Cedric

Being Seventeen....
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I was playing pool with some blagger when this dark lad came in. He was short, stocky, and Cuban-looking, with cropped black hair on a round head. He spoke fair English with a French accent. When I potted the black he tried to grab the blagger’s cue but the blagger tried to blag him, saying it was the best of three. GIVE ME F**KING CUE OR I BREAK YOUR HEAD, Cedric said.

This was hardcore flophouse attitude. I liked him already. We would go to the local takeaway where he would order something that took yonks to prepare so he could chat up the young Chinese lady working there. I remember his food being stone cold by the time he eventually left her alone. I think she was as intrigued by him as I was.

He was brutally honest with people. He seemed to be anticipating challenges all the time. No one stepped up.

He showed me photos of himself posing by landmarks from various countries, including the top of the Statue of Liberty. He was a fearless roaming vagabond who was prepared to fight. A true lone wolf.

One day he came in with a packet of bacon. I thought he was ready to slap someone silly with it. We went to his room. He locked the door behind us. He sat on the bed and opened a portfolio. In it were erotic demons and beasts scribbled in pencil. Suddenly, I saw him in a different light.

Here’s the trick though. He opened another portfolio, but this was full of women from dirty magazines, carefully cut out and stuck together like jigsaw pieces. A zany collage of indecency. I’m telling, it was an absolute piece of art that must have took years in the making.

He gripped his crotch and howled, imitating an awesome orgasm. Then he opened his bacon and laid the rashers out in strips over his right hand. YOU GO NOW, ANDY, he said, making a w**king gesture.

I didn’t need asking twice! Fooking hell, Cedric!

The Time I Got Pulled By A Bloke

For some unholy reason I was on the fun bus with a keyboard and this dark skinned Hispanic fellow sat himself next to me on the back seat. He started chatting, and I didn’t know back then that when one human speaks to another, it is the equivalent of apes grooming each other. I learned that in a book called THE NAKED APE. When someone talks to you, that is effectively what they are doing, so it means they like you and are prepared to care for you. Remember this next time you are caught off-guard and start to feel defensive.

He was ever-so very friendly. I thought he was naive because he was foreign but in hindsight I was the naive one. He knew exactly what he was doing from the off. He said he had a house which was on the bus route and only a mile or so before where I lived. It was above THE BALL pub on LIVERPOOL ROAD. He said I was welcome to get off early and stop at his for a bit because he had studio equipment and I would be able to plug my keyboard in and make a professional-sounding song.

It sounds weird agreeing to this with a TOTAL STRANGER only minutes after meeting him, but that’s exactly what I did. As soon as I went in I saw pictures of his friends with (how can I put this?), MALE LOVE JUICE on their chests. Yes, really. Actual printed photographs of sex games pinned up for all to see. That should have set me on my toes right there. I thought an accomplice was going to stick me with a needle and drug me. My eyes were peeled for any SYRINGES that might POP OUT from between the banisters of the stairs. I thought I was meat.

I couldn’t bring myself to flee like a whipped dog. I had to stick it out and be ready to PROTECT MY BOTTOM at all costs.

It was very unnerving for a while, but when I saw his studio I relaxed a little. I started to have a go and realised that he was just watching me, playing with himself inside his pants. He had a PROPER TENT GOING ON with both hands buried inside. When I asked what he was doing he invited me to start playing with myself too. He said COME ON, DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT, LET’S JUST HAVE SOME FUN. I kind of laughed his suggestions off and said to myself that it was time to go, all the while being careful that he didn’t BRAIN ME on the way out.

And that, ladies and gents, is the time I got pulled by a bloke.

This is a true life personal account with no added sugar, when I was 24. The man in question reminds me of CEDRIC, who I met when I was 17. Stay tuned to hear all about CEDRIC soon!

Madness on the M6

£NON-FICTION£

The sun is coming out. The weather is changing. The clocks are going back next week. It’s just that time of the year, after the doldrums following new year, when things begin to pick up, don’t you think?

