WERRRLD CUP

England have actually managed to score a goal. It’s all the city needs in order to poison itself further than it needs to, and every street corner is being propped up by a bleary eyed disheveled football fan pissing on his own shoes.

A weak retaliation to World Cup events features the involvement of taping bin bags to windows like a teen goth blotting out the World, and projecting a movie onto a white sheet in the office until all the unpleasantness outside dies down.

Which is doesn’t. Obviously. It’s England, for fuck sake, and as thus everyone decided to skive off work early, get on the bevvies mid afternoon and watch some overpaid ignoramus’ boot a ball around a bit of grass in a bleak fit of faux-patriot flag waving.

We’re in a noodle bar. 10pm. A pissed up scouse couple bounds in addressing each other with slurs and the kind of volleying pent up insults which must develop months into a relationship with a person who thinks a noodle ‘is like spaghetti but with, like, chinese stuff on it’. Christ.

The waiter approaches them, he talks in broken English - as do they - but for very different reasons.

The only comprehensible part of the exchange is that they want two beers.

No beer. Ran out. Have tea. Water.

YER’VE RAN OUT OF BEER?

Yes. All gone. Sorry.

YER SERIOUS?

Yis.

ALRIGHT THEN. FUCKIN’ELL. WE’LL HAVE TWO...WHAT DID YOU SAY YOU HAD? FANTAS? WE’LL HAVE THEM.

He brings over two generous glasses of tap water, and returns to the counter with a look of worry on his face.

Eh love, what the fucksthis?

FANTA. ALL THEY HAD.

Why’s it see through, like?

MAYBE ITS ‘OW THEY MAKE IT OVER THERE.

Over where?

YOU KNOW. CHINA LIKE...

The waiter is passed a tray from the kitchen. I busy myself with a mountain of noodles, pretending to have some control over chop sticks, but two pints in and I’m inexplicably bloody drunk. There’s soy sauce everywhere. I want to turn around to watch, but fear getting a glass of ‘china-fanta’ thrown over me head.

I hear him put the tray down.

WHATS THIS LOVE?

Starter. Sea-weed.

OH RIGHT. YER. TAAA....

They dig into it with cluttering, clattering, cutlery which sounds like it’s being used by a donkey wearing boxing gloves.

The waiter hasn’t even got back to the counter when...

WHAT THE FUCKS THIS? EH! WAITERRR!

His shoulders drop and he returns to the table. The noodle bar is silent.

THIS SPINACH IS DEAAD SALTY, LAD.

Seaweed. Dish are seaweed, not spinach.

YER WHA?? SEA WHAT? IT’S FUCKING SALTY.

It normal. Seaweed salty.

IT’S FUCKING DISGUSTIN’ MATE. TAKE IT AWAY, THAT IS FUCKIN - UUURGGH - VILE, THAT.

He returns it to the counter. There’s a hubbub about in the kitchen. Someone is shouting.

Back at the table, the couple are fighting again.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOUR FUCKIN FACE?

My face? What’s wrong with your fuckin face? Pyaar sour mug on you, gerrl.

FUCK OFF. IM TEXTING SOMEONE.

Who? Who yer fucking texting at this hour?

NONE OF YER BUSINESS, IS IT? GET YER GRID OUT OF ME FUCKIN FACE.

Shut the fuck up. Yer doing me head in tonight.

I’M DOIN YOUR FUCKIN HEAD IN? YOU’RE THE ONE THAT PISSED ON YOUR FUCKING SHOES EARLIER, YER GOBSHITE.

The waiter returns, sheepishly.

You leave now, sorry.

YER WHA?

You leave. No charge. Just go, please.

YOU ARE NOT FUCKIN KICKING US OUT!?

Please, no swear. Go now.

He opens the door. The girl stumbles up, sways for a while, swallows a small bit of vomit by the looks of it and looks at her boyfriend who’s attempting to tie his laces for the journey outside.

FUCK OFF. WHATS A FUCKIN NOODLE ANYWAY? WOULDN’T WANT TO EAT ‘ERE. CMON BABES, LET’S FUCKIN GO.

