The lowly seer

The Electronic Mug's Game

I wrote a book. Tried to get it published. Got a whole bunch of rejection slips. Publishing seems a lot like the music biz. Better to make it as a soap star then try to get into it. Then they'll even write the book for you. Never mind. You can read the opening chunk of it for free.

So there we all were, sitting around in Vince’s gaff, waiting for Charlie to arrive. We seemed to be there ages before that knock came, and all the waiting had put us on edge a bit. Vince said,
“Ere, Tel, get that will yer?” and Tel went up to the door. He knocked again before Tel had managed to get down the hallway, and Vince went,
“That’s got to be Charlie, any other cunt woulda rung the bell”.
Spider said, “Hope it’s not the bloke to read the electric meter or sumfink”.
“Better not be,” said Vince, “I got the meter legged”.
We could hear Tel talking to somebody, bringing them in, and sure enough, Charlie stepped into the room.
Charlie basically looked like a bag of shit with a length of string tied round the middle. Honestly, you could send him to the best tailor in Saville Row, and he’d still look like a bag of shit tied up with string. Wrinkly skin, rotten teeth, stooped over shoulders, and thin, mousy hair. He was only about fifty but he looked about seventy. He was a bit of an arsehole, all right, I remember once when there was some lads from down the East End hanging round our way. They flogged him 48 bottles of vodka for 250 quid out the back of their van. Oldest trick in the book, they got him pissed out of one of the bottles, which was the only genuine one, while all the rest were full of tap water. He had to nick his mum's life savings to pay for it as well.
The good side of Charlie was that he was living proof that no-one's completely useless: once every now and again, the urinal down the Duke would get blocked by all the dog ends, chewing gum, vomit, pubes, bogies and ripped-up betting slips that accumulated there and could only be got out by hand. Charlie always got the job and Ray, the landlord, would give him a free pint in return. Charlie, bizarrely, reckoned he was on a winner there.
Charlie looked a bit surprised to see we were all there, and went,
“I hear you wanted to see me, Vince”.

If you're nice to me I may post some more.

posted by Les the Spaceman @ 9:55 am