My Scatterbrained Cycle Ride with Jazzy.


I don’t suppose you’re interested in the ridiculous, irresponsible tales of a first year University student somewhere in the west of England. But if you’re reading this now, that’s what you’re in store for. A little slice of stupidity.

This was back in October — a month into my first year of studying hard and doing my best to ruin my already mediocre physical state with alcohol and other such trifles. By this point I’d met many of the people I associate with daily and consider great friends. Jazzy Pete, who’s now my boss as a gardener, and also fulfilled the role of a dealer for a time, too. He has a penchant for well, jazz, but also whiskey, gin, foxy babes, marijuana, cocaine, mushrooms, good quality meats, vegetables, the piano and electric guitar, skateboarding, tightrope walking, mischief making and anything else of the weird or wonderful. Not forgetting Tara, Tash, Laura, Luke or Jimmy. They were all there too. And probably a couple of others. But this tale is all about Jazzy fucking Pete.

It was a bleak friday night, and nobody particularly wanted to do anything. Going out was definitely out of the question. Yep, you wouldn’t be seeing any of us on the town that night. Except when it got to 11pm, we all fancied a drink. By 1am we were fucked, and a taxi had been ordered to ferry us into town as soon as possible. The problem was, the taxi was for 6, and we were made of 8. Being something of adventurer and a bit of a fucking idiot, I suggested that myself and Jazzy would make the 25 minute cycle into town and catch up with the gang. In the pissing rain. With no lights. Fucked.

Everyone heartily agreed that this was an excellent idea, and Jazzy proceeded to roll a joint the size of a cricket bat. The others left, the cricket bat was smoked to its stingers, and the world seemed to revolve at a rate that would make years swing by in seconds. We both agreed that a brief yet gratifying tinkle on his Korg electric piano was in order before our pilgrimage into town. After ten minutes of fingers falling on duff keys, we figured it was time to make for the road. Pete chucked me a parker which was not built for my rotund frame and perhaps even a little tight on his boyish body, but it went on all the same.

I veered across the empty road as though tracing the peaks and troughs of a heartbeat monitor. It was, as Pete might put it, ‘fucking intense’. Pete however performed jumps, tricks, flicks and all the rest of it. I have no idea how. I think he may have been possessed by some BMX demon, that night. We’d made it into town without any major cause for concern. At least the outskirts. We hadn’t passed car, with it being half 1am, until, around the corner from the club, a deafening light comes up from behind us. Jazzy shouted: “Phil, come left,” to get out of its way, with us being in the middle of the road. And I, in quite a mind melted state, over compensate by thrusting the handlebars sharp to the left, so much so that it felt necessary to spin them immediately back to the right. Next thing I’ve crashed into a car that’s parked on the side of the road, in a heap, thinking I have no idea what, but probably something nothing to do with anything. I get to my feet, and to what should have been my horror, but at the time seemed nothing too concerning, the car behind had stopped, and two uniformed officers were making their way towards me. They got me onto the pavement, and Pete, being one of the most decent people I’ve ever come to meet, despite what aspersions you may have interpreted from my descriptions of the man, came and spoke to them with me, although I am certain he could have gotten away without any trouble.

“Been drinking tonight boys?” an officer said.

“A little, I’ve had, officer,” I said, trying my best to perfect the balance apology and sobriety in my response.

“We could take you in tonight if we wanted to. But that seems unnecessary. Stupid thing to do that….etc etc” I can’t really remember.

They let us go. I think it probably gave them a fucking good laugh. We locked up our bikes and went to the club, only to have no idea where we’d left them the next day.

Lesson learnt.

Molly.


Molly.

I never wanted to start working for Gerry Broker. It was all sort of out of my control. The fucker used to pull at my hair when we were kids, and shower me in abuse of all shades of shite. Molly couldn’t stand him either. When we were together she used to say:

– He’s a bad bloke, Gerry Broker is, she said. – Stay clear of him. But I’d no choice. Broker basically seized his Dad’s double glazing business in Blackpool soon after he left school. He tried to sound like a flash fuck and describe himself as European Sales Manager when we all knew he was just a door-to-door salesman. So was I. And, him being a natural bully, he was very good at it. Me being a bit limp tongued, I was pretty bad. The thing is, I wasn’t actually working for Broker. Well I was…technically. But I was more just watching: documenting. We didn’t have a camera, no… nor me or Niall, we were too poor for that. But I took note of how Broker behaved. I wrote it all down. I suppose this is the story of where my findings took me. But not the whole thing. Not by a long shot. My notes on Broker came to over a thousand pages in the end. Of what Broker taught me. You might think it’s dumb really, to work for a man you hate, just to observe him for all his wrongs. But it made sense. Molly loved documentaries after all. It seemed like the only way I win her love back, in making one of my own. I thought I’d publish it all and illuminate to Mol my ingenuity and thoughtfulness and bring Brooks down in the process. The plan was sweeter than strawberries.

