Darts

'Our voice may be a drop in the ocean, but enough drops will help to turn the tide.'

Duncan sat in the bar with his friends Luke and Matt, admiring the new barmaid, she was really lovely with olive skin and big, big, brown eyes.

‘She’s a bit of alright,’ he said to Luke who’d just been served by her.

‘She’s one of them bloody foreigners.’ said Luke without missing a beat.

‘Oh right.’ Duncan sighed, he was lonely, he’d love to have a girlfriend but he could never go out with a bloody immigrant, the boys would just never let him.

He tried to tear himself away from her eyes and back to the conversation.

‘If Pete employs anymore of them bloody skivers, then I’m going to find somewhere else to drink.’ Luke continued, the other two nodded.

‘There’s plenty of British unemployed, why does he need to get foreigners in? This one hardly speaks the language’ Luke was on a roll now. ‘How are Romanians and Bulgarians even meant to know how to pour a good pint of British beer, this Staropramen needs looking after you know?’

Matt and Duncan nodded, Duncan taking a sneak peak at the lovely new addition to the bar staff. Did she just smile at him?

‘I read,’ Matt started, ‘that this crazy weather we are having at the moment.’ Britain was in the grips of the worst series of storms for over 15 years and that coupled with high tides meant that many low-lying areas were completely flooded. ‘was caused by all those immigrants coming from Bulgaria and Romania on New Year’s Day.’ Matt Continued.

‘Sounds plausible,’ nodded Luke.

Sounds ridiculous thought Duncan, but he didn’t dare say it in front of his two far more militant friends.

‘Yeah apparently because of the extra flights and buses put on to bring them all here, and because of the extra energy we are using cos the country’s full, there’s more pollution and it’s the pollution that’s causing this cold fronts.’

‘Fucking hell,’ the anger in Luke’s curse attracted a few disapproving looks from some of the old boys in the pub. ‘If that’s true, then I am going to start a bloody revolution. It’s about time this government stood up to Europe and told the foreigners to go home. Whose round is it?’ Luke asked holding up his empty pint.

‘I’ll go.’ said Duncan quickly and made his way to the bar.

‘Three Staropramen, please love.’ Duncan was standing just inches away from those brown eyes, he could smell her perfume.

‘Of course anything else?’

‘No thanks. You’re new aren’t you?’

‘Yes I started yesterday?’

Her English seemed fine to Duncan.

‘Where are you from if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘I’m from Bucharest, it’s in Romania. my name’s Oana.’

So she was a bloody immigrant then, Luke was right.

‘Oh welcome to Croydon then.’

‘Thank you. That’s 8.10 please.’

Oana smiled at him as she handed back the change and Duncan went a little weak at the knees; the eyes, the accent, the smile, she was perfect.

‘I hope you’re not chatting up the bloody foreigners,’ Luke said as Duncan came back with the beers.

‘No, no just passing the time.’ 

‘Well don’t!’ Luke used his no nonsense voice.

The boys finished their pints and decided to try to find a bar with some British staff, but Duncan needed the loo before they left.

As he came out of the bogs he bumped into Oana who was out collecting glasses.

‘Are you leaving?’she asked.

‘Yeah we’re looking for a pub with…’ he stopped himself just in time. ‘A dartboard.’

‘Ah I’ve heard about you Brits and your darts. Would you like to teach me to play?’ she said it with a cheeky grin.

Fucking hell, what was happening here, was she asking him out? This didn’t happened to him, he was Duncan Nicholas, invisible to women. The answer was yes, of course the answer was yes, he’d love to teach her.

He looked over to the boys who were looking at him impatiently.

‘Um I better not love.’ he mumbled before leaving the girl of his dreams, but not his dreams, behind.

My Hero?

Ian smiled as Jenny put her arms around him,

‘How’s my hero?’ she asked. She always addressed him as 'my hero' because it was Ian who had organised the great fundraiser for the cancer charity days after Jenny had been diagnosed. Now 15 years later Jenny, fully recovered, was just about to get married and had all of her old university friends around her for a big final meal on the eve of her big day.

Jenny’s uni friends were special to her. Falling ill with that big disease in the middle of what was meant to be one of the happiest time of her life was difficult. But her friends rallied round, Ian, Beth, Charlie and Greg all shaved their heads in solidarity after she started the cancer treatement, they kept her in the loop even when the treatment tried its hardest to kick her out of it, one of them would volunteer for an early night when they could see their housemate couldn’t stay out any longer, and there was always someone to take her to the hospital and sit holding hands when the test results came in. And of course then there was Ian, who put on the huge pub quiz to raise money for the cancer hospital where the care was second to none.

