THE IMAGES

TUESDAY DECEMBER 7TH 1976
DANBRAY - GLENLEVEN PARK : AFTERNOON
Tuesday afternoon was as pleasant as could be expected for an average winter day in Danbray. The sun was only shining mildly but it served to keep the chill out of Sto's bones as he wandered aimlessly around the tennis court perimeter. Off in the distance, through the wire fence, he could see Bill approaching along the road leading to the car park in front of the café, the stagger and sway were unmistakable. Sto leaned against the wall of the small cafeteria-cum-changing room building which remained open despite being mid winter - it seemed some people even played tennis or putting during the cold season. With a quick look round, Sto peered through his blue tinted glasses to ascertain if there was anyone else coming as Bill, resplendent in dark blue parallels, blue crew neck jumper and long black Crombie coat walked up.
"Hi, Sto, what's new then?" he asked with a silly grin plastered to his face.
"Oh, nothing much, Glenn Miller's still missing, Russia's got the bomb. Man landed on the moon… you know, same old-same as, the usual."
“Oooh, very witty, Richard, you should be on the stage - sweeping it! Pity you weren’t as smart when it comes to passing exams, eh? If clever answers were little heat cells then you’d be red hot… so you could warm your miserable self up! Jesus, it's bloody cold."
"I know, my arthritis is killing me." the other laughed as he rubbed at his leg with some discomfort, although not even nineteen he was indeed slightly arthritic, the legacy of childhood polio. The pair drifted aimlessly about at the entrance to the café where they usually met up before a Park jaunt.
The door of the cafe slammed shut noisily.
"You're a pair of weaklings, a good spell in the army's what you need - make men out of you… if you were lucky!" Mhic taunted as he bit deeply into the thick cheese roll he had bought inside.
As usual his pale green baggies and grey polo neck made him appear like an extra from some ITC production, the dark, two vent blazer topping off his sartorial style. He smiled smugly to the others, having spent the last fifteen minutes sitting inside, talking to a young waitress with an overdeveloped bust and underdeveloped personality - but with a suitably flirtatious nature.
"I'd have come out sooner, only I thought I'd get frostbite hanging about out here." Mhic smiled as he cockily walked over to stand next to Bill.
"You know, Sto, I never really liked Palmer too much," Bill said wearily, "he's just so fragile he should be wrapped up in cotton wool until summer. If something hit him he’d probably just crack up, turn to dust and blow away!"
Bill unexpectedly nudged Mhic hard enough to send the large cheese roll flying to the ground with a little bounce.
"You big prick, Rosser!” Mhic shouted with lines of irritation creasing his face.
Sto sniggered at Mhic's reaction then jumped with both feet onto the roll and smashed it into an unidentifiable pulp of dough and cheese, his amorphous baggy clothing moving in a slow motion shift that was a second or so behind the jumping frame they covered. When he stopped jumping up and down he beamed across in triumph. "That's so you don't do anything unhygienic like picking it up off the ground and eating dirty food."
Dave slowly wandered up from the other direction, watching them, smiling.
"I see the weather's cleared up a bit then!" the tall dark haired youth said.
Ignoring him completely, Mhic simply lamented his decimated roll.
"What about my roll? Look at it! I've had nothing to eat all day – all bloody day!"
"I can imagine." muttered Sto with a sarcastic confidence.
“Nothing. No food at all. That was my one chunk of solid grub to keep me going until dinner. Look at it – it’s ruined. You’re a pair of morons! That roll looks like it was tossed out a plane… a very high plane. Seagull swag – that’s all it is now, just seagull swag! That was my roll. It should look like that in my stomach – which it won’t be doing now… thanks to you two!” Mhic continued complaining as Macklin stood shaking his head in despair.
"Oh, God almighty! I'll buy you another one if it'll shut your whinging face up." Bill moaned and dug into his pockets to get some change out.
"No, it's okay, I only wanted to see if you would volunteer to buy me one." Mhic smirked with one of his 'how-about-that' grins. “It was crap anyway!”
The other three shared a sad glance between themselves then looked at the smirking figure as though he was a walking form of the ‘clap’.
“Glad I didn’t get here any earlier!” Dave confided.
“I wish I wasn’t here right now!” Bill muttered shaking his head at Palmer.
“I enjoyed smashing that roll up!” Sto giggled, ignoring everyone else.
“He’s bloody well late as usual! He’ll be late for his own funeral, I’ll bet you. Harris is never on time for anything!” Mhic stated with some irritation.
“Yeah… Well, he’s lucky then, isn’t he? Dave suggested sticking his hands into the old RAF coat. “At least he missed that pathetic ‘roll’ scene you three pulled.”
“Hey!” Bill said, followed by a nudge into Macklin. “These are the moments you’ll want to remember one day… ‘Memories are made of this’! Or is that just Bob Hope?”
“That’s ‘Thanks for the memory’, areshole!” Mhic corrected.
“Thanks for the mammary – in Rosser’s case!” Sto laughed, giving him the finger.
“I’d sooner have a mammary here and now than a memory, if that’s what you’re asking. Any of you fag-boys who don’t agree are just totally… “ Bill drifted off as he searched for a new gay insult term.
“Faggy?” Dave offered with a sigh.
Rosser gave a twistedly sarcastic grin as the others laughed at his unspoken and predictable insult.
“Why are we here?” Mhic asked.
“Everyone has to be…” Sto began
“Somewhere!” Bill and Dave replied in stereo.
“Tee, fucking, hee! You pair are like ‘The Two Ronnies’ - shite!’ Sto grunted, masking his disappointment at having his witty response clipped.
