My girlfriends and other animals

Chapter 5

Love don’t live here in anymore

‘Oh bollocks, shit, piss and tits’

An apt expression of disappointment I thought, having just received my A-Level results.

One ‘E’ in Theatre Studies, an ‘F’ (FAIL) in English Literature and the piece de resistance, a ‘U’ (The examiner couldn’t even be bothered to continue reading such a depressing effort – UNGRADED) in Humanities. Not quite Oxbridge material, in fact not quite anything material.  Mother might want to have a little chat about it sometime.

‘That’s the end of your life then, before it’s even begun. Ruined. No future, no hope, no nothing. Get your coat; you’re coming down the job centre with me’

‘No I’m bloody not’

As Mother pushed open the doors of the job centre, all I could see were hundreds of what appeared to be homeless down and outs.

‘Alright mate, pick up your sleeping bag, and join the other fuck wits who failed their A-Levels’

‘Ticket number 207’

I was shaken from my nightmare by the tannoy calling my number. Every meaningful juncture in my life was filled with bloody tannoys only this time there were no errant breasts or adults dressed in coats of red.

‘My son William has just received less than favourable examination results and would like to sign up with your agency’. Delivered in Mother’s telephone voice, without the aid of a telephone.

‘What can William do?’ replied Jennifer with laconic disinterest that mockingly mirrored my economical and concise Humanities paper.

‘Act!’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Got any acting jobs?  I got an ‘E’ in Theatre Studies’

Mother was surprisingly understanding.

‘I have never been so humiliated in my life.  Act indeed.  As soon as we get back home you’re to telephone Reading Technical College and find out when you can retake your examinations.  There’ll be no gallivanting with your friends, not that you’ll be able to as they will all be off to university’

The next eight months were not looking particularly rosy.

How I got involved with Karen, more commonly known as ‘Chris and Karen’ (joined at the pelvis) I still to this day do not know.  However I must have made her laugh or she really liked boys who could only see out of one eye due to their hair obscuring the vision from the other, either way fate brought us together and I ended up spending the majority of the summer at her parent’s house, revising!



My girlfriends and other animals

‘What the fuck were you thinking?’ empathetically enquired Adrian in total harmony with my inner turmoil.

‘She had five before I even got a look in’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘That night at Fiddler’s, the bastard, we were supposed to be…just me and her’

‘And!’ exclaimed Rob ‘it was supposed to be just her and me until you decided that delivering my bloody rose gave you automatic entry into the land of whatever you sodding well fancied.’

‘Well I’m sorry about that, but I didn’t enter into the land of whatever I sodding well fancied. Admittedly I wanted to, but she was the one who decided to hold an all comers party and don’t act so coy, you were one of them!’

‘I didn’t even see Gillian that night, not until she came crying down the stairs after you’d upset her’

‘I counted five of you total gits, all boasting about how long it had lasted and what positions you’d ended up in…bastards’

‘Will, we’d bought Fiddler one of those blow up sheep. We were pissing about and trying to outdo each other.  We thought you’d seen it in his parent’s room’

That’s when the pause of all pauses hit me; that special moment of realisation, the epiphany to end all epiphanies.

‘Oh fuck what have I done?’

Gillian and I didn’t see each other again for close to ten years. When I did bump into her outside the Hawaiian bar in Slough I tried to explain  how I thought she was a blow up a sheep and that Gavin the Fanny shouter along with Fiddler’s parents’ Harveys Bristol Cream had altered my otherwise caring and sensitive disposition. The fact that in Gillian’s eyes I’d had ten years to think up such a ridiculous and pathetic excuse didn’t seem to impress her.

‘You were a wanker then Will, and you’re still a wanker.’

My girlfriends and other animals

The Sir John Barleycorn was a beautiful quintessential English country public house. Set back along a disused dirt track and nestled between a cohort of tall fir trees and great gnarled oaks. Only patrons with endless time and money took to navigating the desolate pathway that lead to the entrance of the Sir John. Octogenarians in charge of killing machines blazed along the dusty highway oblivious to the destruction they were causing. Young children, beloved pets and barely mobile elderly could be seen throwing themselves into hedgrows in fear of their lives as the mobility Grand Prix tore past them in dribbled anticipation at the refuelling of its aged and wizened navigators.

It had been a week since Fiddler’s party and we were all meeting up for a very civilised country drink. We were a bit chameleon that way. Being brought up ‘Middle Class’ (The ‘Middle Class’ that meant ‘Middle Class’ and not the ‘Middle Class’ that the ‘Working Class’ adopted as soon as shopping in John Lewis became accessible to everyone) meant you pretended to be anti-establishment by wearing zips on your Corduroy, whilst taking full advantage of a privileged upbringing and borrowing your mothers VW Golf to quaff lager and lime and the occasional floater coffee at some out of the way country retreat.

All was well for the first hour. I was playing darts with Adie, Bob was trying to put his little finger through as many beer mats as he could pile on top of one another and Nobby, Farter and Sandy were seeing how many dry roasted peanuts they could balance inside one ear. All in all we were having a very nice unassuming middle England time of it.

