Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

 My 500 is better than The Rolling Stone 500 

In September 2021, esteemed rock mag Rolling Stone published a list of what they believed to be the 500 best songs ever. Gauntlet thrown sufficiently downward, and fuelled by a lifelong addiction to lists, lists of any kind but especially music lists, lists being the way in which a young me made sense of the world, I decided to make my own. Anyway, I did and there’s a playlist.

In October, bored and listless, I decided to write a little about each song. Something that it provoked in me. Not always a critique, not always a memoir about my relationship to that song, sometimes it would be fiction, or poetry. I hadn’t yet decided. I would do a song at random, the Spotify shuffle would be my muse…

#217 – Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood – Nina Simone.

Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

 

THURSDAY NIGHT

Joanne rings me to tell me that it’s over and that I should bring our son with me to meet her tomorrow to begin the rest of our lives separately. I’m stood in my parents’ kitchen verbally nodding into a telephone receiver the colour of sick and trying not to cry. 

 

Our son is sat on my father’s lap, less than three feet from me, my dad forlornly trying to persuade him that what he really wants is to eat the mash potato he has served up for dinner. 

 

Joanne says she’s had time and space to think and that she can’t forgive me for what I did. 

 

She says her parents will pay for the most expensive solicitors in the world if I don’t show up. 

 

She apologises. 

 

I gulp hard. 

 

She says to meet her at 12 tomorrow outside Tesco. 

 

Ok. 

 

And that was the end of us. 

 

 

FRIDAY MORNING 

 

I never saw a sun shining with quite the ferocity as the day I woke up knowing I was going to have my heart smashed into a thousand ugly pieces at noon. Absolutely tore through the curtain, a big old golden fuck you and your imminent sadness. My forehead getting a bead on before I’ve even worked the piss out of my boner. Downstairs my mum is making a fuss over my son. My dad has gone to work. 

 

I slept. Not much, but enough to remember something in a dream. 

 

I was back at school. 8 maybe 9 years old and the headmaster is giving a sermon in the school hall. Or a parable. Or something. The headmaster used these sermons as a way of saying “I know some of you little cunts have been bad. And this is what happens when you do.” He was a squat little man, Mr McBride. He was terrifying in the way that all authority figures with a cane are. 

 

McBride was telling us this story about a boy who vandalised a phone box in a small village not far from our school. The only phone box in the village. Him and his friends. Just smashed it to shit because there was nothing else to do. And one day he comes home from just chilling out with his boys, vandalising stuff and his dad is sparked out on the kitchen floor and his mum is screaming and beating his chest. She says to the boy “Go to the phone and get an ambulance!!” and of course the boy runs like the wind and as he gets to the phone box, he realises that it isn’t going to work and by the time he finds a house with a phone that will let him in, it’s too late. His dad’s dead. 

 

We all sat there in the hall terrified of becoming vandals and having our dads die on us. Even little Stevie Williams and his dad was already dad. Nothing to do with vandalism. He just fell over in Tesco’s.  

 

That Tesco’s is cursed. 

 

I don’t know why I’m thinking of that.  

 

I have to make the most of the hours I have and there aren’t many of them. I go downstairs and my mum has made me a tea which tastes like crap because my gut is all torn with bile.  

 

“You sure this is what you want?” 

 

“I don’t think I have a choice.” 

 

“You’re her parent just as much as Joanne is. Solicitors. We can get solicitors.” 

 

“Mum, they are not going to ever let me be the sole parent. Best I can do is play nice and get to see him weekends. And look maybe if Joanne sees me, sees the two of us, she’ll crumble, she’ll realise what she’s throwing away.” 

 

What she’s throwing away. Me, 21 years old, unemployable, useless, druggie me. Yeah that’s worth diving in the trash bin to salvage. Me and her and our beautiful beautiful fucking baby. 