“Very good! Why, as I just asked, are we here… today, in the Park – What for?” Mhic repeated.
“Because it’s Tuesday?” Bill replied helpfully.
“What? What does that mean – how does that reply to what I just asked?”
“Seems clear to me. It’s your day off… Those two aren’t at Organic Chemistry or something. I’m ill and Harris is… “
Bill never had time to finish whatever grand explanation he had worked out as the empty Coke can bounced off his back and landed at Dave's feet. The perpetrator disappeared quickly behind the cafe with a scream of contempt. As one, they rushed after the potential assassin, the passion of the hunt suddenly rising within them. The figure stood alone in a corner in the midst of humorous death throes.
Sto shook his head in pity. "Oh my Gawd… Harris – the Joker lives! It would be. Late and being stupid – what a surprise!"
Bill's scowl spread to irritation. "I thought it was one of the ‘Neds’ from school, asking to be hurt… but it's just you. I really thought it was a bit of ultra violent action. Aaah, fuckit, let's just kill him instead. Will we burn Harris?"
They looked at the giggling figure in black jeans, black cap sleeve T-shirt and red windcheater.
Dave shook his head at Bill. “Let’s not and say we did!”
“And anyway, it’s ‘Burn Paris’, you gobble!” Sto corrected Rosser.
Harris waved a finger at Bill, an idiotic grin still on his face, making the other roll his eyes upward and nod as if it would be like attacking a cripple.
“Right, Doctor Psycho, let’s head!” Rosser said to the red jacketed figure who was still waving his finger as he came forward.
“You make such a great target, Billy-boy! That’s why the Chimers can’t resist you – unlike your women!” Harris laughed.
Bill sighed as the others suppressed their laughter. “At least I’d be making an effort to nail ‘Blondie’ and give her the chance to resist – which is more that you can say.”
“Are we back to this shit? Ask her out, Bill, it’s no skin off my nose!” Harris suggested as the group began walking along the wide footpath leading to the river.
Rosser looked at his friend suspiciously. “You wouldn’t care if I was doing Christene?”
“Bother?” Harris replied with a wide grin. “I’d just be impressed, that’s all. Because the chances of Christene having a brain tumour huge enough that it’d induce her to plumb the depths of letting you get your sweaty mitts on her sweet little frame range from somewhere between zero and no fucking hope, you tragically optimistic spasmo! The girl would do a line up for the Chimes before she’d let you get near her.”
The others laughed in agreement.
“Well, it’s true.” Mhic laughed. “Everyone who knows us has a fairly clear notion of what your idea of romance is, Bill.”
“Meaning?” Rosser asked indignantly.
“Billiam – I’d stick my head in a fire to save you… but if I was a woman, I’d go lesbo before I’d drop them for you!” Macklin said trying to suppress his laughter.
Harris gently nudged Bill. “The problem is that your idea of romance is taking your girlfriend half a dozen bottles of Newcastle Brown and a big box of black sheaths wrapped in a red bow. I’ve tried to explain all this to you before… girls are different from boys – you can’t get a babe to drop her pants with that kind of ploy the way you can with your boyfriend!”
The rest of them laughed and then continued with more gusto as Bill’s face reflected his irritation.
“At least I look like a guy, Harris. You’d get away with wearing Blondie’s knickers because you look so fucking girly!”
Harris laughed and nodded. “Probably, only thing is… I’d have to wear them backwards coz of my package – once again, that’s a problem you don’t have, half pint!”
The rest turned away from Bill’s face as he clearly became angrier, the laughter burning his ears.
“Shite! At least mine measures in inches not centimetres.”
“I’m pleased, at least now it’s inches – plural… so clearly you haven’t stopped growing where it counts! And measuring in centimetres is fine by me… so long as it’s somewhere round twenty or so rather than your five, Sport! Centimetres that is – not inches!”
Sto managed to stop laughing at Bill long enough to add to the conversation. “Hey, both of you – don’t either of you macho Pratts know it’s not the size but the quality that counts… and what you do with it!”
“You read that in Cosmo, didn’t you?” Dave asked with a wide grin.
“No!” Sto lied looking round the faces who clearly disbelieved him. “Fine, maybe so, but it doesn’t change the fact of the matter – it’s what you do with it that counts. And it was Clare’s Cosmopolitan – not mine!”
The rest were smirking and not laughing at Storey’s very valid point.
Bill waved his pinky toward Sto without saying a word.
“Fuck off, no dick Rosser!” Sto shouted.
Harris was giggling helplessly at them. “You know, Sto’s right – ask any girl and they’ll all say the same thing… ‘Size doesn’t matter’! That’s what they’ll say, ‘Size doesn’t matter’. But what you’ll realise two weeks after she’s dumped you is that although size doesn’t matter when you read it in Cosmopolitan – it really does matter when you’re lying between the pretty-pretty’s thighs and she whispers delicately into your ear the four most soul destroying words in any girl’s vocabulary!”
The others looked to Harris as he waited for them, for any one of them, to ask the question.
Bill sighed and finally asked. “And those words would be… ?”
“She says… ‘Is it in yet?’ You must have heard that a million times before, Bill!”
The others laughed as Bill gave Harris the finger. “Funny, Harris, really funny – I’ve a good mind to ask Christene if she’d like to play bunk bed, horizontal press-ups and then watch your face as she walks about like John Wayne for the next two weeks!”
