Miranda sighed. It had only been one evening, but the house already seemed too empty without Graham there. She hoped he was having fun, and taking advantage of lots of opportunities. She had tried calling him the night before, but his phone apparently had no signal. Rather unusual, but she supposed he could have one night out with the lads. She quickly tried him again, just to be sure, but this time, it was engaged. Why was his phone engaged? Did he talk to anyone usually? Maybe it might be worth ringing round, seeing if anyone… and she caught herself. Why was she worrying so much? Because she didn’t want it to happen again. She’d been hurt before, and she was damned if another man was going to hurt her like that again.
But Graham wouldn’t hurt her like that, surely? She realised she was actually starting to panic. Quickly, she ran upstairs to her painting room, set out a spare canvas on a painting stand, then squeezed out a few colours of paint. And as the paintbrush dipped into the first shade of red, and glided across the palette, she felt herself calming down. She started bringing out the detail on the flames.

* * *

This journey, Graham thought, was supposed to be an enlightening journey of discovery. He was supposed to just get away from his old life, discover something new and exciting, and not just end up in a grubby student house. Life was full of surprises, and sometimes they weren’t nice ones.
“Ahhh mate, do you remember Dave smashing that pint glass round that chavvy cunt’s head in the Gardeners?” babbled the rather porky individual who Graham had spoken to on the phone. He apparently went by the name Pies, because of the volume of pork pies he ate. If you end up with a nickname at university, its not usually going to be a particularly complicated one.
“I don’t remember it, no.”
“Ahhh, well it was utter jokes. How about when you pissed on that car on the way back?”
“Once again, not a sausage.”
“Wouldn’t mind me a sausage sarnie. You hungry?”
“Nope, drunk as last night, remember?”
Pies sneered, as he eased himself up and into the kitchen. “Nyaa, you old people can’t handle your bevies.”
Once upon a time, there would have been a drink off just to make a point, but Graham was too old for that.
“You got my phone?”
“Yeah, its upstairs somewhere. Where’s those sausages? Do you remember…”
“No idea, can I get it?”
“Hang on, you mind the frying pan, I’ll find it.”
And the wobbling git stumbled upstairs, which audibly groaned.
Graham pensively pushed the sausages around the frying pan. The next problem was finding the docks, and finding his ferry. He had no idea where to go, no idea of the general geography of the area. Plus, he didn’t feel up to walking, even if he knew where the hell he was going. He couldn’t really afford to get a taxi, and… actually, maybe there was a simple solution to all this.
Pies eventually returned, heralded by a huge amount of stomping.
“Found it! It’s a shiny thing, innit?”
“Yes it is. I have to be setting off soon…”
“Ah yeah, you don’t want to stay for a pint or two?”
Graham’s insides, already offended by breakfast and sausage fumes, screamed in protest at the idea of more alcohol.
“No can do, but I need to ask two favours.”
“Sure man, sure!”
“One, how the hell do I get to the docks? I’m off to Rotterdam this afternoon, see…”
“Ah yeah! You said last night! Getting some quality ganja, I’ll bet!”
“You never know.”
“Well, you got to bring some back here, man!”
“I would, but at the moment, I’ve got no idea if I’m coming back. One of your lads able to give me a lift?”
“Well, after last nights performance, Dave should be happy to, just got to wake him up, is all.”
“And second, is there anywhere I can get a shitload of money very quickly round here?”
“Apart from bringing us back some draw?”
“Apart from that, yes.”
“Hmm, don’t know, bruv. Let me wake up Dave, get you to the docks.”
And once again, he went stomping up the stairs. Graham sighed again. This could be difficult, and he didn’t mean just getting money. The fat bastard was starting to get annoying, and annoying seemed to be a recurring theme in Graham’s life at the moment.

Dave had been just about alive, and had agreed to drive Graham to the docks in the afternoon. He also had a few ideas about money.
“Lissen man,” he hissed in a hungover sort of hiss, “my cousin spent his gap year in Holland. Don’t know why, but there you go. He found some work with this, erm, courier business, and they’re always looking for people. I’ll give him a bell, get a number for you. They sorted him out for the whole year. Hang on.” He then whipped out his phone, dialled a number, and hissed his way through a conversation.
“Right, he’s got the number, but he’s warned you it probably won’t be anything legal.”
“Fair enough, not ideal, but I’m kinda desperate here.”
“Also, some of the assignments… didn’t make much sense.”
“Once again, no room to complain. What’s the number?”
“Here you are. Get them talking in English and tell them you’re a friend of The Englishman.”
Tapping a Dutch number into his phone, Graham breathed a sigh, of confused relief and annoyance. It looked like he was sorting out his money problems, only to get different problems in exchange. He wracked his memory for what little Dutch he knew.

“Hallo, Het huis van Harold’s van vissen, hoe kunnen wij u helpen?”
“Hallo, ooo sprecked Engels?”
“Eh… yes, can I help you?”
“Hello, I’m asking about courier jobs, I’m… a friend of The Englishman?”
“Hurrah! He was much helpful when he was here. So you want to carry things for us, yes?”
“That’s right.”
“Where are you at the moment, my friend?”
“Well, I’m coming over to Rotterdam this afternoon, and I’m leaving from Hull…”
“Are you? That’s unbelievable! Your timing couldn’t be better, we need something taking over from Hull. It needs to come to Amsterdam, but I daresay you can travel. You know where the… Weatherspoons pub is?”
“Not really, but I’m with people who can point…” he quickly realised he had not only been there last night, but walked past it on the way to this house. “Oh yes, I know where it is now.
“There’s a shop selling marijuana products across the road, by the antiques shop. Go in there, and ask for a bag of fish.”
“A bag of fish?”
“Yes. He will give you the goods you need to transport, tell you where to take them, and give you a down payment for transport fees. You will bring it to the address he gives you within three days. Then you will receive payment.”
“Willdo. Thank you very much.”
“Oh yes, one quick thing, friend of The Englishman, normally we wouldn’t just give some random Engels a job without meeting him, but a lack of time and your friends reputation means we can’t use our normal… procedures. But if you lose this package, or take it anywhere but here… we will find you, grind you up and smoke your karkas. Begrijp?”
“I don’t know what begrijp means, but I understand the rest of it.”
“That’s all I needed. Tot ziens.”
And then the phone went dead.

