1

‘God! I wish this wasn’t happening’ mumbled P grumpily to himself, just as he did at least three times every other day of his life. Sometimes he said ‘God! I wish I’d done that’ or ‘God! I wish I hadn’t done that’ or ‘God! Why does this always fucking happen to me’, but for P life was a serious of disasters, a series of misfortunes and annoyances that happened to nobody but him, but then he was always yearning for the easy life, the easy way out, looking to dump on somebody else. Quite why he was always wishing to do something else or be somewhere else was a mystery to his friends and colleagues as outwardly at least, P appeared to have a nice, comfortable life. He was comfortably employed in a strong, steady job that was virtually guaranteed for life if he behaved himself and did not make a colossal cock up, he had good, well-balanced, supportive friends, a nice home and a beautiful woman who loved him, despite his endless moans and whinges and grumbles.
‘God! I wish I didn’t have to go to work today’ he whined to himself one morning, just as he whined to himself virtually every other morning of his working life. He awoke every morning in a comfortable bed, in a house he did not appreciate, a house that was warm and light and draught-free, a house with Thermo-cool double glazing and triple layered, heat refracting loft insulation, a house with wall to wall soft, thick carpeting in all rooms, bar his kitchen and two bathrooms that all had genuine oak floorboards, double varnished for cleanliness and stain-proofing, a house with instant hot running water, a power shower, fitted kitchen and multi-channel satellite television that he used only for griping at repeats of Men Behaving Badly and to scream at when his team was losing in the football. He flumped slowly out of bed, flopped his feet onto the soft carpet that had been vacuumed just the day before, although not by him, stood gingerly and stretched his aching back, his eyes closed beneath a furrowed frown. In his fuzzy head he wished his back did not ache every single morning.
In the bed beside him, his beautiful girlfriend Jo turned over sleepily. ‘You say that every day’ she murmured without opening her eyes, pressing her face dreamily into her pillow and sliding her lithe naked body across the bed to slip into the warm hollow left by P. ‘Now shut up and get me a cup of tea’. P sighed and glared down at her as he pulled on his T-shirt, then his jeans, patting his stomach and worrying that he was getting too podgy.
‘I wish you’d get yourself a teasmaid’ he said, sulkily, as he padded from the bedroom, eyes closed once more, the pain in his back all but forgotten.
‘I have’ said Jo. ‘You’. His eyes flared open to enable him to glare at Jo angrily, but it was wasted on her sealed eyes and as he noisily stomped back into the room and opened his sock drawer, she was already heading back into sleepyworld.
Twenty rushed minutes later, P quickly finished his cup of tea and stumbled outside, late once again, his teeth the only clean thing about him. He took a moment to take in the day through bleary eyes and furrowed frown, a freezing, dim lit morning waking up from the night as reluctantly as P had. He cursed softly and stepped out, closing the front door silently behind him. The crisp morning frost, glittered like tiny diamonds in the early morning light and crunched beneath his boots, his breath hung around his face in grey clouds and the street lie beneath a wintry duvet of cold as he fumbled in his pocket for his car keys, his hands already numbing with the January chill. He stepped out into the street, slipped the key into the doorlock and opened the door with a familiar clunk. He sat quickly and slipped the key into the ignition. He switched on and heard the oh too familiar whining and whirring of an old engine struggling to start. P stopped trying, took a long, slow breath and tried again. Again the engine failed to start. That’s what you get for buying an old car, he could hear Jo saying inside his head. ‘It isn’t an old car’ he would reply. ‘It’s a classic’.
‘God! I wish this wouldn’t happen every fucking morning!’ he bellowed, then shrank miserably inside himself as his curses echoed down the icy avenue. He tried again. On the third try, his old unfaithful kicked into life and he throttled hard, hurting his poor old car even more as cheap oil rushed around straining, ageing metal as the revs raced up, annoying his still dozing neighbours. P left the engine running and clambered out to scrape the frost from his windows. The depot in which P worked was just seven minutes drive away and could be walked in twenty minutes, but he was a lazy man and preferred to drive everywhere, especially on mornings like this. He cleared his windscreen and was starting on his driver’s window, when a crow passed overhead and dropped a hearty good morning onto his recently cleared glass. ‘GOD!’ he cried and almost wiped it off, then had a bright idea. He cleared his other windows, then climbed into the car, turned on the heater, which blasted his face with cold air, then flicked the window washer soaking the crow’s leftovers. The wipers started automatically, smearing a mixture of now cold bird shit and quickly freezing water across his windscreen obliterating his vision once again. ‘God!’ he cried again and fumbled in the glove box for some tissue.
When he finally arrived late for work eight minutes (‘God! Caught the bleedin lights and the roundabout again!’), the first thing he had to do was wash the crow crap off his hands and yet again he called on his God for a wish, only this time he honestly wished one of the Gods would hear him. ‘God, I wish I could go to sleep for ten years and kiss this fucking job goodbye’ he muttered to himself. As P dried his hands and set about his laborious labour, he was blissfully unaware that sometimes wishes, like dreams can come true.
Sometimes P dreamt that he was one of the God of the universe and could make dreams come true, wishes come true, could destroy some of the hateful things and people in the world. He dreamt he was a pleb amongst the Gods, a God of minor miracles, practical jokes and good, but hard to believe stuff like platypus, Alcopops, McDonalds. P believed in Gods rather than a God, that explained the vastness of the universe, the intricacies of myriad life, as well as dung beetles, whoopee cushions and disco. Although on occasion he was the God of Wounds and Diseases, spreading plague amongst Italians or herpes amongst Kiwis, but relenting and giving the human race the cure for the common cold only to see the research lab that discovered it was owned by a pharmaceutical company that was more interested in sales of phoney cold cures like NiteyNurse and Dr Flu and Sniffaway and so stifled the marvellous find! Even in his dreams, things never went to plan.
But the ways of the Gods are not for mere apes to understand. Humans were only permitted to glimpse fragments of their heavenly perfection and divine touches occasionally. A tiny peek through the peephole of paradise through the oh so brief minutes of Tomorrow Never Knows or a sunrise over Angkor Wat or the voice of Ella Fitzgerald or the sigh of a dreaming lover as she slips her arm around you during her post-coital sleep or the gentle sway of a perfect pair of breasts or a thirty yard screamer into the top left hand corner or Violets or daisies. All these were dipped in heavenly nectar by the Gods. P actually awoke from these dreams angry, feeling it was totally unfair and bogus that he was being kept out of the top 40 by the Gods of wounds and diseases (who only made number 40 by making His Coolness piss himself with leprosy), but that is what happens when you fall out of favour with His Coolness.
P grumped and whinged and moaned through the morning, then dragged himself wearily to the yard wall at the rear of the building to eat his lunch sitting in the winter sunshine gazing down at the river. A sleek and lovely pigeon fell into a deep roll and flew down to settle beside him as he sat, P thought to edge warily closer and nibble any crumbs or leftovers, but also unknown to him to overhear P and watch his every move. His Coolness was always looking for some light entertainment on Sunday evening after attending every boring service on Dirt and this could be it.
