Marcie
Marcie lives in the last house up to the tip and wears clothes that make her boobs hang out. She wears bright red lipstick and stilettos even though she’s old. Calum’s dad says she’s mutton dressed as lamb. He also says she’s away with the fairies. She gets drunk and dances and sings in the middle of the street. Calum’s brother says if you shout show us your tits at her, she does. We went up to her house and waited for her to come out. When she came out we shouted show us your tits at her. Except just when we shouted it Mrs Finch walked past. Mrs Finch said, I do beg your pardon. Mrs Finch is like a teacher but she’s not. We ran off. We did not see if Marcie showed us her tits or not.
Limp Man
Limp Man used to work at the old mill till he got his leg stuck in one of the machines. Calum’s brother said his dad said it chewed him up like bloody mincemeat the poor man. Limp Man got a job as a security guard at Kwik Save. If you lean over trying to get ice creams out he tries to touch your bum. He is always staring at the rude magazines but pretending not to. Things we have nicked from Kwik Save include a Sara Lee Double Chocolate Gateau, a pack of Mr Kipling’s French Fancies, and three tins of Heinz Ravioli. Limp Man has a bright red face. This is because he drinks too much beer. To check if he is a loony, we ran up and knocked on his front door. When he answered it we pulled moonies at him and ran off. When we were running off he shouted, you’ll swing for this you little bastards. He also shouted, I know your mothers.
Skinny Annie Ellis
Skinny Annie Ellis lives up the High Street. She is the thinnest person in the whole wide world. If you held a bit of string up in front of her you wouldn’t be able to see her. She has suckered-in cheeks and fish-lips. She looks like a ghost. This is because she is anorexic. Anorexic means involving, producing or characterized by a lack of appetite. Calum’s brother’s dad says what that lass needs is a good square meal. Bobby Sands was an anorexic. He was a Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteer. Skinny Annie Ellis used to be a school dinner lady. It is possible she is anorexic because of seeing school dinners every day. The worst school dinner is curry with currants in it. The second worst school dinner is boiled fish. The third worst school dinner is frogspawn. We sneaked up near Skinny Annie Ellis’ house and left a Mr Kipling’s French Fancy on her front path. The next day it was still there but squashed.
The Hunchback Kid
The Hunchback Kid works on the fair. He has a lump on his back like he has a pillow stuffed up his tee-shirt. He works on the swingboats. He shouts at you to get off when your five minutes are up. He stands where he can look up the girls’ skirts. Once we spied on Calum’s brother and Cheryl Johnson snogging round the back of the swingboats. Calum’s brother says Cheryl Johnson is a slag. A slag is vitreous refuse left after ore has been smelted. If the Hunchback Kid touches you when he gives you your change, you have to wash your hands or you might grow a hump as well. Once Jonathan Sim slapped him on his hump for a pound bet. Jonathan Sim has not grown a hump yet. We could not do any investigating of him because the fair is not in.
Trolleyman
Trolleyman walks up and down the street pushing a Kwik Save trolley with nothing in it. There is a line of spit going from his mouth to the pushing handle. He talks to himself. We have never got close enough to hear what he’s talking about. Calum’s mum says the poor man must’ve got shell-shock. We decided to find out where he lives. We followed him for ages but he just kept going up and down the street. We started throwing rocks at him to try to make him stop. One even hit him but he carried on. Mr Brown came out after we had walked past his shop six times. His shop sells saws and plant pots. He asked us if we didn’t have anything better to do, and told us to leave the poor man alone. Later we went and got some paint and went back and painted NOB on Mr Brown’s shop window.
The Knicker Ripper
The Knicker Ripper ripped Sally Jenkinson’s knickers off down by the canal. It was on the news. Brian Neville was stood on the village green. Brian Neville is a well-known local regional presenter and self-styled minor celebrity. Sally Jenkinson did not want to get her knickers ripped off. If the Knicker Ripper had tried to rip May Ventress’s knickers off she would have let him. Calum’s brother says May Ventress will get her bra off if you give her a tenner. So far we have saved up £1.67 in pocket money. The police are still looking for the Knicker Ripper. They fear he could strike again. He is described as five foot nine inches tall with brown hair and a scar on his left cheek. He should not be approached. We could not find the Knicker Ripper so we went round to Sally Jenkinson’s house instead. Mr Jenkinson would not let us ask Sally Jenkinson about the Knicker Ripper even though we said it was for a school project. Mr Jenkinson told us to get the hell out of his sight before he wrung our scrawny little necks.
