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Parachutes and pigParachutes and pig--bits, bits,

a gangster and a hedge.a gangster and a hedge.

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(Ha, Ha, Ha!)(Ha, Ha, Ha!)

Dan W.GriffinDan W.Griffin

www.nostrangertothep45.comwww.nostrangertothep45.com

Copyright © Dan W.Griffin

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The rights of Dan W.Griffin to be identified as the Author of this Work has

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Patents Act, 1988

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Thanks for downloading this excerpt from my book, No stranger to the P45.

This is the complete ‘Parachutes and pig-bits, a gangster and a hedge’, a piece describing an attempt to build a nightclub and give all the profit away to charity. It’s the same work as featured in The University Years but produced as an independent piece via issuu.com.

I hope that you enjoy it and I’d be delighted if you’d like to make a comment via the website.

Thanks again and have a fantastic day.

Dan W.Griffin

Welcome to DanlandWelcome to Danland

I once had a dream in which I was pursued by a

Spitfire. There was no explanation as to why it was

pursuing me - it being a dream and all - but because it

was, so I was running away. Clumps of mud and grass

filled the air as a thousand rounds of aggravatingly hot

lead thumped into the ground and ripped it asunder.

Screaming in terror and waving my arms in the air I ran

as hard and as fast as my pudgy legs would allow. What

was probably a molehill then exploded in my face. In a

moment of semi-conscious clarity I pondered just how

odd and unreasonable this entire scenario was. Then

thinking that it would help I dived into a hedge. As I

scrabbled through the undergrowth like a frightened mole

I had a third semi-conscious thought: I considered just

how fortunate it was that I’d travelled back in time to the

Second World War; for had the plane been some kind of

stealth bomber I’d surely have been quite a bit fucked. I

awoke shortly thereafter with the taste of many

dandelions and dirt in my mouth.

As I recall this dream so I also recall the feeling of

abject terror as this masterpiece of aviation technology

pursued me across a meadow. It was that same feeling

of abject terror that I also recalled on the day that I heard

Page 1

that a man named Phil wanted to have a word with me

over a small matter of five hundred quid. In my mind’s

eye Phil was the Spitfire, his team of psychotic henchmen

the bullets. Scotland was surely the hedge.

Some six weeks before and two weeks prior to the

biannual Comic Relief, once more I was hung-over and

sitting in a café by the name of Capers. It was the best

place to go for a greasy fry-up and a mug of tea for a

quid and there were four or five of us tucking into eggs

and pig-bits that morning. The previous evening we’d

been out on the campaign trail for the election (of Jon

and I to the executive committee of the student union).

I’ve no idea whether I disgraced myself that night. But I

imagine that I probably did.

Over breakfast and through his own bleary one-eyed

squint of post-alcohol excess, with a mug if tea in one

hand and a copy of the Student Times laid out across the

table in place of his polished-clean breakfast plate, a

friend named Ben was thumbing its pages and trying to

come to terms with his own fragility. Stopping at a

particular page in the paper he began to read aloud a

piece about the forthcoming Comic Relief event and the

Page 2

fact that a few students were planning activities to raise

funds for it. Pondering this, together we chewed over the

idea (along with a second round of toast) and decided

that we’d quite like to raise a few quid, too. Someone

suggested dressing-up as clowns and waving buckets

about, someone else suggested a parachute jump. I

said, ‘Let’s build a nightclub!’

In my mind (still full of booze-related bubbles and

other nonsense) the idea was a simple one. It wasn’t - as

I would soon realise - and with hindsight I’m altogether

astonished that not a single one of my brunching

companions attempted to have me sectioned right there

and then. Since no one so much as spat out their tea

either, so I was encouraged to expand on my suggestion

as though it was a viable and perfectly feasible thing to

attempt. After finishing the last of my ketchup-laden pig

bits I took a sip of tea and set-about trying to explain it.

That explanation wasn’t half as difficult as I thought it

would be, particularly given the fact that I hadn’t thought

it through one bit.

