Novel extract

AU$$IE RU£ES (The real reason behind the Great Crash of '87)

Prologue:

4am, Friday October 16th, 1987: Production Control Office at the Southern UK Computer Centre of the Bank of Trade and International Commerce

Amazing how the mind works in times of crisis, isn't it?

Now, let's see … as far as I can remember, the Bank has over two thousand corporate accounts in the UK, each containing £10 million or more.

So that's twenty billion quid for starters.

It has around five thousand other corporate accounts around the world, each with a million pounds, say, on average.

Which, for the sake of argument, makes fifty-five billion.

Add to that over four million common-or-garden personal accounts.

Each averaging, say, £1,000 each.

Hmm ...

That's fifty-nine billion pounds I have personally stolen tonight.

I think.

Math was never my strong point.

Let's just say it's a fuck of a lot of money …

… when all I wanted was five hundred quid ...

... and I should never have got my flatmates to help.

 

Chapter One - Foul Play!:

9:41 am, Bank Holiday Monday, August 1987: Home

Oh, no. Oh, dear. Oh, blast. Oh, damn. Oh, shit. Oh, bugger. Oh, fuck.
Oh, fuck. Oh, bugger. Oh, shit. Oh, damn. Oh, blast. Oh, dear.
Oh, no. The limo's parked outside. So Jimmo's still here.

That means I can't take off my crash helmet. For if I do, he will smite me with that famous headbutt of his, and I will surely perish.

It's another shitty rainy Monday morning. After another shitty, rainy, Sunday night. No, forget the rain. It doesn't matter. I was inside all night, at work. Another 12-hour shift.

Work?

Hm. More like twelve hours of shit from the Shift Manager. And twelve hours of shit from the Assistant Shift Manager. And twelve hours of shit from the Shift Supervisors. And twelve hours of shit from the Assistant Shift Supervisors, plus twelve hours of shit from the Deputy Assistant Shift Supervisor, the Computer Floor Supervisor, his deputy, the shift leader, his henchmen and the state-of-the-art (circa 1976) computer system at a certain Bank's Southern UK computer centre.

It's not really work. More like just going through the motions.

How nice to be home.

Quick check.
Teeth? Yes. Clenched.
Testicles? Yes. Even after last night.
Wallet? Yes. Pretty well empty. As usual.
Keys? Yes. Hard to hold with these thick leather gloves on.
Deep breath. Tighten the strap under my chin one more time.
Helmet secure? Roger on that one.
We are go. Let's do it.
Now?
Now.
Off come the goggles.
The Honda goes up onto its stand.
I walk - very quietly - in through the front door.
I tiptoe up the staircase, avoiding the three steps that creak..
I pause outside the door to the flat, and cross my fingers.
I pray that the welcoming committee is still asleep.
It sounds like they are.
I hope I'm right.
Easing the key into the lock and turning it as quietly as I can, I push the front door open a couple of inches and peer inside.
Hm. So far, so good.
Silence.

Two - no, three - feet stick out from the pile of coats on the hallway floor, below the Jamiaca Tourist Board poster half-inched from a local bus stop, featuring a palm tree, a beach and scantily-clad Jamaican lady wondering rhetorically if there's anywhere else the reader would rather be. There's scribbles all over her now: YEAH! SYDNEY! MELBOURNE, MATE! BRISSIE! PERTH! GOLD COAST! SURFERS PARADISE! TASSIE!

At least They can write.

Two of the feet below belong to the Sheep-Shearer. It's the boots that give it away. RM Williams, with those little tags that stick up the back of the ankles. God knows who the third foot belongs to. The toenails are painted, and there's a little braccelet round the ankle. The Shearer must've got lucky again last night. Nobody here knows his name. He's just called the Sheep-Shearer. That's all. The name seems to have opened a lot of doors for him. Mine, for a start. And legs, whosever those are. Well, good on ... no - for - him.

I've got to stop thinking like Them.

Have to.

I push the door a little bit further open.
The fourth leg slides out from underneath a Drizabone coat - Scott's, probably - and the door catches it on the ankle. Not hard, but enough to wake its owner.
The coats rustle, and a dishevelled female head pops up.
It whinges until the Sheep-Shearer pulls it back down, where it carries on whingeing, muffled by wax canvas and a pure Queensland wool detachable lining.
Oh, no. That's just what I didn't need.
I step inside and close the door.
As quietly as I can.
And curse.
More whingeing from under the coats. It's way too nasal for a BBC accent and it's complaining about its leg. That puts paid to the Great Uncomplaining Australian image, then. Kimberley once told me what she considered a joke. "How do you know when it's a Pommie plane landing in Sydney? When the engines stop, the whining still goes on." Thank you, Kimberley.

The coats rustle a bit more, and I can hear muffled voices.

"Fancy a root while you're here?"

The whinge stops for a second.

"Naah."

"Oh, well. Mind if I have one?"

The whinge turns to a giggle, and the coats start rustling. This time in earnest.

Just what I didn't need. Not here. Not after last night.

It's only a twenty-minute bike ride back from last night's shiftwork. But there's a million-mile culture gap between the cut-and-dried binary of the computer centre of a major high-street bank, the one I really wish I hadn't started work at six bloodsome months ago ...

... and here in the Kitchen.

The flat's called the Kitchen because the kitchen is the focus of Their existence. It's where They eat, drink, argue, fight, breed (if there's nowhere else to go) and watch television. Nobody sleeps in there. Anywhere else, yes: there's sleeping-bags all over the two bedrooms, the hallway, the bathroom (plus the balcony beyond) and sometimes on the landing outside, but never, ever in the kitchen itself.

Yet.

At this time of the morning, there's only Bruce and Sheila in the kitchen, perching - as usual - on the windowsill, staring vacantly at the tv, which is turned down low. For a change. Sometimes I used to envy them. Now I envy them all the time. So placid. So relaxed. Anything goes around them. Everything does. Some of Them think Bruce is a bit of a dummy. Others would say the same about Sheila.

They're the only ones here I feel I can talk to. Because they're the only ones here who seem to listen to what I'm saying. And they're definitely the only ones around here I can understand. Come back, Kimberley, all is forgiven.

Sheila's wearing that ashtrakhan hat Deano brought back from Moscow, together with two bottles of Russian champagne that take pride of place at the back of the fridge. It is common Kitchen knowledge that whoever even so much as touches either one of them dies. Brucie Boy looks like one of the Village People in the denim waistcoat that shows off his chest, and the yellow hard-hat that came with Bongo's new job.

