Twelve

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from: richardvhirst@acemail.com
to: martintrhiggins@acemail.com
sent: 20.06.10 at 20.24 pmsubject: RE: Hello!

Marty!

Good to hear from you. I was starting to get worried. I thought French Tony might have found out you’d used the internet and kicked you out of his place. You know how he is. I had visions of you being forced to take the spare room in Nightrape Glenn’s spare room. Which would, of course, have been unspeakably terrible (it‘s a tiny room).

So you’ve turned to the sea, eh? I must say, I was most surprised to hear that, Marty. I didn’t think you were a huge fan of the sea, to be honest. Do you remember when you, me and Hunry Kevin had that stag night in Blackpool? When we were skimming stones on the beach? You didn’t skim a single stone - you just stood there, glaring at the water through your enormous novelty spectacles with the miniature windscreen-wipers on them, muttering darkly from beneath your plastic Viking helmet with the fake hair-braids, and moodily fondling at your set of fake breasts. It was most unnerving. Although I guess when you tried to attack the lapping waves with a plastic cudgel, me and Hungry Kevin took that as a fairly strong hint that you probably didn’t want to get married to that stripper after all. I still maintain the fact that she had your car keys and refused to give them back wasn’t enough of a reason to get hitched. Still, that was a long time ago. People change. We move on. Like trains or viruses or meal times. I’m glad you’re having a good time wherever in the world’s oceans you currently are. Send me a postcard when you land somewhere.

Things have been pretty much the same at this end - Virgil is still living in my flat (I’ve had rats lately - Virgil is an excellent ratter) and I’m still seeing Agatha. In a sense, things with me and her are going well. Although, in another sense - a more realistic one- they’re going really really badly.

Shortly after I emailed you last, I took her on a date - nothing too outlandish, I thought, just a meal somewhere nice. As I think I’ve mentioned before, the city here is awash with ‘theme restaurants’. You name a theme, there’s a restaurant for it. Go ahead. Name a theme! Dinosaurs, bomb hoaxes, grief counselling, gynaecology, anti-Semitism, Dave Spikey, flat-pack furniture, crazy golf, left-handedness, epilepsy, Islamic jihad, lecterns - and that’s just the corner of Bold Street South!

Anyway, I decided to take Agatha to Twilight Sycamores, which takes ‘ageing’ as its general theme. Specifically, it’s made up to look like an old people’s home. We were sat at a Formica trellis table in a along with a band of deaf and senile fellow diners, to complement the ambiance. Instead of being presented with a menu we simply had moulded plastic platter-dish with separate compartments for stewed carrots, mashed prunes, and some large blue pills. The evening was going quite well (not brilliantly), but when I looked around and saw some of the fellow diners having their faces shoved into armchairs they’d inadvertently soaked with urine as punishment I suspected something was perhaps a tad awry. By the time a man who I’d assumed to be the maitre d’ was pronounced dead in a vibrating Lay-Z-Boy, it was clear this was no theme restaurant at all but, in fact, a very real old people’s home. I was mortified. I apologised to Agatha profusely all the way home. She seemed to forgive me. We laughed about it. She gave me an affectionate chuck under the chin and I responded with a light punch to her arm. Unfortunately, it wasn’t light enough and I sent her tumbling into a large nettle-bush and angered a number of secreted wasp-nests and a particularly bitey feral cat.

To make things up to her, I booked us into a restaurant where I knew nothing could go wrong: Pasolini’s. No theme, no pensioners defecating and expiring around us, just food and, hopefully, a romantic atmosphere. Things got off to a bad start on our arrival, however. They’d lost our booking and were now so busy they had no tables free. You’d have been proud of me though, Marty! I was forceful and manly - all ‘I demand you give us some food!’ and ‘Please!’ and ‘Don’t make me cause a scene - I can cry like a freshly orphaned toddler on demand!’ After this, the head waiter said he’d see what he could do about squeezing us into the outside area. They were out of tables and chairs, so we had to make do with a highchair for Agatha, a stack of discarded tyres for me and an old ironing board for the table. This would’ve been fine. We could’ve gotten used to it, probably. The real pain in the arse (other than the shards of rust-coated glass sticking out of my tyre-seat) was there was so little room in the outside area that our makeshift table was actually in a nearby school’s outdoor basketball court. When we were trying to enjoy our lobster bisque starter Agatha got slammed rudely in the face with a basketball, knocking her smashed glasses and loosened fillings into her bowl. I offered to let her eat mine but, by the time she’d staunched the bleeding in her nose, the course had gone a bit cold. Things went fine during the main course of grilled swordfish - I talked about my childhood, the old town, my poetry; she about how the lemon juice dressing was aggravating her exposed tooth-nerve endings and lacerated gums - but during dessert night fell and some young people in hoodies had appeared in the basketball court ‘hanging around’. Thankfully, they didn’t seem too bothered about us. They just stood there, smoking. I don’t think what they were smoking were normal cigarettes though, Marty. Clouds of smoke kept drifting across to our table. Agatha started to feel quite ill, whereas I began unwittingly giggling. I tried to explain to Agatha how we were ‘all one large being, like a pony or one of those large dogs, if you think about it’. Then I found myself slumped across the filthy plates, papping her bosoms, mesmerised by the undulations. On reflection, it wasn’t my best moment.

Most recently, was the park. Parks are safe, date-wise. Nothing can go wrong in a park. I mean, there’s murders and sex-attacks and suchlike that go on in parks, but they usually happen at night. So this afternoon I took Agatha to the Henry Miller Memorial Park. We made our way to the Tropic Of Cancer duck-pond and I cracked open a bag of bread I’d brought along. They all waddled up to us and started nibbling and pecking away at the proffered crusts, Agatha giggling and swooning in my arms as they quacked and shook their wet little tails. Suddenly, one of the ducks started to flap its wings, making a strange croaky sound and eventually keeling over. Another one did the same, sprawling out into the mud. A couple more followed suit. It was at this point that I realised that I’d brought out the bag of poisoned bread Virgil had prepared to catch some particularly resilient rats. Soon I was ankle-deep in a sea of dead waterfowl. What had I done? Agatha shrieked by my side. For a moment I thought about poisoning her - my only witness, I could jab a hunk of the deadly bread down her throat. Whoever found the ensuing scene - a poisoned woman amid a Normandy landing of dead ducks - might reason that the whole thing was a strange, unintelligible suicide pact. But no. I pushed these thoughts away. I didn’t want to murder anyone (maybe it’s parks themselves which have this homicide-inducing effect on people, I wonder if anyone’s ever done a comprehensive study). Anyway, panic stricken, I collapsed onto my hands and knees on the muddy pond-shore and began scooping up the dead ducks in my arms. I entreated Agatha to do the same. Almost instantly it became obvious that there were too many ducks. They oily little bodies kept slipping out of our grasp. More ducks, curious of the mayhem, kept waddling out of the water, pecking away at the toxic bread, having a brief seizure, then dropping down dead. Some people on the other side of the pond were starting to get a sense of something being up. I was losing it. I began screaming. I tried to bury them in the mud, but still there were too many. Eventually, I saw one of those bags-for-life caught in the branches of a tree in the nearby Rosy Crucifixion Sapling Cultivation Area. I ran across and I yanked it down. We stuffed it with as many ducks as would fit, kicking those that we couldn’t carry back into the water. They floated and bobbed where they landed, their beaks nudging up against the shore-decking. I thought about secreting some heavy stones in their wing-feathers to make them sink, but there wasn’t time. I hurried back to my flat, one arm around Agatha to console her, the other around this ironically named bag-for-life containing the evidence of my grisly crime. When we got back, Agatha went for a bath so long she’s still in there now.

No sooner had I returned, when Virgil burst through the front door. Instead of his characteristic rags and bindle, he was dressed in a vest and a pair of chaps. I started to explain to him why I was holding a bag-for-life filled with dead ducks and that he probably shouldn’t try to eat them, but that he could maybe try to use them as rat-bait. But he was too excited about something.

‘I think I’m gay!’ he said, gesturing at his chaps. He looked very pleased.

‘Oh, really? That’s great. Congratu- wait, what do you mean, you think?’

‘Well, I’m not certain. I mean, I don’t really find men attractive, sexually. But I just have this feeling. It’s like a dull, constant pain in the back of my head, just behind my ear. Know what I mean?’

‘Not really, Virgil.’

‘Exactly! That’s because you’re not gay!’

‘Virgil, there’s more to being gay than liking chaps... I mean trouser-chaps… I mean…’

But he giddily started telling me about this club in the East side of the city, a Not-Quite-Gay club, for people who think they might be gay but aren’t certain or are in denial but have some kind of low-level pathological understanding of who they truly are. He said he’s going there tomorrow night, just to see, and did me and Agatha want to come along? I said yes. Why not?

Virgil left. In all honesty, I was grateful to see the back of him (he’d had his chaps on backwards). As I stored the bag of ducks by my fridge, hoping some of the inside coldness would somehow radiate out and delay their decomposing, I ruminated on how badly each of my dates with Agatha have gone. This last one in particular had been, at best, a total disaster - the most one can hope for in a date which culminates in a massacre of the local wildlife is that the experience will bring the two people together, bonded in blood by the shared trauma of the horror they’d conceived. This might not quite be the case here, I thought as I made a pot of tea, listening to Agatha’s racked sobs in the room next door. In fact, my whole time with her seemed to be cursed. Not that she was at fault, you understand, Marty. I was the one who’d even contemplated murdering her with poisoned bread - not an ideal thought for one’s date to have in his head in any situation. I fear we may simply have been mismatched and although we now, due my fatal error in selecting what to feed some ducks, may now have been through far too much together, I’m beginning to feel we also have little in common. I’m not going to tell her, obviously, but in my mind I feel this last date - to a wilfully confused and confusing club - will be ‘sink or swim’ for me and Agatha, if you’ll pardon the expression.

