Feral

 “I’ll bung you a few quid if you catch anybody fucking my cat.”

That’s what I’ll remember, Roy. You offering me money if I spotted anyone in the neighbourhood sticking their old fella up your mangy old cat because, unless I have lived more of a sheltered life than I believe, I’m pretty sure that the slang term pussy isn’t literal. There aren’t teenage boys everywhere looking at cats and thinking to themselves I’m so going to fuck the hell out of that.

I’d moved there in the winter. Top end of town. The wind whipping up off the harbour, up the hill. Fucking hell, the cold. A closed down pub called The Windy Corner told its own story. The day I moved in was proper Arctic. Your sweat would turn into frost on your brow. Me and Dead John moving my life one carload at a time to the only place I could get in January. No reference required, first month up front.

Dead John is called Dead John because he’s dead. He wasn’t then, but he is now. We called him Skinny John back then. Didn’t know any Fat Johns but we had Black John and Diabetic John so it only seemed fair to give him a nickname too. Since the accident we just talk about him as Dead John.

So, we’ve got the sofa in at last. Dead John’s car just about managed it. I’ve put the kettle on and found the teabags. Going to plug the telly in and stick a DVD on. Order a curry, get some beers in. Going to make a real night of it, me and Dead John.

There’s a heavy knock at the door.

Might be a hot neighbour says Dead John.

This sparks a surge in my energy levels and I’m brushing my hair back and running to the door just in case I’ve moved in next door to an unfussy girl who looks like that one out of Elf.

As I opened the door, an invisible truck of icy wind roared past. Before me stood a man who looked like he’d emerged from the business end of an abbatoir. He was comfortably older than me, in his sixties I’d guess. He had a face that told a thousand stories and none of them looked like ones I wanted to hear. It seemed thrown together from many constituent parts. Even his eyes were asymmetrical. In the middle a huge slab of nose was parked, broken at some point. This gargoyle stood before me in a pyjama shirt caked with flecks of blood and other crumbs of human waste. 

“Hello, I’m Roy. I live next door.”

Reluctantly, I shook the grim hand proffered.

“Come in, come in” I found myself saying.

“No, no. I won’t stop. Just wanted to introduce myself. Everyone knows me round here. If anyone gives you any trouble, talk to me and I’ll have a word.”

“Oh okay, thanks. I’m Mickey by the way.”

“Nice to meet you. Right, I’ll be off.”

I shut the door.

“Who was that?”

“Roy. My next door neighbour. Covered in blood and bogies. So, that’s good.”

Dead John let out a big laugh. It was a good night, that. We watched this film where Will Ferrell has a yard sale of everything he owns outside the house that he doesn’t live in anymore. One of the last good times I had with Dead John too.

Roy was no bother really. Every few weeks he’d knock and ask if I’d seen anybody sexually interfering with his cat. Offering a cash reward for information. One time he turned up and asked if I wanted a stuffed monkey he had found in a skip. Then I didn’t see him for a while.

In the local paper one week there was a news story on him. He had been visiting his mother at a retirement home a few miles from here. She was close to 100 years old. Anyway, this one time he turns up and she dies whilst he’s there. According to the news report he then started punching her. She’s already dead, so he claimed, and he resumed the punching. He ends up being arrested and eventually sectioned.  The house was his and it got sold by a niece of his or somebody. I saw her one day rushing in and out with cleaning products and talking on the phone about blood stains and excrement.

She saw me coming out of my house and walked up to me and asked if I knew him. I found myself saying that he kept himself to himself and almost laughed out loud at that cliche. She says he was an animal. There were bags of rotten fish and chips everywhere. And all these dead cats.

I felt bad. I offered her my condolences and explained that I did not really see him often, that he had just struck me as being a bit eccentric. 

Maybe I should’ve gone to the funeral. But I didn’t. I didn’t go to Dead John’s either. I still feel bad about that. My friends fell out with me, and they were right to. The poor bastard slipped off an icy curb the near The Windy Corner and went headfirst under a lorry. It was quick I guess. No time to worry about it.

I don’t walk that way home now. I go the long way round and miss out that corner and Roy’s old house. I find myself sneaking in my own front door, like I’ve been somewhere I shouldn’t have. Close the door quietly, turn the telly on a low volume. I keep myself to myself. Next door have got a cat. It comes in my garden and tries to fuck up any birds that come near it. He is an ugly bastard. He sits on my kitchen windowsill and looks at me. He sits there and snarls at me in my own home and somehow I know that things are going to go wrong for me very soon.

I miss the pub

 I was watching a truly terrible film at the weekend called The Best Bar in America. In it a cliched Hemingway wannabe was embarked on a personal odyssey to find this elusive tavern. There was the potential for a great road movie but it was squandered on, well I don’t know what it was squandered on, but it wasn’t dialogue or acting lessons. 

Anyway, it got me thinking how much I love the pub and how much I, like millions of others, miss it. I don’t know what the best pub in Britain is, and I’ve been to hundreds of them, but I have some ideas as to what the best pub would feature and what it wouldn’t.  

My first regular pub was The Foelallt Arms in Llanddewi Brefi. Can’t put my finger on why I loved that place so much. When I was first drinking there the beer was shit, the jukebox even worse and the locals could be difficult too. And yet, this tiny pub just 100 yards or so from my house, was the first great pub love of my life. Me and my sixth form friends playing pool, talking shit, dreaming of escape and wishing that someone would put something decent on the jukebox. Those summer nights between school and university were magical and the Foelallt, with its dim view of things like licensing laws, was a big part of it. Me and my brother occasionally fantasise about winning the lottery, buying the place and doing it up a bit and restoring it to some kind of alternative glory, where the beer didn’t give you the shits and the temperature was somewhere above zero. I loved the place though, for all its faults, and whenever life in my twenties got too hectic with women trouble or any other kind of trouble, a trip back home and a couple of nights in the Foelallt served as the kind of corrective space necessary to make appropriate adjustments for life back in Cardiff. 

