ENTRANCE




ISSUE

WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN TO THE SHOP?

‘...missing an opportunity for the process,’ he said. ‘In a way I’m responsible for that.’
‘They should be contacting you,’ said the man sat opposite the first speaker. You’ve given an option, you’ve given it a try, best now to start over...we’ve got new staff who may go up to Birmingham for training...’
‘Mike seems to be running the store...’
‘She cannot get out of it...she hasn’t had anything...she didn’t give me any reason since she’s been in Bristol...it’s been a catch twenty-two situation so I have a brand new team in there now. You’ve come in turned the store in Nelson Street around and you need the support of an assistant manager...you’ve got four weeks to turn her around to a positive if she doesn’t, if it doesn’t work, for me, she’s on a very slippery slope...if it doesn’t happen, I’m sorry then that’s it...’
‘She’s on holiday, near the end of it.’
‘When’s she back?’
‘November twelfth.’
‘Irrespective of head office, I haven’t given her a pay rise because technically she’s screwed up...I rely on her for support...but supposing I go away for a week, you go away for two, what’s going to happen to the shop?’

SMELLS OF PISS

‘Am I disturbing you?’ I said to the man wearing a white shirt and tie who’d asked me to move from outside BHS in Broadmead, where I sat sheltered.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We’ve got tills just inside the doors there.’
I looked over to where he pointed. A man stood wearing a green midlength coat, brown trousers and a wool hat pulled down over his ears.
As I packed my rig away, micro cube and loop station easy to carry in a bag for life, mic stand strapped to the back of my guitar case, folding seat to sit on, a man came over.
‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ he said.
‘Yes, of course I do,’ said his name, ‘from down the road.’
We shook hands and he told me he’d been to Newport this week, played a gig then got out of there as fast as he could.
On my way home I stopped in the northernmost subway out of James Barton roundabout, set up. Played for an hour and a half, inspired by a group of three drinkers were busking with guitar, drum and harmonica.
James Barton's about my level. I’m comfortable performing in an urban setting smells of piss.

NOT PERFECT

‘Hello,’ was said neither by myself, nor the man who wore a jacket had council insignia on and who I saw get out the lift as I closed my front door behind me.
I watched him as he looked closely at the floor. I rested my bike against the wall and put my gloves on all the while thinking which lift to take.
The man walked in to the corridor, seemed to hold the door open it took a while to close. When it had I followed him in deciding the backlift was best to use the place I was headed.
‘You checking the tiles?’ i said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They look better but they’re not perfect.’
‘They are better,’ I said, ‘than they were.’
‘Hmm,’ he said after a moment. ‘Better but not perfect.’

MONEY IN HAND

‘Excuse me mate,’ she said as she got out the lift on Ground floor. ‘I’ve just been to see my mate - he’s a nutter he is - and he was supposed to give me a lift home you couldn’t help me out with some change, could you?’
She was short, bleached blonde hair, drink and drugs rough.
‘I’ve got a twenty pence piece in my pocket,’ I said ‘That’s all I’ve got.’
‘Could you help me out with that?’ she said. ‘He was supposed to give me a lift home.’
I took out the three coins were in my pocket, the twenty and two ones, gave them to her.
‘Thanks,’ she said turning away money in hand.

GOOD

They were standing at the entrance to the flats. We’ve been in the lift together. I know where they live.
‘Me first, me first,’ said his daughter.
Me and my bike next, then her father.
The daughter said something and her father laughed.
He wore dark glasses, hair in cornrows, heavy furlined jacket, a winter coat, the collar turned up.
‘Alright man?’ he said.
‘Yeh,’ I said. ‘Thanks. You?’
‘Yeh, good.’

BRIEF ENCOUNTER 2

It was just after I’d walked past him as he sat against the wall of the subway on my way in to town that he said, ‘You got any spare change?’
‘I thought you’d never ask,’ I said turning to face him.
He looked at me. How bright and shiny his brown eyes were, he must be a junkie.
I gave him some change and he said, ‘You think they going to win tonight?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe they will, maybe they won’t.’
He smiled. I continued walking into town thinking as I did, ‘I could’ve made more of a conversation with him.’

BRIEF ENCOUNTER

I was in the supermarket shopping for the items on the list in my hand when I saw up ahead, coming towards me in the aisle where the vegetables are, the man I call Fat Caretaker works on the estate.
As he passed he looked up at me and said, ‘Alright?’ and I said, ‘Hello.’

THE MAN GOT OUT

The lift was on its way up when I got in. I pressed the call button, stood waiting, bike by my side.
I heard the entrance doors open behind me, someone come in.
The lift came down a woman got out, smiled.
I got in the lift and stood at the back with my bike. Then the person’d come in, a man, got in the lift, stood near the door facing the floor buttons.
The man was stocky, wearing a fawn cord jacket synthetic fur on the collar, shaved head, he carried a white plastic bag.
As the lift went up I looked down at my bike, fiddled with a brake cable. Then watched the man open the bag, put his hand in, move something was in there, then take his hand out of the bag.
The lift stopped and the man got out.

