This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You. Jon McGregor

one of those nights when it seemed like basically it was never going to get dark. We hadn’t seen anyone around, and a couple of times when we’d stopped and got out it had been totally quiet, like normal, but we had the music turned up loud in the car and it made things seem sort of hectic or like picturesque? With how far you could see across the fields, and the speed, and the light, and the music? Like when you’re walking around with headphones on and it makes everything seem like a film? Like that. Anyway.

      Josh was talking about setting up a business selling handmade snacks. He said he wasn’t going to go to university, he was going to make his fortune straight out of school. His big idea was that you could get these like gourmet snacks made to order, right there in the shop. It would be like the deli-counter of the munchie world, he was saying. He was laughing about it, but he was totally serious, he was laughing because he thought it was so brilliant. Any flavour you want, he was saying, any snack you want! I’ll be a millionaire! He sounded like someone off The Apprentice. He was listing all the snacks he could think of, crisps and pretzels and Bombay mix and popcorn, and what they were all made of, and he was talking about how the economics of it were brilliant. Pennies into pounds, my friends! He kept shouting that. Pennies into pounds! He was shouting because the music was so loud but also because he was so excited about it? I didn’t really get it. Anyway.

      Tom wanted to know if this shop was going to be located round here and if so then where did Josh think his customer base was going to come from? It didn’t look like Josh had thought about that. He waved his hand around a bit, meaning: like, around here somewhere? I don’t know yet, he said. There’s people around though, there’s like a widely distributed customer base, yeah? He pointed to a farmhouse over on the right, three or four fields away, and then another one a bit further off, the other side of the river. The lights in the windows were just coming on so it must have been a bit darker by then than it seemed. There you go, he said, that’s two of them right there. Tom said, what, are you going to do it like mobile? A mobile crisp van? Josh leaned over and punched him in the shoulder, and it was sort of a play-punch but he sort of meant it as well. No one said anything for a minute. It was just the music and the sound of the tyres on the road. I wasn’t even sure where we were. I could see the red lights of some television mast or something, and the sky all shadowy blue behind it. We went over a little bridge and it felt like the tyres left the road for a second. I don’t think Josh even knew where we were going. Josh said, don’t take the piss mate. This is serious, this is totally serious. This is going to work, yeah? It’s like, a totally unfulfilled market niche. And I’ll be filling in that niche, big-time.

      That got us laughing for a bit, about Josh filling in an unfulfilled niche.

      Tom wouldn’t let it go though, he was giving it all the economic model and the population density and the vulnerability of depending on impulse purchases and Josh was all nodding but then he goes Tom mate you don’t get it. You don’t get it. I’m talking about handmade gourmet snack products. Made to order! Like, locally sourced! They’ll come pouring in from every direction! They’ll be queuing up outside! He cut the music and put on this solemn face and a deep voice like from a film trailer and goes: If you fry it, they will come.

      That set us off laughing again. The state we were in, it didn’t take much? Plus Josh had this very high-pitched laugh that was pretty infectious, and once he’d got us all going it was just about impossible to stop? It just kept sort of growing, getting louder and louder, like something sort of swelling up until it filled the car and we couldn’t hardly breathe and the noise of it was making me dizzy and then Amanda said Josh will you slow down a bit and he turned round to ask her what she’d said so that must have been how come he never saw the corner?

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       If It Keeps On Raining

      Susworth

      This is how his days begin. If you really want to know. Standing in his doorway in the cold, wet morning light and pissing on the stony ground. Waking up and getting out of bed and walking across the rough wooden floor. Opening the door and pulling down the front of his pyjamas and the weight of a whole night’s piss pouring out on to the stony ground and winding down to the river which flows out to the sea. The relief of it. The long, sighing relief of it. He has to hold on to the doorframe to keep his balance.

      

      He looks at the swirl and churn of the river. Boats passing, driftwood and debris. A drowned animal turning slowly in the current. Sometimes the people in the boats wave, but he doesn’t wave back. He didn’t ask them to come sweeping past like that while he’s having his morning piss. In their shining white boats with the chrome guard-rails and the tinted windows and the little swim-decks on the stern. As if they’d ever swim in this river. They can come past if they like but they shouldn’t expect him to wave. Not when his hands are full.

      

      Sometimes there’s a man fishing on the other side of the river. It’s too far to see his face, so it’s hard to tell whether the man can see what he’s doing. But if he could he wouldn’t be embarrassed. This is his house now, and there’s nothing to stop him pissing on his own ground when he wakes up each day.

      

      The boats mainly come past in the summer months, but the fisherman is there all year round. He brings a lot of accessories with him. He’s got two or three different rods, and rests to set them in, and a big metal case that he sits on with all sorts of trays and drawers and compartments, and he keeps getting up to open all the drawers and trays. As if he’s looking for something. As if he hasn’t got any kind of an ordered storage system. He has this long net trailing in the water, with the open end pegged down on the bank. He uses it to keep the fish in once he’s caught them. It’s not clear why. Maybe he likes to count them. Or maybe he likes the way they look when he empties them back into the river, the silver flashes pouring through the air, the way they wriggle and flap for a second as though they were trying to fly. Or it could be for the company.

      

      And he’s got this other net, a big square net on the end of a long pole. If he gets fed up with all the rods and reels and maggots and not being able to find what he’s looking for in those drawers, he could just sit on the edge of the bank and sweep it through the river until he comes up with something. Like a child at the seaside. Like a little boy with one of those coloured nets on the end of a bamboo cane.

      

      Like a little boy whose dad was showing him how to use one of those nets, and lost it. At the seaside. When they were out on a jetty, and the boy’s dad was sweeping the net back and forth through the clear salt-water, and the boy was pulling at his arm to say: Let me try let me have a go, and the man dropped it in the water somehow. The little boy wanted him to jump in and get it, and his father had to say: I’m sorry I can’t. And the little boy wanted him to buy another one and the man had to say, again: I’m sorry I can’t. The boy started crying and there wasn’t much the man could do about it. He could have picked him up.

      

      The way these things come into his head, sometimes. Standing there in the morning, looking at someone fishing, pissing on the stony ground that slopes down to the river, thinking about nothing much and then a man losing his little boy’s net pops into his head from years back. This really was some years back now. The way he couldn’t buy a new net to make it better. The little boy with his red hair.

      

      He stands there each morning and he looks at the river, the fields, the sky. He tries to estimate what the weather will do for the rest of the day. He makes some decisions about the work he’s going to do on the treehouse or the raft. He thinks about making breakfast. He thinks about going to look for more wood.

      

      It’s hard