Blue Collar by Danny King Read Free Book Online Page A

quickly double-checked to make sure I hadn’t rung Gordon by mistake then explained that it wasn’t me who didn’t like it,
     it was the people who bought our houses. They were the ones that weren’t so keen on paying good money for walls with no muck
     between the bricks.
    ‘So what are you up to? Having a day in front of the TV, are you?’ she asked.
    ‘God, no, I’m just…’ I thought about telling her about the kettle and the back of the fridge, then thought better of it. ‘…
     reading, you know.’
    ‘What are you reading?’
    ‘The telly guide, and there’s nothing on.’
    Charley’s snigger of polite laughter quickly tailed off into a sigh and I heard the word ‘anyway’ without her actually having
     to say it.
    ‘Where are you?’ it was my turn to ask.
    ‘Work. The office. So I can’t really talk… that much,’ she explained in hushed tones, then explained to one of her colleagues
     her end that she was talking to ‘no one’. I decided to press ahead and keep this as brief as possible before she really was
     and asked her if she was free at all this week.
    ‘Sure. What day?’
    Any day was good with me. In fact, right now would’ve been just about perfect, but I figured one of us ought to stay at work
     and earn some money if we were going to buy that house together one day in the future, so I went ahead and suggested Wednesday,
     figuring old Stan would go along with that.
    ‘Wednesday’s good for me. Where do you want to go?’
    Hmm, good question, and one to which I hadn’t given even a jot of thought. Normally, when I went out, I just went up the Lamb.
     Occasionally, I went to the bookie’s. Even more infrequently, I went to the dogs. I wondered which of these Charley would
     fancy.
    I quickly nipped to the front door, opened it and rang my bell.
    ‘Oh, hang on a minute. I think someone’s at the door. Can I call you back in a second?’ I asked.
    ‘Sure, give us a call,’ Charley permitted.
    I hung up and took a few minutes to run around inside my own head in a sweat. Where did I take her? What did we do? This was
     a first date, so I had to bowl her over with something special.
    Bowling?
    Some good irony points there but I wasn’t sure it said what I wanted it to say about me. Also, I didn’t really want to spend
     our entire relationship going to funfairs, snooker halls and donkey rides just to prove to her how earthy I was. No, I had
     to show her my classy side, so that she saw me as someone to look up to, or at least someone she didn’t have to look all that
     far down at, which called for dinner.
    Just one thing, what did posh girls eat for dinner? I didn’t know. But then, that was because I hadn’t been to a posh restaurant
     in… well, ever really. I’d been to Indians and Chinese before but usually only after the pub closed when I had double vision
     and double everything with poppadoms and prawn crackers please.
    Still, everyone liked a Chinkie’s, so why didn’t I take her to the best Chinkie’s in the West End and Chinky Town itself.
     Or perhaps that should be Chinatown from here on in.
    Yeah, that was a smashing idea. Really show her that I knew my way around the best places in London and that I wasn’t just
     some Catford kebab head.
    Naturally we’d have to meet for a couple of cheeky cocktails first and it would have to be somewhere central, a short walk
     from Chinatown that was easy enough for her to find. Leicester Square was the obvious solution. It was central, flash and
     just the sort of place a bloke in the know would sweep a young lady off to.
    I dug out the Yellow Pages to look for bars but mine stopped just north of New Cross, so I gave Jason a quick bell and asked
     him if he knew any pubs in Leicester Square. He didn’t but Sandra had been to a place called All Bar One right in the Square
     itself with a couple of the girls one night and she sold it to me completely when she told me that this place belonged to
     a chain of boozers