Christine didn’t even know her address to send holiday postcards to.

LSL Corporate Cients absorbed Templeton LPA receivers, but told the tale that they acted upon their wishes. Every day of October they called Christine. When her soul was wracked by building the case against George, Anto’s ex, his bully and stalker. She stood up to him, using words and words only, she broke his nose. LSL called Christine in the morning, called out to her in the afternoon. She’d had enough of nosebleeds of her own. She built a reputation bomb meanwhile, using the address of every business George might have found work, in a twenty mile radius around Anto’s house. If he came near her beloved again, she had the phone credit and the will to fuck his life up. There was an ocean between them, a sea of love he might have said.

LSL emailed in afternoons and called out, and their letters came by in afternoons and mornings too. Barry was shot, once in the head and once in the chest. It was hard to tell strangers. Christine just wanted to carry the darkness a while, allow herself to feel guilty for the years were they didn’t see one another. To be selfish, because she’d taken the time to get to know him, while the freaks of the city walked past: “Yeoooooooo”, “Yis are stupid, go home!” Ho ho hypocrisy.

The bullshit with George took the focus off Anto’s kids. Christine tried to work around the clock using her teaching skills to help: syllabus, past papers, answer sheets, examiner’s reports. She’d taught professionally for a few years and knew the burden. It had to be done right, leave no mystery unturned. Very quickly she was exhausted. There was no money, then there was the fever and the diarrhea. And still every day of October, LSL called and she only avoided calls when the fatigue claimed her. Thirteen hour sleeps, whole days stolen from her.

And the tourettes. If one person could experience the apocalyspse this was it. On October 28th, LSL issued her with an eviction notice and Anto suggested he wasn’t in love with her. On halloween night, her friends online cheered her up. Ian called by in his car to take her to the cinema for Thor 2, packing the wheelchair in the boot and sitting with her at the back. Paul’s party was small, but she felt welcome and soon it was just the two of them and Jim.

They each took half a bottle of red wine. Jim knew Leonie O’Moore. They heard the theme from Quantum Leap and Christine told them of the suggestion of one of Rol Hirst’s boys that it was the live action version of Mr. Benn. Perhaps the costume shop man was Dean Stockwell, she added. Do you remember Bod? asked Jim. Bod was a rockstar. That theory shouldn’t have gone down so well, formulated from Bod’s approach to front of stage and dance to back of stage during ‘Guess the Milkshake’ Thankfully, Jim had never seen Bod and Paul was too young. The talk turned to dancing in the church of children’s TV: the musical nature of Pigeon Street, the jigs of Fingermouse. Then, like lightning, a notion grabbed Christine. What if, the deep sea diver uniform in the costume shop in Mr. Benn was the same deep sea diver costume in the end credits of Scooby doo?
“We’ve caught him! And if I take of this mask it will reveal…Mr. Benn! And I would have gotten away with”
Paul was keen immediately to locate the street the costume shop was on. Festive Street? There was no internet connection to check it, but she vowed to later. The three of them were talking at once about the notion of this shared universe.
“Trumpton, Camberwick Green, Chigley. That’s how!” she said. “And you remember the generic Scooby Doo families? I swear there was one were the dog could turn invisible…….except for his nose!”
She was holding court now and enough that Jim could add disdainfully,
“Oh don’t get me started on them. So, what about Pigeon Street?”
She thought on this. Was that near Fesitve Street?
“Thats twinned with Coronation Street.” said Paul.
Then Christine explained Mike Weller’s unified soap opera theory – about the tube line that carted Grange Hill actors such as Todd Carty to Eastenders’ Walford, Albert Square. Maybe it went up north, to Weatherfield, but then the tram car derailment that crashed on Coronation Street ended that line of thinking.
“I thought Coronation Street was in Belfast.”
“Because of the pigeons?” asked Paul
“There was a female trucker, Clara….” said Jim.
“Lond Distance Lara!” said Christine.
The subject fascinated the three of them, but Christine wanted to make sure.

Back home she opened another bottle of wine. Invisible Scooby Doo type was probably Dyno-mutt, not only invisible, one feature of a range of mechanical devices as the dog was invisible. He never checked if the show was screened in the UK, but noted the first was a Mystery Machine cross-over episode. As it turned out Mr. Benn lived in Festing Road. There were only fourteen episodes made, the same number as Firefly. In the cases of Fingermouse, Pigeon Street and Bod, there were only thirteen episodes made of each. Bod had characters called PC Copper and Farmer Barleymow and strong links with Taoism. The milk-shake segmens were made separately and only 5 of them survived in the BBC Archives. Only five milkshakes! She drank more. She built an x-y graph with “abilities of drunk” along one axis, and “ease of access” on the other, with delivery food at the top, then takeaway food, then home cooking. Kitchen stock was factored into her drunk food theory.  By 8am, Christine was drunk-faced. Normally quite pretty with the gulp of wine she transformed into a gargoyle for a minute. A phone call came in at nine from LSL Corporate Clients wanting to send an assessment team out to her house. She told them no, then emailed them directions for Hell and went to sleep. November was going to be different.

UPDATE:

Emergency conquered! Thanks to all my friends who re-tweeted, shared and offered advice, and especially the man who helped me out of the muddy puddle.

I should probably keep minioning, but my patron has first priority. There might be something new in this space in the next few hours!

After a week of personal hell, I’m now facing an emergency money shortage. I’m not sure were it went as I budgeted carefully, but am almost out of electric.  I’m loathe to borrow. It’s always off the same people, and I almost always get it back the following week, but still, I’m sure they are sick to the back teeth of me. 

There’s still stuff you can buy off me in the art shop and the book and dvd shop or the irish comics shop.

