Thinking they must be unusually busy for a Monday afternoon, he pressed the button to disconnect his mobile phone and looked up the number for the rival Pizza Hut on the internet. He preferred the pizzas from Dominos, they came with a carton of garlic sauce to dip the crusts into, but if they couldn’t be bothered taking his order then what did they expect him to do? He made a mental note to compose an email of complaint to Dominos Pizza head office about their employees slacking off, and dialled the number he had found for the nearest Pizza Hut.

The phone rang.

And rang.

And rang.

Simon glared at the phone in disgust. With a sigh, he put it down on the desk next to his computer keyboard and rose to his feet, stretching his arms out and yawning. If he had to go and collect his own pizza he was certainly going to give those lazy bastards a piece of his mind while he was there.

He scratched his balls through yellow-stained white Y-fronts, sniffed his fingers, and looked around the room for the rest of his clothes. He remembered they were in the bedroom, and found them in a heap on the floor where he had thrown them the previous night. He struggled into his frayed denim jeans, hopping on one leg when his foot got caught on the hem, and pulled on a Judge Dredd T-shirt. His bulbous stomach stretched out the front tyre of Dredd’s motorcycle, giving it a three-dimensional appearance. After putting on a pair of red canvas trainers, he picked up his keys from the sideboard where he had left them and climbed a short flight of stairs to ground level. He unlocked the door at the top, and walked through the short hallway to the shared main door leading out of the building.

Opening the door, he swore to himself when he saw it was raining. Simon Smith hated rain with a passion. Especially heavy downpours like the one he was seeing. He hated the way wet clothes clung to his body, hated the way his dirty jeans always smelled after they had been soaked by the rain. The smell always seemed to linger in his flat for days, long after he had dried them out on his small, one bar electric heater.

He stood in the doorway for a few minutes, waiting to see if the rain would ease off. No way was he going out in that. He watched the man who lived in the house directly opposite, Andrew-something-or-other, stumbling around in his garden with a hedge-trimmer held loosely by his side, trailing an electrical cable into the house. From the way he lurched around, he seemed to be very much the worse for drink.

Daft cunt, doesn’t he know how dangerous it is using electrical equipment in the rain?

Simon thought about calling out to the man, warning him to get out of the rain before he was electrocuted. But like all of his neighbours, the man had shunned Simon ever since his criminal conviction a few years earlier, so Simon didn’t feel he owed the man anything.

Let the bastard fry, he thought, with a shrug.

Simon looked up at a sky filled with dark black clouds, frowned, and closed the door. The rain obviously wasn’t going anywhere for quite some time yet.

Returning to his basement flat, he used his mobile to call Dominos Pizza again, but there was still no answer. A similar call to Pizza Hut was also ignored. He sat down in his luxury executive swivel-chair and switched on his computer monitor. He looked at the digital clock in the bottom right corner of the screen. 15:05. He’d give it another half an hour, but if they still didn’t answer there would be trouble.

He idly surfed for some more porn, but it did little to arouse him. He found a particularly interesting site, with videos of an overweight Japanese woman tied to a chair being flogged by a short man in a Nazi uniform, and he added it to his favourites for later exploration when he was a bit more in the mood.

With neither pizza shop answering their phones, he ventured back up the stairs to the front door an hour later. It had finally stopped raining, so he stepped outside and closed the door behind him. The drunken man was still stumbling around in his front garden, still holding the hedge-trimmer by his side, like some sort of lethal appendage to his arm.

“You all right there, Andrew?” Simon called out.

The man turned slowly towards him, a vacant look on his face. He stumbled a few steps in Simon’s direction, but came to a halt when he reached the closed wooden gate to his garden. His legs pressed up tightly against the gate, and he looked down at it as if not understanding why his movement had been blocked. He looked up at Simon when he called out the man’s name again, and his mouth gaped open silently as he stared across the street at him.

Fucker’s not just pissed up, he’s fucking on something.

With a shrug, Simon made his way up the deserted cul-de-sac towards the main road. As he turned the corner, expecting to see the gang of youths who hung out in the bus shelter all day, drinking cider and generally making a nuisance of themselves, he was struck by how quiet the town was. The steady flow of traffic Simon expected to see using the town as a shortcut to the nearby motorway junction was missing. A solitary van was parked outside the pound shop, no doubt making a delivery of new tat for people to waste their money on. The road was otherwise completely deserted, except for a few solitary pedestrians walking aimlessly along the opposite side of the road.

Probably the rain keeping everyone in, he thought.

He walked past the row of charity shops, three of them side by side, and debated whether to look in them or not to see if there was anything he could re-sell on Ebay for a profit. He peered through the window of Help the Aged, and the old woman who worked there waved to him. He waved back nonchalantly, and entered the shop. He looked through the boxes of toys, at the shelves of bric-a-brac, and finally at the rows of dusty paperbacks, looking for any titles that would be likely to sell online. He had once struck lucky with a set of Richard Allen Skinhead books that he had made £180 profit on, but that was a once in a lifetime find. With the town having a sixty percent unemployment rate, the charity shops were usually picked clean of anything that would sell within hours of it hitting the shelves.

“Nice day for ducks,” the old woman said with a cheery, toothless grin when Simon glanced in her direction.

