What's happened to the CPT?

[Ted Max]

Get in Brendan, a CPT - Police Sipping Lattes plot tie-up. Good thinking.

[Ted Max]

Sunday morning. The East wind is still winning its battle, street by street, against the Spring sunshine. The familiar double doors open as you walk past; a hum of chatter and warmth. In the background, music.

Families spill out. Women carry parcels of daffodils, thin waists snared by elastic bands. Children circle like foxhounds before the hunt. One older lady, alone, bends into the breeze, catching herself on the railings at the top of the steps. A yellow petal falls from her unclasped handbag.

A father shepherds his children past you, his hands gentle on their heads. You step forward to the old lady, but a car swings in to the pavement and the door opens. The driver - a man your age, no age, gets out. "Morning Mum," he says. "Happy Mother's Day."

The church sign says, "Mothering Sunday, Family Service, 11am. All welcome". You realise you have read the sign out loud. Two of the foxhound pups look at you cooly, and turn away.

In the pub now, first pint of the day, you raise the glass and tell your Mum you love her. But not out loud.

[BigPhil]

I'll be leaving a beer with your name on it next time I'm in the CPT.

cheers Ted , am enjoying reading your writings

ATB Phil

[Mick Mac]

Ted Max - your mutterings are so easily read and come across as so easily written. Very nice interludes amongst all of the forum ramblings.

[Ted Max]

Someone is roasting a pig on Northcross Road, about 50 yards down from the Islamic centre. Which was there first? You?ve no idea. The smell of rendered pork fat mingles with the singed coffee beans from the next stall.

Three men, none of them young nor so old, unshaven, wool hats pulled low, munch hog rolls outside the barbers, as if it were normal. A glance inside, and there are more of these men slouched in the chairs, at ease.

The wait would have been too long anyway.

?He?s not comfortable in his own skin,? Dad used to say. The ultimate insult ? to defy the facts of your own birth.

You duck into the Drum and take a seat at the back. It?s the sort of place people drink coffee in on a Saturday morning. Everybody?s reading and you are too, although you brought nothing with you. Your eyes haven?t moved from the two guys talking by the front window.

[Ted Max]

You feel your body descend into itself, sleep having arrived late and unwanted. Nearly nine, but voicemail buys you a couple of hours.

At school you'd needed a note to take in with you. ?Dear Mr Barnes, Michael had a doctor's appointment this morning. Please excuse his absence.? The old lie, offered and accepted as just that.

The same morning routine displaced two hours means different voices on the radio and faces at the bus stop, a shift of intensity in the light. Like living a life you could have had.

Enquiries about your health come at work but an answer is not expected. Mr Barnes often left Mum's letters unopened on his desk.

The rows and columns total themselves but you keep count in your head anyway. Night mate, don?t work too late it?ll still be there in the morning. You'd always kept reading till the last light flickered off in the library. Haven't you got a home to go to, young man? The kindly question sending you home in tears down Barry Road.

Save all, export, log off. Bus. Pub. Four pints of Adnams under the clock. Whisky. Last orders at the bar please. Whisky. Drink up now. Haven?t you lot got homes to go to? I said, haven?t you lot?

He wasn't talking to you but you've already left. You're not going home.

[Ted Max]

The music rises and falls as the doors open and shut. You see the doormen nod the leavers out, scanning the street for any likely trouble. If they have noticed you, they do not think you are likely trouble.

He comes out first, half-turning to grab a hold of the other one, and they stumble up the street. They stop outside the kebab shop. You see the long thin blade skimming the meat from the block. Pink-brown shavings topple down like flayed skin into the grease.

Outside each bar, groups of people hang on to the night, spell-bound. Black Cherry - a pie mum used to make. The Bishop ? the sweet certainty of your confirmation. Liquorice ? how grown ups could make even sweets taste horrible. Magnolia ? mum crying in the back garden. They stop and kiss outside his house. Here?s what you could have won.

You feel your hair, long now, catching the sweat around your temples. Later, much later, you slip the front door open.

[Ted Max]

Tattoes and piercings all over him. He?s not comfortable in his own skin either. He told you once that his scissors didn?t need sharpening as the constant cutting meant the blades sharpened against themselves. He kept scissoring thin air behind your head as he paused to tell you this. And you noticed the way his fingers flexed and curled, and the swish of steel on steel, and the smell of him.

It doesn?t take long. He makes no noise, and you know now why dad used to yell at mum to say something.

When it?s over you take the scissors and cut your own hair, letting it fall onto his body. It lies blond against his red-brown hide.

You listen to the swish of the blades until they scissor only thin air.

[Ted Max]

The eyes are kind although the hand hurts on your arm. Come on mate, it?s best you come with us now and we can sort this all out. After a while, when the lucid periods are a little longer, they give you some time at a computer. There?s a view of outside, a glimpse of magnolia against a blue sky. They suggest you write some of it down. Write what you like, bit by bit. You create a new document, and start writing. It?s going to be a love letter?

[Keef]

I just pasted every all of Ted's posts in to a document (8 pages in Arial 12) for Mrs Keef to read. She thought it was great, but one of the more depressing things she's read, and she as read a lot!