“No surprises there - the clap will fuck anyone up the same way! But Christene won’t be walking like that because of your monster meat package, Bill, I’m sure of that! Maybe from your lack of sexual hygiene that forces her to provide a holiday home for your crustacean friends but definitely not from your genital delivery system. And even if she was stupid enough to let you anywhere near her when she was naked, the only strange way she’d be walking is in the doubled up position for the next two weeks – from gut ripping laughter! Every time she felt even a little depressed, all she’d need to do was think of you or the Cosmopolitan article and she would be in mega-kinks. And one final message in case anyone hasn’t learned this yet – when a girl says ‘Size doesn’t matter’ or ‘No, that’s pretty normal’, what she’s actually saying is… ‘You have a small penis’! A message you will eventually get after she dumps your teeny tooled arse and she lands herself something that gives her the serious ‘vacuum’ effect that she’s been desperately looking for!”
Even Rosser laughed this time despite shaking his head in sadness. “You’re a dick, Harris!”
“I know, but at least I’m a sizeable dick… and I’d sooner be that than a…”
“Will you two stop talking about your dicks? It’s making me feel queasy!” Mhic groaned.
“Is that the same as jealous?” Rosser chuckled, watching Palmer’s discomfort.
Sto turned to him with a serious look on his face. “Did Michelle say those four words to you, Mhic? Is that what’s the matter?”
“Up yours, roll molester. Go and play with yourself!” Mhic replied in serious irritation.
“Will you two stop talking about being dicks?” Bill asked with a laugh.
Dave kicked a can ahead of him with a grin. “So, is this what we’re here for today? To hear about dicks? Big dicks and small dicks… because if I want to see a gigantic dick I could have stayed at home and spent some time with my father!”
The others all laughed, no matter how funny it was… this was the truest comment of the afternoon so far – and everyone had seen the proof for themselves at some time over the past few years.
Harris shook his head and held up his hands. “Well, I’m out – that’s one giant tool I cannot measure up to! How is Uncle Adolf, these days… still missing me and the shamed German nation?”
Dave nodded. “It’s a toss up which of us he hates the most!”
Harris looked over suspiciously and raised his eyebrows.
“Fine! He hates you more but he gets to spend more time with me… so it feels like he hates me more! Is that good enough?”
Harris nodded in agreement and was pacified by the acknowledgement.
Sto pulled out a packet of Belgian cigarettes. Mhic and Dave collapsed against each other in mock shock.
“Fuck, Sto, you didn’t actually buy some ciggies did you?” Mhic asked rhetorically.
Sto sighed and offered them one silently.
Dave grinned as he took one. “No, I can see you didn’t buy them – they’re Duty Frees. Who went to Belgium recently?”
“Fucking Clare!” Sto shouted in maximum irritation.
“We know that, Sto! Stop talking about the dick thing, eh? You’re making me sleazy!” Bill laughed.
“Clare was in Belgium, Sto?” Harris asked.
“Yes. Do you want one?”
Harris shook his head. “No… the only smoke I get is the taste of it off some cutie I’m necking after she stubs out. What was she doing in Belgium? There’s only one of two reasons to go there!”
“What reasons would they be, Jonn?” Bill asked with a distinctly professor-like tone of affectation, deliberately trying to keep the Storey torment up.
“Well, Bill, one reason is to buy Tin-Tin books!” Harris offered.
“And the other would be?”
“It’s the type of place characters like me go, so they can trawl the lower depths of depravity on the underground weirdo scene. Didn’t think little Clare was like that… well, actually I did, but I knew you didn’t know that - so I never tormented you with it before.”
Storey lit his cigarette and looked over at the grinning pair with some annoyance.
“You know, you two really suit each other. Neither of you are going out with anybody just now – are you? Ever thought of getting together?”
Bill and Jonn looked at one another and shrugged before they turned to Sto and nodded with a nice clear “Yes!”
Sto gritted his teeth. “Pricks!”
“So the Belgium thing is over then?” Dave laughed and his face reflected the lack of impression from the cigarettes made in Hercule Poirrot and Tin-Tin’s homeland.
“She’s not a fucking Kinker, right?” Sto stated in finality.
“Doesn’t mean that even if she is, it makes her a bad person, Sto!” Harris laughed.
“Get fucked, weirdo!” Sto shouted.
Rosser grimaced at the angry voice. “So, Clare – what’s she into? Rubber, torture, ropes?”
“Get fucked, arsehole!” Sto shouted.
“Bondage!” Harris suggested with a grin. “She struck me as a bit of a Bondage Queen, just had that scent about her – especially with the little ‘John Willie’ badge she was wearing at Janine Lewis’s party!”
Sto looked over suspiciously. “That’s just some band’s logo!”
Harris shook his head. “Not unless they’re big fans of ‘Gwendolyn’ or ‘Bizarre’, and if they are… then it’s a kink band. Hey, next time you’re talking to her find out the name of the band – might be my type of thing!”
“Get fucked, weirdo!” Sto shouted again.
“Well, I’m enjoying my Tuesday afternoon so far!” Dave laughed. “We’ve talked about dicks, what girls are really looking for in a man, my father… the dick who dwarfs all others, Storey not buying cigarettes, his girlfriend being kinkier than a monkey puzzle, Rosser and Harris being a homo couple and heard a lot of ‘get fucked, weirdo’! Glad I wasted my time coming along today – thanks everyone!”
“Well, at least they didn’t fuck up your lunch like they did to my roll – bloody well could do with that right now because I’m…” Mhic said but before he could finish the others all spoke at the same time.
“Starving!”
Mhic looked round the laughing faces as they reached the riverside. He just shook his head and thought about the lost roll.

