Amy choked back the laughter as she handed the fraudulent child’s ticket to the grumpy face at the train station. “You’re supposed to be wearing a mask!” it chided. “Whatever,” called Amy, without looking back.
Nial had gone mad on pies and beer in the corner shop before spotting disposable barbecues. He’d picked up three, sticking the rejected pies next to some weird brand of chocolate bars. “Let’s get a whole loada chicken guys,” he’d said. “And rolls and sauce,” his friends had added.

And so it went on until the four friends flashed their ID cards, flashed their cash and burst out of the shop with bulging bags of beers and beach food.

“There’s a caff on the beach if we get hungry,” said Robert.

“We’re not gonna be hungry with that lot!” snorted Amy.

Then she started jumping and shouting that she needed to go back. She’d forgotten to get a lottery ticket. “It’s my special numbers, it’s Wednesday.”

Amidst an a cappella of swearing from three, one discordant, Amy turned back only to return gushing and smiling five minutes later.

“Would you believe I had to show them my ID again. They’d only just seen it five minutes ago. Duh!”

In another part of town, a furloughed couple, Clarice and Peter, set out for a walk. They were wearing hiking boots which looked like bricks on that already hot morning.

“Have you got the masks?” asked Clarice.

“We won’t need masks will we? We’ll be outside.”

“What if we want something from a shop?”

“We won’t. We’ve got our leftovers picnic. What more could we want?” said Peter with thinly veiled sarcasm.
Clarice, too mature to rise, placed the masks in a gauze bag that she’d made from an old net curtain and into a rucksack which she handed to Peter.

“I’ve got to take it?” he complained.

“I’ve got a handbag.”

“What do you want to take a handbag for?” said Peter and then remembered the threat of shops.

“How far are we walking?”

“I thought the Sandgate end of the Coastal Park, where we’ve got the choice of sun or shade. It’s going to get hotter.”

And so they went on rationalising until they reached an area along the shore shaded by trees and Peter explained in intricate detail that a funicular railway had once stood on the exact spot.

“It’s still there,” shrieked Clarice.

“No, not that one. There was another that went straight up the cliff to the Grand Hotel. It was taken down in the fifties and I wouldn’t mind having a nosey later.”

It suited Clarice if Peter was ‘being boring’ on his own. She had her Kindle in her handbag and fancied a read. The rucksack produced masks, a tablecloth, a rug, plates, glasses, cutlery, Tupperware and a map.

“What on earth have you brought a map for?” asked Clarice.

The map had brown curled edges and some sort of royal coat of arms on it. It looked preposterous and possibly pre-war.

“Oh that,” said Peter. “I just wanted to check on the exact location of the lift.”

“I thought you said we were in the exact spot.”

“There are buildings marked on the map and I just wanted to check,” said Peter.

Clarice winced. There was beginning to be quite a crowd. Hopefully Peter would be diluted and no longer ‘on show’ trekking through the undergrowth with his boring Edwardian map. Peter laid out the Tupperware left to right in the order from which they were going to eat.

“You don’t think it’s a bit crowded here?” asked Clarice, with furrows of provocative doubt breaking over her forehead.

“It’s just Eid. You can’t expect people not to come out after Ramadan.”

“Oh yes of course, I forgot.”

Halfway through the couscous salad containing bits of sausage that looked as though they’d been in a bath too long, a group of four young people came and settled near to them.

“They’re a bit close,” murmured Clarice.

“We’re outside. The risk is minimal.”

“They’ve got barbecues and they’re up-wind of us. Should we move?” Clarice asked.

But there was nowhere else to go as the grass beneath the trees on both sides of them was now carpeted with large huddles of people.

“Do you really think those lot are really one household?” whispered Clarice, pointing to a larger group on a picnic table.
The women were enveloped in hot looking burqas in direct contrast to the men and boys with their chubby naked torsos.
“Probably”, said Peter, “Like I say it’s Eid and they look ever so happy.”

Clarice didn’t think the women looked happy but then one of them smiled exquisitely in her direction. Oh, what if she were being lip-read, she suddenly thought and looked away.

The new arrivals were firing salvos of cheap lager into their throats. The more they drank, the more swear words they managed to lace into each sentence. They looked angry. Remembering the woman’s smile, Clarice felt embarrassed. The swear words began to cut through and sour the air. The naked and tattooed torsos of the lads were like armoured breastplates, swelling with belligerent beer. Acrid fumes belched from the disposable barbecue mixed with the smell of burning chicken and cigarette smoke and Clarice had a sudden flashback of the car she’d witnessed bursting into flames on the motorway with the occupants still inside.

“Oi, Robert! See those two over there?” said Marcus.

Robert peered at a middle-aged couple sitting on a tablecloth who were glancing around themselves anxiously.
“What them two with the plastic pots?”

“Yeah, d’you think we should invite them to join us? They look like they’ve eaten wasps or something.”
The three others sniggered.

“Leave them alooooooone!” cooed Amy.

“I want chips with my chicken,” said Nial.“Where are you going to get chips from?” said Marcus.

Robert’s eyes blinked. “Bet they do them at the caff.”

“Nice of you to offer,” said Marcus.

Then there was a great competition for attention among the four, about who wanted what on the chips, what size portions and whether wrapped or un-wrapped. Robert quietly noted everything in his head. Everyone except Amy threw in money. “Might not be any use,” said Robert. “They probably don’t take anything but cards.” The cash disappeared as fast as it had arrived and Robert knew his card would take another hit.

