On the March... again!

I've been too busy with the final chapter of 'Claimant Commitment' to blog for a few weeks, but if anyone else has a day out in Manchester planned for tomorrow, you might find this short story inspiring.  It is recycled from an earlier post but that's sort of appropriate, since I plan to march with the Greens this year!

'Severe Discomfort' will be free to download on Sunday too, if you're after something to read on the coach or the train, with the sequel, 'Continual Supervision', free next Friday and Sunday. 

Marching for Fairness

Saturday 20^th October 2012

Jenny Morris woke up when the coach came to a halt.  She’d dozed off after the comfort break at the motorway services.  She’d been out seriously late on her hen night and the girls had got her well drunk.

‘You so don’t want to bother with that stupid Union thing tomorrow!’ Sita Rai had said as they had crawled out of the taxi and back up to their flat. 

But Jenny did want to bother with it.  Sita might not think they had anything to worry about, but she didn’t talk to the older members of the team.  Jenny sat opposite Penny Marsh, their section leader, and she was scared that a load of jobs would go once the new Universal Credit came in and more claims went computerised.  ‘You ought to join the Union, Jen,’ she said, soon after Jenny had told the team that she and Dean had got engaged.  ‘If you’re hoping to get a place of your own and start a family, you’ll need to know your job is secure.’  And then she’d gone on to explain why she didn’t think it was any more.

Jen didn’t enjoy her first union meeting.  It was well boring.  But the next one was much better.  A new guy called Andy had been voted in as Branch Secretary.  He was a lot younger than the previous woman and didn’t dawdle about reading through ‘Minutes’ at the start, or get hung up about whether something was a resolution for voting on or just a comment for discussion.  All that stuff did Jenny’s head in.  Andy was good at making sure people got the chance to speak who wanted to, but also good at stopping boring people who just wanted to rant on.  He got interesting people in to talk to them too.  He got a bloke from the Welfare Rights Project in to explain how changes to Legal Aid would hurt people wanting to appeal benefit decisions.  When Jen had read about this in the paper, she’d thought it was good that that lazy gits trying to stay on benefits wouldn’t get taxpayer’s money to fight their cases, but listening to this old guy talking about people he and his colleagues had helped made it seem unfair and horrible after all. 

The welfare rights man used to work for the DWP and was still a member of their union, so Andy had invited him and his colleagues to share their coach to the demonstration.  Jen could see their group sitting in a cluster of seats about halfway down the coach, quite close to her but on the opposite side.  As well as the man who’d addressed their meeting sitting next to a woman in a hat, there was an older guy and a short black woman with her hair done up in beads, and in front of them a blond guy wearing a red and white Southampton FC scarf and a thin studenty-looking bloke.  Jenny had been sitting near them when she’d had her coffee at the services and had listened to them talking and laughing.  They seemed friendly and nice.  She hoped she’d never been stroppy with any of them when she answered the phones, or forgotten to pass on their messages.

Andy the union rep was sitting a few seats in front on the other side of the aisle, deep in conversation with a man Jenny didn’t recognise, but who was quite good-looking.  Andy had been up and down the coach talking to most of them and handing out information sheets about the route of the march, where the coach would be to take them home, what time they had to be back to it, and what to do if they got arrested.

That bit had freaked Sita out; she was going to slip away and go shopping in Oxford Street.  Jen hadn’t made up her mind whether to go with her or not.

Sita must have noticed her glancing along the aisle.  ‘You totally shouldn’t be looking at that hot guy!  You’re marrying Dean next weekend!’

‘I know!’ Jen replied crossly.  ‘But I don’t know who he is.  Do you?’

‘No, but I wish I did!  He’s well fit!’

Jen saw Andy stand up and make his way to the front of the coach, ducking his head right down as he did so.  He took up the microphone and explained how they were getting from the coach park to the demonstration, which involved a short walk and a Tube journey.  ‘We’ll all stick together,’ he said.  ‘But if you take a flag each it’ll be easier for me and the other stewards to spot you all.’  At the mention of stewards, Jen saw Penny putting her high-visibility PCS vest on.  Joe Lucas from the ESA section had one too: the big Scot looked like a bouncer. 

Sheet of stickers were being passed down the rows.  Jenny stuck one on her coat that read ‘68 is too late’.  She couldn’t imagine what it would be like still going to work when she was that old.  She offered the sheet to Sita, but she didn’t want to make her jacket all gooey.  Further up the coach, the welfare rights guy seemed to be taking a lot of trouble to make sure one was properly stuck to the chest of the woman in the hat and she had put one on his cheek.  They were giggling like a couple of teenagers. 
It was well sad.

As Jenny got off of the coach, Andy passed her a bright yellow flag with the Union’s logo in the middle. 
Sita didn’t take one.  ‘It’ll get in the way going round the shops,’ she said to Jen, once they were out of Andy’s hearing.  ‘You’ll have to bin it before we get to Selfridges or they’ll think we’re going to break their windows or whatever.  At least it’s small enough to get rid of easily, not like the ones they’ve brought.’

She pointed back towards the coach where the advice people were getting things out from the storage area.  There was a placard with the words ‘A Future Fair for All’ painted on it in old-fashioned writing and a colourful banner that needed two people to carry it saying ‘Solent Welfare Rights Project’, also in fancy writing and with a swirling design around it.  Jen thought they looked classy.

At the Tube station the ticket lady waved them all through the barrier without making them pay and when the train came in there were other people with banners and flags on it already.  The ticket guy waved them all through again at the other end.  ‘Excellent!’ said Sita.  ‘We can use the money we’ve saved on our fares for a latte and a blueberry muffin in Starbucks!’

Jenny wasn’t taking much notice of her because, now they were right out of the station and onto the bridge over the Thames, she could see the crowds gathering along the Embankment.  They were heading towards a mass of blue flags and among those was a huge inflatable bubble with something inside that looked like a big grey fish.  There were a couple of big balloons too.

‘Oh.  My.  God!’ said Sita.

‘That’s us!’ shouted Andy, pointing across the river to where there were lots of yellow flags and a big yellow balloon.  ‘Follow me!’  He waved his own flag high in the air and set off at a fast pace.  Jen wasn’t the only one having trouble keeping up with his long strides but once they got among the other demonstrators there wasn’t much room and he had to slow right down.

Jenny looked at the people around them.  She had expected most of them to be students and other young people but there were loads of people as old as her mum, or even older.  Some had lollipop-shaped placards with a row of little stick people on and the words ‘Coalition of Resistance’ and there were others with ‘Socialist Worker’ or ‘Socialist Party’ on them, but most people had Union flags or banners and were from all sorts of different professions.  The blue flag people turned out to be teachers and the thing she had thought was a fish was a gigantic blow-up pair of scissors with a message against education cuts.  A big crowd of PCS people were just in front of them and she saw Andy hugging and shaking hands with some men and women in fluorescent vests who she guessed were other union reps.

‘Oh my God, Jen!’ Sita grasped her arm.  ‘Don’t look at them, not so it’s obvious, but there are some of those anarchists over there!  We should go, before it all kicks off!’

