CAOIMHE THE WHITE - a short story

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I hear the doves calling my name from the cliffs.

“Coo-ee-va! Coo-ee-va!”

Nobody is listening. Down here, at knee height, the clamour of human rage is deafening. Angry ones surround me on all sides. The ones on the right have given all they own to crush those on the left. The ones on the left have spun their half-truths into dragnets to capture the ones to the right. The ones in the middle are shooting in circles hitting everyone who stands in range.

Some signal their entitlement, waving banners printed with ancient riddles. Others sport visors of privilege, rushing against the ranks of the peddlers of falsehood, carrying secret swords weighted with words. Faceless mercenaries are kettling them all, persuading them with pikestaffs and promises, right, left , centre, slantwise towards the sea.

I won’t howl, for that would sound to them like despair. I will not whimper. Yet, how else can I touch them? 

Some from the right dig in their heels, as they are dragged under the feet of those left-lingerers. I can see some on the left trying to climb the walls to escape.  As soon as they get half way up, they turn back to unleash their mockery on the heads of the right-ramblers, faces contorted with scorn below. Nobody cares if they fall in their fury. They get to call it victory. The ones in the middle are no longer safely centred. They are being spun like scythes in a whirlwind, first right, then left, always slicing, always dividing, always falling and failing.

I am running, here, there, anywhere I can still see daylight between them. They are fluttering, battering themselves against one another like moths in a funnel of fire, melting into mayhem. Why don’t they love each other any longer?

I must reach them. I can’t see who is who. Bodies blur. I can’t check their identities, allegiances, alliances. What would it matter to me? Every last one is in my heart. Every last one fills a gulf in my soul.

So I’m pushing forward, the hairs on my body brushing between their kicking legs, narrowly avoiding their stumbling soles. My ears are full of their yelling, their screeching for vengeance, for violence, for retaliation. 

I nudge a hand with my muzzle. It hangs limp. I lick the cheek of a pale one fallen. She doesn’t move. We are almost at the cliffs now. Some are charging along the edge, but the mob of them has grown so wide, others spill into the breakers and fall silent. I cannot catch their eye again.

“Coo-ee-va! Coo-ee-va!”

High and far, in the fragile light bouncing off the salt waves, I hear the doves. This time, the people hear it too. It means nothing to them. Yet the sound makes them all unstiffen their necks and raise their heads to the sky to see what this strange cry might mean. They halt as one, inches from the cliff edge. I sense they are confused. Why are they all standing together? Who has messed with their differences? Who dares play peacemaker? The doves are not giving them entertainment, or predictions, or tokens to spend. What could possibly be their worth? But no matter. They stand still anyway. The thrift flowers blow kisses of pink petals to soothe raw ankles and scarred heels.

A trill, a squeaking as the creak of a door from the sea.

“Coo-ee-va! Coo-ee-va!”

Half of them turn their heads to where the sun is cracking her golden yolk into the salmon-flecked ocean. The other half listens without understanding, to the song of the dolphins offshore.

I nuzzle the palm of a young child as I melt away. Her mother hears her giggling and lifts her up shoulder-high, dropping her weapons to ricochet off the rocks and come to rest in a rockpool.

“Mummy, did you see the white wolf?”

“There are no wolves in this land,” says her mother. “That's just silly talk, little one. Let’s get you home.”

“Her name is Caoimhe. She is for us and for our peace. The doves and dolphins told me.”

SWEETS FOR MY SWEET (Short story/fiction/romance)

 “Max! Where have you got to this time?”

Harry could only just hear himself above the crash and rumble of the waves below and the breeze buffeting and flattening the grass on the cliff top. It was chillier than last time he had been here, but at least the rain the weatherman had forecast had stayed away. Max was nowhere to be seen, as usual.

The trouble was, thought Harry, Max always followed his nose. He seemed to remember every winding path through the thrift and samphire above the little seaside town where he had holidayed every summer of his life with Harry and Maureen. Now he was eager to revisit them all again, haring back every so often to sniff the air and lick Harry’s hand apologetically before lolloping back to pick up all the private messages other doggy friends had left for him over the two years he’d been away.

When Max was a puppy, Maureen used to bring tasty liver treats in the pockets of her mauve fleece jacket to tempt him back from the exciting adventures he was enjoying down in the gulleys and caves along the shoreline. He could always find something more interesting to do than come running back to his master’s voice.

“Harry, you old duffer, Max knows you don’t mean it!” Maureen would say. “I bought you that ultrasonic whistle but you always forget to pack it! Lucky I remembered his favourite snacks. His tummy always wins in the end!”

Maureen was right. Max would always come bounding back up even the steepest path when treats were on offer, panting and smiling to get his reward. For that moment, he forgot about the special smelly seaweed and whatever the gulls had left on the rocks. Sometimes he brought some of that back on his nose or his paws but Maureen always had a packet of those wet wipers to clean him up again.

“We can’t go back to the guest house with all that flotsam and jetsam on us, can we, Max?” she’d say.

Harry chuckled as he remembered how she had used the wipes to tackle a huge blob of rum and raisin ice cream on the back of his own jacket. He’d blamed that on the gulls, too, until Maureen poked him and said:

“Harry! It’s not the gulls. You’ve only gone and sat on your cornet!”

They’d had a fit of the giggles, then, just like they’d always done together since they were teenagers. They shared the same sense of humour. That’s what made Harry notice Maureen at the dance all those years ago; her sparkly eyes and the way she got his jokes and made even funnier ones of her own that made him howl with laughter.

Harry blinked, disappointed with himself.

“Silly soft old sausage,” Maureen would have said. It was no good keep dwelling on those last precious few months over that awful winter and getting upset.

“You need a holiday, dad. It’s no good moping about again in the house all summer. Anyway, you and Max will have lots of lovely walks on the promenade and then there’s the crazy golf and the café that looks out onto the seafront. I’ll phone Mrs Archer for you, if you like.”

