Author: Chris Green

Hi I’m Chris. I have written over 200 short stories, most of which you can view at chrisgreenstories.com. I am also a keen photographer and you can see examples of my work at chrisgreenphotographs.com I live in Watchet, Somerset, United Kingdom. I write short stories and like to choose unusual subjects and viewpoints that are a little off centre. I hope you enjoy these quirky tales of modern life. Web address is chrisgreenstories.com Please also take a look at a selection of my photos at chrisgreenphotographs.com All written and photographic content on these pages is copyright Chris Green 2014 to 2017: All rights reserved

Slumpton 1980

~ Chris Green ~ Leave a comment

slumpton1980

Slumpton 1980 by Chris Green

The door to number 16 slammed in Harry’s face, as it had more times than Harry cared to remember. Its split green and orange panels were all too familiar. Familiar too were the plywood and chicken wire that was nailed over the space where the window had once been. The force of the door closing caused a liberal sprinkling of masonry to dislodge itself from an upstairs window, landing on the shoulder of Harry’s paint-smeared donkey jacket. Harry brushed it off with the palm of his hand and moved on down the street, past two boarded up terraced houses and a pile of rubble where others had until recently been, before arriving outside number 28. Sounds consistent with marital discord could be heard. Harry shuddered. He felt a strong urge to go back home. He was too old for this kind of aggravation. He lit a Woodbine and struggled to regain his composure. He must be resolute. After all, the Luker family had been slum landlords since the thirties and this was 1980. His grandfather, George Luker had collected from these very houses during ‘he blitz. What would George have thought if he knew Harry was such a wuss?

His composure restored, Harry rapped firmly on the front door with his knuckles. This had the effect of bringing a corpulent, unshaven hulk of about forty face to face with him across the threshold. This was Natt, or Nasty as he was known locally. There were signs of a recent breakfast or perhaps last night’s vomit, on the front of Nasty’s vest, which was, in fact, the back, Harry observed, the garment being both back to front and inside out. Nasty towered above Harry and looked far from pleased at having been disturbed.

‘M’morning N’nasty,’ Harry stammered. ‘Nice day again.’

‘Pishoff,’ Nasty snarled. He was not wearing his false teeth.

Wasting no further energy on social pleasantries, Nasty returned to the arena of family strife. Harry wiped his glasses with a grubby paint rag. A black and white dog with one eye missing sniffed around his heels. Harry motioned to kick it. Resisting the temptation to sink its teeth into Harry’s leg, the animal slunk off to explore the gutter. Harry wondered how long it would take it to find the remains of the dead cat.

Next door to Nasty’s, the heavy bass line of a reggae track pounded out. A Babylonpolicyafolicy chanted a flat and mournful voice. The volume grew alarmingly as Harry approached. Through a haze of ganja smoke that had certain times of day seemed to envelop this particular stretch of the street, an assortment of brightly-clothed and dreadlocked children bounced out of the house. The eldest was no more than seven. They formed a circle around Harry.

‘Money missa!’ the biggest boy demanded, holding out his hand. They began to pummel Harry’s lower body with their fists, chanting in unison. A downstairs window opened and the space was taken up with a rainbow of colour, a mass of braids and locks as a large Jamaican woman appeared.

‘A oo dat a knock pon di door. Ras ‘im not ‘ome,’ she bawled. ‘Im ain’t bin ‘ere since long-time so.’

‘Ras claat ‘im never ‘ome,’ Harry mimmicked, missing the rhythm of the patois by a considerable margin.

‘Ain’t no mi fault mon. ‘Im not come round no mo’ mebbe. You wan’ buy ganja mon.’

Harry indicated that he didn’t.

‘Then goweh now you dam lagga head.’

Harry’s reply that he had come to collect the rent was swallowed up by the agitated roar of powerful motorcycle engines. The Desperados were revving up their machines with some venom outside number 48. They were wearing full colours. They seemed to be off out for the day. Harry was cheered a little by this. It would mean he had one less call to make. Each time he had called at number 48, a progressively more menacing ruffian had answered the door. Harry could only guess at how many of them lived there but it seemed to be well into double figures and he had to admit he was terrified of each and every one, more so even than he was of Nasty.

Harry glanced at his clipboard. This must have been instinctive for he needed no reminder that he had collected no rent on this particular morning. He turned over a few pages as if playing a game with himself to see who owed the most rent. If so, there was no doubt about the outcome of such a contest, for in the three years he had lived in Slumpton Terrace, Nolan Rocco had paid no rent at all. Nolan Rocco was the bane of his life. If Harry could find a way to get rid of Nolan Rocco he would be able to put up with all of life’s other disappointments.

The Tacklers’ had a new board nailed to their front window. Already it had been daubed with offensive comments. Roy Tackler had once been a footballer. Scoring four own goals in Slumpton United’s 4-3 defeat to Arsenal was the only time however that Roy made the headlines. Without his dubious contribution, Slumpton would have made the semi-finals in the cup for the only time in their ninety-five year history. What made matters worse for Roy was that the fact that his last two own goals had come in injury time. After 90 minutes his side had miraculously been leading 3-2, when Roy’s mistimed overhead kick surprised goalkeeper, Gareth Garry, and went in the top right-hand corner of the net. This was reprised two minutes later by his backwards header into the top left-hand corner. He was summarily dismissed by his club. After this, Roy gave up football. He tried his hand at a number of occupations, failing, sometimes dramatically to fulfil his potential in each one. He now lived here. Harry had heard recently that even his long-suffering wife, Deidre had left him,.

Harry reminded himself of Slumpton United’s brief glory days before the FA had closed the ground. Slumpton United had nearly been promoted to the Third Division. He prided himself that he could still name the entire first team. Slumpton was a place on the map then. There were three cinemas and a gymnasium, where you could learn to box. Slumpton had had a thriving Sunday morning market, one of the most prestigious in the city. The dog track that now was only of interest to those dumping toxic waste had once attracted thousands every Thursday and Saturday night. There was hope on the horizon back then for residents of the borough of Slumpton. There were bingo halls and pubs that still had a licence. And there were several Jewish tailors. Now, what was there? Prostitution, all night blues, boarded-up shops, the longest dole queue in the city. And the likes of Nolan Rocco. But Nolan Rocco was another story.

A Police siren struck up from across the car park. It was still euphemistically thought of as a car park, although it had fallen into disuse and become a rubbish tip of some renown. Cars no longer parked in Slumpton. Taxis refused to take fares within several blocks, and even Police cars could not be left unattended. Harry had been around long enough to remember the days before the riots when Slumpton was up and coming. It had not always been a no-go area.

Harry sidled down the street, examining the graffiti on the walls of the houses and blocks of flats, these run by the Slumpton Squatters Estate Agency, Harry’s only serious rival in the area. Even graffiti was subject to declining standards, he reflected. What had become of the imaginative daubings of yesterday? – gems like IS THAT A LADDER IN YOUR STOCKINGS OR THE STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN and PLAIN CLOTHES DRUG DEALERS ARE WORKING IN THIS AREA. Now, the graffiti was was monochrome and unimaginative. It was all SHARON SHAGS and FUCK OFF HOME PAKIS And here was a new one HARRY LUKER IS A CHILD MOLESTER. It was all so personal. He reached number 52. Cats had attacked the black bags outside and their rubbish was strewn across the pavement. A rusty bin full of holes stood beneath the window, its contents incinerated. Arson was one of the major pursuits now, Harry reflected. That and ram-raiding. Harry looked up. The guttering had detached itself from the upper part of the house and hung groundwards like a drainpipe. The drainpipe had long since gone and there was a slimy green stain all down the wall. There were few unbroken windows. The odd thing was that Tardelli did not seem to mind the squalor. While other tenants would tackle him periodically about repairs, Tardelli never did. He differed from his other tenants in every way. For one thing, insofar as Harry could judge, he was educated. What was it Tardelli had told him he did when he had met him in The Builders Shovel public house on the night the O’Neills were arrested? Write film scripts? Tardelli had charm and charisma, rare commodities in these parts. Why then did he choose to live in such a slum? And even sometimes pay rent. After all few others on the street seemed to bother with this nicety.

‘Tardelli,’ Harry shouted. The front door was already open.

‘Tardelli,’ he shouted again as he peered inside into the gloom.

In the hallway stood a huge dresser, which housed a collection of stone jars and old stained glass bottles. On the floor was a tall pile of yellowed newspapers and a couple of open holdalls that appeared to be full of dog-eared paperback books. The walls, where they were visible were painted a dark brown and one or two cheap Indian dhurries hung from them. A sour and musty odour hung on the air. It reminded Harry of his National Service days in Singapore. An inside door opened and the sound of an operatic tenor singing a Puccini aria floated through. Tardelli emerged from the shadows, a tall, lean, almost skeletal figure with dark Indian features and slicked-back hair, which even in the half-light was noticeably greying. His style of dress seemed to belong to a younger man. His blue jeans had reached the peak of their fade and were almost white and he wore a pink T-shirt with the logo I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT emblazoned across the front. A red silk scarf was tied around his waist.

‘Harry,’ he beamed. ‘How nice. Come on in.’

Harry followed Tardelli along the hallway. He was of a broader physique by far than Tardelli. He edged himself carefully past the dresser and a pile of cardboard boxes full of assorted bric-a-brac. He ducked beneath the painted alligator skin and found himself in a room piled high with sundry lumber. The walls were decorated a la Jackson Pollock, although it could be argued without the artist’s flair. A black corduroy blind over the window kept daylight out with a vengeance and the room was lit by oil lamps. A large black paraffin stove heated the room – unsparingly. It probably heated the whole block. Harry’s eyes nervously explored their surroundings, as he tried to establish where he was, even who he was and what he had walked into. He and Tardelli had in the past conducted their business at the front door. The room they were in was or probably had been the kitchen, but with so much disorder, it was difficult to tell. There were no pointers, like cooker, fridge or food. The room certainly fulfilled no culinary function. Tardelli led Harry through to another room. This room too was dark but at least the walls had been painted red. On the floor, a stone sink was filled with water with guppies swimming in it. The sink itself was painted luminous green. An abnormally large ginger cat was lapping up what appeared to be blood from an intricately sculptured bowl on a marble slab, balanced, precariously on a purple trestle table. Papers were scattered everywhere. A cuckoo clock had stopped at twelve o’clock.

‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’ Tardelli enquired, picking up a bag of carrots and handing one to Harry.

‘You seem to owe me some rent,’ Harry said, as he wondered what to do with the carrot.

‘It’s a carrot. You eat them,’ Tardelli said. He could see that Harry had not come across such a vegetable in his travels.

‘Yes. A carrot.’

‘You seem tense Harry. Loosen up.’

‘You don’t have to collect rent in the Terrace on a Saturday,’

‘And neither do you, Harry. You choose to. If it upsets you, don’t do it.’

‘That’s all very well’

‘Look! How do you think I manage to live around here? Do you think I’m completely insensitive to my environment? Do you think I don’t notice how bad things are?’

‘You seem not to.’

The tenor had given way to a soprano. Harry noticed the music was coming from an old radiogram in the corner of the room, underneath a large poster of Ayatollah Khomeini, holding a 50p piece aloft.

‘For the gas meter,’ Tardelli explained, for he could see that Harry was puzzled. ‘I’ll tell you my secret, Harry. I fantasise. I put my fantasies into writing you see. I create my own world. This way, dreams can come true. If you could, what would you have happen in your life right now.’

Harry considered the question for a moment. His fingers played almost instinctively with the papers on his clipboard. Taking the piss was one thing. A slum landlord had to be used to people taking the piss. But three years. And after all he, Harry had done for him. Not to mention the business with the O’Neills. If only – he would be able to put up with all of life’s other disappointments.

‘It can happen, Harry. Take my word. But perhaps you may not need to take my word. Now! About the rent. I can let you have some next week when my advance arrives. Is that OK?’

‘I suppose it will have to be. It’s the nearest I’ve come to a result today,’ Harry whimpered, pathos not absent.

‘Don’t be so negative, Harry. Loosen up. When you step out of here, you are the master of your own destiny. The author of your own script, Harry. If you believe then something will happen……..You’ll see.’

With an air of despondency and a marked feeling that Tardelli too was taking the piss, Harry negotiated the obstacle course to the door and stepped outside.

A profound feeling of time disorientation hit him in the way it did after a lunchtime session at the Shovel. Perhaps Harry felt, more like the time he had been spiked with acid when he had collected rent from the Dohertys on the night Boozy Farrell was arrested. The street seemed to have altered somehow, it seemed less hostile. He thought he could hear birdsong. Surely a songbird could not have found its way to Slumpton. There were no trees. A brass band seemed to be playing, although it was rather a dull tune, with just the two notes.

Slowly as if he was coming to consciousness after a dream, Harry began to notice that a large crowd had gathered a distance down the street. Two police cars and an ambulance were parked. Outside Nolan Rocco’s in fact. Harry watched spellbound as a stretcher bearing the body was carried slowly out to the waiting ambulance. It couldn’t be …… could it?

Copyright: © Chris Green 2019: All rights reserved

The Hurdy Gurdy Man

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The Hurdy Gurdy Man by Chris Green

It is after midnight. Lois and I are watching a nail-biting episode of Bad Break on Horizon when the old man in the threadbare purple duffle coat calls round. He is selling violins. In these uncertain times, traders are likely to call round at any time of day or night but it is unusual for a violin seller to call so late. You expect people selling camping gear and kitchen utensils to knock on your door up until three a.m. And of course, carpet sellers. But we are usually in bed by then. As a rule, we go to bed at two, after Cricketers’ Wives on Bygone finishes, unless it’s a Thursday and we happen to be watching Black Lens on Extra. This does not finish until two-thirty.

Lately, there is a non-stop procession of hawkers, selling anything and everything. Fishing tackle, jet skis, garden gnomes, overspill from car boots, sometimes things that even charity shops won’t take. Having been encouraged to buy all manner of merchandise at every opportunity, people are constantly clearing out. Add to this the swathes of people who have been hit by the dramatic downturn, desperate to sell a few bits and pieces to be able to put food on the table and you begin to understand why you get so many callers. We now recognise some of the regulars. The late-night transient selling boxes of knock-off DVDs, the Frankie Dettori lookalike selling fake signed photographs of sports celebrities, the down-at-heel vagrant selling Lambretta badges and Gilbert O’Sullivan CDs. Sometimes we have to put the light out and pretend we have already gone up the wooden hill.

We don’t normally buy violins on the doorstep. Neither of us plays. Yet this does not stop me from purchasing a Cremona Premier. I have not seen a green violin before. And he is only asking ninety-nine pounds for it. I recognise a bargain when I see one and a green violin for ninety-nine pounds is a bargain in anyone’s book. The man in the purple duffle coat knocks off a catchy Fritz Kreisler tune and says that he will accept an IOU if necessary. Although money is tight, I don’t like the thought of being in debt so I pay him in cash. He says his name is Quinn and if we are interested, he may have some trumpets next week.

Buying from door-to-door sellers is all very well but you have to be on your guard. Life was easier when you could buy goods over the internet. You had eBay and Amazon and Gumtree where practically everything you could ever want was available. I knew someone who bought a bottlenose dolphin and Ravi next door used to buy all his drugs this way. In addition, most businesses had an online purchasing facility. Admittedly, you were deluged with adverts but with practice, it was easy to ignore these. And for specialised markets, there was the so-called darknet.

But all of this is gone now. It might only be six months or so but it is as if the internet never existed. It just goes to show how quickly you get used to things. It is surprising how easily a new common sense develops. Lois and I used to work for Google and now and again, we hear a rumour from an ex-colleague that the internet will soon be back. But then, we hear nothing further. This leads us to believe that whoever or whatever is blocking it is determined to keep it that way. While it is difficult to say for certain, it appears cyber-networks are down worldwide. It seems you would need the internet to find out why there is no internet. Without the internet, news media has struggled. The stories we get have become more localised, the re-routing of the bypass, the search for the missing teenager or the closure of The Goat and Bicycle.

People are throwing out their iPhones. With their functionality reduced to that of making calls, they are of little use. Even making calls is hit and miss due to the breakdown of communication links. Someone from the discount store in town called round last week in the middle of the final episode of Killing Steve offering a job lot. £50 for ten, he said.

When the internet was still up and running, you could stream your favourite TV programmes on your portable devices or on sixty-inch screens in the comfort of your living room. Lois and I used to watch our shows in the middle of the afternoon after we had finished our shifts at Google. We became accustomed to binge-watching box sets. We frequently used to watch three or four episodes of Twin Peaks or Black Widow on the trot. And we could get Alexa to put the kettle on or turn the central heating up while we looked through reviews of hundreds of new series that were available to stream. We took it all for granted. Without the internet, there is no catch-up television. You have to view everything in real-time and there are strict rules about what can be shown on TV before the nine pm watershed. Tame sitcoms and vapid soaps. Auctions of tat and tired quiz shows. Channels are required to put any programmes with adult content on after nine. So, Lois and I no longer enjoy our cosy early nights. Although today’s serial dramas are only poor imitations of those of yesteryear, each night we find ourselves in front of the TV until the early hours.

For some unexplainable reason, recording devices no longer work so we cannot time-shift programmes. Even the techies I know cannot understand why this is. But I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky. We still have television although from time to time there is talk of this too disappearing completely, in the same way that the internet did. You never know what to believe. In this post-truth age, it is nearly impossible to find out what is really going on.

Now there are no longer any internet-related services, Lois and I are unable to find work. We now grow much of our own produce in the garden and door-to-door grocers come around each morning to supplement this so we do not need to go into town often. When we do, we come across groups of noisy protestors, no doubt angry about what is going on. It means I have plenty of time on my hands to learn to play my new violin. The first few days are probably agonising for the neighbours. If you’ve ever had a son or daughter learning the instrument, you will understand. The violin in the hands of a novice does not immediately produce sweet music. I suspect Ravi is able to find a way to shut it out but once or twice, I hear the Domingos the other side of us banging on the wall.

In the middle of an episode of Found, Quinn calls round as promised with his trumpets. He plays a pretty little Chet Baker number on a shiny Selmer. Lois is transfixed and decides she wants it.

‘You can have it for ninety-nine pounds,’ he says. ‘And I’ll even throw in an interesting little primer.’

‘That’ll be a great help,’ Lois says. ‘No YouTube instruction videos these days, are there? I’ll take it.’

‘And next week I’ll be round again with a surprise,’ he says. ‘Something a little different.’

I make slow but steady progress on the violin but with her somewhat unusual primer, Lois’s trumpet playing comes on in leaps and bounds. In no time at all, she masters, Should I Stay or Should I Go and Rock the Casbah. The Domingos appear to be enjoying these Clash numbers as we hear no further knocking on the wall.

Without warning, television goes off the air. All the channels show static. None of our friends or neighbours has any information about what has happened. Who is behind it? What is their aim? At first, the hope is that the blackout is temporary but it continues day after day. There is no way of knowing but it gradually becomes apparent that it is a worldwide phenomenon. It looks like TV will not be back anytime soon.

Lois and I start going to bed at nine o’clock. It is often difficult to sleep though as more and more people knock at the door with goods for sale. Without the internet or television, perhaps there is nothing left for folks to do with their spare time but life-launder. We debate whether we ought to do the same. Should we have a big clear out? Should we get a handcart and go door-to-door, selling some of the teapots Lois has collected over the years and my model aeroplanes?

