NOT A FOOTBALL FAN

CITY 1 FOREST 1

The friend I'd planned to go to the football with texted this morning:
Just looked at website. Forest game sold out;
then:
Tickets sold out monday
I listened to the game on the radio.

NOTE ON A DESK ON THE TOP FLOOR OF A DISUSED CHOCOLATE FACTORY

TRYING TO CONFIRM DEAL WITH TESCO
“ TO GET MORE BUSINESS WITH ASDA
INVESTED IN NEW MANAGER FOR CONTINENTAL CASES
SLIGHT DECLINE IN SALES
CANT BORROW ANY MORE EXTRA MONEY FOR STATIONERY ETC
NEXT MEETING.16TH APRIL

ROOM AT THE TOP

WITH YOU LOT HERE

'You looking for anything in particular?' I said to the policeman closest to me..
I'd been watching him and his two colleagues walking towards me as I sat on the bench on a verge of the cyclepath near the chocolate factory in Greenbank.
'Drugs,' he said leaning one hand on the stick he'd used poking around the undergrowth.
'There's a syringe just down there,' I said.
He didn't bother looking.
'What it is,' he said, 'is the dealers hide the drugs along here so they don't have too much on them if they get caught.'
'Oh, you're after a stash then?'
'If they get caught with a lot on them it means prison time a small amount they get an on-the-spot fine. So they hide it along here so when a buyer comes along they pop in and out of the bushes and the deal's done in thirty seconds. You know what I mean?'
'It's a bit open isn't it?'
'There's a good place down there,' he said pointing with his stick in the direction of town. 'Nothing overlooks it and they can see up and down here if anyone's coming.'
'Good thinking.'
'So if you want any drugs you know where to look.'
'Thanks for the tip.'
'Don't quote me on that,' he said.
'I won't.'
'It's a serious problem...really.'
'I'm sure it is,' I said, 'with you lot here.'

TRIPTYCH

SHE GOT

She got in first even though she arrived after me.
One.
Two.
She leaned forward looked at the numbers.
Three.
Four.
‘What floor we at?’ she said.
Five.
Six.
‘Six,’ I said.
‘Oh.’
Seven.
Eight.
The lift stopped. She got out.

THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE




EVIDENCE

More than a hole it was a gap in the fence.
‘Let’s go in.’
‘I’ve always wanted to,’ she said.
As we passed between an outbuilding and the main building a man up ahead trotted away right behind a corner.
‘Listen,’ I said.
‘What? I can’t hear anything.’
‘Listen.’
A man’s voice. A pigeon flapping in another room.
‘There’s someone else in here.’
We saw a man walk across an opening the far end of an adjoining corridor. He stopped.
‘Alright?’ he said. ‘You just wandering around?’
‘Yeh, you find anything interesting?’
He didn’t say. A woman’s voice and he disappeared from out the doorway.
We went up stairs through rooms across a walkway and up onto the roof. She took a photograph of me with Packers Field in the background.
‘Evidence,’ she said.

THE BOYS AND GIRL ARE BACK IN TOWN

NICE OF YOU

Grandad’s back home. We went to a cafe near where he lives. He gave me money and said, ‘get a couple of cakes for us.’
He’d said on the way, ‘a cup of tea and a Chelsea bun, that’s what I want.’
‘I don’t think they’ll have a Chelsea bun where we’re going.’
‘Oh well, but I’d still like a Chelsea bun.’
We sat without talking. Grandad lit a cigarette and I filmed him stub it out in the ashtray the waiter had replaced the full one with was at the table when we sat down.
Someone held the door for us when we left.
‘Thank you,’ said Grandad. ‘That’s very nice of you.’
I lived near Easton swimming pool years ago and would buy screws and nails and rawplugs from a shop just round the corner on Stapleton Road.
At the counter where I paid for the items I wanted, the man, who I assumed owned the shop, seeing as he was there every time I went in - and who did rather well out of it too judging by the big red BMW I’d seen him drive and park on the road outside the shop - would say, ‘nice of you.’

