Worthing Flash

Robert gets everything in order All the lawns on Mentone Avenue are mowed on Wednesdays. That’s because Robert owns all the houses on Mentone Avenue. It was not the way that Robert had envisaged his retirement working out. He made it to the finish line in the Department for Construction with his home paid for, a secure income from his superannuation for life and some untraceable accounts in the Caymans. His wife left him almost immediately, to partner up with a man who apparently offered more excitement and sense of adventure. Never a keen gardener in the past, growing his own food had now become an obsession for Robert, albeit one with an emphasis on orderliness and strict boundaries. Of course he could not eat even a small proportion of the seasonal harvests, so he gave most of it away to initially grateful (and then later inwardly groaning and discreetly binning) neighbours. Having used most of the arable land he owned, except for a small front lawn, he took advantage of th...

I’ve picked up a job as an extra in Nicole Theron’s new vehicle, ‘There Will Be Blood In Fargo’. I’m Customer No. 3 on the set of the Transylvania Bar. I have a bushy beard and I’m mostly in shadow, so no-one picks up on the fangs. One of the Coens (I can never remember which is which) yells ‘Action’. In strides Nicole in all her pale and willowy elegance. She orders a Rhesus Negative Highball and scans the room. ‘Cut. That’s lunch. Back in an hour,’ shouts Ethol. As she slides off her stool, Nicole glances in my direction and our eyes lock briefly, each excitedly conveying ‘It takes one to know one’. At lunch she sits, alone, under a giant beach umbrella. She’s wearing dark shades (just like mine) and her caked-on make-up makes her skin look like alabaster. She sips from a steel thermos, presumably to disguise the metallic smell of its contents. I loiter until she sees me and then, with a barely perceptible nod, she invites me to take the director’s chair beside her. From the s...