fiction – Wrightsite

The Fab Thigh

Towards the end of the set Nancy started to feel tired; the irregular bolts of hunger pains in her stomach charging her eyes open for another couple of bars.

As familiar as the encore’s fireworks were, the loud bangs and bright flashes stirred up enough attention for her to wave and applause as Paul wished the crowd a goodnight and looked to the side of the stage where she stood weakly, leaning back on a tower of speakers for support.

‘Right baby, let me shower and change and we’ll hit the VIP lounge for a quick meet and greet. Did you see that banner on the front row? Ha!’ said Paul as he approached, passed and walked into the backstage area away from Nancy. A member of Management appeared with her coat and bag, ushering her along in the same direction, but now fifty meters behind.

‘It would be great to grab a quick bite to eat and some water. I’m overcome with exhaustion. I’ve barely had a minute to rest’ said Nancy to Management, her hands on her empty, rumbling stomach.

The manager saw the hunger in her eyes as he tuned in to instructions being given through his ear piece and gave her a faint half smile of sympathy, encouraging her to pick up her pace with a gentle push of her back.

‘Did you like the show? I hope we didn’t miss any of your favourites!’ said Paul to Eamon Holmes and his wife in the middle of the VIP lounge.

’Oh no, Paul. The entire Beatles and Wings catalogues plus your solo material and orchestral scores really covered it all! Don’t get me started on that amazing Gaga collaboration. Is she still here?’ replied Eamon.

The busy, noisy room was packed full of TV presenters, journalists, movie stars and politicians.

Gary Barlow stood eating a handful of unsalted cashew nuts whilst Sporty Spice told him how nicely their voices might blend on a charity single for her Trackies For Turrets Foundation.

An ex-husband of Big Brother season two winner Brian Dowling and now Love Island contestant told Maureen Rees from Driving School that without her, reality television and his entire life would never have been possible.

Cornered on the other side of the room from a table of healthy nuts and bowls of quinoa salad, Nancy nodded and smiled as Bruce Forsyth told her that the only thing he loved as much as his work was golf and that he’d never give it up, for else what would he do.

Even weaker and fainter now, Nancy stood nodding and smiling, not really listening to his words. Colourful, almost edible trails of food related thoughts blurred her vision to the point she couldn’t be sure which national treasure she was talking to, the Strictly Come Dancing or Dance Tonight star. She knew it couldn’t be true, but my God this man’s head resembled a giant, golden Scotch egg, she thought.

‘There she is, the love of my life. Isn’t she great!’ said Paul loudly to either the dictionary corner girl from Countdown or the business reporter from BBC Breakfast News. Nancy wasn’t sure. ‘Lady love, come over here!’ he shouted, encouraging her past Bruce, Gary Lineker, Little Mix, June Sarong and now to his current conversation.

‘Is it true the vinyl in the next series of re-releases comes in different edible shapes Sir Paul?’ asked Mark Ronson in his strange half New Yorker, half cockney accent.

‘That’s a great question Mark and yes, you’re right my man. The White Album’s wax is actually going to be apple shaped and you can guess what the 7” of Strawberry Fields will be shaped as!’ replied Paul.

‘Ya know, we’ve re-packaged this stuff so many times now but the fans still eat it up. The records won’t actually spin on the turntables or play, but what can you do?’ he continued.

Nancy looked over to the goodie bags desk by the exit, hoping there’d be some advanced copies of Sgt. Pepper to feast on, but the only thing laid out were signed copies of the sheet music to Paul’s new Compositions For Gardeners project.

The night drew on and the crowd slowly thinned out; every single attendee having had a personal twenty minutes with the star of the night and his starving wife, now stood by a cleared catering table, subtly trying to see if James Cordon had missed any of the pistachios he’d dropped and got down on his knees to retrieve and eat. He hadn’t.

‘Right, babe. What a night. I’m beat. Let’s call the driver and get back to the hotel. I need a few hours kip before tomorrow’s schedule’ instructed Paul to Nancy, who rubbed her eyes in disbelief as her husband’s head appeared to her as a giant, cartoon beef burger.

The married couple sat back in their blacked out, stretched limousine and almost instantly fell asleep, Paul exhausted after ten encores of Hey Jude, Nancy passing out trying to recall the last time she had eaten a decent meal.

