Chapter Two

Drood was a Londoner – an east ender to be precise. West Ham born and bred, so how the hell did he come to live in Hulke? It was a long story, but I guess that’s what you’re here for. At the age of 26 Drood had fallen for a beautiful lady called Christine who had insisted that she didn’t want to stay in West Ham and dreamt of racing off into the mystical West Country with the man of her dreams. Who was Drood to argue with such a persuasive tone? They had spent a couple of trips searching out new homes – Drood had found the Holmes Street property via an auction, had bid on it and startled himself into action by actually winning it. The dream was coming true! A house in the mystical west, just as madam had ordered! However, Drood had turned out to be not quite the man of Christine’s dreams. No sooner had they moved down here when she had cleared off with the Master of a local hunt and was now breeding babies and fox hounds in vast numbers somewhere up on the Mendips. And serves her bloody well right thought Drood. She had gone from hippie love child to Tory hunting-shooting-fishing harridan within six months. That’s quite a change. Drood himself had continued his lonely, monk-like existence buoyed only by the occasional oasis of lust with a temporary girlfriend, and frequent bouts of the sort of thing your mother told you would ruin your eyesight. He had settled well in Hulke though – he loved the pace of life and the whole feel of the town. He even quite liked his job – office manager at the local adult education college. It wasn’t exactly taxing, but then again the pay was atrocious so it really was a case of swings and roundabouts.

Today was Saturday! Drood’s favourite day. He would set off from his house, walk to the newsagent, purchase a paper, saunter home and sit in the garden drinking tea, smoking fags and reading the paper very slowly and in minute detail. It was what weekends were all about. The newsagent was just on the corner of Holmes Street and Lambert Street, not a long walk by any standards, but in the summer pleasant enough, and in the winter far enough to blow any cobwebs away. It was a very old fashioned place – hard floors, floor to ceiling papers and magazines, large chilled cabinets full of anonymously made and sinister looking sandwiches and racks of horrendously tacky greetings cards. You know the kind – the ones with “Happy Birthday to a Special NINE Year Old” printed over a photo of Stan Bowles playing for Q.P.R. in about 1974. Drood paused momentarily outside the shop and perused the items for sale postcards stuck in the window. His advert was still there, offering his old Yamaha acoustic guitar for a mere £40. No one had contacted him about it. If he had sold it he was going to put the money towards buying a really nice Electro-Acoustic he had seen for sale in Kingsland’s Music Emporium on the High Road. It was glossy black with glinting silver frets and just looked the business. What a shame Drood was such a terrible guitarist. He sighed and pushed open the glass fronted door. The tiny bell above it jangled and danced. Mr Letts, the owner, was busy fleecing a young child aged about six of his pocket money. Drood moved to the papers, picked up a copy of “The Times”, “The Sun”, “The Hulke and Silston Gazette” and “Private Eye”. He moved to the counter and plopped his selection as the six year old departed, ladened with sweets but significantly less well off.
“Morning Mr Letts” began Drood jauntily. Mr. Letts, a large lugubrious man with mutton chop whiskers and a personal freshness problem gazed at Drood over his half moon spectacles.
“You’re up bright an early this morning.” He said with a small mischievous smile playing over his ravaged features. Drood frowned at him, unsure of where this was leading. “Hear you had a touch too much of everything at the Flag of Nations last night.” He grinned and revealed a mouth like a graveyard. Drood groaned silently. Bad news obviously travels fast in Hulke. Nothing like a bit of misery for someone to really cheer up the local gossips.
“You’ve heard?” Drood ventured, as a rather pathetic opening. Mr. Letts snorted like some pig that was a bit too over pleased with itself.
“Trying to cop off with Claire Piper and then attempting to start a fight with the Hulke Barbarians’ Captain? Well put it this way – I am surprised your balls and your head are still in the right place!” And he guffawed at his own joke heartily. Drood seethed and dearly wished he could think of a stunningly witty and adroit response that would leave Letts a quaking shaking incontinent wreck, penitently grovelling on the floor in front of him. However the best he could manage was:
“Just fuck off and die you fat git.” OK, admittedly not exactly in Oscar Wilde or Spike Milligan’s league, but it did at least make Drood feel a little better about himself. True, he would have to find somewhere else to buy his papers and fags from now on, but it had been worth it. And Letts had still sold him what he wanted before throwing him out.

