He'd died grim, uncle Gordon and I hadn't been to see him.  Didn't have the bottle, but our John went up.  He's older than me and a lot harder.  Went to the hospital twice in three days.  The second time he went, he thought they'd fixed Gordon up and sent him home.  Had to ask the nurse if he'd been discharged, because he didn’t recognise the bloke in the bed.  She said no, that’s him, he's in the same bed as he's been in since he arrived.  John said that when you run a dog for three miles or more, it just pants and fights for breath.  Said that's what uncle Gordon looked like.  And that’s when he knew he’d had enough.

Outside the crem, I stood with the old man.  Saying nothing, while the old lady methodically read every single bloody note on ever single bloody bunch of bloody flowers.  Across the car park, a body of men gathered.  Huddled together in the cold breeze.  Coughing.  You'd have called it as a reunion of a disreputable 1970s army unit.  Broken noses, brown teeth.  Tragically bad mauve shirts and comically wide black ties.  One or two I recognised.  Bill Foreman, Noel Kennedy, Ernie Rudd.  Noel ripping the end off a tipped cigarette and smoking it the other way round.  Combovers, grey suits, red blotchy skin. 

Then you realise.  That if you needed a pipeline welding, or an 18 foot bar top polishing, or someone to fix a 60 ton excavator, or install a boiler in a conference centre, or lay 500 bricks in a day, whistling, this is where you'd find him.  I ground my teeth together, nodded at cousin Phil, noted his wife.  Looked back at the old man.  Still saying nothing.

It was only later, when the tales were being told and the beer and whiskey kicked in that, crying like a baby, I collapsed into the arms of several bewildered family members.  Funerals, to me, are like railroad officials with promises on sheets of paper, confronting hillbillies in short stories.  They always get you in the end.

Martin C

I Guess The Old Boy Had A Sense Of Humour After All.

The old man had been very wealthy., everybody who lived in this building was very wealthy, old money mostly but some new money too, it's all money. Money can buy you anything in this life but you can't cheat death no matter how rich you are.

He was gone now, dead and buried, the staff all let go. The chef, the nurse, the cleaner, the housekeeper, the driver all looking for the next wealthy family or individual to pamper. Letters of recommendation clutched in their hands no doubt, maybe even a mention in the will?

The apartment lay bare, the family had sold it quickly; even in slow times an apartment in a Candela building didn't stay on the market long. His executor handed the keys over to the building superintendent with a letter, legal of course, informing him of the change in ownership. The new owners will have gone before the board, their lives dissected, their wealth investigated, their charitable donations accessed, their characters examined. It's not enough just to have money in some buildings...

The apartment was indeed empty but the building superintendent and I we knew what we were looking for. In a cedar lined closet we tapped out the hollow behind which a safe was hidden away.  I remember them putting it in more than 25 years ago, a company from the Lower East-side who specialized in quality safes. Though she measured no more than 30 inches in height, she was a heavy old girl. We pried her out with pinch bars and elbow grease and sweat from our brows. Once she was on the movers dolly it was simply a matter of navigating the passage way to the rear of the apartment and then down to the basement via the service elevator.

The locksmith who had the contract for the building wished, naturally, to keep the contract, and agreed to open the safe gratis. I poured the tea, we sat and watched him in action. Not so much a master at his craft more a capable jobber he none the less opened the safe within the hour. Alas to our dismay no riches were to be found, only a pair of false teeth and a sepia coloured piece of paper on which the combination to the safe had been scribbled many years ago.

