Late night listening.

   I discovered something about myself last night that I maybe should have realised about one thousand years ago... I’m a night time person.

Granted, like I said, I should have realised a while ago, what with the not having a proper job for the last twenty years, constantly working nights and not knowing how to work an alarm clock, all this really should have tipped me off. 

But it wasn’t until last night that it finally hit home.

I was booked to do an interview on the excellent John Barnes’s BBC Radio Lancashire show, which runs from 10pm until 1am of a week night. It’s a mix of chat, listeners calling in and music, I was there plugging my book and hopefully entertaining his audience for an hour or so.

I set off from Liverpool at about 8.45 for the forty mile drive up the M6 to Blackburn where the studio is based. A beautiful summers day was changing into a beautiful summers night and as I headed off toward Lancashire the sunset dribbled down the sky like a blob of orange paint on a deep blue background inching its way to the horizon before it fell off the canvas and out of sight.

Off to my right the odd star was showing its face and the motorway was clear except for night time truckers or tardy sales reps. It was one of those rare occurrences you get nowadays when you can sit back and just enjoy the drive.  By the time I got to Blackburn the sun had gone to start a day shift the other side of the world and when I parked in the BBC car park the place was lit by street lamps and was empty except for a solitary curious cat and me.

Security cat let me pass and once inside the building I waited in the empty newsroom before heading to the studio, computer monitors and scraps of paper littered the room, it looked like a film set waiting for actors and I guessed it wasn’t so calm during the day.

They are strange places radio stations, more so than TV stations. Nowadays on the telly we are used to seeing people behind the presenters, phones pressed to their ear, banging away on keyboards with sweaty brows and deadlines. But a radio station is like a swan in the water, we just hear the calm voice while unseen, unheard, there is a frantic paddling team of people keeping the whole thing afloat and moving forward of a day. But of a night, when the reporters have gone home, the managers have put away their calculators and the cleaners have tidied up all the paper coffee cups, something magical happens and they slow down and become your friend.

While I sat in the studio and listened to John chat to his first caller, Leah from Swinton, about Coronation Street I felt real warmth that you wouldn’t get with daytime radio, an intimacy between Leah, John and the thousands of people listening around the North West. He was in their bedrooms, their sitting rooms, sharing a cup of tea with them and tucking them into bed. I felt a real privilege being invited to share that warmth and I hope I didn’t let them down.

I stopped for fuel on my way home from the station, as I paid the guy at the window I heard John on the radio inside the store, keeping someone else company for the night, along with the taxi drivers, the truckers and the other late night lost souls.

 As I headed back onto the M6, just me, the stars, the odd lorry lit by a lazy moon and John on the wireless, I wound down my window, rested my elbow on the frame and thought,

“I love the night time, and I love night time radio even more.”

You can listen for the next seven days to the show here.

Credit, where no credit is due.

I’m not in the habit of quoting Shakespeare to people, I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that people who quote Shakespeare are the kind of people who buy books for their coffee table and only open them when they hear the doorbell. You know the sort, the ones who used to fold the News of the World up inside The Observer.

But I’m going to break my rule just this once, safe in the knowledge that I don’t have a coffee table and the NOTW has gone the way of a deleted voicemail message, so here goes:

“Wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice?”

This popped into my head a few months back, it was long lazy afternoon of staring out of my windscreen and waiting for a fare. I was close to home and I could hear the couch and the kettle calling me but I’d told myself whatever happened I was going to sit tight for ten hours, even if that did mean prolonged periods of resting my head on the steering wheel as my  day went down like a slow puncture.

When I finally got a job I felt like Daniel Day Lewis when he struck oil in There Will Be Blood, I fired up the focus and bolted around to the rough old neighbourhood where my salvation lay. The second the door opened I knew my new found hope had been misplaced.

Mum and Daughter supported each other down the path like conjoined twins on ice. Mum must have been seventy plus, she looked like a skeleton wrapped in wet parchment. Her neck barely thick enough to hold up her head and you could have used her fingers to pick a lock they were so thin. Her hair was like rusted wire wool glue to the end of a pencil and the clumpy flat black shoes wouldn’t have looked out of place on Frankenstein’s monster.

