Author: T. A. Belshaw (Page 41 of 57)

Breaking! Tracy will be back very soon. Tracy’s Lockdown Hotmail will hopefully be written and released by the Autumn so you can look forward to seeing how Tracy and her dysfunctional family, managed to live together through the lockdown periods.

To whet your appetites, here’s a Christmas special that was written after the two original books were released. If you’ve never met Tracy before, you’re in for a treat, if you have… well, you’re in for a treat too, see how generous I am?

Tracy’s Christmas.

Hi Emma

How was your Christmas? I bet it was a bit weird spending it in Cornwall. Their accent is hard enough to understand when they’re sober so it must be just about impossible when they’re pissed. I met a bloke from Penzance at a party once, he spent all night betting me that I couldn’t handle his scrumpy. He was only about five-foot two and his trousers were so tight they hid nothing, so I’m pretty sure I could have. I wasn’t really interested anyway; he was drinking homemade cider, it looked like baby shit in a glass.  It was full of lumpy bits; I think he must have dropped his Cornish pasty in it.

My Christmas was okay, Mum got a bit drunk and Dad and Gran had their usual three rounds of all-in verbal wrestling. It was better entertainment than those crappy 1970’s reruns of Morecombe and Wise though.

Neil was playing the hero at the police station on Christmas Eve, saving us all from gangsters, drug dealers and other, scummy, low life, so he couldn’t come out with me. I was going to go to Tossers with Pauline Potts and her sister, Tia, but Pauline had a dodgy curry on Tuesday night and spent all day Wednesday on the lavvy. She was gutted because she had to miss her office party at work and Tia pulled the bloke that Pauline’s been lusting after for the last three months. Tia texted me to say she was going out on the piss with him on Christmas Eve, so it meant I had to make alternative arrangements. I rang around a few people but most of them were going to Spanners, that garage music night spot in the precinct. It was all ticket and no one had a spare.

I was saved from the ignominy of spending the night at the Dog and Duck with Dad, by that tart Olivia of all people. I was just standing behind her in the queue for the tills at Primark, listening to her highly confidential gossip, when she let it slip that she had a blind date lined up with some poor sod and they were going to meet up at the Spread Eagle pub at the top end of the council estate. Two things struck me about this. One, the aforementioned poor sod would really have to be blind if he was going to go through with the date after he’d met old yo-yo knickers, and two, the meeting place was aptly named because it was odds on that Olivia would be spread eagled by the end of the night, probably over the pool table. Anyway, the interesting bit was that the pub was having a fancy dress night and it was pay on the door.

I thought I’d have to spend the rest of the day looking for a costume, but then I remembered I still had that Xena, Warrior Princess outfit that I bought in the summer. The one I wore when they chucked me out of the St Moribund’s church roof, fundraiser dance because my tits kept falling out. (The bishop didn’t moan about it though and he had at least five dances with me that night.) I didn’t bother hanging around to see what Olivia was going to be dressed as; she always looks like a hooker whatever she wears.

Dad insisted on dropping me off at the pub in his little vegetable delivery truck because he reckons that estate is like the Gaza Strip during an Israeli invasion. Two doorman pilots, built like a row of brick shithouses wearing flying helmets and goggles, checked my undercarriage as I got out of the car.

‘If you can’t pull in there, don’t go home lonely, I’ll give your bomb doors a good greasing,’ said the one with the false moustache hanging precariously on his top lip.

‘If she can’t pull in there she must’ve smashed an entire hall of mirrors,’ said the one with the Tom Cruise sunglasses. ‘Most of ‘em are so desperate they’d queue for an hour for a turn with Ann Widdecombe.’

I managed to squeeze past them with nothing worse than a cursory grope, and walked over to a kiosk occupied by a forty-something woman dressed like Helen Mirren when she played the Queen in that film. She looked at me like I’d just crawled out from the u-bend.

‘Are you the stripper?’ she asked.

I shoved a tenner onto the counter. ‘Do I look like the stripper?’  I asked contemptuously.

‘Well, yes, you do, otherwise I wouldn’t have asked.’ She nodded towards my chest.

I tucked my boobs back into my dress, snatched up my ticket and headed towards the function room.

‘I’d keep those puppies in their kennel if I were you,’ she shouted after me. ‘There are a lot of animal lovers in there tonight.’ Continue reading