Boot

I.F. Godsland

Description

Once upon a time, shortly after a prodigious financial crash, there was a 'highly capitalised legacy-fling' called Petswell MacHeath, which advertised itself as providing 'original solutions for unconventional business problems'. But in these difficult times, what could such a glossy new start-up possibly want with Anthony Booth, aka Boot, fresh out of juvenile detention and set to work as a gardener? And what could it be doing with Miff ("Social pays me and gives Pigswill Macbeth a retainer to keep me on"), and why would it want to recruit Boot's gardener mate, Asbo ("I like thistles - you don't argue with a thistle")?But, strangest of all, how can it be that Petswell MacHeath leaves it entirely up to these three inexperienced social leftovers to develop a business plan of unsurpassed sophistication? By the time these questions are answered, only one question will remain: will Boot, Miff and Asbo be able to save Civilisation As We Know It?Along the way, humour, comedy, farce and satire vie with each other in a story of ultimately epic proportions. Boot: The Three Point Plan will appeal to those looking for a hilarious romp that will keep you guessing.

Sujets

• Humour

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 20 juillet 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781785896491
• Langue: English

Extrait

boot
the three point plan







I.F. Godsland
Copyright © 2016 I.F. Godsland
The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

All characters in this book are fictional and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental

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ISBN 9781785896491

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Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
To Simon – For humour through all the ups and downs.
Contents
AUTHOR’S NOTE
BOOT

The Three-Point Plan: Point 1
INHERENT CONTRADICTION

DAY 1
DAY 2
DAY 3
DAY 4
DAY 5
DAY 6
DAY 7
THE AFTERMATH

The Three-Point Plan: Point 2
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

DAY 1
DAY 2
DAY 3
DAY 4
DAY 5
DAY 6
DAY 7
THE AFTERMATH

The Three-Point Plan: Point 3
RESISTANCE ENHANCEMENT

NIGHT 1
NIGHT 2
NIGHT 3
NIGHT 4
NIGHT 5
NIGHT 6
NIGHT 7
THE AFTERMATH
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is an unlikely story that had unlikely beginnings; specifically, in a men’s lavatory at Miami International Airport.
There was I, watering the urinal with a diffident English trickle when there’s a sudden turbulence and this bull-male American jock plants himself four-square in front of the stall next to me, gives forth a five-second Niagara squirt, boots the flush pedal and, judging by further turbulence, shoulders aside the air and muscles his way out.
Still trickling, I didn’t get to see whether he washed his hands. And anyway I was too taken up with the way he had booted that flush pedal to worry. Supposing, thought I, there was a company that specialised in environmental manipulation to maximise the masterful, aggressive, assertive energy its clients could exert – pedals for them to kick, doors for them to slam, packaging for them to crush; all slightly more resistant than usual? And supposing the company had working for it someone called Boot…
The men’s lavatory in Miami International Airport does not feature in this story. But some other even more unlikely things drawn from my experience do. One is the professional gambler with a system that works. He was thumbing a lift at some lights on the Western Avenue, heading for a casino on the Edgware Road. I took him there and he invited me in. In an hour and a half, he had won somewhat over fifty quid, though mostly by going against his own system in a last-second, intuitive switch. He was aiming to win enough that evening to buy his wife a new fridge and he told me fifty quid in an hour and a half was too slow. He headed off to where he reckoned ‘the tables would be better’ and left me with a few chips to have a go with, which I lost immediately.
Another experience included in these pages is being woken by the sound of a cat having an acute attack of diarrhoea, unfortunately, in my case, over the shoes in a bedroom wardrobe rather than simply behind a sofa. The tree at the end of the Barbican’s John Trundle Highwalk looks quite manageable and I have a photograph showing that on one occasion, at least, the Canary Wharf tower could be viewed through a hangman’s noose at the back of the Prospect of Whitby. Moreover, I can assure readers that I have in my possession a rusty, but very serviceable, ten-inch nail picked up from the Thames shore at the foot of Wapping Old Stairs.

