North by Northwest (1959)

 

The Faculty (1998)

 

Get Lost! (1981)

 

Bobby March Will Live Forever by Alan Parks (Canongate Books 2020)

 

13th July 1973

The door to the Gents opened and the one person McCoy didn’t want to see came out, wiping his hands on a paper towel. Bernie Raeburn in all his portly glory. Raeburn was one of those men that took a bit too much care over what they looked like. Brylcreemed hair, neat moustache, silver tie pin, shoes shined. Probably thought he looked quite the thing. To McCoy, he just looked like what he was: a wide boy. Raeburn dropped the paper towel into a bin by one of the tables and peered over at McCoy. Didn’t look happy to see him. Didn’t look happy at all.

‘What you doing here?’ he asked.

‘Was at a call round the corner. Just came to see if there was anything I could do?’ said McCoy.

‘Did you now?’ said Raeburn, looking amused. ‘Think we’ll manage. Plenty of us boys here already.’

‘Okay.’ McCoy resisted the urge to tell Raeburn exactly where to shove his boys. 

'Any news?’

‘Getting there,’ said Raeburn. ‘Getting there . . .’

He held his finger up. Wait. Took his suit jacket off, smoothed down his pale blue shirt. Decided he was ready to speak.

‘Actually, McCoy, there is something you can do to help. Need you to go back to the shop, tell Billy on the front desk to start calling round. Want anyone who hasn’t already gone on their holidays back in, soon as. Need the manpower for the door-to-doors.’

McCoy nodded, kept his temper. Tried not to look at the row of new telephones on the bar.

'So the sooner the better, eh?’ added Raeburn, looking at the door.

McCoy stood there for a minute, trying to decide what to do. The pub had suddenly gone silent, could even hear the big black flies buzzing against the windows. Knew everyone was watching, waiting to see what would happen. Round twenty-odds in the continuing fight between Raeburn and McCoy. They’d even opened a book back at the shop: how long will it take before one lamps the other? Current best bet was about a week.

Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013)

 

Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)

 

Mystery Road (2018)

 

The 80s Marinello

My favourite player as a kid . . .  and then he signed for Arsenal 38 years ago today . . . 

#Charlie Nicholas  #Peter Marinello

Great Days at Grange Hill by Jan Needle (Fontana Lions 1984)

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

Fighting Dirty

You lose one. you win one - that seemed to be the rule for One Alpha, even if it did not apply to Tucker and Benny. They lost one - and gained four each, across the hand, hard. Like the man said, they didn’t forget it in a hurry.

One Alpha lost Justin Bennett, for a time at least, and possibly for good depending on how his father felt when it came to it. But the class gained a replacement called Michael Doyle. He was about the same size and shape as Justin, although he was fair instead of dark. But there all similarities ended. Completely.

Tucker and Benny first saw Michael Doyle after a bit of horseplay on the stairs. They’d been discussing the school elections, for which Tucker was hoping to get a nomination, when Trisha Yates, another candidate, came clattering down. As she passed. Tucker knocked her exercise books flying. Without a word, but with enormous force, she swung her briefcase at his head, almost braining him. She was a hard one, Trisha. He almost saw stars.

‘Jenkins!’ It was Mr Mitchell, at the bottom. And with him was Michael Doyle, smiling strangely. ‘Jenkins,’ repeated Mr Mitchell wearily. ‘Can't you go anywhere without making a nuisance of yourself?’

Inside the art room. Trisha sat next to Judy Preston, and nudged her.

‘Watch Old Mitch,’ she whispered. ‘That’s his girlfriend, that Miss Mather. Bet you.’

The girls watched like hawks. Mr Mitchell certainly smiled in a friendly-friendly way at the art teacher, and she was quite good looking for her age. He introduced her to the new boy.

‘Miss Mather,’ said Old Mitch. ‘This is Michael Doyle.’

‘Oh yes, Michael. Weren't you recently in Mr Malcolm's class?’

Judy and Trisha exchanged grins. She had a dead peculiar voice. Miss Mather. She was from Belfast.

‘Yes, Miss,’ said Michael Doyle.

‘Right,’ said the art teacher. ‘Well, go and find yourself a place. I’ll see you later.’