‘Alright P?’ asked P’s dearest and closest workmate, Dave squatting beside him happily on the wall. Dave in contrast to P was a happy, contented soul. He asked for little from life and life lived up to its end of the bargain.
‘Alright mate’. P opened his lunchbox, his lunchbox lovingly made for him that morning while he dressed by the long suffering Jo and sagged with despair. ‘Not bloody sarnies again!’ A God should be used to so much better than this, he thought as the pigeon edged closer, fluffed himself bigly and pecked at the ground to hear better.
‘What’s up?’ asked his Dave, staring with equal disappointment into his own lunchbox, also lovingly prepared by his happily content wife that morning as Dave showered. Cold egg and mayonnaise were not what he was hoping for after giving his wife a languidly satisfying conjugal before he showered that morning.
‘God! I wish I had a fucking decent lunch for once, just once like… like a pie and a pint’. The Gods, as well as the pigeons must have been listening for once, as something mystical had heard him and granted his wish.
‘Do you know, that’s just what I was thinking’ said workmate Dave, slapping his thigh theatrically and smiling benignly at P. He stood suddenly. ‘Come on, I’ll stand you a pie and a pint. I could murder one’. The disbelieving P jumped to his disbelieving feet and scurried off after his fabulous workmate Dave before he changed his fabulous mind.
P’s drab, misery morning had transformed into the lunchtime of joyous, drunken glee and P himself had felt himself transformed into a mixture of James Bond and James Dean as he stood in the Dead Pig. But after the second pie and the rather delicious Dead Pig Steak and ale pie, his glee began to mingle with unreasonable paranoia. He was not used to nice things happening to him. Actually nice things happened to P on a regular basis like avoiding a smash by braking in the nick of time whilst trying to change a tape, getting an unexpected blow job from his beautiful, patient and understanding girlfriend, or a tenner on the lottery or a happy, silly night out, but P’s persona would not accept the good in life, when the bad, the annoying and the irritating could be concentrated on. He was unused to wishing for something that suddenly came true and his eyes flicked nervously around the Dead Pig at his fellow boozers and saw subterfuge and conspiracy in every corner, suspicion in every pair of eyes. P and fabulous workmate Dave ordered two more pints of lovely lager, Dave gave the barmaid a bit of saucy talk, then gulped down the lager greedily, as P whispered his conversation quietly in case anyone was earwigging. Dave laughed his irrational fears off, then they both gulped and gasped noisily as they swallowed and gulped in air. How P wished he had invented lager, it was most definitely the drink of the Gods and he would have made a killing with it. He would also have to have been dead by now, but that thought slipped silently away.
‘Mmm nice’ said Workmate Dave.
‘Delicious’ said P, gazing in wonder at the sunlight shining through his delicious, goldy pint. ‘Shall we have another?’
Workmate Dave frowned slightly. ‘I was talking about Brenda’ he said nodding towards the barmaid, ‘but yes anyway’ he grinned and leaned nonchalantly against the bar trying to look sexy. P ordered two more pints and finished the last crumbs of pie as he fished inside his pockets for enough money. ‘Oh come on P, not the old ‘strapped for cash’ routine again’ groaned Dave, letting the sexy act drop.
‘Well, I am!’ insisted P pathetically and dishonestly.
‘Yeh right. You’ve played that old act too much, mate. Jo told us all about your hoarding’. P submitted to the painful truth, dragged out a crumpled fiver and slammed it angrily down on the counter and stonked over to the fruit machine in a sulk. One pound went in and was lost in thirty seconds. The second pound was gone in twenty-five seconds. ‘God! I wish this fucker would pay out, just once!’ shouted P as he kicked the base of the machine and inserted a third pound. P’s lesser God appeared to be listening to him today, sitting at the bar as an invisible guardian angel, giggling silently and ordering brandy, doing his divine stuff.
A few minutes later, P was changing forty-four pounds in change into notes and celebrating his good fortune, whilst beginning to wonder what exactly was happening to him today.
‘I don’t believe you’ said workmate Dave, shaking his head in disbelief as he finished his pint and wondering whether to risk a third. ‘There you are moaning away about how hard done by you are and how skint you are, then you hit the jackpot on that thing’ he said slightly angrily gesturing towards the fruitie. P just grinned at him and finished his pint. ‘Think we’ve got time for another before we go back?’ asked workmate Dave eagerly anticipating a yes.
P’s grin dropped. ‘God, I wish we didn’t have to go back this afternoon’ he said and quickly finished his pint. ‘I’d even buy the next round for that, the next two rounds even!’ he added with a laugh as workmate Dave and saucy Brenda shook their heads sceptically, both had heard too many P whoppers to completely trust anything he ever said. P grinned and stared in wonder at Brenda’s cleavage, which seemed to wobble invitingly at every movement she made, even a simple and seemingly static act such as a shake of the head. These ape women are entertaining, he thought. P and workmate Dave then started to argue just who should get the next one in.
‘But it IS your round’ insisted P.
Workmate Dave angrily dug his hands into his pockets, scowling at P. ‘You’re a real tightarse, do you know that? You’ve just taken forty quid out of that bleeding fruitie and you won’t even buy me a pint out of it!’
‘But it IS your round’ P insisted pathetically, shaming Dave into coughing up his round as a matter of honour. Workmate Dave paid for the round whilst mumbling about the fact that he bought a pie as well, when luscious Eve appeared. Eve was the receptionist cum secretary cum tea lady cum lust object at the firm as she was the only female under fifty-five still working there.
‘Hello hello, what have we here? A gift from the Gods?’ oozed workmate Dave smoothly, sliding seductively towards Eve as she strode towards them. P, as always, swallowed and stared in lustful awe at the angel walking towards him.
‘I may be Gods gift, but your name’s not on the wrapper’ she said rather confusingly and poked workmate Dave playfully in the stomach. Her finger went a good three inches into flab before he had time to suck it in. ‘I have some good news for you two pissheads’ she breathed huskily, her every syllable drenched in angelic gorgeousness. P and workmate Dave swallowed anxiously and put down their glasses expecting anything other than good news. ‘There’s been a spill at the depot and we’ve had to close for the afternoon’.
‘Yes!’ said workmate Dave joyously, clenching his fist in front of him as P began to worry.
‘Spill?’ he asked Eve nervously, his forehead furrowed with concern.
‘Like an accident?’ said workmate Dave.
‘Chemical spill’ said Eve. ‘Health and safety innit?’ The colleagues looked at each other in amused bewilderment. ‘Either of you two gentlemen going to offer a lady a drink?’ asked Eve, saucily. P nodded and rooted through his pockets.
‘We will get paid though?’ asked P, as spendthrifty as ever.
‘Dear me’ said workmate Dave, shaking his head and laughing. ‘Listen to Mr tightarse’.
‘Terry’s in there now with Mr Fang sorting it’ said Eve, tapping a perfectly manicured nail impatiently on the bar.