She slides out of the place in a diagonal motion - her head closer to the floor than her fucking shoulders.

Her boyfriend finally staggers up. He shakes the waiters hand and pats him on the back.

Alright lerd, alright. Going now.

A fork falls out of his pocket.

Shit.

Him and the waiter stare it at for a good five seconds, then stare at each other, and then back to the fork, all in complete silence. The man surveys the rest of the gawping customers in the restaurant and then stares back at the fork. He picks it up and puts it back in his pocket as though no-one can see him.

I’ll just take me fork, and leave, lad.

The door slams after him like a forced applause following a bad joke.

The waiter does a small victory dance behind the counter and smiles at everyone.

Fuck England.

Friday Night On The 82 Bus Home

Piss-ant stumbles aboard. Can smell his cider potency from the middle row of seats I've stumbled myself on.

The man in front of me keeps sneezing and wiping his germs on the back of the seat in front of him. I keep my hands to myself. I levitate off the seat, just in case I catch anything. I'll levitate the fuck off the bus later, too, just to be fucking sure. The 82 is riddled like an auld rat.

Piss-ant sits in the disabled seat, facing the rest of the bus, like a burnt out performer taking to the stage and re-living his glory years of packed out dive bars and high fives and cheers.

EH, DRIVEERRR! CAN YER GIVE US A SHOUT WHEN WE'RE NEAR THE 24 HOUR OFFY, LAD?

The driver slows down the bus. What was that lad? 24 hour? Yer mean on Park Road, yeah?

YEEAAH, SOMEWHERE.

He scans the faces in front of him, realising everyone's clocked him in his scruffiest hour. His binge peak.

'OOO WANTS A DRINK? COME'EAD.

He pulls out a Tesco bag with a bottle of wine inside and takes a big gulp.

The germ fest in front of me, shakes his head in dismay, and pissed out of his skull himself slurs: Aaah, lad, put it away lad. Don't be doing that to yourself. Don't be...err...put it away.

He punctuates with belches. The piss-ant gawps at him and spits some wine out all over himself like a try hard punk arriving in London twenty years too fucking late. Get off the fucking stage, lad.

PUT IT AWAY?? NARR LAD. DYER WANT SOME YERSELF, DO YER? he starts punching his own head WELL THEN CRACK ME OPEN. IT'S ALL LIQUID IN 'ERE. he continues bashing his head in AAAALLL LIQUID!! He screams, laughing.

A woman with a Marks&Spencer bag at the front of the bus gets up and moves to sit at the very back. Must think she's the fucking queen.

The piss-ant curls up into the corner of his seat and starts singing to himself. His words stagger listless points of thought which sound like they're rumbling round his liquidated brain like a pinball with no-one pushing the flipper.

THERE MIGHT BE A KEBAB SHOP OPEN. YER. KEBAB. BIT GREASY THOUGH. BOSS THOUGH. FIVER THAT. CHICKEN KEBAB! YIIIRRRSE. GET A CHICKEN KEBAB. he laughs to himself CH-CH-CH-CHICKEN, CHICKEN-LICKEN. LITTLE CHICKEEEE. IN ME BELLIEEE.

Germ fest in front of me staggers up for his stop. He shakes the hand of Piss-ant as he's leaving.

Y'alright lad. You take it easy, yerr? Have a safe one.

YOU TOO LAD. YOU TOO.

He get's off the bus and cracks open a can of Super Tenants. Fuckin hell, everyones on it. This is how the World ends. Friday night on the fucking 82 bus.

Eee'yarr lad. The offy's coming up.

MEGGAAA! TA DRIVER.

Piss-ant quivers up from his seat - a walking turd - and stands by the door. He spots the offy - it's nearly midnight and it's got a bigger queue than was spotted on the same street not too long ago for voting.

THERE IT IS! OFFY!!

The bus drives a little while further to get to the bus stop, piss-ant panics.

