Chapter 9: Checkout and Checkmate Time

Chapter 9: Checkout and Checkmate Time 
It was a Monday; Barry had spent one year, eleven months and three weeks of his life locked up inside Weirdways Prison. There was now just one more week left on his sentence to serve. Over this substantial chunk of his life Barry had managed to prevent himself from going insane by acquiring a pair of ear plugs and a nose peg. These two devices served as indispensable tools at blocking out Sammy’s constantly intrusive insanity. They’d been smuggled into the prison for a high price, but Barry managed to pay for them with the leftover stamps he still had and the performance of a lot of blowjobs. Sammy thought the nose peg and ear plugs had been sent by Satan: his illness had taken a radical shift, transforming him into a religious zealot, and for a reason only known to him, he’d discarded the belief that the MI5 were listening in to his every word. Everything that wasn’t labelled The Bible was, to use a phrase Sammy had taken a liking to: An abomination unto the Lord. Sammy’s enthusiasm for this sentence never appeared to wane, and even Barry’s unibrow got referred to as an abomination unto the Lord.
It’s not that bad, thought Barry caressing his eyebrow self-consciously. Barry had been permitted to read books from the prison library again, but he had read and memorized almost every word in there and it was getting hard to find any interesting material left for his brain to digest. He was currently perusing, Tax,
Yes It Does Matter by the Inland Revenue. As you can see he was really scraping the barrel, but then reading was his solitary escape from his unhappy circumstances because the reminders of his failed life were ubiquitous, although as long as he kept
115 his eyes on the pages of a book his awareness of his problems could be temporarily lessened. The ear plugs and nose peg had helped a great deal as well. All Barry now had to do was keep out of trouble for another week and he’d be out of Weirdways a free man. There was even a job packing bags at the store he’d attempted to rob setup for him upon his release. It maybe wasn’t the world’s greatest occupation, yet he felt it should be better than his prior game plan: selling his pretty lil ass on the street for five quid a pop. The prison canteen was filled with the hustle and bustle of dinner time, but Barry was in his own little world, sitting by himself dreamily staring into space, looking earnestly forward to the moment of his release. He fantasized about blazing sunshine, leafy green trees, cut grass, fresh air, and the delightful charm of birdsong. It was three minutes past seven in the evening when Mr Merryweather entered through a door into the canteen accompanied by Griswald. Barry had not spoken to Mr Merryweather since their meeting, deliberately trying to keep a low profile, and it had been very successful as he’d for the most part been left alone. The prison bullyboys had also lost interest in Barry and were currently tenderizing the new meat that had arrived at Weirdways, much to Barry’s relief. Barry made sure he never looked up from the floor or said anything more than a murmur, which made the guards believe he was already a broken shell of a man and so their sadism was kept in check too. It was a terrible, repressed way of living, he just wanted to explode sometimes, but he knew the retribution for such a blatant outpouring of emotion would result in reprimands that didn’t even bear thinking about; plus, he’d run out of Vaseline. Mr Merryweather spoke to Griswald in a clearly annoyed tone. ‘This robbing Government, you won’t believe the amount of tax I have to pay.’
116 Barry sat in his chair curiously observing the reddening of Mr Merryweather’s cheeks. It was the first colouration he’d seen in the drab but pristine appearance of the man. ‘I mean I tell you, what sort of world do we live in? I just don’t know what is becoming of this country.’ Griswald decided to utter one of his characteristically moronic brainwaves. ‘It’s these bloody asylum seekers if you ask me Sir. They’re sending Britain to the dogs.’ Mr Merryweather declined to respond because his chief guard had a tendency to blame everything on asylum seekers, whether it be the bad weather, his equally mentally-deficient daughter and her hideous school results, or the reason his car repeatedly decided to break down. Barry surreptitiously continued to eavesdrop on the conversation between the two most powerful men at Weirdways; that was until Mr Merryweather noticed him listening in. ‘Mr Broomfield isn’t it?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘You seem to be taking an overt interest in my matters.’ ‘Oh I, er I…’ There was only one week left on Barry’s sentence and he knew he was now placing his release in jeopardy. Mr Merryweather was a sick, twisted version of God inside the walls of Weirdways that controlled every aspect of the inmate’s existence and could, at the flick of his ridiculously extravagant luxury pen, destroy their lives. ‘I could help you with your tax problems,’ said Barry finally. Now don’t go thinking Barry had suddenly transformed into a saint because he doesn’t usually help people like Mr Merryweather, a man who’d deliberately sought