SWOB

‘Let me in,’ said the man coming towards me as I got ready to fob the door.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not if you don’t live here or the person you’ve come to see isn’t in.’
‘I do live here.’
‘Where?’
He told me with details only a resident would know, ‘but I haven’t got my swob, I’ve lost it. I’ve got to go to the office get a new one.’
‘Do they give you fobs?’
‘Yeh. The swob I’ve got doesn’t work down here only at the back.’
‘You need a new one.’
‘Yeh. That’s what I said.’
‘Yeh, you said that you’d lost it and that it didn’t work?’
‘Yeh, that’s right,’ he said. ‘They gave me two swobs when I moved in. I lost one of them and the other doesn’t work.’

DEMOLITION

HARDER

She left a message on my mobile: I wondered if you knew they’re demolishing that Audi art place on Cheltenham Road was the art gallery I’ve just gone past it on the bus they’re really in the middle of it and you can see all the grafitti inside it’s a great photo opportunity.
I went down and saw what they were doing. I filmed and took photographs. My hands got very cold.
As I left the scene I asked one of the workers was the other side of a fence had been erected around the demolition site if all the buildings were coming down.
‘Not these,’ he said of the two buildings facing Cheltenham Road. ‘They’re listed.’
The man in the lift was the older of the three of us going up said, ‘it’s cold out there isn’t it?’
‘My hands are freezing.’
‘I can’t believe it’s gone so cold after all that warm weather.’
‘I’m suffering.’
‘My throat’s dry and I think I’m coming down with something.’
‘I’ve already got something,’ I said.
The older man got out halfway up leaving me and Big Man.
‘It’s the weather changing keeps the colds coming back,’ said Big Man. ‘I know someone has had some sort of cold for months.’
‘It makes work unpleasant,’ I said.
‘Makes it harder,’ said Big Man.

COLD OUT THERE

‘Thanks,’ I said to the man held the door for me as I got in the bottom lift.
‘What floor?’ he asked then pressed both our buttons. ‘Did you see the snow earlier?’
‘No. When was it?’
‘About three o’clock.’
I’d left the flat about three and passed No.4 who was waiting for the lift.
He’d said, ‘it’s cold out there.’
‘Is it?’
‘It’s just tried to sleet.’
‘Tried to?’
‘Well it did, but only a few minutes then it stopped.’
‘Got to be cold to do that.’
As I turned the corner to the doors he said something I didn’t quite hear so I leaned back to see him there, in the entrance to the lift.
‘What was that?’
‘I said, “the wind makes it colder.”’
The man in the lift was saying, ‘it was when I went to pick up the kids from school.’
‘They said it was going to snow but I didn’t believe it.’
‘Nor me. But I do now.’

REVELATION




I FOUND A BOOK...
its cover was missing and pages were torn. I took a photograph of it lying on the ground.

A NINETY ONLY

“But there’s TRITON,” crusted a gath break with a conflict history. “We’re simply gore filth in a hundred ways cut the more at ease.”
Over the spared to:
her eyebrow lowered asking one of his eye, “it’s not as if his arm his expression break into something evolving probably Jewish.”
Bron lazy once explained, “to turn up com buttons and spies take yo of his those that;
“Whelt up the nomic wangling;
“Cotall eve beeksty cut;
“come forward again to set scar need through ice after vicious.”
He minutes each cargo ship from the edge of off and roll.
“Yeah, had a ninety only...”

BROADMEAD NEW END
(today about 1pm)

IRISH STEW

On the way home from Easton I rode past a St. Patrick’s Day parade about to move off towards town from Goodhind Street. I stopped, got off my bike and filmed as the column passed where I stood.
‘You’d think it’d be bigger with all the Paddy’s in town,’ said a man next to me.
‘There is a large Irish community here, isn’t there?’ I said.
I used to co-own an Austin Half-Ton van we’d bought from a buthcher was going out of business. One day while I was giving it a much needed wash a pony and trap driven by what looked like a young teenage boy drew up.
‘You want to sell it?’ he said with an Irish accent and pointing at the van.
‘No thanks.’
‘Go on. I’ll give you a good price.’
‘No thanks.’
‘You sure? I’ll do you a deal.’
‘No thanks.’
‘If you change your mind I’ll be around for a while.’
‘Okay,’ I said.