The next regular was a true love of mine. The Elephant and Castle. Fuck knows why a South London estate had a pub named after it in rural west Wales but there you go. I was from South London and so it seemed to fit that I would love this place so much. First date with my first serious girlfriend was in the Elephant, the first place I’d go after a row (and usually, before it) was the Elephant. Found out I was going to be a Dad there, took my son there to be christened in the world of booze, a baptism involving me having a very quick pint of Stella while the landlady cooed at a two week old boy in a pram. 

The Elephant had a U-shaped bar. It got progressively lighter as you moved round it. Dark corners are a key part of any great pub. I wasn’t one for the dark side of the Elephant though. I went to where the light was, by the pool table, by the jukebox and the dartboard. The Elephant catered to all my adolescent needs except the carnal. 30 years since the place closed and I can still recall the numbers of key songs in my musical education provided by the Elephant’s proper rickety jukebox. 183 – She’s Not There. 157 – Whisky In The Jar. 191 – Lola. 147 – Dock of the Bay. Every time I hear any of those songs, I close my eyes and picture my dear friends Garry, Steve and Bevan rolling cigarettes or cueing up an unlikely pot on the bright blue baize of the pool table. 

God how I loved that pub. When it closed its thick oak and metal door for the final time, it felt like the end of the world. It was more than somewhere to go - it was somewhere I belonged. Most students avoided the place, too far, too dark, too dingy for them. They preferred, still prefer I imagine, the bright lights of the Dairies with it’s Sky TV and new furniture. The Elephant was a tatty, fearsome old beast and I loved it dearly. 

Me and my friends needed a new base and settled upon The Blue Boar. The Blue Boar was a great pub. Its main architectural feature was a pointless aquarium that seemed to take up half the place. Again, dingy. Darkness is good. People don’t want to sit in the bright light, the pub is for contemplation, reflection and self-admonishment. Nightclubs are for parties. The boozer is for boozing. I was always in awe of the daily drinkers in these places, the coming in and getting your head down and drinking the days away. A foolish, youthful romanticism I know but already I felt a kinship with these guys. Outside of the pub, you could be stuck in a dead-end job, a damaging relationship or some other intractable reality. Inside, sat with a pint and a couple of fellow minded travellers, you were free from all of that, princes, for a while, of your own sainted kingdom. 

The Blue Boar had all the facilities the youthful me required. Jukebox (CD – hundreds of albums), pool table and, most importantly, atmosphere. It was a lively place, the Blue, if you caught it at the right time. The best hours in a pub are often the weekday nights just after everyone’s fucked off out of work. Only going for one, two at the most, the joy at not being behind a desk or till is palpable when these people enter the pub. A couple of hours there and they leave a little bit of that joy hanging in the room when they go. Sometimes you can taste it. 

Eventually, I had to move town. I’d run out of people I could safely owe money to and my time in Carmarthen was up. And so to Cardiff. I didn’t have a regular for years, preferring to give a different pub it’s moment in the sun for a few months. The Rummer Tavern with it’s medieval darkness and subterranean pisser, Dempseys with it’s famous four bars, the Goat Major with it’s distinct lack of pool table and jukebox but a fucking huge weighing machine in the toilet. I loved them all, the Borough on a Friday night could turn a bit tasty at the drop of a hat but it had atmosphere by the bucketload. 

When the Wetherspoon Revolution came around, I found a new home. Mulligans, an authentic Irish bar at the bottom of the world famous chip alley. Fuck me, I loved that place. I’m about as Irish as Mo Farah but something about being served by a proper Irish family amongst timetables of Atlantic crossings from Cork whilst The Dubliners chirrup away in the background spoke to me. Mulligans was ace. They looked after their regulars. You didn’t have to queue for a drink if it got packed. Thirsty drinkers would have to pass the Stella back to you if they wanted to get served themselves.  

These were the days when my drinking companions included Mad Michael. Michael was his own man. He wore a bobble hat beneath which his 12^th century haircut strained at the leash. He had been a monk but gave up the monastic life when, in his words, he really fancied a pint one afternoon. Same age as me and probably the cleverest person I’d ever met. Translated ancient texts for universities on the side. You’d be sat next to him in a call centre and he’d be gabbing on to some old lady on his headset whilst deciphering ancient sentences with his non-typing hand. Funny as fuck, too. The language on him after five pints. Came back from the gents with his old boy still hanging out and, when this was pointed out to him, merely stretched his jumper down to cover the tip. Went mad in the end, properly, terribly, horribly mad. I’m not saying it was because Mulligans changed hands but I’m not saying it wasn’t either. 

Mulligans famously employed The Hardest Bouncer in Cardiff too. These were the days when you didn’t need a license. You can mention Lloyd’s name to a certain older generation of doorman in Cardiff and they’ll get all misty eyed. Lloyd was about 5 foot 6, 9 stone wet and was not a man to tell you things twice. Everyone had a Lloyd story. Like the Sex Pistols gig in Manchester, everyone was there the night Lloyd threw a man who’d hit his girlfriend out the doors so violently he ran into and bounced off a bus turning into St Mary’s Street. I made the mistake of testing Lloyd’s patience one night and, luckily for me, he only whispered in my ear. Not only did I instantly leave, I was back the next day with apologies by the dozen. All was forgiven, I was a regular. But I wasn’t to take liberties again. 

Anyway, after Brains decided that what was really needed was to turn an authentic Irish pub in the city centre into an “Irish-themed” pub, I stopped going and so did everyone else. I had another child by then and my days of leisure had come to an abrupt end.  

I don’t know if I’ll ever get to go to a pub again but by God, I’ll enjoy it if I do. I’ll make it a regular pilgrimage, make it my home from home. I want to see friends again, I want to spend hours with my friends laughing and joking and hiding from real life. Lord knows we’ve had enough real life to contend with of late. 

All I dream about is the last year before the pandemic and the joyous pub-based occasions therein. The shitfaced Dixieland night at the Old Duke in Bristol, the epic walk around the pubs of Treharris and Nelson in search of food and quizzes, the Estonian barmaid in Treforest who loved 1982-era The Fall, the hugely hungover trawl through Tenby and its myriad takes on hair-of-the-dog and finally my dear friend Steve’s 50^th, days before the first lockdown and a night of regrettable tequilas, strange guilt and determined celebration. 

