Auctions/Donations - red button theatre and film workers' co-operative

Auctions/Donations - red button theatre and film workers' co-operative

The Christmas Bus

I knew things would be different this year!

It was the nativity scene on the bus stop that did it.

They couldn't for the life of them get the donkey on the No 1 Bay Circle anti-clockwise.

"Has he got a Concessionary Pass?" the driver cried.

As a quiet woman in a blue burkha floated to the back of the bus.

Joseph fiddled with his change and placed his holy-spirit level in the baggage area.

"Exact money only it says. Look Pal, give unto Caesar what is Caesar's and give unto Cardiff Bus what is Cardiff Bus's".

The doors shut abruptly on three panting wise men, Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist.

"This is a Christ-mass bus! Can't they read?"

Mother Mary is heavy with child and it will be touch and go whether they make it to the Heath in time.

"You might have to give birth in the C.R.I love!"

"The Royal Infirmary is a bit of a stable now but beggars can't be choosers eh!"

"I hope your waters don't break cos I've just tidied up the bus back at the depot".
"Herod will have my guts for garters if it comes back a mess again".

Aramaic, Polish, Hebrew and Welsh filled the night air with expectation.

"Crikey there's a crowd here to meet you."

"All right, take care now!"

Jostled, pushed and cursed, Joseph and Mary struggle through the shopping bags.

Jo is doubled over by a weapon marked 'Ann Summers' and Mary is recommended to get a new outfit by a well meaning but hideous personal shopper.

They take refuge in a grubby corner of a shop recess.

"Wasters! Druggies! Psychos!"

"Why don't they get a job Daddy just like you?"

Silent Night sung through a plastic toy microphone

"Big Issue Mate?"

Lights Dim 

Front Page of the Echo, Boxing Day Edition

BABY FOUND ABANDONED IN ST MARY'S STREET

Police to investigate.

Teyrnged i Sparky/Tribute to Sparky

Ruabon's Roy of the Rovers

gets shafted again by

the men with money.

He keeps them in the Prem last season against

the Millionaires

who shafted him before.

Marc ap Mabon Llew

Sparky the Lion Heart

is poked and pulled and pushed

by suits with chequebooks

Al-Fayed slandered you and

Match of the Day undermined

you last Saturday by parading your

urbane successor.

Remember this 'Son of Ruabon Red Brick'

They never scored goals and tackled like you did! 

Raise your chiselled chin, brawd!

Fe Godi di eto!

You will Rise again.



A Game to Remember!

I was 14 years of age and a prisoner in a concentration camp in North Wales, a pupil in a public school. The above game was played at the Racecourse, Wrexham where I would bunk off games on Saturday afternoon and go and see Wrexham play. This day we (the Welshies) were listening to our Transistor Radios and could not believe the result. The crackling made the goals sound more special somehow.

The exact make and model of Transistor Radio that I was packing that day  (PYE)

Games like this do not happen now and it is very unlikely that a game between Wales and England will ever throw up a scoreline like this again. Now we've drawn England in the European Championships in France, let's hope for a repeat performance of the one above. #YsbrydWrecsam 

SocialMe says I am spiritual and compassionate and talk about mental health, literature, and christianity.

SocialMe says I am spiritual and compassionate and talk about mental health, literature, and christianity.

Postcard (A Short Story)

Postcard

(A Ken Frane Mystery)

“In my experience, those who beg for mercy seldom deserve it”. The body of a man of Slavic features lay just behind the ornately carved posts leading to the public park. Place: Penarth, South Wales, Time: 8.40am. The body would not be moved or discovered for another two hours with early morning passers by believing it to be someone left over from a Wedding Reception at the Windsor Hotel, the night before. The Green Copper Roof of the Victorian Pier glinted a spectrum of light on to the fishermen taking up their positions at the end. Flasks opened and sandwiches eaten early. Another bright and beautiful Saturday morning to the casual observer but darker forces were at play in the avenues and alleyways of Grangetown, a mile to the East of Penarth. The No 29 dropped Ken Frane off at the Black and White Cafe, coughing up last night’s cigar before ordering a Full Breakfast without the Tomatoes. Ken was a throwback to an earlier Cardiff. His 35 years spent as a policeman, detective, security guard and now gumshoe or private detective which was embossed and smudged on his business card. One such card was pinned, now yellowing on Toni's cork board.

