Sean and Diffy stories contain very strong language.
“It’s easy, you just press this”.
“It can’t be that easy, or everyone would be doing it”.
Listen, fuckw……:
“Have you read the instruction?”
“…………….”
“Sean, you can be such a dick. Where are they?”
“…………….”
“You threw them away, didn’t you?”
“ One of these days I am going to punch your fuckin lights out, you obnoxious little PORG. (person of restricted growth) It’s dead easy. This time next year we’ll be millionaires. Trust me, stumpy. I is right, and you knows I is right.”
“Go on, then”
“What?”
“Make us millionaires.”
“Just a sec.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know how to work it.”
********
Sean and Diffy sat on a bench outside the park, the tiny compact camera perched on the seat between them like an unexploded bomb. Diffy finally summoned up enough courage to pick up the item of 21st century technology. He held it gingerly between his index finger and thumb, and turned it slowly.
“It’s got buttons.”
“I know.”
“And dials.”
“Them, too.”
“Scary shit this, isn’t it, Sean?”
Sean reached across and jabbed randomly at a button. The world exploded.
“Argh! You fuckin idiot. You blinded me. I can’t see. What’ll my mum say?”
“Calm down, Diffy. At least we now know how to work the flash. Come, oh short one. Let us away to the Journal offices. I feel a little promotional inspiration coming on.”
“God help us.”
“Careful.”
“Yes, Sean.”
********
Brian Potter leaned on the counter of the local newspaper, ‘The Journal’, and absently scratched his arse whilst gazing through the large plate glass window into the middle distance. He was too good for this job. He had always wanted to be reporter on one of the national tabloids. He yearned to be there in the thick of the action; to grab the scoop that would catapult him into the spotlight and make him a national treasure. He wanted to hob nob with the gentry whilst sipping Dom Perignon and talking bollocks with the captains of industry. Instead he was propping up the counter of this small town rag, waiting for young Susan to fetch him his bacon and sausage sandwich from Tony the Greek‘s. ‘I hope she remembers the brown sauce.’
The door opened.
“Fuck off, Sean……… morning, Diffy.”
“Why does the garden gnome get a ‘morning’, and I get such an uncalled for rebuttal?”
“Because the garden gnome doesn’t owe me twenty quid. …..No offence, Diffy.”
“None taken, Brian.”
“Shut it, Diffy.”
“Ok, Sean.”
“What can I do you for, gents? Have you arrived on our doorstep with tidings of woe, or are you attempting to scam this honourable establishment out of some of its hard earned?”
“You can be so cynical, Brian. “ Said Sean, feigning hurt and indignation. “ Diffy and I are here to guarantee your meteoric rise into the upper echelons of the publishing industry. How does that grab ya?”
Brian withdrew his hand from down the back of his trousers and folded his arms under his ample belly. He leaned back on the counter, and grinned at the pair through a set of technicolour teeth. “I’m all ears.”
“Are you sure, Brian?” grinned Sean. “You look at least fifty percent stomach to me.”
“The thinnest of thin ice, Sean. Now tell me all about it, or fuck off back to wherever you crawled from.”
“It’s like this, Brian…………………..”
********
Our intrepid pair armed themselves with enough sandwiches to feed a small army, four cans of strong lager to ward off the cold and the compact camera, complete with instruction, which they had found on the mantelpiece under Sean’s mum’s retirement clock. It had all looked Russian to the lads, until they realised it actually was Russian, and they had been viewing the wrong page.
“It’s easy when you know how, isn’t it ,oh tiny tit?”
Diffy scuttled along in Sean’s wake, as the former, now filled with artistic inspiration, strode towards the town centre, and their destiny.
Brian had seemed quite keen on their plan, and had encouraged them to go out, post haste and shoot the shot that would shoot them to stardom and untold wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. (Too many ‘shoots’ don’t you think?)
Diffy finally managed to grab hold of Sean’s arm and pull him to a halt just outside the doors of ‘The Swan‘. “Fancy a pint before we go doing the David Bailey thing?”
“The what?”
“The David Bail…………,. Oh, never mind, Sean. I’ll explain it to you later. Let’s go and grab a couple of beers. I’ll treat you to a bag of pork scratchings.”
“Last of the big spenders.”