The Gypos
The gypos camp up Back Lane every summer. When they come Calum’s mum says, that’s all we bloody need, I’ve got enough bloody clothes pegs to last me a lifetime, thank you very much. Calum’s dad says they are nowt more than vermin. This means they are mammals and birds injurious to game, crops etc; eg foxes, rodents and noxious insects. Dean’s mum says they are dirty and they are dangerous and you are not to go anywhere near them do you hear me so-help-me-God. Sometimes we go and spy on them. Once we saw a boy one weeing in the beck. Another time we saw a girl one wearing wellies and shorts. We waited to see if she did a wee in the beck but she didn’t. Calum’s brother says one day he is going to go up and chuck a Molotov Cocktail at them. A Molotov Cocktail is a crude incendiary device consisting of a bottle filled with inflammable liquid. We lobbed a rock instead. It smashed the caravan window and a baby started crying.
Zack
Zack is Kayleigh Barker’s brother. We pretend to be friends with him so we can go round and try to see Kayleigh Barker with her top off. Once we hid behind her curtains and she came in with her dressing gown on. She was about to take it off then Calum sneezed. Kayleigh Barker screamed and got her mum. Zack never talks. He drives a pretend car. He goes to a special school. We tied him up in Jippy Jim’s junkyard. We said we’d let him go if he said please. We pretended to go away then we saw Kayleigh Barker going swimming so we followed her. It got dark and we got back and Zack’s mum was crying. We went back and got Zack. He was white and shivering. We carried him back. There was a crowd in the street. We said we found him up near the gypos. Zack’s mum said, what the hell have they done to him. Calum’s dad said enough’s enough this will be bloody well sorted out once and for all. Zack’s mum said how can I ever thank you boys enough.
PART THREE: CONCLUSION
Describe what you have learned about your topic as a result of your investigation. Perhaps you have discovered some interesting facts, or changed your views on the topic.
Our conclusion is that loonies are vermin. Calum’s dad says sometimes in this life you’ve got to take the law into your own hands. He also says a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Skinny Annie Ellis has died. Well she has either died or she has got so thin she is invisible. The Knicker Ripper has ripped someone else’s knickers off. Calum’s brother caught Calum’s dad giving Marcie a good seeing-to. Zack has still not talked. We liked doing our topic and have decided we will carry on with it in our own spare time.
* * * *
Cow-tipping
The sight of all those schoolgirls’ legs unfolding off the buses at just past four o’clock every afternoon is almost enough to shut anybody up, except for Roscoe Williams when he’s got another one of them stupid ideas of his rattling around in his thick old head.
Squinting up at all that bare chicken-flesh parading right past you, it’s all you can do just to think straight, let alone talk. But Roscoe Williams, he’s so screwed-up with thinking where his next drink’s going to come from he could talk his way through a sixth-form orgy just so long as there was a bottle of Super waiting on the other side of it.
Maybe it’s because he’s so blurry-focused on the booze and his next means of getting it that th
e sight of all them shiny fawn thighs doesn’t seem so much of a big deal to him as it does to me. Me, I reckon I’d happily trade in swigging Super all day long on the bus-stop bench if it meant even the smallest improvement of getting any pair of them educated limbs of theirs lolled around my neck.
This time I’m trying my best to focus on the long curve of Kelly O’Mara’s calves, smooth and sleek as a sports car bonnet and guaranteed to top-speed her out of this place just as soon as she’s old enough to get behind a wheel. Only Roscoe’s blabbing in my left lughole about this weekend being a right ripe time to pull another of his ‘famous’ cow-tip scams.
Thing is, what gets me most isn’t so much Roscoe’s blabbing as me knowing how it’s going to turn out, no matter how much I try and stop it. Ever since my dinner-time drinking got me fired from the animal feeds, I’ve been desperate enough that there isn’t a whole lot left I wouldn’t do for money. Even most of those things would be tempting if you waved a bottle of Super under my nose.
