stupinder
29-04-2012, 14:08
I wrote this a while ago and thought AOSters may enjoy having a quick read of it. It's the first in a series of celeb-type fictional pieces.
Sometime ago i read a headline in a music magazine along the lines of "Is Chris Martin the Most Powerful Man in Rock?"
You can almost imagine the scene - tea time (Dinner time to you in the South).
The children are out on the estate playing football against the wall of some disused garages. Gwyneth is dressed in a primark T Shirt, adidas jogging bottoms and a pair of pink slippers. In one hand she has a tin of warm Tennants Super and in the other a half smoked roll up. As she stands in the doorway, framed by the early evening sunshine, the now familiar, to their nearest neighbours anyway, cry of " Apple Blythe, Moses Bruce, your tea is on the table, get your scrawny arses in here now. It's chips and them beans and sausage you like so don't let it get cold" With this she shuffles into the sitting room, flops down on the SCS sofa (bought on 5 year interest free credit, but they're two months behind with the payments so she's making the most of it before they come to take it away and they're left with just the deck chairs again) relights her dog end of a cigarette, inhales deeply, swigs the last mouthful of her lager and settles in to watch Home and Away.
The children, both their knees are bloody and their hair cropped short (there are headlice going round the school again) run into the kitchen, sit at the table and proceed to shovel spoonfulls of chips, beans and sausages into their dirty faces pausing only to take huge gulps of no-brand cola from their lurid green plastic mugs. The cola leaves an exaggerated "the Joker" grin on each of the young childrens faces which they try in vain to wipe away with their forearms. On the wall the clock, it was picked up from a souvenir shop when they went for a week in a caravan in Skegness last year, ticks slowly showing that it's getting on for 10 past 6 and time for Dad to get home.
Dad, his ill fitting shell suit really could do with a wash and the pinhole burns down the front suggest that he's back on that dodgy soap bar again, crashes in through the back door, almost staggering into the table around which his beloved children are now eating choc ices out of the freezer. With a great deal of effort he manages to compose himself, glares at the two children, who by now have a mixture of melted ice cream and chocolate besmirching their t shirts, and makes his way towards the blaring sounds of Australia's finest actors discussing this weeks latest drama. He looks at the television somewhat confused, perhaps his mind has wandered to better days, a time before the world had realised that Coldplay were no longer the darlings of the world's music press ( "utter shite" is what the Sun on Sunday had called them in it's premier edition), a time when he and his wife could sit on the North beaches of Sydney protected from the paparazzi by a small army of trusted aides, a time when the world was at this power couples beck and call. Suddenly his mind snaps back to the here and now and, like a member of the audience at a David Knight (The Mind Persuader) he's back in the room, a room bereft of any evidence of their previous trappings of fame and fortune except for a lone framed photograph of the couple, clearly in happier times, at the after party of Coldplays momentous conquering of the pyramid stage at Glastonbury in 2011: In the background of the photograph and clearly enjoying the event are Jay Z and his wife Beyoncé. Chris shuffles over to the photograph, picks it up and gazes at it with barely a trace of recognition. He puts the photograph down, turns to his bloated wife whose body is becoming enveloped in the pvc of the settee and realises he can't be bothered with yet another argument. He falls into the sofa, asks his wife to shift her fat arse and fishes out of his pockets a rolling tin. In the background he can hear his children, now making their way back outside, talking about how Simon Cowell could have been their dad if only their stupid mother hadn't shacked up with this loser and a tear wells up in Chris's eye and falls onto the 3 Rizla papers he has carefully stuck together rendering them useless.
He gives up, closes his eyes and drifts off into a half-dream of past memories.
Sometime ago i read a headline in a music magazine along the lines of "Is Chris Martin the Most Powerful Man in Rock?"
You can almost imagine the scene - tea time (Dinner time to you in the South).
The children are out on the estate playing football against the wall of some disused garages. Gwyneth is dressed in a primark T Shirt, adidas jogging bottoms and a pair of pink slippers. In one hand she has a tin of warm Tennants Super and in the other a half smoked roll up. As she stands in the doorway, framed by the early evening sunshine, the now familiar, to their nearest neighbours anyway, cry of " Apple Blythe, Moses Bruce, your tea is on the table, get your scrawny arses in here now. It's chips and them beans and sausage you like so don't let it get cold" With this she shuffles into the sitting room, flops down on the SCS sofa (bought on 5 year interest free credit, but they're two months behind with the payments so she's making the most of it before they come to take it away and they're left with just the deck chairs again) relights her dog end of a cigarette, inhales deeply, swigs the last mouthful of her lager and settles in to watch Home and Away.
The children, both their knees are bloody and their hair cropped short (there are headlice going round the school again) run into the kitchen, sit at the table and proceed to shovel spoonfulls of chips, beans and sausages into their dirty faces pausing only to take huge gulps of no-brand cola from their lurid green plastic mugs. The cola leaves an exaggerated "the Joker" grin on each of the young childrens faces which they try in vain to wipe away with their forearms. On the wall the clock, it was picked up from a souvenir shop when they went for a week in a caravan in Skegness last year, ticks slowly showing that it's getting on for 10 past 6 and time for Dad to get home.
Dad, his ill fitting shell suit really could do with a wash and the pinhole burns down the front suggest that he's back on that dodgy soap bar again, crashes in through the back door, almost staggering into the table around which his beloved children are now eating choc ices out of the freezer. With a great deal of effort he manages to compose himself, glares at the two children, who by now have a mixture of melted ice cream and chocolate besmirching their t shirts, and makes his way towards the blaring sounds of Australia's finest actors discussing this weeks latest drama. He looks at the television somewhat confused, perhaps his mind has wandered to better days, a time before the world had realised that Coldplay were no longer the darlings of the world's music press ( "utter shite" is what the Sun on Sunday had called them in it's premier edition), a time when he and his wife could sit on the North beaches of Sydney protected from the paparazzi by a small army of trusted aides, a time when the world was at this power couples beck and call. Suddenly his mind snaps back to the here and now and, like a member of the audience at a David Knight (The Mind Persuader) he's back in the room, a room bereft of any evidence of their previous trappings of fame and fortune except for a lone framed photograph of the couple, clearly in happier times, at the after party of Coldplays momentous conquering of the pyramid stage at Glastonbury in 2011: In the background of the photograph and clearly enjoying the event are Jay Z and his wife Beyoncé. Chris shuffles over to the photograph, picks it up and gazes at it with barely a trace of recognition. He puts the photograph down, turns to his bloated wife whose body is becoming enveloped in the pvc of the settee and realises he can't be bothered with yet another argument. He falls into the sofa, asks his wife to shift her fat arse and fishes out of his pockets a rolling tin. In the background he can hear his children, now making their way back outside, talking about how Simon Cowell could have been their dad if only their stupid mother hadn't shacked up with this loser and a tear wells up in Chris's eye and falls onto the 3 Rizla papers he has carefully stuck together rendering them useless.
He gives up, closes his eyes and drifts off into a half-dream of past memories.