‘Take the bait my friend and let the music play. You are mine and I am yours. Let our greatness shine upon the non believers. It is time’

Nobody told me, not one of my MATES had warned me.  As I pulled out my last dart and turned to pick up my lager and lime, there standing at the bar was Gillian. Not on her own, but laughing and looking in that way that says ‘I think everything you say is absolutely hilarious, say some more you very, very funny man’.  Who had she snared this time?

‘I didn’t think there was anybody left’ I muttered under my breath.

‘Alright Will, can I get you a drink?’

‘Thanks, another lager and lime, cheers Fiddler”

Fiddler! The same Fiddler that she’d chucked months before Rob had entered the land of jam and honey. Fiddler, hard as nails punk rocker Fiddler who only referred to me as ‘Knob’ as we passed on the stairs of inequity? Fiddler who was now wearing an Aaron jumper and beige chinos?

That was it, I wasn’t about to have my bloody face rubbed in it.

‘Scotch, no ice, i’ll bloody teach her. Whiskey please…make it a double. Another scotch and make it a bloody large one…don’t tell me what to do, just give me the bottle’. Satan’s mouthwash cut the throat of inhibition leaving him lifeless and drained of colour. The show was about to begin and I had a full house to entertain.

‘Ha, ha, that’s so funny.’ Gillian could barely contain her over exaggerated drool for Fiddler’s every ridiculous utterance.

‘We’re going on a picnic on Sunday to the Berkshire Downs, do you fancy coming?’ asked Fiddler as he smoothed the crease on one leg of his chinos.

‘That’d be really great thanks, I’d love to.’ replied Gillian now quite unable to contain a high pitched giggle that seeped from her pouting and luscious lips.

That was it. Those tossers had pushed me over the edge. Going on a picnic? Fiddler was about as punk as Boy George.

‘You can’t help but see the funny side of it can you?  A pathetic picked upon lonely masturbator to this. You really have come an awfully long way my friend’

As I climbed onto the table I knocked over some stuffy cow’s Gin & Tonic.

‘Oh, I say young man, look what you’ve done’

‘Oh I am sorry, would you like me to lick it up for you?’

            ‘Oh, I’ve never been so insulted.  I shan’t stay here and be insulted’

‘Good, well fuck off and be insulted somewhere else’

Fiddler tried to grab me, but I managed to move away just in time, leaving him sprawling on the adjoining table, face first in some bloated Octogenarians beef and ale pie.

‘Has anyone here seen a slut?’

I was really going for it now.  Rob and Farter had hold of both my legs and were trying to tug me off the table.

            ‘Come on don’t be shy. Surely someone here has seen a slut. That’s very disappointing. Still no one, well let me help you out. Here’s a slut’

The room fell silent as I pointed directly at Gillian. By now the scene resembled a second year food fight. Fiddler was wiping bits of beer and gravy from his face. Mrs. G&T was struggling to start her mobility scooter and I was delivering my sermon from the mount with Gillian moments away from emptying the entire contents of her Kahlua and milk all over my head.

‘It’s only a pound…roll up, roll up and if you’re lucky you may not have to wait for sloppy seconds…number six, that’s me…six in one night…introducing the one and only…whore’

And with that Gillian’s Kahlua exploded into my face. The landlord, with the help of two locals, Farter, Nobby and Rob, carried me face down and unceremoniously dumped me onto the car park shingle.

‘He’s banned…for life!’ said the landlord as he fingered his heavily Bryl creamed hair neatly back to its former glory. ‘I don’t ever want to see him or you around here again, do you understand? One other thing. Did she really have six in one night’?

And with that they bundled me into the back of Mother’s VW Golf.

My girlfriends and other animals

'It's no good casting out devils. They belong to us, we must accept them and be at peace with them' D.H. Lawrence.


William takes a rest and will return on Wednesday 14th December.


Thanks for following and see you all next week.

My girlfriends and other animals

I looked back into the kitchen. Gavin had vanished and as I walked towards the foot of the stairs a maniacal inhuman gut wrenching laugh filled the room. I was twelve tiny steps away from docking with the cosmonauts. As I went up, Fiddler came down, passing me on the fourth step. 

‘Alright Fiddler’?

‘What’s it to you?’

‘Nothing, sorry to bother you’

‘Well Good luck anyway, nice cords, knob’

I continued to climb the fifth and sixth step. It hit me on the seventh. Why was Fiddler wishing me ‘luck’? I had been aware of a steady stream of my ‘mates’ slipping upstairs at fifteen minute intervals, returning looking flushed and with a grin as big as the proverbial Cheshire.  Was I about to become just one of the many or was I one of the chosen few?  Was I just a complete and utter knob for thinking Gillian could possibly want anything to do with an eleven stone stick insect? I began to come over all queasy.  My stomach was churning.  To think I had fooled myself into believing that Slow motion Gillian and I were to become an item. An item like Chris and Karen, fellow sixth formers joined at the pelvis who no longer had their own single identity and were now forever acknowledged individually and collectively as ‘Chris and Karen’. As I climbed the stairs my mind went back to Rob’s love poem; ‘…my love unbound, it cost me a pound’.