Jenny stole a cautious glance in the direction Sita had indicated.  ‘You are well stupid,’ she said.  ‘Just coz they’re wearing black!  Can’t you see their poster?  They’re junior doctors dressed up as undertakers because the A&E at their hospital is going to be closed.’

‘That’s well bad.’  Sita actually sounded as if she cared. ‘But there’s still loads of people here!  I bet they won’t miss us if we go shopping.’

‘Not yet,’ Jenny said.  She had never been on a demonstration before and thought it would be cool to walk a little bit of the way with the others, at least as far as Big Ben.  She just wished people would stop waving all these bits of paper at her with political stuff on.  She had taken some to be polite, but they must have been printed cheaply as her hand was all dirty where the ink had come off.

‘Aren’t those old banners nice?’ she said to Sita.  ‘There’s one with a lovely painting of a ship on it.  My granddad used to go to sea.’ 

‘What’s that one with the flames on it?’ Sita said, pointing across the crowd as they came round past the Houses of Parliament.

Jenny couldn’t see where she meant for all the people packed around her.

‘It’s the Fire Brigades Union,’ said Andy, coming back through his group to check that they were all okay and to hand out little cardboard cartons of fruit juice.

‘No shit!’ Sita said.  ‘God, Jen!  You should so have told me there would be firemen on this march!  I’m totally staying now!’ 

Daphne Randall stood on the corner where Whitehall entered Trafalgar Square, watching the marchers passing.  Tens of thousands had passed before her and yet, from what the Unite steward beside her was saying to the policeman, this was less than a quarter of those on the move.  She had seen masses of red Unite flags, the purple and green of Unison - which always put her in mind of the Suffragettes – brass bands, bangra bands and cacophany of other street musicians.  The message might be an angry one - a demand to put an end to damaging cuts to Public Services - but the mood was pure carnival.

Daphne walked back against the flow of the marchers.  She was confident of finding her friends in the crowd despite its size; Hilary Carrington had sent her a photograph of the glorious banner that her husband had designed and painted for their project and the pretty placards he’d made.  They reminded Daphne of the lovely Victorian ones she had seen in Manchester’s People’s History Museum, all very Art Nouveau. 

There was a throng of yellow-flagged PCS people coming up Whitehall towards Daphne now and, sure enough, mingling with them she could see an elegant placard with the words ‘Benefit Cuts are not Social Justice’,  It was borne by a small black woman, while two young men shouldered the main banner of the Solent Welfare Rights Project between them.  Talking to one of them was a lean old guy and at his side, striding along purposefully with a UCATT flag, was a very tall and heavily built redhead girl that Daphne thought she recognised.  Hilary's husband was marching beside her, bearing his ‘A Future Fair for All’ placard; holding his other hand was Hilary Carrington herself.

Daphne chuckled to herself.  She would have staked money on it that Hilary’s outfit had been bought specially for today, possibly from one of those classy little vintage clothes shops she loved perusing.  That baker-boy cap and the flowing corduroy skirt were straight from the 1960s and the waistcoat completed the ‘activist chic’ look.  As Daphne waved and elbowed her way through to meet her friend, she noticed with a little pang of sadness that one of the badges Hilary had pinned to it read ‘Coal not Dole.’  It was hard to believe that little button was almost thirty years old.  It was hardly surprising that Hilary felt the need to look the part.  As if to prove the point that women were forever being judged by how they dressed not what they did, they were now passing the memorial to the Women of World War II.  Daphne smiled grimly: it took the form of a series of empty uniforms hanging from pegs. 

‘How super to see you!’  Hilary hugged her.  ‘There must be at least as many people here as last time!’

Daphne fell into step beside her.  ‘I cannot say, Hills.  I was talking to a Unite steward earlier and he said there wasn’t as many, but I haven’t seen to the back yet and there are certainly hordes of people in front of us.’ 

‘I do hope there isn’t trouble anywhere,’ said an older woman walking nearby.  ‘All I saw on the news after the March for the Alternative was Anarchists with flares grappling with riot police.  You’d never have believed that over three hundred thousand Trades Unionists had paraded entirely peacefully through the capital on the same day.’

‘This is Margot from the PCS,’ Hilary said, introducing her to Daphne. 

‘Daph Randall, Potteries Women’s Rights,’ said Daphne.  ‘I had to come down for this.  My area is being completely hammered by this vile Government.’

The same was equally true of her birthplace in the northeast.

‘I’m sure,’ Margot replied.  ‘I’m due to retire this year - at a cushy sixty unlike my young colleagues.  But I don’t mind supporting them.  We all need to stand together.  And I do so enjoy listening to young Mark Serwotka!  I think quite a few of us ladies have a soft spot for that lilting Welsh accent!’

‘Shame on you, Margot!’ 

‘I’m rather looking forward to hearing Frances O’Grady’ Hilary remarked.  ‘It’s about time a woman became TUC General Secretary.’

‘It certainly is,’ Daphne agreed.  ‘After all, the other side had one in charge almost forty years ago!’

‘It can’t be as long as that, can it?’  Daphne’s friend looked absolutely horrified. 

‘It’s not quite that long,’ she answered reassuringly.  ‘Thatcher was elected Tory leader in 1975, so that’s only thirty-something years ago.’

‘Thirty-seven,’ the tall ginger-haired woman in front of them called back over her shoulder.  Daphne remembered she had spoken to her at Hilary’s wedding, but couldn’t get her name for the moment.

‘Sweet mercy!’

Daphne linked Hilary’s arm.  Inside, she herself didn’t feel very different to the woman who had done just that when she, Hilary, bookish Godfrey Higginbotham and dishy Nathan Bankside had led the Students’ Union march down from the University to join the rally at the end of the Miners’ Strike.  It didn’t trouble her overmuch that on the outside she was stouter and wrinklier, got out-of-breath on the second flight of steps up to her office in the Town Hall and that, had she not chosen to turn it purple for the occasion, her hair was now more salt than pepper.  But Hilary was different.  Daphne changed the subject quickly back to the present. 

‘How’s things at the Project, Hills?’

‘Busy and relying on our volunteers more than ever.  We’ve got a new recruit starting next week,’ Hilary replied as they left Trafalgar Square and turned into Pall Mall.  ‘She’s hoping to run for the Council in the next local elections and wants some practical experience of housing and benefit issues, so she’s offering to do three mornings a week with us.’

‘And if she’s going to be battling Sleazy Gerry for his seat, H is going to want to give her all the help she can get!’ added the woman whose name almost certainly wasn’t Suzy, but was something like that.

‘Who’s Sleazy Gerry?’ asked Daphne.

‘It’s a long story,’ Hilary replied.

‘And Piccadilly is a long road.  You can tell it me between here and Hyde Park with no trouble I’m sure, pet!’

‘I’m getting well bored now, Jen.’  Although some of the guys on the march had been quite fit, especially those junior doctors, her feet were starting to hurt now and Sita Rai desperately needed a coffee.  ‘There’s a Costa over there!’ 

She grabbed Jenny Morris’s arm and propelled her out of the seething crowd towards the coffee shop.  Her friend didn’t struggle too much and seemed as relieved as Sita when two people stood up from a table in the window just as they walked in and they could grab their seats. 