THE SS OF THE COUNCIL

‘What you doing?’ I said to the man pulled a cable from the corridor into the quadrant on to which my front door opens.
‘Stripping the tiles,’ he said.
‘You’re replacing them?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘just stripping them.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You’re taking the top layer off.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
I went out for a couple of hours. When I got back the man, using what looked like an industrial floor polisher on the tiles, was being watched, as he did so, by two other men, who, like him, were wearing council tee-shirts.
‘That’s how you do is it?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It takes a while. See the grey bits?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s what it looked like when it was first laid.’
‘It’s the first time it’s been done,’ said one of the other men. ‘Ever.’
‘First time for forty years then,’ I said. ‘Almost to the day.’
‘We don’t go down too far,’ said the first man, ‘because they’re asbestos.’
‘The tiles are?’
‘Yes,’ he said. They’re sealed though, or we’d be wearing suits and masks,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to know what we’re doing.’
‘That’s right,’ said the third man who was stood in front of the lift. ‘We’re specialists.’
‘Oh yes?’ I said turning to face him.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We’re like the SS of the council.’

BATHTIME
for those of you unable to get to town and watch pigeons bathing beneath the fountains at College Green, this is for you

ENGLAND ESTONIA

- Ok. Phone to talk about it
- My prediction. Owen will get injured. His interviews demonstrate more hope and frustration than realism
- Terrible keeping. Lamps will come on at 60 poss for cole
- Too obvious
- And now another
- Yes
- I think so but they are getting lots of space
- Jo cole causing lots of problems
- Ok. Not sure how they’d do against a good team
- Indeed
- It’s an honour for me

THE NEW FLOOR COVERING IN THE LIFT

A CIGARETTE END

‘That lift isn’t working,’ I said to Fat Caretaker as we passed in the Sixth floor corridor.
I didn’t mind, I was going down, but I wanted it working for when I got back.
‘They’re putting a new covering on the floor,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a word see what they’re doing.’
The new covering is a black gold speckled lino. Clean, the first time I saw it. I smelled the glue and went up.
Now, the smell of the glue has gone. There’s spit on the floor, two sweet papers, a cigarette end.

THE SHIT THAT’S FUCKED

Cafes were open. People were sat at tables out on the pavement. That’s where he was. I hadn’t seen him fifteen years maybe more. And now he was back, in town, eating a curry, not looking up as he did so.
‘Hello,’ I said.
He raised his head, sat back. Took a look at me.
‘Hello,’ he said and then turned to the table next to him on the right and started talking to the men were sat there.
I moved on taking the hit in my own mind, wondering if he took any responsibility for what went wrong.
Further up the road one of my sisters standing under a bridge where pigeons perched, their eyes on the action below.
Through a group of white youths I came to the cashpoint around which a group of black youths stood. They parted when I stepped forward my card in my hand.
‘That shit’s fucked,’ said a voice behind me.
‘That shit was shit from the first,’ said a second.
‘What shit you talking about?’ a third.
‘The shit that’s fucked.’

SNATCHES

‘You got a light, darlin’?’ said the woman standing on the corner of Portland, one of the two squares near here women work from the street.
‘Yes,’ I said and pulled over.
I took a lighter from my pocket, gave it to her.
‘How’s business?’ I said.
‘Slow,’ she said. ‘Mind you, when it comes it comes quick.’
As I looked at her lighting her cigarette I smiled and said, ‘That’s handy,’ and she laughed.
‘Just the job,’ she said giving me back the lighter.
‘Keep it. I’ve got another.’
‘Thanks,’ she said and I rode off.

I held the door for a man I’d not seen before was carrying two bags in one hand and in the other what looked like a cake in a box held flat.
‘Cake?’ I said as we waited for the lift.
‘Yes, cake,’ he said.
I got in first going higher with a bike.
‘How much?’ he said nodding at the bike.
‘How much?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thirty pounds,’ I said. ‘About a year ago.’
‘Thirty pounds?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘A bargain if you ask me.’
‘Yes, yes,’ He said, ‘a bargain.’

A DEAL

‘You got any tramadol?’ I said.
‘No, I took the last one I had last night but if you want you can go get my prescription from the chemist.’
I hesitated, just a little.
She said, ‘I’ll give you some when you get back.’
She gave me two prescriptions, the other for diazepam.
'Save me going out in the sunlight.'
I phoned her from Picton Street. ‘Twenty minutes, they said, is that alright?’
‘Is it alright with you?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll go for a coffee.’
Outside the Bristolian I sat reading the sport pages of the Guardian and drinking the coffee.
‘Have a good time,’ said the woman gave me the drugs.
‘Thanks,’ I said, wondering what she might be thinking.
Back at her place she gave me a blister of the tramadol, what I’d thought'd be a deal.

OBVIOUSLY

Two men in a lift going up stops at the Seventh floor.
The doors open and a man makes to get in.
He looks first at one and then the other of the two men in the lift and says, 'You going down?'
'We're going up,' says one of the men in the lift.
The man stepping in steps back out of the lift and the doors close.
The man of the men in the lift hasn't spoken says, 'Obviously.'

COMPANY

‘Going down first,’ said the man in the lift as I got in and pressed the button to my floor.
‘But,’ I said, ‘this is Ground,’ as the lift started up.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Oh well.’
Two men had got out of the lift and a third had stayed and I saw his finger on the button holding the door open and assumed he’d got in a few floors up to go higher but had had to come down because it was already on its way.
‘I’ll have to come up with you,’ he said. ‘Keep you company.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘It can get lonely.’
We mentioned the weather, that it was getting colder, then he said, ‘It’s much quicker than it used to be.’
‘About two thirds,’ I said. ‘I’ve timed it.’