“Ken sit down, I bring it over. You want bread n butter?”

Ken nodded and slumped into his seat by the window. Another week without a job, another week spent watching the cheap porn trailers on You Tube. Titillation was the order of the day. Food was just something functional like sex. The breakfast would pass through his digestive system and shake its head at the mess of an ulcer lying at the bottom. Ken placed his new Half Corona next to the Sugar Container. At least he'd have something to look forward to. Out of the corner of his eye, as Toni was moving from the hatch to the cutlery tray, he saw a Refuse Collection Cart turn left by the old library. The guys sitting in the cab, to a man looked like Eastern Europeans. Like London, all of Britain’s major cities had tendered out its refuse collection to private contractors and like all businessmen, they had gone for the cheapest labour who at this moment in time were former refugees and asylum seekers from the old Yugoslavia. The War crimes tribunals were happening in The Hague and although the 1990’s had seen Ken fall from Detective to Security Guard in one fell swoop of a Chief Inspector’s pen; he had not been blind to the images coming out of Bosnia. Those images of Serb soldiers sitting astride lorries and wagons deserting Muslim areas. The refuse wagon passed a woman wearing a Burkha on her way to the library. It passed close to the pram she was pushing. She faltered, looked back and carried on.

“There you go Kenny Boy, another of my finest specials.

You working now?”

“Been quiet Tony,”

“Not enough murders for you eh?”

“There a bit high stakes for me now”.

“What you do den”?

“Mostly surveillance, tracing relatives, missing persons”.

“But you ain’t got a car!

“I get there in the end Toni; Cardiff Bus does its best”

Tony smiled and shook his head, moving over to the corner of the café to wipe a few tables.

“Here look at this Ken, one of dose rubbish men have left a postcard. You want it. It looks nice”. Tony hands it to Ken as he goes back to the kitchen and there is a picture of Dubrovnik. He flips it over catching some brown sauce off the plate and sees an old stamp, that looks like President Tito and the writing in an old ink pen in what appeared to be Serbo-Croat.

Ken waves a salute of farewell to Toni and lights up, before the door has a chance to close behind him. Over to the old library, dodging the articulated lorries on Penarth Road and in to see Jean.

“Hya Ken Love, Western Mail’s over there”.

“How are you Jean?”

“The usual Ken, overworked and underpaid”.

Someone shouts shush from the far corner! Jean shushes back. Ken smiles and sits to read the headlines. His eyesight was not what it used to be.

George, the other librarian who is Scottish comes in with two teas. He shouts over to Ken!

“I’ve just had one thanks’ mate.”

George comes over and sits next to Ken.

Ken looks up and smiles.

“I still can’t understand why you swopped bonny Scotland for down here.”

“Women problems Ken and I was also a big fan of Dylan Thomas”

“Swansea is that way”

“This’ll do me, I can do a day trip from here on the Shuttle.” George pauses and looks at Ken with a mixture of pity and what seemed like anger.

“You’re not doing yourself any favours, living like this.”

Ken flinched “Living like what George, I’m only reading the Western Mail”

“Precisely, it’s no reading matter for a thinking man like yourself. No,cooked breakfasts and cigars. It’s no healthy.”

“I don’t have a wife, the last one left me, remember.”

“Aye I do remember, lovely Lisa, shame that, what did happen?”

“She just got bored, like everyone else”.

Police sirens travel up Penarth Road and then an Ambulance.

A small crowd had gathered at the gates of Alexandria Park and a dog was about to cock its leg when it was startled by the Police Sirens. The Fishermen had laid down their rods and were making their way across the road.

“Hey George, where’s the languages section?”

“Ah about time you went on holiday!”

“What on tax credits?”

“Over there behind the lending machine”.    