‘Where have you been?’ Quinn says. ‘I’ve called round several times.’

‘We don’t answer the door after three in the afternoon,’ I say. ‘Too many people selling things and we don’t need anything else. We don’t have room.’

‘You’ll want this,’ Quinn says. ‘I’ve been saving it for you.’

He opens his bag and pulls out the most curious musical instrument I’ve ever seen. It is shaped a little like a violin but has a silver crank at the butt end. Its strings appear to be covered by an ornate wooden board and it has a small but prominent keyboard on the underside of this. It is a work of art.

‘What is it?’ I say.

‘It’s a hurdy gurdy,’ Quinn says.

With this, he deftly knocks out an old English folk tune. So far as I can gather, the crank works like a bow and the keyboard blocks the strings to produce notes.

‘Ninety-nine pounds and it’s yours,’ he says. ‘You might find it a little tricky at first but I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it. No primer for this one, I’m afraid.’

It still seems remarkably cheap so once again I go to see what cash we have left under the mattress. There is just enough. I tell him I will have plenty of time to learn to play now that there’s no television to interrupt me. ‘

‘Of course,’ Quinn says. ‘The old goggle box has finally gone. Never watched it myself. Constant stream of babble. Frank Lloyd Wright called it chewing gum for the eyes. Anyway, you probably won’t believe me but I have a theory about what has happened to the internet and TV.’

Everyone, it seems, has a theory but no one is able to back up their thoughts. The Earth’s magnetism gone haywire. Mass malfunction of satellites. Divine retribution for our sins. The Illuminati perhaps. Religious zealots, Muslims, Jews, Seventh Day Adventists. Tech companies holding everyone to ransom to raise their prices. The Chinese or the Russians using it as a tool for world domination. The precursor to an alien invasion. Is Quinn’s theory going to be any different?

We hear him out. His idea is absurd. Surely he cannot be serious. How could it be down to a small bunch of anarchists to highlight climate change? Granted Google’s servers used the same amount of power as whole continents and televisions were getting larger and larger. Certainly, taking out the main channels of advertising would hit capitalism where it hurts. But how would they have had the funding or the means to take down secure well-established global communications networks? And how would the ensuing chaos benefit the Extinction Rebellion cause? Surely they would need a voice and a means to transmit their anti-capitalist, save the planet, peacenik, no nukes message. To to do so by word of mouth on a day-to-day basis worldwide would be a big ask for a small disorganised unit.

‘Nice try,’ I say. ‘But I really don’t think that’s likely.’

‘I did say you may not believe me,’ Quinn says. ‘After all, it does seem a bit fanciful. But, we shall see. Enjoy your hurdy gurdy and don’t forget to look out for me. I may be round again with another surprise.’

© Chris Green 2019: All rights reserved

FIFTY – five vignettes

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fifty

FIFTY – five vignettes by Chris Green

Fifteen:

It is May 1967. I am fifteen years old. I am walking through Wellesley Park with my friends, Dave, and Keith. I should be at school but I’m not. Dave is two years older than me and should be at college but he’s not, and Keith has tagged along. I’m not sure where he’s supposed to be. The park is a cool place to hang out. We can do what we want. No-one bothers us, except occasionally Tom, the park-keeper, who tries to sell us pornography and tells us about his days in Cairo when he was doing his National Service. He has told us several times now the story about the woman and the snake. Tom is old, he must be well into his thirties. My name is Mike, but for some reason, he calls me John.

Today, Dave has brought his Roberts radio and we are listening to Radio London, the best of the pirate radio stations. Radio London has an eight-day UK exclusive on Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. One by one, they are trickling the tracks into their playlist. A couple of days ago, Dave and I heard A Day in the Life for the first time. Dave had been unable to get any hash that day and he had read that you could get high by smoking dried banana skins. We were in the front room of his parents’ house trying some. His parents had gone away. We had the radiogram on loud. We decided A Day in the Life must be the greatest piece of music of all time. This may not have had anything to do with the dried banana skins.

Dave, Keith and I update one another with how far we have got with our respective girlfriends. I wonder if perhaps exaggeration is de rigueur for teenage boys sexual narrative. Or is it that Judy is just too inhibited? I have not got past the outside of her lacy bra. To save face, I pretend otherwise. We talk about the film Blow Up, which we saw at the Colosseum last night.

‘What did it all mean?’ Keith asks.

‘There is no individual meaning,’ Dave says. ‘Meaning can only be agreed socially and that’s why the film ended without closure. Because the David Hemmings character was on his own, we do not know if the murder really took place.’

‘You mean because there was no one to corroborate what he saw?’ I say. ‘And the photos had disappeared.’

‘It’s existential,’ Dave states, in summary. I can see by the expression on Keith’s face that he isn’t sure what it means either.

As we are walking up the hill past the zelkova tree towards the Pump Room, the opening notes of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds break through. It has not been announced, but we know instantly that this is The Beatles. It may seem a little sad but I have known the titles to all the tracks on Sergeant Pepper for about a month since they were announced in Record Mirror. I guess which one this is right away. Dave turns the volume up. What is that instrument? Surely it is from another world. We are sitting on a commemorative bench now, hunched around the radio. The words to the song are incredible, like a dream: ‘cellophane flowers of yellow and green towering over your head.’ ‘rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies’, ….’newspaper taxis’,…. ‘plasticine porters with looking glass ties’. What vivid imagery, I’m thinking, as this surrealistic masterpiece captures me. This is a moment of transcendence, and I have my whole life in front of me. Time is on my side. On Tomorrow’s World, they say we will not have to work much in years to come. From here on in, life will be easy. Technology will replace drudgery. In a few years, we will be able to travel on starships to Jupiter.

When I get home at 5 o’clock, the house is swarming with police. There are police in uniform and police in cheap macs and trilby hats. It is like the set of Z Cars.

‘There’s been an accident, Mike,’ one of them says. He has a grave look on his face.

‘Your parents stood no chance,’ says another.

‘The lorry driver’s name,’ the uniformed Sergeant tells me, injudiciously I can’t help feeling, ‘was Paul Lennon.’

My English teacher, Mr Percy, had been banging on all term about irony. Was this the kind of thing to which he was referring? Or was it coincidence? All I can remember is him saying that it is important not to confuse the two.

Twenty-Four:

I am at Ben and Holly’s wedding reception. Rachel, my girlfriend, left earlier in a huff. We have been together long enough for me to be used to our disagreements. It is late in the evening. Everyone is off their faces. The band has finished their set and the DJ with the Rod Stewart haircut is playing Bohemian Rhapsody over and over. It is Ben and Holly’s favourite song and seems to have been Number One forever. Uncle Dutch, bored as I am with Ben and his friends air guitar demonstrations, is telling me how he lost his leg.

‘I was working as a locations finder for Columbia Pictures. What a great job, you are thinking. How did a country boy like me get a job like that?’

I am thinking this very thing. My dad’s younger brother, Uncle Dutch and I had never been particularly close. I had last seen him in the late sixties. He ran a motorcycle courier business. Quite a new idea back then. I remember too that he used to ride horses. It would be hard for him to do this now.

‘I lived in a 1930s house in Beverly Hills,’ Dutch says, ‘with a fantastic view of the foothills of the Santa Monica mountains. The sun came through my window every morning. I could have freshly squeezed orange juice on the lawn with Laura and look out on to the palm tree canyon. A short drive to Topanga and Malibu and a short drive to the studio in Burbank. It was like paradise. I met all the stars, Burt Lancaster, Jack Nicholson, Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Natalie Wood, Faye Dunaway, Barbara Streisand. You name them, I met them. I had a season ticket for The Dodgers. I lived among the rich and famous. I went to the same shrink as Tony Curtis. You have to have a shrink in Beverley Hills, or everyone thinks you are mad. David Crosby and Mickey Dolenz were neighbours. I went to The Beach Boys barbecues in Bel Air and swam in Joni Mitchell’s pool. Life couldn’t have been better. And Laura looked more beautiful every day.’

He takes out his wallet and shows me a well-thumbed photo of Laura, She is a real stunner. She has long dark hair, and an hourglass figure with rounded breasts, thin waist, and voluptuous hips. She has a perfect California tan. She has beautiful brown eyes and her smile is like the sun coming up. He shows me another picture of the two of them at a Hollywood première. His eyes mist over. He hands me the photo. I’m not sure what to say.

‘Is that Dustin Hoffman in the background?’ I ask.

Dutch doesn’t seem to hear me. He studies the original photo of Laura reflectively.

The hall seems to have suddenly become more claustrophobic. It is a chaos of empty bottles and fuddled friends and family. The DJ has put on Sailing. He is juggling the microphone like Rod does and encouraging people to sing along. It is painful to watch. Why do people hang around at these embarrassing gatherings once the business is over? I suggest to Uncle Dutch we go outside to smoke a joint. Despite the limitations of movement presented by his sticks, he seems to move remarkably well. After negotiating a maze of corridors and lobbies, we find ourselves in the hotel’s landscaped grounds. The recent snow sparkles under the floodlights. We pick out a discreet table and Dutch lights up.

‘I was driving around the Monterey, Big Sur area,’ Dutch continues, ‘looking for a spot to film some shots for a remake of Vertigo that the studio was planning. All I had to do was select a few vertiginous spots. Not that difficult on the Californian coast. The views from Highway 1 take your breath away. I had a 1971 Dodge Challenger. Bright red it was with a black stripe. They call them pony cars in California. God knows why. Anyway, it had a big six-litre engine and handled more like a pig than a pony. Nothing sensible about it. That’s the way they like their cars out west. Anyway, I had put the thing in for a service the previous week but they had not checked the brakes.’

Dutch looks me in the eye and passes me the joint. I wonder if he wants me to put two and two together rather than continue with the story. He can see I am holding out for the story and laughs.

