Thronebogcan

By M.T. Bachcwm

THRONEBOGCAN is a humorous, quirky, ironic and sometimes bawdy look at the intertwining lives and loves of late adolescents and twenty something’s at the birth of the internet revolution. It also references the cynical handling of talent by entrepreneurs during the dot.com bubble era. It is a coming of age journey that encompasses a road trip and a quest that may prove to be the making of Gregory Martyn.

Gregory Martyn is an antihero, a boy in a man’s body who is more comfortable with machine code than humanity, he is a quirky, intelligent and his life is changed for the better when he is thrown on the scrap heap from his comfortable civil service job. From that day forward, he vows to ‘show them’ and plans a trip that searches for his ultimate ‘holy grail’. He visits 12 cities in his quest from Wales, Southern to Northern England, Scotland, Northern Island and finally Japan.

As the road trip develops his blog picks up momentum and the games that he had developed become popular and the impending success is threatened by the greedy intentions of ‘business types’.

He desperately tries to lose his virginity along the way and stumbles across a cast of characters, a real love, a real lust and the psychotic attention of his spurned ‘strange first and only girlfriend before the trip’.

The book reaches its climax in the Toto museum Tokyo.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M.T. Bachcwm
• Release date: Feb 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370151141

M.T. Bachcwm

I used to play in a very good, original material rock band who were rated as the very best in my home town, the second best band have now sold 35 million albums and counting!, such is life. The dust has gathered on my songs and I am at an age where I can pursue and ignite the creative side of me once again. It feels good to share some of my quirky observations with you and I hope that you enjoy my work. In order to pay the bills I drifted about as far away from creativity as is possible in my early twenties and left my home to work as an Engineer and have lived in Blackwood, Leatherhead, Stafford, London and now Toronto. I am married with 3 children and two dogs. A heart felt thanks to all the people that have encouraged me and even bigger shout out to those people who have inspired me.

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THRONEBOGCAN

M.T Bachcwm

Copyright © 2016 M.T Bachcwm

All rights reserved.

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Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

This is a work of fiction and the characters, apart from those that are in the public domain, do not exist and any similarity with any person is purely coincidental and not intended.

Note this book contains adult humour and situations

THRONEBOGCAN is a humorous, quirky, ironic and sometimes bawdy look at the intertwining lives and loves of late adolescents and twenty something’s at the birth of the internet revolution. It also references the cynical handling of talent by entrepreneurs during the dot.com bubble era. It is a coming of age journey that encompasses a road trip and a quest that may prove to be the making of Gregory Martyn.

Gregory Martyn is an antihero, a boy in a man’s body who is more comfortable with machine code than humanity, he is a quirky, intelligent and his life is changed for the better when he is thrown on the scrap heap from his comfortable civil service job. From that day forward, he vows to ‘show them’ and plans a trip that searches for his ultimate ‘holy grail’. He visits 12 cities in his quest from Wales, Southern to Northern England, Scotland, Northern Island and finally Japan.

As the road trip develops his blog picks up momentum and the games that he had developed become popular and the impending success is threatened by the greedy intentions of ‘business types’.

He desperately tries to lose his virginity along the way and stumbles across a cast of characters, a real love, a real lust and the psychotic attention of his spurned ‘strange first and only girlfriend before the trip’.

The book reaches its climax in the Toto museum Tokyo.

Also by M.T. Bachcwm the novels Hope and Hopeless

CONTENTS

IN THE BEGINNING

PLANNING

1. OXFORD CITY

2. TRURO

3. NEWPORT

4. CARDIFF

5. BRISTOL

6. HULL

7. RIPON

8. EDINBURGH

9. GLASGOW

10. ARMAGH

11. NORWICH

12. OXFORD UNIVERSITY

OUT OF THE END

IN THE BEGINNING

Gregory did a double take but there was no mistake, the letter received in a government buff coloured, A4 envelope laid out the terms of his termination of employment from her Majesty’s civil service:

March 1st, 1991

Mr. G. U. Martyn,

Re: Compulsory Redundancy Notice

With immediate effect your job has been terminated at the Headington Job Centre under the following terms and conditions:

Ten years’ service (1981- 1991)

Severance: 14,763.69

It was signed by C.O. (Clerical Officer)

Ms. J.C. Habib M.A. hons (Cantab)

He trudged back up the stairs in his shared student accommodation terraced house at the end of Bell Street and he sat on his bed and re-read the letter. He shook his head in disbelief and ran his hand through his mousey brown curly hair and stared at the cheque.