Kathy was right, just as grown up daughters seem to have an annoying knack of being. She was a lot like her Mum, too, practical and sensible where Harry often seemed in a muddle and a dream.

“I’ll do it myself, love. Max needs the exercise, the great hairy lump, now he’s an old dog.” But when Harry booked himself into the pet-friendly guest house where he and Maureen had always stayed, he was determined not to avoid their familiar well-loved walks. Where was the fun staying on the flat bits? That was for old codgers! Even when the doctor told him he had diabetes just after he retired, Harry was determined everything would be just the same. His own dad had “had sugar” as they used to say back then, and Dad had carried on regardless till the day he died.

“Mr. Collinson,” his new young consultant had said more recently, “now your pancreas isn’t working quite as it should, it’s important you get some gentle exercise to help the insulin to do its work; just remember always to carry something sugary with you in case your blood glucose drops too low.”

Harry had been hopeless at timing the injections at first, when they told him tablets were no longer enough to control his diabetes. Sometimes he would go a bit wobbly and sweaty and Maureen was always the first to notice.

“Do you need a sugar tablet, Harry? I think you do; you’re getting a bit argumentative and wibbly wobbly, you know.”

Sure enough, Maureen would fish out the packet of special glucose tablets from her pocket or her posh handbag if they were at a dinner dance or a café, and Harry would soon feel better and raring to go again.

“You’d forget your head if it wasn’t nailed on with glue,” she joked. “Lucky I remembered to bring the spare packet with me.”

Harry heard Max’s barking coming up from the path that descended steeply to the shingle strand where the limestone caverns dotted the coast like a doggy paradise. At least he hadn’t fallen in a rock pool, but what if he was stuck on a ledge? Harry imagined the big yellow rescue helicopter whirring overhead and the photos in the local rag showing a soppy old Golden Retriever with a silly smile on its face getting winched to safety with the locals and holidaymakers whooping and applauding.

Harry had always tried to keep himself as fit as he could. A few years ago he could have shimmied down there and been the hero himself.

“You’re always my hero, you old softy,” he could hear Maureen saying.

Harry felt in his pocket. His fingers closed on the neat embossed tin with ‘Best Dad in the World’ on the lid. Kathy had bought it for him as a holiday present to keep three whole packets of glucose in. It felt very light. Then he remembered putting the packets on the bedside table ready to pack into the tin in the morning. They must still be sitting there, along with the wet wipes he was going to put in his pockets for the usual little mishaps Maureen always dealt with so sensibly.

“Max! Come on up! Time to go for walkies back to the cottage!”

Shouting made Harry realise his voice was going a bit funny as though his cheek muscles and his tongue were made of rubber and when he looked where the gulls were wheeling over the sea, they were mixed up with little swirling spots and squiggles like bits of burning paper blowing up from a bonfire. He was starting to feel quite weak and shaky and although the wind was cool and bracing on the cliff, he was getting so sticky hot he felt he wanted to peel off his jacket and sit down on the ground.

As though he was a million miles away, he could still hear Max barking above the sound of the waves that seemed muffled, somehow, as though his ears were full of singing cotton wool.

The familiar woofing started getting nearer and nearer.

“Good boy, Max. I’ll be up in a minute, I’m just having a little lie down,” Harry heard his own voice saying, as if he was a stranger with detachable lips. He couldn’t remember actually laying down, but his body had taken over somehow, trying to conserve his energy for fight or flight. He had never ever let his blood sugar get so low before, or rather Maureen hadn’t. She always saw the signs long before anybody else even noticed, including Harry himself, and brought out the sugary lifesavers.

Then something warm and wet was tickling his hand where it lay palm down on the prickly grass that felt like little spiky tufts of that artificial stuff greengrocers used on their stalls. His brain was whizzing round trying to make sense but he felt so weak he could only think of giggly silly things as if he was drunk. He hadn’t been drunk more than once in his life when he was just a tiny bit tipsy at a neighbour’s wedding as a very young man. After he met Maureen he never bothered with more than a glass of shandy, so how did he know this felt like being drunk? He remembered then the glossy leaflet the nurse at the Diabetes Centre had shown him describing the symptoms of a ‘hypo’ attack when your blood glucose is too low.

“Be careful as people can sometimes mistake a hypo for being drunk,” the leaflet had spelled out in large underlined capitals.

What if somebody found him like this and called for the police? The tickling got even more slobbery on the back of his hand and he could hear a woman’s voice, now, close by, though his eyes wouldn’t seem to open to let him say hello.

“Are you alright there?” The owner of the voice was kneeling by Harry’s head. “Well, obviously not. Are you diabetic, by any chance?”

Harry managed to nod, but he wasn’t sure which way was up and down, so his head ended up flopping around in a way he hadn’t quite planned, but he did manage to tell the lady his name.

“Alright now, Harry, you’d better have some of these jelly sweets,” the lady attached to the voice was saying, very gently but matter-of-fact. “First we’d better see if you can sit up and swallow properly or I’ll have to call for an ambulance to get you off to A&E. Thank goodness I have this terribly sweet tooth and I carry a big bag of jellies with me whenever I go for a walk. I’ve just been exploring those caves. I felt rather like a smuggler! My grandson calls me Dora the Explorer. Cheeky monkey.”

The voice went on saying soothing, funny things that kept Harry chuckling and concentrating. She helped him sit up and as soon as she was sure he could manage them without choking, she fed Harry some of her jellies. At first his mouth was so numb he couldn’t taste anything but soon the different fruit flavours came through. Gradually, he began to feel much better and they sat at the side of the footpath, with Max trying to sit between them, begging for a sweet of his own by putting his paw on Dora’s wrist.

“Quite an intelligent dog, aren’t you, Mr Max?” said Dora as the three of them made their way back along the cliff top path.

