Maxwell's Silver Hammer...

Here's an extract from my, as yet unpublished, debut novel, Maxwell's Silver Hammer. If all you publishers and agents could just form an orderly queue and stop jostling then we can begin the auction. Okay, that's better, I believe the bidding was starting at a quarter of a million...Yes Random House, your bid please...

Billy

Bit of a result that was, sorted everything out with the boys and got them on their way early doors. Quick time check, they should be round about Doncaster by now, Zeebrugge after dinner and home for last orders. I’ll meet them at the lock up in the morning. Job done. As a reward for my early start I’m treating myself to breakfast at the Cavern Café. It’s one of those lovely windy, sunny mornings we get in Newcastle at this time of year, the type of weather that takes your skin colour from blue back to white – smashing.

Strolling down Shields Road it’s sad to see how the place has declined. When I was a teenager, back in the eighties, there was ten bars on this road and it was lively as fuck on a Friday and Saturday night. The road was always heaving with people, the pretty boys and the muscle men; the young girls and the owld slappers; smells of perfume, kebabs and that horrible fucking poseur gear Kouros mingling as one all down the road, it was a quality night out. Me and the lads all done up in our best gear, Pepe or Le Breve jeans; Pod loafers; acid house shirts and some gel in your hair, I had some then like. I remember Donny turning up in a suit once, we fucking laughed him out of the bar, he had to get a taxi home and get changed before we’d let him come out with us.

Aye, Friday night seven o clock prompt, start at the top of the road and work your way down to Baxter’s and The Ford, the two disco bars with a late licence. Usually kicked off at some point, mind you, Big George ran the doors in them days and no cunt messed with him. I remember wor Carlos once in Baxter’s, this lass was trying to get into him and he was a bit cocky about it, he was putting it about in them days as well. Anyway, he asked where she worked and she said the Cat and Dog Shelter up the west end. He just casually turned back to the bar replying, “I wasn’t asking where you lived pet.” Me and Donny creased up and she just stood there livid. I didn’t feel bad at all about laughing at her cos she’d knocked me back the week before. Mind you it was funnier still when her mate swilled him, I’m giggling to meself now thinking about it.

Aye, the road’s changed an awful lot in the last twenty years and not for the better either. It used to be full of good shops, butchers, fishmongers and greengrocers. There was even a department store, a real one that dealt in good quality gear the old fashioned way, like Grace Brothers and that. It’s been turned into student accommodation now and the whole place is just full of second hand and bargain shops, fucking heartbreaking really. Those students get right on my tits as well. There was a squad of them in The Raby last Christmas Eve, all dressed up trying to be wackier than the next cunt. They look down on you cos you’re from a council estate and have to graft for a fucking living. Someone put the Beach Boys on the jukey and next thing you know one of the pricks is lying on the floor and his mate’s only standing on his back pretending to surf and they were all cracking up like it’s the funniest thing in the world.

“God Tarquin, you and Richard, you’re so zany.”

“Yah Imelda, In Sociology they call us the Mad Dogs because we’re so wacky.”

Crazy John in the lounge showed them what mad really was when he started nutting the pinball machine and breaking glasses over his head, strangely enough they left quite soon after that.

Wankers.