Me and Roscoe go back a long way. We met when his mother threw a party when we were ten years old, snuck under the kitchen table and drank ourselves as good as unconscious on her cooking brandy. Sometimes it seems the screwcap hasn’t been back on since. Through it all, I’ve learned the hard way that Roscoe is exactly the kind of greasy-arsed bastard I oughtn’t to be listening to when it comes to the question of making up the next bunch of beer money.
So when he starts up with the famous cow-tip shit, I blink my eyes off all those perfect bodies and dribble a spit on the concrete and say, convincing as I can, ‘bullshit, Roscoe.’
‘Wayne-oh,’ sighs Roscoe. I hate it when he sighs my name that way, like he’s some kind of big-shot who can hardly lower himself to shape the words. The sun turns to shadow and there’s no need to look up to know it’s Patty Jenkins who’s blocking it out. She’s already replaced her school jumper with a tee-shirt saying ‘Frankie Says Relax’. It pegs the end of her balloon boobs then drops straight off, makes her look like some sort of slutty sandwich-board evangelist. She’s got tight scraped-back foster-home hair and smells of wet towels and cheese and onion crisps. She sags down between us and pokes a Benson in her cake-hole. She eyes up the bottle of Super and Roscoe hands it over sweet as if he was giving Kelly O’Mara a box of Black Magics on Valentines’ Day.
‘All right?’ I say, but it’s Roscoe who’s got her attention on account of the free slurp of Super and the always-likely offer of some more fat cash.
‘You fixed for tonight?’ says Roscoe. Patty shrugs. She slurps and bends forward to itch an inner-thigh. She passes me the Super. I take one look at the fuzzed-up rim and pass it right back. She takes another slurp, passes it to Roscoe who drains the last two inches.
‘Have faith in the cow-tip!’ he proclaims, standing and tossing the empty bottle of Super towards the village green bin and stomping across the street towards the public lavs.
Later, we’re in the Fox and Roscoe’s tipping the shorts down Patty Jenkins’s neck, wrapping her round his little finger with what’s left of his charm and his cash. Strikes me there’s no need for Roscoe to be so generous with the doubles, since Patty would good as guarantee herself to anyone for keeps once she’s dosed up on Pernod and Blacks.
Patty’s swapped her Frankie tee-shirt for her best blow-job clothes, a cheap black bra just about big enough to hold them in under a two-sizes-too-small crop-top that shows off her folds. The way she’s rubbing up against Roscoe looking up at him with those big trusting eyes of hers, it almost makes me feel sorry for her. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s coming but I swallow my morals for the thought of a pocket-full of dough.
The tap-room’s full of boys with bare arms swigging pints like they know where the next one’s coming from. They’re here to give Jackie Bell a quaint old rural send-off. Jackie Bell’s hauled them up here supposedly on some outward-bound weekend but truth is he’s been after the chance to rub our noses in it ever since he swanned off to that college of his. He’s throwing twenties at Old Roy and Old Roy’s flapping about after them like a zoo-pond penguin at feeding time. It’s just as well we’re so practised in making our own pints last all night or we’d be detoxed by the time we managed to catch Old Roy’s eye.
Roscoe’s got his eye on a couple of likely lads. Reckons he’s like a lion picking out the weakest wildebeest from the herd. Calls it his sixth sense and I have to hand it to him, it hasn’t done us too far wrong in the past, save the time he didn’t account for a scrawny-arsed runt being a champion flyweight. They’re well-dressed townie types and it’s easy to see who shits it the most when the pissed-up farm boys barge past on their way to the lavs. Roscoe flicks his head and heads off, pulls up a stool. I follow him. Patty stays back by the jukebox, swivels her clack-shoes so her tits are spilling in their direction.
Roscoe nods at a pair of lads and asks if they can spare him a fag. The fatter one offers up a pack of poncey menthols and I know that at that moment Roscoe’s gone and struck gold again. Roscoe leans in for a light. He nods his head at Jackie Bell lording it up at the end of the bar and says, ‘known him for years. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke.’
