Blue Mondays

Mark Engineer

Description

Blue Mondays is a witty and insightful portrayal of life in a small, middleclass town during the height of the ‘Summer of Love’ of the late 80’s, writes Andy McCorkell. It is easy to recall the wild media hysteria of the time, not least the lurid headlines of drugfuelled parties, the supposed sexual depravity and abandon of a feral youth gone mad.

Informations

• Publié par: M-Y Books
• Date de parution: 01 février 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781906986285
• Langue: English

Extrait

Blue Mondays
A novel by
Mark Engineer

AN M-Y BOOKS PAPERBACK
© Copyright 2008 Mark Engineer
The right of Mark Engineer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All Rights Reserved
No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with the written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended).
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
Published by M-Y Books www.m-ybooks.co.uk
Cover and typesetting by David Stockman davidstockman.co.uk
This Book Is For Andy Herron



In Loving Memory
Alex
It was a late one last night, Thursday, the weekend starts here boys and all that. Always a laugh, the Thursday sessions, but they make Friday afternoon seem twice as long. It’s warm in here, the early autumn sun streaming in through the classroom windows, and that and the spliff I smoked with Matt at lunch has made me well sleepy. I’ve been looking out of the window, at a group of first years playing football, just letting my mind wander, thinking about last night.
Met Joe and the boys down the Lion early doors. Beers and chasers in the garden, skinning up a crafty one under the bench while Justin kept an eye out, because Fat Andy, the landlord, is an arsehole of the highest order when it comes to drugs, even though he’s happy enough to break the law on a daily basis by serving the likes of us drink. Just another kind of drug dealing, what he does, isn’t it? After a good few I’d got up to go to the bar, and some lanky prick had taken the piss out of me, blimey it’s like a playground in here boys, and all his mates laughed. I didn’t say anything at the time, because it’s our local and serves us no questions asked, and we don’t want to get barred. I kept a good eye on that guy though, and as soon as he and his mates left I was right behind them. He laughed when I squared up to him, because he was a good bit older than me, eighteen or nineteen at least, and like I said he was tall, although he didn’t have much of a build. But he stopped laughing as soon as I hit him. It was a good punch, a jab, caught him on the cheek and knocked his head back. He didn’t go down, but I could tell he was seeing stars so I whacked him again, and this one was a beauty, right on the nose. And he doubled over, hands covering his face and claret dripping through his fingers, while his mates stood there like lemons, because Joe and the lads were stood behind me by now, and they’re well known for being pretty tasty in a row. And then Jizzle had gone over and stuck his head on one of them and they’d all turned and ran, the guy I’d hit staggering after them, and all of us laughing…
“Yes, carry on, Sanderson.”
Carson’s nasal voice cuts through my daydream, bringing me back to reality with a thump. I look up and he’s looking straight at me with his beady eyes. An expectant silence has filled the classroom.
“Sir?”
“What have I been talking about?”
Fuck. I haven’t got a clue. I’ve no idea what he’s been saying for about the last half an hour.
“Well, Sanderson?”
I look past Carson, at the big white board. The word JOINTS is written on it in huge letters, underlined twice. “Joints, sir.”
He’s twiddling a strand of what’s left of his hair, a sure sign that he’s wound up. “What sort of joints, Sanderson?”
There’s an obvious joke here, and I can hear a few people giggling, expecting me to say it. I don’t know if Carson would understand, but he’d know I was taking the piss, and I don’t want to be kept behind on Friday afternoon. Besides, there’s other ways to make him look stupid. “Hinge joints and ball-and-socket joints.”
“And what is the difference…”
“Hinge joints allow movement in just two directions, like the elbow and knee. Ball-and-socket joints, like the shoulder or hip, allow a much greater freedom of movement in all directions.” I look him right in the eye. “Sir.”
I’ve actually just read all this off the handout he gave us at the beginning of the lesson, but he’s either too angry, or too thick, to realise this. There’s a few more sniggers, and I can see poison in the little bastard’s eyes. But what can he do? He has one last try, although he must know he’s lost this one. “And what is the fluid that lubricates the joints called, Sanderson?”
“Synovial fluid.”
He looks away. “Right, thank you.”
“Will that be all, sir?”
“Don’t push it, Sanderson.”
I’m still staring at him and for a moment I’m tempted to do just that, to push it, push him, see how far I can go. He tries to act the big man, but I know he’s soft inside, like most of them. I’ve got him pinned, squirming, and people all over the room are looking at me, grinning, urging me on. Not today, boys. He’ll keep.
