Book 1 of the
Call Me Eddie series is
available to buy now from
amazon
and other good bookshops. ISBN 978-1-4116-9606-8
oOo
Set at the end of 2001, this is the story of a man who starts his mid-life crisis early, by mistaking his own lack of ambition for deliberate persecution by an unknown agency. Or so it seems.
Can you imagine always arriving at the bus stop just before a bus arrives... and having exactly the right change in your pocket?
If every little thing went your way, would you ever notice?
Maybe if you suddenly lost the power. Maybe if someone took it from you. Maybe if they were out to get you.
This is Eddie's story: he had the moss and didn't even know it. Now that it's gone he has to find out why... and how to get it back!
Chapter 1
"This is not a test." concluded the voice of the Tannoy.
It was a test, obviously. He knew it and the rest of the staff knew it. How? Because everyone had been sent a memo telling them that there would be a fire drill sometime in the next 24 hours.
"Ah, how efficient." he thought, tossing the script onto the desk by the microphone and making his own way to the nearest fire exit. One of these days he would just set the alarms off himself and see how bloody efficient things were then ... well, he'd like to, but he probably wouldn't actually do it.
Outside, selected members of staff were standing at the four designated collection points (lamp-posts), surrounded by small groups of people, ticking off names on their lists. Everyone seemed quite happy. They stood about, got ticked off, and then started chatting cheerily.
"Just like clockwork." he muttered to no-one in particular.
Looking around he couldn't see his boss anywhere, which was a shame because "general manager and assistant manager are mutually self-accountable". The phrase had stuck in his mind as a classic. Having accounted for himself he made a mental note that the general manager was being mutually accounted as elsewhere and promptly threw it in his mental bin. Unfortunately his mental bin was full, with small notes like "what happens if the list-holders are absent or can't find their list in the unlikely event of fire breaking out without first giving a day's notice?" and biggies like "and what if the cinema actually has hundreds of customers in ... arsehole!", so the note fell back out.
"I suppose I'll have to find him." he said out loud, again to no-one in particular.
"Who?" piped out Elaine Smith nervously, looking down at her list and hoping she hadn't blundered.
Since he hadn't been looking quite directly at her, he didn't immediately register that she was talking to him. The resulting pause made Elaine slip from mere nervousness towards paranoia but she saved herself almost immediately by noticing that all five of the people on her list were indeed still standing right next to her.
"What..." started Elaine, hoping that a completely different question might help shed some light on what was now only a slightly confusing situation.
"The general manager, Elaine, is not accounted for." he said, not waiting for her to finish in case she came up with a question which would just prolong the agony a bit further.
"Oh, I think he went looking for you Mr B.", said a voice behind him.
Turning his head he replied "Thanks Jeremy. I guess we ought to wait here until he finds me then ... tea anyone?"
Ten minutes and a cup of tea later the bells stopped and the cinema staff began making their way back inside. How thoughtful of his boss to provide a cuppa to warm the troops in the car-park on this chilly November day.
"Now that's what I call a plan Jeremy. Dissuade the staff from returning to the building too early, or nipping off home, by setting up a tea bar in the car-park. Brilliant." he concluded with a smile.
"I guess, if there's a real fire, we'll have to warm our hands on the flames." he added ironically.
There'd still been no sign of his boss, apart from the bells stopping, which must have been him since everyone else was outside in the cold sipping hot tea and wishing they had `risked their lives' just a little bit by stopping to grab their coat on the way out. Starting back towards the main entrance he wondered what would meet him at the door. Had the general manager really been scouring the building for him these last ten minutes or just convincing himself that everyone had really got out?
Stepping up to the main doors he was still looking out for his boss when his "warm our hands on the flames" jibe popped back into his head. Actually, it not so much popped as crashed: like an echo that somehow manages to get amplified and comes back all full of itself. Suddenly he was unspeakably angry with himself for saying that.
"It's the sort of thing Sylvia would say." he thought, shuddering and stopping in his tracks.
A young assistant projectionist called Joe Franks bumped into the back of him. Before he could say "Excuse me Mr B", whilst thinking "you idiot", one of the fire extinguishers by the door went off. The hapless soul who'd been inspecting it, mild mannered janitor Henry Wilks, suddenly realised that not-only did he not know what to do when told to "check all the extinguishers" he was clueless about how to proceed faced with a red metal cylinder violently spraying water over his colleagues.
With no off-switch, whichever way he turned seemed to make things worse. Every piece of furniture and decor around him seemed to have been specially placed to deflect water right at someone. Finally deciding that the floor was the only safe bet, he grimaced with resignation as the remainder of the water splashed over his own trousers and shoes.
"That was lucky" said Joe to Eddie, smiling in the realisation that they were now the only two people in the vicinity who could be described in any sense as dry.
"Luck?" said Eddie, "in my experience, there's no such thing as luck." he continued, quoting his all time hero Obi-Wan Kenobi ... the Alec Guinness portrayal that is, the jury was still out on young Ewan McGregor in his mind.