“Good thing I’m not on holiday, I wouldn’t be able to get home with the Volcanic Ash everywhere, I hear half of Dinas Powys is stuck at Alicante Airport.”

“Aye what with their banks and now their volcanoes, Iceland is becoming a right royal pain in the arse and we’d never much fussed over it before”.

Ken picked up a few books, Portugese, French, Italian for Dummies, aha a very old and tattered copy of Serbo-Croat made simple. This’ll do, something to pass the time of day, thought Ken.

The lending machine bleeped and gurgled as Ken swiped his bar code, another Police Car went past.

“you’d have no hope of getting an ice-cream from that van, it was going too fast. Happy reading Ken, here have this apple. It’ll keep the Doctor away for another day”.

George's farewell made Ken feel as if the world hadn't abandoned him completely.

Ken still had a few friends on the force, those that would still talk to him, that is. Ken had spent the last ten years trying to justify his actions of that night but whichever way he stretched and spanned it, he couldn’t get away with the fact that it was a miscarriage of justice.

Walking in to Butetown Police Station half an hour later after catching the No8, Ken went straight through the  waiting area and waved his book at the Duty Officer. Ken passed by where his old office would have been. How appropriate he thought that it was now the ladies toilet.

Detective Inspector Lewis Davies eyes shot up to the ceiling and his vision stayed there a moment longer than was necessary and Ken told him so.

“Ken, I'm looking forward to my retirement and you visiting at all hours is not going to allow for an easy passage back into civvy street”.

“Christ, it was ten years ago man, Is the old witch still going on about it?”

“She has her moments yes. So what can I do for you today”? Ken tosses the postcard from the black and white over the table.

“Been on holiday have you?”

“Look at the Stamp!”

“President Tito, Ken these are two a penny down down Jacob's Market. I've got a few in my collection at home, not that I get a chance to look at them these days.”

“That's why I've brought it, you can have it”.

“I'm completely underwhelmed Ken. Surely you haven't come in just to give me a postcard.”

“No, not exactly, I was wondering if you put a good word in with the old lady whether I might get a pardon or re-instated.”

“And you ask why I look at the ceiling?”

“I just want some kind of recognition from the force that I'm not a bad old bastard and I deserve a second chance, whether I get one or not doesn't really matter. I'd just like to see something written down in the records that changes me from Police Enemy No1 !”

“Lot of water under the bridge Ken since then, does it really matter”?

“When you sleep like I sleep Lewis and live like I live, then yes it does bloody matter. I gave the best part of  30 years of my life to the force to be brushed aside and made a scapegoat. Remember I took the Flak so a number of others beneath me, Lewis, wouldn't have to.”

“What can I do? We've been through this so many times, in fact every time we meet”.

“Get me an In, in some way on a case, a big one, let me do some freelance detective work, come up with the goods, you give me the leads and I'll follow them up. I'll get you the evidence that nails the bad guys.”

”For Christ's sake Ken, I'm not Gene Hunt and this is not the 1980's, we don't work like that anymore”.

“You've got informants, you've got police protection. There's such a thing as goodwill Ken but you'd never believe it.”

“Look, what can I tell you?”

“Tell me that a man who begs for mercy sometimes receives it even though he might not deserve it. I need, Lewis, I need a letter from that bitch saying I'm a good guy and that I was badly treated by the force before I go to my grave. That's all. I'm not looking for a bung or a backhander. I just want a letter, a piece of paper that vindicates me from that miscarriage of justice that so many were involved in but were not responsible for because you know Lewis, because I was your superior, you know that it wasn't our fault but the system's bloody fault.” 

Ken slumps his head and Lewis notes a rash at the  hairline.

“Hope you're taking something for that Ken, it looks rather nasty”.

“It's like talking to a brick wall”.

“She'll be passing through any minute on an inspection of duty so if you don't want to cop it for a second time I'd have it away on your toes Ken”

Ken moves his face closer and Lewis flinches at the odour of breakfast and apple.

“You owe me Detective Inspector Lewis Davies”.