The idea was to attempt something along the lines of

the old television series featuring Anneka Rice, a series

entitled Challenge Anneka... I think. I seem to recall the

shows featuring Ms Rice either building or doing

‘something’ and I remembered - possibly a somewhat

loose and rather inaccurate term - that one of these

Page 3

shows featured her building a playground. Another

featured her publishing a book. What the book was I’ve

no idea but I do remember that it was published by Butler

and Tanner in Frome, the owner of which I’d mown lawns

for back when I was about ten. One particular thing that

struck me about the show was that although it gave the

impression that the projects were achieved in just a

couple of days, the entire operations actually took a

couple of weeks. This was rather relevant to my thought

processes - another loose and somewhat inaccurate term

- as I sipped tea and chomped on my toast and pig bits.

Spending many years of my younger life in and

around the small Somerset town of Frome I was more

aware of the existence of Butler and Tanner than

someone living somewhere else may have been. Since a

television show involving the company was being

produced in the town, so the news spread like a small

ineffective virus. In Frome, because nothing really

interesting ever occurred, the production of such a show

constituted news. In my mind therefore, I determined

that because the show had managed to produce

‘something’ within two weeks, so we could build a

nightclub. Through my booze-related bubbles I figured

that with this unique nay dumbfuck idea we could whip

up a great amount of support and thus not be particularly

concerned that we lacked of any resources whatsoever

Page 4

(compared to those of the production company of the

show). Confident that I’d sufficiently planned the idea in

the space of about thirty seconds I presented my pitch to

my brunching companions. ‘We’ll find an empty building

and then prey on the goodwill of the local ‘everyone’ to

encourage them to pitch in. We’ll beg, borrow and steal

everything we need and then operate the club for a week

and give all the profits to Comic Relief’ I declared. ‘It’ll be

fun.’ Oddly, my brunching companions had still not

dismissed the idea as entirely absurd, although a couple

did glance at me as if I was mad.

Back at home we telephoned newspapers and radio

stations and were interviewed live on-air. We prepared a

pitch for the student union and nearing the end of the

first week a hundred-plus volunteers were chomping at

the bit to get involved. We were offered a defunct Lazer

Quest building to put the whole thing together in and I

telephoned the press office of the Nissan car plant and

collected two brand new vehicles in which to do some of

the running around. In the meantime the executive

committee of the student’s union met and decided not to

help out and late on a Wednesday afternoon I arrived at

Page 5

the estate agent’s office to collect the keys to the

building. Things seemed to be going rather well. About

twenty minutes later and they rather abruptly ceased

doing so.

We were about fifteen feet from the entrance of the

defunct Lazer Quest building with the keys in-hand when

my phone rang. Given my activities of the previous few

days it was not a particularly novel occurrence and so I

answered it, thinking that things were progressing

according to the non-existence of my plan. The call was

from the estate agent who had moments earlier received

an urgent fax from the lawyers of the owners of the

building. Within it the lawyers had used a number of

fairly strong and unambiguous words to communicate the

owners’ change of mind about letting us use the building

(on some spurious grounds of not having any insurance

or something), and they continued on to suggest that

should I actually enter the building rather than returning

the keys immediately, please, they would then be

delighted to sue the living crap out of me. It was the

first, but not the last time that I would ever receive a

threat of legal action from a very angry firm of lawyers.

As I tend to do in these situations, I became quite

concerned about that.

It was then the day before the elections and having

not done any campaigning whatsoever, somehow I was

Page 6

neck-and-neck in the polls with someone named Paul.

Right up until that telephone call I’d been thoroughly

enjoying myself trying to build a nightclub out of nothing

but the goodwill of others. Many people were actually

taking me seriously for once and as I blundered and

barged from one issue to the next, so things appeared to

fall into place without too much aggravation. We had

pledges of support from students and a half-dozen of the

union’s clubs and societies. We also had responses from

the interviews with the local radio stations with offers of

assistance and support from local businesses to provide

electricians, joiners and other useful things. It was all

beginning to feel like something of a snowball rolling

down a hill; picking up mass and velocity as it bumbled,

bounced and barged its way forth. Suddenly, with the

communication from the lawyers, the snowball then

smashed into a wall and my dignity disintegrated across

the floor.