I was telling her about my dreams before it all began. Quirky little fucked up ones they were, at the time. I told Mol what happened in ‘em. I said:

– I’m falling, hurtling, down to the floor from some tummy turning height. Then I’m in a room fulla tickin clocks and my teeth are all falling out on the floor. Molly’d shake us awake and she’d say I’d be like crying almost. I’d be alright though, once I could roll onto my side and trace the curves in her back with my hands, and rest my thumb in the delicate kidney dimples on the small of her back. I remember how the bow in her spine eased down and swept upwards at the bottom. It could have been formed in the design of a delicate swish of a composer’s baton. Those dreams plagued me in the odd hours for weeks on end. Until I took Mol over Blackpool tower one day. She was going on about how the glass at the top, the walk of faith she says it’s called, can take a weight of summit like fifty tonnes. She said it was on Louis Theroux or some other documentary the other week.

– I fuckin hate Louis Theroux. I said, trying to move the conversation away from documentaries. They’re all she ever spoke about.

– You don’t even know who he is, Jon. He’s an interesting man. I’d never been into documentaries. Looking at everything through a magnifying glass, you miss the bigger picture, I reckon.

– Jonny, she says. – I can’t be doing this no more. At first I thought she meant the height of it, what with us bein’ near 150 metres up in clouds.

– Let’s geddown then, shall we? I said, putting my arm round her flat shoulders, ushering her to the exit. She stepped back from me and says:

– That’s not what I mean, Jonny. I can’t deal with your hate for everything, she says. After two years together she pissed all over us. I didn’t know at the time what brought it on. I’d had thoughts of asking Mol to become Mrs. Jonny Hopping. Just as well I didn’t ask. Proper tit I’d have looked when she’d have said no. I looked down at my feet so she couldn’t see me weeping like an open wound, forgettin we’re on the glass floor, right at the top. My bowels slackened at the sight of all the lego-men below – the ittiness of everything. Nigh on shat my pants at the very top. That wouldn’t have been the ideal way to go about winning her love back. She nestled her precious head in my chest for a few seconds, then left. I can still feel that impression on my heart now. I rang Niall and he came down to the pier and we skittered skimming stones across the flat grey water for a while, supping at Special Brew and acting like neither of us had a care for anything in the whole shitey world. He’d just told us that his Dad’s window tinting company had gone under.

– We’re fucked, he said. – There’s no decent work for boys like us, Jonny. Dad says he’s sorted us somethin’ though. With Broker.

– Fuck that, I said. That’s not for me, Ni. Broker’s a fat bastard. And he’s always had it in for me.

– He’s not the same as when we were boys, Jon. He’s a grown bloke, he’s done us a good turn. And so that’s when I thought it. I had no option but to work for the fucker, I’d be out on the streets if not. And I wanted to stick with Niall. The lanky bastard would be lost without me, and I don’t mean that in a big-headed way. He’s as dumb as a dandelion. If I had to work for this cocky bastard then I’d at least be in it to fuck him up somehow. Even if all that meant was jotting down how much of a twat he was in a little notebook. I felt like a soldier that didn’t shoot his gun on the job. A real thrill. A conscientious objector to door-to-door sales techniques.

Broker’s techniques were quite something, too. When me and Niall went over for our first day with him, he showed us some real dark stuff. I’d forgotten how unpleasant time spent in his company was. He had a maddening way of describing any conversation as though it happened back-to-back. “Then he turned round to me and says” forming the beginning of almost all his anecdotes.

– Then he turned round to me and says ‘you’re the best salesman I ever dealt with Gerry.’ And he’s right, Broker said, choking on his laugh which crawled up his thick neck and barked out of his rotter. When I thought about it, I completely understood if most of his conversations did happen back-to-back. After all, Broker had a nose like a huge glowing red chili and an uneven peppering of stubble across his cheeks. Proper fiery fucker. And you could tell he was a flash cunt right away, even if you didn’t see him rock up in his soft-top Saab, it was from his Clooney-grey hair that must work its charms on his victims. You couldn’t help but think he’d be driving something shitey like a Rover if his locks were Jon Snow-white. He had a fancy-as-fuck watch shackled around his wrist as well. A white metal thing with a face almost as big as his own. He wore it like a second cock. I never asked him the time, even if I really needed to know, just so he couldn’t get the satisfaction of swishing it in front of my muzzle.

– How’s the Mrs, Jonny? he said soon after we arrived and had suffered his crippling handshake. When he spoke his tongue slithered along his cheek before saying what he wanted to. He spoke too fast and huffed at the slightest of inconveniences. Asking this question seemed an inconvenience, and was followed by a long, wheezy huff.