He sighed and put the letter and the cheque down onto his bed and went to the shared bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. His chin was covered in a light stubble but otherwise his face was boyish with slightly rosy cheeks, his eyes were steely blue and his nose was slightly large for his face. He removed his rimmed, black framed circular glasses and took off his civil service white shirt and purple tie and his white vest. He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, his chest was hairless and his nipples and surrounding areolas were quite feminine, his skin was a grey white/pinky/grey colour. He moved further away from the mirror and removed his black drainpipe trousers and nylon Y front pants. He tilted the shaving mirror downwards and observed his skinny and hairy legs, he had often found this a bit weird - little to no hair on his upper body and a jungle below the waist. He turned around and felt his scrawny white bum and then turned to look at his cock. The flaccid penis just about stuck out of his brillo pad like pubic hair, not bad he thought, circumcised, a bit purple grey on the bell end and not very long but somewhat, no definitely wide, about the same size as a can of diet Pepsi when happy and reaching for the sun.

He turned the shower on and tested the temperature before jumping in, he went through his usual routine and he always started with face, behind the ears, torso, arms, legs, balls and best friend, bum and crack and then feet.

He patted himself with his trusty green fleecy towel that he had treated himself to last Xmas from Marks and Spencer’s. The towel smelt a little sour as he had never washed it, after all why would he wash it? he reasoned that he was always clean when he used it, so it did not need washing.

He switched on his radio when he returned to his room, Terry Wogan’s breakfast show was on and ‘I’m in the mood for dancing’ by the Nolan sisters was playing as the show wound down to the 9:00 news, he sang along ‘I’m in the nude and dancing’. He put a black pair of jeans on, a white tea shirt and calf length white tennis socks. He sat on the bed and read the letter again, he felt a deep rage building up within himself.

‘Fuck you’ he said, he shook his head and put it down again

‘I’m going to prove you wrong I am going to do something special!’

He put on his Adidas white trainers and his trusty green Harrington jacket, he found his savings book and placed the cheque between the pages. He quickly calculated that with the severance pay he had 21, 747 pounds and 23p.

He walked for fifteen minutes or so until he hit the High Street and went into Lloyds bank. It was a Monday and the bank was not very busy, just an old man in front of him. He paid the money into his savings account and was sure that the teller, who was a pretty middle aged woman with silvery blonde hair, had taken a bit of interest in him and smiled and made some small talk. But as he was not versed in the art of wooing, he was after all a geek, more comfortable with real ale, game playing, role playing, game design and programming in BBC BASIC, web site and game design, he did not say what his little voice in his mind was saying ‘fancy a drink at lunch time and then some red-hot sex?’. Instead he just mumbled ‘thanks’ in a low, quiet, baritone voice and did not maintain eye contact with her as he left the bank.

He went from the bank to Harrington’s the baker and ordered bacon in a white bap with HP brown sauce and a can of diet Pepsi. The bap arrived in a white bag and he carried it with him as he crossed to the park and sat down on a bench and he began to eat his ‘welcome to the scrap heap’ breakfast.

He was a fastidious eater, he chewed every mouthful at least twenty-two times and in-between bites he took small sips of the diet Pepsi. When he had finished, he crushed the bag into a small ball and threw it towards the rubbish bin, he missed and stood up and placed the bag and his empty can into the bin. He sat back down and looked at his watch, it was nearly 10. He sat for a while longer and watched the mothers pushing their babies in oversized buggies, a few school kids heading for the woods to play truant, the daffodils growing around the large oak trees, a few older people doing power walking and dog walkers. He watched as a Jack Russel dog walked away from him, he had a fascination with dogs, or to be more precise a phobia about their behinds, he remembered back to when this phobia started as a teenager. He was sitting on the swings in the park eating a sausage roll one morning when he was prepubescent when a dog walker went past, the dog bent over and braced himself and from that day on Gregory equated dog poo and dog’s rectums with sausage rolls. I guess in many ways he had always been a little strange, detached and this had led to a largely lonely childhood.