I feel for the kids of today, watching on as their supposed elders and betters vote for them a Britain without the same access to Europe as we had. I worry about what effect the pandemic will have on their development as young adults. As dangerous as alcohol can be, the pub as a place to amass experiences, consolidate friendships and celebrate milestones cannot be underestimated. As my dear friend and stoic drinking partner Mark said to me only today, man is a social animal. I hope that all of us can socialise again soon. It is the way in which ideas are best shared, in person, not online, not in secret. If things ever get back to normal again, I hope that all of us can be social again, can find places to share ideas, problems, joy, sadness – the stuff of all human life. Without seeing familiar faces, this life loses meaning. When the pubs reopen, let’s not ruin it by just getting blindly drunk, let’s seize the opportunity to reconnect with people, find new friends, build relationships, communities and plant the seeds for new, happy memories.  

The Morris

It is the curse of old age not to forget things but to remember them. My mother said that to me and, not for the first time, she was right.

Me and my mother were laughing at my aborted decision to buy a dartboard. I’d become nostalgic in isolation and pined for the carefree winter of 92 when all of life’s problems could be tuned out by a meditative couple of hours chucking arrows.

Thirty years later and I’m thinking of turning my front room into the Lakeside of yore. Fuck it. Who needs two sofas? Get rid of one, stick a board up, kill the remaining years with trebles and bullseyes.

The day I came home to find my girl had gone and my son with her was the day I played darts for five hours solid. Just on my own. Not knowing what to do. Telling myself that if I could get a ton with the next three darts, she’d be back and we could start again. And the next three darts. Change it up. Go for 120. She loves you, she’s just flipped and the moment she realises her parents are only too happy to hate me a little more, she’ll be back.

140. 2 treble twentys and a twenty. Or double top, double 15 and bull. Yeah she’s coming back. Got the yips now you tell yourself. Can’t hit the bull. Love or fucking money. Not a chance.

Alright, fuck it, maximum. All in. If I get the 180 here, she’s not only coming back but we’re going to be happy.

I don’t even notice it’s got dark outside.

Rituals, patterns, codes, signifiers, trends. All my life letting chance and fate and coincidence and randomness guide me rather than just be a soundtrack that occasionally takes over the narrative. The first girl to kiss me was born in January. The second in October. The third in February. Now I’m chasing girls born in November. Whenever I watch the Villa in the Boar they lose, can’t watch the game in the Boar, they lose when I do. No matter that the Villa are shit, no matter that right now we’ve got a forward line of Guy Whittingham and fucking John Fashanu. It’s all down to me and the fucking Boar. Got to watch them in the Pops. They won when you watched them down there. And so on.

I like patterns. I don’t mean wallpaper or fucking shirts. I like patterns. I see things in them. The number of letters in the names of the last three girls I slept with is 11 in each. My daughter was born on the 11th day of the 11th month. Tony Morley. Number 11. 11 letters in my name. Son’s date of birth. 3rd of August. 3+8=11. What’s the house number of the empty room in which I’m throwing darts in the dark to turn my life around? Number 11.

Alabama. Alaska. Arizona. Arkansas. Accrington Stanley. AFC Bournemouth. AFC Wimbledon. Things I say to myself to get myself to sleep. Remember the US states in alphabetical order. The 92 clubs of the football league. Goalkeepers in FA Cup Finals from 1971 onwards. The chronological order of New Order singles, Coen Brothers films and every job I ever had. These night time tortures are only another manifestation of my mind, always wanting to make some kind of order of a universe that has never demanded much of me in return.

This is how the Morris got out of hand.

The Morris was a greasy spoon to end all greasy spoons. The kind of place that environmental health officers would call lawless. A place to harden the arteries just by sitting down. The Morris Tea Rooms. Laughable those last two words. There was nothing dainty or genteel about the Morris. And to me, 19 year old me with my secret, laughable ideas about becoming a writer one day, this was a place to people watch like no other.

I couldn’t believe what a treasure trove of stuff I’d walked into. The prices were bizarre. Nothing was to the quid or the fifty pence. A plate of sausage, eggs and chips was £2.38. A cup of tea was 57p. The food was extraordinary. Man’s food. The kind of man who didn’t plan on seeing 40. Soon me and my friends were regulars. Morris became a verb. The other cafes in town would have to do without us. The Tea Chest with it’s selling point of being up a load of fucking stairs. She loved the Tea Chest. With it’s wide range of jacket potatoes and beautiful china teapots. £3.99 for a fucking spud and some tuna. In 1990. A scandal. Or there was The Seashell. Or The Coffee Pot. Or the West End, purveyors of easily the worst chips in the western world. The Old Curiosity Shop was never entered because of a rule I had just invented about never going anywhere named after a Dickens novel. It was popular with the kind of people that I wrote off as losers, losers because they dared to study and settle down and have ambitions and dreams. Mortgage chasing fools, I would say to myself, as I opened up a Daily Mirror at the horse racing page.

The Morris became a temple for directionless, godless me and my fellow pilgrims on the road from salvation. The tea was served in little plastic Typhoo pots. They leaked easily and, if you were to unfortunately put a pot down on some tea-stained formica, would move like curling stones. The tea, of course, tasted like café tea always did back then. A scalding mix of ashtray and industrial Britain. The full breakfast was sausage, eggs, beans, black pudding and bacon. And fried bread. And if that wasn’t enough to tempt as unsophisticated a palate as mine, raised as it was on working class British fare, then there were chips too. Chips for fucking breakfast. Heaven.

With all the imagination in the world at our behest, we dubbed the blonde waitress with the long neck “Giraffe.” A similar degree of wit and class changed the name of Mr Shute, a regular in the window seat by the front door. We had our regular table. We would race pots of tea, pick horses for bets we wouldn’t get around to making and invent a language and terminology for the rare friends we deemed worthy of inviting to join us. A Continental was a fried breakfast with peas. A Rob was a ham and peas. Mr Morris was only too delighted with the sudden uptake in student customers. I rarely paid full price. Mr Morris saw me for who I was, a revolutionary in greasy food appreciation, Fidel Gastro, Café Guevara. Our number grew, the terminology spread, the rituals became more and more ornate and sacrosanct.