Jenny propped her PCS flag against the windowpane.  ‘I’ll get the drinks and stuff,’ she offered.

‘Cool!’  While her colleague was up at the counter, Sita watched the marchers going by.  There were hundreds and hundreds!  Just the blue flag people seemed to go on for ages, though that might have been because time was dragging while Jen waited in the queue for their drinks and cakes.  When she came back, there were orange flags and a brass band outside.

‘They’d run out of blueberry.  Is cherry and almond okay?  You aren’t allergic to nuts or anything?’

Sita looked at the frothy mug and the tempting golden brown muffin.  ‘No way - I love nuts, ‘specially almonds.’  She thought she’d be more likely to tempt Jenny out of the demo and into the shops if she sweet-talked her a bit.  ‘That’s totally cool, Jen; thanks!’  She so needed that coffee! 

‘Look at that poster!’ Jenny said, pointing out of the window, ‘It’s well rude!’

‘Oh my God!’  Sita could see which one she meant.  ‘That man looks like he’s got a giant condom on his head!’

‘It’s supposed to be the Prime Minister!’ Jenny laughed. 

‘Isn’t that, like, treason or something?’

‘Duh!  No way!  It would only be treason if it was the Queen, or Prince Charles.’

‘Right!’  Sita wasn’t sure that was right, legally.  There was another placard showing someone she thought was from the Government with his head in a guillotine.  That must be treason!

Just then, two strange men came into the café.  They were old, or at least middle-aged, and one of them looked like he might have what Sita knew she should call a ‘learning difficulty’.  The disabled guy had an orange and black flag with GMB on it, which he was swishing about and smiling at.  The other man propped a placard against the wall as they took seats at a table behind Sita and Jen.  It had ‘REMPLOY SACKED WORKER – WHERE IS MY JOB?’ printed on it in big red letters.

‘I don’t suppose you girls could keep an eye on Trev while I grab us a tea, could you?’ asked the other man.  He sounded Welsh.

‘What’s he likely to do?’ Sita asked.  She didn’t want to have to watch out for the disabled man if he was going to be weird.

‘Nothing,’ said his friend.  ‘But I left him while I bought us a snack once before, and while I was away a couple of boys started teasing him and I’m sure they also stole his wallet, though we couldn’t prove it.’

‘That’s well mean!’  She looked at Jen.  ‘I suppose that would be okay…’

‘Or if you give me the money, I could go up and get your drinks?’ Jen suggested. 

Sita guessed she didn’t really want to be left in charge of the disabled man either and this was a smart way of getting out of it.

‘Would you mind?  I’d be ever so obliged, miss!’  The guy looked really grateful.  He fished about in his pockets and gave Jenny a ten-pound note.  ‘We just fancy a cup of tea each.  Thank you so much!’

‘Thank you!’ said his friend.  He gave Jenny a big smile and waved the flag at her.

Sita was annoyed with her friend for leaving her with these two guys she didn’t know and didn’t particularly want to talk to, but it would be rude to ignore them and look out of the window. 

‘What’s Remploy?’ she asked, pointing at the placard. 

‘We started off running factories where disabled ex-servicemen could get jobs after the War,’ said the man.  ‘The Department for Work and Pensions funded them to teach people new skills and provide rehabilitation.  But since then, we’ve taken people from all sorts of backgrounds and with all manner of disabilities who can’t readily find work in commercial organisations, but still have skills and deserve a chance.  Trevor here does upholstery.  He’s not fast, but he’s neat: aren’t you mate?’

Trevor grinned proudly.

‘And it gives him somewhere to go during the day and some mates to hang out with, and he earns a fair wage so can give his mam and dad something for his keep, and of course it means they can go out during the day without worrying about him.  Well, they could.’

‘But Trevor’s been sacked?’ Sita asked.  That didn’t seem a very nice thing to do, even if he was slow.

‘We all have.  They closed us down in the summer.  The theory is, the money spent on the factories can be better used to support disabled people in mainstream workplaces, rather than segregating us into places of our own.  I suppose there’s an argument of sorts for that… ’

‘But you don’t agree?’

‘I can’t honestly say that I do.  Most factories by us are struggling anyway, or they’ve already closed down.  They want workers who are as productive as possible and don’t need watching over by managers and supervisors.  I can’t see them being in much of a hurry to take on the likes of Trevor and me.  That’s why we’re here.  They are fifty or so other factories like ours all over the country, and they’re gradually shutting them all down.’

‘That’s well wrong!’

‘Isn’t it, now?’

‘Totally!’  Sita realised she actually worked for the same Government Department as Trevor and his friend.  ‘I suppose Trevor gets ESA now - Employment and Support Allowance?’

‘Well, he probably should do,’ said his colleague.  ‘But he was found fully fit for work at his medical the other week, so I’m helping him with an appeal now.  I’m out of work too, but I’m volunteering at our local Citizens Advice Bureau.’

‘I suppose it’ll be easier for you to get a new job.  You aren’t disabled, are you?’

‘Not so as you’d notice straight away,’ he said, resting his right arm on the table.

Sita flinched when he drew the glove off of his hand and she saw it was actually a metal claw. 

‘I was one of the supervisors in our factory,’ he said with a deep laugh.  ‘My name’s Gareth, but the boys used to call me Darth Vader!’ 

‘I hate to call for the desecration of a work of art,’ Toby Novak said to Martin Connolly.  ‘But do you think we could cut some holes in this banner?  Whenever there’s a gust of wind, it's like tacking a yacht!’

‘I’ve got my Swiss Army knife if you need it,’ offered Sally Archer, transfering her UCATT flag to her left hand and fishing about in her pockets.

‘Then make sure you don’t get arrested or the cops will do you for possessing an offensive weapon!’ Martin warned her.

‘That’s not going to happen – it would take too many of them to hold me down.  I’d be really useful if they did one of those occupations anywhere!’

‘We’ve very nearly reached Hyde Park now,’ Vaughan said.  He had taken a turn carrying the banner with Toby.  ‘We can rest it against a tree or roll it up when we arrive.  Personally, I’d hate to damage it.’

Toby wasn’t feeling quite so sentimental, but then he had been carrying the banner throughout the march while various colleagues had taken turns to share the burden of the other pole.  He was probably the strongest and fittest member of the team so it seemed only fair and, even if it was an ungainly spinnaker of a thing, it was also a great banner in the finest tradition of the Trades Union movement.

It was only when they had decided they needed a banner that Toby and his colleagues realised they weren’t all in the same union.  He had always assumed they were all in Unite.  He had been from right back when it was the old T&G and he knew Hilary had been in the MSF when it merged into Amicus, which then became part of Unite too.  But Tricia was still in Unison from when she worked for the Victory Housing Association, Hilary's husband was PCS and Martin, people’s hero and champion of the workers, reluctantly confessed he wasn’t actually in a union at all.

‘I didn’t know which one to join,’ he had protested.

The discussion picked up again as they filed through the ornate heraldic gates into Hyde Park.

‘Should we all be in the same Union, do you think?’ Hilary asked her colleagues.   