JL

20 minute true story from Wales UK

Catrin and John met around Christmas 1989, a few months later they found themselves standing outside the office/fan club of rock band Queen in the Notting Hill area of London. As a long time member of the Queen Fan Club, it wasn't the first time that John had visited the club and had always had a great welcome from Jacky, who ran the venture.
This time John noticed a green Mercedes Benz about to be booked for illegal parking outside the office, when a young blonde lady appeared and promptly agreed to move the car, thus avoiding a penalty.
She jumped in the car and zoomed off. John thought the car belonged to Queed guitarist Brian May, so as the young lady returned by foot, he politely asked if Brian could sign an autograph for as they had travelled over 200 miles from South Wales to be there.
Astonishely the Queen employee offered for both to accompany her into the office and ask Brian themselves.
John boldly marched in without a care in the world whilst Catrin shyly followered with a rather blushed face, only to find the entire band sitting in a room engaged in a meeting with the production manager.
Completely 'star struct' they both were introduced to each member of the band who very politely responded by saying, "hello I'm Brian, John and Roger, but Freddie Mercury was recalled as introducing himself by saying "hello I'm Kim Bassenger, very pleased to meet you" prompting the whole room to laugh and the air of anticipation melted for Catrin & John. The band then engaged in a little small talk whilst they kindly signed their autographs on the rather outrageous "things to do today" headed notepad that John had recently purchased during a walk around Carnaby Street. This also prompted some innoendo by Mr Mercury who very sadly died just over a year later of AIDS. Powerful memories were firmly ingrained into the minds of both Catrin and John during that chance encounter, that will remain with them for the rest of their lives.


John Lewis

WHAT IT TAKES

There could be power in a day like this, he saw that.
He’d tried to dam the river of pride that ran through him, stared at the ground, swallowed hard. The wet pavements reflected street lights moving towards and past him as he moved with urgency. There would be power in this day.
Every injury was opening up as he crossed the street.
A bus flashed by, its interior lighting up the street. Three or four passengers staring ahead like automata, oblivious to all. He crossed the road behind it and thought for a second or two of the thousands of people who would be sitting at home tonight with their families or the others who would be doing things they loved, like reading, playing music, watching a film, holding a hand.
The pub was leaking light and music onto the street. A few customers stood outside smoking, still within reach of the smell of beer and humans, trying to keep a little of the inside alive on the outside. He walked through their smoke and talk and into the warmth and the wall of sound. 
Everywhere was shoulders and backs of heads, occasional profiles cracking with laughter. He couldn’t hear what they were laughing at; he didn’t really see them.
A gap opened up as someone pushed back from the bar with three pints of beer in his hands. He saw you through the gap.
He slipped by the pint-carrier, through the closing gap and walked up to the table where you were sat with your sister. 
The music changed to Percy Sledge singing Dark End Of The Street as he lifted the revolver from his pocket, placed the end of the barrel to your eye and squeezed the trigger. A beautiful red mist filled the air as your brains erupted through the back of your skull. As you slumped over to your side he took the time to spit in your sister’s face before continuing moving through the pub and leaving by the side door. 
This is what it takes to kill a man.

 

DG

I don't seen Tony Falshaw for years, then all of a sudden he's everywhere I look.  Turns out he's got divorced and moved into a flat somewhere the other side of the railway bridge.  Tells me about having both his hips done.  He's not a lot older than me and it makes me shudder to think.  Says that they don't even knock you out when they do it and that afterwards you encounter loads of new challenges in life.  Like going for a shit in comfort. 

Their Dale's not up to much, he says.  "Can't do owt with 'em these days, can you?"  There’s nothing resilient in him.  Resigned.  Beaten.  Then Tony says “What's your lad doing?"

I tell him Jack's got an apprenticeship at Mathers Engineering down Shawside.  Like a lot of people, he reacts as if I've told him Jack's got into Oxford University.  Forty years ago there'd have been two dozen of them down at Mathers.  And another thirty or more each going to the docks, the pits, on the sites.  Not now.  Not ever again. 

Tony says "He'll know Steve Barker then?"  He looks at me like it's something important. 

"I think he sees him here and there, but he’s not shop floor."  Tony waits for what seems like two hours and then says

“They make a lot of stuff for the American military at Mathers, don’t they?  Top end stuff.”

I hadn't got a clue.  I was just starting to get used to Jack coming in knackered every night with a faceful of soot and eating his tea like he'd never seen food before and hearing stories between mouthfuls, of burrs and drilling and drawings, and canteen tea like witch piss and magazines in the bogs and blokes called Eddie and Smackers and Mr Fresh.  Just assumed the metal he’d been polishing and shearing and cutting, was bits for gearboxes and pipelines and industry.  And maybe rotors and casings and blades.  But not military ones.