But for now, provided you can Paypal or bank transfer in the next 10 hours, I am your rent-able personal minion.

Costs £5 per hour, £3.50 per hour for those on a low income, unemployed. Bartering acceptable.

Travel costs must include a minimum £10 hire and be paid in advance.

Hosting costs incur an extra £1.50.

Paypal to drew.luke@gmail.com or email for personal bank electronic transfer details.

Things I am really good at:

writing stories that will take you to a set location, or through a time or place, 

teaching (humanities) and study aids

entertainment,

project management,

CUDDLES and maybe some petting.

promotion

i’m good at using crayons AND colouring pencils, ink black pens, some felt tips

time to be cute,

fresh social media progression

i’ll also harvest data and research

transcription

and if it’s socially ethical I will plot to over-throw a dictator.

Barry’s dead. I don’t want to write a poem, I haven’t the skilled energy for a painting. He was murdered by “dissident republicans” in a city centre location. Like their paramilitary counter-parts “dissident loyalists”, people ask news agencies, “Why don’t you call them by their real name?” This isn’t a plea for divine powers, but to infer this is ‘the IRA’, ‘the UVF’ or whatever. Though it never was about that, never in thirty years of low intensity conflict. It wasn’t about protestant or catholic. It was about cocaine, heroin, ecstasy tablets, sullied weed even. It was about who could pull the biggest robberies, steal the green: the grass always greener if all sides are together. Circle, sphere.

So they murdered him, threw his girlfriend into the other room while they did it. Kieran McLaughlin knows something about it. There’s a hundred men out looking for him, but the internet will track him down. They’ve not had to deal with that before. I’ve never had to deal with this before. I’ve never lost someone dear. Sure, my childhood was spent terrified, my adolescence brimming with a nervous disorder. My school-bag was searched, was dad coming home? You couldn’t talk about some things in some places. I was just the same as everyone else. Part of this state of North Ireland that’s ninety years old now. I lived with it in my twenties too, the gun at my head, the senior citizens weeping for vengeance, frail and exhausted, and when I was old enough I left. I cried too. Not because I would miss everyone here, but because I knew I didn’t want to come back.

I did. I spent some time on the protests. They shot dead pizza boys. The MPs signed up house expenses and we got the letters into their offices. They joining the boards in clusters for consensual embezzlement motions, and our voices yelled at the windows. We saw them on the boards of one bank, two bank, three bank, and it’s okay, they said, it’s a very special deal, can’t fail. We can put this money into securing your future, they said. They had their favourites: the poetry arcade arsonist, Iraq’s Bridge End bombers. Too much writing, too much writing…

Gazebo in Writer’s Square was were Barry and I met, were we timed Occupy. With our slogans to remind. No to the bail-out. If you lose a billion pounds, you have to take responsibility for that. Mummy can’t come and get you. I enjoyed the time I spent with him: stoking the fire, talking about investment, long-term historical trends, government, drinking hot tea. Ah Jeez! The wind is blowing the smoke everywhere. can’t see a gorram thing. We explained gorram to him. He made welcome (and coffee) the people who came and sat with us, whether they be posh for an argument, riddle me this, or genuinely up for a chat. You tell me your story, I tell you mine. There were those that just came for the fags and coffee and we were okay: come out of the rain drip, come out of the rain drip.

“She said her son, who had ovrer 100 criminal convictions in the court, was “not the worst of the worst.” – Derry Daily

Barry told me the exact same thing, and I thought he was joking as you would. I couldn’t even see it in him. There were probably a few for protesting, for advancing the achievements of fairness and equality. Probably a few for genuine harmful crimes. And he fell from grace with some. When it got dark, Barry didn’t want the girls leaving too late. He’d give them fags or get someone to walk with them while he manned the camp. We’d talk about why ITV weren’t covering the city fraud, why the BBC weren’t spilling the lies calling criminals criminals and why Sky were hacking phones. Well now you know. Information dissemination. There wasn’t much reward in those days, but Barry knew and he shared, and people left us sandwiches. Chopstix saved the bins and donated our dinner. Often it rained and we fortified with board and rope. The torches swung on string from the ridge pole. Sometimes it was a half hour of treachery, like open seas deep in the city centre across from the cathedral steps.

The news said he was 35, naaah, I was older than that and he seemed older than me. It’s a week on from his murder nearly as I write this. I’m sad my friend is dead and worse, I don’t feel the gaping hole, the loss. I knew Barry for two months, about half of the week. He’s the first friend I’ve lost directly to this bullshit. I was saying last night I’ve been lucky never to have something about losing someone luckier than most. And now, I feel no different. Because this is the same crap that made me happy to leave my family, the same unity that said I could never be self-employed in Belfast. The same bullshit that covers our skies with sodden flags and burns down the streets of East Belfast, that injures our cops who have children, that murders our people who have children. As Dave Baillie put it, it’s an indiscriminate device. Sometimes a clergyman or a professor will talk about the sort of things we did. They’ll say that it’s wrong to laugh at Neanderthals. That by making fun of vicious thugs and by making ourselves laugh in the process, we’re ignoring the problems and provoking the situation.

A psychological misogynist has pushed me to make a reputation explosive this week. Four times, before I found out about Barry, I woke myself up crying. But what is the level of indecency that requires Kieran McLaughlin, a 58-year old with a past with guns, to engineer a manhunt for his information? We’ve been advised not to approach, to ring it in. They call this touting, but we called it information dissemination, education, keeping people informed, sharing with lovers. Not making up lies about causes, scapegoats: straw men are for farmers. The world doth turns and while one side pickets the other and makes their hell, Barry and I sit in the shack, trying to keep the leaflets dry and talking to people about the tyrannical classes. We will overcome. The scum-bags who keep us from evolving will fade into ashes and dust.