Faded to grey

I do not write.

Not nearly enough.

Too busy, too many things to do.

I have let it go, lost the thing I had that made me write.

Haven’t the disciplines, the determination to push it through.

I have been courted by big publishing houses.

Literary agents rub their chins and email me for more.

I’m popular then not.

Minimum wage forcing my hand, £5.50 per hour for this grown man to protect.

No prospects beyond the next wage packet.

I am paid five days late. Often.

Don’t make the threshold to pay tax to the man.

He has no need of my trifling small pennies.

Late nights that become day.

Remnants of cancer ping with pain.

It wants to join me in my mire.

Year in. year out.

Perhaps too comfortable in my weaned poverty.

Comfort in the decrepit familiarity.

Need the misery of never enough.

Memories of mum begging down the lane.

Need the pain of no gain.

Always work hard, callous your skin hard.

Reward never came. Capitalist fodder for life.

I dragged riches for others from the sludge.

My dotage, damn it, my dotage is near.

One last push, one last big breath in.

Who wins. Literary or my labour?

Cancel the Sun life monthly funeral payments. Five pounds saved.

Greys of a hard knock life.

Thinned grey papery skin and hair.

Faded to grey.

David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs and the Varnish of Death

It is the early seventies, I should be at school. Getting work was easy then, you had a couple of weeks before they wondered where your paperwork was…

It is nearly the end of my shift and it has been a long stressy day. I was told off by the bloke on the guillotine earlier, almost had my hands off at the wrists apparently. He is a grumpy bastard, never smiles and has no time for youngsters like me, keeps moaning about my long hair, he thinks I should wear a hair net because my hair is always in my face. Fucking old git.

 “A bit of overtime?” The balding Irish foreman taps me on the back asks. He matches the ink colours from one print run to the next, by eye and texture; I cannot even begin to know how he does that.  I like him; he is a cheerful version of my dad.

 My mum expects me home around 6pm, we don’t have a home phone and since me mum called the lady upstairs a feckin’ witch she won’t let us use her phone anymore. I’m still scared enough of her to make sure she knows where I am and what I’m doing. I need to get home, let her know I will be working all night. Explaining to the boss what I need to do to get the overtime gets a few laughs in the office. I run home, it’s maybe three or four miles, when you are young, you can run fast, like being chased by the old bill fast.

 I’m soon back at work for the already too long shift, I have bag of crispy bits from the chip shop and a bounty, I feel dead posh when I eat a bounty. There are two of us in this big old Victorian print works, Justin and me. Justin is a long haired bespectacled tripped out hippy, a fat John Lennon springs to mind and he’s about ten years older than me, always has a rolled lit fag in his mouth. The long Svecia screen-printing machine is ready to go when I arrive, Justin is sitting atop it cross-legged, smoking and reading the NME. Tonight we are finishing a Charlie Rich LP, it is having a gloss put on, also doing a David Bowie album called ‘Diamond Dogs’, it’s having its final colour done, don’t know what happened earlier but by the loading dock near the bogs there is a skip and it’s brimming with this album. Someone somewhere fucked up. Also by the bogs there is a full size David Bowie stand up cut out figure from the Aladdin Sane album, it has been defiled with goofy teeth and large genitals, the foreman’s name is prominent and little notes have been scribbled all over it.

 Everyone has clocked out and there is just me and Justin left, we spend about an hour of preparation and I am lining up pallet loads of the unfinished album covers ready to go in the machines. David Bowie is first, it is done quickly and I pull the loaded pallets one by one out of the auto stacker thingy at the rear of the machine, the next load goes in. We notice how cold it is with the extractors on and Justin turns them off, we shut the big iron framed Victorian windows, this old building is fucking freezing. Bowie’s album is done and I deliberately position the full pallets around the guillotine so the miserable bastard cannot get to it in the morning.

The varnishing of Charlie Rich’s LP ‘Behind Closed Doors’ is next, its one in the morning and still fucking cold and I’m now wearing the miserable guillotine gits bobble hat. I’m helping spread the varnish onto the silk screen from large tins, my head is already spinning and I’m reminded of my Zoff plaster remover sniffing phase way back when a couple of weeks ago.

I was woken by the Irish foreman giving me the kiss of life. He smelt of old spice and tasted of old Holborn tobacco. Apparently, I was not breathing, three or four hours have disappeared from my memory and once it was established I was ‘alright’ the miserable guillotine bloke wrenched his bobble hat from my head and called me a stupid little cunt. Justin was barely conscious and was being given a fag and a right good talking to for turning the extractors off by the boss. A cup of tea and a headache later I was on my way home, had to make my own way home mind and fell asleep on the steps of the church half way down Cable Street, probably still semi-conscious from oxygen deprivation, got home in the afternoon and me mum told me off. I dared not tell her what happened; she would have been up there punching heads. I left soon after that, got a job in a Jewish wholesaler above the undercover in Petticoat Lane allocating and packing woman’s dresses. I can still do a mean knot and have searched for David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs vinyl LP cover printed by Augustus Martin for years, not found one. Yet.

 I wished I’d had thanked you grumpy guillotine operator, I can’t remember your name, I now know you did your best to take me under your wing to train me, I wasn’t and never paid any attention, I was within an eighth of an inch of losing both hands, you nearly broke your hand slamming the stop button. I cried in the toilets shortly after because I knew that was an unwanted reality that came too close. I don’t even think you were ever that grumpy. I have paid close attention to everything I do ever since; it’s just one day, but one that is still silk-screened into my aged, know-better mind.

Gem.