‘Drove it over a cliff,’ he says. ‘I have this image in my head of a sound like the distant rumble of thunder and a line of Harley Davidsons coming the other way. There is a bend coming up. I must have tried to slow down to negotiate the bend, I guess. The Challenger goes straight ahead, through a clump of trees and down a ravine. I was trapped inside the car for three days before a Japanese hiker found me. They had to cut me out. The leg was severed off above the knee. I had lost pints of blood and was unconscious when they found me. I don’t know; I may have had a drink or two. I often stopped by at a little Hispanic bar in Salinas, but the truth is I can’t remember.’

I am silent. I do not know what to say.

‘To cut a long story short, I was in the Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital for months,’ Dutch says. ‘Laura didn’t visit me once. The day before I got out, I found that she was divorcing me. She didn’t like the idea of living with Long John Silver. Life is quite simply before the accident and after the accident. They didn’t film Vertigo in the end.’

Twenty-Nine:

I have split up with Rachel after six years. She moved her things out the week before last. I have let my friend, Karl, stay for a while. Karl got back from India a few days ago. He has been to Southern Asia many times, but the political situation is changing, and he says it is now much harder to travel around that part of the world. Chitral, Kashmir, and Nepal are now hostile areas, and he thinks the Shah of Iran may soon be deposed and word is going around that the Soviets might invade Afghanistan. The end of the hippie trail. It also looks as if the cowboy actor might become President, I point out. Dangerous times ahead, we agree.

Karl is helping to redecorate the flat. It is a spacious conversion, on three floors of a Regency building, if that is not a contradiction. We are painting the large front room burgundy and Venetian blue, picking out the pictures rails and the cornice. He says it will look theatrical, like a stage set. We have some modern art planned for the door panels, Piet Mondrian, maybe. Karl isn’t your stereotypical hippie. He wears a tweed jacket, listens to classical music and is a fan of The Archers. You can pick it up on BBC World Service, he says. He tells me how he had to be near a set every day when Shula was stranded in Bangkok after her money was stolen, and how he hopes that the hapless Eddie Grundy’s turkey farm will take off. Eddie and Joe add some spark to the programme. I have no idea what he is talking about.

Karl has brought back some Nepalese temple balls and after three days of painting, we are only halfway through the second wall. We are taking a break for a cup of Darjeeling Spring Flush tea. Apparently, Darjeeling tea reduces mental and physical stress and promotes a feeling of relaxation and well-being.

‘It’s to do with the amino acids,’ he says. ‘I’ve noticed that you seem to be on edge.’

‘Six years is a long time,’ I say. ‘It takes some adjustment. I miss Rachel’s perfume on the pillow, her books on the bookshelf, her notes around the house, her piles of clothes on the bedroom floor, the condiments and spices in the kitchen, and even the sound of the hoover on a Sunday morning.’

‘And the sex.’

‘Yes, the sex obviously.’

‘She wasn’t having an affair, was she?’

‘Not that I was aware of.’

‘And you aren’t having an affair.’

‘No. Why do you ask?’

‘Nothing. Just a thought. So the split was her decision.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘When people live together for a long time, they are likely to gravitate towards stasis.’ Karl says. ‘How much of what you are feeling is down to not wanting change?’

‘I don’t know. Some of it, I suppose. I like to be able to pick up things where I left them.’

‘But change is the only certainty.’

‘But all the same….’

‘You wanted happy ever after,’ he says.

‘I just want to be happy,’ I say.

‘There is no happy ending,’ he laughs. ‘You only find happy endings in books. Happiness and sadness are like yin and yang. One chases the other in a never-ending cosmic circle. Therefore, you must not put all your effort and energies into clinging to them. It is much better to detach yourself from these illusions and go with the flow.’

‘How do I do that?’

‘You will learn to. As Ibsen said, We sail with a corpse in the cargo.’

Thirty-Nine:

‘Is that for me?’ says Joi, her gaze taking in the bulge in my jeans.

She has just come through the door and is putting her travelling bag down. Joi and I have been seeing each other for about three months. She has been away for a few days, and I have missed her. She is tanned and her dark hair is hanging loose around her shoulders. Her Louis Vuitton skirt hugs her hips tightly and her breasts seem to be powering their way out of the low-cut top she is wearing. I have Miles Davis’ Tutu playing. I pretty much only listen to jazz now. I find pop and rock in the mid-nineties so unsubtle.

Joi leads me off to the bedroom. She has a wicked smile. She slips her skirt off slowly to the sound of Miles’ muted trumpet. She is wearing sheer black tanga panties. She guides my hand towards her favourite spot. It is warm and wet. I kiss her urgently and pull her down onto the bed, where frenzied passion takes over.

‘What was that all about?’ she says afterwards. My unrestrained ardour seems to have taken her by surprise.

‘I wanted you badly,’ I say.

‘I must go away more often,’ she laughs.

‘I think I’d rather you didn’t.’

‘I’d rather I didn’t too. Perhaps I should move in. We’re good together, aren’t we?’

I hesitate before I answer what was probably not a question, anyway. I give her a warm post-coital hug to give myself time to consider my words. I feel like a million dollars but at the same time I feel a creeping melancholy. When things are this good, I worry that my credit at the Metaphorical Bank of Serendipity might be running out and somehow will be paid for with something in-fortuitous. My experience suggests that epiphanies have a tendency to foreshadow calamity. I am also unaccustomed to sharing my deepest secret fears. It is dangerous to let down your guard. I want what I say to come out right.

‘Sometimes when everything is going well,’ I say. ‘I have this sense of foreboding that something bad is about to happen. That something is going to be taken away.’

‘You mean like Happiness, that state you dare not enter with hopes of staying, quicksand in the marshes and all.’

‘Certainly the quicksand in the marshes part. That’s very good. Where’s does it come from?’

‘It’s the opening of a poem. Stephen Dunn.’

‘The thing is, I’m usually right, which scares me a little.’

I relate to her the occasion that I had climbed the North Face of Ben Nevishttps://bennevis.co.uk/, the highest peak in the UK with my fellow climber, Roy Tavistock. Roy had been my instructor at the Everest Climbing Club in the Brecon Beacons.

‘I was a comparative novice. I had never attempted anything so daring before. I had never been particularly good at physical sports, so for me, the climb was a supreme accomplishment. Roy congratulated me. Its Grade he explained was Difficult. There had been a number of fatalities over the years. We stayed on the plateau at the summit for a bit, taking it all in, the wind whistling around us. I felt literally on top of the world. By world standards, Ben Nevis may not be the highest, but it was to me. I understood how Sir Edmund Hillary must have felt. Late in the afternoon, we began our descent. Roy warned me this would be more difficult than the ascent and would need concentration. About halfway down I was struck by a flying crampon. I was concussed and had to be rescued by air ambulance. I was in hospital for over a week.’

‘Dramatic stuff,’ says Joi. ‘So, my hero, what is it you think it is that is going to happen?’

‘That’s the trouble. You never know. If you knew then you could prepare for it.’

‘They say that every action has an opposite and equal reaction, you can’t have night without day,’ Joi says, sounding like she had just been on a Buddhist workshop.

‘Or day without night,’ I say. ‘It’s the day part that is the problem because you know that it must be followed by night.’

‘And then day again. Look! Why can’t you view it another way, crisis contains the opportunity for growth and bad luck becomes good luck? Adversity spawns creativity. But we’re not talking about adversity. I don’t see much adversity.’

I think about what Joi has said. I’m sure she has a valid point, but she is looking at the thing the wrong way round, so in a sense, she is missing the point I am trying to make.

‘My analogy is that if you have had a run of six green lights, then you are unlikely to get a seventh’, I say. ‘Each green light increases the chances that the next one will be red.’

‘Don’t you think that is a little negative,’ she says, sitting up and folding her arms over her breasts in a defensive gesture. ‘You could see every red light as positive because the chances of a green light next time increase.’

‘How does that help when you get the feeling that things are going too well?’

I seem to have dug myself into a hole. The conversation ends there. Joi gets dressed. She says she is going out for some air. She doesn’t return. She doesn’t come round again. Life it seems is a series of losses

Forty-Nine:

Maya is awake now. She has been asleep for most of the flight.

‘Funny how some situations bring unrelated memories flooding back,’ I say to her. ‘With me, it’s air travel.’

‘You mean involuntary memory. Like Proust’s madeleine,’ she says.

I give her a disapproving look because I feel she should know I have not read Proust.

‘In the last volume of À La Recherche du Temps Perdu, Proust describes how he was eating a madeleine that he had dipped in tea when a series of memories from his past came flooding back to him,’ she says. ‘He felt those things you remember involuntarily contain the essence of the past.’

‘I guess that’s it,’ I say hoping that it isn’t the case as each of my wayward reminiscences has been an episode that turned out badly.

It is September 2001. Maya and I are flying to New York to celebrate my fiftieth birthday, which is on the eleventh. We are on a Boeing 747 flying at 35,000 feet. We are over the tip of Greenland. This seems a little off course to me, so I take the opportunity to ask a stewardess.

‘Transatlantic flights go this way because it is quicker. It is known as a Great Circle route,’ she says, knowledgeably. She explains that this is the shortest distance between two points on a sphere and that westbound flights tend to run more northerly due to the prevailing westerlies. I am more confused than I was.

We are going to stay in Lower Manhattan. Maya knows New York quite well and for my birthday, she is going to take me to breakfast at Wild Blue in the Windows of The World Restaurant, which is on the 107th floor of the World Trade Centre. Through the full-length windows, Maya tells me, you get unrivalled views of the southern tip of Manhattan, where the Hudson and East Rivers meet. The weather forecast is good.

