Exclusive story: Paint Your Name In 100 Font; Vegas is Vegas, BabY - my latest TOME; Poem: And The Geese; Birds are dinosaurs; Tales From The UniversE 53 - newsletter from A Salford DJ Booth
An arcadia of imagination
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1. Vegas is Vegas, BabY
My latest book is NOW on my substack - in four parts:
Manchester United's summer 2023 tour of New York, New Jersey, San Diego, Houston, San Diego, Las Vegas penned my way.
The first part is FREE; the rest the £4.99 a-month subscription for which you receive everything else paid for on here.
1A. DJing house tunes, New Cross bar, Ancoats
Come along, this Friday, 8-10pm and 💃🏽💃🏽💃🏽🕺🏽🕺🏽🕺🏽
2. Short Story
Paint Your Name In 100 Font
Winston Fitz taught science at Poynton High School and bet on the nags at Adlington Spur. He kept a ledger of his winnings/losses and as March arrived and the jump season moved towards its close he tallied himself ahead a few pounds.
This was a sad time of year, this was a happy time. National Hunt was Winston’s true love and the season came to an end though the incoming Flat season and the summer air it heralded provoked a differing frisson.
There was the other feeling Winston could not shake.
Which was this. How all felt similar.
Year on year. Teaching teenagers about light refraction, zygotes, the periodic table, Saturdays and Sundays at the track, the thrill of the wager, the lurch of the loss or win. Home to the two bedroom terrace house on Pickwick Road he bought a decade or so ago.
What he wanted was something else and this year, this March 2024, he had the courage to go out and grasp and seize hold of what he desired.
Which was this.
Winston wanted to paint his name in 100 font. Literally. In the village. For all to see. See the letters of his name blare down on the people who walked about day after day after day.
WINSTON FITZ
The locale he chose was St. George’s Church at the bottom of Park Lane across from the two roundabouts of Poynton. The side of the steeple that faced the village main vista. He knew what he would do would cause. The police would be called. He’d lose his job. No more weekends at Adlington Spur studying the horses, laying bets. Disgrace. If he was lucky - notoriety.
What else was there? Existence flatlined. It was rising each morn to do the same stuff again and again. Was this a type of madness? Wanting what he wanted?
No more thinking. Act.
Monday 4 March. The afternoon. He taught his last class of the day. He veered off the syllabus to tell the 14 and 15 year olds why the ‘poets beat the scientists to it all’.
One kid got it. He was called Henry Wardaker. His eyes brightened. Winston didn’t notice him before. Not like this anyway. Animated. Involved.
He said, ‘You mean intuition, Mr Fitz? The poets just somehow knew what scientists work out through experiments?’
Winston nodded. ‘Which is interesting when you think about it. Freud said this, I believe.’
‘Didn’t a poet do so, Mr Fitz? First I mean. Because as you say, the “poets beat the scientists to all.”?’
He laughed. Henry Wardaker was listening.
Monday late afternoon, the lengthening daylight soon to be spring hours remain. A chrome filter over the village. Winston took his stepladder and pot of yellow paint and the broad brush he bought from MATES hardware store and placed these in the boot of his Fiat.
Drove the half a minute through the village. Parked up by St. George’s Church. Took the stepladder, pot of paint, brush. Carried these to the side of the steeple that faced Park Lane.
The light began a fade from chrome to blueish. A colour of childhood nights in the village when he walked Buster the family dog and listened to birds in the lanes and whispers of the dark coming down.
He opened the stepladder. He positioned it sideways to the church and hit a realisation. The steeple was towering tall and the stepladder no more than 10 foot. Why only see this now? He felt a fool. He had visioned his name right up there not barely above street level. He had to laugh. He forced a few chortles. He felt more foolish. Forced more chortles. Still felt foolish.
Time to make a decision. Winston opened the pot of paint, took the brush, and made the steps to the top of the ladder.
A pause to take in what he saw.
All the years living in the village and never once gazing at this vista before. The angle. Park Lane on the slow ascent of its ancient rise towards the hills of Higher Poynton and Lyme Park beyond where before any notion of science and school and teachers doth did dwell the first inhabitants of these lands.
Enough ruminating.
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