117 out to make his life as miserable as possible. Yet deep down inside of Barry the embers of a prevalent goodness still glowed, despite the many mishaps and unfortunate events that had turned him inwardly bitter to everything and everyone. ‘How can you help me and an even better question, would be why would you help me? You’re leaving next week if I’m not mistaken,’ said a clearly intrigued Mr Merryweather. ‘I can help you because I’ve read quite a bit about tax law. I might find some loopholes in the system that you can exploit. The truth is I don’t want to help you, I want to help Sammy Nammy, and if I do take a look at your taxes you must first let Sammy have a psychiatric evaluation.’ It was well known now inside Weirdways that Barry had quite remarkable mental abilities, and Mr Merryweather could see that this lowly convict, this piece of slime, this skid mark on the toilet bowl of society was indeed capable of helping him with his financial matters. ‘Is that it, don’t you want a payment?’ The thought of payment hadn’t even crossed Barry’s mind. ‘No. Just get Sammy some help.’ Even somebody as detached from empathic emotion as Mr Merryweather could see this was a selfless and courageous act. Shocked, the Prison Warden didn’t know what to say, he just stood there befuddled, scratching his head. ‘So is it a deal or not,’ said Barry after a lengthy pause. Mr Merryweather glanced at Griswald, then at Barry, his eyes shifted back and forth between the two men, his mouth slightly open in bewilderment. Barry believed he was attempting to find the right words to invoke the most potent wrath from Grizzly, but he didn’t.
118 ‘Okay—it’s a deal,’ he said in a strangely quiet voice that almost hinted at defeat. After going over Mr Merryweather’s financial statements, Barry was able to uncover the loopholes he was confident he would find and saved the Warden a considerable amount of money. It was a bitter success since helping such a petty and malicious man like Mr Merryweather made Barry feel like he was selling his soul to the devil. The evaluation of Sammy very quickly highlighted the illness that afflicted him. The diagnosis was schizophrenia, just as Barry believed it would be. Sammy was to be rehomed at a mental hospital a couple of hours drive away. He was hysterical upon finding out where he was going and went ballistic when he was informed it was his cellmate who had suggested he be assessed. Barry sat on his bunk using his arms to shield his face while Sammy clawed at him, screaming in a deranged parrot-like shriek. Barry found this response to his kindhearted helpfulness to be somewhat disconcerting, but fortunately the men in white coats were there to restrain and escort Sammy to his new place of residence. Bowing his head and sighing dejectedly, Barry watched Sammy frantically struggling in vain against his captors. He just hoped he had done the right thing. When Barry finally got released after spending two very long years inside Weirdways Prison, he felt just as lost as he had before his arrival. He had fantasized about this day since his first night behind bars, but departing wasn’t as glorious as his mind’s eye had imagined. He’d perceived a divine, glorious light shining on him as the
119 prison’s main gates opened, revealing a serene and beautiful day. Instead of this grandiose vision he was greeted with cascading rain, inner-city pollution and filth. Catching a bus to the city train station, Barry headed in the general direction of his Mum’s house: Barry wasn’t very good with public transport. Maggie welcomed her son with open arms upon his arrival, but it was not in Barry’s plans to enjoy a happy reunion as he’d only come back for a few of his possessions and his beloved rabbit. He knew that his old room was being rented out and that there was no roof for him here. In fact, as Barry stood at the front door he could see through his old bedroom window some random person nonchalantly eating toast off a plate whilst lying on his old bed. The relationship between mother and son had become tattered beyond repair. Barry was as courteous as civilized interaction requires but was also devoid of the emotion usually expressed between a mother and son, especially considering they hadn’t seen each other for a very long time. There was overwhelming tension in the air until at last Barry spoke. ‘How come you didn’t visit me? One visit in two years would’ve been nice, or at least a letter.’ ‘I couldn’t really be arsed to write a letter and err, as for coming to visit, well you know, I’ve been busy and it’s a long way.’ ‘It’s half an hour on the train! You abandoned me. Where’s Bob? He’s my rabbit, he’s coming with me.’ ‘About your rabbit, he erm, well how can I put this delicately? Erm, he’s dead.’ ‘He’s what!’ ‘He died last year. I’m sorry.’