“Fuck you, then.”
The inside of The Swan was dark and monotone brown. It was deserted, save for a couple of scallies, who sat huddled in a corner conspiratorially. They looked up as Sean and Diffy walked in, then resumed their whispered conversation.
“What’ll it be lads?” Asked Freda the multi gender barmaid/man. She/he was dressed to kill in a tight fitting pink spandex top, camouflage trousers and Doc Martins. The lads assumed it must have been an early morning dichotomy of taste.
“You’re alright, Fred,” countered Sean, reaching into his plastic carrier bag and retrieving a couple of cans of Special Brew, “we brought or own.”
“It’s Freda, you obnoxious shit, and if you think you are supping your own ale in here, you can fuckin well think again.”
Sean hastily shook his can, aimed it over the bar and pulled the tab. They hit the street just as the screams reached a crescendo. “That was good, wasn’t it, Diffy? I nearly pissed myself laughing.”
“Hilarious, Sean.” Answered Diffy. “Except that now we have nowhere to drink, because you, my amoeba brained compadre have got us banned from every pub in the town. We are outlaws, bereft of watering holes. We are destined to spend the rest of our days drinking Special Brew on the bench outside the crematorium.”
“Fear not, shortarse. This will soon be yesterdays water under the bridge; a forgotten chip paper.”
“What the fuck are you on about, Sean? You sound like Mrs fuckin Malaprop!”
“Who?”
“Mrs Malaprop…You know, Sheridan? The Rivals?.”
“Who?”
“You are fuckin joking aren’t you ,Sean? Tell me you are joking, for fucks sake.”
“Course I’m joking, Diffy, you diminutive wanker. I know what you mean.”
They continued towards the town centre, Diffy at last finding some enthusiasm for the task ahead, and Sean wondering what the fuck a ‘Sheridan’ was.
********
It was market day, and the area outside the Town Hall was a multi coloured confusion; a multi ethnic cacophony of Northwest England proportions.
Sean and Diffy muscled their way between the tightly packed trestle tables, each laden to breaking point with every delectable sweetmeat and pastry imaginable. When they popped out at the other side Sean had managed to pilfer four samosas a couple of lamb pacoras and a rather fetching red and gold scarf. Diffy, on the other hand, had gone for quality rather than quantity, and emerged clutching a one foot high Shilpa Shety doll with retractable hair and a choice of Bollywood’s favourite quotes with the pulling of a cord that appeared to emerge from her arse.
They devoured the pacoras and the samosas, played rude games with Shilpa Shety and walked across the Town Hall square to where a squat building of indeterminate age sat aggressively in a small gap between two plain concrete storage units. ‘The Fleece’
“Why have we come here, Sean? Nobody comes to The Fleece, not if they want to go home with both their ears, anyway. This is the roughest dive this side of the Pennines. I’m not going in there. Last person who went in The Fleece ended up on ‘Crimewatch’ in a series of small plastic carrier bags.”
“It’s a winner, Diffy. We just wait here for the trouble to start, then we take a few shots, sell em to the papers, and Robert’s your father’s brother, we make a fortune.”
“You are way, way thicker than I had you down for, Sean.”
“Hey, dwarf boy, This is going to make me a fuckin fortune, and if you don’t want to be carried along on my wave of success, then just fuck right off,?”
“If taking photographs of wasters falling out of the pub was such a money spinner, everybody would be doing it. Am I right, or am I right?”
“Tell you what you are. You’re a short arsed waste of fuckin time, that’s what you are. Now grab my equipment bag, and prepare to be astonished.”
“You mean this ASDA bag, Sean?”
“Just pick it up….twat.”
********
“Fifty quid a shot.”
“Mm?”
“Fifty quid a picture. Keep up you fuckin dwarf. I reckon the papers will pay fifty quid for each photograph. I saw it in a magazine……”
“What magazine did you see this in, Sean? I mean…….”
“I don’t know what fucking magazine, Diffy, you fuckwit. Does it matter what fuckin magazine? Jesus. Sometimes you stagger me with the lack of depth of your intellect. And stop laughing, or I’ll shove this camera right up your diminutive rectum.”
