A Little Fiction – The Case (Dinah and Shaw part 11)

It was with no little surprise, knowing how infrequently Shaw changed his clothes, that Dinah contemplated his suitcase as he attempted, not entirely successfully, to extricate it from the boot of the taxi. “‘Just pack for the weekend’, you said. ‘You won’t need much. It’s nothing special.’”
“The last time we stayed in a hotel, you complained that I had everything in a plastic carrier bag,” he moaned. “So, I thought I’d make an effort.”
The effort, as far as Dinah could tell, involved going to a carboot sale and buying the tattiest cardboard suitcase he could find. Once brown faux leather and now peeling paper, the giant post-war trunk was a symphony in duck tape and string. ‘If I were underwear,’ thought Dinah, with a shudder, ‘I would definitely take my chances in the carrier bag.’
“I didn’t want anything that looked new.”
“Evidently.”
“I thought it might arouse suspicion.”
“Presumably in a way that a mouldering, bungalow-sized cardboard valise would not. Anyway, yes, it’s very you,” said Dinah, somewhat taken aback when, rather than being affronted by her open sarcasm, he smiled brightly at the perceived compliment.
“I think it may have been to exotic places,” he said excitedly. “It’s got a really interesting smell to it.”
“You could be right,” said Dinah. “It does smell like something very exotic may have died in it…. A long time ago.”

Shaw lugged the festering behemoth up the marbled steps to the hotel under the watchful gaze of the concierge who didn’t mind wearing the stupid braided uniform, but most certainly was not paid nearly enough to tempt him to carry that particular crate. Shaw held the oversized container like a mime artist struggling with something immensely heavy, although Dinah couldn’t help but wonder whether in reality, it might not be empty. It certainly didn’t have his toothbrush in it. That was in his top pocket with something that looked as though it might once have been a comb, and a teaspoon.

As his passage through the revolving door to the hotel lobby involved standing the giant suitcase on its end and wedging himself behind it, his eventual entrance was the stuff of ‘Carry On’: the suitcase completing an additional three hundred and sixty degrees whilst a stationary Shaw clung grimly to the now disassociated handle. In the subsequent melee the concierge received a really quite nasty bruise to the eye (which may, or may not, have been attributable to a flailing Shaw elbow) and an unsuspecting passer-by found herself corralled and herded into the hotel with one shoe in her handbag and somebody else’s dog on the end of an extending lead. Dinah walked calmly to the reception desk. She and Shaw were booked in separately and occupying different rooms, Shaw had insisted on it. It was, he assured her, crucial to the investigation that they were not seen to be together. Why this might be, she had no idea and he was not about to say. As usual, although unwittingly, Shaw had kept her completely in the dark about what was going on but, when pressed, had assured her that this was a proper enquiry and, more to the point, they were being paid to conduct it. She would find out soon enough and, in the meantime, she intended to enjoy the peace and avail herself of the hotel toiletries, the bath, the hot water and the mini-bar – although not necessarily in that order – luxuriating in the knowledge that the office rent was about to be paid and that she, herself, might just be able to afford a new bra, or at least some new wires to put in the old one.

The receptionist handed over the room key with what Dinah perceived was almost certainly a raised eyebrow. “Would you like help with your luggage?” she asked.
“No thank you,” Dinah replied, suddenly conscious of The Minions rucksack on her back. “I’ll manage.”

She had barely lowered herself into the foaming water when she heard the knock on the door. She had no doubt who it was. Nobody else knocked quite like Shaw. “It’s on the latch,” she shouted. “I’m in the bath. You did say the client was paying for the mini-bar didn’t you?”
“Well, yes, I…” Sheepishly Shaw peered around the bathroom door. “I… that is… they brought my suitcase up to my room for me – it took two of them – and now they… I don’t suppose you’ve got any change have you?”
“In my purse,” she said, fully aware that Shaw would give the porters the ten pound note that she had heretofore kept successfully secreted. “It will cost you both the gin and the Jack Daniels from your fridge.” Dinah heard the door click behind him as Shaw left and settled back into the bubbles, closing her eyes only for a second before she once again recognised Shaw’s impatient knock on the door. “I told you, it’s on the latch,” she shouted.
“I took it off when I left,” Shaw shouted back.
“Why?”
“Well, you know, you’re in the bath and…”
“And?”
“Well, your purse is on the table.”
“Does it have anything left in it?”
“…I’ve brought the booze.”
Dinah raised herself from the warm embrace of soapy water and into the slightly prickly grip of an over-washed white hotel bath robe before opening the door to Shaw who breezed past her and into the room. He began to empty his pockets onto the table. “Gin, Jack Daniels, chocolate, peanuts and Pringles,” he beamed. “Which would you like?”
Dinah pouted. Or tried to. Her robe fell open and Shaw almost broke his neck trying to look the other way whilst she pulled it back together. It’s difficult to pout and giggle at the same time. “You got me out of the bath,” she said. “You can have the tin of lager out of the fridge… and the Smarties as long as you promise not to eat the blue ones… and then you can help me get the lids off these piddling little bottles and tell me what’s going on.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why are we in this hotel? Why are we in separate rooms when one is so much cheaper and you’re perfectly happy to sleep in the bath with a cushion, and who is paying for the mini-bar?”
“The client.”
“You said that. So why are we here?”
“Ah…”
“Ah?”
“Well I don’t actually know yet. It was all done over the phone. The woman just asked if we would be prepared to take on a case that would keep us both out of the office for two days and, of course, I said yes because I thought you could do with the break and the office is so cold since they cut the electricity off. I asked if we could have separate rooms and she said we could have whatever we liked as long as we weren’t at the office. She said we should book into this hotel and just give her the bill when we’d finished. She said she’d let us know what we had to do once we’d settled in…”
“Did you get a name?”
“Well no, I…”
“So, how do we give her the bill?”
“Well, she’ll be in touch won’t she? To tell us what we need to do.” In contrast to Dinah, Shaw knew exactly how to pout.
“Tell me, this woman, did she sound just a teensy bit like our landlady?”
“Well, now that you mention it, her voice was a little bit familiar… Shall I go and get my suitcase?”
“I think we’ll be quicker without it. Come on, we need to find a back way out… and don’t forget the gin”

I know, I know, not what you’d really call truncated, but these two just don’t work in shorter doses…

Dinah and Shaw appear periodically through my ‘back catalogue’. Should you wish to follow their story you can do so here:

