Greetings, bonjour, what’s happening
Welcome to Lager Time. For the second week running, I’m putting this out on a Saturday, which is today, for me. There was some real Lager Time last night, been a while. Enjoyed seeing the boys.
Been a busy week this week, been all over London doing workshops, not had a great deal of time to put this together. Can’t complain though, it’s been good, mate. I’ve been trying to write this second part to the 405 story, in between jobs and on trains. So it’s probably a bit scrappy, but a lot of the stuff I’m putting up on here, are in differing states of development. That’s the idea I guess. It’s odd though, I suddenly feel a bit of an obligation to put it up. Though I think that’s merely down to my own idiosyncrasies, wanting to keep this up, than any particular demand, because as far as I know, it doesn’t exist.
I’m enjoying doing these stories though and I think I’m going to run with them for a bit. I’ve got a list of ideas, I want to write about, I’m also enjoying introducing little bits of sound design. I mean, it entails me going on to Freedsound and downloading bots and bobs, nothing out of this world but it’s a direction I’ve wanted to go down for some time.
Large up everyone who read, listened, and downloaded the first part of the 405 story last week. I was listening back, and realised the bit where I stopped the story, was where the Mo character encounters some casual racism form the driver; which unfortunately, was not that uncommon back them. Only reason that I stopped it there, is because that’s where I stopped writing it, as that’s where I ran out of time. That was it. Listening back, it reminded me a bit of those American Sitcoms that I used to like watching as a kid, like the Fresh Prince, where every now and again they, do a serious episode, rolling the credits at the end with no music; really driving home the poignant on-the-nose moment and the moral message. That’s the last thing I’d ever intend to do with any of this stuff. That kind of moralising is not my cup of tea, at all, and if I’m being an honest, it puts me off from going to a lot of spoken word events. Back when I was more active, there was loads of it. However, the thing with the driver, did happen, and happened all too often. Along with the likes of me, who sat there silent and did nothing, though I did once almost get my head kicked in, in London bridge MacDonalds, tying to stuck up for someone, for similar reasons but that’s for another time. I think that says enough. Roll credits, no music. Boom.
It’s coming up to almost a year, since I started Lager Time. I think I’m only just starting to find my feet with it. I must say, I do enjoy it and I enjoy the freedom of it. There seems to be a small number of you who are engaging with it, and its slowly growing, so thankyou. It means a lot. Either this week, or next, I’m going to do another Not Quite Live edition again, I enjoyed that one last time, even if no one else did. Not quite sure where this is all going, had a thought at some point in the future, I could put on a night, I dunno. I’m a performer, I like performing but at the moment, there aint a lot of that and I’m enjoying doing my own thing, so the Lager march continues.
Enjoy part 2 of the story, hopefully I’ll have something new for next week. Blimey, pressures on.
Having a banging rest of the weekend
Paul
The 405 part 2
BOSH. After the long, arduous and perilous journey across the Towns and villages of Surrey, we finally arrived into Kingston, and just like that we all became energised again and the al the banter and bravado we left Crawley with was back. BOOM.
It’s like we were re-connected, spirally realigned to our purpose again (even though I doubt any of us quite knew what that was.) New life was breathed into the firm, like those occasions when I bothered to reconnect the long-since-fallen, algae-ridden filter system in the fish tank, at home. Everything was fresh and gold like my fish. We were in a whole new town, with new opportunities but more importantly, about to enter the utopian-dystopian world of Lazer Quest.
Of course this meant we had to be on our guard a bit. Instinctively, shoulders arched back and as we bowled though the bus station into the town-centre, I made sure I dropped a couple of swear words, extra loud, like WANKER, letting the locals know, we had a bit about us.
Kingston was an upgrade on Crawley and definitely Horley. It was similar but everything just seemed, a lot more, like, nicer. The neat paving bricks in the pedestrianised high-street, the river, the olde-worlde buildings, even the windows looked cleaner, the girls prettier, the geezers somehow more flash, suddenly I felt like we were tatty in comparison.
