Don’t Jump I’ll Miss Celebrity Squares - New Version

Don’t Jump I’ll Miss Celebrity Squares - New Version

I was P.C. Mike Edwards of Cheshire Police, Runcorn beat. If your girlfriend ever asks you to ‘kiss her where it smells’ as Les Dawson used to say, then Runcorn a.k.a. chemtown, really is the place to take her. As Runcorn is a particularly smelly place to live. Edged by the massive manufacturing plant of chemical bullies, I.C.I. with the town centre infested with a gold-hooped plague of pram-faced single mums, sporting the regulation (for girls with one C.S.E.) pony tails that give them 'council face-lifts' whilst they push around their babies concieved in the untaxed and rarely MOT'd Vauxhalls of the local bad lads.
However, most importantly for now, it is also home to the fabulous Runcorn bridge. Bessie I call her, a big steel-boned, lass. Stretching over the River Dee where the river coughs out the chemical cocktail kindly given to it by I.C.I. into the Mersey estuary. Bessie, a feat of engineering bravado performed in an age when half of the globe was Empire red, designed and overseen by a bloke in a stovepipe hat with 'Kingdom' or some other mad middle name.
Nowadays in what 'The Sunday Times' journalists, with their opinions on things for clever poor people call the noughties, much to the chagrin of myself, Bessie is now destination of choice for those with suicidal tendencies racing through their muddled minds. Bessie is especially attractive to every depressed housewife, failed businessman and disgraced Clergyman this side of the M53. She is THE place to jump and get the much mentioned at funerals 'cry for help' mentioned in a four line aside in The Liverpool Echo, opposite another advert for T.J. Hughes.
Bessie, was built when they knew how to wrestle a girder, when honest men with big hands and lunchboxes full of love and big buttiesgrappled the steel into submission with big hammers and hot rivets. A time when life was cheap and the health and safety man in his white hard hat, clipboard and flourescent jacket non-existent. To the credit of those nutters in the big hats and the men who skipped around without fear three hundred feet up on that steel, Bessie doesn’t wobble when you walk across her, unlike that millennium effort in London. No Sir, solid is Bessie, solid as Ashford and Simpson.
I've had three call outs to her already this month, this one being the fourth. It was April, spring had sprung, a season of supposedly new life, when the thoughts of young men in white socks and school trousers turned to love and the girl next door in the blue jumper full of promise. April was usually very quiet. I’d always get a dive (for want of a better collective noub) of 'weeping leapers' around Christmas time, as that was when these often sensative and reflective people looked beyond the tinsel and the ho, ho ho's to realise how painful and shallow modern life in the 'noughties' really was. Personally I think playing an unsung part in the increase was the Christmas day ritual of broadcasting the bone achingly tedious, Billy Smarts Circus.
I hadn’t seen a busier April since some bright spark in a music studio sat behind a stupidly large desk crammed with knobs and dials, thought it would be a good idea to release the song ‘Mash’ as a single. Cheerily advising that 'suicide is painless.' Attempted suicide isn’t painless, I can vouch for that. I’ve seen too many poor broken sods carried into ambulances screaming for Mum, Mummy and ocassionally Mater.
I’d just popped a Findus Cod in Parsley sauce into a pan of boiling water when the call came. It was a shame, as I like a nice bit of processed fish moulded untidily into a oblongy sort of shape. Reminds me of happier times, times when I didn’t have to pay for a woman to shake my porridge gun. When I could put a smile on a woman’s face without giving her a twenty pound tip. A time before the books, bought from shops with black windows and carried home quickly in brown paper bags and a time before the relentless late night searches on the internet for fat old 'sluts' no more than a 'Rucorn Cabs' three pound fifty ride away.
So, as duty called, it was off with the gas and on with the coat. When I arrived they had already closed the roads both sides of Bessie and a couple of hundred stranded drivers sat still, all with faces like smacked northern arses. Some were out of their cars, peering up to the top of the bridge at the problem, in the vain hope of communicating some sort of ‘get down you fucker I wanna go home' message. Others sat in a very British sort of tollerance and mused about divorce, deadlines and how to contact first loves on Friends Reunited without the neurotic 'missus who no longer kisses' finding out.
I was met by Wingnut from 'Traffic'. It is a fact that he would be able to get Sky on those lugs of his if he plugged himself in and attached himself to one of those big televisions people with Pit Bull terriers have. The wind off the river had given his flappers a comedy tip of red, rendering him not unlike a car-boot garden gnome. He told me in his voice which was like Keith Harris on Methadone, that the jumper was a man, they nearly always were, if you ask me us men bottle things up and then crack, women in my shite opinion that even tramps don't listen to, chop the onion too quickly. They tend to let it out straight away, that’s why you always see them coming out of toilets dabbing their eyes with hankies. Some don’t even bother going to the toilets. I had a young WPC with me for a long week who’d cry at the slightest of things. All it took was for a suspect to give some bullshit hard luck tale of kids with no shoes and she end up looking like Alice Cooper chopping the very same 'woman' onions.
