Saving Romford

By John Mycroft

"Saving Romford" is the tale of an incompetent computer programmer whose main joys in life are going to the pub and, on rare occasions, finding a woman. Mike Fendalton puts up with being the person most likely to be called in the middle of the night to fix a broken system and takes it all in his rather inept stride.
Amazingly, he is erroneously identified as a computer whizz by the inhabitants of a distant planet who decide he is the ideal person to fix their defence system which is destroying the planet's budget.
"Saving Romford" is sometimes (mostly?) funny with just the occasional reflection on earlier screw-ups. The content is mildly "adult" in nature but nothing too lurid - just don't buy it for the vicar.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Mycroft
• Release date: Oct 14, 2009
• ISBN: 9781102466857

John Mycroft

John Mycroft is a long-in-the tooth software developer living in North Carolina. Educated at Westcliff High School and Bedford College at the University of London, he spends his time writing, teaching and scribbling the odd bit of software.

Book preview

Chapter 1 - The Long Tuesday

Stone me, it’s frigging cold, he muttered to himself as he flopped sullenly into the driver’s seat of his car. Mike Fendalton had only himself to blame for the lack of warmth as suede boat shoes without socks, jeans, a t-shirt proclaiming a famous cartoon rodent as pope and his ubiquitous red and black rally jacket with the MG badge are hardly a match for the vicious north Essex January weather.

Nothing’s more beautiful than the full moon on a frost-covered field. It shone now on the frosty field on the north side of Coggeshall Road much as it would in a mushy romantic novel. All that was missing was a coach and four clattering up the frozen rutted lane to the Elizabethan coaching inn behind the gnarled oak tree. It was all wasted on Mike who would far rather have been where he was ten minutes earlier – asleep in bed.

Mike looked younger than his 28 years which he credited solely to having never married, being a non-smoker and drinking only naturally brewed beer, on occasions in large quantities. His slightly chubby cheeks showed the merest hint of stubble even though it was nearly 24 hours since he had last shaved. He now succeeded in looking the perfect picture of a pissed-off teenager.

The moon highlighted the deep green gloss of Mike’s 1975 MGB sitting in the carport. The car was Mike’s proudest possession, having rolled off the assembly line the same day as he did. He’d bought it for himself as a Christmas present two years ago. He turned the key and it came as no surprise when the car started first time: Taffy at Monmouth Motors may not have been the cheapest mechanic in town but he did know how to treat an MG. Mike didn’t slam the door or gun the engine; he knew that the neighbours were asleep and he didn’t want to disturb them. Not yet.

The previous evening had been fairly normal for a Tuesday - indeed, had it been Thursday, it would have been fairly normal for a Thursday, too. Mike had left work as close to five as he could manage without being accused of watching the clock, which he had been doing for the last fifty minutes. As work days go, it was less than stellar. He was a computer programmer at the Henckler Re-Insurance Company in Colchester, fifteen miles east of his house in Braintree.

He was a very special programmer, too. It’s a well-documented fact that one programmer in ten is incompetent. No matter how hard they try, they cannot write a program that does what it is supposed to do. Sometimes the faults are minor and sometimes they make the front page of the national papers. Mike had reached that second pinnacle twice. On the first occasion, his program printed a hundred thousand threatening letters demanding that a credit card company's customers pay zero within seven days or be faced with legal action. The second time he caused all a bank’s money machines to display Stupid bastard if a customer entered the wrong PIN.

It is less well-documented that one programmer in ten is just plain unlucky. They get their files wiped accidentally, their programs used by people who can’t find the Any key and constantly suffer from others’ ineptitude. Mike was one of those, too. What made him so especially special, though, was that instead of the expected one programmer in a hundred being both incompetent and unlucky, that fate fell to only one in a million. Mike was that unfortunate soul.

He had spent the day searching for a bug in one of his programs that was making it skip every 50th page in the report it printed. It was only by chance that he had heard a voice in the next cubicle muttering, Oh, shit, to himself at 4 o’clock.

What’s up, Alan?

This stupid bloody program of mine - the damn thing’s deleting every fiftieth record from the report file. Pity the poor sod who’s trying to print the report from that one!

Mike smiled. Not a smile of pleasure, more the smile of someone who realises that the person who has just been hit by a falling rock isn’t him.

Mike was now wondering if he could pin the current problem on Alan. Or on Ralph. Or June. Or anyone but himself. But this was getting him nowhere and he already had a vague idea where the trouble lay. His mind wandered back to the evening before.

