Don't Jump I'll Miss Celebrity Squares

I'm P.C. Mike Edwards Cheshire Police, Runcorn.Home of ICI, a Beezer
Homes League

football team, a disproportionate number of single mothers and most
importantly for our pur

pose the fabulous Runcorn Suspension bridge. A feat of Victorian
engineering and magnet for

every depressed housewife, failed businessman and disgraced clergyman
this side of the

M53.Built when we knew how to engineer quality structures. I've had
three call outs already

this month and this was my fourth and it was only April. I mean you
usually get a run on around

christmas time, you know when people get to dwell on things and that
Billy Smarts Circus is

enough to drive anyone over the edge if you ask me.I hadn't been so
busy since they brought

out the song from Mash declaring Suicide is Painless. It could be I
suppose but nobody has

ever lived to tell. I mean its no good asking the poor sod when they're
splattered across the

mud flats of the Dee is it? Attempted suicide isn't painless I can
vouch for that. I've seen too

many poor broken sods carried into ambulances.

I'd just popped a findus Cod in Parsley

sauce into a pan of boiling water when the call came. It was a shame
cos I like a nice bit of

processed fish moulded untidily into a rough oblongish shape. Reminds
me of happier times.

when Bob Monkhouse 'bless his non stop joking soul' ruled sunday
afternoons with Bernie

the bolt and a glamourpuss lady in a short skirt and white boots. I got
the call so unfortunately

it was off with the gas and on with the coat. When I got there the lads
had already closed the

bridge and a couple of hundred stranded drivers sat gobs like beaten
favourites. Some were

out of their Fords and Vauxhalls and peered up to the top of the bridge
in the vain hope of

communicating some sort of 'get down you silly bugger 'message. Some
sat in sheep like

tolerance and mused about divorce, lawns and drop dead gorgeous
Australian soap stars.

with big eyes and blue white teeth. I was met by wingnut from Traffic.
I swear you could get Sky on

those lugs of his, the cold breeze off the Dee had given his ears a
comedy tip of red, he told me

'the jumper' was a male, they nearly always were, you see us men tend
to bottle things up and let it get on

top of us, women in my experience weep at the drop of a hat, they tend
to let it all out once and a while,

that's why you always see them coming out of toilets dabbing their eyes
with hankies.Some don't even

bother going to the toilets. I had a young WPC with me who'd cry at the
slightest of things. All it took was for

her to listen to five minutes of "Our Tune' in the squad car and she'd
end up looking like Alice Cooper

chopping onions. Panda Car was dead right. I put her straight, "If you
cried less you'd piss more" I told her.

Anyway it was a bloke up top and he was threatening to jump. 'Wingnut'
had got

halfway up and his vertigo had kicked in. Which wasn't surprising a
good gust behind

those lugs and he'd have ended up in St Helens. Like Mary Poppins only
with thicker wrists

gliding on the wind. I was used to heights it didn't bother me, I'd
been up in all

weathers, I preferred summer obviously I'd once spent a glorious
afternoon with a failed

businessman spotting red Cortinas and laughing about Basil Brush.I was
quite

disappointed when he wanted to come down. I climbed onto the steel
walkway and

proceeded to make my way 300ft up to the top. As I got nearer the thick
ginger hair and

the round shoulders looked familiar. It couldn't be. It was. "Ginner is
that you?" I asked.

Ginner was a mate all through school and for a couple of years after
until he left to

become a priest with The Salesians Of John Bosco. Ginner looked at me.
"Edwards?" He

squinted. "My god man." I sighed, as I took a seat next to him on the
cold steel. "Fancy

meeting you here".He had obviously fulfiled his ambition as he was in
the regulation

black outfit and his dog collar was stuffed untidily into his top
pocket. Ginner stood up in

a 'I'm going to jump now sort of stance.'"Sit down you rum bugger". He
took another step.

"Listen rusty nut sit down or I'll give you a slap." I slipped into
fourth form bully mode. It

worked. Ginner sat down."Let me guess I said, you've been a little
liberal with the church

plate collection?" Ginner shook his head and spoke a solemn "I wish".
I'd tried this route

first after his scam with the school tuck shop money in year two.
Nothing was ever

proven but I was privy to the Kwik Save bag full of copper he kept
buried underneath

a pink painted concrete flamingo in his back garden. "A little trouble
with er.. Choir boys? "