As the stars walked across the reception area of their hotel, they were greeted by a full team of concierge staff, all working late for a glimpse of rock n roll royalty. Paul signed a few autographs, whistled the full fifteen minutes of Carnival Of Light, told the story about writing Yesterday and then gestured for the lift to be called, pointing to a lamp he said John’s Aunt Mimi would have simply loved.

‘Can we have any food prepared and sent to your floor Sir Paul?’ asked a member of staff as Nancy’s eyes somehow widened and glowed with the little energy she had left. With all the force she could muster from her weak, tired body she opened her jaw a little, desperately trying to respond that she’d love some, but the words were too heavy for her to say fast enough.

‘Oh no, that’s fine. I know I’m a Beatle and all that but I’m not one to bang on about it. We’ll eat like normal people at breakfast tomorrow. Besides, it’s 4am. You should be getting home yourselves kids’ replied Paul.

Up at their room, Nancy didn’t bother undressing or getting into bed, instead surrendering her body to it in one resigned backwards flop, Paul telling her how beautiful she looked with chords on the guitar he’d picked up to sing her a goodnight melody with.

The couple were woken up the next morning by a loud knocking on their door by Management, there to get them on their way to the airport for a flight to Manchester and another show.

Nancy looked over at the clock on the wall, thinking to herself it didn’t feel like she’d actually slept at all. The minute hand resembled a pork chop and the second, a Peperami. Paul was already out of bed by the time she could yawn, strumming out a new riff on his guitar that had come to him in those few hours of sleep.

‘It’s got this kind of, ya know, train track rhythm to it, this one. It sounds so familiar. I might have ripped it off someone. Have you heard it before?’ asked Paul. Nancy shrugged her shoulders as she changed into fresh clothes and gathered her belongings.

‘When Prince died I read that he used to fast as a way of focusing the mind and encouraging creativity. It kind of, ya know, seems to be working.’ said Paul, strumming the riff over and over and over again.

Management led the pair through reception, declining their breakfast along the way, and before Nancy could ask that they stop at the airport’s McDonalds, they’d boarded the plane, completed the journey and were arriving at another venue for another sound check performance. These were pre-concert concerts attended by around 500 very rich, very strange super fans – the sort you see dressed up in Union Jacks outside hospitals when another Royal Lizard’s hatched.

By the time the night’s main show was underway Nancy was on the brink of collapsing, her hunger now a fierce stabbing sensation in her stomach and beyond. She could barely concentrate on a sound or sight, visions and sensations of food overtaking her every sense. The endless crowds of screaming fans resembled not the black silhouettes of music lovers but dark, round, shining balls of caviar. The band’s drums looked like ovens, opening every time they were hit to release the delicious thick steam of an almost baked steak and ale pie, mince beef lasagne or bacon sandwich.

As was customary, Management checked in on Nancy halfway through Paul’s performance of a more recent song, one of several in the set where the whole arena usually headed to the toilets and bars, making it unnecessary for Paul to actually finish them. Instead he used the breaks to Snapchat Ringo using the Rocky Raccoon filter.

‘Thank God you’re here. I really, really need some food. I haven’t eaten anything all tour and I’m literally about to die. Can you get me something? Anything?’ pleaded Nancy to the Manager who looked down at her like she was asking for too much, for the world.

In a few minutes, Paul was back to the old numbers, the crowd back in their seats sipping organic beer and eating vegetable chips. Management was nowhere to be seen, no doubt busy taking 360 degree photos of the adoring crowd for Paul’s Facebook page rather than doing as they’d been asked and finally fetching some food, Nancy thought.

As Paul recalled the time George was dying and gifted him a ukulele, Nancy felt a tap on her shoulder and then the blissful sound of a white, polystyrene catering box moving towards her. Everything suddenly became suspended in time as the heat of whatever food inside it warmed her lap. The box’s steam drifted up towards her nose as her eyes watered in joy that she was finally about to eat.

Overcome with excitement she wondered if it would be a delicious, gravy drenched bed of sausage casserole and mash, meat balls and spaghetti, a heavenly sea of lamb curry or slice after slice of greasy, gorgeous kebab?

Nancy detached the top of the box to open and access its contents, her heart thumping and mouth filling with saliva. Too eager to wait for cutlery, she took a hand from her rumbling stomach and scooped whatever the food was into her mouth in the dark shadows of the arena, almost pitch black besides the one spotlight on Paul’s performance of Blackbird. As Nancy began to chew, to rejoice in finally eating, a new, less than ideal reality gradually unfolded.

