Monday 23 July 2012

Weekend in the Happy Valley


(Beware - naughty words)

The walls breathed. Every breath I took the cold beige, piss stained brickwork breathed with me. In and out, in and out, rhythmic like a bass line to go with the drumming in my chest. I could smell the cell around me, even with my eyes closed it was no use. This yellow bladder of a room was too small to take away the putrid aroma that came from the walls and the jaundiced corners. Each a testament to a time when some drunken sot had missed the slop bucket.
            I lay on my back in the centre of the cell. To my right and left were two padded benches, and above me a vaulted brickwork ceiling. The red bricks started at the top of the wall and curved into blackness behind the only light.
            I had been in the cell for three days. That much I was sure of. Or it was three hours. They couldn’t keep me for long. It was a shit charge that they wouldn’t charge me with. A stupid run in with a couple of bored coppers. Bastards were just having some fun with a fucked up teen on a summer’s night. 
            It was a pointless fucking lift. Sitting in the town’s park. It’s locked gates were easily scaled. We all go in, me and James and Richie and Harris and three girls we just met. Harris doesn’t get one, he’s too fat. So we go in and it’s just a bit of a laugh. I’m smoking a spicy roll up and the fifteen year old slag next to me thinks she’s getting high or something.  She’s giggling and we’re all laughing at her, but she doesn’t get it and she puts her arm around my waste, and she just can’t do it. She’s about five three and I’m nearing six two on my seventeenth birthday.
            It’s a laugh, no one is hurting anyone. So we stop and sit. A clutch of trees in a wide grassy expanse. They used to use the park for football on a Sunday with the cub scouts and this tree always used to get in the way. They had to make one pitch about fifteen yards too short, I once scored a goal from the halfway line, and I’m telling her this while were sitting there, smoking something stronger and letting her hands wander a bit. She knows what she’s doing. Anyone who says otherwise is full of their own self importance. Just cos she’s under fifteen. Bollocks.
            But that’s beside the point. The point is, it was pretty cool. Chilling out and with the possibility of some very relaxing entertainment. Then it starts to go wrong. I decide that it’s the right time, given the light early evening and close proximity of girls and grass, to drop a tab of acid.
            Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not a habit I’m really into, but when you’re young, bored and have a part time job, you’ve got to spend your money on something. So in it goes, and Richie does the same. We’d picked em up the day before and he’s getting as friendly with his girl as I am. So we sit, have a bit of a play with the pretty young things and wait for the acid to kick in. Now don’t get me wrong, the chances of an enjoyable episode with this kid are rapidly dropping to zero once you stick a couple of tabs on your tongue, however the simple ride can often be just as exhilarating.  You never know, I might be able to get it up.
            But then it goes to shit. Harris has got fucked off. He’s fat and ugly and no one want’s to sleep with him, so off he goes. Sulks off into the distance. All I can see from over the top of the midget in my arms is his fat fucking form staggering off towards the athletics track. Which he’s probably going to climb into and where he’ll probably wake up tomorrow in the sand pit. Cunt.
            But then, I see him stop. Two looming figures walk towards him and I see he whole thing play out in slo mo. His pockets are turned and then comes the moment I’ll never forget. The fat fuck, instead of doing the business and making some shit up. “I was here with my girlfriend but she went home, I was here on my own, I’m a teenager, I’m depressed” any of these I could have accepted and the filth would have as well. The two beat bobbies, out for a crafty toke and have bumped into the fattest child ever to usher forth from woman and they ask him.
“Who you here with son?”
Does he make up something, does he bollocks. All I see is his chubby finger pointing at me. I swear I can see his bitten finger nails from where I’m slouched under the tree. Bastard. Then he gets another bite at the apple. The copper actually looks and doesn’t see me. This is because we’re all still as statues. What does the cunt do. Starts walking. Now I’m fucked. If I up and run then there’s a chance of being caught and a bit of a beating for making poor PC fatty do his daily hundred yard dash. The second problem there is that I’ve lost the feeling in my left leg. If I did try and run it’d probably snap off.
            The boys have started to notice now. The baccy tins are quickly shoved underneath the open roots of the tree. All except mine. It’s in my back fucking pocket and plod is looking right at me. He’s fifty yards away, but he’s eyeballing me and there isn’t a hope of getting up and away. We could try getting up and slowly walking to the gates, but they’d just follow us.
            So what do do. Cool as anything, I just slouch there. The acid is starting to kick in I think, I’m imbued with a sense of cool and natural charm. I am about to find out how wrong I am.
            PC psychic rocks up with the man I am never speaking to again. Fatty Harris just looks at me and knows he’s gunna get his nose broken for this. He stares at the grass he can’t see. The flashlight comes on, in my face.
            “Evening officer” Says I.
            “Evening young man” says he.
            “So how can I help you on this fine evening” Now I’m playing a dangerous game, he’s gunna think I’m pulling the piss.
            “I was just wondering” Says the Nazi “what would I find about your person if I searched you?”
            “Well officer” Says I, realising that the phrase fucked was now glowing in big neon letters above my short spiky hair, “nothing of interest bar the half ounce of cannabis resin in my back pocket” Let’s go for the win.
            “Can I see that then?”
            Bollocks. I get up and hand over the tin, one of the old golden virginia tins. My old man gave it to me a year before he died. The filth opens it, takes a sniff and says,
            “I think you’d better come with us”
            “Of course officer” 

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