My friends got their shit together. Some of them anyway. And now here I was, darts in my hand, telling myself that 170 with the next three darts would bring my family back. I’d not even heard of The Dice Man, yet alone read it. I had a digital watch which I would consult before making any decision. Stopwatch feature. Click go. Ask it a question. “Should I go to the pub?” The higher the hundredths of a second when I finally clicked was a percentage of favourability. A 98% success you say. Pub it is. 14% - fuck it, let’s go anyway. And if a shit time ensued, it was your own fault for ignoring the Magic Watch.

My friend Darren became obsessed with the Magic Watch, blutacked it to a wall in the front room of the house I ended up sharing when I lost everything, dartboard included. Not a decision was made in that house without consultation. A crazy house. Andrew with his bed shitting, rampant alcoholism and mute girlfriend. Matt with his horror films. Poor Kim, working hard, looking after everyone, not joining in the drinking and the drugs and being the first of us to die, not even 40 and fucking cancer took her. Darren with his regime of medication necessary to give him dignity. Mike with his drugs and his crazy Irish girlfriend. Me with my silent pain and crazed rituals. My new girlfriend with all her secret hurt that I was unwillingly adding to with each of my irritating acts of desperate stupidity.

I stopped going to the Morris when I saw how popular it had got. I was the worst kind of snob like that. I’d go off bands the moment their talent got them fame. It wasn’t the same when everyone else liked it. I can’t remember the last time I went. Maybe one day I’ll remember that occasion, vividly, like my mother said and it won’t be a happy memory at all.

So, I’m not buying a dartboard. I’m buying a new sofa. I’m going to sit on it and get fat and wait to grow old and see what else the past brings me.

Christmas Eve at the Yellow Shop

Christmas Eve at the Yellow Shop

 

Before I’ve even opened the door, before I’ve had the chance to stick the kettle on, switch the lights on, and put my Give A Shit face on, he’s rung. The fucking area manager. His end of year bonus in the balance, no doubt. Telling me to stick the Christmas CD on. To ring him if I need help. Fuck that. I’ve made my own Christmas CD and that is going on instead. The office one that he wants me to play is all the usual shit you can hear in any other shop. Shaky. Slade. The Pogues. Nothing wrong with them. It’s just they’re inescapable. My CD is more self-satisfied I know but fuck it, I have to show I’ve got some cultural cachet somewhere. The Fall, Aimee Mann, Nat King Cole.

Someone might ask me hey what song is this playing, and I’ll say it’s Just Like Christmas by Low and if I’m lucky the person asking me will look a bit like Scarlett Johansson and fall in love with me there and then. We’ll get a nice house near my daughter’s place and I’ll write a best-selling book and eventually Scarlett will die in a terrible car accident, hanging on through weeks of life support and blood transfusions before finally giving in seconds before I make it to her bedside to say goodbye. Everyone will say how brave I am, how dignified.

I will never love again.

It isn’t going to happen of course but it’s Christmas and even your humble off-license lackey needs a little fantasy. Besides, no one ever bought an extra bottle of third-rate champagne on the back of hearing Mariah Carey.

Key in the door, the shutters opening. A wet and icy wind telling my kidneys just how festive I feel. Lock the door behind me. Stick the lights on. Put the cash in the till. Put the heating on. Go to the kitchen. Kettle on. Customers banging the door already. The bastard phone ringing. One minute past nine and they want to come into your grotty grotto. Fuck off. I’m making a brew.

Busiest day of the year and already I’m wondering how to do as little as possible. There’s not quite enough room for a chair between the till and the Jägermeister. So, you’re stood up the whole shift. It’s deliberate, isn’t it? Another act of cruelty from The Man. God forbid you’re never less than 100 percent ready for retail action. At an angle between the shuttered fag racks and the counter, it is possible to lean with your heels tight against the base of the Cigarette Prison. I spend my days here, at an angle of 40 degrees to my waist and then leaning across the counter. I look like twenty to three on an old clock. 

The recession has hit this town hard if the number of off licenses are any indicator. Used to be three in the town centre. Now we’re the last. Not because we’re the best, by any fucking stretch, but we’re dead centre of town. In between the chemists and the bookies. There must be people here who walk along this street and put on a bet that doesn’t win, then come in here for some booze to numb that disappointment and finally pop in to the chemists for antidepressants to make them feel better about the first two.  

I mean, it can’t be just me. 

On goes the CD and I open the doors. Christmas Eve at the Yellow Shop. My daughter gave it that name. She’s only five. It’s got a big yellow frontage. Alcohol is sunshine. Or something. It doesn’t look like sunshine when you’re opening the door at nine and our morning regulars are in for their Frosty Jack or their economy vodka. It doesn’t feel like yellow then. Not that sunny yellow anyway. More like the smudged yellow of a 50-a-day man’s fingers. The yellow of Pissed Billy’s face when he’s tutting at you for not opening till five past because you’ve overslept. That’s not a sunny yellow. That’s not sunny at all. 

Been working here five years. Five years. I spend most of my time sitting in the storeroom out back, pretending I’m dealing with a delivery when I’m really eating a nicked Twix and reading a good book. 

Pissed Billy is gone. Time for a sip of tea. I nick a Twix. It’s ten past nine and this is the one day of the year I’ll be properly busy. Still, I’ve positioned the one chair, they’ll let you sit down out the back on your break, in such a way that I can see the shop door in the angled mirror and the CCTV if I missed them coming in. It’s a good life, this, when it’s quiet. The only thing I like better than reading is watching people and imagining their lives.

You can tell what kind of time people are having from the way they act in a shop like this.   I’m not talking about my regulars. Scratch card Sue. Boring Frank. Dr. Wilson with his nightly use of the 3 bottles for a tenner offer on the Cab Sav. Anyone can hazard a guess at those people’s lives. No, I’m talking about the irregulars, the people who just pop in once a year. The end of year drinkers. Today is the day I meet them all.

One in now. Studying the form on the shelves. Quarter past nine in the morning and he’s consulting the merlots. Anyone spending more than five minutes looking at our wine has either got money problems or thinks they’re an expert on wine. I’ve done a wine course and it’s a piece of piss. By piece of piss, I mean I haven’t done a course but my boss thinks I have and I’m supposed to wear a badge that says, “Ask me About Wine!” but the badge is in landfill somewhere being ignored by a seagull.  