You can tell the pair’s nervous what with the proximity of Roscoe’s fucked-up face. Roscoe lifts his dregs and makes them clink glasses. He clocks one of them’s wearing a United pin-badge. When it comes to clocking stuff like that, Roscoe never misses a trick. A few minutes later, we’ve got fresh pints lined up courtesy of the townies, and they’re embroiled in a red-faced three-way over who’s better down the Old Trafford wing, Jesper Olsen or some other cunt I’ve never heard of. I’m looking over at Patty waiting for the signal, and I’ve half a mind to pull Roscoe aside and tell him a night on the beer’s enough for me without having to go through with all the famous cow-tip crap.
Roscoe flashes me the wink which says I’ll never see the end of it. He nods over at Patty and draws their heads in and says, ‘see that bird over there with the tits? Best blow-jobs north of Watford.’ He reaches for another menthol, sparks up. ‘Fact.’
They’re looking over giving her the ogle. She gives them the cutesy wave. ‘You’re in there.’ Roscoe says it so they both them he means them. Truth be told, they’re not the types it looks like pussy comes easy for. The fat one looks down, embarrassed. The other meets her stare.
Just then, Jackie Bell flits past and Roscoe pulls him over and steers his pint to the table and says, ‘good on you, Jacko!’
‘Hey-hey!’ says Jackie Bell, slaps Roscoe’s back. Roscoe used to be Jackie’s pussy-catching mate till too many nights on the glue turned him into an ugly sniff-faced bastard. Used to bore me senseless with stories of double-teaming sluts behind the Kwik Save. Now Jackie just treats him like another piece of shit ought to be stuck down the bottom of a brown paper bag.
Jackie says, ‘you’ve found yourself a right fucking pair here, lads,’ and I can’t work out who it is he’s talking to, us or the stag-do dickheads, but either way knowing we know Jackie seems to put the two stag-do dickheads at ease.
Jackie gone, Roscoe’s back to drawling on like a Match Of The Day pundit. Out of the corner of his eye he tips Patty the wink and she wobbles over.
Long past closing time we’re out in a field in the middle of nowhere and I hate to admit it but Roscoe’s plan has worked like a charm. Getting the pair of them out of the pub didn’t present much of a problem once Roscoe started gabbing on about quaint local activities, and Patty piped up about the cow-tipping right on cue.
It’s fair to say the fat one was a bit more reluctant to give up his seat in the thick warm pub for a spot of gallivanting round pitch-black fields getting his box-fresh Filas all fucked up with animal shit, but it’s nothing a well-placed hand on a thigh from Patty couldn’t sort out quick-sharp.
We pile in the back of Roscoe’s Cortina Estate. It’s had the back down so long now the seats wouldn’t sit up if you tried. Roscoe uses it as a mobile bed most nights given as he’s pretty much permanen
t estranged from his folks these days. Colder it gets, the more litres he gets through for insulation. It smells of old fags and stale piss and the bearings squeal like a yard of pigs as Roscoe bathes the pub car park in full beam. ‘Jesper fucking Olsen,’ he says as he backs out, shakes his head in the best fake awe you’ve ever seen.
Soon we’re bouncing up the pitch-black back-tracks so much it’s giving me a stiffy and I’m hating myself for it taking just a few stupid pot-holes to get me horny about Patty Jenkins of all people again. She’s squeezed in between the college cunts in the back and if everything’s going according to Roscoe’s well-laid plans she’ll have each of her hands down their respective boxers by now and be twiddling their no-doubt tiny nobs towards the point of splurge.
After more bumping and grinding than you get on the dancefloor of the Pickering Ritzy on your average Friday night, Roscoe pulls up and half-turns and his teethy smirk is lit up by moonlight.
‘Cow-tip time!’ Roscoe says, and we all lamp out the car and feel our feet sink in pools of warm shit. The fat lad stops to light up another menthol and by the look of his face in the match-glow he’s not all that thrilled with where we’ve took him. The other one’s more perving at the gigantic bouncing balls Patty’s got stuffed up her tee-shirt and they’re looking even bigger in the moonlight glow. Patty’s looped an arm round both the boys and she’s steering them off to the darkness as planned.
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