A Quiet Saturday Evening at Home.

I knew trouble was impending the day ‘Rocky’ started walking the wrong way. His hair had also been recently cut and though he still had that idiotic grin on that perfect ‘doppelganger’ face, he had now definitely lost it.

Sylvester Stallone’s look-alike might not have packed the same muscle as the original ‘Italian Stallion’, but even I was impressed when he launched one of the Lion pubs beer garden tables through Barclays Bank huge pane glass window on the High Street. As the front disintegrated into a thousands pieces of glittering glass, the alarms screamed out their wailing alert of imminent illegal entry.

I watched enchanted from my perfectly positioned first floor front room window, perched above the High-Street, next to the Lion. Everyday I sit and write at my lap top, occasionally casting an idle glance out the large bay window as I guzzle another beer down my gullet. I had become fond of Rocky. I had grown accustomed to his wanderings as he went past three times a day, usually at two downed tins intervals. Always appearing into view from the right. The cocky swagger a little hindered by the heavy jacket he now had on against the cold. He would come into my line of sight at Barclays, stop at the bank front window, and would shadow box it a couple of times before moving on. Then past Discount World opposite me, their piles of cheap imported Chinese made toys spewing all over the side walk, eventually disappearing from my vision after passing the Salimar with its authentic New Age happy clapper crap. (Made in Pakistani sweat factories by seven year olds.)

When Rocky, Monday last, came from the other direction sporting a new haircut, I knew something was up. The town folk said he was an alcoholic nutter. That he had once glued up the front door of the local tattoo parlour was local gossip. It appeared that he had not been happy with the quality done on him. That I could believe. When in summer he went by in his shiny boxer shorts and muscle shirt, his arms, always flexed from his sides, sported a famous quote,

‘Rather a bottle in front of me’, was crudely tattooed on his entire left arm, the right also covered in script from shoulder to hand, informed the willing spectator the rest of the text,
‘Than a frontal lobotomy’. The problem laid not in the clarity of the letters, which were sharp enough to be read from over the street, but that it was all in reverse. As if only he wanted to read it, as he preened in the reflection of the Barclays Bank front window, or perhaps he never understood that what he saw, no one else could. Or even maybe because the font on one arm was Times New Roman and the other; Comic Sans.

It was just before closing time last Saturday night when Rocky appeared in his summer kit, the temperatures now hovering at sub-zero, his body steaming from sweat as he shadow boxed, dodged and weaved at his own image. Then before I could even react to this amazing spectacle, he had run across the road, heaved a large iron cast round table from the Lions front porch above his head, and accelerating back across the High-Street, launched it straight through the banks window.

The noise as the glass shattered, accompanied by the alarms being tripped, brought the drunkard clientele from the Lion out onto the street. The place, now being off season, was only frequented by the local intellectually brain-deads, immediately recognised the figure as it continued doing the ‘Mohamed Ali Shuffle’ whilst lashing out right arm uppercuts and left jabs to an imaginative combatant.

‘Go Rocky Go’,
called the drunken mob, urging him on. I cracked my eighth beer for the day from the half full Iceland plastic bag at my feet and informed the 73 year old paedophile I had been out of boredom chatting up in some perverts chat room, that I had to go. There was no way I was going to miss this action. Besides, the filthy bastard wanted to web cam himself masturbating! Charming to say the least.

I calculated Rocky had maybe five minutes before the local peace keepers turned up. Leaning out my window I managed to convey, with the assistance of sign language, to some yobbish obese 16 year old with her skirt hiked up to her ears, that the two tins of Carlbergs Special Brew 7.1% I was holding in my hand were to be given to Rocky. Giggling, flashing her hanging guts over the tight skirt, she complied and dashed across the road to a dancing Rocky. He acknowledged my gift by raising a tin in my direction and sank the first one in seconds, throwing the empty tin into the glass strewn floor of the banks entrance. Then the alarms were still, to be replaced with the yowl of the oncoming squad car and I quickly searched my MP3 data base for the theme from the movie Rocky 1, and boosting the volume to max on my massive Hi Fi connected to the lap top, opened all my windows and let rip.

This delighted the growing amount of spectators and they jeered as the three local ‘Bobbies’ spilled out the small police Fiesta to confront Rocky just as he finished downing the second tin of power juice and with expert aim bounced it off the nearest coppers head before he had time to put on his reversed flower pot shaped helmet. With the music blasting out, Rocky hopped from one foot to the other with arms aloft, saluting the boisterous crowds of well wishers and fans.


The first attempt to refrain him was attempted by the local, ‘hobby bobby’ Janet of notorious parking ticket fame. So when a well placed hook to her solar plexus dropped her like a stone on all fours, to vomit in wheezing gasps onto the street, the fans burst into spontaneous cheers and clapping. With the theme from Rocky 1 approaching the end, I smoothly switched over to
Eye of the Tiger by Survivor to keep our hero’s adrenalin well rushed. The response from the onlookers was ecstatic as prancing Rocky placed a few quick left jabs to the chin of the next ‘bobby’, dislodging his false teeth, and a well placed kick to the groin brought roars of laughter as the hapless law enforcer joined Janet on the pavement to mix his processed dinner with hers.