120 ‘How did he go, was it peacefully in his sleep?’ ‘Well, no not quite…’ Maggie shifted uncomfortably. ‘What does it matter how he died anyway?’ ‘Because I want to know, he was my rabbit.’ ‘Okay but you’re not going to like this. I put him outside in the garden to let him have a run around before noticing the grass needed a trim. So, I got the lawnmower out and began cutting it. Anyway I think the noise of the mower startled him and he started running all over the place. Then he ran under the—’ Maggie didn’t get to finish her sentence because a pained cry was torn from Barry’s lungs. He’d trusted this woman to look after his only friend in the world and she had brutally murdered him. While most women are sensitive to other people’s pain, Maggie didn’t seem to be blessed with this quality. ‘Yeah it took ages to get all the fur and blood off the blades. That lawnmower’s expensive. I had to get it fixed, cost an arm and a leg.’ Barry thought about how it had cost poor little Bob a lot more than just an arm and a leg. He now, after careful contemplation came to the conclusion that the day of his release was definitely not going according to plan. It appeared dismally as if he had left one prison just to enter another. Because Barry had been a bum upon his arrest he was granted a temporary home inside Happy Day Hostel for the Homeless. It certainly wasn’t the Ritz but it was a roof for which he was grateful. Once he’d managed to get the syringes into the bin, mopped the blood bespattered floor and removed the vomit it wasn’t that bad. Sadly Barry wasn’t granted permanent accommodation, and would need to find his own place fairly soon or find himself re-homeless.
121 The next day he caught the bus to his new job and found out upon arriving he was quite the local celebrity: there was a mob of people armed with pickets waiting to hound and harass him. One such picket read: Mothers Opposed to the Reintroduction
of Outrageous Nutters back into Society, which conveniently abbreviated to M.O.R.O.N.S. The M.O.R.O.N.S. had gone to the trouble of developing a highly sophisticated chant, ‘OUT WITH BROOMFIELD; OUT WITH BROOMFIELD; OUT WITH BROOMFIELD,’ that rose to its ascendancy the moment Barry showed his face on his first day. He thought at first the callous hags might give him a worse beating than the ones he’d received at Weirdways, but luckily there was a security guard on hand to control the situation with his baton. It was an ironic situation really, seeing as the reason there’d been a security guard appointed to The Shop in the first place was because of Barry’s robbery. Judging from the first day of his new job Barry considered the possibility that this was a final attack orchestrated by Mr Merryweather, to drive him to commit another crime and be returned to his control. He thought it surely couldn’t be conventional government policy to place convicted criminals in a job where they’d committed their crime. The devotion the M.O.R.O.N.S. displayed to their cause was quite remarkable. They patrolled outside informing any approaching customers about the grounds for their protest, and by so doing managed to acquire further members. The crowd grew larger. Understandably, Barry from the supposed safety of The Shop did not have a good first day, dropping and breaking a couple of items due to his nerves being
122 frazzled by the lynch mob waiting for him just a few feet away. He’d never realized before how middle-aged women could look so uncannily similar to pitbulls. ‘That’ll be coming out of your pay,’ said Rachel Coombs, referring to a jar of pickled onions Barry had accidentally smashed. In the two years Barry had spent incarcerated at Weirdways, Rachel Coombs (the person Barry had hit over the head with a spanner) had somehow managed to become a powerful force inside The Shop, having risen up the ranks. Coombs patrolled her aisles with a menace reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s Storm Troopers, and crazed with this power, she was simply overjoyed that Barry was now under her control. She leaned into his ear and whispered: ‘See those people out there? They want you dead, but not me, I want you to suffer.’ Barry hadn’t expected quite this level of wrath upon his return. Of course he hadn’t expected to be welcomed back with warmth and smiles either, but this level of hatred was really quite preposterous. Whatever happened to forgive and forget? I
served my time. The following days continued in much the same pattern as the first. The protesters certainly kept the security guard on his toes, and his wooden baton was similarly made to work hard. Barry was beginning to get used to being spat on by now but he still didn’t enjoy it that much. The general agreement from the managers in The Shop was that at some point this trouble would simply blow over, and that the protesters, or Broomfield Busters as the local paper was now referring to them, would get bored. When this assumption didn’t turn out to be the case, a high-up boss from the Cracker Jack Food Chain that
123 owned the store paid a visit to address the situation. This boss called a meeting to be held in one of the larger storerooms out the back of The Shop, a meeting that had to be attended by the entire staff. The bigwig’s face looked like a grey-skinned prune. ‘Good day to you all, I think everybody is aware of why I’m here. This particular branch of the Cracker Jack Food Chain has, in the past couple of months, performed very poorly. Now does anybody know why this might be?’ Many pairs of eyes swivelled towards Barry’s position in the middle of the room making him squirm on his chair, while at the same time muffled chants of the M.O.R.O.N.S. could be clearly heard from outside. ‘Broomfield to burn, Broomfield to burn, Broomfield to burn.’ Sitting on his chair wondering what the point of this meeting was, Barry thought it was obvious as to why business was down: it was because of him. Why did they need this big trumped-up get together to point that out? And he was also acutely conscious that now each individual pair of eyes fixed unwaveringly upon him. He looked everywhere in the room apart from at those scowling faces, finding the ceiling to be quite interesting. Giving a nervous whistle as if to pretend he was oblivious to the dirty looks, he knew the eyes were still burning and the hatred inside of them growing. After a considerable amount of time staring upwards, Barry had to lower his gaze due to his neck beginning to ache. Looking around the room he tried to uncover any allies, someone that would pipe up and say something positive in his favour, but there was nobody.