Simon grunted his agreement, and left the shop.

Stepping through the door, he collided with a young woman who was walking past, sending her stumbling towards the kerb. The woman’s arms flailed in front of her madly as she tried to regain her balance, but as she stepped off the kerb she lost her footing and fell forward, landing in a heap in the rain-sodden road.

Simon looked around, expecting someone to come to the woman’s aid, but if the other pedestrians had seen her fall they chose to ignore it and continued on their way as if nothing had happened.

He looked up at the tantalising blue and red Dominos Pizza logo hanging from a shop front a few hundred yards away and deliberated over whether he too should just ignore the woman lying in the gutter.

It’s her own fucking fault, she should have been looking where she was going.

There was some sort of commotion going on outside Dominos. A small group of people were crowded around the shop doorway, and seemed to be agitated about something. One of them, a man dressed in a hooded parka and faded jeans, banged repeatedly on the door window with his fists, as if demanding to be let in. Another man was trying to push him gently out of the way, but he held his ground. Others had their faces pressed up against the main shop window, staring inside.

Simon looked down at the woman who had fallen into the road. She was now sat upright, staring blankly ahead as rainwater dripped from her face, and blood dripped from her legs. A strand of hair fell across her face, and matted to it with the oil and grime from the road. Despite her current dishevelled appearance, Simon was struck by how attractive the woman was. She couldn’t be any more than eighteen, he decided.

Simon licked his lips, nervously. He wasn’t used to talking to women, at least not in real life. He had a few girlfriends online that he messaged on a regular basis, and had quite an active cyber-sex life with one of them (though he was never really sure if she wasn’t actually a man), but in all of his twenty-seven years he had always found himself tongue-tied around real women.

“Um … are you all right there?” he stammered, eventually.

The woman’s head turned slowly, and she looked up at Simon, but said nothing. She seemed to be dazed, and Simon thought she might have hit her head in the fall but he couldn’t see any bruising on her face, just rain and dirt from the road. Her knees seemed to have taken the brunt of the impact, and skin was flayed from them by the unforgiving tarmac.

Simon licked his lips again as he looked at the woman’s legs. His eyes flicked from the bloody, grit-covered wounds to the short tartan skirt that was hitched up around her waist. He stepped into the road and crouched down to see if he could catch a glimpse of her knickers. As he had hoped, they were red and flimsy-looking, almost see-through with a lacy pattern. He stared at them wide-eyed, until he realised that the woman was still looking at him. Simon looked away, embarrassed at being caught ogling her, and straightened up. His face reddened as he held his hand out to her.

“Do you … um … need any help?”

The woman’s head turned slightly and she stared at his outstretched hand, but she didn’t reach out to take it. Simon held it there a few more seconds and let it drop by his side. His face reddened even more from her rebuke.

“Here, let me help you up,” he said, moving behind her, not ready to give up just yet.

He grasped her by the armpits, his fingers straying forward to fondle the soft mounds of her breasts as he pulled her to her feet. The woman swayed slightly when Simon released her, but remained standing. She slowly turned towards him, her expression blank.

Simon gave her his warmest smile, his eyes darting from her face, down to her legs, and back up to her face, pausing momentarily on her breasts.

“I’ve … um … got some … ah … antiseptic in my flat. It’s just down there,” he added, pointing towards the side-street where he lived. “You know, for … um … your knees? They’ll … um … get infected otherwise.”

His heart fluttered when he thought about the possibilities if she went along with his suggestion. He could sit her on his computer chair and kneel down on the floor while he cleaned up her knees. He would get a good view from that angle, especially if he spread her legs wide while he did it. Maybe he would be able to reposition his webcam first, but then of course he would need to make sure he kept his head out of the way.

The woman stared at him, her mouth hanging open. Her arms slowly rose from her sides, and she reached out towards Simon, her fingertips bending inwards like a cat flexing its claws. Simon walked into her arms eagerly, embracing her.

Bitch is gagging for it, he thought, fondling her buttocks through the flimsy woollen material of her skirt.

The woman started nuzzling against his neck, and Simon’s penis bulged out of the front of his jeans, pressing hard against the denim around the zip. He closed his eyes and sighed in pleasure when the woman closed her mouth over his neck, suckling at it. She began to suck, her teeth gently squeezing around the flesh of his neck. Simon had read about this on the internet. A love bite, it was called, it was supposed to be a good thing, a sure-fire sign that you are guaranteed a shag at the end of it. But he hadn’t expected it to be as painful as this. His eyes flicked open when the pressure increased and the pain became more intense. He tried to jerk his head away to let her know he had had enough pain, and that it was time to get down to the shagging part, but she moved with him, her mouth clamped tight over his neck like a limpet.

With mounting panic he squeezed his hands between their bodies and thrust out his hands on her chest, in an attempt to push the woman from him. But the woman held him tight in her vice-like grip around his waist, her fingers clawing up and down his back. The pain in Simon’s neck became more intense, quickly turning into excruciating agony when the woman’s teeth started to break through his skin.

“Get the fuck off me, you fucking mad bitch!” he yelled, pushing her violently away from him. The woman stumbled backwards and fell, her head cracking down hard on the pavement. She lay on her back staring upwards, her finger tips twitching, but otherwise motionless.