"Love those pecth, Bruthie Baby", I lisp, but he's too busy gazing at a program about farming to reply. I blow a kiss at Sheila, but she's too engrossed in pigsty management techniques to notice. Maybe they'll learn enough from it to do something about this place. I doubt it. Nobody else has. I gave up trying to keep it clean months ago, when the Australiasian Invasion was starting to reach its peak.

Brushing a half-empty taramasalata pot and some dried-up strips of pitta bread off the only safe chair in here - and into the pine needles and beercans under the table - I settle down to remove my supposedly weatherproof motorcycle gear. But the helmet stays on. I will not take it off until I know it's safe. Pushing away several overflowing ashtrays and three pairs of walkman speakers to clear some space on the table for my elbows - as always, pinstriped, and currently sodden - I cover my face with my hands and moan.

I don't understand it. I just do not understand it.

I've saved that fucking bank countless man-hours. Developed little time-saving techniques that the floor supervisors shouted at me for using months ago. Now everybody - in all four shifts - does what I got bollocked for doing. And what do I get for it? A small word of thanks? A little nod and a "Nice one, Bateman?" Or even a teensy-weensy "Well, done, Charles?" Don't make me laugh. I'm on the verge of getting fired. For what the senior management define as "inefficiency". And last night, when my Shift Leader dropped this on me, I asked him exactly what he meant, and to give me an example. He didn't. Not because he wouldn't. But because he couldn't. I do not understand it. At all. And, looking back on it, I'm not sure he did, either.

I pull my hands away from my face and stare staight ahead at the wall. Or what there is of it to see under the decorations. At eye-level, They've stuck dozens of postcards onto it with anything from what They like to call Durex to used chewing-gum to three-inch woodscrews. Some of them are from Kimberley. There's not much difference between her cards and the ones everyone else has sent, except on the back, where the address doesn't contain the word "Kitchen". And there's usually a "Charles" in there somewhere. And a lot less of the old xxoxxxoxxxoxxx at the bottom. Just one or two discreet little x's.

Above them all, next to the TerraHawks poster, is a map of Europe with different-coloured lines drawn with great care and precision in felt tip - continuations of the London Underground route map nailed to the top right corner. The Central line now starts in Madrid and terminates in Moscow. The Northern Line's been extended to Reykjavik. The Victoria Line goes boldly where no tube line has gone before: change at Cockfosters for Alpha Centauri. "Fosters" is underlined, circled and is in the centre of a ring of arrows all pointing to it. The Metropolitan Line snakes westwards through one of forty-two near-identical photographs of Britt Ekland signing some book she's written and up along the doorframe until it stops at a postcard of a Bedouin gent sitting on a camel. His friend, in front of the beast, is feeding it whisky from the bottle. Looks like they're going to be for a rough ride soon.

I think I know how they'll feel. My rough ride has already begun. I have to convince the senior management that they're making a mistake, that I'm not what they seem to think is "inefficient", and to stop this whole disciplinary process that started last month and has been gathering momentum ever since ... without anybody even bothering to tell me about it.

But first I have to make them listen.

The map is covered in pushpins with names written on them. It's a Kitchen tradition. Antipodean backpackers on walkabout stop off here for a while, party themselves senseless and then stagger off again. Most are in their early twenties, which makes them four or five years younger then me. Sometimes they come back. Sometimes they don't. The pushpins mark their last known whereabouts.

Precision: Meredith's and Nola's pins are poking into Greece, thank God. The two Tarts are due back soon - if they haven't been deported already - but it was nice while it lasted. Peaceful. Comparatively speaking.

Guesswork: Tom's pin is treading water due west of Oporto.

Kitchen logic: Karen Two's pin is on the other side of the room, at the freshest end of weeks' worth of washing up spreading from the sink, across the counter, over the cooker and onto the worktop next to it ... where she's sandwiched between the breadbox and the Betamax. There's a slice of toast poking out from the tape slot. Has been for weeks.

Reality: a cluster of twenty pins nail London to the wall. Twenty different names mushrooming out from the map. Mine included. Albeit grudgingly.

Kimberley escaped before the pin tradition started.

The Official Timepiece - half a pink day-glo digital watch nailed to the doorframe - says 15:24 .... Kitchen Time. Nearly time for my ten a.m. Map check. It is another Kitchen tradition that the Map shall stay upright and intact until it has finally been completed. Anyone causing it to collapse and work to restart on it will die. I take a deep breath before gently pushing the back bedroom door open. Out of fear, of course, but also because of the socks.

No need for that any more, really. Not since someone found a spare chairleg under a sleeping bag and smashed the window in there last month - there's always fresh air blowing in over Them now. I poke my nose in and count. Fourteen bodies in eleven sleeping bags. Seven bodies in three beds.

I will not go down the hallway past an ankle bracelet tinkling in time to the Sheep-Shearer's snores. I have no need to make use of the few surviving facilities in the bathroom at the other end. For all its many faults, at least at work there is no chance of getting glared at in the gents. Well, there is, but not by someone in a sleeping bag by the bucket under the sink.

And I will not go into the front bedroom. Not if the limo's still here. I know exactly what it's going to be like in there anyway: the curtains will be drawn. There'll be workmen silhouetted on the scaffolding outside the windows, banging and crashing and cursing in Oirish.

Below them, Bongo's feet will be sticking out of the tent he's nailed to the floor beyond the wall of teachests, and into the usual heap of underwear and cassettes piled up under a guyrope.

There'll be Bluey with the long red hair in one of the sleeping bags on the floor between Jimmo's bed and mine. By herself, because Anton's escaped her clutches yet again. She'll probably be sitting up watching him outside on the scaffolding, where she first spotted him a few weeks back, and he will be in for a cup of coffee later. She will have made it with fresh milk and love, and he will down it in one and then go straight out of the window and back to work. It's almost become another Kitchen tradition.

A couple of people I should recognize by now will be curled up under a blanket somewhere else on the floor. No - hang on, there was a party last night, wasn't there? At least in the back bedroom, anyway. Make that six people, then, and two or three strangers in my bed. It's par for the course: I'm on nightshift, and Their logic says it'd be a waste to leave it empty. I'm used to it by now. At least it's warm when I climb in.

But I will not go down the hallway and into the front bedroom. Not if the limo's still here. I'm not that stupid.