A Little Fiction – Five Minutes in the Car

“…So, do you think that bees know that they’re going to die when they sting you?”
“I don’t think that a bee knows anything. A bee just is. A tiny tangle of neurons with honey-making facilities at one end and munitions at the other. They are driven purely by instinct – like a man at a free bar.”
“If they did know they were going to die, would they still sting you?”
“But they don’t.”
“So, there they are, settling nicely on your nose when they decide they might just give you a bit of a dig and they never, not for one second, think to themselves, ‘Actually, this might not end well for me.’ Nothing inside of them says, ‘Hang on, if I do this, much of what I currently have inside of me will then be on the outside of me, and wearing internal organs externally is never a good thing.’?”
“I don’t think a bee is quite that rational, no.”
“We had a swarm of bees in our garden once. The sky was black with them and the noise was horrendous, but when they settled they formed a ball about the size of a football. It was nice, kind of sleepy, just a gentle buzz to it and a few little stragglers flying lazily around it – until I went just one step too close. Then the whole thing got angry. The buzz became irritated. It throbbed. It was a clear threat: ‘just one step closer!’ So I stepped back and suddenly the whole thing became calm again. It was definitely thought through.”
“I think it’s just instinct isn’t it? A reaction to perceived threat. There’s nothing they can do to affect it.”
“It’s a bit of a stark life though, isn’t it, being a worker bee? Up at the crack of dawn, flying from plant to plant collecting nectar to feed the young; mind that hornet; dodge the man with the folded-up newspaper, knowing – or, if you’re to be believed, not knowing – that if you wanted to sting the annoying little kid with the cricket bat, it would be the last thing you ever did.”
“Well, it’s not something that you would ever have to worry about, is it? All the worker bees are female. The male bees are called drones because they are boring, energy-sapping users who exist solely for the opportunity to mate the minute the virgin queen drops her guard. They are useless wastrels who sit around doing nothing all day and get fanned and fed by the females for their trouble. They don’t even have a sting in their tails. Remind you of anyone?”
“Well, it seems to me that if these drones just lounge about the hive all day being fed and watered before popping out every now and then for a bit of nooky with royalty, maybe they’re the ones with brains.”
“Well, it’s not all beer and skittles. It’s a single-use penis, I’m afraid. A couple of seconds of frustration for the queen and then the drone dies. I suppose it saves him having to help raise the kids.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I like insects. It’s why I married you.”
“You have to feel sorry for male insects, don’t you?”
“Do you?”
“Yes, like those spiders: one chance to mate and then straight away afterwards the female eats him. It’s not very romantic is it?”
“Romantic? It’s life isn’t it. You forget that males are here for only that one single function. If you didn’t contain sperm, we’d have no use for you whatsoever.”
“Oh yes, so who’d open your jars?”
“I’m sure there’s a gadget for it.”
“What about checking your tyre pressures, your oil level? What about topping up your windscreen washer fluid?”
“Gadgets for all of those, I’m sure.”
“Ok then, what about a woman’s other needs?”
“Oh, there’s definitely a gadget for those…”
“You say that, but can you actually imagine a world without men? …Well?”
“I’m sorry, I was just imagining…”
“There are loads of things that women can’t do you know.”
“Really? Outside of getting women pregnant and peeing standing up, what might they be?”
“When did you last clean out the pond pump? When did you empty a mouse trap or de-worm the cat?”
“Choosing not to do things is not the same as not being able to do them. I choose not to fart at the dinner table, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t do it.”
“Well, even if you’re right and all that men are good for is making babies, that, at least, is one thing you can’t do without us.”
“Yet… We’re working on it.”
“Well maybe we’re working on having babies without you.”
“Really? That will be good. Who’s going to change their nappies?”
“…How far have we got to go?”
“Before we can make babies without the messy bit? Well, we can do that now can’t we?”
“I meant before we get to the hotel.”
“Why, do you need the toilet?”
“Oh, very funny. I can’t see the sat-nav. I just wondered how many near-collisions we might have before we arrive… Don’t you think you were a bit close to that cyclist?”
“What cyclist?”
“The one on the… Oh, very funny.”
“We’re about an hour away. Look, the doctor told you that you needed to rest your ankle, why don’t you give your mouth a rest too?”
“You hate driving in silence.”
“I can put the radio on.”
“You hate the DJ.”
“I can change the station?”
“Not since you broke the tuning knob when you decided that you hated the song that was playing.”
“Oh… Well you’ll have to talk to me then.”
“What about?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps we could avoid the bee conundrum for a little while though.”
“Right, so… Do you think that wasps know that they’re not going to die when they sting you?…”

A Little Fiction – My Mistake

The bus was empty, but I knew as soon as I saw him climb aboard, that he would choose to sit beside me. He smelled like a dump in summer and something of which he appeared completely unaware, was moving around under his coat. He tried to release a smile, but it merely flitted across his face like a leer in a convent and as he sat, he turned his entire body towards me as though his head had become fused to his shoulders. He licked his lips revealing teeth the colour of teak. He had eyes like midnight and breath like petrol, his hair sat atop his head like a hat, threadbare, unkempt and matted like a cat that could no longer clean itself, undisturbed since sleep. He pulled a slightly threadbare fur coat tight around his shoulders, just failing to cover the lace neckline of the nightdress he wore beneath it, in an overt attempt to create a small space between us. In his hand he carried a small stuffed toy: a penguin I think, it was hard to tell. His stare forced me to look away and casting my eyes down I noticed that his shoes were several sizes too big for his feet, that one sole flapped loosely, mouth-like, allowing fleeting glimpses of an un-socked foot as he moved his toes rhythmically, as if they were accompanying a song in his head.

I had seen him before walking around the town, unhurried and unbothered by both drunken youths and bored policemen, and I ‘knew’ his story in my head, his name and everything about him. His name, I concluded, was Geoffrey and he had a St John in there somewhere. His surname was double-barrelled, probably featuring a double ‘f’. He was definitely aristocratic, devoted to his mother who had died unexpectedly – probably from Lassa Fever or something equally romantic – leaving him alone, vulnerable and, eventually, here on the upper deck of a midnight bus with me. A mental breakdown between then and now I surmised, life in an institution surrounded by his mother’s furs and nightclothes, and his own childhood toys, but nobody to care when he wasn’t there at night. Nobody to worry.

I offered him a mint which he took with thin, elegant but grubby hands and a nod of thanks. His nails were long and grimy, but elegantly filed into shape. It seemed strange that he should take such care over the shape of his nails, but show no concern over the filth that had accumulated behind and around them. I wondered if he cared for anything else in his life or whether this was the last thing he refused to let go. I noticed that he had worn a ring until recently, the mark still palely traced across his finger, and wondered if it had been stolen from him or whether he had sold it to buy… what? He didn’t smell of booze or cigarettes, just decay. He wore nothing that could have been even approximately new and I remembered that when I had seen him around the town centre in the past he had often worn long, white satin evening gloves, the kind that are only ever otherwise seen on overdressed women at the opera or by the murderer in an Agatha Christie mystery. Where were they now? Had they been taken with the ring?

The bus slowed to a halt and he half-turned his body so that he faced the curved mirror that allowed a view of the bus’s doors below. He seemed fixated on the doors, but they did not open. I guessed the stop was one of those where the driver had to stop – do they call them ‘timing points’? – but I wasn’t sure: I had never travelled the route before. I would normally have got a taxi home, but it was a warm night so I had started to walk, unaware of the rainclouds developing in the darkness above my head. I was sheltering in a bus stop when the bus came along so I jumped on and asked the driver where would be the best place to get off. I won’t pretend that his first answer was altogether helpful, but eventually we found somewhere acceptable so I paid the fare and took a seat upstairs that was, as far as I could tell, out of his view and beyond any unwelcome conversation, where I sat, happily disengaged, until my ‘companion’ stumbled into his seat.

