Me in Meet the Makers: Kevin Soar (Lee Cooper A/W campaign)

An extract from 'Style'

Chapter 1.
Trotsky's

Reed walked down the steep concrete stairs his black shiny Bass-Weejuns clip-clopping softly, a sound that he enjoyed, the hard leather bottoms of his crisp penny loafers on concrete, like the sizzle of streaky bacon on a Saturday morning or the crack of the first can of lager on a Friday night after work. These where the kinds of sounds that reminded him of his youth, his days of over confident swagger and presence among his peers the sounds that trickled over his ear lobes like Champagne over his first Sixth Form girlfriends pert breasts. The sound rang through his ears and brought a smile to his face, this in turn brought him to take off his black suede gloves as he slowly descended the stairs and feel the cold steel of his Smith and Wesson model 10 snub nose that snuggled in his navy Duffle coat pocket and rest his left hand on the hard wood handle.

The door to Trotsky’s was open, it was a Tuesday night so no security. The bar had the air of a New York cocktail lounge, dark oak walls, a long bar,with the suitable chrome tall bar stools, chalk board drinks menu, numerous randomly scattered tables with low black leather chairs around each. Trotsky was strewn with the 'young generation' of artists, writers, musicians and those of their ilk chatting themselves up to the nearest clone that would listen, Reed recognised them all, some personally some as the same low level scum who brushed past him everyday, they worked yes, but they worked for fame trotting out the kind of modernist shit that Reed once dreamed of doing before the accident.

The bar was shuffling with little lean bargirls Reed swore he had slept with at least two of them or at least had wanked to the thought of having done so. One of the girls, a buxom red head - bottle or natural he could not attain with the dim after Eight lighting, looked over to him. Reed was hunched which didn't compliment his dapper appearance on the scene, well pressed grey flannel slacks ran down to his ankles where his bright red socks caught her eye, then straight up she raised her glance as he tapped his foot to the vintage Southern bbq-soul the battered cd player by the coffee machine was blurting out. She took in his slight frame and followed the Six foot line of his body up past the pristine Duffle coat and to his face slim, hard, no sign of stubble, a slightly jewish nose but not all there, dark eyes, the darkest eyes, and a healthy head of gelled brown hair - an English brown mousy if you like turned Mediterranean by the hair product and swept to the side not unlike some 1940's footballers barnet of choice, not shaved and as neat as a soldiers and too much hollywood gable neither but somewhere in between if you like. Reed looked up from his hunch and caught her eye. He smiled at her and swept aside the stray hair, that had dropped out of place in part from his cramped demeanour, to the side of his forehead with his right hand.

The left Bass-Weejun continued to tap on the floor, Reed looked away from the pale rose tinted red head and found the fella he was looking for. Reed moved as if to go towards him but the acquaintance a shorter man than reed with a smarmy grin and a ruffled black crop moved towards him , he wasn't a man of great likability in his look, neither was Reed but this guy moved as if the floor was his cock and everyone moved with its motion, their dancing feet, their roaring laughter and their pleasant interactions all massaging his alcohol dampened, green tiled erection, Farrow as his closest liked to refer to him as, shuffled his way through Trotsky’s lively crowd knocking people clumsily with the drunken sway of his manner, “Reed” he shouted. A few of the faceless numbers turned towards the call. Reed started to recognise more of the faces and gripped the Snub Nose tighter in his pocket slowly moving the trigger finger into position, Farrow was now with in Three metres of Reed. Reed looked over at the bar and smiled at the redhead again- oh he wished he had just come for a drink and could smoother her with metaphors, questions and eye contact, take her home, let her under his covers, “Reed mate...”. Reed looked back at Farrow and in time with the turn of his head pulled out the gun and shot as his eyes reached his. The left side of Farrows forehead exploded and a cascade of blood and flesh dropped in tangent with his pint of Lager and at least four other cocktails of various descriptions from several sides of the room, Farrow fell the to ground.

The sound of the gunshot that pierced Reeds eardrums so suddenly was soon overcome by the rank sharp screams that now rang around Trotsky, Reed turned away from them quicker than the bullet carnage he had just created and walked towards the door. Everyone scrambled to the aid of Farrow, and with everyone thinking that at least someone else would stop him leaving, no one did.

Reed closed the clear glass door behind him, he turned to catch a glimpse of the red-haired beauty, she downed a shot of Tequila. Reed walked up the stairs in his brown shiny Bass-Weejuns and let the sound penetrate his thoughts once again, he was leaving his mums house, the taste of toothpaste and lager on his breath and the smell of Tommy on his neck, Town was his oyster, the streets awash with girls, he reached the top of the stairs, looked up and down the strip of bars, clubs and restaurants and saw his lift arriving. On to the next.

The car pulled up a shiny black MG Roadster not many left nowadays, Jimmy opened the door from the inside, it only opened from the inside and let Reed in. Jimmy turned the key in the ignition and off they drove down Old Turner street. Reed looked straight ahead and scratched the back of his head slowly and for what seemed like a couple of minutes. “Who you done tonight then mate?”

asked Jimmy, Reed carried on looking straight ahead stopped his scratching and answered wearily “sorry mate what? I weren’t listening.” “Who you done?” “ah no one you know, just an old bother”

“fair enough” Jimmy replied and carried on driving. The pair stayed silent until they got to the Safe house. They called it the safe house but it wasn’t really safe the Police knew where go after any 'bother'.

