Sawn-Off Tales (5 page)

Contact Time

I
SEE MY
kid every weekend, but it always ends in tears. When I told him about the man with one ear who went into a pub, he didn't laugh, he cried. What happened to his ear? Was he the same man who bought the slippers off the bloke with no legs? Was the pub the one with the microwave where they put the poor duck to make it into Bill Withers?

So I gave him maths instead. I told him about a farmer with three lengths of rope and we worked out the average length, then calculated a 20% reduction on a shirt in last year's style. But this troubled him too. What was last year's style? And was it bought by the farmer with the rope showing his ignorance of fashion?

Now we play ‘snap'. If we stay away from the picture cards, it's fine.

 

 

Enclosures

I
SAW HIM
every day, sucking on a tube of Superstrength or curled up like a foetus in his tattered sleeping bag and I thought about our armadillo munching his vegetables, our pumas tearing into slabs of glistening steak, our zebras in their warm straw beds and I called him over and said come with me.

I placed him in an empty orang-utan unit and told him to stay out of sight during opening times. I put two solvent abusers in with the giraffes and the muttering shopping-trolley woman onto gibbon island.

But the shopping-trolley woman kept showing her bottom to school children and the boss called me in. He was pleased with my intervention, but could the new guests be given educational classes like art, music and dance so that the public could watch? This would be the zoo finally putting something back into the community.

 

 

New Best Friend

A
FTER THE CONSULTANT
left, Tim called us into his office and handed round a packet of Marlboros. ‘Take one, light it, and inhale,' he said. I immediately had a coughing fit, and Julie was sick in the bin. ‘I haven't had a fag,' she protested, ‘since I was fourteen.' Tim ignored her and prodded on the PowerPoint. Lines of text slid on and off. ‘Smokers,' he said, ‘change things. Smokers are clued up on office affairs, know what staff think of the company, are less risk averse and more alive to the moment. They're sensualists, pleasure-seekers and,' he snapped off the machine, ‘never defer gratification. Smokers take action so from now on, the members of this management team are smokers. Tomorrow we'll look at lighting and holding, disposal of stubs, and when to offer and when to accept. And I have a few things to say about lunchtime drinking.'

 

 

Potato Smiles

W
HEN DEBBIE LEFT
I ate nothing but potato smiles with no-frills ketchup. One day I looked at the fluffy orange discs grinning up at me and decided to save one. I stuck it to the wall next to my bed and it cheered me up. The next day I saved another, but I'd had one of my funny days, so I stuck this one upside down, to make a frown. I did this for years and the pattern reminded me how well I was doing.

The man from environmental health had a big oblong body built for blocking doorways. ‘The neighbours are talking about a smell,' he said.

I locked the door and made him sit while I removed the smiles and heaped them on a plate in front of him. The sauce bottle was rimmed with decaying ketchup scabs. I squeezed, squeezed hard till his plate was full.

 

 

Shop Talk

S
HE DIDN'T WORK
with people, she worked with structures. She talked their language, knew about business growth models, could joke about the inverted triangle of the not-for-profits, worked strategically, never operationally.

So why was she in bed with this ginger man, shagging a person not a structure, growing a relationship, not the growth model of a relationship, getting her hands dirty with service delivery?

I'd flown down to surprise her on her Managing Change course. And here she was. The woman who had written “Do Not Resuscitate” on a subordinate's personnel file, who shouted, ‘Does the Pope have a wooden dick?' at the Regional Development Agency, who would rather grind monkeys than talk to organists.

Their heads touch on the pillow, his hog-orange bristles mingling with her chestnut locks. The contrasting shades remind me of exotic snakes, spiders as big as hands. It is the warning pattern of poison.

 

 

Until You are Happy

H
E SAT IN
the Photo-Me and read the instructions.
Tilt your head to the side or sit at an angle. Point your shoulder towards the camera
. He tried all this, but couldn't relax. He looked as though he was holding a contorted poise for an invasive medical examination. His face wore the expression of a startled comedian trying to look zany. Then he saw the sign.
Keep taking your picture until you are happy
. He stayed in the booth all day, striking a pose, taking the picture, looking at the preview screen, starting again. But each time the morose face staring back said the same thing.
There is no escape. There is no way out. You can get a travel card, but you'll never get away from me
.

 

 

Floydy

F
RAGGLE-RALPH WON
a competition: the Sugababes play live in your living room. No-one had heard of the Sugababes and neither the word ‘living' nor ‘room' could describe our living space; sofa criss-crossed with masking tape, TV balanced on a toilet, a pyramid of Superstrengths in a shopping trolley.

Ralph sucked on his joint. ‘Aren't they sort of, like, Floydy?'

Sugababes.com confirmed that the girls were not ‘Floydy', nor would they be comfortable in a shabby house with two unemployed alcoholics and a bi-polar with anxiety episodes. But Fraggle-Ralph rang the number and you know the rest: street blocked with do-not-cross tape, counsellors crackling through loud-hailers, milk-faced publicist Sellotaped to a chair, and Fraggle-Ralph bawling, ‘Sugababes now!' waving his .22 about.

At night the pigs blasted thrash-metal from a helicopter. Some of it sounded all right. The publicist kept crying, that was the problem. If she'd stopped crying everything would have been OK.

 

 

The Habits of Unstoppable People

‘
L
ET'S WORK ON
your narrative arc.' I looked blank so she took me to a party. It was all razor-edged suits, high-drain hairstyles, people who could slip in and out of social interactions like Porsche gear movements, who knew when to sip, nod, nibble, laugh, all to a background wash of clinking percussion and meandering oohs and aahs, like a music therapy class.

My mentor raced about, cheek-kissing and hand-pressing, between each blipvert tête-à-tête consulting a stopwatch on the underside of her wrist and muttering things like ‘five seconds too long' or ‘excellent closure.'

‘Your narrative arc is your life,' she explained. ‘If a relationship isn't pressing forward your personal narrative, cut it off. We are trapped in a narrative trajectory.' She described with her finger a tangled racetrack in the air. ‘We cross, we mingle, but wait,' she glanced over my shoulder, ‘someone's coming, act normal.'