– Fine, I said. Then he showed us his twisted mind. He knocked on a door and said – This is the shoes-off method. Me and Niall stood there behind him, a bit confused by that. You could already smell his bullshit blowing in the winter breeze. A bingo-winged lady answered, wearing a pinkish smock, with bulging electric blue varicose veins worming their way through her dimpled calves. Broker said:

– Good afternoon, lovey, how are you? before she could respond he started to unlace his shimmering black shoes and had them off pretty quick and offered himself in. In an instant I was drinking her cold tea and sat on her damp sofa with Niall beside me. Broker was performing his set from a clicky-combination type briefcase by the fireplace, and the lady sunk into her own swathes of yellow fat in the armchair by the front windows. I didn’t realise quite how large the lady was until we got in her living room. She needed a zimmerframe to get around. But despite asking us in for a drink and sounding very interested in Broker’s double glazing special offers, she soon backed away from any purchase.

– I’m sorry Mr. Broker, I’ve listened to what you’re offering but it just isn’t for me. I suppose I invited you in because I’m just lonely. My husband passed away a few months back, she said. I looked at Niall and he looked proper spaced out by the whole situation. It made the whole thing proper thorny. But Broker will never give up on a sale.

– What if I can offer you a third off our fitting fees? surely that’ll swing you, lovey? he said. I didn’t know there even was a fitting fee.

– No, no, Mr. Broker, she said, her swollen face dropping into a look of discomfort. – My husband wouldn’t be so happy at me spending money I don’t be needing to, she said. I was fascinated. Broker turned around and, almost hyperventilating, let out a sort of roar. You could tell he wanted to remind her that her husband is dead. Proper fucking psycho. Then he turned back all professional and said:

– May I ask how your husband died? I am very sorry for your loss, lovey.

– He fell and broke his neck… the C7, the bone at the bottom of your neck. The doc’s said it would have been almost instant, mind. So I can take something from that, she said, twisting her wedding ring around her oversized fingers.

– Goodness, Broker said. He was quiet for a sec, and then followed up with – What a jazzy way to go, the C7. Well, I’ll be blown. It’s been a pleasure, lovey. Now take a card. Broker threw one of his shitey business cards down on the brown carpet, snapped up his briefcase and left. Brash cunt. If I was the fly on the wall, she was the elephant in the room. Proper obese and having none of it and crying now. Made the rest of the day proper tetchy.

This sort of situation would be replicated around ten to fifteen times in an average day working with Broker. We must have covered half of Blackpool in a week or so, having shoes and abuse hurled at us often along the way. He bullied people with the power of his wrist-cock and silvering Ocean’s Thirteen hair. What I’m really here to tell you though, is about the one house we knocked on that really changed everything. I’d been a spending my days thinking too much, living inside my own head, I spose. It was just how it all ended so sudden. Like having my legs smashed out from beneath me, without a word of warning or chair to fall back on. Just fell right on my arse. My heart and stomach felt as though they’d plummeted through the walk of faith and thudded onto Blackpool beach. The house was in Staple Street, a shitey little road, straight from the set of Coronation Street. I pinged the broken doorbell and knocked a handful of times. Broker had been giving me shit all day about how shit I was at selling double glazing.

– Mediocrity is what it is Jonny boy, he said. – It’s as far as the eye can see. He also said it was ‘my day’, and that he wasn’t going to try and sell a thing to anyone until I’d made twenty seven sales. One for every mediocre year of my existence he said. He was more full of himself than a fucking Russian doll. Fucker, he is. Inflating his ego on the taste of my shortcomings. He was prodding me in the back I remember, at the doorstep of this house. And I remember how I noticed just before any answer came, that the skeletons of trees which lined the pot-holed road had ribbons of toilet roll coiled over and around them. It had taken over the trees themselves and infected them with its shitey contempt. I snapped my head back around to reprepare my pre-prepared bullshit Blue Peter speech. Broker called it the Blue Peter speech because it was ‘one he made earlier’. The prick. From behind the blue door a default faced lady answered, but I took nothing of her face in. My attentions fell to the blonde over her sharp shoulder, in the room behind her, almost supine, reclined way back in a special chair, plugged into a respirator, with tubes coming out of her like a web of poison ivy. It was Molly. I said nothing and just walked straight in. I could hear Broker yelp with awe at what he probably thought was some new, ballsy technique I’d invented to try to impress him. But I just had to speak to her. I knelt down by her side and pressed her fingers in my hands. She didn’t move and for a while I just knelt there and held her. The lady then said from the doorway:

– Jonnny, I suppose you are? I didn’t turn to her but nodded and she left us to it. Gerry didn’t come in either. The door clicked shut and I told Molly that I loved her, and I always would. I told her that if death ran off with me tomorrow, that I’d be more complete and not quite as cold and bitter as other men. It’s thanks to Molly’s compassion that I can say that. I said she’d always be welcome, in ten years or even fifty, to come and see me and spend an evening in each other’s company. Even though she couldn’t respond and nothing of it was said, we both knew that this could never happen. Mol wouldn’t make it. She looked grey. I found out at her funeral that it was her kidneys. I never found out why she did it.

The Sky You Painted.


 

 

Upon rotten ledges and woods, your thirsty words became

 

doubted.

