Dusk Spank - Chapter One

Innocent English Literature student Annie Mallard would rather be reading Austen than dating, until she meets enigmatic and troubled billionaire Cullen Grey. They share an instant, electric connection, but Grey is a troubled man, tormented by dark secrets. Can Annie’s love heal the deep wounds of his past?

I check my hair in the mirror. Because I went to bed with wet hair, I now can’t style it how I want to. My hair, not the bed.  I put my hair in a ponytail instead. I have really big blue eyes and soft, wavy brown hair. No one ever fancies me, I am so skinny and unattractive. This is the most amount of times anyone has used the word ‘hair’ in one paragraph, ever.

I am getting ready to interview this multi-billionaire business man for the student newspaper. My friend Karen  Cartwright was supposed to go, but she has VERY bad flu, so she is sending me instead.  There is no-one else on the student newspaper that can go in Karen’s place. Karen is so selfish.

I have final exams to cram for, one essay to finish and I’m supposed to be working this afternoon. I am going to make Karen feel really bad about this for the next 3 chapters because she’s so selfish.

I don’t bother reading anything about the mysterious CEO of Grey  & Co Industries Incorporation LTD.  I don’t have a…you know…the flip screen thingy, like a phone, but bigger.  You know, with the square letters on it and the tiny filing cabinets inside. I can’t remember what they’re called and I don’t have the time to try and remember now. I once asked Karen what the ‘internet’ was and she laughed for ages and then said, ‘Oh, Annie, you’re so funny!’ but she still hasn’t told me what the internet is.

Karen is so annoying when she’s ill, but I also sort of think I might love her because she’s really sexy and pretty. I am 21 years old and I have never had a crush on a man. I bet my gothic romance novel heroines did not have to worry that they might lesbians.

THERE’S NOT MUCH TRAFFIC when I set off.  Because my car is an unreliable death trap that’s held together with rust and hope, Karen has let me borrow her car. She’s so selfish, she could just buy me a new car. Her family are loaded.

Grey Towers is like, this really, really tall building and it has lots of glass windows. I have always wondered how they make buildings that tall without them falling down, I mean, just look at Jenga. Now imagine an enormous Jenga made of glass and steel that doesn’t fall down. Doesn’t that blow your mind?  This brick, glass, steel and concrete building edifice is twenty storeys high. I know, because I stood outside and counted them all.

There’s this really tedious exchange with the receptionist because I’m not Karen. The receptionist is blonde and quite pretty, so she’s probably a bit thick and bitchy. I know she’s  judging me because my clothes are so shabby, but I am just not the type of girl that feels comfortable in expensive clothes.

When I am in a strange place, I like to mentally calculate the size of the rooms and how much furniture there is in the rooms.  I also like to think about how socially awkward I am. I think about this a lot. But right now, I am really thinking about what a total dick Karen is for not preparing me properly for this interview. It gets really crowded in my head sometimes, which is probably why I love books. I wish I was reading a book right now.

This black man comes out of Grey’s office. I don’t know why this is important, because we don’t meet the black man again. I love black people, though, don’t you? They’re so twinkly and happy. This one says, ‘Golf next week, Grey?’ It’s so unexpected. I didn’t know that black people could play golf, only basketball and that thing where they run round the big track really fast. Oh, but wait, there is that one that plays golf, isn’t there? His name’s Lion or something. Or am I getting muddled up with cricket…? I know brown people play that, but black people sort of are brown so….

 ‘Mr Grey will see you now, just go in’ says this blonde woman, smiling at me kindly. People smile at me like that a lot. I expect it’s because I’m really pretty, but also I’m also really scruffy, so I don’t intimidate them very much and they’d like to be friends with me.

As I push open the door, I trip over my own feet and land on my face because I am so uncoordinated and clumsy.

Oh, fudgesicles, me and my massive feet! I am on my hands and knees in the doorway. Gentle hands are around me, helping me to my ginormous clown feet. I am so mortified. I peek up at him, like Princess Di did with Martin Bashir in that interview. Sugarflaps, he’s so young and so HOT. Mr Grey, not Martin Bashir.

