Excerpt from the novel - the Spaceship has landed - by Stephen Morris @ 9:25am 23/06/07
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING EXCERPT COULD BE CONSTRUED AS SEXIST – APOLOGIES!
And yesterday was the day that it finally happened. The male half of the country had been desperately anticipating its arrival, and so it was that at 10 a.m. yesterday the spaceship touched down.
The concept of the spaceship derives from a story told to me by a close adviser of mine. His first boss pulled him aside one summer’s day and, pointing out of the window, proclaimed, “There, you see son, the spaceship has landed. That’s where it touched down. Look at all of the women. The spaceship has dropped all of these beautiful women off and will be back to collect them just before winter starts.”
Jack is driven to distraction similarly on his route into work in the following extract taken from the start of Part 2:
On the Monday morning following Mark’s move Jack rolled up to work to find an e-mail from HR informing him that his boss was so happy with his work that he’d decided to put him forward for a senior admin job - provided he impressed at the interview.
Jack had been sat in the interview with Paul - gleaned from his name badge, there had been no introductions - for fifteen minutes now, answering boring standard question, after boring standard question. Paul appeared not to have even one iota of interest in Jack or the interview process. He had been through the motions and around the board at least twenty times in the last fifteen minutes. He was just passing Park Lane on his way to Mayfair when he wound up and pitched a curve ball at Jack.
“Define irony for me, Jack.”
Jack had no idea how this ambiguous question had followed on from “Where do you see yourself in five years?” But it had, so Jack needed to answer it.
Jack sat back and thought for a second. And then it came to him. “Okay, here’s my definition of irony. The scene is a bar in Spain. The bar is packed full of pissed up Brits.
The swamped barman is coming to the end of his 14-hour shift. The barman is fluent in three languages and he’s only working in the bar to get his degree and to get a job in finance, somewhere in Madrid.
A kid addresses the barman. The kid is wearing a white, short-sleeved shirt open to show off his red, sunburned chest and bulldog tattoo. He’s about 18 and speaks, or rather slurs, with a heavy Yorkshire accent. He asks for four beers, four Aftershocks and four absinthes. The music in the bar is really loud and the barman can’t hear the boy. The barman asks the boy – in perfect English – to repeat himself. The boy does, but this time throws in a couple of “fuckings” and one “deaf twat”. The barman, unfortunately, still can’t hear the boy. The banging speaker behind him and the slurred heavy accent doesn’t help. He keeps his cool and in perfect English politely asks the boy again to repeat his order.
The boy replies, shouting loudly in the face of the barman, “What’s the matter? Are you fucking thick?”
That is my definition of irony.”
Paul laughed and asked Jack to join him on a tour around the office and to show him his new desk.
Jack rounded the corner onto Leadenhall Street. The sun was absolutely blaring and the females of the species were out in force. The City seemed to have been invaded by a hoard of stunningly beautiful women in small vest tops and shorts, with long sumptuous brown legs that disappeared into sling-back stiletto shoes. He was spellbound. He found himself speeding up to get to the end of every street, in a frantic effort to see what women lay around the corner.
It was the same on the tube that morning. He couldn’t wait for the train to pull into the next stop just to get a look at the women getting on the train. This wasn’t him. Jack wasn’t a leerer but the proliferation of outstandingly attractive women had turned him into an 80-year-old pervert in a flashing mac. He didn’t like it, but he put it down to being cooked up in that flat with another bloke.
To read on from here we hope you'll check back on August 13, which is when Part 2 will be released.