Games Makers: A London Satire

by Andrew Calcutt

Shutthefuckupyouwankeryouabsolute pieceofshitshutup.

  Tony is in another meeting. He is having to listen to yet another presentation about the significance of people making the Games their own, and the importance of inter-agency collaboration to facilitate this. Going forward.

  Accordingly, the professional representatives of various Olympics-oriented agencies are sitting in a circle at this moment in time. They’ve done the rounds:

  Hi, I’m David Allen, I lead on the Olympics for the Capital Development Agency; Hello, I’m Teresa Kelly, I’m Olympics champion in the Communities Office.

  They have seen the video, yet another video, of people all round the country doing things. Any old thing. Mostly things they would have been doing anyway. But – this is all-important – doing them next to a banner that says ‘London 2012’.

  And now they are listening (is anyone listening?) to more talk about the value of agencies getting together so that we can get the people together.

  Everyone out there, each individual at a level s/he feels comfortable with, communing with each other. The Spirit of London, Allen Ginsberg’s wholly communion, brought about by inter-agency collaboration, coming out of our silos, working together sustainably, singing from the same hymn sheet.

  Still in use, that one; but not ‘joined up government’, which is as old as New Labour.

  Tony is trying to place the woman in the midst of this liturgy. The one giving the sermon. Sorry, making the presentation. Not as in name, rank, organisation. No need for that; her personal information appeared on the first slide. Rhianna Tulepo, Head of Sustainability, Olympics Legacy Commission. Also appearing on the first slide, though Rhianna was standing there for everyone to see, her photograph; and for networking afterwards, when you’re speaking to the personification of the photo, she’ll be wearing ID.

  Is it me or are we all OD’ing on ID?

  But Tony’s wondering who Rhianna was before doing this, and what does she think it is she is doing now? Parentage: Hispanic and Irish, Tony reckons.

  Or Scottish. Anyway, a McSpic.

  Like it, must use it somewhere, appropriately ironised, of course.

  Age: fit-looking early forties, which would make her a veteran of illegal raves, late eighties, early nineties, ecstasy in a field, Chill the Bill in Adidas tops.

  Now it’s linen dress, coffee-coloured legs (bare), maroon lipstick, asymmetrical hair, mouth like an old trout but the eyes are still young. In her younger days, she might have been attached to a dog-on-a-string. Now she is normally accompanied by a four-year-old with difficulties: her son, Hal.

  Hal comes with me everywhere. Almost everywhere. He sits and draws so beautifully.

  He sits so beautifully and draws. Hal is on the autism spectrum. The specialist says he doesn’t know where.

  But, really, I know my own son better than anyone.

  Perhaps that’s it. Maybe Tony is somewhere on the autism spectrum. That would explain why he’s not connecting with all these people, gathered here today to make connections. Come to think of it, maybe we’re all autistic now. Because nobody is.

  Connected, that is. All round the circle, there are people not quite making contact. Close enough to make it seem as if they are; but all the time they are looking fractionally to the side of each other –

  a glancing g(r)aze. The lucky ones are those facing the window, thankfully not blacked out for the presentation. They, at least, have something to look through to.

  Through the window, so close that it seems to be almost touching the glass, there is a large, blue-grey rectangle: it’s the Royal Victoria Dock (water’s a bit choppy for a summer’s day). Beyond the dock, and the water in it, a strip of built-up land. Then another strip of water, followed by more and more buildings as far as the eye can see. The eye can only see as far as the steep rise to Crystal Palace and its telecoms tower, which stands at the top lip of London’s hollow.

  ‘Another strip of water’, described above, is really the River Thames; except from here you can’t see that it is water; still less that it’s the Thames. Unless you already knew the river was there, in normal circumstances you’d only notice a set of buildings, then the second set, and the gap between them which might make you wonder where the third set of buildings must have gone (the ones that ought to be there in the middle).

  Not today, though. Right now, among the buildings, apparently, the masts and sails of a tall ship are moving upstream, making a mockery of the landscape, and tracing the course of the river (’cos now you’ve seen the masts so high, you can also work out what’s down below).

  At this point, nearly everyone’s watching the ship as it appears to travel along North Woolwich Road.

  Even attendees with their backs to the window, are first craning their necks, then swivelling right round to see it, barely pretending to pay attention to Rhianna’s presentation. At last they really are looking in the same direction, sharing an experience, because for once there is something beautiful for them all to look at.

  The Head of Sustainability at the Olympics Legacy Commission is trying not to be put off.

  Why doesn’t she stop to see? But, of course, the no-show must go on.

  Distracted by everyone else being distracted, Rhianna is stumbling, starting to lose her lines when Tony experiences a sudden throb in the groin.

  It’s his phone, set to silent, nestled deep in his trouser pocket (pants, if you’re American). He could have turned it off, or simply waited for it to stop while enjoying (slightly) the vibration.

  Instead he makes it his cue to dive out of the room and take the call.

  The call is from his PA, name of Lesley Dawson, the woman Dinky had visions of...y’know. The silly boy didn’t pay enough attention to her voice, though. Though it is prim and proper with tints of Cheltenham Ladies’ College, these are offset by the honey-gold texture of whisky and cigarettes. Quite a girl, our girl; and, of course, she is known in the office as ‘Les’.

  ‘Hi, Les’, he says.

  ‘Sorry to bother you with this, Tony’. She sounds a tad unnerved; not like Les at all. ‘I’ve just had a strange call from that young man who was here yesterday.’

  ‘Oh God’, Tony interjects. Not an OMG or anything like it: he’s feigning that cadence which implies boredom bordering on terminal exhaustion.

  Les leaps back into the conversation so that Tony cannot possibly fall asleep – not even metaphorically. She reports that ‘he said, and I quote, “It’s a matter of life and death. You must get Tony to phone me now. Real lives depend on it”.’

  She rushes on: ‘I can’t believe it is... What he says, Tony. But he did sound so agitated, I just had to let you know in case there was something... going on, OK?’

  Tony can picture her, standing behind her desk, because she too has become agitated, fiddling with the string of pearls she wears for the full Katharine Hepburn effect.

  Les knows that Audrey is lovely but you’ve got to be hip to Katharine.

  Tony, on the other hand, can now afford to relax.

  For a moment, he too had been unnerved, in case Dinky had spoken to Les and spilled some beans about his invitation to terror. But Dinky couldn’t have done any such thing, or Les would have to have said something and Tony would have to have been denying it by now. Instead Les is repeating what she started with: ‘It’s a matter of life and death. You must get Tony to phone me now.’

  Yes, I’ll get to the little sod, Tony thinks. But not before going into full charm mode with Les.

  Smooth words poured out into what we used to call, ‘a ladies’ glass’.

  ‘Lesley, munchkin, thank you so much for letting me know about this thoroughly strange boy. You’re quite right, he is a weird one’ – the ‘r’ slightly rolled; a semi-demi reference to the macabre.

  ‘My fault for bringing him into the office’, Tony continues. ‘Let me have that number and I’ll find out what he wants,
just this once. And, Les, dear Lesley, if he ever calls again, just put the phone down on him. You’re such an asset, darling. You’re time is too precious for it to be wasted on the likes of him.’

  Tacitly agreeing to be reassured by Tony’s pantomime charm, she reads out the number which Dinky left for Tony to ring. He tells her he’ll be back in the office later that afternoon. He waits for her to end the call and double checks that the connection is closed.

  Can’t be too careful. If Tony’s going to have anything more to do with Dinky, there can be no crossed lines between his office and the toxic things the two of them will be talking about. Absolutely no leakage from one realm to the other.

  (9) But does he dare to eat the peach?