What's happened to the CPT?

[Jah Lush]

Spot on HonaloochieB. I was thinking just the same. We maybe need a Nettie in there somewhere. Over to you Ted Max. I'm hooked.

[Keef]

It actually reminded me of THIS.

[david_carnell]

Keef, I think I want to kill myself.

Ted, ditto. But bravo. It's like Mark from Peep Show in his 50s.

[Ant]

Wonderful stuff Mr Max. And DC, I can see where you're coming from with Mark from Peep Show only I suspect there'd still be a smattering of history and Nazis in there if it were him.

[Ted Max]

Lunchtime. "Medallions of Lincolnshire Pork, prune and ale sauce, creamy celeriac mash - ?13.95" reads the menu in the window of the old Lord Palmerston. You eat your bacon roll (Danish Pork, also with a brown and fruity sauce, you note) as you head back up Northcross Road.

You can feel the wind about your collar, where the barber's number two grade has exposed your neck. You remember a few tiny flakes of dandruff, no more than is normal, surely, falling onto the dark nylon cape, and not being able to decide whether to shrug them off. Perhaps doing so would draw more attention. You weren't going to go for such a low grade, but hadn?t objected.

Staying on the opposite side of the road from Clippers, you look over as you walk on. Two in the chairs, four more waiting. Probably three customers an hour, dozens of heads in a day. Hundreds in a month.

Step into the pub at 12:45, newspaper in hand, and you smell furniture polish, disinfectant, recycled dust spumed from an ageing hoover. Saturday morning smells. Mum humming a tune; Dad studying the form.

"Got your hair cut?" she asks, reaching for a glass.

"Yeah. Got a haircut. Had to be done."

You rub your neck in apologetic explanation, noticing afterwards the forgotten, familiar smell of talcum powder on your hands. You decide it?s time to do something about the back bedroom.

[Sue]

You got a publisher, Ted Max??

:)

[The Goose]

Sue Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> You got a publisher, Ted Max??

>

> :)

yes , he's very good isn't he , lol.

[HonaloochieB]

"You can feel the wind about your collar, where the barber's number two grade has exposed your neck. You remember a few tiny flakes of dandruff, no more than is normal, surely, falling onto the dark nylon cape, and not being able to decide whether to shrug them off. Perhaps doing so would draw more attention. You weren't going to go for such a low grade, but hadn?t objected".

This is my favourite line, so far. Is the narrator passively accepting what is given to him, or is he deliberatly or perhaps subconsciously building up a sense of grievance against an individual, or the world in general.

At the same time it comes across as the most poignant acceptance of his lot in life.

Genuinely when I read it, it took me straight to one of my favourite lines in a song. Jimy Webb's 'Wichita Lineman' as sung by Glen Campbell.

Doesn't the line 'I know need a small vacation, but it don't look like rain' create the same sense of melancholy as TM's.

[Ted Max]

The third pint swills in your stomach as you stand to leave, an ominous slop of bilge water from below decks.

You?ve made the short list in your mind. Bin liners. Tape. A couple of plastic boxes with snap-on lids. In the hardware shop the lady on the till is calling everybody darling, and you get yours too as you hand over your money.

The shop has about a dozen types of drain clearer on its shelves ? designed to lodge years? worth of impacted soap powder, cooking fat, hair and skin from East Dulwich's furred arteries. No handy point-and-shoot, leave for 30 minutes and rinse, solution for Dad, just a lingering, breathless end. The doctor had checked your levels, and told you your ?bad? cholesterol was likely, genetically, to rise as you got older. He gave your Mum a dietary leaflet, which she had looked at in bewilderment, its five-a-day cheerfulness confirming in red-on-green 14pt Comic Sans her role as vital accessory in the murder of her husband. You got your levels checked a year later, without telling Mum, and hadn?t been back. Neither of you had mentioned the leaflet again.

The P13 passes the old chip shop opposite the Police Station, a petrified pot plant still visible through the dust-smeared window. You hug your shopping to your chest as if for warmth, and remember that you?d overheard a nature programme on the pub TV once, about desert plants that can lie dormant for years until it next rains. ?This miracle of nature,? the voiceover had said, ?brings new life where none had seemed possible, raising the...?

?Turn it over, Dave, results are on,? a voice had said from the front bar; and in the Crystal Palace Tavern, on a late Saturday afternoon, the miracle was postponed.

[Ted Max]

Sunday lunch. Busiest time of the week for most pubs. But not for yours. For you, only the smell of cheap meat frying in the live-in staff flat upstairs, the midday pint pulled with weary pity. You like to see how long you can stay hungry for, before the beer takes over. Usually it is long after the blinds and big screen have been lowered in the front bar for the football.

You?d taken Mum out for lunch once, soon after Dad had gone. The large, bare dining room of a large, bare pub fronting up to a busy junction. An hour?s wait not-hearing the language from the kitchen, not-noticing the stained table. An hour that had fragmented your mother?s hard-won appetite. You hadn?t ordered pudding.

And now. Four labeled bin liners by the front door: dresses + skirts, blouses etc, coats, shoes + bags. None of the bags is full.

Lying on the bed are two yellow plastic boxes. In one, a few framed photos and two photograph albums, labeled 1967-1973, and 1973 - .

You?ve kept one frame back. A Christmas Day shot of Young Mum, a sherry simper under a teetering beehive, holding Dad?s arm. Mum?s looking at the camera, but Dad is looking at Mum, a thin curl to his lips. In her belly, the secret source of their pride.

Welcome to Super Sunday on Sky Sports.