Eventually, after I’m not certain how long, maybe two or three minutes, the bus sighed, juddered into gear and pulled away from the kerb, and my companion dragged his attention away from the mirror. I felt a sudden pressure to speak, but I am the king of the non-committal nod. I have perfected the shy smile and slight eyebrow twitch to such a degree that I seldom find it necessary to actually engage anybody in conversation. It wasn’t going to work here though, was it? I knew I had to speak, but how to start? “You know, you really could do with a bath,” was honest, but not entirely tactful. “Excuse me, but is your name Geoffrey?” might lead him to think that I was confusing him with somebody else – I had no real basis whatsoever on which to assume that it really was his name. How do you start a conversation with a smelly, old man upstairs on a midnight bus that is not open to misinterpretation? “What’s a smelly old man like you doing on a shitty old bus like this and why, in God’s name, did you choose to sit next to me, putting me in this insidious position?” was probably not going to cut it. In the end, societal cowardice dictated my subsequent strategy. “Excuse me,” I muttered, half rising. “I think this is my stop.”

And it was then that I caught the unmistakable glint of reflected light from the knife blade as I felt it nestle uncomfortably against my side. I felt shocked at first, not by the action, but my reaction to it. I knew that I would not be unable to lunge past him and all that I could remember thinking was, “How has he kept that blade so shiny when he can’t even wash his bloody hands?” but I felt it unwise to enquire. I sat down heavily. Should I shout out for the driver who, without question, would not put himself in danger to help me? Strangely calm, I wondered whether this was how it was all going to end for me, on the top deck of a bus with a smelly old tramp, when a sudden realisation hit me, that he probably felt he was just protecting himself, that he himself had felt threatened by something that I had said or done. I raised my arms, palms open, as I believe it is done, and opened my mouth to speak, but he merely lifted one grimy finger to his lips and shushed quietly. “Money, phone and watch,” was all he said.

A Little Fiction – Frankie & Benny #3 – The Night Before

“You, my friend, were drunk.”
“I was not drunk, Frankie. I have not been drunk in many years.”
“You were slurring your words. Were you having a stroke?”
“No.”
“Then you were drunk.”
“Nobody else said that I was slurring my words.”
“Well, they wouldn’t would they? They wouldn’t want to upset you, in case you were having a stroke.”
“I was as sober as a Methodist christening. I was not slurring my words. I was not drunk.”
“You were most definitely not sober. I walked the several miles home with you.”
“Several miles? We were only across the road. Eight hundred yards at the most”
“As the crow flies, Benny, I’ll give you that. Eight hundred yards in a straight line, but you were not walking in a straight line. You, Benny my friend, walked as far backwards as you did forwards, and twice as far to the side. You were bouncing off parked cars and garden fences like a pinball. You were singing to the lamp-posts.”
“You’re exaggerating again. I know what you’re doing. Alright, I had drunk a little – as had you – but I was not drunk.”
“Ah well, ok, have it your own way. Have you checked your coat pocket, by the way?”
“My coat pocket? What for?”
“Why don’t you go and check?”
“…A mushroom vol-au-vent. What does that prove? Everybody sneaks food away from a buffet. It’s expected.”
“We weren’t at a buffet, Benny. You went through the baker’s bin on the way home. Check your other pocket.”
“…What the?…”
“Chicken Chow Mien, I believe.”
“I don’t even like Chicken Chow Mien.”
“I know. You kept bothering a young couple at the bus stop, telling them your life story and eventually they offered you some of their food to go away. You said that you didn’t actually like the fore-mentioned concoction – I seem to remember you showed them how the noodles get under your dentures – but that you’d take some home for the dog.”
“I don’t have a dog.”
“Indeed you do not. Nor do you have a parrot, but you also took their prawn crackers.”
“Oh dear. I must admit, I do have a bit of a fuzzy head this morning, but I don’t remember any of this. Are you sure you’re not winding me up here?”
“No. No, not at all… Well ok, maybe just a little bit. The landlord brought out the vol-au-vents after the quiz, that’s where you got that from.”
“And the Chow Mien?”
“That was from the couple at the bus stop.”
“Oh God… What were we even doing at a quiz, we’re both thick aren’t we?”
“I believe that is indeed what our teachers told us Frankie. A verdict I have never felt equipped to contradict.”
“So why were we doing a quiz?”
“There was a prize.”
“What?”
“A bottle of whisky.”
“And did we win it?”
“No, but we did drink one.”
“I think I’ll put the kettle on. Do you want a tea?”
“I wouldn’t say no. If I’m honest I feel a little out of sorts myself.”
“Do you want a biscuit?”
“Yes, and a couple of aspirin if you’ve got them.”
“…Why do we do it?”
“What?”
“Drink too much. At our age, why do we do it?”
“Well, I think that if we were sober, Benjamin my friend, we would not do it, but as soon as we get drunk, then we start to drink too much.”
“So you’re saying that if we didn’t start to drink at all, then we wouldn’t drink too much?”
“Precisely.”
“Well, that’s cleared that up for me then. Here, have a biscuit. I’ve only got Rich Tea I’m afraid.”
“Rich Tea? What happened to the Hobnobs?”
“I don’t have any.”
“You do, I was with you when you bought them yesterday.”
“I ate them.”
“When?”
“Last night when we got back from the pub. I also appear to have eaten several slices of toast and fried my last two eggs.”
“You ate your last two eggs?”
“You should listen to what I say Francis, perhaps clear some of that wax from your ears. I did not say that I ate my last two eggs, I said that I fried them.”
“So what did you do with them then?”
“Well, one of them I appear to have put in the fridge with a beer mat and a half-eaten spring roll.”
“And the other?”
“I have just found in my slipper…”
“So are you not going to wash your foot then?”
“I think I’ll just sit a minute first. Drink my tea… I might need to take a minute or two before… The yolk, you know… So how many of us did this quiz thing then? I mean, how many were in our team?”
“Just you and me old chum. Just you and me.”
“So we came last then?”
“Oh yes we did indeed. Very. But we did win a prize.”
“Really, what?”
“This.”
“A tiny cup. Very nice. I’ll keep it in my trophy cabinet with all the others. What does it say on it?”
“‘Wankers.’”
“Oh classy. Charming that. Quite a wag, that landlord, isn’t he?”
“He did apologize. He said that if he’d known we were going to take part, he would have had our names engraved on the loser’s trophy in advance.”
“Oh well, fair enough.”
“Yes, fair do’s, he could have insisted that the losers at least scored some points.”
“Did we not score any?”
“We never answered any, Benny. We spent the whole night arguing over our team name. I wanted to call us ‘Frankie and Benny’ – everyone knows who we are anyway – but you said it should be something clever and witty.”
“And?…”
“We couldn’t think of anything… How’s your head now?”
“Not so bad. I’m starving mind, how about you?”
“I could certainly go a fry-up.”
“Come on, I’ll just get this yolk off my sock and we’ll go and get one.”
“Ok. I fancy the whole works: fried bread, black pudding, mushrooms… That’ll sort me out.”
“Mind you, we did spend quite a lot at the pub last night. If you want, I could warm us something up here instead.”
“Oh yes, and what have you got?”
“How do you fancy Chicken Chow Mien?”

These chaps are currently my favourite characters. You can find their previous appearances here and here.

A Little Fiction – Conversations with a Bearded Man (part 7) – Helpline

For Ellie (Mrs Underfelt) – who said she liked this character.