“If he was clever he wouldn’t keep going AWOL and leaving his lord and master stranded miles from nowhere,” joked Harry, “but he’s sharp enough to know which side his bread’s buttered when he wants something.”

They both laughed as Max nuzzled his nose into Dora’s pocket.

“He knows which side pocket the sweets are in, you mean,” she chortled. Harry found himself rather taken by Dora’s laugh.

“How did you know I was a diabetic?” Harry was suddenly curious. Dora smiled.

“I’m a retired nurse. Endocrinology was my specialism so I’ve worked in a lot of diabetic clinics in my time. I used to come to the little fishing village in the next cove every year with my husband Stan. When he passed away I decided I just couldn’t face the same old same old. I started coming here when I needed a break. I love walking the cliff and exploring the caves. Usually I have the place to myself but today Max kept running up and barking at me. I realised he must have somebody waiting with a lead somewhere so in the end, when he wouldn’t be shooed away, I thought I’d better climb back up here in case he got lost or stranded when the tide came in. Dog’s know, you know.”

“Max knows when he’s onto a good thing, that’s for certain,” Harry smiled as Max managed to tweak a jelly out of Dora’s pocket when she wasn’t looking.

“I mean some dogs know when their owner’s in trouble; sort of a sixth doggy sense. You can train some dogs to alert people when they start going hypo, or get help if they are prone to seizures.”

Harry grinned and patted Max’s head.

“Can’t teach an old dog new tricks, eh, Maxy?”

But he wasn’t so sure about that any more.

A few summers later, after endless emails and long phone calls and meetings in country pubs with Max in tow, Harry and Dora were walking on the cliffs again. They stood for a moment, close to each other, in the special place where Harry had had his little lie down, as they always called it, just listening to the seabirds squealing and crying as they rode the air currents over the ocean.

A dog was barking somewhere on the beach. They could hear its owner calling it and whistling for all he was worth. Dora squeezed Harry’s hand tenderly the way she did when words weren’t quite enough. They thought of Max, always running on ahead, nose quivering towards hidden horizons, but always coming back when Dora rattled the liver treats that she kept in her pocket next to Harry’s special sweets.

RENT-A-PET (Short Story/humour)

 “I told her she was talking to the organ grinder instead of the...what's the other one? The oily rag one?”

“The engine driver. Or is it the monkey you're after?”

Shireen doesn't look up from her magazine. No change there, then. Kim Kardashian and Lady Gaga have got one over on me as usual.

“I said, what with the recession, we'll just have to tell them we can't fulfil.”

“Fill what?” Shireen does look up for a minute, but she's still planning the evening's viewing and what to download on her iPhone and she's not connecting with my dilemma.

“If pets were properties...”

“Pardon me?”

“If our pets were properties, it might make sense to rent rather than buy in the current climate. That's all I'm saying.”

“Take these five words and put them in order: thought, haven't, this, you, through,” Shireen is raising her eyebrows in that way she does when I'm having one of my brainwaves. “Have you, though?”

I've lost her to media mindless again, if she ever came back from there in the first place. But now I'm firing on all cylinders. It makes perfect sense to me. The customers could rent a pet, say, a shoal of guppies, a dog, a chinchilla, a guinea pig and have all the advantages of not owning it. We could offer monthly food subscriptions, vet insurance, all that day-to-day stuff. We could have a dog-walking service for if they're too busy for the pooper-scooping malarkey jazz. Virtual pets were all the rage a decade or so ago, so it's a small step to this, really. A little bit virtual, a little bit 'a dog's not just for Christmas.' Best of both worlds.

Shireen doesn't look that convinced, yet.

I print out some flyers and stick them in the shop window after lunch. Shireen shouts to me while I'm mucking out the gerbils. Sounds like she's taken it in this time.

“What's all this, 'Recession-Busting Pet Rentals' business?”

“What I said. Here comes our future. Well, for the present, anyway,” I say, trying to work out whether she's digging it or about to phone for the men in white coats.

Then a woman comes in with a little kid. I'd say grandson, because, I'm not being funny or anything, but there's dentures involved, to be honest and quite possibly mint imperials.

I go straight in for the hard sell. I know Shireen is barely resisting a surreptitious head-bang to 'Applause' because I can see her doing that Gaga swan-neck thing off the video, inside her head, so she's probably not going for the big sales pitch any time soon. The little boy is fingering the counters and eye-balling the Bearded Dragon. I don't anticipate that becoming a sale in real terms, so I do a bit of a redirect.

“How would your little lad like to rent that Beardie Weirdie for a month to see how it goes, madam?”

“He's not mine, love, he's our Linzi's. Stop touching the glass, our Callum, you'll frighten that lizard thing.”

I was going for a smidgeon of flattery, there, but she doesn't seem to be biting. So I try again.

“We're offering a try before you buy, madam. You can do a rental of the Bearded Dragon on a month by month basis. For an extra premium, we do the feed thrown in. Can't say fairer.”

“Callum!” The woman seems more bothered about him picking his nose than getting him the best bargain this side of Animal Magic.

“Has he had a pet before?” Now it's time to focus and do a spot of compare and contrast, swings and roundabouts, checks and balances. Need to get Grandma going for the renting rather than buying scenario.

“He won a goldfish when he was little. It only lasted about a month. I think it got fed up of going round and round. Mind you, it came from a stall just next to the roundabouts, so I suppose it should have got used to that, by the time our Callum chucked his quoit over the plastic duck. You're a right little marksman, aren't you, our Callum?”

Callum's glaring through the glass at the Bearded Dragon and sticking his tongue out. I think he thinks it's trying to insult him but we're here to educate and inform.

“How long do you think Callum would like to rent the Pogona for?” I say, wondering if going for the Latin name's maybe trying to blind them with science a bit too soon in the seller-client relationship.

“It's actually a Pogona vitticeps,” Callum has transferred his glare to me, “This one's a Central, or Inland Bearded Dragon. It basks on rocks and is found throughout semiarid regions of Australia. Why does this label say 'female'?”

