Lurching into the bar like lumbago dancing, that philishaved pyroxide PORN prostitute, Maureen "mojo the clown" McBennet, cap in hand and caps a plenty, sidled up to me spluttering some think about the kray twins and her previous precious premonition that we were no more than tiny fleas skipping in a pool of jam. Space-faced and fire-retardant she was spatula-laden and generally at a miss, Miss. "Eminem sucks the corkdriver boss!" she crooned. "eiundem sucks the corkdriver�." My mind was wounded - the night before having done me in. I felt as if my head was burning, silently seeping pain, a long lingering woeful wound. Tonight was Feb fourteen - the day pain traditionally came. The night before had been Feb thirteen - THE pREMOnition. I was feeling as delicate as coitus and less impressed. I hadn't seen Maureen the night before, but she was clearly high as the jump and had, I guess, scored. She was jelly intoxicated and floating, erudition and exhumation rapidly forming identical sides of a similarly spun coin. She was trying to get attention from Mike and making little sense. "The thing about rap is it comes from the Greek for rape" she postured "and that's what they all want�.. a little bit of grape". Mike poured her a glass of the Habit and she plonked her middle-aged hinny on the barstool adoring mine. As some regulars at Mikes would know, Maureen and I go back like apfel and strudel. For those of you who don't know, she is, I suppose, an ex prosi and I am, I suppose, an ex rent. You can see the join. Mike as you all know is a cunt, but luckily he has little to do with this tale. The night before I had been cruising and slagging and as normal feeling inherently unimpressed by the class of man that inhabits the commons and by-ways of this land. I'd met a dong at the rec who had tried to strangle me with his bootstrings as I creamed his ginger (there's thanks) and I'd met an Italian Big Issue seller who kept shouting at all and sundry passing, "You can stick you fingers up your ass". It had been a traditional night. One for the parents. I had tales to tell and had arrived at Mike's with the intention of telling them. I was singularly unimpressed therefore when Mauzza walked into Mike's with her own agenda, babbling and spitting like sherbet-dipped skin pustules. It was clear she was not in the mood for listening to me, and I should warn you poppets, that tends to put me in a bad bad mood. "How are you Pops?" Maureen had flatlined as her arse hit the stool. A deliberate attempt to infuriate me - I hate reference to my age and coming from a woman who couldn't be said to have so much lost her looks as sent them packing I thought it was extremely rich. "Forgotten your hormone pills?" I sniffed. She replied with girly chants: "Pops is feeling tiny. Pops is feeling tidy��".I hadn't wanted a fight that night but I can tell you I was feeling tempted. I decided to drink first. "Michael. Un boisson for monsieur". Miguel soon presented me with my favourite - "the soleil stretchmark", a mixture of stun and scum. Not so much an ice and a slice as a burn and a slash, a hangover credit card. I sipped and prepared to lay into Maureen with tweezers, but on lighting a ciggy, I realised that the inordinate menopausal babble spewing from Maureen's mouth had temporarily subsided. I looked up to see her staring at the door. I followed her eyes and saw a man who I assume had just walked in, a man whose general appearance I not only found nauseating but thoroughly addictive - a smack of sorts, a smack without class. A smack on the baby's arse. New money. He may as well have been wearing a t-shirt - saying "My money is new, how about you?" .He wasn't wearing a t-shirt though, he was wearing a Burton suit and looked as if his hair had been combed by Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. He was one of those morbid untrustworthy straights, the ones who you get in the lavs all angry that they want to be wanked off by a man who knows how to tug as opposed to a girl who can only fug. He was staring at Maureen with the sort of doleful expression that children at jelly parties wear when they see a pile of cream. Palid, a slight rotund quiver to the jowl. But the cheek bones were ivory and high. The absurd mayflower mullet a throwback to better times. His eyes were monkey pink, yellow in diameter and aubergine in circumference. A mystical quality noticed possibly by a few. A languid jersey kerchief bombed his upper pocket and a wrangler wristwatch advanced his arm. A timid romantic rimmel to his eye glass. Possibly an innocent sweetie at heart. I remember instinctively feeling at the time that he was probably a jon-gon-astray. A na�ve innocent consumed with fire for the mojo clown. Perhaps he'd seen her stripping down at Terry's on Rose Hill. Perhaps he'd paid twenty five squids a throw to see her time and time again go through that same laborious shopping list - these are my tits, this is my waist, these are my arse cheeks, muff and face. There was an intensity to his expression, the sort of intensity shared by the lover and the looser. A need to be with. The need directed at Maureen. And it burnt in the air. Hanging there. I looked back to Maureen and saw that she was gazing back. The mad talk had fallen from her leprous lips and the line between her eyes and his sizzled like strychnine in coke. She started to do that thing that young adolescent girls do in graveyards with tassles and cider, she started to sulter. She suddenly looked a lot younger, less crab-infested and well I almost choke as I think it but almost virginal. Quietly embarrassed of herself and suddenly aware. Aware that she was really well really probably quite lonely�well no she always probably knew that..but quite suddenly openly lonely. She suddenly couldn't hide it anymore that was the point..it was obvious to all. She was trembling slightly and blushing. She turned her head to me and made a slight goofy face. I couldn't understand what was meant and didn't really have time because the Burton suited knight at that moment clasping his balls in hand strode across the floor and pulled out a rose. It wasn't a plastic joke flower, but a real, ruddy red vadge of a rose. Valentine's, Love, Beauty - the whole deal. She took it from him like a Geisha girl. He kissed her on the cheek and left, walking straight out of the door, not hurriedly but certain that he had done what he had come to do. No words, no bullshit just facts. He had given her a rose. Orchidexotica. Uplifting thoughts. Kew in spring. She hung there for a moment as if on string, her cheeks burning and her eyes sparkling. And then she followed�that same invisible path to the door...dancing almost..trance like snake-like like out of the door. I looked at the door and then back at my stretchmark. Six hours later Maureen's body was found amongst the bins outside Mike's, breathing but only just. Breathing, but lightly, her rib cage had been smashed in with a hammer. She wore a rose in her hair. When I picked her out of the bins..she asked me if I loved her..I said I did�she asked me if I'd be her valentine�I said it would be an honour�I meant it�.The ambulance rushed us to casualty through a clearly cold winter's night air. Maureen's eyes reflected the street lights and traffic signs as we rushed through the town. She gripped my hand all the way to the hospital. I remember the traffic signs looked busy that night, too busy for a Valentine's Day, but yet probably busy enough.

Okey, that'll do for the time being. Why not flick around the photographs on the wall of the bar? Simply peek into the cellar.
That's all for now from the bar that loved yer mother. Come by next time we call, when I'm afraid it'll be more of the same.