The daughter was maybe my age, a fragile soul set in a fast food frame. Bulky and track suited her pasty face had the colour of fresh dough, and, I’m afraid to say, the consistency. Daughter’s eyes darted this way and that, the caution of someone who thinks the outdoors isn’t so great.

I knew they weren’t going far before they even got in, in every sense of the phrase.

Daughter bundled herself into the back seat and slid across with all the grace of a skittish hippo, her mum got in after her and helped her daughter settle. I realised this was a woman who had not only given birth, but given her life, to her child. I could feel the weight of her burden as she clucked, cooed and calmed her daughter who in turn fought with her seatbelt and talked at a gallop.

“How does this work, I can never work these things, I pull and pull. Are you okay mate? Sorry mate. How does this work? Mum? Pull that?” She rattled away like a machine gun all twists and yanks and fingers to her face, it was like watching a pan of water about to boil over.

My heart ached as Mum settled her in and then turned to me and, over a sound track of chatter from her daughter asked to go to Huyton Village.

I sighed, less than a mile, £2.20, that job working in McDonalds looked more and more appealing as I pulled away from the kerb then felt guilty as Mum apologised,

“I’m sorry it’s only a short one, we can’t walk far.”

“It’s alright love, you tell me where to go and I go there, that’s my job.”

I smiled in the mirror and she smiled back, the lines on her face momentarily giving me a clue to what she had once looked like.

“We’re going to sort out her money, aren’t we?”

“Yeah, yeah, bloody robbers, robbers they are, yeah. I only lent £150, bloody robbers, robbers aren’t they mum?”

“She only lent £150, they’ve been phoning me for weeks about it, she’s been in hospital, hasn’t been able to pay have you love?”

“No, no, I’ve been in hospital, not been well. I was in hospital.”

I glanced in the mirror and Mum rolled her eyes and I nodded a reply, getting the message. Her daughter still wasn’t well, she was twisting and turning in a mental storm and she was a long way from the shore, battered by breakers and break downs she was clinging to her mother for dear life. I’ve seen those break downs close up before, messy affairs that leave no stone unturned, nightmares come to life as the world towers around, looming and pushing you down into the pit and I only hoped her mother had the strength to pull her out.

“So who has been phoning you?”

“This bloody loan company, they never leave me alone.” Said Mum, “She had to give them my number when she took the loan out.”

“Have you guaranteed the money?”

“No, they just phone and phone asking where she is, chasing her until she pays them.”

“I’ve already given them three hundred haven’t I mum?”

“She has, she still owes them one hundred.”

“For £150? Bloody hell that’s robbery!”

“I’m taking out a loan to pay it off, to reduce the payments.” Said Mum, stuck between a rock and a hard up place.

The shopping centre the women were going to was one of those ones built in the 70's to look modern, they would have called it a "New development" but if anything it was a step backwards. Like something from a North Korean planning manual it was all grey concrete, mildew and to-let signs with sausage roll wrappers blowing around like tumble weed.

I know the village well, I grew up around there, it was once an exciting place for young Schumacher, my Mum would go the bank, draw out some money and we’d wander around paying bills on a Saturday morning, first to the Gas Board, then to the Water Board, then maybe the telly rental and then to the shops. The purse getting thinner but the money there to see, to be held and spent till it was gone. We didn’t have credit cards, if we didn’t have money we didn’t have money. I got a comic on a Saturday and thirty minutes in the library to look for an Agaton Sax book or something by Bill Naughton. They weren’t coffee table books; they were under bed sheet books, lit by a torch not a Habitat lamp.

There must be four or five "Cheque Shops" and "Payday Loan" outlets dotted around the charity shops and shutters in the Village now. The council charge for parking so there is a Russian Steppe of a space were cars once waited, like the great plains after the buffalo had gone. All those cars are parked at the nearby mega store which enjoys a huge free car park that was donated by the same council that now is choking off the independent retailer.

I watched the two women wobble off to indenture themselves and their benefits to the serpent that would no doubt be stinging them more than twice. I wondered where it had all gone wrong since Blair and Brown told us "Things can only get better" and Obama wittered on about “change”.

It funny how as we watch Greece struggle with colossal debt nobody seems to mention the little people struggling with debts of their own.

It appears the only interest is the kind that charges 1000%.

Why it started...

     About six years ago my life was going swimmingly. I had the lot. I had the wife, the son, the house, the career, the car and even the trendy dog.