WHERE YER FUCKIN GOIN, LAD? LET ME OUT!! YER GOIN MIIIILLES OFF! FUCKSAKES.

The driver stops and piss-ant jumps off and starts running like a kid spotting an ice cream van after school.

The bus is silent and still, and all I can smell is the booze on my own breath.

Ladykiller

I'm a murderer. Proper bad one, me. Destroyed a whole family once. Didn't even have to try - I did it in one quick, sharp, move, so skilled and secretive and laissez faire that not a single person in that packed out cafe managed to witness it.

Fuck knows how old I was, but it was the Summer right before puberty hit. Right before I ballooned up like the prize heifer at a pig farm, right before hormones restricted all the oxygen to my brain and made me stupid enough to think particular boys had any interest in me, right before heartbreak, right before responsibility, right before Nickelodeon and MTV started their downward descent to shitsville, right before the awful, stinking, bleeding and the once budding, then blossomed tits which outcasted me from all my male friends.

Puberty, I'd worked out, was a vile, horrific penance for a vile, horrific act I'd recently committed.

We were in Blackpool on holiday - the working class' Paris, tower and all - and sat in a greasy spoon by the beach. That Summer what could only be described as a plague of Ladybirds had swamped the town like an outbreak of acne over every building, window, grain of sand, paving stone, fairground ride and tram. They were everywhere.

At any one time you would find at least four of the insects crawling about on your tee.

We'd just eaten and I was sipping on a coke, my brother playing on a Game Boy beside me, my parents opposite, when I leaned myself on the windowsill behind me and felt a damp, minor crunch beneath my elbow.

I froze. I tried to imagine every vile, frightening scenario as to what the squidgy crunch could have been - a shrunken head, a mouth full of teeth left abandoned on the side with gums like off fruit, a tiny egg of a miniature being, a bubble full of blood and the contorted legs of daddy long legs, and then I turned around and saw it. THE MASSACRE.

There, bleeding out on the windowsill like a smashed grape, was the ladybird I'd just savagely destroyed. It was practically broken in half - it's innards pooling about it, sticky like a candy gone bad in the sun.

I felt pretty shitty about that, in itself.

I grabbed a napkin, and stared at my parents - they hadn't witnessed the tragedy - I checked the rest of the cafe - they hadn't witnessed it either, I was safe.

I wiped the death from my elbow.

I sat shifting about uncomfortably. I waited for my parents to suddenly become aware of the situation, to get manic, angry, sickened.

YOU KILLED SOMETHING!! They'd say - YOU KILLED A LIVING THING!! WE DON'T WANT YOU ANYMORE. Stay here in Blackpool when we leave. You're no daughter of ours.

But they hadn't noticed.

Thing was, I'd killed loads of ants and spiders in my time, but this was different. Ladybirds weren't evil. Killing one was like taking a hammer to the sun.

I turned back around, and noticed at the other end of the windowsill which stretched out past about five other tables, two other ladybirds approaching, practically holding hands.

One was tiny - a baby, the other was around the same size as the one I'd just killed, and it was obvious to my child brain that it was the mother. They quickened pace when they saw the murder scene behind me.

The mother approached the corpse whilst the baby, obviously in a large amount of trauma stared frozen at who was probably the ladybird baby's papa.

The mother was crawling all over the corpse, frantically. Then the baby joined and both of them looked as though they were screaming, standing on their hind legs and thrashing about.

I wanted to apologise. I wanted to scream, IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!!, but they wouldn't have cared. No-one cares that anything's an accident, you only care that something bad has happened and it can't be undone.

Then they picked up what was left of the corpse and carried it away with them. I shit you not. They left a couple of legs behind, and part of what I guess was a piece of ladybird skull.

I stared at my parents. They smiled at me. I imagined what would happen if something bigger than us just clumsily whammed it's elbow down on my father in the same way. He'd be gone. And we'd need to carry his body out. As much of it as we could find anyway. And then I wouldn't have a dad.

I started to panic. The World seemed so unsafe, suddenly. Anything was possible.

