub with that halfwit who supports the enemy mouthing off behind you.  The enemy/opposition have a corner, you grit your teeth.  Here comes the delivery.  In a flash you stake your life on one moment, just clear the fucking ball, out, away.  Get a bloody head on it!  For a moment you’d sacrifice your girlfriend, your job, even your family to see the ball punted clear of your goal or sailing harmlessly over the bar.  Gnnnnnnr. And then the sucker punch, the sickening blow.  The ball glances off the forehead of an onrushing opposition attacker and into the goal.  As the net bulges and the opposition players wheel away arms in the air in celebration, the lad behind explodes with vicious delight.  ‘FUCKING YES, FUCKING HAVE IT, YOU CUNTS!’ .  He’s joined by his ‘mates’.  ‘GET IN, YA BASTARD, FUCKING CLASS!’  In an instant you are wishing death on him as well as his conniving mates.  And if it were possible, if you were the fighting type, if you were only more than average in every physical respect you would administer the punishment.  Your blood is hot, hot, your skin is beginning to blister, your anger is in danger of boiling over.  But you know you’ve only got your wit.  And that’s never enough.  ‘FUCKING UNITED…CUNTS, FUCKING CUNTS’, the lad again, that fucking Liverpool fuck, that fucking Scouse bastard, that fucking attitude, that fucking sense of fucking entitlement.  You’ve had it with him, but what can you do?  You look around for a pool cue, an umbrella with a sharp end, a piece of pub clobber you can bludgeon him with.  And then, there in the corner of the room, you notice for the first time your weapon.  You turn around, and face him, in his ugly red shirt, with the ugly badge with the ugly red dragon on the crest and the two justice flames licking the sides.  You search quickly for your most commanding tone.  And somehow you find it and injecting a bit of menace for good measure you look at him directly in his small, mean eyes and say firmly: ‘Do YOU wanna cool it, mate? There’s KIDS in here!’.  

Ivory - a short one by Phil

After months of acrimony; teenage petulance and parental stubbornness, I thought I’d seen a new phase beginning in the relationship between my husband and daughter.  We were on holiday in Thailand, the three of us, enjoying blissed-out beach time.  It was a welcome reprieve, but not without dramas, such as our daughter’s vigorously ill response to some searing spicy street food, and my husband offending monks at a temple with his attempted deference; it came off like a piss-take.  Nevertheless, all of us had begun to forget the conflicts of home, where the minutiae of the exact time our daughter was due home, her precise location and the people accompanying her when ‘just out’ had become overwhelming, a cul-de-sac.  That day, the beach was beautiful, the sea a folded blanket gently resting on a deep carpet of sand.  I blistered uncompromisingly in the sunshine while my husband took a swim with our daughter.  They had been pushing against one another so hard for so long I felt a rising relief to see them relax with each other, goofing about in the water. 

A magical moment then occurred, when my husband shouted urgently to Fiona, ‘What’s that, behind you?’ as a dark shape moved in the water a few meters away.  She swam towards him and turned, and both saw that it was an elephant swimming right there in the ocean, unconcerned about the tourists, nobly skirting most swimmers as it came into the shallows.  Massive but elegant, its trunk stuck periscopically two feet above the surface of the water.  Fiona and Daniel watched with childish excitement, and I saw him put his arm over her shoulder.  I could see the fondest of memories forming, could feel the two of them remembering they loved each other.  It was dreamlike, unreal, as the elephant swam until the water was too shallow then proceeded to loll about in the wet sand.  Serene and self-possessed, the beast unabashedly sloshed water and sand about.  Tourists took photographs.  My husband and daughter just stood in the water, drinking up the scene. However, the reconciliation was to be incomplete.

Just then, a gunshot sounded, so unexpected and intense, and the elephant shrieked shrilly.  The anguish was human, unbelievable.  Two more shots followed, with quick ferocity.  The elephant thrashed about, the wounds to the head, neck and chest – a deadly triumvirate.  Shocked tourists scattered; Daniel and Fiona rushed towards me on the beach.  We clustered on the towels, Fiona shivering.  The gunman ran out of his vantage point among the palms, heading a gang of five men with hatchets and machetes. 