‘It could be a bit of a mess if we ever ended up in a dispute with the Management Committee and needed a Union officer to support us,’ said Tricia.  ‘I assumed you’d all be in Unison because you were based in a Council building when I started.  Richard never said anything.’

‘Was Richard in a Union?’ asked Martin.

‘The TSSA,’ answered Hilary.  ‘He started work doing rosters and payrolls for the railways.  That’s where he mastered the dark art of statistics and arcane calculations.’

‘But that was hardly the union for our line of work, was it?’ Toby queried.

‘Perhaps not,’ Hilary replied.  ‘But they did give us a small grant every year and they’ve been in touch to confirm they will this year too!’

‘So which Union are you going to join, Mart?’ Sally asked.

The young man shrugged.  ‘I don’t know.  H and Toby are both in Unite, so that’s the majority, but there might be another one for me.  Were you in a Union, Vaughan?’

‘One could stretch a point and say that I was, if one was to include the Law Society!’

‘Get away, Vaughan!’ laughed Hilary.  ‘I would have thought Equity was more your style!’

‘Pot and kettle, my dear!’ Vaughan protested.

‘What about you, Daphne?’ asked Sally.

‘I’m Unison, lass.’

‘That would do you, Mart.’

‘Don’t encourage him to make common cause with the Enemy!’

Tricia cuffed Toby lightly round the head with her placard. 

‘This is not about football, you sad fool!  It’s about the best Union for the Project.  There’s some sense in him joining us - and the rest of you, for that matter.’

‘Now then, Tricia, no poaching!’ Hilary's husband warned.  ‘We’re almost at the rally.  Why not let Martin listen to the speakers and then decide which Union he wants to join?’

‘Christ!’ said Toby. 
As they emerged from a grove of trees and crested a rise, they saw for the first time the number of people who had preceded them.  ‘We’ll be doing well to get close enough to hear anybody!’

 

Jenny was sound asleep, her head resting on her jacket, which was rolled up and propped against the coach window.  Sita didn’t know how her friend could sleep on a coach.  It made her feel sick.

She glanced up at the luggage rank.  When they’d set off that morning, she’d expected to be coming home with loads of shopping from the cool stores along Oxford Street.  She’d planned to get herself a dress and new shoes for Jen’s wedding, for a start.  She certainly hadn’t expected to spend most of the afternoon talking to a guy with a metal hand and his friend with learning disabilities as they’d marched together to Hyde Park, behind the FBU brass band.

That had been a bonus!

When they arrived at Hyde Park, there were already loads of people leaving and all the speeches had finished so the four of them had gone for another drink together and talked about the day, and then she and Jen had wished the guys luck with getting new jobs and caught the Tube back to the coach park.  Jen still had her yellow flag and Sita had the orange and black one Trevor had given her, so the ticket people had let them on for nothing again. 

Sita could overhear a conversation going on a few seats further up between two of the Welfare Rights people.  The lady in the hat’s partner was talking to the studenty one.

‘Don’t be daft, Martin!  You can’t join the RMT!’

 ‘But Bob Crow was seriously funny!  That bit about George Osborne dodging his train fare…!’

‘I know it was.  But you can’t pick a Union based on which General Secretary does the best stand-up routine!  Especially when you aren’t actually a transport worker!’

Sita thought she had better join the PCS now.  She didn’t know if she’d want to start giving up her lunchtimes to go to meetings like Jen did, but at least if she joined she would be standing with her workmates and doing something for people like Gareth and Trevor.

‘Excuse me?’
Sita looked round.  It was the good-looking guy. 
‘Did you speak to the press?’

‘Yeah,’ she said.  She’d almost forgotten that.  On the way along Piccadilly a woman with a microphone and a cameraman had stopped her little group and asked them a few questions about why they were there.  She couldn’t remember saying anything that brilliant and didn’t think it would be broadcast.’

‘I thought it looked like you!  You’re on SKY!’   He handed her his Smartphone.  ‘Look!’

Sita saw herself standing between Trevor and Gareth, with Jen peeping in from one side.
‘Andy!  Come and look at this!’ said the dishy guy.

The Branch Secretary crouched awkwardly in the aisle, watching it with a huge grin.

‘That was great!’ he said when it finished.  ‘I’m sure a lot of people will be very moved by that.’

Sita had forgotten that she’d been quite so wound up at that point.  That she’d told the journalist that Remploy had been set up to help heroes and that people like Gareth and Trevor were heroes too, even if they hadn’t got their disabilities in wars, and deserved to be properly treated.

‘That really was good,’ the nice-looking man said.  ‘I’m Press and Publicity Officer for the Branch.  I’d love to use this on our website.  Would you mind…er?  Sorry, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you at a Branch Meeting.  Are you new?’

‘Yes,’ said Sita, deciding this was true as she was new to the Union.  ‘My name’s Sita Rai, and I’ll definitely be at the next meeting!’   

Facts, figures and fiction

Scene of a fictional tragedy.  But how many real ones have there been?

It's a 'fifth Saturday', which means that all three ebook parts of 'Limited Capability', my serial looking at the failings of Employment and Support Allowance through the eyes of the fictional Walker family and their allies at the equally fictional Solent Welfare Rights Project, will be free to download all day.

I have been trying to promote my 'Social Insecurity' series to a new, wider audience in recent months, leaving the relatively safe and sympathetic Facebook sites of disability and welfare rights groups, and seeking a less niche audience.  After all, if the purpose of the stories is to counter the Channel 5 propaganda against claimants, it has to reach their audience and be read by them.

Luckily for those of us with no marketing budget, there are numerous Facebook groups where self-published authors can promote their work to readers, though none apparently specialize in contemporary politically-motivated fiction, you'll be unsurprised to learn.  Instead, 'Severe Discomfort' et al have to compete for attention amid a diverse field, dominated (no pun intended) by BDSM romance novels - their covers almost invariably adorned with a well-toned, bronzed male torso, teasingly truncated low down on the hips, plus a title containing word 'billionaire' - and recipe books for everything from desserts more sinful than the alpha male heroes of the aforementioned erotica to prim and perfect pickles.  Occasionally, as if to offer an antidote to those who might have over-indulged on the latter category, a glut of diet plan books appears, while the steamy stuff is countered with a range of chaste and wholesome Christian romantic fiction.

However do I make my books catch the eye of readers among this miscellany?  I'm trying a number of approaches, from simply reproducing the book 'blurb' above the link, to snappy one-liners.  I got a decent spike of downloads for 'Severe Discomfort' with the strap-line 'Unsuitable for Daily Mail readers' but when I tried marketing 'Continual Supervision' with the confession that 'the heroes are on benefits, the lovers are middle-aged and the sadistic billionaires are in Government' my witticism seemed to be wasted.

Of course 'Limited Capability' is suddenly very topical, with the publication yesterday of the long-withheld DWP statistics on the mortality rates of ESA claimants.  Having studied the figures closely, I have my doubts as to whether they actually tell us anything useful at all.  Even the numbers for people who died after being pronounced 'fit for work' may not be as damning as many campaigners claim; after all, both my husband and my father suffered heart attacks (fortunately not fatal) while not just apparently fit for work but in employment, and without any help from a dodgy Work Capability Assessment.