I burst into tears, my parents came over to comfort me, console me, they couldn't get any explanation out of me apart from deep, sorrowful gasps which resembled vowels and sharp letters.

We went to the Pleasure Beach fairground that same day and went on the ride with the swings that fly out in a circle. We got engulfed by ladybirds - hundreds of them, everywhere. They got in our ears, up our noses, down our t-shirts, they got caught in our hair, and eyelashes.

They knew who I was, I thought, and they were getting their revenge.

Life Lesson 2: Everything is a dirty stinking lie.

Suffice to say, I've always been under the impression that a period is a happy, high fiving, gory salute to the fact that there is categorically, under no possible circumstances a baby inside you.

A total lack of fanny-weepage, on the other hand, was a threatening commiserating signal that slut karma had decided it's big pay off moment was this, and took the opportunity to knock you the fuck up.

Turns out that all of this is one big, awful, stinking lie. All of it.

I heard a horror story about a year ago from a close friend of mine who described how her boyfriend had become extra paranoid about sex.

He'd just returned from visiting friends - two of which, a couple - we're now suddenly in possession of a little newborn baby.

He didn't even know she was pregnant, he said. But as it turned out, neither did they.

For nine months she got her period. For nine months she showed no other symptoms of breeding - no stomach, no weight gain, no mad cravings, no morning sickness. Nada, nothing, zilch.

She just woke up one morning, felt ill, experienced the worst stomach pain of her life, and popped out a kid. Just like that.

Horror. Horror. Horror. Horror. Horror.

A close pal of mine, Pearl, has somehow managed to recently become a doctor.

We got totally fucked up the other night and I told him about this story - he's a doctor of vaginas, or whatever you call it - and asked him if any of it was at all plausible. I begged him to tell me it was all bullshit. An urban myth. He shook his head.

Happens more often than you think. All of it's plausible.

ALL OF IT???!

All of it. You could be pregnant right now.

I gasped. Threw a hand over my mouth. I felt vomit lurch up through my throat.

Why would you say such a thing...??

Sorry.

It is true though. Had a woman in just the other month. She was athletic - had a stomach like Jet from Gladiators.

Oh, I loved Jet.

Oh my God, I know, right? Killer. Anyway - she comes in complaining of extreme stomach pains. We all shit ourselves thinking it's appendicitis - this bitch is going to die, right? WRONG. I get a finger up there...

He gestures his two finger vag-wiggle technique at me, making a face like he's trawling through sewage.

...and that's when I feel the baby's head.

NOOO....

Oh yeah - she gives birth to a baby girl. Nine months of bleeding - worthless.

Shit.

I feel swathes of paranoia wash over me. I, like most women, get paranoid about pregnancy whether or not I've even had sex that month - and now this?? Fuck.

The next day I browse the pregnancy tests in Boots. They all cost over £8, which is nearly a quarter of my weekly budget. I decide I'm going to shoplift one. Maybe two - just to make sure.

But then I notice that all of them are security tagged up to high fucking hell. I try Superdrug - the same. I try St Johns market - SHOCKINGLY the same, even though security tags probably cost more than the walls in that place.

I've no solution to this, other than to live in abject fear for the rest of my still fertile life. Thanks a bunch, womb.

The Hangover

Three day binge. Inexplicable unplanned binges, cross-firing into each other.

It’s morning now, somewhere in deep, silent vaults pertained in my skull is a bunch of brain cells licking each other back awake, and cursing my fucking name. They’re all mush now. Hollow. They’re skins without substance.

Coffee, I think, coffee will fix everything. Come on fellas, stop punishing me.

Sitting then in a greasy spoon, staring directly through the steamy vapors cradling my limp, greying face and into the black cavern of optimism, of comfort, of muddy caffeine.

Somewhere near the counter a woman can be heard abusing the waitress for not putting any cream on her mocha.

We don’t have cream, the waitress tells her.

The woman turns on her heels, swears, and then turns back as though nothing has happened.

She asks for a white coffee instead, Can you manage that? She spits at the poor, scrawny underpaid cow behind the counter.