Simon put his hand to his pulsating neck and looked at the woman, wide-eyed in shock. He inspected his fingers, and stared in shock at the crimson blood that dripped from them. He put his hand back to the wound to stem the profusion of blood he could feel pouring down his neck, and looked around him frantically to see if there were any witnesses.

None of the other pedestrians, or the group huddled around the doorway of Dominos, seemed to be taking any notice, so with a final worried look at the woman lying on the ground, Simon ran back to his flat leaving a trail of blood spots behind him.

Holy fucking sheep shit on a stick! If you thought Richard Allen was clueless about skinhead culture, wait until you see what he thought punk was all about in this 1977 cash-in title.

Here are a few of the things I learnt about punk from reading this book:

1. Punk girls stuck safety pins in their tits and liked being tied up and whipped.

2. Fanzines were published by rich pornographers who lived in mansion houses.

3. Fanzines were advertised on national TV.

4. All punk musicians were extremely rich and only sang about being poor to make money.

5. Skinheads teamed up with teddy boys to go punk bashing.

6. In 1977 it cost £10 to see a punk band (which probably explains why they were all rich).

All of this wouldn’t be so bad if he had written it in the same style as the Joe Hawkins Skinhead series, from the perspective of an actual punk character. He could have had them spitting on grannies, being sick at airports, worshipping Satan, all the other things the newspapers at the time said punks did, but at least it would have been fucking interesting.

Instead of that we get some boring as fuck newspaper reporter writing an expose on punk rock. Being a typical 1970s newspaper reporter, instead of talking to some real life punks, he starts by asking a few teddy boys what they think of punks, and then approaches some plastic pop star cashing in on the punk bandwagon to ask if he can follow him around for the day. The plastic punk says things like “It’s the age, man –  Aquarius” and goes to orgies where 14 year old girls stick safety pins in themselves. And yes, he does also say “Shit on that” quite a lot.

There are no actual punk characters in the entire book until right at the end, in the epilogue, when two French punks get attacked by a gang of teds. That is also the only bit of violence in the book (or aggro, as Richard Allen calls it).

So all in all, it’s a great big pile of fucking shite so don’t waste your money on it. Here is the only line in the entire book that is actually worth reading (which is, admittedly, a line of pure fucking genius and I’m jealous as fuck for not writing it myself):

“His head throbbed like a dozen punk bands were playing discords over his eyeballs.”

This showed up in the “People who bought this also bought …” list on Amazon for one of my stories, and I got attracted to its skanky-looking retro-style cover, otherwise I never would’ve noticed it.

I never cared much for mods myself, not that I actually knew any of them. We had a feud with the local mods once, I can’t remember what it was about now. Probably something trivial, or maybe even just picking up subliminal messages from the latest Exploited single. Anyway, we all traipsed down to this café on the edge of town where all the mods hung out, Speedy-Bar or something like that, chanting Fuck a Mod Today or whatever it’s called. When we got there, there were just two young mod birds sat there drinking cups of tea, I think everyone else must’ve fucked off to some scooter wank-fest or something. So when we all piled in it was a bit of an anti-climax really. The mod birds seemed okay though when we got chatting to them, and one of my mates ended up going out with one of them for a few weeks, which pissed off the mods no end.

But I digress. Back to the book.

It’s set in present day rather than the 60s or late 70s like you’d expect from mod fiction. It opens with a bit of random violence when a gangster and his skinhead sidekick burst into the mod’s flat and smash up his stuff. It later turns out they’ve also smashed up his scooter and killed his best friend. Thinking he might be next, he does a runner to Brighton on the train, retracing the steps of his hero, the bloke from the film Quadrophenia.

There’s actually a bit of a Quadrophenia theme running through this, as he visits a lot of the locations used in the film. He even gets a quick shag in the same back alley as Jimmy from the film, with an ex-girlfriend of his who snubs him for the local Sting/Ace Face character (who is a money-grabbing property developer rather than a bellboy). There’s also a mods and rockers reunion when he arrives in Brighton, though being fucking ancient 60s relics by now they just stand around admiring each others’ bikes and scooters. There’s an old woman who lives on my road who was a mod in the 60s, she likes my Triumph 900, so maybe that’s not as far fetched as it sounds.

Other than Quadrophenia, all the other mod references went way over my head, but it’s a good, solid read. He doesn’t seem to have written anything else yet, which is a shame. If he had I would’ve picked it up on the strength of this one.

Trog woke to the sound of rusty bedsprings screeching their complaint as Mandy climbed out of the single bed they had been sharing. His eyes flickered open just in time to see her bend down to pick up her bra and pants from the floor where they had been discarded along with the rest of their clothes the night before.

“Fuck me, what a sight to wake up to.”

Mandy turned and smiled, clipping her bra on back to front around her waist. “Go back to sleep, it’s still early.” She spun the bra around and lifted the cups over her ample breasts before putting her arms through the shoulder straps.

“Why, what time is it?”

“Just gone six.”

“What? Well what are you doing up then? Get back in here.” He pulled back the covers and looked up at her, expectantly. When she didn’t respond, he patted the mattress next to him, sending up a cloud of dust mites.