The first chew was powered by her vivid imagination of fried chicken but it couldn’t have been that. The texture wasn’t right. On her next chew she thought she might be eating an onion and ketchup coated hotdog but that wouldn’t have been so rubbery. And then it all became clear. 5 countries, 10 cities and 20 shows in as many days later, Management had finally brought her something to eat; one plain, half cooked Linda McCartney sausage.

Nancy finished her vegetarian banger quicker than Paul could reel off an anecdote about the time he wrote Here Today for John. As a projected vignette of old tour footage lit up the area, she looked down at her now empty food box and felt a surge of anger and desperation bolt from her stomach, down each leg and arm and take a hold of her mind. As she stood up to furiously break through the barrier of Management into the general admissions catering area, she suddenly realised a blinding spotlight focused on her and 100,000 faces looking her way.

‘A great friend of mine once sang Isn’t She Lovely? How about we have her come up here on stage everyone?’ asked Paul to the audience. Within half a minute Nancy found herself sat on a stool in the middle of the stage, immersed in blinding lights and deafening screaming from the crowd as Paul sat at a piano, singing her a recent single, My Valentine.

This time the crowd didn’t disperse for a toilet break or refill of drinks, for what started to unfold on stage would fuel the next fifty years of message board threads, Daily Mirror front page puns, Channel 5 re-enactment documentaries and a forest worth of updated biographies on Paul.

Nancy’s brief sausage had fooled her body into thinking food was finally upon it, multiplying her hunger threefold when nothing else came. As she sat unstably trying to balance on the stool as Paul sang the song’s first verse, his thin crinkly fingers pressing on piano keys appeared as rows of turkey twizzlers, making her tongue start licking her lips feverishly. Paul’s arms transformed into salmon and his torso a huge crispy duck.

Paul, lost in the music with his eyes closed, launched into the song’s chorus as Nancy stood from her stool, moving towards where he sat, saliva now running from the corners of her mouth down her face. Management watched on, assuming the couple were playing out a piece of choreographed affection, a declaration of their love for all the fans to rejoice in. As Nancy reached into her handbag for what they expected would be a ring or red rose for her husband, a plastic knife and fork appeared from within.

A key change and final chorus to go, Nancy was steps from Paul, still seated, lost in the music beneath his trademark brown died hair which she saw as a lake of the nation’s favourite instant gravy, Bisto. Paul’s face, a bronzed, shining thigh of moist chicken drew Nancy’s cutlery clenching arms towards it with a magnetic force. So tenderly, the chicken came away from its bone, each succulent slice calmly being forked into her mouth, her body growing in strength by the minute, her stomach no longer cramping but filling with deliciously slow cooked meat.

Nancy finished her final bite and took a napkin from her bag, delicately wiping her mouth clean. She hadn’t felt this alive and well since 2007, she thought, as her vision became clearer and attention refocused on her surroundings. She looked around to see an ocean of stunned, silent faces looking at her as silence filled the arena. Her fingers loosened their grip around the knife and fork that fell to the floor in a clink. She took a step back from the piano seat and slightly lowered her gaze.

‘Oh my God! I’ve eaten a Beatle!’ she cried.

Paul’s body, now headless, sat motionless on the stall, his arms no longer salmon and fingers no longer turkey twizzlers. Suddenly, a twitch of Paul’s fingers pressed down on a note that pierced the arena’s shock and disbelief ridden silence. One by one more notes started to be played, until Paul’s arms were fully animated again, giving the crowd his first ever live performance of I Am The Walrus as fans slowly started nodding their heads, moving their feet and dancing once more.

‘I am the chicken thigh head man, they are the chicken thigh head man, I am the walrus! Goo, goo g’ joob!’ he sang, Nancy by his side with one arm on his shoulder and the other waving around in the air in time with the music, relieved that by only partially eating her husband, he could still live and perform on.

Backstage, after the show, headless Paul stood in the centre of the VIP room again, surrounded by countless Northern celebrities.

Heather Small of M People was helping untangle Mick Hucknall’s ginger locks from a fire extinguisher he had jokingly got down on his knees to pretend to drink from for a selfie. Nobody was very impressed.