The Weatherspoons pub was just down the road from where he was, and there was indeed a poky little head shop nearly opposite it, next to an antiques shop. Dust seemed to cover many surfaces. A few weed growing tools were scattered around, and a selection of bongs sat in the window, from basic clear plastic ones to elaborate ceramic ones in the shape of skulls or Rastafarians. An emaciated man sat by the counter, giving him a somewhat dirty look.
“Erm… hello, I’d like a bag of fish, please.”
“You’re a bit different to the normal couriers.”
“Apparently, I just came along at the right time.”
“Right, hang on then, let me find the package.”
The man then rummaged around behind the counter, and produced a package in a brown paper bag, and a stack of Euro notes.
“You will take this, and at 5 in the afternoon in three days time, wait by the roundabout for the road going through Rembrandt Park. A man will come up to you, and ask if you had halibut for dinner. You will tell him that you pickled the vicar. Do as he says.”
“Is it really a bag of fish?”
The man crossed his arms, and gave him a look most commonly used on idiots.
“What do you think?”
Apparently not then.

“So he sorted you out then?”
“Yeah, although I’m not sure what exactly it is.”
Graham was back in the grubby living room with Pies, the package sitting on the table looking thoroughly sinister. They were staring at it like it was a disembodied hand.
“Hey, maybe its a disembodied hand!” cried Pies.
“Why would they pay me to carry a hand into Holland?”
“Maybe they thought it’d be fun?”
“Why would they pay me to carry a hand into Holland for the fun of it?”
“Well I don’t know! Its not like you’re going to be smuggling drugs into Holland, is it?”
“Well, it doesn’t matter now, since they’ve threatened to kill me if I don’t take it, and even if they hadn’t, I can’t afford not to.”
The atmosphere would have been tense and fraught, if Pies was capable of being anything but sluggishly excited about everything.
“Well, now you’ve got to come back, intcha!”
“How do you reckon that?”
“Well, you’ve got to tell us what it is, haven’t you!”
“No promises, but if I ever come back, I’ll let you know.”
“Wicked, man! Fancy a pint yet?”
“No, not really.”
Pfah, old git.”
“Where’s Dave?” It wasn’t too late, but after the other night, Graham wasn’t in the mood for leaving anything to chance.
“He’ll be up and about, old man.”
“I’m not that old.”
“Yeah you are, now lets get Dave then.”

Dave had a crappy 1994 Ford Fiesta, and was quite surprised he could fit into it. For some reason, he was shoved into the back of it, and discovered that Dave had apparently put all his car money into buying the sort of speakers you normally encountered at rock festivals. And when they pulled off, the sheer volume was terrifying. Literally. Graham’s vision immediately blurred, and his ears started popping. He did, however, get a wonderful back massage from the seat vibrating underneath him. Overall, he got the impression that the sound quality was optimised for someone three cars back, and was very happy when they finally got to the docks. His ears were ringing, and the last time that had happened was when he’d spent an entire night by a speaker at a rave back in the old days.

And, inevitably, the morning after would come. This was subtly altered by the exact events of the night before – whether glasses of water were drunk, if he had been sick, what take-away had been ordered – but since these, as mentioned, might as well have happened when he was passed out, Graham didn’t have much of a say in what happened, and was usually ruined by the morning after anyway. He woke up, and immediately regretted it. For a start, he’d been having a rather interesting dream he couldn’t remember the specifics of. It wasn’t exactly fun, or sexy, but it was a very interesting dream, one of those that could easily fill out a thousand words of nonsense if you could remember it. Following this by waking up meant you forgot it doubly quick, once for waking up, twice for waking up thinking your head had been hit by a sledgehammer, and forgetting anything else.

He felt horrible. People who had stopped drinking heavily at twenty three, and tried to kick-start it with a massive bender ten years later, come out of it like an old school Mini Cooper picking a fight with a lorry. His head was the worst part, sledgehammer metaphor already mentioned, but as ever, there were many little things making it so much worse. The dry mouth and parched throat. The starving hunger, paradoxically mixed with the stomach growling “you just try it, mate, you won’t enjoy it”. The horrible aftertaste, in this case chilli, tobacco, and something else quite foul, but thankfully not vomit. That, and he’d left the curtain open, a wall of light hitting him in the face. And like fuck could he do anything about it.

He lay there for what was only an hour, but felt like three, before lurching out of bed, throwing the curtains shut before the light made his head any worse, and collapsed back on the bed. It was still too bright, since he must have overslept, but at least he could actually get his eyes open without them falling out.
All in all, his room wasn’t in too bad a shape. When he was a student, a night like that could have anything spilt or dropped on the floor. And walls. And ceiling. In this case, it mostly just seemed to be clothes, a pizza box, seemingly empty, more clothes, and…

Wait, clothes?

A flash of something came to his mind, he’d walked past a charity shop, he was with… some students, perhaps. He had the vague idea that one of them had suggesting stealing a black sack left outside, full of donations. Something to do with not having any clothes. Evidently, the drunken Graham had told everyone what he was doing, and one of the people he’d told had done something about it. A simple solution, perhaps. But what was here?
Wonderful. Someone’s grandma had had a clearout, by the looks of it, and three flower-print dresses festooned the floor. Also, an ancient looking, and gigantic, bra. That would have to be binned when he could move. A pair of jeans that looked like they might just fit, but on closer inspection seemed to be a woman’s pair. Well, needs must and all that. And finally, what was either a bandanna, or a headscarf. So no T-shirts then. Graham risked a look at a clock. Eight thirty. He’d always had a bad habit of waking up too early when he’d been drinking.