Despite the Royal status, there was only one jewel in Kingston’s crown. Croydon had the Water Palace, Guildford had the Ice rink and Kingston the Lazer Quest; despite all the flashness of some of the locals, Crawley was not yet swinging in the big boys league, with these lot; though there were rumours at the time, that a Virgin Megastore was opening in the Country Mall.
We never arranged to meet the splinter-group, we just assumed they’d be at the Lazer quest when we got there and vice versa. We had a to ask a couple of people to find it. This was a moment when larey pricks like Granger actually came of use, he didn’t care who he talked too. Everything was amusing to him.
We’d all seen that episode of Byker Grove, where they went to ‘Quasar Laser’ and it looked sick! All dark with neon lights, metal grids, bunkers, netting and dry-ice; I hadn’t been this excited since Steet Fighter The Movie..
We finally reached our destination, this sort of non-descript sixties grey building, with a corrugated roof, looking like a glorified second hand tyre shop. But the all important Lazer Quest sign, on the outside of the building, was using a sick, lightning-like font, in electric-red and I was reassured about techno-futuristic-utopia-dystopia I was about to enter.
The splinter group were sat in reception, all stood up, except for Veejay who was sat down looking miserable. They stunk of fags. Smoking?! Rich explained they’d had to jump a wall at Kingston station to avoid the ticket office and Veejay had done something to his ankle in the process. I knew Veejay should’ve been with us. A mid forties women with curly, dyed red hair and glasses, wearing a black polo top showing some faded tattoos on her arm, was behind the counter with a monitor above her head, showing some scores, in mad futuristic writing, like the bowling alley, but, like, way sicker. Some cheesy Euro trance was playing in the background, it wasn’t Speed Garage but this place was already pissing on the AMF.
‘Where the fuck have you boys been, we’ve been here proper time’
‘Bus was fucking long’
‘fuckng hell man’
‘mind your language boys, not in ere thankyou’
The red head had spoken, with authority. She looked like she’d beaten up a few men in her time. Kells, with his back to her, and facing us, protested in a way that only he could
‘shutup you fucking bitch’
‘What did you just say?’
Kells was grinning at us and then immediately turned his face to a scowl, tuted and turned round
‘what, I didn’t say nothing, chill out innit’
He turned back to us and grinned again. Kells was a liability but I was kind of glad he was here. We were far away from home, so it was good to have someone in our ranks who went afraid to mix it, even if it meant him doing stupid shit like that
Redhead took the L.
‘I don’t want any lip from any of your boys when you go in there, if you mess about, you’re out, understand?’
A few ‘yea, yea, yeas’ emerged, half-heartedly from the group.
‘We need to get you signed up and then have your safety briefing, you’re in the next game, they’ll be some others in there with you’
A safety briefing?! This was just getting better and better. I thought for a sec about some of those mugs from my class, like Chris and Ramo, probably at the ABC cinema, back in Crawley. Pussies. They weren’t man enough for this shit.
We all bowled up to the counter, paid up and registered. Whilst I was in the que, I looked up at the screen and noticed some new names had appeared with a score of 0. These must’ve been the other players. There were names like ‘Dark Lord’ ‘Excalibur’ and ‘Colbolt 3000’ these names were sick. I then saw ‘Tony’s Mum and Fish Fingers ‘ had appeared on the screen, and clocked Granger and Kells were at the front adding their esteemed alias’s to the cannon. Red-head didn’t looked impressed but I guess she had to let these through on a technicality, I heard Kell’s arguing with her that ‘Mum’ was his surname.
We stood outside these black-double-doors, which had more of the sick, electric red font on them. I could hear cheesy Euro-Trance pumping through and the sounds of people running around. I was nervous but I could barley contain my excitement. We got kitted out in these mad-looking Ghostbuster type, packs that slotted over our heads, with a holster for this massive lazer-gun thing. Red head came over to administer her best war address.
‘If you get shot, your pack will freeze and you’ll have to wait till it unfreezes. Aim of the game to get as many hits as you can. Three hits and you’re eout the game. The other team you’ll be facing, are already in there and if you mess about boys, you’re out, understand, I’m not taking any crap today?!’