That’s all pretty grim, right? Don’t worry, Marty. There’s a cheery footnote to this email! Just as I’d finished typing that last paragraph I heard some rustling coming from the kitchen. When I went through I saw there was movement inside the bag o’ ducks. A webbed foot thrust its way through the throng of mallard corpses and waggled into view. I hurried over and plucked him out. One of them is alive, Marty! I ran with the little fellow up the stairs to tell Agatha. I should have probably given a little tap on the door or explained what had happened or done something other than shove the door open and release the duck to splash about with her in the bath. After she’d calmed down and stopped screaming about it being ‘a spirit hungry for vengeance’ I picked him back up and carried him back downstairs. He’s a friendly little guy. He’s sitting with me now, quacking away happily and playfully trying to peck at my hands as I type, Marty. Just like you! I think I’ll name him Martin.

Anyway, I’d better do something with that bag.

Bye for now,

Richard


　

Eleven

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from: martintrhiggins@acemail.com
to: richardvhirst@acemail.com
sent: 08.06.10 at 22.40 pm
subject: RE: Hello!


AHOY!!!

That means Good Evening in Sailor. Hello Richard. I know you probably thought I had stopped caring about you or died or something, but in fact I have been off out in the world 'finding myself'. I know, I know, it sounds ridiculous but it turned out I wasn't happy in our peaceful little home town and wanted more.

Basically, after my last email, I tried to make things work with Sally but failed. She insisted that I was actually the guy who played 'Paul', the geeky friend from 'The Wonder Years'. At first I thought it was funny and charming, but when she introduced me as 'Paul from The Wonder Years' to her friends and later her parents I felt enough was enough. "I'm not him!! I'm not Paul from The Wonder Years!!" I shouted at her as we sat in 'The Awful Prawn', the recently opened seafood restaurant I had brought her to that fateful night. She had told the bemused waiter I was Paul 5 times whilst we ordered starters. She threw her crab soup at my face and stormed off. It was on my journey home, as I tried to ignore the laughter of the teenagers sat behind me on the bus(my crabby fragrance apparently causing them much hilarity), that I decided that I needed to get away from the old town and see what else was out there.

I consulted with my uncle Patrick and he told me that a spell with the merchant navy hadn't done him "any harm". The fact that he was telling me this whilst attempting to fish from a paddling pool full of tea bags in his front room should have set off alarm bells, but it sounded good to me. The Navy. Men fighting the sea and winning. I went down to the docks that evening. After a rather close shave with some speed addled russian sailors I decided to come back the next morning instead.

And so, the following morning I walked down there again and spoke to the most trustworthy looking sea-faring gentleman I could find. It was there I met Captain Charles Bearsspit. He said he'd take me under his wing, of course I had no idea at that point that he meant that literally. He told me he would take me on as an apprentice sailor. I would work on his boat, 'The Flimsy Floozy', as a crew member and together we would see at least one of the seven seas. My god Richard, if you'd seen The Flimsy' in all her glory. The light glinted off her metal bits and the wooden bits were all worn and woody. The sail looked just like my bedclothes on my mother's washing line, flowing in the wind. I was hooked instantly, like a tea bag in my Uncle Patrick's paddling pool.

I have been a junior sailor now for 2 weeks. Everything is going very well, apart from my chronic sea sickness and the fact that I appear to be allergic to sea water. I spend most of my days throwing up in my cabin which I share with Old Bobby Womacknorelation and Little Terry Flopscotch. At night for some reason I can handle the sea sickness and so then I go out and help tie ropes and hoist sails. It's very exciting. We've dropped anchor somewhere in Spain and that's where I am writing to you from now! Did that make sense? The almost constant nausea is playing havoc with my mind. Anyway, we are here for the night getting supplies and some medical assistance for me and my bloody screaming/vomiting thing. Then we set off for.....who knows!! (Captain Bearsspit knows apparently, but he isn't talking to me because I threw up on his shoes this morning.)

I will contact you again when I can me old shipshape. Or is it mate? I've not got the hang of this yet, but by grog I will!

Your friend,

Martin

Ten

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from: richardvhirst@acemail.com
to: martintrhiggins@acemail.com
sent: 20.03.10 at 14:56 pm
subject: RE: Hello!


Richard

Hey, Marty.

Good to hear you’re trying to get back into the swing of things, albeit with mixed results. Have you ever thought of signing yourself up for some evening classes? My cousin Alf was learning how to smoke mackerel when he found love. In fact, his teacher turned out to be his future wife. Obviously, she also turned out to be a cannibal, something cousin Alf probably learned when she killed, smoked and ate him. Still, don’t let that put you off. People always forget that cousin Alf and Maria had many, many, many happy hours of matrimony before she stoved his head in with that galvanised concrete birdbath.

Ugh, what a week this has been! And it started out nice as lice, as my granddad used to say: the sun was out, the birds were singing in the trees, all was right in the world. But no, it’s ended up crap as a tap, as my granddad also used to say: the birds have all gone mad and are pecking me all over then precision-shitting into the wounds whilst the sun laughs like a drunk and smears its hot balls all over my face and the trees that all the birds had previously been singing in use their branches to pinion me down and say ‘DO YOU LIKE THAT? DO YOU? DO YOU LIKE IT?’ into my shivering, blubbering face. Metaphorically speaking, of course. As the old saying goes, ‘you can’t become Pope if you’re just a pillowcase full of prawns’. Actually, I’m not sure exactly what that means. It’s something else granddad used to say when he was in the home, shortly before the end.

Everything was fine, Marty! Things were all going so well - I was looking forward to this coming weekend’s date with Agatha (I’d planned on taking her to the Steve Martin Memorial Museum Of Toasters And All Things Toast); and I was starting to enjoy going to work a lot more - getting to see her around here and there at Benjamenta Insurance. During coffee breaks where we’d sit together and do the Independent’s new ‘erotic sudoku’ (although I’m not entirely sure how it qualifies as ‘erotic’ rather than ‘mind-wiltingly simple’ - all the numbers have to be either a six or a nine - I guess that’s so you can finish quickly and get some quick-as-a-flash rumpy-pumpy in before the end of your break). We even started leaving amusing little post-it notes for one another. Only yesterday I stuck one to her desk-tidy saying ‘How about a swift snuggle round 3.30pm? In the under-the-stairs cupboard where the Henry the Hoover lives?’ She left me a reply-note saying ‘I’m not interested. Frankly, I’m alarmed. Also this is a waste of stationery. Thanks. Geoff.’ which I thought hilarious till I remembered Agatha had indeed switched office-cubicles with Geoff Langley from accounts earlier in the week. Now I think about it, as I was leaving the note, I did think it seemed a bit odd that she had a monster-truck calendar on her dividing-wall, a picture of Geoff’s family on her desk, and an envelope stuffed with pornographic playing cards at the bottom of her drawer.

Anyway, besides this minor blip of misunderstanding, everything was going swimmingly. Until, that is, I got back from work last night to find Virgil, my ex-lodger, sat on my sofa. He’s returned to my flat for the time being whilst his new place is being used as the set for ‘Paint Your Dragon’, a sitcom about a family who have a large, mischievous pet dragon they have to keep secret from their priggish neighbours by painting it so it blends in with whatever background it’s stood against. Apparently Nicholas Lyndhurst’s in it. I think it sounds amazing.

We chatted for a bit, then I showed Virgil a picture of I’d taken on my phone of me and Agatha in the staff room, holding up our successfully completed sudoku in celebration. Then do you know what he said? Do you? I’ll tell you, because you probably don’t.

He said: ‘I did her.’ Just like that. All nonchalant, like he’s Serge Gainsbourg or John Leslie or something, and not a toothless, eczema-faced drunk who should be grateful to get any action from a dead lamb. He continued: ‘I did her. Like, in a sex sense. I mean, I had sex with her. Me and her - sex. Just so we’re clear. I’d hate for a series of amusing, madcap antics to emerge from a relatively basic misunderstanding here. I had sex with her. This woman in this picture you’re showing me on your phone. Her. I had sex with her. With my erect penis. And her vagina. Sex.’

Obviously, I thought there must be some kind of mistake. But no. Virgil was unashamedly adamant. He even started launching into a lengthy appraisal of the foreplay that had been involved, leaning forwards in his armchair and chuckling like some kind of bad Ronnie Corbett. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Obviously, we got into our old argument about Stagecoach's franchise-ownership of Sheffield's tram system - Virgil holding that it was a perfectly legitimate business-move, whereas I, as you know, maintain that the lack of adequate regulation involved in this transaction was the starting-point for the company's disregard for localised competitive strategy.

Enraged, I opened the door, stormed out of the room and slammed it shut. Immediately I realised I’d picked the wrong door, was in the fridge, and had pulled the door shut so hard nothing could re-open it. Three and a quarter hours later, with a little help from Virgil, the building’s utilities manager, and some lovely chaps from the fire service (and after three dozen or so rounds of ‘Imaginary Battleships’, ‘Imaginary Risk’ and ‘Imaginary Hungry Hippos’ with Virgil), I uncoiled myself from round the leftover roast chicken and measuring jug of curdling custard and was able to re-stage my dramatic exit five hours later.

I stormed straight into a woman in the corridor outside my flat. She had a slipper of Babysham in one hand, a large flash of mulled-sherry in the other, and a yard of Malibu in the other. I’d seen her around the block of flats before and figured she was one of my neighbours. Right away I could tell she wanted me. I don’t know whether it was my dizzying good looks, the waves of sexual magnetism I can’t help but radiate, or the fact I smelled very strongly of roast chicken and she was drunk and peckish. But when she said ‘I couldn’t help overhearing you have an argument with your friend in there. Would you like to come in for a cup of tea. I’m having a little party - just a small gathering,’ I said yes without a second thought.