He stumbled downstairs, and through sheer force of will, managed to force down the fry-up he was served. He needed food in him, despite the feeling that his insides were out to kill him. He then returned to his room, and studied the pile of hideous clothes in the middle of the floor. Evidently, even though he had been utterly smashed off of his face, he had been thinking along the right lines. He needed supplies. He had kept the important things and what he needed to keep up the illusion he was only away for the weekend. The other bag had contained more clothes, some tourist guides, a map of Europe, and a Dutch language book, without which he’d be struggling a little.

Promptly, two thoughts crossed his mind.
Where was his phone?
And how much had he spent last night?
The second question was the easiest to answer, a quick check of the wallet showed that “only” fifty pounds had vanished from his wallet. Ten pounds of the remainder had turned into loose change somehow, and there was a scrap of paper with an illegible phone number on it. Graham left it. The first question remained unanswered. It hadn’t come back with him. This was slightly more worrying. One, it had been a rather nice phone, a birthday present from Miranda, and had had email, internet, and all sorts of new and shiny things installed on it. Secondly, if Miranda tried calling it, there was every chance that whatever happened, she’d start panicking about it. He went downstairs, asked if he could use the phone, and dialed his own number. Unlike seemingly everyone he knew, he thought it was quite useful to know your own number, and he felt rather smug as it started to ring.
“Hello?”
“Hello, who is this?”
“I dunno, who’s this?”
“Well, you know the phone you’re holding?”
“Yes?”
“Its my phone.”
A pause. Then a gasp of surprise.
“Oh yes! Its… you’re that bloke from last night! Man, that was a maaaaaaaaaaaaad night! Do you know how much you drank?”
“By the feel of it, far, far too much.”
“Yeeah, that was mad. Listen, you want this back, I guess?”
As obvious as it might seem, Graham paused for a second before answering. Was it that useful to have a phone that had no SIM card in it?
Still, if all else failed, he could sell it somewhere.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Right, right, well come back up the road, we’re back here, come get it.”
“Erm.. back where?”
“Here!”
“I don’t know where here is! I don’t even know who you are!”
“Right, right, I hear you, fucking hammered last night and all that. Right, we’re in Lambert Street, go up Bev Road and find the petrol station, we’re at number 32. Catch you in a bit!” And then the phone went dead.
Packing up his bags, Graham checked his ferry tickets. His ferry left at half five in the afternoon. Plenty of time. He packed his bags, paid his bill, and set off to find a petrol station.

Fifteen minutes passed, and still no opportunity presented to retrieve the suitcase. While Graham would have found it an interesting conversation with Miranda about career prospects under normal circumstances, the fact was that Graham didn’t have his career in mind. What he did have in mind was trying to travel the world with two shirts, four pairs of socks, and not a lot else. He couldn’t say he needed the bathroom, partly because the train would inevitably show up while he was waiting, but mostly because the bathroom was in the complete opposite direction to the cloakroom. And tempting though it was to just take the train back, he wasn’t quite sure how to get to the coach station, and he was running short of time as it was. He decided to try a gamble. He patted down his pockets, and turned to Miranda.
“Ah crap, I didn’t pack my spare glasses.”
“Oh, you idiot. Where did you last see them?”
“I think… actually, I might have left them in the car.”
“Why on earth did you do that?”
“Cleaning them, I think. I’m sorry hun, I can’t leave the bags, they should be in the glove compartment, I can’t leave the bags, can you fetch them please?”
“Oooh… well, alright then. Catch you in a minute!” She then gave him a quick kiss, and hopped off in the direction of the gates. As soon as she was facing the other way, Graham lurched towards the cloakroom. He had no time at all.

“What do you mean you can’t find it?”
“We can’t find the bag with that number on it, sir.”
“How the fuck did you manage to lose it in one day? I only checked it in yesterday!”
“And now it’s missing. We’ll let you know as soon as we’ve found it.”
“Like fuck you will, I’m supposed to be running away, and now… oh sod it. Useless fuckers.”
With that, Graham turned round, and sloped back onto the platform, followed by plain-sounding requests not to abuse staff… sod the staff. What was he going to do? He needed that money to actually get anywhere.
The train pulled up as Miranda reappeared, oddly enough with his spare glasses case.
“You big silly, they’d fallen out in the boot.”
“Oh, really? Oh dear. Well, thanks for finding them.”
“Is something wrong, hun?”
Apart from not having any fucking thing to take with me, no, all hunky dory, would be the correct answer.
“Well, I’m not going to see you all weekend, am I?”
“Oh, hon, you’ll be back soon, and it’s all for a good cause.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Well, you’d better get on. I’ll see you on Sunday.”
“Love you.”
“And I love you.” She left him with a kiss, and he stepped onto the train. As the doors shut, he looked into her eyes, and realised that if he actually went ahead with this plan, he’d probably never see her again.
Did he really want to do this?
Of course. Cold feet, that’s all. He sat down, and gazed gormlessly out the window.

Milton Keynes is a very… erm… something town, where… actually, you know what? I can’t pretend I’ve ever actually been to Milton Keynes. For all I know, the entire town is made of purple tentacles, and screaming demonic faces leer out of every pavement. So I can’t tell you what its like. So we’ll just move on to Graham catching the bus, and I’ll put the fourth wall back where it was.

Milton Keynes coach station isn’t actually in Milton Keynes. If you imagine the junction where an A-road meets a motorway, and basically stick a train station platform on an off-ramp next to it, that’s what the coach station is. It’s an incredibly boring place to spend any amount of time. There isn’t even a snack bar to speak of.

Graham had an hour layover there, for no discernibly good reason.
“I was in the Great War, you know.”
And stuck next to the obligatory loony. He didn’t look a day over forty, it was just that it was a particularly loony forty.
“Really,” replied Graham, with a monotony and blandness that screamed, leave me alone, you’re talking out of your arse.
“Damn really! Head of the RAF, I was. Flew over Berlin and shot Hitler single-handed! That suicide nonsense was a cover-up!”
“Was it now?”
“Yes! And I was going to fly a top secret prototype jet fighter with a laser cannon mounted on it, but I broke my arm on a walrus the day I was supposed to go on and fly it!”
“Sounds like horrible luck.”
“And do you know what happened then?”
“No idea.”
“They teleported me into the future!”
Graham sighed. It was times like this, he thought, when being back at home wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
Focus, he thought, you’ve only been away two hours.
“Did you know, the Queen’s actually an evil Chinese warlord?”
And another hour here to go.