 

Yet still — we watched and waved, we blamed and waited.

The sky you’d painted fell,

tainted,

ruined by the night.

 

And as it attacked in blues and blacks, we listened and heard our breathing be clean and our smoking out –

 

The skin-soft breeze filled the air and lured the boats in.

 

They waited, watched and waved and halted.

We sang; and our feet were wet and our kisses salted – but then, from a sudden, far off… way away, in the distance,

a tugboat whistled.

Yet still.

We managed. You stayed afloat in shouts and flails; drowning in the whites of sails.

In a clamour,

soaked to your own heavy bones.

It was drunken and sobering.

My confidences bottled,

shattered and

failing.

But in the morning

The tides they came in, creeping, still -

still, and still.

 

 

The New Louis Theroux.


I would love your feedback on this Fucking love it. If you read it, please please please say something, anything about it!!

cheers

 

 

I never wanted to start working for Gerry Broker. It was all sort of out of my control. The fucker used to pull at my long ginger hair when we were kids, and call me all sorts of names. Molly couldn’t stand him either. When we were together she used to say
-He’s a bad bloke, Gerry Broker is, she said. -Stay clear of him. But I’d no choice. Broker basically seized his Dad’s double glazing business in Blackpool soon after he left school. He tried to sound like a flash cunt and describe himself as European Sales Manager, but he was just a door to door salesman. So was I. And, him being a natural bully, he was very good at it. Me being a bit limp tongued, I was pretty bad. The thing is, I wasn’t actually working for Broker. Well I was…technically. But I was more just watching: documenting. We didn’t have a camera, no… nor me or Niall, we were too poor for that. But we took note of how Broker behaved. I suppose this is the documentation of that. Of what Broker taught me. You might think it’s silly really, to work for a man you hate, just to observe him for all his wrongs. But it made sense. Molly loved documentaries after all. It seemed like the only way I could have her back… to make one of my own.

I was telling her about my dreams. Quirky little fucked up ones they were, at the time. I told Mol what happened in ‘em. I said -Am falling, hurtling, down to the floor from some tummy turning height. Then I’m in a room fulla tickin clocks and my teeth are all falling out on the floor. Really fucked. Molly’d shake us awake and she’d say I’d be like crying almost. Not for want of dreaming again, I can tell ya that much. Sketched me right out. Had them plaguing me in the odd hours for weeks on end. Until I took Mol over Blackpool tower. She was going on about how the glass at the top, the walk of faith she says it’s called, can take a weight of summit like fifty tonnes. She says it was on Louis Theroux the other week.
- I fuckin hate Louis Theroux. I say, trying to move the conversation away from documentaries.
- You don’t even know who he is, Jon. He’s an interesting man. I’d never been into these documentaries. Looking at everything through a magnifying glass, you miss the bigger picture,I reckon.
- Jonny, she says. – I can’t be doing this no more. At first I thought she meant the height of it, what with us bein’ near 150 metres up in clouds.
- Let’s geddown then, shall we? I say, putting my arm round her flat shoulders, ushering her to the exit. She brushes me off and says:
- That’s not what I mean, Jonny. We’re goin’ nowhere. Time we went our separate ways, she says. After two years of picking her up from work and going to the cinema each Wednesday, and driving up the coast, or going to see her folks, she pisses all over us. That really gave my heart a kick in the balls. I couldn’t tell what bought it on. I had thoughts of asking Mol to become Mrs. Jonny Hopping. Just as well I didn’t ask. Proper tit I’d have looked when she’d have said no. I looked down at my feet so’s she can’t see me weeping like an open wound, forgettin we’re on the glass floor, right at the top. My bowels slackened at the sight of all the lego-men below — the ittiness of everything. Nigh on shat my pants at the very top. Now that wouldn’t have been the ideal way to go about winning her love back. She nestled her precious head in my chest for a few seconds, and then left. I can still feel that impression on my heart now. I rang Niall and he came down to the pier and we skittered skimming stones across the flat grey water for a while, supping at Special Brew and acting like neither of us had feelings. He’d just told us that his Dad’s window tinting company had gone under.
- We’re fucked, he said. – There’s no decent work for boys like us, Jonny. Dad says he’s sorted us somethin’ though. With Broker.
- Fuck that, I said. That’s not for me, Ni. Broker’s a fat bastard. And he’s always had it in for me.
- He’s not the same as when we were boys, Jon. He’s a grown bloke, he’s done us a good turn. And so that’s when I thought it. If I had to work for this balding cocky bastard then I’d at least be in it to fuck him up somehow. Even if all that meant was jotting down how much of a twat he was in this little notebook. I felt like a soldier that didn’t shoot his gun on the job. A real thrill. A conscientious objector to door to door sales techniques.