PROPERTY SECTION

I bought the Evening Post from the twenty-four hour shop on the Triangle after Sainsbury’s on the way to the hospital.
The lift in the Old Building is slow.
Grandad was sat in a chair next to his bed. He was doing a puzzle in the book of puzzles I’d brought in Wednesday.
He seemed pleased to see me. He looked well. I told him. I got a chair from against the back wall and sat down near to him. I gave him the paper. He turned it over to the back page.
‘They at home tomorrow?’
‘No. They’ve got two away games in a row.’
‘You think they’re going to make it?’
‘It’s in their own hands.’
He handed me the paper.
‘You want a quick read?’
I took out the property section and gave him the rest.

DOWN THE LINE
(shortly arriving at Filton Abbeywood)

THE VISIT

I went to see Grandad in hospital. He seemed as well as I’ve ever seen sat up in bed with tubes and wires going in and out of him he didn’t stop talking.
He told me stories he’s told me many times before and after I’d got back to his bedside from buying him a paper and a book of the puzzles he likes he told me one of them again.
‘City this size ought to have premiership football,’ he said.
I agreed with him. A top flight team would bring a lot to the city not least decent live football of a Saturday afternoon.
City have been responsible for some of the worst football I’ve seen in my career as a fan of the team local to where I happen to be living at the time. But this season the couple of games I’ve watched them play they’ve been well organised with a sense of purpose.
‘I think they’ve got a manager there now who can do something,’ says Grandad.
He talks about managers and players of an era was before I was born; of his trial for City Boys; and of playing for his school with a boy who later scored for a big London club.

GRANDAD IS UNWELL

I’m due to see Grandad tomorrow but I got a call yesterday saying he’d been taken to hospital becasue his health had deteriorated.
‘It only hurts when standing or walking,’ he says of his leg. ‘When I’m sat down I don’t notice it.’
I can see how painful it is by the look on his face when he moves.
‘I used to go to Molly brace’s place out at Severn Beach. The Bookie - I don’t remember his name - would give me a lift. If he’d had a good day he’d buy me a drink.’
‘What if he’d had a bad day?’ I said.
‘He’d buy me a drink then as well. He was never short of a bob or two, even on a bad day.’
‘I suppose a good day for him was a bad day for someone else.’
‘I never liked the horses,’ he said.
I took a sip of coffee.
‘Molly Bracey,’ he said. ‘She’d play the piano and sing. I’d have a couple of ciders. Kingston cider, it was. Just a couple, that’s all.’

THREE AND A HALF MINUTES OF BIRDSONG

DISAPPOINTMENT

‘I just heard a conversation,’ he said when we’d sat down. ‘But I don’t think I’ll remember it.’
I listened so I might use it later.
‘He was stood at the bar saying, “I sent her flowers and a card. I didn’t hear from her for two days, the ungrateful bitch. So I phoned her up and asked if she’d got the stuff. She said she had and then a few days after that she sent me a note saying what she’d got with the voucher I’d given her.”’
‘He was expecting too much,’ she said. ‘Bound to be disappointed.’

The next day he left a message: I knew exactly what he meant but it wasn’t until I got to his place that I found out he’d borrowed the phrase from someone else.

A FREQUENT FREQUENT

BOOTS VOICE ACTION



COUNTING CRANES

I’d seen her a few days ago now her friend said, ‘why don’t you come back and have some birthday cake.’
‘Is it her birthday today?’
‘No, tomorrow, but we cut the cake already.’
I was by the front door of the block on my way home from work.
‘I’ll get rid of the bike then come down.’

The dog barked and jumped up at me. I followed it downstairs to the kitchen.
‘Come out the back,’ she said. ‘She’s out there.’
‘Happy birthday,’ I said being careful not to step into the just laid concrete.
We counted the cranes.
Fourteen.

DINNER

‘Thanks for the messages,’ I said when we met outside the top end of the flats. ‘But I’d got rid of it the day before. I’d have liked to have done what you said but it was too late.’
‘I saw it’d gone.’
She was carrying a pink paper bag with string handles. We stopped at the point we’d go our seperate ways.
She opened the bag, ‘look.’
There was a black rabbit in the bag and droppings at the bottom. The rabbit stood up poked its head out the top of the bag and I touched its nose.
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘I’m taking it back.’
‘I wondered how you got them from A to B.’
We said, ‘goodbye.’
When I reached the front door I turned and said, ‘is that dinner?’