“…I knew it would be you as soon as I dialled. How do you do it?”
The voice at the other end of the phone was exactly as I had grown to know, except for an air of confusion with which I was not familiar but, never being one to let doubt get in the way of indignation, I pressed on none-the-less. “Your card in the newsagent’s: how did you know that I would see it? How did you know that I would call?”
“Call?”
I quoted directly from the card that I had removed from the shop window. “‘Tired? Lonely? Need to hear a friendly voice? Just ring,’ and then it’s got your phone number.”
“My number? Are you sure?”
“It’s the number I just dialled.”
“But I don’t have a card in the newsagent’s.”
“Yeh, right.” I said, regretting my tone instantly. “So how come I just got you?”
“You must have mis-dialled.”
“That really is…” I wanted to say preposterous, but the notion was simply so far-fetched that I was already checking the number on the card against the number I had dialled. It was, of course, one digit different. That single digit had connected me with the man I know as Lorelei. But how? How is it even possible to dial what now amounts to a virtually random phone number, and get him. It must be some kind of trick – a mind-game or something. Maybe I was having some kind of psychotic episode. Perhaps I’d been brainwashed, or hypnotised, or… I have no idea what… I would wake up soon and find that this was all a dream.
“So, are you?” His voice pricked into my brain like defeat into an ego.
“Am I what?”
“Tired? Lonely?”
I wanted to say ‘no’, but I knew that he would see right through that. Why had I rung the number in that case? I really didn’t want this man to think that I might have been trying to contact the kind of person who routinely displays their phone number in the newsagent’s window. “Well, I’m tired of how things are. Does that make sense?”
“I don’t know. What sort of things?”
“I thought I was making progress. I thought that she might have been ready to change her mind, but instead she just told me that she was getting married again and…”
“Ah, this will be your ex-wife.”
“The new man is called Duncan. Bloody Duncan! He sounds like a Blue Peter presenter.”
“I thought you had put that particular situation behind you. I thought you said you were moving on.”
“Duncan has a sports car. Duncan has his own house. Duncan, apparently, wears clean socks every day and doesn’t behave like a three year old when things don’t go his way.”
“Ah, so you’ve not moved on quite so far as you might have hoped then?”
“The thing is, I’ve done everything she asked.”
“Have you?”
“Well, I listened.” Even through the mobile phone I could sense his eyebrows arching. “There was a lot to take in,” I explained. “She had a lot to say. It appears that I have quite a lot of faults.”
“I don’t suppose you can remember what any of them are?”
“Not really – she might have a point with the not listening thing I suppose – but the other stuff… I’m willing to try.”
“She doesn’t want you to though, does she?”
“Not now she’s got Duncan. Good old Dunc’…”
“She was alone too, just like you, although without the six foot pile of takeaway containers in the kitchen and a mound of dirty socks in the bidet, obviously.”
“She left me. She started the divorce. She said we were both unhappy.”
“And?”
“…It’s bloody infuriating.”
“She doesn’t want you to be lonely.”
“She wants me to meet somebody. To ease her conscience.”
He sighed the kind of sigh that, even over the phone, comes accompanied with a world-weary roll of the eyes. “Where are you?” he asked.
“I’m in the park,” I answered. “It’s the nearest thing I get to excitement these days. Can I get home without treading in dog shit? Can I sit on a bench without having my hat stolen by a gang of feral kids?”
“You’re not even wearing a hat.”
“How can you possibly know that? I…” I looked at my phone only briefly before ending the call. “Don’t tell me,” I said, turning to face the man who I knew I would find standing beside me, “you just happened to be in the park as well.”
“I like to walk,” he said. “I like to meet people. It’s a good way to meet people, don’t you think?”
“I’m not really lonely you know,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “Let’s have an ice cream.” We joined the short queue to the kiosk. “And we’ll see where life takes us.”
“Beautiful day,” said the woman in front of us, trying to defy gravity by remaining upright with a bouncing toddler dangling erratically from her arm. She smiled apologetically as a whirling hand caught me a glancing blow a-midriff and gently eased the child out of range. “I brought my nephew to play. An ice cream is a small price to pay, don’t you think? It’s so nice not to be staring at the walls.”
I waited for Lorelei to fill the void, but he was silent; smiling benignly at me, the woman and the world in general. He had a look of contentment that, as ever, I found impossible to understand. I tried to grin my way out of the situation, but the silence was becoming increasingly awkward.
“Do they still do 99’s?” I asked nobody in particular.
“I hope so,” said the woman. “Otherwise I’ll have to get a Flake from the newsagents on the way home. I’ll be particularly unhappy if they don’t do sprinkles.” She smiled. Quite a nice smile, in its own way. “Sara,” she said. “My name is Sara.”
“Jim,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you. And this is?…” I looked down at the child clinging to Sara’s hand.
“Oh this,” she said. “I’ve really no idea. He’s not my nephew really, I just picked him up at the playground. It’s so much easier to talk to people if you’ve got a child with you, don’t you think?” I could feel my mouth dropping open. “It’s a joke,” she grinned. “Of course I know his name… It’s written in the back of his coat.” The smile again. “This is Tom. Say hello Tom.”
“Aunty Sara’s going to buy me an ice cream,” said Tom clinging tightly to her hand. “We’re both having sprinkles.”
Lorelei coughed quietly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve just…” He turned to the woman in the queue. “I’m sorry Sara – I hope it’s ok for me to call you Sara – I hope you don’t think me terribly rude, but I have to go. It’s been good to meet you. I hope you enjoy your ice cream.”
“We will,” I replied in perfect harmony with Sara and Tom as Lorelei turned and wandered quietly away.
“And don’t be lonely,” he said. “I’m just a call away…”
“I know,” said Sara…

The first conversation with the bearded man is here: A Little Fiction – New Book (Title Unknown) – Introduction (Conversations with a Bearded Man part one)
The second conversation is here: A Little Fiction – A Further Excerpt from a Different Unfinished Novel (Conversations with a Bearded Man part two)
The third conversation is here: A Little Fiction – A Further Further Excerpt from a Different Unfinished Novel (Conversations with a Bearded Man part 3)
Conversation four is here: A Little Fiction – Lorelei (Conversations with a Bearded Man, part 4)
Conversation five: A Little Fiction – Conversations with a Bearded Man (part 5) A Pre-Christmas Exchange
Conversation six: A Little Fiction – Conversations with the Bearded Man (part 6)

I believed that these conversations might end here, but I’ve been asked a number of times to resurrect this character and so I’m trying to think how I might do it without him wandering out of a shower to find that it’s all been a dream…

A Little Fiction – Goodbyes (Frankie & Benny #2)