© Chris Green 2019: All rights reserved

Tangerine Trees

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tangerinetrees

Tangerine Trees by Chris Green

‘Hey Lewis,’ Carol calls out. ‘Come and look at this!’

‘What?’ Lewis calls back.

‘I’ve found something weird.’

Taking advantage of the Spring sunshine, the pair have driven out of town and are walking their salt and pepper Schnauzer, Bono through Wolverton Woods. Lewis has had a message on his phone and has hung back. He sees it is from their son, Matt. He figures this can wait until later. Matt is eighteen, old enough to look after himself. He has probably only messaged to say he’s back from wherever it was he has been for the past few days. Or perhaps he wants to borrow more money.

Lewis picks up his pace to catch up with Carol. He finds her staring at a curious brightly coloured mass glowing in the undergrowth. Is Lewis imagining it or is it giving off a low-pitched hum? Is it organic or not? Is it dangerous, he wonders? The thing seems to be changing shape. Lewis approaches it. As he gets closer, he feels dizzy and steps back. The normally unexcitable Bono starts to bark.

‘It’s fascinating, isn’t it?’ Carol says. ‘Do you think it’s extraterrestrial?’

‘It might have something to do with Obsidian Point’ Lewis says. This is a research establishment a few miles along the coast.

‘But what is it?’ Carol says. ‘Someone must know.’

‘You think so?’ Lewis says. He has become distracted by the prisms of light darting down the nearby stream.

‘What about your friend, Phil who writes those stories about the supernatural?’ Carol says. ‘He might know what it is.’

‘Phillip C Dark? I don’t think so. Phillip’s long gone.’

‘We’d better let someone know about it, don’t you think?’ Carol says.

‘But who?’ Lewis says, looking around him to see if there’s anyone about who might be interested.

‘I don’t know. The police? The army?’

‘Auntie Vi perhaps? Gerry and Mary? Ghostbusters?’

‘Now you’re being facetious,’ Carol says.

‘Let’s leave it for now,’ Lewis says. ‘And enjoy the rest of the walk. After all, it’s such a beautiful day.’

As they move on through the woods, everything seems to be echoing. Even the silence has an echo.

‘It’s as if the whole wood is breathing,’ Carol says. ‘Like it’s alive.’

‘It is alive,’ Lewis says. ‘It’s nature.’

‘Yet those yellow and green flowers look as if they are made of cellophane,’ Carol says.

‘Everything is so colourful this morning,’ Lewis says. ‘But at the same time blurry like a Monet painting.’

‘Look at those tangerine trees.’ Carol says.

‘The sky looks as if it’s melting,’ Lewis says.

‘Look at the rainbow pattern on the gravel path where the sun hits it,’ Carol says.

Carol’s phone vibrates. It is Matt.

‘Mum, did you and Dad take your vitamins this morning?’ Matt says.

‘Yes we did, son,’ Carol says. ‘But it’s kind of you to ask. Did you get back from Amsterdam in the night?’

‘About 3 a.m. The plane was late,’ Matt says. ‘I tried to be quiet and not wake you. Look! I used one of your old vitamin supplement packets to bring something back through Customs. I must have left the packet on the kitchen table when I got back and just now, I noticed that some of the uh …. contents were missing.’

‘Oh, were those yours, Matt?’ Carol says. ‘I assumed they were ours. I didn’t realise you were taking them too. Sorry about that. You can take some out of the packet in the drawer if you like. We’ve got plenty. Did you have a good time in Amsterdam? Did you see the tulips?’

‘I don’t think you understand what I’m trying to tell you, Mum.’

© Chris Green 2019: All rights reserved

IDEAS

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IDEAS

IDEAS by Chris Green

‘I’m telling you,’ says Flavia. ‘The guy was a complete stranger. He just walked up to me and handed me the bag.’

‘And you didn’t think to say what are you doing or who are you or anything like that,’ says Matt.

‘There wasn’t time. It all happened very quickly,’ says Flavia. ‘Besides I was taken completely off guard.’

‘And he just disappeared into the crowd.’

‘Well, yes. That’s exactly what happened. Look! It was busy. There were a lot of people around. People were coming out of the cinema. People were waiting for the 61 bus. And there were a large group of passers-by watching a street musician with a trumpet. He was very good. If you hadn’t gone into that games shop you would have seen how quickly it all happened. You could have done something about it.’

‘So you were distracted. That’s what you are saying.’

‘That’s right, Matt. You know I like jazz. And this is free jazz.’

‘And the fellow that gave you the bag was about average height, average build and was wearing blue or grey.’

‘That’s right. Even his balaclava was blue, or grey. Can you get off my case, please! Who do you think you are? Inspector Wallander or someone?’

‘You do realise what this is, don’t you?’ says Matt.

‘But there’s nothing in it. I’ve looked. The bag is empty.’

‘I know that is how it looks. But, does it feel empty?’ says Matt, handing her back the blue Ikea bag. ‘Here! Feel it. It’s very heavy.’

‘You’re right. It is heavy.’

‘There is something in there. Feel inside it.’

‘It got a shape. ….. But …. but it’s invisible. What is it?’

‘It’s an enigma. That’s what it is.’

‘What? One of those machines the Germans used in the war?’

‘Not exactly. But you might be on the right lines.’

‘Well, if that’s the case someone’s going to want it. Someone’s going to be looking for it. Someone’s going to be looking for us,’ says Flavia.

………………………………………………………………….…

Flavia is right. Someone is looking for it. Casey Boss is looking for it. His department is extremely security conscious. They need to be. There is a lot at stake. How could the courier have been robbed like that? From his van. In broad daylight. Who were these cowboy logistics people? Weren’t there supposed to be two people on board when they transported sensitive cargoes? And how did the thieves get it into the Ikea bag?

Casey Boss has the van driver in his eleventh-floor office overlooking the river. He is trying hard to stay calm. He was recently hospitalised. Dr De’Ath warned him he must avoid stress. Losing his temper again will send his blood pressure through the roof. He is on powerful beta-blockers.

‘You do realise the gravity of the situation,’ Boss says, swilling a couple of extra Propranolol down with a glass of water. ‘You understand that we have just lost something ………. important.’

Zbigniew Wozniak has some difficulty in following him. There are several big words there. English is not even his second language. His job as he sees it is to get things from A to B. Even this can be a challenge sometimes. He has difficulty with some of the road signs. How was he to know that it wasn’t a real diversion sign? The next part of the scam was, however. easier for Wozniak to understand.

‘Man’s face is covered,’ he says. ‘He says gun if I don’t give him.’

‘Where did covered man go?’ says Casey Boss, finding himself reduced to Wozniak’s pigeon English in order to communicate.

‘Have big black car,’ says Wozniak. ‘Drive fast.’

………………………………………………………………….…

‘It’s a pity that you hit that car, George’ says Mavis Deacon. ‘Look at the time. We are going to be late for indoor bowls. And you know it was our turn to make the tea.’

‘I know, dear, but there’s nothing we can do about it now.’

‘Black ones are definitely harder to see, aren’t they? I think the last one you ran into was black.’

‘It was the other fellow’s fault though, dear. He did pull out in front of me.’

‘That man certainly didn’t want to hang around to give you his insurance details, did he? Running off like that. Why do you think, he was in such a hurry?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps he had to get that bag to the shops quickly. It was one of those bags, wasn’t it?’

‘I think it was an Ikea bag, George? Perhaps we could go to Ikea sometime. They do some very nice kitchenware.’

‘Yes. I believe it was Ikea, Mavis. And we will go one day. If we can find it. Anyway, I expect the police will be along in a minute. They will be able to sort things out. His car did take a bit of a knock though, didn’t it? They don’t make them like they used to.’

‘Why do you think he was wearing a balaclava though, George? That seemed to me to be a little odd. Especially if he was going to the shops. The security people in the shops might think that he was a criminal with a gun, who was going to rob them.’

‘I’m sure there’s a rational explanation dear. And anyway he’s bound to be on CCTV cameras somewhere.’

………………………………………………………………….…

Matt and Flavia are in Café Baba, a small establishment run by a Moroccan family down a discreet alleyway, away from the main shopping centre. They have gone there to get away from the hubbub while they take stock of their situation. Matt is feeling inside the bag. What can possibly account for its weight?

‘I think it might be changing shape,’ he says.

‘You mean like it’s alive?’ says Flavia, nervously.

‘Kind of. …… Not exactly. …… I don’t know. Have a feel.’

‘No, thankyou! I’ll take your word for it,’ says Flavia, with a grimace. ‘Look Matt! Enough is enough. We’ve got to get rid of it.’

‘What do you suggest we do with it then?’ says Matt. ‘We can hardly go to the police with it can we?’

‘Can we not? Why’s that?’

‘Don’t you think they might find us a little suspicious, handing in a blue Ikea bag with an invisible object inside. A heavy invisible object that keeps changing shape, no less. I really don’t think they Sergeant Rozzer would be likely to understand. A man handed it to my wife in the street. No, she hadn’t seen him before. No, we did not get a look at his face, he was wearing a balaclava. They would detain us as aliens or something. We would probably be locked up forever in a secure institution.’

‘We could just dump it.’

‘I suppose so, but that seems a bit irresponsible.’

‘Wait! Don’t you have a friend who is some sort of scientist, Matt?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘The one with the multicoloured framed spectacles.’

‘Oh, you mean Theo. No. Theo’s a prosthodontist. That’s basically a dentist. I don’t think that’s quite the same.’

‘What about the one who works for MI5?’

‘Oh, Hank. You’re talking about G4S, not MI5. Hank works for G4S. Used to be called Group 4. He’s a night security guard at a building site.’

‘Well. Perhaps you could come up with a suggestion, but we’re not taking it home.’

