All stories

Back in the day things were simpler. Eat, sleep, take a good dump – circle of life. If you were lucky – or good – splash a good and runny un across the window screen of some shiny car. All these fledglings want to know – how is it you got to be so good? How is it you can plant a wet one nine times out of ten, and plant it good and true, right in the kisser?

It was Beady Eye that started it – raving about chips. Triple cooked these were, and these weren’t fancy dans from some restaurant, these were real chips, these were chippy chips. Eldorado, he called it, a storeroom full to the roof of shiny gold twice cooked chips waiting to be plunged into the fryer a third and last time before rising in all their glory. Shards of golden crispness giving way to pale white and fluffy. I’m proud to say that I gorged as never before. My pale white belly was full as an egg as I lumbered into the journey home. But that’s the beauty of our life: throw it all up then back to Eldorado for another meal of snatched crispy goodness.

So full I was that I nearly took off the face of the cliff when I crashed into land. Right away chicks fifteen, seventeen and eighteen were hollering – Feed me! Feed me! Feed me!

But what about sixteen?

Where was she?

Feed me! Feed me! Feed me!

I beat aside the selfish beaks of her siblings, but chick sixteen – no way would she have let herself be trampled by her brothers and sisters (oh, I do still mourn chicks three, eight and eleven).

Chick sixteen was not in the nest.

I felt a moment’s surge of hope.

Could she…have flown?

Every time I left the nest: Daddy! Daddy! Let me fly. I’m a flyer too!

All those times together, gull and chick, her downy feathers set by the wind into a mockery of sleek flight feathers, all those times I was thinking, could she? Of course not, she was too young. But the nest was empty.

A terrible chorus of screeching began – the alarm call. A moment later Beady Eye beat to a hover in front of me.

‘Hurry! It’s chick sixteen!’

This child of mine had flown. Somehow she had made it safely to the sand below, but lacking her flight feathers she was unable to take to the sky.

Unable to escape the human beast.

We arrived only in time to glimpse the last moments of her torment, to see this human child stamp once, and crush her head into the sand.

We divebombed him. He ran, he fell, and then as his hands tried to beat away the wings of Beady Eye I cratered his chest and unloaded a stomach’s worth of triple cooked chips now softened into goo.

But that’s not what you wanted to know is it. That’s right, why am I the Eagle of aerial bombing? Well, you would be too, because revenge is not chips served cold. Revenge is taking to the wing, Beady Eye as spotter, then line up my next bombing run, my once a week treat, and always boom! Right in the kisser.

Davie Greendale was an ordinary old man who had a special power. Due to a mix up at the opticians, whenever he donned his rose-tinted specs, he was transported to an idyllic past where youngsters respected their elders and betters and humorous words to describe non-white people were not considered to be hate crime. In this world Davie was extremely important!

He was not the only old person who seemed to have developed super powers. His best friend Ralph , who Davie often mistook for Michael Caine, had been given a new mobility scooter for Christmas and was now able to deliver a withering diatribe at anyone being socially irresponsible without that person feeling able to punch him in the face.

This was perfect for apprehending the many felons that he encountered such as litterers, queue-jumpers and traffic wardens.

The third member of their gang, Frank, who Davie called Sean Connery, also had a power. Since winning third prize in an Echo poetry competition he’d discovered himself to be able to write appalling verse whenever he wanted to highlight a local issue.

While some might consider this a pathetic superpower, incomparable to those possessed by his friends, Frank knew it was a vital tool in highlighting the shortcomings of the Council and had several polite replies from them that “took his concerns very seriously” to prove it.

He was hard at work on a new masterpiece when the others approached his golf club table.

“These plastic eyesores full of rubbish lie

On every pavement that assails mine eye!

Did Heroes land upon that day called “D”

These monstrous, ugly. Wheelie-bins to see?”

Frank had always been prepared to lay down his life for his country, …..providing that it wasn’t during Eggheads.

“Sean! Here’s your drink, I know how you like it “Shaken Not Stirred!” said Davie.

Ralph’s scooter arrived at the table.

“I call to order the first meeting of The League of Extraordinary Pensioners! Item one: Suspicious Looking Characters. I have just seen a young person loitering, he is carrying a large bag full of valuable golf clubs and he appears to be trying to start a rave in the carpark.”

XXXX

Ryan Greendale had had to ferry Dad around since last month’s driving ban. He’d got the clubs from the boot but when he looked up, Dad had already gone. Possibly to the club room for a wee. He turned off the Neil Sedaka CD which the old man couldn’t hear, even at full volume, and slipped into a reverie about Hannah-in-marketing while he waited.

Suddenly, he felt a pain in his foot, he looked up to see his father had stamped on him whilst a second old man was attempting weakly to pin his arms behind his back, a third shouted at him from a mobility scooter.

“This is a citizen’s arrest! Do not attempt to resist! The police are on their way,”

“Oh Dad”, said Ryan sadly, realising that he would have to explain everything to that angry bird, WPC Potter, and therefore miss the start of Chelsea-Liverpool .

