The company accountant is everything you’d imagine an accountant to be: mid 50s, stern, abrupt and very, very serious. It was the Christmas work’s do and the rest of us sat around feeling the customary awkwardness of having to socialise with people we wouldn’t normally choose to. Not the accountant though. He’d already drunk way too much Barnsley Bitter in the restaurant before we somehow ended up in the student area of the city in a bar that was far too trendy for the likes of us.
It was Salsa night. Everyone else in the bar knew how to dance Salsa properly and were obviously regulars. We couldn’t have been more out of place if the bar had been on the moon.
I was just about coping. The volume of the music fortunately meant I didn’t have to talk too much and I began examining potential excuses for leaving. However, half an hour later, the accountant disappeared. We searched everywhere for him until, just as we’d almost given up on ever seeing him alive again, I weaved my way to the toilet and spotted a grey head of hair bouncing around on the middle of the dance floor. Arms flailing, glasses skew-whiff, he was head-banging in the middle of a pack of serious and dedicated Salsa dancers.
FOCUSING ON SOUNDS & SMELLS
The company accountant – always ready with a savage quip, a headmaster’s voice with a home-counties accent. The accompanying smell of old churches and Golden Virginia.
The trendy side of Sheffield, moneyed students in a bar blasting out South American music loud enough to prohibit conversation. The fruity alcoholic smell of extravagant cocktails mixing with the Lynx deodorant that seemed to seep from the walls.
A fug of beer fumes lingered over our table and, amid the tumult of trumpets and bongos, we took our attention off our accountant for a second and he was gone – vanished like the smoke from his roll-up on a windy day.
We braved the girating bodies and flapping silk in search of him. We followed our noses through the swathes of perfume at the bar, crossed the underlying stench of sweat on the dance-floor and made it all the way over to the nostril shrinking tang of disinfectant by the toilets.
Nothing.
Then, a wisp of grey hair amid the cloud of elegant, sweeping youngsters. Right in the centre of the dance-floor, the aura of drunkenness coming off him like musk - there was our accountant pogoing mercilessly to chilled latino beats, as inappropriate and unavoidable as a klaxon in a library.
AS FICTION
Split personality. Jekyll and Hyde. However, instead of a chemistry set and beaker, the accountant’s magic potion came from the casks of the Kelham Island Brewery.
The rest of us were sober enough to be ill at ease and uncomfortable in the student bar. I tried to stay quiet, waiting patiently for the first couple to peel away from the group and go home so that I could more easily justify my own escape. But then, panic. Our accountant was missing.
We murmured concern over the deafening thump of the Salsa music. He was in a wild enough state to create trouble with the gym-attending, easily offended clientele 30 years his junior.
Having patrolled the perimeter, scanned dark corners, checked the toilets – both male and female – and sent out a rescue party to search the streets outside, there was still no trace of him. Then, reconnoitring the dance-floor one last time, I spotted him. A mass of grey hair bouncing anything but rhythmically amid the irritated looking Salsa-ists. With horror, I watched as the trademark brown cardie came off. Next, it was twirling around his head in what appeared to be some kind of pagan fertility ritual.
I wasn’t the only one watching. A pack of bouncers was gathering like storm clouds close by. The extraction of our accountant from that dance-floor would need to be planned like a military operation.
A HAIKU
Wild hair, flailing arms
Blind drunk feral accountant
In the Salsa throng.
FROM A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW
Boring bastards. Boring, miserable bastards. What’s the matter with you? This is fantastic! Listen to that music – can’t you feel it? Drink up, come on, let’s go and dance!
Wait, what are you doing? Don’t start talking about politics – are you mad, we’re on a night out! You, take your head out of your hands. Don’t you dare look at your watch and yawn. Keep drinking, all of you, it’s only half one – we don’t have to be at work for another eight…er...seven…no, seven and a half hours. The night is young and it’s Christmas!
What are you… get to the bar, come on! I’ll have a cocktail this time, get me a Sex on the Beach. I don’t care what it costs, I’m the bloody accountant, it’ll go under expenses.
I need to dance now, who’s with me?
What?
Miserable bastards.
Right, screw this, I’m off. Not sitting around here all night when there’s music like this playing.
Wow, they all look very good at dancing. It’s a bit controlled though, a bit too regimented, like a routine or something. You’ve got to really feel these rhythms, let it flow through you, be free with it. I’ll show you all how it’s done, I’ll get right in the middle, right in the mixer.