Lewis looks rather shocked and gets to his feet.

“I'll  be seeing you Ken and next time will you ring me please”!

Ken looks disgusted and pushes the table. Muttering he leaves and marches straight across James Street.

Ken leans on a fence persuading himself that it’s more for rest than to regain his breath and composure.

Passing the Royal Stuart Workshops where he had nicked an American Express Traveller's Cheques Counter fitting Operation in 1991. The case had been thrown out because it was claimed that the police had planted an informant who encouraged these jobbing printers into the operation because the police seriously wanted to nail Jamie Parker but had not been able to up till then. That had begun the downward spiral that Ken had found himself him. The finger gad been pointed at Ken for planting the informant.

“Ungrateful Bastards”, he thought and shouted, startling an elderly lady moving across the lane.

This was certainly a tale of two cities down here. When he’d started walking the beat in the late seventies, it was the ‘Docks’, now thirty years on, the developers and money men had renamed it the ‘Bay’.

At the Penarth Times, Cub Reporter Craig Standish is staring incredulously at his notebook. “Unidentified man found with throat cut in Alexandria Gardens”.

This was a big story, the biggest story he’d covered thus far and he needed an old head to help him handle it. Who did he know who could advise him? Listing his contacts, a name that he hadn’t called before but one with a bit of police background, a man who could be relied on for help in return for a cooked breakfast and a cigar. Ken had just sat down on a bench in the Hamadryad Gardens when his phone went off. Glasses on and a slightly panicky hand presses a key which he hopes is the answer key.

“Ken Frane speaking”.

“Hello Mr Frane, you probably don’t remember me but its Standish the reporter at the Penarth Times. We met at the Charity Function in the Paget Rooms last November. You gave me your card. You mentioned that if I had any leads, any big stories to give you a ring, well, look, I’ve got a big story.”

Ken clicks off the mobile and looks out to the Barrage. He is smiling. “Oh Yes, the Wicked Witch of the West will be mine”.

Ken and Craig waste no time and Standish outlines the facts as he knows them. Toni brings over two mugs of tea.

“So you are working Ken!!”

“ Hey Toni, have those bin men been back in, you know the ones who left the postcard?”

“Funny, you should ask dat an I was going to tell you but it slipped my mind. I been busy over de Cash n Carry. Well he came back in, the man who had left the postcard, he was looking for it”.

“What did he look like Toni”?

Toni a little surprised at Ken’s interest replies in a deadpan manner:

“Like a bin man, big and fat, like Eddie Yeates, you remember Eddie Yeates off Corrie Ken, yeah he looked like him.”

“When’s bin day?” Ken snaps at Toni and Craig splutters on his tea.

“Well it’s a week today, innit, they only come once  a week.”

Friday, it’s too far away. Ken is thinking quickly and reaches down for the library book in his coat pocket.

“He was definitely an Eastern European.” Craig carried on talking. I contacted the Police at Penarth and they told me that the case had been transferred to Cardiff Central. “That means they’ll be dealing with it in the Docks”.

The “Bay” you mean.

“No I mean the Docks” Ken snapped and apologised and then pushed Standish for some more information. What the passers by had noticed and what a Fisherman had handed over to him.

Craig Standish reached into his inside pocket and drew out a postcard, the exact same picture of Dubrovnik but with a different, more modern stamp and the writing this time was in English.

“In 1991 after the breakup of Yugoslavia it was besieged by Serb-Montenegrin forces for 7 months and heavily damaged by bombing.”           

“How do you know that?” Ken looked astonished.

“Wikepedia”, Craig winked, “ The Journalist’s best friend”.

“The Fisherman!” Ken pressed Craig further.

“He’d found it down at the end of the pier nowhere near the body.”

“ Why did he give it to you”?

“ Because there’s blood spots on it”.

“ Jesus, why didn’t you say before. This is crucial”.

Ken reached for one of Toni’s serviettes and wraps the postcard into it and places it into his inside pocket.

“ OK, if I keep this?”

“ Suppose, what you going to do with it?”