“Yeah and they probably want your ID!” guffawed Amy, to which they all rolled and hacked with laughter.

After a while Robert returned with yet more bulging plastic bags. Nial was championing his chicken which was going to be ‘proper’ with the burger sauce. Ape-like noises crescendoed with percussive ‘pfish pfishes’ of opening beer cans and their midriffs and torsos began to look as pink as the inside of the chicken they tore into.

Peter had gone off with his embarrassing map and Clarice was determined to make the best of it. Her Kindle was 22% through Virginia Wolf’s Mrs Dalloway. She was
7
contemplating her own life’s disappointments when she was struck by something hot and rather oily. She peered under her sunglasses to observe a large chip lying on her inside leg before becoming aware of being shouted or laughed at.

“Sorry babe. It was an accident, honest!” came a shout from the beer and barbecue lot followed by guffaws and more swearing.

Clarice decided to ignore them despite internally seething. How can you accidentally throw a chip, for goodness sake? In an instant she forgave Peter and his map and desperately wanted his company.

But Peter was oblivious to the chip-throwing incident. Surrounded by rank undergrowth of a rather itchy kind, he was discovering Victorian bolt-heads and sections of brick foundation clinging to the cliff face. He’d found a concrete staircase, poorly constructed, a later alteration but it overlay a partially concealed brick vault. He flashed his phone torch hopefully into the void. He was contemplating lowering himself inside when he heard something move. It sounded like a small animal, a rat perhaps, and the hairs on his arms bristled. He stared in fascinated horror as his eyes engaged his brain and spotted what looked like cushions and clothing. Then unmistakably he heard a fart, a human fart. Peter’s eyes widened as he took in a mop of matted hair and a pair of red-rimmed eyes staring back at him and he took off down the slope like a hare, clenching his map for dear life.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” said Clarice as Peter appeared before her.

“I think I just have,” replied Peter.

Amy was now snogging Nial. Marcus was debating with Robert about whether the middle-aged couple he’d thrown the chip at still ‘did kissing ‘n’ that’. Marcus was playing Robert like a fiddle and bursting into expletives and bellyaches. No one noticed the homeless man, wearing a thick anorak, wandering between the huddles with his head down as if making an inventory of everything on the ground.

It was getting late but people kept coming like the tide below. The beer had taken the four to a drowsy place from which they couldn’t easily rouse themselves or each other. They started to worry about getting home.

“We should clear this mess up,” said Robert.

“What mess?” asked Nial before he and Marcus started kicking Robert, while Amy laughed taking snaps of it all on her phone.

“If you want to be ‘Captain Binman’ you can, but the rest of us…”

And so the beer cans with their plastic connectors, the chicken bones, discarded rolls, sauce bottles and carrier-bags all lay where they fell as four swaying friends staggered up the hill to the train station.

Peter looked on in relief as the apes disappeared.

“Can you believe they left all that rubbish?” he said, staring at the three disposable barbecues that had scorched margins into the grass.

They hadn’t even used one and left it abandoned with its touch paper still intact.

“Well maybe we should tidy it up? It isn’t fair on the council, is it?” he added, before having second thoughts. Instead, he took a photo of the mess and posted it on Facebook.

The train was forty minutes late which meant that a line of overtired strangers were further needled by expletives and bellyaches. Amy wasn’t joining in any more but was leaning into Nial. The weather had started to break and there was a threat of thunder. When the train eventually arrived, they barged in and poured around a table all to themselves. Amy was staring at her phone as the train set off.

“You are not going to believe this!” Amy said.

“What’s up, babe?” asked Nial.

“You are not going to believe this!” she repeated. “And don’t call me babe. We just snogged, that’s all.”

Nial’s shoulders crumpled.

“What is it?” asked Robert.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this but I think… I’ve just won the lottery.”

“It’s a scam,” laughed Marcus.

An eerie silence ensued.

“Are your numbers 03, 14, 18, 23, 25, 50 then?” said Robert, looking at his own phone.

“Always, Rob. That’s my numbers.”

“Can I see?” he asked

“You don’t need to. I know my numbers. Look…,” she said, her fingers searching among the coins in her purse to find the ticket.

The homeless man placed the unused disposable barbecue on the concrete seawall. The crowds were gone. The wind was cooler now. He’d salvaged various interesting things, particularly from the noisy crowd, including a whole portion of chips, still wrapped, a pack of unopened sausages, some tomato sauce and a half drunk tin of larger.

“How thoughtful,” he chuckled as he binned the rest. “And then there’s this,” he sniggered, fingering the pink lottery ticket as he toasted it with the tin of larger.

“Well, you never know, do you?”

THE END

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Meet the author: Charles Bain Smith

Charlie, an architect, who lives in the town with his family, started writing at school when he used his many detentions to write stories, not realising that anyone actually read them. Egged on by his teacher’s praise, he has been writing ever since. His story was partly inspired by events this summer when littering became a huge problem in the park, amid much finger pointing.

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Charles’s story is read by Oliver Senton, a Folkestone-based actor who has starred in many West End shows including Mamma Mia! The Musical, The Showstoppers, Peter Pan Goes Wrong, and for The Royal Shakespeare Company. Oliver is also an associate of Slung Low in Leeds and played Phil Masters in The Warp, the longest play ever written. Incredibly, he improvised for 50 hours non-stop in the London Improvathon.

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