By Richard Owain Roberts
Location: Wilbraham Road, Chorlton
I think you will be coming into the shop today. I think it was this time a week ago that you last came. You hired a DVD and bought a pack of Polo mints. This is what you ‘do’ every time you come in. I think you’ll be coming in soon, so I reach around to the front of the counter and pick up a pack of Polo mints. I open the pack of Polo mints and take three out and put them in my mouth. I have a sense of enjoying them and this surprises me and I don’t know why exactly. I put three more Polo mints in my mouth, crunch them up, and suck on the flavour.
I finish the pack of Polo mints.
You don’t come in tonight and I have eaten six packs of Polo mints. I close the shop and, as I lock up, take another pack of Polo mints from the counter and put them in the back pocket of my black cords. That is seven packs now and I hope that will be okay.
**
It’s the next week and it’s the same time. I have already eaten two packs of Polo mints and am starting my third. I generally put four mints in at a time now; I think this is just about the right amount.
You are not here yet and I am rearranging the DVDs. We have thirty DVDs at this shop. Courtenay likes them alphabetical, I like them via stream of consciousness connections. I place Daddy Day Care next to Babel. I immediately do not understand this decision.
You have dark hair and dark eyes and like to rent DVDs on Tuesdays. Three weeks ago you took out You Don’t Mess With The Zohan and when you returned it you told Courtenay it was the best film you had seen in years. You told him that it was a ‘laugh riot’ and you enjoyed it so much that you had to, just had to, write a thousand-word review on IMDB. I think you were messing with Courtenay’s head. I think he is susceptible to that kind of thing.
I walk back to the counter eating the last Polo mint from the current pack. I crumple the empty wrapper in my hand and throw it on top of the shelf unit that stocks the cigarettes. This is where I throw all of the empty wrappers and I jump up and down on the spot to check that they are not visible.
You do not come into the shop tonight.
**
By Laura Marsden
Location: Dell Road, Shawclough, Rochdale
My Dad is a mechanic and his name is Kenny. We live in Rochdale. Everyone always goes ‘alright Kenny’. No one says alright to me even when I’m with Dad. He says it’s because I have funny eyes. What’s funny about them Dad? They’re a bit bozzy he says.
I’ve got four brothers and one sister called MELISSA. She’s the spit of my Dad Kenny except she has long hair and wears it in a French plait.
All my brothers are dicks. They all have fat heads and loads of spots. They’re always cupping rank farts and then shoving the farts in my face for jokes. Our Carl made me strip off in the snow last night for a joke. I had to stand in the back yard for ages with nothing on except my Winnie the Pooh slippers. They got dead wet because of the melty snow what stuck to them like cold brains. All Carl’s knob-head mates were there. They were all laughing loads and kept grabbing my tits.
Everyone who comes round to ours is always staring at my tits because they’re quite massive. But nobody will look at my face because of the bozzy eyes.
Sometimes I like to just get away from it all for a bit so I tell Dad that I’m going to my room do not disturb. I just lie on my bed and listen to tapes and/or do some colouring. I like colouring. It’s very therapeutic.
MELISSA is allowed to come in whenever she wants because it is also her room. She sometimes brings me a Slim-a-Soup (Minestrone) and a packet of cheese and onion McCoys and/or a Topic. I’m the only person I know who likes Topics.
Next week I’ll be 26. Can’t wait. Dad says he might try and find out if there’s a place in town where they fix eyes.
Laura Marsden lives in a flat that has five rooms. It’s in Salford. She buys weekly provisions from Mocha Parade, the local shopping precinct. It’s really good quality and value for money. For many years she lived in Rochdale. Rochdale, mighty, mighty Rochdale. http://tonguesandwiches.blogspot.com
By Ian D Smith
Location: A34 by Parrs Wood
At Parrs Wood on the A34 heading south, I saw a man in a suit at the side of the road holding up a cardboard sign with In-Car Valeting scrawled on it. At his feet, an open briefcase contained the tools of his trade.
The windows were greasy, the carpets were filthy and there was dust lying all over my ‘86 Metro, so I was interested in the idea. I’d provide the lift; Mr In-Car Valeting would do the hard graft. We’d both be happy. So I stopped and opened the door.