I can see Shireen has pulled one of her soundproof earbuds out. This could develop into better entertainment than Big Brother eviction night, in her book, who knows?

“Well, because it is. Female, I mean.” I'm just a tad on the defensive now, because, from Callum's tone, I can tell this could get personal.

“It's a male,” Callum sounds like Chris Packham when he's doing that thing where he sets himself up as a connoisseur of all things mammal poo. “I can understand your mistake. They aren't very strongly dimorphic.”

I might be getting a bit flustered, as I haven't got time to Google, but I'm keen to keep my end up.

“It's hard to tell the difference, you'll find, Callum, as the male and female are very much alike.”

This doesn't wash with the bastard offspring of David Attenborough and Michaela Strachan. I'm a bit distracted by that image of genetic pick-and-mix, so maybe I take my eye off the ball for a moment, because Callum's straight back in under my guard.

“You can tell them apart, actually. The male has a wider cloacal opening and if you really look at the tail, you can see it's wider at the base than a female's would be. This is a male because it also has too big a head to be female. See the big black beard?”

I want to stay aloof from what is developing into a lecture, but I feel obliged to keep swimming. I can see out of the corner of my eye that Shireen has taken her other earbud out, like she thinks it's the final of Britain's Got Talent and I'm the unpopular one singing songs from the shows, pitted against the dancing dog.

“He knows his stuff, does our Callum. Don't you, our Callum?” Grandma looks like she's about to go into that 'back-of-the-net' pose from Alan Partridge.

“Plus, the clincher is that the male has a hemipenis.” Callum points this particular feature out. I'm ashamed to say, Shireen starts giggling, which rather lets the side down.

“Lovely,” I hear myself saying, “so if you know all about it, you'll be eager to get your hands on this fine specimen, then.”

I turn my attention to Callum's grandma again, who looks as though she could march him off for a nutritional sit-down burger treat at any minute, so the stakes are pretty high, at this juncture.

“Shall we say three months rental at twenty-five pounds a month, per calendar? That will be seventy-five pounds in the first instance. I could do you a nice little package, including food, for another tenner per month, taking us to a hundred and five pounds. For fifteen pounds extra, we can do Callum a nice little printed certificate with his name and the Beardie's on, to say how well he looked after it for the quarter. All for one hundred and twenty pounds, no hidden extras. What do we say, madam?”

“What's the name of the Pogona vitticeps, then?” Callum is looking at the label and I'm already seeing a fly in this particular ointment.

“Well, as you can see, its name's Veronica, at this time, but as a special concession to you, we can call him Veronic instead.” My mind's going down the same route as Fred the Blue Peter tortoise metamorphosing into Freda with a lick of white paint.

“I wanted a female. The label said this was a female. I didn't really want a male,” Callum is saying. My mind wanders onto Lulu the Blue Peter elephant, with me fulfilling the role of her hapless handler sliding about in the...

“She tells me it comes with a nice hutch.” Grandma is looking at the cages section with Shireen who seems to have laughed herself out of her catatonic stupor.

“It's a vivarium, Grandma,” Callum says. “We'd want something off for it being a male when I didn't want a male, wouldn't we?”

Grandma nods.

“I could do you the three months for, say, a modest knock down price of one hundred pounds.”

“Would that be with live insects to feed it with?” Callum is really pushing it now.

“No. We do pre-packaged sealed boxes of insects dusted with vitamin and mineral powder.”

“That's not actually like it would be in their natural habitat. We'd want something off for that, wouldn't we, Grandma, for it not being fully authentic nutrition?”

Callum is taking the proverbial, surely, but Grandma nods sagely. My options are swimming off up the Swannee without a paddle.

“You said ten pounds a month for food, but that's not the proper food, so that would thirty pounds off, like only seventy quid. Then we'd have to be using Granddad's aphids off his roses and taking moths out of Uncle Ian's moth-trap and everything, to keep it healthy. That'd be us feeding it, so we'd need thirty quid like you said.”

“I make that,” Grandma's got her mobile out and switched on the little calculator under 'organiser-apps', “forty quid.”

I see Shireen putting her earbuds back in, trying to look like she's not really listening any more, but she's not fooling me, because I can see she's got Lady Gaga on pause.

“The other pet shop we went in, Animal Magic on the High Street, was offering a package of special reptile-safe disinfectant for all our hand-washing and hygiene needs, for fourteen pounds ninety-nine for a big spray.”

I'm beginning to lose the will to live, but Callum's on a roll.

“Plus they were offering us a really good book on 'Caring for your Bearded Dragons, Lizards, Terrapins and other Exotic Reptiles' at half price, that's ten quid with loads and loads of full colour plates. On top of that they said we could have the latest DVD of 'Vivariums: Reptiles in da House' Region 1 and PAL for just twenty smackers.”

“Our Linzi's bloke calls them smackers, doesn't he, Callum?” Grandma turns to me and adds, “I think that's a fiver you owe us and you can put Veronic in the back of the car. We're just parked round the corner. Bring him back the last day of August, shall we? Callum will be back to school soon after then, so he'll be wanting something he can take for walks.”

I let Shireen fill out the paperwork while I walk round to the car with Callum and a bloke who comes in with tattoos up to his neck. That's Linzi's bloke, apparently. He breeds Bearded Dragons. Says he could flog me one cheap if he's got any going when they bring Ronnie back. That's what Callum's wanting to call his new temporary pet.

I probably won't be going ahead with Rent a Pet, just at the present time of asking. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

SUPERMARKET SWEEP (Short Story/Humour/Crime)

Chillax, grandma!