Things did not get much better when the coach actually arrived. The thing about coaches, is that they are usually designed to carry you great distances between cities, and are usually cheaper than trains. This means that the people using coaches don’t have the money to get a train, and can’t drive for one reason or another. This does tend to mean that they are usually full of students and mad people. Thankfully, that madness usually manifests as enough social awkwardness to give you a quiet journey, or at worst just blare out some horrible hip hop on their phone.
As another aside manifesting as a battering of the fourth wall, whoever thought you needed to have big-ass speakers on a mobile phone needs to have their balls stamped on. That is all.
“I was in the Great War, you know.”
“Oh, really?” asked Graham. This gentleman actually looked old enough to have taken part in the Second World War.
“Oh aye. Those were hard times. Couldn’t have done anything about them, but they had to be done.”
“And I’m very grateful for it, sir.”
“Did you know, the Queen’s actually an evil Chinese warlord?”
Oh gods, he thought, and it was looking so promising.

The journey up to Hull took a lot longer than anyone was expecting. Not just because the mad old man had many more stories, both of wartime sacrifice and blithering lunacy, but traffic on the M1 was made ten times worse by a lorry full of chickens overturned. A large van full of hot fat crashed into it, and a truck carrying eleven herbs and spices managed to avoid them, but upended itself all over the road. The smell of KFC wafted for miles around. It was a tired, and nauseatingly hungry, party which got off in Hull.

Many things have been written about Hull over the years. Frequent references to “shittiest town in Britain”, and “actually given an award for shittiest town in Britain” are thrown around quite frequently. This isn’t an entirely fair accusation, since you’re just as likely to get punched in the face in somewhere like Manchester, or Newark-on-Trent. The thing is, Hull is an aimless town. Its main economy was based on its ships, and these do not venture out very often, so it no longer has any affluence it may have had. These days, it is true to say that its entire economy is students and pushchairs for young mothers.

But that would miss out on a city that is still full of life and character. Nestled amongst the student-ridden slum housing are some beautiful buildings. The town centre mixes shitty bars and take-aways with gilded statues and Victorian architecture. Not that this concerned Graham much. Having spent all day travelling, he needed somewhere to collapse, and then perhaps a quiet drink somewhere to celebrate his newfound freedom. After about an hour of searching, he managed to find a small bed and breakfast that miraculously still had a spare room. There was a rather good reason for that, however, and the normal Hull-air smell of either tires, burned cocoa, or death, was replaced with a rather damp, musty smell, and a rather damp, musty texture to the air as well. Graham shrugged. As long as it wasn’t the bed…

Thankfully, half an hour with the hair dryer had rendered it suitably dry, and Graham resigned himself to what would now be a mildly damp, but even stinkier night. This was most defiantly a call for massive amounts of alcohol. He strolled out of the bed and breakfast, wandered back to the main road he had walked up, and went almost straight into a bar.

I’m trying not to turn this into a travelogue of debauchery here, so I’ll point out only the salient details. Beverley Road is the main road through Hull, and the main road for bars. A man could start drinking at one end, and be hammered by the other. The town centre end caters more to the locals, and the end nearer the university is obviously more favoured by students. Technically, this doesn’t affect too much, since both ends are likely to be pissed on any night of the week, but neither party likes each other. They each seemed to like Graham, however. Back when he had been a student himself, Graham had had a very set pattern for getting exceedingly drunk.
At the start of the evening, he normally nursed just a pint of whatever ale or bitter the bar had, having something he could enjoy and comment on intelligently, while he was still able to tell what he was drinking, or talk intelligibly. This was appreciated by a few working men in the first few bars, who he shared a few words with, before moving on.
He then progressed onto lagers, which were a bit easier to drink a lot quicker. He had never been one for simply downing pints, mainly because they were far too cold to do anything with quickly.

Midway through the night was usually the time sobriety started sliding away, and it was also the point where the bars became more… well… fun. One of the last lucid thoughts Graham found himself having was in the Cannon Junction. A rather unusual bar, it is built into the support for a railway bridge, and the main sitting room is two converted train carriages. He had somehow caught up with a 21st birthday pub crawl, and had found himself, despite the entreaties of the previous paragraph, having a downing contest against a large youth wearing an incongruous pink cowboy hat.
And it was exceedingly fun.
“Wouldn’t be able to do this with Miranda anywhere in sight.” Thought Graham, as he slammed down his pint, a second after his opponent. And naturally, he demanded a rematch.

Later on in his evenings, his memory tended to go a bit fuzzy, as did everything else. Having moved into the realms of the Scream brand bars, the cheap student drinks, and the exuberant young people about to go to some grotty club, this was made somewhat… worse.
He remembered being in a queue for something, and it was a little dark.
There was a large stretch in somewhere with lighting, and a very loud soundtrack.
He had been shouting merrily about something, and some people cheered at whatever he’d said.
Eventually, he left with some people, and as tradition dictated, the blast of cool, fresh air pushed him over the edge of what his memory could work with, and for all intents and purposes, he plunged into blackness. While still walking, talking and having fun for a good few hours.