One plunged a hatchet into the elephant’s neck, as though to ensure the murder was done.  The others dragged the front legs back, and the head upwards, giving them plenty of room around the tusks.  They viciously hacked at the root of the left tusk first, two men holding the tusk and rocking it back and forth.  One man repeatedly raised his machete high in the air and brought it slamming down on the side of the elephant’s great head, uncompromising in his violence.  They worked fast, in silence, so we could hear the garish butchery.  Blood mingled with the perfect sand, a sudden and shocking confession of brutality and desperation. 

The team had removed the first tusk within ten minutes.  The second was more difficult, with the elephant’s head lying over its root.  The tourists returned to gather and bear witness to the macabre scene.  The men chopped away even more aggressively.  They were all bare-chested, blood and sweat-soaked.  Eventually, while we watched, still stricken, they yanked out the huge right tooth.  It took two men to carry each tusk; hoisted onto their shoulders like they were bearing a coffin. 

The men dashed off, disappearing into the trees, leaving the mutilated giant on the beach, the wavelets of the receding tide lapping at its haunches.  The crowd slowly dissipated, and the three of us went to the elephant and each touched it once on the forehead, a shared moment of humbling melancholy.  

a forty second story...'changes'

The tour had been cancelled half way through out of respect.  A giant skull and cross bones had crushed the drum technician to death.  The skull and cross bones had been part of the tour set design.  At the time of the accident, Paul was on an errand - his errand to procure eleven bags of honey coated Spanish almonds for the bass player of the group.  The bass player of the group was called Pulex Irritans, or rather this was his stage name.  Pulex Irritans' real name was Clive. 

Clive liked honeyed almonds.

..By the way, the group were called Capsicum Pubescens!  They were world famous!!

~

Paul had been a roadie for various bands in his life, but Capsicum Pubescens, was, to use the trade venacular, his best 'gig'.  Travelling the globe with Capsicum Pubescens, Paul had seen so much of various cities and cultures, as well as developed an extraordinary, and probably unrivalled knowledge of international health food emporia.  Then again, he still didn't know Holland & Barrett began life in 1870 as a clothing store.

But until of late, neither did I.

Anyway, Paul loved the 'gig', and the tragic accident that befell Capsicum Pubescens' drum technician cast a long shadow over the future of the group, and the 'gig' - three fourths of the group believed in Karma, there was it seemed something in the waters, and the whole incident was an omen. 

The omen said: 'Stop Touring.  Pack it all in'.

As it turned out three fourths of the group were only too delighted to retire to the luxury of their rock star pent houses, and, coincidentally the music cogniscenti all thanked their lucky stars and pin badges for the omen as well!

~


The omen, of course, did little to suit Paul.  He was forced to return to the Birmingham suburb where he had been living and resume his job alphabetising vinyl in his mate Tony's record shop: 'Tony's Records'.  Unfortunately, he returned home to discover in the few months he had been away, Tony's record shop had started selling women's lingerie instead.  It was now called 'Fig Leaves'.

'What on earth did you do that for?', asked Paul when he and Tony hit the pub on Paul's first Friday home.  'Why?', replied Tony, supping a pint of stout.  Why!!? Paul asked again, only for Tony to explain that while Paul had been away he realsied his days selling old, unwanted Deacon Blue LPs were over - he too had seen an omen (ironically, Deacon Blue, with his partner, at the Birmingham Symphony Hall, on their 'Hipster' tour!). 

Enough was enough.

Closing Time!!

..And so on.

~

Poor Paul was at a loss.  He didn't know what to do next.  And a visit to the Job Centre did not help either - Paul sat together for two hours with a plump, bespectacled spinster called Majorie, and the only skills relevant to the world of work Paul could muster on paper were as follows:

Lifting and safely storing heavy objects; shopping for health food items - honey coated almonds, in particular; driving a minivan; doing as he was told.

Marjorie had then pushed her horn-rims back onto the bridge of her nose, adjusted her butterfly broach, stamped a couple of official documents and suggested Paul try for another job as a roadie.  Paul sighed. 