1000 students, each paying a fiver to play the quiz, local businesses donated prizes and money, with the raffle and everything, Ian raised close to 10000 pounds. A lot of money now, a fortune back then.

Ian nodded and blushed a little like he always did.

‘I just did what anyone would have done,’ he mumbled, but deep down he knew that he didn’t, he did do something special and he didn’t do what everyone would have done. That is mostly because most people would have paid the money straight into the bank, given it to the charity that it was intended for not spent it all on booze. He hadn’t meant to keep it, it just kind of happened. It sat in his room for a few weeks and then he started borrowing from it; putting in IOUs each time he took out a fiver here or a tenner there. He told himself it was to tide him over until he got to the cash machine and he could take out some cash to replace the money hed borrowed, but he never seemed to get to the ATM, and soon there were more IOUs than money and he certainly didn’t have the money in his bank to replace what he’d taken. So, he did what anyone would have done. He lied; he covered his tracks, spent the rest of the money and hoped he could forget about it. And he would have as well if bloody Jenny didn’t remind him about it every time she saw him.

The Lynch Mob

'Our voice may be a drop in the ocean, but enough drops will help to turn the tide.'

Dragos and Alina tried to ignore the negative press that Romanians got in the UK. After all, most Brits they’d met were nice and kind and welcoming and if the locals did agree with what was written in the papers, at least they had the manners not to show it to the Romanian couples’ faces. You always met a few nutters but that was to be expected and you couldn’t judge a whole country on the nutters you met and the right wing press.

They’d been in the UK for the best part of three years, after being headhunted by an NHS trust looking for qualified doctors. They settled in a nice two bed rented house on a quiet suburban street and tried to embrace the local culture as best they could. Like this Saturday for example, Alina had just been out to buy the Guardian while Dragos cooked bacon and eggs for breakfast. How much more British could you get?

But this Saturday wasn’t going to turn out like any other Saturday they had known. They first became aware that something was wrong when they heard angry voices from the street outside.  Dragos looked out of the bedroom window and saw the mob about twenty or thirty strong coming down the street. He felt a lump in his stomach, it was unusual for there to be demonstrations in their street. Alina joined him at the window, they put their arms round each other nervously. What were they shouting? Dragos and Alina couldn’t make it out, but when the demonstration stopped in front of their house they could hear them clearly.

‘Go home, Go home, all Romanians go home.’

It wasn’t the most eloquent of chants, but they weren't the most eloquent of people. 

‘I’m calling the police’ Dragos said, but he didn’t have time to act before the mob was kicking down their front door and swarming through their house. A baseball bat took Dragos’s knees from under him, while Alina was knocked to the ground by a plank of wood of some kind. Both were then carried out into the street to face the rest of the mob.

Fears and tears, pain and confusion, why? Why had the mob turned on them? They were a hard-working family. Both Alina and Dragos recognised faces in the crowd who they’d treated in the emergency ward. They could even see some of their neighbours for example there was the guy who lived two doors down. Why were their friends and neighbours turning on them? They expected to hear sirens, saviours with blue flashing lights but none came. They were aware the mob was thicker now, grown from twenty or thirty to fifty or sixty, maybe even more.

They were dropped in the middle of the baying crowd like scared bulls in a bullring. One man stepped forward. He was the leader, the showman. He swung a baseball bat through the air, a coward’s show of strength.

‘This is the people’s court of the United Kingdom,’ he shouted as much to the crowd as to the scared couple in front of him.

‘You are charged with being Romanian, how do you plead?’

Dragos and Alina looked at each other but remained quiet?

‘You are accused of coming here and stealing our jobs. How you do plead?’

Again the Romanians said nothing.

He took a step closer to Dragos and raised the bat? ‘Are you Romanian?’

Dragos nodded in fear of his brain being smashed in with the bat.

The skinhead turned to Alina.

‘Do you have jobs here in the UK?’

Alina also nodded, both of them had seen baseball bat damage in their jobs and it was not a pretty sight.

‘In which case the court of the people of the United Kingdom finds you guilty as charged.’ The crowd cheered. 

‘Your punishment is…’

I stood in the crowd watching events unfold. I lived two doors along from the Romanian couple, I didn’t really know them but we had exchanged pleasantries and they’d seemed nice enough. The noise of the mob had brought me and my other neighbours out on to the street, swelling the crowd. To start with I thought it was some sort of carnival, the speaker was entertaining and I smiled at his patter, but then when they brought out the defendants, I realised this was no game this was serious. I looked more closely at the crowd and saw that amongst the causal onlookers were a serious mob that looked dangerous, skinhead haircuts and baseball bats, hiding their faces behind scarves and hoodies, more tattoos than in a sailor’s bar in Portsmouth. I was scared, so god knows how Dragos and Alina were feeling. This was barbaric but what could I do? I was heavily outnumbered, I could do nothing to save them. I tried to get out of the mob so I could call the police but I was hemmed in.