What could be better than a walk in the Lake District? It was sweet. Fond hours along a nature trail with only the pleasing sight of RAF planes navigating by, rather than queues of static motor car traffic.

A nice day. A nice walk. Done. But on the way home...

A car – the very next car in front of us, on the motorway, doing 60 at least – drifts out of the left hand lane. I didn’t see that bit, to be honest. I just heard Julie saying “F*ck!” in that special tone of seriousness reserved for things that truly surprise or shock us. Now, Julie NEVER swears. The very first glimpse I got of the accident unravelling right in front of us was of a car rolling onto the grass beside the motorway and bouncing off a farmer’s dry-stone dyke.

The absolute key detail* is the blond female hair I saw coming out of the open sunroof as the car rolled. A car, flying through the air upside down, and blond female hair cascading from the sunroof. Then it came to rest and the second detail my mind recollects is the passenger, a man, get shook back into his seat like a doll.

Our speed takes us past them but then we pull up. I didn’t want to get out the car. I didn’t want to see. I’m not one for blood and gore. If her hair was hanging out the sunroof, then her head could have been too. That girl’s head could be like an egg for all I knew. One thing for sure, it was a damn serious crash. Off and rolling at motorway speeds is always going to be a serious crash.

It all happened so quick. And in slow motion at the same time. Weird.

I was expecting blood. I was thinking crimson. The idea that the car might explode never occurred to me, but the thought of a messy-bodied woman tangled in metal held me back for a good ten seconds at least before stepping out. The responsibility of being first on the scene is massive. It’s also horrible. You don’t know what the nuts to do.

But this girl is out before me. There’s a scratch on her finger and that’s it. Her passenger, her dad, is also unmarked. She is absolutely unscathed, considering. I’ve just seen her get tossed about, upside down, with her hair billowing out the sunroof, off the motorway, off a wall, and she’s just like, huh, totally fine. Completely fandabbydozy.

She’s shocked, oh you bet she is, doesn’t utter a single word, all distant and vague, but she’s actually on her feet, she’s stood up, looking girly and pretty and blessed and alive. A cut finger, nothing more. I wanted to hug her. I actually wanted to hug her. I did a kind of mild manly half cuddle with one arm and said something along the lines of “Well in love, I could see your hair blowing out through the sunroof, I’m glad you’re okay, you’re lucky to be alive, put the lottery numbers on this week.”

Eventually she sat and by the time the ambulance arrived she was breaking down into tears. Until then she remained blank and staring and in shock. Perhaps she did bang her head, and to be honest I don’t see how she couldn’t have banged her head (view picture), what with her head more or less dangling out of the sun roof as her small car’s flipping every which way but loose. The driver’s side is caved in. She must have been flung towards the passenger side when that happened.

We took her number so I should be able to find out what happens at the hospital, but like I say, the girl was standing up with a scratch on her pinkie when she should have been stuck red and dead. She cheated death. She told it to do one. Her name’s Emily, and here’s to her.

*Passing a separate wreck several years back, I remember seeing a potato on the road, which had come clear of some shopping bags. This car was upside down on concrete, and the driver had already been whipped away in a body bag. Absolute key detail.

One of Those Days

TUE: 16/12/2008
Hokey-dokey, my bullshit white van won’t start, so I goes and deposits ten pounds at the nearest garage for a set of jump leads. Pack ya bags Peter the Travelodge manager kindly agrees to give me a jump with the hotel van, but we can’t find the bonnet-release switch for a damn good twenty minutes. Then we can’t even gain access to the battery once the damn thing finally opens, so he uses his wife Debbie’s car instead. I am away to sunny Widnes and relatively honky dory until I run out of diesel. Blast! I gets out and starts pushing. Another white van man helps me. Gotta stick together, haven’t we? Mercifully, there is a cul de sac closeby and a garage on the other side of the dual carriageway. I darts across and am forced to buy an overpriced petrol can. Wotta rip! I puts £2.50 diesel in, returns, and puts it in the van. Has the battery recharged yet? Well, even if it has, the van won’t start because I haven’t put enough diesel in, or so my dad explains on the dog n bone anyways.