“Well Francis my friend, that was a pleasant kind of morning, don’t you think?”
“Oh yes, certainly. You can’t beat a good funeral, can you?”
“No, you can’t. Indeed you can’t. Providing, of course, that it’s done right.”
“Oh yes, has to be done right.”
“Proper mourning. None of that happy-clappy nonsense. Proper solemn hymns. I like a good hymn.”
“Traditional, yes. A good traditional hymn, where the words don’t fit the tune properly and the verses don’t rhyme unless you pronounce them wrong.”
“Yes, nothing worse than being asked to sing something that sounds like it might have been written by Gary bloody Barlow. I am at a funeral, not a Take That concert. I do not wish to clap along. I do not wish to shake my hips. I do not want my vicar to wear a kaftan.”
“And I don’t want to celebrate the life of the dearly departed either: he was a miserable bugger anyway. Wouldn’t have appreciated a good joke at his own expense when he was alive, let alone now he’s in a box.”
“You knew him then?”
“Who?”
“The fella in the box.”
“No, no… not at all. I was just generalising. I didn’t recognise a soul. I thought the widow was very dignified though.”
“Even when they had to lower her down into the grave to get her bracelet out.”
“Always a perilous business, chucking soil down into a hole. Fraught with danger…”
“Nice to get out in the fresh air though. Get a bit of sunshine.”
“Definitely, beats a cremation. Who wants to sit indoors for twenty minutes just to see the curtain come around and knock the flowers over? Who wants to listen to the corpse’s favourite song when you could be on your feet banging out ‘Jerusalem’?”
“…Did I see you putting money in the collection, by the way?”
“Changing really. Couple of those coins in there that you can sell on Ebay, so I swapped them for a couple of bog-standard. Nobody loses out and possibly I might make a bob or two. Silver linings and all that.”
“Do you know how to put them on Ebay?”
“Not a clue, but still, better in my pocket than the vicar’s.”
“Have you ever considered your own funeral, my friend?”
“How so?”
“Well, what hymns you would have, what prayers… who would read your eulogy?”
“I don’t suppose it will be you: you’re three years older than me.”
“Fitter mind.”
“Do you reckon?”
“I traipse half way across the estate and up the stairs to your flat every day. All you ever manage is a stroll to the pub.”
“I walk a lot faster than you. You dawdle. Dawdle, dawdle, dawdle, like you’ve not a care in the world… Mind you, there’s no doubt why you want me to get to the bar before you, is there?”
“Nor why you never decide to have a pie until the second pint. ‘Oh look, it’s Benny’s round. I think I quite fancy a chomp on a chicken & mushroom.’”
“…I’ve written it all down, you know.”
“What?”
“My funeral wishes.”
“What on Earth for? What does it matter? You won’t be there, will you? Listening, I mean, or watching. Well, you’ll be there of course… unless you’ve been lost at sea or something. Unless you’ve just wandered off. ‘Police are making enquiries about the whereabouts of Francis Collins – known to his friends as ‘Tight Bastard’ – who they believe was trying to walk his way out of buying peanuts…’ but you won’t know what’s going on, will you? They could be singing a selection from Abba for all you’ll care.”
“No, no. I want it to be right, you know. I expect all of my friends will be dead by then – you’ll be long gone – and I want to make sure that I don’t repeat mistakes, you know.”
“Mistakes?”
“Well, look at that funeral we went to last week.”
“The one at the chapel?”
“Yes, the one with the paste-table for an altar.”
“It wasn’t a paste-table Frank.”
“It was made of hardboard!”
“It was not. Granted, it was sagging a little bit in the middle, but a paste-table it was not. Have you any idea how heavy all that silver is?”
“Well, no. Now that you mention it, Frankie, I do not. I have never lifted any. Tell me old friend, have you and, if so, when? Perhaps you could fill me in on the circumstances.”
“I have seen it being lifted on the Antiques Roadshow. Comment is often passed viz-a-viz the weight. ‘A fine example,’ they say. ‘Full of… decoration… and… very heavy.’”
“Yes, well whatever, the service was much too long and I didn’t know a single word of any of the hymns.”
“Nor the tunes.”
“Nor the tunes indeed my friend.”
“Lovely wake though. Corned beef sandwiches and pickled onions. Trifle. Lovely.”
“Yes, nice food, I’ll give you that. Good spread.”
“No free bar though.”
“No, shame that. Fortunate you had your hip flask.”
“Indeed. My many years of Dib-Dib-Dobbing not entirely wasted Frankie my boy. Always prepared.”
“So, don’t you have any last wishes then?”
“Well, nothing special. I want to be buried, not burned: the surgeon told me that this new hip will last a hundred years – I wouldn’t want that to go up in flames, now would I? …And I don’t want a photograph of me looking startled on the front of the Order of Service. Why do people always pick ‘amusing’ photos? I want a picture of me looking serious, sombre like, you know.”
“When did you last have your photograph taken, Benny?”
“Well, I don’t know. I had a passport back in the day. I must have had a photograph then.”
“Your passport ran out in the eighties. Have you not had a photograph taken since then?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, what on earth are they going to put on your pamphlet then? A drawing? A photo-fit?”
“Well, I don’t know. I always thought they might take one after I… After, you know.”
“Oh yes, that’ll be nice won’t it. ‘Ah look at him on that photo. He looks really… dead.’ Classy. ‘You can see where the cat chewed the end of his nose off.’”
“Are you suggesting that I should have my photograph taken now, in case I die suddenly?”
“Well, it would save a lot of bother, wouldn’t it? Tell you what, I could do it on my phone I think.”
“Could you? Do you know how?”
“Well no, but how difficult can it be? Look, there’s a little picture of a camera there.”
“Well, press that then.”
“Alright, alright, I will. There… Oh look, it’s me!”
“You need to turn it round.”
“Now I can’t see the screen.”
“I can.”
“Oh, shall I press the button then?”
“Yes.”
“Right… Which one?”
“I don’t know. Let me see. What about this one? Oh… That’s your ear. That won’t do. We’ll need to practice a bit, don’t you think? I don’t want to be buried with everybody thinking that I looked like your left ear.”
“Yes, you’re right. It’s not urgent anyway.”
“No, I’m not ready to say my ‘goodbyes’ just yet. It can wait.”
“Shall we just take a little stroll down to the pub?”
“Yes, a fine idea my friend. Lead on MacDuff, lead on…”

Frankie & Benny first appeared here.
Episode three is here: A Little Fiction – Frankie & Benny #3 – The Night Before

This was written and scheduled in late March (since which time I have barely been around, even for reading your wonderful blogs, for which I sincerely apologise) and somehow – through a process known to WordPress alone – sneaked out to some of you at the time. If you have read this before, I can only apologise. Frankie & Benny (names have been altered etc etc) have gone on to become half a play since I wrote this, whether they will ever become a full one, only time will tell. I feel sure that I will be back with you fairly soon (please don’t report me for threatening behaviour) when I have got whatever-it-is out of my system. Thanks everyone!

A Little Fiction – The Unseemly Abasement of Miss Timmins

There was barely a static pair of net curtains along the whole street on the day that the police came to visit Miss Timmins. Nobody wanted to appear nosy, but they also did not want to miss out on anything that might form the basis of a succulent little nugget of scandal for some future discourse. Not that it was likely with Miss Timmins. I’m not sure that anybody actually knew her age. She looked about ninety with her straight, grey hair scraped up into a bun on the top of her head and the blue gingham housecoat which, as far as anybody could see, she never took off except for her weekly trips to the church hall beetle drive, when she wore a threadbare old cardigan over a paisley blouse of such florid hues that the bus driver insisted that she sit on the top deck for the journey home. It was rumoured that she had first worn the blouse in the sixties when, as legend had it, she had auditioned for Pan’s People, but had not got the role on account of being far too quick for Jimmy Savile. Others claimed to have seen the blouse before, in an episode of The Avengers on ‘girl behind ray gun’, whilst yet more claimed that it had once been a hotel bedspread.