Mandy sat down at the bottom of the bed, setting the springs off creaking again, and manoeuvred her feet into her pants. She stood up and bent down slowly, deliberately giving Trog another quick flash, before pulling her pants up and snapping them into place around her slim waist. “I can’t sleep, I’m too excited.”

“Yeah well, you’re not the only one after what I just saw. Anyway, who said anything about sleeping?”

Mandy smiled when she turned to face him and took in his erection poking up through the bed covers. She knew what was underneath, and it certainly wasn’t in proportion to his short stature. “Didn’t you get enough of that last night?”

“Does it look like it?”

“Yeah well, you’ll have to wait. I want to try on some clothes for Cleethorpes. I haven’t worn my skinhead gear for years now, I need to check it still fits.”

Trog ran his hands across the short stubble over his crown before clasping them together behind his head, propping himself up on the pillow to get a better view of Mandy posing before the full-length mirror built into her wardrobe door. She was brushing out her feather-cut, the only part of the skinhead look she had kept since moving out of Shefferham to work as a barmaid at The Black Bull several years ago.

“What made you give it up?” Trog asked.

Mandy glanced quizzically at his reflection in the mirror as she continued brushing her hair. “Give what up?”

“Your skinhead gear.”

“You don’t think I’m too old?”

“Nah, don’t be daft. You’re only, what, twenny-five?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Yeah well, same difference. Anyway, you know what they say, you’re only as old as the man you feel.”

Mandy laughed, putting the hair brush down on a nearby dressing table, and picked up a small cordless battery operated shaver. She flicked it on, and it buzzed in her hand like an angry wasp. “So how old does that make me then?”

Trog’s face reddened slightly as he replied. He had assumed she knew how old he was, and hoped his answer wouldn’t put her off him. “Nineteen.”

Mandy’s eyes widened slightly as she took in his age, but she didn’t comment on it. She knew he was younger than her, but she didn’t know precisely how much younger. After a short pause, she shrugged it off as unimportant. “Put some music on, yeah? But not too loud, these walls are paper-thin and I don’t want the old couple in the next flat complaining to the landlord again. We probably kept them awake half the night as it is.”

Trog smiled at the memory. It had been the first night he had slept over at Mandy’s place since they had first got together a few weeks ago. It had been her idea for him to stay the night, it would mean they could make an early start for the trip to Cleethorpes, she had said. Trog obviously didn’t take any convincing. He still couldn’t believe his luck that Mandy had chosen him out of all the other skinheads who frequented The Black Bull.

He peeled back the bed covers and sat up, feeling slightly self-conscious about his naked body. He was slightly overweight, with the beginnings of a beer belly, but his broad shoulders and muscular arms went a long way towards compensating for that. What he was embarrassed about was his lack of height. At just over five foot tall, he was a lot shorter than anyone he knew, including Mandy. Not that he ever let his insecurity show externally, of course. To everyone else who knew him, and certainly to those who didn’t, he was a cock-sure skinhead who took no shit from anyone, and was always the first into battle when any trouble kicked off.

He spun his legs out of the bed and pushed down on his penis with the palm of his hand, but his raging hard-on stubbornly refused to go away. Watching the rear view of Mandy in her bra and pants as she shaved her head didn’t really help. With a sigh, he pulled on his underpants, stretching the fabric out at the front in order to fit his manhood inside. He located his jeans and struggled into them, pulling the red braces up over his naked chest.

“After you with that razor, yeah?” he said, walking towards a battered old turntable in the centre of the dressing table. He thumbed through her collection of singles, old 45s by bands he had never heard of before. “Haven’t you got any Cockney Upstarts?”

“You know I only like the old stuff,” Mandy replied without looking away from the mirror. “I don’t see the point of all that shouty music you listen to. They don’t even have a tune, most of them.”

“So what do you want me to put on then?”

“I don’t mind, really. You decide.”

Trog frowned, and thumbed through the singles again. Not finding anything of interest among the plain brown cardboard sleeves, he turned his attention to a small collection of albums propped up against one of the legs of the dressing table. One with a photo of a group of skinheads posing by a brick wall caught his eye, and he slipped it out of its dog-eared sleeve before placing it on the record player’s long vertical spindle.

Sliding across the starting switch with his thumb, he sat back down on the bed as a loud mechanical click sent the record sliding down the spindle. There was another mechanical click as the tone arm jerked across and came to a stop hovering above the outer edge of the record for a few seconds before dropping down with a loud thunk as the stylus hit the vinyl.

The record was very scratchy, having obviously been played a lot during its lifetime, and Mandy squealed with delight when she heard its “Watta-watta-watta” opening, her hips already swaying in anticipation of the music to follow. Trog folded his arms and watched her, smiling to himself. It was worth putting up with the awful music if this was the effect it had on her.

When Mandy had finished shaving in front of the mirror, she switched off the electric shaver and spun around on one leg, crouching down low before slowly rising back up. Holding the shaver like a microphone, she began to sing along to the record, her free arm and hips swaying in time to the music as she made her way slowly towards Trog with a glint in her eye. When she reached him, she ran her hand over his head, coming to rest on the back of his neck, and held it there. She thumbed on the shaver, and smiled as he gazed up at her. Putting the shaver to his scalp, she started to shave him, gently moving the implement in straight lines over his head.

