Too Cold For Snow

They’d replaced the blood-bespattered cement floor with a perfect sheet of ice, and had even installed hand rails around the walls.
    ‘So you can practice lunchtimes, and we can watch.’
    As his workers applauded this briefest of speeches, Planer’s eyes spotted the spectator stand on one edge. The chippies at the abattoir had worked at a frenzied lick to get them built and had even draped them with bunting. Cued by a nod from Trevor, one of the ladies from the canteen stepped forward and gave Planer a pair of skates, sporting a Bunleys-for -Beef slogan and motifs of flying sausages and burgers. Planer had to laugh.
    ‘Just what I always wanted,’ said Planer to much applause, which resounded around the chill room until he put on his skates and took to the ice. He executed a perfect mazurka as he sang along to a routine he’d perfected in his head but had never actually danced. As he went ever faster, he sang one of his favourite hymns, and he might have been giving theme the keys of the kingdom, he really could, because they were all as quiet as field mice, all ninety five employees in their Cliniwhite hats, as they watched him work his way through his alphabet of moves.
    When Planer walked into the bar to meet Henry that night, a palpable buzz of excitement tingled its way around the room. There was a starburst of paparazzi flashbulbs and there were an awful lot of strangers in the place. Henry was drinking Perrier.
    ‘We’ve been invited to represent the UK in the world championships. No trials, no competitions, just a straight entry based on the strength of what we’ve done in the past,’ said Henry, without ceremony. He sipped, with distaste.
    ‘Blimey, no wonder you’re on the weak stuff. When are they?’
    ‘In two weeks’ time.’
    ‘You’ll be needing something a little stronger then?’
    ‘I most certainly will.’
    They trained down at the abattoir where Planer now just worked half days. The company loved having the television crews coming back and forth and gave them all free samples and hot beef baguettes.
    Getting Henry into the place involved using cars with actual curtains on the windows and changing clocks so that he never actually saw that it was daytime, enough of a ruse to confuse his phobia. He still got nervous if he simply heard the word ‘day’.
    For a couple of days they had a skating coach, Jurek, to help them but all he could do, despite years of training Lithuanians, was watch the two of them achieve things they shouldn’t be able to. Their levels of fitness were laughably low.
    The two men worked out a dynamite routine, weaving together Asian dub beats and old war movie themes, helped along by Planer’s nephew who was a DJ and record producer. He added some Stravinsky and some psychedelic beats from Togo and Benin from the 1970s. Henry loved these in particular as they had the madcap energy of people who were clearly out of their boxes, and he was no stranger to that state. He drank Chartreuse from plastic cups by way of training.
    The fateful day dawned in Reykjavik. Planer felt awkward in his new costume, but not as awkward as Henry, who found it clingy around the capaciousness of his behind.
    Russia and Denmark were the countries to watch, both countries backed by the tipsters and the bookmakers right up until Planer and Henry threw their hats into the ring, or into the rink, rather. On the night flight to Iceland the Nighthawks, as they now styled themselves, had chatted amiably about the challenge ahead. They talked about Miles Davis and Shakespeare and other people who had pushed the boat out into new and open water. Henry held back from the booze and resisted the free drinks, a token gesture really as he’d already sunk a good few in the airport bar.
    Henry limbered up with a couple of Goldschlagers and two quick turns around the ice of the practice rink. He felt a little queasy as if he were coming down with something. He’d been listening to the music over and over, as had Planer, who knew every note and nuance. They both put on their black spandex costumes and their new skates. They were smiling as they went through the doors into the cinema show of their performance, a capacity crowd on its feet the moment they stepped into the glare.
    Deafening cheers – not least from the hundred abattoir workers who had made the trip – followed them as they went around the rink in increasingly decreasing figures of eight. They wove a pattern into each other with