Authors: Calvin Wade
ZARA – May 2012
Sam snored so I didn’t have the greatest night’s sleep of my life. I kept checking the time on my mobile and at half eight, I thought I may as well go down for some breakfast, then try and get some sleep later, Sam looked like she was flat out, so I left her sleeping. When I arrived in the dining area, three of the girls in our party were there already, Sara and two others. There was a fourth place on their table, so I took it. Glynnis, the landlady, and her husband were flying in and out of the kitchen like housemartins flying to and from their nest.
“Good morning!” Glynnis said, “Can I get you some tea or coffee?”
“Tea, please.”
“Would you like white or brown bread for your toast?”
“White, please.”
“OK, love. I’ll bring them over and I’ll ask what you would like for your Full English then.”
“Thank you, Glynnis.”
Glynnis headed back to the kitchen. The four of us were the only guests that were in there.
“Good morning, ladies! How is everyone feeling?” I asked.
Everyone answered at once with ‘shit’, ‘crap’ and ‘not good’.
“I feel like death too,” I said empathising with their plight, “I’m going to have my breakfast and then go back to bed for a couple of hours. It’s been hard to sleep though, as I ended up with Sam, as Lucy invited a young man to share our room with her. Unfortunately Sam snores like Pinocchio with a cold.”
The three girls laughed.
“Our Lucy’s a bit of a one, isn’t she?” Sara observed, “I haven’t been on a Hen Do yet where she hasn’t managed to get herself a man by the end of the evening. She’ll have another one tonight, so if I were you, I’d get back early and pretend you’re asleep if she brings a bloke back.”
“I’m not sure that would work, Sara,” I explained, “she would probably carry on regardless!”
The blonde, skinny looking girl sitting next to Sara, who always looked serious, decided to put her opinion forward.
“Nothing wrong with a woman enjoying sex. If Lucy wants to enjoy herself with some male friends before she settles down, that is her prerogative.”
“I agree. Lucy’s single, she can do what she wants.” I said, whilst starting to tuck into my toast that Glynnis had brought over, “I did think it was off though that Candice ended up getting a taxi back to Poulton with some lad. I mean, sleeping around when you’re single, that’s fair enough, but sleeping around three weeks before you get married, on your own Hen Do, that’s got to be crossing the line.”
All three of the other girls already had their Full Breakfasts, but they all stopped and for several uncomfortable seconds, just stared at me. I started to get a complex.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, “Do I have something on my face?”
I rubbed and checked. There was nothing.
“Perhaps we didn’t finish the introductions yesterday, Zara,” the skinny blonde said.
“I’m Debbie, this is Sara and this is Amy. We are Patrick’s sisters.”
“Who’s Patrick?” I asked naively. I should have worked it out.
“Patrick is the groom. Our brother is marrying Candice in three weeks time.”
TIMMY ANDERSON – May 2012
Joey Neill was fortunate that I had an empty weekend when he rang to book me for Simon Strong’s Stag Do. From Easter to late September, I am booked out most weekends as ‘The Blue Goblin’ and have been for five years now. After the summer season finishes, Christmas work kicks in and I tend to find work in Santa’s Grotto’s or in pantomimes. As a young adult dwarf, I would never have considered manipulating my lack of height, but I learnt to be thicker skinned and I now make around £60 000 a year net profit from working a two or three day week, which, in the midst of a credit crunch, is pretty damn good.
I advertise nationally and tend to spend most weekends in Northern English cities or in Dublin. Most gigs in Dublin are still as ‘The Blue Goblin’, but I charge £250 extra if the Stag Party want me to dress as a leprechaun, as I am not comfortable with it. I am not Irish and understandably, I don’t feel it sits well with them.
When I took the booking for a Stag Do in Blackpool and it was mentioned that the Stag was an Euxton male called Simon, I did wonder if there was any way it could be Simon Strong. I persuaded myself it was unlikely, but when I was being hidden on the back seats of the coach and there was bizarrely a kick off between Simon and Luke ‘Boffin’ Booth, it was almost like being back in Parklands playground twenty five years earlier. I had never forgotten the favour that Simon had done me when we were children.