With no alternative but to return the keys to the

estate agent, once again we found ourselves in Capers

trying to figure out what to do. We needed a new venue

in which to focus all the ‘stuff’ and we needed to find it

very quickly indeed. By my calculations we required at

least five days of actually being in a venue for each

individual or organisation to do their bit, whether that be

nailing some wood together to build the bar or trailing a

Page 7

few wires around to make some lights flash. That gave

us about forty-eight hours to find such a place. Having

exhausted all other sensible possibilities other than forget

the whole thing entirely, on impulse I did exactly what

I’m sure anyone with a similar problem would have done:

I hopped in one of the Nissans and drove to London to

gate-crash Channel Four’s Big Breakfast.

... ?

Ben was eighteen but looked about twelve. I can’t

remember which course he was studying but he too was

standing in the elections for a post on the executive

committee. Like me, he didn’t take it particularly

seriously either, and was instead keen and excited about

this ludicrous idea to build a club. Taking this new

direction more seriously than he perhaps should’ve done,

he climbed into the second of our Nissan run-arounds and

we convoyed through the night south to London.

It was a fairly interesting journey during which Ben

‘lost’ the front wheel of his Nissan. He was then arrested

because the police thought he’d stolen the car.

Apparently, their logic was that he looked too young to

drive and despite his protestations and showing of his

licence didn’t believe he was entitled to drive the car

Page 8

anyway. Back then there was no automatic tie-in with

the DVLA and insurance databases etc. and so checks had

to be carried out at the nearest police station. That done,

they let him go and we carried on south, arriving in

London at about half-five the following morning.

Given the absurdity of the thought processes (or lack

thereof) that had so far gone into what we were trying to

accomplish, it was no surprise that we weren’t allowed on

the show. We did however, enjoy a particularly pleasant

breakfast in the green room of Lock Keeper’s Cottage and

I briefly met Dawn French while Ben tried without success

to pull the daughter of the week. With nowhere left to

turn for help after a brief trip to the offices of Comic Relief

had proved less than fruitful, we began the drive back to

Sunderland and stopped off at one of the service stations

on the M1. Continuing the absurdity of the day I met an

extremely distant family relation whom I hadn’t seen

since a funeral some five years before, and we were

moments from rejoining the motorway when we noticed

four girls standing on the slip-road dressed in pyjamas.

They were each carrying a bucket and as we approached

them one thrust her hitch-hiker’s thumb into our path. I

figured it would have been rude not to stop. And so I did.

The girls were undertaking a sponsored jailbreak to

raise money for Comic Relief. It appeared that they had

actually attempted something feasible and so rather than

Page 9

not accomplish anything whatsoever, both Ben and I

decided to give the girls a lift to Sunderland. Stopping

barely long enough for a cup of tea we then decided to

make the most of Nissan’s generosity and aid the girls in

their challenge by driving them to Edinburgh. We then

returned them back to their university in Leicester that

same day, attended the post-jailbreak party and fell

asleep.

I lost the election but it was a close-run thing. As it

turned out I was seventy-four votes short of that

‘someone-named-Paul’ who had a thousand and three

hundred and something to my thousand and two hundred

and something else. I wasn’t disappointed, though.

Instead I was far more concerned about what Nissan

were going to say about the fact that none of the

nightclub things had happened, we’d lost a wheel to one

of their cars and put almost two thousand miles on them

both in just under a week. They really weren’t at-all

happy about any of that.

Phil was a local gangster and owner of a small number

of nightclubs in the city. His reputation preceded him but

Page 10

it didn’t stop me from getting very excited when he

telephoned the office of the Student Times about a week

or so after the botched Comic Relief thing and asked if

there was anyone we knew who wanted to promote his

bar. It was a couple of weeks late but it didn’t matter:

we had our venue and it didn’t even need to be built.

Ben was as keen as I was to take on the project and

so we met with Phil and a couple of his henchmen that

very same day. They all seemed perfectly palatable then.