In fact, I fear that the argument about the 'real' figures will become a distraction from the real ESA issues - whether the medical assessment is fair or fit for purpose, whether the qualifying conditions have become too strict, whether poor administration is causing stress and financial hardship to seriously ill and disabled people and whether people are dying as a direct consequence of failures within this system.  The number of excess deaths does not need to be in the thousands or tens of thousands to matter; if the only proof of injustice we have are several dozen coroner's reports questioning the role of the DWP in a death or suicide, surely that should be enough of a scandal for questions to be asked and resignations demanded?

I hope that my fictional story might bring as much understanding of what is wrong to people unfamiliar with how ESA works as the DWP's mass of data.  The problem is, it seems a little tasteless to try to promote it now, when there are real stories about the real victims that should be told instead.  On the other hand, no-one browsing the Free Kindle Books site is likely to be looking for a news report, but a contemporary drama with a cast of interesting, if impoverished, characters might yet catch their eye among the six packs and the sorbets.

You can find a link to the first instalment of 'Limited Capability' here

A horror story

The result of a silly Facebook 'would you survive a zombie apocalypse?' quiz (short answer: no) and a challenge from a well-respected local author to take a walk on the dark side.  No spoilers if you aren't familiar with the Solent Welfare Rights Project team, Severe Discomfort or the sequels. 

 

Until they heard the woman's screams from the corridor, Martin Connolly and Toby Novak had been enjoying an unusually quiet afternoon in the Solent Welfare Rights Project's cluttered office, catching up on routine paperwork while listening to Radio 1.  Martin had won the toss and retuned from Radio 4.  Toby had wanted 6 Music, but decided he was still young and cool enough to tolerate his colleague's choice.

Martin was first to his feet and the door.  Immediately outside, one of the housing officers from the office opposite, a middle-aged woman whose name he had never taken the trouble to learn, was sprawled across the floor.

 Toby knelt beside her. 

 'It's okay,' he said, checking her wrist for a pulse.  'She's only fainted.'

 'I can see why...' Martin said slowly.

Standing where the door from the waiting room had been, until something had reduced it to scattered splinters, was a ghastly figure.  Its straggling hair was matted with blood and dirt, there was a rotted look about the greyish flesh of its battered face and one gory socket was missing an eyeball.  It lurched clumsily towards the advisers, dragging its festering feet across the carpet tiles, its left arm swinging limply at its side.  As they looked on, momentarily immobilised in terror, it lurched to a halt and swung its right arm forward. 

Clutched awkwardly in its filthy, gnarled hand was a brown envelope.

'What the...?'  Martin was too stunned even to swear.  He stepped back beyond the prone housing officer.   

Toby rose slowly to his feet and, to Martin's surprise, advanced cautiously until he was almost within reach of the creature's outstretched arm. 

'It looks like a DWP envelope,' he said. 

'Not that!'  Martin exclaimed.  'That!' 

He levelled a shaking arm to point in the creature's direction.

'I reckon he's a zombie,' Toby answered. 

'But zombies aren't real!'

'Of course they are!  Didn't you see the ones abstaining on the second reading of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill?'  Toby warily accepted the envelope from their visitor and stepped back quickly out of reach, drawing the letter out from within surprisingly calmly. 

'We need weapons!' cried Martin.

He glanced back into the office.  He saw only standard office furniture, computers, cardboard folders, notepads and paper.  While it might have counted as such in their usual battles with the dehumanising bureaucracy of the DWP, when it came to zombie-slaying, his trusty CPAG Welfare Rights Handbook didn't really cut it as a weapon.  The only sharp-edged object within easy reach was a staple remover.

'Don't you ever watch horror movies?' Martin demanded, as Toby nonchalantly perused the letter.  'We've got to cut its head off!'

'We can't do that.'

'Why not?'

'He's come here for help.'  Toby offered the letter to Martin.  'He's been found fit for work!'

'What?'

'His Employment and Support Allowance claim has been turned down.  He only got nine points at his medical.  They've allowed him occasionally has uncontrollable episodes of aggressive or disinhibited behaviour that would be unacceptable in any workplace.  No points for anything else.'

'He should be exempt from the Work Capability Assessment, though, shouldn't he?’ Martin argued.  ‘He's terminally ill!'

'Technically he's not, if he's already dead,' Toby suggested.  

'But there must be loads of other descriptors that fit him.'  Martin's keen legal instincts were conquering his fear.  He stepped over the housing officer and got as close as he dared to the creature.  'The way he walked up to us, I don't reckon he'd get more than a hundred metres without stopping or significant discomfort.  That's another nine points straight off.  He only needs six extra to pass.  Hey, zombie!' 

The creature grunted, but had turned away after handing over the envelope and seemed more interested in a fly crawling up his left leg.  Martin noticed that suddenly there were several drowsy flies buzzing about the room.  With a lurch in his stomach, he realised they were hatching out from somewhere near the zombie's left knee.

'He's called Ernest.  Ernest Simpson.'  Toby said evenly.  'It's on the letter.'

'Thanks.  Hey, Ernie!' 

Martin caught the monster's attention this time.  It stood with its head lolling to one side, watching him mutely. 

'Can you do this - with either arm?'  Martin raised his hands to the top of his head in turn. 

Ernest Simpson attempted to copy him, but his arms swung down to his sides before his hands were higher than the level of his chest. 

'Nine more points,' Martin said. 'Cannot raise either arm to top of head as if to put on a hat.'

The effort of lifting both arms seemed to have winded the zombie.  He gave a low groan and his left hand dropped off, falling to the floor and landing with a dull squelch.

'Looks like we can count 4c as well.'  Toby said.

'Cannot transfer a light but bulky object, such as an empty cardboard box.'  Martin recited from memory.  'Six points.  But that wouldn't have applied when he had his medical assessment.'

'Fair point.  Still, he's got to be home and dry – we’ve got more than fifteen already and we haven't touched on communication, or his mental health.' 

'Or continence..?'  

Although Martin didn't like to be judgmental, the guy smelt terrible.

Toby checked the letter again,  'He's in time to challenge the decision.  This isn't a month old yet.  I'll get him our usual paperwork to request a mandatory reconsideration.'

Martin didn't fancy being left alone to watch Ernie the zombie.  'Shouldn't we take him into the office?' he asked.

'Better not.  Hilary will give us both hell if he decomposes near her workstation.'

Toby turned to step back over the housing officer, but even as he noticed that the woman was no longer lying behind them, she emerged from her office, angry, wild-eyed and armed with a fearsome sickle-shaped blade.  She rushed straight at the startled zombie, howling as she hacked his head from his shoulders in a single mighty blow.

'It's the blade from the paper guillotine,' she explained, fastidiously wiping the gore off on the dead zombie's ragged clothing.  'I'd better see if there are any more of them about!  There usually are, aren't there?  No point leaving it to you pair of useless do-gooders, obviously!'

The advisers stood speechless as she strode away, looking down solemnly on the body of their decapitated client.

'Poor old Ernie,' said Toby.

