“…numbers 2, 29, 17, 6 and 34. The bonus number 20. Those winning numbers again…” I muted the radio. I didn’t need to hear twice. I didn’t want to hear twice. I just wanted to keep drinking down this beautiful feeling you get when you win ten million euro. I’m guessing that you’ve never experienced his, so I’ll try to explain it. As a child, did you ever run down a hill so fast that you couldn’t actually stop? If you haven’t, go now. It’s quite the experience, and costs less than comparable highs, such as glue. Now, imagine that you are running down that hill, but to cushion your inevitable faceplant you have a massive pile of €50 notes. Are you giggling? You should be. I know I was.
I had strolled into the local Spar, receiving the nod from the manager, fluorescent light reflecting from the sweat on his bald head. He had frowned when I detoured from my usual aisle - Bargains and Sell-By-Date Specials – and went toward the “Vice Counter”, as I like to call it. A parade of dazed and pasty soap opera ‘stars’ had gazed back from the shiny scandal-rags, trying to convince the overweight and middle-aged that celebrities were “just like us!” but with better publicists. Calorie-laden sugar highs had jostled for attention with authoritative cigarettes, who wore their warnings with indifference. Damages sperm? Who wants kids anyway?
I wouldn’t call myself a gambling man, but buying the occasional lottery ticket was my Dadaist way of getting back at the Man. As Keith had told me
“Buy food? That’s what He wants, man. All those E-numbers? Frickin’ mind control, man!”
It seemed that the manager cared deeply about my health, though. He had punched those numbers in himself, claiming that
“Fugghan Quik-Pik’s a bleedin’ scam boss. Never seen a Quik-Pik winner, ‘n oive sold thousands of the feckers!”
I was grateful – and not a little freaked out – by his kindness. His head seemed to be getting shinier by the minute, so I duly made my escape to my lodgings.
“Lodgings” are the best way to describe them. Once you lodged yourself in the narrow confines, it was very hard to become dislodged. The general design approach I had gone for was “cluster bombs filled with rubbish”. Several pizza boxes lingered in the corner from the heady days when I could afford such luxuries. They were on the cusp of sprouting legs and marching off to the bin anyway, so the scientist within me refused to dismantle the important experiment. In lieu of a sofa, I had piled all my clothing in the general shape of a beanbag. Next to the ‘beanbag’ was a coffee table – so named for the elaborate pattern of coffee-rings on the surface – with the Leaning Tower of Cigarette Butts perched precariously on the top. A desk slumped in the corner of the room like a tramp. It had been bought in a whirl of freshman enthusiasm, but I was quick to realize that ‘student’ was a misnomer: the true student couldn’t find a lecture hall with a map and compass. And that was just the Geography students. I’d describe the smell of the room, but I’ve just eaten, and the manuscript wouldn’t be accepted with recycled scrambled eggs on it, now would it? In short, it was a place Stig of the Dump would turn his nose up at.
I had crouched over my wind up radio - my landlord, who bears an unfortunate resemblance to an anorexic stick insect, rivals Ebenezer Scrooge for fuel consumption - and those glorious numbers had filled my box room. Not that that was an incredible feat. I smiled. What would I buy first?
“Oh Christ” moaned my liver.
I took out my 1980’s cop movie surplus mobile and dialed Keith’s number. I needed to get very mindless on as many illicit substances as possible, and Keith was the only man up to the task. His brain had long succumbed to the tug of various narcotics, and now his psychedelic-Swiss-cheese noggin responded to only three things: shiny objects, primary colours and more narcotics.
No signal. Honest to God, stepping into this flat is like going back to the Industrial Revolution; all that’s missing is the flat caps and elaborate facial hair. I ran down to the street, and Keith answered. I waited a few seconds for him to work out which end he spoke into, and began.
“Keith!”
A noise like a badger snuffling through leaves.
“Keith, come over to mine, we have to plan a night to forget!”
Notice how I start every sentence with his name; he thinks that you’re talking to someone else if you don’t address him.
“Dude, can we even, like fit in your apartment at the same time?”
