Episode 8 Skate-Rot!

The Rottenbrough skatepark was finally a reality. And for a town known largely for its anonymity, it had proved an unexpected triumph. I'd watched the project take shape over the past eighteen months, suffering King's snorts when I asked the developer where they were putting the swimming pool. I never went overboard about the results anyway. The surface was coated with a non-stick substance guaranteed to unglue each rider from his board at the slightest movement, except of course, the 'cognoscenti', speeding around their designer bowls, and excuse me "pool". They could execute turns in the half pipe when we couldn't even slide from one side to the other without breaking our limbs; we stained the concrete with sweat and sent our boards flying from the Snake Run like missiles. 

The glory of the affair was short-lived however. By Christmas, skateboarding was entering its final phase. 'Skate-Rot's one moment of glory came in a dying issue of "Griptape", the industry monthly, where local hotshot, Lee Scallywag, got a flattering write-up, but for him, as for all who had nailed their colours to the skateboarding mast, it was too little, too late....A Sunday evening though. The smell of a bonfire in your lungs. The horror of the new school week looming ahead. Rolling up and down your twenty yard strip of tarmac. The decision to go out after tea scuppering any chance of feigning sickness. The tears in your eyes from the bonfire smoke. Or at least, that's what you would have claimed was the cause....your inability a secret of the night...Suddenly, you're thrown forward as the wheels hit a stone and your knees strike concrete, protected only by the pads that this night alone you chose to wear. Would you ride your luck forever...?

I knock at every door

Darkness fell like a miserly shroud and we set off on our carol-singing expedition. Such compassion in the face of other's suffering. The rain began to fall. I had Derek, an umbrella, and two hymn books for company. It was November but a good idea wouldn't wait. My book had a huge drawing of a penis on the front. Our class had managed to intimidate 60 or so such texts from rivals through hushed threats in Assembly, so choice wasn't lacking, but at 3.30, my well entrenched guilt led me to snatch the first two to hand from the store room and stick them in my bag, exiting with the flushed look of the inexpert thief - a pretty standard look actually.

"After three...One, two, three, "Silent Night, Holy..."
Silence from Derek. Then a shriek of laughter and he was off. He'd got twenty yards before I was able to reach him and swear fully in his face.
"You fucking bastard. You'd better do it properly next time!"
"I promise...I promise!" pleaded Derek.

But he didn't. The scenario repeated itself and eventually, I threw my hymn book at him, leaving it in the gutter, and walked off home in the rain.