Once upon a time, shortly after a prodigious
financial crash…
BOOT
I was born ‘Anthony Booth’. Then at school I got sick of the kids teasing me by sounding the ‘th’ in ‘Anthony’ in a way that picked up on the ‘th’ in ‘Booth’ and gave out that I wanted to be called plain ‘Booth’. I hit those who didn’t drop the ‘Anthony’ until they did.
Then we moved to Ireland, where people were happy enough to call me ‘Booth’ but, with just a bit of the Irish on the ‘th’, it came out as ‘Boot’. I liked that, and told people ‘Boot’ would do me fine. In Ireland, I didn’t have to hit anyone to get called by the name I wanted to be called by and when we moved back to London, ‘Boot’ was who I was and anyone who got it wrong only got it wrong once. With my name settled, I could get on with all the other stuff in my life that seemed determined to turn me into someone I wasn’t – stuff like gangsters, juvenile detention and secure training centres.
At least in the sense that I don’t go looking for it, I’m not a violent person; but I recognised early that there are some issues best settled by a smack in the teeth – issues like people not calling you by the name you want to be called by. In the world I grew up in, it was only the complete psychos who wouldn’t accept a smack in the teeth for the unequivocal assertion of one’s God-given human rights that it was. But I came to recognise that beyond the reliable limits of take-and-take and dog-eat-dog that I was used to, things could get more dangerous. There were people out there who, instead of getting on with their own lives, wanted to get on with other people’s and the greatest threat to them doing that was people like me who might talk straight to them. If the likes of me showed his head above ground, they were right in there to root us out and nip us in the bud. You can tell by the horticultural metaphors the kind of socialisation schemes they thought I needed.
Maybe they hoped they were being vindictive, putting a wild animal like me in among the plants. But I didn’t mind gardening. I felt more a part of the natural world than I did theirs. In the natural world, things get on with what they have to, like getting all the food they need, growing as big as they can and taking over as much territory as possible. On my first day out of the secure training centre, the head gardener got me on the right track. His name was Joe and he had long, grey hair, a face that had seen too much life, and tattoos all the way up his arms. He looked at me and said, not unkindly, “Are you going to fuck me around or get on with it?”
“Dunno yet, do I,” said I. “No reason not to get on with it.”
He gave me a nod, then, “You’ll have been in some rough, tough places, Mister Boot. Let me show you something really rough and tough.”
He led me to a wild-looking corner of the park.
“See that? There used to be pansies and petunias there, but I’ve let the thistles and nettles take over. I like thistles and nettles. I identify, if you know what I mean. But the powers that run this park like pretty little pansies and petunias. So they set spiky people like you and me to work keeping the garden safe for pansies and petunias. Seems to me, Boot, that there is a great mystery there: how can it be, I ask myself, that people who like pansies and petunias have the power to set the likes of you and me against the thistles and nettles? Seems to me those people must be even spikier than we are.”
I worked with Joe until somebody from his past put him in hospital and a new head gardener turned up. He was okay, but not spiky and interesting like Joe. Still, I got on with it when he told me to clear Joe’s thistles and nettles and plant pansies and petunias. Joe said he identified, but I didn’t see any difference between a flowerbed being cleared and a tsunami. It was tough on the thistles and nettles but for me it wasn’t personal.
All the same, I held on to what Joe had said about the people who liked pansies and petunias. Until then, I’d only taken in the minor types – the sort who put other people down so they can feel better about the heap of shit they are. In the garden, I could see a heap of shit could do a lot of good, but the people I’m talking about were just smothering and toxic. Joe’s pansy and petunia people had to be different, though. Maybe they operated the heaps of shit like they operated Joe and me, so they could enjoy their pansies and petunias.

I put some of this to a guy who turned up shortly after Joe moved on to other things. This was a guy who’d actually applied for a job in the garden rather than being put there to make a better citizen of him. He looked very African the first day he arrived: tall, wiry and extremely black, and he said in broad Peckham, “’Ello, mate. What’s it like ‘ere?”
I’d been on a bit of an inside drift, thinking about the plants. “It’s alright,” I said. “You can watch the plants fighting.”
The other kids I worked with would have all gone ‘Ha, ha, ha’, or taken a swing at me because they thought I was taking the piss, but this guy replied, “Yeah, I’m more into birds myself, but I know what you mean.”
“You and me are meant to stomp on the plants the park people don’t like. That’s what we’re here for.”
“To stomp and be stomped,” the new arrival said cheerfully, which caused me to raise an eyebrow in appreciation.
“We’re here to make the park safe for pansies and petunias,” I added for good measure, “…stop the thistles taking over.”
He frowned. “I like thistles. You don’t argue with a thistle.”
I liked that. “What’s your name?”
“Asbo.”
Forgetting my whole history, I said