The last peace keeper retreated petrified and attempted to radio for reinforcements from the car, but was forced to stop as a deluge of beer glasses were thrown his way from the rapidly approaching riotous crowd of revellers, keen to participate in the fun. Rocky was obviously tiring now and whilst he still shadow boxed, it was obvious that the extreme cold was taking its toll, so locking on to the psyches of the flipped out excitable drunks, I starting playing the classic from the Bloodhound gang, The Roof is on Fire. This version though was pure trance with a sexual, primitive deep strong bass designed to make ovaries dance with desire.

Almost as if on cue, as the roaring 3 foot tall speakers, ably backed by 1500 watt Yamaha sub woofer belted out the lines, ‘We don’t need no water, let the mother fucker burn’, half empty bottles of rum and whisky were tossed into the open banks front, closely followed by wads of oil soaked fish and chip wrapping paper, now flaming copiously. As the mixed cocktails set the carpet and tacky veneered chipboard teller's cabin alight, a roar of satisfaction almost deafened the beat pounding from my flat.


With the crowds now in a real party move I switched over to the Sex Pistols, Anarchy in UK. One of my favourites. Reminded me of the time when I did impromptu ‘Karaoke’ deep in the bush during the Rhodesian war. The peasants had loved my boisterous singing as I torched their humble grass thatch huts and shot their livestock whilst singing,

'I am an antichrist
I am an anarchist
Don't know what i want
butI know how to get it
I wanna destroy the passer by
cos iI wanna be anarchy !'







With the fire now souring 50 feet or more into the dark sky, the heat more than adequate to keep Rocky and every one else warm, the two bobbies on the ground finally staggered up just as flaming molten plastics blobs flared down from the fiercely burning Barclays logo. As they legged it from the braying mob, I focused on the next track to keep the fun up. By now our antics had attracted the riff raff from the Drunks R Us pub a 100 feet further down the street,
I clicked on U2, Streets With No Name.








That did the trick, and as the Lions staff struggled gallantly to serve the teeming excited crowd screaming for alchopops and bottles of vodka, a small group charged towards the police Fiesta and easily flipped it into the middle of the road, followed by shoving flaming fragments from the banks impromptu bonfire through the open window. Fantastic stuff, this town hadn’t seen a spectacle like this since Armistice Day celebrations last November. (The town’s lifeboat had been torched to settle a drunken argument between two contestants both claiming to be the captain. The idea being no one could be captain now.)

One wit, staggering drunkenly around with a beer soaked shirt, exposing a sallow white tone in the flickering light of the inferno, coaxed his fellow inebriates to block the other end of the street with another vehicle. Whilst they themselves certainly lacked class, the vehicle that was duly rolled and ignited was. Mainly, a brand new Jaguar convertible. Shame it belonged to the owner of the Lion. Still, he was making a roaring trade. Hopefully the landlord was insured against arson.

With the flames now licking Discount World, the prying tongues desperate to taste the tons of Chinese plastic buckets, spades, Caucasian dolls and toy A.K sub machine guns stored two stories high, I rapidly scrolled my data bank and was greeted with roars of delight as Arthur Brown’s classic opening line thundered across the rioting hooligans,

‘I am the God of Hell fire, and I bring you…FIRE’.

The yobs were going ape-shit, popping ecstasy like Smarties, several now vomiting copiously over each other between slugs of pure spirits. This was what I admired about the British. No wonder they beat the dreaded Hun 5-1 in Munich.

The heat was extraordinary, the tar-mac started to blister and I even turned off my little electric fan next to my feet. I reckoned by the time this lot was put out, I had saved at least £1,34 pence in electricity, as well as contributing to saving energy and the environment.
The police were no where to be seen. Actually, as several tons of plastic imported crap caught fire, the black dense smoke pouring out of every glass exploded window in the building started to make visibility extremely difficult, along with breathing.

Several of the party revellers were hacking and coughing, including the overweight teenager, who was now retching on all fours exposing a rather skimpy pair of pink knickers. Trapped between the buildings on both sides, the superheated air created eddies and cyclones of thick, black, toxic soot. As the sounds of the approaching fire brigade and police reinforcements made themselves tangible over the dying notes of FIRE, I thought it prudent to call it a wrap. Just one last song for myself before I passed comatose to bed. A grand finale to a highly entertaining evening.



By now most of the choking and gagging crowd had dispersed, Rocky had cleverly boxed himself into the shadows, leaving me to close down on perhaps a softer note. So as I dropped the volume, shut my semi molten windows, closed the curtains and pretended that I had nothing to do with it all, I amused myself with Meatloaf. As the well known lines,

And like a Bat out Hell
When the morning comes
I’l be gone gone gone.,

called to me, I packed my few possessions. Time to find a new town to trash, because I am…Anarchy!