I should’ve realised this was a bad idea when I saw the inside of her flat. The woman went off to make me a cup of tea and I saw that her living-room was lined with what looked like unlit phallic-shaped candles. In the corner nearest to me there was a large bucking bronco machine, but I couldn’t see how anyone could ride on it, Marty, because in the middle of the saddle there was some sort of large handle moulded into the seat. Initially it looked like there was four or five very old, very wrinkly people sat round a coffee table in silence in the centre of the room, all in the nude, whilst ‘Candle In The Wind’ blared out of a stereo system in the corner. By the time I’d realised they were actually a group half-deflated blow-up dolls it was too late to leave. The woman had returned. I accepted a mug brimful with tea, which turned out to be a pint whiskey with a teabag floating in it.

‘My name’s Chloe,’ she said, pushing me onto the sofa in between the sex-dolls. Then she started lapdancing, whilst eating a sausage and egg sandwich. The brown sauce spilled down her chin, she spat stray pieces of eggshell and gristle into my lap, some of her long fringe got caught in the sandwich so had to keep dragging food-matted lengths of hair from her throat. It was erotic. I stood up, took the remainder of he sandwich off her, took a bite out of it and said ‘Shall we take this to the bedroom?’

She was annoyed at me for stealing a mouthful of her lunch but agreed nonetheless. Her bedroom was worse than her living room. Every single patch of wall was covered with pictures of celebrity chef Rick Stein: magazine photos, newspaper cuttings, crayon drawings of him cooking his enormous genitals in a huge pan which had been specially converted from a decommissioned naval ship, print-offs of crudely photoshopped images of him dressed in dungarees whilst having sex with a bear’s skeleton. Still, I thought ‘No. I will do this.’

Chloe put some music on - another cd of ‘Candle In The Wind’ which she left on repeat - then began to undress. One of the first things I noticed was that she had a large bushy tail like a hairy dog’s. It wagged happily.

She caught me staring at it: ‘Oh, don’t worry about the tail. It used to belong to my Biffy. I was devastated when he died. Luckily, all it took was a brief bit of experimental grafting in the veterinary surgery,’ she said, stroking the tail, ‘and presto - part of him will live forever! It’s wonderful. And I save a fortune on toilet paper.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘And what are these on your back?’

‘Oh, they’re testicles. A side-effect of the treatment I had to undergo to counterbalance the effects of the dog-hormones that the graft introduced to my metabolism. Don’t worry though, I’m all woman. Other than the backers, of course. I call them that. It’s a mix of the words “knackers” and “back”, y’know?’

‘HOW SWEET!’ I shrieked, touching my hand against the nightmarish spice-rack of flesh, the whole thing two degrees cooler than the rest of her body. I felt like crying. Still, I thought ‘No. I will do this.’

Then I saw that there was an eyeball in her knee, studded into the bagged cap-flesh like a glacé cherry on a cake. ‘Oh, you don’t want to be bothered by Chaz,’ Chloe said.

‘Chaz?’

‘My unborn twin. My mother had a traumatic mishap in an out-of-control teacups ride when she was pregnant with us. As a result there’s pieces of him all over my body - an eye in the knee, a hand in the brain, and I think a couple of these backers might be his,’ she said, hopping into bed. ‘Don’t worry though, he can’t see you.’ The eyeball moved around, seeming to focus on me, winking and frowning in disapproval of what was about to occur as it disappeared beneath the sheets. Again I thought: ‘No. I will do this.’

‘CAN I TURN THE LIGHTS OUT?’ I asked, using my discarded clothes to block any light coming in under the door and draping a duvet over the curtain-rails to mask some exterior streetlight which was coming through the window. As I approached the bed though, I could just about see Chloe’s outline, and stopped in my tracks. Her profile looked exactly like that of former home secretary David Blunkett, Marty. As you know, there’s nothing which terrifies me more than former home secretary David Blunkett. Well, other than clouds, muffins, buttons, pigeons, fingernails, death, lawns, bumper-cars, mimes, bookmarks, coat-hangers, paté, balloons, guinea pigs, broccoli, question marks, hammers, old people, bongos, skimmed milk, and The Wurzels. Nothing.

She said: ‘Since the 11th of September, 2001, we've faced a heightened threat level. And we've been enhancing both the exchange of intelligence and security information and the assessment of that information, because that's the crucial element.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said are you okay?’

I’d had all I could stand. Before I knew what was going on I’d bolted out of the flat and was stood inside mine, leaning against the door and panting. Virgil, who’d been lying weeping on the sofa whilst watching Gramsci and the Mutt on that new Marxist Cartoon Channel. He stood up when I came in. He asked why I’d stormed out. When I told him he laughed and asked me get the picture back up on my phone-screen. After a brief return to Chloe’s to gather my clothes I pulled the phone out of my pocket and showed him.

‘No, not her,’ he said, pointing at Agatha. ‘I meant her’ And he pointed at the picture of Judith Chalmers in the newspaper we were holding up. ‘I had sex with Judith Chalmers. Up against a lamppost in a town in Estonia whilst a tv crew filmed the whole thing. Some locals paid to watch. It must have made quite a controversial Wish You Were Here…? At least, I’m pretty sure it was her. She didn’t speak a word of English.’

My mind's all over the place. After spending the best part of an evening directing my hatred towards Agatha for whoring it up with a confused homeless man who, it would seem, was actually being whored out himself by an Estonian pensioner who had the good luck to look a little bit like Judith Chalmers, and coming close to going through a sexual Hellraiser, I’m not sure what to think. I feel awful. I’m supposed to have my second date with Agatha tonight, but I think I might cancel. What should I do? Should I tell her? Keep it secret? Help me out here!

Richard

Nine

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from: martintrhiggins@acemail.com
to: richardvhirst@acemail.com
sent: 09.03.10 at 21.10 pm
subject: RE: Hello!



Richard,

I apologise for my lack of correspondence. It has been quite a month. I have moved out of Tony's place and am now staying at the B & B just outside town. It's run by Mrs. Throttle, a former circus freak and current holder of the North West Women's Wrestling Federation's championship belt. After I last wrote to you, I decided that it was time to get back on the saddle (not the one that Tony had installed in his kitchen but the metaphorical saddle) and get myself back in the game. The best way to do this, I thought, was by throwing myself at the mercy of our town's bustling nightlife. Tony and I started by celebrating my new found freedom at 'BEWBS', the only strip bar within 200 miles. I don't know if you remember 'BEWBS' Rich, I think we tried to get in there once on your 16th birthday but failed due to both of us being dropped off outside the venue by my parents, in clear view of the bouncers. My mother's insistence on getting out of the car, running after us, and presenting us both with packed lunches did our attempt at decieving the doormen no favours. Anyway, this time Tony and I entered with ease and I must admit I felt a little shudder of electricity flow through me as we pushed through the curtain of beads that separated us from the ilicit thrills within. Sadly this turned out to be quite a strong reaction to the static electricity contained in the curtain and I went into convultions for around 7 minutes. Tony managed to convince the staff that I was "only mucking around" and somehow got me seated at the bar. When I regained consciousness I was rewarded with the sight of Tony whooping and clapping as a middle aged leather sofa disguised as a woman gyrated wildly in front of us to the sounds of Chris Rea's 'Lady In Red'. She wasn't even wearing red Rich, she was wearing a purple and green tracksuit with the legs and sleeves cut off. I ordered us a round of drinks which ended up costing £57.86 (two pints of Sultry Mist which I am SURE is just Sailor's Breath rebranded for the erotic dancing market) and prepared to face the next 'performer'. This turned out to be 'Lambrini' who was a shaven headed midget woman wearing a fishnet kagool. Her tune of choice for her seductive manouveres was 'Snooker Loopy' by Chaz'n'Dave. It was at this point I dragged Tony away and we walked back to town. If this was what the single life entailed here then I wanted none of it. I must meet another lady.

The next day at work, I was talking to Mildred the receptionist at Betterbins about my issues with meeting women and she suggested a dating agency. I found a place on Main Street called 'Blind Date Mate' and after a long discussion with a member of staff about my likes and dislikes, my allergies, and my most irrational fears, I was told that this agency would be able to set me up with at least three different blind dates over the next few days. I went home, excited at the prospect of new love awaiting me. The next day I recieved an email with details of the venue for my first date and the time I should be there. I arrived at The Golden Badger promptly at 8 pm and was shown to my table. Five minutes later my date arrived. It was quite clearly Mr. Bradley Nichols, the man who'd interviewed me for an hour at the agency the day before, only now he was wearing a green wig covered in glitter and an orange catsuit. He looked like a transexual carrot. He introduced himself as 'Brandine' and I made awkward small talk with him for ten minutes before finally excusing myself and walking out. I simply told him that I was not in any way interested and wished him good luck. The next day I recieved another email with a new date location and time. With some trepidation I arrived at Mario and Luigi's (Authentic Thai Cuisine) and was once again faced with Mr. Nichols this time masquerading as 'Ladybelle' and sporting a 3 ft beehive wig and a faux leather mini-skirt. I turned on my heel and left. The third email I simply ignored.