“For someone who couldn’t pick himself out of a police line-up, you’ve got a clever mouth”
“Uh?”
Long sentences that aren’t punctuated by the word “like” tend to confuse him.
“Come. To. Mine. Now.”
End call.
I skipped back up the steps to my apartment, held my breath, turned sideways and stepped in. It’s hard to gasp when you’re holding your breath, but I did when I realized my ticket wasn’t where I had left it. I searched the room from top to bottom. It took roughly 47 seconds. I happened to glance towards the window and there it was. It looked like a tarred-and-feathered potato with random twigs for legs. But its seemingly scruffy body contained an evil, scheming brain and a black, shriveled excuse of a heart. The Magpie.
I ask you, dear reader, to recall the idea of running full tilt down a hill, only to land in a pile of €50 notes. Imagine if that pile turned out to be a very cleverly disguised pack of rabid wolverines that had just got root canal. They’re angry, they’re in pain, and you appear to them to be a punching bag full of painkillers. Moments before you are torn apart, your heart attempts to escape through your mouth, your internal organs try to vacate the premises by the “emergency exit” and your brain cryogenically freezes itself. That moment of sheer terror has enveloped your plucky narrator. Now multiply it by a number with lots of zeros. That’s what it’s like to watch €10 million fly out the window in the mouth of a vindictive villain.
I tore down the stairs, crashing through Keith.
“Dude…? Are you on America’s Most Wanted or something?”
“Follow! Magpie! €10 million! Now!” I screamed over my shoulder as I exploded through the door.
“Is the magpie on America’s Most Wanted?”
Keith’s car was pulled up on the pavement. He could only have parked closer if he had crashed through a wall or two. Being Keith, the car door was open and the engine was running. He must have thought he got a taxi or something. I leaped into the car, and was about to screech off Starsky & Hutch style till I noticed Mr. Potato Bird across the road, staring at me malevolently with its one eye. It performed a little jig of victory, flapping its tattered wings and stepping from one misshapen leg to the other. I hurtled across the road, followed by Keith. The bird took off through the park. I elegantly flipped over the fence and came to a soft landing in a pile of grass clippings.
“Good thing they didn’t lock that gate, man” Keith said, as he strolled past. It was a good thing that I had a football field worth of grass in my mouth, or someone would have got seriously offended. My battered little buddy wheeled toward a copse of trees, and we followed.
It landed in its lair: the upper branches of a monkey puzzle tree. Keith stared at the tree and scratched his head in confusion.
“How are you gonna get up there?” Keith asked.
“Assuming that I’m the one who’s climbing it?”
“It’s not my ticket, man” he grinned.
Back seat drivers. I don’t drive (how could I afford the insurance?) but I still find them annoying. However, back seat climbers rank on the annoyance scale around the same level as “railroad-spike-through-forehead”.
“Dude!” he called, “move your foot to the right!”
It was as if some malevolent animal had greased that exact spot up.
“Advice. Not. Wanted.” I grumbled through gritted teeth.
Several splinters, a torn pair of jeans and enough cursing to give a convent of nuns a heart attack later, I reached the nest. The numbers looked back at me from different parts of the nest. €10 million worth of refurbishment. Once again, I ask you to remember those enraged wolverines. A twist of fate has placed a machinegun and 10,000 rounds in your hands. You feel a grim resignation to the task that lies ahead. Sure, the wolverines are just angry because they got painful dental work done. Maybe on a different day, you’d find a shared love of the work of Gary Newman, and sit around drinking beer and singing “Cars”. But not today. Your trigger finger twitches. You are, to put it indelicately, gonna tear these sons-of-bitches a thousand new holes to breath through.
I didn’t have a Gatling gun, but I did have 10 tonnes of unrefined anger to spill on this miserable excuse of a nest. I was about to do a demolition job on the lair, when I noticed the trophies of his various evil shenanigans. Watches, earrings, gold chains…the Magpie had tangled with the wealthiest and had won. The once-evil spud had – indirectly – decided to go Robin Hood, and I was a lucky benefactor.
