Documentary Fiction Photography - Steve Coel
Got another letter...just another reminder...just like all the others...
Then.
Times were different and some will still tell you that if you can remember what you were doing you weren't there. But I remember and it was great. Saturday nights dancing at the 'Apples and Pears' with all the other Mods and then off we'd all go Sunday morning to Southend or Margate for a laugh. For me though it only took one big mistake to make all the good things stop and that was seeing that stupid card in the pub window down the Old Kent.
All it said was - 'Fence - Good Money. Ask for Chick before closing'.
So, for a dare really, next Saturday, after listening to new singles with the girls down Woolies, I went over there and asked for Chick. Don't really know what it all meant back then.
Do now.
Now.
Down the market this afternoon people commented about my lovely sixties hairstyle and how it suits me. Some even asked after mother. But I don't like talking. Never did. So I just got on with things. I mean after all those years inside I learnt to keep myself to myself. And as for mother well least said really.
So here I am. I keep myself clean and live off the money I got given on release. It's what they owe me after all seeing as how I've kept my mouth shut all these years.
So when each new letter arrives, like the one today, I'll read it just once and put it away with others. There's now way round it. I am what I am...a rich woman with no life.
Pity mother isn't alive to share it with me really.
[Originally written/published/distributed - 1988, + Tin Collector: Collected MicroFlashFictions - 2015]
Notes:
My experiences of old street market stalls that sold medals and badges, random shoes and Sunday morning leather jackets from Saturday night gig venues (if you lost your jacket you sort of knew where you could get it back the following day!).
On just one night out down the Old Kent - a large organised bare knuckle fight in a pub backroom, a person being chased out of another pub, and down the street, by someone with a samurai sword and another person being thrown through a window into a pub...good grief...
Steve Coel
