dddk 10 - the terrible adventures of peter pan

‘This’ll do nicely…I could do with a sit down but…Maybe I’ll just lean on the banister. You’d have thought after all these weeks without a ciggie I’d have it cracked. But you have no idea how superb this moment is; oh nicotine, makes beat my heart. Sucking hard; hot slides the holy smoke, deep, deep, ah…Steady lad, hold on now, oh sweet fucking headrush. Easy Barry boy or you’ll finish up arse over tit at the bottom of the bloody stairs. That said I wouldn’t mind sliding down a level; the window in that door’s a dead giveaway. If that silly bitch that caught me in the bogs yesterday walks past I’ll be frogmarched back to me bed again. Tart. Thirty years ago she’d have been sending me her dirty knickers and wanking over my signed photo. “Now, now Mr.Daze, smoking is not only not acceptable in the hospital building, it is also extremely detrimental to your recovery.” Trollop.

But they’re all fucking trollops aint they. And Margot, oh Margot you are queen of the lot. Right from the start I knew, I knew her for the rich bitch hunter of seed that she is. “I really do think you would make the most interesting subject for a film Barry,” she’d oozed. Did I say she could call me Barry? I don’t think so. But you know, a film, could get me right back on my feet I thinks.

Should’ve seen her face when she walked into the flat. There’s me worrying about the state of the place, and in she comes her eyes lighting up like it’s Christmas come early. “How did you end up here Barry?” She asks me, fiddling with something on the side of the camera. So I tell her. I tell her about that sleazy cunt of a manager John Costello, about all his tasty backhanders made by signing me out of the royalties, whoring me for one off payments, telling me I was rich, telling me he was paying my taxes, fucking my slut wife and then dropping me like a shining turd when punk rock hacked off my legs.

The next time she came, so understanding she is, so sympathetic, she says “Tell me about the good times Barry.” And I know what she wants and I just can’t help myself, I have so got to give it her. So I tell her about the rollers, and the famous mates, and the parties and the drugs and the kids chasing me down the street tearing the clothes off me back. And I dunno where it comes from, but I find myself telling her this one story about a night I went down this really posh hostess club, full of rich Arabs and Tories. How I got half a dozen tarts pissed up round the table and then piled them into the car, and there we all were back at my suite tooting away, and I gets this fucking hilarious idea – There’s this vase in the corner stuffed full of feathers, peacock feathers – I gets ‘em all to strip, “nothing but your shoes on girls,” I shouts. I sits on a chair in the middle of the room and slides one plume into every single arse crack. And it’s fucking hilarious I tell Margot – her mouth is just hanging open – I make them strut around me for two hours while I screw up fifties into tight little balls and aim for the feathers. When I’ve had enough I tell them they can keep what they can pick up with their mouths – Should’ve seen them, snuffling round on the floor like fucking truffle pigs. Ah, fucking hilarious. She don’t say much does she, old Marge, but I start thinking she’s beginning to see who I was, she’s starting to get it.

Next time she’s sposed to be coming round and I gets this call; would I mind terribly coming down to her place as she’s having trouble getting into town. She even says she’ll have a ticket waiting for me at the station and I think great a day out at the seaside.

Margot’s waiting outside the station in a very tasty silver Beemer, she waves and I get in next to her. “Barry, meet Emma,” she says, waving toward the back seat – and there’s this kid, she’s reading a book, bloody great thing it is, and she’s really little behind it. I dunno, eight? Seven…? She looks up at me, and I can feel her taking it all in. Then finally she says “Hello Barry.”

Margot gears up the car and swerves out the car park like Stirling fucking Moss. “Thought we’d do a bit of filming down at the beach, ok with you Barry?” Like she really thinks I might say no.

So there we are walking down a stretch of windswept sand and she’s studying me through the lens, asking me “What’s life like now Barry?” And for a minute there I think she’s really listening. And I’m telling her about the Peckham Manor Estate, and being on the sick. And I’m leaning on this bunker – pillbox I think – and she’s coming in really close and I’m thinking about all those bastards that don’t wanna know me no more, and I tell her I can walk down the street now and not one single fucker turns their head, and her phone rings.

She wanders off hissing into a bone no bigger than a fag packet, which makes me think a smoke wouldn’t go amiss. I look down at the kid, still looking at her book. “I’m Peter Pan,” I says to her, pointing at the picture. She looks up at me, disgust scrawled over a momentarily perfect replica of her mothers mush . “No you’re not, you’re old. And anyway, Peter Pan doesn’t smoke.” The wind turns and I catch a strain of Margot’s irate fluting, “Just let me finish up with this tosser and I’ll be over…shit no, alright I’ll do it now.” She slides the phone back into her pocket and turns round, smiling at me like I was her long lost fucking brother. “Look, something really urgent has come up,” she’s saying, “could you keep an eye on Emma? I’ll be back in about twenty minutes.” I smile and she waves dismissively at the kid, “Be good for Barry darling, back in a jiffy.” And off she trots, leaving just me and her.

I know she didn’t really believe me when I told her I could fly, but she follows me round the back and into the bunker anyway. We’re just about to step into the concretes lucky gap, when a stinking, washboard ribbed cat streaks across our path; scares the fucking life out of me…black bastard. “Ooh,” she says, “it went from right to left, my dad says that’s bad luck.” Nah, I’m thinking, this is definitely good. “Come on.” And she follows me into the gloom to become the privileged recipient of some true Barry Daze magic.

Time mother Margot gets back, me and the girl are sitting on top of a dune quietly cradling a slumbering secret. She’s looking all stressed out is mummy. “Look, I’m sorry,” she says, “but I’m not going to be able to get anymore done today.” Dunno, maybe I looked a bit disappointed, ‘cos she backs it up, “I know the trains not for another couple of hours, do you want to come back to the cottage for a coffee before you head off?”

Before I know it I’m sitting at a massive oak table in the middle of a country living advert for exclusive kitchens. The kid’s disappeared leaving me and ma sharing a comfortable if somewhat small expresso coffee. I start telling her about a cafe I go to on giro day, but she gets up saying she’s got to make a call. And I’m leaning back in my chair feeling really quite nice, when this scream rips through the corridor and suddenly the woman’s running towards me waving this bit of red and white cloth. “You bastard, you scum bastard.” I can just see over her shoulder now, and the kids there, half undressed and shaking. Maybe Margot’s having second thoughts, ‘cos she pulls up short, panting and staring me down, her eyes bulging out of her head. I start backing up to the doorway. Heavy bells clash as she reaches into a tangle of hanging brass tubes. The whore is ripping the chimes from the beam and swinging them straight at my nut, freeing up another headfucker scream as she goes. I grab her keys off the dresser and scorch the driveway in my impatience to get her out of my face.

The drive back to town was beautiful; sun setting on the motorway, exquisite turbo drive…It wasn’t till I’m pulling into Peckham High Street that I realise the cunt knows where I live. I couldn’t go back to the flat. I dumps the car and starts wandering. She probably had them there waiting for me.

So you see it’s all her fault I ended up down the arches. I just had to stop walking; work out what to do next. Her fucking fault. So tired I was, but I just couldn’t close my eyes, that’s why I took the Temazepan.

They reckon I had a fag in my hand – that’s how they say I fried.

Well they won’t have to worry about chemical fucking castration now will they. Bollocks, this fucking piss bags leaking…