In fact, what little was actually known about her had been smuggled, illicitly, out of her little terraced home by such visitors who had dared to brave the gloom and stifling heat of the spinster’s house. She had a photograph album that she kept on the table in her dingy little lounge and those that claimed they had dared to peak into it when she left the room to brew tea in the kitchen, reported that she certainly had a dancer’s body as a young woman. Unfortunately it was accompanied by the boxer’s face that continued to lower out from under her hairnet today. Whilst she had, as a young woman, a body that turned heads, it was accompanied by a face that did a similar thing to stomachs.

Vera Timmins was a woman who deplored ‘frilly’: the crinoline lady that sat astride her toilet roll was void of all fripperies and not even her paper doilies were allowed lacy edges. Those unfortunate enough to overlook her washing line reported that her underwear was never more (or less) than strictly functional. In fact some claimed that if you looked really hard, you could still see the Utility Mark stamped onto the waist band of her more-than-ample knickers. She was a thin woman and yet she somehow managed to wear nether garments that could house a pack of cub scouts. Truth be told, there were few, outside of the vicar (who could often be heard offering up the fervent prayer that it might never happen again) who were ever invited into her home. Mary Maguire was one such and perhaps the most willing to discuss the contents of Miss Timmins photograph album. It was her firm opinion that Vera had been spurned by a man in her youth – the album, she claimed, was filled with roughly torn half-photographs, some of which revealed a distinctly male-looking hand nestling on her waist – and from that moment on had decided to make herself as unattractive to the opposite sex as she possibly could. In that one respect she had been supremely successful.

No man had been allowed to cross her threshold in living memory. The rent man, the milk man and the grocer’s boy all picked up their monies in envelopes left by the gate. She had an elderly tom cat, but that had not been allowed under her roof until the vet had removed its undercarriage. It had grown fat and lazy, but to its credit, it still managed to spray on the cushions whenever she wasn’t looking. So it was with a seismic level of surprise that the assembled net twitchers of the whole street watched her beckon the two young male policemen into her home. None could tear their eyes away. Most felt it a nailed-on certainty that the unfortunate uniformed fodder would never be seen again.

This opinion had solidified amongst those still fit enough to be standing with gimlet eye to gossamer crack when, some two hours later, they were still to reappear. Most had given up. Some had already been on the phone to Mary, but such was the intensity of her vigil, she would not be drawn away from the window to speak and as Ted, her husband, had taken her mobile to the match having left his own in the compost tub with his spare socks at the allotments, she could not both speak into the ancient handset that hung in the hall and maintain eye-contact on the front door at number thirteen. They would all just have to sit it out. She would be quick enough to report when anything happened.

In fact she missed the actual moment when the police van arrived to take the lachrymose old maid away, owing to the fact that she had, over the first fifteen years of her marriage, been on the outside of fifteen children and was not within reach of anything on which to squat in her hour of need, but, undaunted, she was outside speaking to the constable who had remained at the door even before Mrs Timmins had dragged her second leg into the constabulary vehicle. He was, of course, not supposed to pass on the information, but she knew his mother so what was the point of keeping quiet? He would have to tell his mother what he had been up to if he wanted to be fed and it was certain that half of the Bingo Club would then know about it within the hour. What harm could it do?

“It was a romance scam,” Mary Maguire told the assembled throng some time later.
“Oh, poor soul,” cooed Mrs Rodgers who, in the excitement, quite forgot that her teeth were still in the glass in the bathroom and covered Mrs Maguire’s spectacles with a fine dusting of PG Tips and simnel cake* . “She never seemed the kind did she?”
“The kind?”
“To be looking for romance. I mean, if we’re honest, she didn’t really seem to have much time for men at all, let alone be lured by one pretending to want to share her life. Did he get much from her?”
“Certainly not money. I think you misunderstand,” said Mrs Maguire, a thin smile creasing the scar where she had once been bitten by a parakeet in a Morecambe bar. “She’s been passing herself off as a forty year old male property developer. Apparently she’d been using half of an old photograph from her photo album for a profile picture, until somebody clicked that it was actually Patrick McNee without the bowler…”

*Which my spellchecker insists should be ‘semen cake’. Clearly it does not know Mrs Rodgers.

A Little Fiction – Conversations with the Bearded Man (part 6) – Newark

I had never actually tried to seek him out before, he had always found me, and if I’m honest, I had no real idea of where to start. I wandered the streets for days, sat on buses, drank in pubs. I retrieved his petrol can from the back of the shed, but it held no clues: it was rusty and the last few drops of the petrol it had once housed had long-since absorbed into the softly rotting floor. I couldn’t remember the last time I had even seen a metal petrol can. ‘Only him,’ I thought. There would be a reason for it of course, some kind of message about strength and fragility. I would ask him – if ever I found him.

More than a year had passed since the last time we spoke and much had changed – and yet it was the same. I had made contact with my soon-to-be ex-wife and we had spoken, almost exclusively without rancour. Well, she at least, had spoken without rancour: I had been my usual petulant self, but against all odds we had managed to remain in one another’s company for more than an hour without once resorting to violence and name-calling. It had not physically changed anything: she was still well on the way towards becoming my very ‘ex’, but the absence of desire to kill after our encounter was exactly the kind of progress I thought that I should report.

Also, I now had friends – even if I wouldn’t want to be seen out with them in daylight. We went out together, or more precisely, we met up at the same place every Friday night in the bar of The Harrows for a few pints, a volcanically microwaved prehistoric meat pie and a quiz. We never won, but we always got through the evening without major ructions and, as loathe as I was to admit it, I looked forward to the occasion, even if the quiz master did insist on calling us ‘the sad bleeders in the corner’, when our actual name “Archimedes’ Crew”, was quite clearly written at the top of our answer sheet. More progress to report. My life had become, if not exactly good, then at least bearable at times. Never-the-less I knew that there were still pieces of the jigsaw missing and, instinctively, I felt that he had them.

So it became my habit whenever I had the opportunity to sit for a while, empty my brain (a frighteningly simple exercise) and then just see where my legs might take me. I did things. I did theatres, museums, football matches, bus trips, weekends away – all alone, all in the hope of being found, and as each day, week and month ticked away I became increasingly convinced that my final meeting with Lorelei was already in the past. The little diversions became a way of life – just something I did – but as they became more and more habitual, the feeling of emptiness and disaffection began, once more, to chip away at my soul…

…The rain, although not heavy, was as persistent as a text-message reminder from the dentist and more than a match for my cheap, Ebay kagoule. I couldn’t tell you why I had chosen Newark to visit: it was easy to get to on the train and it had a castle and a river, but as the icy cold precipitation soaked through every one of my manifold, yet inadequate, layers of clothing forming a puddle in my crotch that, despite its location, still succeeded in being a good ten degrees colder than the surrounding temperature, I couldn’t think of anywhere else that I less wanted to be. I picked my way across the market place, along the glistening cobbles, sensing the slick, unsteady surface through the wafer-thin soles of my saturated Converse, towards the dim yellow light that beckoned me from the windows of the pub in the corner, when I became aware of a small crowd gathered around a figure on the floor. Instinctively I pushed my way in, feeling the burning imperative of the recently acquired St John’s First Aid badge in my pocket and found myself looking down on a familiar, bearded face. He looked up and beamed a greeting smile. “I knew it would be you,” he said. “Thank you everybody. I know this man. He has training. He’ll help me across to a seat in the café there. I’m sure I’ll be fine after a few minutes in a chair. I’m so very grateful for your help. Thank you.” And all I could do was wonder why on earth he wanted to recover in the café instead of the pub.