Across the river was the town, the car park and the rear of the shops staring blankly over to the wilderness of the sprawling Park where trees, greenery and a controlled natural environment filled the jutting peninsula. The Glenleven Park was a pleasant looking but tacky domain. Superficially it may have appeared pleasing to the eye, peaceful and relaxing, but this was merely to subvert the Park's profound alter ego. The park was a ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ affair, by day it was where the town’s regulators had tried to make something the citizenship could enjoy and take pleasure in, back in the days when the workforce toiled for six days a week building ships and working in the claustrophobic, oppressive, industry related factories. It was a noble concept and undertaken for genuine reasons of social benevolence. but that was in the past, the dim and distant past. As times changed and progress marched on, this green belt slice of urban countryside had transformed and mutated from an oasis of freedom to a much darker creature – quite against its’ will and conceptual function.
Over time this bountiful and extensive mass of green acres had been the site of a quiet revolution that had progressively manifested in a schizoid identity through no fault of its own – it was an outcome that none of the Danbray elders could have anticipated. The huge area designed for freedom and a sense of non-industrialised countryside had gone from a place of beauty and pleasure to becoming so much darker when daylight faded away. At night, the park became a very different place in modern Danbray. Since its' extensive boundaries were not inaccessible to intruders, the park remained open at night and was a well known trouble spot to the local population.
The Danbray Herald, like many other papers, had extensively featured the recent brutal attack on two innocent tourists who had fallen victim to the deceptively innocent looking ‘Venus Fly Park Trap’. The update on page six indicated that the man was still comatose in intensive care and, if he somehow pulled through, would possibly never walk again whilst the girl had needed over two hundred and fifty stitches that would leave her hideously scarred for life. The fact that despite an intensive Police investigation and numerous interviews with local gang members and local villains, no arrests had yet been made was shocking. It was the kind of thing that reinforced the locals’ nocturnal horror of spending time in the part of Danbray where the law was too under-resourced to maintain control. This Park was a place the young couple would never, could never forget – and it was very doubtful they would ever consider it to be a beauty spot! Summertime tourists may have found it a pleasant place to stop and picnic, walk, play miniature golf or tennis… any of the normal holiday pleasures, but they were quite unaware of how they were passing through a region that had been the site of many an atrocity.
Over the past decade or so, it was where all the local gang battles took place – a neutral zone for violent interfaces between the warring factions whose sole difference tended to be their geographic location rather than anything else. The tall trees and thick bushes which, by day, held such 'Constable' like beauty, were, at night, serious potential hazards. Periodically there were rapes and sexual assaults but more often there were arrests for soliciting along the main avenue that led to the heart of the Park. The down and outs, the ‘Winos’ and even the homeless hung around the river and the bridges, the frequent victims of violent ‘Clockwork Orange’ types of youth aggression, while at other times they were the culprits and perpetrators of perverse or degrading crimes. The Glenleven Park wore its' scars well, caked thickly with environmental make-up.
In the summer the park was radiant and bustled with activity, its' sins forgotten or ignored. It lay conveniently near the main road through the town and since Danbray was situated so that the main road north ran almost right through it, tourists frequently spent an afternoon in the Park - oblivious to anything except the superficial. To look at the park in summer it was beautiful, everything was neat, flowers bloomed in abundance and the trees cast leisurely shadows to relax in, little putting greens and football parks attracted locals and tourists alike. In winter the coldness of the season personified what the park was like in the grim reality of darkness. It was dangerous.

The Glenbray River, which eventually opened onto the River Clyde, was peppered with boats of varying sizes and styles, owned predominantly by those who were weekend sailors. Unlike Hellenford, which had a lush Marina, Danbray merely had a tiny harbour for the boating community – on the safe side of the river. Most owners were happy enough to drop anchor near the access site of the Riverside Car Park or sometimes from the old Glenleven Moorings, where they could easily access their crafts from the numerous mini piers that were quite apparent from the Park side of the river.
The pale sun filtered down onto the water and glistened in fractured reflections off the hulls. The mass of boats floated up and down as the water lapped against them, causing an odd slurping noise that was tranquillising and yet disquieting at the same time. Two small boys in cheap denim clothes punted a makeshift raft out towards the boats in the middle of the flowing river, floating out from the green covered shore. Perhaps the two were going to steal something from the boats, or perhaps were merely trying to live out a childish fantasy. Either way, the raft didn't look as though it would get very far.
Bill stood on the flaking grey fence and called out to the boys. "Hoy, you two! It's not safe to go out there. Go home and play with your ‘Action Men’ or something."
The two boys looked round in amazement, faces contorted with scorn. The smaller of them shouted in a heavily accented tone. "Away to fuck, ya wank!"
Shaking his head, Bill turned from the river and faced the rest. "That's the younger generation for you. No respect whatsoever."
"Not like in our day, Bill? Kids today and all that?" Harris sneered, with a smirk on his face.
“That’s the last time I try to help some fucking unfortunates!” Bill replied in disgust before mounting the fence again. “Drown, you pair of turd fucking bastards!” he shouted enthusiastically, now devoid of any sense of social responsibility.
The others laughed as the kids gave him the finger, one of them almost falling in as he did so.
"Anyway, and more importantly…" Harris continued, looking round the faces standing by the fence.
"has anybody got any decent suggestions as to what we can get going over Christmas?"
Screwing his eyes up from the smoke of his own, non Belgian, cigarette, Dave grimaced. "Just the usual, there'll be a couple of parties, get loaded, go out to the pubs, flicks, y'know?"