So I stay in the kitchen. If it wasn't for Bruce and Sheila, I'd have the room to myself. But they don't mind me. And I don't mind them.

The Kitcheneers lie, some snoring, some not, all dreaming Antipodean dreams amongst the backpacks and beercans and pine needles. Christmas-in-July finished for them a month ago. For those of us in the real world, it is the August Bank Holiday. For those of us who actually work for a bank, it's just business as usual. Not much to celebrate there, then.

Right now, what the one and only Pom in the place really wants is a cup of tea, to figure out what the hell's going on at work, and then to sleep. Perchance to dream? Naah, fuck that.

"Seen the kettle, anyone?"

Bruce and Sheila haven't. Come to think of it, the last time I saw it, it was being hurled down the hallway. Karen One was doing the hurling. So it must've been Tom she was hurling it at. That was last night, before I hopped onto the Honda and headed up the road to get to work before the Sunday night shift started at nine. Shit. That means the kettle's down the far end. Beyond the Sheep-Shearer and his friend. Somewhere down by the front bedroom. If not actually in there. Is it really worth looking for it? Under these circumstances?

Common sense says no. It's a matter of survival.

National pride says maybe.

The need for tea says yes.

There is no telephone in the Kitchen. Otherwise I'd be on to the SAS to help me rescue the kettle. Looks like I'll just have to do it myself. Dear Lord, we commend our spirits … hello … hello? Anyone listening up there? I'm not playing around down here, you know.

I know. Good luck.

Thanks a bunch, chum.

Deep breath. Tighten the strap under my chin one more time.
Helmet secure? Roger on that one.
We are go. Let's do it.
Now?
Now.
I step into the hallway.
Easy does it.
Uh-oh.
There's a rattle down the far end.
The door handle.
Ohnoohdearohblastohdamn.
The front bedroom door opens very slightly.
Ohshit.
It's Jimmo.
Ohbugger.
He's seen me.
Ohfuck.
The door slams open against the wall and then there's the thudthudthud of two hundredweight of towel-clad Tasmanian charging headfirst down the hallway straight at me yelling "Aussie Rules!!!" but this time, I will not run away.

I'm tired of this game.

***

Chapter Two - Out of the changing-rooms...:

3:41pm, Monday June 16th, 1987: The staff canteen at the Southern UK Computer Centre, Bank of Trade and International Commerce

Our tour guide finishes his caustic little address.

".. So since there's very little any of you can do except sit here and drink coffee until it's time to go home, you might as well leave now. I expect you all here at eight-thirty prompt tomorrow morning ..."

Well, thank God that's over.

" ... Except, um, Bateman. Charles Bateman. I'd like a word with you. In my office. Now."

As everyone else pushes their chairs back from the canteen table and disappear, I hold up a single, bloodstained, finger. Here I am.

Just like that first bewildering day long ago at College, we've been given the Grand Tour. But this time, there've been no cloisters with names etched on the walls, names that we have to memorise by the end of the month or be caned by the House Prefect. And this time, there are no hatband colour schemes to match to the appropriate House, nor the protocol about who our straw boaters with said hatbands around them have or have not to be lifted to. Or which House is run by which Housemaster - again, a beatable offence if not recited correctly. Nor do we have to know the Housemasters' nicknames, their wives' nicknames, the names of each House Dog … and everything else we had to know perfectly back then if we wanted to sit down in any comfort for the next few weeks. I spent a lot of time standing up that first term, until the House Prefect gave up on me. His beating arm had started to trouble him. Almost as much as my sitting backside troubled me.

But now, what with manager's names to remember, and the names of their assistants … plus all those other names of everybody else all the way down the chain of command here, even unto the lady who wipes the canteen tables at irregular intervals, it's not just our bums on the line, it's our jobs.

The stakes are much higher, now.

We've been led, wide-eyed and unwelcomed, around an anonymous building right at the very farthest western edge of what anyone could possibly consider London. We're in the middle of a new industrial estate out in the middle of nowhere, so new that even this year's edition of the London Street Guide has no idea where we are.

Outside, the building is grey and glass. No magnificent three-dimensional Bank logo - like the ones on high streets up and down the country - adorning an ornate entrance to let people with bombs know what's inside ... just grey and glass, with a tiny grey plaque beside the glass doors that only open when the tiny grey security guard inside the tiny grey booth pushes a great big red button on the wall behind him. On cloudy days like today, even the glass is an anonymous shade of grey. Anonymity rules: it keeps the IRA from blowing the place up. So we are told. Right now, I'm quite prepared to invest ten pence and call them from the phonebox at the bottom of the stairs. I'd even chip in for the Semtex.

Inside, it's a labyrinth of identical grey-carpeted and grey-painted corridors, with grey-painted office doors along them at regular intervals. The titles on those doors go in order of seniority. If you find yourself lost in the maze, all you have to do is work your way down the ranks and then down the stairs.

If you're on the top floor, you start at the far end of the corridor at the Centre Manager's office, and then head down the hallway to ASSISTANT CENTRE MANAGER (REAL-TIME), past ASSISTANT CENTRE MANAGER (BATCH PROCESSING), and just after ASSISTANT CENTRE MANAGER (PRODUCTION), you'll turn a corner and see some stair-rails silhouetted against the wide window that follows them all the way down.

Go down that staircase, stop off at the next floor, and the titles on the doors run as follows: PERSONNEL, ADMIN (REAL-TIME), ADMIN (BATCH PROCESSING), ADMIN (PRODUCTION), and a very small room right down the far end labelled "S CK BAY".

The next floor down has a hallway with many more doors. We're down to Shift Manager level, now: one for each of the three shifts, working round the clock - Red, Blue and Green shifts. And their Assistant Shift Managers.

Below that is the floor of the Shift Supervisors. And their Assistants. And the Shift Leaders. And their Assistants. Who supervise the Computer Floor Managers, whose Assistants don't, we are told, have offices of their own. And then one more flight of stairs down, and you're on the ground floor and the EXIT sign above the staff payphone points the way towards the glass doors that beckon you back into the drizzle outside.

But that's only two sides of the building. There are corners in each corridor, with flat grey doors right down at the end that have nothing written on them except NO ENTRY. As do the floors on the other two sides of the building. They, too, have corners and terminate in flat grey doors marked NO ENTRY. Perhaps they connect. Perhaps they don't.