She walks past my table. I cower.

It’s 11am and she’s wearing stack heels so large they resemble murder weapons for the feet. Her hair is bright purple and short. She’s also wearing a cut off denim jacket which she probably bought ready-cut and grungey looking. She probably paid a lot of money to look so fucking awful.

I suddenly catch a whiff of myself - three day hedonism. A stench potent with shameful things, burnt things, mysterious things, unclean things, chemical things, lusty things, sleepless things. I can’t judge anyone.

I sip at my coffee and watch a pigeon trying to eat a bee on the pavement outside.

The purple woman returns to the counter.

Wheres me coffee, love?

It coming. Being made now - two minute, sorry promise.

Oh is it now? Bloody ordered that before anyone else in ‘ere.

She starts pointing around the place - Before him, before her, before this one ‘ere - she throws a finger at me. I have a minor stroke and feel a flush of sweat engulf me.

It coming miss. Two minutes.

I NEED it now, girl. Do understand that? I fucking need it, NOW. I’m not leaving this counter until you fucking pass it to me.

Fine. You wait.

The scrawny foreign waitress escapes to the back and rants something in an indecipherable fast paced language. She brings out two full English breakfasts and walks past the silly cow stood at the counter.

Eh, love. Are they our breakfasts? She storms over to the table the waitress has just slammed the plates down on. Make sure you bring that fucking coffee over, she says sternly shoving her face so close to the waitress’ that their noses nuzzle for a second.

The coffee comes over.

The purple things friend is kicking off now. She’s from Yorkshire and her voice sounds thick with the experience of a woman who’s probably broken more than her share of teeth, jaws and noses in her time.

She’s wearing a maxi-dress which she probably bought from the market, but will proclaim it’s designer to anyone who dares fucking ask.

The Yorkshire one is unsatisfied with her breakfast. Fuck knows what she was expecting, but apparently the beans are touching too much sausage, the sausages ‘look funny’, the bacon looks too fatty and it has a fried egg rather than two poached eggs as requested.

She walks up to the counter. She’s also wearing big heels but in the disguise of a gigantic wedge which bellows her arse out like a prize ass (the animal, not the body part).

The service ‘ere, love, let me tell yer - she puts her hand on her hip - the service ‘ere is fucking disgusting. Yer food is bloody disgusting. And you are a poor, poor, excuse for a bloody wage, aren’t yer? Listen love, tell yer chef behind there, yeah, to fucking just throw an egg on - a decent bloody egg - he can even scramble it if his fookin GNVQ cookery class hasn’t covered poachin’ yet.

Two minutes, she scowls, any longer than that and you’re gonna have a bloody problem.

She marches back to her purple state of a mate, and the two of them discuss how incredibly, soul destroying and offensive the greasy spoon they chose to eat in has turned out to be. They change the subject to talking about Sex And The City and how it taught them ‘a lot about love an’thaaa’ when they were young girls.

My coffee’s running low. I watch them out of the corner of my eye stuffing sausage, bacon and toast into their mouths in massive mouthfuls and hope to God one of them gets it lodged in their throat - if just for a minute.

I contemplate gagging them with my own putrid, stinking socks but think better of it. It would mean having to walk home with my feet rubbing inside my shoes, and today will be hard enough as it is.

Their eggs haven’t turned up. They’re furious.

My phone keeps going. Text messages pile up and crash together the way traffic jams do when a rogue car slams into the back of it. Apologies. Pleas. Begging. Seduction attempts. invitations to suspicious parties. Frightening anecdotes. I feel bile rise. Flashbacks hit me.

The purple thing and her donkey mate throw their napkins onto their half full plates. They take a sip of their coffee each and both look at each other with dramatic disdain. They charge once more at the counter and with juvenile, disturbing synchronization hurl a shit storm of abuse back at the waitress.

They grab their faux-designer bags and totter out the place. I think I remember an episode of Sex And The City when Carrie Bradshaw did the exact same when leaving a greasy spoon, but then realise it was actual an episode of Street Crime Uk involving a jewish trannie called Minnie who wasn’t served kosher meat.