 

Three years together. Each other’s first. You know what I mean. And it was intense and passionate and angry and dirty and physical and complicated, and you never felt anything like you did, either of you, the fucking animalness of it, the realness of it. And you got her knocked up. Because the pair of you didn’t give a fuck about consequences. Not in those moments. You never knew how it would end, an encounter with her. You could end up with a black eye and a blowjob. It was all you had ever known, romantically speaking, and now it was over.  

 

Three weeks earlier she’s got up early. First time ever. You always got up first, dealt with the baby, did breakfast. Got to the post. 

 

She thinks we’re saving up for a deposit for a house. Joint account. But you’ve been fucking around, getting wasted with your mates and getting drunk the moment she gives you any shit. She’s at work all day doing her degree thing and you’re sat at home with a baby. You have dinner ready for her the moment she’s home and it isn’t enough. She wants to know what you’re doing, what the plan is and you row, and you fuck off out of the flat and get shitfaced with your childless, irresponsible friends. The plan, Joanne, is to live off you as you get progressively more successful. That’s the plan. I don’t have anything else to offer. Childcare and consistency. 

 

Yeah, she opens the bank statement and it’s about 3 grand light. She doesn’t scream. You hear her say “What the fuck.” 

 

The moment you get downstairs you know it’s fucked. No more blowjobs. That shit’s done. You’re fucked. 

 

She packs an overnight bag and goes to her parents. 

 

Her dad turns up and threatens me. Then he punches me. So, his threat was more of a very short-term warning kind of thing. 

 

He goes to take the baby and I tell him that I will have him for abduction there and then. Fuck Joanne. Fuck him. The kid is mine. He goes. He figures with my nose bleeding and everything that it won’t look good for him if the cops come. He used to be a cop. I don’t know why he left but he did, and I don’t think he has many friends there. Or anywhere else for that matter. 

 

My boys Neil and Phil turn up. We pack everything up and drive to my parents in Neil’s van. Neil has a van that he uses to deliver food to school canteens. It’s a side-line. His main job is pretending to be a student even though he got kicked out two years back for the small crime of running a pirate radio station from the college chapel. Phil is somehow, still a student. Thirty miles to my parents and though they are delighted to see the grandson, they’re not so keen on my backstory. 

 

I spend the next 3 weeks either on the phone to Joanne or rehearsing all the things I will say to her next time I am on the phone. But nothing works. Trying to explain, trying to pretend I have a plan. Not apologising. Then apologising. We bawl and cry and scream at each other and my dad takes me to the village pub, and I tell him everything. He doesn’t punch me or threaten to.  

 

The reason he’s left for work so early is to make sure I don’t see him cry, saying goodbye to his grandson. 

 

So now it’s 8am. My bus to Lampeter is at 9.25. Next bus is to Carmarthen at 10.40. I’ll literally have fifteen minutes or so to wait to be heartbroken when I arrive. 

 

I shower, I shave. I want to look salvageable, like something you might want to reconsider. But I know it’s no good. I’m wearing the Van Gogh t-shirt she bought me. I don’t know anything about art. But it’s a guy with a bandage round his head. He’s cut his ear off apparently. Fuck knows what she sees in me that she sees in Van Gogh. But it’s clean. And I’m looking good. I’m no oil painting, Van Gogh or not, but I don’t look like complete shit. That’s all on the inside. 

 

He looks like her. Nothing like me. We had a row where I accused Joanne of not being faithful. That the boy wasn’t mine. I began to see in his tiny, beautiful face traces of Big Kieron, who she’d always fancied. I didn’t care much for Big Kieron as you can imagine and he was definitely around the scene around the time she fell pregnant. But I can’t deny we definitely had drunken, unprotected sex around that same time.  

 

I wanted the boy to be mine.  

 

Who fucking knows? 

 

Now it’s time to go and I grab the pushchair out and put it in the front garden. My Mum has the boy in a t-shirt and shorts, and he has his favourite cuddly elephant tight in his mitt. I strap him in and tell Mum I’ll be back tonight, most probably, but I’ll let her know. 

