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I pulled up my socks and fastened my shoes. Well I didn’t really fasten them I was just checking them again. I always did this now before every race. Just superstition really. They’d never once come undone.

I put my feet back into the blocks and crouched back down into the starting position and put my hands on the asphalt. It was almost impossible to touch. The sun had been on it for hours now. It felt sticky and I had, as I always did, a moment of panic about what would happen if some of the searing hot red goo got stuck on my hands. I looked down at them just to check and the reflected heat baked into my face. I couldn’t keep looking so I looked further back to check my feet position. The glittering of the metal was almost dazzling. The colours always seemed so much brighter at the track.

I could feel the people around me were looking up and forward and I just as though I had decided it for myself I did the same.

Bang

Running for the train,
think I’m gonna miss it,
pounding down the lane,
in a rush to get pissed yet,
something in my mind says,
don’t be so silly,
she’s just some fillie,
not like Billie,
and there’s a dude on the line,
in Forest Hilly.

Peace out to my gangster* massive** homeboy***

* He wears a suit to work at Currys

** He is actually massive. I’ve seen him eat a whole family bucket at them KFC****

*** He’s actually a mummy’s boy but his mum lives at his home too – innit?

**** K to the F to the mother clucking C homeboy***

This is part three of a short story. To get the story so far see part one (Left out in the cold and part two (Outside).

He walked towards the door. He had to see, it could have just blown shut he thought. He walked forwards and pulled the door. He thought he felt it move for just a second but then nothing. It was secured.

He turned away and looked across what he remembered had once been a rose garden but now was just a completely plain white vista that stretched on as far as he could see. The buildings behind him were the only identifiable thing he could see.

He knew exactly where he was and yet he was lost. He wanted to shed a tear but he knew it would instantly freeze and would cause him more troubles than it caused. Instead he gulped down on the air, and regretted it instantly as the freezing vapour entered deep within his lungs.

He looked longingly towards the old school. It looked abandoned rather than thriving with all of the windows boarded up like that. If only there was a way for them to see him he thought.

And then it hit him. In the dining hall there was a giant glass window that was left. Years ago they had seen wildlife despite the snow. Polar bears and rabbits and so on but now even they had migrated further south. The temperatures being too cold even for them. Right now he couldn’t help wondering why hadn’t he.

A stupid thought though. It was still too cold for him to survive down there. It just would have taken longer to die. He had to concentrate. No time for stupid thoughts like that. If he could get to that window he could make it.

He stumbled forward. He hadn’t quite realised how far away the dining hall was from the door but he supposed it was all a question of diameter versus circomfrence. It was very different to be walking inside a shape than all the way around it. He kept his mind active by trying to do the retevent maths in his head.

After twenty minutes he was cold and tired and not nearly far enough around. He was finding it more and more difficult to put one foot in front of the other. Soon enough he stopped. And after a second he fell to the floor.

As he lay there he remembered a common room meeting twenty years ago. There was a big debate and then it was decided that the lock should be removed from the door. There was no point because there were no burglars. But they had worried that somebody might accidentally get locked out. In fact he had recently thought about adding a lock to stop the students from getting out but hadn’t for just this very reason. Such a fool why hadn’t he remembered this before. His left cheek was starting to get wet from the snow he was lying on. So why couldn’t he open the door? They must have been on the other side holding it closed.

What was it? Richeous indignation? Or just having been a teacher this long? Whatever it was the rage that bubbled up inside him, and more than that the desire to tell the students off awoke in him an energy he didn’t know he had.

He leapt off of the ground, dusted himself off and started almost running towards what he now knew was an unlocked door.

This is part two of last weeks story: Left out in the cold.

Despite all of the protection, the cold crept quickly around his skin. The hairs all over his body stood to attention faster than a lieutenant who has dropped his rifle in front of his drill sergeant. Ah, what a simply sublime simile, he thought to himself as the cold air cupped his balls and forced him into action.

He stepped forward and heard nothing, his ear defenders stopped any noise. He would have crunched through the snow, but instead he merely walked.

He looked down at the snow for clues, he had hoped to follow the footprints but it was snowing now and it was so bad he couldn’t even see his own feet.

What was he doing out here? He could die. If he couldn’t see his feet then he might not even be able to get back into…

He turned around and all he could see was the door he had just come out of, it was ajar. He hadn’t left it open. He was sure he’d closed it. Just then the door closed from the inside. He ran towards it. But he knew, he knew even though he hadn’t heard it. He knew it would be locked.