Once a roadie always a roadie! 

~

 
For the next four weeks Paul exerted himself scrutinising the local classifieds, but there was nothing he seemed fit for.  Nothing whatsover.  And as far as trying for another job as a roadie, well, as Paul told Tony when they hit the pub on Paul's second Friday home, Paul wanted to bow out on a high.  'I had the best gig in the (roadie) business', lamented Paul, 'I'll never get better one, and I'm not one for (roadie) come backs'.  There was an element of logic in this - Capsicum  Pubescens really were the biggest band on the planet (at least according to their fanzine, The Chili Sauce), and the only way for a roadie was down, even if Paul was forgetting the main, or perhaps the sole reason for the comeback: money.

~

Then a few days later, as Paul was eating his morning breakfast cereal, his eye fell on an advert in the weekly classifieds.  Paul hesitated, droplets of milk shuddering from his spoonful of cornflakes: the money was good, the hours were..good, the location was..within walking distance, the job description seemed to involve..doing what one was told.  The name of the place was..

..wait for it..

..

Fig Leaves!

Paul, resubmerged his spoonful of cornflakes into the bowl from whence it had just been raised.  He gazed at the job advertisment for a full two minutes, hardly blinking at all.  Next, Paul pushed back his chair from the breakfast table, stood up, walked over to the sideboard, took a pair of scissors from the kitchen drawer and returned to sit down.  From here, Paul made an incision with the scissorblades around the job advertisement for 'Fig Leaves', and, as if examining a banknote, held it up to the light. 

A moment later the job advertisement was tacked to his pinboard and he had edited and updated the contact details for what had once been Tony's Records in his mobile telephone.

   ~

On Paul's first day working as a shop assitant at 'Fig Leaves', he had firmly to resist the temptation, when processing stock, to hang on what might be considered rather too long for a man of his appearance and bearing - Paul was a dead ringer for Jimmy Nail - to the knickerlace being passed through his hands.  That is not say temptation wasn't staring Paul in his long, hangdog face.  How he wanted to feel with his big, rough hands the fine weavings and intricate, fiddly little patterns that he was discovering seemed to characterise women's lingerie, but like Jesus in the desert, resist temptation he did!

On Paul's second day as a shop assistant at 'Fig Leaves', he was arranging a window display for the new stock of plunge balcony bras they had just received in when he looked up to find one of Tony's Records' most loyal, obsessive, and generally irritating customers staring at him askance through the glass.  Paul, ex roadie and friend of the hard rocking Capsicum Pubescens, and their bass player, Pulex Irritans, was deeply, deeply embarrassed; Roland, on the other hand, who had spent the fullness of his sexually active life as a fully active and fully incontinent member of Record Collector Magazine was deeply envious.

(the closest Roland had got to getting his hands on women's lingerie was Roxy Music's third album cover - Stranded)

But get this: on Paul's third day as a shop assistant at 'Fig Leaves', he was asked to remove the knickers from two female manekins in the centre floor display.  Paul felt fifteen all over again!  It was like being reborn (albeit as a teenager in a hairy, forty something year old body undressing a giant, sexless barbie ).

Needless to say, it felt good.

~

After a month at 'Fig Leaves', Paul was an expert in women's lingerie.  He found he could talk at length about Camisole Vests, the virtues of the Big Wave Break Chemise over the Pandora DD Chemise, the difference between Bamboo Leggings and Contour Tights.  To eavesdroppers in the pub, Paul might have sounded like an Executive Transvestite; but Paul's audience, a motley crew of ageing, sex deprived rocksters, were able to fulfil their erotic fantasies through his chatter (at least up to a point - when they opened their eyes they were still faced with a Jimmy Nail lookalike).

Indeed, with time, Paul began to view his former career as a roadie as something rather uncouth, as some kind of interlude in his life before he found his true calling.  Where before he had only an appreciation of leather and cotton, now he dealt in satin and silk.

Rags to riches!

And so, dear reader, Paul's little story is proof we can change, we can change, we can
change!

You just have to be open to it.