Broker’s techniques were quite somethin. When me and Niall went over for our first day with him, he showed us some real dark stuff. I’d forgotten how unpleasant time spent in his company was. He had a really fucking annoying way of describing any conversation as though it happened back to back. “Then he turned round to me and says” forming the beginning of almost all of his anecdotes.
- Then he turned round to me and says ‘you’re the best salesman I ever dealt with Gerry.’ And he’s right, Broker said, choking on his laugh which crawled up his thick neck and barked out. When I thought about it, I completely understood if most of his conversations did happen back-to-back. After all, Broker had a nose like a huge glowing red chili and an uneven peppering of stubble across his cheeks. You could tell he was a flash cunt right away, even if you didn’t see him rock up in his soft-top Saab, but from his Clooney-grey hair that must work its charms on his victims. You couldn’t help but think he’d be driving something shitey like a Rover if his locks were Jon Snow-white. He had a fancy-as-fuck watch shackled around his wrist as well. A white metal thing with a face almost as big as his own. And he wore it like a second cock. I never asked him the time, even if I really needed to know, just so he couldn’t get the satisfaction of swishing it in front of my face.
- How’s the Mrs, Jonny? he said soon after we arrived and suffered his crippling handshake. When he spoke his tongue slithered along his cheek before saying what he wanted to. He spoke too fast and huffed at the slightest of inconveniences. Asking this question seemed an inconvenience, and was followed by a long, wheezy huff.
- Fine, I said. Then he showed us his twisted mind. He knocked on a door and said – This is the shoes-off method. Me and Niall stood there behind him, a bit confused by that. You could already smell his bullshit blowing in the winter breeze. A bingo-winged lady answered, wearing a pinkish smock, with bulging electric blue varicose veins. Broker said – Good afternoon, lovey, how are you? before she could respond he started to unlace his shimmering black shoes and had them off pretty quick, and offered himself in. In an instant I was drinking her cold tea and sat on her damp sofa with Niall beside me. Broker was performing his set from a clicky-combination type briefcase by the fireplace, and the lady sunk into her own swathes of yellow fat in the armchair by the front windows. I didn’t realise quite how large the lady was until we got in her living room. She needed a zimmerframe to get around. But despite asking us in for a drink and sounding very interested in Broker’s double glazing special offers, she soon backed away from any purchase.
- I’m sorry Mr. Broker, I’ve listened to what you’re offering but it just isn’t for me. I suppose I invited you in because I’m just lonely. My husband passed away a few months back, she said. I looked at Niall and he looked spaced out by the whole situation. It made the whole thing proper thorny. But Broker will never give up on a sale.
- What if I can offer you a third off our fitting fees? surely that’ll swing you, lovey? he said. I didn’t know there even was a fitting fee.
- No, no, Mr. Broker, she said, her swollen face dropping into a look of discomfort. – My husband wouldn’t be so happy at me spending money I don’t be needing to, she said. I was fascinated. Broker turned around and, almost hyperventilating, let out a sort of roar. You could tell he wanted to remind her that her husband is dead. Proper fucking psycho. Then he turned back all professional and said:
- May I ask how your husband died? I am very sorry for your loss, lovey.
- He fell and broke his neck… the C7, the bone at the bottom of his neck. The doc’s said it would have been almost instant, mind. So I can take something from that, she said looking out of her netted curtains.
- Goodness, Broker said. He was quiet for a sec, and then followed up with – What a jazzy way to go — the C7. Well, I’ll be blown. It’s been a pleasure, lovey. Now take a card. Broker threw one of his business cards down on the brown carpet, snapped up his briefcase and left. Brash cunt. If I was the fly on the wall, she was the elephant in the room. Proper obese and having none of it and crying now. Made the rest of the day proper tetchy.

 

Falling Down


Hello.

I’d really appreciate it if anybody who reads this can spare two minutes to leave any form of feedback. Hate it, love it, highlight all my mistakes….anything is useful!

Cheers.

 

“Is she on yet?” Brooks said, my boss at MDS builders, a company that had to be doomed from the start with two builders at the helm who chose to sit in steam rooms while they were supposed to be at work.

“No… She’s a week and ‘alf late,” I said with a half glance towards his pregnant looking belly, scanning upward from his thick black Oxford United tattoo which commanded the left side of his chest.

“Fuck, imagine if he knew, old Pearson. That bastard. I’d love to see his face…” Brooks said, as he ran his hand along his hot, hairless scalp, pouring cold water over the top of his head.

“He can’t know it happened, Brooks.”

“I can’t believe you did it. Who fucks Pearson’s daughter? You’re just asking for fucking trouble.” He sat opposite me in the steam room, distorted by the hot vapour which clouded his shallow face.

“She won’t be pregnant. She can’t be.”

Gerry Brooks was a man with a body thrown together like a tower of boulders stacked on top of each other in no particular order. A few spindles of hair sprouted from around his inflated belly button and nipples, which he often inspected with close attention between his index finger and thumb. His stomach swelled with a quality that only twenty years of fried eggs, Stella Artois and poor quality sausages could give rise to. Brooks eat everything. Yet he insisted he followed the latest workouts to the letter, often dictating to me how I should perform a tricep dip most efficiently. His stomach had gotten so large that from behind the mist it could have been a cement mixer, churning away the last of his cornish pasty from lunchtime. Brooks claimed that relaxation time was essential to the wellbeing of a modern day labourer, and made a point of ensuring that we made regular excursions to the leisure centre to ‘sweat out the stress’ — or something along those lines.