Peace let itself reign in the household for a couple of days. Graham was preoccupied with making arrangements for his “trip”, and since he’d given Miranda the impression he was working on improving his job prospects, she was happy, and left him to it. Finally, Graham was ready.
“Baby, you know how you want me to improve my job prospects?” he opened with on the next Monday evening.
“Yes, Gray-ray?” she replied. Horrible nicknames, another thing he wouldn’t miss.
“Well, it just so happens the company’s having a training and aptitude weekend down in London this weekend. It’s a bit short notice, but…”
“When, where, how long?” came the slightly panicked sounding reply.
“They’ve booked some rooms in a hotel in London, thankfully somebody cancelled…”
“No, I mean what hotel specifically.” He’d not quite prepared for this level of interrogation, but he’d forgotten about her specific foibles in planning his retreat of her general foibles.
“If I’m not mistaken, it’s the… Arlington Row Hotel. Yes, it’s on Arlington Row, so that’d be right.”
“Ok then. Can I have a number to call you at if I need you?”
“Well, you’ve got my mobile number,” he retorted, feigning a slight amount of hurt, but amused in that as soon as he set off, his old SIM card was being chucked in the bin, “but I’ll look up the number soon as you’ve said yes.”
“And can I ask your man in charge about this? I know you’re trying hard, but I’m still worried that…”
Realising that decisive action was needed, Graham took Miranda in his arms, and looked her in the eyes.
“Miranda, my love, I am trying. And I love you. We’ve been together for years now, and I know its time I need to get my life in order. Please, trust me, I’m not out to hurt you, I’m going to make things better for both of us. Now I’ll get you that number, but you need to let me do this. Okay, beautiful?”
Technically, all true as well.
Miranda had a tear forming in her eye, but there was a smile on her face as well.
“Of course. You take all the time you need. Just get me that number when you can, honey.”
Graham smiled in turn, partly to portray the happy boyfriend, partly because it had worked. Now he just had to tell the people at work what he was doing.

Thankfully, Graham had already made some arrangements, having informed his manager that at some time in the near future, he might need some time off at short notice to take some training in London. Admittedly, this was arranged with actually going to get some training in mind, but things with Miranda had complicated things, and the issue had drifted somewhat. Thankfully, his manager had a good memory for things that weren’t names.
“Taking some training at long last, Burricombe?” he chuckled. He was a heavyset man, given to chuckling at everything from an employee seeking to better himself, to the water cooler making an unusual gurgling sound. “I thought you’d shelved that because of your girl, Miriam isn’t it?”
“Miranda, sir, and it’s about time I did something.”
“Good man, good man”, came the chuckle again, “how long do you think you’ll need?”
“I’m not sure, perhaps a couple of months?”
Another chuckle, but this time not a good natured one.
“A couple of months? What are you training to do, go into space?”
“It’s a very long story, sir.”
“I’ll bet it is, and I’d be interested…” Thankfully, the phone rang before he could complete this thought. He murmured a few things into the phone, and placed it down again.
“Well, I’m not too happy about it, but I did say I’d let you take the time off when you needed it, so take as long as you need. We can always get in a temp or three to cover while you’re gone.”
A last round of chuckling saw Graham to the door, rather disheartened that three destitute students could do what he had been doing for ten years, but still pleased that his plan was coming to fruition.

With all the big problems out of the way, it only remained for Graham to pack. This was complicated by the fact that Miranda thought he was only going away for a weekend, and would more than likely notice him packing two big suitcases alongside his briefcase. In a fit of inspiration, he packed all the non-essentials into a suitcase his grandfather had left him, which consequently had been left in the attic and not seen since. He trusted that Miranda, in amongst all her new and shiny possessions, had simply forgotten it had existed. He then took this to the local train station, and booked it into the cloakroom for a couple of days. Problem sorted, since the things he was supposed to be taking for a weekend away all fitted into a significantly newer suitcase Miranda had bought him one year, not really noticing he didn’t actually go anywhere that required a suitcase.

Finally, the big day came around. Graham had packed everything he needed for a “weekend” away.
“OK baby, I’ll be back on Sunday evening.”
“I know, now do you need a hand getting your bags in the car?”
“In the car?” Graham asked. He had planned on walking up to the station.
“Of course, I’ve got to see you up to the station, haven’t I!”
“Erm… well…”
An eyebrow went straight up. “Why don’t you want me coming with you to the station.”
And true to form, Graham panicked. He needed to keep her calm up until the second the train pulled away, and having the jealous routine wasn’t calm.
“OK then, I’ve got them, don’t worry.”
Hefting them into the back of the car, Graham rationalised that he could simply tell her that whatever train was there was his train, and he was going to miss it. Simple solution there.

The car ride was surprisingly cheery for one that was supposed to be a mildly unhappy parting. Miranda talked about all the things she thought he’d be good at, suggesting all sorts of sales positions and how about that editorial stuff he’d wanted to do when he was younger, and a patter of a girlfriend seeing things only getting better. He happily, yet blankly, responded in kind to any suggestions she made, and all was still smiles as they pulled up to the station.
He took his bags out of the boot.
“Well, thanks for the lift, beautiful.”
“I wouldn’t want to do anything else now.”
“It looks like my train is here, I’d better get going…”
“That can’t be your train, hon.”
This rather unusual interjection caught him by surprise.
“How do you reckon that?”
“That’s the train to Milton Keynes there. You’re heading to London, aren’t you?”
Just his luck, she’d memorised which trains went where for some reason.
“Well, we’re not headed straight for London!”
“Why not?”
“Well, we’re… erm… meeting up outside Milton Keynes, then taking a train down to London from there, and…”
“That doesn’t make any sense!”
“Why not?”
By the time everything was sorted out to Miranda’s satisfaction, the train had pulled away, and the next one was half an hour away.
“Well, why don’t I wait with you then?” suggested Miranda. Essentially, there wasn’t anything wrong with that idea, as long as you ignored the bag left in the cloakroom that needed collecting, that contained everything Graham needed apart from money, a change or two of clothes, the tickets, and the watch.

Eagle eyed readers will remember my Chaos Ogre models from the sixteen or seventeen articles I did on them a while ago. I’ve spent some time mulling over whether to scrap what I’ve done with my Ogres, and just do an entire army of Nurgle Ogres. Its certainly been a tempting idea, a Bruiser with a Battle Standard has been on my To Do list for a while, as has a Nurgle Bruiser. And perhaps tinkering my Slavegiant, give him those hooves you get, and replace the beergut I crudely carved off him with a huge, weeping gut. But I’ve neither had reason to, nor the money.

The latter problems being sorted by me getting some work recently, and the former… not so sure about. Reading this months White Dwarf, I saw Forge World have brought out some Nurgle-themed Ogryns, mostly with a Traitor Imperial Guard army in mind. In two minds from the pictures I saw in paper, I went to their website to get a better look.