The drive home had been the usual ten minute grind through the back streets of Colchester and then onto the country lanes through the villages of High Colne, Lower Colne and Bardleigh. It was far from the shortest or fastest route but it took Mike past some favourite pubs and he would often stop for a quick pint or two on the way home. Tonight was darts night at the Black Lion and so, while he was in no hurry, he couldn’t risk getting stuck into a drinking session at one of the country pubs. It was nice to look at their welcoming lights, even so - like the feeling a deep sea fisherman must get as he passes familiar lighthouses on his way back to port.

Mike was an adequate cook for a single man but didn’t always choose to exercise his skills. Tuesday’s dinner of frozen sausage rolls with a can of beans and nearly half a bottle of HP sauce gave him just the boost he needed for a heavy evening of throwing darts and drinking Greene King best bitter. It is the fate of the office worker to spend his working time sitting down and his relaxation time standing up.

The Black Lion was within walking distance of Mike’s house, if you like walking. He’d driven there tonight to arrive in time for a practice game and a practice pint. The usual darts crowd was already there. Mike’s brother, Dave, greeted Mike as he walked in.

Your round, little brother - what you having?

Mike didn’t need to answer and didn’t bother, either - Terry the barman had seen Mike’s car pull into the car park and the pint was halfway pulled by the time Mike got to the bar.

Stone me, it’s frigging cold, said Mike, displaying a certain lack of originality in his ability to describe the weather, even though, chronologically speaking, he hadn’t already said this yet.

Going to snow tonight, added Old Trev from his usual seat in the corner. Nobody ever saw Old Trev arrive or leave the Black Lion and rumour had it that the pint in front of him had been poured in 1953 to celebrate the Coronation.

Mike looked over his shoulder in Old Trev’s general direction.

What makes you say that then, Trev?

Cause it’s frigging cold. Don’t you young uns never listen to nothing what people say?

My dad says it’s too cold for snow, added another Dave. (Fortunately, we’re not going to hear much from this Dave as having two people called Dave can really confuse the story.)

Shows what a stupid prick your dad is then, doesn’t it. Terry, like most British barmen, had more than a little to learn about customer relations.

Watch it or I’ll take my valuable custom elsewhere, retorted Dave II, retreating into his pint.

Yeah but you’ll have to wait til you’re eighteen to get served.

Dave II blushed - he was barely 17 and everybody knew it. Due to a certain lack of personal hygiene and the dark facial hair he had inherited from his father, Dave II looked 25 and had been known to pin a fly to the dartboard with a well-aimed shot.

It was hard to tell who was the home team (Dave, Dave II and a sulky heap of a man called Spencer) and who were the visitors (Mike, Willie and Jerry) as they chatted to each other and bought each other pints - some out of friendship and some with the forlorn hope of spoiling an opponent’s aim. Henry V had discovered the effect of beer on English arrow-aimers before the battle of Agincourt and had ordered that each bowman drink three pints before the battle. The French didn’t know what hit them.

It was a little after ten when the match finished - a victory to the Black Lion though nobody really cared all that much except for Spencer who had scored 180 with three darts in his game with Jerry and had spent the next 20 minutes punching people in the arm and grinning A ‘undred and eighty, eh? at them. It finally fell to Terry to inform Spencer, as diplomatically as possible, that, admirable though the achievement may be, everybody had heard enough about it.

Spencer - shut your frigging gob about that bleeding 180, will ya?

Yeah but I mean, a ‘undred and eighty, eh? said Spencer, crestfallen, before slipping out to the gents.

Do you think Spencer’s OK? asked Dave after a while. Everybody looked at him in a way that said, If you want to know, you go and find out.

Dave had one of those cheap post-war small capacity bladders and needed to relieve himself anyway. So he headed for the gents and found Spencer carving Spencer - 180. Tuesday, January 11th on the door with his pocket knife. As Spencer was the local butcher, his pocket-knife was not your everyday Swiss Army job and, after giving him a nervous smile of approval, Dave made use of the facilities. It’s not easy to concentrate on taking a leak when there is a slightly agitated person attacking a wooden door with an eight inch boning knife not six feet away from your most treasured body part.

Nice work, Spence, said Dave and, hands in pockets, sauntered back to the bar.

Everything OK, Dave? asked Terry.

It was Dave’s turn to give a look that meant, If you want to know, you go and find out. Terry, not being much of a look-reader, took it to mean Piss off, you ugly bastard, which, when you think about it, is pretty much the same sentiment expressed more succinctly.