Trog stared at her breasts, which were just above eye level and jiggled enticingly with her arm movements. He couldn’t resist slipping an arm around her waist and pulling her closer so that he could rest his face between their twin mounds. He felt the hand on the back of his neck pulling him in closer, and heard Mandy gasp before she reluctantly prised his head away and resumed shaving him.

A few minutes later, she switched off the shaver and slid off its plastic guard, blowing the short hairs from the blades. Trog reached out for her again, but Mandy was quicker. She put a hand on his forehead and gently pushed him to a prone position on the bed. Quickly bending down to put the shaver safely on the floor, she climbed on top of him, setting off a new symphony of creaking bedsprings.

2

Trog handed the suitcase to the taxi driver and watched him toss it unceremoniously into the boot of the car before climbing into the driver’s seat and waiting impatiently. Trog opened the back door and gestured for Mandy to get in first, before sliding in beside her.

After almost an hour of trying on different clothes, she had eventually settled on a black and white Ben Sherman plaid shirt and a short denim mini-skirt to show off the black fishnet stockings she was wearing beneath it. Her red braces hung down from the skirt uselessly, only being there for show. Her outfit chosen, she had then spent another forty-five minutes deciding what else to take with her, and filled a suitcase to bursting point despite Trog’s protestations that they were only going for two days. Trog, meanwhile, only had the clothes he was wearing and a change of underwear and a spare shirt. Anything else he might need, he had said, he would be able to buy while he was there.

“Where to, guv?”

“Train station, mate,” Trog replied.

“Going anywhere nice?” the taxi driver asked, pulling out without indicating.

“Cleethorpes,” Mandy said. “There’s a ska festival on, we’re going to that.”

“Oh yeah? I quite like that Madness meself, driving in me car and all that. Well you’ve picked a good day for it, judging by the weather.”

“Yeah,” Trog said absentmindedly, staring out of the window at the row of boarded up shops rushing by. This village is dying on its feet, he thought. Fucking Thatcher. The sooner we kick that witch out the better.

Mandy, sensing his sudden gloom, sought his hand and squeezed it gently. “This weekend is going to be fucking brilliant,” she said quietly.

At the train station, Trog paid the fare while Mandy climbed out and straightened her skirt, pulling down on the hem. She looked around at the large gathering of skinheads, and nodded at a few faces she recognised from The Black Bull.

“All right, Mandster? Looking fucking good there,” one of them called out, and she waved to him, smiling. She had been a bit apprehensive about venturing out in her skinhead gear again after such a long break, but the man’s comment immediately flushed any doubts from her mind. She was back where she belonged, amongst her own kind, and there would be no more trying to pretend she was something else just to satisfy people who didn’t understand.

The taxi driver retrieved her suitcase from the car’s boot and dumped it down by her feet. “Here you go, love. Have a good weekend.”

Trog picked up the suitcase and headed towards the ticket office with it, Mandy following close behind. There was a short queue, and when they reached the counter Trog ordered two first class tickets to Cleethorpes.

“First class?” Mandy asked, raising an eyebrow.

Trog shrugged, pulling out his wallet to pay for the tickets. “Might as well do it in style. Looks like the train will be packed out, and I don’t fancy standing up all the way there.”

“Yeah but don’t you need to save money to pay for your fine?”

“Nah, I just pay that a few quid a week, I’ll not even miss it. I got a good bonus this week, we hit a rich coal seam so production was way up.”

“It’s all right for some,” Mandy said, looping her arm through his as they made their way to the station’s solitary platform.

“Trog, you fat bastard!” a voice boomed, and Trog spun around, a wide grin on his face.

“Aye up, Stew. What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Going to the festival aren’t I, you soft get. Don’s here as well, he’s just gone off to get some fags. All right, Mand? You scrub up well, didn’t recognise you with your clobber on.”

Mandy smiled. “Er … thanks. You’re not too bad yourself, Stew. New flight jacket?”

“Yeah, got to make an effort, haven’t you?”

“So how come you and Don are going then?” Trog asked. “You don’t even like ska. Don calls it bongo music.”

“Yeah, so? You don’t like it either, but you’re going.”

“Yeah but Mandy does, and that’s the only reason I’m going. So what’s in it for you and Don?”

“Mate, it’ll be wall to wall fucking skinbyrds the whole weekend. Who wouldn’t want a piece of that? Besides, there’s other stuff to do at Cleethorpes –  arcades and shit. It’ll be a right fucking laugh.”

“What’s that then?” Don asked, walking towards them with a lit cigarette bobbing up and down in his mouth.

Trog spun around to face him. “Alright, Don. Stew were just saying why you’re going to Cleethorpes.”

“Nowt else to do, is there? Anyway, look at you—” he said, turning to Mandy. He looked her up and down, appreciatively. “Fucking hell. Trog, you jammy bastard. How the fuck did an ugly cunt like you pull that?”

Trog smiled, and put an arm around Mandy, drawing her closer. She trailed an arm over his shoulder. Don’s eyes drifted back down to her legs, and he shook his head slowly. “Fucking hell,” he repeated.