After that I tried internet dating. A site called 'www.ewwwwwww-harmony.com'. After 29 pages of questions and a rather uneccessary eye test, the site produced one match. Lambrini, the miniscule stripper with a thing for sexy rainy day clothing. Finally Tony and I went along to a speed dating night at The Posh Whelk. After an initial problem with the process which saw myself and Tony sat in front of each other for three 'changes' in a row, and a few awkward sittings with women who actually drifted off during my minute of chat, I found myself blathering at speed to a young lady called Sally. She actually seemed interested as I described myself and my interests at rapid speed whilst dabbing at my brow every three seconds to absorb the Niagra Falls of sweat that was pouring from my, well, my pores. I stopped and dropped my head to indicate that I was finished and that she could now get up and leave. To my surprise she lifted my head, said "Let's go", and we went and had a drink elsewhere. She's very nice and I'm seeing her again this week. I'm not going to say more about her until I see her again, I don't want to jinx it. Unfortunately Tony met someone that night too and that is why I am living in a Bed and Breakfast. She is called Tinkerbell. She is 6 ft 4 and can open tins of soup with her teeth. She moved in THE NEXT DAY and I quickly found myself on the streets. No really, I mean she actually threw me out of the bedroom window.

Well anyway I have rambled enough. My dear Richard it seems we both have promising women on the go. Agatha sounds like a keeper, I've never known you to get to the Le Loi dynasty with any of the girls here. She must be a special lady. Good luck sir, keep me updated!

Martin

Eight

To see the previous post click here.

from: richardvhirst@acemail.com
to: martintrhiggins@acemail.com
sent: 05.03.10 at 00:52 am
subject: RE: Hello!

Hey Martin,

It’s been a while since I heard from you. I guess you’re still staying at French Tony’s and he’s still banning you from believing in the internet. Still, just thought I’d check to make sure everything’s okay.

Also, I had my date with Agatha the other night and thought I’d let you know how it went. It went well. I had a tiny bit of a panic over where to take her. First I thought about maybe taking her to the Golden Pudenda, a swanky-looking Chinese restaurant I’d seen a couple of times on the way to work. But then I remembered the fiasco that was the time you and me went for that Chinese New Year meal with those mental Chang sister (right after I’d said it I was aware that raising my glass and shouting ‘Chinky chink everyone!’ was a touch inappropriate. I said sorry. And all those ‘Chinesey impressions’ I kept doing were supposed to be examples of the callous, passive-aggressive racism I don’t indulge in as part of the apology). Anyway, I decided Chinese food was a potential minefield. Then someone at the office told me about a place called The Darwin. Here in the city, the rules is that any restaurant which is called ‘the’ something is usually a pretty high-class place, so I booked a table. However, just to make sure, I went to check it out. It isn’t a swanky, knob-packed joint, Martin - it’s a ludicrous evolution-themed eatery where monkeys on snakeboards raced about bringing and taking away plates. This may sound like a lot of fun but it wasn’t: the plates themselves have to be made of paper due to being constantly dropped by the stupid animals; the floor has a thick carpet of soiled sawdust due to the serving-chimps perpetually shitting their nappies to overflowing; and I was asked to sign a piece of paper on the way in which said that I accepted all liability, should I be attacked by one of the monkeys, a possibility made all the more real by the small squadron of men wearing disturbing-looking rubber Stephen Jay Gould masks who patrol the service-monkeys with taser-rifles. That said, for desert I had a large ice-cream sundae which was in the shape of a giant DNA strand complete with rum ‘n’ raisin guanines, tutti-frutti adenines and a sugar-frosting backbone. That was quite nice.

Anyway, I rejected these along with a few other more promising dining possibilities, deciding in the finish - there was quite a bit of blind panic judgement on my part - that there was only really one place I could feasibly take Agatha: the large multi-storey car-park, just off the ring-road round the corner from my block of flats, across the B.S. Johnson Memorial Flyover.

I know you’re probably reading this thinking it doesn’t sound very romantic. And you’d be right. After I’d frantic speed-history of how the Le Loi dynasty came to displace the Ming lineage and we’d had the picnic I’d prepared - some Laughing Cow and rollmop sandwiches, a tube of Pringles Rice Infusions, and a four-pack of Gunmetal Special - in an awkward silence, it started to dawn on me the nigh pitch-black environs, which I’d assumed would provide an atmosphere of dimmed intimacy, were perhaps a massively terrible mistake. My suspicions were confirmed when a gang of youths arrived and told us they’d ‘make our heads bleed like radiators. It’ll be well sontag. It’ll be drastic pigeon hose.’ Obviously, I’ve no idea what any of this actually meant but the fact they were brandishing golf-clubs and bike-chains whilst they spoke gave me cause to believe a threat of violence was being issued. I hastily moved me and Agatha on to the park. I’d heard there was some kind of public music event going on there. Sadly, this turned out to be a small band of nationalist Bavarians. We stayed for most of a surprisingly rousing oompah-rendition of the Horse Vessel song before I got us moving on again, this time for a walk along the river.

I tried to think of nice things to say to Agatha. My brain was trying to decide between ‘your hair smells like Cherry 7Up if you’d swilled a Boost about in it then drank through one nostril it whilst sniffing an éclair with the other’ or ‘Your eyes are nice and kind-looking like puppy suffering from myopia.’ By the time I’d reached a decision and was about to speak (I’d opted for the second) I saw there was a couple of policemen fishing something out of the river. I don’t know if you’ve heard the news-reports about Cannibal Stan, the flesh-hungry psychotic who’s somehow got accidentally released from the local Herisau maximum security hospital. His serial-killer’s ‘thing’ is that he murders his victim then eats their entire body, leaving only their chewed-off her hands and feet as a gruesome calling card. These, it turned, were what the policemen were fishing out using a plastic JJB Sport bag. Now, as I’m sure you‘re aware, JJB Sports provide their customers with plastic bags which have a ruched, string-drawn opening. This design was causing the two officers a few problems - the weight of the limb-ends they’d succeeded in collecting were causing the bag to weigh down heavily on the branch they’d chosen to use as a rod, pulling the bag-mouth closed. The remaining severed hand escaped their attempts and bobbed free, following us along the river as we walked, like the grisly guilt-vision of crime I’d not committed. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to generate a sense of pastoral romance whilst being slowly pursued by the amputated hand of a recently butchered prostitute. Probably not. It’s awful. The bright red nail varnish, the thumb and index finger curling slightly from a lifetime of providing strangers with relief, the suggestive bobbing motion - the whole thing seemed intent on mocking my undeclared sexual thoughts. We attempted conversation: she told me about how she wanted to train to become an avian cage-maker but couldn’t afford the fees right now and how her sister had recently injured her shoulder when a ferris-wheel she was on at a Tuscan Christmas fair had stalled; I told her it sounded like she was going through a really tough time and tried to touch her on the leg. But then I looked at the floating, gnawed-off extremity, all bloated from the river-water and pale from death. The whole date, which had started quite poorly, was going down like Sexually-Liberated Stacey in a knackered lift on New Year’s. Only with a lot less sex. We decided it was time to call it a day. If I ever meet that bloody Cannibal Stan I’ll give him such a slap.

So, we left things at that. I thought trying to go in for a kiss on the periphery of a crime scene might give the wrong impression. Still, I have the promise of a second date, so that’s something.

Still, enough about me. What’s going on with you? Are you moving out of French Tony’s soon? Any plans to move out of the old town completely? Any dark horse-ladies in the running?

Richard

Seven

To see the previous post click here.

from: richardvhirst@acemail.com
to: martintrhiggins@acemail.com
sent: 10.02.10 at 04:58 pm
subject: RE: Hello!

Hey Martin,

As you can see, I’m up early this morning. Not for any particular reason: my sleep was interrupted by yet more David Blunkett nightmares. This time I dreamt I’d managed to trap him inside a jar of mayonnaise but he was using a pair of genetically altered arms -a masonry drill-bit on the end of one, a mad basking shark on the other - to bore his way out whilst giggling like a tickled cretin.

Sorry to hear about you and Veronica breaking up. That’s terrible news. But, as you’d probably gathered, I was never a massive fan of hers and I do kind of think you’re going to be better off without her. But still. I don’t imagine sleeping in French Tony’s bath is exactly a whole load of fun. At least you can get some much-needed peace and quiet. Does Tony still live in that tiny flat above the pneumatic drill museum? And does he still breed those Croatian Shrieking Lizards in his toilet cistern? Is he still hosting those late-night primal-scream and shotgun-practice therapy sessions? Of course you can come down and visit me whenever you want. As long as you don’t mind sharing a sofa with a tramp - Virgil’s still hanging round my place till the bonus cheque from his gang comes through for him to put an deposit payment down on a luxury penthouse apartment in Pelmet Heights. Don’t worry though - Virgil won’t interfere with you! Ha ha lol ha! (Seriously though, he has done a stretch for violent sexual assault fairly recently, but I’ve had no problems with him. Not really.)