Splashing across the carpet to the dejected Henry, Eddie had no trouble producing a comforting smile, unlike the rest of the staff, who were either wearing scowls or smirks, depending on how wet they were.
"No worries Henry. At least we know they work now." he said, winking.
"Thanks Mr B. I'll get it mopped up. Do you want me to, err, check the other extinguishers now?" asked Henry, his voice tailing off rapidly, in hope more than expectation.
"I think we can leave that until later Henry" said Eddie reassuringly, "and ... just count `em up eh, no need to actually inspect the contents next time." he whispered, winking again.
Returning to his office, a small room used by several people who liked to think of it as theirs, he picked up the fire drill script again.
"One. The General Manager shall determine the appropriate time for the test and shall operate the alarm from a position of his choosing." read Eddie to himself.
"Why does he insist on calling it a test?" he wondered.
"I'm sure I wasn't the only person to point out that everyone else on the entire planet calls it a fire-drill or a fire-practice. But no, Jeff `Sylvia' Stevenson says it's a fire-test and that's that. As long as he gets his little procedure down on paper and filed away then he's happy. Doesn't matter if it actually works well or not. I bet he's in his office now plotting average exit times on some poxy chart."
Realising that the red mist was rising, he stopped himself and tried to think of something more constructive. This had been happening a lot lately. In fact, ever since Sylvia had come in as General Manager. He was bitter but not because he hadn't got the job. Well, not quite. He hadn't even applied for the job, mainly because everybody knew they would bring someone in from outside. He could have applied though, and made them at least consider him. Looking at Sylvia's performance over the last two months he knew now that he could do better.
"Why didn't I apply?" he thought for the umpteenth time, staring at the fire-drill (test) sheet (script) that Mr Stevenson (Sylvia) had handed him the day before. No answer came. Instead, the door opened and in walked Jeff Stevenson.
"Come in!" thought Eddie.
"Ah, Eddie." said Jeff, looking directly at Eddie and smiling. In a tribute to all the management courses he'd been on, Jeff then forced himself to pause for just long enough to allow Eddie to speak, if he'd wanted to, before saying "How do you think it went?"
Eddie had been on a management course too, once, and despite the impression he always tried to give people, largely to avoid getting sent on one again, he had actually quite enjoyed it. Not so much at the time, the course had talked as much bollocks as sense, but that was still 50% sense. Afterwards it had really come into its own, as Eddie realised that most managers have a special ability to cling to the bollocks bits and completely forget the sensible stuff.
As if to prove the point, Jeff then changed his open question into a loaded one by adding "I thought it was great. All out in under five minutes!" before Eddie could speak.
"What was the target?" asked Eddie, as if he didn't know and, more impressively, as if he cared.
"Erm, 7 point 5 minutes." replied Jeff, almost gleefully, checking his notes to make sure he was right.
"Great." said Eddie, at the same time nodding in an attempt to avoid the slip into sarcasm.
"How is ..." he started but felt a smile coming on so he bailed out, putting his hand over his mouth as if he was about to cough.
"Sorry. How is that calculated exactly, seven and a half minutes?"
"Well, that's a good question," replied Jeff, moving right into the office and perching himself on the edge of Eddie's desk, "what you do is..."
Eddie wasn't listening of course. He pushed his chair back a bit, notionally to give his boss a bit more space to sift through his printouts, but actually because he really didn't like being near him. The noise washed over him and he displayed his mastery of the great human art of saying "oh", "yes" or nodding in the right places without listening to a word.
As Jeff's tepid version of evacuation dynamics drew to a close, Eddie's mind drifted back from thoughts of his own self-thwarted ambitions to the day's films ahead.
"Does that make sense?" concluded Jeff, his positivity dented slightly by the realisation that his figures were slightly wrong because he'd counted some of the staff twice.
"Perfectly." lied Eddie, "Err, we open in 15 minutes so I have to go I'm afraid." he added.
"Yes, of course." agreed Jeff, looking at his watch.
As Eddie got up he realised that Jeff was sitting on the one piece of paper that he needed. Nothing more suitable than the obvious "Excuse me, you're sitting on my running order" could rise above his disgust at the thought of picking up a piece of warm paper so he said nothing. He would have left the room first if Jeff hadn't suddenly sprung to his feet and almost dashed out, saying "Things to do." as he went.
Eddie looked at the running order on his desk. Next to it, undisturbed by its author's backside, was the fire-drill script. A feeling grabbed him. He picked up the pristine A4 page, screwed it up into a ball, opened the window and threw it out. The window, being more of a vent than a viewport, was 6 feet off the ground so Eddie couldn't see through it without standing on something. He was only 5'11'' but he always claimed to be 6 foot: well he was in his shoes, if anyone ever asked him how tall he was when he happened to be barefoot then he would say 5'11''.
Eddie had never stood on something to look through the window, and he didn't now either. He didn't know what was out there, the shape of the building was complicated so he wasn't even sure which direction his room faced. He felt no need to know about the view or the fate of the fire-test script. He'd trusted his feelings, everything would be fine.
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Eddie Shore !