The back garden of 63, Holmes Street was particularly pleasant this morning. Drood lay in the over long grass, a large mug of tea in front of him, a Camel Light cigarette in his right hand, and his large athenaeum of papers and magazines piled up waiting for him to work his way through them. The Times was as it always was – Giles Coren only reviewing restaurants that were within staggering distance of the Groucho Club. How did he get the job in the first place? Thank God that nepotism isn’t rife in the British media. Simon Barnes trying to make football out to be something akin to Buddhism – or in other words, the usual. The Sun was as entertaining as ever. Some large breasted pop tart that Drood had never heard of, had turned up at some London club he had equally never heard of, and had been photographed getting out of a London cab possibly not wearing any knickers. Wow. This was Earth shattering news. Who cared what happened at the Middle East Peace Conference – can you see if she has any shreddies on? Mind you, the Hulke and Silston Gazette was turning out to be almost equally exciting. Someone somewhere didn’t like what someone somewhere else was planning and they were complaining about it at the council offices. Nothing would ever happen about this, of course, but the Hulke and Silston Gazette still reported on it. There was also the usual section of wedding photos – heavily hair gelled men with fake tans and ear-rings marrying a variety of butt ugly women with Jennifer Aniston haircuts and shoulder tattoos, and nearly all of them spending their honeymoons in “The Dominican Republic”. Where the hell was that? It sounded like something out of “1984”.
But now Drood was getting on to his favourite part of the local rag – the adverts! There seemed no limit to the depths the good people of Hulke and Silston would stoop to – nothing was too crappy to be sold. For instance:
“Red and grey Formica kitchen cupboard. One door missing. Some glass damage. £5 ono. Buyer to collect. Call Hulke 353711.”
Drood lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. Would there be anyone at all in the surrounding area who considered his or her life so empty that they just HAD to have a red and grey Formica kitchen cupboard with a door missing? There was always an outside chance. Come on, the half-wits round here had voted in a Tory candidate at every election since the Battle of Hastings, so they were quite capable of anything. He turned to the next page. Still nothing here that would interest a man of his tastes and sensibilities. But by now his advert trawling was taking him away from the stark reality of second hand kitchen cabinets, and into the only partially charted waters of the “Personal” columns.
Aside from the usual grunt groan “man-seeks-woman-for-bouncy-bouncy-sessions” ads there was also the cryptically fascinating announcements column. These adverts were free as long as you weren’t selling anything and were something of a tradition in the Hulke and Silston Gazette going back 20+ years. It was always a long column and was inevitably packed full of bizarre proclamations. Drood picked the first one out immediately as a classic of its genre.
“Oozlum Woozlum to Cathode Ray Tube. The ink monitors are watching. Switch to scramble mode.” And that was it. Further down this column Cathode Ray Tube was urging Oozlum Woozlum to consider his (or her) procrastination techniques, whatever that meant. And so it went on, line after line of eccentric nonsense that obviously meant something to someone somewhere. However, half way down the second column a small one line advert snapped Drood out of his semi-interested state. It read:
“Drood. Something wonderful is going to happen.” And, again – that was it. Drood grabbed the paper tightly and pulled it closer, as though sticking his face close enough to the inky print might make this mad message make sense. He read it and re-read it. It definitely said Drood.
“Something wonderful?” He said, out loud. “Like what?” His eyes ducked back down to the paper in his hands. Five messages below the first seemingly addressed to him, was his answer.
“Drood – everything you could hope for. What is your dearest wish – right now?” His heart was beating a little faster now. This was weird. He slowly stood up to his full height, never taking his eyes off the message. The only other time he had experienced goose bumps like this was the night the first four balls out of the National Lottery Draw had been on his ticket. The message straight below the previous one made his pulse rate sky-rocket.
“Drood – just like the first four numbers in the Lottery. Of course you were never going to get the final two, were you?” Sweat suddenly beaded on his brow. He cried out as the forgotten cigarette in his hand finally smouldered through to his fingers. Drood stamped out the final smoking remains of the fag and took himself back to this weird paper. What was his dearest wish – right now? Well, he’d always fancied driving round in a brand new Land Rover Discovery… oh, come on. He could do better than that. The mystical column agreed eight lines further down.
“Drood – only a car? We know you and we need your help.” They needed his help? And surely his idea of an ideal world could stretch further than a large car. What about World peace? That would be nice, everyone getting on with each other for a change. The column agreed once more.
“Drood – that’s more like it. And you will achieve it.” But how? Who would ever listen to him? He had no influence, no status and barely a pot to piss in.
“Drood – your pot runneth over. Go see your wood burner.” And that was the final advert of that week’s column. Now this was definitely not your usual Saturday, even on a day with such a ferocious hang-over to contend with. What did it mean? Go see your wood burner? It was the height of summer for Christ’s sake. Drood pondered a while as he stood in silence in his garden. He picked up his tea mug and marched inside. It was time to take a good hard look at his wood burning stove.
Inside seemed spectacularly dark after the brilliant sunlight of the back garden. Drood wandered through into his sitting room, but everything seemed wonderfully normal and re-assuring. The sagging shelves of books, CD’s, LP’s and his elderly stereo were all where they should be. The signed photo of Spike Milligan smiled down at him from its alcove. And there, lurking in the middle of the stone fireplace was the wood burner itself. It was a nice modern model, a Villager, but its front windows were blind and blackened from the heat they had experienced in the winter. Cobwebs trailed round the hinges and indicated the front doors had not been in opened in a while. Drood knelt in front of the black box and tried to crane his neck so he could see if anything was going on round the back of the burner, but it was, as ever, flush to the wall with the flue running up into the chimney breast. There was absolutely nothing out of place or unusual. Drood tentatively reached out a hand and unlocked the front doors. The cobwebs split and broke as the doors opened outwards. Inside was a mass of old ashes and darkness. But there was something else. A small clear plastic wallet, a little bit like the bags you get from banks for your small change. Drood picked it up. Inside was a piece of A4 paper that had been folded neatly into a quarter. He opened the bag, took the paper out and unfolded it. In clear, neat handwriting was written the message:
“I recommend you check your bank balance.” And that was it. This was madness. Expecting Drood to check his bank balance – on a Saturday? Anyone would think that Banks opened for their customer’s convenience! Seriously, this definitely needed checking up, so a visit to the High Road seemed like an urgent need.