So what we had was a bloke up top, the wind off the Mersey in his hair and a spectacular leap to death on his mind. Wingnut had got halfway up and the self preservation gene kicked in. Which wasn’t surprising, as a good gust behind those lugs and he’d have ended up in St Helens. Like Mary Poppins only with thicker wrists and sans umbrella. I was used to heights, they didn’t bother me. I’d been to the top of Bessie in all weathers. I preferred summer obviously, one afternoon in July I spent a glorious couple of hours with a failed businessman, playing spot the red Mondeo and laughing about the often missed irony of Basil Brush, with the 'Bum Bum Mr. Roy' fox being dressed as one of the hunters in the red jackets and the stoopid hats that wanted their beagles to tear him to screaming lumps of red fur. I was quite disappointed when the leaper said he wanted to come down.
I climbed onto the steel walkway and proceeded to make my way the 300ft up to the top. As I got close to the jumper, the thick ginger hair not unlike a ginger foam microphone and the round shoulders looked familiar. It couldn’t be. But it was.
"Ginner is that you?" Ginner had been a mate all through school. He'd always wanted to be a Priest and left to pursue his Godly intentions before sixth form.
Ginner looked at me. “Hello Edwards?”
“Christ on a Raliegh Chopper, Mary Magdelene in a Triumph Herald, what’s a man of God like you doing in an un-Godly situation like this?”
He had obviously fulfilled his ambition to spend the rest of his life listening to other people's sins and meating out confessional punishment, as he was in the regulation black and his dog collar was stuffed untidily into his top pocket.
Ginner stood up in a ‘I’m going to jump now’ sort of way.
“Sit down you rum bugger.”
He took another step.
“Listen prick, sit down or I’ll give you a slap.”
I slipped into fourth form bully mode. It worked as it did all those years ago. Ginner sat down.
“Let me guess I said, you’ve been getting drunk and buying pictures of other people's naked girlfriends on E-bay, using the Sunday takings out of the wooden collection bowls?"
Ginner shook his head and spoke a solemn. “I wish.”
I’d tried this route first after his scam with the school tuck shop money in year two. Nothing was ever proven but I was privvy to the existence of the Kwik Save bag full of copper he kept buried underneath the B and Q ‘pissing cherub fountain’ badly cast in concrete, that stood in the middle his parents back garden.
“A little trouble with Choir boys?” I fished.
Ginner sneared at me. “What do you take me for?”
I’d only suggested this because I vaguely remember he onced covered his Geography text book with a picture of Liberace and refused one day, at the bus stop to take his turn to spit in the face of a boy from St Martins private school who spoke like Danny La Rue.
“Woman trouble?” I offered, it was usually one of four things this being the third and only remaining possibility, as the fourth was being a failed businessman and I assumed any business with God as the Managing Director couldn’t really fail.
Ginner nodded. Like the predictable plot in an episode of 'Cracker', it began to take shape. 'Priest falls for pretty member of congregation. The warm AGA fresh scones, the long soft chats, the light floaty summer dresses and the occassional flashes of olive inner thighs and ever so soft white knickers,' just too much for any man with balls and eager tadpoles.
“Is she married?” I asked.
Ginner shook his head.
“No, but I am.”
‘What, I thought and I never even got invited to the piss up.'
“Married to God,” Ginner continued.
I thought it was Nuns that were married to God as the Catholic church didn’t approve of homosexual marriages, but I decided not to contest this point as I was beginning to make progress.
“What’s her name?” Ginner stood up.
“Steady on.”
“ Don’t worry, I’m just getting you a photograph.” He passed me a picture of what looked like a summer camp. Two girls with that gawky thirteen year-old look, who had big heads full of teeth, stood each side of a 'Russian shot putter' of a woman in something waterproof and green by Peter Storm, her massive but Ronnie Corbettesque legs sporting muddy leggings and hiking boots.
“Very nice,” I said, well what else could I say, ‘you’re three feet away from ending it all for a woman who most men rather fuck than fight?’ My initial guess of summer dresses, smooth olive inner thighs with ever so soft white knickers, were adjusted to a 'bikini paragraph, distressing 'I've seen them on the athletics on the telly' woman muscles, steriods, Fathima what's her name and pink ‘kidney warmers’.