‘Well it’s not our fault health and safety have closed us down, is it?’ asked P, then fell silent as certain facts began to filter through his fuzzing mind. The pint, the pie, the fruitie, now the afternoon off. His God must be monitoring his thoughts and his confusion, chuckling divinely to himself as he played with P’s life effortlessly. P stared about himself, imagining his God transforming himself into a song and drifting out of the Dead Pig’s window and back to the home of the Gods. Meanwhile, workmate Dave reminded P of his boast of paying for two rounds and drained his glass, then offered Eve a drink on P, who graciously and saucily accepted.
P paid, then began to worry even more. He had wished for the afternoon off and it had happened. That had never happened before in all the years he had worked at the depot, even when they had had a chemical spill once before. He looked around the ageing, smoke stained pub and leaned back against the bar. He had been inside this pub so many times before, spoken to saucy Brenda, ogled saucy Brenda, flirted and made lewd comments to saucy Brenda, got drunk with workmate Dave on many, many occasions, lost on the fruit machines, vomited in the gents, adding to years of similar dirty stains, watched football and lusted after Eve. He had even brought his darling Jo here. She hated it and he could see why. But now, it seemed different somehow, as if he had seen this place in a film or in a dream, but never set foot in the place until now.
P slipped himself gently onto a barstool, stared blankly at the horse racing on the television and as Dave tried to work his pathetically poor magic on Eve and saucy Brenda, P carefully went over the day’s events. Old man Fang would never close the depot and give everybody a day off, even half a day, it just was not in his nature, he was too mean for that. But today he, P had wished for it and it had happened. He could write off the pub, workmate Dave always wanted to go to the pub and could be coaxed into going as easily as he could be into breathing and the fruit machine was bound to be kind to him sooner or later, but the afternoon off? He decided to keep his concerns to himself for the moment, but then Eve went to the ladies and he decided to try something.
He ambled along the bar towards workmate Dave and whispered stealthily into his ear. ‘I wish Eve would take me home and fuck me this afternoon’ he said. Workmate Dave looked at him suspiciously and frowned.
‘Yeh, wouldn’t we all mate?’ he replied slowly, but rather too loudly for P’s comfort. ‘But if she won’t take me home, you’ve got as much chance as a blow job off the pope’. Saucy Brenda laughed and patted P on the shoulder.
‘Never mind luv, plenty more fish in the market’ she said with a wink. She must have overheard what I said, thought P miserably and an afternoon locked in a pub upstairs with bouncing Saucy Brenda briefly caused the flicker of a smile to intrude onto his face. But that dropped as he thought of why he had actually made his wish to workmate Dave.
Eve returned from the ladies, swinging her hips and swishing sexily, saucier than a ketchup factory and P struck up a pointless conversation. ‘Err, Eve’. He was lost for words. Usually any amount of pointless trivia, obscure facts, old jokes and meaningless rubbish sprouted forth from his mean lips, but today he was stuck.
‘Yes please’ she replied.
‘Eh?’
‘Another beer? I’d love one’ she said. P in his panic ordered a fresh round and workmate Dave asked for a packet of prawn cocktail crisps before he came to his senses.
‘If you could err… water-ski… anywhere in the world, where would you go?’ he finally managed to force out, his face burning hot with a blush as Eve and Workmate Dave looked strangely at him.
‘Water-ski?’ asked Eve incredulously. Workmate Dave and Saucy Brenda started giggling.
‘Errrm, yeh, you know, skiing… on water’.
‘I know what water-skiing is, I just wondered what the fuck you’re talking about’ she chortled. ‘P, I can’t bastard swim more than five yards with my back, so I’m buggered if I’ll go bleeding water-skiing anywhere’. Workmate Dave whispered something to Saucy Brenda and they giggled again.
‘OK’ said P, flushing even redder and starting to feel an uncomfortable prickling sensation up his back and in his armpits. ‘Err fishing then’. Eve sneered at him quizzically, then looked at Saucy Brenda.
‘Do I look like fucking Venus Williams?’ she asked, obviously confusing the tennis superstar with fifties film star. Saucy Brenda and Dave looked suitably perplexed. ‘I think you’ve had enough, P. I don’t want to go skiing of fishing anywhere, ok?’ P nodded his head. ‘Now shopping is another matter’ she said and wandered over to the cigarette machine, where she was grabbed by kinky Ken, the ex-copper who was forced into security work after his disgraceful sacking from the Met. He and the Dead Pig suited each other perfectly, especially on their gentleman’s evenings.
P finished his pint, said his farewells and left grumpily. As he sat in traffic, he pondered the day’s events in his head and scolded himself for thinking he had some sort of fairy godmother suddenly appear to grant his every desire and making a nob of himself. His God and his dreams could fuck right off and go back to sitting in Godly comfort and poke their holy fingers right up their holy arse.
What the fuck am I thinking about? he thought. All my wishes coming true? Do me a favour, P. You should know by now that the world will never do you a single fucking favour, fairy godmother or no fairy godmother. It was just a fluke, that’s all, a fluke. Oh bollocks, look at all this traffic! God! I wish there was a clear road home, just once.
Whether his God had fucked off or his flukey day was continuing was uncertain, the lights changed and he seemed to have a relatively clear lane ahead of him all of a sudden.
I wish I did have a fairy godmother, then I could get myself a nice steak and a blow job tonight, then tomorrow would be Saturday instead of Wednesday and I’d get the lottery up and sod this fucking country and go and live in Barbados. I bet Eve would give us one then. Or Spain maybe. Or Australia, that would be nice. Jo could sod off and all. All the poncey pasta and couscous rubbish she was mad keen on recently was getting on his tits.
At the very next junction, every car bar his took the left turn onto the motorway, rather than split into two halves as usual, and his short cut home be slow and snarled as it was every other night. Normally about half would go left and half right, so P was stuck in traffic until the reached the end of his road. Tonight however, he unexpectedly had a clear road all the way home and a heavy worry sitting silently in his mind again.
It’s just the beer, that’s all. I’m just a bit lucky today and it’s making me paranoid, that’s all it is. I’ll be alright later, yeh course I will. A lovely plate of Jo’s delicious pasta and an early night and I’ll be back in that sodding depot tomorrow and totally fairy godmother-less. I know, this’ll prove it. ‘I wish Jo would dress as a nurse, cook me a steak and let me shag her twice tonight’ he said aloud. There if that fairy godmother IS listening, she’ll have scarpered pretty sharpish by now.
And with that, P pulled up outside his house and took a moment to gaze upon it. Maybe the previous evening’s chicken had turned him a bit funny today, he thought. He certainly felt unusual and gazed upon his home, with its wonky roof and steamy windows and wondered for a moment why he always saw the faults, rather than the hot bath, the comfy sofa, the warm bed and loving girlfriend. He locked his door and walked inside to find Jo sitting in her dressing gown and slippers with the couscous on the go and Eastenders on the telly. They ate, they bathed (separately), they watched Jean-Claude Van Damme in bed, then Jo kissed him, snuggled up against him and fell asleep.
Huh! Fairy godmother, my nob.