Chapter One

It would appear that the weather men had been right the night before. It really was going to be the hottest day of the year so far. Even at this early hour, a light blue hazy mist rose over the fields and hedges of the surrounding districts as the first really hot rays of the sun started to get to work. The gently rolling hills and dipping valleys of the Somerset/Wiltshire border looked as inviting as ever. Nestling in a small valley just by the A303 lay the drowsy buildings and streets of Hulke. It was a small, non-descript town that showed signs of its heyday having long since passed. This was complete crap as it had never had a heyday in the first place. It had always just been “that place”. No railway had ever been there, no major battles of the English Civil War had ever raged near it. Hitler hadn’t even bombed it. No one had told him about it, so why should he?

Hulke has one major tourist attraction. Alright, I exaggerate. Hulke has A tourist attraction. In the middle of the town is an attractive and relatively large green. Its lawns undulate and are liberally covered with leafy trees that offer tranquil corners for lovers and tramps alike. In the middle of all this charming greenery lie the stark ruins of Hulke Priory. This was a small religious house that had never really been a major site, but had still been torn to pieces and left to rot by Henry the VIIIth and his asset stripping operation. Now the crumbling walls were slowly decaying in the elements, but still attracting the occasional visitor who would shuffle round, reading the information boards erected by the town council and taking photos to bore friends with later. It still made for a nice vista from the shops and pubs that lined one side of the High Road.