“Give me a good reason then?” Ginner stood up. “Good enough not to jump right now?”
“I’ll miss Celebrity Squares.” I said automatically, it was the first thing that came into my head and it was true, if he came down I'd be back home for eight, when the freeview channel U.K. Living, famous for showing old programmes that it could get for a tenner, aired the long de-commissioned by the new breed of TV execs probably called Nic without a K, quiz show car crash.If he jumped. I'd have to wait for ambulances and fill in a million forms.
Ginner sat down.
“What, you like it too?”
‘Yeeees’ I thought. I’d done it, the first rule when trying to get through to a ‘jumper’ was to establish a common thread of interest and the eighties game show where minor ‘celebrities’ got a chance to be funny and revive their flagging careers with a couple of witty remarks, seemed to have done the trick.
“Who do you think was the best?” I asked.
“Bernie Clifton, he replied without hesitation. I used to think he was no more than a second rate holiday camp entertainer, stuck forever with that bloody ostrich, but his answers to the questions were so funny, he was a real talent.”
I agreed, not because I thought the said Mr Clifton was the best, oh no, I felt that that honour should go to Ted Robbins, famous for being the fat unfunny brother of Kate Robbins, who was famous for being something to do with The Beatles, another one of Liverpool’s many McCartney cousins, who all called Paul ‘Our Kid’ and where shite at whatever they turned their 'by tenuous association' nepatistic hands to.
We mused about it for a while then Ginner stood up. He took a deep breath.... “From Norwich... it’s the quiz of the week!” I stood up too and we both began to dance in a sort of twist like fashion. Like a pair of embarrassing wedding uncles. A twist but not a 'Chubby Checker And The Fat Boys' twist, just a two pissed uncles trying to dance with bellies full of chicken legs and Cava twist.
After we’d forgotten the rest of the tune, we both sat back down.
“What’s he like to work for then, this God fella?”
Ginner smiled.
“Alright, no fear of the salary cheque ever bouncing and if you want a word with the top man there’s no need to make an appointment you just drop to your knees and open your mouth.”
“A bit like Monica Lewinsky eh ?” I joked.
Ginner looked at me like he did that day when we were in the fourth form together and I had carefully with a pen knife from Southport, bored a hole through the outside wall of the girls changing rooms, giving us a sneaky peep hole to heaven.
I turned to him that afternoon and invited his eye to partake in the feast of giggling filth.
“Look Ginner I grinned, real beaver!” it was that same look, the look of a wife finding her husband bollocks deep in the dog.
“You’ve always been the same haven’t you Edwards?” he said. “Always the same beast.”
“Steady on Ginner, I protested, I’m hardly a beast! We were thirteen remember, it wasn’t as if I was doing a Gary Glitter, it’s alright to look at little titties and arses if you’ve only got a little arse yourself.”
“Really?” his eyes rolled and looked dark and black.
“Beast” he repeated. He turned to me in a most unpriest like manner.
“Tell me about your books Edwards? Those disgusting, degrading books, that you both hate and love, the filth-ridden books jam packed to the frothy brim with vacant staring teenage girls. Lost daughters of good people, arms full of drugs and hearts full of unhappiness?”
I didn’t know which was worse the way Ginner seemed to be looking into my soul or the fact that he knew I had been sleeping on a tilt above a sticky pile of the very same teenage porn, sodden with my DNA and self loathing.
“Your life is shit Edwards.”
“Should a priest say shit?”
“I say it like it is Edwards, shit, like the shit bit of processed Cod you’ve left on the stove, that will now never get to partner with the garden peas and boiled Jersey Royals it deserves.
This was getting surreal. He spoke an uncomfortable truth, my life was shit, living alone in a house with no soul and not a single picture on its rice pudding walls was shit. Being a Policeman and everyone hating you apart from people over fifty was shit, wanking off to those dirty sex pictures of teenage girls in bitty Marks and Spencers knickers smiling heroin smiles was shit. My relationship with everyone who bothered sending me a cheap box set Christmas card was shit. My work colleagues, who had not once in twelve years invited me out for an after work drink thought I was a sad shit. Even my cat. who took delight in crapping in my headphones. thought I was shit. Ginners eyes where a solid black now, ringed with what looked like a long burning flame, He held out a hoof, it seemed natural to take it.
“I’ve come for you Edwards, it’s time.”
The wind swung me around and as we fell, I saw Ginner smirking. The wind parted his ginger wire wool at the forehead, the hair that would make Vidal Sasoon weep into his pile of money and five seconds from death, the last question of my miserable life was not 'Is there a God,' but 'were they horns?'