"Great!" Storey spat with contempt. "That really makes me look forward to Christmas. It's the most boring time of the year. Hey, we could go on a winter holiday."
"Yeah, Costa Del Saltcoats or Sunny Bognor. Sure thing, Sto!" Bill chimed as Sto shuffled closer with his head hanging low in his typical, irritated stance.
The glasses reflected the sun in glinting highlights as Sto looked over at Bill with his 'cynical smile' as though to say ‘Screw off’.
Seeing the gesture Bill patiently replied. "Look we don’t have enough money to get a decent holiday where it’s sunny, so why daydream?"
"If you ain't got the green, you can't make the scene!" Harris laughed and gave a flick of his head.
Mhic nodded in agreement. "True enough."
There was a brief silence between them as they tried to come up with a valid suggestion.
"What about a dance!" Harris suggested.
“No thanks! I’ll stick with Pam for that kind of thing, Jonn.” Dave laughed as the other grinned and shook his head at the deliberate misinterpretation.
"What? Uhmm?" Storey asked.
"I said, a dance! It wasn’t an offer." Harris replied, leaning against the old fence with his hands in his pockets. "We'll organise another dance to get us a few bob. We got …what was it on the last one, eh?"
"Roughly £600 minus costs for the ‘pre summer do’ and the ‘back to school’ one in August gave us about two hundred and eighty-six pounds, twenty four and a half pee." Mhic informed them all. "And I'd still like to know where the other twenty five and a half went."
"Oh give up!" someone moaned.
“Somebody probably bought a couple of cheese rolls with it!” Bill laughed as he watched Mhic’s sickly grin when he once again thought about the roll he hadn’t eaten.
"Hey, stooges, wrap it up. Don’t get the ‘hunger-monster’ going again. Listen, we can probably get the CLM hall in Rose Street, Glasgow so that we can get more bodies and the other schools involved. It takes about three hundred, maybe even three hundred and fifty, at three quid or three fifty a pop… so that’s somewhere about a grand minus costs - Disco, PA, Hall, Bar, posters, tickets, promo… we could clear nearly six to seven fifty if we sell 30 tickets to each school on the network! Since the last Friday before Christmas is the twenty fourth we’ll have to do it on the twenty third, the Thursday night – don’t really see that being a problem for anyone! Got to be worth looking at?” Harris said in his convincing rat-a-tat, high speed chatter.
Sto nodded, “That could pay for a holiday or some holiday entertainment for us all, pubs, clubs and chicks! Yeah, I like it! Glad I thought of it.”
“I could definitely do with some spare cash for the festive season, that’s for sure.” Dave mourned.
Harris and Bill stood beside one another nodding before they spoke in near synchronous time.
“Think bigger!"
Harris continued solo. "We could invest in our future!”
“It won’t buy a house!” Mhic stated obviously.
“A hundred and fifty a piece would buy you a lot of rolls, though, Piggy!” Sto laughed.
Finally everyone looked to Harris and Rosser, clearly intrigued enough to await the explanation.
Bill chipped up with a grin, relishing the focussed attention of his friends. “Right, you know how I play with ‘The Sawbones’ every couple of weekends…”
Sto leapt up and down and cheered. “Yeah, cover songs from the pop charts for every occasion! Are you still doing ‘Tiger Feet’?”
“And what did you do last weekend, Sto?” Harris inquired sarcastically. “Took your little sisters to ‘Snow White’ was it? Exciting shit. Living right in the danger zone, Sport!”
Rosser resisted the sense of triumph he felt watching Story’s bravado crumble and merely continued what he was saying. “DJ heard through Ronnie that ‘Salvation’s management, or Slik as they are now, are flogging their entire PA and backline and they offered it to him at a serious discount for about five or maybe six hundred because they had got Frank a tasty new BMW… The boys know we’ve been playing a lot, well rehearsing a lot, over the past six months, so they asked if we were serious and if so that this was a great opportunity. So…”
Mhic was deliberately obtuse. “So we go into the second hand gear business? Adolescent musical Steptoe and Son Inc?”
“No, retardogram, we get the shit at a rock bottom price and make an effort at putting the band on a proper keel… gives us something to work at and fills in some of the down time over Christmas.” Harris retorted with some irritation. “I mean, you’re one of the keenest amongst us, Mhic. Mr fucking Music! Sax boy extraordinaire! So do you just want to keep dreaming and yakking about what a great band we have – in a crappy rehearsal room or do you want to actually get down to working at it properly?”
Dave smiled happily to himself, nodding distractedly at the prospect of things to come.
Mhic scratched his head, finally smiling at the thought of what was being suggested.
Harris bided his time leaning against the fence, smiling arrogantly, everything already calculated.
Nodding strongly, Dave grinned eagerly, obviously in favour of the idea. “Well, it’d save a stack of cash on PA hire now we’re ready to get out gigging – Nice one, Bill!”
“And we could make cash as well - hiring the PA out to other bands or venues. Sounds good. It’s about time one of us had a great idea again. I can live with being poor if we’re finally going to do this properly and try to get somewhere. If the Pistols can hit it, then so can we. Yeah, I’m in!” Mhic enthused.
Watching Storey shake his head from side to side to an unheard rhythm, Bill turned to him with a look of curiosity. "Hey, Sto, are you having some kind of seizure - is that your head wobbling or is your neck just blowing bubbles? Are you up for it, fungus face?"
Screwing his face at Rosser with obvious pleasure, Sto’s grin spread wide, "All the way daddy-o!"