The moment we’d all been waiting for. Redhead opened the door. No dry-ice seeped through? Where’s the dry-ice? The cheesy Euro-trance was superloud and we entered into this sort of small-ish-dark-ish room with these wooden walkways, with some neon-graffiti on them which sort-of-looked cool.
We entered in and immediately ran off, Kells turning round to shoot as many of us as he could. We were meant to be on the same team! The wooden walk-ways were really noisy, it was putting me off. It also weren’t that dark so we could see everything. Where were the futuristic metal-grids with the futuristic dry-ice?! This just wasn’t very cool.
My pack suddenly vibrated and flashed red. I tuned round to see this podgy mid-thirties-looking guy, with long greasy hair guy and hiking boots, with a pack on, I assumed he worked there.
‘I’ve been shot, mate, what do I do?’
He shouted ‘Alpha-two-one, repeat alpha two-one, let’s go’
He then turned around and rolled off into a corner, and I heard him tramping up one of the walk-ways. The fat prick had shot me. As he tuned, I saw ‘Dark Lord’ written on the back his t-shirt. That was the Dark Lord?! He looked like he worked in the Games Workshop.
‘What are you doing you dickhead, you’re just standing there.’
Mo grabbed me and suddenly we were under one of the wooden walkways. I noticed on the floor an empty Ribena carton, a few empty crisp packets and a discarded copy of The Daily Express. I could hear Kells and Granger laughing somewhere in the room, but in truth it was hard to hear anything, as the Cheesy Euro Trance was blasting so loud and the with the stomping on the wood, I could barley hear myself think.
Fuck this, I thought. I stepped into the void, looking for that fat nerd, looking for revenge. BANG. I’m vibrating again and I tuned round to see another one of these socially awkward-looking-podgy-older guys. Must’ve been Cobalt 3000. I hadn’t even got my gun out he holster yet and I’d been shot twice. Two more if I included the bus journey.
Me and Mo ran up onto another platform where we bumped into Doyle.
‘These peedos keep shooting everyone, I’m almost dead. Veejay got taken out within five minutes.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘He’s over there.’
I looked over in the direction Doyle was pointing and saw Veejay sat on an Orange plastic-chair, like we have in school, reading a copy of Shoot Magazine. What?! Surely they wouldn’t have crap orange plastic chairs, in the sick dystopian-utopia-future?! The drapes were rapidly coming down on my lifelong dream, well, my dream, from as far back as the morning; when I actually thought a bit about what we were doing. This place was shit.
‘oi, how many lives you got left’
I tuned round to see Kells and Granger, grinning.
‘One’
‘BANG. Not any more’
I vibrated. Game over. They ran off, I’d love to say into the smoky darkness but I could see clearly where they were going, and hear them too. This place was small and shit, reminding me of Horley. I headed over to where Vejay was. He was reading an article about Andy Cole’s favourite type of pizza.
Even with the Cheesy-Euro-Trance at full-blast, Red-head must’ve got on the PA system, booming over the music to tell us the game was finishing. I wanted to get out. Predictably, Andy Cole preferred a Margarita, I had to agree with him on that one but it was no substitute for the disappointment that I felt.
We ‘de-briefed’ back in the foyer, looked up on the screen to see that team ‘Alpha-Flight’ has whipped team Crawley Boys, something ridiculous. A few of team Alpha-Flight were de-briefing in what they called the ‘ante-chamber’ with us and I overheard them referring to each other in their codenames. Really? Grow-up boys.
We managed to find a McDonald’s and at least enjoyed that. Spat some paper through the starws in the shopping centre. Took in the glorious sights of Kingston and trudged bakc to the 405, with a hobbling Veejay. He was never a bad boy. The others seemed to have enjoyed themselves, and lots of the chat on the bus back was about the fun they’d had. Mo’s was reputation was still in-tact.
Most of them had fallen asleep when the bus rolled into Horley and I got up to get off. It was dark by this point. Dark and dul,l with the few half working street lamps pitifully attempting to illuminate Horley’s crap town centre. It was fitting. I looked at Mo.
‘See you later, mate’
‘Yea, see you later, mate.’
I left the conversation, the bus and the town centre, awkward as ever.
Satellite Stories: EP 3 - The 405 Part 2