This morning we've been shown, dismissively, to people with names that none of us remember after five minutes, but who will rule our lives from here on in. We've been led to rooms that we're expected to recall and locate at a moment's notice. And we've fluttered the flashbulb glare out of our eyes and left the little security office clutching the plastic passcards that will cost us our job if lost. The polaroid portrait on mine makes me wish I'd been given the opportunity to brush my hair first. No chance. Sit down and smile. Pop. Blink. There you go, son, look after it.

Ugh.

And then we've been shepherded into the canteen, herded together onto a table that should have been wiped clean long before breakfast, and then abandoned to eat lunch and watch the rest of the day shift at the trough.

Finally, after the last plop of industrial-strength instant custard's been scraped off the plate, it is time to be introduced to the equipment we'll be using. But first, we're taken along a corridor to the changing room, where another security guard is waiting to allocate us our lockers and their keys. They are almost tall enough to stand in, and mine leans against one with a door that swings open because its lock is broken.

This is where I should have come this morning to change out of my bike gear, if I hadn't asked somebody who looked like he knew where I should go. He, however, had directed me to the gents, somewhere on a floor above where we are now. He then escorted me to a room with armchairs all the way round it and a television at one end, and insisted I should leave everything on one of the chairs there. Even when I'd pointed out that I'd been rained on all the way across town. The seven other newcomers - three girls of differing colour, three white boys around my age and a middle-aged Indian bloke, all scattered around the seats - had watched, but said nothing.

And now, as we tug at our new keys and our old keyrings and curse both them and our now-broken thumbnails, we are taken out of the changing room, up one flight of stairs, along a corridor, down another, smaller flight of stairs, and led into a small room with PRODUCTION CONTROL stencilled on the door. Here we exchange nods with someone behind Elvis Costello glasses under an Andy Warhol haircut. He's sitting at a desk covered in punchcards and identical grey loose-leaf binders with the Bank's logo on the front cover.

He, apparently, is almost a law unto himself, because he is in charge of telling the Shift Manager to tell his Assistant to tell the Shift Supervisor to tell his Assistant to tell the Computer Floor Manager to tell his Assistant to tell the computer operators which programs and jobs to run, and when. And, by running punchcards through a machine that reads them, how. Again, the name is forgotten. But the eyewear and the hairstyle is commented on. In whispers.

And from there, down another set of stairs, along a short corridor and through two sets of glass doors that hiss noisily as they open in front of us, we arrive at the biggest indoor open space I've seen without either paying to enter or entering to pray in. It is air-conditioned, clinically-clean, operating-theatre sterile and houses the very heart and soul of the Bank. Apart from a low humming that comes at us from all sides, the place is silent.

The drop in temperature makes us all shiver.

The ceiling must be at least three storeys above us, inset with parallel rows of flourescent tubes that seem to converge at the far end of the room. And the far end is very far away. Coming back along the opposite wall, three sets of three thin windows stretch all the way up from the floor to the ceiling. Light and not-so-light grey floortiles, three feet square, chessboard their way into the distance, some covered by boxes of various sizes and various shades of grey, some not.

Briskly, our tour guide leads us the length of the computer floor, past a long wallful of four glassed-in rooms. One is where the tapes and disks are stored securely. It is the Tape Library. It must be - the sign on the door says so. The next one along runs most of the way down the computer floor, and contains the many staff who make sure the mainframes are in total phone-line communication with the Bank's branches and cashpoint machines every second of every working day … and with the programmers and developers at the Bank's Northern UK Computer Centre all through the night. The people making sure all these communications run smoothly, we are told, are Real-Time people, and therefore nothing to do Operations staff. That's us. And we, on the Operations side, have nothing to do with them. Except, of course, in emergencies. Likewise the Engineers, who occupy the office next door.

Finally, we are beckoned into the smallest of the rooms, right down at the far end of the computer floor. Our tour guide strides over to the two men sitting behind grey metal desks, speaks in hushed tones that we wouldn't have overheard even if we weren't all catching our breath, turns to us and states that he is now leaving us with his Assistant Computer Floor Managers. Two more names to try and remember.

They will look after us.

They motion us back out through the door again. We stand in a group at the bottom of the end wall. It is grey and plain and very high. Behind it, we are told, are millions of pounds' worth of plant and machinery that keep the computer centre up and running in the case of a power cut, and keep the air in here at a constant temperature. It has nothing to do with Operations staff. Understood?

We nod. Understood.

About turn.

Forward march.

We're now heading back towards the glass doors that hiss open once more in the distance, as the tiny figure of our tour guide passes through them. The two Assistant Computer Floor Managers, now nicknamed Laurel and Hardy for obvious reasons, lead us diagonally across the floor towards the first two items of equipment we'll meet. They look like film processors, each with a desk and keyboard. I recognize them from the textbooks I've read in various libraries and bookshops.

We trail behind, discreetly trying to decide amongst us whether Laurel was the tall thin one or the short fat one, until we reach the person dashing between each keyboard and two more machines that clank at regular intervals. He would come up to my shoulder if he stood still long enough, and the name on the pass card he's left beside one of the keyboards says "Lucas". I'm not quite sure why, but it's the only name I've managed to remember for more than ten seconds today.

"Here," says Laurel. Or Hardy. The tall thin one hands me a postcard-sized sheet of dark blue plastic. "Tell me about this, if you can."

I look at it, hold it up to the light and see a couple of hundred little square boxes etched in white, with various amounts of lines across them. Something clanks nearby.

"Photographic." Shit! What's it called again? "Not microfilm ... um, micro ... micro ... fiche."

"Thank you." Hardy, or Laurel - the short, fat one - snatches it out of my hand, causing something like a paper-cut between my thumb and finger, but much worse. And much messier. While I'm fumbling for something to staunch the sudden flow of blood, the rest of us are having the magic of microfiche explained to us: photographic ... computer generated ... indestructible ... get that? You with the handkerchief?

Actually, it's a kleenex, and not very fresh at that. I nod, and carry on wrapping it round my hand. Lucas. Ah, right, Star Wars. That's why I remember the name. I look up, and notice that everybody is moving on to a collection on at least twenty squat grey boxes, the pawns on this great Grey-vs-Grey chessboard. I have to hurry to catch up.

The kleenex is starting to soak through already.

These are not pawns, these are the rows of disk drives on which all the Bank's transactions and computer programs are stored. The disks themselves are eighteen inches across, stacked ten-high on each spindle, and when not in the drive, are protected from the elements by a clear plastic cover that would look more at home on a restaurant trolley, over three-quarters of a Black Forest Gateau.

