Hi all. I'm back again after a little time away (Wedding in two weeks, much preparations).

This is the first part of something I've been chewing on for a while, just thought I'd get something down in concrete and see how it looks. (my first foray into first person as well)

Fifteen minutes ‘till the end of the world and somehow, I know it’s all because Ali Palmer decided to wear a skirt.

I met Ali, back when I was a small kid and she wasn’t much more than a toddler, through her brother Paul. And I met Paul back in infant school when he tried to take my dinner money. He was a big guy as a kid and I had always been more on the lean side, course now I’ve been hitting the gym three times a week for the last year and I look a little more substantial (not that that should matter, but for some reason it always does) but back then I was a proper scrawny little shit. Either way when he came striding over with that nasty little grin across his face I knew that I had two choices; give him the money, or don’t. I decided not to.

Now, let me set this straight from the start, it’s not that I’ve ever been some kind of tough guy, or even that brave. It’s just that that day happened to be a Wednesday and Wednesday happened to be waffle and ice cream day in the canteen. And I tell you what, even now, just under fifteen minutes away from the end of the world if you asked me what food was worth getting a kicking for I’d say Waffles and ice cream. Either way, I’d just told Big Paul Palmer himself to “get lost” and “If you want my lunch money you’ll have to take it off of me.” And he did.

I lost one wobbly tooth (a front one no less) and 75p that morning, but not before I flat handed Paul on the side of the head and burst his eardrum. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a kid scream like that since, guess now I never will. Anyway, I’d just given Paul a perforated eardrum and he’d performed four knuckle dental surgery  on me and nicked my waffle and ice cream money, when dogface Blatcher came stomping across the playground towards us with her little silver whistle clenched between her teeth. Even now, as a 25 year old man, I think Doris Blatcher would scare the willies out of me, and probably any other grown man she came across, the miserable old cow.

Luckily by the time I was at infant school teachers weren’t allowed to cane pupils anymore, but that didn’t stop old dogface from inflicting maximum damage on an unsuspecting pupil, she knew just how to grab an arm so that it would leave a bruise for well over a week and woe to any kid who got caught by the acid rain that used to fly from her mouth.

She took one look at the pair of us bawling our eyes out, me with blood running down the side of my mouth, Paul with his hand clutched over his ear, then clamped her robotic, torture hands round each of our arms and dragged us to her office. Long and short of it is we were in big trouble. Then I took the blame for the whole situation and Paul and I became best friends. ‘Why did you take the blame for the kid that just robbed your dinner money?’ I know that’s what you’re thinking. The truth of the matter is, when I saw him standing there, clutching on to Doris Blatchers dress with tears streaming down his face, screaming “Don’t tell my Dad!” and “He’ll kill me!” I just felt sorry for him. See, even back then I was a soft touch.
 

That’s how Paul and I met, and we stayed best friends right up ‘til my 21st birthday then I didn’t see him or his sister again for 4 years.

Either way, I was telling you about Ali. Younger than me and Paul by two years she was a typical little sister, always trying to tag a long and basically getting in our way pretty much all the time. When we hit our mid-teens she got a bit of a lot of a crush on me, nothing ever happened though.

I’d never really had a thing for Ali Palmer. Not that she was an ugly girl, she just wasn’t the sort of stunner I’d come to think I deserved. She had red-blonde hair that was always pulled tight back into a pony tail, eyes that looked just a little too sunken and she was always wearing the same combination of Kappa tracksuit bottoms and black holterneck top that highlighted her curve-less, boy-like, figure.

I’d never really had a thing for Ali Palmer. That was, until I bumped into her in a club on the night of my 25th birthday, and she’d decided to wear a skirt.