Every Stag Do I go to, I am handcuffed to the Stag, that is the deal I am signing up to and what I earn my crust from doing. With Joey Neill’s booking, as it was a 24 hour booking rather than a 48 hour one, Joey was keen to make the most of me for the full 24 hour period. He wanted me handcuffed to Simon at the earliest possible opportunity. In the main, I am pretty compliant with requests from the men with the money. I don’t come cheap, so when Joey said twenty of the lads were going to ambush Simon’s room and handcuff him, I was always going to be happy to run with it. It transpired Simon was in the shower, so they ambushed him there. Simon seemed to take the wind up in good spirits but Stag’s often do, it is only when they begin to realise the full extent of what they are being subjected to, several hours later, that their calmness turns to anger.
I had a gut feeling from the outset that this was destined to be one of the more memorable 24 hour periods in my job. I just wish now that this sixth sense would adapt and learn to give me more of a warning as to why. One thing is for certain, I definitely earned my money that weekend.
SIMON – May 2012
On the Saturday afternoon of my Stag Do, I had a temporary glimpse into the world of David Beckham. Obviously, David Beckham does not spend his time handcuffed to a dwarf, who goes by the name of ‘The Blue Goblin’, but as our Stag party walked through Blackpool town centre and even more so at the Pleasure Beach, it felt as though I was as famous as Beckham. Every man, woman and child turned to look at me. A large proportion even reached for their mobiles and ran after us, so they could capture the moment for posterity. Several, especially a whole load of Japanese holidaymakers, wanted their pictures taking with us. I guess it isn’t every day of your life that you see a balding fat bloke handcuffed to a blue, big eared dwarf. It really was surreal.
To start off with, the whole thing didn’t bother me. I anticipated the handcuff joke would probably last the remainder of the afternoon or possibly into the early evening and it would then be over. After the laughing masses left our bathroom, I gave Will a ticking off for letting them all in, although to be fair, with hindsight, I realised it would have been impossible for him to keep them all out. I awkwardly and self consciously managed to dress myself, with a little assistance from ‘The Blue Goblin’ who seemed happy enough to help me. He must have been experienced in dressing with handcuffs on, as he knew how to angle himself around to assist me and would hold items of my clothing when I needed him to. We didn’t really engage in much chit chat in the early stages as my natural disposition with strangers is a shy one. I needed time to adapt to my predicament. I asked Will to go and knock on my Dad and Arthur’s door and tell them we were going to the Pleasure Beach for a few hours so if they would rather go and do their own thing for a few hours, they were welcome to do so. I told him not to mention that I was handcuffed to a goblin, as I was hoping by the time we met back up with them, someone would have brought the key and released me. Will, ‘The Blue Goblin’ and I met the rest of the lads in the local pub and after a quick pint and the anticipated ribbing, we walked down to the Pleasure Beach, on the way transforming every member of the general public into a temporary member of the paparazzi.
The first time I really started to talk to ‘The Blue Goblin’ was in the queue and on the ascent to the peak of Blackpool Pleasure Beach’s, ‘The Big One’ rollercoaster. I established his name was Tim, which was certainly less of a mouthful than ‘The Blue Goblin’ and that this was not just a one off for him, he had the unfortunate job of being handcuffed to people for a living.
The lads thought Tim may have been stopped from going on ‘The Big One’ due to height restrictions, so circled around him in the queue to prevent him being sent out, but the closer we got to the front, the more we started to notice nine and ten year old kids were getting on, so height didn’t seem to be a big deal. Not surprisingly, the lads made Tim and me sit at the front of the carriage. I’m not overly comfortable with heights, so as we slowly clanked our way up the climb of over two hundred metres to the highest point, I wanted to keep chatting to keep my mind off where we were.
“These handcuffs are a digging in to my wrist, Tim. Can you just get the key, so I can loosen them?”
“The key to the handcuffs? I don’t have it, Simon. Your mate, Joey, gave it to the coach driver for safekeeping.”
“The coach driver! He’s not coming back to get us until tomorrow afternoon. Where are you going to sleep?”
“Next to you!”
“I’m in a single bed.”
“Looks like I am too, Simon. I can’t do anything about it. I just go where I have to go.”