124 Barry was now living in an area that was renowned for being the world’s second-least inhabitable place for life after Ukraine’s nineteen-mile island around Chernobyl. It was even known for tramps to turn their nose up at the sight of it, instead preferring to remain inside their cosy cardboard boxes. If Barry lost this job though, it would be very probable that he would again find himself joining the ranks of the tramp because he was only just managing to scrape by as it was. The Shop was not paying him a particularly handsome salary just to pack bags of shopping, leaving him on a very tight budget. Visualising his inglorious return to the Hickey Woods with dismay, Barry thought that the leap of faith off the Very Big Tree was once again looking like a splendid life choice. The silence and those hateful eyes became unbearable, and even though he needed the job badly Barry shouted out: ‘WELL SACK ME THEN! THAT’S WHAT EVERYBODY WANTS.’ ‘We can’t do that unfortunately Mr Broomfield,’ answered the prune. ‘JUST DO IT, JUST DO IT, JUST BLOODY DO IT.’ The eruption of Barry’s rage was quite startling and some people seemed a little taken aback, even frightened. ‘I was hoping Mr Broomfield that you’d leave of your own accord.’ His rage subsiding as quickly as it had arrived, Barry sighed, grabbed his coat and left, but not before he’d been thoroughly spat on by the Broomfield Busters who had gained a very large following from their coverage in the local media. Barry turned to the mass of M.O.R.O.N.S. and said over their shouts and shrieks: ‘You’ll be happy to know that I have quit. I won’t be working here anymore.’
125 A huge cheer reverberated through the crowd and there was singing and dancing. Christmas had come early. His head hanging down on his chest as the celebratory roar of the M.O.R.O.N.S. rang in his ears, Barry ambled slowly on his long walk back to his bedsit in Junkieville. The icing on the cake was that it started to rain. To lighten the discouraging atmosphere that Barry felt encroached upon his every waking moment, he imagined that in some parallel universe he was getting lucky by being beaten to death by thugs wielding baseball bats. Having diligently just worked a twelve-hour shift performing the mindless task of filling plastic carrier bags with other people’s rubbish, for minimum wage, only to get sacked, was very demoralizing. All Barry wanted to do when he got back home was lay on his bed. Well, he refers to it as a bed but it doesn’t really class as one you or I would think of: it was an inflatable lilo mattress that would normally be used at a swimming pool. One thing about his bed that did make it superior to other normal beds was that it was brightly coloured, and at least this added some kind of decoration to his miserable home. Fetid odours, peeling paint, threadbare carpet and bluish mould were the invasive eye and nose sores in Barry’s world now, though there was no hovel he could exist in, no matter how nauseating that could be worse than how he felt internally. His life was a total derelict. Lying on his bed, completely devoid of anymore hope, Barry pulled up a fleabitten blanket to his head to then drift off into a miserable sleep. As his eyes began to close and his brain got ready to slip into dreamland, the local newspaper was pushed through the letterbox on his door. This would normally be nothing to get overly excited about, but little did he know it contained his one chance at salvation.