She faced the class. Mr Mitchell was still beside her. ‘Quiet, please.' she said. ‘Today I want you to continue with the props for the school festival. Everybody collect your equipment and make a start, OK? I’ll be around to see you shortly.’

As the children sorted themselves out, Mr Mitchell asked her how the festival arrangements were coming on. Miss Mather flashed him a warm smile.

‘Oh very well,’ she said. ‘Far better than 1 expected. Oh, I’ve got one problem, the props for the school play. I need a pair of flintlocks. You know, antique pistols for the kids to use as models.’

‘Tricky.’

‘It is, yes. Anyway—what about Doyle?’

Mr Mitchell’s face got serious.

‘Not much to tell,’ he said. ‘He could be a bit of a problem I’m afraid. He and a couple of his friends were caught bullying, so Mrs Munroe decided to split them up.’ 

Miss Mather gave a rich laugh.

‘And put them under your firm hand of authority!’ she said.

‘It’s my fiendish neckhold!’

Michael Doyle, although he had not been assigned any work yet. decided to collect a paintbrush from the pots. On his way back to his table, he noticed Benny’s — unattended. Michael’s brush was tatty. Benny's was new. So he did a swap. Benny, as it happened, was returning to his table, and saw it.

‘Oy,’ he said. ‘That’s my brush! Give it back!’

Doyle sized him up. Tiny. He gave a supercilious smile and turned away. When Benny grabbed at him, he swung round and pushed him hard. Benny careered four feet into Tucker’s painting arm.

Lobster Rocks!!!

 Lobster, where the hell have you been all my life?

Microsoft Word has been holding out on me. I did not that there was this super sexy font within my blogging reach.

Late night shock

A totally unexpected 180. My first in about a month, and my first 180 with the recently acquired Darts Corner Firescar Darts (25g). 

I really haven't been throwing well for about four months now, so I'll take it.

47th 180 for 2021.

47/50

They Drive By Night (1938)

 

Mystery Road (2013)

 

In the All-Night Café: A Memoir of Belle and Sebastian's Formative Year by Stuart David (Chicago Review Press 2015)

 

At the end of the last day we had a play-through of everything in its finished state, and Stuart, Chris and 

Bel got up to dance behind the mixing desk during the playback of ‘I Could Be Dreaming’. They all had their own dancing styles. Chris was Northern-Soul-Boy, Bel School-Disco, with her pigtails and white knee socks. Stuart was somewhere between Punk and gym hall jogging.

It was joyful to watch, a shy celebration of what we’d achieved, but there was a bittersweet quality to it too – everyone knowing that our tenure at Cava was over. We’d packed our instruments away, all the microphones and patch leads had been dismantled and the live room had been tidied up and prepared for whoever was coming in next. All the mixes had been bounced down onto two-inch tape, and when the playback was over there was nothing much left to do except say our sad farewells to Gregor and Geoff and then go home.

Chris, Bel and me also had our respects to pay to the water-cooler at the bottom of the stairs, the symbol for us of everything that had been great about the week. Then, with that done, Chris said to me, ‘This has been the best week of my life. But I’m not sure if it’s just because I’ve had a shite life up till now or not.’

He disappeared up the stairs, while I went back along the corridor to pick up my bass, and before I got outside a rumour had begun to circulate that Chris was crying.

Riders of Justice (2020)

 

February's Son by Alan Parks (Canongate Books 2019)

 

10th February 1973

McCoy stopped for a minute, had to. He put his hands on his knees, bent over, tried to catch his breath. Could feel the sweat running down his back, shirt sticking to him under his jumper and coat. He looked up at the uniform. Another one of Murray’s rugby boys. Size of a house and no doubt thick as shit. Same as all the rest.

‘What floor is this now?’ he asked.

The big bastard wasn’t even breathing heavily, just standing there looking at him, raindrops shining on his woollen uniform.

‘Tenth, sir. Four more to go.’

‘Christ. You’re joking, aren’t you?  I’m half dead already.’

They were making their way up a temporary stairway. Just rope handrails strung between scaffolding poles, stairway itself a series of rough concrete slabs leading up and up to the top of the half-built office block.

‘Ready, sir?’

