Decerday night is all right for fighting

  

Decerday night is all right for fighting  

Elizabeth Sullivan stumbles out of bed and over to the curtains. As she opens them the sun comes bursting into her bed sit. The light is bounced round the room by the foil on the wall behind a wooden trellis, up which numerous plants grow. She gets ready for work, grabs a hand full of grapes off the vine by the door and heads off.

Elizabeth walks into tramps tea room by the back door and takes her apron from its hook. The first band was just going on as she takes her place behind the bar. The tea room is quiet, only the bands and their hangers on, there for the open mic night. There are more people in the car parks of the nearby industrial estate protesting about the lay offs at many of the factories. a guy with a very tight perm and tighter jeans comes to the bar. “I’ll have a Russian thanks” Elizabeth smiles, turns and starts making the drink. “what do you think of the band” says the guy as she adds the vodka to his tea. “not bad. That’s 1.40” he hands over some coins. “do you want to book them for the tea dance, I’m there manager”  “really, wow” he failed to hear the sarcasm in her voice. “yeah, the lead singer is my baby brother. I took him under my wing, taught him all I know” there was a long pause. “well we have booked the bands for the next few weeks” “oh …ok” he muttered, then goes back to his seat. The band on stage was a 3 piece scrounge band. scrounge music is identified by its make-do instruments, often cannibalizing other instruments or replacing broken parts with household items. For example, the boys on stage are using leather cut from the back of a second hand sofa for the skin on the kick drum and have cello strings on their guitar. This means that the sound of a band can change dramatically from gig to gig depending on the wear and tear of the instruments. Scrounge started when government funding for the arts was cut to help pay for space exploration. This hit the small cover bands first, so at the birth of scrounge most of the songs were cover versions often adapted to fit the new metric calendar. Soon the financial problems hit all parts of the music industry. This created an almost infinite number of scrounge sub-genres.

Mary sides up to Elizabeth “hay Liz check out that bloke’s hair” 

“I’ve seen it”

“do you think he’ll pose for a photo with our mop, they’d look like twins!” Mary skips of to the other end of the bar to serve a customer. 

As the band finishes a factory worker comes in and orders 6 Irish and 4 Russian teas to go. Elizabeth gets to work making the drinks. Mary floats over and leans on the counter “hey, what's all this protesting about?” 

“their planning to replace 60% of us” replies the worker trying not to look down Mary’s top “Androids ?” asks Mary

“gynoids actually”

Elizabeth turns round and puts 2 cardboard drink holders containing 10 paper cups on the counter “why gynoids?”  

“eye candy for the CEOs”

“that can’t be true” exclaims Elizabeth

“oh it is” claims Mary “there’s a car factory where all the gynoids have black hair with permanent gothic makeup because thats what turns the owner on”

the worker pays for the drinks and leaves. The next band now on stage set up as 2 police cars speed past out side. DJ trench foot takes off his headphones and heads to the bar “hay it’s Elizabeth isn’t it”  “yeah, but Liz will do” she hoped he wasn’t going to ask for Mary’s number. “you DJed last night for the Tramps tea dance”  

“yeah” replied Elizabeth “you don’t know where I can get another gramophone” 

“why, what’s up with yours?” trench foot leans in “I want to try this thing I saw DJ slipped disc do at Glastonbury,  merge 2 gramophones so you can play 2 tracks from the same record simultaneously. Then you use a mute to alter the sound.” Elizabeth thought about it for a bit “there are a some junk shops behind the tube station, that’s where I got my cassette decks”  trench foot smiled “ thanks” then he looks in Mary’s direction “ is she single ?”  suddenly there was a loud bang which shook the tea room. Everyone move to the front of the room to peer out the window or hang out the door. Down the road black smoke pours out a truck as the sound of  braking glass and sirens fill the street. It soon becomes obvious the noise was coming their way. “ok everyone we’re having a lock in” yelled Elizabeth trying to pull people back in. Mary got the keys out and pushed a button on the key fob the shutters start moving down. Some of the customers duck under the descending shutters and run down the road. The shutters meet the floor, all the lock click shut and a box with a keypad by the door bleeps twice. Elizabeth types in a code to stop the alarm going off. Mary runs to the TV bracketed to the wall and puts on the news channel. A film from a helicopter of the burning truck  plays as a reporter  tells of how a riot had began when the driver delivering the new gynoid workers stopped outside the industrial estate and torched the truck. The occupants of the tea room sit and watch the tv and drink tea as more and more people round the world start to riot. The news shows an image of the earth from the moon's main telescope. Small gray spots of smoke can be seen on the blue orb of earth making this the first riot visible from space