    'Yeah,' said Martin.  'I had high hopes of getting him into the Support Group on Regulation 35 too.'

I've started, so I'll finish.

 

With the Tories on the brink of introducing yet more anti-union legislation, threatening the few remaining rights to dissent and protest the conventionally employed still possess, I find myself facing the kind of situation guaranteed to bring organised labour onto the streets with another unilateral change in terms and conditions from Amazon. 

As well as being able to buy ebooks (or download mine free, if you have patience and follow the timetable), it is also possible for 'Kindle Unlimited' subscribers to 'borrow' them.  As a staunchly Kindleless Luddite, I have no idea how this works - does the file disappear from your screen at the end of the 'loan'?  Are there fines for late return? - but what has changed for me is how I earn vanishingly small amounts of money from the process.  Payments used to be per book borrowed; we are now to be paid instead by pages read.

Since I do not have vast numbers of readers borrowing my books at any given time, this has the potential to give me an unexpected insight into where my stories grip their readers, and where they might flag.  This week, via the 'reports' tools Amazon provide, I have been able to follow the progress of one anonymous reader through Grand Union: cover-to-cover in four days with a gentle start, a good binge to the middle of the story, another light day and finally a sprint to the finish.  It will be interesting to see if that is typical.  I hope so; GU has apparently gripped this particular reader all the way to its conclusion, which is good news for the Beverage Fund.  Where I probably stand to lose is with those readers lured into Continual Supervision by the mildly racy second scene, only to be turned off by the politics in the third.  (Daily Mail readers, the lot of them!)
This in turn set me thinking about how we read books, and whether we have a tendency to see them through to the end, even if we aren't enjoying them very much, or give up and move on to something more engaging.  I do tend to stick with a book once I'm a chapter or two into it - probably a habit instilled in my schooldays when 'set books' had to be read and 'appreciated', even if I found them utterly tedious and longed to be brave enough to say so.  No more exams; no more Jane-bloody-Austen!  I know some people will regard that a heresy, but I prefer my classic literature without a soundtrack of tinkling harpsichords.

If I get into a book with a forward-moving plot, I am inclined to speed-read to find out what happens next, only to feel guilty at the end of many a fine novel that I didn't give the writer more respect and take it at a pace to better appreciate their craft.  On the plus side, it does reduce the number of hours of your life you'll never get back from a highly disappointing book.  I'm reluctant to name names, though as an enthusiast for all things medieval and architectural feel a moral obligation to 'dis' Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth as a long-winded, pretentious and deeply unpleasant piece of melodrama, which I should never have started, let alone bothered finishing.  I had almost put it out of my mind until it turned up as a recommend on Goodreads.  Seriously, people - no!

However, I digress.  Much as I might question the motives of the Amazon loans policy, it favours writers of long sagas as long as we have engaged our readers with our cast of characters, so even if I could, I don't think I'd be taking industrial action over this!

Encore!

  'What's happened to the pub?'  Wayne Reynolds stared about him, then jumped in shock at the sight of the alien glass in his hand.  'And what the fu...?'
  'It's wine, Wayne,' his wife Marie explained patiently. 'It won't kill you.'
  'What's it doing in my hand, though?'
  'You're drinking it, babe.'
  'But why would I do that?  I'm an Englishman!'
  'Because we're all in a cafe in Paris,' Daphne Randall explained.  'Since we only exist in our author's mind and she's over here in France for a few days.  If you've noticed, man, my beer est disparu as well.'
  'Oh Tom!  How romantic!' sighed Hilary, grasping her husband's hand.  'We do so love Paris, don't we darling?'
  'We do indeed, my love!'  Dr Appleby pressed his lips to her hand.  A smouldering look passed between them.  Tom took Hilary's other hand and kissed that too, never taking his eyes from hers.
  'If I was our author, I'd tell the rest of us to bugger off and stick with writing about those two,' Wayne said to Toby, with a nod towards Hilary and Tom.  'That's the kind of stuff that sells, innit?  She could knock twenty years off 'em and turn your man Tom into a millionaire banker instead of a boffin, and she'd be quids in.'
  'But that's absolutely not what she writes!'  Sally objected.  'We're the opposite to all that, an antidote to that stuff in fact, with heroes who are poor and ordinary, women who are courageous, wise and confident, and rich people who are slimy and dishonest - like they are in real life!' 
  'That's true enough, pet,' Daphne replied.  'But us characters still get to enjoy a bit of a bonk now and again, don't we - yourself and young Danny included!'
  'I know!' Sally laughed.  'But ours is sort of fun bonking, messing about and trying to sort out how to do it properly.  I bet there isn't a market for novels about that!'
  Daniel suddenly seemed even more fascinated by the views of the city from their Montmartre vantage-point, as he turned to face the window, but Sally could tell he was blushing as his ears were pink.
  'He's getting much better,' she added.  'Really.  And I am.'
  Dan's ears darkened.
  'Whatever,' said Wayne.  'You and the nipper might not be that hot, but Hilary and your decorator are a different matter.  She's missing a trick, I tell you.'
  'You've got a point, mate,' Toby agreed.  'It'll be just her luck if someone nicks those two for inspiration and rattles off a fan-fiction best seller - Fifty Shades of DLA, anyone?'
  'No chance!'  Tricia argued.  'Some of her readers already disapprove.  Don't tell H, but one reviewer says their romance is nauseating.'
  'Nauseating!  She would be well pissed off!'  Martin laughed.
  'That is somewhat uncharitable,' said Vaughan James.  'But I suppose if one bought the books for serious political and social comment, one doesn't expect to find two of the principal characters gallivanting around the garden in a state of undress.'
  'Or snogging in public - even in fucking France!' Wayne added.  'Oi!  You two!  If you're going to carry on like that, get a room!'
  The hand kissing had escalated.
  'Don't be so bloody British, man!' Daphne chided.  'Let them kiss and cuddle in peace.  You're in Paris, after all.  I certainly wouldn't say no if our author fancies sending me over here for a racy little adventure, investigating crime on the Canal St Martin with a dishy gendarme or two.  In those circumstances, I could even cope without a decent pint!'
  'You aren't headed anywhere more exotic than Manchester Piccadilly, from what I've heard,' Harry Biddulph grumbled.  'And, before anyone says anything, I aren't stripping off for her readers, neither.  I'll leave that full-frontal malarkey to the Appleby lads!' 
  Daniel was suddenly overcome by the need to photograph the view, rushing outside with his camera, while Tom was evidently oblivious to everything except the sweet lips of his beloved Hilary.
  'I don't mind doing a sex scene, ladies!'
  A stocky man in his fifties, wearing square glasses that really didn't suit him, wandered in to the café.
  'What are you doing here, Fishy?' Sally demanded.  'You're supposed to be in Woking, redeeming yourself by working for me, not making disgusting suggestions!'
  'Yeah, yuk!' Tricia said.  'You've totally put me off my steak tartare, creep!  If I was in publishing, I'd pay our author not to write that scene.'
  'I don't know, Tricia' teased Vaughan.  'Aren't you curious to know exactly how the night ended when Mr Pike and I shared a room, courtesy of the Hampshire constabulary!'
  Gary Pike fled the café, ashen-faced.
  'Actually, he's absolutely not my type...'  Vaughan insisted.  'And if anyone suggests otherwise, I will sue!'
  'I'm glad that horrible man has gone,' said Lyn.  'I quite like it here.  I've never been abroad before, and it is pretty and romantic.  I wouldn't mind spending a few days here.  We could do one of those little riverboat trips, and have a look in some of those nice shops, and stay in one of those elegant buildings George's son was photographing, before Sally went outside and started kissing him.'  She smiled fondly at the young lovers.  'What do you think, Terry?'
  'We've got to go, Lyn love,' he said.
  'Go where, Terry?  Why?'
  'Back to the book - she's writing again, and we're in the first scene.'  He coughed loudly in Hilary's direction.  'You too, darling!'
  Hilary disentangled herself reluctantly from her husband's embrace, smoothed down her hair and straightened her dress.
  Lyn swiftly swilled the last of her wine. 
  'See you all soon!' she said

Waiting for inspiration...