Tony doesn’t say anything else.  Just gives me a smile that says “Where’s your fucking left wing credibility now, you twat?”  Then he rubs his hip, widens his smile and limps off.  

Martin C 

English as a Second Language.

Arh great, just what I need. 8:00 a.m. Monday morning and Jesus turns up with a completely new crew.
"Jesus, what the fuck man? Where's the regular boys?"
"Hola John."
"Jesus..."
"Wha... These guys mucho better."

"Better for you maybe, maybe work for less but what the fuck do they know about demoing an apartment in a building like this?" We are stood outside an apartment build on Central Park West and 84th Street. Jesus is my demo guy, he is also a cheap fuck. A Peruvian who hires guys on an as needed basis for as little as he can get away with. He does all my demo, I pay him, he is legal, his men are his concern. Me, I'm a GC, a General Contractor. I specialize in high end apartment refurbs.  My average job is around $5m.  I've a lot of money tied up in business and I've worked hard to get where I am. Getting here was the easy part, it's staying here that's hard. I try do things by the book but it's not easy when the competition will cut every corner they can. I still use union electricians and plumbers, the HVAC guys are all licensed but when you're up against some of the low life's this business has attracted it's getting harder and harder to make a buck.

There's one guy, new on the scene, wears leather trousers for God's sake, he hires Chinese day laborers for everything. They will work for half the price of a Mexican. I don't know how he gets away with it but he does. Palms, obviously, are getting greased. I have one guy, Jim, he's from Trinidad ( you ever met anyone from Tobago? Me neither. It's always Trinidad) he did a few weeks with this guy, told me he had 35 guys doing demo, dragging cans out into the street. No dumpsters just dragging them. All these guys wearing sneakers, no boots, no helmets. Said half the guys came back the next week reinvented as carpenters and laying out the stud and sheet rock. Said he quit when two of them declared themselves electricians and kept shorting everything out. Bad enough working in those conditions; think about living in the apartment when it's done?

Demo is one of the areas I try compete but Jesus has really fucked me this time, these guys look fresh off the boat. This is tricky demo, I want a lot of the walls to remain, I don't want the water lines disturbing, I don't want all the electrics ripping out.

"Where'd you get these guys Jesus?"
"Take it easy my friend. These guys, good guys."
"These guys fucking cheap guys. Where's Hector, get fucking Hector here, he can read prints. I want fucking Hector here or you can fuck right off."
"Hector no work for me no more. Cordaro can read prints yes?"
"Cordaro? Which one's he? Guy's a fucking midget Jesus. Cordaro, you read prints?"
"Si."
"You do? Jesus stop nodding your fucking head."
"Cordaro where'd you work before? Speak English?"
"Si, poquito."
"Popquito? Where did you work last week?"
"Arh, arh, I dickwasher."
"Jesus, what the fuck? What the fuck's a dickwasher?"
"Si I Dickwasher!"
"Hey don't shout that too fucking loud pal."
"Si, Dickwasher?"
Jesus, get fucking Hector back here and the rest of the regular crew and get this fucking dickwasher out of here..."
"Si I Dickwasher!"
"Hey Cordaro? Where'd you was dicks?"
"John, John, John, he worked in the dinner...
"Washing dicks? Fancy place."
"Washing dishes."
"Arh dish washer?"
"Si, si, si, I Dickwasher."
"Jesus call fucking Hector."

JL

The Bane of Bairns

I hate children, all children from new borns to those on the cusp of adulthood; I don’t discriminate and happily include strangers, acquaintances and family members. I know, not a popular opinion. I should add that I don’t actively wish them harm, but the fact remains that children irritate me and as such I am looking to impose a UN sanctioned no juveniles zone. The actual mechanics of the zone have yet to be thrashed out but I’m doing pretty well so far in policing my own informal arrangement. I’m just hoping Ban Ki-moon will sanction some clips round the ear to complement my glaring.