Mike had an awful evening at the dartboard, losing every game except his doubles game with Jerry as his partner. He even got whitewashed in his game against Spencer, failing to get a double to start while Spencer cruelly finished the game with just eight throws.

The losers bought a round for the winners and then, to show there were no hard feelings and that it was only a game anyway, the winners bought a round for the losers.

Time to go, Mike - work tomorrow, said Dave. Dave had learnt some years ago that turning up to teach forty pubescent teenagers about the beauty of the language in Romeo and Juliet with a hangover (the teacher, not Romeo and Juliet) was a good approximation to hell.

Want a lift, Dave?

Sounds a good idea. Another one of those ritual conversations - Mike always offered a lift and Dave always accepted.

Amid a chorus of Night, all! and Thanks for the game! and See you next week! the players, spectators and casual drinkers spilled out into the freezing night. Some felt the fresh air wake them up while others felt the fresh air hit them like a bottle of scotch behind the ear. Nobody saw old Trev leave but he was no longer in the chair in the corner.

In the distance, an unmuffled motorbike roared towards Cressing and the inevitable dog barked. And, from the back of the Black Lion came an anguished cry. What bloody bastard done that to the bog door?

Not your best night with the darts, Mike, ventured Dave. Something on your mind? Mike, as always, had been contemplating how long it had been since he had any form of energetic physical contact with a woman but that was nothing unusual.

I think I’ve got RSI. Or arthritis. In my elbow.

Dave laughed in the vicious way only a brother can. Try changing hands occasionally.

I knew I could rely on you for sympathy. No, it clicks when I throw. But not when I keep it bent.

Like when you’re drinking?

Exactly.

Bugger.

Oh, thanks. Really helpful. I’ll take your advice.

Mike swung the car into Appletree Close. Dave looked anxiously through the windscreen as they pulled up outside his house. He knew that, if the lights were on, Jenny had stayed up to complain about something he had done or hadn’t done or that other women’s husbands would do without having to be asked. On these occasions he would invite Mike in for a cup of tea as Jenny was slightly milder in Mike’s presence and would state her case rather than yell it. Tonight the lights were off which meant that Jenny was already in bed and would be pretending to be asleep while she lay in the dark building up to the assault on Dave over breakfast the following morning. Such nights were rare but were definitely Dave’s unfavourites. They meant that he would lie and fret about what evil sin he had committed and then he would have to go to school in a foul mood which fourteen year olds can detect with their eyes closed. They would attribute the foul mood to a lack of sex (always a contributing factor - Dave and Jenny hadn’t made love, screwed or shagged on a Tuesday for years) - and whisper and titter about it.

Dave and Jenny had made a deep impression on Mike when they were courting. Mike was 13 when Dave brought Jenny home for the first time. She was the most beautiful woman Mike had ever seen and she stirred some weird but pleasant feelings in him. She’d shaken his hand and said she was pleased to meet him. Mike felt he was going to drown in her perfume and the spontaneous erection was one he would remember for the rest of his life. Jenny became a regular visitor to the Fendalton house over the next couple of years and Mike would probably have done better at school had he spent less time plotting how his brother could meet with a nasty accident so that he, Mike, could comfort Jenny. Even after Mike had been on a few dates, including a rather embarrassing one with Jenny’s younger sister, Jenny was still the centre of his fantasies.

Mike’s life changed forever the day that Dave told him that Jenny was going to give him a blow job for his birthday.

What’s a blow job?

Dave explained in lurid detail, relishing the very thought of what, or who, was about to come. Mike thought it sounded disgusting.. It didn’t stop Mike fancying Jenny but the picture of her doing that to Dave totally destroyed the virgin goddess myth Mike had built up around her. Dave never did tell him that, while Jenny kept her promise, she never repeated it.

Oh, bugger - she’s gone to bed. All hell hath no fury like that woman on such occasions. I’ll see you over the weekend, maybe, Mike.

OK, Dave, sleep well. Mike smiled a brotherly smile but couldn’t get out of there fast enough in case Jenny rose through the roof, spraying splintered rafters and tiles in all directions and destroying his beloved MG with a blast from her fiery maw. Not surprisingly, she had never done it yet but Mike was firmly convinced that it was but a matter of time.

Married life had been good to Jenny - their three kids were markedly less obnoxious than those of Mike’s other friends and Dave’s steady job as an English teacher meant he was around more than many other husbands. Their three bedroom semi-detached house was nicely located within walking distance of the town centre if you weren’t carrying too much and Dave enjoyed decorating although he was useless at woodwork. But every other woman in the Close had something better than she did.

