Friday 3 August 2012

Short excerpt from Bunny on a Bike


The tube station was not far from the casino and when it came into sight I thought it looked more like an enormous, ungainly office block.  It was on pillars, but not the classical kind, and it looked so, so wrong.  The windows were high up and masked by long curtains, which presumably hid the bright, luxurious interior.  I suppose I thought the building would be grander, more ornate – dripping with wealth.

‘What a dump!’ said Carol.

She wasn’t wrong. 

Then, we saw all the people.  There were hundreds of them.  Girls and some boys too, just standing there, in the longest queue I had ever seen.  It went along the side of the building, round the corner and on for at least a hundred yards. On closer inspection I noticed how the young trendies were dressed. Never had I seen so many fashion mistakes in one place.  I pushed back my dyed blonde hair and eased up my skin-tight jeans.

‘Do you think they are all here for the croupier jobs?’  I wondered aloud.

‘Of course they are, you silly cow.  Let’s get in the bloody queue, shall we?’  Carol shoved me and we walked along the pavement, checking out the competition. 

‘They look younger than us.  And prettier,’  Carol whispered.

‘Speak for yourself!’  I said.

The advert had specified young, good-looking people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three.  I was twenty-four, Carol was all right, she was twenty-three. We were young enough and certainly attractive, in a brash kind of way.  Looking back, I blame Debbie Harry for my lack of sophistication.


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bunny-on-a-Bike-ebook/dp/B0089FB71O/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1344003000&sr=1-1 

2 comments:

  1. Brash was good, then. And nothing wrong with Debby Harry, either then or now! Your queue reminds me of a similar one in Wardour Street when I was 22. I reached the end of it to discover it wasn't a film runner job, but a secretarial one and only open to females. My moustache was a bit of a giveaway.

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  2. Moustaches are okay, but I think you would have needed the ability to type, smoulder and take orders to be a secretary in the 80s. Thanks for looking.

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