 

The bus is on time. Dai Price is still driving it today. He has driven that bus since God was a foetus and doesn’t appear to have aged any further than the 800 years old he has always been. 

 

“Right Dai. Single to Lampeter, please mate.” 

 

“Right.” 

 

The bus is not quite pre war though the ticket stub is – the print barely visible. I get the boy out the chair and sit him on my lap, and I point out sheep and cows because that’s what you’re supposed to do. And he knows about sheep and cows, he’s nearly two, so he makes the noises and the old woman opposite me smiles politely though she probably thinks I’m a dick. Which I am. 

 

Off by the Black Lion. Fucking murder a pint though I am with child and the pub ain’t open yet. And she’ll know if I’ve had a can so that’s out the question. This is a test. It ain’t over. I just got to look like something worth giving another go, that’s all. I go to the florist and I come out again empty handed because fuck it, she’s never going to give me another chance, flowers or not. Peace offering. Yeah that might work. I roll the phrase around my mouth to try it out. Peace offering, I picture myself saying casually as I produce the flowers from behind my back, sly magician that I am. 

I don’t buy the flowers. 

 

Next bus is on time too. It’s all go. The gods clearly want me to be on time. The sun is shining. There’s a florist opposite the bus station in Carmarthen, if I’m quick and I’m willing. I check the boy doesn’t need the toilet. I feel like I could puke, shit and piss all at once but I can’t. I got to see Joanne. And then I can explode after. 

 

Off we go. Down the hill past the coloured houses and the shit supermarket. Over the bridge, out of Ceredigion, quaint, racist, backwards, beautiful Ceredigion and into the unholy alcoholocaust of Carmarthenshire. Cwmann. Llanybydder. Llanllwni. Pencader. New Inn….shithole village after shithole village pass by with their names like misspelt diseases. I can’t go back tonight. I’ve got to get Joanne back. Whatever it takes. 

 

A boy of about 16 gets on in Peniel. He’s a cadet, full camo. Probably going to the barracks in Carmarthen. I think about how young he is and how he might be dead before he’s the age I am now. As he makes his way down the bus his backpack blocks out the sun through the front windscreen and it’s dark and shimmery at the edges of him, so he looks like a combat angel or something. Maybe he’s one of the lads my mate Belfast John nearly got us all into a huge pile of grief over. 

 

That was a couple of years back. John reckons he’s got uncles in the IRA and shit like that. Walks past the barracks one night, there’s a bunch of teenage boys doing some sort of march thing, we’ve had too much to drink as fucking usual and Laurie starts screaming at these kids about bombs in the post. They’re not proper soldiers, they’re just kids looking for a way out of here.  

 

Anyway, the big old fucking main gate starts to slide and we’re not fucking stupid. Fuck this, get our legs going, big old sprint up the side street before the Picton Monument and we are out of there. Belfast’s laughing and shouting shit about the Queen’s sexual preferences. We see an Army Land Rover go down Sycamore Way. I mean, even if they saw us, they can’t just come out and kick shit out of us, can they?  

 

Belfast says, “kicking’s the least of our worries with those cunts.” 

 

The soldier on the bus sits down. 

 

I make the mistake of saying to the boy we’re going to see Mummy. And he’s so excited. Mummy. Mummy. Mummy. Each time he says it, I think I’m going to puke. And finally we start the slow dribble into Carmarthen. 

 

This is where we met. At college. 

 

Joanne was doing Fine Art. And me, I was supposedly training to become an English teacher but I’d fucking ruined that. I thought it would be like Robin Williams in that film but it’s all child psychology and fucking weeks and weeks of making lesson plans and dressing like a dick and going to primary schools in villages like Pencader and “being observed” whilst I try and pretend a nine-year-old has written a fucking amazing poem about Christmas. I stopped going. All of my mates from school were doing shit like Architecture and Film Studies and visiting burial sites and discussing Casablanca and getting high on proper London/Manchester pills/weed. I’d made it thirty miles down the road, hanging about with the other A-level losers. It was like school again only you got paid to go. 