I’ve never been interested in my own or anyone else’s progeny; as a young adult I never foresaw my family lineage doing anything other than halting with me. I didn’t ever imagine myself as someone’s dad, nurturing, teaching, helping a child grow into a functioning adult and then sitting back with pride at the not inconsiderable achievements of my loins and mind. No thank you. I know that it seems the most natural thing in the world to many but nature and I are at odds on this one. I’m not quite sure where this antipathy originated and there was a time when I assumed that maybe I just wasn’t ready and nature would give me a nudge when appropriate to take care of business.

I’m now at an age where the general expectation is that you should be having or already have had children, if not there must be some physiological problem precluding breeding in which case you merit great sympathy. Most of my friends now have children and insist on telling me all about them, sometimes sending me pictures of them and frequently posting photos on Facebook accompanied by hackneyed ‘sleeping’, ‘crawling’, ‘first steps’ statements. I assume that I’m being afforded great sympathy by them for my failure to procreate, the tacit ‘trouble’ I must be having; if they knew of my dislike and disinterest in children they surely wouldn’t insist on keeping me abreast of the minutiae of their spawn’s ‘progress’ and would come to rightly regard me as the selfish and shallow individual I am; qualities which I am perfectly comfortable with.

The sound of children elicits the same response in me as nails scraped down a blackboard. I bristle in the presence of them in much the same way that other people become tense and uncomfortable at the presence of a smoker or a hooded teen; preferable company in my opinion. I scan the area and plot exit stratagies like one of Andy McNabb’s fictitious heroes. I know that they can’t hurt me, not physically, but they can ruin my day.

I recently visited a bar with my father, an establishment we had enjoyed on many occasions previously. By pure good luck we obviously hadn’t had the misfortune of visiting on a Friday afternoon before. This particular bar is opposite a prep school where the aspiring middle classes part with their hard inherited cash in order that their offspring receive the best of starts. A laudable idea. A little after three thirty the formerly peaceful idyll was transformed by the arrival of squadrons of Ritalin starved apes ‘overseen’ by a small team of moneyed, negligent, clothes horses. It was dreadful, I hated it, my father hated it and the staff clearly hated it. The clothes horses seemed unaware of the chaos and clearly didn’t think that they ought to play any part in the disciplining of their children. Dad and I glowered into our swiftly consumed pints and the staff offered the sagely advice of avoiding Friday afternoons in future.

Children in pubs, this is one of my biggest bugbears, pubs are adult environments, for adults. I don’t ruin it for them by making the playground unwelcoming; the pub is my playground and they are effectively breaking the slide and smashing the swings when they enter a pub. How can I enjoy the sticky carpet, the company of the unhinged and the extortion in a child-friendly pub?

I know my stance will horrify and offend some, thankfully those known to me will be too busy with their offspring to read that I watch You’ve Been Framed purely to see children falling over and hurting themselves, it’s my rather benign revenge.

Tim Mac

The Fat Of The Land

The Fat Of The Land

Like many people I could lose a pound or two with little difficulty and look and feel better for doing so. Unlike many people, I am aware of this.

Now, I’m not an old man far from it, at thirty nine I may have passed the tipping point of my prime but I can still remember the great days of the early nineties when going on holiday meant sharing beaches with fine looking people; the Mediterranean coasts were literally awash with good looks and glamour, a perception admittedly assisted by alcohol but a fair reflection all the same. However, not enough booze exists to make many of today's Brits abroad look palatable. At holiday resorts frequented by the British the appearance of David Attenborough and a camera crew is half expected as you would be forgiven for thinking that you’d arrived at a seal colony given the abundance of blubber.  

We live in strange times when the majority of people sporting sports attire are those least likely to engage in anything that would even raise the heart rate of those of us able to see our feet and reach our genitals. They don’t look sporty just as I don’t look like a nineteenth century gold prospector when I pull on a pair of jeans.

