Doingit

C is spending a week in Prague.

Several weeks ago, things were not going well for him. He was off work and in a lot of physical pain from a mysterious and persistant intestinal disorder. A brief, intense and chaotic relationship (with me) had just ended badly. He'd been mugged at knife point with GBP200 stolen, and his prescription of prozac had been doubled.

He dealt with all this by getting enormously drunk. Unfortunately alcohol don't mix too well with prozac. He has no recollection of doing it, but it seems he made a series of phone calls to his boss, telling her exactly what he thought of her and what she deserved.

She proved him right by pressing criminal charges, and pushing for a jail sentence. The police were their usual sensitive and diplomatic selves when they turned over his room, which didn't help his depression one bit.

He's the kind of person who, once he's decided to do something, will do all that's humanly possible to achieve it. That's how he managed to spend 2 weeks on a frantic tour of Peru, sampling everything it had to offer from hang-gliding to paddling down a pirhana infested river in a thin little boat - with the bowel infection but without any medication.

So, when he decided he'd kill himself if sent down, there's no doubt he'd do it. It's his right, and there's nothing I could do to stop him, but I'd still rather he didn't - I like him.

A prison term for a trivial first offence seemed unlikely. But then, I spent five months in a stone box for no intelligent reason a decade ago, and since then the courts have been seized by a mania to overfill prisons even more.

He went to court on the 4th.

Now he's touring the great architectural sites of Prague, taking endless photos and trying every bit of local cuisine and culture available.

When he gets back on the 14th, there's 60 hours "community service" to do, apparantly working in a charity shop - the kind of work he likes to do. He's on a new antidepressant - one that actually works - and I'll see him in about a week.

---

So, he won't get to see me do my drunken karaoke (kapitoke?) on the 13th. 50 others will though, so I'm practicing my cadaverous baritone and gutteral hiphop

Although I can't get Gloomy Sunday to work, Strict Machines want to have a go. A punk-funk-blues version of the Hungarian suicide song should be interesting.

---

I've got my murder mystery planned out, now it's just a matter of writing it. Just the little matter of a few thousand words that get read beyond the first hundred. How's this for page one?

Detective Inspector Brandt snored as the telephone rang. For a full minute the two sounds competed, until the shape next to him in the bed nudged him awake. With a long suffering grunt, he awkwardly sat up, swiped on the bedside light, and grabbed the receiver.

“And a merry fucking Christmas to you too, whoever you are”, he growled down the phone without giving the caller time to speak, “and if this isn’t important, you can shove the tree…”

He was interrupted by a middle-aged male voice on the other end. It spoke rapidly for 10 seconds, and Brandt listened intently, not interrupting. When the voice stopped, Brandt spoke much more quietly.

He said, “I’ll be there in half an hour” and hung up.

“Or maybe 45 minutes”, he added, heaving his bulk out of the bed and starting to get dressed.

“Sorry love”, he said to the other form in the bed, “It’s a murder.”

The car park of Mallich police station one hour later, coated with drizzling rain at six ‘o’ clock on boxing day morning. Someone had optimistically strung multicoloured lights over the station’s front entrance – they worked but the illuminated blue police sign over the door didn’t. A dented brown skoda, dragged by it’s headlights in the gloom, pulled arthritically into a random parking space, and out stepped Brandt.

DI Brandt, 48, 6’1’’, 250lbs, wearing his version of smart casual grey trousers and white shirt under a black trenchcoat and broad brimmed fedora. He stood for a moment, tired eyes looking at nothing, droplets collecting on his dark brown beard somewhere between stubble and proper growth. Then he gave a grunt and marched purposefully through the front doors.