A group of characters who may be familiar to you wait to be summoned back into action...

   ‘She’s hardly written a word since the election, you know!’  Hilary Carrington took a generous sip of her merlot, reluctantly allowing a frown to furrow her brow.  ‘Naturally, we’re all deeply disappointed with the result, but she can’t leave us in 2013, still full of hope and determination, just because 2015 turns out so badly in reality.’

    ‘At least she’s left us all in a pub while she decides what to do next,’ Terry Walker said to his caseworker.  ‘You can’t say fairer than that.  Cheers darling!’

   Hilary's scowl deepened. 

'Just as long as it's not the pub in Life on Mars and we're only in here because we've already been killed off!'  Toby Novak was generally the joker of the team, but there was a hint of genuine anxiety behind his comment.
   ‘It’s not to be wondered at if she’s lost her way forward for now,’ Daphne Randall said.  'She's got a lot to worry about.'  It was always good to catch up with her friend Hilary, even if she had no idea how she came to be with her, her colleagues and a random selection of southerners just then.  She caught sight of Terry’s glass of Carling, shaking her head in pity and disapproval.  ‘Look on the bright side though, man.  If we’re stranded here for a while, at least I can try to re-educate your taste buds.  How you can drink that pitiful excuse for a pint when they have Titanic on tap, I cannot imagine!’

‘I don’t it’s right calling a beer after that poor ship, luvvie,’ Lyn Walker complained.  ‘One of my great uncles was lost aboard her.  Darren’s Paula found out all about it.  He was only a little nipper, too.  They took him on as a bell boy, the poor little mite…’

‘Another victim of grasping capitalism and the selfishness of the ruling classes,’ Martin Connolly remarked sourly.  ‘That’s what we’re up against – the rich grab the lifeboats, the rest of us get a bit of wreckage to cling to if we’re lucky.’

‘Applying that analogy, we’re more like the crew of the Carpathia,’ Sally Archer suggested cryptically. 

‘What are you on about?’ Martin asked his former colleague.  Much had changed for them both since they had first met as trainees at the Solent Welfare Rights Project, but not her tendency for weirdness.
   ‘The Carpathia was the ship which rescued the survivors from the Titanic,’ explained Terry.  ‘I saw a documentary about it.’

‘So what’s that got to do with us?’

‘Our author writes because she enjoys telling stories, but she was telling our story to try and stop people voting for parties that supported more benefit cuts,’ Sally explained patiently.  ‘Only it didn’t work and in our future, where she is now, she’s got to put up with another five years of austerity.’

‘But from our author’s point of view, that’s five more years of bloody good story material, isn't it?’   Wayne Reynolds was downing ‘shorts’, as the drinks seemed to be free, even though he wasn't in his wife’s pub.  ‘If I had five years of guaranteed work to look forward to, I’d be laughing!’

   ‘I don't think she wanted to spend five more years writing “welfare rights lit” stories,’ said Hilary.  ‘She was writing our story towards a proper conclusion this time.’

‘Why?’ asked little Amy Walker, on the verge of tears.  'Doesn't she like us any more?'

‘It’s not that, luvvie,’ Lyn said, comforting her granddaughter.  ‘She likes us all very much – so much that she doesn’t really want any more bad or sad things to happen to us.’

‘So we’re supposed to live happily ever after, like Cinderella?’

‘I always hated that fairy story,’ Sally laughed.  ‘Who wants something as dangerous as glass slippers, a coach that turns into a pumpkin and rats at midnight and a stupid prince, when you can have just as much fun dancing in massive safety boots, driving a car that runs on chip fat and loving a poor but brilliant architecture student!'  She smiled at Daniel Appleby.  'But your Nana is right, Amy.  We were supposed to live happily ever after.’

‘So why can’t we?’

‘Because, in the real world, a load of stupid bastards voted for the fucking Tories.’

‘Thank you, Martin; I’m sure Lyn’s granddaughter doesn’t need to hear your bad language.’

‘Sorry H.’

‘But if the author was going to give us a breather, what was she going to write instead?’ asked Toby.  ‘She can’t spend all her spare time gardening.  She lives in the north.  It rains too much up there!’

‘All the better to keep our waterways topped up, pet’ Daphne said.  ‘And I do believe she had some more adventures in mind for me.  After all, that funny little thriller she dashed off last autumn does better bringing in the biscuits than your “welfare rights lit” tales.  It even got her a mention in her local paper.’

‘I aren’t surprised!’ Harry Biddulph laughed, finishing his own pint of White Star.  ‘That’s a bloody clever tactic to get publicity, starting a story with your leading lady seducing a local journalist!  No wonder she got an interview!’

‘There was none of that, man!  She made it quite clear she was happily married and there was no beer or boat trip on offer.  And anyway, who says I seduced you, Harry Biddulph?  As I recall, you were the one who chased me home along the towpath.’

‘But you were the one who dragged me to the pub, woman!  That’s the trouble with the author letting you be narrator – readers only get your side of the story.  If she's stuck for new ideas, I've got one for her -  I reckon she should rewrite Grand Union, from my point of view!’

‘That’s the absolute crappiest idea for a book I ever heard!’ Sally declared.  ‘What’s the point of retelling the same story from someone else's view point, when everyone already knows what happens?  No-one's going to buy the same thing twice!’

‘You'd be surprised, pet.’  Daphne answered.  'After all, people voted the Tories in again and, as our author's remarked before, you'd think they'd be fed up with being screwed by sadistic millionaires by now.'
'Evidently not,' sighed Hilary.

To be continued...

Hot Air and Cold Water

Stoke-on-Trent has just held its second literary festival, and I missed it.  To be fair, there was only one of the invited authors I would have liked to hear speak, and by the time we got home from our narrowboat trip around Birmingham and the Black Country, the tickets for Michael Palin had gone on sale - and promptly sold out. 

The other big names - 'spin doctor' Alistair Campbell and politician Alan Johnson - didn't appeal, and I couldn't really justify buying a ticket just to thank them for their part in persuading me to join the Green Party, though I'm sure my fictional rebel councillor Daphne Randall, lead character of 4mph thriller Grand Union would have elected to do just that!