Ginner sneared at me. "What Do you take me for?" I'd only suggested
this because I

vaguely remember he backed his Geography text book with a picture of
Freddy Mercury

and refused one day at the bus stop to round on the boy from St Martins
private

school that spoke like Danny La Rue. "Women trouble" I suggested, it
was usually

one of four things this being the third and only remaining possibility
the fourth

being failed business and as far as I could see any business with God
as the

Managing Director couldn't really fail.Ginner nodded. It began to take
shape. Priest

falls for pretty member of congregation.Home-made scones long chats,
light

summer dresses and flashes of olive inner thighs and white knickers.
"Was she

married?" I asked. Ginner shook his head. "No, but I am." What, I
thought and I

never even got an invite to the reception. "Married to God," Ginner
continued.I

thought it was nuns who were married to God as the catholic church
didn't approve

of homosexual marriages, but I decided to concede on this point, all
things

considered. "What's her name?" I asked. Ginner stood up steady on
steady on I urged,

"Don't worry I'm just getting you a photograph."He passed me a picture
of what

looked like a summer camp. Two kids with that gawky thirteen year old
look - head

full of teeth and gangly stood each side of a dowdy woman in a green
Peter Storm

cajoul, muddy leggings and hiking boots. Very nice I said, well what
else could I

say, you're three foot away from ending it all for a woman that looked
like no fun

whatsoever. My initial thoughts of summer dresses and olive thighs with
white

knickers turned to polyester trousers, orange peel legs and a VPL more
prominent

than a cheap toupee.

"Give me a good reason then. Ginner stood up. Good enough

not to jump right now?'

"I'll miss Celebrity Squares." Well it was the first thing that came
into my head. Ginner sat down.

"What you like it too?"

"Yes," I thought. I'd done it, the first rule of thumb when trying to
get through

to a 'jumper' was to establish a common item of interest and the
gameshow

where minor celebrities used to get a chance to be funny and revive
their flagging

careers with a couple of witty remarks seemed to do the trick.

"Who do you think was the best?" I asked.

"Bernie Clifton, he enthused. I used to think he was no more than a
second rate holiday

camp entertainer stuck forever with that bloody ostrich, but the
answers to those questions

were so funny, he was a real talent."

I agreed, not because I thought the said Mr Clifton was the best, oh
no I felt that that honour

should go to Ted Robbins, famous for being the unfunny brother of Kate
Robbins who was famous for

being ..er well dunno but I think it's something to do with The
Beatles, she bought a hamster off George

Harrisons sister or something very 'our kid' Liverpool like that. We
mused about it for a

while then Ginner stood up again he took a deep breath...."From
Norwich... it's

the quiz of the week! I stood up too and we both began to dance in a
sort of

twist like fashion. Like a pair of embarrassing wedding uncles a twist
but not a

twist just a two uncles in a horrible family wedding dance. After we'd
forgotten the rest of the tune

we both sat back down. "What's he like to work for then, this God
fella?" I asked.

Ginner smiled. "Alright, he replied no fear of the salary cheque ever
bouncing

and if you want a word with the top man there's no need to make
an

appointment you just drop to your knees and open your mouth."

"A bit like Monica Lewinsky eh ?" I joked. Ginner looked at me like he
did when we were

in the fourth form together and I had systematically bored a hole
through the

wall of the girls changing room with a drill bit purloined from
metalwork.

"Look ginner I grinned... Beaver!" it was that look, the look of
disappointment.

"You've always been the same haven't you Edwards?" he said. "Always the
same.

A beast."

" Steady on Ginner, I protested, I'm hardly a beast! "

"Really, his eyes looked dark and black. "Beast"he repeated. Then
turned to me in a most priest

like manner. "Tell me about the books Edwards. The mucky books the
filth -ridden

books, filled to the frothy brim with black eyed ghoulish teenage
girls?"

I didn't know what was worse the way Ginner seemed to be looking into
my soul or the fact that

I had been sleeping on a tilt on such a pile of the very same teenage
porn. Ginner

was right and he knew it. Suddenly it felt cold. "Your life is shit
Edwards. "

"Should a priest say shit ?

"I say it like it is Edwards. Shit. Like the shit bit of processed Cod
you've left on the stove.

This was getting spooky. Although Ginner was right my life

was shit, living alone was shit, being a policeman with everyone hating
you apart

from people over fifty was shit, wanking off to ghoulish pictures of
teenage girls

in bitty Marks and Spencers knickers was shit. My relationship with my
family was

shit. My colleagues thought I was a sad shit. Even my cat thought I was
shit.

As I fell the wind swung me back facing upwards. I saw Ginner
smirking,

the wind parted his hair slightly at the forehead, It might have been
just an illusion,

but were they horns?

The End.