This is what I ended up with.

That paint job utterly ruined that idea for me. They wouldn’t work as Ogres. They certainly don’t work as Ogryns. At best, they might make some interesting Chaos Spawn in a normal Chaos army, or perhaps some unique Gorgers in the aforementioned Nurgle Ogre army, but I wanted Tyrants and Bruisers first, not just shambling monsters.

Ah well, back to the writing block. Thankfully not the writers block, I’ve got plenty of material for my story yet.

It didn’t get much better throughout the day.
“You’re telling me you’re selling double glazing?” said the elderly gentlemen on the other line, sounding as if he had been offered a pink zeppelin.
“That’s right sir, we offer high quality glazing at an affordable price, and…”
“It’d have to be extremely high quality, this is a church.”
Oh bollocks, Graham thought, not again.
“I’m terribly sorry sir, our dialling system doesn’t recognise the location of the numbers…”
“I’ve been told this five times in the last month or two, can’t you just take me off your list?”
“I’ll take you off it right away, sir”, he said, knowing full well that no request to take someone off their list of numbers had ever gone ahead, and he might as well throw his phone out.
“I should bloody well hope so!” the vicar shouted, and slammed the phone down.

The day didn’t get much better. He got put through to three office blocks and a man who claimed he was avoiding such modern trappings as double glazing (“Why the bloody hell does he have a phone then?” Graham shouted inside his head), and the sensible leads he got just didn’t go anywhere. Coupled with that, the bus he was supposed to get simply didn’t show up, and the next one rook an hour to get there. The end result was a rather unhappy Graham storming in at about seven, and a somewhat put-out Miranda trying to hide her annoyance with a simple “how was work, dear?”
“Lets not even start,” was the sullen reply, “I’ll only get annoyed. What’ve you been up to today then?”
“Well, after I spoke to Miguel again last night,” she started, and sensing a load of art-talk, Graham decided to zone out, and focus on what bloody use he was selling double glazing to elderly vicars, and caught himself starting to pay attention again as he was told about a pigeon with three legs.
“Last thing we need, more bloody pigeons. The ones the people across the road alone are determined to paint your car white with shit, and that’s only two of them.”
“Well, its turning out to be a very nice sculpture, and Miguel says he might have a buyer interested in it if it turns out alright.”
“Miguel my foot, when was the last time he actually found a buyer who’d pay you something hard decent for your stuff? What happened to that old guy you used to have? Mr Boscombe or something?”
“He died last year, Graham.”
Not quite sure how to get himself out of that one, Graham went straight over to the matter of food.
“I had made dinner, but you didn’t call me to tell me you were coming back late.”
“Well, this bloody phone doesn’t actually charge properly, and Arriva seems to think sending out buses on time is a ridiculous idea.”
“One of these days, you’re going to realise it’d make life much easier if you learnt to drive.”
Graham was inclined to agree, but pride and a lack of money meant he couldn’t actually tell her this.
“One of these days, I’ll actually have the time and the money…”
“Rubbish, I’ve told you I don’t want to do that.”
“Because you don’t love me, I know full well…”
“Don’t start that again, for god’s sake.”
“Well, there’s got to be some reason you won’t let me help you, and if it isn’t because you don’t love me, I don’t know what it is. Let me tell you…”
And it led into another one-sided argument, concluding with Miranda storming off somewhere upstairs, and Graham left fuming in the lounge. Sick to the back teeth of never being right once in his life, he flipped the television on, and once again, the news filled his screen with yet another government blunder, with the Prime Minster personally losing three million peoplesworth of information on the train. Perfect for his mood.

Losing things seemed to be a common theme on the telly that night. Since Miranda evidently didn’t want to come back downstairs and finish what she’d started, and Graham didn’t want to finish what she’d started either, he stayed put and watched. After the Prime Minister losing things on the news, it went over to a program about gigantic people losing weight, and then some drama about a hunt for a missing person. Missing person… now why was that such a familiar idea? Shades of his thoughts from the night before started to creep back into Graham’s mind. Something about running away and seeing the world? That didn’t sound like a bad idea. But how? He had taken a handful of driving lessons, but those were nearly twenty years ago, and he’d probably forgotten half the things he needed to know to not get arrested. So how to get away? He knew he couldn’t go via London, he couldn’t afford the bus fare to the station there, let alone a way out of the country.

And then a few more things clicked into place. Instead of getting onto the continent via France, like everyone else in the county did, he could go across to Holland by boat. It’d been an idea some of the stoned individuals at university had suggested, based on the huge volumes of weed apparently available even then. And since he’d done German for his O Levels, he’d have a lot more luck with Dutch than French, the former of which he understood as being a bastard lovechild of English and German. Right, so that was where he had to go, the question was, how?

He could pretend to book some driving lessons, borrow the money off of Miranda, and use them to pay for a train ticket… but no, even though she pissed him off royally, he couldn’t go basically stealing her money, no matter how much of the stuff she kept splashing on utter crap. How about his savings? He had something like five hundred pounds kept aside for the wedding he didn’t really want to go ahead with anymore, that would be a start. He didn’t have anything particularly valuable to his name, apart from an old pocket watch his granddad had given him, and told him never to get rid of. Well, needs must when the bitch is driving, he thought, finding it in his safe deposit box, along with a twenty pound note he was saving for no particular reason. Might as well use that as well.

And the guidelines for his plan started to fall into place. Get the train… nah, save some money, get the coach up to Hull, get a ferry over to… where was it in Holland? Some research said Rotterdam was the port to be aiming for. He’d buy maps and things like that over there. But how and where was he going? Did it matter? Probably not. Perhaps get a bike in Rotterdam and cycle it somewhere. The important thing was getting away, anywhere away from here, and once he had some distance, start thinking about it then. He booked a coach ticket from Milton Keynes, found some buses, gathered a fairly good idea of what ferries from Hull were like, and by the time Miranda sloped back downstairs, was perfectly content to apologise for having done absolutely nothing, and acquiesce to the things she told him to do. Made sense, seeing as it’d calm her down for now, and by the time he had to do anything about it, he’d be long gone.