Sean had finally hit upon the moneymaking scheme of the century. All he had to do was hang around this den of iniquity, and take a few snapshots of the local reprobates as they exited the watering hole in angles ranging from ‘horizontal, face up’, to ‘horizontal, face down’.
The papers paid a fortune for this sort of tosh, nowadays, and it sure beat the shit out of getting a proper job. Sean’s idea of going to The Journal to seek conformation that this plan was, indeed, their gateway to Nirvana had been a stroke of genius. Armed with the junior reporter’s approval, they laid in wait; camera at the ready.
Brian had listened to their plan with rapt concentration. He had made the requisite encouraging noises at the correct points in the diatribe, and had sent them away with a look of glee, and a wicked twinkling of the eye.
Lambs to the slaughter.
********
Sean ducked and dived outside the taproom door. He held the camera to his eye with one hand, and gesticulated wildly with the other.
“What the fuck are you doing, Sean?” asked Diffy, incredulously.
“This is what it’s about, mate. The cut and thrust of street photography. Grabbing that shot; beating a hasty before the Rozzers come.”
“Rozzers?“
“Rozzers.”
“This isn’t the fuckin Sweeney, Sean. This is Adlington on market day. No body has called em the ‘Rozzers’ for 25 years..”
“Get in the groove, Shorty. This time next year……..”
“Yeah, sure, now if we……………Sean! Look!”
The taproom doors of The Fleece burst open, and out tumbled a confusion of arms and legs. One set of which could, from the myriad navy tattoos, be identified as Wee Jimmy, the itinerant Scottish ne’er do well and professional arm wrestler. The accompanying profanities only went to confirm this impression. Wee Jimmy was taking part in his favourite national pastime; rolling around on the floor and beating the shit out of someone.
Sean immediately jumped into the centre of the melee, with Diffy at his shoulder, eager not to miss being a part of this history recording phenomenon.
“Get off me fuckin arm, Diffy!” screamed Sean. “ I can’t see the screen.”
“It’s not on!” shouted Diffy in reply. “The fuckin cameras not on.”
“What?”
“Not on””
“What’s not…………………..!”
Wee Jimmy had regained his feet, and seeing that his opponent was still recumbent, decided to hit the nearest face, which was Sean’s.
Our hero left the floor, and travelled in a horizontal ‘face up’ trajectory until he made contact with the unyielding door of a landrover that appeared to have been parked up some time ago, and was now being used as a communal parts depot. The roof and windows had already been pilfered and the back door and seats had disappeared, but much to Sean’s discomfort, and chagrin, the passenger door appeared to be in remarkably good order.
********
The bruising seemed to have gone down a little, and Sean’s front teeth were settling into a rakish kind of leer by the time they came to be standing outside The Journal, staring at the huge A1 poster that adorned the massive plate glass window. Sean looked past the poster to where Brian Potter leant on the counter, grinning a grin that no right minded man should be allowed to grin.
“You’re a twat, do you know that, Diffy? A sly, backstabbing, sneaky cowardly, shitty little twat.”
“Thanks, Sean. I appreciate that.”
“It’s not funny.”
“It’s hilarious.”
“Ok, it’s a bit funny. How much did you get?”
“Fifty quid.”
“Result.”
“I think so, Sean.”
“Not a bad likeness, is it, Diffy? I think I look like Oliver Reed.”
“I think you look like Oliver Hardy.”
“Fuck you, Diffy.”
They stood in the street looking at the huge black and white poster that portrayed the sad and dishevelled image of a blood spattered youth lying against the rusting door of an ancient landrover.
The words above, and in large attention grabbing capitals read………………….
DRINKING ISN’T FUNNY. THIS COULD BE YOU!
Sean looked down at Diffy. “The camera wasn’t turned on.”
“I caught it as you took off. It fell from your hand; I grabbed it; switched it on, and bang! Fifty quid from your local newspaper for an exclusive image of one of Adlington’s finest in one of Adlington’s finest’s finest hour.”
“Fifty quid, did you say?”
“I most serpently did.”
“What time is it, my digital dwarf?”
“12 o‘clock.”
“You know what that means, don’t you?”
“I serpently do, Sean.”
Sean turned to face Brian. He grinned a crooked grin and raised two fingers, wiping the smile off the fat boy’s face.
“The pub?”
“The pub.”