Say someone comes in, it’s nearly always a bloke and you know the type, they’re looking at the top shelf stuff, the expensive stuff, which has never made any sense to me because if they fall, they smash. Put the cheap stuff up top, surely. But I’m not the manager so top shelf stuff is top priced.   Anyway, back to your bloke who thinks he knows about wine or wants to imply, via sighing and umming and pretending to read the bottles thoroughly, that he does. Time to earn my money. 

“Can I help you sir?” 

“Mm. I’m after a bold red, I think. I’m having some family and friends over for dinner on Boxing Day. And we’re having INSERT SOMETHING LUDICROUSLY EXPENSIVE for dinner. And I was looking for something to compliment this.” 

Now, what I do here, is this. I agree with this cunt’s choice, but only to an extent. Then I move over to a shelf that I know to be empty.  

“Aah,” I say, “we don’t have, erm let me just check whether or not I’ve got this other wine in the back.” 

I go out the back and I have another mouthful of Twix, while I kick an empty box about for effect. Then I look up to the wall where I’ve sellotaped a biro chart I’ve made – Foods down one side and types of wine or spirit that go with it.   This prick is having veal. I mean, where do people buy this stuff? 

Anyway, there it is on my chart. I’ve written, whatever the customer says, suggest the opposite and say that veal means you can be quite versatile. So I pick up a bottle of the most expensive white wine we sell.  Deep breath. Back into the arena. 

“Sorry, I was so long. Yes, the thing of course (the of course here flatters the customer, lets them know that you appreciate their expertise, and that the knowledge you’re about to impart is not news to them) is veal is so versatile. I suggested this particular bottle to a customer a couple of weeks back and they popped back in to thank me a few days later. Obviously the red you have there is a good solid choice. But…” 

They always buy both bottles. Fuck em. Isn’t veal the one where they kill it soon as it’s born? The deer, isn’t it? Something like that. What’s foie gras? That’s on my list. That’s something horrible too. 

Anyway, I like to imagine these people’s lives and evenings. It’s very rare I imagine something nice for these people because why should I? Honestly, everyone should do Working Behind A Till instead of National Service. Two years in a shop, it would transform the country.  

Two Bottles of Wine with Veal Man? Well, I imagine he works in something terribly important to do with Money. And he’s probably younger than he looks. He looks about 50 but I reckon he’s late thirties. He’s probably got a wife who likes her expensive things more than she likes him. And they’re inviting over friends for dinner to “catch up” and “remember the old days.” And each of these two couples will secretly resent the other couple for being, in their minds, much happier and much more successful than they are. And they’ll have had veal with broccoli and Expensive Potatoes. And they’ll be playing some Miles Davis or something quietly in the background because he’s got a book called What Music Goes Well with Expensive Food. Something like that. And they’ll drink the wine. And the guy says, “veal is so versatile, you can have either red or white with it.” And they’ll all nod, like they knew this already. And the men will end up talking about house prices, and the women about schools in the area because you know the clock is ticking. It’ll be the dullest evening in the history of the world, but everyone will hug and kiss and Make Plans to Do it Again Soon when it’s over. They’ll exchange presents. Books by Jamie or Nigel, no doubt. And then both couples will have a row at bedtime. 

Here comes another punter. It’s raining so he’ll dawdle but he already knows what he wants. He’s looking for the chiller. There it is mate, in the fucking corner, it’s not Big Tescos. And he’s so clearly a cider man but the drink has an image problem. You can dress it up all you like but cider is hooligan juice in many people’s eyes. If he’s drinking cider, he’s probably in for some fags too. Also, a Diversionary Purchase, as I call them.  

The diversionary purchase is designed to make the humble shop assistant swiftly recalculate the mental image you may have drawn up of the person buying a Suicidal Amount of Sherry or Two Bottles of Tramp Piss. Luckily, retailers are aware of these instincts. And so, this December, we have a small amount of “Christmas DVD’s.” – films you can buy for a couple of quid to pretend to watch when really you’re just going home to get absolutely fucked. Or there’s the boxes of chocolates. Or there’s our World of Christmas Snacks, supposedly snacks from around the world but really it’s just beef jerky propped up against the Quavers and Wispas. Tinsel sellotaped all around it. Ho ho ho.

Sure enough, the man moves to the chiller, thinks about only purchasing a four pack but realises he’s going to have got through them pretty quickly and we’re shut tomorrow so he moves in for a second. A moment later he’s bought some beef jerky. The hat-trick looks like it could be on, he scours our small selection of films and then looks at me and goes “Shame, I’ve seen all of them.” Moments later he is out of the store convinced I haven’t already written a mini biography of him in my head.   

It gets progressively busier. The day goes reasonably quickly. I recommend scratch cards, whiskies and cigars as Christmas presents, I prove that I can bullshit on German brandy as quickly and as convincingly as I can on everything else in my life. I turn up the music and watch as the till fills to the point where I’ve got enough there to finally get the fuck out of here and start again.

Of course, it’s not my money and I’d probably end up in prison. But that would be a fresh start I suppose. Not so much wiping the slate clean as smashing it and hoping no one fashions a shiv out of it and kills me in Swansea nick. The phone rings. I don’t answer it. It’ll be someone who wants to know what time we close. Just get here. I’m busy. I know why people ring places to find out what time they’re shut. It’s because they can’t make decisions. I know what that’s like. Five years in this shop all because I can’t quit. To quit means having to try something new. Risk. Fear. The unknown. The job pays the bills. But nothing more. I could do more with my brain, I suppose. She knew that. And she made a decision when I wouldn’t.

Don’t ring the shop, just come over.

Just Like Christmas comes on and it’s a punch to the guts. I remember how it’s going to be tomorrow. I’ll drive over to the ex in the morning and we’ll do presents with our one gift to the universe. And it’ll be magical, and she’ll smile and my ex will pretend she’s impressed with the gifts I’ve bought and for a second there’ll be the smell of regret and possible change and redemption in the air and I’ll want to grab it and she’ll think about it and then we’ll remember who we really are deep down and then that sadness will permeate everything, even the taste of Christmas lunch. And my daughter will fall asleep on my lap watching Elf or something. And I’ll be sitting there wanting to go, wanting anything to not be there when she realises it’s time for me to go and she’ll be hurting and crying and somehow despite me not being the one who left, it’ll be my fault and all that regret and possible change will be over, just like Christmas.