In his head, P dreamed. He was seven years old and was standing with his grandfather on his allotment. The sky was a brilliant, vibrant blue and the sun shone gloriously, despite the cold. Crows blacker than coal dust circled and cawed coarsely overhead, waiting to pounce on any flavoursome titbits left behind for them. His granddad was wearing his pea green gardening trousers, the same trousers he always wore to the bookies. P desperately wanted a pair just like them. He stood in his dark brown cords, parka and favourite jumper as red as tizer, watching in amazement as his granddad reached into the freshly turned, rich dirt and pulled up the biggest vegetables P had ever seen; carrots brilliantly orange as long as torches, then onions the size of footballs, then turnips as white as flesh, then incredibly, ten pence pieces! Two of them! They shone bright silver in the radiant sunshine, dazzling him with their brilliance.
‘Wowwwww’ he whispered as he walked towards his granddad and tripped over a huge turnip, face first into the earth. It even smelled like his granddad, warm despite the cool sunshine, damp and old. His granddad laughed like a bucket and lit his roll up cigarette. It burned over halfway down towards his gnarled, stained fingers before his granddad had drawn in one puff, so stingy was he with his tobacco. ‘Look at you’ he laughed. ‘You’re like a greyhound, boy. Skinny and floppy and clumsy, you’ve even got the right tongue for a greyhound’ he laughed. P pulled himself to his feet and grinned. He loved his granddad. ‘All prick and toenails, you are’ he added as he ruffled P’s hair.
He finished his roll up and brilliantly flicked it straight onto the compost heap. P watched it arc through the autumn sunlight and land still glowing amongst the rubbish. He was so impressed. ‘You’ll break all the girls ‘earts one day, won’t ya boy?’ he chuckled. P grinned again and they packed all the dirty vegetables into carrier bags and got dirt under their fingernails and felt like men of the world. His granddad stood upright and pressed his hands into his lower back as he stretched and groaned. P wanted to be just like his granddad, so he did the same. His granddad laughed and nudged him as he picked up his bags, so he fell over, then his granddad pulled him to his feet as they chuckled together and they set off to nan’s, where he knew they would get boiling tea and hot meat pies in front of the blazing fire, where they would both tell him about the old days and the war.
P loved his granddad. In his dream they never made it to the fireside, hot tea and his nan’s pies, they moved straight to the cold day, standing in the graveyard in the pouring rain, crying and hurting inside. He was so sad his granddad was dead.

The following morning, P arrived at work to find workmate Dave and Eve both late and hungover and Old man Fang furiously having a go at anybody that crossed his path after losing half a days money the day before. P set to work as miserably as ever, all thoughts of yesterday’s wishes and worries long gone from his small mind.
That lunchtime, workmate Dave was too ill to drink, so they took their lunches and sat outside the garage in the rear yard near the river where the warm air from the extraction system allowed them to eat outside without being frozen stiff, away from the noise and the plebs, gazing into the sky as they munched. Young Alan joined them and was rattling on about the holiday he had just booked for himself and his girlfriend to California and that when he had finished his apprenticeship, he would be right out of that dump and into a proper job, so he could earn the sort of money his Angelina earned and so his Angelina’s father would let them get married, then he was really in and set up for life.
‘I’ve only got another five months in this stinking ‘ole, then I’m off to California with my Angelina, then when I get back, ‘er old man’s gonna sort me out with a proper job in ‘is firm, then it’s just a matter of time until I get to run the place, earning mega big bucks while you losers are still sitting in the cold outside the lorry shed eating your sarnies, haha’.
P and Dave looked at each other and tucked into their truckie lunch as young Alan rattled on, immersed in his fantasy and believing the older men alongside him really took in every word he said. ‘Yeh, once me and my Angelina get ‘itched, I’ve got it made, boy. Her old man can’t wait to get me started in ‘is place, pulling in real dough during the day and slipping it to my Angelina in our five bed drum out in Loughton. Lovely. Going off to the Riviera or skiing or-‘
‘For fucks sake, Al will you shut your stupid gob’ barked out P, unable and unwilling to listen to anymore. ‘You fucking bang on and on and talk shite all the fucking time, it’s getting on my nerves’ Alan fell immediately silent.
Dave and Alan looked genuinely shocked at his outburst. Dave knew Alan talked crap all the time, but it was better than sitting or working in silence. It helped to pass the time and gave them both something and somebody to laugh at. ‘OK granddad, calm down. I’m only talking, no ‘arm in that, is there?’ P did not answer, but threw his sandwich into his lunchbox and leaned back against the wall, hand on head, eyes closed. ‘Fackin’ ‘ell’.
‘Just give it rest Al, alright?’ He sighed. Alan shook his head and nudged Dave.
‘What’s ‘is problem then? Not getting any?’ Dave shrugged and Alan laughed off his sudden nervousness, surprised by P’s unusual reaction, he laughed the laugh of a young man with a young girlfriend who thought that only he knew the true meaning and ‘deepness’ of sex. P’s fuse blew.
‘Who the fuck do you think you are, you scrawny streak of piss? Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to? I’ve been getting it since before you had your first pubes and I’ll bet I’ve had some since you have’. Alan looked confused and P felt it. ‘I am dog sick of scraping a living, living in shit, with a girlfriend who never talks to me, having no money, no future, no holidays, no fun, an aching back, bad feet, bad knees, chronic boredom, a shite car, then on top of all that, having to listen to your fucking drivel EVERY SINGLE FUCKING DAY!’ Both men stared back at him agape. If nothing else, it had shut Alan up.
Dave stood and patted him gently on the shoulder. ‘Calm down, mate. No need to get all worked up, is there?’ Alan sat still, still agape and not moving.
‘Well…you know’ said P as an explanation. Dave led P away from Alan and the garage and over towards the river.
‘What’s got into you, mate?’ P shook his head and looked at the floor. ‘You went for a fortnight in Greece with Jo about four months ago’. P nodded and looked even harder at the floor. ‘And you don’t live in shit and we had fun yesterday’. They stopped at the river.
‘Did we?’ asked P. Dave nodded happily.
‘In the Dead Pig’. P was confused. Again. ‘You know we did, mate’.
‘You call that fun?’ he demanded noisily. ‘All we did was drink beer and talk bollocks. And I paid for most of it’.
Dave looked offended. ‘I got my round in mate. And you cleared the fruitie as I recall’ he added pointing a finger P’s way. ‘You’re always moaning about fucking money, it isn’t everything, you know’.
P was not convinced. ‘And that’s your idea of fun, is it?’
‘Well it was for me’. P felt a sudden surge of male friendship well within him. ‘Especially after you left and Saucy Brenda took me upstairs at the end of her shift’. P stared at him and Dave nodded and grinned back at him. ‘Her old man’s away driving Sunday to Friday morning, you know that’.
‘I don’t believe you’ said P dismayed and walked away.