     Today? Well I haven’t got the house, the car, the job, the son, or the career. I’ve still got the dog mind, although sometimes, I wonder if he has me.

     Let me explain; I was a Policeman. I wasn’t an ordinary policeman, I was the type who did a bit of stand up comedy on the side. My life was filled basically with moments of fear, fighting, arguing and adrenaline, and that was just the comedy.

      In the police I was a response officer, I basically used to drive around Liverpool with blue lights flashing answering 999 calls. I’ve kicked in more doors than Jack Regan and turned over more bodies than Quincy. It was messy, bloody, dangerous and at times, desperate. And I loved it.

Rear View Mirror

     I loved my colleagues, I loved the charging around shouting, I loved the challenge and I loved the thrills. I loved my life.
I honestly used to pull up at my house of a night, in my quiet cul-de-sac, and sit for moment and think about how lucky I was. I know that sounds crazy when you say it out loud, but I did.

     I was that happy.

     Or at least I thought I was.

     Six years later, sitting here writing this, it seems like someone else’s life I’m writing about, I’m not sure of I’d recognise the bloke who used sit smugly in his car looking at his house with his gorgeous wife waving through the window. To be honest, if I met him, I’d probably think he was a bit of a kn*b.

     That bloke’s life finally fell apart when he found out his son wasn’t his. In fairness, although he’d not noticed it, his life had been in trouble for a while but, like a carrier bag that splits at the bottom and drops your spuds on the floor all at once, I/he just hadn’t noticed it going.

     I’ll not bore you with the details, that’s another story for another day but, six months after my carrier bag split, I found myself without a job (never write a resignation letter when you are crying) and sitting in a rented house I couldn’t afford with a designer dog that was, quite frankly, disappointed in me.

     I had to do something, so when a mate suggested getting a cab drivers licence to “tide you over till you get your head straight” I decided to do that, if only to get out of the house that had become a prison, and to start talking to people again.

     It was the best thing I’ve ever done. Because amongst the drunks, the drug addicts, the lager, the lovers, the lost and the lonely… I found myself.

     It happened at about four am, sitting in a park, eating a lonely service station sandwich and staring at a cat getting beat up by a bird, that I decided to write.

     And that cat, and that bird, led to my book Rear View Mirror being released about two weeks ago for the Amazon Kindle and if I ever meet them again I’ll shake them by the paw/claw.

     I’d never written anything before, so I was surprised at how good I felt when I wrote that first story. I didn’t just feel happy, I felt different, like something had happened in my head and my heart, like a place had been found and that I’d come home. I remember reading it a few times and smiling to myself. I even printed it off and stuck it by my bed to read when I woke up, just in case in the morning, after the shine had worn off, I found it was rubbish. I’ve still got that original story upstairs, and I still don’t think it’s rubbish. I created a blog, and posted the story up there, and told what remained of my friends on facebook. Some of them read it, a few of them commented, and I felt good for the first time in years, so I wrote another one, and another one, and another one.

     And I felt better; little by little, I felt better.

     A few months later a lady got in the cab and we chatted and she told me she edited a local magazine. I told her I wrote a blog about the cab and she promised to read it. I didn’t believe her. A few weeks later I got an email, and she said some nice things and offered me a column in the magazine and said she would pay me for the stories.

     I still didn’t believe her, but it turned out she was telling the truth. I’d become a writer, and I was happier than I’d been in years, and it wasn’t money, it wasn’t a house and it wasn’t a car that was making me happy… it was my heart.

     Which was finally fixed.

     Da dah! Finally, after fretting, tossing and turning, editing and re-editing I've gone and done it.

     My collection of columns is finally out there on the kindle... whether anyone buys it of course is another matter.

     I'd be so grateful if you folks could like and share, and even more grateful if you could buy and leave a review! (Only joking, hope you just enjoy the sample chapter!)

     Right then...I'm off to walk the dog.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007T9ZFO6

Liverpool looking lovely...

I don't normally stick pictures on here, but having taken this one I thought I'd share it with you.

It's Liverpool, my Liverpool.

I spend my life driving around Liverpool at night, I'd love to tell you I love driving my taxi... but I don't, the money is crap and the hours are horrible. the only redeeming feature is I get to spend time with some nice people while I drive around trhe wonderful city I live in.
So, I decided instead of writing about it, I'd film myself talking about it for a change, hope you enjoy it!