I didn’t really want to tell you this, but this seems like as apt a time as any to come clean: Veronica once made a pass at me. It was about eighteen months ago. Remembered when I was round at your place with Dog-Patter Geoff for our fortnightly Malibu And Guess Who ‘poker-evening’ and I borrowed your dvd of City Slickers 2: The Legend Of Curly’s Gold? Just as I was leaving I said I’d bring it back next time I was over to which Veronica replied: ‘No need for that. Just post it through the letterbox.’ Understand? See what I’m saying? Just post it through the letterbox. Get it? It’s pretty unambiguous, right? Clearly she meant ‘just post it through my letterbox.’ The ‘letterbox’ in question clearly being her groin-slot, the ‘it’ requiring postage being my throbbing chapwand, and the act of ‘posting’ being a few minutes of trouserless and semi-rhythmical jiggling mayhem. It might sound like I’m projecting a meaning onto this insignificant-sounding little statement she patently didn’t intend, but it was there - in her tone, in her coyly standoffish body language, in the way she glared at me when she said it. A palpable level of disgust registered on her face when she looked at me. Was she disgusted because I’d just triumphed after you and Dog-Patter Geoff had dared me to eat a tube of Pringles using a full family sized tub of Flora as a dip? Or was she so turned on by the thought of me making love to her right there, amongst the empty marge-tubs and Pringle-lids, that the prospect of it not happening there and then disgusted her? The answer seems pretty obvious: she was what I believe is medically termed ‘gagging for it.’ ‘It’ once again being my erect memberstick. But before you go mental Aunt Maggie’s and start smashing apart her fax machine with pork-chops and copies of Razzle like some kind of nihilism-age Othello, just let me just state emphatically that I didn’t take her up on the gymnastical sexual wizardry that was clearly on offer. I just left and, a couple of days later, literally and non-erotically popped the actual dvd through the non-euphemistic letterbox. I don’t want you to get the idea that I’ve got an inflated sense of my own sense of magnetism or anything, but the only reason I’m telling you all this is because I think it maybe has something to do with the problems you and Veronica were obviously going through of late. I literally can’t imagine what being turned down by me would do a woman’s mind: Christ only knows what witless fuck-donkeys she turned to in her squalid hunt for a sex-shag.

Anyway, never mind all that, right? You’re free! Free! Free! I gather men are normally encouraged to think of the abrupt conclusion to an intimate relationship in this way: free! Said repeatedly with an exclamation mark on the end. You can do all the things you’ve always wanted to do: setting up that roleplay society to enact the woodland battle scenes you always said should have been in Basic Instinct, teaching football at the local cattery, making tiny effigies of Joanna Lumley from dehydrated porridge so you can repeatedly live your dream of watching her dissolve when you put them in hot milk. You could even make your move on Marigold Globfash now. You always had a bit of a thing for her, right? I know the fact she had rather a large testicle growing out the side of her nose is a bit off-putting, but she’s got a great sense of humour. And all the doctors were in total agreement that any rogue man-hormones were almost definitely safely contained within the unsightly Sid James and she was, therefore, all woman, legally speaking.

Things here are more or less the same: work is now a routine, soul-withering experience, the initial novelty having pretty much totally worn off. I’m starting to think I might even look for some other employment. On the plus side, know that girl Agatha I mentioned? The one I kept trying to talk to but instead of normal, human words all that came out was medieval tactical military history of the Middle East? Somehow I’ve arranged a date with her. Don’t ask how - the whole thing was agreed whilst my mind was lost in a fug, listening to myself list the reasons behind Basil II’s initially successful attempt to conquer the Balkans. Before you say anything, I know! I’ve jumped both backwards in time from Kublai accepting Planocarpini’s papal visit to the eleventh century- I’d hoped that, by now, I’d at least got as far Chu Yüan-chang establishing the precedence of Ming dominance over the Mongol regions - and geographically: what the hell am I doing in the Balkans?! I'm out of my depth. Anyway, by some miracle a date was arranged for next week. Wish me luck!

Richard











PS: Funny about French Tony speaking French. Are you sure that’s where his name comes from? I could’ve sworn it came from the fact that he looks like French toast. You’ve got to admit he does look a lot like French toast.

Six

To see the previous email click here.

from: martintrhiggins@acemail.com
to: richardvhirst@acemail.com
sent: 08.02.10 at 21.34 pm
subject: RE: Hello!

Hi Rich,

I know it's been a while since I've been in touch. I've not had any access to the internet for the last week. I am currently staying at French Tony's house and he doesn't believe in the internet. It's not that he doesn't believe in using the internet, or that he's morally opposed to it. No, it turns out that Tony literally does not believe that the internet exists. I bought a laptop and tried to sneak it into the house but he found it and buried it somewhere in the garden. I have had to pay £17.50 for 15 minutes internet use in 'Aunt Maggie's Coffee-Cafe/Shop/Newsagent/Butcher's' on Pernicus Street.

Why, you may be wondering, am I staying at French Tony's? Well Rich, I know you won't be surprised or probably even upset to hear this, but Veronica has dumped me and kicked me out of my own flat. And I am gutted. It all happened the weekend before last. Veronica came home early from Speed Chess class to find me sat in front of the PC, large bottle of Lucozade in hand, and a dirty website on the screen. I was mortified. She was furious. I don't know if you've ever seen the site before Rich, you were always so secretive about your online favourites, but it's a cracker. It's called 'Womenofloosemorals.com' and features pictures and videos of women in short dresses smirking, smoking, drinking beer, dropping litter, paying bills weeks later than they should and in some cases NOT PAYING BILLS AT ALL. I know, I know, absolute filth, but I feel very strongly that every man should have a few vices. Obviously my Uncle Patrick believes this in a very literal sense, and the less said about 'Paddy's World of Grip' the better. Anyway, she went ballistic and we had a horrendous arguement.

I can give you a good idea of how horrendous mate, I swore. I said "Why don't you get off my frigging case, you crazy whore-faced miscreant!!". She was speechless for at least a minute. You know very well how little I swear. I guess it's because of the time I spent at the School of Christian Brothers. Those were tough times at that school, Dominic and Lorenzo Christiano were harsh taskmasters, but I was always taught that swearing was wrong and that every time I swore, Jesus would drop some change and bump his head looking for it. Of course, it later transpired that the Christian Brothers establishment was not a school at all but a mechanics. As a result I cannot quote you any poetry, or solve an equation, but I can strip the engine of a ford fiesta in 10 minutes flat.

Anyway, after that fight she told me I had one night left in the flat so that I could pack my stuff, and then I had to leave. I agreed, resigned to the fact that we were coming to the end of our adventure. I was dividing our box sets, one episode each, when the doorbell went and a selection of Veronica's friends and some local sailors stumbled into the flat. She had decided to hold a party to celebrate her new found freedom. Ever the gracious host, I served drinks and snacks to them all until around 1 am whereupon a large man called 'Slash-face' with a map of Swansea tattooed on his forehead insisted that I leave. I made my way to French Tony's and asked if I could stay at his for a bit and here I am still. It's not permanent, I don't really like sleeping in a bath, it's just until I get my head sorted out. I miss Veronica and my lovely flat, but I guess things weren't working and something had to give. I wish you were here Rich, I could do with a shoulder to cry on and a sofa to sleep on. Maybe I could come visit you? Let me know if this is possible, I don't want to intrude on the home that you and Virgil have built there.

I better go, Tony stands out in the street and shouts if I'm not back in the house by 10 pm. Incidentally, did you ever hear how French Tony got his name? Apparently one day 12 years ago in The Greasy Face he inexplicably said 'Oui' instead of 'Yes' when he was asked if he wanted more tea. The name just stuck.

Take care, hope to hear from you soon.

Five

To see the previous post click here.

from: richardvhirst@acemail.com
to: martintrhiggins@acemail.com
sent: 01.02.10 at 22:11 pm
subject: RE: Hello!

Hey Martin,

Good lord, all that business with Mr Crumbgold sounds terrible. It also explains the text message I got from him late that very night. It read:

‘IM GON 2 TAKE U LIEK A PIL LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1’

Actually, no. It doesn’t explain it at all. That’s part of the reason I’m here, Marty - out of the old town and living the high life: the other night I went to a bar that sold African beer. African beer! Can you imagine such a thing? It’s beer, but from Africa. Amazing! I mean, it tasted rank, really rank - like drinking the fermented sick of a tramp who’d spent his final days licking a battery, snorting some onion flavoured pigeon-droppings and eating some particularly garlicky fish semen - but I didn’t say that at the time, obviously. I don’t want my new city-friends thinking I’m racist or anything. So I smilingly drank my way through six pints of the stuff until it felt like my body was going to make me unwillingly swallow my tongue, lips, teeth and most of the skin on my face in protest.

Anyway, my point is: there’s not really a whole lot you can do. This sort of thing with Mr Crumbgold happens all the time - not the ‘bottlefingers’ incident specifically - but when I was working at Betterbins, he’d go through these insane, depressive phases which always seemed to characterised by a manic ‘workplace idea’: there was ‘Sing-Song Snip-Snip Saturday’, where he lumbered round all the workers with a bottle of Farmer Dampcrotch Cider and a pair of kitchen scissors, cutting strips from their shirts whilst noisily blubbing the lyrics to ‘Who Wears Short Shorts’, replacing the word ‘shorts’ with ‘shirts’; there was ‘Funny Foothand Ha-Ha February’ where he made all the temps wear Gola football boots on their hands and stood watching them whilst they attempted to type, drinking screaming passages from Peter Sutcliffe’s trial transcripts through an electronic megaphone; and then there the outright fiasco that was ‘Bring Your Own Pet Into Work Fortnight’. Poor Maureen. And poor Professor Waffles. God rest her poor his little doggy soul. And God rest poor his little staple-addled, rubber-bands-threaded doggy body. ‘Puppetry Of The Puppy’, that homemade video Crumbgold insisted on sending into You’ve Been Framed, haunts my dreams to this day. I can only conclude some ghastly internal programming error has led ITV to repeatedly broadcast it as part of the show’s opening credit sequence.

The reason, I found out, for these drunken bursts of monstrosity is actually pretty simple: it’s Mrs Crumbgold. His wife, Horny Wendy, sporadically packs her things and leaves him, only to return within a couple of weeks. After this, you’ll find Crumbgold will calm down quite a bit. It might help to talk to Horny Wendy though - both to speed things up and to make sure she isn’t leaving him for good this time. Don’t be put off by her name though: she’s not, as far as I’ve ever been able to ascertain, particularly sexually adulterous. No, her nickname derives from the fact that she actually has a twin set of horns growing out of her head, like a goat or the devil. Don’t be alarmed though! She won’t mind if you stare at them or anything - she’s very un-coy about her horns, proud even. A lot of the time she paints them with nail-varnish. She’ll let you touch them if you ask her, maybe even hang your hat or a tea-towel off them. I remember one Christmas she came into the office with some baubles and a little plastic cherub hanging from them. Very festive. All that said, however, you will have to sleep with her to get her back with Crumbgold. That’s just the way things are.