I helped him to his feet. “How?” I asked.
“I just slipped on the cobbles.”
“I mean,” I said, “how did you know it would be me?”
“Well I don’t know anybody else here,” he said.
“But how did you know that I’d be here?”
“I didn’t… Did I?” He looked confused. Painfully aware that the pub was just next door, I led him into the café and sat him at a vacant table. The waitress was with us almost at once. She was all concern and fret.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked. My companion assured her that he was. “Okay,” she said, finally content, “As long as you’re sure. I’ll get your tea. What would you like love?”
“Coffee please.” The waitress bustled away. “Do you come in here often?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been here before.”
“So how did she know you wanted tea?”
“I always have tea. Now,” he said, “why did you want me?”
“I didn’t! Well, I did, but…”
He was looking around the room, breathing in his surroundings, reading the walls like he was in a museum. “It’s so important to be open to the new, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” I cast my own narrowed eyes around the twee yellow chintz palace, “but ‘the new’ can be pretty boring as well, can’t it?”
“I suppose so. I always think about see-saws. You want excitement on one end, then you’ve got to put excited on the other. If you want to sit at the bottom end just staring up at nothing happening, then it’s best just to stare. If you’ve got nothing to contribute then you can bounce as hard as you like, you’re always going to end up on the ground with the business end wedged under your chin.”
“So you’re telling me that I can only get out of life what I can put into it, right?”
“Am I? Oh…”
The drinks arrived at the table and, having poured Lorelei’s tea – milk first, one sugar – the waitress fussed away to her romantic novel behind the till.
I sipped at my coffee, which smelled great but tasted like it was a virtual stranger to the coffee bean. “I don’t think I always try very hard.”
“I don’t think you have to try too hard,” he said. “Just try.”
We drank in silence. Somewhere unseen a cuckoo clock marked the hour and, instinctively, the waitress, Lorelei and I all looked at our watches.
“Well, I suppose I’d better get going,” said my companion, rising slowly to his feet. I noticed, for the first time the bruise on his head.
“Are you sure you’re ok?”
“I think so,” he said. “But it wouldn’t hurt to check on me now and again, would it?”
“How?”
“Oh, don’t worry, it’s easy enough. You can let me have my petrol can back some time.”
“It’s rusted.”
“I know…”

In case you want to catch up on the rest of this tale, the first Conversation with the Bearded Man is here.

The previous conversation to this (#5) can be found here.

Episode 7 is now here: A Little Fiction – Conversations with a Bearded Man (part 7) – Helpline

A Little Fiction – Ancient Greeks (The Meaning of Life #3)

The man in the lovat Cavalry Tweed suit drained the last of his pint, loudly belched a beery fug laced with peanuts and bumptious pontification, and turned expectantly towards the man in the moleskin waistcoat who had barley sucked the froth from his own drink. “Your round, squire, I think,” he said.
“Bloody hell,” said Moleskin. “You got a shift on didn’t you?”
“Yes, well, as Archimedes pointed out, a man is only as heavy as the amount he can drink. You, my friend, are bordering upon reedy.”
“Eureka!” said the man in the Meerkat T-shirt as he painstakingly attempted to remove shards of Cavalry Tweed’s eructation from the head of his stout.
“What does?” said CT, tapping his glass impatiently.
“Eureka. It’s what Archimedes said after he sloshed his bath water all over the bath rug.”
“No, you my friend are mixing him up with Aristotle when he discovered logic: my glass is empty, therefore it needs filling. ‘I think, therefore I am.’”
“Descartes,” muttered moleskin, gathering up the glasses and heading, reluctantly to the bar. “It was Descartes who said that – ‘cogito, ergo sum’- not Aristotle.”
CT chuckled loudly. “Cogito, ergo sum,” he said, means ‘like clockwork’. It is actually the motto of Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club. Didn’t they teach you nothing up that posh boys school of yours?”
Moleskin bridled. The hairs on the back of his neck rose in a villus concert. “I did not go to a posh boys school. I went to a state grammar school.”
“Of course,” said CT. “I forgot. So,” he continued, “how many girls were there?”
Moleskin passed a twenty pound note over to the barman. “My point,” he said, quietly contained, “is that it was not a posh boys school. It was simply a boys school.” He placed the three glasses onto the table a little more heavily than was strictly necessary. “You did not need to be posh to go there, you simply needed to be able to demonstrate a certain level of education…”
“…Attainable only to those who did not have to be up at sparrow’s fart to do their paper round and thus supplement the family income,” sneered CT.
“You never had a paper round!”
“Not for the want of trying, sunbeam. They were all taken up by you posh boys whose dad’s took them round in the family Volvo. My battered old hand-me-down bike did not conform to the corporate image.”
“Corporate image? It was a local paper shop. Mr and Mrs Singh would not have cared if you went round on a pogo stick as long as you got the papers delivered. You never got a round because you were bolshie even then.”
“Didn’t he have a principle of some kind?” asked Meerkat.
“Mr Singh? What kind of principle?”
“No, Archimedes. Didn’t he have a principal? Something about a solid object displacing its own weight in water…”
“Common mistake,” said CT. “Firstly, what Archimedes invented was the screw – everything was nailed before he came along – and secondly, when you put something in water, what it actually displaces is its own volume in water e.g. drop an elephant in your average bath and you’re going to wind up with suds on the downstairs carpet.”
“Unless the object was absorbent, I suppose.”
“Not many absorbent elephants around though,” chuckled Moleskin.
“That,” said CT, “is where you are mistaken. All elephants are absorbent due to where they live in the desert. It’s why they have humps…”
The man in the moleskin waistcoat opened his mouth to object, but his attention was taken by the man in the Meerkat T-shirt who was taking peanuts from the packet and dropping them into his pint, where they floated on the, as yet, untroubled head. “How come,” he said, as he tried to get the last few peanut shards from the packet “those huge boats don’t push all the water out of the sea?”
“Well, they do, in a manner of speaking,” said CT. “They cause the tides, don’t they.”
“No they don’t,” said Moleskin. “That’s the moon.”
“The moon?” laughed CT. “The moon? Have you gone mad? Might cause a bit of sloshing around, I’ll give you that, as the Earth goes around it every day, but not the tides. Have you ever been stood there when a big boat goes by? That’s where your waves come from sunshine. That’s the tides.”
Meerkat looked on solemnly as the salt slowly flattened his beer and the disappearing head lost its grip on the nuts which sank to the bottom of the glass. “I don’t think I fancy a cruise,” he said.
“I must admit,” said Moleskin, “I never quite understand why they don’t turn over, those big liners. There’s so much more above the water than below it.”
“Kaleidoscopes,” said CT.
“Kaleidoscopes?”
“You must have seen them. Set ‘em spinning and they’ll balance on anything. Send them scuttling along a piece of string or whatever. They never fall off.”
“Do you mean a gyroscope?” asked Moleskin.
“Or a cat,” suggested Meerkat.
“A cat?”
“They don’t fall off things, do they? And…” continued Meerkat, his face suffused with triumph, “…and they always land on their feet.”
“Are you suggesting that ships have feet?”
“No. Don’t be stupid. What I’m suggesting is that if you filled ships with cats, they’d never fall over. Man’s best friend and all that…”
“That’s a dog, surely.”
“Dog’s don’t always land on their feet,” said Meerkat after a short pause for thought. “Also, only one life. Cats are nine times more cost-effective. You don’t have to keep replacing cats.”
Cavalry Twill and Moleskin lifted their glasses in unison and drank in quiet contemplation as Meerkat tried to retrieve the peanuts from the base of his glass with a knife.
“Where would you put the passengers?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if you filled the ship with cats, where would you put the passengers?”
“They would have to share.”
“Except for those who are scared of them, of course” sneered CT, staring directly at Moleskin.
“I am not scared of cats,” he replied. “I am allergic to them. They affect my breathing.”
“Yes, it’s always difficult to control your breathing when you’re terrified.”
Moleskin drained the beer from his glass and thumped it down on the table in front of CT. “Like when it’s your round,” he said.
The man in the Cavalry Twill glanced casually at his watch, drained his own glass and rose to his feet. “Good Lord,” he said. “Is that the time? Must get on. Carpe Diem, and all that” he said. “God is a fish…”