He was an only child and he replayed the moment when 6th form school and his A levels had finished, his mother and his step dad had abandoned him as a seventeen-year-old. ‘Gregory it’s time for you to leave the nest and make a life for yourself’. He sat in the back of the car in silence with his mother as the light blue Ford escort headed to the bedsit that she had selected and paid the rent on for the next few months. His life’s possessions were included in a suitcase and two cardboard boxes of computers and other information technology gadgets. Much to his chagrin his mother had confirmed that all his other stuff like records, art work and books had been given to the ‘poor’. She stayed in the car and watched as he unloaded his stuff and resigned himself to his fate, in a way he was relieved at least now he could eat what he liked. He went back to the car and his mother rolled down the window and handed him a reused white Xmas card envelope that contained a thousand pounds. ‘Your inheritance son, good luck’ and with that she unplugged herself from his life.

He returned to the present and shook his as he heard the bells in St. Mary’s church chime twelve o’clock and he made his way back to the High Street. He saw Melinda Grenville walking towards Barclays bank, he wondered if she too had been ‘let go’. She was his only confident at work, she too was a loner, a fellow bedsit dweller who preferred a good book to making small talk. At office parties, invariably they ended up with each other away from the music and the fun, they would find a quiet corner and bitch about their other work colleagues. How immoral they (their colleagues) were, she would say, exchanging bodily fluids behind their husbands and wives’ backs.

They had both started at around the same time in the civil service and had gradually found themselves in the darker office areas, not around the coffee machine or canteen but more often than not under the apron in the underground car park looking to avoid colleagues. After about 3 years of near plutonic friendship, at a Christmas bash they had kissed and fumbled but since then they had not taken it any further in terms of sex, though they did regularly go out on pub nights. Greg had wanted to have sex but Melinda wanted to be a virgin until her white wedding. They spent most of their time together making up snide remarks and nicknames for their fellow workers:

• Dog’s bollocks

• Farty Fran

• Dipshit David

• Behind the bunny girl

• Feckless Frank

• Chocolate twat

• Martini (any time any place anywhere and on her knees mostly)

• Barry biscuits

• Dope Pope

• Desperate Doreen

• The fornicator

• Urine girl

• Growler woman

• Tiny Tim the button mushroom

• Biscuit man - when he drops his pants the girls say ‘crumbs’

He tapped her on the shoulder, she was slightly plump and was wearing scarlet dress and blue tights, her jet-black hair was tied back into a ratty pony tail.

‘Cruel times Melinda, are you on the scrap heap to?’

‘Twats they are’

‘Yeah’

‘Fancy a drink to drown our sorrows?’

‘Sure, it will have to be quick though as I start my new job tomorrow so I have to buy a new blouse’

‘Shit that was quick, how did you do that?’

‘Saw the writing on the wall Gregory, I have been plotting this move for months’

Greg was a little upset, ‘bitch’ he thought

‘Sorry Greg I should have told you but you would have been a competitor and I need the money to get to University’

‘Yes, I understand, reading sociology is more important than me’

They walked into the snug of the 3 tunnels pub and sat in the corner looking at their drinks.

‘Anything planned?’

‘Nah not really, bit of a shock I thought I would be there until I retired’

‘That’s the problem with you Greg lots of ideas but you never carry them through’

She drained the last of her cider and black and stood up and looked him in the eye

‘Make a plan Greg’ she said

‘I have one, I am going to stay here and drink every one of the real ales on tap today, then on the way home I am going to have a curry and chips and tomorrow I will sign on’

‘Such sacrifices, I had to lick my new boss’s balls to get my new job, you can do better than that Greg you have talent’

Greg thought about this

‘I will never lick anybody’s balls for a job’

They looked at each and said together ‘just for love’

‘That’s why you will end up sad and lonely Greg’

With that she left.

Greg watched as she left, he liked the way she walked ‘here’s my face my arse is coming’ he sang to himself. He ordered a half of Ruddles ale and returned to his seat, he had asked for a pen at the bar and he ripped the cover off a beer mat. I will show them, I will he vowed.

By 4 pm and 3 and a half pints later he had a list:

• Go to college and do a HNC in Business Admin’

• Become a programmer

• Find another admin job

• Marry Melinda

• Take a gap year

• Become a full-time game developer

He stumbled out of the pub at 10pm and made his way to the great wall of China takeaway. He ordered chicken