‘Miss Cartwright,’ he says, holding out his hand. ‘I’m Cullen Grey,’

He’s like, sooo young. I mean, he’s older than me, but he’s young. And he’s hot. I don’t know if I mentioned that he’s hot. I’ll describe him to you, so you can really understand how hot he is. OK, so, right, he’s tall, and has messy copper hair, and his eyes are gray, which is weird, because his NAME is GREY! He’s wearing a smart gray suit with a white shirt and a black tie. I wonder if he chose a gray suit because his name is GREY?

I don’t think I’ve mentioned that he’s young. I’m all at sixes and sevens when I shake his hand. The touch of his long fingers makes me quiver, but in a good way, like when you’re on the train or you stand too close to the washing machine when it’s on the spin cycle. How weird, I think and my eyelids start blinking in time with my heartbeat, which means I blink about 80 times in one minute.

‘Do you have something in your eye, Miss Cartwright?’ he asks.

‘Miss Cartwright is indisposed, so she sent me. I hope that’s alright, Mr Grey,’

‘And you are?’ he says.  I think he might find me amusing, but his face is giving away nothing, so it’s hard to tell. I really need visual clues to gauge what people think. Also, I told you that blonde receptionist was stupid, she didn’t even tell Mr Grey who I am, which would cut out this whole needless hot mess of confusion that is my creator’s excuse for a meet cute.

‘Annie Mallard, I’m studying English Literature with Karen, er, Miss Cartwright at WSU,’

‘I see,’ he says, smirking.

I take a few minutes to needlessly mentally calculate the size of the room, how much furniture there is in it, paying close attention in particular to the number of chairs there are and how many people can sit in the chairs. I also look at some paintings and feel like I need to comment on them, so you, the reader, know that I am clever because I understand art.

My knowledge of art also impresses Cullen Grey, this is to let you, the reader, know other people also think I am clever.

OK, so, I’m going be honest. The interview doesn’t go very well. I ask Mr Grey stupid questions, insult him, and call him names.  This is to show that I am a feisty, self-contained woman who’s not intimidated by anyone, apart from all the times when I tell you how intimidated I am by someone. 

Grey repeatedly does this weird thing where everything he says actually means something else.  This is to provide you, the reader, a hint of Grey’s true character and what is to come, and show that me, Annie, is too innocent to understand what he’s getting at it, even though I sort of do understand, because one of the names I call him is control freak.

I also ask if he’s gay, because stupid Karen has written it down and even though I read over the questions while I was waiting, I didn’t actually absorb what they said.  Karen is such a douche, she did this on purpose to make me look stupid! I am so going to keep bringing it up when I get home. It’s totally her fault and not mine that I’ve fucked this up by being ill-prepared and rude.

Then Cullen Grey starts asking me questions, about me, Annie, and I really don’t like talking about myself, so I just bite my lip. He looks at me weirdly, sort of like he wants to eat me, and it makes my kitty-woo feel funny. Oh, no, I think I’ve wet myself, this is soooo humiliating! I’ve simply got to get out of here.

As he walks me out of his office, Mr Grey makes a funny joke about how clumsy I was falling over earlier, which sort of makes me hate him. It has been a very confusing day so far.  He helps me put my coat on and his hands brush my shoulders, which makes me feel all quivery again.  He carries on staring at me as we wait for the elevator. He’s so handsome. I didn’t tell you how handsome he is. He’s really handsome.

I get into the elevator.

‘Annie,’ he says.

‘Cullen,’ I say as the doors close.

Bonus Round:

Clunky exposition count: 395

Foreshadowing alerts: the foreshadowing alert counter exploded

Dear X

Remember in that ‘mad, undated rant’ post I mentioned a holiday with a mysterious, seldom used dining room?

That holiday was in 1997. I would have been 18, almost 19.

In one of the what feels like 400 notebooks I using to write my novel, I found this, a letter to my very first boyfriend, who was back at home. I used to keep copies of letters I’d sent. Trust me, this was tiresome and time consuming, but I am sort of glad that I did it now.

‘At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred’

Just kidding – no one died, but names have been changed, if only to spare their blushes (and my own.)

