This is a sequel/reimagining of It's Friday... from 2008.
The Show
Barry
is heading home with more alacrity than ten hours of factory work,
for less than what used to be the minimum wage, would normally
engender but it is Friday which means two things, the start
of
the weekend for some lucky folk (but not menials like Barry)
and...the show of the week!
While it would be nice for Barry to win, he only really watches the Show to see his girlfriend. Lily may be older than him and he often reads a lot of unfair gossip about her but surely it cannot be true, can it? He is sure that if he was to meet her, he would make her very happy and all the gossip would go away.
--x--x--
Dot and Alf are already squeezed into their elderly settee early, eyes firmly fixed on the slightly blurred TV screen, a wedding present many, many years ago. Mugs of tea on the table by their feet and a box of chocolates on Dot’s lap. Friday evening was a time to live a little. At least, it was once Oxfamilies, the charity shop soap, had finished.
“Have you got your pen and paper? You’ll need your pen and paper. Go and get it, you will forget your head one day” Dot orders, as another chocolate squelches into her mouth.
Alf heaves himself out of his seat, muttering wordlessly to himself and disappears into the kitchen…
“Look, Alf, those dresses! I could have carried one off when I was young, not now”
“I don’t know…”, Alf dutifully replied, “Do you remember when I had a suit like that?”
“I remember your demob suit that didn’t quite fit...I suppose it had creases. For a while.”
--x--x--
Susie and Bob have been separated for several months, divorce is on the horizon, whenever their finances would allow it. Such allowance had to be deep into the futuire, Bob being jobless and Susie’s coffee shop struggling. What do they say? Poverty comes in the door and love flies out of the window? Susie wasn’t sure poverty was the direct cause of Bob’s various affairs but the lack of self esteem had to have been a factor. As was his anger born of frustration.
They had little to do with each other except on Fridays. Bob had no TV, so Susie would allow him into what was once his home, to watch the Show of the Week. On the firm understanding, they would share any winnings.
Time was, they’d share the sofa but now they sit on either side of the small lounge, pointedly watching the TV and not each other.
Bob never really liked the show, trivial, pointless, sadistic, it seemed to him to be little more than a tired old going through the motions, to fill airtime before the whole point of the programme, the cash prize competition. But, still, Lily was worth the time by herself, it would be a sorry less than a man who didn’t have fantasies about him and her every Friday
--x--x--
“Did ever tell you I used to know Mr Spinge?”
Dot sighs, as she did most weeks.
“Of course he had a different name then, Ronnie Whelks, if I remember correctly. He wasn’t a comedian in those days, either, still isn’t I suppose.”
“It would not do for us all to like the same things,, it’s why they call it variety.”
--x--x--
Barry has always fancied Mr Spinge’s suit, he reckons he could carry off better than Spinge ever could. He has seen one for sale in a tailor’s shop near his flat. Well out of his range of affordability but if he could just win this week...the sky and Lily are the limit.
He would the man about town, the alpha male, the one they all looked uo to, with his famous suit and his beautiful lover on his arm. All in all, much more than anything the unfunny Mr Spinge has to offer – what have they been giving the audience to wind them up to that level of hysteria?
--x--x--
Susie knows what is coming next. She looks at Bob,
“Keep your hands in my sight. I’ll tolerate you watching her here but nothing else.”
She realises (and Bob knows) she is only half-joking.
Bob tries to ignore her and settles down, as if he needs anything more than his imagination
--x--x--
Lily is Dot’s least favourite bit of the show,
“Have you read about the latest thing with her, Alf?”
“Yes, bloody disgusting. Why do they keep having her back on?”
“The audience love her, can’t think why. I’d be holding my breath for fear of catching something.”
--x--x--
Barry has an idea…
--x--x--
“Of course, it’s all an act. Soft rubber bats, a padded suit and capsules of fake blood”, says Alf with an authority born of nothing, really, least of all what he is seeing on the TV screen.
“But his head doesn’t look padded does it, nor does all the blood pouring out if his head look fake”
“Television trickery!”
“Do you think that’s their real names?”
“Yes, course it is “, Alf eyes privately raised.
--x--x--
Bob looks at Susie and he, too, has an idea.
--x--x--
Puzzle set, the show is over.