Ben and I agreed to promote one of his clubs and take a

percentage of the door fees to donate at first to Comic

Relief and then, with it out of the way, earn ourselves a

few quid, too.

Ben and I split the responsibilities. My job was to do

all of the behind-the-scenes organising which included

arranging a band and decorating the place according to

our new ‘Seventies’ theme. Ben’s job was to run around

with posters and flyers and the like and for the next

couple of weeks we busied ourselves on all manner of

activities relating in no way whatsoever to studying. I’d

found a barely-used room in the new ‘business’ campus

of the university. It had a coffee machine and so I

adopted it as my office. With an overhead projector,

telephone sockets and stationery cupboard it was very

useful indeed.

I had a friend who had a Sunday night show on Wear

Page 11

FM, one of the local radio stations. I decided to visit him

and plug our new venture on-air. Just why he allowed

me to all-but hijack his show I’ve no idea but he did and

having written relentlessly about the upcoming event in

my column too, we were getting very excited indeed

about our opening night. Immediately after the

publication of my latest column promoting the event I

received another letter from Henry, the president of the

students’ union. Within it he embarked on a rather

extensive rant regarding the fact that I’d appeared to

have broken about a half-dozen articles of the National

Union of Journalists’ Code of Conduct. Ken published it

together with my ‘open’ response in which I pointed out

that since I wasn’t a member of the National Union of

Journalists I didn’t actually care. He wasn’t in the

slightest bit happy with me for that but I was far too

focused on our opening night to concern myself in any

way with his pettiness.

The band that I’d hired was called Love Train. It was

a Seventies tribute band that I’d met while gatecrashing

the NUS conference some weeks before and I’d

negotiated a price of a few hundred quid to get them to

travel from London for our opening night. Phil appeared

confident that he’d cover the cost with the hundreds of

students that we all anticipated would be turning up to

the show and as the band warmed up, so Phil and I

Page 12

chatted about our plans for the next few weeks while we

waited for Ben and the punters to arrive. They didn’t.

And neither did Ben.

Today I am fully aware of the fact that I failed to take

proper control of the night and the promotions. I failed to

keep myself aware and up-dated of the distribution of the

flyers and the posters and I am aware that I should have

played a much greater role than I did. Eventually getting

hold of Ben an hour or so after the supposed start of our

opening night I learned that instead of running around

frantically drumming up support and possible attendance

figures he was actually half-pissed in a bar across town

and had been somewhat overconfident in his assessment

of just how effective his promotion efforts had been.

These are the reasons why, when I heard that Phil had

wanted to have words with me about the money that he’d

had to spend in advance of the evening, I had that feeling

of abject terror. A number of people told me that he was

very displeased with me indeed, and he told me so

himself when I telephoned him a day or so later to

apologise. It didn’t make any difference and so I figured

that since I really had been a particularly crap student

and really didn’t want to be snapped in two by any of his

psychotic henchmen, I’d take a dive into the hedge. I

hired a car and drove to St Andrews to visit my sister for

the weekend. I stayed for six months, took a couple of

Page 13

jobs and tried to write a book. I also fell in love, became

a gambler and almost died... twice. I quite enjoyed St

Andrews.

Page 14

*

FOR AWARDS CONSIDERATION PURPOSES ONLY. FOR AWARDS CONSIDERATION PURPOSES ONLY.

(Ha, Ha, Ha!)(Ha, Ha, Ha!)

There is no chance that this will ever be a

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Dan W.GriffinDan W.Griffin

No stranger to the P45No stranger to the P45

‘It’s not sh‘It’s not shiit t -- it’s Art!’ it’s Art!’ -- Marvellous MalcolmMarvellous Malcolm

‘Dan, you should be in prison’ ‘Dan, you should be in prison’ -- Mrs H.DowningMrs H.Downing

‘Buy this book! (or else)’ ‘Buy this book! (or else)’ -- Andy McNab, Author Bravo Two ZeroAndy McNab, Author Bravo Two Zero

WARNINGWARNING Contains strong language, bloody violence Contains strong language, bloody violence

and scenes of a sexual nature and scenes of a sexual nature

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