Forward march.

The kleenex is very damp.

We cross the floor to the state-of-the-art mainframes themselves. Four of them in a line along the wall, between two sets of windows. The tallest pieces in the chess set. Kings and Queens. Apart from one or two small flashing lights just above floor level, they look like huge grey concrete slabs, but not as exciting. People say Stonehenge was a primitive computer when it was built, centuries ago. The upright stones must have looked just like this before time and vandalism took their toll.

The mainframes are why we are all here today. They are the turning point in our lives.

Laurel - or Hardy - pauses briefly in front of them. As one, we all catch our breath. This is how Stout Cortez must have felt when first he espied the blue Pacific. This is how Neil Armstrong must have felt as he lifted his foot off the last rung of the Lunar Module ladder.

Obviously sensing the majesty of the moment, Hardy - or Laurel - makes his pronouncement.

"Mainframes. Not to be touched. Understood?"

Understood.

Forward march.

The kleenex is starting to dribble.

Laurel and Hardy point out the chain printers - all sixteen of them - that have to be fed paper as they print out statements for the Bank's customers, ledgers for the branch staff, and morning reports for branch managers. These reports tell the managers about any interesting occurrences in customers' accounts, like, for example, a deposit or withdrawal in excess of five hundred pounds.

Forward march.

Halt.

Much as I hate to interrupt the tour, I hold up a bloodstained hand.

"Excuse me," I start, "would it be - "

"We'll answer any questions later. Behind that glass wall," say the Assistant Computer Floor Managers between them, "is the despatch area. You will find yourselves liaising with the staff there at regular intervals, collating and checking off printed material produced during the evening and night. They will pack them up and despatch them to customers and branches. Over there ..."

Laurel - or Hardy - waves casually at two rows of seven-foot high tape drives on either side of us, each with two big spools that judder backwards and forwards and stop at irregular intervals. I have never missed my own little tape deck so much in my life.

My hand is beginning to ache.

"... Are the tape drives. Very little to say about those except that during the course of your duties you will be mounting, dismounting and labelling tapes, and will be responsible for the cleaning of the units themselves. Maintenance is left to the Engineers. And now, last, but definitely not least ..."

Laurel and Hardy turn to the two light-grey desks directly in front of us. On both of them are dark-grey monitor screens, with columns of light letters on a dark background. Again, in grey. In front of each screen is a two-tone keyboard. Light grey and dark grey. The seat at each desk is grey. And vacant.

My hand hurts.

The two terminals here, we are told, set off the quadrillions of binary instructions to process trillions of electronic ones and zeroes every day, that redistribute billions of pounds, whether in Sterling, Deutschmarks, Francs, Yen, Roubles, Dinars, Dollars - American, Hong Kong, Canadian and Australian - and every other currency on the face of the globe and the screens of the money markets, amongst millions of Bank accounts all the way round the world. Somewhere in there, I have two.

I opened them with the Bank long before I applied for a job here. One is for stashing away deposit money for a mortgage that the Bank will be obliged to sell me at a preferential employee rate, once I've qualified for one by working here for two years. I started it up when things started getting sticky with Annie out in the East End, feed it at irregular intervals and do not know how much is in there. I find it better to ignore the statements, and throw them straight into the bin when they arrive. That way, I don't know how much I have to spend, and therefore find it less of a temptation to spend it.

And because of a sudden and very well-timed cheque for a deposit and two weeks' rent in advance, my other account stands at £1.43. Overdrawn.

"That's it. Thank you."

Laurel and Hardy start the long walk back to the Assistant Computer Floor Managers' office. We watch them go in silence, and wonder what to do next. There's a trail of dark splotches on the floor, snaking its way around the chain printers towards the mainframes and from there, thinning out back towards the end wall.

One of our little group, Eve - a skinny girl, possibly Sri Lankan - suggests we walk round the floor and look over peoples' shoulders, to get a feel for the place. I have a feel for the place already. It's called pain. I hold up my hand.

"I don't know about you lot, but I'd like to get this dealt with. Now. I'm going to the gents, and if you're still here when I get back, great. If not ..."

I shrug my shoulders and pass through the glass doors that hiss at me. I hiss back at them. They hiss back at me. No, it's someone following me. Another one of us. Gary.

"Where's the gents, then?" he wheezes. This little runaround has done him no good at all. Putting it kindly, he could do with losing some weight. About half of it.

"I think it's up here, somewhere."

I've been there before, but from a different direction. And walked past it and Production Control on the way down to the computer floor. I check the names of the rooms as I go. "PUNCHCARD WRITER", "PUNCHCARD READER", "PHOTOCOPIER", blank, "PRODUCTION CONTROL". Aha.

I push the blank door open. Porcelain. Tiling. Sinks. Taps. Bullseye. I rinse what I can off my hand, and go to the end cubicle - the one with the window - where I changed out of my bike gear this morning. I drop my soggy kleenex into the pan and mummify my hand with the last of the lavatory paper, hoping it'll leave Laurel or Hardy as much in the lurch as they seem to have left us.

I feel better just thinking about it and stare out of the window, out of the endless grey of the computer centre, out over the endless grey of a half-built industrial estate, up into the endless grey of a traditional English summer sky and then down into the dappled grey of the puddles dotting the concrete below. Too far below. I don't like heights. I flush my lifeblood down into the sewers - it only takes three tugs at the handle - and step back out of the cubicle.

Gary zips himself back up with a contented sigh and as we reach the door, it swings open. There's a muttered "Excuse me" as somebody's head whizzes past at shoulder level. We stand, lost, in the corridor, trying to get our bearings. Someone has to lead us out of here. It might as well be me.

"Turn right here."

"So, what do you make of it all, then?" Gary asks.

"Not impressed. You?"

He shakes his head. Or at least his neck bulges from side to side. His eyes move equally in the opposite direction, to compensate.

"No. Bit overwhelming."

"First time here?" I wonder out loud.

Gary nods. I think. His chins expand and contract, anyway. And his eyes move up and down, this time.

"Funny," he says, "I thought they'd have shown us the place before we signed up."

"Me too. They interviewed you in the City Office, then? Posh, eh?"

There goes the neck again. "No, back home."

"Where's that?"

"Manchester. I've only just moved down here. I think I want to go back."

"Already?"

And just as we get to the sliding glass doors, he asks me a very strange question.

"Think you'll stay?"

But before I can answer, he peers through the doors, slaps his hand to his forehead and moans.

