No More Chairs

No More Chairs

Monday Night Group

Copyright 2014 by Monday Night Group

Smashwords Edition

Selection and editorial matter copyright © Monday Night Group

Prose and Poetry copyrights with the authors. All trademarks acknowledged.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may

be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This is a collection of works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents

are either the products of the author’s imagination

or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the e-mail address below.

Monday Night Group enquiries@mondaynightgroup.org.uk

0161 832 3777

Edited and Collated by Paul Bluer, Joseph Dempsey, Amanda Ashton, Mike Whalley, Adam Dean, & Ruth Clemens

Cover Images © Steve Rouse

Cover Design by Amanda Ashton www.ashtondesigns.co.uk

ISBN: 9781310298745

Published by Smashwords Inc.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Warning

No Gods

The God of the Woods

Hobby Rocket

A Greek Gift

He Sits and Drinks His Tea

Jimmywocky

The Year Without a Summer

I Will Lose Friends

Snowdrifts

Hackus

Tinkas

Confessions

The Fair Lady of Shannon-by-the-Sea

Death of an Unknown Woman

Chosen

Tottenham cut up

Black Paint

Bihar and Orissa

Bar Room Brawl

Except for One

The First Touch

Superheroes’ Showdown

Garden Party Ghosts

Imagine

Actaeon

An Outdoor Clubbing Experience

Promise and Cocoa

Five Pounds

Wasted Time

Masks

Running (extract)

Cave/The Development of Decent

Reflections on a Sunset at Silverdale

Up and Down Joyce

The Edge

Red Sky at Night

The Stranger

Absence

Hackus

Tinkas

Two Tickets

The Painful Birthdays of the Muse of War

The Price of Silence

Cereal Killers

Roger Casement

Inconceivable Afterwards

Statues

Acknowledgements

Biographies

Copyright Information

Contact Information

Foreword

The Monday Night Group has been running in Manchester for over fifty years. In that time there have been various, albeit sporadic, publications from the group but none recently. That’s why Joe and I, having attended the group for a while, decided to seed a fresh anthology of its members’ work – the one you’re about to read.

The first things we agreed on: aim high, showcase the group’s talents and be as inclusive as possible. It was trial and error, because despite looking at how other people were doing it and asking advice from the veterans and alumni, our relative lack of experience in publishing meant we were winging it.

To aim high, we wanted a large anthology that could be published both online and in print, so we had to raise our own funds, and though this was just one of many hurdles the editors had to overcome, showcasing the group’s talents was probably the easiest part. This compilation contains an eclectic variety of prose to poetry, and even a special Bar Room Brawl section. Contributors were asked to write fresh material based on the arbitrary theme of a Bar Room Brawl. Open interpretation of this led to a maelstrom of dark minded fantasy muddled with fact, surrealism, emotional hurt and physical furore.

We could continue to wax lyrical about the material within the pages of No More Chairs, but you’re the judge now and we sincerely hope you enjoy it.

Paul & Joe

Warning

by Ruth Clemens

I want to rip this room to shreds.

Tear down the walls,

Stick a knife in the curtain and fly

Down it as if it was a sail.

Throw the telly out the window:

It knows.

I can see the fear in its glass reflection.

I want to destroy this silence.

Hurl the stereo across it

Tear the ordered memories from the shelves

Break the pencils

Stuff the flowers in the plug socket.

This room hates me.

It knows too much, it’s too clever.

The fireplace snarls at me,

Its black teeth bared.

The armchair wants to spit me out.

I want to punish this room

Like a child resenting the wisdom of elders.

The clock ticks its sturdy whispers in my ear.

Take what you can, it tells me.

Run.

Leave.

No Gods

by David Hills

We never watch support bands, we never stay for encores. They’re usually some talentless dicks called something like Hey Space Cadet or Tall Restless Virgins. Jez is necking vodka, surrounded by scene kids idolising him and keen to learn about Madchester straight from the man who can almost remember being there.

I met him back in 1990. Straight off the plane with my journalism degree, I walked into his record shop, two rooms in the Northern Quarter stacked full of imported American house and German techno records. I told him I was reporting on the Manchester scene for the American music press.

I’m not sure if he believed me but he stuck his hand out, ‘So yer a Sherman? I’m Jez, call me fucking Jeremy and I’ll rip yer face off and air mail it to yer Nan for Thanksgiving, whenever that is.’

It’s been over twenty years now of Jez and his sidekick Sherman. He rents that old shop to a cool clothing brand now and sells equipment to wannabe DJs online. He says, ‘Headphones are the new trainers, man.’

Jez likes to boast on my behalf, ‘Sherman used to write for Rolling Stone. You remember Rolling Stone don’t yer, cross between Playboy and Melody Maker, except more wankers read Melody Maker.’

Yeah, so I was blagging him. A good British word, blagging, except it sounds a bit too much like blogging these days. I’m the walking American-Manc dictionary. I like crumpet, with its double meaning, too.