The man peered inside.
He sniffed, ‘Where to?’
‘London,’ I replied.
He nodded, ‘S’fine.’
And he hopped right in. He slammed the door and smoothed down his hair. He put both hands on top of his briefcase.
I set off and reached the M6 junction, but he just sat there staring straight ahead, and he didn’t say a dickie bird. He looked at his watch. His shoes shone like diamonds. I asked him when he was going to start doing some valeting.
‘London,’ he replied. ‘I’d be a mug to start before then wouldn’t I?’
‘That’s not part of the deal.’
‘There was no deal.’
By Biz Huthwaite
Location: Scarsdale Road
There is a man. Standing on the corner. Sipping a cup of coffee. Not a take-away cup, but one from his kitchen. His lip is rasping on the chipped rim each time he raises it to suck on the smooth, dark liquid. Next to him is a cat. A Siamese. Its blue collar matches the man’s blue cotton trousers. They are both disinterested in each other and in their surroundings.
The man is calm, seeming as if it’s completely normal for him to be standing there away from an entrance to any house, but not seeming to be waiting for anything, anyone. The Siamese sits. Raises her paw in time with the man lifting his coffee cup. They both lick. Him, his coffee; her, her paw. They are still looking for nothing. A car rolls by. The man, the Siamese, follow it with their eyes. Their heads are slowly moving from left to right as the man’s shirt flutters lightly across his turgid belly. Once the car has passed they resume their positions of staring blankly ahead of themselves.
A woman comes out of the house nearest to where the man and the Siamese are standing. She leans her twisted frame against the rusty bricks of her porch. She is now watching the man, the Siamese, who are still watching nothing. She squints as the sunlight burns harshly onto her retina, blocks it with her gnarled hands. They used to be smooth and dark like fine leather, but have now aged and resemble an old satchel, battered from years of use. Her lined face is a map although she herself has never left the city. The old woman wonders where the pair on the corner may end up going, instead of questioning why it is that she has never left.
The children kicking a yellow ball back and forth, back and forth down the street have not yet thought of where they will end up. Nor have they noticed the odd trio of observers a short distance away from them. They are too busy pretending to boot the sun around amongst the cars, pretending the apocalypse will come if their miniature sun happens to slide under one of the many vehicles that line the street. The ill-fitting shirts draped over their tiny frames billow like parachutes behind them as their feet dart around after the ball in too-big shoes. Tripping over themselves to save the earth, they let out fierce shrieks and simultaneously drop to the floor as the ball disappears underneath a cobalt Volvo and the apocalypse arrives. When a skinny arm fumbles blind under the sooty car, catches the ball, the world and the game start up again.
By John F Keane
Location: Whitworth Art Gallery, Oxford Road
Martin found himself in a strange, unhallowed hall. Vast canvases surrounded him, utterly abstract yet oddly inviting. It was like a clearing had opened in the world, a vast space beyond all conceptual limits. His mind-chatter ceased, exposing a sacred silence. He sensed this artist knew the world’s secret, knew all about the Hate Machine. This was art of an infinitely higher order than pop music or films. Its elements were bafflingly complex in their simplicity, deceptively artful in their crudity.
The paintings were hardly serene or remote – far from it; they were intimate statements deploying self-referential, mythic elements. They called out to him, somehow, demanding his attention.
‘Wonderful, aren’t they?’ said a gravelly voice behind him.
‘Yes – yes, they are.’
It was an old man who looked to be Jewish. Of course, he might not be: he might be anything.
‘Mark Rothko truly grasped the human condition,’ he opined expansively, his stick clicking on the polished floor. ‘He sensed the incessant pressure of modern life – the walls that bind us.’
Martin nodded: The Hate Machine.
‘He sensed correctly that religion offers no tenable salvation to modern man. His art seeks a secular solution to our “thrownness” – not unsuccessfully, if I may be so bold.’
‘Are you some kind of art expert?’
‘Some would say so. Rothko recommended the viewer should stand eighteen inches from his paintings, by the way, to feel their full effect.’