Mary’s husband was captain of the tennis club, tanned and muscular.

Jane’s house had four bedrooms and a sunroom.

Shirley had just had her second new kitchen fitted and she’d been in the house less than ten years.

Trish’s son had just got a scholarship to Oxford.

And the Johnsons had two cars. The list went on.

What Jenny conveniently overlooked was that Tennis Ted was never at home at the weekend, Jane and Brian had a mortgage that meant they both had two jobs and never got to see the sunroom. The Oxford scholar would get a degree in classics and spend the rest of his life teaching Latin to kids who didn’t want to learn it. Shirley couldn’t cook to save her life. And Bill Johnson was shagging his secretary in the back of the Jag that he would be driving into a power pole in a couple of weeks time.

And Jenny has a nicer bum than all of them, thought Mike.

Mike backed the car into the car port and let himself in through the front door. Next house, integral garage with remote door-opener, he promised himself as the beer, his bladder and the cold conspired to make it as difficult as possible to get in. He picked up the post from the doormat and flung it on the hallstand before dashing upstairs to the bathroom. Next house, downstairs karzy, read the mental sticky note he stuck on his forehead.

Back downstairs, more composed and making another mental note to throw away all his underpants with a maze that you had to fish your dick through to pee, Mike headed for the kitchen for a late night cup of tea. While the kettle boiled, he made short work of the half-eaten sausage roll he had left by the sink. And so, as Samuel Pepys would say, to bed.

Chapter 2 - We’re not in Tuesday any more

Mike’s phone rang at a little after three o’clock on Wednesday morning. That’s the Wednesday morning following the Tuesday evening aforementioned. It wasn’t the first time Mike had been phoned in the middle of the night and he knew instinctively that it was work. After knocking his car keys, some loose change and the photo of his mum on the floor, he finally picked up the phone.

What? he said although it didn’t actually sound that long – more like Wo? It conveyed a world of meaning, however. It was if he had said, Good morning, this is Mike and I strongly suspect that there is a problem at work for which I am being blamed. I would be much happier if it could wait until morning but, as you are calling me, then it probably can’t. On the other hand, if this is a wrong number, piss off.

Mike listened for a few seconds and then said Wo? again, this time meaning No, I don’t know what has happened – could you please elucidate?

A few more seconds, a further Wo? followed by a Shit, an OK and, after putting the phone down, Bollocks, saw Mike reluctantly haul himself out of bed. Of those four utterings, the shit and the bollocks need no further explanation. The Wo? meant I don’t want to hear any more as it is clear that the troubles you are relating are of my making, while the OK meant something very long, starting with Bugger off, and going rapidly downhill from there..

In a little over a minute he had learnt that the program he had finished some simple maintenance on just last week had had its first production run about an hour ago. In a 1950s B-movie, it would have resulted in punched cards being sprayed all over the computer room and sparks leaping out of the tape drives but tonight it merely resulted in a message saying Job failed – further processing terminated. Not strictly accurate as further processing hadn’t started but it made its point. It is at times like these that people often consider what drives the universe, whether there really is a God, what difference their own existence makes to the well-being of mankind. Mike wondered why it was that, the moment you answer the phone in the middle of the night, you’re busting for a piss. Next weekend, cordless phone.

After the blissful relief of the piss and rejoicing in how splendid a bitter-driven fart can sound in an enclosed space, Mike wandered back to his bedroom ready to collapse back into bed when he recalled why he had woken up in the first place. He gazed longingly at the pile of tangled blankets and set about getting dressed. He grabbed some clothes but not totally at random. If he was going to work at 3 a.m. it was quite likely that he would still be there as everybody else started arriving for their normal work day. He wanted it to be perfectly clear that he had gone the extra mile for the company by being there unexpectedly in the middle of the night. He grimaced at the thought of going the extra mile, as Andy Holmes, universally know as Ideal, would undoubtedly suggest. It was one of his boss’s favourite clichés this month and he was sick of being told how everyone was doing it, should try doing it or should not expect others to do it if they weren’t prepared to do it themselves. Wouldn’t mind going the extra eight inches for that Janet in accounts, though, he smiled to himself. It had been a long time since he’d had his favourite form of exercise and it was only natural that his mind should turn to it at the smallest provocation.