“ Give it to the police.....eventually. My advice to you son, give the article a snappy title, just write the facts as they appear to you. Don’t go into theories and hypotheses as you see them, that’ll come after once or if  the case is solved. Leave em dangling with an angler’s hook in the end. For example, readers are asked to contact you with any information rather than mention the police, don’t know if you’ll get past the editor with that one but it’s worth a try. Look I got to go. I’ll get back to you with any info I get but we’ll keep schtum for the moment. Ciao for now.”

Ken wastes no time and catches a bus up to the main Council Depot. He glances up at the filthy sign peppered with mud and sand ‘Cardiff City Cleansing’.

“ Does exactly what it says on the tin” he mutters.

A big bastard in string vest is sat on an old school chair, plastic red and four black metal spikes at a kind of reception area made out of milk crates.

“No work” he barks.      

“ I’m not looking for work,” Ken barks back. “Take me to your leader”. The big fella nods to a door beside him and motions him enter. Ken follows the direction and sees a little man with huge glasses sitting behind a name plaque saying ‘Pierce’.

“ Mr Pierce, I presume”.

“ Yes, How can I help you?”. He appears a little ruffled perhaps sensing an ex copper.

“You have Serbs and Croations working for you, Mr Pierce”.

“ We’ve got all sorts here pal. It’s like the United Nations. I blame the government myself.”

“You don’t approve”.

“ Not for me to say……..I just does the drains”.

“ I’d like to speak to any Serbs or Croatians that you have on your books”.

Pierce looks up at Ken, analyses him for a minute then adds “ Must be important!” He then goes over to his computer at the back of the office. Pierce looks over his shoulder and shouts at Ken.

“We got Poles and Checks, a Couple of Hungarians and some Romanians but not Serbs or Croats”.

“What gang was working Grangetown, this morning, any of those you mentioned?”

“Perhaps you’d like to tell me a little more before I divulge any confidential information”. Pierce swivels in his chair and folds his arms in front of him. After Ken explains and hands over his card Pierce looks at him and says

“ It may look like a shit hole Mr Frane but we do have standards”.

“ Mr Pierce, any help that you and your department give will be acknowledged. Thank you for your time”.   

As Ken approaches the corner of Roath Park, he pulls out his phone and glasses and squints at the screen! A few buttons pressed later and the reception at Butetown police station answers. “Could I speak to Detective Inspector Lewis Davies please”. Ken is put through to an answer machine.

“ Hello Lewis. Its Ken here, ere …look… I hate talking into one of these. Can you ring me back pronto please! It’s about the Penarth case Bye”

Ken looks up towards Roath Park Lake. There on her own feeding the swans by the Scott Tower is Lisa. Faint heart never won fair lady even though he’d lost her already; Ken walks passed the pedaloes and row boats and stops for an ice-cream. He notices that Lisa is throwing in a very distracted, almost dejected fashion. She doesn’t notice until Ken places a Cornetto to her mouth.

“ God Ken, you gave me a fright, what are you trying to do?”. The questions had started already.

“I’ve bought you an ice-cream, if you don’t want it, Sidney the swan over there can have it”.

“Thank you”. They look at each-other intently and then sit down together without a word on the nearest bench.

“ I’ve missed you”. Ken said between licks.

Lisa knowing his style just nods acknowledgement.

“You met somebody new”?

“Does it look like it?”

“If you want monogamy, marry a Swan”. Ken wasn’t sure where that had come from but it broke the ice and both laughed.

At Butetown nick, Inspector Lewis Davies and his team were drawing blanks. They had been down to the Welsh Refugee Centre on Newport Rd. The unidentified man was actually a Kosovan Muslim by the name of Ladi Mulliqi. It appears that he had been in Dubrovnik in the last month. He had attended a few English classes at Newport Rd but there had been an argument with some others in the class and he had left. When trying to ascertain who the others were, he drew a blank from students and the teacher who refused to co-operate with the investigation. Back in his office he goes through his messages and sees the one from Ken. Leaning back in his chair, his hand wavers on the postcard in his inside pocket.