"Shit. They've gone. Now what?"

He's right. There are very few people on the computer floor. I don't recognize any of them. The doors hiss open again, Lucas runs up behind us and stops just long enough to tell us everyone's gone down to the canteen for a coffee, before sprinting back to the microfiche machines down at the far end.

We work our way down some more stairs and find ourselves by the staff payphone. Personally, I'm tempted to follow the arrow on the EXIT sign, but first I'd have to find my way back to where I stashed my bike gear this morning. Instead, I follow Gary, who's following his nose round the corner and there, at the end of another grey corridor, is the canteen.

So here we all are once more, eight of us round a gravy-stained table. Partners in uncertainty. Seven have come in by car, because there is no public transport around here. Seven of us will leave by car. One of us is hoping very much to leave - immediately, if not sooner - on a rackety old Honda, but isn't sure whether it'll start up again after being rained on for the past forty-eight hours straight. It was difficult enough this morning, amongst everything else.

I have a pushbike that's much more dependable, but it's leaning against an unfamiliar bed covered in a dozen bin-liners. I filled them in such a rush this morning - as soon as Annie'd left for work - I almost forgot my guitar. While I waited for the man with the van ... and waited ... and waited, I cursed him, cursed Annie and scribbled the little good-bye note I should have written long ago. It gave me something to do. Now, all my worldly goods - the bike, the bin-liners full of clothes and other possessions, the guitar case with the yellow smiley-face sticker at the top and the folk guitar inside - are in the flat I'm officially moving into once I get out of here this afternoon.

Hanging on in quiet desperation, as the song goes, is the English Way. It took eighteen months to get to the point where Annie would wait for me to switch on the tapedeck, plug everything in, strap on my Strat and press RECORD before breaking out her Black&Decker to carve wooden sculptures in her kitchen. Purely because she knew from past experience (and a lot of shouting) that the interference it caused on the mains would bugger up anything I was recording. It's hard to create deep and meaningful music when all you can hear in your headphones is zizz-ziz-zizzz-ziz-ziz-zzzziz. And then when you take them off, a giggle from down the hall.

Maybe it was God's way of letting me know I'd never make a living as a musician.

For years, I'd worked as an office temp by day, and spent the rest of my time - and more than all of my money - making demo tapes of sad songs in the tiny little flat I shared on Sloane Street with a couple of friends from College. They had double-barrelled surnames. They also had the bedroom. Me, I lived in the boxroom and recorded in the bathroom. Better acoustics in there. A pleasant enough postal code, what with Harrods round one corner and the King's Road round the other, but perhaps not the most street-cred address to impress an industry that fed on the raw energy of disaffected youth. So when Annie suddenly - very suddenly - invited me to shack up with her in the East End, it seemed like a good idea to take her up on it. More space, less rent, and more sex. Well, some sex. At first, anyway.

The initial difficulty was the phone. Or lack of it. She refused to have one in the flat. From Day One. Even when I'd offered to pay all the charges, and for all the calls, whether hers or mine. But then again, that, I thought, could be an advantage in some ways. If life hands you a lemon, make lemonade. Impoverished artist, in squalid phoneless little garret, writing songs for impoverished people with phones to cry at in their squalid little garrets. A pre-defined audience, a perfect selling point. Out went a hundred demo tapes, this time without the Sloane Street return address label. Or a contact phone number.

Back came ninety-three cassettes. Back came eighty-one badly-photocopied "thanks but no thanks" replies. Obviously I'd sent out the wrong songs. It was back to the drawing-board.

Annie wanted bright lights, after-hours drinking with influential people and the Sloane Street lifestyle she thought I'd had - not someone sitting in front of a tape-deck all night. And so did I, but the music came first. It was the same with her woodcarving, wasn't it? Apparently not. Since I couldn't introduce her to any Sloaney art-gallery types, for the moment it was just for fun.

So she said.

We were standing ankle-deep in wood-shavings at the time. Not in the artificial spit'n'sawdust tourist-trap pub just up from Piccadilly, where we'd originally met, but in her kitchen, where she'd been dismembering a large branch she'd dragged back home from somewhere. I shouldn't have compared her flat to a hamster-cage just then, because it was the next (and steeper) section of the downhill slide: the gap between us - in and out of bed - grew rapidly wider.

A couple of rather unhappy months of writing and recording and re-recording to edit out the zizz-ziz-zizzz-ziz-ziz-zzzziz-es, a few more miserable songs for lonely people in bedsits to slit their wrists to, ninety-three cassettes re-copied, a fortune on postage and many, many silent sulky evenings later, it seemed more and more like a good idea to escape from the East End in general, and Annie in particular. But hanging on in quiet desperation was the English way, wasn't it? As soon as I'd got an advance from a record company - any record company, and any size advance - I'd up stakes and exchange my leading role in this particular cage for a walk-on part in the war that was popular music at the time. That was the Plan. The next batch of demos did slightly better.

This time, each cassette had a little handwritten note attatched, begging the recipient to ignore the fact that I had no phone, and to send a telegram to bring me grovelling my way across the office carpet to lick their boots and sign a recording contract. There was one reply. He was pushing retirement age, he was camp as a row of tents and he bought me drinks. Many drinks. When he thought I was suitably lubricated at one end, he took me out to dinner, and talked endlessly about his many friends in the business, and how nice they'd been to him.

Then when he thought I could be suitably lubricated at the other, he invited me back to his little pied-a-terre in Denmark Street. Sexually speaking, it was the best offer I'd had for nearly three months. Or, let's be honest, the only one. I slurred my excuses and left.

After sending out the last remaining seventy-six cassettes, this time containing music for people living in cardboard boxes to commit hara-kiri to, and receiving sixty-three of them back again - once more with a photocopy of a photocopy of the original reject slip, which now made three generations of copies in all - two things dawned on me.

One was that if this sort of domestic bliss was going to escalate any more, no matter how much music might calm the savage beast, when it came to hand-to-hand fighting, my Stratocaster gave me some advantage. It had length, together with a useful and very solid weight at the business end. Much like any other blunt instrument. But it would be less than a match - at very close quarters - for a Black&Decker with a saw attachment.

And the other was this: along the lines of that old seventies poster that urged one to eat shit because fifteen thousand billion flies couldn't be wrong, perhaps I was somewhat outvoted regarding the musical talent I thought I possessed. Maybe, in fact, I should call it a day.

So I did.