The cold evening had turned into a bitterly cold night, at least by Braintree standards, by the time that Mike got into the car. It purred gently as he eased it almost silently down the short drive and edged its front wheels into the road. Now was the time to disturb the neighbours. Or Jim Palmer, the next door neighbour, to be precise. Mike planted his foot heavily on the accelerator, spinning the back wheels just enough to send gravel flying across the drive to hit the timber fence that ran along the side of the garden. Morning, Jim, muttered Mike with virtually no detectable affection.

That bloody bastard bloody car noise bloody, groaned Jim Palmer to his wife, Betty. Jim was not famous for being coherent when woken from a sound sleep though he did feel he had made himself reasonably clear.

Yes, dear.

Bloody does it bloody on bloody purpose. Little bastard.

Language, Jim.

Where the hell…

Language.

Where on earth is the little – beast – going at this bloody hour of the bloody night, anyway?

Go back to sleep, Jim.

Nah, got to have a piss now. He heaved himself out of bed, not bothering with the bedroom slippers he had carefully placed for exactly this occasion.

Language.

Jim was already on his way to the bathroom.

Bugger off, you silly cow.

I heard that. Fortunately, she hadn’t.

Mike didn’t have a clue why Jim disliked him so much. He had felt it the day he moved into the house. It was as if Jim resented his very being. Betty, on the other hand, tried hard to be nice to Mike whenever she thought that Jim wasn’t looking – odd plates of homemade cakes, volunteering to take in Mike’s mail while he was on holiday and little things like that. She even sent him a Christmas card which she signed as being from both her and Jim though Jim took no part in it.

Mike’s house and the one it was attached to were built on what used to be Jim Palmer’s rose garden. Shortly after being made redundant by the railway company, Jim read somewhere that residential land was at a premium. The article went on to say that a good retirement fund could be built by anyone with a large plot in a desirable location. So Jim had called his lawyer and set the wheels in motion to sell off the chunk of land on the town side of the Palmers’ house. It fetched a tidy sum although the lawyer’s bill and the hearings by sundry council committees ate away more than their fair share.

Jim was a canny soul and wasn’t going to stick the money in any feeble deposit account where the interest didn’t keep up with inflation. So, against his bank manager’s advice, he asked the lawyer to invest it, along with his redundancy payout. And so it was that, in the last five years, Jim had seen what had been enough money to live on reasonably well for thirty years grow to where it would buy him and Betty a couple of weeks in a cheap hotel in Spain. How he made the connection to blame this on Mike was something he had never pondered and of which Mike was totally unaware.

By now, Mike was half a mile up the road and concentrating on making the drive to work as comfortable as possible. He had already turned the heater on full blast. Then he realized, too late, that all he would get from the heater of a car that had been standing in a frosty car port for four hours was a blast of arctic air up the trouser leg. He stabbed irately at the first button on the radio.

The title track of Sergeant Pepper was about halfway through.

Sodding pretentious drivel, muttered Mike. Then, to make himself feel better, he yelled it. Then he sang along with the song, replacing all the words with Sodding pretentious drivel although it really didn’t fit the tune at all well. Sergeant Pepper was the anthem, the Ark of the sodding Covenant of his parents’ generation. It was the only LP he recalled them owning and they would play it, enraptured, repeatedly in the long summer evenings at home. They wouldn’t even let the bloody thing go kertonk kertonk at the end of side one (or say Paul is dead backwards or whatever it was supposed to do). One of them would leap up and turn the bloody thing over. Or play that thing about the holes in bleeding Lancashire again and again and gawp at each other stupidly. He had hoped that they would retire it when it got a scratch on that track and, even now, he always expects to hear holes in Blackburn, Lancashire – cashire – cashire whenever it’s played.

Mike’s faith in God was restored the day in 1992 that his mum left it in the sun while she emptied the washing machine, turning it into a Daliesque object hanging over the edge of the sideboard. He became a confirmed atheist the next day when Dad triumphantly stormed into the house with the bloody thing on CD and with a CD player on which to play it. They spent the rest of the day (of which there seemed to be seventy hours left) playing it and singing along, looking meaningful when the words reached the truly meaningless bits.

It even got him in trouble at school. Mike was good at school, meaning he behaved acceptably and passed all the exams he took, some of them with A grades. Mr. Shiner, his English teacher, had to introduce Mike’s class to the art of writing poetry criticism and, to break them in easily, he set A Day in the Life as the work in question. Mike’s essay was considerably shorter than the expected three pages and displayed a luridness of vocabulary that is usually not to be found in the Times Literary Supplement. Mr. Shiner was a forgiving soul and understood that Mike’s comments probably stemmed from a more intimate knowledge of the subject than they initially revealed. He summoned Mike,