Ken and Lisa are laughing, in fact they used to laugh a lot before the boredom set in.

“Don’t suppose you fancy a trip to Penarth? A stroll along the Pier”. Lisa nods her head in affirmation. 

An hour later Ken, Lisa, Detective Inspector Lewis and Craig Standish are standing at the end of Penarth Pier. Lisa and Craig looking out to Flatholm and Ken and Lewis looking back towards Alexandria Park.

“ Shall we play snap?” Ken and Lewis pull out a postcard apiece.

“So the blood samples on yours match the test taken from one of the ‘Romanian’ Bin men.”

“Romanian, my arse”, Ken replies. “If you cut him in half, he’d have the word Serb written across him like a stick of pink Penarth Rock”.

“So what had this poor guy done to end up with his throat cut?” chimes in Craig Standish.

“ That my friend is written on both postcards, it’s in code. Let’s just say that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and of the wrong ethnicity. And Toni was right, he did look like Eddie Yeats.”

“ We’ve also arrested the teacher at the Welsh Refugee Centre, he wasn’t all he appeared after he’d had his big white beard shaved off” Inspector Lewis added.

Seeing the look of confusion on Lisa’s face he can’t resist a little dig “You can’t say that you’re bored now!”

“Well Lewis”, Ken carries on “ Do you think I’ll get my letter from the Wicked Witch now?”

“Letter Ken, she’s coming to thank you in person”.

On cue, a police car pulls up at the entrance to the pier and a female in uniform steps out.

“ You all right Ken?” Lisa asks, “you’ve gone very white…

Ken…..Ken!”

Wales' Sexiest Women

" You know it's Autumn when...the Western Mail publishes its Sexiest Men and Sexiest Women of Wales lists. Now in their ninth year they're as crucial to the season as is a debate about who should play at number 10 for Wales"

 Ceri Gould, Frontlines, Weekend Magazine of the Western Mail

On the front page of the actual paper are three headlines 'Wales Crash Again (Rugby) A Big No Show (Voting for Police Commissioner) and 50 Sexiest Women in Wales'. On the Front Page of the National Newspaper of Wales!!!

It appears on Page 7 that it is a readers' poll! The Headline on the Magazine itself is "Dish of the Day", shades of Eric Morley's Miss UK.  So is it men or women who vote for the sexiest women in Wales? and how come the crumpet cymraeg from Carmarthen Iola Wynn is only at No 50? (oops regression!)

I'm writing this because I am appalled by the shallow values of the 'National Newspaper of Wales' and it's readership. In this age of equality (?) is having a list of sexiest women, appropriate? What is sexy? Being a single mum? How many of the Top 50 are single mums? Is this a scientific survey? What are the criteria for being sexy? Is this list vetted and overseen by balding, toothless, middle aged men in mackintoshes on the third floor of WM House. Surely these are the connoisseurs, the cognosgenti of what is sexy in Wales! Where is Dolly the Sheep? Why isn't she in the Top 50.

Wales is a Fucking Joke and take that from one who has all the credentials. Born on March 1st, Bi-lingual (I can talk shite in two languages) and I used to play Rugby. Wales is a Fucking Joke if the Western Mail is anything to go by. They say we deserve the politicians we get! Surely we can't deserve the National newspaper we get.

What if 15 of these 50 sexiest women had been chosen to represent Wales against Samoa last night? We might have stood a better chance but then that wouldn't have been fair. There is Working class sexism implied in that very sentence. "You played like a bunch of women". "Does that mean we played sexily coach"? The glass ceiling doesn't extend to flaunting your sexy assets on a rugby pitch. If we as human beings are to be judged on how sexy we are then perhaps the Western Mail needs to be indicted in cases of bulimia, anorexia and self harm when young school girls look and see whether this is the norm and that this is what they should be aspiring to.

We no longer have Miss World due to its sexism. Now is the time to rid ourselves of these ridiculous lists.  Readers of the Western Mail, stop voting, as you did for the Police Commissioners.