………………………………………………………………….…

Casey Boss is conscious that he has an emergency on his hands. He must not let the situation escalate. There is no telling what harm could be done. He leaps into action. He quickly puts a number of his people on the streets to requisition CCTV footage from cameras over a distance of several square miles. Freeman and Willis send him film of the crash at the Cross Hands crossroads. He plays the footage. The white Skoda ploughs into the side of the black BMW. A hooded gunman gets out of the Beamer and runs from the scene. An old couple slowly emerge from the Skoda.

‘Doddery old farts like that shouldn’t be allowed on the roads,’ he says to his colleague, Jagger. ‘Look at him he’s about eighty. He’s got a white stick. He’s probably blind.’

The gunman with the blue Ikea bag heads in the direction of the shopping district. It is strange, Boss thinks, how little notice people seem to take. It is as if they are all too used to seeing armed men in balaclavas running through the streets with heavy Ikea bags.

Boss moves his focus to footage from a bank of sixty-four cameras located in the centre of town in the comms suite of the municipal building. He is able to witness the masked man’s progress through the town on several cameras, past BetFred and BetterBet, past the Hungarian supermarket, past the bank of posters advertising the Psychedelic Furs reunion concert, through the park where the street drinkers assemble, into the square, past the fountain of Poseidon and into the smarter part of town. He passes the 61 bus stop by John Lewis, but then it is not clear where he goes. He disappears into a crowd of people that are watching a weathered-looking jazz trumpeter with a hunched back in a black coat and black trilby hat. It is unusual for a street musician to draw such a crowd. Jazzman’s audience grows by the minute. With the movement of the crowd, it is difficult to see what is going on. There is no sighting of the masked man emerging from the melee.

Boss tells Jagger to put out the word to bring the jazz trumpeter in for questioning.

There are no further sightings. He hopes that as the day wears on there will be more on the CCTV footage to view. Other than that, there are bound to be witnesses. Some public-spirited citizen will have noticed a man wearing a balaclava weighed down an Ikea bag. Surely. Perhaps he went into a shop. Perhaps one of the local premises is a front for some clandestine operation. Perhaps a number of the shops are fronts for clandestine operations. A lot of ethnic traders have moved in lately. He instructs his team to question all the traders in the area, threaten them if necessary.

………………………………………………………………….…

Meanwhile, the jazz trumpeter too has disappeared. He has somehow avoided Boss’s men, who are now all over the west side of town. As it happens, with his gear packed into a makeshift box trolley, he is making his way to the Café Baba. He likes to relax here with a slice of orange and almond cake and a glass of mint tea, away from the afternoon crowds. Ahmed will usually have some mellow jazz playing. They might even have a bit of a jam later in the back.

Matt and Flavia are already there, discussing what to do with the bag. It is a quiet time of day at Café Baba and they are the only customers. The Gaggia machine is switched off. There is a faint smell of hashish. Behind the counter, Ahmed and his younger brother, Youssef are sharing a pipe. A tune by Mulatu Astatke’s Black Jesus Experience plays gently in the background. East African beats. This is free jazz. All about ideas, inspiration and improvisation.

Ahmed notices that there is a little tension at Matt and Flavia’s table. Their voices are raised. Perhaps its the food. Maybe they are not familiar with Moroccan delicacies. Perhaps the briouats or the kefta wraps are not to their liking. They do not seem to have touched them. He ambles over to their table to see what the problem might be. In his djellaba and babouche slippers, his movement is hushed, so Matt and Flavia do not hear his approach. They are facing the window. They appear to be in the middle of an argument.

‘I think we need to find out what it is,’ says Matt. ‘Before we make a decision.’

‘I want it as far away from me as possible,’ says Flavia. ‘It’s gross.’

‘Someone might offer a reward for its safe return.’

‘How do you even think of these things? Matt. Where do you get these ideas from? Sometimes I think you live in a parallel universe. It’s a bloody Ikea bag for God’s sake.’

‘But a mysterious Ikea bag.’

‘We’re getting rid of it.’

‘We could put in in a storage unit or a locker at the station until we find out more.’

‘It’s going.’

‘But Flavia …….’

‘Matt! Matt! Look!’ says Flavia, grabbing him by the arm. ‘I swear the bloody bag is breathing.’

Ahmed follows her gaze to the inlaid leg of the walnut table. The blue bag, he notices, does look as though it’s breathing, in fact, it appears to be edging its way across the mosaic floor tiles. It has moved several inches. He is about to remark on this, but at that moment, Chet appears at the door with his gear. Chet comes at about this time every day after he has played his pitches in the town. He is struggling a little today. He is not getting any younger. Ahmed goes over to help him with his cart.

………………………………………………………………….…

‘We’ve found him, boss,’ says Freeman.

‘Who?’ says Boss. ‘Speak up man!’

‘Sorry. It’s a poor signal. …… Is that better?’

‘What is it, Freeman?’

‘We’ve found Jazzman, sir. He has been caught on CCTV passing the horologist’s in the old town. He’s gone down one of those alleys, with some equipment. Willis thinks he might be heading for the Café Baba.’

‘Where?’

‘The Café Baba. It’s an African place.’

‘What’s the low down on it, Freeman?’

‘Could be a front for terrorist activity, possibly.’

‘What about the bag?’

‘He didn’t seem to have the bag, but perhaps it was packed away with his gear.’

‘Keep Jazzman there until I get there. Stay outside, for now, but keep a close eye. We’re not going to lose him again. …….. But I want to be the one to apprehend him. Bring the car round, Jagger!’

‘You asked me to remind you to take your tablets, sir.’

‘Quite, Jagger. Thank you. And let me have some of the others, the ones you got from your man, Zoot.’

………………………………………………………………….…

Matt and Flavia have put away their differences for the time being and realised that they are hungry. Perhaps it has something to do with Chet and Ahmed having sat themselves down at the next table. Chet and Ahmed are waiting for Youssef to bring the mint tea. They are listening to Miles Davis’s So What. It is a live version. Ahmed has turned the volume up a bit.

‘Jazz should be about breaking down conventions, experimenting,’ says Chet. He looks forward to these conversations. They affirm his dedication to the art. ‘I mean it’s got to have energy, be a bit raw, come from inside. You know what I mean.’

‘Absolutely,’ says Ahmed. ‘You certainly get that with Miles he doesn’t do pre-written chord changes.’

‘That’s right,’ says Chet. ‘Miles probably never played this tune the same twice. His improvised melodic lines are the basis of the harmonic progression.’

‘He’s a genius. Where does he get his ideas for improvisations from?’

‘I know. It’s like he opens the bag just before the show and grabs a handful of ideas?’

‘Some of these people you hear today on Jazz FM. It’s like you are stuck in a lift,’ says Ahmed. ‘This so-called smooth jazz. I mean what’s that about. Smooth jazz is a contradiction in terms.’

They sit back to take in an improvised passage.

‘The pastries are delicious by the way,’ says Flavia, trying to make amends for their earlier lack of decorum.

‘Really tasty,’ says Matt.

‘Thank you,’ says Ahmed. He remembers the conversation that they were about to have before Chet’s arrival, the one about the bag. The big blue bag is still there under the table. It appears to have settled.

‘What is in the bag by the way?’ he asks.

………………………………………………………………….…

Casey Boss and Jagger arrive at Café Baba. Freeman and Willis are waiting outside.

‘How’s it looking?’ asks Boss. ‘Is jazzman in there?’

‘Yes,’ says Freeman. ‘He didn’t bring the bag though, but a man and a woman were already there with it.’

‘So there’s more than we thought. What about the café owner?’

‘I think they must all be in it together,’ says Willis.

Casey Boss has not done a lot of fieldwork lately. He is suddenly racked with uncertainty. Shouldn’t Zoot’s meds be working by now, he wonders, to give him a little confidence?

‘What do we do now?’ he says.

‘We generally burst through the door pointing guns and shouting,’ says Freeman. ‘I’ve always found that to be effective.’

‘What are we waiting for then?’ says Boss.

The four of them make their entry in the recommended manner.

‘Nobody move!’ yells Jagger. He has brushed up on his commands.

No-one looks as if they were about to move. It’s as much as they can do to look around. They see so much street theatre these days.

‘Stay away from the bag!’ says Jagger.

‘What’s the fuck’s going on?’ says Ahmed. His sentiments are echoed by the others. Eyes gradually focus on the Ikea bag. Whatever is happening, this is at the heart of the narrative.

Boss picks it up and examines it. He feels calmer now he has the bag and the meds are finally beginning to kick in.

‘Whatever is in the bag seems to have got everyone hot and bothered’ says Ahmed.

‘Whatever’s in the bag! Whatever’s in the bag! You know perfectly well what is in the bag. And we are going to find out everything about your little operation here at Café Baba.’ says Jagger, producing several pairs of handcuffs.

‘I swear none of us has any idea what’s in the bag,’ says Matt.

‘Well let me tell you what is in the bag,’ says Boss, feeling magnanimous. Zoot’s stuff is a real mood changer. ‘The bag is full of …….. ideas.’

‘It’s what?’ says Matt.

‘A bag full of ideas,’ Boss repeats.

‘What are you all talking about?’ says Chet.

‘It’s a bag full of concepts potentially present to consciousness,’ Boss elaborates. ‘Ideas.’

‘Cool,’ says Chet. ‘A bag full of ideas, eh? Can I have a look?’

‘Stay back,’ says Jagger, pointing the gun at his head.

‘I will attempt to explain,’ Boss continues. ‘It is clearly dangerous for too many people to have access to too many ideas, too many concepts potentially present to their consciousness, if you will, so it is necessary to keep a collection in a central repository. Ideas need to be carefully regulated, but it is also important to have a new idea now and then. After all, new ideas generate investment. Even the most antisocial ideas generate an investment. Sometimes raw ideas need to be transported from our warehouse to another location in order to be developed. Different skill sets you understand, storage workers and visionaries. Earlier today, in transit, a delivery was hijacked and has ended up here in the blue Ikea bag.’

