Saturday 19 July 2014

Under the Overgrown Brambles, Through the Spiders' Webs...



Under the overgrown brambles, through the spiders’ webs, past the tethered cat asleep on the lawn at the limit of its chain, to Mr Briggs’ front door. “Good weekend?” he asks. “Not so bad, thanks. You?” “It were all right. We went down The Railway. I said to Robert, ‘Have
you any food on?’ He said ‘Yes, we’re doing bacon sandwiches for a pound.’ I said, ‘I’ll have two.’ So we had a bacon sandwich each.” “Very nice”, I say. “Aye, but when I got up to go for a piss, they had a bloke on the toilet door trying to charge me 50p because of the Tour de France! The robbing bastards! I said to Robert ‘You’re not charging me 50p for a piss, I’ve been coming in here thirty-five year.’” “Did he charge you?” I asked. “Did he fuck. Robbing bastard!”

The roofers are listening to Tracey Chapman on their bright yellow, heavy-duty site radio while they discuss their nights out in Brighouse. “Aye, I went out there last weekend. It wasn’t a bad night but I didn’t go out to get rat-arsed” says the younger one, rolling a cigarette. “Fuck me!” says the older one “I did! I got absolutely fucking bladdered.”

The occupants of the little Fiat 500 ahead of me at the lights are engaged in some kind of gobbing-out-of-the-window contest. The big man with the moustache in the near-side passenger seat appears to be winning; he’s landed a large greeny halfway across the pavement outside the doctor’s surgery. Two of the beige pensioners in the long line of mainly-beige-with-accents-of-navy pensioners at the bus stop look on disapprovingly. They begin to remonstrate with the Fiat men but the wind blows something heavy by Yves St Laurent into my van so I wind up my window and miss what they say.

Saturday 12 July 2014

The Most Difficult Thing Ever audio extract / new stockists



Two new Manchester stockists of The Most Difficult Thing Ever book/CD:

Magma
22 Oldham Street
Manchester 
M1 1JN

Trouble at Mill
50 Beech Road
Chorlton-cum-Hardy
Manchester
M21 9EG