126 Rays of light signalled the onset of morning, yet Barry had no reason to get up as he was waiting for when he’d be kicked out by his landlord onto the streets, due to his inability to pay the rent. He had decided the best course of action was to lounge on his lilo and fall into a bottomless depression until that moment came. It would be useless for him to attempt to get a job: convicted armed robbers don’t have skills that are high on most employers’ lists when they’re looking to recruit new staff, apart from maybe assertiveness. Eventually, at around two o’clock in the afternoon Barry became aware he needed to urinate. He got up off his lilo to answer the call of nature, having to step over his saviour to enter the bedsit’s tiny bathroom. Looking in the mirror he could see his hair was dishevelled and his eyes bloodshot from spending most of the night quietly sobbing. After emptying the contents of his bladder he picked up the morning’s mail that lay outside his front door, including the newspaper that was currently the only thing in the whole world that had the ability to lift him from a terrible fate. He began sorting out what had to be thrown away. ‘Bill, bill, junk, bill, junk.’ The junk mail, along with the newspaper got promptly thrown in the bin. Normally Barry would read the paper, mostly to look in the job finder section, but he would also scan over some of the local news as well. Recently however, he had grown so sick of reading about the exploits of the Broomfield Busters that he no longer bothered. If he had chosen to read it he would have come across an interesting article.
Regional Chess Championships set to take place at Town Hall. 1 st place prize
money £5000.
127 Looking out through his window Barry was greeted with a grim day that matched his mood all too well. With no intentions of attempting to snap out of his gloomy frame of mind, he reclined on his offensively bright, multi-coloured lilo, too depressed to even bother feeding himself. The day passed him by. The following day came and Barry was still moping around. The morning quickly slipped by. Staring at the ceiling Barry realized he was hungry, and his stomach rumbled uncontrollably as if in agreement with these thoughts. Although his renewed descent into depression had left him with a morbid curiosity for death, his body was still currently functional and needed sustenance. There was only one problem: everything in his fridge and cupboards appeared very unappetising. In his despondent, apathetic mood there was only one meal that could satisfy him and maybe even help to cheer him up slightly: fish n chips. This was an expense though Barry could ill afford considering his current financial predicament. But then thinking over the matter logically he thought, what does it matter
anyway? I’m going to get kicked out eventually even if I scrimp and save every penny. This meal represented much more than just the vital carbohydrate, proteins and other nutrients that Barry’s body required to keep it functioning properly, because in his mind it was as if he was on death row and this was his last meal before the inevitable. He rummaged around in the back pocket of his battered blue jeans and found what he was looking for, a heavily fingered five pound note. With the delightful prospect of fried fish and potato sliding down his throat, a little bit of enthusiasm for life was injected back into Barry’s system. He first took a much-needed shower and afterwards, now cleansed, he looked around at the state of
128 his flat. He had never been the tidiest individual, slob may be a better description, but nevertheless, if this was to be his last hurrah he decided he wanted to go out in style. The flat was thoroughly cleaned, the lilo was dusted and the floor swept. Not owning any other possessions like tables, ornaments, television sets and other dust-collecting objects, the process didn’t take very long. His flat and body now clean, though not to the unnaturally immaculate state of Mr Merryweather’s office, Barry felt pleased. The final thing for him to do before making off to his local chippy was to dispose of a couple of full bin bags. This included the one that had located within it the newspaper with the details of his only chance of saviour. As Barry walked to his floor’s refuse chute inside the tower block, the black bin liner containing his salvation began to split and stretch due to been accidentally overloaded, or had it? This surely was an unlikely coincidence, was this in fact some kind of divine intervention, or fate? A few moments more and the black plastic bag would break, revealing the details of the Chess Championship to our loser. Completely oblivious to the enormity of what was taking place, Barry’s walk was brisker than usual: he had grown unfathomably hungry from the physical exertion of sprucing up his homestead, and also because he hadn’t eaten for a day and a half. Unfortunately this eagerness to stuff his face had thrown off fate’s timing. Hoisting his bin bag into the refuse chute it broke a moment too late, releasing the contents into the dark abyss of the shaft never to be seen again, rather than onto the floor where it was supposed to land. ‘That was lucky,’ said Barry, looking at the torn bin liner held in his hand, ‘could have made a right mess that.’