Annie was busy hacking at an innocent lump of wood in the kitchen when I broke the news: at the ripe old age of twenty-mumble, it was time for me to grow up, stop going nowhere fast, give up the hopeless musical struggle and find myself a real job. A proper career, even. I wasn't quite sure what, though. One thing at a time, OK? She smiled, put down her Black&Decker, took my hand, led me into the bedroom …

… and pointed pointedly at a pile of laundry that needed putting away.

I sold everything except my acoustic guitar to the little band of other hopefuls I knew at the temp agency, who shuffled paper all through the working day while dreaming of spotlights at night. The proceeds kept us in clover for a little while, and there was, once more, peace and happiness in the household. And more sex. Well, a littl more, anyway. Perfect, in fact, apart from the occasional zizz-ziz-zizzz-ziz-ziz-zzzziz in my walkman headphones, but I could live with that. I wasn't recording anything any more, just listening to classical music, reading anything I could about computers, and learning, learning, learning.

Computers, they said, were the next big thing. They sounded like fun. Just push a few buttons and hey, presto - all your work's done for you. That was my kind of machine. My kind of job. And the ads on the Underground said the pay was good, too. Come to where the money is. Come to Computer Country. It was time to take the first step up the career ladder, and I wanted to be prepared. So I read book after book after book, from wherever I could get them, and cultivated my interview technique.

They said that computers would revolutionize industry. They also said they'd revolutionize our home lives. And on that score, they were right: Annie still wanted a West-End lifestyle, even though I still hadn't met anyone who owned an art gallery, and used my studying as an excuse to vent her frustration. She brightened up when I pointed out classified ads featuring larger salaries than both of ours put together, and was thrilled at the concept of my working shifts. Evenings, especially. And nights. But that didn't last long. It took a month before she told me I'd become a bookworm, and consequently even more boring than when I was sitting copying tapes in the front room. At least I'd given her some attention then, even if all I did was shout at her. But now, all she saw was a book in front of my face. So she said. It probably wasn't the best course of action to say nothing and turn back to my textbook just then, but I had a chapter to finish before bedtime.

Things were sliding downhill once more, and faster. Little things would set us screaming at each other. The people upstairs started banging on their floor at sunrise one weekend, because of a difference of opinion we had that started at sunset the evening before. About which way round the loo-roll should go on the holder. At first.

Finally, armed with enough knowledge to bluff anyone but an expert, I ironed a crease or two in some dark trousers, pulled on a polo-neck and went to the local Job Centre to register an interest in becoming a computer professional. At the reception desk, a nice young man with no hair and an earring looked up from his paperback and nodded towards the back section of the office, where white typewritten cards in neat rows on the walls offered the least fortunate of Thatcher's Children a helping hand up the evolutionary ladder.

Maybe it was the devil whispering "take it, take it," when I saw the card saying that the Bank needed a computer operator. I took it back to the reception desk and waited patiently until the gentleman behind it reached the end of his chapter. In the process, I became quite skilled at reading upside-down. I dropped as many computer terms as I could remember into the following short - and somewhat one-sided - conversation, an interview was arranged for the following week somewhere deep in the City, and the nice young man with no hair went back to his book.

Maybe it was kindness that prompted me to say yes I would put the card back on the rack on the way out. Perhaps it was forgetfulness that made me head straight for the door instead. It was definitely a sense of civic responsibility that led me to the second-nearest rubbish bin, tear up the card and drop it in. After all, we all had to do the right thing. And to Keep Britain Tidy. Besides, I didn't need the competition. I needed the job. And a job with a bank, as everybody told me, was a job for life.

With nobody else applying for it, after a surprisingly-relaxed interview over a polished oak table somewhere in Threadneedle Street, which consisted mainly of a discussion about the financial perks of working for the Bank, about my education (languages and literature. How about mathematics? An O-level, perhaps? Failed three times? Really?), about the facts that the computer centre itself was as far west as one could possibly go and still be in London, while I lived in the very last postcode before the East End turned to Essex ... and about the current mechanical condition of my Honda (appalling, as always), the job was mine.

Lucky me.

So here we all are, eight of us newcomers, sitting around a gravy-stained table, ready to devote the rest of our working lives to the care and feeding of the Bank's computers. The other seven look like they'd rather wear a suit than anything else and could knot their ties with their eyes closed. Even the girls. They don't have damp patches at their left elbow and right knee like I do, where the rain soaked through my waterproofs on the way here. But then again, they probably don't fall off motorcycles at regular intervals like me.

At least we all have one thing in common: it's a miracle that any of us got here on time this morning. It's not as if the Bank was particularly helpful when it came to directions - just a faded photocopy of a faded photocopy of a badly-drawn map, so all eight of us are now smoking, sipping vending-machine coffee and swapping horror stories about exits from arterial roads and having to turn back on ourselves several times. Which is almost a word-for-word repeat of the thrilling conversation we had at lunchtime. And equally thrilling now.

It was a little easier on the Honda - I could just U-turn wherever I wanted while the photocopy became more and more rain-spattered, or simply take a convenient pathway to cut through the park that suddenly sprang up in front of me this morning. But when one of the lads - Mark, I think his name is - asks me for the second time today how easy it is for me to get home from here, I have to answer truthfully once more that I have no idea. I've only been there twice before.

The first time was yesterday, after seeing the postcard in the newsagent's window. I met someone there called Ruth, who blinked at me through owlish glasses perched on her beak, told me I'd have some interesting flatmates while snatching at my deposit cheque, handing me a set of keys and ushering me back down the stairs and out. The second time was just before coming to the centre this morning, when I had so little time I just threw all the binliners and guitar on what is now my new bed - sort of a burglary in reverse - propped the pushbike up against it all and hopped back onto the Honda to try and make the stipulated ten o'clock arrival time.

Nearly made it, too.

The conversation fades out. Must've been something I said. Our tour guide walks up to our table and announces that since we as a unit are, at the moment, little use to man nor beast nor Bank, we might as well leave now. But it's time for the Bank's quarterly interest run, and the more hands on deck, the better. Lots of statements to be printed, folded, stuffed into envelopes and mailed out. Lots of branch reports to be run and distributed. Lots of stuff that even we, the novices, can do. So we're expected here at eight-thirty tomorrow morning. Prompt.

Well, thank God that's over. From here on in, things can only get better. Can't they?

But he'd like a word with ... he looks down at his clipboard. ... umm, Bateman. Charles Bateman. In his office. Now.