When the train arrived there was a surge of bodies towards the doors. There were only two carriages, and the train was already half full, so there was a lot of light-hearted pushing and shoving to get on in order to claim a seat. Most of the train’s occupants were either skinheads or rudeboys heading to the festival, with the odd family with young children out on a day trip looking bemused at the sheer number of shaved heads and pork pie hats surrounding them. A black youth sitting next to the window had a cassette player on his lap, a large ghetto blaster type, and it blared out dub reggae music, much to Don’s disgust. He glared at the youth as he walked by, hoping to catch his eye and daring him to say something, but the youth was busy in his own world, nodding his head in time to the music as he stared out of the window at the drab, grey landscape.

Trog deposited the suitcase in the luggage rack near the train door and led Mandy by the hand into the first class compartment. Unlike the over-crowded second class area with its cramped seats and mass of bodies standing in the aisle, it was deserted save for a middle-aged man in a dark blue pinstripe suit who was reading a copy of The Times. The man glanced up at them over the top of his newspaper as they entered, and ruffled it slightly to show his contempt before turning his attention back to yesterday’s stock market figures.

“Cor, innit posh?” Mandy exclaimed, taking in the plush, spacious seats. “There’s doilies on the arm rests and everything. And look, curtains. Curtains on a train, that’s just fucking mental.” She tugged on a corner of the curtain and it swished effortlessly across the window. Another quick tug and it swished back.

Trog sat down, pleased that she was happy with his choice of tickets. The extra expense was definitely worth it to see the look of pure joy on her face. She’d had a hard life growing up in Shefferham, and was no stranger to poverty. Her father had died in a factory accident when she was ten years old, and her mother had struggled to support them both on unemployment benefits and a cash in hand cleaning job at the weekends. Things got even harder when some busybody reported her to the social and they cut her benefits in half.

“You know what would make this even better?” Mandy said, standing before Trog with her legs wide apart, swaying with the movement of the train.

Trog gazed up at her, liking what he saw. “What?”

She smiled, and straddled him, kneeling down on the seat before lowering herself into his lap. She put her arms around his neck and gently drew his head into her chest. Feeling him stiffen, she started to move her groin backwards and forwards over his.

A faint cough came from the seat opposite, followed by a louder one when it was ignored. “Excuse me,” the suited man said, folding up his newspaper and leaning forward. “This is the first class compartment, you shouldn’t be in here.”

Trog leaned across to one side, looking past Mandy towards the man. “What’s it to you, like?”

“I paid good money to be in here so that I wouldn’t have to put up with the likes of you. Either get out or I’ll fetch the guard to throw you out.”

“Fuck off,” Trog growled, and returned his attention to Mandy’s breasts.

“Right, well don’t say I didn’t warn you,” the man said, rising to his feet. He put the newspaper under his arm, picked up his briefcase, and stormed out.

“Fucking dickhead,” Trog said under his breath. Mandy laughed, and sat down beside him, her face flushed.

A few minutes later the man reappeared, train guard in tow. “There they are. It’s a disgrace, that’s what it is.”

The guard glared at Trog and Mandy, contempt clearly visible on his face. “Tickets please,” he said in a monotone.

Trog grinned as he pulled two train tickets from his wallet and handed them to the guard. The guard’s eyes bulged slightly as he glanced at them, and he punched holes in them before handing them back. “Thank you, sir.” He nodded politely at Mandy, setting her off laughing again. “Madam. Enjoy your journey.”

He turned to leave, and the suited man called out to him. “What, that’s it? You’re not going to do anything about them?”

The guard paused in the doorway and turned to face him. Calmly, he said “Sir, they have valid first class tickets for this journey.”

“Well that’s just not good enough. I shall be writing a letter of complaint about this, you mark my words.”

“As you wish, sir,” the guard said, turning to leave. He rolled his eyes at Mandy and she smiled at him.

Trog leant forward in his seat and glared at the suited man until he unfolded his newspaper and hid himself behind it. There was a slight tremor to the man’s hands that made the newspaper rustle slightly, and Trog didn’t care whether it was due to anger or fear. He turned to Mandy and grinned. “They let any old scum in here these days, don’t they?”

I’d been watching them loitering around outside for about twenty minutes, mentally daring them to enter my lair. I can’t do anything about them being outside, you see, on account of it being a public highway. But once they come in here, things are different. This is my domain, and what I say goes. It’s my job to protect Woolworths property from thieving scum like that, and I’m very good at my job.

I hate punks, me. Hate them with a passion. They’re just a bunch of idle bastards sponging off the state while I pay my taxes to keep them in a life of luxury. Willie Whitelaw is right, a short sharp shock is what they need. If I had my way they would all be shipped off to theFalklandsto fight the Argies, not lying around in bed all day. I would have been there myself in a heartbeat if it wasn’t for the shrapnel in my leg, a souvenir from my last tour inBelfast. Put these punk bastards in the army and they wouldn’t know what hit them. Hell, just get them out of bed in the morning and they’d probably faint from the exertion.

I watched the old lady struggle with the door, rubbing her cheek with one hand where it had hit her in the face, while she pulled a shopping trolley laden with groceries behind her. It was quite comical to watch, and I couldn’t help smiling. But then I saw Barbara on the till watching me intently and frowning. She’s a good ten years younger than me, so there’s not much of a chance of getting into her knickers, but it never hurts to keep your options open. There’s always the next staff Christmas party.