Fuck.

The waitress starts sobbing.

I grab a few napkins out of the table dispenser and run to her aid, dabbing her face and apologizing on behalf of half-cut, badly dressed northern women every where.

They’re so rude, I say, grinning shit at her.

And then just as planned she smiles at me, says her thanks, and makes me a free coffee.

She squirts cream on the top of it.

We had it the whole time, she says, I just didn’t want to give it to them whores.

Life Lesson 1: Everything Is Shit

Some way or another, it all begins at around 9 years old. It only takes a minor incident, a slight slip of innocence, an adjustment of the current World order as you’d previously known it, for you to realise how utterly shit everything actually is.

For me it was Brownies. For the most part - or the first year at least - Brownies was great guns. The once weekly meeting ground was an opportunity to do little else than play games, eat your body weight in free biscuits and sew badges onto a sash for everyday heroic ‘achievements’ like waving at the crazy auld woman who lives down the road from you, or sharing your lunch with the poor kid in your class who stinks like she’s slept in her own piss and turns up to school everyday with stale cornflakes stuck in her hair.

HEROIC.

We were a pretty tight little unit for a while there. There was about 30 of us in the group and being pre-pubescent weren’t yet the utterly pyschotic bitches we’d turn into in just a few years time. No-one fought. No-one picked on nobody. Everyone hung out, high fived, ate their body weight in biscuits.

There was a set roster of games. The best one was Lions And Tigers in which all the girls formed two parallel rows and sat facing each other with their feet together - each pair of girls had their own animal name and during the course of a convincingly improvised story would have to leap over the legs of the other brownie scouts in a race to see who could run around the rows first and sit back down.

It was brutal. There was always someone who would ‘accidentally’ stick their leg up at you mid-sprint. There was always a girl sobbing by the end of it with a skinned knee. Nearly always a mysterious stain of blood on the floor from where someone lost a tooth or got a nose bleed.

We learnt a lot about the brutality of the jungle from that game.

It eventually got banned.

In it’s place a new game was created. The rules of which are still hazy and tortuous to me, even now.

They involved sitting in a circle. Brown Owl - a sweet middle aged lady who was in charge of the whole team - wore a cape, and using a long stick would tap and draw imaginary symbols and shapes on the floor in front of her, walk around the perimeter of the circle tapping certain girls heads repeatedly before spanking her own hands.

This went on for a good couple of weeks before a single person even got an inkling of what the hell the game was about, and then out of nowhere my then best friend Evans yelped out STRAWBERRY! You’re spelling out STRAWBERRY!!

Everyone turned and gawped at her. The moment hung still and astonished.

Then everyone turned back to brown owl and gawped at her instead.

She was untying her cape. She motioned to my best friend to join her outside the church hall for a second and when they returned, Evans was now wearing the cape. She was now holding the stick. She became the most powerful person in the whole universe at that moment.

She sat down. She drew circles and tapped the floor in front of her. She walked around the perimeter of the circle and tapped certain girls on the head. She spanked her own palms.

No-one knew what the hell she was doing. No-one guessed for another fortnight.

Then thick as pig shit Claire Maloney bellowed CAT!! YOU’RE SPELLING OUT CAT! I GET IT!!

Then Brown Owl, Evans and thick as pig shit Claire Maloney all stood outside the church hall, and when they returned thick as pig shit Claire Maloney was wearing the cape, and holding the stick, and grinning smug as an idiot who’s just recited the two times table up to ten.

She sat her dumb arse down. Drew circles and tapped the floor in front of her. She walked around the perimeter of the circle and tapped certain girls on the head. She spanked her own palms.

Afterwards, with our free disposable cup of orange squash and pockets full of hob knobs, I broached the subject with Evans.

Tell me how it’s done, Evans.

No. I promised Brown Owl I wouldn’t tell anyone.

Please! Come on, I’m your best friend. I won’t tell anyone.

It’s not about that.

