Part 2: CONVERSATIONS BY THE COOLER:..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Before long we fell into those things. My appetite for water grew greater. Really though it was just a need to scarpe some hust, clod some time back into my black brown sack. I was always in a hurry, yet had time to pour out ad infinitum; as ever I wasn't certain what it was I wanted to do. Nonetheless we had a job.

"Well bollocks to the review !"

Mr Charles Charles was sat in beige surrounded by a massive cheeseplant and more unwanted papers than a dentist's surgery could ever want.

"What took you ?"

He shot the words out without looking or turning his head.

"I came by myself. Where's your company ?"

"I work alone. There's reasons. Let's sit"

"Don't want to sit. Can't be arsed. Could use a coffee though. Why do I keep talking like a t.v cop ? Get me a coffee, muthafucka !

His laugh fell out his face.

"No fuck it I'll make the muthafucka, mesen. You sit"

I climbed the stairs & some reason- the smell of disinfectant or just some reason- took me back to Mrs.Honnighty. She had been big with a huge brown birthmark on her tiny neck. She had been German and perhaps she was even still alive.

On the automatic door was a sign that had been taped up the wrong way. You read it from the other side. The floors were parched and the air smelt dry and green. Forgive me if this last bit reads strange. As a general thumb rule, I have had this since the age of 8 when the Dachsund on that Welsh farm shook me; this compulsion to describe the air in colour ever since.

 Sharing this with you,  because I see it, no reason not to.

(key index:

green= musty

red= danger in air

yellow= all is not well

black= fine n dandy

blue= you lose some, you draw some

orange=the future's fuckin' DIM !

etc)  

I can't say I hated the coffee but if had it been a woman's face I didn't fall in love with its eyes (mouth, neck etc). Generally there are reasons why we resist; the crap falls out of us & we go on regardless or not but there are impediments or imperatives.

I half expected Mr.Charles gone.

"What took you ?"

"Stuff. A conversation by the cooler. Stuff"

"Where's Motson ?"

"We work separate. That way we like it best. Then one night in a mauve moon we concur."

A girl grinned, hanging onto a red apron, her mum filed past to the kitchen, we were like men fishing in a river that both suspects is only batched up with bikes.     

He asked me if I wanted a game of draughts; I refused. A game of backgammon ? poker ? twister ? gin rummy ? How about Mah Jong ?

We agreed on bagatelle.

"Seems like Motson has a reason for staying away ?"

"Did I say that ?"

"It's what you didn't say"

"I didn't say to stay away, Charles. I said we work separate.

He's right here."

"Where ?"

"Up on the roof. There's a shed just beside"

A text hurried past the moment of silence that followed. It was as unobtrusive as an ambulance hurtling beside a wake.

After a long gap, Charles pulled out a gobstopper.

"My teeth are bad, there's no way I should have these. But the taste in my mouth gets worse. You know ?"

We lean forward.

He didn't offer anything, I didn't persist. I let him go about his gobstopping ways alone.

I said, "Motson has the papers, Charles."

He said

"Weather's bright now, Cuzzie. Isn't it fine now ? We need a parasol. All of us need that thing. People up on rooves need the damn thing too"

Charles held up his hand, as always he did, and then he walked out. It would be the same time the next time but next time he would make the coffee.

Part 3: ROOVES & ROADS

Motson looked drawn. Like a pair of old house curtains. He ran his hand through his hair, his palms on his trousers (as if he'd dug a grave) and coughed.

I could've sat down but there was a Simaese cat on the chair.

"Cuzzie, I'm fading on this case."

I didn't sigh, I just thought it.

"Truth is Motson we all are. There's as much and as little for us both to do"

"But why this job ? There's nothing in there, you know that"

"I don't know…I don't know. We just get paid and hope that'll will turn a worm. I haven't given up. Why should you ?"

The fizz in his cola fuzzed, loud and peremptory.

"Let's go to the dogs then, Cuzzie"

"let's not" I returned.  

*        *        *          *        *        *         *         *         *      *

I was lyin g omn thee banke. Twelve year apart. I lookit up and sawe the starre they pushede me back down.

" I say wicked Mr.Winston give me bluey, I hav all me lokup in me last green chewey

Shavin all the stuffel out me big tough face; dangling a haddock for thee last rum race"

 Motson remembered the words & the melody crept back.          

*     8   *      (    *      (      9   *          *                 *          *

Hearing all this, struck me song was gone.

Song by a riverbank, by a fireside, with a belt on yr back in the field & a dig in yr hands or with a farmer in his den; sad, abolished, not wanting a wife, not wanting anything…

Why is Motson's childhood relevant to all this slop ?

