Flattener

By George Veck

Craig Flattener Sharp, an ageing, technophobic, cult hero journeyman boxer is sick of being a professional loser. He abandons the boxing script in hope of bagging one last title shot, risking exposure to the computerized constraints of claiming Universal Credit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: George Veck
• Release date: Jun 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798224296200

Book preview

FLATTENER

By

George Veck

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 1

Pre-fight pints are a novelty left behind in the eighties for most boxers. Not for Craig. He can barely train without a jar first. Not least on this bustling Saturday lunch time at Chester's roughest busy pub – a dusty, murky Victorian hall of a place, one that passes mould and safety inspections by a whisker. Boasting prices that rival Wetherspoons, the subsequent crowd can prove particularly unsavoury, a fact only amplified by the landlord's blind eye approach to letting in those on Pubwatch. Fuelled by a three-hundred-and-twenty-five-pound government cost-of-living grant, even the lazy, lie-in prone stragglers are six pints down by 3PM. Most of the hundred odd punters are engrossed, utterly transfixed by the horse racing beaming off half the gaff's seventy-inch TV's. A Betfred next door allows them to sink down their winnings – or sorrows should they lose – in an instant, before spunking the rest on the fruitys.

If it wasn't for such convenient access to all their gambling needs, many may have taken exception to the beady-eyed hunch back hogging the place's sole Deal or No Deal fruit machine. A geezer who is himself well on the way to blowing his government gift load, all after being six-hundred pounds up a mere eighty minutes ago. Thank god no one did, as the unassuming lad in question is no other than professional light-heavyweight journeyman boxer Craig Sharp. Five pints down himself – a figure that would be higher without the fruit machine's glittering distraction – he could not care less about squandering free money. A chance worth taking in his eyes. This care-free approach is soothed by the fact he's fighting in a couple of hours. While his fee of seven-hundred-and fifty-pounds for a four round fight sounds lucrative, expenses soon devour a humbling chunk. Being from Bangor, and thoroughly opposed to ever moving, Craig has no other choice than to travel for fights given Gwynedd's non-existent professional boxing scene. While today's bout is in Chester, an hour-long train journey away, the hotel