I got out of the tree the easy way. Once the dust had settled and I had checked my ribs, I dusted myself off, checked the time on my two new Rolex’s, confirmed it on my diamond-embedded Cartier and adjusted my Chanel earrings.
“An interesting look, I must say” murmured Keith.
It wasn’t exactly €10 million, but Keith and I managed to get hangovers sufficient to turn the Great Wall of China into a pleasant rockery, and the little Potato Bird keeps me in steak and cider. If only I could get all these needles out of my-
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I checked my watch. Late as usual. I silently willed the bus driver to drive faster than 30 miles a fortnight through the miserable, soaking January evening. Then again, no one was ever on time for practise so it didn’t make a shred of difference whether the bus driver continued his attempt to beat the Guinness World Record for Most Passengers Driven (ho ho) To Insanity by Crappy Driving.
I’m the lead singer and guitarist for the most inept band ever to torture an amplifier. I sing and play despite my extreme stage fright, ham-handedness and the fact that the combination of my voice and guitar skills would make deaf people wince with its unique sound of two scalded cats fighting. In a bag. At a road works.
And I’m my own biggest fan.
“Thanks” I muttered, my sarcasm lost on the bus driver who observed me from under his bushy eyebrows like a scientist would peer at a Petri dish. His glasses would have made good microscopes anyway. He finally managed to open the door and I stepped out of the bus, missing the kerb by several feet and ending up in an ankle deep puddle. Speccy the Bus Driver hadn’t quite reached the pavement. I squelched off towards Toms’ house.
Tom was our drummer. He was built like a minifridge (emphasis on mini) with the complexion of an overripe tomato, probably because when he wasn’t beating the hell out of his unfortunate drum kit
he was shouting. He was definitely the most talented of a bad bunch, saving our skins at many gigs with his nifty little solos distracting the punters from their efforts to extract a refund from our manager and keyboardist Jimmy Chon.
Jimmy, as he loved telling us, had played keyboard since he was six. This came as a surprise to most, seeing as he could barely play “Pop Goes The Weasel” let alone a concerto. He also made himself our manager because he knew how to get us gigs. The local pub? No, that would make sense. Instead we became the soundtrack to Chons’ massive extended family. Weddings, parties, anniversaries, you name it we played it. He even tried to get us to play his Great Aunt Xis’ funeral before his faulty common sense meter spluttered to life. Of course we could hardly expect him to ask his family to pay, could we? Actually, we could. And did. Several times, for all the good it did us.
The strains of crashing cymbals became louder than the squishing of my shoes as I got closer to Toms’ garage where we had our gear set up. Judging by the noise, Tom had begun without me. No wonder his mother had a permanent bewildered expression on her face with that cacophony going constantly, a thrumming backbeat that set her dishes shaking and ornaments flying.
I didn’t knock, no point in trying to compete with Tom. I stepped in to wall of noise that was the garage. Tom grinned at me, sweat glistening his shaved head and sticking his Panthera t-shirt to his chest.
“Ready to make some noise?” he said, his tongue stud glittering.
I nodded. I plugged in my guitar and cleared my throat. Just before we could continue the aural assault and battery, Jimmy burst in.
Water beaded his coat, a leather full-length number that he had rushed out to buy after he saw The Matrix. Unfortunately the coat made him look like a transvestite hooker from a distance.
“Lads, the recording studio called!” said Jimmy, brushing water out of his spiky black hair.
“Recording what?” asked two rather confused musicians.
“The deal is done, my friends!” continued Jimmy, oblivious to our expressions as he polished his glasses. My jaw made a plopping noise as it hit the floor.
“You actually persuaded someone to let us into their recording studio?” laughed Tom.
“Hey, he saw our last gig and he was well impressed!”
I shuddered. Our last gig was the talent show. Luckily they didn’t scan us for talent on the way in.
“Dude, I saw kids crying while we were playing!” I said.
“They were overcome by emotion!” replied Jimmy.
“Yeah, nausea and earache…” I muttered.