Some three roads back from Hulke’s main drag was Holmes Street. This was another largely anonymous red brick Victorian terrace of apparently cloned houses. They marched up the shallow hill in a regimented line of conformity. Here and there, owners had attempted to stamp their own identity and individualism on the outside by painting a gutter a garish pink, or by affixing large and hideous plastic butterflies on the brickwork. Some others had just decided to ignore all boundaries of taste and good sense and had plumped for the leprosy of home improvement – stone cladding. Number 63 was a little different from the rest, but you had to get up close to notice it. Around the front door, with its pretty and original stained glass panel, there were one or two messages. Things like a “Glastonbury 98” see-through badge, or a deeply faded “Dig Deep for the Miners” sticker, that sat proclaiming the house owners taste – and peeled slowly.

Upstairs in the main bedroom, a single figure lay sprawled across the scrambled bed clothes of the double bed. It was a male figure, aged about 35, thick set and with a mass of straggly brown hair that was thinning slightly at the front. He lay face down on the bed in just a pair of boxer shorts, a tiny sheen of perspiration in the small of his back. Somewhere in the street outside he could hear a milk float whining up the hill. His eye lids slowly parted and he focussed on the mobile phone by his bed, used as it always was by him as a clock and alarm just as often as a means of communication. The time said 07:34. For one moment he thought it was time to get up, head to the office, but then it came back to him. It was Saturday. A day off. The thumping hangover confirmed that it definitely was Saturday. The figure rolled on to his back and tried to ignore the headache, but on the pain Richter scale this one was heading towards double figures. He struggled into a semi seated position, farted thunderously and then pondered on the possibility of being upright. It sounded far too adventurous and he slumped back into the pillows. This was Neil Hinchcliffe, known to all his friends, and the occasional enemy, as “Drood”. A bizarre nickname, that was for sure and one whose explanation was now lost in the mists of time and would probably never be recovered. Not unless someone invented a time machine and what was the likelihood of that ever happening? He had been known as Drood since his years at secondary school and it had stuck, and to be quite honest he liked it. Summoning up super human reserves of energy and resolve he levered himself into a seating position and then, even more impressively, swung his legs out over the edge of the bed and let them dangle down to the floor. Hot. Headache. Desperate for a wee and a poo. Mouth like a piece of sandpaper. All of these sensations were analysed by his brain and filed away in order of importance, to be dealt with as they became critical. Toilet first seemed like a good starting point – obviously after an evacuation of his bowels and the resulting odour, this would necessitate the opening of a window somewhere which would alleviate some of the over heating problems. A glass of water and two paracetamol would equally cure the sandpaper and headache scenario. See! Life could be made simple!