Excuse me, coming through, oops, sorry about that – it’ll wash out. This is more like it! Everyone – hey, everyone – watch me! This is how you do it!
I may be an old man but as you can see, I can still cut it with these youngsters. Impressive eh? Hello there my dear, what a lovely blouse you’re wearing.
CHANGING THE SETTING
I was at the gig, the gig I’d been waiting months for. The Deathpigs haven’t played here in seven years and the crowd were well up for it. The sense of anticipation had been building all the way through the support act and we must have necked at least eight ciders before the ‘Pigs even started. By the time I made my way down to the mosh pit at the front, I was already pretty wrecked – I think everyone was.
When they finally came on stage, the crowd went ballistic. Bronco had his devil mask on, Cagney was wearing all his leathers, Brody threw a bucket of fake blood into the crowd – it was amazing! When Fester picked up his bass and cranked up the amps, I was shouting so loudly that I lost my voice for three days afterwards. It was the best gig I’ve ever been to in my life.
There was one weird moment though, so strange that I can’t be totally sure that it wasn’t just a cider hallucination. Right at the start of the guitar solo in Head Full of Hate, I noticed this old guy. He was really smartly dressed with immaculate hair and well pressed clothes. There was a quiet dignity about him, he seemed to give off an aura of charm and sophistication. Baring in mind, this was when the crowd were at fever pitch - beer and spit and hair everywhere, psychos headbanging and crashing into each other and throwing bottles at the stage – the mosh pit was utter bedlam, a seething mass of black shirts and sweat. But none of it seemed to touch this old gent. He just breezed through the lot of us doing this smooth, slinky kind of dance. Never in my life have I seen anyone dance to The Deathpigs like that. In a really strange way though, it seemed to fit perfectly with the tempo and beat of Head Full of Hate, as if the old guy had natural rhythm and was totally at one with the music.
Like I said, weird.
Showing posts with label Exercise. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Exercise. Show all posts
17 February 2010
29 November 2009
Writing Clichés #2
WIDE EYED AND LEGLESS
That bloody alarm clock! That bloody snooze button!
I leapt out of bed and skidded across the bedroom on the July issue of Marie Claire. The mirror wasn’t my friend that morning. The massive zit that had been amassing for several days very helpfully chose today to erupt out of my forehead and my hair was a complete fright. All I could do was tie it back and cover it with a hat. Which hat? I shouldn’t be allowed to make important fashion choices when I’m still technically asleep.
Like an idiot, I grabbed the beret that had been lurking in a dark corner of my wardrobe, unworn since the day I bought it. I’ve no idea why it was even there – it had no place among my other clothes which tend to be quite dull and practical. I remember picking it up from a lovely stall on Camden market and imagining how Cosmopolitan and French it’d make me look. That had been a good enough reason when I was all giggly on Chardonnay but in the cold light of day I realised that all I looked was, at best: kooky, and at worst: completely deranged.
Who on earth wears a beret to the office on the day they’ve got an important marketing meeting at 9.30? I obviously wasn’t thinking clearly. I should have just gone back to bed and phoned in sick.
Clothes-wise, I put on the nearest things to hand which happened to be a pink blouse and a trouser suit that luckily wasn’t too creased. Only later when I was sprinting down the street to the tube station did I recall that the jacket had a tzatziki stain on it from Friday’s lunchtime bagel.
I was way too late for my usual train so I missed any encounter I might have had with my mystery man. Most mornings, it’s only the thought of seeing him that gets me out of bed at all. Two or three times a week we end up in the same carriage – that is, I make sure we end up in the same carriage if I’m quick enough to spot him through the window as the train slows down. He gets on somewhere further up the line and gets off somewhere further along, I’ve no idea where. One day, I’m going to book the morning off and follow him just to see where he works.
I imagine him being in publishing, possibly because he’s always reading when I see him. Not the Metro or a newspaper, it’s always a novel, usually written by some French author with loose morals. He has these cute little wire rimmed glasses and slightly overlong hair that’s elegantly dishevelled and makes him appear all arty and serious. I wonder if he’d been wearing his distinctive scarf that morning? I was probably thinking of him when I bought that damn beret.