The promoter, a sweet girl wearing a T-shirt so tight I can count her ribs, not that I’m looking at her ribs, pushes through the crowd. She’s wearing a black miniskirt and killer platform heels. This is the first time I’ve seen her out of jeans and Converse so I turn the aloof setting down a notch. I’d make a move on her except the needle on the risk:reward scale in my jeans tells me I might hurt myself, so I say, ‘Hey, great venue.’

You know your band sucks when the best thing people say about your gig is, ‘nice venue’.

She asks me, ‘Are you going to mention this in your blog?’

I say, ‘Yeah, maybe. Jez is really impressed with your band.’

Jez has had his back to the stage the whole time, threatening the bartender with cash, never more than arm’s length from her trestle table of plastic glasses.

I hand a beer and twenty cigarettes to the sound engineer so that he’ll put a recording of the gig into my mailbox. We live in the same apartment block. It stands on the site of a legendary Manchester nightclub. We’re both sceptical that it’s progress but enjoy the balcony views.

‘Nice venue,’ I say.

‘Yeah, man. Sweet acoustics,’ and then he bends over the control desk to adjust some levels. He claims that he saw the Sex Pistols play at the Free Trade Hall, but he’s about the same age as me. Blaggers everywhere you look.

I watch the roboscans slice beams of light through machine-created fog. They pick out the details of the architecture, mullioned windows, gothic arches and god squad bling high above our heads. Just briefly, I’m lost in the beauty.

I punch Jez on the shoulder to get his attention, ‘Why are we going to gigs in churches anyway?’

‘Since the fascist regime took over, dirty, filth-encrusted rock-and-roll sweat boxes are about as common as breeding pandas. And this isn’t a church; it’s a real honest to god cathedral. When have you ever been in a cathedral, Sherman?’

I shrug and we head out into the night as the headline act shuffle off stage.

***

We stand in line for the all-you-can-vomit buffet with the novelty of queuing wearing off. I’m tired of the British fascination with it and my American obsession with decent service begins to surface.

Jez distracts me with random conversation. ‘What’s less than having no beliefs?’

The question is too philosophical for my wired brain. ‘Atheist,’ I venture.

‘No that’s the zero state. I’m a rebel. I want the negative.’

‘The Antichrist.’

‘No, still acknowledges the belief system.’

I shrug. My brain can’t handle the deep conversation and my body isn’t in the mood for bad Chinese food.

‘This place is less than food,’ I complain as we are led to a table.

We sit anxiously scratching the labels off Budweiser bottles. Around us are lowest common denominator diners, big groups of students and small groups of fat fuckers who rate quantity over quality. We should have asked for a table near the salad bar where it’s quiet.

I want to ask him what he thinks the meaning of life is, but I know he’ll say ‘drinking and fucking,’ because he always says ‘drinking and fucking’.

But he’s off into some joke, or story or half-truth that his mangled brain has re-invented.

‘So there’s this cleaner who works in the art gallery. You know the score, agency, foreign, not a word of English but grafts really hard. So, anyway, she goes into this office and it’s a right state, so she gets on the rubber gloves and her black bin bag and does the business. Clears all the crap off the floor, and then runs the old Hoover over it. Happy that she’s done a good job, she wipes her duster over the framed sign on the wall, and d’ya know what it said in the frame? Plastic cups thrown on floor in disgust of urban anxiety.’ Ten grand of art installation, scooped up on to a bin liner,’ he cackles and waves his beer bottle at a waiter.

I watch a crowd of balding blokes congregate around the table next to us. They loosen their ties but keep their name badges on. I think of Henry Fonda in Twelve Angry Men. A waitress is called to take a drink order, and they enter into the verbal dance of ‘I’ll have what you’re having,’ until the pack leader orders a dozen bottles of Bud.

I say to Jez, ‘Let’s blow this, I’ve lost my appetite.’

***

A steward in a fluorescent tabard is turning people away based solely on their footwear. He stares at our feet and lets us pass. We are met by an invisible wall of stale farts and cheap perfume cemented together with equal parts desperation and sexual frustration.

I say, ‘God almighty, you can tell we’re at the wrong end of Deansgate.’

Jez says, ‘No my friend, your argument is flawed, it implies that there is a right end of Deansgate.’

Clearly, the last venue has brought out the philosopher

in him.

I say, ‘There is a right end to Deansgate; it’s when it implodes and becomes a smouldering pile of shit.’

Jez grips the balcony rail and stares at the swirling mass of the dancers below. We look at the ordinary girls; the ones who buy their underwear in the same place as their cardigans; the girls with ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ fridge magnets. I’ve had my fill of intriguing and beguiling, bored by the exotic.

How spoiled am I, craving the comforts of an ordinary girl? I stare at my reflection in the mirror behind the bar and try to find myself.

I fish inside my bag ‘til my fingers find the secret little fold in the bottom corner. I grasp the magazine grade paper with its sharp creases between my index and middle finger.