Tony x

The Life Of Brians.

I used to work with a bloke called Brian. Well, that isn’t quite true; I worked with two Brian’s, “Afternoon” Brian, and “Morning” Brian.

“Afternoon” Brian was a massive lumbering lump of a man who would sit, sweating and swearing at his desk, dappled in gravy from a dinnertime pie squinting through a Hamlet’s smoke stabbing a stubby finger at me from across the office wheezing after wobbling back from the pub after his lunch “hour”.

“Your problem, and I mean this in a nice way, is that you are a miserable bastard” he would slur in a manner that was anything but nice, “but not only are you a bastard, you are the worst kind of bastard there is. You Tony are a miserable bastard.”

“Have you been the pub Brian?” I would reply blankly at him shaking my head.

“You see,” he would jab, ignoring my question (and the ash falling onto my desk) “there are hard bastards, lazy bastards, angry bastard’s even ugly bastards, but the worst of them is the miserable bastard. And it’s just my luck I ended up being stuck in an office with a miserable bastard, because they are, as I have already told you, the worst kind of bastard there is.”

He would lean back in his chair and smooth his tie across his straining shirt and sometimes rub his chest in an attempt to ease the indigestion he was always moaning about and then slowly rotate back to his ashtray and his tea.

I would ignore “Afternoon” Brian, lower my head and get on with my work, maybe make or take a call as I shuffled my papers and glanced at the clock in the way that only office workers can, the look of longing a dog has for a dangled biscuit.

“Afternoon” Brian would scowl at me and break wind and bang his cup, eventually he would disappear for an hour clutching the Daily Mirror. Later I would later hear how he had been shouting at the lads in the warehouse or arguing with the girls in reception.

“Afternoon” Brian was a piss head. A proper old fashioned narky piss head.

Of a morning I worked with a different Brian. “Morning” Brian was funny, warm and hardworking; he’d laugh at my jokes and chat with customers, he’d whistle his way round the warehouse and we all loved him. 

“Morning” Brian was everything “Afternoon” Brian wasn’t. And considering they lived in the same body it amazed me they had never appeared have met each other.

One day the guy who owned the company came into the office and told me “Afternoon” Brian was asleep on the small area of grass at the back of the warehouse, 

“Can you take him home? I can’t have him lying around like that it’s the middle of January he’ll die of hypothermia.”

I got the keys for a van and together we walked out to get Brian and take him home, 

“I don’t know what to do with him; he works so well in the morning and then falls to pieces in the afternoon. He’s getting worse by the week, if I sack him he’ll never get another job.” The boss said as we wearily trudged through the yard to the sleeping and loudly snoring Brian.

We shouted and shook Brian back to life and shoved and shuffled his bulky wet frame into the van. And as he shivered and complained on the way home I tried to tell him he was walking a tightrope as to regards his job,

“They are getting fed up Brian; if you aren’t careful they are going to sack you!”

“I don’t care; they can do what they want, it’s a crap job anyway.”

“You need this job, who else is going to take you on?”

“What do you mean?”

Oh no... I’d done it... said what I didn’t want to say, crossed that line you never want to cross when you are with someone with an addiction... I’d pointed it out.

“Well, you know, your drinking, nobody else will want to give you a job with you drinking so much. It’s starting to take its toll on you mate, look at yourself.”

Brian sat silently as I drove, I glanced across and he was staring straight ahead. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or embarrassed. When we pulled up at his house he got out of the van and slammed the door behind him and stomped up his front path without a glance back. I sat outside for a minute and thought about apologising, decided I’d said enough, and left.

The following day “Morning” Brian didn’t come in to work, I sat and stared at his desk for a while willing him to show up but he didn’t. By the time the boss came in to check where he was I feared the worse,

“Has he rung?” he asked

 

“No.”

“Did he say anything yesterday?”

“No.”

“Give him a ring, ask if he is okay, tell him to take the week and then come in and see me on Monday.”

I made the call, and “Morning” Brian didn’t answer, I tried to leave a message with “Afternoon” Brian (who had either gotten up early, or not gone to bed at all) but I don’t think he was listening; he shouted a lot and put the phone down and never came back to work again.