 

It was like that army barracks. Just another way of making sure you weren’t counted as unemployed. 

Joanne and me first met at a really shit party. I was shy and she was drunk and somehow that worked. I always associated the taste of red wine with our first kiss after that. I thought that made me romantic but apparently it didn’t. It was a horrible drunken terrible mess that kiss because I’d only ever kissed one girl before, and I was about 11 then. 

 

Now we were at the end. 

 

I got off the bus with child tucked under one arm and a folded up pushchair under the other. Another passenger brought my bags off for me. Here we go. Walk up the road. Deep breath. Get my shit together. Think salvageable.  

 

He starts singing Mummy again. And I’m excited too now. This is just a bump in the road, people fuck up, they are forgiven, everyone moves on. It’s a beautiful day. She loves you. It’s going to be fine. 

 

Thirty seconds from Tesco, I see her. And her dad. And I knew then that, whatever other hopes I may have had for today, the main one, the one I got out of bed for, the one I prayed (silently, tearfully, drunkenly, often) for is not going to happen. 

 

I hand our child over in the manner of someone passing their suitcase through one of those x-ray machines at an airport. Not that I’ve ever flown anywhere. But I’ve seen it on telly. 

 

Joanne smiles, I smile. I kiss my son goodbye. I feel all of the thoughts and hopes and fears and dreams and conversations I’ve ever had evaporate in my mouth and whatever great swooping gesture I was going to convey with my next words falls apart before I can speak. 

 

“Ok, then.” 

“Ok.” 

“Right, well, take care.” 

“Ok. Yeah, you too.” 

 

Joanne’s dad has the decency to offer me a smile, like he knows what I’m going through is awful, but is the Right Thing to Do so he has some Level of Respect for me. 

 

I watch as my girlfriend officially becomes an ex-girlfriend and all I can hear is the boy saying Mummy over and over again as they fade into Personal History. 

 

I look at my watch. It isn’t even 12. 

 

Plan is to find Neil. Crash at his tonight. Get some cans in. Go up to the uni this afternoon mind, find out what I need to go to get back on track. Lick all the arses. Make all the apologies and explain. Two minutes is all it takes to get derailed. 

 

I’m walking up Water Street. I don’t know why it’s called Water Street. Maybe it was a river once. Now it’s a stream of takeaways and pubs. So many pubs in this small town. What was it that cabbie called them? “Palaces of drink.” Fucking brilliant, that. I didn’t get cabs very often. Sometimes though with a kid and they’re two and they’ve just fucking shit themselves and you’ve already used the spare nappy and clothes you had, and you have to get home quickly then taxi is the best. I lived right at the top end of town. Well, I did. I’ve got a street map of Carmarthen and there we were, our little crappy cul-de-sac in the A1 box of the map. A1. I’m about as far from A1 as it fucking gets. 

The cabbie I always seemed to get was called Peter. A real philosopher. He was wiry and had that permanent stubble olive-skinned guys always seem to have. It makes them look cool and dangerous. Even if they’re delivering shit covered toddlers to A1. Peter always managed to fit some wisdom into the journey. 

 

“You never cross the same river twice, my friend.” 

 

First pub I pass is the Blue. A regular haunt. I try not to look in, try to walk past, hang on, no I don’t – I don’t try at all. I tell myself I tried later to make it look or at least feel like I did try. I walked straight in. Brian’s behind the bar. He nods. Jeremy’s at the cigarette machine. 

 

I know Jeremy pretty well. He’s one of the few public schoolboys who went to uni here. Get your fees back, Daddy. Fucking hell. Eight grand a year and you’re still here. Stick that on your prospectus. Jeremy’s alright, though. A fucking mouthy cunt at times, he’s like a little fat Withnail. You know, all loud and assertive and Listen Here until it fucking kicks off and some cunt’s going to go all McFuck on you. Still, he’ll probably buy me a pint. And he does.