So I pops over to the garage again, sprinting across in front of the lollipop lady and setting a terrible example to the kids (it’s home time). The vehicle still doesn’t start though so I opens the bonnet and attaches the jump leads before waiting against the side of the van hoping someone will stop and offer assistance without me even having to ask. I’m not about to go flagging cars down, no way, forget about it. The overall effect I achieve is the serial schoolgirl killer look, like I’m plotting to drag someone in. Anyhows, I am right opposite a library so I asks in there. A woman comes out in her car but for some reason my van won’t jump. Another woman comes out in her van and this time both our batteries explode when I attaches the leads. Woman 1 has really sexy thick lipstick on and Woman 2 is so blissfully naïve with her willingness to help out I can imagine her not even calling the police if some nasty yob burglar trashes her house, but rather clean up the mess with a dustpan and brush with a smile on her face saying, ‘Not too worry, we’re insured.’ I calls it off I do, and says I’d feel too guilty if I blows her van as well as mine. Even though Woman 2’s car starts again (only just), she is still willing to try again. My Dad would help but he’s stuck beside his own van while it gets a new windshield fitted (some nut with a vendetta written his car off and done his van in at the weekend, so I starts jogging back, and realises, when I eventually gets in, that I’ve gone and left the door key to my room in the van).

So I can’t even gets back in when I'm starving and tired. I need Debbie, Travelodge staff member, to open my door for me. But guess what? She can’t. Guess why? Because she is locked in the office. Listen to this......the door handle had fallen off. I put my mouth against the crack and told her I thought I was having a bad day! Imagine being held up for something important because a goddamned door handle falls off? A team of comedy writers couldn’t make that one up, could they? She had to be rescued from the window.

Rammstein Concert

Awesome display of lasers and explosions as is expected but I felt like a Man U season ticket holder at Old Trafford: You know it's gunna be a brill experience but can it live up to the VERY first time you were dazzled by the Theatre of Dreams? I've been 3 now and this time I even left a song early, after ICH WILL. Plus because their latest album was a let-down the song listing didn't thrill me either. I feel strangely not-very-happy, because several little aspects of the night didn't go my way. This should have been the best night in ages, but I've presently got a bit of a sulk on. Not forgetting postives:

1 The lead singer sang the first song with some kind of lightbulb in his mouth.
2 Loads of spooky dolls hanging from the set blew up.
3 Someone on stage was set on fire.
4 The keyboard player played his keyboard walking a treadmill.
5 Geeky dancing is the best kind of dancing there is.

But there were other mild dissatisfactions that marred what should have been an exceptional occasion. I won't go into them: They're just me......it's just me.

Earlier today I was listening to Dani Filth from the band Cradle of Filth talking about Gilles de Rais who was one of the wealthiest men in Europe from the 13th century and a knight who fought alongside Joan of Arc, but he is best known for being a serial murderer of children (yeah I know, nice bloke). Dani described him as "not giving a stuff", which to me seems like a glowing review, but this shocker slaughtered hundreds of innocent girls and boys between the ages of 6 and 18 in unbelievably cruel fashion after sodomizing them. This news may have played a part in the conspiracy to spoil my day, as I've just realised the WHY of it all now, about ALL bad deeds, call it a revelation: The ghastly f**k was just having things HIS way, at the end of the day. When people go ape shit and do crazy stuff I reckon they're simply seizing control and having things THEIR way. That's what it comes down to. Because surely no c**t can enjoy doing wild crap like that. Surely our nature doesn't stoop that low on its own. Please tell me it must be pushed into a corner first.

Tonight I did not have my way. That's why I'm here, where I can. It's the little things, sometimes, innit, that set you off down the lane of irritations and regrets? There's nothing bigger.