As everyone else push their chairs back from the canteen table and disappear, I hold up a single, bloodstained, finger.

Here I am.

"In my office, I said. This way, please."

There's nobody else in the canteen, now. If there's anything confidential for him to say, here would be a good place to say it. But no, I have to follow him up the staircase, along a corridor and into the office with ASSISTANT SHIFT MANAGER (RED) stencilled on the door, which I close quietly behind me.

It reminds me very much of all those times I was summoned to a certain House Prefect's study, years ago.

There were, around then, certain gaps in my knowledge of the ways of the College, the names of its heroes inscribed around the cloisters, House Masters and their nicknames, House Wives, House Dogs and House Hatbands, as well as the protocol of to whom the straw boaters said Hatbands were wrapped around must be raised.

And those gape meant only one thing …

… a certain bamboo cane.

***

"Sit down."

The Assistant Shift Manager (Red) tugs at a string behind him to open up the blinds and let in the daylight in through his office windows. Silhouetted against the light, he lowers himself behind his desk and into his chair. It's considerably higher and more comfortable-looking that the one I'm leaning forward on, squeezing the layers of blood-soaked lavatory paper on my hand. He flicks through the sheets on his clipboard, murmuring to himself.

"Bateman ... Bateman ... Bateman. Ah, yes, here we are."

He looks up at me.

"Complaint. Already."

His voice is almost expressionless. He's probably in his late forties. His hair is blonde-ish, parted at the side with a few tell-tale overlong strands brushed up from the parting and over his naked scalp. His eyes have deep, dark bags under them, and wrinkles - lots of them - to the side. There are many lines on his forehead. Silently, he reads his clipboard, glancing up at me every now and then. And then speaks.

"I presume you do know there are changing rooms here?"

Of course I do. He took us there after lunch.

"Yes."

I nearly add "Sir" in a deferential tone, but remember that I'm not at school now.

"Then may I ask you a question?"

Without waiting for an answer, he continues.

"Since there's a perfectly adequate place for you to leave your motorcycle clothing, why on earth did you find it necessary to pile it all onto a chair in the handover room this morning? People go there to relax at lunchtime ... and they certainly don't want to have to move wet clothes and a crash helmet to do so."

Jesus. Should I bend over the chair now, or what?

"I did ask someone where I could change when I came in ..."

There goes that silent "Sir" again.

"... and he directed me to the gents and told me to leave my bike gear where I did."

"And who would that be?"

Well, he was a smarmy little git with slicked-back black hair, but that's not the best description to give, under the circumstances.

"I have no idea."

"Hm. I suggest you use the changing-room from tomorrow onwards."

"I will."

Pause.

"That's all."

Fine. If he's not going to say goodbye, I'm not going to either. I get up, walk all the way to the door and out, but before I pull it completely closed, the Assistant Shift Manager (Red) calls out.

"Oh, and Bateman ... Charles ..."

"Yes?"

"I have a telephone message from someone for you. It came early this morning. It is not bank policy for staff to receive personal calls at work. But since this is your first day, and since it does appear to be extremely urgent, I'm prepared to overlook the matter. But just this once. Here."

He pulls the corner off a sheet on his clipboard and holds it out for me. I have to cross the room, and as I take it out of his hand, I can see the rest of the paper and it has "Bateman, Charles" typewritten across the top. And several lines of scribble underneath.

"Thank you. Will that be all?"

"Yes."

And just as I'm closing the door behind me once more, he calls out again.

"Oh, one more thing ..."

I hold my ground and poke my head back into the office. Buggered if I'm walking all the way back to his desk.

"I wonder if you'd mind not bleeding all over the computer room floor in future. I think you now know that we a have a sick bay for that kind of thing. The Assistant Computer Floor Supervisors have a key - "

I hold up my bandaged hand. It's going to start dripping again in a minute.

"Then may I - "

"No. They're far too busy preparing to hand over to the next shift right now. I'm sure you can deal with it adequately at home. Goodbye."

Out in the empty corridor, stairs silhouetted by the glass wall at the far end, I look at the triangle of torn-off paper. It has nothing but a phone number on it.

After living in telephonic limbo for so long, most numbers look unfamiliar, and this one is no exception. Even after I've re-bandaged myself with the last of the roll in the cubicle next to the one with the window (that'll get both Laurel and Hardy, then. With luck), picked up my bike gear from the handover room and blinked my way down the stairs, grateful for some natural light, rather than the flourescent strips everywhere else in the building, I still can't figure out whose number it is.

The staff payphone has a sloppily-painted back wall with holes drilled into it at regular intervals, and a well-scratched perspex hood to duck into for privacy. I pop 10p into the slot, dial, and wait for seven rings before the beeps go and I try to press it in. It won't go. I try with a twenty, wait for five rings and that coin won't go into its slot either when whoever it is picks up the receiver.

Once more with feeling and a fifty, and ...

"Hello?"

I recognize the voice. The first time I heard it, we were in a spit'n'sawdust tourist trap just off Piccadilly. The last thing it said that night was that I was invited to dinner tomorrow. Her place. The following evening, it was slightly muffled. Not surprising, considering what her lips were wrapped around just then ... and one morning much later, Annie was inviting me to move in with her. Seems like a lifetime ago, now.

"I got your message. What can I do for you?"

"You've gone."

Oh, she's all surprised and sweetness and bloody light now, isn't she?

"That's right. That's what you wanted. So?"

"I came back early this morning. To have a phone installed. This is my new number ... that's all."

"Fine. Thank you. Goodbye."

I try not to slam the receiver down. But fail.

I take my bike gear down to the changing room. God knows why. I might just as well have gone back to my favourite place in the building, the little cubicle with the only window that opens out enough to see the real world. Or as much of it as I could see from there - just a half-finished industrial estate, and a large grey box that looks like it has something to do with the phone company poking out of the pavement a couple of hundred yards away. But there's real air to breathe through that window, not this temperature-controlled air-conditioned muck that stops the computers and all the other equipment from doing what I'm close to doing now: overheating and exploding.

What a way to end a relationship. Annie's got herself a phone. At long last. Thanks a bunch, bitch.

What a way to start a new career. Pissed around as soon as I set foot in the place. Changing room? No, we don't have one of those. Extremely urgent message? Let's wait the whole day and then tell him. And would you mind not bleeding on the floor in future? Thanks a bunch, cunts.

Well, thank God that's over. Time to hop on the Honda and head for my new home.

Let's see what joys await us there.

***