Too Cold For Snow

ever so lucky no-one got seriously hurt, for even though two people were bitten, they both survived to tell the tale, as did the RSPCA inspector who sealed off the hotel and caught the serpents one by one with his pair of special tongs. Forty eight in total.
    Owen particularly liked the image of his redoubtable auntie Lil beating away a fearsome rattlesnake with her walking stick, beating it back all the way to the cloakroom where a terrified attendant had become incontinent with fear as a coppermouth snake appeared behind the rack of coats and opened its terrifying gape. Lil was indomitable, she really was, as was the whole family. After a Biblical onslaught of snakes they really could cope with just about anything. He underlined his surname on the front of his school exercise book. Pearson. A strong name. Full of character. The sort of stuff that stood you in good stead when life was all chill wind and challenge. He wanted to be like Lil. He would be.

Nighthawks
     
     
    The session down the job centre had not gone too well. The man behind the Plexiglass screen hadn’t liked Planer’s jokes and had put him down as a flippant time-waster , which could really scupper his benefit payments.  
    ‘I’m afraid we can’t accommodate any one of your three preferred career options,’ – Planer had expressed a desire to be an ocarina salesman, pearl diver and glider pilot – ‘and so I’m afraid you’ll have to look at something less, well, exotic.’  
    Planer didn’t even get the chance to explain about the man from Senegal who’d shared digs with him when they were both working on the M4. Salif showed him how to make three kinds of ocarina and it was a life skill Planer carried with him: how to fashion the transverse, the pendant and the inline and get rare good sounds out of all of them.  
    At forty-nine Planer had acquired a range of skills. He described himself as a willing hand, but there was raging unemployment and no need for any hands. Lines formed even for menial work and dirty tasks.  
    The surly man gave him a print-out of job vacancies in the area and it was a demeaning list. In the old days he’d have lumped them all in the category marked ‘skivvy’. There were a few catering jobs and a desirable career option as an assistant lavatory attendant in the Scrumballs Terrace conveniences, which actually had a pension scheme attached as if he might choose to grow old and retire in the fetid bunker, in the smell of other people’s insides.
    ‘You’re kidding me, right?’
    ‘No one jests in this job, Mr Planer. We’re civil servants.’
    ‘And if I refuse all of these?’
    ‘The State would, I’m afraid, take a dim view. Let me suggest the job at the abattoir. “Meat Excavator”. We haven’t had many enquiries about that. It seems most of the long term unemployed in this area have become vegetarian overnight.’
    So Planer caught the Number 61 bus to a huge concrete bunker on the edge of town. A smoke stack plumed the smell and smuts high into the air. His job interview was perfunctory. He was shown where to clock in and given his overalls and boots. Disposable caps came from a dispenser.
    ‘You’ll find it hard at first. There’s a damn sight too much blood for most people, but we won’t ask you to work the stun gun in your first few weeks. We’ll just let you get the hang of it. But I would say be very careful when walking around – the floors are very slippery as one of the sluice channels has clogged and it’ll take a few days to get it running again.’
    He pointed at a mound of innards and offal which were being pushed into a corner by a gangling Rastafarian wielding an U-shaped rubber brush.
    By the afternoon Planer was already wielding the stun gun, the iron bolt shooting into the animal’s skull with such precise force that it would have dropped down stone dead were it not pinioned by the metal sides of the killing harness. He worked in a fine mist of blood which came off the lancing and cutting tools from the other men on the line. He counted fifty animals in and, as he left at the end of his first shift, saw four lorries moving carcasses out of the goods yard.
    Planer had a shower after reaching the flat and then walked down to the Drovers’ where he was due to meet Henry. He was never seen in daylight for medical reasons; a rare condition which banished him from sunlight. Henry danced like a God.
    His friend was swimming away from himself into a lagoon of worry,