“But what if she is?” Brooks said, by now indistinct through the steam.

“Shut up about it now.”

“We should probably get back to the job. Pearson’ll be thinking we’ve been at Wickes for a fair while,” Brooks said. I stayed silent. “Come on. Let’s go. He lives to moan. It’s bad enough having to live with him next door, now I’ve got to put his fucking conservatory up. It’s too much… He shits his pants if I leave my dustbin out in the street for a day you know. Comes knocking on my door at all hours whinging and groaning… Needs to sort his life out him, get himself a woman… Not got much going for him mind. With a nose that big, least… He’s always watching. You don’t want your kids having his genes. God no. No… fuck this, I’m going. It’s like a fucking incubator in here.” Brooks had spoken, but I didn’t really acknowledge any of his words. He wasn’t the most commanding of bosses. I just couldn’t take him seriously. He was a man designed to be overlooked. I laid in silence for a moment. We’d been sitting in the steam room almost half an hour by this point, and the haze that swallowed the room had gotten inside of me — like I was being cooked from the inside-out. A second skin of sweat and vapour cast itself on to me, and it felt as though my whole heart or brains could bubble up and explode, or that the mist could part, and I’d be alone, in some far flung jungle where the damp and rot would set in, with only the company of occasional black shapes skittering behind roots in the thick film of steam and humidity. I thumped the plastic wall of the room. Hundreds of droplets of warm, condensed water, which had rested on the ceiling, rained down across the room like a tropical rainstorm.

“Bastard.” Brooks spat away warm driblets of water from the tops of his lips. Masked in the vapour that glows about the violet-blue lights, Brooks drew his eyes upwards to the glow which spilt soon to nothing in the gloom from the ceiling. I swivelled my legs around and pressed my split heels on the ridged tile flooring, sitting upright.

• • •

Later that day, rejuvinated and fresh faced, we finished cobbling together the shitty white PVC conservatory for Pearson. Pearson’s house, a white washed two-bed on the end of the Causeway, tagged on to the terrace, next door to Brooks. Their street’s a hell-hole; covered in dog shit, smashed beer bottles and discarded takeaway meals. It’s the sort of street where the only thing the women can do is keep an eye on each other around the side of their netted curtains, or stand in the street in their dressing gowns and slippers, with rollers in their hair, smoking and chatting to each other. In the road the kids skitter pebbles along the pavements at cats and crumpled tins of Carlsberg, some times launching wet slices of cheap bread to stick on the sides of Mr Pearson’s house. The April sunshine had sunk well behind the slate-roof terraced houses by the time we finished the job and packed away the tools into Brooks’s Transit van in the street. It was coming close to the time in the late afternoon when the hooded would come out into the dark back alleys to be little shits and sell drugs to each other. They swarmed in the alley behind Pearson’s house — he sometimes shouted limp threats at them from his top window if they made too much noise when Loose Women was on. As we stopped to roll a cigarette for the end of the day, Pearson emerged from his house wearing an apron with “Mr Good Lookin’ is Cookin’” stamped across the front, carrying a sack of sweet potatoes, with a face spread long and white.

“Mr. Brooks, Brooks, get here,” he said, raising the fist which wielded the exotic potatoes. “It’s just fallen down. All of it. You’re all bloody useless.” Brooks curled his copy of Men’s Fitness up into a neat cone, before rising to his feet using a spirit-level as a walking cane, to confront the bug-eyed Pearson.

“It’s what?” Brooks asked.

“It’s fucking fallen down,” he said, “so I’ll be wanting my money back around about now. I knew I shouldn’t have left this to you. The conservatories don’t even look good in the newspaper advert. I wasn’t confident when I asked you to put the thing up, but I just expected a shitter finish and a few more cups of tea for your ‘mates rates’. But no… It’s all in a heap on the floor… How could you fuck this up so brilliantly Mr. Brooks?” With that Brooks kicked up the end of his spirit-level and grabbed it with both hands to hold it like a spear, tucking his magazine under his porky arm and jabbing Pearson in the gut a few times, then twatting him with Men’s Fitness right around the temple. Pearson, being a narrow set guy with puny office-boy forearms and a flagpole torso, retaliated in a way which he thought was right and within his means: by hurling sweet potatoes at Brooks from behind his Mini Metro that was parked in the street. I stood there taking cover and carried on trying to smoke, but ended up hacking up lungfuls of trapped smoke from laughter.