Cheeky monkey! Found his comment under my Facebook status this morning. I’ve got this new friend online, you see. Jack Hoodie Honeytrapp. Not his real name. Obviously. He looks in his early twenties from his profile photo. I added him when he requested because I thought he must be Phyllis’s grandson. He has about nine hundred Facebook friends; makes my thirty-five look a bit threadbare, doesn’t it? I’d say “ROTFLMFAO” but apparently that’s a bit saucy for silver surfers like me! A bit like admitting to watching “Shameless” or listening to “Slipknot”! That caused a bit of a ripple. I usually settle for doing a bit of this “LOL-ling” business instead. They can’t touch you for it!

This morning I’m doing one of my “sweeps” down the supermarket. Usual place, different time, because you don’t want to get too predictable for the CCTV. Not that they staff the cameras, really. Just dummies – staff and cameras! Last Tuesday I came away with a whole bag of kumquats in my big plaid shopper. Don’t even know how you’re supposed to use them! They didn’t seem to go with my boil-in-the-bag cod in parsley sauce. I ended up throwing them away.

I always religiously take a snap of the “sweepings”, as I call them, before I get rid, to post on my Facebook. I love how you can set your privacy so only certain friends can see certain photos. I post all my “sweepings” so the other lasses-“Silver Sweepers” we like to tag ourselves- can compare, compete, and pick up tips from each other. Bit like a knitting circle, but with purloined goods instead of purled ones. “Nick one, purloin one,” that’s what I put under one of my photos, and I got loads of thumbs up on Facebook for that one.

“Watch and learn, sisters, watch and learn!” I put on as a little title under the snap of those kumquats. The other Sweepers were green with envy! Phyllis had only managed to post a really blurry photo of the packet of desiccated coconut she’d just pinched. Desiccated coconut? I ask you! That’s not even imaginative! She even nicked a pot of glace cherries last month. Lois texted me this short video of her in the magazine section shoving “Viz” magazine down her skirt (elasticated, naturally, with “inserts”).

“Put it on the website,” I texted back. No good just showing it to me. We all want to see what the others are up to, or where’s the fun? Anyway it was out of focus and you couldn’t see whether the assistant was nearby or not, so where’s the challenge? Lois is a bit of an amateur, to be frank. Fancies herself as a bit of a Quentin Tarantino, I reckon. Style over substance, I say. Just my opinion, of course, but as I started the “Sisterhood of Sweepage”, I think I’ve a right to my two penn’orth.

These little tables in the supermarket restaurant are very handy. I can park my shopper trolley up against the table just where they have that little tray-rack thing attached and as soon as my cappuccino and my pensioners’ portion of liver and onions with peas and mash gets brought to me by the waitress, it’s in goes the tray, down the side of my plaid swag-bag, no bulge, no stretch, onlookers none the wiser. Today there’s already a tray actually waiting in there, in the rack with its rim stuck out! I had that as well, no messing! It’s a tight fit, but a wiggle and a bit of manoeuvring, and job’s a good ‘un.

I’m sitting here and I’m wondering now if I should maybe have gone for the textured featherlite condoms instead. What if the trays won’t impress the girls when I post the photos after I get home? I do a panning sort of shot on my mobile showing the girl on the till and the waitresses beetling up and down only a few tables away. Pretty daring, but even I feel a bit flat just bagging a couple of melamine trays to show for a day’s sweepage.

When I get up to go, I can tell nobody’s even looking in my direction. I’m in my seventies and I joined Invisibleville, society-wise, quite a few birthdays ago! Every cloud, and all that. Back on the bus, the driver actually shouts back to a young mother with a double pushchair and asks her to budge up for the old lady with the tartan print trolley, and a young man lifts the front over the step for me as the bus isn’t one of those with the let-down hydraulic super-low floors. Young people today! No backbone!

When I get back home I put the trays in a good light on my kitchen worktop, pop my bill for the meal on top as a little in-joke for the girls, (they all love the liver-and-onions), then I take some good full frontal shots of myself sort of hovering in the background, on automatic timer, and then I put them all online with the footage from the restaurant.

More notifications and updates on my homepage: Phyllis’s grandson Jack has just become a friend of half the Sweeper girls on my friends list, including Lois and most of the others. Lois has been busy uploading too, I see. There’s a new photo album on her profile showing her in the store, grinning and pointing at some support stockings still in the packet, poking out of her coat sleeve – not poking out very far, mind, so you can’t really tell one way or the other. Then there’s another couple of photos of her putting on some of that under-eye miracle roll-on stuff. Then some pictures showing how much they’ve ironed out her wrinkles and that “under-eye area” we used to call “bags”! Except they haven’t, of course; her mug looks just as saggy! All that gurning and grimacing for nothing!

Lois usually misses the point, bless her. Maybe the wrinkle stick is a step in the right direction for her. I keep telling her the rule is supposed to be that sweepings have to be things we couldn’t possible have any use for. That way, if anybody starts to suss out what we’re up to (allegedly!), we can put them straight, tell them we couldn’t possibly have taken these items for ourselves. What, me? Your cuddly old gran? Kumquats, condoms, lads’ mags, they fit the bill, but half of what Lois sneaks out is too like the stuff she has on her shopping list anyway! That’s not cricket. That’s common or garden shoplifting!

I decide to do the double today. A morning-and-afternooner, as I call it. I have my cuppa and a digestive around two, then I’m off down the little chemist on the precinct. I can’t get my plaid trolley into the chemist, so I just take my ordinary bag instead. It’s even more challenging, in here, as it’s more hands-on, face-to-face. There’s always an assistant around, doling out advice on which cough medicines you need for tickly, dry or phlegmy, or they’re offering to reach you down the incontinence pads from the top shelf. Why do they put them there, for goodness’ sake? You’re blinking well weeing from having to stretch up there! Too much information, as they say. Still, today, I’m here on a mission, so I’m on the look out for something more unlikely. I go up and down the aisles, very slowly.

“Just browsing, dear,” I mutter, “thank you very nicely, forgotten my list.”