I also failed to get an invitation via my short story entry - again!  I haven't seen the shortlisted entries, so don't know whether sulking is in order or whether I should graciously concede defeat to a better wordsmith, but either way I can't complain because despite my previous grumbles and despite 'Daphne's' merciless critique of the Six Towns Gazette a few pages into Grand Union, I was lucky enough to get a photo and article in The Sentinel, its non-fictional counterpart and festival sponsor, a couple of weeks ago.  If you've read Grand Union, you'll appreciate that Richard the journalist might have wondered what he was letting himself in for when he made contact, and probably considered himself fortunate to have escaped without being invited for a beer or boat trip!

Still, here's the 'also ran' short story.  Expect to see it recycled as the foreword to another Daphne Randall story one day - but probably not the next one!

Lock 37

The Trent and Mersey Canal takes a varied course south from its shadowy summit in the ferrous depths of the Harecastle Tunnel, past Westport Lake with its vociferous wildfowl, modern and Victorian potteries at Steelite and Middleport, the wasteland that was Shelton Bar and the soulless regeneration of Festival Park, before dropping through five locks that nestle in the heart of the Six Towns.

Etruria deep lock and its shallower companion are numbered 40 and 39.  They form part of the picturesque industrial scene beside a boatyard and a bone mill, still supervised by master engineer James Brindley, his statue retired to a sheltered housing scheme and his wig powdered white by disrespectful pigeons.  Twyford Lock - number 38 - is unremarkable, though below it the waterway passes ominously between the living and the dead.  Modern housing faces a graveyard; long-dead generations sleeping beneath their marble covers a sombre reminder of mortality as the flat-dwellers rise and draw their blinds to each new dawn.

At the neglected southern boundary of the cemetery you reach the unlovely and unloved lock 37 where, crushed beneath iron girders straining under the main line to Manchester, the canal descends from a landscape of dereliction into darkness.  Corroded railway bridges bleed rust through faded, blistered paint, tattooed with mindless daubs of vandalism unworthy of the name ‘graffiti’.  Livid green algae cloaks the walls of the lock chamber, flaying away in sheets of slime as the water level falls and the tattered wooden gates open to the unquiet waters ahead.  A seething by-wash boils and hisses in the gloom and thin, bony stalactites reach down from the blood red girders of the bridge while, too close above your head, trains howl and screech like angry demons.   It is always a relief to be through this dismal lock; to duck carefully under the skull-splittingly low railway bridge while peering through the dank gloom beneath, before motoring briskly away into even the dullest wet day’s light. 

Mr and Mrs Entwhistle’s first attempt on lock 37 unexpectedly ran into trouble.  A shuddering and clanking from their narrowboat’s propeller and the realisation that though the water level was falling steadily and levelly, their vessel was not, caused a moment of panic before Mrs Entwhistle loyally followed her husband’s instructions to close all the paddles and then carefully refill the lock.  With the prop still sluggish, they towed the boat backwards through the grey morning’s light spring rain and moored in the pound above.  The skipper delved about in the weed hatch, removing a quantity of fabric and fluff that might once have been part of padded jacket, but a second attempt took them no closer to the bottom of the lock, before the propeller snagged and the boat began to tilt again. 

Surmising that there must be an obstruction beneath the surface hindering the boat’s descent, they refilled the lock, reversed again and called out the Canal and River Trust, whose lads made the gruesome discovery that lock 37 had been the portal to Purgatory, if indeed there is such a place, for one Mickey Mulligan.    

In death, as in much of his forty-seven years of life, the fates had conspired against Mickey Mulligan.  Lock 37 usually leaks to empty through its moth-eaten mitred bottom gates, but the crew of the last boat ascending on the final evening of his life must have left one of the top paddles raised in their haste away from this God-forsaken spot, allowing the lock to stay full.  Mickey might yet have found a full lock less deadly than a drained one, had his tattered rucksack and the pockets of his ragged anorak not been stuffed with stolen goods, but these had dragged him to the bottom without even a brief scrabble for freedom; the post mortem revealed none of that lurid slime from the lock’s cold walls under his nicotine-stained nails. 

But gold is a remarkably heavy element and Mickey Mulligan was drowned in possession of a substantial quantity of it.  In fact, once the items retrieved from a pains-taking fingertip search of the reeking mud at the base of the lock were reconciled with those still in the dead man’s pack and pockets, the police could account for all but one item stolen in the armed robbery on Mohammed Zia’s jewellery shop, eight days before Mickey was dredged out of the lock.  What they couldn’t account for was how the proceeds of that crime came to be in Mulligan’s possession, when both the witness statements and CCTV suggested the suspects were two young men of Asian origin, a description which in no way matched the corpse in the canal. 

Most likely Mulligan, a persistent but incompetent thief with addictions to fund and debts to pay, had stumbled across the haul when scouting his neighbourhood for unlocked doors or ill-fitting sash windows, and had stumbled again as he tried to short-cut across the lock on his get-away.  Apart from where the boat had struck his already lifeless body, there were no wounds to suggest foul play, and his fall had surely been an accident; had anyone helped him into the water, they would certainly have searched and emptied his bag and clothes of the loot first.  So the police publicly ascribed Mulligan’s death to ‘misadventure’ and privately attributed the shortfall between what was found and what was reported missing to an over-zealous insurance claim by Mr Zia, despite his most earnest protestations that the missing necklace was a precious heirloom, purchased as a wedding gift by an important customer.

Delayed in the Potteries for a couple of days, Dennis and Marjorie Entwhistle completed their third and final descent of lock 37 on a bright spring evening, chugging on in their trusty Maisie Joan to the grim concrete of lock 36, where an angry dog barked them down onto the drain-like channel to the Trent aqueduct, and so on to Trentham and the sixth lock out of the city.  Whichever route Dennis plotted to get them from there to Birmingham, the long-suffering Marjorie knew she would have to wind the paddles up and down on at least thirty more locks, and then the same again from there to Stratford, before she had to wrestle with those massive river locks on the Avon all the way to Tewkesbury and back up the Severn.  It would perhaps have eased her labours if occasionally he showed that he appreciated her hard work; their ruby wedding anniversary had passed without card or present a week before as she had slogged up the Marple flight in biting sleet, windlass in hand, for no more reward than the offer of a nice cup of tea.

Dennis had in fact belatedly remembered the occasion, a little while after they first reversed out of lock 37.  While groping about in the weed hatch, removing the remnants of poor Mickey Mulligan’s anorak, a glint that was not the brass of the propeller had caught his eye through the murky waters.  The clanking noise he had heard in the lock was explained as he carefully and nervously disentangled an intricately formed necklace of thick golden chain that had wrapped itself around the prop-shaft.   On a whim, and quite out of character, he slipped it into his pocket.  It was hardly Marjorie’s usual style, being rather ethnic looking, but when he had the chance to examine it more closely, while his wife was getting the groceries, he decided it could be worth a stroll into the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter to get the dents and scratches repaired. 

It would make a perfect if belated anniversary present for ‘the Missus’, and she need never know it had cost him next to nothing and was only second-hand.