The men generally opt for a trip to Sports Direct to pick up a few 4XL t-shirts and jogging bottoms. The women tend to adhere strictly to a different dress code that allows them free rein as regards their torso but mandates leggings on the bottom. Leggings, however comfortable, are rarely flattering, especially on the fuller figured wearer. White ones forgive nothing whilst black ones create a sort of giant black pudding illusion.

A friend recently started internet dating, he was seduced by the myth that it is normal (it isn’t) and being new to the whole thing wasn’t really up to speed with the jargon and various acronyms used on such sites. Thinking that a broad cast of his net would yield better results, he had to endure a number of dates trying to disguise his disappointment with his hulking fellow diner before he realised that BBW apparently stands for big beautiful woman; he felt MOPS would have been rather more appropriate - morbidly obese panting slug. Things didn’t improve a great deal when he got the hang of things and decided to refine his criterion. Average sized and even slim were the next lies being purported in the cyber love search. When did corpulent become average or slim? The problem is that many people who are indeed overweight seem to think that because they are part of a sizable and growing (in every sense) minority, their size is in fact normal and rather than being mocked for their porcine gluttony they should be considered perfectly acceptable specimens.

I enjoy eating, its a pleasant thing to do. What I don’t understand is comfort eating. I suppose that I must derive some sort of comfort from eating but only the comfort of no longer being hungry having emptied my calorie bank. As a rational, pragmatic individual I tend to look for solutions to any problems I may have rather than ways to compound them. Post-war Britain was a pretty miserable, austere place, did everyone comfort eat? 70s Britain saw massive inflation, the three day week, the winter of discontent, did our bulldog spirit lead us to chow? Thatcher dismantled the remnants of British industry, did we mewl into our microwave meals? See where I’m going? You’re a fat rotter, it understandably upsets you. Solution, eat more. Give me strength!

I’m not a body fascist (whatever that means), I don’t expect everyone to walk around taut and sinewy at their optimum fighting weight, I just want to see people with the general contours of people rather than sea mammals. Glandular problems, big bones? Nonsense. If glands were the problem more money would be pouring into glandular research than for both cancer and the common cold combined. It isn’t. Bones are hard, fat people are soft, I don’t think bones are the cause of their problems other than forming a scaffold from which to hang fat.

What happened to necks and waists? I’m struggling to recall when I last saw either, before too long I expect them be consigned to the history books, listed alongside dodos, mammoths and sabre toothed tigers but with more photographic evidence. We’ll become wistful and yearn for yesteryear when elders were respected, you could leave your doors unlocked and people boasted necks and waists and often both, great days.

What of the future? All of our signs would have to be modified as the stick figures currently used to denote human beings would no longer be a recognisable representation of the human form; fat folks would be in mortal peril, unable to heed that the warnings from unrecognisable signage.

I recently saw a guy on TV complaining that he had been refused a gastric band on the grounds that he wasn’t fat enough. Surely any right minded individual would breathe a sigh of relief at discovering that, whilst overweight, they weren’t actually morbidly obese and their very existence wasn’t threatened. Not this chap, he decided that the only solution to his problem was to gorge himself Henry VIII style until such time that he was considered fat enough to merit weight loss surgery. He’d managed to work out that eating more made him fatter but was unable to comprehend how cutting down would have the reverse effect.

Eat less and move more, it’s a simple equation which seems to befuddle our rotund friends. How about this one then? Substitute calories for pounds; if £4000 was deposited in your bank account each day and you only withdrew £2000 would you expect your balance to go up or down? If you can work it out you can lose weight, if you can’t happy heart attack.

Mal B

Late Night On The www.

Buy now $18.98
Buy now $23.25 - Free Shipping.
Like new, no bids, starting bid $5s....
Decisions, decisions...
Let's just have a quick look.
TYPES IN - Shimano 105 Compact Groupset.
$639. $40s Shipping.
Hmm, that's still too expensive. What have I left in Paypal? $247s. Ok, I bought those new Contis, good price, hope they're genuine, guy only had 9 Feedbacks.