He starts droning on again and I look back out at the football match. One of the kids has the ball at his feet and is weaving his way through the defence. He’s got a bit of skill all right. He pushes it through this bigger kid’s legs and runs round him, then the bigger kid just scythes him down, gets the ball and boots it up the field. The ref, it’s Mr Fountain, doesn’t blow. Probably approves, probably enjoyed it.
It was all back to Joe’s after the pub, his new place in Garston Street, and he whacked on Dance FM full blast, Kenny Ken in the house, while we ignored the neighbours banging on the floor. We were getting stuck into the Thai whisky his cousin had brought him back, and Mark and Ainsley were speeding off their tits as usual, throwing shapes in the corner. And suddenly there was a knock at the door, and we thought shit, maybe the neighbours have called the Old Bill, and there was a mass panic attack while we hid all the drugs, although the place stank of weed so we’d have been fucked anyway. Joe turned the music down and we listened but they didn’t knock again so it must have been the neighbours, but we gave them their wish and kept it quiet after that, well quiet-ish, just to be on the safe side. And Roger, who can’t take his drink or drugs and is always the first to crash, had slept through all this. We stuck a fag up his nose and lit it and he smoked the whole thing without waking up, then Joe shaved one of his eyebrows off, then Justin opened a bottle of poppers and held it under his nose for over a minute. We were all cracking up as Roger’s face went redder and redder till you could see the big vein at the side of his head throbbing, and suddenly he stood up, knocking the amyl everywhere, staggered forward and fell over the coffee table…
“Hilditch !” snaps Carson suddenly.
I look across at Nathan Hilditch, who’s spaced out as usual, staring at the walls. I know what’s coming. Carson needs to get back some of the power I took away from him.
“Hilditch!”
“Uh?”
“What have I been talking about?”
Nathan’s harmless and as thick as they come. He’s an easy target for the likes of Carson, who tears into him. The bell goes, but he keeps us back for a couple of minutes to humiliate Hilditch some more, the baldy little fucker.
Graeme
Eric behind the front desk gives his usual cheery nod as I walk through the foyer. “See you, Gray. Good day?”
“Shite,” I grunt and he laughs in his vacuous way and says “See ya tomorrow”. To be honest I doubt he even heard me, his response would probably have been the same if I told him I’d been out murdering his wife. Been to see your missus actually Eric, slit her throat, then smeared her blood all over your bedroom walls. Oh really Gray? Well, see ya tomorrow. The old boy’s been so focussed on his pension for the last two years he doesn’t notice anything else anymore.
I get in the car and my fingers are already tearing at my collar, loosening the top button and pulling my tie off. God, I hate the bloody things. Feel like I’m being strangled all day, but Wheeler’s a stickler for form. “Best collars and cuffs, lads. Got an image to maintain, ain’t we?”
I take out my fags. Last one. Shit. I light it anyway, take a deep, deep drag and suck it right down. “Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.” Definitely need to cut down a bit though. I just sit there for a moment, eyes closed, head back against the rest, savouring the sweet smoke. Just a moment’s peace, before I’m back into the shite that is my life. I smoke the fag right down to the filter, till it’s burning my fingers, searing my lungs. Then I chuck it out the window, start the motor. I think for a moment, do I want to go home? Not really but where else is there? and swing out into the rush-hour traffic.
I wasn’t lying to Eric, it had been a shite day, not that that bloody time-server could have cared less. A mound of paperwork in the in-tray, thought I’d be able to crack through it in a morning, but it actually seemed to have grown by lunchtime. One interview in the afternoon, John Mayes, a guy we’d lifted that morning. Suspected of selling pills. We turned his flat upside down, didn’t find any gear but there was a sheet of paper with names and numbers on it, looked like a tick-list. He’d just stood there smiling, cocky as hell, offered to make us a cuppa. So we gave him the morning in the cells, then interviewed him in the afternoon, hoping he’d have softened up by then. He hadn’t. He sat there, arms folded, smoking my fags, looking calm and relaxed as you like, and let the duty solicitor, a smarmy little bastard called Claiborne, do most of the talking.
There was something about this Mayes that really wound me up, something I couldn’t place at first. I mean, he wasn’t anything like the young scumbags we usually get in there, swaggering around full of bravado in baseball caps and tracksuits, hardly able to string a sentence together, and at least four “fuc