So, yeah. That’s the sum total of my advice, I’m afraid.

Nothing much is different here. I’ve managed to chat to Agatha, that girl in the office I quite like, a couple of times, but I still have that old problem: I see her making a coffee in the staff-room and decide, after anxiously phrasing what to say in my mind to make it sound as casual as possible, to talk to her. But, instead of saying ‘So, doing anything this weekend?’, when I open my mouth out comes: ‘The Mongol empire owed its successes both to its theo-aristocratic roots and to Temujin who, despite the not initially commanding a heavily populated army, succeeded in uniting the clans of the Onon, Kerulen and Arugun valleys under his leadership and whose military victories gave him an unprecedented authority. The first of these victories took place in 1211 when he launched a successful campaign against the Chin Empire, taking Peking three years later…’ I go on like this until she’s finished drinking her cup of coffee, cleaned up her mug and the spoon she used to make the cup of coffee, and then left the room. I even continue speaking for a while after she’s left, just to comfort myself. So I’m not seeing it as a hugely accomplished wooing campaign at the moment. Where does it come from, this awkward inability to chat to women normally, without lapsing into a narrative regarding early thirteenth century Asian warfare? It’s a nightmare. Still, I’ve rambled as far as friar Planocarpini’s meeting with emperor Kublai in 1245 so, hopefully, after I’ve got past the point where the Mongul Empire finally collapses in 1368, my mind will be able to move on to jabbering mindlessly away about a slightly more romantic period of medieval military history.

Work is still pretty boring. I find myself daydreaming whilst sat in my cubicle copying out the red ink numbers and the black ink numbers. Throughout Friday I was lost in a vivid reverie in which I’d been taken prisoner by a company from the Korean military who were dressed like Amish hodd-carriers, wore matching dressing gowns made out of smoke and Plexiglas, and were aggressively pressing me into staging a production of Evita on a slowly deflating bouncy castle with a cast made up entirely of deceased and decaying giraffes. This can’t be healthy. I keep extending the length of time I’ve allowed Virgil, the tramp, to stay in my flat, just so I’ve got someone to have a conversation with when I get home. And even he might be leaving soon. Apparently he’s been doing some sterling work for the Cunt Fuckers, the criminal gang he’s joined. They started him out on boring, low-level thuggery: answering the phones, filing invoices from fellow gangs, photocopying beating-victims’ faces, etc. He’s shown so much promise there’s a good chance he’ll get a pay rise, company car and an office of his own, the sort that have a little shower in the adjoining bathroom and loads of those weird, slightly boring metal toys on the desk. I can’t imagine a guy with that sort of life hanging round on my sofa, watching Touch The Truck repeats and playing the ‘guess how many fingers I’m about to hold up’ game for too much longer. Ah well.

Anyway, let me know how you get on with Mr Crumbgold. And with Horny Wendy. If you want a tiny bit more of advice regarding her, I’ll only say only two further words: hornymorphously perverse. I’d better get going. I want to nip to the Spar before it shuts: they’re selling some past-its-sell-by-date chicken tikka flavoured wafer-thin ham dead cheap at the moment and the pack of woefully underdomesticated tracksuit-children who are normally to be found lurking around by the entrance hurling paving slabs at the passing traffic tend to leave at around 11pm to go beat up the first wave of pensioners on their way home from the Pug And Shovel. Bless ‘em!

Speak soon and good luck.

Richard

Four

To see the previous email click here.

from: martintrhiggins@acemail.com
to: richardvhirst@acemail.com
sent: 27.01.10 at 23.34 pm
subject: RE: Hello!

Hey Richard,

My god I'm stressed. Work is hell right now. And not in the good way. Mr Crumbgold is coming apart at the seams like a cheap pair of trousers. Last Thursday he made everyone go out after work to The Tulip and Laurence and it all went downhill very quickly. After drinking a whole bottle of Silly Mary whiskey, he insisted we all write down our mobile numbers on napkins and put them in his hat. Then he spent the rest of the night going through the napkins and throwing away all of them execpt the one with my number on it. I left around 10 pm and stumbled home to my traditional berating ritual from Veronica (incidentally, I tried calling her 'Ronnie' the other day for comic effect and she tried to force a bread roll through my face. I think you're right about her sense of humour) before drifting into a peaceful sleep on the sofa in front of one of my compilation videos of old Crimewatch reconstructions. I did not sleep for long though (although I did NOT have any nightmares, Nick Ross made sure of that) as my phone started buzzing indicating a text message had been recieved. It was from Mr. Crumbgold. It said "I WNT YOU 2 DESIGN A BIN THATT CAN SCREAM WHEN ITZ FULL AND NEEDS EMPTYIN". I read it three times and then, putting it down to his drunken state, went back to sleep. The next text came around 10 minutes later, it read "DO IT FLOPSY YOU MASSIVE POO!!!!" which was more than a little disturbing. I sent him a reply enquiring if he was alright, to which he replied "LOLZ!!!! URE GONNA DIE IN A BOAT U HUMAN SICK BUCKET!!!!! :) x". The texts continued to arrive all night, until eventually the last one appeared at 5.47 am which simply said "DWA dsssr jp LOOOL WA???? !".

The next day was dreadful. Friday, as you'll remember, is 'Foolish Belt Day' at Betterbins and so the mood in the office was playful at first (I wore a skipping rope again which made everyone smile). Then Crumbgold arrived. He seemed oblivious to the SMS assault he had put me through the night before when I finally nervously confronted him. He said I was "talking through my ears" and should "go to school again or something". Not long after I went back to my desk, he ran out of his office brandishing several empty beer bottles. He dragged old Mr. Trenderskill out of his chair and made him stand on a table in reception. Poor Bob, he's so old now his skin is almost see through. Crumbgold forced him to put his fingers into the bottles and wave them around. "LOOK" he bellowed, "IT'S BOBBY BOTTLEFINGERS!!!!". We stood in stunned silence as our great leader threw the complimentary oranges from the front desk at Bob for him to catch. Each time Bob's new glass digits fumbled the oranges to the ground, Crumbgold screeched "OOOOPS! BOTTLEFINGERS!!!" and laughed like a greasy Hyena. Urgh. It was a grim sight. What should I do Richard?? You always had a way of calming the boss, should I do something to help him? He's obviously not right.

Anyway, that's enough of my troubles. How's you? Glad to hear the novel is back on the go mate, the new opening chapter sounds much more 'mass appeal' than your first idea. As for Virgil, well you know how I feel about vagrants. Oh no wait, was that Cormorants I was talking about that time? Anyway, be careful. On a positive note, your new offices look very impressive! There must be at least 4 floors in that building!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'll never understand architecture! :D And a new office romance eh? Agatha sounds nice dude, you should totally go for it. You have to stop pre-emptively ruining relationships by imagining which perversion the girl in question would be most disturbed by, it's just silly. You had a great thing brewing with Sally Boooon a while back and you wrecked it all by asking her out whilst stood on her doorstep wearing a gasmask and a paper dress. No one believed it was an asthma cure Rich, no one.

I better go, it's late and Veronica wants me to read her new John Grisham novel to her in my "stupid girly voice" before bed. God I love that woman! :)

Speak to you soon mate.














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Three

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from: richardvhirst@acemail.com
to: martintrhiggins@acemail.com
sent: 21.01.10 at 22:59 pm
subject: RE: Hello!

Hello, Martin!

Sorry it’s taken me a while to get back to you. I finally have broadband set up in the new flat. I’m emailing you from my the comfort of my own ‘desk’ (an ironing board) at home, the hustle-and-bustle sounds of the city emanating from below my window: people chattering away, sirens going off, thousands of volts of electricity being pumped into lifesize rubber dummies. Admittedly that doesn’t sound very romantically metropolitan, but my flat is above the police’s taser range, so I have to make do with what sounds I hear.

I’ve had quite a week. The new job, the new pad and all that. First of all though, I can’t believe you’re bringing up your uncle Patrick’s perimeter fence again! Let’s face facts: we both know there is no fence. There’s only your uncle Patrick’s extended hallucinations. The man’s patently insane. Sorry, that sounds harsher than it was meant to. I’ve no problem with your uncle Patrick so resolutely insisting on the existence of an imaginary perimeter fence. The fact that he seems to think it runs throughout his flat, forcing any visitors into a ridiculous pretence of clambering or hopping over it, is a bit much but just about manageable. But that he expects you and me to go over twice a month to go through the absurd charade of ‘painting’ the damn thing is really taking the biscuit. I didn’t like to say at the time, but don’t you feel a bit foolish, stood there, over an imaginary indoor perimeter fence, waggling a teaspoon (or ‘brush’) around and making ‘painting’ sounds for a full day? I know his crumpled little sack of a face always looks really chuffed with the brilliant job we do but, honestly, it’s just supporting your uncle Patrick in his fence-based madness. The fact that we had to be ‘supervised’ by ‘Melvin’, a giant talking egg in suspenders, only testifies to this.