We’ve never spoken or anything but the time is getting closer, I’m sure of it. Whenever he’s there, I sit as close to him as I dare and wait for him to look up so that I can catch his eye. Surely he must have noticed me by now.
But maybe it’s for the best if we never speak. What if he’s not half as alluring as I imagine him to be? What if he’s a tabloid journalist or a telemarketing guy? What if, when he opens his mouth, there isn’t a refined and gently accented Scottish or Irish burr but a broad Liverpudlian twang?
God, it would ruin my commute!
That day I was on the later train, the one that’s always packed. I had to squeeze in behind some exchange students and my face was in the sweaty armpit of a fat man all the way to the office. I tried my best to put on at least some make-up but what with holding onto the hanging strap and balancing my briefcase between my knees, I ended up with panda eyes and decidedly wonky lipstick. It would have to do.
No time for my usual Chai Latte pick-me-up from the Italian café outside the station or a friendly flirt with the security guard at reception that morning, I went directly up to my office and tried to make myself look as though I’d been there ages. I was just booting up my computer when my boss, poked his head round the door.
‘All set for the meeting Rosalyn?’ he said.
‘Oh yes, Mr Hague. Just spell-checking the final agendas.’
Then he saw my beret and physically flinched.
‘Er, that’s an interesting hat,’ he said.
I brazened it out. ‘Why, thank you Mr Hague,’ I replied, without looking up. He was too polite and old-fashioned to start giving sartorial advice to a woman twenty-five years his junior. I’d managed to get away with it.
There was barely enough time to print out the agendas before the meeting. As I headed upstairs in the lift with Mr Hague I noticed a glaring typo on the second line – typical!
The executive from the marketing agency and the photographer were already there when we arrived. I didn’t notice them at first because I was too busy juggling with an armful of files. I nearly dropped them when I saw who was positioned at the table opposite me.
‘Miss Bedford, I think you know Mr Henrion from the agency?’
‘Hi,’ I gasped at the exec.
‘And this is Jack Miller, our new photographer.’
He stood up and I shook his hand. Was that a glimmer of recognition that flashed across those piercing blue eyes?
‘Hello Miss Bedford,’ he said. It wasn’t Scottish or Irish but thankfully, it wasn’t broad Liverpudlian either. Definitely northern though, Manchester maybe? He’d worn that distinctive scarf today after all.
‘Nice beret,’ he added, with a smile.
That bloody alarm clock! That bloody snooze button!
I leapt out of bed and skidded across the bedroom on the July issue of Marie Claire. The mirror wasn’t my friend that morning. The massive zit that had been amassing for several days very helpfully chose today to erupt out of my forehead and my hair was a complete fright. All I could do was tie it back and cover it with a hat. Which hat? I shouldn’t be allowed to make important fashion choices when I’m still technically asleep.
Like an idiot, I grabbed the beret that had been lurking in a dark corner of my wardrobe, unworn since the day I bought it. I’ve no idea why it was even there – it had no place among my other clothes which tend to be quite dull and practical. I remember picking it up from a lovely stall on Camden market and imagining how Cosmopolitan and French it’d make me look. That had been a good enough reason when I was all giggly on Chardonnay but in the cold light of day I realised that all I looked was, at best: kooky, and at worst: completely deranged.
Who on earth wears a beret to the office on the day they’ve got an important marketing meeting at 9.30? I obviously wasn’t thinking clearly. I should have just gone back to bed and phoned in sick.
Clothes-wise, I put on the nearest things to hand which happened to be a pink blouse and a trouser suit that luckily wasn’t too creased. Only later when I was sprinting down the street to the tube station did I recall that the jacket had a tzatziki stain on it from Friday’s lunchtime bagel.
I was way too late for my usual train so I missed any encounter I might have had with my mystery man. Most mornings, it’s only the thought of seeing him that gets me out of bed at all. Two or three times a week we end up in the same carriage – that is, I make sure we end up in the same carriage if I’m quick enough to spot him through the window as the train slows down. He gets on somewhere further up the line and gets off somewhere further along, I’ve no idea where. One day, I’m going to book the morning off and follow him just to see where he works.
I imagine him being in publishing, possibly because he’s always reading when I see him. Not the Metro or a newspaper, it’s always a novel, usually written by some French author with loose morals. He has these cute little wire rimmed glasses and slightly overlong hair that’s elegantly dishevelled and makes him appear all arty and serious. I wonder if he’d been wearing his distinctive scarf that morning? I was probably thinking of him when I bought that damn beret.