 

Five minutes later he’s consoling me as I tell him about Joanne and Alice. We’re sat in front of the big screen watching some cricket match. I don’t know much about cricket. I went for a game at the uni once, the 2nds, and everyone laughed at me because I didn’t know about any of the niceties. I’m stood there, looking like a prick, the last batsman. There’s this thing you’re supposed to do, ask your opposite batsman if your stance is in line with the wicket you’re protecting but I didn’t know about any of that, so this bowler shouts out “Are you ready” and I shout back “Yeah get on with it you cunt” because it was just like all those other times when I was being me somewhere people like me didn’t belong and I didn’t know the rules. Ball smashed off the end of my shit trainers. All blood in my sock. Fuck sake. I got a four next ball by ducking and inadvertently raising my bat to the ball flying at me.

 

Anyway, they never asked me back.  

 

So, the cricket’s on and there’s me, Jeremy, Fat Andy and Jan. Jan is Norwegian. His mum is something important in the Welsh Office, so he’s ended up here. He does more drugs than anyone I know. Fat Andy is a lunatic. Did a yard of vodka and orange at the Student Union once. Bought 100 pints of lager another time. 

 

On the telly, this batsman just keeps smashing six after six after six. Fat Andy and Jeremy are cheering and going fucking mad. The sound of the crowd just reminds me what I have lost. After a couple of drinks, I won’t care, I’m sure I won’t care. I can’t care because if it goes wrong, I’ll feel worse than I do now.  

 

Jan asks me if I manage to sort it with Joanne. 

 

Whole pub seems to fall silent as I tell him the news. 

 

Jeremy decides this necessitates Heavy Drinking. Neil and Phil walk in, their timing immaculate.

 

On the jukebox a Nina Simone song begins.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Slow Life

My 500 is better than The Rolling Stone 500 

In September 2021, esteemed rock mag Rolling Stone published a list of what they believed to be the 500 best songs ever. Gauntlet thrown sufficiently downward, and fuelled by a lifelong addiction to lists, lists of any kind but especially music lists, lists being the way in which a young me made sense of the world, I decided to make my own. Anyway, I did and there’s a playlist.

In October, bored and listless, I decided to write a little about each song. Something that it provoked in me. Not always a critique, not always a memoir about my relationship to that song, sometimes it would be fiction, or poetry. I hadn’t yet decided. I would do a song at random, the Spotify shuffle would be my muse…

So, here’s the first one.

#267 – Slow Life – Super Furry Animals.

First thing is I think of is a couple I used to work with. I’ll change their names but if you knew me back then, you’d probably know them too. Let’s call them Harry and Mary. They were colleagues of mine. Harry had Napoleon Syndrome with a side order of Premature Baldness. Mary had the permanent expression of one of those guards in a busby outside Buckingham Palace. Harry had a trainer fetish and Mary had, well no one really knew what she had, but she had Harry. 

Occasionally my job would demand me go to the office where Harry and Mary both worked, which was in Swansea, and I worked in Cardiff.  It was a pain in the proverbial, not least because I couldn’t drive, which meant catching the train. Catching the train there was fine, it was a minimum hour out of my working day which meant I could do fuck all which is exactly how I like things. But then I had to be professional in our Swansea office, which is like being a trapeze artist, you’re surrounded by clowns and no one really looks pleased to see you. Especially Mary. Mary couldn’t look pleased if she was being made love to by a travelling troupe of talented, sensitive courtesans.

We used to have a running joke back in our Cardiff office, we would take turns to impersonate Mary having an orgasm. The winner would always be the person who made the most imperceptible facial movement. This isn’t particularly amusing or clever I know, but it was a stressful time back then and since my Big Promotion, I had foresworn my traditional stress remedy of Drinking Heavily From Noon.

Anyway, Harry and Mary used to offer me a lift back to Cardiff as this was where they lived. I never took them up on it, it was too far out of the way, etc. I was polite. I was sensitive to their needs. I had paperwork I could do on the train. And by paperwork, I meant cans. God damn it, Train Cans. Someone should write a book on that subject. A collection of memoirs on Drinking on Trains. It is one of life’s great rewards, after all.