JOB DONE

DICKHEAD

I heard the sound of a car then its horn behind me as I cycled up King Square. Near the top of the road the car passed me.
‘Fuck off,’ I shouted as it pulled away turning right into Dove Street. ‘Fuck off,’ I shouted as it drove away.
The car stopped outside my block and I wondered if someone was going to have a go at me.
The front passenger door opened and a woman got out, ‘shut up shouting at us.’
‘Fuck off. Go on, fuck off, why don’t you?’
‘Fuck off yourself.’
I rode on to the paving area and stopped level with the car.
‘Why you shouting at us?’
‘Because you sounded the fucking horn as I was riding up the fucking road, that’s why.’
‘You were going too fucking slow.’
‘Well fucking wait then.’
The window of the car opened and I looked at the driver and said, ‘next time why don’t you fucking wait?’
She didn’t say anything but the woman now unloading a pushchair from the boot said, ‘I’m going to come up to your flat and punch you in the face.’
‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘I’m so scared already.’
‘Fucking dickhead.’

THE DEAD SOFAS

Ground to my floor takes twelve seconds less in the new lift than it did in the old. I timed it tonight on my way back from seeing a very loud rock ‘n’ roll/blues three-piece at Mackie’s on Stokes Croft.
A man lives in the block told us about the gig as we came out of the lift out this morning on our way to Kino’s for breakfast.
He said, ‘we’re playing tonight. Probably start about nine.’
The band was called The Dead Sofas and it turned out the man who told me about the gig wasn’t actually a playing member. He came up to me during a break in the music as I sat in the bar watching the fish in the fishtank opposite.
‘We practice in my flat,’ he said.
‘Had any complaints?’
‘Have you ever heard us?’
‘No.’
‘If you do, let me know.’
‘Okay. Thanks.’

SPLASH

THE STREET

‘You want to buy a quilt cover?’ said a man on Stokes Croft to another man who was there too.
‘No thanks,’ said the other man.
‘You sure you don’t want one?’
‘Yes, I’m sure. Sorry.’
‘They’re Laura Ashley. They’re usually six but I’m selling them for ten.’
‘You sure you got that right?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You want one?’

THE LIFT

‘Morning,’ I said.
Morning,’ he said. ‘Or should I say, “afternoon” as it is the afternoon?’
‘Afternoon is good.’
Waiting.
‘Nice today, isn’t it?’ as we went up in the lift.
‘Hope it stays like this for the weekend.’
‘Been a bit unpredictable lately, hasn’t it?’
‘Monday was sunny. Tuesday rain...Wednesday rain again...’
‘What about Thursday?’
‘Friday too.’
‘Who knows about Sunday?’

THE VASE

On the corner of Picton Street and Ashley Road is a small patch of open space. Concrete, weeds and today a couple were selling things from a table. I’ve seen them walking, arguing, drinking, around the area together.
On my way back from Licata’s I saw the couple were packing up.
I went over and said, ‘how much for the vase?’
‘What do you think?’ said the woman.
‘You say and we’ll start from there.’
‘Er...I don’t know...’
‘A pound,’ I said picking out two fiftys.
‘Okay,’ she said holding out her hand.

ARMADA PLACE BS2
RUBBISH

GRANDAD

Grandad is an eighty-six year old man I know who I don’t so much chat with as shout at.
‘I gave up drink before I ended up in Glenside,’ he said.
‘What happened?’
‘The wife went off with another man and left me with our son to bring up on my own...and I had a mortgage to pay.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I gave up the drink. I thought it would help.’
‘You drink much?’
‘No. A couple of ciders at the end of the day after work. Being a driver I had a licence to protect. I was dependent on it.’
‘So you ended up in Glenside?’
‘It was after giving up the drink...it all got too much...that’s it really.’
He took a sip of tea then put the cup back on its saucer, ‘my son said she wanted to come back to me but I couldn’t let her after what she’d done.’