CHAPTER 3
I was still on late turn, of course, so she bullied me into getting the tourer out of the shed and loading it with panniers.

“It’s not fair, you’re on a bloody ting-tong road bike”

“Yeah, well the amount you’ve clearly spent on booze you could have had a titanium bike yourself, and it’s not me that needs the exercise. Get this: I am not taking you cold turkey, but you are not drinking at home till you are well again. You’re coming out of that burrow if I have to tie you to the Trice and drag you, even if it means a night on the piss in company”

We rode through the town to the supermarket, the Super Galaxy feeling sedate after so much time spent on the road bike, and I kept missing gear changes without the STI levers. I mean, bar end shifters are on the tourer for reliability, but I still kept trying to twist the brake levers to shift. Bollocks.

We locked the bikes up by the entrance, Ginny doing her usual individual thing with a pair of “street cuffs”, a bike lock that looks like a large pair of handcuffs and is ideal for winding up those members of the public with their nose up their arse, as she puts it.

“Too busy smelling their own farts to see the life around them”

Ginny is not slow in sharing her opinions, though sometimes she has been known to exercise tact, as well as her customers. She was, back then, running the fitness side of one of a chain of gyms, which gave her scope to keep her own fitness up as well as both eye up the women and pick faults in the clientele.

“I mean, they live twenty minutes away by fucking bike, so they drive here and then pay to sit on a stationary one for the same twenty minutes! Then they do their make-up before they sweat! Tossers”

She had paced me steadily to the shops, watching for any obvious signs of hung over wobble, and did not look happy when we had eventually finished the ritual of locking and removing all the extras.

“You are riding far, far too easily after last night. You start cutting back today. Get a big trolley. It’s dhal time”

Ginny is also a bloody vegetarian, though thankfully not a vegan, so she has very direct views about meat, and pulses, and tannin, and caffeine, though she does drink more tea than she ‘knows’ is good for her. I started at the toiletries end, as I was reasonably sure that she had not come packed for a long stay, and she just nodded in recognition as she tossed some sanitary supplies, shower stuff and a deodorant into the trolley. Next were the vegetable aisles. If it grew, apart from potatoes, she took it off the shelf. Tomatoes. Lots of toms, and fresh garlic, all sorts of leafy crap, and dried beans and chick peas and shit. She expected me to eat it?

She did relent on the meat front, though, at least to the extent of some lean chicken.

“You need to take in some protein, otherwise your body will think it’s going into fast mode, and start piling on even more lard. Now, I want a promise. You have a staff canteen, don’t you? Usual fried crap, pies, bacon rolls? Here’s the deal. You can eat shit twice a week from now on, but only twice, so if you have pie and chips one day, that’s a kebab or a curry you can’t have that week. Got me?”

“You mean I can’t have curries? How the fuck am I supposed to survive?”

“You can have curries, but I will cook them. Oh, yeah, got any decent knives, apart from those saw-toothed horrors in the block in your kitchen?”

Ginny and knives. She isn’t really scary, she just knows what she likes. And she likes knives, particularly Japanese wonders of silky sharpness.

We filled the panniers, and began the laden (for me) ride home, one last item strapped to my rear carrier, a set of digital scales. So much money, so much crap that I would probably bin once she was gone. I mean, what the hell were pinto beans? And why?

We spent a while unloading, and Ginny insisted on setting up the scales and taking a first reading. She was shocked, and I was a little surprised.

“Nineteen stone fucking twelve! At least it’s not twenty, mate, what pressure are you running your tyres at?”

“About 110”

“Kinnell. Look, mate, when’s your next weekend off?”

“Ten days or so”

“Still got your touring kit, or have you sold it for booze yet? Sorry, that was a bit brutal, but I’ve seen this before. You start off by cutting away your friends, you pare your life down into nothing but work and sleep, then work goes, and then you do. Well, not this time. Not again…..”

Her voice trailed away, and the looked through me into some other place for a second, then shook herself and grinned.

“Some turkey ham and coleslaw for lunch, and I’ll make up your meal for work. Tonight is junk-free, got that? I’ll pop home and get the Brommie, and then I can get to work from here. Got space in your shed for the Thai Bride?”

Who else could get away with calling their best bike ‘Ladyboy’?

“And look, Adam, we’re having a zombocalypse practice a week on Saturday, setting off from Hyde Park at seven thirty. One of the lads has found exactly the right place for a camp out, and we have a friendly landowner. You won’t believe it, but it’s actually called Crazies Hill”

“You are taking the piss!”

“Well, we looked for ‘Dawn of the Deadville’ or ‘Flesheatington’, but the closest we could come up with was Braintree, and who the fuck would want to go there?”

She softened a little. “Tell me you still have the tent and stuff, mate. You can get pissed that night if you need to, but among friends, OK? Back on track, Adam, till you can tell me what it is that has fucked you over.”

She rode with me to the cop shop, and then continued on to Brighton, and I am sure the mad bitch took an eastward detour just to do Ditchling. At least she wasn’t on the bloody fixie. I knew she would be back before I was, even so.

Once more a run of the mill shift, until the bloody fingerprint system broke down and we had to go to the old-fashioned slab and roller. Messy, horribly messy. It was fights, ASBO violation and shoplifting that afternoon and evening. What a stupid term, it’s theft, a theft we all bloody pay for in the end in higher prices. The shops pass on their losses, and add a bit more for themselves, and we all get screwed, all except the thieving little chav bastards who never pay for anything anyway. Me, cynical? Ruth brought in a gobby little shit, who knew all of his rights, yeah? She’d caught him pissing in the park by County Mall, and he had, like, decided to, like, tell her about natural justice , yeah, because he was a student at Central Sussex, yeah?

I sighed. Search of person, into the cell, an hour tops, and he would want his mum. I put the phone to one side, and after he was locked away I asked her.

“Kirsty, why the fuck didn’t you just send him home with a bollocking?”

“Sarge, I tried, but he pissed down my leg”

“You’re kidding…”

“Nope, I went to tell him to fuck off, and he turned to look at me, and it sort of came round as well…and all over my fucking leg”

Oh bugger. “Police caution?”

“If we can get away with it. Has he cried for mummy yet?”

“Not yet, I’ve got the phone ready for him, though”

The thieving shits were different. They had their own shark ready for a call, what a surprise. I wondered f he was paid for waiting time. Jim the skipper stopped by to see if there were any review problems, and I mentioned the chav’s brief.

“It’s a bugger, Adam. We know he knows, but unless he’s a complete fool, we have to let him in on the interview. Bit of a fucker, but that’s the job.”

So, I signed the mercenary turd in, and I signed him out, and justice was seen to be done. Whether it was, of course, was a different matter.

Ginny was waiting when I got back, the Brompton parked in a corner of the living room.

“So, have you been a good little bear?”

“If you mean did I stick to your fucking hummus and celery, yes”

“Well, that’s two of us who have had a shit day, then. Bedtime”

She insisted on sleeping with me once more, which produced a set of feelings I couldn’t get easily straight, but it was better than I had had for months. I got off quicker than I normally did, until the dead baby came to call.