Chapter 2

Ken

To get to the safe house Reed and Jimmy had to go around the back of the brightly lit 24 hour smoothie bar whereby in the car park and besides the numerous recycling bins in which property’s were now required by law to have four, glass, plastic, cardboard and food waste was the black door, number 17 buzzer B. Jimmy pressed the buzzer “hello” the black box uttered. “ken” Jimmy replied and the door opened. They strolled up the narrow stair case to Flat B, Reedy smelt the warming waft of nicotine floating into his nostrils, since cigarettes were banned in the square mile and most parts of the divided Britain it was always a pleasure to know he was out of the overindulgent squalor of the centre of the city and back east when he could breath in fresh cigarette smoke again. They entered the door, and Reedy hung up his coat and walked over to the red leather sofa by the window the scratched wooden flooring creaking underfoot, the room was circled with plush leather sofas with a knee high dark oak table in the centre. The walls were adorned with several framed photos of the safe houses saviour the last Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, since the city was divided into five, east, west, north, south and the square mile, London was now divided thusly between 4 mayors, the square mile was police governed. During the 'dividing' Ken was imprisoned for his strong stance against the change and the safe house was actually funded by and previously owned by ken.

An extract from Down and out in London and Essex, The Battle

The Battle

Sandlay Woods, Great Leighs, Essex.

One balmy Thursday evening in June we managed to get a big attendance to one of our wood battles, our boys were feeling overly confident after a few evenings of battering practise on a large oak tree.

A rumour had been circulating at school all day one of the village big boy bully's was going to at attendance and a hint of nervousness had started to creep into our ranks. But buoyed by Thomas's boasts that we would send him home weeping confidently marched to the woods using route 2 across the stream. No problems there as it hadn't properly rained for a few weeks so the stream was dry as a bone.

As we approached the woods the laughter of a few other lads could be heard. As predicted there was Alex the big mouthed self professed gangster of Great Leigh's. No sooner than he saw us he let out an almost incomprehensible 'Gays' and went off into a bout of uncontrollable laughter. Feeling a bit dejected and definitely with some pride flushed from us we dashed into the woods screaming come and get us. 5 of us in total we split into two groups, me and Thomas dashed deep into the heart of it whilst the other two flanked us keeping to the clear edge of the woods but within shouting distance. Within minutes we could hear the shouts of Alex and his cohorts closing us down. We jumped down a leafy ditch and kept low. Alex appeared to have broken from his pack of crony's and we heard his war cry within spitting distance “come on you gays”. Alex leaped down from above us into the ditch and clumped Thomas clean on the forehead with his stick. Tom let out what can only be described as a 8 year old girls scream which quite predictably sent Alex into fits of laughter, not one to hang around with a stick in my hand, I jumped heroically to Thomas's defence and swung my stick straight at Alex's face. Strangely he didn't make a peep, Alex just fell to the ground with nothing more than a dull thud, panicking I run over to him to see if he he was alright, Thomas still crying like a girl in the ditch. Alex was out cold, I wished he would just open his gob and scream ' gaylord' in my face but even after a few shakes I had no such luck. When your twelve there is only one reaction to a shock to the system and that's run from it. I grabbed Thomas and quite promptly scarpered to the nearest field dropping the tools of our misdemeanours to the ground as we fled.

An extract from 'Down and out in London and Essex 'Getting to 'The Woods'

Sandylay Wood, Great Leigh, Essex.

Around Great Leighs there were several places for a young boy to go get his kicks, and with the majority of the young generation being pre teen Great Leighs was a relatively untarnished place for a kid to grow up, it was certainly not an affluent place to live, its just the class difference was small, small enough for family’s not to have envy for each others property, everyones parents seemed to work hard and to just have enough, not enough as the family on the edge of the village with the swimming people but enough for the village not to harbour any need for more than one policeman.

One such place was 'The Woods'. The Woods so called for the area being densely populated with trees much like a small forest and could only be accessed one of two ways.

1. Over the barb wire and across the field next to the school that contained 'The Bull'
2. Across the ditch, through a different field then across 'The Stream'.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   At the age of 11 one isn’t so bothered with imaginative names for places rather what happens at those places. There was also an area we congregated to named 'The Tree' which was a huge fallen down Oak but the activities there were far more uninteresting than anything that went on in 'The Woods'.
   In regards to getting to 'The Woods', choice 1 was more or less out of the question because out running 'The Bull' was no goer. No one had ever been hurt by 'The Bull' and it was wise to keep that statistic a none fluctuating figure. So it was always choice 2 (unless 'The Bull' happened to not be around) that we would take. Going via 'The stream' was not a cop out by all means, the stream ran the length of the only accessible field from our side of the village to the woods, it was not a fast flowing brook and 90% of the year didn't even have much in the part of water running through it. It would have been more accurate of us to describe it as 'The Bog', it was really just a long stretch of really sinky mud. Many an intrepid traveller had lost a Reebok Classic in 'The Stream'. It takes a fair old jump to cross it and if you trip up, thats it your knee deep in muddy stream and coming home with crap caked tracky b's, a trip to Wimpy at the weekend with mum it does not make.