Tune in next week for the final part.

The boys were out again, Edward could feel it. Perhaps it was because it was just a little bit too quiet. Or maybe it was the way the boys who were indoors were looking at him – as though they all had a guilty secret they couldn’t say about, but that they desperately wanted him to discover. What ever it was the boys were outside again.

Edward understood the attraction of it. Of being out of bounds. When he had been a boy it had been smoking they had all wanted to do. And in those wonderful summer days hiding in bushes, running through meadows and accidentally setting fire to Colin (an eminently combustible child) the teachers were always after them.

But now it was different. The world was cold. Everyone knew that. The ground had been frozen solid ever since scientists had tried to reverse global warning in the early twenties. Well they had succeeded in their own way but only by creating global freezing. And now it was minus seventy in the summer. And nobody even went outside anymore. Nobody who valued their extremities anyway.

So why were these boys doing it? Why were they going out? Edward know there was only one solution. He’d have to follow them outside.

The beagle put out a cigarette and leaned back in his chair.

“What you’ve got to realise monkey is that we’re here for the common good”.
“Hey my name is Albert.”
“Albert,” the beagle put forward a paw, “name’s Boris, pleasure”.
“Boris the Beagle – really?”
“You take the piss all you like, but I’m trying to help you. I could stop.”
“Sorry. Sorry mate. Go on. Common good? Right? Right.”
“Yeah. We go through all of this to help the humans and in return they give us some cigarettes.”
“Aren’t the cigarettes just another…”
“What?”
“Well… Nevermind. You actually like smoking.”
“Me,” Boris took another drag, “no. I don’t smoke because I like it. I smoke because it makes me look cool. And anyway it beats the hell out of fox hunting.”
“You don’t enjoy the thrill of the chase?”
“I might, but I wouldn’t know. I have the lung capacity of a nat.”
“But…”
“No really, they did a test that’s the current lung capacity I have – and I’m still alive. One day I hope, god willing, to get down to the lung capacity of dust.”
“I don’t think dust…”
“Yeah, then those guys down at the pound will have to give me respect.”

Harry is sitting next to his mother in the shoe section of a giant department store. It’s the first time he’s been allowed to sit down all day as he’s spent most of it being dragged round the different departments. It was all so very boring. Except the hat section that had been fun. His mum had told him off a lot but nothing serious. But now he was sat down for the first time he started feeling pretty tired and a little bit sleepy. But being pretty tired and a little bit sleepy couldn’t explain what he saw next. A large mouse and a small cat were fighting over a piece of cheese. The thing that struck Harry immediately as odd was that they were fighting with swords.

Harry quickly hopped off of his seat and ran over to the skirting board. He knelt down beside them and simply said, “Wow!”

But soon his “Wow” turned into “Ow” as the cat accidentally cut him on the knuckles.

“Keep back,” the mouse shouted out, “I’ll defend you”.
“You can talk!” cried Harry.
“You can see us!” cried the Cat.
“And, just think,” said the mouse, “if you could stab him like that then he could stab you back”.

This was clearly such an unsettling thought that the two of them stopped fighting and looked up at him.

“What are you doing here,” asked the mouse?
“I’m shopping,” said Harry.
“But this is a department store,” said the Cat, “boys don’t shop in department stores.”
“No, my mother’s shopping, I’m just with her”.
“But,” said the cat, “that happens all of the time. And the store never lets kids see us.”
“He’s bought something, must have”, said the mouse, “that’s the rule. Kids can’t see us because they don’t buy anything, parents can’t see us because they are never concentrating.”
“But I haven’t bought anything.”
“But you’ve definitely done something different,” said the cat.
“I did, I did try on a hat,” admitted Harry sheepishly.
“Aha!” said the mouse. “That must be it.”
“Incredible,” said the cat, “to think that this hasn’t happened before.”
“Indeed,” said the mouse, “Well I’m afraid I’m going to have to complain to management. What kind of system is it where we can be discovered so simply? Eh?”
“I know, I just can’t believe it. I’ll come with you – I have got to see the look on his face when you tell Cuthbert what’s happened.”
“So, about this cheese,” the mouse said as they started to turn away from Harry and towards a hole in the skirting board.
“Shall we split it?” said the cat?

And with that the cat cut the cheese in half with his sword and gave one half to the mouse, and popped the other half in his mouth. After chewing for a second or two he said, “One half in my mouth, the other half in my mouse” and the mouse and cat started laughing. In fact they didn’t stop laughing until they were well out of sight.