Liam Gallagher and Steve Coogan were deep in conversation about their favourite bread recipes.

Judy Finnigan was knocking back any glass of red wine she could find whilst Richard Madely was stealing any bottle of red wine he could fit into a Tesco bag for life.

‘Get Nancy some food, Management. We don’t want her turning this meet and greet into a meat and eat!’ joked Paul to the cast of Coronation Street; Kym Marsh, Shane Ward and Les Dennis seeing who could out-laugh each other the loudest to win his attention.

That night at the hotel, Paul ordered the usual army of hotel staff to cook Nancy whatever she desired, even meat. Nancy ate through to the morning and again every remaining day of the tour.

The following month’s music press had a field day with their headlines, ranging from She Really Got A Hold Of Him and Maxwell’s Silver Platter to Mean Mrs. Mustard, I Eat Mine and All You Need Is Grub.

Nor Paul or Management ever disregarded Nancy’s requests for food again. Paul retained his remaining body parts for five Off My Head world tours, three ‘The Headless Demos’ box sets, two volumes of Shoulder To Shoulder Blues poetry anthologies and counting. Nancy no longer attended every date of every tour, instead staying at one of their homes to enjoy gardening, without a portable stereo.

Kudos and the Easy Rinse Formula

‘Can I borrow your phone for a minute mate? My battery’s dead.’ asked one eye this way and one eye that, dressed like an extra out of a 2 Tone band from the eighties; his grey, ironed trousers sitting on a bony waist, side parting hair dipping out from beneath a chequered flat cap and a warm, proper London accent you’d be both suspicious and loveable towards.

‘As long as there’s no rushing off, though you’ve been in this queue for a good ten minutes, so I doubt that’d happen, unless you’re really after a new phone or just don’t care about shitting your pants.’ replied Jack, leaning against a wall, in his own sweaty world until the question, feeling a lot more trustworthy than normal on account of the past hour and a half of dance music he’d just raved to.

‘Dad, it’s Charlie. I’m in a bit of a situation here. I got split up from Moog in the crowd and my battery’s dead. What I need you to do is look in the phone book for Moog. Give him a call and tell him I’m at the toilets where we were earlier. If he doesn’t show up, I’ll just go back to the flat. Cheers Dad.’ instructed Charlie with a tone that said everything about his relationship with his Dad come mate, old school practice of keeping paper records of electronic data and commitment to leaving with the person he arrived with.

By this point it was finally Jack’s turn to use a cubicle. He’d favoured the shelter of an inside toilet as opposed to the racks of halve pipes outside, where people had to stand face to face, an inch away from touching each other with their private parts. He did one day festivals for sounds, not splashings.

‘That’s a good effort. I hope you find your friend. Take care.’ said Jack, taking the phone from a smiley, appreciative Charlie.

‘If he rings back and I’m still here, can you give me a shout?’ asked the cockney, 25 at most and clearly nearing the end of his night that by the sight of him, included a lot of dancing in mud, twisting of his preppy clothes and consuming beer, amongst other things.

‘Sure.’ said Jack, taking to a cubicle.

After he’d taken his emergency toilet roll from his back pocket, wiped the toilet seat a good two times, undone his baggy jeans and sat, the lights went out. Sighs bounced between the walls of cubicles, the lights flickered back on before being cut again, everyone sighed some more and so repeated Jack’s call of nature.

It’d been a long wait and a demanding day on Jack’s legs. With that in mind, he took his phone out, sent a few messages and used the solitude of his surroundings to be what a stuck up spa would call relaxation quarters. When the phone buzzed in Jack’s hand and Luke’s face flashed on its screen, Jack pinged out of his daydream and rushed back to the main arena.

‘I can’t believe we found each other after you charged away to the front. What a great gig though. Who’d have thought they’d still be doing this so many years on.’ said Jack to Luke as they waited for their train to London Paddington.

‘I can’t believe how long you were in that toilet for. You must have been in a pretty messy state. Still, it looks like we’ve beaten the crowds. Beats me why they’d stay for that last band. They’re certainly not headliner material.’ replied Luke.

After exchanging a few comments about the set of their favourite DJ collective that they’d been counting down to all summer, conversation didn’t dry up so much as take a subdued simmer towards a state of peaceful satisfaction. The two friends had jumped around in excitement on the train up, ripped every other band of the day apart, hanged off each other’s necks in celebration of their near idols arriving on stage and spent four hours in the near dark, circling the festival site, trying to find the right exit.