We’ve never spoken or anything but the time is getting closer, I’m sure of it. Whenever he’s there, I sit as close to him as I dare and wait for him to look up so that I can catch his eye. Surely he must have noticed me by now.
But maybe it’s for the best if we never speak. What if he’s not half as alluring as I imagine him to be? What if he’s a tabloid journalist or a telemarketing guy? What if, when he opens his mouth, there isn’t a refined and gently accented Scottish or Irish burr but a broad Liverpudlian twang?
God, it would ruin my commute!
That day I was on the later train, the one that’s always packed. I had to squeeze in behind some exchange students and my face was in the sweaty armpit of a fat man all the way to the office. I tried my best to put on at least some make-up but what with holding onto the hanging strap and balancing my briefcase between my knees, I ended up with panda eyes and decidedly wonky lipstick. It would have to do.
No time for my usual Chai Latte pick-me-up from the Italian café outside the station or a friendly flirt with the security guard at reception that morning, I went directly up to my office and tried to make myself look as though I’d been there ages. I was just booting up my computer when my boss, poked his head round the door.
‘All set for the meeting Rosalyn?’ he said.
‘Oh yes, Mr Hague. Just spell-checking the final agendas.’
Then he saw my beret and physically flinched.
‘Er, that’s an interesting hat,’ he said.
I brazened it out. ‘Why, thank you Mr Hague,’ I replied, without looking up. He was too polite and old-fashioned to start giving sartorial advice to a woman twenty-five years his junior. I’d managed to get away with it.
There was barely enough time to print out the agendas before the meeting. As I headed upstairs in the lift with Mr Hague I noticed a glaring typo on the second line – typical!
The executive from the marketing agency and the photographer were already there when we arrived. I didn’t notice them at first because I was too busy juggling with an armful of files. I nearly dropped them when I saw who was positioned at the table opposite me.
‘Miss Bedford, I think you know Mr Henrion from the agency?’
‘Hi,’ I gasped at the exec.
‘And this is Jack Miller, our new photographer.’
He stood up and I shook his hand. Was that a glimmer of recognition that flashed across those piercing blue eyes?
‘Hello Miss Bedford,’ he said. It wasn’t Scottish or Irish but thankfully, it wasn’t broad Liverpudlian either. Definitely northern though, Manchester maybe? He’d worn that distinctive scarf today after all.
‘Nice beret,’ he added, with a smile.
13 November 2009
Writing Clichés
COLOR ME DEAD
Inglewood, West 33rd Street. I was parked outside a neat little redbrick building out in the ‘burbs at the request of a broad named Talula Monsoon. She’d wiggled into my office that afternoon and given me the sort of smile that can loosen a belt at ten paces. Just a simple job she said, a routine stakeout. I’ve been around the block enough times to know that nothing’s routine in my line of work, especially when my fee’s agreed with no questions asked. That amount of dough is enough to buy my curiosity and besides, Talula’s got the kind of figure that makes it hard for a guy like me to refuse.
It can get awful lonely at 3am in a dark suburban street. That’s why I always bring a friend. His name’s Mr Daniels but when you know him as well as I do, you just call him Jack. He’s a good buddy, very easy to get along with. He always travels light but he can pack a hell of a punch just when you need it. Boy, I needed it then. I reached across to the glove box to bring him out for a chat. I was a little jumpy, there was something in the air that night.
That something turned out to be a slug from a ’38. It missed me but caught Jack right in the neck. He was bleeding liquor down my suit before I even realised what had happened. Two more bullets slammed into the bodywork of my sedan before I took the hint and got the hell out of there.
I only just made it. The guy with the itchy trigger finger was now out in the street and he sure was mad about something. Not as mad as my mechanic was going to be, with two more shots my back window was gone and my trunk suddenly had air conditioning. He fired again, wide this time, then turned and ran for his car.
I headed for the hills with the guy right behind me. The roads out there are windy and unlit but I floored the sedan and hoped for the best. When I’d put some distance between us, I rounded a blind bend, skidded the car to a halt and killed the lights. It was time to have a little talk with my angry friend. In situations like this, I always find it best to do my talking with a Colt semi-automatic.
