AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

For earlier Chapters and an explanation of this dreadful story, see blog: The Cardiff Grandma. WARNING: This novel contains fake Welsh.
In the previous episode, Sunny Quito, not dead after all, just flattened and elongated, joins forces with the other Welsh University student, the Welsh one, Rhoda Crwys. Now what? More Beer® perhaps?
The Cardiff Grandma Chapter 51

For all of his failings the hard-boiled, ham-fisted, bullheaded bloodhound of a detective, was good at his job. The defective detective was an inspector of collectors of retrospective prohibited musical invective. That is to say he spent his nights as an undercover officer for the Jazz Police, tootling around the back streets of downtown Beer®, where it mingled and merged with the fringes of Seaton, keeping an eye out for illicit movements of, and trading in, imported vinyl. Particularly those pieces that should never have even been considered for parole, let alone be released upon the public. It wasn’t especially dirty or hard work… but someone had to do it.

A typical evenings work would involve the disguised Bowls making like just another of the multitude of musical tourists on the look out for a cheap thrill from one of the many back street traders that had come to plague the more seedy parts of town in recent years. With luck it wouldn’t be long before some unsuspecting trader would accost him and invite the cop to sample some of his offerings.

‘What you after man? I got it all. I’m telling ya, if I ain’t got it you don’t want it. And if you don’t want it I probably still got it anyway. What’s it to be man? Come on brother…’ The inevitably over talkative trader would try out his usual patter, unaware that he was soon to be taken unawares by the ham-boiled, bullheaded, hard-fisted officer. ‘I can see you are no fool man, you ain’t just some dim tourist like the rest. I have something special for you...’ The chatter would go on and on, all the while the trader leading his ‘punter’ further into the seclusion of the alley. ‘You like Fusion man? I got some great Belgian Fusion. Gutbucket? Assbasket? Jive? Live Jive? Beehive Jive? Hey, I got some great bootleg stuff from Mad Old Blind Johnny Rogers? How about something by Mentally Unbalanced Aging Visually Impaired Billie Smith? No? No, I bets you prefer some Stinky Swampy Honkey Tonkey Stomp? Freeform Dixie? Freefall Pixie? Hard Acid-rain? I got it all fella, I got it alllllll!’ the back alley trader would rant. And when he’d heard enough, and in an instant, Bowls would strike and another trader, and another stash of smuggled Jazz, would be safely removed from the mean, ill mannered streets of Beer®.

In contrast to how he spent his nights, Short Mat Bowls spent his days down at the suitable understated indoor green, ‘QuiteGoodBowl’, supping cold coffee, chewing on hot donuts and basking in a warm glow of self satisfaction at another nights work. All of this while he perfected his long-break shots and polished his jack.

Days in Beer® were a humdrum affair. So humdrum that the local residents often resorted to having humdrum affairs with each other just to break up the monotony of the day light hours. The non-local residents frowned on such things. Or at least they would have had they lived closer and been party to them. Short Mat Bowls had seen it all before. He was cursed, or blessed (depending upon his mood), with a rare form of psychic power and / or delusion known as fore-hindsight. With this affliction he would often have premonitions about upcoming events and scenarios… occasionally before they had even happened. He had decided long ago not to dwell on the experiences he experienced.

Of course partly as a result of his ability to predict past events, and mainly as he’d been around a really long time, he’d seen the debauch and licentious aftermath of many a humdrum affair… sometimes before the actual affair had taken place, (or at least before it was over).

For the most part he kept himself to himself and he liked it that way.

Short Mat was far from perfect but then he had only one true vice. He kept it bolted to a heavy wooden bench in his garage: it was a six inch cast iron device with an eight inch reach and a buttress screw fastener. (He liked to maintain ‘imperial’ measurements, somehow six inches just sounded more definite than 152 millimeters). But these days he lived a clean life and sought solace only at the bottom of an empty packet of jelly beans*. Jelly beans, he figured, probably weren’t too good for him but as far as shortcomings go he could come a lot shorter.

The days would pass and, with an almost predictable inevitability, give way to nights. Having napped, eaten and passed time in his usual way, Bowls would once more come to life and resume his one man, double handed, ham-fisted campaign to rid his neighborhood of as much vinyl crime as possible. His existence was as regular as a regular clockwork clock and that suited him fine. Disturbance to his routine was not welcomed. He had striven hard to create the kind of life he wanted to live and he wasn’t prepared, or expecting, any variation any time soon.

* Despite seeking solace at the bottom of a packet of jelly beans, he never, he once realized, actually found it.