"Rock and Roll!” they shouted en masse with a huge laugh before a cacophony of sound ensued.
“We can get started on the posters and tickets in Big JL’s class as soon as we get the hall confirmed!” Dave began.
“We contact the other schools asap. I’ll hustle at the next Student’s Council Meeting during the week and get a groundswell rolling!” Bill added with a nod.
Mhic grinned at Harris. “We’ll start working out figures and costs to see how much we can wangle!”
Sto nodded to them and looked round them all. “Why don’t we get DJ in for the Disco, he was shit hot at the pre-summer do… keeps it in the family that way. So long as there’s no fucking ‘Tiger Feet’ in my earshot.”
“Good idea – about DJ, not the ‘Tiger Feet’ thing… I love watching you do that stupid bloody dance, Sto – you can never resist it!” Bill laughed, elbowing him.
Harris grinned to them all. “Cool-o-rama! We’ll filch a breakdown of the gear and get rolling with this. Might make for a Cool-Yule… and the plus factor, outside of making ‘Proto’ start happening, is that there are going to be a stack of very very tidy cuties at the Dance. Works for me! Plan made!”
They drifted off, suggesting and debating, enthused with a sense of purpose once more as the afternoon light yawned and shone just for them.

At the little cafeteria a blue MG sports car pulled up. Inside there were two pretty young women and they appeared to be tourists. One had long dark hair and the other was blonde.
“So this is one of the many happy towns on the West Coast, then?” the blonde smiled to the driver, her English accent was clipped and refined.
“Looks that way. What do you think so far?” the driver asked, switching off the engine and watching her friend look round.
“Pretty desolate. Did you say this was called Danbray or Brigadoon?”
“Danbray, gateway to the North.” came the reply from the dark haired girl, her accent too being Southern English.
“Well, it’s better than the last place we stopped. Where was it? Doesn’t matter, it was hideous. You tend to think of Scotland as all green and countrified… but the number of dismal little hamlets we’ve paused in reminds me of the North. I hope Fort William’s more picturesque.”
“Annabelle, the point was to see these types of places – a couple of weeks round the country. It doesn’t matter what they look like, does it? We’re off work and having fun!”
“Fine! Right now I’m having some tea in this glorified Scout hut before we get some tennis in.”
The dark haired girl smiled back as she opened her door. “You know we’re going to freeze on that court, don’t you?”
The blonde shrugged in response. “I just love wearing those silly little skirts – sometimes you have to suffer to look good. Anyway… it’ll give the locals a thrill. Like those primitives over there!”
The dark haired woman looked over to where her friend had nodded. A small group of youths in brightly coloured trousers were walking past the far side of the enclosed Tennis court.
“God almighty, Annabelle, the last thing we want is to thrill the local oinks – they’ll be all over us like a virus!”
The two pretty women began walking to the café, well dressed and looking quite incongruous in the desolate solitude of the sparsely populated Park. Annabelle looked over at the group disappearing in the distance. “They just don’t know what they’re missing!”
Her friend grabbed her arm. “Come on, let’s get some tea and then I’m going to trounce you again!”
“That’ll be a first!” Annabelle laughed as they went inside.

At the edge of the Park they walked along the pathway that led straight into Hill territory, it was a scum motorway at night, allowing them to evade the Police who knew there were too many ways to escape to make it worth pursuing felons.
Harris stood by the broken wall that once protected walkers from the cliff side, watching the others sitting on the little bench.
"So, anybody got plans for the weekend… and by that I mean those of us who aren't tied up by mini-marriages!" Harris laughed.
"You feeling the sting of jealousy, Jonn-boy?" Mhic sneered.
"He just wishes he was Michelle to be closer to you, Mhic!" Bill laughed.
Sto elbowed him, "You're really getting on this Gay thing these days, dude! Is there something you want to tell us?"
The others laughed and swished themselves at Bill.
Harris sat down as he spoke. "Bill's facing the eternal problem!"
"What's that?" Dave chimed in with some curiosity.
"Finding that he's not only too ugly for women but probably too ugly for men as well!" Harris smirked back.
Bill nodded and simply gave them the finger, one by one.
Their laughter echoed off the large hill behind and they basked in the pale sunshine of the dying afternoon.
"What about a jaunt to town?" Dave offered.
"Stardust and That'll be the day are on at the GFT." Mhic stated.
"Well, at the risk of you faggots misinterpreting my next comment…” Bill said, waiting for the abuse which never came. "We could go up to Joanna's! There's always a host of tidy there and I think Vogue are playing!"
"They're total crap, it’s all covers!" Sto said too quickly, only realising his mistake after it had been spoken. "Whoops, sorry, Sawbones boy!"
"Get over yourself, Sto!" Harris laughed as Bill bared his teeth and mocked menace.
"Works for me!" Dave said with a nod.
"So can you get wheels, Sto?" Harris asked.
"Well, there's an interesting tale." Sto began with a enthusiastic grin.
"Shut the fuck up about the Morris Minor, Sto! Trust me, guys, you don't want to hear this one!" Mhic warned as he gazed round them.
The horrified faces all revealed they'd been inflicted with the dementia that was Sto's Morris Minor plan, a huge guffaw followed the silent pause… from everyone but Sto.
"What? What's so funny?" he asked them innocently. "Fine, yeah! I'll drive us up but I don't want my father's car used as a shagging wagon if any of you somehow manage to pull - all I need is semen stained seats to reveal our happy lives!"
"Cynical bastard!" Dave smiled.
"Hopeful bastard, more like!" Harris laughed.