When he came around the corner, my gun was in my hand and I was ready for him. I put three, quick rounds into the space between the headlights and hoped I’d caught the engine block. At least one of them must have hit home as the car swerved to the right and into a ditch. Then, silence.
I waited a while, the smoke from my cigarette mingling with the smoke from my gun. Nothing moved.
Ten minutes later and the sound of those damn crickets was driving me crazy. I crushed my fourth cigarette under my heel and went over to see the damage I’d done.
The engine was ruined. So was the driver. Clunk click, every trip – I guess he forgot that. When the car hit the ditch he’d popped out of his seat like a champagne cork, straight through the windscreen and into the field.
He was very dead.
He was lucky, it would have cost him a fortune in chiropractor bills to fix that nasty crick in his neck.
I pulled out a torch and turned him over with my boot. I recognised the face immediately, especially the mouth, the guy had more teeth than a Ferrari gear box. I’d seen it enough times leering at me out of the gloom and more often than not, that view had directly preceded a lengthy sleep and a trip to Hopewood Infirmary.
Grinning Mike McGee, a hired goon running with Hoagy Winston’s mob. But Hoagy Winston ran his outfit on the Southside, what the hell was he doing in Inglewood?
I had no idea what Talula Monsoon had gotten me into but one thing’s for sure, I was suddenly in a whole heap of trouble...
Inglewood, West 33rd Street. I was parked outside a neat little redbrick building out in the ‘burbs at the request of a broad named Talula Monsoon. She’d wiggled into my office that afternoon and given me the sort of smile that can loosen a belt at ten paces. Just a simple job she said, a routine stakeout. I’ve been around the block enough times to know that nothing’s routine in my line of work, especially when my fee’s agreed with no questions asked. That amount of dough is enough to buy my curiosity and besides, Talula’s got the kind of figure that makes it hard for a guy like me to refuse.
It can get awful lonely at 3am in a dark suburban street. That’s why I always bring a friend. His name’s Mr Daniels but when you know him as well as I do, you just call him Jack. He’s a good buddy, very easy to get along with. He always travels light but he can pack a hell of a punch just when you need it. Boy, I needed it then. I reached across to the glove box to bring him out for a chat. I was a little jumpy, there was something in the air that night.
That something turned out to be a slug from a ’38. It missed me but caught Jack right in the neck. He was bleeding liquor down my suit before I even realised what had happened. Two more bullets slammed into the bodywork of my sedan before I took the hint and got the hell out of there.
I only just made it. The guy with the itchy trigger finger was now out in the street and he sure was mad about something. Not as mad as my mechanic was going to be, with two more shots my back window was gone and my trunk suddenly had air conditioning. He fired again, wide this time, then turned and ran for his car.
I headed for the hills with the guy right behind me. The roads out there are windy and unlit but I floored the sedan and hoped for the best. When I’d put some distance between us, I rounded a blind bend, skidded the car to a halt and killed the lights. It was time to have a little talk with my angry friend. In situations like this, I always find it best to do my talking with a Colt semi-automatic.
When he came around the corner, my gun was in my hand and I was ready for him. I put three, quick rounds into the space between the headlights and hoped I’d caught the engine block. At least one of them must have hit home as the car swerved to the right and into a ditch. Then, silence.
I waited a while, the smoke from my cigarette mingling with the smoke from my gun. Nothing moved.
Ten minutes later and the sound of those damn crickets was driving me crazy. I crushed my fourth cigarette under my heel and went over to see the damage I’d done.
The engine was ruined. So was the driver. Clunk click, every trip – I guess he forgot that. When the car hit the ditch he’d popped out of his seat like a champagne cork, straight through the windscreen and into the field.
He was very dead.
He was lucky, it would have cost him a fortune in chiropractor bills to fix that nasty crick in his neck.
I pulled out a torch and turned him over with my boot. I recognised the face immediately, especially the mouth, the guy had more teeth than a Ferrari gear box. I’d seen it enough times leering at me out of the gloom and more often than not, that view had directly preceded a lengthy sleep and a trip to Hopewood Infirmary.
Grinning Mike McGee, a hired goon running with Hoagy Winston’s mob. But Hoagy Winston ran his outfit on the Southside, what the hell was he doing in Inglewood?
I had no idea what Talula Monsoon had gotten me into but one thing’s for sure, I was suddenly in a whole heap of trouble...
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