37 year old thoughts on 18 year old self are in the square brackets and red text.

9 August, 1997

Dear X,

Here we are at last and what a place. Firstly, it smells of damp. Even the cups. [it smelled like ALL holiday places smell!] There was a cleaner here spraying the windows and she showed us around.

‘This be the dining room,’ she said in an ominous, dark voice.

‘Hardly anybody goes in thaaaar’ [she was obviously a pirate by night.] and I’m not surprised. The floorboards are painted black and there’s a six inch layer of dust on everything. And it's spooky, hence when I retire to bed I cannot sleep. [for some reason I elected to sleep in that creepy ass room, probably to avoid sharing with my siblings.] So I think I’ll listen to my Walkman [Walkmans!! I wish I’d kept it, I could listen to all my Taping Off the Radio Top 40 tapes again.] only the fuckin’ batteries don’t work.

I lie in the dark (very dark) and imagine all kinds of horrible things coming to get me. (Damien, Freddy, Grant Mitchell….)  fumble to get the light, turn it on and scream when a bug flies into my hair. 

T [my sister’s boyfriend at the time] runs in.

T: are you alright? We heard this yelp. (demonstrates spooky aforesaid high pitched yelp.)

Me: (slightly hysterical) a BUG flew into my hair. I can’t sleep in here!

T: I couldn’t, I shit myself! Come and sleep in our room!

So I do. I know. It’s pathetic.

W2: What the fuckin’ hell are you doing?

T: she’s sleeping in here

Me: (I put blankets down on the floor. The light goes on and off about 4 times before I’m happy.)

T: (in the darkness) that bloke died in here, you know

W2: Yes, but he died in your bed

W3: (to me) Why ARE you in here, exactly?

Me: My excuse is I’ve got so used to sleeping with someone else [in the bed] that when you have to sleep alone it’s really odd. And the dining room’s spooky. [It’s funny, 20 years on, I can’t stand sharing a bed with someone else, unless it’s a massive one that feels more like two beds. Oooh, I’m a bit like Christian Grey, aren’t I? 'I don’t sleep with anyone, Aaaaanaaaahhh’]

W2: How did that bloke die?

(Lots of jokes about shagging sheep, Noel [Gallagher] being God and defeating Damien, what a wimp I am follow. Finally everyone seems to start to sleep. After a while, in total darkness -)

T: OK, so who’s thinking about The Omen?

I sleep for about a minute. Wake up. Just how [can’t read my own writing] is this room? Fall asleep. Wake up and everyone is rushing about & highly amused to find me ‘asleep’ on the floor. Think it’s funny I couldn’t even stay awake without freaking out in the dining room [me neither…]

On Sunday, we go to Bamborough Beach and it’s lovely. All white sands and blue sea [Ugh, I’ve turned into EL James, what else is a beach going to be apart from sand and sea??]

Eat sarnies, get sand in my face due to W1 shaking his sock in the wind. Get an ice-cream, walk on some rocks, get tea in an Olde Worlde Teae Shoppe (or something) [uck, you again, James, you nefarious cretin.] come back. Have a shower. Put on my Mrs Jaffar T-shirt [I had this t-shirt from the H & M kids section, it was blue with pink sleeves and had a bejewelled face on it, which, thinking back on it, was probably Krishna, but was referred to by the family as ‘Mrs Jaffar’] and sit down to write this. My face itches and it is impossible to shave your legs in the shower.

Miss you lots, love from

The Dormouse [because of my teenage habit of generally being able to fall asleep anywhere, for long periods of time]

Thoughts:

• Note how I do not ask how my boyfriend is, or what he has been up to.
• I think this holiday was probably in Wales, as I remember it rained a lot, especially on the day we decided to walk up Mount Snowdon.
• I got irritated with T because there was a programme on t’telly about Oasis, but he wanted to watch something else, and as he was ‘a guest’ he won.
• I was an incredibly immature 18-year old. 

Dr Zzzzzz (what I read on my holidays)

Back in December, on beautiful Thai islands, I read two books.