What’s it about?

Loyalty.

Lo-what?

Loyalty. Brown Owl says I’ll get a badge for loyalty if I don’t tell anyone.

You can have my badge, if you like.

You have a badge for loyalty?

No. I’ve got one for sharing my lunch with stinky, cornflake hair Cate though.

That’s not the same.

Oh. What about if I give you my share of biscuits.

No! I’m not sharing. I FIGURED OUT HOW TO PLAY THE GAME, SO SHOULD YOU! ITS EASY!

By then she’d reached her house, had started to cry, and slammed the door at me.

I took the next week off Brownies. Evans was giving me the silent treatment and the thought of spending one more week being too stupid to figure out a stupid game made me want to slap myself in the face whilst simultaneously vomiting. I was a brutal kid.

When I’d returned the next week, half the group was in on it. Apparently the week before a tonne of the girls had somehow figured out the shady inner workings of the game. They’d all donned the cape. They’d all shook the stick.

There was 12 of us left now. The nightmarish suggestion that we might be singled out by our stupidity, abandoned by it, rejected for it - the suggestion that one of us may never figure this out, may never be part of THEM - hung devilishly over our heads.

This was the first threat of failure. This is what they teach you in Brownies.

The group, becoming segregated in the two packs of those who had guessed the method of the game and those that hadn’t, became more and more blatant. Those that hadn’t spent their time nervously sweating and watching, with longing, the girls whose brains had not decided to abandon them. Those that had, high fived and patted backs. Wecome To The Club!

Brown Owl stood with that group. She didn’t stand with ours.

One by one our group grew smaller and smaller. I begged Evans with growing desperation to tell me what the rules were, what it all meant. I bartered with biscuits, chocolates, clothes, cd’s, tapes, toys. I grabbed onto her jacket as she walked away. I sobbed.

People don’t need all your material shit. They don’t need to be begged. The more you beg and plead, the more you prove that you need something from them. To have something that people need and can’t have is the most valuable thing in the whole fucking World. What an age to learn it.

I asked one of the most recent joiners of the other group to share her secret with me.

There was a pact! I screeched, distressed, We all made a pact to remember the group you’d left! To tell us how to play the game. PLEASE TELL US!

No.

No?

No.

Why?

Promised Brown O--

I don’t care if you promised her.

That’s not very nice.

I know. Well - tell me how you worked it out.

I didn’t.

You didn’t?

No. Brown Owl told me.

BROWN OWL TOLD YOU?!!

Yeah.

Thanks.

It was all so clear to me now. Brown Owl. This was all a mass conspiracy! This was all a way to torture and bully! It was all so elaborate! The whole game was probably fake!

EUREKA! That’s it! The game isn’t real!

Evans was tapping out something onto the floor.

CLOUDS!! I shrieked YOU’RE SPELLING OUT CLOUDS!!

There were only three of us left now who hadn’t worn the cape or tapped the stick. It was time to break out.

The other group looked at other. Thick as pig shit Claire Maloney started laughing.

Brown Owl shook her head.

I’m afraid it isn’t. Everyone - what word are we spelling out?

CHOCOLATE - everyone chanted, smugly.

Why? Why is it?! How?

That’s something you need to work out.

Me? It’s impossible. This is a stupid game. Stupid.

I stood up and walked to sit over on the stage at the front of the church hall. I heard some of the girls laugh at me. They wanted me to cry, but I would not cry.

Oh well, why don’t we carry on playing anyway, shall we girls?

The girls all cheered. I could hear the stick tapping. I could feel them watching me.

Another one of the final girls shouted out FLOWER?! She got it correct. Then there was only me and another girl left.

My cheekbones hurt. My eyes felt strained. My head hurt.

SUNSHINE? said the final girl. Everyone applauded. I was alone.

Can you tell me how to play the game, now? I asked. Defeated. Done.

They ignored me.

Everyone got biscuits. Disposable cups full of squash.

The next week Lions And Tigers got put back on the playtime roster and I totally killed on the nose bleed and skinned knee front.