"Are you coming to bed?"
"Two minutes, yeah."
"Are you on eBay again?"
"No. I'm looking at porn."
"Thank God for that."

JL

ON A MISSION

Time was getting on Col thought to himself, he’d have to make a move soon or it would be too late. The weather had steadily gotten more and more inclement throughout the day but if he didn’t attempt the trip soon he would have no chance. Zipping his parka up so only his eyes were visible and pulling his beanie over his ears before pulling the hood as tight around his shaven head as he could ,he mumbled to himself ‘well, Colin, it’s now or never’. He looked down to his feet and as usual he noticed he  was ill prepared for the task ahead, but with the weather seeming to get worse by the minute he realised that if he didn’t act decisively now then any chance he may have had would be gone. Slowly he set off, his middle age frame more reminiscent of a frail old eighty year as he had to stoop into the piercing, frozen gale that was blowing snowflakes the size of 50 pence pieces into his exposed eyes and covering the fur of his parka hood, weighing it down so it drooped in front of his increasingly frozen face. The snow had definitely reached blizzard proportions and was settling like a thick shag pile carpet under his feet which incidentally felt like they were turning into frozen blocks of ice. Even though the night was pitch the fresh fallen snow created that odd sensation which made it look more like twilight when he looked at the ground. If Col looked behind him he would see that his footprints were disappearing almost as quickly as he was making them. With a steely determination though he fought through the worsening storm, keeping his spirits up by thinking he might actually make it. With head bowed and a about a mile clocked up on the trek he could just make out a twinkling light which gave the adventurer a lift. He smiled to himself even though he was frozen to the bone. As the light shone a little brighter through the worsening onslaught of snow, he allowed himself to believe he was actually going to make it. Closer and closer, the light beckoning him like a siren to a sailor, Col trudged on, until finally he reached his destination and the familiar vision in front of him came as such a relief that he fair pushed the door off its hinges before he shouted ‘The usual please Hayley, and a bag of scratching whilst you’re at it!’

Colin

How Not To Rob A Bank

First thing’s first, we’re not hardened career criminals. Just four blokes who needed a cash boost. Tommy, Johnno, Bernie and me had been mates since we met on the bricklaying course . I was fresh from failing my A-levels (in the days when they were bloody hard), Tommy and Johnno were the same, but Scottish. Bernie was actually planning his career in the building trade – he had a business to take over eventually.

It was this business that put us in our current predicament. True enough, Bernie had inherited his dad’s business after he died, only to have absolutely no business brain. This meant the company quickly went downhill. It was on the verge of going bust when Tommy had the plan. “We can rob a bank,” he said in his thick Glaswegian accent. “I saw it done a few times when I were a kid.”

“That’s all well and good” I responded. “But how in God’s name do you suggest we get away with it?!”

So Tommy told us. First thing, you get yourself a good mask, to cover your face. Secondly, you get something scary to wave about – doesn’t have to be guns, or even real guns. Third, a reliable getaway driver in a non-descript car. Finally, you’ll need a good hideaway and trustworthy connections.

So, we got our masks. Mine was a good ski mask, two eyes and a mouth. Real menacing.  The others had similar ideas – they got exactly the same mask as me. Tommy used his slightly dodgy connections to lay his hands on a couple of fake pistols. I got my baseball bat from in the loft and knocked a few nails into it. Bernie brought his dad’s old hunting knife. Johnno got us a getaway driver. More of that later. Finally, Bernie borrowed the keys to his dad’s canal boat – he thought it would be a great idea to mix lying low with a boating trip!

We were dropped off outside the bank, and in we ran, shouting and waving our weapons about. The cashier starting filling the bags, and it was going smoothly until Johnno sneezed, and Bernie, forgetting himself, said – out loud the stupid bastard – “bless you, Johnno.”

Tommy was distracted from waving his toy gun at the manager, and cursed him. “Bernie you tit, what did we say about not using names!” This was all the manager needed, and ‘BAM’ the alarm was triggered. We legged it outside to where the car should have been. Only for the car not to be there.

Never use a taxi as a getaway car!

Jonathan M