‘What are you talking about?’ says Chet.

‘The bag is empty,’ says Flavia. ‘Or at least what is in it is invisible.’

‘Obviously, it’s invisible,’ says Boss. ‘Ideas are invisible.’

‘And heavy,’ says Flavia.

‘Of course, it’s heavy. You don’t think ideas just come in through your internet browser do you, or blow in gently on the prevailing south-westerlies?’

‘Anyway, you’ve got it all wrong,’ says Flavia. ‘A hooded man ran up to me in the street while I was standing there watching the jazz and handed me the bag and ran off.’

‘What?’ says Boss looking round at Jagger. Has his colleague messed up again, he wonders?

‘Why do you think he did that?’

‘Panic, possibly. I don’t know.’

‘And I’ve been trying to get rid of it ever since.’

‘Well, be thankful that you didn’t get rid of it,’ Boss continues. ‘There are a billion embryos of ideas in that bag. Ideas in their raw form, like the seeds of creation. Their value is immeasurable. Over time the ideas will grow and the department needs to be able to monitor their growth. Imagine if they fell into the wrong hands. We would have a free for all. We need to lock them back up in a safe place. It wouldn’t do for people to get the wrong idea.’

© Chris Green 2019: All rights reserved

Bad Karma

~ Chris Green ~ 2 Comments

badkarma

Bad Karma by Chris Green

Eight million pounds give or take, Des Hattersley’s Lotto win set him up with a life of leisure. Being single with no family or close friends to speak of, Des did not have to share his winnings. His new found wealth enabled him to give up his position as a Parking Enforcement Officer with the Metropolitan Borough Council, give notice on his tenancy with Harry Rogue Associates and leave Rotherham behind. With fond memories of Torquay from childhood holidays thirty years ago, Des headed for the Devon coast.

With his meagre traffic warden pay, Des had not been able to afford to run a decent car. He had a series of rusty Rovers and battered Fiats. But now he could buy any model he wanted. He chose a red Lexus LC Coupé. In the wake of the child sexual exploitation scandal, he had once put a ticket on one of these belonging to a visiting dignitary parked on double yellows outside Rotherham railway station. Ever since that day he had wanted one. It was a performance car designed to take your breath away. The Lexus however took a little getting used to. With all the smart technology on board, it felt like NASA command centre. And with a top speed of 167 mph, it was a little quicker than his Fiat Panda. But he soon found himself cruising around Torbay.

The next step was to find a suitable house. The five-star hotel he booked himself into while he was settling in Torbay was comfortable but it was important to have his own space. After a summary tour of west-country estate agents, Des settled on a large detached property in the exclusive Ilsham Marine Drive. At £1.2 million, Giles Hornby-Wallis assured him he was getting a bargain, what with the recently installed swimming pool and property prices in the area expected to rise by ten per cent over the next twelve months.

Karma Lacroix was what is often referred to, for lack of a gentler expression, as a gold-digger. Karma hung around Torquay’s nightspots keeping an eye on the cars that the clientele drove up in. She could tell right away that the man in his late thirties in the ill-fitting seersucker suit who drove up in the Lexus Coupé would be a pushover. He had that look of innocence about him. This was a naive man. She could sense it. But he was clearly filthy rich. Given her powers of persuasion and a little patience, he would be hers. He would be able to bankroll her and, after a decent period of time, join her growing list of penniless ex-husbands.

Des had had little experience of gold-diggers back in Rotherham. Rotherham was not a place where there was a lot of gold. Des certainly didn’t have prospects of any. The only connection with the world of wealth was when he was ticketing around Rotherham Town Hall during a licencing meeting. He was flattered therefore when Karma came up to him in CoCo and put her arm through his.

‘Where are we going afterwards?’ she said.

Des was taken aback. He was not used to women taking the initiative. He was not used to women, let alone attractive women like Karma. It was years since he had had a proper girlfriend. He looked around to see if she might have mistaken him for someone else. He finally managed to stammer something non-committal.

‘You could always come back to mine,’ she said. ‘That is if you would like to. Or perhaps we could go back to yours. I’ve brought an overnight bag.’

Things moved along quickly. Karma was practised in the art of seduction and having moved in with Des, within a matter of days got him to propose. After the private wedding, the joint account was a formality and Karma went on a spending spree, taking in London, Paris and Milan for her new wardrobe.

‘A boat would be nice, Des,’ Karma said. ‘You can’t live in Torbay and not have a boat. I saw a lovely Sunseeker Manhattan for sale. A fifty-two footer. You could probably get it for around half a million. Maybe less.’

‘I know nothing about boats,’ Des said.

‘You could learn,’ Karma said. ‘Then we’d be sail over to the continent. We could visit Jacques in Cap D’Antibes. Perhaps we could even buy a place in the South of France. Nice is nice.’

Within a month, they were sailing to Cap D’Antibes aboard the Vanilla Sky. Within two months they were in the notaire’s offices signing the contract for a villa in Juan-Les-Pins. Within three months, Karma was shacked up with with Jacques in Des’s new villa overlooking the Mediterranean. Des, meanwhile, was in custody in Nice following a heated domestic dispute.

It wasn’t even his fault he was arrested. In a drunken rage after a night out, Karma had attacked him with a Gauloises ashtray. He had expressed his disapproval of her constant flirting. He was defending himself, trying desperately to hold her back. As he tightened his grip on her, she began screaming and shouting. It was unfortunate that two gendarmes were passing as she ran from the house. Her accusations of assault convinced the officers he was the aggressor, a violent sexual predator. His protests of innocence fell on deaf ears.

It has been said that incarceration can be character building. Des quickly discovered that languishing in prison in a foreign country was a great leveller. How could he have been so charitable, so trusting, so gullible? Looking back on it now, he could see that from the outset, Karma had been using him, abusing him and robbing him blind? There was no real need for the boa constrictor. Or the gold-plated iPhone. And she had sold the Cartier diamond necklace he bought her almost straight away. How could he have fallen for her lies? How could he have believed that someone like Karma would really be a big fan of Geoffrey Boycott? She didn’t even know what a straight drive was. Or that her family used to breed whippets? She hadn’t even heard of the Kennel Club. From the very beginning, she had strung him along and he had fallen for it, hook, line and sinker.

………………………………..

‘You should have contacted me sooner,’ Sebastian Dark of Gallagher, Dreamer and Shed, Solicitors said.

‘I would have,’ Des said. ‘But the French police wouldn’t let me. They told me I had to use their representative. A Monsieur Dupont. I’m not sure what Monsieur Dupont’s position was. But he wasn’t much help. That’s why I’m still in here.’

‘Well, it’s not good news, Mr Hattersley. Over the past week, there have been major withdrawals from your accounts. The total withdrawals amount to, let me see. Ah yes, four million in all as near as dammit. Not to put too fine a point on it, you have been cleaned out.’

‘You’re telling me Karma has taken all my money.’

‘In a word. It would seem so, yes.’

‘I see. It all begins to make sense now. ……. But I still have the properties and the boat, don’t I?’

‘H’mmm. Not the boat, I’m afraid. That appears to have been sold and, of course, the two houses are in joint names. We’ll have to contest that one. And I’m not sure there’s an easy way to tell you this. I received notification through the post this morning that your wife has filed for divorce on grounds of adultery.’

‘Her Adultery.’

‘No, Mr Hattersley. That’s not how it works. Your adultery’

‘But I’ve never so much as looked at another woman.’

‘Apparently, her solicitors have photographic evidence to the contrary.’

‘So, what can we do about it all, Mr Dark?’ Des said. ‘Can we get any of the money back? Can we take her name off the deeds? Can we counter petition on the divorce?’

‘One thing at a time, Mr Hattersley. Firstly, we need to get you out of there.’

It is often thought that the party that holds the power will always be the one that holds the power. But others might argue that eventually, over time, things have a tendency to even themselves out. Some even believe that destiny will take care of things. But perhaps it is best to channel your energies into bringing about the change you want.

Over the few days that he had been locked up, Des had built up a determination to reverse the downward momentum that had gone hand in hand with meeting Karma. Des had always seen things in terms of good and bad, black or white, right or wrong. There was no middle ground. Good generated good and bad generated bad. This view needed revising. His love for Karma had turned to hate, a bitter hate that went deep down into his soul. He wanted revenge. He was a man, not a mouse. He needed to call on the same resolve that had once enabled him to win Rotherham Parking Enforcement Officer of the Year by issuing a record number of tickets over the Christmas period, a time when traditionally traffic wardens held back. No holds barred.

It now seemed obvious. Oppose the divorce. This would be straightforward enough and delay matters. Then, in the interim, get rid of Karma. Not personally of course but employ a hit man. As next of kin, assuming that she had not yet thought of making a will, Karma would die intestate and everything would revert back to him. Time was of the essence.

‘If you can get me out of here,’ Mr Dark,’ Des said. ‘I may have some ideas of how to go about sorting this out.’

Through Sebastian Dark’s protestations to the French authorities, Des was released the next day. He found there were a surprisingly large number of English-speaking private investigators based in the south of France. Perhaps the weather suited people of this persuasion. Perhaps the market here was more lucrative for gumshoes. Perhaps there was simply a higher demand for their services than back home.

Nick Carr, Private Investigator, Licensed and Bonded agreed to tail Mrs Hattersley. He confided that he knew people that would be prepared to intervene, should this be required.

‘For a fee, anything is possible,’ Carr said.

‘You mean …..?’

‘Indeed! Just say the word and it will be done.’

‘The intervention sounds good,’ Des said. ‘Cuts out all the crap. In fact, don’t even bother tailing her. Let’s get on with the hit as soon as possible.’

‘As long as you’re sure,’ Carr said. ‘But, remember! Once this is set in motion, it is not something that can be cancelled.’

