Mogul

The Story Of Ort

Album: Runnin' Riot [2002]
Author: Stuart Anthony Smith © Elefant Publishing

It all happened on New Years’ Eve, ages ago now. Me and a couple of mates from school went to a pub that wasn’t too fussy who it served. Anyway, we had Ort with uswho was dead mature-looking with a rapidly thickening moustache. He’d go up to the bar for the Snakebite and Blacks. He was quite good at talking to older people so that helped

 

It seemed everybody we’d ever seen about in our entire lives was there, though thankfully not any uncles or mates of my dad. This tosser, who was the spit of Chris Waddle was there, in some cockney teams’ crappy yellow away kit. So were a load of psychobillies who went to our other mate’s training centre. One was called Stretch, he hung out with Tobin sometimes, but he was still alright. The loudest lot, though, were a load of women old enough to be our mothers, laughing and drinking Snowballs and Barley Wine or something at the table to our right. One of them had DIY tattooed dots on her right hand, in faded blue ink. They were only small dots, mind you

 

At midnight, people got unusually friendly for round here. They usually just beat you up, and blokes who would normally take the piss were going, “Happy New Year mate!” ‘n’ stuff. The women were getting friendly as well, showing far too much leg. As Ort got up to go to the bog, one of them made a grab for him, and he fell into her lap, only just avoiding the lake of beer and fag ash on the table. She squeezed his big fat arse and whispered, “how about a New Years’ kiss, luv?” before greedily tonguing his mouth. It turns out her name was Audrey, she was 36 and from Tantany. Her old man was inside, so Ort, the lucky bastard, got to go back with her, though he was warned to be quiet so not to wake up Kelly, her 13-year old daughter. I got an invite too ... sort of. Audrey said I could come round anytime as she reckoned Kelly would really like me

 

Nothing changes really; the next day, people had the same fears and hatred in their eyes. It wouldn’t matter if it were the New Year 2000 or whatever, it would all be the same