It had been a spectacularly bad night at the pub the previous evening. “The Flag of Nations” was another simple Victorian building with two bars and a miniscule snug. Its front windows were of a pleasant stained glass, while inside the flag motif was played to the extreme with various pennants draped over most available surfaces. Dark wood and horse brasses completed the picture. Drood had been a regular there for the past 4 years and things still weren’t improving. This particular Friday evening, two of the local lasses were in there – Claire and Tara. Both of them quite nice, but Drood was particularly fond of Claire with her dark hair and big sensuous eyes. But then he wouldn’t have kicked Tara out of bed either and he had been single for far too long and was determined to impress these ladies. But it didn’t go according to plan. He had sat with them in the snug and felt happily in control of the situation and even started flirting with both of them. They even admitted that they were both very single and were on the look out for a man in their lives. Drood’s heart had leapt at this admission. He was poised to move in for the kill when Claire delivered her knockout blow on his undefended emotional chin.
“Drood” she had begun, gently rolling the “R” and leaning forward so that he could get a better look at her cleavage. “Both Tara and I are single and in need of good men, and we wanted to ask you something…” Drood, as calmly as he could manage replaced his pint on the table, but inside butterflies were going ape-shit and his breath shuddered slightly. Was she really going to say next what he thought, hoped and prayed she was going to say? Something along the lines of “can we come back to your house and give an impromptu display of lingerie wearing and Sapphic tendencies for your delectation?” Did she bollocks…
“What we wanted to ask you was, do you know any nice single men you could introduce us to?” His heart slapped onto the floor, flapped around pathetically for a second or two and then expired. He tried to regain some composure and raised an eyebrow quizzically in a way that he hoped would be attractive.
“Well, there is one name that springs to mind…” He growled in what was a passable imitation of a sexy voice. Tara sat forward excitedly and Claire’s big brown eyes twinkled.
“Oh, do tell!” said Tara. Drood licked his lips slowly, ready to deliver his trump card.
“Me” he announced, proudly. Silence descended on the snug.
“You?” said Claire and looked in bewilderment at Tara. Drood’s confidence evaporated.
“Err… yes, me” he repeated, only this time in a timid rather pathetic little voice. Claire reached over and stroked his arm gently.
“Oh you sweetie, always trying to cheer us up with a joke. You are just like a brother to us, totally safe and trustworthy! That’s why we love you!” She finally emotionally murdered him by giving him a chaste, innocent peck on the cheek and stood up and headed for the bar. Tara remained briefly. She looked hard at Drood.
“You fancy her don’t you?” she said sharply. Drood nodded dumbly and smiled apologetically at her.
“Dreadful isn’t it?” He ventured in a joking way. Tara stood up and picked up her drink.
“Yeah” she breathed. “You know you don’t stand a chance, don’t you? Claire’s completely out of your league.” She added. Another emotional boot in the bollocks. She drained her glass and went off to join Claire. Drood sat for a second in silence. He had already drunk too much and was getting towards “emotional” in more ways than one. But he would be OK; he would settle his emotions and go out into the bar again. He just needed a couple of seconds to calm him down and get everything under control again. Just at that second, some complete knob-end put on “Hurt” by Johnny Cash on the juke box and Drood dissolved into a mass of snot and tears. Heaving shoulders and gasping breaths. He would have to do what a man had to do. He was going to have to get very, very drunk and make some completely futile gesture of love and admiration.

Downstairs in his kitchen the following morning Drood poured water into his kettle for a cup of tea. His mind recovered what he had finally done at the pub last night. He groaned with embarrassment. Seven pints of Summer Lightning and a couple of whiskies were probably not the best way to begin a romantic plan, but the purchasing of large amounts of crab sticks and winkles from the woman who came round with the shell fish tray and then attempting to give them all to Claire and Tara as a token of good will and unbridled lust was definitely a no-no. The added ingredient sure to make this whole scenario collapse was the fact that Claire and Tara were by this time completely surrounded by the Hulke Barbarians Rugby club and enjoying their attentions as they were all obviously completely unlike brothers to them. Drood had completed his utter embarrassment by throwing a winkle at the Rugby Club captain, had just missed having his head taken off his shoulders by the said captain and had been rescued by his best mate Bryan Camfield who had helped him stagger home, pausing only to throw up in a litter bin. As he poured the boiling water from the kettle into a mug for some tea this following morning, he could only console himself with the idea that one day he would look back on all this and laugh. Probably sometime during the next ice age.

A Novel featuring Hippies, football and time travel...

OK, OK, I know there are millions of other people banging out novels on line. I have even read some of them myself. I have been farting about with Team Spirit for what seems a lifetime now and I do love the story, I have it all mapped out in my mind, but it is the discipline of making myself write it down completely, finish it off, that is the real difficulty I have. So many other things to distract me. Well, having heard some woman on the radio the other day getting over excited by the six-figure advance she had received from a certain well-known publishers for her (IMHO) self-centred navel gazing tosh that had been picked up on the net via a blog, well, I thought I'll have some of that myself. So week by week, I shall start publishing the chapters of Team Spirit and the ongoing struggle of it's central hero Drood Hinchcliffe and his best buddy Bryan Camfield, to come to terms with a bizarre world of which they have not the slightest idea what is going on in. Blimey. That sentence got away with me already and I haven't even started yet. You can always make a run for it here, dear reader...

Comments would be most welcome, as long as they are either constructive or praising. Please, none of this American "Hey, I love your blog, have you considered tri-equity sausage bonds with Rolex watches free in our casino with lashings of hot viagra! Make your cock HUGE!" bollocks, OK?

Finally, the town this is based in is called Hulke and is pronounced "HEW-K" and is actually based on the town of... well, that would be telling. See if anyone can work it out.