My eyes darted between Barbara, the two punks, and the old woman. The punks didn’t seem to have stolen anything yet, so they could wait a bit longer. I sighed, and walked over to the door, and held it open for the old woman. I glanced over at Barbara, and she was smiling at me. Result.

The old woman didn’t seem to be in any hurry to walk through the door, though. In fact she just stood there and looked at me.

“Thank you dear,” she said, and, get this, she stood her shopping trolley up and transferred it to her other hand before she walked through. And talk about walking slow. You would think she was the one with shrapnel in her leg the way she hobbled around.

I grunted at her when she eventually got around to entering the shop fully, and let the door swing closed behind her. I watched her saunter towards the pick and mix sweets, put down her shopping trolley, and lift up the lid to the tub of fruit gums. I watched long enough to make sure she didn’t pop any sweets into her mouth instead of paying for them, then turned my attention back to the two punks. They were making their way through the shop in the direction of the escalator, as if they had a god given right to be there.

Following them, I reached for the radio in my inside jacket pocket and pressed the transmit button.

“Sam, you there?”

Sam is my subordinate. He’s always slacking off somewhere, he doesn’t seem to take the job seriously at all. So it didn’t come as any surprise when he didn’t reply for several seconds.

“What’s up, John?”

“Two punks, heading up the escalator to the first floor. I’ll keep an eye on them and let you know if I need backup.”

“Roger, John. I’ll be on standby.”

Yeah, right. Like he’s ever on anything but standing by while I do all the work.

I put the radio back in my pocket, and with a final glance at the old woman to check she was putting the sweets in the correct paper bag, I made my way quickly to the foot of the escalator. They were already half way up it when I arrived, and one of them turned in my direction so I darted to one side, where the pots and pans are displayed. I didn’t think I had been seen, but it had certainly been a close call. Luckily my army training had made me quick witted, so I was able to blend into the background in time.

I picked up a chrome-plated kettle and used it as a mirror to check the coast was clear. Holding it at arm’s length and tilting it around, I was able to gain a good view of the entire escalator from top to bottom. They were snickering to themselves about something, but they didn’t look around again.

When the punks stepped off the escalator on the first floor, I put the kettle carefully back in its proper place on the shelf, and twisted it around so that it matched the exact same profile as all the other kettles around it. Then I took out my hanky and wiped away the greasy fingerprints I had left on it, before I stepped onto the escalator to follow them.

Stooping down slightly as I reached the top of the escalator so that I wouldn’t be seen, I stepped off and looked around the upper floor. The punks were loitering around one of the toy aisles, so I made my way casually towards them, deliberately looking up and down the other aisles so that they wouldn’t suspect they were under surveillance. They were obviously up to no good because when they did see me they quickly darted out of sight down one of the parallel rows of aisles.

Quickening my step, and cursing that Irish bastard and his bomb, I limped towards the end of the aisle in which I had seen the punks last. I paused before entering the aisle, and listened for any sounds that might give away the punks’ location. I couldn’t hear anything, so I risked a quick reconnoitre by stepping briskly to the next aisle and relying on my excellent peripheral vision.

The punks were at the opposite end of the shop, and as I walked past I saw them move into the next aisle, in the opposite direction that I was travelling in. I decided stealth was my best option if I was going to catch these two at whatever it was they were up to. I entered the aisle I had last seen them in, and stopped in the middle, listening for any sounds. I carefully parted some boxes containing Barbie doll furniture, and peered through the small gap I had created between them.

The punks were standing in front of the Action Man range, sniggering to themselves. I couldn’t see what they were doing, they had their backs to me and were standing too close together for me to see, but whatever they were doing it was sure to be something illegal.

I watched them for a minute or so, and then decided I had better investigate before things went too far. They were acting suspiciously, so I was perfectly within my rights to apprehend them so that they could be searched for stolen property. And if I got a bit rough with them I could always say I had to defend himself. The way these scruffy bastards were dressed, one look at them would satisfy the police who the real aggressors were. In fact they probably had a criminal record a mile long anyway, so they would certainly be known to the police.

My legal requirements satisfied, I saw no more need for stealth so I slid the Barbie boxes back into their correct place and made my way to the end of the aisle. When got there, the punks were gone. I limped quickly to the end of the aisle and looked down the adjacent aisles, but they were nowhere to be seen.

I was about to give up and go and inspect the Action Man toys for any damage the punks may have caused, when I heard a faint cough behind me. I spun around to face the direction of the cough, and there they were at the opposite end of the aisle I was looking into. Staring at me with stupid grins on their faces.

“Oi you two, come here,” I shouted, taking a step towards them. But the two punks ignored my direct order, and ran towards the first floor exit. I gave chase. If they got out into the rest of the shopping centre, or even worse, into one of the other shops, I would lose them. But the best I could manage was a brisk limping walk, and they were running at full pelt the way that criminals do when they know they’ve been rumbled, so I knew my chances of catching them were somewhat remote.

But wait, there they were standing in the doorway as if they hadn’t done anything wrong. I still had a chance of catching them and bringing them to justice. I thought about shouting out to them, ordering them to stay there. But they had already proved they were incapable of following simple orders. I reverted back to stealth mode and crept quietly towards them, hugging the wall as much as possible to remain out of sight until I was ready to pounce.