‘Charlie!’ shouted the usually more reserved Jack.

‘What’s going on? Who’s Charlie?’ asked Luke, opening his eyes from an intense ten minutes of gig recollection and random thoughts such as ‘Are you really inside if there’s a window open?’ and ‘How do those one legged, foldable festival seats hold you up?’

‘It’s that guy we met earlier’ replied Jack, standing up from his seat, squeezing past the knees of Luke and walking with a pace of intent down the carriage isle to the far end where sat a silent group of friends face to face on tabled seating, designed perfectly for co-travellers and horrifically for any solo commute.

‘Can I help you mate?’ asked one of the guys in the group, raising an eyebrow that tucked in under his dark brown cap.

‘Great to see you mate! Did you get a charge?’ inquired Jack.

‘I’m not sure it’ll ever come to that mate. We’ll see I guess… So your final stop’s London? We’re going for some drinks in our local. Care to join?’

By this point, Luke, not recalling having met anyone at the festival, had caught up with Jack, curious as to what his friend was up to, seated with a bunch of trendy strangers, talking as though they were all best friends. Jack had always been more of a gaze out of the window type of guy, quick to implode with passive aggression any time someone as much as walked passed or caught eyes with him.

‘Hi there. Sorry about this. Come on Jack, let’s sit back there and leave these guys to it. We’re almost home.’ replied Luke.

‘It’s okay mate. It’s not a problem with us. You should both come along for a drink. We’re not going much further than Paddington.’ replied the capped stranger.

III

One short stop in Slough, a shared Taxi through Paddington and a skip past Baker Street, the group of friends, Jack and Luke arrived at a pub nearby Great Portland Street tube station. It’d been an unbalanced journey of much silence, left field interjections of conversation from Jack, exercises in damage control by Luke and a textbook cabbie tale.

‘What’s everyone having?’ asked the capped man in the group of strangers. Luke and Jack moved to one side and positioned themselves to buy their own beverages. They’d learned the pitfalls of other people’s generosity on several previous occasions.

‘They seem like a nice bunch.’ suggested Jack.

‘Sure. The drive was pretty strange though. They’re not saying much to each other. Ten minutes in and I was welcoming you putting your foot in it about the tragedy of wearing caps and growing beards.’ replied Luke.

No sooner had everyone been served a drink, the landlord turned towards a dusty, seven tier system of CD trays and buttons, rotated a nozzle and filled the near empty, sorry looking residential road pub with music. The group of friends from the train immediately recognised the song.

‘Are you having a laugh? Time and a place mate. You do know what happened this afternoon?’ asked one of the strangers, dressed in a singlet and revealing two drum sticks in his back pocket as he leaned in towards the landlord over the bar.

No questions were asked but the nozzle was rotated back to where it pointed. The party looked at unease with one another, the landlord consulted his phone’s messages to work out what the guy had meant and Luke ushered Jack to one side.

‘I haven’t seen familiarity between a boozer and landlord like that for years. It’s all ‘help me fund my degree in model village architecture by pouring you shit pints’ these days’ observed Luke, drifting into a head spin about life as an overseas student come flyer pusher by night in London.

By 2 AM, the group of strangers Jack and Luke had arrived with had splintered off to different corners of the pub. The cap-wearing centrepiece had been in deep conversation with the landlord who took him behind the bar and into the back quarters.

Jack had gradually become less scattered in his talking, Luke was less distant in thought and by unnoticeable dribs and drabs, punters were floating in like puzzle pieces on an auntie’s table that never seem to be moving or building towards something until the picture’s suddenly right there.

‘I’ve got to get my hands on some of the tracks the guys played tonight. When it went dark and they came back out to that really nasty beat, I literally went weak at the knees. I became that cliché!’ said Jack excitedly.

‘You literally did. We literally lived that set as much as this pub is literally a pub and our early exit home was literally an escape from a sure bet waste of time.’ replied Luke, speaking as the pair often did with a crossbreed of fact and sarcasm that usually cut short even the keenest of newcomers.

‘You mean Kudos and the Easy Rinse Formula?’ asked an energetic, high-pitched voice of disbelieve.

‘What?’ asked Luke back.

