Adventures in writing

Cooped up in the house for yet another session of Monday morning I'm so crap blues I thought I'd try a new tack. It started with a Cornetto for lunch (mint and choc chip) and ended with the realisation that armed with a laptop and pocketfuls of my change jar any chic coffee shop could be my office.

Fortunately this being Newport it's not hard to find a coffee house that bustles with the industry of a dozen artistic types tapping away on their laptops. I hit the mother lode in fact - not just a coffee shop, but a coffee AND card shop. Nothing else screams out intellectual thinkers than hand made greetings cards priced at three pounds and above with droll quotations from Oscar Wilde and Woody Allen.

In fact it wasn't just a card and coffee shop, it was a card, coffee AND women's hairdressers. Had I realised then I might just have kept on walking to my local and entered the daily arm wrestling contest (one prize: honour). But I was comitted and I wasn't going to be fazed by the ranks of Bella and Chat magazines beneath those big perm machines. I marched right on past them and up the stairs to the coffee section, the wittily name "The Loft".

That's where I met Henry, my Barrista for the day. Poor Henry. Poor, poor Henry.

With his love of bicep curls and very tight T-shirts, with a glass stud in each ear he treated me to a broad smile and fluttered what I hoped were genetically predetirmined long lashes.

"And what would you like?" he said.

He poured me my coffee, and then added, "With room for some...milk?"

I guess his face was shot so full of Botox that's why his pencil thin eyebrows weren't oscillating suggestively.

"Care to try one of my muffins?"

I thanked him kindly, and said no, going over to a seat by the window and took out my laptop.

He flounced around, clattering cups with wild abandon, counting the change in the tip jar. From time to time he'd join in with songs on the radio. At one point a song by the Scissor Sisters came on and he falsettoed his way over to the radio and spent an inordinate amount of time bending over to tune it in.

I sighed to myself. He must have sensed that I was a writer. Was it the uncombed hair? The baggy, faded and crumpled polo shirt?

Or the tortured look of a soul trying to create?

Somebody (I forget who) once wrote that "with great power comes great responsibilty."

I would do well to remember that, especially around male hair dressers. Poor Henry. His only crime was to be smitten.

That's when the old lady came in. Wearing a raincoat and pitched over almost double, with thick glasses like safety glass on her face.

"And what would you like?" Henry asked her. "Room for some...milk? See anything that catches your eye?"

If anything he was speaking with super italics.

I took my laptop and I slunk away.

Trod in some dog shit on my way home.

With Facebook you can make a difference!

So there I am, walking home through the dark streets of Newport and I hear the sound of one hand clapping. It's a slapping sound, a harsh sound, and each time it's followed by a hiss of indrawn breath, almost like a sob, but cut off, half way. I push on the wooden gate by the side of the house and creep around till I'm in the garden and I can see the whole, horrifying scene.

It's a big guy, with a beard. A big, fat guy, and a little kid, and the kid is on his backside, snivelling, cowering. You can't walk on by, can you. It's a little kid after all, and his Dad's beating him. So I said something.

"Oy," I said. "Don't you know you shouldn't be doing that? Don't you know that right now all the good folk of Facebook are changing their profile pictures to cartoons from their childhood to cut out this sort of thing?"

It felt good, coming out with it, making a stand. But I don't think he did know about the Facebook campaign.In fact he looked a little bit aggrieved at having his parenting skills called out like that.

After he beat the shit out of me he was feeling a bit tired, and anyway, all his aggression was done, so him and little Jamie went for ice cream and father son bonding.

Next time, fuck it. I'll just walk on by, go home and change my profile picture to Tintin.

A love story

There once was a beautiful young hand maiden to the Queen. With the face of an angel and a laugh that set fairies to dancing she caught the young prince's eye. But alas! He was a prince, and she a mere hand maiden; his love for her could never be.

Daily he would travel to the mountain lakes and leap naked into the icy water to cool his ardour. Unfortunately this caught the eye of a local farmer who sold the pictures to a sleazy newspaper. Soon the image of his pasty white body was all around the tiny kingdom, and he, a laughing stock. People stopped to point their fingers and laugh, and it didn't matter how much he protested that the lake was freezing, they would still snigger.

The King disowned the Prince - the laws on public nudity were very strict at the time. He was now a common man, just a serf, like the hand maiden. His love could be!

Before he left the castle he went down on one knee to her.

"I love you, with all of my soul. Come with me?"

And the girl with the face of an angel looked at him. Where once he had dressed in the finest of silks and his hair was sculpted with the smoothest of Brylcreems now he wore sack cloth and his hair was slicked back with cooking oil. He wasn't that good looking either.

She said to him, "So you're not a Prince anymore, and you're not rich. You don't have a fancy house, or a big horse, and I've seen the pictures. I think I'll stay here in the warm, if it's all the same to you."

Out for a run

"Oy! You!"

The cry went from the yellow Saxo.

"Yeah, you. You run like a Springer Spaniel!"

It was already pulling away, so time only to smile and give a thumbs up.

The car slowed.

"Like a Spaniel with its legs broke!"

The mocking sound of tyres screeching as it sped away.