The first was Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black, read on sitting on the beach in between paddles in the sea and naps in the hammock on the balcony.  The second was Doctor Sleep by Stephen King, read pretty much on Christmas and Boxing Day, nursing an almighty hangover.   

 Doctor Sleep is the follow up to 1977’s The Shining, which I first read in the early 90s, on holiday in Cornwall. I remember that it was blazing hot that year, but I was there in the snow bound Overlook Hotel with little Danny Torrance and his insane dad. Jack Nicholson was on the cover – (an illustration of that famous Here’s Johnny scene from the Stanley Kubrick movie. In that scene, Shelley Duvall’s terror seems so real I have to watch it from between my fingers) I LOVED The Shining. I love the movie version, too, and rank it in my Top 5, even though it takes serious liberties with the original source material.

I loved how Stephen King was able to make fictional characters so real and so believable, so well-drawn and fleshed out they could be people you know. I loved the spooky twin girls and Dick Halloran and how feisty Wendy was. I loved the whole back story of Jack’s alcoholism and the dark history of the Overlook.

Doctor Sleep finds Danny (now Dan) Torrance some 35 years later. He’s a piss-head, just like his dad, and we come into his life as he’s ‘hitting bottom’. The first chapter of the book is classic SK to me, no messing around, pulling you right into the story.   Danny wakes up in a strange place with a strange woman, and he behaves appallingly. 

Soon he finds himself with an Al Anon mentor, who sets him on the straight path. This is where Dan’s story gets a bit dull. I would have liked to have followed him a little more as a boy, teenager and young man, other than the snippets that King gives us. 

 Once he’s in recovery, he becomes a very one dimensional character, and becomes so perfect and saintly, it’s irritating. He also does not speak like someone in their late 30s/ early 40s would, coming across as much older. Maybe this is because I am an immature late 30-something, but the way he spoke just didn’t ring true. I didn't really feel Dan as a fully formed character. King is very, very good at writing children, and perhaps I couldn't get to grips with 'adult Dan' because I remembered   'child Danny' so vividly. 

Dan has found himself work in a hospice, where he has earned the name ‘Doctor Sleep’ because of his ability to help the dying cross to the other side.

Meanwhile, across town, there’s Abra, a girl with remarkable shining powers. Over the course of ten or so years, she gets in touch with Dan via their ‘shine’, until they meet in person. Stephen King could have held back a bit on the internet / grooming aspect of their meeting, but it’s referred to repeatedly and made me feel uncomfortable. Sure, Dan is 38 or so, and Abra is 12, and Dan is so obviously not a sexual predator, but referring to Abra’s ‘long legs’ and ‘masses of blonde hair’ and then inserting that he’s worried about being thought of as a paedo was just a bit confusing.  I wasn’t sure if Abra was supposed to have a bit of a crush on Dan or not.

We meet the True Knot, a group of travelling ancient vampires, who feed off the ‘steam’ that shining children expel when they die. They discover Abra, and decide that they must have her.

We are introduced to Andi, a vulnerable young woman who was abused by her father for many years. She also has a remarkable talent, but sadly, Andi and her talent are discarded very early on. SK only picks up on Andi in the book’s closing chapters, which is a great shame, because she is by far one of the most interesting characters in the whole novel.

Abra is so powerful we feel no fear for her in her final show down with the True Knot. The ending feels rushed and hashed together. This is a common problem with Stephen King books – I feel that he writes himself into corners he can’t get out of and this is a prime example.

I was so disappointed with this book, especially as I’d chosen to lug it in my suitcase, weight that wasn’t really needed. I’m a long term SK fan. Saving this book for my trip was a bit of a let-down…I’m sorry, Steve. I still love you, but boy you better make it up to me.

Beyond Black was a different matter. Morbidly obese spiritual medium Alison tours the Home Counties with her bitchy assistant Collette. Alison is genuinely physic, unlike her tarot card reading colleagues. But she is also literally haunted by her past, in particular the foul-mouthed, perverted spirt guide Morris.

This book is so creepy it makes you feel a bit queasy. The descriptions of Morris and his ghostie mates sliding behind walls and hiding in pipes feel as sinister as they sound.