‘KERF! I couldn’t believe it when Harry just threw the guitar in Gary’s face like that. Sinead and me were waiting all day for their set. Never has my brother been so useful. We wouldn’t have found out about this place ourselves!’ said the girl, looking up at the wall of the dated pub as though it was Mecca.

Jack, who’d been starring at his thighs, frowning in confusion, looked up at a lost Luke.

‘Did I get lost on my trail of thought in the toilet block and take a wrong turning at my formula for the best quantity of sliced cheese and tomato sauce in a toasted sandwich?’ he asked.

‘What?’ asked the girl back.

‘KERF! One of them wears a cap right?’ asked Jack.

‘Isn’t it great? He’s like a throwback to that mid nineties series about a 1950s policeman in the countryside. He’s so bold and ironic.’ claimed the girl, reaching for her empty glass that she marched extended by her arm towards the bar for a refill.

‘Four hours we walked around that festival site, to avoid those, no, these idiots, and four hours later, we’re in their bloody local with a legion of their devotional, quarter of their age groupies.’ figured Luke, looking at Jack with a headshake of disbelief.

‘So’ said the squeaky, irony-loving girl on her return from the bar. What are your names?’

As the girl moved her arm to hang around Luke’s neck, Luke moved his neck to escape, signalling with his eyes and a nod for Jack to follow him away from the table besides a fruit machine.

‘Just relax mate. I reckon this place will stay open for ages, being tucked away around here. Maybe the mighty KERF! will resurface so we can collect autographs!’ joked Jack.

The two friends had always shied away from the bands that took centre place on music magazine covers and entertainment shows on the television. For the past summer KERF! had not exploded into the mainstream, they’d arrived, blown a multinational’s marketing budget, ripped off a few seventies classics – adding a few layers of computer generated fuzz cultural commentators called ‘an innovation in composition’, and made an absolute fortune, so considered Jack and Luke.

‘O.M.G!’ screamed the girl. ‘It’s Gary! Look, it’s Gary!’

As the girl worked her way through a dictionary of abbreviations, panting heavily and fiddling in her ridiculously sized handbag, presumably for a phone to let everyone know what was happening, the rest of the pub stopped in their conversations, looked towards the door and watched to see what Gary would do.

‘Evening all. I’m not the sort to charge. Enjoy your night.’ announced Gary, moving slowly towards the bar where the landlord stood to pass over a drink that’d already been poured.

‘So, what is the score?’ asked Luke with a sense of surrender about his tone.

‘You don’t know? One song into their set, Harry and Gary exchanged whispers. Before you could chant the first line of ‘Everybody’s Special’, the arm of Harry’s bass guitar was bouncing off the cheek of Gary. Look, it’s still red!’ pointed the girl.

Luke looked around to find his friend who was nowhere to be seen. He stepped outside to search the smoking crowd but nothing. Next on the manhunt were the pub’s toilets, one urinal and one cubicle big. Jack wasn’t in there either, so up the stairs Luke walked, necking the last of his drink.

‘Luke, you know Harry, from the drive here. Pull up a chair. We’re talking about morning radio and how early you have to go on if they’re playing your exclusive’ said Jack, sitting with Harry and the rest of his band, minus Gary.

‘I thought Harry was the guy I met in the toilets earlier who wanted to charge his phone. When I asked about the charge on the train, he thought I meant getting his mate Gary arrested!’ explained Jack enthusiastically.

As Jack tried explaining the crossed wires to Luke, how he’d managed to get them stuck in a pub with a band they left the festival early to avoid, Harry and his group fidgeted and looked uneasy, clearly still feeling raw about the afternoon’s events.

‘Um… I’ve got chatting to that girl from downstairs. I’ll catch up with you in a bit. Let me know before you leave and we can share a cab home’ replied Luke.

Dismayed that his close friend was spending the aftermath of the big calendar event with a lead singer from a band they both despised, Luke moved back down the stairs and fetched another drink at the bar. Sure enough, the girl he’d reluctantly engaged with earlier was still around, by herself, on her phone, trying to chat to any passer by who’d make eye contact about the Harry and Gary incident.

‘She’s a good girl. A bit of hard work at first but her heart’s in the right place. Be gentle’ said Clive, moving slowly and confidently across the pub and passed Luke who’d sat himself on a bar stall.