That evening P poured his heart out to Jo, explaining to her how he felt, how he felt he had wasted his life, that he was going nowhere with his dead-end job, his pointless existence, his ageing, sagging face and body, their horrible house, his useless car, their lack of sex and everything else he could think of. Apart from his belief in some sort of fairy godmother, which he thought best to keep to himself in case Jo questioned his sanity. Jo listened patiently to his whining, self-pitying drivel whilst cooking, then continued to listen and ‘mmm’ in the right places as they ate, then ran him a bath once they were finished.
‘What am I going to do, Jo?’ he asked pathetically as he wallowed in bubbles and self-pity.
‘You’re going to come to bed with me, then tomorrow you can either carry on as always or look for another job’ she replied as she gently stroked his chest and belly through the water.
‘And that’s it, is it? Just carry on working and doing fuck all and slide bored shitless towards the grave? Just getting older and saggier and frustrated and… and…’
‘Oh God!’ sighed Jo, exasperated. ‘Why do you always make everything look so bleak? Why is everything so terrible with you?’
‘Coz life stinks, that’s why’ he said glumly.
‘Life does not stink, P. We’ve got a nice house, we have nice friends, have nice times, we both earn nice money, we go on nice holidays and we have each other’. P looked up at her pleading pleasing face. ‘And I love you. No matter how miserable you get’. She leaned into the bath and kissed him.
‘I love you too’ he whispered softly. Jo smiled and kissed him again. She liked to kiss him quite a bit and he liked it, too. ‘I’m not sure about the nice times with nice friends, though’ he said miserably. Jo giggled and tapped him on the top of the head.
‘Yeh right. So you didn’t enjoy getting pissed on Sunday afternoon with Sainty, Del and Terry while Arsenal won 3-0 then?’ P feigned indifference and shook his head unconvincingly.
‘Not particularly, no’. Jo slapped him harder.
‘Rubbish. When me, Kerry and your sister turned up you looked like you were having a good time’.
‘Yeh, well that’s beer, innit? Beer always makes me happy, doesn’t mean I want to spend the rest of my life in a drunken, giggling stupor’.
Jo raised her eyebrows. ‘Oh yeh? I thought that was exactly what you wanted’.
P frowned and pursed his lips. ‘Yes. Well’. Jo giggled again as he struggled to counteract her unfailing logic. ‘Are you getting in here or what?’ he asked gesturing to the bath.
‘Urgh no! Get in there with you filthy boy?’ she asked playfully.
‘I’m clean now, it’s only my mind that’s filthy’. Jo giggled again. The giggle that thrilled him all over when they first met and still had a happy panacea effect on him now.
‘Shall I make us a cup of tea for bed?’ she asked as her dressing gown drooped into the water. P nodded and smiled a forced smile. She kissed him again, drooping a little more dressing gown into the water.
‘You’re wet’ said P.
‘Not yet I’m not’ said Jo with a saucy grin. She stood and let her dressing gown slide to the floor to reveal her gorgeous naked body. P gasped, all thoughts sunk by lust.
‘Mmmmm nice’ said P and watched her walk nakedly away as his mouth watered and his cock hardened. P washed quickly, then lay back in the hot water, eyes closed, Jo’s wonderful naked bottom fixed firmly in his mind’s eye with the emphasis on firm. With his troubles and worries shared by Jo, his stomach full and his body’s stresses and aches being melted away by the hot water, P began to feel a weightless, fretless sleep creeping over him. The concerns he shared with Jo earlier were forgotten as his alter-ego God began to play in his mind, struggling with Jo’s bottom for supremacy.
‘God, I wish I could sleep for ten years’ he said and dipped his head under the bubbly water. P’s God had been playing inside his head, listening and watching with interest (especially when Jo dropped her dressing gown) and pounced on this wish with glee. In his head Jo was rebuffing his God’s naughty advances, so his God twinkled his omnipotent nose and waved hands at P. He would let them have the rest of the evening alone and would come back to him tomorrow.
P ‘mmmm’ed and immersed deeper himself in the hot water and his mind drifted back to the first time he met Jo, when he was young and keen and single and she was young and gorgeous and going out with a right wanker. Completely different from P, obviously who was smooth and charming and good looking and loveable.
That long weekend away by the sea. The sea. He had seen it before, heard it before, felt it. It seemed to be waiting for him when he arrived, just waiting for him, for his pleasure, for him to admire and stand in and swim in. It seemed to be his and his alone. He took a swim that first afternoon and discovered the sea was also for him to splash in, breathe in and cough out.
The others joined him, despite the cold and they giggled and laughed as they played in it. All except the wanker, who dipped one finger in it, then walked alone back to the house to watch the racing and smoke alone. They splashed and swam and giggled, then left the sea and walked away like a bored child, ignoring a toy that had lost its novelty, walked away to seek other amusements. From that first afternoon, P knew what other amusements he wanted and from what he saw and heard from Jo, he thought he might just get it.
P laid in the bath with his muscles being warmed and relaxed by the water, his eyes closed and pictured the sea just before they arrived as he stared at it, alone, its waves monochrome beneath the grey sky, as if he had been staring at the sun for too long. Then the others arrived. He knew TA, Sam, G and Grace, of course, but had never set on eyes on Jo or the wanker before. He was smitten immediately, by Jo of course, not the wanker. She had a twinkle in her eye, too, but then P was at his most desirable back then; his hair and eyebrows blonded by the sun, his body lean and worked into a level of fitness and tautness he had never recaptured, his skin brown and lovely. Until her arrival he had sat in that idyllic paradise, alone with his sadness, looking at the sea, so calm and beautiful. It looked so tranquil, it was hard to believe something so beautiful could ever be harmful. But it was the same sea that had taken his Granddad, swallowed him whole. He had hated the sea then, when he was a boy, but now it comforted him, almost as if he was closer to his Granddad when he was alone by the sea, than he had ever been when he was alive.
Sam had forced him to come. It’ll do you good, he had said. You’ll meet new people, he said. You’ll feel so much better. It’ll bring you out of yourself, he said. P did not want to come out of himself, but finally, he could bear no more cajoling and had agreed just to shut Sam up, but once he saw Jo, he was very glad he had come and was looking forward to seeing more of her. If he was lucky and was reading her correctly. He was certainly reading the wanker correctly, he knew that.
P saw Sam as he walked down the hill towards the beach and waved languidly. Sam stomped down the hill, big, bold and sturdy, forever the outdoor man. Sam walked down the beach smiling at him, his hand outstretched. P took it and shook it. ‘Soooo glad you came’ said Sam. ‘You’ll feel like a new man after this weekend’.