The Meaning of Life #1 can be found here.

The Meaning of Life #2 is here.

A Little Fiction – Frankie & Benny

“…So, you know what it’s like, you’re well into discussing the state of your underwear when you realise that the person you are talking to is not the person you thought you were talking to, but you can’t stop now, can you, without drawing attention to it? Without, as it were, looking an even bigger pranny than you already do.”
“Perhaps it would be wiser to keep the on-going condition of your undercrackers out of the conversation until you had a little more time in which to ensure clarity, viz a viz the ‘who am I talking to’ conundrum, in future.”
“What?”
“You do tend to introduce your grundies into the chat rather more early than is altogether seemly, if you want my opinion Benny.”
“I don’t!”
“Fine, that’s fine then… So, who were you chatting to in the end, anyway?”
“Turns out she was from the council. She’d come to discuss the complaint I’d put in about the smell.”
“And you thought it was the ideal time to introduce your trolleys into the conflab?”
“I thought it was a long-lost aunty or somesuch. I’d even offered her a Yo-Yo.”
“Mint or toffee?”
“Mint.”
“Classy.”
“Well, I thought she might have turned up out of the blue to tell me that I’d inherited some money or something. You can’t go offering Rich Tea in those circumstances, can you? That’s a Penguin conversation at least.”
“I have Viscount myself. Superior quality of tin-foil on a Viscount I find: stay fresh for week’s they do.”
“Yes, well, we’re not all superannuated you know.”
“Right, well, I can see why you got the Yo-Yo’s out Benny, need to make the right impression in such a circumstance, but what drew your shitty pants into the discourse?”
“She mentioned the smell.”
“From the yard?”
“Of course, that’s why I’d rung the council in the first place – not, of course, that I realised that she was from the council at that stage – but I thought that, if she was indeed a solicitor or somesuch, planning to make me the sort of offer that could see me as the proud owner of an automatic washing machine or an induction hob et cetera, then I needed to make her au fait with the fact that, whilst the money to make my laundry days a little less time consuming than my current trip to the laundrette in Morrison’s carpark would be most welcome, those same arrangements were not the cause of the unpleasant odour at that time permeating my whole flat and, to that effect, I thought it legitimate to mention that my pants were clean on last Thursday.”
“That being?”
“Monday. So a good few days left in them at that point.”
“And how did she react?”
“Well, that’s when I began to suspect that all might not be as it seemed, Frankie, that things were, indeed, somewhat at odds with my expectations.”
“Go on.”
“‘The Council is not in the habit of handing out loans to those who are – for whatever reason – unable to stop themselves from being the source of unpleasant odours,’ she said. ‘We do not, in short, expect to be called out to the properties of unsavoury old men in order to experience for ourselves the smell that they give off due to not being able to keep themselves clean. I bid you good day,’ she said, and made to leave. ‘Now just you wait on,’ I said, but she was ready for me. ‘If you think,’ she said, ‘that you can threaten me, Mr Anderson, you’d better think again,’ and she scooped up her Yo-Yo and left without a by-your-leave.”
“Oh dear. So what will you do now?”
“Well, we need to get out there and find out where the smell is actually coming from.”
“We?”
“I’m an old man, Frankie, you wouldn’t have me out there on my own would you? ‘Now, what’s causing that smell? Oh my God, look at that! It’s a…’ Exit Benny, gripping chest in agony. Alone and friendless in a smelly backyard.”
“Alright, point made. You are certain of your underwear situation, aren’t you?”
“Would you like to take alook for yourself?”
“No, no, definitely no. Ok, I’ll accompany you onto the patio. I’m not touching anything, mind.”
“Right, let’s go to it then: strike while the iron’s hot. I want to find out what’s causing the stink and rub that old luxury biscuit thief’s nose in it.”
“Ok. How do we get in there?”
“Where?”
“The backyard. How do we get in there? The door’s always locked, but I’ve never seen a key for it. Who’s got the key?”
“Ah, I’d never thought of that. I bet it’s that bloody TFW on the ground floor. I’m not knocking on his door to ask for it.”
“I’m not sure he’s even in. There’s an old lavvy outside his front door and about three week’s milk.”
“He took the lavvy out himself – with his head. It was annoying him, apparently, but the milk… You don’t suppose he’s dead do you? It would explain the smell.”
“I’m not sure that he could smell any worse dead than he did alive, my old chum. He had what I believe the BBC would term an ‘uneasy relationship’ with soap. Ten years I’ve been coming to your flat Benny, and other than the day of the gravy incident, I’ve never seen him change his clothes. I hear that David Attenborough is preparing to do a whole series on the life contained within his jogging bottoms… You want to get rid of the smell, you need to get out of this flat my friend.”
“But what if he’s dead?”
“Does he have any cats?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Nobody to eat him then. He could lay there decomposing for months. They say that you can never remove the smell of a dead body.”
“Particularly one that is welded to his clothes. I’ll phone the council again. I’ll say I can’t manage the stairs… Have you still got that spare room, Frankie? Just as a stopgap I mean. Just short term. Until they sort me out with a new flat. There are some empty near you aren’t there?”
“There are, yes. They are constantly becoming vacant, in fact there is a permanent hearse on standby at the end of the block. We used to run a sweepstake on who would be next, but there’s not enough of us left now. There’s more chipboard around me now than a kebab shop. Come on, let’s not bother phoning, we’ll just wander round and see them. Get your stick. Put a marble in your shoe, that’ll help.”
“Ok, I will… Shall we just have a cup of tea before we go?”
“Ay, why not. Don’t suppose you’ve got any of those Yo-Yos left, have you?””
“No.”

I decided to revisit some old ‘Little Fiction’ friends and whilst I was doing so, I met these new ones… N.B. my thanks to Billy Connolly for ‘TFW’ – Tattooed Fuck-Wit.

Frankie and Benny reappear here: A Little Fiction – Goodbyes (Frankie & Benny #2)