‘Oh, we’re not…’ replied Luke.

‘Hi again babes!’ greeted the girl, slinging her arm around Luke’s neck.

‘That’s my brother. He works at KERF!’s label. He told me this is where they’d likely be hanging out after today’s non-gig. Let me go and find out if Harry and Gary have spoken yet. B.R.B!’

Door to door.

Through the window, near motionless nodes of life stood drumming their fingers methodically over smooth, shiny blobs of plastic and glass, all laid out tidily on grand tables of thick pine wood. Between the walls, floor and ceiling a repetitive drumbeat looped, occasionally accompanied by dense synthesised keyboarded melodies. Lee panned into the scene feeling out of complete sorts with the other passing occupants littered around the vast open plan retail space. The overly warm, still air immediately brought a pink to the young man’s face, reducing his appearance of age by some five years, increasing the extent to which a member of staff could patronise at his each undoing of a shirt button or scarf knot to release the itchy warmth of consumer angst.

Lee’s fingers remained firmly inside his pockets whilst little eye contact above floor level was made. The anticipation of patronage rolled along with the store music. Contact lurched slowly towards him, commenced by a firm, confident hand from behind, patting his shoulder. A blindingly white set of perfectly formed teeth danced behind a smile so smug it could snap.

The intruder of personal space’s eyes scanned every pixel of Lee’s face. The maximum volume of Lee’s voice seemed muted by the assistant’s unsettling over familiarity. He reached into his inside pocket, presented a diagram of the input ports behind his new television and pointed at a presentation laptop he owned a model of. The intruder swaggered into a back room, half dancing in his stride on returning and placed a series of wires into Lee’s hands. Lee paid for the items, re-knotted his scarf and did up a few shirt buttons. With determination, he power walked through the sliding electric doors to outside.

‘It’s incredible, the self importance great marketing can provide someone who ultimately just works in a shop’ typed Lee into his personal diary, letter to pen pal, tape cassette player and camera all rolled into one digital soapbox come necessity, whilst taking in the real, fresher air of the street. Outside of that businesses’ doors, he could have been standing anywhere, such is the regularity of international brand strategy. This time he was in London. The usual mild busyness of a mid morning performed choreographed poses the city knew too well.

‘It’s equally as unfathomable how right and sure a customer is that a particular product is the best choice because of bleached white television adverts positioned relentlessly throughout programming schedules’ typed somebody outside of that company’s San Francisco equivalent, into their own pocket PA system.

Lee stepped down into an underground station and watched the insides of his eyelids until his mental tally told him it had been six stops and was time to get up. The peaceful solitude of his own mind’s canvas was then drowned in buckets of noises sweeping, hanging, stomping and wheeling around the market stalls pitched immediately at the exit of his destination’s tube terminal.

In between prams, past snail paced shoppers, behind a leafleteer and across a set of traffic lights, Lee walked across an uneven terrain of paving slabs, seemingly against the flow of the earth, as baggy tracksuit bottoms, clouds of smoke, hints of urinated upon walls and bus dust marched towards him. A crisp packet got stuck on his foot. The unzipped tracksuit top of somebody running for a cab pinched past his forearm. At his front door atop six flights of stairs he refused to take a lift to avoid, Lee panted, took keys from his satchel containing an apple, notepad, box of cigarettes and newspaper, and shut himself away from it all.

Two wires crossing a road named Bridge

‘Hi Jean!’ said Hugh Man excitedly.

‘What’s your problem? Do I smell?’ asked Jean in a rush of panic.

‘What are you on about?’ replied Hugh with a wave of confusion.

‘Hygiene. What’s wrong with my bloody hygiene?’ Jean began to angrily shout.

‘Hugh, man. You’re so bloody rude!’ she continued.

‘Listen, you’re clearly getting the wrong end of the stick. It’s a bit much to right off a whole fricking specie as rude’ reasoned Hugh.

‘What, I’ve done nothing of the sort. But I’m not having you say I smell!’ snapped Jean.

‘Humans. Rudeness. You’re so horrifically generalizing. Get bent, or better still, go shower!’ said Hugh.

‘Man, I’m out of here’ said Jean.

‘So what, we’re not even on first name basis now? Don’t trip on the way out’ yelled Hugh…Man.