The leader was playing to the gallery. He’d found them guilty and was about to announce their punishment.

Shit, if I let them continue I’d be complicit in this, I couldn’t blame others, I was in the crowd and if I didn’t stop this then I was as guilty as the wankers with the baseball bats. Surely my neighbours and other onlookers didn’t want to see Dragos and Alina punished for being Romanian. I was scared but that was no excuse, I took a gamble.

‘Your punishment is…’  said the skinhead with the baseball bat.

‘Stop!’ I shouted at the top of my voice. ‘This is barbaric.’

The street fell silent, all eyes turned to look at me. My heart thumped, surely I would be now dragged into the pit to join the other two ‘defendants’.
The silence lingered on, before another voice

‘Yeah stop!’ 
and then another.

‘Stop!’
and more.

‘Somebody help them.’

‘Go home yourselves, you bullies.’ 

Voices rang out from all around now; even some of the original mob were dropping their weapons and calling for the end to this kangaroo court. It had been my very own Spartacus moment.

The lead skinhead looked around, his body language changing rapidly as he realised the climate of fear he had created was melting around him. He no longer controlled the crowd by force and was reduced to the sorry looking, pathetic man he was.

People pushed through the crowd to help Dragos and Alina to their feet and back into their house. Men appeared with tool kits willing to fix the damage the mob had done.

At last blue-flashing lights arrived in the streets but we hadn’t needed the police. We’d stood up to the bullies and began to dismantle their myth of fear.

If you enjoyed the theme of this story, you might enjoy this one too.

The woman with two faces

Again apologies that this appears at the top of my posts. By adding the audio it thinks it is a new post. 



‘News is just reaching us that a senior policemen has been found dead in a church near his home in…’

The 'Woman with Two Faces' turned the radio off and smiled to herself. Vinny had done a good job just like she knew that he would, he was a good boy that Vinny.

Another one gone, another good for nothing scumbag getting his just desserts, death would become him.

The 'Woman with Two Faces' liked to think of herself as a feminist Batman, a crime fighter who fought crimes against womankind. She hadn’t built a bat cave and didn’t dress in tights and a cape, in fact she didn’t get her hands dirty at all, but she was on a crusade and she'd sworn revenge on men.

When her husband died she was pleased, she’d pretended to play the grieving widow but beneath the literal and metaphorical veil there were smirks, smiles and sobs of laughter. She’d loved him once - maybe it was that love that stopped her from escaping from the cycle of brutality and humiliation. Or maybe it was the fear of being alone, the shame of a divorce. Or maybe it was just because he was so forceful. Whatever the reason she had stayed with him, put up with his moods, his fists, his affairs.

It was at the funeral that the 'Woman with Two Faces' took the first step to becoming the 'Woman with Two Faces'. It was there that her sister had given her a necklace that she'd bought in Malaysia. The pendant was a small white face handcrafted by local craftsmen. The stunning thing about the face was the striking resemblance to the woman with two faces. She’d put it on immediately and worn it every day since; a second face giving her extra powers, extra strength, extra comfort.

Dealing with his estate had left the 'Woman with Two Faces' with many surprises. They’d lived modestly but the bastard had money everywhere. How hadn’t she known that he was a seriously rich man? He was also a seriously sleazy man with lovers in more places than he had money. She found calling cards from whores in all the major world cities he visited supposedly for work. If she’d hated him while he was alive she despised him now.

The money left her in a quandary, it was tainted, dirty money. If she spent it, it would keep him alive, but could she give it away? Could she bring herself to donate that kind of money to a charity, even a women’s charity? The money lay untouched for months. But in the end while watching Batman Begins and fingering her second face she finally became the 'Woman with Two Faces' and decided to put her money to good use.

During the day she managed the bookshop, smiling at customers, chatting to staff but at night she liased with a completely different world.

This copper was her 10th hit in 4 years and it was probably her best.

The Monkey Man had brought Connie to her attention. Connie had given her husband devotion, children and boxing practice while he'd slept his way through the police force. So he deserved his fate but the real beauty was the timing. The bastard had finally decided to leave Connie and wanted a quickie divorce so he could marry his new totty. That meant the woman with two faces had to act quickly; that’s why she'd chosen Vinny. She knew Vinny could get the job done with very little fuss and very little planning.  It gave her great pleasure that with the divorce not yet finalised, the wife would get all of the sizeable police pension while the harlot he was leaving her for would get nothing.

Yes Vinny had done a good job, a very good job indeed.