That is why, here, you have bus timetables to consider, I mean to wade back through …It was time for the 14 baby teeth Motson had smuggled through the yeards until his 14^th birthday, it was time for these bright bab fools to go.

He turned to the dentist

"incidentally d'you fuckin' want some ?"  

Part 4:

CUZZIE's CUSTARD:

Cuzzie's aunt owned a shop. Owned is a dubious word. She owned it only because no one else in the family was ailing enough, willing enough to take it on.

Was there he had met Motson. Rather, Motson's cromby & then Motson himself. The absent-minded sleuth had left his trademark garment at the dry cleaners next door, then forgotten about the traditional 1 week the business was closed for the long holiday. Mrs.Vermont had placed it next door as Cuzzie's aunt Susan was closing.

"Promise to stash this will you, Eileen ? The daft gentleman forgets"

Foraging in the pockets what fell out…

"Lotus: Quality biscuits & Shoewear"  

 *                           *                                 *                            *

Ovary Leonard presents

THE ROTARY BOREHOLE INVESTIGATIONS

Part 1:   FULL OF IT

It was the time when young able adults impersonate a pensioner's gait, when the ice on the pave is hidden and slows stuff down and makes it bright and wittles away at torpor. I had done the room. Or it had done me. Old yellow pages, old benefit bills, old corks from wines that never dreamt of being vintage (happy to be here, no frills as I am), old love letters in a Boston box advertising mustard. All these, all old, all had gone their way; when ,in time, there was no more junk to spare, no more to sally,  none more I could have. And when it was all done & thrown away, I wondered where the new days would lead me.

The phone rang. I let it do its stuff, away at the races, fractured & running out of juice, by itself. On the message there was a hairdryer when I heard it back, it blacked out all the words, they were low and monotone emotion, the daughters of charisma lived nowhere near or if they did it was a giro drop no more no less.

Suddenly a need for cheese came upon me, some great thunderclap of hankering, like a magician leaving his rabbit. I sat down, I took it slowly, piece by piece, the chives and then the cheese. It was blue stilton, cheap stuff; natural amphetamine so they say, I can't see it, you humour me my old Madogan, there & afar, sending postcards, thinking it's like it was in your day, in wartime, when it wasn't so violent.

Outside there were words, the bloke on crutches & 8 cans of Strongbow with his son, the ice on the brick not yet begin to melt, on the tops of hedges the same. I stood up & thought about Madogan. I thought about playing the message back but it was too broken and there wasn't time. It wasn't the weekend, I didn't need to lark about, I had no need to be strummy. It was about time to find people. What they wanted to do was up to them.

Somehow it all felt false, all this needing to be bored so quickly & for what. I rang Motson & he concurred. I should meet him, it's a good day this, take advantage (taste advantage, I thought he said). I packed up & went out. At large, it felt lazy, all the lunchtime shoppers gone strong on the ale & able to take the time scraping the snow off the tops of a hedge on the way home. Would they do that if they had to take their gloves off ?

We met by the cathedral. I got there early & rang my wife. The message I left had the peal of the bells playing. She had played it back to hear them again but now she had wiped it off. Strange, it is the bells & not the words you want to keep, those things that have been there before us by thousands of years. 

 Motson always wore a cromby of some kind and in summer I could spot him there among the crowds on the steps. But here, now, with ice on those steps and no cameras all the people that passed seemed to wear them.

Some twelve days later

Motson's cromby looked old. I knew it was from last week but I said nothing. It was clear that more people were coming. Motson said nothing but I sensed it. There were stipulations on his room too but it wasn't that. I didnt care but in the town I felt buried by all this clear air & cold. The conversation paddled about a bit but to no intent. Motson's concise style deliberately turned on its head to lose our pursuers ?  Something else ?  I bit my teeth together & drew the curtain back. In the courtyard the dog made whining tracks in the air and you thought that with its paws it must have done the same like this for scot free years, must have padded about like this for joy alone before it was tethered apparently for a reason. There was a bakery nearby. I could hear the dog's pacings even out & calm when the smells of baked bread wafted through at 4. 

Why did you get involved, Cuzzie ?

For me it's a routine of honour, a badge, to say sweet Fanny, even to those like Motson that I trusted. They can wait at their turnstile for night-games in a slow queue if that is to be their way.  

The noise from the Roebuck  was ridiculous. I pulled on the lead from a radio in the room to drown it out. It was like liquorice. It did its best but that was not enough.