‘Let’s go freshen up.’ I shout above the awful music, and push a path through the meatheads in fake designer clobber, waiting for the chance to clobber someone. Even here, the English language lets me play with it.

Praising low level flushing technology as he chops, we twenty note the biggest line that Jez can fit on to the cistern lid. He says, ‘Toffee Crisp,’ and after my fingertips confirm that my nose is still attached to my face, I reply with ‘Curly fucking Wurly’ as we finish off the gram of good rock star grade powder that’s been sustaining us all night.

Really mellow coke, not the cheap shit these muppets around us had once and then brag about for the rest of their lives. It reassures us that we are still players.

They’re piping music from the DJ into the toilets and he’s playing some seventies glam rock tune. In the confined space, Jez yells ‘Gak Monster’ at me, then the bouncers delicately kick the toilet door in and gently throw us down the fire escape.

I’m struck by the realisation of how little difference there is between coke-head and cock-head. Yeah, cock-head, a great word on both sides of the Atlantic.

A hospitality Hummer belonging to a lap-dancing club rolls past us.

‘Do you remember back when we was both dating strippers?’ he asks, ‘Not planned just sheer, bloody coincidence.’

‘You can see the attraction can’t you, a woman who earns as much as you for doing the same amount of effort.’

‘Being a DJ’s harder than it looks, Sherman; harder than writing about music.’ And he pokes fun at me for trying to compose my roman à clef, while he’s never tried to write his own story.

I had made the mistake of crossing the line from recreational fucking into dating. I remembered the last time I saw Natalia, standing in a shoe shop with a Manolo in one hand, a Jimmy Choo in the other, and my credit card in her purse. She ignored me while I tried to explain the connection between Liza Minnelli and Christopher Isherwood. I checked that I had cash and wandered off in search of a bookshop. I doubt she even noticed.

‘What’s worse,’ I idly wonder, ‘being objectified or being ignored, because let’s face it, it’s binary, a flicked switch, nothing in between.’

Jez says, ‘I’m sure I saw the lovely Nutella. She were standing outside that strip joint near the town hall.’

‘I doubt it, rumour has it she went back home to marry her cousin.’

He says, ‘Hey, you almost fell in love back then.’

And I say, ‘Yeah, almost,’ a bit too wistfully and he smirks.

***

So this is it, the age of unreason, I think I’m losing the ability to be a sentient being. Simple rules, seek pleasure avoid pain, no longer responding to the senses. I slip off the bed and crawl around the floor in search of orange juice

and painkillers.

I press my face against the floor-to-ceiling glass. It feels cool and smooth on my forehead. I stare at the jagged industrial skyline, but feel disconnected from the city.

I cannot bear to open the balcony door. The line of buses and cars sixty feet below chokes the neighbourhood with fumes and noise. They don’t put that in the glossy brochures; just photos of potted plant balconies and aspiration. They don’t tell you that you’ll get nostalgic for a stand of trees or a local boozer where you get a decent pint and slobbered in by the landlord’s golden retriever.

I wander the back streets feeling vacant and needing to kick-start my system back into existence with a tall double strength latte. I avoid the slaves of retail, and their plate glass altars to designer clothes where I might catch my ghostly reflection and scare myself.

I stumble into a little backstreet church. I didn’t know it was here, probably the closest to my flat. My footsteps echo off the marble, such a light bright space it hurts. My mind races at the contrast with the red-brick exterior. Someone unseen is playing scales and exercises on the church organ. I mutter to myself, ‘Sweet acoustics.’

The modern art canvasses of the Stations of the Cross take my breath away and I feel compelled to sit down and just stare at them. My head starts pounding and it sounds like a Peter Hook bass riff. Then a Johnny Marr like jangle starts reconnecting my nerve endings. I fear I might start twitching and get mistaken for dancing like Bez from the Happy Mondays. The soundtrack inside my head beat mixes into I Am The Resurrection by the Stone Roses.

‘Welcome here kind stranger.’

I haven’t heard that since running with the Boston Irish. The guy in the dog collar squeezes himself into the pew next to me. He has a belly that betrays his enthusiasm for homemade cake. The little wooden bench holds us closer than comfortable.

‘We usually have a wedding on about this time. No matching duties today, probably make up for it with the hatching and dispatching later in the week.’ He shoves his hand out in greeting and chuckles at his own bon mots.

He says, ‘We’re in the guidebook, the Hidden Gem. You should see our guest book, comments from all over the world. Not just football and musicians, this town.’

Normally, I’d tell someone to fuck right off and leave me in peace, but he is a priest, the sort that turns up to give your grandmother the last rites and comfort the family.

He says, ‘But something tells me that you’re not a tourist.’

‘Did God tell you that?’ I ask, relieved that my sarcasm is in full working order.

He looks at me ruefully and breathes as if he’s summoning the energy to physically remove me from his quiet respectful sanctuary.

‘Twenty years of ministering to heavy hearts and troubled minds taught me that.’

‘Oh.’

‘And besides, you don’t have a rucksack.’

A warm