Several hours, a dozen lagers, and two thirds of a film later, and Graham’s opinion of himself, his world, and circumstances in general hadn’t improved much. He hadn’t quite realised that lager, once the fuel of a variety of good times at university, now only produced a somewhat maudlin introspection. If he’d been given to experiment, he’d have found that vodka was as much a party drink as it is for most people, whiskey would still leave him introspective, albeit happily introspective, and vodka would make him black out, possibly before being violently sick. Mind you, this tends to happen to most people drinking tequila.

His rationale was this. Most people he knew had achieved something by the time they were thirty three. His old roommate, Giles, had gone on the same graduate placement scheme as him, and done quite a bit better out of it. Possibly because he’d done a Business Studies degree, which, while being horrifyingly boring, meant he actually had a qualification that might be useful once in a blue moon. The last time they had met up, he was doing something in marketing for one of those big companies lurking in London. Many of his former drinking buddies had been able to do something similar. Even Greasy Mike, the perpetually stoned guy who lived on the landing downstairs and never went to his lectures, had set up his own business and was doing very well for himself. Admittedly, it was a web business selling customised bongs, but that was still more than he was doing, a thought he used to refocus his self pity on himself.

The big problem, he mused, was Miranda. He had met Miranda near the end of his time at university, and had fallen in love in a matter of minutes. She had started off being a lot less blatant, but by all appearances had eventually succumbed to his charms. It had been a wonderful first few years, they had moved in with each other, and then things started going bad.

“Jealous” and “controlling” weren’t exactly the right words. Unfortunately, “damn crazy” wasn’t the right word either. Something in the middle was defiantly needed. She had made some excuses about being hurt by previous boyfriends, but these stories ended up changing slightly with each telling, and by the time it was obvious she was talking where the sun didn’t shine, she was using the story in the same not-particularly-passive-aggressive way. Passive aggressive suggested something passive, something working calmly to be decidedly antisocial. Miranda didn’t believe in passive. Any arguments were to be solved by being the loudest, jumping in with telling Graham things that whatever he was doing was cheating on her, had cheated on her by doing things that sane people wouldn’t call unfaithful in any round of madness. And since Graham was already the easily dominated sort, he bent over backwards to keep her happy.

Thankfully, money was one of the few things that didn’t present a problem in their relationship. Somehow or other, Miranda had acquired a small fortune, possibly from a dead relative, and might as well have had an unlimited bank account. Quite why she still stayed with Graham when she could easily have afforded to keep some petty, subservient younger lad he didn’t understand: she claimed she couldn’t live without him, but she said lots of things.

Opening his last can, Graham turned this idea over in his mind. There had to be some reason Miranda stayed with him, but gave him all this abuse. He hadn’t tried breaking up with her for years, since that was when the passive aggressiveness went into overdrive. Maybe the best solution would be to just run away. Go where he couldn’t be found. He hadn’t taken a gap year after university – the idea simply hadn’t really existed when he was a student – and he hadn’t seen any of the world outside of England. Get a ferry over to France… no, everyone went to France. Maybe Holland? Maybe Norway….

The next thing he knew, he was still in his chair, but the lights were out. It was 3:14 in the morning. He must have fallen asleep. He shambled upstairs into bed, somehow managing to get upstairs without waking Miranda up. She didn’t even stir as he flopped into bed.

* * *

Miranda woke up at about nine in the morning, having been stirred half awake by Graham waking up, banging around, and setting off for work. Poor man, she thought. She had offered to support him, she had enough money sequestered away to keep them for many years, but he’d said something about not wanting to be dependant or something. But didn’t he realised how closely related dependence was to trust? How refusing her offers of support showed how little he trusted her? But it was alright. She loved him, and he loved her, and that was all that mattered.

She rolled out of bed, and went downstairs to the kitchen. There was plenty she had to do today, her meeting with her art dealer, Miguel, had gone pleasantly, but had requested some pieces in a more… he’d hovered around the word “modern”, but it was defiantly the one he was looking for. It was very hard, however, to define what exactly he meant by “modern” without being “abstract”. Abstract sculpture was a horrible term to Miranda. It suggested bizarre angles and unfathomable constructs that didn’t bear any resemblance to real things. And Miranda favoured real things in her work. Either something was, or something wasn’t, and if it was, it could be reproduced. And if it wasn’t, you couldn’t do much with it. So she’d have to disappoint him – not something she liked to do, because while she had enough money to keep her happy, Miguel made sure she didn’t have to spend more of it than she had to. So keeping him happy was usually better for her, for him, and perhaps for Graham as well.

Her thoughts then turned, with a twinge of sadness, to her fiancé. He obviously didn’t like the job he was in, but he didn’t seem to want to do anything about getting a proper job. Cold calling people all day trying to sell tat to people who didn’t want it simply wasn’t a job for a man. But she wouldn’t make him do anything, because she loved him.

She put some oranges in her juicing machine, poured out a bowl of muesli, then squeezed out the juice into a glass. She took her breakfast out onto the veranda, and once again admired the view. When she had been doing some painting, she had done a selection of scenes depicting this view. There was plenty to be said for the life of the artist. Thankfully, she didn’t have to suffer the terrible poverty the old masters of art had to, the money her three aunts had willed to her meant that she wouldn’t need to worry for money for many years to come. Content with this knowledge, if not with her circumstances, she put her breakfast things in the dishwasher, and went up to her sculpture room. Perhaps a large cast of a pigeon could take some modern influences somehow.

* * *

Graham was not happy again. He’d woken up early with an unpleasant hangover, managed to stumble through his morning routine without thinking about it too hard, and had managed to get to work with a head that only felt like it had been hit with a hammer. And coupled with that were the people he had to deal with.