“Look just fuck off alright. Give me a refund then fuck off. Now how am I supposed to have sweet potato mash? My salmon’s gonna be bland. You cunt, Brooks. Not only have you fucked my conservatory, now my blood sugar’s going to be all over the place. I’ll have to have rice, white rice, for fucks sake… fucking long grain. That’s not low GI. For fucks sake.” Pearson ran around his car in circles to stay out of Brooks’s range. But Brooks was intent on knocking Pearson’s head clean off his shoulders, even if it meant bludgeoning the man to death with a glossy magazine.

“You should hear yourself.”

“Diabetes isn’t a laughing matter, Brooks, you chubby bastard. I’m surprised you’re not Type 2, to be honest. You should get down the Pharmacy for a test.”

“You talk to me like that again and I’ll burn your house down, Pearson. You big-nosed nonce.” Still Brooks shuffled around the car to get within beating distance of Pearson.

“Well that’d be an idiotic thing to do. You’d burn your own house down in the process… It’s that sort of comment that highlights your absolute incompetence, Brooks.” With Pearson around the far side of his car in the road, and Brooks closest to the houses, Brooks made a run for Pearson’s open front door, stamping his muddy boots in Pearson’s spotless doorway and locking himself inside.

“Get out of there now,” Pearson squealed. But Brooks had already made his way up the stairs and into Pearson’s back bedroom.

Mr Brooks


“Is she on yet?” Jack says, my colleague at MDS Builders, a company that had to be doomed from the start with three builders at the helm that chose to sit in steam rooms and jacuzzi’s while they were supposed to be at work.

“No… She’s a week and ‘alf late,” I said with a half a glance towards Jack, scanning upward from his thick black tribal tattoo which embellished his skinny chest.

“Fuck,” Jack says, as he runs his hand along his hot, hairless scalp, pouring a little cold water over the top of his head. “I can’t believe you did it. Who fucks their own bosses daughter? You’re just asking for fucking trouble.” He sat opposite me in the steam room and appeared distorted by the hot vapour which clouded his shallow face.

“You don’t say… She won’t be pregnant. She can’t be.”

On the other side of the fogged glass, our boss Gerry Brooks showered beneath a hot stream that offered hardly enough water to wet much of the pale void between his broad, sunken shoulders. He was a pot-bellied man with a body thrown together like a tower of rounded boulders stacked on top of one and other in no particular order. A few lonely spindles of hair sprouted from around his inflated belly button and nipples which he inspected with close attention between his index finger and thumb. The man’s stomach swelled with a globular quality that only twenty years of fried eggs, Stella Artois and poor quality sausages inevitably gives rise to. Brooks eat everything. He was gifted with greed. His stomach had gotten so large that from behind the mist it could have been a cement mixer, churning away the last of his cornish pasty from lunchtime. Brooks claimed that relaxation time was essential to the wellbeing of a modern day labourer, and made a point of ensuring the three of us made regular excursions to the leisure centre to ‘sweat out the stress’ — or something along those lines. I lay my back down on the stone ledge, bringing my knees up, and closer to my chest. Sadly, the lady in question was Gerry’s youngest daughter Hayely, a cherry haired town girl of twenty-one that had worked the bar at the Summertown local pub from the age of sixteen. We met after Gerry held a company meal over the Christmas period, in which we suffered both the strains of unfamiliar company and bad wine, all over a plate of tepid roast dinner. Bombarded by the out of place noise the part time DJ blared out from the corner of the community centre hall, I didn’t stay for long.

“But what if she is?” Jack says, by now indistinct through the steam.

“Shut up. He’s coming,” I say, as the waddling figure of Brooks draws larger through the film of steam on the door. He opens it, jutting his wrinkled face inside the room.

“We should probably get back to the job. Pearson will be thinking we’ve been at Wickes for a fair while,” he says. We remain silent. “Come on. Let’s go. He lives to moan. It’s bad enough having to live with him as a neighbour, now I’ve got to put his fucking conservatory up. It’s too much… He shits his pants if I leave my dustbin out in the street for a day you know. Comes knocking on my door at all hours whinging and groaning… Needs to sort his life out him, get himself a woman… Not got much going for him mind. With a nose that big, least… He’s always watching. Fuck this, I’m going. It’s like a fucking incubator in here.” Brooks had spoken, but neither I nor Jack really acknowledged his words. He wasn’t the most commanding of bosses. In a strange sense asked too politely for things, even when he tried his hardest to be heartless, he was a man designed to be overlooked. He’d probably be a little more strict with me if he knew I’d shagged his daughter at his own party.

“But what if she’s pregnant?” As I speak my dry lips crack a little. I can just about make out Brooks’s bald head crumple at the neck as he tips it back and sinks his body into the gushing bubbles that surround him.

“Would she have it? You know the bird a bit better than me, Ad,” Jack says.