There’s nothing I can do about any of that, of course. We go the way we must. The last of the regulars punctuate the long evening. Frank and Margaret and their dog in a basket. Mad Mike. Scratch card Sue fucking up her life, scrubbing away the silver dream in front of me till the counter looks like broken glitter. Even Pissed Billy manages a third and final visit, offering me a swig of the can he’s finishing. Swaying in front of me as he tries to remember what fags he smokes, and I know I shouldn’t but I pretend I don’t know and he finally remembers it’s Superkings and I give him a free lighter as a Christmas present.

As he moves away, he spots the DVDs. He picks one up and squints until he sees enough to make a decision.

“It’s A Wonderful Life!”

“It certainly is, Billy.”

“No, the film mun. The fucking best Christmas film ever. You seen it? Probably too old for you.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen it. It is good.”

“My mum, god bless her. She loved this film. Always made her cry.”

He pauses to take a sip from his can.”

He looks at me with tear-filled eyes and says “Me too.”

And in that precious tiny little moment Pissed Billy is elevated, transcendent and glorious, all his stories are revealed to me at once, tragic and untellable, a flash of pain and tenderness across his face and all our mutual Ghosts of Christmas Past are sat between us, forgiving and kind.

“Do you want the film, Billy? Only I’m closing up soon.”

“Nah butt. Fucking seen it.”

I laugh at the majesty of that fucking. Billy burps and says excuse me and almost leaves without his fags.

“Happy Christmas Billy.”

“Happy Christmas.”

I see him out the door and watch as he swerves his way round obstacles known only to him. I check the street for any last-minute shoppers, any Scarlett Johanssons, but there are none. I rinse my cup out in the sink and put the money in the safe. I put the Twix wrappers in my pocket and turn on the alarm. Thirty-five seconds to leave and lock the shop. I manage it, I always do but there’s a reluctance tonight. A hope for something I can’t quite put my finger on. Off go the lights. I just about get out on time and when I finally lock the shop, I realise what it is.

NATIVITIES

The QI twitter account said that kids allotted the roles of Mary and Joseph in school nativity productions tended to be more successful in later life. Here’s a chapter from my unfinished and unwanted autobiography called Nativity.

1976. I am sat on the sofa in our front room. The record player is playing A Night at the Opera and I am reading along with the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody. It makes me scared. Why is this man singing about dying? Who is going to get him? It upsets me and thrills me at once. I am fascinated by my parents little record collection. Aladdin Sane is terrifying because the man on the inside cover is wearing makeup and has no genitals. I ask my mum what wanking means when reading the lyrics. My mum hides that record. A trip to school to find out what it is like. School not wanking. It is a cold day, the grey of an empty playground.

My Mum, still only 23 or so has a conversation with the headmaster, a Mr O. Mr O is not impressed that I can already read and write and says to my mum – “What are we supposed to do with him for the next two years?”

After the Easter holiday I am taken to school for my first day proper. I fall apart in terror. I beg my mother not to go. I am eventually separated from her by a teacher and gently dragged to the front of the infant’s assembly where I sit cross legged in fear and tears. On the wall an overhead projection of the words to a hymn called “God made the Sun and God made me.” – to my left a battered old piano kicks into action, played by some unseen hand. Everyone sings, I just sit there and cry. I don’t know anyone here. Our house is on one side of the school grounds, the vast majority of these kids seem to live on the shiny new estate that is the other side. I haven’t made any friends yet. I don’t think I’m going to.

Day one of the 2,500 odd days that will make up school does not go well. Our teacher is Mrs M, a kind old lady. She sits me next to Martin Bond (Not his real name, the poor sod might have a much better life now and doesn’t deserve to be remembered in this way). I soon find out why no one else is sitting next to him. He smells. He is visibly dirty and a bit odd. At playtime there is more horror. Kids running around, falling over on the concrete, screaming, telling, forming gangs, playing games. I am Walter the Softy in the corner. I don’t understand any of this stuff. My childhood has been books and television and none of this. There is British Bulldog, there is kiss chase. There is mainly this thing of kids forming a huge chain of hands saying “Who Wants To Play (name of game) – All join hands” – children would stop their own activity of marbles or hopscotch or whatever and join this long line of kids until they had enough kids to play the game. Invariably about 30 seconds before a teacher rang the bell to stop playing.

The boys’ games were always a variation of “War”. “War” was just boys running about making machine gun noises and saying you were dead to arbitrary others. Being Germans was the worst thing you could be. Nobody ever said Nazi. Maybe that was some kind of higher truth about who we were, still clearly are as a people. Beating the Nazis wasn’t as important as beating the Germans. Semantically speaking, there wasn’t a great deal of difference but on some subconscious level maybe we didn’t mind the Nazi bit. Either that or these were just five year old boys not yet fully up to speed on the finer points of World War 2. Anyway, the niceties of playing War aside, Me and Martin Bond are not welcome in any of these games. It is the summer of 76, a ridiculously hot one, the air is thick with punk rock. The independent streak that saw anyone able to form a band had not passed down to all of us Maidstone based five years old, and so me and Smelly Martin Bond are not able to do our own thing. We are Genesis, the enemy. The other kids are the Sex Pistols and the Clash.

There will always be bullying in school. And well, me and SMB were sitting ducks. I’m not proud to say it was two six year old girls who first saw their chance. I don’t recall their names or faces. Just that sense of powerlessness as I handed over my lunchbox. Eventually my Mum worked out what was going on and went up the school and these kids were spoken to and it stopped. A few days later, it started again. Two boys in my year, Lee and Ian. They lived for this shit. Ian, in particular, was clearly someone looking for trouble. Again my Mum came up the school and this time Mr O decided to catch them in the act.