Anyway, sorry. Ignore me. I’m not in the best of moods. I had a terrible night’s sleep: I had my usual dream in which David Blunkett is creeping about in my loft, dressed as a croissant and rubbing crushed Wotsits into his hair. So I got up and tried to start work on my novel - A Clown In The Circus Of Sadness - but I’ve felt pretty uninspired ever since you quite rightly pointed out that my original first chapter, where I had my hero sit down to play chess with Death on a beach, was a bit of a rip-off of the beginning of The Seventh Seal. I’ve now changed my novel so they’re no longer playing chess but Kerplunk; and it doesn’t take place on a beach any more but by the deep-end of an indoor swimming pool on the outskirts of Wigan; and it’s no longer Death but ex-Monkee Pete Tork who, gone mad, has dressed himself in tattered bin-liners and is demanding Ribena. This, I’m pretty sure you’ll agree, certainly makes for an arresting opening, but it’s a real bugger to think what should happen next, plot-wise.

Then there’s the constant night-time interruptions from Virgil. I know, before you say anything! He should have gone by now. I really should have just kicked him out. Don’t worry though, he should be gone soon - he’s just started a fantastic new job. Well, maybe not ‘fantastic’ actually, but a job’s a job. Well, I guess it’s not actually a job, per se. Basically, he’s decided to join a gang. I say ’decided’. Late last night he came back in a very distressed state, his hair and head covered in bright red paint. This, so I’m told, is what they do round here. He’d been ‘tagged’ by a gang and is now their ‘property’. I asked if they were called ‘The Red Heads’, which I thought was a gently amusing attempt to cheer him up. But no, apparently they’re called the ‘Cunt Fuckers’. Still, he gets paid. Apparently they deal everything round here these days: drugs, organs, novelty thimbles, anecdotes regarding Robocop actor Peter Weller, those fake glasses with a little plastic moustache attached to them. Still, he seems pretty upset about the whole ordeal, so I feel bad about kicking him out right away. Plus he’s the only one who can re-set the sound-settings on the tv (whenever I turn it on it’s always gone to the setting which makes every programme sound like it’s been filmed in a tin filled with screaming gulls). And he knows how to make carbonara sauce just the way I like, with bits of garibaldi biscuits and pineapple rind floating about in it. And he does this brilliant impression of George Alagiah - he’s all ‘Hello, I'm the news,’ and then he’s all ‘Coming up in the programme.’ It makes me laugh like this: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. After which I make a sighing ‘Ahhhh…’ sound. Sometimes I start laughing again after this. You sort of have to see it. So yeah - it’s best he leaves but, for now, I’m letting him stay on the couch. I do with he’d put some clothes on once in a while though.

How’s life at Betterbins? Things sound much the same. Sorry to hear Mr Crumbgold has decided you’re the current ‘office chimp’. If it makes you feel any better, I’m pretty sure he does it to everyone once in a while. I was the chimp for a while. It’s with no small amount of shame that I recall how easily I caved in when he demanded I burst into his office and fling my dung around during Alan’s disciplinary meeting for stealing drawing pins. Poor Alan. I wonder if those surgeons ever managed to fully reconnect his retinas.

And I’m surprised you weren’t aware I was leaving. I assumed it was you who’d arranged the ‘Goodbye And Good Luck Richard, Love Martin’ party. I could have sworn I saw you gluing the tiles that spelled out the ‘X’ kiss onto the farewell mural on the side of your block of flats. And stitching the bunting with a photograph our smiling faces appliquéd onto each heart-shaped triangle of fabric which was hung throughout the town. Clearly, when I said my farewells just before leaving for the railway station and you dodged into the toilet muttering ‘Will you all excuse me, I’ve got something in my eyes’ it really was just your glaucoma playing up again. Ah well. There’s tons of things I miss about the old town, the month long festival period that led up to the Mocking of the Turnip being but one. Do you remember when Tall Gary beat Dog-Patter Geoff and Gaseous Trevor to win the Chip Peg Contest? That’s one of the things I don’t like about living in a city. If I tried to describe to the people here a competition that revolves around grown men picking chips out of a ditch with clothing pegs, in the nude, whilst being thrashed with nettles and urinated on, they’d probably think it backward.

I’ve attached a picture of my new offices at Benjamenta Insurance. My new job is okay, I suppose. A bit boring. Each morning I’m given a list of numbers, some in red ink, some in black. My job is to copy the numbers out - the ones in red into a spreadsheet titled ‘Red’, and the ones in black into a spreadsheet titled ‘Black’. There’s been some talk of adding some numbers in green ink to my list, and a corresponding spreadsheet (titled ‘Green’), but at the moment that’s all only crazy speculation. I’ve no idea what any of the figures mean. So, yeah - not brilliant, but it sure beats being in Betterbins, all that having to spend the morning swinging from the artificial ‘vines’ Mr Crumbgold had fitted to the ceiling in his office before giving him his ‘afternoon groom’. Plus the people here are nice and friendly, although they don’t show it as much as they do back in the old town. None of all that hugging, shaking hands, smiling, talking, making eye-contact or getting out of someone’s way here. No sir! We’re too dynamic to have time for all that sort of thing here in the city.

Actually, the one person in the office who I seem to have struck up a sort-of-friendship with is a woman called Agatha, who I’m thinking of asking out. She works in the office upstairs (where, it’s said, their spreadsheets are inked with all the colours of the rainbow) so I only really see her when she comes down to get things from the stationery cupboard or when I’m loitering about near the stairwell by the women’s disabled toilets hoping to get a glimpse of her. A glimpse of her in her office, I mean. You can just about see where she works from near the women’s disabled toilets. I didn’t mean I hang about trying to get a glimpse of her going to the bathroom or anything. I’m not some kind of disability-fixated wee-fetish peeping Tom. I mean, if it turned out she was into that sort of thing, I’d be willing to give it a try. Although I’d probably try to talk her out of it beforehand. And she’s not actually disabled. Not that there’d be anything wrong with that, of course. She just isn’t - I have no say in the matter. So, if having me spy on her whilst she relieves herself in a semi-public manner, any aspect involving disability - a set of crutches, for instance, or a whiplash-brace for her neck, maybe even a fully motorised wheelchair - would be purely cosmetic. Which is all a bit messed up, when you think about it. Borderline insane, really. Can you imagine what kind of issues someone like that must have? Jesus. I don’t want to get involved in all this. I think I’ll give Agatha a wide berth from now on. Thanks for warning me, mate.

Don’t mention Elizabeth Fraudenshoesen! You know that name sends shivers down my spine. And not the good kind, like sex-shivers. The bad kind of shiver, like when you see an elderly man spitting up a sandwich into a napkin. I don’t want to sound all appearance-ist or anything, but if you have to have two glass eyes, opting for a set of novelty ‘breast’ ones, with massively protruding nipples, is not a good day-to-day look. Lord only know who told her popping them into her mouth and sucking on them was seductive. And then there’s her hands, with the nails on the wrong sides of her fingers, all facing inwards. Have you ever watched her clench a fist? It’s like being on a bad ketamine trip.

I think we both know the reason me and Veronica never really got on: it was that incident. You know the one. I hate to write it down, to be honest. Whenever you see the sentence ‘I did a poo in her knicker drawer’ it just looks totally inexcusable. But I still maintain that if someone invites me round to their place to play a game of ‘hide and seek’ they shouldn’t just assume I know the rules. I hold your uncle Patrick half-responsible: insane or not, he knew when I asked him how wickedly bad the advice he gave me was. Veronica must know that I felt more ashamed and idiotic than I’ve ever felt in my entire life for the remainder of her grandparents’ anniversary party. Her calling me ‘an evil sex-lunatic’ and then fuming about it for the rest of the evening didn’t exactly make me feel any better. And it certainly killed the party mood: no matter how much go-go dancing I did afterwards no-one cracked a smile. Nonetheless, I forgave her. I can only hope one day she’ll look within herself and be big enough to do the same. Anyway, maybe she’ll relax a little now I’ve moved away.

I'd better stop writing this now. Virgil's carbonara's ready and the pineapple rind can go quite soft if it's left to stew too long. And I don't like that.

Bye for now,

Richard

Two

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from: martintrhiggins@acemail.com
to: richardvhirst@acemail.com
sent: 10.01.10 at 6:13 pm
subject: RE: Hello!

Dear Richard,

Great to hear from you mate, really great. I must say your move came as quite a surprise to me. I mean you’ve never seemed one for big changes and have often told me “I will never leave this place” when we have been sat in The Horseman’s Mistake of a evening, supping pints of Sailor’s Breath, but I think the main reason I'm so surprised is because you were supposed to be helping me paint my uncle Patrick’s perimeter fence yesterday and I had no idea you were leaving. Hey ho, never mind eh?

It all sounds very exciting, trains and everything. They have that one here that drives kids around MacDonalds but I don’t think it’s a ‘real’ train. I remember that time me, you, and Small Keith tried to rob it after a few too many drinks in The King’s Limb. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha. Heh. Do you remember? Actually maybe you weren’t there. Someone your height was there though. I think you made the right choice defending the old people on the train from the kids, after all as Chris Rea once sang “I believe old people are the future / Give them sweets and all the rest”. I think it was him. Glad you made it there safely pal, wherever it is you have gone.

205 Hagenback Heights is such a romantic sounding place. It instantly brings to mind happy families barbecuing meat in the summer sun, playful snowball fights and sledging in the winter, conker fights and kicking leaves in autumn, and other stuff in spring. I can’t believe you saw some prostitutes right near your new flat, that’s amazing. Mind you I suppose that ‘Naughty Nora’ woman lives near me but she’s more of a slut than a professional sex worker. Apparently one of her boobs looks EXACTLY like John Suchet when he played Poirot but I’ve never had the opportunity to verify this. It was Billy Ballsacks told me that and you know what he’s like, a total bloody idiot. As for Chasing The Busker, it doesn’t sound any more odd than that Mocking The Turnip thing that all the men over forty seven have to do here every year over by the lake. Uncle Patrick won three years in a row using the same insult which I thought was a bit sly but I’m only 29 so what would I know about vegetable derision.