"Still… ‘Stardust’ is a classic!" Mhic chipped in.
"Whatoosh, the sound of Michelle's whip filled the air!" Bill tormented.
"Little Mhic not allowed out with the bad boys now? Michelle make him roll over?" Sto asked.
"Make a sentence out of these words, Storey… Fuck and off!"
"Too complex, Mhic!" Dave sneered.
"Hoy… I resemble that remark!" Sto replied.
"Don't you mean resent?" Harris asked.
"I know what I mean!" Storey shouted.

Later they found themselves standing at the old fountain and pond once again, which was empty of water and full of autumn rubbish. A jet streaked noiselessly across the sky, its' white vapour trail contrasting to the ruddy glow of the sky. Mist crept surreptitiously across the river, parting sporadically like a torn curtain.
Harris watched the youth with the green shorts bound swiftly from foot to foot, his yellow hair bouncing along just out of synchronisation with the rest of him.
"Hey, there's good old Gerry!" Harris said, as though it were a threat. "Silly, silly boy! He had a happy life and just threw it all away. That’s the final product of a private education. Getting away from his world of problems by dropping acid and snorting anything he can get his hands on so he doesn't give a shit for a couple of hours! Crazy. Dumped with the other dorks in an institution to become 'the leaders of men'. Thank Christ I escaped all that – it’s a fate worse than death!"
"That's harsh!" Mhic stated seriously. "Gerry's just got fucked up with that crazy bitch, that's why he flipped out and became persona non grata!"
"Gerry's shit doesn't have much to do with Private education, Sport! It could have happened to any of us." Sto suggested with a serious glance.
“Yeah, he looked as if he had straightened out when I saw him at the weekend. And if you’re so down on him, how come you stuck your neck out and spooked his dealer off – you can’t have it both ways, Harris!”
The red jacketed youth looked over with a shrug. “My point is about the system rather than Gerry. And I hustled his dealer because I hate cunts that live off someone else’s misery. I’ve known Gerry and his family a long time – sending him to boarding school wasn’t an answer, it was a way of passing the problem off somewhere else. If he straightened out it wasn’t because of being part of the Private system… although it probably wouldn’t have made much difference where he was being schooled.”
“Well, we all made that same ‘Comprehensive’ mistake… but whatever results we get at Summer they would still carry more weight if we’d been smart and gone Private like our families wanted us to do!” Dave stated monotonically.
Harris flicked the collar of his red windcheater up to protect his neck.
"That's crap, Mack! Exam certificates are as disposable as tampons - good for a while and then you can just line the bird cage with them or put them in the bin. Try using that shit to get a decent job when you're thirty and you'll wish you'd had a better relationship with God - because prayer will get you further than ancient paper! We all got decent results last year and yet we're still in Hotel Hell for sixth year!"
"Yeah, but they're necessary if you want to get on - without them you'd be fucking lucky to get a start on the bin round!" Bill replied.
"You still outgrow them and their usefulness."
"As we've all outgrown our surroundings?" Mhic asked.
"Could be. Well, what do you think, you were first out?" said Harris.
"I don't know. I suppose I have a reasonable job and in a year or so I could be manager of a record shop, eventually owning one! Shit, I'd sooner do anything but watch my life drift away."
The loud smash of the Coke bottle Bill threw was ignored – they had lost count of the number of times he had performed this same obsessive bottle busting ritual. But they all watched it glide through the air, flying slowly, then hitting the ground and splintering into hundreds of tiny pieces which all caught the last glimmers of the dimming sunlight.
Harris' eyes twinkled icily in the fading light. "You should want to own a record company."
Nodding, Bill almost agreed with Harris. "I'm still not sure what's gonna happen after the exams. But all I know is that I'm not going to spend my life on the dole queue like my Dad, I’m going to make something of myself – one way or another."
"Who isn't?" Sto asked.
'We could all just go on to Uni and end up in our 'little boxes' and save a lot of bother." Macklin suggested with a hint of bitterness.
"At least we're not like all your Terry Gillins and Charlie Dunlops. All they ever do is drink and fart around, telling everyone how they were porking so and so last night or how they were pissed out their minds! They don't give a shit what happens when they leave school, it's all written ahead of them - a job, get married, out with the boys, bang the wife on alternate Thursdays." Harris smiled, the contempt rising within him.
"Does it matter, if you're satisfied?" Dave suggested defiantly.
"Who's ever satisfied? You're pacified, contented, not satisfied." came the reply, “Life should give you something more than that!”

Later still, at the Tennis Court, the two women in their twenties, one with shortish blonde and the other dark haired were heading towards the conclusion of their game as the sun faded slowly. Long shadows stretched out on the ground surrounded by anaemically pale yellow, winter light. Dressed in their white tennis clothes, its' purity infiltrated only by the occasional streak of blue on the arms or chest emblem - even the little knickers that flashed briefly as they moved reflected a wholesome whiteness. The long legs gleamed and the athletic torsos jiggled as they skipped from foot to foot in preparation for each serve and reply. They were pretty and visually seductive in their brief white outfits that did more to enhance their good looks than they did to enhance their playing abilities.
Engaged in a timeless dimension, the two pretty women fought for supremacy, the game taking on the importance of life - for now. Gracefully and lithely moving, it was like an alien ballet as the two girls panted and groaned to score against one another. Reality had been deposed as the battle raged, they were temporarily in a timeless zone and only the game was important. The white ball which thudded relentlessly between them became the world and its' fate hung in the balance of the outcome.