I got within fifteen feet of them before I saw their reflections in the glass door. They were staring straight at me, a stupid grin on their ugly faces. I realised my mistake long before they turned around and waved at me before darting out of the exit, and I cursed my stupidity. I should have circled around the shop and taken them from a different angle. I strode quickly to the door, hoping I might still be able to apprehend them, but they were already gone by the time I got there.

I hid behind a large cardboard cutout of ET the Extra Terrestrial for a few minutes in case they came back. They didn’t. No doubt they would already be half way to the second hand shop selling whatever it was they had stolen so that they could buy drugs.

With a sigh, I decided to resume my normal duties. I wondered briefly if the old woman downstairs had paid for her sweets, but realised there would be nothing I could do now if she hadn’t. Maybe I should have told Sam about her so that he could observe the woman while I was busy watching the punks. Too late now.

I remembered the punks had been doing something suspicious near the Action Man range, so I decided I had better investigate that. I would know instantly if there was any missing because I know that range very well. If only my wife had had a boy instead of a girl, then I would have been able to use them to teach him what army life was all about. Stupid woman couldn’t even do that right.

When I reached the Action Man display I was appalled by what I saw. Two of them had been stripped completely of their green camouflage uniforms and posed in a disgusting sexual way, one bent over and the other standing behind it with its pelvis thrust forward and its hands hooked around the other’s waist. Several other soldiers had been arranged around them in a rough semi-circle, their right arms raised in a Nazi salute.

Anger flared through me, and I exhaled loudly through my nose. Don’t they know that these people gave up their lives so that this country can be free? If my father had been alive to see this! I was so angry I shook with rage as I reached out to the two soldiers who had been so vilely defiled and degraded.

“Don’t worry, they will pay for this,” I promised as I parted the two soldiers and held them gently to my chest. I looked around for their clothes, found them discarded on a lower shelf, and gave them back their dignity. Standing them to attention in their correct location on the shelf, I turned my attention to the rest of their squad. I lowered their arms, straightened out any crumples in their uniforms, and arranged them in a straight line with the others. I gave them a quick salute, pivoted ninety degrees on one leg to do a smart right turn, and marched towards the escalator with my head held high.

Time to retake my optimal surveillance position near the entrance door, where Barbara can see how vital my role is to the security of Woolworths. I may have lost one small battle, but I will certainly win the war.

According to this book, boot-boys were a middle-class offshoot of skinheads who tore around town on mopeds raping women and daubing swastikas on the front doors of Jewish residents. The book follows one such gang of boot-boys, The Crackers, led by middle-class white boy Tom. And yes, there were boot-girls too. Just like skinhead girls, they carried weapons in their bra and were all sex mad.

Benjy, a Jewish son of a clothes factory owner, challenges Tom for leadership of The Crackers, and an election is called. (Boot-boys are a very democratic breed, unlike skinheads.) But Benjy (the dog!) bribes all the members of The Crackers with the offer of free clothes if they vote for him. When Tom finds out, the election is called off and they decide to have a daredevil competition on their mopeds instead.

A stray cat foils that plan, so then they go to a football match to see who can beat up the most Geordies. Benjy beats up four Geordies, while Tom can only manage three before he is ejected from the football ground. But while Benjy had a witness to back up his claims, Tom’s witness was a big fat girly who ran away at the first sign of trouble. Which meant that Tom’s claim of six Geordie scalps was unprovable, so the contest was declared null and void.

Next they have a shag-off to decide who gets to be leader of the gang. Six dolly-birds are lined up for each of them but they both falter after the fifth. A dead heat that left two dollies still on heat, as it were. So then they decide on a knife fight.

After that, things start to get a little bit … well … silly is the word that springs to mind.

So is it any good? Mate, it’s a Richard Allen book. The simple fact that you are here reading this means that you want it just as much as a dolly-bird that’s been turned into a nympho after being gang-raped by a bunch of marauding skinheads on Brighton beach wants shagging.

The Meat Wagon

When civilisation came to an end, the members of the Wart Hogs Motorcycle Club had been too busy partying to notice. They had been to the annual Smoky Bears Picnic and Music Festival in Derbyshire. A whole weekend of drink and drugs-fuelled debauchery away from the nine to five grind of factory life. A weekend in which they got to live their dreams of a biker-lifestyle, surrounded by their own kind in an old aircraft hangar in the middle of nowhere. But can they survive full time in a world gone mad?

Reclaim the Nation

16 year-old Jordan was brought up by her ex-punk father to have a healthy disrespect for authority. “Stay away from the police,” he taught her from a young age. “They will beat you up and then do you for assaulting their fists with your face.” When she enrols in the local college, she meets an anarchist group planning a London demonstration with military precision. But when it goes wrong, she finds herself facing an army of police looking for heads to crack open. Armed only with a camcorder, can she survive long enough to get her footage out to the media? And will the media care anyway?

Stiggy’s Last Stand

What Stiggy did after the events in Punk Faction.

No Title Yet

A ska festival brings skinheads from all over the country to the sleepy seaside town of Cleethorpes.