When I cleared his desk I found tons of unfinished work he’d hidden away, “Morning” Brian had been drowning in paperwork and booze and “Afternoon” Brian had leant over the side and pushed his head further under water.

A few weeks later a new face joined me in the office and Brian slid from our minds in the way that old colleagues always do, his tea stained mug worked its way to the back of the cupboard almost as fast as he did to the back of our minds.

I didn’t see Brian for years after that; I’d long since left the company when our paths next crossed. I pulled up at a church in Wavertree and the allotted fare climbed in, 

“Where too mate?” I asked, barely glancing in the mirror,

“Tony?” 

I looked up and he was, a new Brian, sober and smart and two stones lighter. He jumped out of the back and jumped into the front seat and clasped my hand. I noticed the bible then, held tightly to his chest, inches from his heart. 

“Oh Tony! It’s so good to see you! How long is it?”

“It must be nearly fifteen years mate, how are you doing?”

“I’m brilliant, better than I’ve ever been. I’ve left drinking behind me, cleaned myself right up. I realised I was missing something...”

“Here it comes.” I thought,

“I’ve found Jesus, he’s saved me!”

Boooooooooooom!

“I was so unhappy, I should apologise to you, I was horrible. I lost the house, ended up back at my mums, she was on the verge of kicking me out. And then one night Jesus spoke to me.”

“Jesus spoke to you?”

“Yes.”

“The Jesus? The one in there?” I pointed at the bible and Brian nodded while I shook my head and said, “Where are you going to Brian?”

“That’s it! That's basically what he said.”

“No Brian, in the cab, I’m asking you, where are we going now?”

“Oh sorry, Tuebrook.”

I rolled my eyes and off we set, I should explain, I don’t “do” god. It’s not that I have anything against the guy, I just don’t believe he exists. I’m the kind of person who watches Songs Of Praise on the telly with the sound down just to see if there are any good looking girls in the congregation (there never is). 

There is another reason I don’t “do” god in the taxi, it’s because it’s likely to inspire someone to try and save me, and if there is one thing I don’t need it’s saving, if I’m hanging off a building, then please save me, but if I am driving a cab and thinking about whether to have chips for my tea, don’t save me. Don’t save me, because I don’t need saving thank you very much, I just need to go on a diet.

It’s not just the need to “save” that I find unsettling, it’s the shiny faced smiley desire born again Christians have. They remind me of people who have been taken over by aliens in 1950’s B movies, blank eyed and fixed grinned they blindly follow orders from a two thousand year old instruction manual that has been reinterpreted more times than Yesterday by Paul McCartney. The bible reminds me of that game Chinese Whispers, “send three and four pence I’m going to rise again on the third day.”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Brian smiling and looking at me, after a few minutes of chit chat about my life he finally decided the time was right to tell his story,

“I was lying in bed, hung-over, in a terrible state, and I heard a voice calling me.”

“Your mum?”

“No not my Mum! It was God! He was asking me to let him into my life, so he could save me.”

“God has too ask?  I would have thought if he wanted in he would just get in. He’s politer than I thought.”

Brian ignored me, and smiled again, this time not at me, this time at the memory.

“I knew straight away I’d been saved, I’d been born again, I’d seen the light.”

I must have shaken my head because Brian looked at me,

“It sounds crazy, but I didn’t need to drink again, I’d left the old self behind me. I joined the church, and now I work in the community, saving others.”

“I’m made up for you mate.”

“Do you believe in Jesus Tony?”

“Erm, not really mate. But thanks for asking.”

“He loves you.”

“He’s never met me.”

“He’s met everyone and everything, he’s everywhere and anywhere, he sees all and hears all.”

“Bit like Rupert Murdoch.”

“Here, take this, have a read” he offered me his bible,

“Erm no thanks mate, I’m only half way through the Echo crossword,” I replied dragging out the paper from under my seat and waving it at him like a Vampire hunter.

“Please, it will help you. I’ll write my number inside and you can ring me to give it back when you are ready to chat.”

We stopped at his Mum’s and Brian paid the fare and handed me the bible, 

“Please ring me when you are ready, we can talk over a coffee. You have a hole in your life” 

I subconsciously thought of my right sock and wondered how he'd known, and then realised he was talking about my soul, not my sole.

We shook hands and he got out, I looked at the bible on the seat and shook my head. In much the same way as I shook my head when I looked at it on my bookcase just now. It’s still there, a couple of years later and I still haven’t managed to go for that coffee.