She didn’t get it. Ashley knew who Morcambe and Wise were, of course. Her Nana had loved them and she had found them amusing too in a gentle sort of way. They had watched the reruns together, when televisions and VCRs were still a thing.

Why she had seen this episode more than four times was beyond her. The sixteen year old carers pulled up random programmes - anything tagged with ‘golden era’ would do - and left the residents to it, while they went back to whatever it was they did off duty.

That afternoon Ashely was helped from her chair and ushered into the dining room for coffee and biscuits with the other residents. She stared down at her hands, clutching her aluminium frame, clawed with age, riddled with liver spots.

She remembered those same hands dancing, weaving, flashing, lithe in the darkness, like delicate white birds loosed in the sweaty, crowded tent. The strobe lights flashed hypnotically to the beat, the rubber stamp of an angry bird smeared across her wrist.

The Ecstacy from the boy in the white Adidas zip-up jacket coursed through her blood, as, nearby, a stranger danced and sweated and chewed his face, right along with her. They shared a smile that seemed to carry worlds within it.

She remembered the sun coming up and the way the music still simmered in her veins, long after the DJ had packed up and gone home; hot tea on cold mornings, the sunrise over dew covered mountains.

The smell of grass and canvas and sweat. Fag smoke and chewing gum. That feeling that everything was exactly as it should be, because they all had each other, here, in this perfect moment that would stretch all the way to tomorrow’s come-down.

Then she remembered Brit Pop and Girl Power; Brexit, terrorism, running parallel with Instagram and smartphones. All gone, decades ago. All a thing of the past. Like her.

These days she wasn’t sure what it was young people were crazy about. These days Glen Miller drifted gently out from the PA and all the pictures on the walls were of Vera Lynn and long-dead comedians she had never heard of..

She had asked one of them once. One of the carers, Shanaya, who told her it was to remind them of when they were young.

“But when I was young I went to raves and listened to trance music. I liked festivals and films and backpacking. I never knew who Glen Miller was until I came here. I liked Judge Jules and Absolutely Fabulous.”

But Shanaya’s eyes had glazed over.

“Aw that’s nice. Did you ever learn how to do the jitterbug to the trance music? Was your husband in the army?”

“What? No! I didn’t have a husband!”

“Oh that was brave for them days. We learned about it at school. Was you one of them ‘unmarried mothers’?”

When Ashley didn’t answer, Shayana led her gently over to the biscuits. The music changed Male Voice Choir hits from the Welsh Valleys and Ashley tried to understand why she was supposed to like it.

Picture the scene. Then.

The morning sun nudges the night sky awake. The first lights glow washes over the still warm bodies draped across the field. Chests rise and fall in peaceful slumber. Limbs entwined with others, some with the dark stained tables. The gentle glisten of dried sweat shimmers in the air. Peaceful remberences dance by. Whirling to the forgotten sound of the beat. The outline of bodies moving, merged in the heat of the moment. A cool wind blows them away.

If you listen carefully you can still hear the gentle echoes of the thrum thrum thrum. The distant sound of fading music, cheering crowd and pulsing whistles mixing with the chirp of the morning chorus.

Picture the scene. And now.

The morning sun nudges the night awake. The first lights glow washes over the tense already awake bodies. Quick short breathes. Eyes wide. Plastic shapes entwined with discarded bibs.

The gentle glisten of baby vomit and mecunium shimmers in the air. Children’s shapes spin by in the shadows. Whirling to no known rhythm or beat. It is hot. There is no breeze.

All you can hear is the banging and stamping of feet. Echoing thrum thrum thrum through your skull. A child finds the toy whistle as it mixes with the shrill piercing of childrens screams drowning out the distant morning chorus.

Picture the scene. Now remember it. Not the story of it, made in the retelling, but the real moment. Then.

The sun is too hot for this early in the morning. Your head aches with an endlessly repeating thrum ringing through your head, your water starved brain struggling to make sense of it all. Your leg is trapped somehow in what’s left of the table you foolishly danced on last night. And the damn light cuts through everything; flashing daggers of pain mix with flashes of last nights mistakes. Everything reeks of sweat. You can hardly see, bodies are littered everywhere and the wind blows dirt and god knows what else into your face. Some fucking chaffinch is squawking like an angry child.

And now.

The sun is just rising, you still have plenty of time before work. You smile as you lie naked next to her trying to catch your breathe. Eyes wide in amazement and satisfaction. The children for once content to play with each other. Happy and temporarily tear free. A moment to savour. The thrum of their movement washes over you. The noise of their cries is so familiar to you that you that you worry when you can’t hear it, but for now it is underscored by the morning chorus.

Then, was now once. So why make it impossibly rosier than it was. Our world is not meant to be tinted. The truth is some moments were more and some were less and as we change the balance changes. It is impossible to capture then; you can never step in the same stream twice. So maybe it’s not about swimming in idyllic days gone by, but taking a moment to enjoy dipping your toes in what’s happening right now.