But this one day, I just thought, fuck it, what’s the worst that could happen. On the way up I’d been listening on the train to Phantom Power, the then new Furries album. It hadn’t grabbed me with the immediacy of their previous work, too muso-ey, too accomplished, too polished. But the closer, Slow Life was one of their best ever tracks. Like an indie sea shanty hijacked by techno dub pirates. It had got to the point where I only put that album on to hear that song.

I digress, I’m walking to Harry and Mary’s car. I’m walking slightly behind because, already at 32 a veteran of dysfunctional relationships, I recognised the tense silence and exaggerated movement of A Row Put On Hold In The Presence of Others.

Fuck knows what they’d been rowing about, but it was clearly a belter. Harry drove like a man no longer in control of his emotions, zig zagging through rush hour Swansea like there was no tomorrow. On the M4, he had clearly decided that this was the time to see if his car could break the sound barrier. It was a Ford Focus. The sun beat down outside, I felt like this was the last time I would see it. Port Talbot passed by in a blur, which was something. I sat in the back, my briefcase on my lap, surrounded by trainer boxes. I thought about my girlfriend, sorry fiancée. We were getting married in a fortnight and I thought that well maybe I wouldn’t be now.

It was the longest half hour of my life, a series of swallowed gulps and silent prayers. We came to a dignified halt outside my house. Fiancee was speaking on the doorstep to a neighbour. Harry and Mary got out the car, all smiles, like the journey down has been a pleasant hour of sophisticated and witty repartee. The next thing I know, Mary is inviting us to their wedding reception, which is next weekend. Fiancee, unaware of my hostage situation just seconds before, is Instantly Excited. So, the weekend before our wedding, we’re going to see another Happy Couple on their Big Day.

Anyway, a week passes and we go down Harry and Mary’s reception. We grab a drink, having spent the afternoon getting subtly wrecked ourselves, and the taxi means we've gone half an hour witthout topping up. Not immediately recognising anyone else there. we decide to seek out a quiet place. Our choice is poor.

On one of the hotel’s patios, Harry is shitfaced, ruined beyond words. It’s six.

“What have I fucking done?” Harry slurs.

“You alright, mate?” I say.

“I don’t even love her.”

Fiancee steps in at this point.

“Course you do Harry, you’ve just had a bit too much champagne.”

From inside the hotel, I can see a bevvy of best men making their way over. They, too are Bald and Short. 

I silently thumb to behind me, this is their guy, thank God, someone else take over and point us to the Free Bar. Mary is behind them in Hot Pursuit in Wedding Dress Designed by Someone Paid By The Yard.

Mary is horrified to find her husband of a few hours out of his mind. Which is a relief to me, this is the second facial expression she’s ever pulled in my presence, so there’s something for me and Fiancee to talk about when we get home.

Soon, we have many things to talk about.

Firstly, there is Jim. Jim used to be a friend, a good friend. But we fell out quite badly when I took his Unrequited Love to task for continually leading him on. He comes up to me, fresh from the same well as Harry. He wants a row. Fuck him. He ain’t having one, this isn’t our dance.

He’s grabbed me by the wrist and said We Need To Talk.

I told him to Let Go or I would Fucking Kill Him.

It’s not our dance, he walks away.

We’re in the main reception hall, and this is an expensive do. This is a big hotel. The dancefloor is a ballroom and the DJ is wearing a tux. He’s on the microphone.

“What a fantastic day today has been. The sun is shining and love is in the air. Before we get this party started, let’s introduce the Happy Couple to the dancefloor. HARRY and MARY….”

He shouts their names like he’s introducing Jesus Christ at Wembley.

Darkness fills the room, save for a sole spotlight pointing at the place Harry and Mary should be. Mary walks out, with a third facial expression, embarrassment. The room manages to achieve a place of perfect silence.