McCoy nodded reluctantly and they started off again. Maybe he’d be doing better if he hadn’t just finished two cans of Pale Ale and half a joint when the big bastard had come to get him. Him and Susan were laughing, dancing about like loonies, Rolling Stones on the radio, when the knock on the door came. Big shadow of the uniform behind the frosted glass. Panic stations. Susan trying to open the windows and fan the dope smell away with a dishtowel while he kept the uniform talking at the door for as long as he could. Just as well they’d decided against splitting the tab he’d found in his wallet.

Bloody January by Alan Parks (Canongate Books 2017)

 

1st January 1973

McCoy headed along the corridor towards the stairs, heels clicking on the metal walkway, breath clouding out in front of him. Never changed, Barlinnie. Freezing in the winter, boiling in the summer. The old Victorian building was on its last legs. Wasn’t built for the number of prisoners they had stuffed into it now. Three, sometimes four of them locked up in a cell made for two. No wonder the whole prison stank. The smell of overflowing slop buckets and stale sweat was so thick it caught in the back of your throat soon as the big doors opened; stuck to your clothes when you left.

He’d been coming up here since his first weeks on the beat. Only good thing about Barlinnie was that it saved you going anywhere else. The whole spectrum of Glasgow’s wrongdoers ended up in here. From rapists and murderers, nonces and kiddie fiddlers to bewildered old men caught coming out the Co-op with two tins of salmon stuffed up their jumpers and their wives not long in the ground. Barlinnie wasn’t fussy, it took them all in.

He leant over the balcony rail, peered through the netting and the fug of tobacco smoke at the rec hall below. Usual crowd milling about in their denims and white plimsolls. Couple of boys whose names he couldn’t remember playing ping-pong. Low-level troops from the gangs in the Milton gathered round the pool table, all long hair, moustaches and borstal tattoos. One of them pointed with his cue as Jack Thomson was wheeled in front of the TV, started sniggering. A year ago he would have been too scared to even look at someone like Thomson. Now the poor bastard had a dent in his head so deep it was visible from up here. That’s what happens when someone takes a sledgehammer to each knee and then gives you a few whacks on the head for luck. Can’t walk and your brain’s so scrambled you don’t even know where you are.

He buttoned up his trench coat, blew in his hands. Really was fucking freezing in here. A year ago he would have been too scared to even look at someone like Thomson. Now the poor bastard had a dent in his head so deep it was visible from up here. That’s what happens when someone takes a sledgehammer to each knee and then gives you a few whacks on the head for luck. Can’t walk and your brain’s so scrambled you don’t even know where you are.

The Accidental Footballer by Pat Nevin (Monoray 2021)

 

Another room was swiftly bypassed on the stairs with a flick of the wrist and a ‘You wouldn’t be interested in that one’ comment. Like hell I wouldn’t be interested, that was the one I wanted to see most, now that he had dismissed it with just a little too much disdain! I was already envisaging a picture of Dorian Gray, but with an ageing Morrissey in the frame. He changed his mind and then relented again after some gentle persuasion. He turned the key in the lock so sluggishly and opened the door to the room so slowly that it was even more obvious that he was embarrassed about its contents. I just wanted to push past him at this point, it was such a painstaking palaver.

The door finally opened to reveal the very last thing I expected to see: a fully kitted-out multigym with all the most modern equipment.

A Fatal Glass of Beer by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Mysterious Press 1997)

 

Pleasure to meet you,” Fields said.

“I’ll write to my husband and tell him I met you,” she said. “He thinks you’re funny.”

“Armstrong takes Beau Jack, ten bucks straight up,” I reminded her.

Violet nodded solemnly; Fields and I left.

“Note,” he said as we closed the door and stood on the railed landing of the sixth floor of the Faraday Building, “she said her husband likes me. It has been a source of irritation that women, as a gender, are not particularly responsive to my wit. They prefer a popinjay ballet dancer like Chaplin to honest misogyny.”

“Hard to understand,” I said, remembering that my former wife, Anne, had refused to see Fields movies with me, claiming that they made no sense, weren’t amusing, were nasty to women and small children. I had agreed with her, but I still thought he was funny.

Big Game (2014)

 

Face (1997)

 

An American Werewolf in London (1981)