I’m not sure if it was the mention of having ‘to go’ that triggered an unwanted realisation in my brain.
“So every time I need a wee in the next 24 hours, you have to come with me.”
“Afraid so. Don’t worry, I won’t look.”
“Hang on! What if I need a dump.”
“A man has to do what a man has to do.”
“That’s just fantastic.”
“Simon, if I were you, I’d be more worried about when it’s my turn.”
Just as Tim said this, we reached the highest point of ‘The Big One’ and after the long climb upwards, we very slowly tilted downwards, giving us a fantastic view of the Fylde coastline and the Irish Sea, before dropping vertically at stomach churning speed. Not being experienced in rollercoaster travel, Tim began to cry out. It was a mix between a scream and a yell. I yelled out too, not out of fear but out of frustration. I had been stitched up good and proper and what I had hoped was going to turn out as one of the best weekends of my life, now had the potential of becoming a complete disaster.
ZARA – May 2012
On Saturday afternoon, we were all on the beach, right by the Pleasure Beach. Candice had given us all Baywatch Lifeguard outfits to wear, so we were wearing our orange swimming costumes, cropped jackets and each carrying a small, blow up float. I guess it would have seemed really funny if there hadn’t been such an atmosphere following my revelations to the groom’s sisters. All the Great Dunmow girls seemed to be getting on handsomely with each other. The poisonous atmosphere only existed when I was in the presence of any of them.
It all became too much for me when they piled up their floats, drew out a court in the sand and started picking sides so they could play with the beach ball they had bought earlier. I was the last one picked and I could hear the other five on my team grumbling about having me. I decided not to make it any easier for them to give me a hard time by announcing that I was going for an ice cream. I asked if anyone else wanted one but everyone said ‘No’ or shook their heads with the exception of Lucy, who was on the other team, who decided to come with me.
“They all hate me!” I moaned once we were out of earshot of Pamela Anderson and her gang.
“Zara, what do you expect?” Lucy reasoned, “you told the groom’s sisters that the bride was away shagging some other bloke.
“I didn’t say she was away shagging another bloke, I just said she had gone back to a blokes house and anyway, no-one bothered to tell me they were Patrick’s sisters. A warning would have been nice!”
“Sorry, I should have said, but I wasn’t anticipating you opening your big gob like that!”
“I’m sorry. I just thought they were all Candice’s mates. Anyway, why am I the bad guy, why aren’t they mad with Candice too?”
“Candice managed to wriggle her way out of trouble. She didn’t stay out long as Ziggy sprinkled his stardust pretty quickly, if you know what I mean.”
I did know. Lucy meant that Ziggy fell asleep.
“Anyway,” she continued, “she ended up coming back to The Cheshire about five o’clock. She went to her own room first, but you were in there, so she didn’t have a bed, so she ended up sleeping in with me.”
“Where was your bloke?”
“He’d gone home by then. Anyway, after your revelation, the sisters arranged a search party and found Candice in with me. She just denied everything.”
“Why didn’t Sam back me up later on?”
“Zara, why would she? She’s Candice’s Maid of Honour, they’ve been mates since they were six.”
“Brilliant, so everyone hates me, but they all still love each other.”
“What does it matter, Zara? They all have to live in the same town together. You’ll probably never see any of them again after tomorrow.”
“I might see them at the wedding,” I said this more than half joking. I wasn’t going to be buying a new outfit for the night do after this.
“Just forget it and enjoy the rest of the trip away.”
“I can’t though. I don’t like being everyone’s enemy,” I stuck my bottom lip out for dramatic effect.
“Have a few drinks later and put it to the back of your mind.”
“I’m going to have to have more than a few. I can’t face them any longer whilst I’m sober.”
“Zara, I’ll stick with you tonight. We’ll get hammered together.”
I knew Lucy’s offer of sticking with me would only last until she started attracting male attention, but it was still comforting. It would have been much worse if she had joined ranks with the rest of the baying mob.
“OK.”
“Oh, by the way, those magic blue tablets worked a treat. It was like making love to a broom handle! When we get back to The Cheshire, remind me to give you a condom and tablet for your handbag, tonight. A drunken bonk will sort everything out.”