Sorry to hear about your unwanted lodger by the way, this Virgil chap sounds like trouble. I knew as soon as I started reading that paragraph that there was strife ahead and that as sure as grass is green, your blue mug with the elephant on it would be at the very centre of the whole shebang. I’ve always liked that mug. Of course I’ve only ever seen photos of it as you were always most insistent that it couldn’t be viewed ‘in person’ which I have to say mate, is a little overprotective. Now this Virgil prong seems to be getting his grubby mitts all over it and I’m pretty jealous. Shame that you are still having those ‘Blunkett Terrors’ Richard, I thought all that psychotherapy would have helped you. I know Doctor Bailey isn’t really a psychotherapist or even a doctor for that matter but a vet has to have gone to medical school too right? Even one that lies as much as Doctor Bailey. David Blunkett isn’t out to get you mate, he probably doesn’t even know who you are. You must defeat this phobia you know, they don’t stand for any of that nonsense in the city. It’s a sign of weakness.

I have no idea what an ‘Assistant Internal Resources Consultant’ does either I’m afraid. It sounds important though. It’s certainly better than ‘Office Chimp’ which is the title my boss insists on using for my position at Betterbins Wastepaper Baskets. It made sense when I was making tea and brushing the floors for them, it was even a little amusing, but I’m an assistant sales manager now for gods sake! He introduces me as ‘Bobo The Office Chimp’ to new clients and has Beryl the tea lady bring me bananas during meetings. I swear one day I’ll do something drastic and wipe the smile off Mister Betterbins once and for all. Actually talking of Betterbins, I suppose I should tell him you’ve left when I go in on Monday. You’ll be missed in the office. Especially by that Elizabeth Fraudenshoesen eh you sly devil? She was always making eyes at you. I know it could get a bit annoying when you were trying to work and they would roll down your desk but you have to admit some of them were very realistic so the girl obviously has talent. I’ll give her your email address anyway, I’m sure she’ll want to write to you.

I’m doing ok mate, you know, the usual. The same as last week really when I saw you in work. And you know very well it’s not Alice, it’s Veronica. Veronica. You should remember that as you spent the entire of her birthday party last year calling her ‘Purple Ronnie’ until she threw a plate of vol-au-vents at the wall and locked herself in the bathroom for 2 hours. I don’t know why you two never got on, you’re actually very similar. Not facially obviously, I made that mistake with Christine Frankells and I still have trouble looking either of you directly in the eye. Anyway, we are both still living together in our flat which is still the size of an average disabled toilet. Nothing has changed here Richard, apart from your presence here obviously. And now I know the reason behind that. Well, I have to go on now mate, Veronica says if I don’t watch Grand Designs with her she will bite off my nose and spit it down my throat. Hahaha. That’s my girl, what a character. All the best of luck at the new job Rich, I mean that. Stay in touch eh?















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One

from: richardvhirst@acemail.com
to: martintrhiggins@acemail.com
sent: 10.01.10 at 10.21am
subject: Hello!

Dear Martin,

Well, here I am! I thought I’d email you now I’ve moved to the city to let you know how I’m getting on in the city. I’m currently writing to you from a tiny place called ‘Krajewski’s Internet Café’. It would seem, even here in a massive city, internet cafés are considered a bit ‘late 1990’s’. This is the only place I could find for miles around: a small café populated, it would seem, almost exclusively with unfeasibly hostile foreigners of indeterminate nationality. I assume this while place is a front for an international people-trafficking ring. That might sound a bit racist, but there’s been a steady stream of pre-teen girls coming and going from a back room in varying degrees of distress.

I came down here by train yesterday. It’s literally been years since I was on a train. Have they always been scientifically designed to provoke feelings of existential despair in people like me or is that a fairly recent development? I felt like I was trapped in Guernica. My decision to take a seat next to the toilet was my own fault, I suppose. Although I can’t really be said to be responsible for the malfunctioning door which kept noisily sliding open and shut. Until you’ve witnessed the clumsily strobed nightmare of an drunken middle aged man with a teddy boy quiff slumped in a toilet cubicle, shitting and wanking at the same time, you’ve simply not known the true nature of disgust. Still, at least he seemed to be having a good time, of sorts, which is more than can be said for an elderly couple at the far end of the carriage who seemed to be being harassed by a gang of youths who kept flinging empty Coke bottles at them and telling them to ‘Fuck right off.’ I would’ve intervened, obviously, but, as I’m sure you’re aware, I get terrible motion sickness if I ever stand up on public transport when its in motion. So I gave the youths some very disapproving looks and, eventually, they stopped. Admittedly, this was when the elderly couple disembarked, but, as they past me, they both gave me a firm look - you could even call it a glare - which, I’m fairly sure, was intended as a kind of salutation between fellow experts in facial expressions of disapproval. I also like to think it said: ‘Thank you. Thank you for your censorious staring. It made our journey less unbearable.’

I arrived late at night. I’d arranged to have all my furniture and boxed-up possessions sent along ahead of me last week, with instructions to the apartment building supervisor to let the moving-van people bring my stuff in. I got a taxi from the station to the block of flats (it’s 205 Hagenbeck Heights - I’ll let you know the postcode when I find it out). Despite being practically pitch black at the time, I’ll admit that, initially, I still wasn’t exactly over-impressed with the place: on my journey from the taxi to the outer door of the building I was approached for eye-poppingly cheap sex three times (twice by prostitutes, once by someone thinking I was a prostitute); heard shots being fired, some of which I’m pretty sure I felt ricochet through my fringe; and saw a one-man-band busker being chased by a gang of hooded youths. This last thing sounds amusing now I write it out, but believe me, it wasn’t: he was having trouble outrunning them with his all his instruments strapped to his body and with each hurried step he his kick-drum or kick-cymbal issued a loud and distinctive enough noise to let his pursuers know exactly where he was. Poor bastard. Again, I would’ve got involved but, as I’m sure you can understand, I’m in a new city. I don’t know the things that go on here. Chasing The Busker might well be a local tradition round these parts, or possibly a piece of Arts Council funded experimental musical theatre. Or possibly a local band shooting some wry social-commentary scenes for a music video. They wouldn’t want a confused outsider getting involved.

Anyway, the weirdest thing happened when I actually got into my flat: I found that all my things had been unpacked, cleaned and arranged. At first I thought the building supervisor or the haulage people had taken their remit a bit far. Or that maybe, by some freakish coincidence, I walked into the wrong flat, in which someone who happened to have the exact same possessions as me was living. I went into my new living room to find a thin, bearded man sitting on my new sofa with his feet up on the coffee table my gran left, watching late-night poker on my television, whilst at the same time listening to Bitches Brew on my stereo, and - the worst thing - drinking hot chocolate from my special blue mug with the picture of an elephant on it which, as you know, I allow no-one to use, not even me. After an initial flurry of aggressively posed questions of my part (I calmed considerably when he put the mug down) I got the truth: he was a tramp who’d been secretly squatting in the empty flat and, when some men delivered a flatload of furnishings, thought it was just an impossibly lucky ‘one of those things.’ He opened them all and made himself more at home. I flew off the handle a bit - is it considered acceptable to call tramps ‘tramps’ to their faces? - and threatened to ‘alert the proper authorities.’ However, when he picked the mug back up and made as if to take more sips with his homeless lips, I softened a little and told him he could collect whatever things were his and leave and that would be the end of it. Ten minutes later Virgil (he told me that was his name) was at the door, apologising repeatedly and saying thing like: ‘Guess I’ll be off then now. Don’t you worry about me… There’s a good bridge I know not too far from here… the ice isn’t too bad under there… there’s an ice-cream van which sometimes dumps its stale cones nearby…’ Whilst all this was going on I could still clearly hear gunfire going on outside, and was pretty sure I heard the distant parp as the unfortunate busker has his horn stamped on. Well, I’m not a total monster. I told him he could stay for a couple more nights at most on the sofa. He was very grateful. Even more grateful when, exhausted, I went to bed only to find he’d left what I can only call ‘his mark’ inside the sheets, and I decided to take the sofa myself. I slept uneasily: I have trouble relaxing in unfamiliar places at the best of times and I kept imagining I saw the shadowy figure of David Blunkett sneaking about the room, waving his limbs and dribbling with insanity, but, when I turned the lamp on, it invariably turned out to be a stack of unsorted books and dvds. Why do I fear David Blunkett so?

So, there you have it. My first night in the big city. I start work tomorrow. I passed the Benjamenta Insurance offices on the way here through the city: a monstrous concrete block of a building, with no lights on. I’ve still no idea what it is my job will actually entail. ‘Assistant Internal Resources Consultant’ - what the hell is that? I tried to ask during the interview but all they told me was that I’d be ‘assisting he Chief Internal Resources Consultant in his professional duties, of course.’ I wish I’d lied a little less on my CV. And during the interview. And when they gave me a suspicious look and asked me ‘Are these really your qualifications?’ That was my opportunity to come clean about my claim to have ‘invented text messages’, really.

I should be more positive about things - new job, new city, new life and all that. Why am I still so depressed? I keep thinking about death and…

Actually, I’d better wrap this up. My internet time’s almost run out and I’m not sure I’m entirely welcome here: the guy behind the till keeps glaring first at me then at a large meat cleaver hacked upright into a chopping board on the counter. What about you? How’s life back there? Are you still with Alice? Was she called Alice? I’ll email you again once I get broadband installed in my new place. I asked Virgil to call BT whilst I was gone. He said he’d ring round the other service providers first as he’d heard bad things about BT and wanted to get me the best offer available. Then he made a joke which had ‘To BT or not to BT’ as the punchline. We laughed.


Right, farewell sir. I shall speak to you again soon.

Richard V. Hirst




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