‘Bollocks’ laughed P to a tittle tattle response and another smile despite, the fact Sam hated swearing, but then Sam disapproved of so many things; swearing, smoking, coking, giggling, horse racing, slobbing, lardiness, tardiness, cheating, bleating, lying and watching Sky were all in the bumper book of Sam no-no’s. But his whole life had been full of those. No-no’s, not bumper books. He had a bumper book of yes-yes’s too, but as he had discovered that the first chapters were monogamy, classical music and working, that was one bumper book that P would never get beyond chapter one. Quite why they were such good mates, neither could ever figure out. Perhaps Sam liked P’s who-gives-a-shit attitude or his ability to booze anytime, anywhere or his ridiculously stupid and puerile sense of humour. P for his part loved Sam’s big heart, his generosity, his cash, his oh-so-unavailable, but wonderfully loveable and happy wife, Mrs Sam and his adorable and occasionally available sister, Louise. How P adored Louise. His infatuation was as vast as the sea he sat staring at. P’s attempts at seduction were clumsy and laughably futile at first, especially as Louise was nine years younger than he and Sam, but as Louise had relationship after relationship flounder, P’s more skilful attempts finally paid off. But even fulfilment of desire, did not dampen his ardour for her. Something Louise enjoyed immensely and often abused.
But Louise was not at this particular weekend shindig and Jo arrived giggly, beautiful, saucy, charming, funny, totally totally wonderful and captivated him. He stared dumbstruck at her. Introductions followed. This is Jo and this is her boyfriend, Wanker. He nodded and grinned like a loon.
That night they all dined together in a huge room overlooking the sea, despite the fact that Wanker insisted on sitting nearest the tv so he could watch Cheers, clearly disdainful of everyone present and determined to be as insular and unfriendly as possible, despite Jo’s obvious anger and embarrassment. Sam and Mrs Sam were giggly and happy and touchy strokey all night, as always, despite being told just a few days earlier that Mrs Sam could never conceive, news which P knew wounded them both very deeply. They did not show it, however, quite the contrary. They really believed that despite their bad news, they were still the prefect couple and perfectly in love with each other. The fact that they would never have a child merely forced them to channel their love into their friends, instead. And they were right, they were the most perfectly suited and perfectly happy couple P had ever seen and their love for each other spilled out to their friends creating an atmosphere of creamy goodness that made everyone feel relaxed and nice. Great news for P and even better once he had been introduced to Jo.
P and Jo chatted and giggled and flirted over dinner, fortunately seated together with the ungraciously rude wanker seated on Jo’s left watching the tv, even when his favourite show ever Cheers had finished he sat resolutely glued to the chair and the box refusing to talk or mix with anybody. Then over coffees, Jo and P giggled and chatted, Jo seemingly trying to coax her boyfriend from his rude reverie with jealously, but it did not work, then over drinks as Wanker moved on to watching the Word he ignored P and Jo’s canoodlings, from lager to whisky and from indifference to belligerence.
P and Jo talked and talked and P gazed into her gorgeous green sparkling eyes and fell deeper and deeper. Jo, he felt, was so gorgeously sexy and sensual, she would be able to conceive at will, possibly even alone and although he did not want to put that to the test immediately, the thought was a very pleasant one. Or even thoughts. Her every move was so gracefully slinky, so elegant, so smooth, he was in love before dinner had ended.
That weekend went as smoothly and as wonderfully as he could have dreamed of. Jo and Wanker rarely spoke, except to argue and by Sunday morning the wanker had left. Something to do with yes, actually fucking rugby IS more important than you. Perfect, thought P, virtually rubbing his frustrated hands together with backed up saucy glee, Jo was alone, vulnerable and hated Wanker. P was being and had been since she had met him charming, funny and good company. He thought he must be in.
They spent all weekend together drinking and talking and laughing, yet for all his restrained efforts all he got was a farewell kiss on Monday afternoon and a phone number. He gave her his number and bade a sad farewell certain they would never meet again and that she had treated him and seen him as a nice friend of a friend, someone to stick on the back burner should she ever be desperate before travelling back to London alone to meet and argue with wanker once again. He was glad his fucking rugby side had lost.
However, he had tried his luck the following weekend, giving a respectful few days to ensure Jo didn’t think him too keen and therefore obviously desperate. Jo and Wanker were fortunately no more, she was single, miserable, angry and he was in luck. They met the following evening and had a fantastic evening. Soon afterwards, his wish came true and he got her into bed, where she fucked like a dervish, ridding herself of frustrations and P was the very very lucky recipient. Years later back in the bath, P lay back in the water smiling at that first weekend, then at the second weekend and by the time his memory had reached the third weekend, he was grinning like a Cheshire cat and his cock was poking above the waves once again.
Jo was the perfect girlfriend and quite what Wanker had found to be so cross about he had no idea, but was glad he did. Jo was gorgeous, slinky, sexy, funny, smart, loyal, brilliant, adored by everybody and she could be sweet most of the time and dirtily horny the rest of the time. He really was a lucky boy, he thought just as she re-appeared with a warm towel and a saucy smirk.
P climbed from the bath, his body relaxed, his mind fixed on Jo’s naked body. He dried and went to bed even happier than he had been in the bath. By the time he feel asleep, he had forgotten all about his earlier wishes, he was just in a fluffy heaven of post-coital rapture.

In his head, P dreamed. Everything was huge, he was a child, dreaming of nursery school, that vast old, grey hall of his childhood, filled with sound and shouts and paint and cakes and big, warm teachers with big, warm cuddly chests and scrapes and cuddles. Bad things were always happening to him as a kid, he was prone to peril. None of them were his fault, of course. Accidents, mishaps, suddenly moving house in the early hours, weeks and months without seeing his father, things just seemed to happen to P that did not happen to other, ordinary children. He blamed Thunderbirds as he grew older, P always wanted to be Virgil. He thought of Virgil’s massive, emotive eyebrows and the fabulous frown he could affect. Which is one reason P could not help climbing up the slippery side of the slide one afternoon, sending himself and Susie Bond KOOOOMing to floor, then to ambulance, then to hospital. Fortunately for bouncy P he landed in the sandpit and received a small jump lump on the back of the head and a clip round the ear when it became clear he was not seriously injured. Unfortunately for Susie Bond, she landed on the blackboard, then the desk, then the floor. Then the contents of the desk fell on Susie. Most unfortunate.
As she staggered to her feet, her face a crimson mask of staggered, bloodied shock, the classroom erupted into screams and chaos and madly scampering little feet. Lardy Miss Parker fainted and wobbled as she hit the floor, while Susie just sort of stood there stunned, feeling her blood ooze down her face while P sat in the sandpit amazed by the situation he had created, an intense throbbing in the back of his head, which his mother blamed for virtually everything that ever happened to him afterwards. A throbbing cheek followed when his conveniently present father was told of the day’s events. Just his luck for him to be there whenever he did anything wrong. Nothing like that ever happened to Virgil.
Susie stayed in hospital for quite a while with a fractured arm, broken collarbone and busted nose. It was her own fault, P had told her that it was his turn on the slide again. Susie was absent from school for quite a while after that, but for a while, if you looked very carefully, you could still see some of her blood in the cracks in the tiles on the old classroom floor. P always took time to look at that stain and sometimes saw ants hanging around Susie’s blood. P and Andy liked to push the ants about and try to divert them on Lardy Parker’s feet, but they never went where they wanted them to go and no human would go near Lardy’s smelly plates, either. Not for a thousand bags of Rancheros. For a while after the Susie incident, P gave tours and blow by blow accounts of exactly what happened on that fateful afternoon. On each telling P became a little more heroic and Virgil-like, a little more KOOOOMy and she the stupid, clumsy cow who deserved exactly what she got.