As is the norm each Friday, Alf & Dot are nonplussed, word games were never their forte, as if anything ever was.
Barry is not bothering to think about the puzzle, he never saw or heard it. He was deep in thought about how to put his plan into operation.
Bob stared at the TV screen for a few minutes then almost yelped, “I’ve done it! I’ve only gone and done it LOVE-LONE-LONG-SONG!! Where’s the phone?”
“We haven’t got one any more, remember?” Susie’s hand goes to the side of her head in memory.
“Then how can I win?”
“Find a phone box on the way home. Now bugger off”
Next Week
Bob never found a phone box on the way home last week, no one could nowadays. At least, not one that was working. So he never won but, no worries, he had had an idea and spent the week up to Friday working on it
--x--x--
Barry had an old brown suit, one he had inherited from his late, unlamented father. With the help of some black paint he had added a fetching check and now the suit looked the image of Mr Spinge’s, if only to the uncritical eyes of Barry. He was deeply proud of what he had done much in the same way as a doting parent is deeply proud of their monstrous offspring. It was just a shame he hadn’t found time to find or make a matching hat but some things cannot be helped.
No TV for him tonight, he is going to meet his beloved, at the stage door after the show. He has a vague idea where the theatre is, so he is giving himself plenty of time to find it.
--x--x--
It is a momentous time in Dot and Alf’s home,
“Why don’t we do something different this week? I have never liked the show, you always fall asleep and we aren’t clever enough to do the puzzle.”
Alf was slightly shocked by Dot revolutionary words but he wasn’t unhappy as he had had the same feelings for quite a while now.
“You know, Dot? You’re right. Get your glad rags on, we’re going out!”
--x--x--
The Big Show Theatre was somewhere deep in Theatreland, so Barry understands. Thus he walks around numerous side-roads deep in the city, each with their own entertainment establishments of varying size, class, purpose and probity. But no Big Show Theatre.
It wasn’t far off showtime and dusk had set in. He will have to give up if he didn’t find the theatre soon. Where were the crowds? The TV cameras? The general air of excitement and exuberance?
Reluctantly, Barry turns about and heads for home, he’d try again next week. Out of the corner of his eye, he spots a narrow road he had previously overlooked, Gaiety Lane. The lane is in a poor state of repair and liberally decorated with the litter of numerous city weekends. But surely a theatre, once The Gaiety he supposes, was down there somewhere and Barry would find what he was looking for, he hoped.
The road was not very long, a cul-de-sac ending in an old brick wall. Tight up against the brick wall was a decaying set of theatre doors, one was ajar, recently forced opened, apparently, for the dislodged litter was yet to dissipate, still forming a miniature mountain ridge.
Barry immediately recognises the Big Show Theatre but had no explanation for its derelict state.
--X--X--
Barry pushes through the door. He recognises what was once the sumptuous, ornate foyer, now with rotting drapes and crumbling plaster mouldings. The foyer is deep and broad, disappearing into the shadows in the increasing gloom.
He walks forward, to one of the auditorium doors, pushes it open and walks through.
The gloom has lifted somewhat here because a large section of the roof has collapsed onto the velvet upholstered seats. On one of the front seats sits a woman who Barry recognises as Lily, a Lily who is without makeup and without life.
In front of her, kneeling as if in supplication, is Bob (not that Barry knows him). He is holding a blood-spattered baseball bat in his hands,
“She wouldn’t speak to me, she wouldn’t even look at me. I had even bought my own Child to impress her but was she interested? Was she hell! I even finished my marriage for her…”
Barry sees the bloody bat, too much blood for the small amount on Lily’s staved in head and, as he scans down her body, he sees an empty syringe still hanging out of Lily’s arm. Overwhelmed with grief and more than a little nausea, Barry sits down beside her,
“She was dead already you never ki…”. Bob’ s Little Child connects with Barry’s head,
“She’s mine!”
Finis.
--x--x--
Many, many miles away, Mr Spinge, Ronnie Whelks or whatever his name is today, is sitting in his luxury office, tucked away in some obscure Caribbean hideyhole. He is talking to his tech assistant, the nearest thing he has to a righthand man,
“I do not think the Big Show has much more life in it, Ramby, we will be getting found out sooner or later. AI is a wonderful thing, what shall we use for next?”