‘I’m sure,’ Des said.

They discussed fees and made arrangements for the handover of the cash. Des was sad he would have to sell the Lexus but this seemed the safest way to raise the required fifty thousand without disturbing what was left of his finances..

‘Erase all your computer search history,’ Carr said. ‘Then no written communication and no emails. No phonecalls or texts between us except on these single-use burner phones. Three for you and three for me. And take a holiday. Act normally. Phone a friend or two to say how much you are looking forward to getting away for a few days.’

It seemed very cloak and dagger to Des. He was used to everything being out in the open. But perhaps this attitude had contributed to his downfall. Clearly, there were grey areas, shady deals and hidden agendas to consider if you were to get by. Secrecy was certainly an important factor when doing business with the Midi underworld.

As instructed, Des took a plane to Stockholm to avoid being linked to the impending hit. He booked into the Hilton. Here there would be sufficient records of his stay to give him an alibi when the hit happened. His being in Stockholm would look like a legitimate city break, the type of leisure pursuit a man of means would be likely to entertain. He spoke freely to hotel staff and told them he expected his wife to join him in a few days. He took the precaution of posting date-sensitive selfies at key landmarks on social media throughout his stay.

News of Karma’s death reached Des over dinner. A simple message, All done. Ditch the phone. Stay put for now. Leave the day after tomorrow.

A call from Sebastian Dark cut Des’s celebrations short.

‘I’m afraid there has been a complication, Mr Hattersley,’ he said. ‘You will have probably heard by now that your wife met with an accident. To add to this sad news however, there are, how can I put it, some complications. It appears she did not die intestate. She left everything to her brother, Jacques.’

‘What exactly does this mean, Mr Dark?’ Des said as he tries to work out the ramifications.

‘As things stand, it means, Mr Hattersley, that you have no money and you and Jacques Lacroix are the joint owner of two properties.’

‘I don’t understand. You mean that Jacques was her brother and not her lover.’

‘It would appear so, Mr Hattersley. And from what I gather I’m not sure the two of you are going to see eye to eye.’

© Chris Green 2019: All rights reserved

The Life and Times of Roy Saxx

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thelifeandtimesofroysaxx

The Life and Times of Roy Saxx by Chris Green

I’d better start at the end. Roy Saxx is dead. He met his maker in September 2011 when he lost control of his Triumph motorcycle on a blind bend in a freak thunderstorm near the aptly named village of Kilve in the Quantock Hills. He was sixty three years old. You may not have heard of Roy Saxx. But, if you have not, the chances are you will. Even though he has been dead for seven years, his star is rising. Posthumous fame is more common than you might imagine. Think Stieg Larsson, Van Gogh, Kafka, Jesus.

It is difficult to pigeonhole Roy Saxx. He was something of an enigma. But were it not for Roy, you would be without many of the things you take for granted. You would not have a tiger in your tank. You would not be changing rooms or baking off. You would not have a selfie stick and your disks would be floppy. Your eggs would all be in one basket and the ball would not be in your court.

Roy was born to Sid and Sally Saxx, the seventh of seven sons. Growing up in Somerset in the post-war years, he was a gauche and gangly child. Giving his elder brothers a wide berth and avoiding the gangs and cliques at the schools he attended, he developed a solitary persona, seeking out the places he knew his contemporaries would not. If he had a best friend, it was probably an imaginary one. He was habitually drawn towards the unusual and fascinated by the unexplainable. At a very young age, he would retire to his room for days on end where he would read the works of Nikola Tesla or the teachings of Krishnamurti. He devoured the early science fiction novels of Kurt Vonnegut and Theodore Sturgeon with equal relish. On rainy days, he often took to going on long walks on Exmoor to contemplate the nature of the universe and perhaps to seek congress with aliens.

Remarkably, there is no record of Roy Saxx from 1965 onwards. Until recently, there was little interest in what he might have been up to. But as we begin to realise his monumental importance as an innovator, speculation regarding his whereabouts during the lost years abounds. Was he in hiding or could he have been using another name? Or many names? Was he studying the occult on a barge in Burma or had he perhaps been kidnapped by extraterrestrials? No-one knows for sure.

I first became aware of Roy Saxx a week or two ago when I was researching for a short story about an eccentric inventor. I found that the patents for almost everything I had mentioned in the draft of the story were actually owned by Roy. Somehow, over the years he had accumulated a prodigious portfolio. The patents for the plug and play pet rock, the edible pen and the silent trumpet that in the story I had attributed to my character were items already patented by Roy. Each time I tried to substitute another unlikely invention, I found this too had already been thought of by Roy. Imagine someone else thinking of a USB frog, an invisible kettle or a luminous badger. It was uncanny. When I tried to bring a little more realism into the tale by having my protagonist come up with a self-cleaning, solar-powered smartdog, it turned out that Roy had patented this too.

I wondered if other people were aware of Roy Saxx’s clandestine enterprises. No-one at the office seemed interested. They are an incurious lot at Ideas R Us. When I brought the subject up with my partner, Carrie after dinner one evening, she said, you’re not going to go off on one of your flights of fancy, are you, Chet? She reminded me of the time I became preoccupied with the idea that lines in the sky left by planes might contain chemicals that were being used as a form of mind control, this before I found out they were after all just lines in the sky. She told me I was so obsessed with my writing I no longer spent any time with the children. I argued that at eighteen and nineteen, they no longer needed to be mollycoddled. Besides, I said, Simon spent most of his time at his girlfriend’s and Garfunkel was out of his head the whole time. I managed to parry the inevitable ‘and whose fault is that’ with a compliment on Carrie’s casserole.

I decided to phone my friend, Greg. Greg would surely know something about Roy Saxx. He read the Financial Times and watched The Culture Show.

‘Good to hear from you Chet,’ he said. ‘Is it about the pigeons?’

‘Not the pigeons, this time, Greg,’ I said. ‘The pigeons are fine. I’m calling about Roy Saxx. Have you heard of him?’

‘You mean Roy Saxx, the snakes and ladders magnate?’ he said. ‘Didn’t he die in a ballooning accident a while back?’

‘Is there …… maybe not another Roy Saxx?’ I said.

‘Just kidding you, Chet,’ Greg said. ‘You are clearly referring to Roy Saxx, the wish fulfilment engineer who grew the magic poppies.’

‘That sounds like him,’ I said.

‘Dreamer of the Year 2001,’ Greg continued. ‘Runs the Dreams Come True corporation.’

‘That’s definitely the fellow,’ I said.

‘Sorry Chet,’ he said, laughing. ‘I made that one up too. …… But look here! You just don’t hear about some of these innovators. They don’t make the front pages. They keep a low profile. Have you heard for instance of David Sun?’

‘No,’ I said.

Sun? What kind of name is Sun? I wondered if Greg was still winding me up.

‘Sun founded Kingston Technology,’ Greg said. ‘Flash drives and flash cards. He is worth billions. What about Harvey Ross Ball, the inventor of smiley faces? Or Gary Dahl who invented the pet rock? Roy Saxx is probably just another in a long line of diffident maverick inventors.’

Once you become aware of a word, a name, an object or a situation that is new to you and your brain has registered it, you begin to notice it all the time. Somehow it was there all along without you realising it. The newly discovered word or name or object or situation comes up in conversation, in the paper, on the news, on the posters at tube stations and in the book you are reading. Suddenly, it is everywhere. You wonder how it was you did not notice it before, especially because you now realise whatever it is has been around for a long time. I’m sure you must have experienced something like this. If you google it, you will find this is called the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, sometimes referred to less colourfully as frequency illusion.

Following my conversation with Greg, Roy Saxx’s profile seemed to grow exponentially. Most days, I would see his name in the local paper about something or other. As I made my way through the Saturday shoppers, I’d hear his name. People would be talking about him in the queue for cinema tickets and at supermarket checkouts. His picture began appearing on adverts on the side of buses for a range of products. He featured in the tabloids I found left on train seats, then the broadsheets. His name began to appear in the credits at the end of TV shows, new ones and repeats of old favourites. He had a Wikipedia page, which was constantly updating. He was becoming a popular culture icon. I even found him on the cover of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I’d owned the album for years. I felt sure he didn’t used to be. At least, I thought I was sure but truth be told, I just didn’t know anymore.

Several times I asked Carrie what she made of it but she now seemed to have stopped speaking to me altogether. Simon and Garfunkel too were conspicuously silent at meal times. In fact, they were not there at meal times. Or any other time. Apparently, they had both left home. Greg was no longer answering my calls. Ideas R Us had suspended me. My world was falling apart. I did not know which way to turn. Was that the Saxx browser that has appeared on the desktop with an advert for the Saxx Bank? Without warning, Roy Saxx appeared as a Facebook friend. He began trolling me on twitter. Everything appeared to be closing in.

Perhaps I did not start at the end. It was not the end. I just wanted it to be the end. Perhaps it was just the beginning. How could all this be happening if Roy Saxx were dead? Perhaps he survived the motorcycle accident. Perhaps there was no motorcycle accident. Perhaps there was no motorcycle. I have just had another look at Wikipedia. There now appear to be a dozen entries for Roy Saxx, each offering different information. Is it possible that Roy Saxx operates outside the normal parameters of existence? Is he a time traveller, hungry for recognition and hell-bent on acquisition, who keeps coming back for more?

Be on the lookout! Something or other pertaining to Roy Saxx is certain to make an appearance in your life soon. Then you are likely to discover the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon kicks in. Suddenly, you will notice Roy Saxx’s name everywhere. It will be on the inflatable Buddha you keep on your desk. It will be on the bouncing tortoise you are thinking of buying for your partner. It will be emblazoned on the side of the plane on your flight to Honolulu. It will be ……….

© Chris Green 2018: All rights reserved