Nervously, the DJ shouts out, trying to sound amused, “Hey where’s Harry? Is he having another pint?”

Whoever’s operating the spotlight moves it around the room until Harry is located. Harry is giving a shoulder massage to a nervous looking woman. The spotlight hurriedly disappears.

From nowhere, Big Dead Michael appears. He’s not dead at this point, but he is now. He was a lovely guy who looked and spoke like that main butler in Downton Abbey. Big Dead Michael skilfully, silently and diplomatically escorts Harry to the light, tucking him into it's beam almost unseen.

The music starts up. I can’t remember what song it was, I doubt anyone can. Probably something shit. All anyone who was there will remember is Mary basically walking Harry around a dance floor whilst he tried to Stay Awake. A few tortuous seconds later and the dancefloor is filled with her friends, being supportive, doing the right thing.

Me and Fiancee, went home, our taxi filled with raucous laughter. This was easily the best wedding reception either of us had been to. We were smug that our reception would be better than that. We were smug about a lot of things back then.

Harry and Mary were divorced by Christmas. Me and Fiancee took a little longer. I was going to say something like, it’s a slow life when you’re on your own but luckily I avoided it. Not the being on your own thing, the cheesy ending.

So, whenever I hear this song, that’s what I think of. Harry and his trainers. Mary and her Three Facial Expressions. A terrifying drive down the M4. And the way the sun shone that month, shone like fuck the whole time, like everything was going to be fine, like everything would work itself out in the end.

 

 

Dream Attack

Vision Incision

Weekender

California Soul

Angrily Packing Carrots at The Organics in Lampeter.

(Idea for Flash Fiction suggested kindly by Susan Barsby)

Angrily Packing Carrots At The Organics In Lampeter. Still Quietly Fuming At Being Dumped The Day Before In A Car Park Behind Marks and Spencer. Embarrassed At Having Sobbed So Pathetically And Publicly. Especially With It Being His Mother’s Birthday Too. Relieved At Now Not Being In Bad Books For Forgetting Said Birthday. Irritated By Constant Airplay Of Michael Bolton at Full Volume on Work Radio. Secretly Thrilled On Some Level To Find Heartbreak Is Intense Experience. 

Amused briefly by Antics of Co-Worker With Amusingly Shaped Carrot. 

Quietly Eating Lunch Alone In Dark Corner Of Canteen. Hoping Shamefully To Look Deep And/or Traumatised in order to Elicit Sympathy from Co-Workers. Hopefully the Devastatingly Attractive Brunette on Courgettes. Lonely Quiet Lunch Completed Without Sympathy.

Angrily Packing Carrots Again. Staring At Watch Discretely Only To Find The Days After Heartbreak Move Slower Than Before. Reminded Brutally That A Wedge of Raw, Organically Grown Carrot Entering Fingernail Below The First Tideline Is Actually Really Painful. Glad Of This Distraction From Her.

Taking Final Break On Small Hillock Outside Work. Hoping That Stance With Can of Diet Coke From Behind Is Reminiscent In Some Way of That Painting by Caspar David Friedrich. Smiles Smugly At Inner Cultural Life. Cannot Imagine Any of Colleagues Would Know Who That Painting Is By Or Indeed Who Caspar David Friedrich Is. Remembers That This Smugness Is Not A Nice Thing, Might Even Be One of The Many Failings That Led Him To Be So Publicly Dumped Yesterday.

Remembers Crying. Remembers The Happy Times. The Smell of Her Hair, Some Expensive Shampoo or Another. The Feel of Her Olive Skin Against His In Their Student Flat. Remembers He Will Not Have That Experience Again. Remembers Crying. Hears Colleague Shouting His Name. Wipes Eyes.

Angrily Packing Carrots at the Organics In Lampeter. Angrily Packing Carrots at the Organics In Lampeter. Angrily Packing Carrots at the Organics In Lampeter. Angrily Packing Carrots at the Organics In Lampeter.

 

 

 

 

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.