But he showed them how he ran, and he only fell over once before he caught them at the lights.

Then they showed him how they could open all four doors simulataneously when someone shouts, "Hey, dickheads!"

They showed him how well they could loom.

They all watched him for a while, before agreeing he had more the lolloping gait of a Golden Retriever about him.

How I shop for clothes

So there I am, loaded down with like fifty shirts from the sale rack and I go up to the blonde hair extension with smile at the cash desk.

Fix my best charm smile, and I say to her: "Do you know how many on sale fashion free polo shirts I can buy for the price of a single Ben Sherman top?"
She didn't, and she wasn't free for a date.

Too busy washing her hair extension I guess.

I bet this would totally suck if it was real

He didn't love the girl. How could he love someone after just two dates? That was a sure fire ticket to Loserville. But he did really like her. Then one mistimed comment and boom, all gone.

They had this single perfect date together. The kind of first date you get in movies, when the both of them clicked, right at the same time. They drank Mojitos in the bar at the end of the bay. Somehow they talked about kids. One hour after meeting they were onto children, and neither of them was leaving.

They shared their first kiss before the hour was up, waiting for a table in Demarcos. His impulse, her surprise, but they both kinda liked it. And they both kinda liked the guy who sang like Dean Martin, who held the note, until the guy leaned over the table and kissed the girl again.

In the downstairs bar they drank beer. They held each other close, they kissed some more. The drink was flowing well and with hands clasped this new couple made so many new friends that night.

No one could believe that it was their first date.

They rode the carousel even though it was all tucked in for the night, laughing on the same pony until the man came and shouted at them.

Their second date a film, a movie that she liked but he didn't. That wasn't why it felt flat - who outside of Romeo and Juliet could top that first date?

He still did not know how he fucked things up, only that his sole memory of her - a contact on his phone that said: "Imogen?" - victim of a pissed off number deletion followed by frantic fumbling to get it back. Going months without calling her, and it wasn't until he was back in that downstairs bar for the first time since, on another first date, that he thought to himself, "Fuck".

He was there with this new girl, and she was nice, and he was having fun, but she was no Imogen. He started to think - with a first date like that, it was meant to be.

Perhaps it made him a dick, but he didn't care. Text her, and ask her - "That Imogen? Remember me?".

Scrolling through the contacts on his phone, looking for her name. Slowly, the horror growing, remembering that message, just two nights before:

Warning! Upgrading to the latest version of Android will erase all local data on your phone. Including contact details of your one, true love.

He said fuck once more, out loud. Didn't care that everyone was staring.

Freedom, week 4

I'm in my fourth week of leaving my job - wanted to get out before I had to say I'd worked there for an entire decade.

Nine years and eleven months sounds so much better.

So far the count of desperate emails pleading for me to return at a gratuitously high daily rate stands at zero.

My departure did have one side effect I never counted on though - the cleaners have been missing me.

They first thought I was on holiday. Then they thought I'd just been keeping my desk really tidy.

It was then that my friend Phil, fearful of causing hysteria which might lead to a massive coronary and no one to clean the mess, broke the news to them gently.

Never has so much wailing and gnashing of teeth been concentrated into two tiny letters.

"Oh," the cleaner said.

And then she added, "I'll take away his bin then."

Short fiction - Nightwalker

I once knew this fella, regular as clockwork once a week he'd go round to his grandparents for tea. He would buy some cream cakes on his way there, a packet of four. After they'd eaten they'd argue over whose turn it was for the spare and always they ended up splitting it three ways no matter that the knives were all blunt, and no matter that meant destruction, sad little curls of cream lining the plate.

After the washing up they would sit around in front of the television, or perhaps with a board game or two, though that was rare with the rise of energy saving lightbulbs that produced a light too weak for older eyes.

Always at nine the guy would walk home. His grandmother telling him to catch the bus or better yet, why not a taxi? Who has money for taxis? he'd say, and the grandfather would nod and take his wife by the arm and tell her it was only a half hour walk. The guy would close the gate and wave, and always the two old folk would wait till he was out of sight, no matter the cold.

They would go inside and she'd talk over the journey; the dark streets out of their estate, the bridge over the river, that big junction where the boy was killed and don't you try and tell me being plugged into his music player had nothing to do with it. The old man never saying what he'd heard later, how the boy had been on the pavement waiting for the green man. How they still hadn't replaced the safety barriers.

It was a half hour of worry each week, ended only by the call that said he was home safe.

Then one week, the call never came.

He'd just stopped to look at the high tide, see the lights of the city mirrored in the water. Or stopped for a pint of milk.

But by ten, still no call, so with shaking hands she dialled his number and waited ten rings, and then fifteen, giving up on twenty.

So now what? What could they do? Ring someone up and be called worrying old fools?

Then the relief as the phone starts to ring, and it's him, the joy tempered only by a gentle scolding - you know how I worry. You should take care, there's crazy people come out at night.

And the guy, stood in his bath room, with his hand on the mirror looking at the blood that's splashed up on his face tells her not to worry, he's not scared of the crazies of the night. When he hangs up and says goodnight he's wondering - should he really have slung the fencepost, or perhaps instead brought it home and burnt it on the fire.