When he did, he grabbed the school bell and shook it violently. Everybody was told to line up. He told these boys to come forward. They did so, crying. Now I don’t know if he hit them in front of us with this plimsoll or if he dragged them away to do so. I just remember them crying and the bullying stopped. At least that sort did. Now I was about to enter a whole new world of hell. Name calling.

My mum had given up on the whole sandwich thing and I was school dinners, presumably in the hope that I might get through that without handing over a plate of hot food to some terrifying small child. I can remember the name of the boy very well who began the process of ruining my life. His name was Brian. I don’t remember his surname. He looked a bit like a young Beach Boy or infant Nazi.

I had protruding front teeth. Teeth are the curse of my family. My Dad had his all out voluntarily as a young man, just sick of all the continual chips and fillings and accidents, his brother smashed his all in on a trip at home as a child. No one escapes it. Brian the Beach Nazi calls me Bugs Bunny. I don’t understand. Then he calls me Goofy. This gets hysterical laughter from the other kids. They all suddenly start sticking their teeth out and calling me Goofy. I just sit there and cry. I know instantly this incident is a life-changing one, that it will not go away.

That summer term in school is seemingly unending. The one thing I can do is clock watch. Every minute passed is another triumph. I hide away at playtime. If I am discovered it’s to be surrounded and called Goofy. Occasionally one kid would say “What’s Up Doc?” like Bugs Bunny. Of course, I am in no position to fight back. The other children are legion and without the imperfections I need to counter.

We are given bottles of full fat milk to drink at random points of the day. The milk smells like sweat but I drink it. I have learnt not to stand out if I can help it. My Mum comes to pick me up each day with a beaker of Ribena which I guzzle like it’s a reward for survival though it’s probably to get the taste of free milk out of my famous mouth. My sister is in the buggy, my brother is in the womb. Those few hours between getting home and going to bed are the happiest of my day. My parents try their best with the sticks and stones speech. It doesn’t work. I am miserable and being clever doesn’t help either.

After the summer, I moved up to Mrs D’s class. Mrs D lived on a houseboat and dressed like Felicity Kendal in the Good Life. But she didn’t look like Felicity Kendal. By this point I had begun to really stand out at playtime preferring not to join in the ambulance-chasing games that dominated the playground. No, like some sort of underclass ponce, I would read books of poetry from the school library in the corner of the playground. This isn’t normal behaviour for a five year old boy. I remember cutting my head slipping on frost one morning and a girl in our class helping me up. I remember being totally and inconsolably stressed out by our introduction to graphs. I remember Ian my tormentor from the previous year being expelled for stealing the entire class’s lunch money. He’d been told to take the envelope of money up to the secretary’s office and he just took the notes out of it and stuffed them in his pockets. There was no plan or alibi or escape route. He just nicked it.

What I remember most is the Nativity. Last year, my friend Bob gave me a brief slice of psychoanalysis. We were talking about this breakthrough in the research into stammering. Apparently, lots of stammerers suffer near-death experiences before they are able to talk. Car-crashes, near-drownings, fires etc. This lack of vocabulary in the moment of fear does something to the part of the brain where you form words forever. Something like that. I was drunk and don’t remember. Anyway Bob says something like we all have a formative memory that shapes us, something that upsets us, something that fixes our personality to an extent. I couldn’t think of anything at first.

“When was the first time you felt humiliated?” she asks.

At this point, I almost immediately start to cry. In the middle of a Cardiff pub on a Tuesday night. I could be wrong about all this but here goes. So, I’m this bright, weird kid. I don’t fit in. There’s probably something wrong with me but I’m well behaved and very good academically so no one’s rocking the boat. Because my Mum has two young children and young children don’t do timetables, sometimes my Mum is late collecting me. Not much, 10 minutes or so but I’m sat in the classroom with my buck teeth and my poetry stopping Mrs D from getting on home. And this winds her up. She hasn’t a chance of getting promoted, maybe. Her home life is a disaster, possibly. And subconsciously she sees a chance of getting her own back on me for all the times I’ve made her stay in school a few more minutes than she needs to be there.

So, it’s Nativity time. And this is the first of Life’s Beauty Contests. Some kids get to be born more Aesthetically Pleasing than others. That’s a given. What shouldn’t be a given is that the best looking kids should automatically get to be Mary and Joseph but it always happens. I didn’t want to be Joseph. I didn’t want to be anything. But I’d have settled for a shepherd, maybe an innkeeper. But no, Mrs D, looked at me and clearly went

“That sticking out teeth muthafucker is going to be the comic relief. I’m gonna make him a donkey.”

And so it is that I am pushed onto the stage in a brown body stocking, huge ears and tights in front of a few dozen mums and dads. Who laugh. And I mean really fucking laugh. There is pointing. It lasts forever. The laughter, that is. Somehow I don’t cry but I want to.

Back in 2018 I am crying. I tell Bob the whole story.

“That bitch knew what she was doing,” she says.

Bob used to be a teacher.

“Do you think that’s why you love to make people laugh, Paul? When did you first start telling jokes, doing impressions, etc.? I bet it wasn’t long after that.” It wasn’t very long at all. No.

I’d never made the connection. That laughter wasn’t nice. It was the laughter of parents relieved that isn’t their child. This was the 1970s. People were fucking awful. They’ve always been dickheads but this was a bad time. Punk had to happen. I was not yet a punk but I was an outsider. That moment sealed it.

A CURE FOR LOVE

So, I’ve taken a plunge. A mild one, of course. Hardly the stuff of an Acapulco cliff dive or even a New Year’s Day dip at Eastbourne, but a plunge nonetheless.

Emboldened by the example of the brilliant Bobbie (@cherryaimless), I decided to venture into the previously taboo-to-me arena of self-publishing.

Indie films and indie music have always had a cool cachet, but writing and publishing your own book traditionally brings a sneer to the lips, mine included. Bobbie, a Bridport Prize-winning author amongst other things, just decided to forego all the usual channels and take control. Starting her own imprint Typewriter Press, her debut novella Hollie’s Dream of Consciousness reclaims the teenage working class girl voice from the Vicky Pollard screech and thumps it vibrantly and AUTHENTICALLY into the here and now.