I’m guessing Brian hasn’t missed his bible, I reckon he’s got plenty of them around the house, ready to fall back on when the going gets tough. Bit like that bottle was for “afternoon” Brian. I suppose a paper crutch is better than a liquid one, but I’ll say this much, he was funnier when he was pissed. 

The Devil and Me.

I had a cup of tea with the devil and his Mum the other day. The devil, sitting on a shiny cream and blue leather sofa thanked his Mum when she gave him a plate of biscuits and then blushed when she told him off for not offering one to me first. He awkwardly waved the plate in my direction and then glanced back at his Mum for approval before popping a whole Jaffa cake into his mouth and smacking his lips.

I took a drink of milky weak coffee from a mug with “# 1 dad” on it and wished I’d asked for tea when the choice had been offered. The devils Mum shook her head at her son who had moved onto to Jaffa cake number three and sipped her own tea from a mug with the Liverpool football club crest.

On the flat screen TV in the corner a couple were looking for a place in the country with a budget that would bail out Greece, or at the very least buy everyone there their own packet of Jaffa cakes and we all silently watched it for a moment until the Devils Mum said,

“If we lived somewhere like that he wouldn’t get into the trouble he does.”

And the devil, by way of reply, ate another Jaffa cake and grunted shaking his head.

It wasn’t the real Devil of course, not unless the Devil wears Homer Simpson slippers and lives in a tidy housing trust property in a slightly down at heel estate in Huyton, just outside Liverpool. This devil was seventeen years old, pale skinned and shaven headed, he had the build of a fly weight boxer and his milky white arms reminded me of a greyhounds legs, skin stretched tight over explosive, long thin muscles laced with quink filled veins.

Where exactly the saturated fat from the Jaffa cakes was going I can only guess.

I’d first met him when I was driving my cab the night before. He’d gotten in with a boisterous mate, both smelling of pocketed skunk weed and chip fat, from an address in the Kensington area of Liverpool and asked to go to Huyton, a suburb about three miles away.

“Been out boys?” I’d asked, by way of ice breaker,

“Sittin’ off lad, new fifa in’it?” The devils mate had replied, leaning between the front seats to get a look at me.

I turned to look him in the eye and he’d sat back, whatever question he was asking answered.

“Who won?”

“I kicked his arse!” Said the devil

“Eeee lad, behave” said his mate “you was shit lad, yer ma would be better than you lad!”

“You couldn’t beat me lad, I was playin’ as Wigan lad and you still couldn’t beat me lad!”

They collapsed in a fit of skunk fuelled laughter behind me and I rolled my eyes as they rolled around.

I should explain, as well as being a cab driver I write, or maybe, I should say, as well as writing I drive a cab. I suppose which order depends on which job has paid for dog food that month. A few weeks earlier I’d been accepted onto The Guardians Reading The Riots project, the papers attempt, along with the London School Of Economics, to make sense of what had happened on our streets the few short riot riddled days a couple of months earlier. The project involved me interviewing people who had actually rioted on the days in question, sort of “sorting the chaff from the wheat” and sitting down with them to see what they had to say.

I’d found that the leads from The Guardian had proven to be unsuccessful so amongst other tactics I had resorted to asking young people who had got into my cab if they had been there on the nights in question. Most times my questions had been met with stunned silence, with my being acutely aware that I still looked like the Policeman I once was.

This time however my “Do you remember the riots?” gambit resulted in an avalanche of reply.

“Yeah lad, we was there, it was boss, a proper laugh lad!”

“You went to them all the way from Huyton?”

“Yeah lad, we jumped a baxi and got down there to have a go lad, mix it with the bizzies lad, can’t miss that lad can yer?”

I laughed along with their infectious excitement and explained why I wanted to know,

“So would we be in the paper lad?”

“No, totally anonymous, there is no way the bizzies can find out about you.”

“I’m not arsed if they did lad, would my photo go in?”

“No mate, nobody would know you had spoken to us.”

“Do I get dollar lad?”

“No mate.”

“Why do it lad?”

“So the government can learn about you, how you live, it might make things better for you, maybe help you get a job.”

“I don’t want no job lad, they can fuck off lad, they don’t care ‘bout me, I don’t want to help them.”