The assistant goes back to shelf stacking and I shuffle round the other side, furthest away from the dispensing counter. That new pharmacist always comes out glaring over her half-rimmed specs, asking people their address as if they couldn’t make that up! Amateurs!

I look on the bottom shelves. Gift items, false eyelashes so you can look like Cheryl Cole, Kylie perfume, hair straighteners. Lots of potential, but they leave me a bit cold, this afternoon. I want a real biggie to impress and inspire the girls. Even Phyllis seems to be lowering her targets lately. Desiccated blooming coconut, indeed! You can’t get slack, or what’s the point?

I feel a bit creepy, like I’m being watched. There’s a young man who came in after I did and he’s still hanging around. I can’t get into my stride with him malingering there like a bad smell. I think I might go with the eyelashes after all, or maybe now is the hour of the textured featherlite? Suddenly I decide to go for both. The false flutterers slip into my side zip compartment. The security camera’s on the other side of the shop. They have one that looks out into the street, too. I move off in pursuit of the condoms, but they are right opposite the counter. The young man in the hoodie’s still dithering about just behind me. Has he seen me go for the lashes? She who hesitates is lost! I’m just about to reach out for man’s best friend, when he’s leaning over my shoulder. He grabs a packet of some very boring looking Mr Averages, and then he’s at the counter, blushing and coughing as he pays for them. Quit while you’re winning, Rene! Don’t push it. I leave the shop while the assistant’s dealing with reluctant Romeo.

My mobile battery’s running down to the red bit, but I didn’t get chance for any photo evidence on this job, anyway. I could stick on the eyelashes back at home and get some shots that way. I watch the young man come out of the shop. I know what you’ve been up to, but you don’t know what I’ve been up to! He looks vaguely familiar now I come to have a proper look, but I can’t place him. I watch him till he’s back in his car. There’s another bloke in the driving seat with a policeman’s uniform on. Is this why we pay our taxes?

When I get home, there’s a private message on my Facebook from Phyllis. She says no, Jack isn’t her grandson, where did I get that notion? She thought he must be Lois’s grandson. But Lois says not. Lois has been asking Phyllis, “What are privacy settings, anyway?”

“GR8 2 C U 2DAY.L8R G8R,” Jack’s posted on my wall again. Unintelligible but sweet, as ever. More pressing, I’d better check up on Lois and her privacy settings! Apparently, she’s showing her sweeper’s gallery to her whole friends list, or everybody, more likely.

I’ve been in for a while when my flat’s intercom doorbell buzzes. I ignore it for a minute while I glue on my phony eyelashes with the special non-toxic adhesive provided. Still time for an upload or two to get the girls giggling before suppertime. I have my camera at the ready and I’m just thinking up a snappy caption for it, like: “The cashier didn’t bat an eyelash,”or maybe “Granny’s Allowed,” when the doorbell buzzes again, a bit too insistent, for my liking. At this time of day! Don’t they know we’re all pensioners in here?

So I open the door with the eyelashes half on, semi-sighted cos I can’t get my specs back on in the rush. It’s two young men with a warrant to search my flat.

“Mrs Irene Garland?” one says, and I can see he’s the spitting image of young Jack off Facebook, and the other chap’s suspiciously like the policeman in the car this afternoon.

I don’t say much. What’s the point? They show me reams of printed out photos they’ve downloaded from Lois’s sad little collection. They’ve already got Phyllis’s particulars. I haven’t heard that word since I last listened to Gilbert and Sullivan on my iPod!

My case comes up before the magistrates in a couple of weeks. They give me time to unglue my Cheryls before they take me down to the station. They are very decent and a bit apologetic for duping me into a sense of false security. Jack Hoodie Honeytrapp. He didn’t fool a pro like me for a second! Sitting in the back of the unmarked police car, I have a bit of time to do some serious chillaxing.

“Leader of a criminal internet web ring” is a tad erring on the side of overkill, IMHO, but it’ll look good on my CV! The other sweepers will have to settle for supporting roles. The boys in blue don’t seem to notice the lumps in my Damart thermals, even when they go through my handbag for contraband goods. In fact I chillaxed all the way back to my flat with a regulation clipboard, a couple of pencils, a small roll of “Crime Scene-Do Not Enter” fluorescent tape and pair of standard issue handcuffs, no key, but who’s counting?

I think I might give all this social networking a miss tonight and have a night in with the soaps. Or maybe “C.S.I.”

THE GREAT FIRE OF LUNCHEON (Short story/humour)

           

 "You're joking me, right?"

             "No, mate. That's what you said on the phone. That's what I've written. That's what you're paying me for."

            Sign writers; couldn't write their own name if it wasn't taped in the back of their boxers. I said it clear enough:

            "The Great Fryer of Luncheon" I said. "Fancy font, curlicues or whatever you call those poncy swirly bits."

             Turn some heads, have a laugh. Now look at it. Right above the door, making me sound like a ruddy Samuel Pepys grappling with Gordon Ramsey. No subtle chippy reference after all, thanks to this jobsworth.

             "It's a license to print money, mate," my cousin Nobby said to me and the missus as we were driving him to the airport. He's off to Australia to open another chippy there for ex-pats. I say he just has a crush on that lass off the telly that does the holiday programme. He fancies escaping to the sun instead of being stuck in sunny Plumstead. He's had this chippy since Uncle Horace passed away. Good turn over. Nice little earner. Catches the passing trade. You can't lose.

              So I do a bit of brainstorming with the wife and she has this flash of genius. Jane calls it 're-branding'. I call it a disaster. When the sign guy peels off the dust sheet, I see the writing on the wall. Literally.

             "The Great Fire of Luncheon" it says in great magenta lettering two feet high. Thank crikey we didn't go for that flat fish logo in the catalogue. We might have ended up with a Technicolor Jaws slavering over the door. Anyway, I'm not one to stick fast, so I say to Jane, "Let's go upmarket. Ditch the deep fat and go Bistro."