[The Goose]

the return of the Max

[mightyroar]

love it.

you like to see how long you can stay hungry for.................., lump to the throat!

and was that pub the palmerston pre success maybe?

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

Oh for goodness' sake, tedmax, it's far too early to start blubbing. I demand a mascara warning at the beginning of your posts.

[SeanMacGabhann]

oh my... and I'm supposed to work after reading that???

[Ted Max]

Back from work on the 185. You decide to get off a couple of stops early and walk the rest. Northcross Road and he?s sitting outside The Drum. Tanned fingers, curled round a perspiring Coca-Cola glass, loosely scissor a cigarette. A tattoo disappears under a white cuff.

He greets you, indicating his handiwork from Saturday with his eyebrows. ?Alright?? he says.

You see yourself stop, chat, sit drinking Coke outside, smoking. The other you keeps walking, heading for the safe embrace of crimson velveteen, the soft knock of a full glass on polished mahogany.

The clothing charity whose flyers litter the shared hallway hasn?t collected. The bin bags still queue at the end of the path. One of them has a slash near the bottom, a smear of brown cotton spilling out into the street. You stuff it back, but leave the bags on the path. They can?t come back inside now.

You don?t always reheat the beans, or toast the bread, but tonight you do. Wide awake, you lie on Mum?s old, sheetless bed. Just before the alarm goes off, you creep back to your own room. You meet your Coke-drinking self coming in the front door. The shame is mutual.

[TillieTrotter]

Enthralling Ted.

[Ted Max]

Christmas morning. A wrap of flowers in his hand and a slick of oil in his hair, this morning's pomade mingling with last night's smoke and whisky. Same old work clothes leavened with his one bright-coloured tie, a carnation in the buttonhole. "Happy Christmas, Mum" he would say, though she was your mum, and his wife.

A great show of carving the turkey, jokes about legs and breasts. Mockingly sawing away at an over-crisp roast potato. Mum's streaky bacon complexion flaring in flames thrown by candles showing the wear of their fourth Christmas on duty.

Today the flowers are for Mum again. But your hair, newly cut, smells only of the wax you had nodded your assent to in the barber's chair yesterday. And when you say "Happy Christmas, Mum," it's OK because she actually is your Mum, and no longer his wife.

The flowers sit next to the urn, waiting for you to leave. So you do. You haven't had lunch today, and have made no plans to do so.

The sign outside the pub says "Open Christmas Day, 3-6pm." You push open the double glass doors. "Happy Christmas," the barmaid says, "escaping from the family for a moment, are you?"

"Yeah," you say. "Trying my best."

[candj]

Only just saw this thread. Fantastic!

[Ted Max]

Your pub is open past midnight this New Year?s Eve, one of its sporadic efforts to open itself out beyond its regular cast list. People shout slightly louder than they have to over the music. Jools Holland mouths silently to the front bar.

In the lounge, you stay in your old seat as the old year ends.

And now you are not alone because he has asked if you mind if ?we? join you: ?we? being a small group of his friends, one of whom you recognise from the barber?s. He leans in to speak to you, and you can feel his breath on your face. He's only asking how your Christmas was, but you find your mouth can't form the replies you are looking for.

"Are you OK?" he asks. You tell him you're fine, and he takes his hand off your arm, wishes you a Happy New Year.

Once, at a primary school disco, a girl asked you to dance, and you had started crying. You told her you had suffered a ?family bereavement?, and she gave you a puzzled look but kept tapping her feet on the gym floor, fixing you to the polished wood with her kindness.

The thin air of the new year can?t support your breath; the road home stretches up the hill in empty mockery. You step back inside and order another drink. Nobody seems to have noticed your departure or re-entry. In the front bar there is some dancing on the unpolished wooden floor. You stay at the bar with your drink, and watch. Every pub in the city has a face like yours in it.

[annaj]

Does anyone else do a silent, internal, cheer each time they see this thread pop back to the top with Ted Max post?

Definitely my forum highlight.

[Jah Lush]

Love it. The final sentence does it for me. "Every pub in the city has a face like yours in it." Good work Ted.

[cait]

I'm so sorry you had rubbish time. Very funny though. I'm very grateful to the staff i encountered at the Lord palmerston last saturday,more than that they restored my faith in human nature!Because.......We'd just had a horrible experience at Le Chardon,so horrible that after merely complaining that our food was cold we were ejected onto the street!We went into the Palmerston automatically and in shock,. The staff were incredibly sweet, the Palmerston even produced a pudding with a birthday candle in it, they showed great innotiative and I think great compassion.The food we had was delicious. My birthday celebrations had just been specularly ruined at Le Chardon, my partner was completely traumasised but the girls with the cake really cheered us up.We thought how happy and contended they all seemed and what a marked difference to our disaster of evening at the Cruella da Ville stop a few doors down. I'm quite happy posting my vengence, my partner however is still mortified however the loveliness of the staff at the Palmerston stays with us.We will definitely return, will try the full menu and keep you posted.

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

Cait, you've now moaned on at least three threads about Le Chardon. Get over it and stop hijacking threads.

[woofmarkthedog]

Ohh Ted Max.......

I"d consider licking your balls ......after my own of course

You is a wordsmiff.....Woooof

[Brendan]

Tuesday morning and you scuttle out of Sainsbury?s head down when you see him, drinking coffee with the other officers. Your heart races, you and mum haven?t spoken to him since he left for university leaving you both behind like dead memories.

(Apologies for messing with your plot there Ted, I couldn?t resist.)