Is that what he meant?  Not the rose, but love’s first union.  Had he paid for Gillian’s services? Had all the flushed and pimply gits, who were now swapping sordid stories in Fiddler’s living room, paid for their pleasure?  As I entered the bedroom, my eyes immediately became transfixed to the single bed, unmade and crumpled.  I didn’t want to look, I wanted to act as if the situation were as normal to me as getting up in the morning, but  whatever I did to try and avert my eyes from that bed of inequity, my head was twisted and my eyes magnetised to that filthy mess.

‘Where have you been?  I told Fiddler to tell you I was here ages ago’

‘Well, he didn’t, did he and I would have thought you were quite busy enough without having to worry about where I was’

‘Well, for a little while yes, but I couldn’t keep going indefinitely’

‘You’re unbelievable, have you no shame?  They’re all talking about you downstairs. It’s disgusting. I thought tonight was going to be special.  And if you think I’m paying for it? You really are an entrepreneur of exceptional fortitude. You’ll need to open a safety deposit box if you carry on at this rate”

‘What are you talking about’?

            ‘Don’t give me that Little Miss innocent routine. What do I get for fifty pence? I don’t have a pound. All that slow motion stuff and bunnies running about your mother's hall, was that all made up as well?’ I was really flowing now.

‘Bunnies?’

‘Tartan picnic blankets and overripe strawberries. What a mug I’ve been. Let me tell you something. I don’t pay for it and if I did I wouldn’t pay anywhere near as much as those pimply gits. A pound? It’s pathetic.’

‘I don’t know what you’re rambling on about. I was really excited about tonight.  After you dropped that rose off I thought you were really sweet and kind.  Tonight you sound like all the other wankers who can’t hold their drink.  I thought you were different”

Now forgive me, but wasn’t I the one who should be aggrieved?  Who was it that had turned Fiddler’s bedroom into an all night drive through? She thought nothing of her actions. I was supposed to accept it as an everyday occurrence. I wasn’t even the first. Number bloody six! Infantile grins greeted my deflated stick insect of a body as I descended the Kama Sutra highway.

‘Stick it to her William’

‘Oh piss off’

As I slammed the door and headed home my head was filled with images of sweaty youths pumping for all their worth, zits popping with each thrust, faces in pained exultation, pubescent greasy backs arching, screams from their barely broken voices;

‘…love unbound, it cost me a pound!’

My girlfriends and other animals

       Fiddler’s party began as most parties began. Not that I knew how most parties began as I’d never been to one before. Anonymous spotty teenagers were lolloping in the kitchen mixing two litre plastic bottles of woodpecker cider with the entire contents of Fiddler’s parents’ drinks cabinet. Now  Fiddler’s parents were not the most adventurous drinkers. It had been rumoured that Mike Huxley’s parents had been to Spain three years running and once to a Greek island before the rest of Essex discovered it. The Huxley parties saw big bulbous plastic bottles of woodpecker smooching and canoodling with sleek and slender bottles of Malibu, Cinzano and Tia Maria; names so wet and exciting they made you want to dress up in grass skirts and wear a hat full of fruit. Fiddler’s caravanning parents were nowhere near as moist and slippery. My swollen litre of cider rubbing itself against a half open bottle of Harveys Bristol cream. There was talk of an almost full bottle of Warnicks advocaat floating around, but I think it was just idle gossip.

       The music was in full flow with Fiddler cranking up ‘Do They Owe Us A Fucking Living’ by the Crass which sounded nothing like Shalamar or the Kids from Fame. Several youths in mohair jumpers and pretend safety pins in their ears (talk about unoriginal) were all doing the pogo and knocking into unsuspecting females who had foolishly ventured away from the comparative safety of the kitchen.

       ‘This is smashing all this pogoing’

       Why did I have to say ‘Smashing?’

       'Did you say smashing?’

       ‘Yep, gonna smash this place up with some smashing’

       ‘knob!’

       They were of course quite correct. Knob was pretty much spot on. I really needed to get out more. I skulked my way back towards the sliding door of the kitchen resigned to spending the rest of the evening with Gavin Robinson who only grunted and said 'Fanny' at the top of his voice whenever he felt threatened which was always.

       ‘Will, what are you doing?  I’ve been waiting for you upstairs’

       ‘I beg your pardon?’

       ‘Fanny’

       ‘Hi Gavin’

       ‘Gillian. How are you? I was just talking to Gavin about…’

       ‘Fanny’

       ‘That’s not what we were talking about. Where have you been?’

       ‘Why don’t you pop upstairs? See you in two minutes?’

       This was it. This was bloody well it.

       ‘Gavin I have to leave now to see…’

       ‘Fanny’

       ‘No not Fanny, to see Gillian. Wish me luck. It’s been nice talking with you Gavin’

       ‘And you my friend. I’ve got chills, they’re multiplying and I’m losing control’