129 The chippy that Barry would be frequenting on this cold winter day was only a couple of minutes walk from the tower block where he lived; it was named Phil’s Plaice. Barry had never visited it before since he was very strict with his finances, and he had to be because he’d been on a very tight budget since leaving prison, but now all that no longer mattered as he believed for all his discipline and hard work, he was still going back to the gutter. Phil’s Plaice was known to the locals as being far from the best location to go to get fish n chips; or, any other foodstuff on their menu for that matter. Everyone marvelled at how wondrous it was that the establishment had not been closed down by the authorities, and that Phil was not residing in jail, as the hygiene practices Phil’s Plaice employed could be compared to the ones used in the third world. The thing that kept the shop afloat was its very lucrative side business (or should I say real business) of lending and selling the dirtiest of the dirt, the lowest of the low, the cream of the filth barely legal erotic videos. Imported criminally from abroad, the content contained inside these movies could make Amsterdam’s finest prostitutes blush. The shop front acted as a good cover for the sale of smut because anyone walking down the street would just think the customer entering was innocently buying themselves some fish n chips, unaware of what transaction was really taking place. The videos and DVD’s even came wrapped in newspaper to make them look like a recently bought portion of chips. No man wants the rest of the world to think he is a dirty, perverted piece of slime, even though every man is. Phil knew this, and whilst his devious scheme was the product of a deranged mind, it was genius nonetheless, pulling him in a meaty cashpie of delight.
130 Deprived of this little titbit of information, Barry casually strolled into the chippy expecting a meal. ‘Could I have a portion of fish n chips please?’ said Barry, placing his tattered fiver on the counter. Phil smiled at him, moved his head a bit closer to his customers face and whispered: ‘What do you really want?’ Barry was puzzled by this odd remark. ‘I er…really want fish n chips. This is a chippy isn’t it?’ ‘Yeah…’ said a disgruntled Phil. While the quality of explicit adult material on offer in Phil’s Plaice is of irreproachable brilliance, the same cannot be said for the food; after all, the fish n chip store is merely a façade. Barry was dished up discoloured chips riddled with eyes, and fish that had long since forgotten its sell-by date. The food was almost thrown at him because Phil was highly annoyed: sad and ugly men like Barry made up the significant bulk of his clientele, and if scum like this were no longer interested in his products anymore he wondered if he was losing his touch at gauging other men’s sick, sexual fantasies. He certainly had no intention of actually becoming a fulltime peddler of fish n chips anytime soon.
Maybe someone locally has opened up another smut store, thought Phil. Barry, completely unaware of all the thought processes running through the mind of man in front of him asked: ‘Could I have salt and vinegar on them please?’ ‘What? Oh yeah, sure…’ Phil’s voice was distant as he was wondering who could be moving in on his territory. ‘Do I get any change?’ asked Barry.
131 ‘What?’ ‘Any change—out of my fiver.’ ‘Yeah here,’ said Phil impatiently, wanting to return to his paranoid thoughts. His stomach still grumbling, Barry’s body didn’t realise a potentially lethal cocktail of pathogens, including bacteria, viruses and parasites lay before it. All it knew was that it needed nourishment and the disease-laced food looked extremely appetising. His mouth watered in anticipation of its first bite, knowing the natural high its brain would deliver for granting the body fuel. It is curious, and also obviously beneficial to mankind how powerfully ingrained the survival instinct is inside the human body. The human body, what a remarkable machine, capable of doing many remarkable things: regulating its own core temperature, repairing itself unaided, equipped with thigh bones that are harder than concrete, nerve impulses that travel to and from the brain at up to one hundred and seventy miles per hour, blah, blah, etc etc. Yet for all this complex majesty and thousands of years of evolution, it was about to be outwitted by a scummy man called Phil who owned a sleazy porno store that masqueraded as a chippy. In Barry’s right hand a large piece of rotten, encased-in-batter fish was speeding towards an expectant mouth, but he’d barely stepped out of Phil’s Plaice when a pair of meddlesome kids ran past, accidentally knocking the big bag of fish n chips onto the floor. The open bag then proceeded to roll through a muddy puddle, over a pile of dog faeces and into the road, where it was then promptly run over by a truck. Barry had to stop himself from dropping to his knees and holding his hands to the heavens in despair. The meddlesome kids in the meantime had not seemed to notice anything go amiss outside their own little fantasy world, and ran off round a corner to meet with their dealer. Knowing he didn’t have enough money for a fresh helping of poison, Barry inspected the crushed remainders of what was left of his meal on the tarmac to see if there was anything he could savage. It was a mark of just how desperate and hungry he was that he would consider eating it, and it is a fair bet that if he wasn’t in broad daylight, and that if it wasn’t a packed busy street, he would pick up and eat his sullied meal. Thankfully he didn’t and even though his body didn’t know it, it would have been grateful. Just as Barry began to trudge back to his flat to again wallow in an even deeper depression and maybe eat some crackers with mouldy cheese, he noticed a headline on the tattered and torn newspaper that had been used to wrap up his now discarded fish n chips.
Regional Chess Championships set to take place at Town Hall. 1 st place prize
money £5000.