I lay in silence for a moment, unsure what to think of any longer. We’ve been sitting in the steam room almost half an hour by this point, and the haze that swallows the room has gotten inside of me — as though I am being cooked from the inside-out. A second skin of sweat and vapour cast itself on to me, and it feels as though my whole heart or brains could bubble up and explode, or that the mist could part, and I’d be alone, in some far flung jungle where the damp and rot would set in, with only the company of occasional black shapes skittering behind roots in the thick film of steam and humidity. I thumped the plastic wall of the room. Hundreds of droplets of condensed water, which had rested on the ceiling, rained down across the room like a tropical rainstorm.

“Bastard.” Jack spat away warm driblets of water from the tops of his lips. Masked in the vapour that glows about the violet-blue lights, Jack ruffles his ginger hair into a neatly swished side parting, and casts his eyes upwards to the glow which spils soon to nothing in the gloom from the ceiling. I swivel my legs around and place my split heels on the ridged tile flooring, sitting upright.

“I suppose I could take some care of it… If that was what had to be done. Y’know?”

“I don’t even know how a labourer ends up with a woman like that in the first place,” Jack says with a curious tone. I think the heat had gotten to him a little, too.

“Gin and bullshit,” I say. “That’s how.”

“She wasn’t that drunk, Adam, you bastard. You’d only had a couple. She must’ve just liked the look of those callous hands of yours.”

Later that day the three of us, rejuvinated and fresh faced, finish cobbling together the rickety white conservatory for Mr Pearson. Pearson lives in a white washed two bedroom house on the Causeway, nextdoor to Brooks. All along the street there are plentiful scatterings of smashed beer bottles along its pavements, along with discarded takeaway meals, and even occasionally unwanted dog shits, simply left to wash away into the grime that festers between the ridges in the grey slabbed paths. It’s the sort of street that housed those so poor that the only thing the women can do is stand in the street in their dressing gowns and slippers, with tightly gripped rollers in their hair, smoking and chatting to the neighbours, and the men can only wait inside for something to happen. All the while shool uniformed tearaways play games and kick footballs high into the air like wild cannons and wait for their artillery to come crashing down onto the cars which line the sides of the narrow road. The April sunshine had sunken low behind the slate-roof terraced houses by the time Brooks packed away his tools into his Transit van parked in the street. It was nearing the time in the late afternoon when the hooded, tracksuited adolescents would come out into the darkened back alleys to sell drugs to one and other. They gather in herds in the alley which runs adjacent to Pearson’s house, and he sometimes shouts various limp threats at them from his top window if they make too much noise when Jamie Oliver’s on TV.  Pearson emerges from his house carrying a sack of sweet potatoes, with a face crumpled into a close orange ball, offering nothing but a look of absolute disdain for the world.

“Mr. Brooks, get here,” he says, raising the fist which wields the exotic potatoes. “It’s just fallen down. All of it. You’re all bloody useless.” Brooks curls his copy of Men’s Fitness up into a neat cone, before rising to his feet using a spirit-level as a walking cane, to confront the bug-eyed Pearson.

Dry Lips


Are you on yet?

The message fell across the screen of the beaten up Nokia, just before Jenifer’s hazelnut eyes. She read it, before cramming the phone back into her clutch bag, and adjusting her feathered rose fascinator with two wavering hands. The message was from Adam. He had sent the message half an hour prior to her reading it, and was now slumped in a steam room at his local spa, wearing nothing but a pair of burgundy swim shorts.

It seemed strange to Jenifer to be back at Blenheim now the thickets had swollen into large, colourful masses of life down at the far end of the grand lawns. Now the trout fishers had returned for the spring, and were casting out in the low afternoon sunshine, at the Great lake. Around the far end of the water, the Great lake plummeted into white-capped cascades and into the waters of the Glyme, a small river which ran through the Palace’s grounds. The last time she had been here, in the deep winter, the trees had showed their twisted skeletons and the pathways boasted a thick covering of blackened, trodden leaves. A newly awoken lavender brushed at her bare knees as she walked towards the blue and white bandstand.

“She’s a week and ‘alf late.” Adam said to George, a friend and fellow builder, who appeared vaguely from the opposite side of the steam room.

“Fuck.” George said, as Adam ran his hand along his hot, hairless scalp, pouring a little cold water over the top of his head. “It’ll come good. You’ll be alright, mate.”

Adam laid down his back on the stone ledge, bringing his knees up, and closer to his chest, before knawing at a piece of dead skin on the top of his pink thumb.

“But what if she is?”

“Is what?”

“Pregnant, you tit.” Adam’s dry lips cracked a little.

“Would she have it? You know the bird a bit better than me, Ad.”

Adam thumped the plastic wall of the room, causing the hundreds of droplets of condensed water which rested with a downward inevitability on the ceiling to gush across the entire room.

“Bastard.” George spat away warm driblets of water from the tops of his lips. A bearded man wearing black Speedo trunks came into the steam room, masked in the vapour which glowed within a blue light from the ceiling. Adam swivelled his legs around and placed his split, hardened heels on the ridged tile flooring, now sitting upright.

“I suppose I could take some care for it… If that was what had to be done. Y’know?” The stranger took a seat next to Adam.