“Good morning, Graham!” came the booming voice from the desk next to his. Wilbur was a gentlemen in his early seventies, who gave no impression of being anywhere near seventy. He had been something important in the city some years ago, before retiring a couple of years ago, quite possibly because he hadn’t been a particularly quiet old man, or indeed a quiet anything. Generally, Graham tolerated him, because he was quite amusing when loud noises weren’t a gift from the Devil himself.
“Morning, Wilbur”, he grimaced, hoping to be spared much more than that for now. Sadly, he wasn’t to be that lucky.
“Was it not a splendid evening for you too last night, my young friend?” he continued, in a splendid baritone that would have done wonders on the stage.
“Not too bad, stayed in, in front of the telly.”
“Ah yes, I forgot that you are bereft of your wonderful wife on the evening of a Tuesday!”
“She’s not my wife, Wilbur, we just…”
“So I imagine you suffer from a head brought on by the beverages of kings?”
“Yes, it’s a little tender.”
“Well, I daresay you’ll need a modicum of quietness. Mores the pity you’re stuck with this! Ha ha ha!” he concluded with a laugh that could only be compared to thunder.
“Ha, yeah, mores the pity for me”, laughed Graham, with absolutely no trace of real humour in his voice. Having Wilbur bellowing in his ear was the last thing he needed.

It was always starting things that had got Graham stumped. He liked to think he was an assertive, willful individual, who knew what he wanted and always went for it when he knew it, but it was always starting things that got him caught. So not an awful lot happened at first, when he decided to run away.

Perhaps some elaboration might be more helpful. Graham Burricombe was thirty three, and, on reflection, not particularly happy about it. He lived somewhere in the middle of England, so managed to avoid the “Southern Fairys vs Northern Monkeys” arguements that had inevitably cropped up in his time at the University of Manchester. He hadn’t moved very far away from home, taken up a graduate placement scheme that had taken him absolutly nowhere, and eventually resigned himself to a telesales role. Unfortunatly, he had turned out to be sufficiently good enough at the job to stay put, but a 2:2 in Sociology and no other useful skills had meant he couldn’t go anywhere else.

Depressingly enough, these weren’t the worst of his problems.

For now, however, the worst of his problems could damn well wait. It was Tuesday afternoon, a decidedly quiet time for the week, for no discernably good reason, and this evening was the one evening a week he had anything approaching a modicum of freedom, and he was damn certain he was going to enjoy it.

“To hell with it, I’m buggering off early today!” he declared, to absolutley nobody in particular, and promptly spent two hours telling himself how there was absolutly no point hanging around with no work to do, since he had somehow met his sales targets for the day, and he’d enjoy the extra afternoon off, and how he deserved it, quite frankly. By the time he’d finally steeled himself to set off, however, it was long gone half five, and everyone else had gotten round to actually going.

Mildly embaressed, he grabbed his coat and briefcase, and set off. He didn’t need a briefcase, since all he really needed for his job were his computer and the automated dialling system, but he rationalised that the one day he didn’t bring it would cause a flurry of paperwork to wing his way. In the interests of keeping his desk clear, therefore, he kept his briefcase close to hand and contented himself with carrying around newspapers.

He didn’t actually have a car. To be short, he didn’t have his own car. Miranda had one, god alone knows what for, but since he couldn’t drive, it wasn’t much help. Therefore, he was forced to take the 185 route bus every single day, trying to console himself with the fact that he wasn’t damnaging the environment, but still more than faintly embarassed by being stuck with the last of the old ladies exploiting their free bus passes by travelling exactly nowhere, the usual gaggle of young boys coming back late from school, and even the odd temp from his office, not quite sure whether to talk to him or not. Much as he would like to think he was better than them, they would do his job for a couple of weeks, do it passably, and then go on to something much more interesting. He however was stuck. With a sigh, he hopped on the bus as its doors opened, and flashed his bus pass at the driver. As ever, the driver asked to see it, despite the fact that he’d been riding the same bus every day for nearly ten years now.

After half an hour enduring a group of young lads discussing who they’d beaten up the night before, he got back to his house on Wilburn Road, fought with the lock that, despite having been fixed five times since they’d moved in, never actually unlocked without bodily kicking the door, and stumbled in as the door finally decided to let him in. Without Miranda’s overbearing presence filling the house, it seemed decidedly empty, despite being four bedrooms and three storeys. Graham hadn’t quite worked out why they needed such a large house when it was just him and her, but once again, she’d commanded, he’d objected, she’d started mkaing accusations about his fidelity, and he’d folded like a poker player holding, not two cards, but a jack and a small picked halibut.

So they had a large house, at the moment an empty house, and Miranda filled the rooms with… well, he wasn’t quite sure what. He knew some rooms had ornamental things in them, and some had books, but he had lost track over the years, and as long as she didn’t spend all his money, he could live with it. His domain on Tuesday evenings was the lounge, in front of the telly, with a twelve pack of beer. Not exactly what made life worth living, but certainly better than being whipped the entire week.

He cracked open his first beer, and flipped on the box, to find the news on. Graham grunted in annoyance, before flipping over. It wasn’t that he didn’t care what was going on in the wider world, but it was his night in, and he didn’t need to hear the same news story night after night: Government not doing very well, American foreign policy leaving much to be desired, war, famine, strife. It would be a lot easier to feel for the suffering of the world, if he could hear about something that wasn’t suffering for five minutes. Much as he maligned the American media, he had to admit, there was something to be said for the “waterskiing squirrel” stories they ran at the end of every news broadcast.

Instead, he flipped over to Channel 4, where some mindless teen drama was playing itself out. It didn’t require much thinking, leaving him free to focus on more important things, like where he was going with his life. At the last count, the answer seemed to be “absolutly nowhere”. He was stuck in a job he didn’t like, with a girl who’d crowbarred herself into an engagement, and only spared him the horrors of being technically married because they just couldn’t afford it, the only advantage of his job whatsoever, and he was too much of a coward to do anything about it all.

Nanowrimo starts tomorrow, and naturally, I’ve timetabled myself up with work for the whole first week. Brilliant timing. Ah well, most updates for now are going to be story entries. Also, check the widget and site on the sidebar.

Finally got round to launching the Death Ray. You’ll be seeing some interesting stuff on Jelly Pufflemur in the next couple of days, I can assure you.