             How hard can it be? Jamie Oliver eat your heart out.  Just don't book your holidays in Rotherham. The refit goes like clockwork and we put in these up-lights that stop you seeing what you're eating and a bit of the old Rennie Mackintosh I saw once on the Antiques Roadshow. Then some mood music and a  bit of silver service. I've stocked up with a load of crates of plonk. Three Pinot Grigiots and Jane's anybody's. Health and Safety gave us the green light when the wrappers were still on the fish knives, so we were opening on Monday.

             It was over the weekend Jane said to me, 

             "Can you cook all this stuff?"

             That made me stop for a minute. Only a minute, mind, because I've never been much of a one for navel-gazing.

             "Cook it? What's the point? There's that little restaurant on the High Street that does takeaway deliveries. Why keep a dog and bark?"

             So it's into cruise control with Plumstead's own Antony Worrall Thompson. Once we've taken the orders, out comes the complimentary carafe and while they're getting a bit chillaxed after a hard day at the office, I'm ringing the 'Fatted Calf' for whatever's required. I mark it up a few percent, natch. I've my overheads, phone bill, free plonk and all that to cover, but I'm quids in at the end of the day as there's no delivery charge for orders over twenty pounds within a radius of two miles and the 'Fatted Calf' is only just round the corner.

             "Sorted, love," I say to Janey, cos I could see she's going a bit Eastenders boom-boom-boom-bup-bup-biddly-biddly on me. It was all working like a well-oiled machine. Until today.

             Tonight when I rang the order through, the phone just went on ringing.

             "Come on, mate," I'm saying into the receiver, "get a shake on, we're getting busy this end." We were, as well. The punters from the new solicitor's office on the High Street came in with their other halves, as well as the usual steady flow of couples on a first date when he fancies a bit of Dutch courage and she fancies getting him blotto so she can go back and watch a box set of Sex and the City.

             "Come on, geezer, let's have you," I'm saying when suddenly the answer machine kicks in and I'm hearing this plummy speaker phone voice:

             "I'm sorry. 'The Fatted Calf' will be closed until Monday next due to a family bereavement. We regret being unable to serve you at this time, but look forward to welcoming you when we reopen after the weekend. Thank you for your understanding at this time."

             Jane comes through to fill up some of the glasses and she sees me with my mouth open, staring into space.

             "Have you rung them yet, Dave? One of the girls is debating whether to order your famous quail with cucumber and peppermint jus. Peppermint jus, Dave!" -she's getting uppity now-"Where's your head at, tonight?"

             So I tell her the news and she just looks at me like I've completely taken leave.

            "Well, there's only one thing for it, honey bun, beloved. You're going to have to do exactly what it says on the tin. You're going to have to step up to the white imitation porcelain dinner plate, and actually be a restaurateur."

             Jane does an impressive line in comedy when it's called for; most often when it's not. I put the phone down and flick through the local directory but no restaurants are making what's on our menu. That's all down to the 'Fatted' flaming 'Calf'! Their chef's rubbed shoulders with Egon Ronay, somewhere down the line, which is why I now find myself up the proverbial creek devoid of proverbial paddle. I tentatively ring a couple of places further away, but they either don't do deliveries or we're out of their area.

             Jane's schmoozing and each time she comes back to see how I'm getting on, she makes one of her little comments.

             "Get a wriggle on, Dave!" she says, "the natives are starting to get twitchy. We don't need the background muzak any more with all those executive bellies rumbling."

              I look in one cupboard, then another. Then I push my head in the chest freezer. It's actually starting to look appealing just leaving it there. Bare, apart from some frozen vol-au-vents and a tub of cookie dough ice cream.

             Then I have a look in the fridge: left over lasagne verde that Jane buys because she thinks anything green is healthy; half a bottle of brown sauce I buy in because my dad always had it with his ham sarnies for work; eggs, bacon, hash browns, all the breakfast stuff. Perhaps we could ask the patrons to stay over and I could do them a full English as compensation. 

             There's this huge plastic bag of baby potatoes with some wilted salad, scotch eggs and two packets of mini pork pies, one with pickle, one with apple. That's something me and Jane can't compromise on, so the pies are a sort of his and hers selection. There's white bread rolls on the counter and those rye cracker things Jane has, to make up for it when she's been at the cookie dough deluxe.

             I can hear the hubbub in the front of house getting a bit more lively. I'm hoping that's the free booze though time's ticking by. My mind does a little juggling with those ingredients but then I realise it's now or never; do a runner or run them up some grub, sharpish.

             I grab a frying pan out of the bottom cupboard and look around for some oil. Every legit establishment in our game has its signature dishes, so perhaps it's time I left the 'Calf' with its hackneyed old peppermint jus and its balsamic vinaigrette and got our clientele's palates buzzing with some all-new flavours. 

             I unearth some garlic butter, a bit dried at the edges but serviceable and that gives me a bit of a confidence boost. I tie on an apron. It's got fake boobs and striped like a butcher down below, but I'm on a roll, so I stride to the front and shout:

             "Ladies and gents, tonight you're in for a treat. Our usual dishes are being suspended for one night only in order to introduce you, our most valued customers, to our brand new special gourmet menu. These dishes have been a long time in the production and as we value our customers so highly, we would appreciate your feedback...on the feed."

             This seems to go down reasonably. Nobody cries. Nobody starts eating the place-mats. Nobody screams and pulls the table cloth off. More importantly, nobody leaves.

             Jane starts clinking the bottle against their glasses to cover my exit, talking about how her genius husband is expecting to be asked onto the advisory panel for Ready Steady Cook very soon, though he's such a connoisseur, he's had to turn them down a couple of times already, in light of their disregard of the requirement of the more discerning palate such as we cater for here.

             I can still hear her going on about me in the background while I stick a couple of the scotch eggs into the pan with the garlic butter and grub around for the rest of the starter ingredients. We'll deal with the mains and the desserts later.