The conversation continued along these lines for a while until I dropped the devils mate off, once left alone with Satan the atmosphere in the car became less charged and he seemed to be coming around to talking to me about the riots,

“I don’t want the bizzies to get involved lad, are you sure they won’t find out? I’m on a curfew and I don’t want banging up again.”

I reassured him once again, explaining the highest of journalistic standards would be in place before adding,

“We can meet at McDonald s if you want? So your family don’t know.” I felt like a potential adulterer,

“Me ma knows I was there, she went off her head, I stunk of smoke when I got in, that’s why I only went the first night, I’ve got a kid, she was going to blow me up to the bizzies if I went again.” He said sadly, and I wondered if it was the threat of losing his liberty or losing his child that was making him sad.

“Do you want to meet tomorrow? It’ll only take an hour.”

“Yeah go ‘ed then. About four, come me ma’s.”

I’d just done a deal with the devil.

In daylight the house looked less run down than it had the day before, his Mum opened the door and shouted upstairs for him to come down when I knocked, she then invited me in an offered me the coffee tea conundrum I’d failed so miserably.

I took a seat in the living room while she shouted at the ceiling again and a Staffordshire bull terrier wandered out of the kitchen to inspect me and then to loll against me leg,

“Are you okay with dogs?”

“As long as he is okay with me.” I replied as he noisily licked two conker like testicles whilst using my leg as support, we both pretended not to notice, me and the mum that is, not the dog, who was concentrating intently.

Mum wandered out into the kitchen and I scratched the dogs belly to distract him from his labours, eventually he slid down my leg and lay on his back accepting my offering of a tickle instead of a testicle.

When the devil walked into the room he looked tired, rubbing a hand across his head his black tracksuit bottoms looked as creased as his grey tee shirt, with his milky white skin he could have stepped out of a black and white film, only Homer smiling up from the floor offered up any colour,

“Alright mate, sorry... I forgot.” He said as he flopped down on the couch,

“It was only last night!” I laughed and the devil tapped his head and then shook it,

“He’s got a head like a cabbage,” said his Mum walking in with my “coffee” and I wondered how much skunk weed it took to help you forget the night before, “He told me about it this morning when he showed me the letter you gave him, how did you find him?”

“He got in my cab.”

“You drive a taxi? I thought you were a writer?”

“I am, it’s just that I’m rubbish so I drive the cab for food and stuff.”

She smiled at my “joke” and went to open the box of Jaffa cakes; the devil sipped some tea and sniffed loudly,

“We still alright with the interview?” I asked and by way of reply he flicked his head to the door and rolled his eyes, I sipped my coffee and we waited for his Mum.

Once she was seated, and biscuits consumption was commenced I asked him again,

“We okay to start then mate?” I nodded to my bag that the devils dog was using as a head rest, it won’t take long.”

The devils mum pulled her eyes from the Cotswolds and shook her head at him,

“I don’t think he should,” she said, and I launched, a little too quickly into my spiel about sources and safety and society. She listened and nodded and sipped at her drink and waited until I had finished before lighting a cigarette and pointing it at him,

“He’s brought me nothing but trouble for ten years, I’ve had to move because of him, do you see that front door? Twice that’s been knocked through by the bizzies because of him. My nerves are shot, you don’t know what it is like to have to live with him. His mood swings, his mates, coming in at all hours, drugs, the drink. He’s got a baby now... did he tell you?”

I nodded,

“He’s supposed to be a father and he couldn’t even boil an egg, he hardly sees him, do you?” the devil sighed and looked at the cracks in the ceiling barely listening to the cracks forming in his mother’s voice “People like you have no idea.” She pointed at me,

“I do! I grew up around here; I work on these streets every night!” I said indignant that I was being seen as a middle class writer type, even though that was what I was aspiring to be.

“I don’t mean what it is like to be around here, I mean, you don’t know what it is like to be me, what I put up with, what it’s like to break your heart every time the Police come knocking looking for him, when the girl he got pregnant comes knocking looking for money, you don’t know what it is like! Who is going to interview me? I’m a victim of this too.”

The room was filling with smoke from the resting cigarette and we all sat silently for a moment, lost for things to say, the devil stood up and walked to the door, parting through the swirling smoke as he left the room, as the door shut behind him he said two words,

“Fuck off.”

So I did.