Oblivious to all around them, the girls continued their struggle, heading to a climax, the final fate of the competitive battle to be decided shortly. Their detachment was almost tangible. The ball floated in the air waiting for the blow - but it was one which never came. The taller, dark haired girl fell back in amazement at the five lunatics who threw themselves at the wire fence, struggling, climbing and screaming good-naturedly.
"Can we have our ball back please, missus?" they mindlessly chanted in a Liverpool accent again and again.
The women looked at one another and returned to play but the five stood watching, clapping and making quirky little comments incomprehensibly as if commentating on Wimbledon in accents that were so ‘plummy’ that the words lost their meaning.
The blonde shook her head at them in irritation as her friend waved a reproachful finger at her. It seemed that impressing the locals wasn’t such a good idea after all. They tried once more to finish their game but the new audience were off-putting somehow even when they stood silently watching. With the veil of illusion shattered and the game ruined, they both finally walked off in high dudgeon – ignoring the five clapping idiots. The happy lunatics grinned as they watched the pretty pair leave the court and they laughed to themselves - their solitary good deed for today was over.

Staggering into the small cafe, their laughter rang hard in the dingy little place. It was a little seedy having seen better days but it was warm and open. The pale yellow walls were once white a lifetime ago and all the little tables were attached to the wall, blue Formica topped and silver trim edging, matching the plastique pale blue seats. The group took a window seat, noting they were the only customers currently present. Almost immediately they were descended upon by a fat waitress with splinters of hair escaping from under her grubby paper hat. They sat crammed behind a table contemptuously watching the pimpled monster who less than pleasantly told them, "Right, hurry up, we're closing soon!"
The voices mixed and blended in a rhapsody of speech.
"Give us a loan of your make-up."
"Do you still use Mary Quant or is it Trumix now?"
“Don’t get the cheese rolls – coz that’s what they do!”
“That’s not funny!”
“Show a little respect for where you are!”
“Just a little? That’s not very reverential.”
"Get me an alligator sandwich and make it snappy. Snappy – I like that."
"Shit - I've got the bleeding hiccups now."
"Frighten him to cure that."
"Can’t - No mirror."
"Two black coffees and two black coffees, please."
"That’s a bad idea. Their coffee puts hair on your chest, on the inside!
"A big glass of Alka Seltzers for that Pratt to bubble off."
"Stop shaking that salt on my hair, Dan Druff."
"I'll use sugar instead."
"Shut up, spazzo! I’m trying to decide what I want. I know now – either of those two Tennis nubiles."
"They’re not on the menu, retard! Shut up, you're lowering the tone again."
"Two tons of Fallowhill shit couldn't lower the tone of this place. Look around you."
"Four coffees and a Coke for him – please!"
"Actually, that is our order, pretty please! And sorry about this lot - they're only out for the weekend!"
"It's Tuesday, the weekend's over, Dumbo!"
"Loonies don't know what day of the week it is!"
"Jesus, I feel like Jack Nicholson in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'!"
"Well, you've had the lobotomy, dude!"
"Just the four coffees and a Coke, please!"
"I want four coffees as well. But no cheese roll!"
"Hey, get off that – you’ll get the hunger monster rolling again. Take a holiday."
"I thought it was, school's out, Sport!"
The waitress, oblivious to such shenanigans, nodded patiently as if warming to them a little and wandered away unperturbed while they resisted a cookery lesson with the milk, sauce and sugar.
The boys fell into a silent lull as they just watched the two Tennis babes exit from the changing room door, all long legs, tight breasts and short skirts that were quite inappropriate for winter.
"Nice!" they breathed as one.
The girls chatted briefly, looking over every now and then, giggling and nodding. The blonde walked over and threw their sports bags into the back of the dark blue MG and stood frowning at the five faces mentally stripping her. With a toss of her head she opened the passenger door and climbed in, trying to avoid flashing her pants to the telescopic vision they probably possessed. Her friend, the dark haired one, started back towards the café window.
She stood confidently before the five faces pressed to the glass, ignoring the ribald comments and the blatant examination of her body as their eyes inspected the exposed vista of her impressive cleavage. She was the taller of the two, dark haired, icy green eyes, great body and legs that went on forever, probably aged somewhere in her mid twenties.
Harris was puzzled, there was a certain strange familiarity about her - but from where? She was immensely attractive for an older chick.
"Thanks for the game, Mr. Harris, I owe you one for that!” she said defiantly, looking up at the amassed faces pressed to the window, pushing her chest out a little. ”Be seeing you!” she breathed amusedly with her English accent, curling her thumb and first finger into a circle like a member of ‘The Village’.
Harris looked down from inside the cafe, her words just discernible, and still blatantly looking down at her ample, bra-less cleavage undulating from within her hastily buttoned white blouse. He smiled warmly and she returned in kind before slowly striding off toward the MG with a seductive wiggle that moved her short black skirt in eye-catching reaction with every pace. The pretty blonde friend patiently waited, less than amused at the way they watched her driver. Five pairs of eyes followed the dark haired girl’s seductive, hip shifting walk with captivated grins and some piqued curiosity.
Silence,,, the gang said absolutely nothing but simply stared out the window as they all knew what each other was thinking. The small sports car had reversed and was soon moving back to the Park entrance before Harris finally spoke.
"I don't know. Absolutely no idea." he said in a blanket reply to the unspoken question, without turning away from the disappearing car.
Sto grinned mindlessly, "Well, that’s as clear as mud to me. Can't say fairer than that, can we?”
"Nope!" Harris replied as his friends smiled and shook their heads. ”It’s a strange old life. innit?”