The book’s done well and deservedly so. It’s not troubled the charts, it couldn’t. But it’s sold out its small run and another run after that. So, Bobbie says to me, halfway through our fishcake and chips, why don’t you give it a go?

The reasons I didn’t want to.

1 – FEAR. I used to do stand up. I wasn’t terribly accomplished at it but I did it. And I enjoyed doing it. But the only reason I could do it at all was A HUGE DRUNKEN SHIELD. Being arseholed on stage gave me the confidence of another persona. I couldn’t be held accountable. It didn’t matter. You can’t do that with a book though. It’s there, forever. And, whilst this has been the only ambition I’ve ever come close to realising, it still terrifies me. What if people think its shit? Jesus, I’ve spent all this time doing this and it’s shit. That’s what’s kept me from sleeping. Fear. But Fear becomes something bigger, a lie.

2 – VANITY. I did a creative writing degree and I did well. I just thought I’ll write a novel now and I’ll get published and that’s it. I honestly thought I could just sit down and smash one out (Steady – ed) and that would be me, another impoverished scrivener on the shelf at Big Book. It didn’t happen and I watched as friends and peers not only wrote books but got them published. People mentioned just going it alone. I couldn’t bear the thought of it. It reeked of defeat. Vanity publishing, I spat through my beer-flecked lips, is for talentless losers. And I wanted no part of it. But Typewriter Press feels different, an exercise in giving people control of their work, of how it’s released and how it pays for itself.

3 – A LIST OF EXCUSES DRESSED UP AS A MIDLIFE RUT. Too old, too silly, not good enough, too poor, too tired, kids, depressed, pandemic. Etc.

So many writers out there, so many good writers god damn it, it’s hard to get spotted. I’ve had the occasional bit of notice but nothing to make enough people go HEY WHO’S THIS GUY etc. I like short stories so I write them. Short stories don’t sell. And there are loads of short story competitions you can enter but who can afford that? If I entered all the ones I wanted to, I’d be 3 years behind on my rent. So it prices a lot of people out.

Anyway, I’ve talked myself into it. Bobbie’s the real brave one, she did it first. And she’s allowed me to share her imprint with my own book. You can order it by emailing typewriterpress@gmail.com or DMing me at @fourfoot on Twitter.

I’ve overcome my fear by hiding behind my real name. I’ve called myself JENKINS for three reasons.

1 – There’s already at least two authors with my full name.

2 – I wanted to reclaim the surname from its traditional place of being a name of a minor character (usually some minor jobsworth clerk) in a sitcom episode or a butler. Why should Morrissey have this forename-free world to himself, the burger-dodging racist twat.

3 – I thought it would be funny to be honest. (“THIS SENSE OF HUMOUR OF MINE, IT ISNT FUNNY AT ALL “– Kate Bush)

So, to summarise. I’ve written a book. If you've ordered a copy then THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR PLACING YOUR TRUST IN ME AND THIS BOOK. I can't wait for people to tell me they liked it. Because anything other than that response would make me cry.

 I just wanted to see what it felt like to say I’d written one. I hope people like it. Oh God. Oh fucking God. [PULLS EDWARD WOODWARD SEEING WICKER MAN FACE]

Not My Child

My daughter was born nearly eighteen years ago in a warm hospital in south Wales. She was a few days late, had inconvenienced a few people by moving into the breach position, only to somersault the day before a Caesarean was scheduled and, thanks to the gargantuan efforts of her mother, crashed into the world one November evening. She was wrapped in a blanket and placed in a little cot on the maternity ward next to her shattered mother.

It was a moment of pure joy, tinged with relief and exhaustion and all the emotion that accompanies a new life. She was someone we had longed for and tried for. In the midst of the delight, we were all moved to a ward of new mothers.

There were maybe a dozen beds in the room, a dozen conversations and a dozen doting dads and beaming mums. The efficient glide of midwives between them all. The bed opposite ours was empty. And then it wasn’t.

A child of maybe no more than twelve or thirteen years of age was being wheeled in by a midwife. Her own baby was placed in a cot. At that moment, I was trying to concentrate on being in the moment with my own precious family but couldn’t look away. The child had an expression of deep shock, of having gone through an unimaginable horror and not yet having the vocabulary or the energy or the context to articulate it. She was a child with a child. She did not look at the baby. She sat and stared into some fixed point ahead of her, some lost moment behind.

I have never seen such a broken person. 

I think I indicated to my wife, unintentionally I hope, the girl sat in the opposite bed. Either way it distracted us for a few moments from our own fresh arrival. As if sensing our presence in this moment, a midwife came and offered my wife a cup of tea. Another nurse hovered into view and then drew a curtain around the bed opposite. 

From within the thin curtain there came the unmistakable sound of someone having their heart broken. I felt a terrible sense of powerlessness. A man and a woman, both dressed like salesmen, came into the room. They had briefcases and mackintoshes. A nurse ushered them into the heartbreak. There was crying, lots of crying. I noticed a policewoman at the door.

When I talk to my daughter about the night she was born, I leave all this out. I talk about the first time I held her, the way I pointed outside roughly in the direction of our house. Outside the night was wet, was dark. There were distant lights. There were distant lights.

I tell her about the tiny row I had with her mother when I accidentally named our daughter whilst her mum was in the shower. I tell her about the long walk home I enjoyed in the rain and the large scotch my next door neighbour poured me when he saw me at my front door. 

I tell her how much she was loved from the very start and how she will always be loved, no matter what.

I leave out the bit about the little girl and the even smaller child this life had seen fit to give her. I leave it out not because it’s not part of her story, but because I hated myself for being glad when the midwife separated her from the joy in the room. I did not want to be reminded of the horrors of the world so soon after the birth of my precious daughter.

Most of all I did not want to be reminded that sometimes a man cannot do a thing, not a single thing to help, even if it was a small terrified child barely an arm’s length away. 

I do not want my daughter to know I could not help and did not try.

When I came to see my wife and child the next morning, the bed opposite them was empty. The child and the other child had been moved in the night to whatever future the girl had stared into the night before. 

I presume they were both taken into care and eventually from each other. I try not to think of her, but sometimes I get the bus home that way, over the hill and past the old hospital. 

Through tears I cannot show, I remember her pale wet face and beg for their forgiveness.