Private Members

Escaping a thigh piercing from the muzzle of a dribbling DMX and clutching at the box of an original Stylophone, complete with Rolf Harris’ How To Play 7″, Paul skips whistling from the curb where his driver waits, to a secret door between a beads shop and deep fried takeaway dive in furthest East London.

James Morrison, working the middle shift between Blunt and Hucknall, takes Paul’s coat to the hanger, then, stands with his back to the recent arrival before bending forward to touch his toes. With a sigh and roll of the eyes at protocol, Paul, as burdened as ever by his status, shuffles up tightly to his carriage, who pops his Sir over the shoulders and jumps each of the purple carpeted stairs.

Throughout the journey, the passenger pens some notes on his new instrument and before long has a melody to which he freestyles couplets about Prince’s choice in colour schemes and Harris’ ignorance towards left handedness.

“I’ll record that in morse and upload it in my name reversed’ he plans.

Panting, Morrison interrupts Paul’s chorus, sung predominantly in his newly picked up skills of ancient Latvian, to suggest the composer could hold the stylus in either hand as it doesn’t make a difference, but Paul’s already paged his team and Rolf’s just signed a contract to work on a left handed model of the device that he had actually only ever promoted rather than engineered.

Rolf has two weeks, will get no royalties for the work and will lose custody of all his rescued cats if he misses the deadline, which he works violently to beat whilst humming questions down his didgeridoo as to why it had to be him and not Stardust to come up against the wrath of McLaw.

At the top of the stairs, Morrison gratefully accepts his tip, a Wings pin badge, and places it with the rest on his blazer’s sleeve. Paul enters the lounge and sits with Bob who’s gargling a flute of pebble laced earl grey.

“Lil’ Wayne’s voice gets deadlier by the mixtape. I don’t know how much more of this I can take” says the angelically voiced Bob to Paul, avoiding eye contact in favour of his 61st ‘The Genius Of…’ Rolling Stone cover article.

“Don’t box yourself in Robert, man. The only way you’ll out crackle Lil’ is if you take to cough syrup addiction too. It’d be too blatant a gag, and where would it end? Just come clean. You’re a choir boy and can actually sing.” replies Paul.

Now, the fireplace rotates to reveal a 52” widescreen TV set that flickers with static before presenting the room with a cross atlantic, Hawaiian shirted Starkey.

“What’s up dudes? I’ve been listening to what you’ve said and there’s like, no harm in totally changing your slang, O.K?” he yanks, as the picture of him wearing an LA Lakers baseball cap and holding a hotdog fades, rotating back into fireplace flames.

“Was that vegan? It was vegan, right?” strums Paul on a series of cardboard toilet roll inners, blue tacked together and decorated with elastic bands to use as differently tuned strings for a forthcoming experimental project called ‘The Shit’.

Eddy Ball Tales #1

Spoonie: How was lunch?

Fork: He was alright, but he’s fallen out with Breakfast. She’s been getting close to Supper which has caused a bit of friction. How was Lunch for you?

Spoonie: I’ve not seen Breakfast for ages. I keep missing him. Always gone before I get up. Me and Lunch get on well but I never get enough time to digest everything. Supper is being a right slut. I catch him in a different place every night.

Fork: I hear you about Supper. He sure gets about, but I guess that’s half the fun. You never know what state he’ll be in. Far more interesting than say… Brunch. That kid doesn’t know if he’s coming or going.

Spoonie: Oh dear, we’ve forgot all about Desert!

Fork: I’ll get my keys.

A Barber at Cutting Edge

The subject says:

Number five on top and two on the sides. Don’t worry about a rinse.

The Barber, Barry, replies:

So, going anywhere nice this Easter?

The subject:

No, probably not. I’ve just got back from Chad where I tamed a wild Elephant and fed it Jaffa Cakes.

Barber:

That should be nice. So, what do you do for a living?

Subject:

I work with the skull. Around twenty to thirty a day. Usually more if a bank holiday or Christmas is coming up.

Barber:

My old man’s mate used to be some kinda doctor too. Messy business, but then I’m screamish. What’s the worst you’ve seen?

Subject:

One guy’s nut had lice in it. Hadn’t been washed in years. Hairy knots and tangles all the way through.

Barber:

Well, blow me down. Who’d have thought a brain would grow hair?

Subject:

Yeah, people and their brains… who’d have thought it?

Barber:

So then, tell me how I should wash mine.