Harry stood up turned around and walked back to the stool next to his mother. He would say something to her – but he was sure she wouldn’t believe him.

This is part four (of four) of this years Christmas story on Gamboling. This started four weeks ago with: You may have seen a cakewalk, but have you seen plenty of this (9)

Jenny was sitting in her kitchen and it was snowing again. It didn’t
seem to snow that often anymore at Christmas. Not actually on the day
anyway. But there was still a week to go. It was getting dark out there.
She had a box on the table which had contained her outgoing Christmas
cards. “ho ho”, she thought to herself, “they probably are more outgoing
than me”. She looked at the box and it still had one more card in it. Of
course it did. It was a card she’d bought twelve years ago, two years
after she’d left Tom, and had always meant to send to him. It had a
picture of Father Christmas doing a crossword on the front. But she
never had sent it because… It never seemed enough. And because she had
left him at Christmas it had always seemed likely that he wouldn’t
really want to hear from her. And then after a while sending had seemed
much less important.

But she had seen something in town which had made her change her mind.
She’d put it off for about a week but now, this evening, with the snow
starting she’d decided that she would send the card after all. And there
was still time.

She picked up the card and inside wrote:

Tom,
Your Answer: Hyphenate
My Question: Amundsen’s forwarding address (4)
Meet me there, 7pm, Tuesday if you’re interested in catching up.
Merry Christmas even if you’re not.
Jenny x

She sealed it, addressed it and walked out the house. She didn’t even
bring her coat with her as the post box was just at the end of her
drive. She walked down there hearing the slow crunch of the pebbles
beneath her feet. The crunch was slightly faster on the way back as she
realised just how cold it actually was. She got back in side and tried
to shake some of the snowflakes out of her hair. But they were already
melting.

On Tuesday she got ready early, and then sat around waiting. When she
got there early she realised that it was probably a mistake. She hadn’t
even bothered to look at what the place was like when she had seen it.
She had just picked it because the name was the answer to one of her
favorite crossword clues. Or in fact because it’s name had reminded her
of the clue, and in turn it had reminded her of Tom.

The bar was okay, she supposed, but it was clearly designed for younger
clientele. They only had two kinds of wine: white and red. But actually
when she started to drink the glass of white it wasn’t as bad as she had
expected.

At five minutes past seven he arrived. And a flood of relief flowed
through her. She had been sitting there for the last five minutes
imagining him looking at the card and laughing at the thought of her
sitting in the bar alone.

He walked up to her, and looked at her glass. It was empty and she knew immediately she’d given away the fact that she’d been early. She looked up at him and he said, “red or white – that’s all they have”.
“White please”.
“I’ll be right back”.

As she sat there waiting for him. She wondered what they would actually end up talking about after such a long time. She’d got as far as planning on them meeting, and worrying about if it work, but had stopped short of working out what it would be that they would discuss once they got there.

He ambled back to the table.
“So you figured it out did you,” she said.
“Yeah, we’ll it’s ‘mush’ isn’t it. Although the fact that I’ve made it here lets you know that I guess.” He grinned. And then he looked a bit more serious before going on, “I can’t believe it’s been so many years and we’re still setting each other clues like this.”
“Yeah, it’s weird isn’t it”.
“Here’s one, ‘Overloaded Postman'”.
“Oooh, um how many letters…”
“Loads.”

They both laughed at the silly joke and it lightened the atmosphere a little further.

“So,” Jenny said getting down to it, “are you doing anything for Christmas”?
“No. Not really.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well it means that I haven’t really planned anything. I’ve got some food sorted out – sort of.”
“Ah,” she said.
“What about you?” he looked up and made eye contact for the first time in a few moments.
“Well I’ve got all the food sorted out but I haven’t got anyone to share it with.”
“You know you really hurt me before.”
“I know.”
“And I’ve not really dealt with that.”
“Okay. If you don’t want to come that’s fine.”
“No,” he said, “I’d love to come but…”
“What is it?”
“Well, if I come you have to promise me that you don’t ever do that again. It’s now or never for committing to me.”
“I can do that, I’ve always loved you since the moment we first met. I was just confused I think. I won’t hurt you again.”
“Okay.”

Tom sat there thinking for a moment and then finally said, “Pixel”.
“What’s that?”, Jenny asked.
“That’s what this is as a clue. A ‘Point of resolution (5)’.”
“It is, but Tom.”
“What?”
“No more games now. This has got to be real this time.”