Immediately Gem is engaging, breathlessly sparkly and making good eye contact which is strange for me as most if not all people talk via the windscreen. You’re happy! I say with a big smile, ‘No’ she replies and sighs. ‘I’m trying to get my daughter back, she is four next month and they won’t let me see her’ My first surprise is that she was old enough to even have children, she being so small, I would have guessed her age at 14ish maybe a bit older. She is 23. ‘It’s my ex-boyfriend he hurt her while I was at work’ I took her to the doctors, not knowing… Her face is wet. ’I will get her back. He hurt her. He hurt her… I have stopped the cab for a while now, just listening.

Do I have a judgement? Do I dare? I believed her, a combination of harsh association with a vicious child man/boyfriend that stubbed cigarettes out on a child. He disappeared, left her with the burden of loss. Her family has left her with that burden too. She does not have boyfriends anymore and is at college. Her incredible fortitude and positive outlook looked unshakable, not a victim, not a ‘poor me.’

That was eight years ago.

Very recently, I saw her. A small young woman with another small young woman both exactly the same size coming out of Boots in St Leonards, was it her daughter that was with her? It was. How sure am I?  I know how mums are with their children. She was simply being a mum and my face was wet that’s how I know.

Lulu.

She puts on her own seatbelt and waves goodbye to the staff at the centre who have put her in my cab. I have taken Lulu to and from the centre for many years now. She shoves polo mints into my mouth and waves ten pound notes in front of my face to pay me when I’m driving. She cries when I hit potholes and is beside herself when there is a delay or traffic. ‘What’s your name? Is something she has asked me once a week for the last 14 years.

Today though is a special day. Today she has had a celebration. Lulu has had a party.

She has a phone, she likes the beeps and whistles it makes. She makes a call; ‘Hello? Hello? Its forty years today! Yes! I had a party! Forty years in the home! Hello? Hello? The line is dead. Ten seconds the call lasted, to her sister. Busy I suspect, our lives are busy after all. ‘What’s your name?’ She asks, I am already new to her yet again and after searching her cardigan pocket she shoves a hairy polo mint into my mouth.

See you next week Lulu.

Miguel.

Tall, tanned with a duffel bag he sits in front with me.   “I am Miguel” instantly my language centre of my brain deduces quickly that Miguel is a student, in fact, a foreign student. I say hello back, in English. Slowly.  I notice his knees are very tanned, already I’m annoyed he can get away with wearing shorts as I look stupid even standing next to a rack of shorts in a shop.  Me with my white british knees. “I love England, it is pretty” I sense he is reciting a Spanish Janet and John ‘how to speak the English’ book for the under-fives. Probably not though, last time I spoke Spanish I said “graphiarse” instead of gracias, somehow my lips got involved and both colluded to embarrass me. We are making good progress and about halfway to his destination he starts to move about in his seat to face me, he starts to stroke the side of the seat and that instantly puts me into my I-appreciate-your-gay-but-I’m-not-mode, as I am quite a catch for the younger gay men of this world. I am thinking he wants to stay in the UK with the perfect sugar daddy, which is me obviously.  It is funny what conclusions you can come to in a few seconds. “Have you want to seen my banana?” Miguel insists whilst tapping my arm and has a pout on, like they do in them ‘selfies’ you see on twitter and that Facebook. I have to stop, he’s crossed a boundary touching me and offering me his ‘banana.’ I pull over, get out and stomp around to the passenger door, open it and drag him and his tanned knees out. He is crying and wailing, not sure what he is saying but I get in and drive away. Feeling bloody miffed I can tell you, I’m always being picked on by the gays, just because I have perfect nails, lovely teeth, wear lovely clothes, wash almost every day and listen to Melody Gardot. I’m miffed me, miffed.   Much later while searching for a penny that fell out of my quite perfectly manicured hand down the side of the passenger seat, I find a bandana.  The penny dropping was perhaps a metaphor for the penny dropping in my perfectly moisturised and quaffered head. ‘Have I seen his bandana?’ is what Miguel was trying to say to me. I feel a bit daft and embarrassed; he was not trying to pull me to be his sugar daddy, he was looking for his bandana! I still have it. I wore it when I dressed as a pirate for pirate day, tied it to my sword. Very fetching.

Hank.

“Where can I get a REALLY good shag man?” He seemed very keen to get the best and I knew just the place. “How much cash do you think I’ll need?” I don’t know how much a really good shag is these days and told good 'ol American boy Hank you generally get what you pay for, he elbowed me in that manly way that’s quite annoying. We stopped at a cash point and emptied it, this guy is obviously out to pay for the best shag he could get while he’s here in England and I’m worried now that the little place I know won’t have what he’s looking for, fortunately I’ve seen what they have to offer and it looks good enough to me. “I’m a bit nervous! He is wringing his hands er… nervously; bit odd I thought, after all, it’s quite normal, maybe the town he lives in hasn’t got a place quite like the one I’m taking him to.  I tell him I think he will be pleased as you can get ready rubbed as well and they do quite a good rough one. His eyes light up. OH. MY. GOD!  He is starting to animate and jiggle about which is not really doing my suspension any good as Hank is quite a large man. We arrive at the bottom of the street in the old town and I cannot go any further. His large spongy wet hand shakes mine, he pays me and gives me a whole pound tip. I gesture where it is and tell him it is the fifth or sixth door up on the left. “How will I know it’s the right door?” I winked at him and told him he will know and watched him walk up the street, he stopped roughly where I said the place would be and I gave him the thumbs up. He did not look that happy, don’t know why, it’s the only proper tobacconist shop I know in this town. Some people are never happy are they?