On another spine tingling occasion when he had grown tired of Thunderbirds and moved up to proper school, P was Napoleon Solo. He slid into the classroom like a silent fart, flattened himself dramatically against the wall, eyes left, eyes right (just like action man because you never know where THRUSH will pop up next), then POUNCEd into the classroom only to slip on a blob of paint and go crashing into Fat Andy’s easel. Fat Andy lost his balance and BANG his fall caused a domino effect on the rest of the class sending easels, paint and pupils flying in a mushroom cloud of small bodies and multi-coloured paint mix and giving P an enormous laugh and a clump on the head for ‘running about like a lunatic’. Mr Waverly never did that. Andy would never be Kuryakin and plagued by a bad choice of role models, P started watching Doctor Who instead.
You’re even worse than your brother’ said Mrs Parker as she administered the blow, but then school was fraught with danger and peril. Getting from the school to the football pitch without being forcibly grabbed by one of the girls and forced into playing kiss-chase was a danger boys had to face every day. P and Andy had to sneak down the stairs with Thicko Tony, who was completely crap at sneaking anywhere and therefore the perfectly excellent decoy, go through the boys toilets (even THAT was unsafe from those naughty girls), look right, look left, look right again, SPLINK! Then run Tonto, run for the footy pitch, run for your life. Those dratted girls were waiting for them every time, though and always managed to grab them by the pass. Curses, kiss chase again. Those girls were vicious! Once they had you in their evil clutches there was no escape. Not even Superman could escape the slurp girls. This was obviously something to get used to.
Another big danger was sitting down for any class before Rachel Kennedy had sat down. If Rachel had not sat down, then she would always try to sit next to P. this was something he had great difficulty understanding at that tender age.
‘Hello P’ she would say in a silly, girly way, a sickly smile on her face. She never had dirty hands, she never had her jumper tied around her waist, never played football and never once pretended to be Batman. Not even Catwoman! She always looked as if her mum had just dressed her for church. It was a difficult concept for a five-year-old boy to grasp.
‘Go away and don’t call me P’ he usually replied with a frown. P was the sort of boy that existed in the real world as he saw it. Dirty hands, jumpers tied around the waist, red, flushed cheeks, footy stickers in his pockets, flicksies, swapsies at the ready and holes in his knees. In any photograph taken of him before the age of ten he always looked as if he had just fallen out of a loft. Even at weddings or on cold Christmas mornings.
‘What should I call you?’ asked the Sugar girl.
‘Master’ he replied with a grin, the Doctor Who already kicking in. ‘Now go away’.
‘Why?’ she asked sweetly, curling a trailing piece of hair into a ring around her finger.
‘Because I don’t wanna sit with girls, that’s why’.
‘Not even me?’ P gave her a look that hypnotised Jo Grant and crap guards and gave her the brain-shrinking stare. She smiled and did a little pirouette. That did not impress P. She would have been better off producing a sonic screwdriver.
‘I don’t like you. Go away’.
She usually went away eventually, but why oh why on earth was she pestering him in the first place? He thought. Girls are weird. Always have been. None of them like playing war or football. None of them know how to die properly, screaming and spasming. None of them go around the back of the sheds to sneak through the thick, thorny bushes instead of going out the long way through the gates, none of them climbed the tree by the bins to see if there was any interesting rubbish inside before the dusty’s arrived and none of them EVER went to the Newty. They were just weird. And kiss-chase!? Weird.
P drifted outside of himself as he slept and dreamed. Everything seems straightforward when you are young. Apart from sums. And spelling. And girls, of course. Everything you want to say has to be screamed at the top of your voice, especially if you are running at the time. Everywhere you want to go to has to be run to. You can read comics like the Beano and the Beezer and Whizzer and Chips without laughing once. You have to watch every cartoon on the telly and never laugh once, but every burp and fart is hilarious. Every meal has to be wolfed down and the table ran away from. Screaming.
The telly and football and Doctor Who and Scooby-Doo and marbles and footy stickers meant EVERYTHING. Your mother and father and mates and your house and money mean nothing, after all, they would always be there, wouldn’t they?
Fuzzes and swirls and multi-coloured clouds swept through his brain, cleansing it, washing it in cool, cold watery dreams. His childhood left behind, his God came to visit.

The irritating beeping of the alarm clock roused Jo from her deep, dreamless slumber. She may not have had Gods in her head, but she had her head in good order. Both of them. She always slept well, always worked hard and always tried to see the best in everybody and every situation. She had to, living with P. She frowned and groaned as she realised what it was that woke her. In her sleepy grumpiness, she elbowed P gently. ‘Come on, P, I don’t have to be up for an hour’ she mumbled. P remained motionless.
Jo frowned harder and sat up slowly as the relentless beeping became steadily louder. She thumped P as she clambered over him to switch the wretched thing off. Jo pursed her lips and thumped P in the chest. ‘Very funny, you bastard’ she moaned groggily at him, then thinking he was just playing dead, she curled up in bed and tried to slip back into sleep. After a few moments, she realised P was still lying beside her and nudged him again. ‘Come on, baby, you have to get up and go to work and you’re not getting away without getting my tea’ she mumbled. Especially after what I did for you last night, she thought. She thumped him again, tired now of this stupid game of his and angry at having her morning ruined.
Eventually, she sat up and thumped him harder than ever. ‘Fuck you, P, you stupid tosser’ she bellowed as she got out of bed. ‘I’ll make my own bloody tea’. She stormed downstairs shouting ‘and I’m not making you one. Just because you’re bloody miserable….’ Her voice trailed off as she went into the kitchen.
Ten minutes later, Jo returned to the room and was furious to find P still snoozing peacefully. She pulled open the curtains and switched on the radio. ‘OK, I’m up now, you win’ she sighed disconsolately as she walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She walked back into the bedroom. ‘There, I’ve even turned your shower on’. Still, P laid in bed, motionless. ‘Oh come on, P, stop messing about. I’ve got to go to work, too you know’. Still P did not move.
Jo stood by the bed and suddenly, violently shook him, thinking this sudden attack would make him giggle and give in. To her surprise, his body seemed limp and just shook or moved wherever she pushed it. ‘This has gone far enough now’ she said loudly, certain it was just one of his stupid games, but getting slightly worried despite herself. She shook him harder and harder, but P remained unconscious and limp.
Jo started to panic and slapped his face, but his head simply rolled to one side with the blow. Jo shook him and shouted his name, then slapped him as hard as she could across the face. Still, he remained unconscious and Jo was starting to fret and freak out as her handprint became visible on his cheek. She tried to calm herself and think logically. She was sure he wasn’t dead, because he was so warm and seemed to be breathing normally.