            There's some ready-grated cheddar in the fridge door next to the piccalilli and pickled onions. It isn't actually cheddar, it's that half fat nonsense, but who's counting? I sprinkle some over the scotch eggs (giving my trade secrets away, here!) and bang it all under the grill. I plate up and bung on some wilted salad. Well, not wilted in the traditional sense, but this is gastronomy at the cutting edge, after all. It's looking pretty limp, anyway. 

             I do one of those streaks of brown sauce, that kind of flourish all the chefs seem to do these days, when they're not busy calling a teaspoonful of frozen mousse a quenelle. I'm sparing with it. Not enough on there to satisfy, just enough to make the plate look a cross between dressy and messy, so you wonder if you can get away with licking it off before the waiter comes back. I daub a quenelle of piccalilli on each cover. They don't all stay as quenelles, mind. A few slump a little, but what the heck, I've got my mains to churn out yet!

             "Here he is, the man himself," I notice Jane is swaying slightly, even though she seems to have taken her heels off. Not too formal. Casual but welcoming, that's our way. She helps me serve up and there's a real buzz going round the room.

 “Ladies and gents, I present our exclusive new starter, oeuf sauté with wilted salad and a quenelle of crudites à la moutarde jaune. A votre santé!” French GCSE comes in handy, at last. It never did in Ibiza.

The punters are all busy chewing so I hare back into the kitchen to look for the next hotchpotch of ingredients. I need to go for more substantial this time, so I winkle out the bag of baby potatoes and fling open a couple more cupboards. There's the lasagne verde, of course, and a line of microwavable packets of savoury rice. That'll do for the carb fix. Now for the protein. 

I end up back at the fridge where the only protein I can spot is the pork pie selection. I get to work with a knife and teaspoon, gouging out their innards onto a baking sheet. Offal's very popular these days, so maybe I could pass these pie fillings off as something similar. I put the bacon and hash browns in the pan for good measure.

 

I'm mashing the potatoes when Jane comes in carrying the crockery from the starters.

“Nobody's got food poisoning yet, as far as I can see,” she says, reaching under the counter for a couple more bottles of Blue Nun. She's crashing about in the sink when I start to gloat.

“Mains is pork paté with bacon and hash served with mashed baby spuds and a whole raft of subtle and innovative sides. Sorted. Then it's out of the freezer with your cookie dough delight smothered in a bit more alcohol and drinking chocolate powder and job's a good 'un.”

“I ate it.”

“Ate it? Ate what?”

“The ice cream. I had a midnight feast at eleven o'clock. I think I left a little bit in the bottom of the tub, just in case I get the munchies before I do the supermarket run.” I can see she isn't joking.

One of the guys staggers into the kitchen, tie askew by this point, a bit flushed and merry, looking for the gents, so Jane waltzes back out with him while I stick the insides of the pies on the plates in a bit of horseradish sauce with the mash and some dollops of white bread soaked in gravy, which is a new kind of dumpling, the way I sell it to them in my best jovial host mode. I've had it with fancy. Needs must.

Jane's rarely wrong, but this time she's way off. There isn't even a lick of ice cream in the empty tub. It must have been a heavy night. That's why there are all those blinking rye crackers on the counter, to redress the balance.

I eye these up, with dessert on my mind. I do a bit of a find and replace for any sign of fruit, but nothing's doing.

I didn't bother investing in one of those expensive solid marble mortar and pestles, so I get the rolling pin and start giving the rye crackers a good going over. Could have done cheese and biscuits, but I've used all the cheese and anyway, that is SO seventies.

Jane comes in tutting and frowning to see what the noise is, and I manage to keep the blunt instrument focussed on the task in hand. I'm glancing round wondering how to make the crackers less dry; sweet, moist and melt-in-the-mouth would be good, too, but I'm not going to push it at this late stage.

“That bloke who came in here's very chatty. I think he's impressed. Keeps asking where you get your inspiration,” Jane giggles as she necks the dregs of the Blue Nun without bothering to decant it into a glass.

“Gotta keep the customer satisfied,” I mutter as I put some black pepper on the rye crumbs. Well, it works on strawberries. It's supposed to get your juices flowing so everything tastes more intense. I can see the dishes are maybe lacking a little je ne sais quoi so I do some fancy spoon work with half a jar of marmalade and some treacle topping stuff we never used out of a hamper our Doreen won from the old folks' bazaar last Christmas, and we're in sight of the winning post.

When I'm clearing the dishes and Jane's showing out the last of the diners, I notice a few tips under the mats. A bit of my sweet Seville sauce left on the occasional plate, but nothing major, so I'm ready for an early night and a private pat on the back. Never again. Then I see the card on the table by the window.

“This is where your chatty mate was sitting, wasn't it?” I say to Jane as she turns the 'Closed' sign round with a long overdue burp.

“Excuse me, soggy muesli” she says, as per.

“He's left his business card, if we ever need a solicitor with no taste buds.”

Jane snatches the card off me before I can turn it over.

“Joe Collinger. Food and Wine critic of the Saturday Standard,” Jane looks a bit blank, but it is late.

It's only the local freebie paper, but it's a start. We're taking on more staff next month when I can get the paperwork sorted out. They're queueing up for a job here waiting tables.

Joe did us a great write-up, and the review online got loads of hits. We've set up a Facebook page, but Jane deals with all that when she's Twittering with her girlfriends. I'm back in the kitchen, dreaming up all these new dishes.

“Tastes like home but with a twist. You'll be laughing from the moment you catch sight of the quirky name over the door. What cookery lacks today is comedy. Mine hosts Dave and Jane have changed all that. Theirs is the most comical bistro this side of the Thames,” wrote Joe in his article.

I read the other week that 'The Fatted Calf' is selling up and shutting down. It's a competitive world, and with us on their doorstep, who can blame them?

Bon appetit!