“When do they want us in?” asked Tom.
“Tomorrow afternoon” answered Jimmy.
“TOMORROW!?”? I shouted, resisting the urge to wrap my hands around his skinny neck. “We only have one song we wrote ourselves!”
“Please stop shouting, you’ll disturb Toms’ mother” soothed Jimmy. “One original song is fine for cutting a demo.”
That song had been the tearjerker at the talent show.
“That song violates human rights man. The only place we’re going to be allowed play it is Guantanamo Bay!” I said.
Jimmy rolled his eyes.
“Wait, that could work! We’ll do a live album Johnny Cash style!”
“Tom, what do you think?” said Jimmy, ignoring me completely.
I sang in my best Cash impression. “Guantanamo I hate every inch of you…” I crooned.
“Well, we’re definitely not prepared for something like this but it’s an opportunity we should grab, man” replied Tom, doing his best to disregard me.
“You’ve cut me and you’ve scarred me through and thruuuuuuuu…?”
I dodged the drumstick that whistled through the air that my head had been occupying.
“Ha ha! Reduced to one last shot, are w-“. My witty repartee had been stopped by a drumstick to the face. I made a grab for Tom but he jumped backwards. In the ensuing chase we managed to knock over: a bike, most of the drum kit and Jimmy, who had dissolved to tears of laughter on the floor.
“How can those stumpy legs move so bloody quickly?” I grunted.
“How can all that hair move at all?” Tom shot back.
“Maybe we should practise…” tried Jimmy.
And we did. Not that it helped. I still sounded like I hadn’t finished tuning up. Jimmy sounded like a toddler experimenting on a Fisher-Price keyboard and even Tom was off-beat. Not that there was any way a beat was going to hold us together.
“Lets just call it a night.” said Jimmy after yet another missed chord.
“I think we’re getting worse lads.” agreed Tom.
“Tomorrow at 9.00?” I proposed.
“Tomorrow at 10.00. I’m not getting out of bed at 8 on a Saturday just to set up all the gear” whinged Tom.
“I know ‘Desperate Housewives’ is on tonight but can you not just record it and get a good nights sleep?”
A drumstick clanged against the door as I left. That kid must have a bandolier of sticks on him.
I yawned as the bus once again trundled slowly towards Toms’ house, Speccys’ eyebrows knitted together as he carefully navigating the empty early-morning roads. The bus wheezed to a stop, the engine sounding as clapped-out as the driver looked. Jimmy was waiting for me at the bus stop, looking like someone had given him cat food on toast for breakfast.
“Why the face? Today we make it big, man!” I said as I leaped dramatically? from the bus to the pavement.
“Tom’s hurt.” came the reply.
“Is it...is it serious?” I gulped.
“He fell down the stairs last night on his way down to turn the video recorder off” said Jimmy, ashen-faced.?
He actually did watch Desperate Housewives. I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.
“Is he in hospital?” I asked.
“They released him at about 7.00 in the morning” replied Jimmy. “He can’t use the bass pedal with a cast on his leg!”
“What about the demo?” I murmured.
“Right now we need to know that Tom is ok” said Jimmy. “Lets’ go and check up on the poor bugger”.
“I knew I should have stayed up and watched it!” grinned Tom as we filed in to his room, avoiding puddles of dirty clothes and dishes that were on the verge of growing intelligent life. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Do we get to be the first to sign your cast?” I asked.
“No foul language, Mr. Tern!” Tom said sternly.
“You in much pain?” said Jimmy.
“Nah, they doped me up something crazy!” replied Tom. I noticed a set of bongos under a pile of clutter and pulled them out.
“Can you play these?” I asked Tom. He took them and tapped out an experimental rhythm.
“Is there anything I can’t do?” replied Tom.
“Get a girlfriend?”
Jimmy's face lit up. “Acoustic set?”
“Acoustic set.”
Here we were. I shifted my old acoustic guitar from one shoulder to the other, and checked to see if it was tuned properly.
"Ready?"
"Ready."
And we began to play.
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