She came to her senses enough to run downstairs and call for an ambulance. It arrived just over twenty minutes later and despite trying slaps, caresses, cuddles, water, tea and begging, P remained motionless and unconscious. The ambulance crew moved a shrieking, panicking Jo out of the way and gave him the once-over, trying to rouse him, but to no avail. Eventually, they moved him from the bed to a stretcher and carried him (naked) into the waiting ambulance and away.

In his head, P dreamed of being in bed, small warm and young. A bird twittered just beyond the fuzzy edges of his sleep, disturbing it. Invisible, THRUSH anti-sleep strings dragged his eyes open to investigate. On the windowsill sat a bird, twittering. P groaned the groan of a zombie and dragged his cobwebbed eyes fully open. According to his spanking new, 100% plastic, glow in the dark, heroes Batwatch it was 5.20. In the morning. 5.20 in the pigging morning AGAIN. The bird started twittering again. It was no use, he would never be able to sleep with that noise going on. P decided to get up and kill the pigging thing. It had been landing on the windowsill and waking him up every pigging morning for weeks. It didn’t wake his brother, Herman up. Nothing woke Herman up, he slept like a pigging stone and P hated him.
He climbed slowly, silently out of bed (it was CRUCIAL not to disturb a flying pest when you were trying to sneak up like action man through the bushes and kill the pig) and dramatically threw open the curtains to scare the pesky thing away. ‘SHOO! SHOO! BUZZ OFF’. The bird shuffled out of reach and sat at the far end of the windowsill, continuing to sing. P made more SHOOing noises and flapped his arms about trying to imitate a large predator, but the bird just sat there ignoring him. Drat and double drat. Just my luck to get the only deaf bird in London, thought P. Catch that pigeon NOW.
P pushed open the window knocking the bird off the windowsill and sending it plummeting towards the ground. The bird had either forgotten how to fly momentarily or was suicidal. Hurray! He left the window open in case the pesky pigeon remembered how to fly at the last minute and decided to come back to it later in the morning and annoy him again.
P climbed back into the soft warmness of his Batbed, pulled the blankets right up to his nose and looked around at all the lovely things his bedroom held. The bright reds, blues and greens with flashes of white that was his Spiderman posters as Spidey zzzzzzzzzzzipped his web onto a nearby New York rooftop, Spidey caught in mid KROOOOM, his cars, his lego that Herman kept using even though he insisted he did not, the lone ranger hat and silver six-gun and the orange, bouncey space hopper that he had been allowed to keep even after the accident Jamie from next door had had with it. Lovely things, lovely things. Then there was Herman. Herman the scumbag, Herman the pig. P hated him. Lying there pretending to be asleep, but really just waiting for him to doze off so he could pounce and put bogeys in his shoes or snot in his pants or hit him in the mouth with his willy while P’s arms were trapped by his sides. P leaned out and put a square piece of lego by Herman’s slippers hoping he would tread on it when he got out of bed. Ha.
Unable to sleep after a morning of such excitement, P tip-toed into the cold kitchen for some milk, peering into the living room to make sure nobody was looking, then very quietly taking three biscuits from the tin. He stood on the cold kitchen floor, moving from one foot to the other and ate one of the biscuits. Mmmm, smashing orangey bit. He started on the second and realised He did not have enough, so reached up and took two more, then sneaked back to the bedroom ducking under the saloon doors in the kitchen (because they squeaked and squealed on biscuit rustlers and then everyone would know he was pinching biscuits). He s l o w l y and c a r e f u l l y sneaked back to his room making sure not to step on the creaking board or any pieces of lego or meccano (because then he might have to wake up Mum again trying not to cry) and putting the milk on Herman’s Shoot, quickly put on his Batcap, snuck under the covers with his handy Bat-torch and biscuits and read about Spidey and his battle with the strange menace of Mysterio again.
Oh how he wanted to be Spider-Man. Sticking to walls, hanging from ceilings, spinning webs zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzipppp, fighting crime and THWACKing villains. Why didn’t his parents give him a name like Jack? Or Steve? Or Chad? Chad Thunder was what he should have been called. Peter Parker was a pretty dull name, considering he was really Spider-Man. Not like Bruce Wayne. That sounded tough, brave and big. Somewhere in the sprawling metropolis stands a man, a man that stands for Truth, Decency and Biscuits, a man called CHAD THUNDER!. That was never going to work. I needed a better name and QUICK!
P laid back in his lovely warm, soft bed and thought so hard his eyebrows touched. He thought and thought and strained his mind, then became Dack Specimen, by day a humble pest exterminator, but by night, dah-de-DAHHHHHHHHH, the Astounding BIRDMAN!!! With the power of all our feathered friends, the Astounding BIRDMAN sweeps and swoops over the city seeking out crime, exterminating evil, battling evil do-ers, leaving messages on windowsills, eating biscuits and putting the world to rights.
The Astounding BIRDMAN, able to take on the persona of any bird at will; Sparrowman - able to get into places no other man could, Hawkman - keen eyed and ruthless when dealing with violent criminals, Pigeonman - a noisy pain in the bum with a silly walk and a liking for statues, Eagleman - a high flying predator and great at golf, his abilities are endless. With his jet-powered, sleekly feathered astounding BIRDMAN outfit and utility belt full of hi-tech gadgets such as the amazing errr.......sonic birdsong....transmitting destructor thing and lightning fast errr, oh poo, that was no good. The Astounding BIRDMAN was not going to be that interesting. P nestled into his bed and set to thinking once more for something else for Dack Specimen to be. Although Eagleman was quite good. Hmm.
All he wanted was to be a big tough guy so that he could be a humble pest exterminator orrrrrrr a policeman because they could tell Mums what to do and they did it, instead of them always telling you what to do or what to stop doing or what to put down or when to go to bed when you never felt tired. Snakeman! That was it, the Astonishing Snakeman! Able to slide and slither through the world of crime like a hooded black cobra, the Astonishing Snakeman! With the bite of a rattler and the guile of a…err…adder, the Astonishing Snakeman would crush crimmo’s in his dislocating jaws of death! What a cool outfit he would have! But then he would have to crawl along on his belly. Hmm. Nah, Spidey didn’t run like a cowardly thing on all fours (or eights) and P was sure he could get out of the bath by himself.
And it wasn’t fair that he had to eat foul, smelly cabbage and sprouts when they tasted like bogie poodrops, either. Another thing mums made you do. And he had to eat Herman’s bogie poodrops, too because Herman always put his sprouts on P’s plate when nobody was looking and if he squealed, P got a whacking when he got to bed. And Herman was always nicking the meaty bits of steak and kidney pie, too, leaving him with the horrible shiny bits. Once Herman put a bogie on his kidney, too, making it even worse! P hated him.
Being little was horrible. P wanted to be big like grown ups and throw away sprouts and say ‘any more tater’s, luv?’ like his granddad and stay up late and not get told off like grown ups. Like Ginge. He liked his uncle Ginge a lot. Ginge was funny and made him laugh every time he saw him. And he sometimes gave P two bob when nobody was about.
P had spent the morning dreaming and so leapt out of bed, slid into his Arsenal slippers and bounded into breakfast like Rubberman.