Morris is mates with a few other dead men, and as the story progresses, their link to Alison and her horrific past becomes clear. Hilary Mantel is very skilled at ‘showing, not telling’ and it’s largely left up to the reader to piece her awful history together, though it’s also fairly clear why Morris and his mates have sought her out and continue to taunt her.

Other departed souls visit her, mostly those that don’t understand that they are dead and are looking for their long lost friends.

No, it’s not like The Sixth Sense, even though Alison does see dead people. I really liked Alison’s charlatan medium friends, but hated Collette – she was a total dick and really irritating. The story stayed with me for a long time after I’d finished it – perhaps reading it in a foreign country, suffering from jet-lag added to the strangeness of it. Only two criticisms; it was a bit too long and I didn’t really understand what Mantel was trying to say and what it all meant. Perhaps that we are all haunted by our pasts, in one way or the other, (which kind of ties in nicely with Danny Torrance.)

Maybe, as has been said of David Lynch’s work, it might not mean anything at all.

Blog Bonus Round: (BING!) 

I quite enjoy casting the film versions of books I'm reading. I decided that adult Dan could be nicely played by Jake Gyllenhaal (yeah, yeah, I know he looks nothing like Danny Lloyd, and he's a few years too young, but I think he carries off that vulnerable / potentially dangerous thing quite well)

This is going to require Danny Torrance's eyes to change colour....

Aaand....Chloe Grace Moretz as Abra (she's already played Carrie White in 2013's remake...)

Have you read Doctor Sleep or Beyond Black? Who would you cast? 

Is this the world's worst novel?

I have this Ira Glass quote stuck on my cork board (or, as my inside voice wankily calls it, ‘the inspiration station’):

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Ira Glass has obviously never read the novel I wrote when I was in my late teens. Sure, he’s right about a few things; my work disappointed me, and it definitely wasn’t that good. And I never got past that phase, because I did quit. I did a lot of work, but I quit. My work has never been as good as my ambitions, and I don’t think I’ve ever closed that gap, though I finish stories.

People think The Shining is about a haunted hotel. It isn’t. It’s about writer’s block. Jack Torrance, clacking away at his typewriter, going slowly mad. I wonder if the snowbound Overlook Hotel becomes a metaphor for the isolation and loneliness of trying (and failing) to write a book.

Even when I had three months (THREE!) to do nothing but write, I still couldn’t do it. There became so many more tempting things to do. But as a teenager, and in my early twenties, I couldn’t stop writing. I didn’t have a computer then, so I wrote long hand in wire bound notebooks, typing up and printing out pages when I had a late shift at my reception job. I wrote so much that I developed this weird little lump on the second finger of my right hand (it’s still there, to remind me I don’t write that much anymore.)

This massive pile of notebooks and loose sheets was actually my second attempt at a novel. I am not even sure what order they go in, and I doubt I could tell from trying to piece together the plot. From what I remember, there was a teenage girl, an inappropriate relationship with a much older man (MUCH older, don’t know why I did that.) unrequited love, and two dead rock stars sent to torment our heroine into sorting her life out. Magic realism written by a 17 year old isn’t going to be any good, but thanks for the encouragement, Ira.

2,000 pages of crap

Don't make notebooks like they used to

I found this scribbled in an old diary: ‘the only thing I write these days is shopping lists.’ It's the sort of thing that at the time I think is pithy and witty, but it's really just lame and unfunny.

So when the muse is failing to crap on my head, or I’m feeling a little spooked out from the posts about missing people and unsolved deaths, I’ll post a chapter of the Not So Great English Novel. (it had two titles, neither of which were any good, ‘The People vs Alice Same, and I Wish My Friends Were Someone Else’s) E.L James, prepare to surrender your crown as The World’s Worst Writer. 

Undated Mad Rant

A little light relief from the weird and creepy stuff I normally write about, some teenage ramblings. Hashtag: cringe.

Found: in the box of shame, locked away since we partied like it was 1999.

Date: circa 1991 -1998

Circumstance: Who knows? Possibly a school trip, or disappointing family holiday. We stayed in one place where there was a very creepy dining-room. The floor was black, polished wood. There were many glass fronted cabinets filled with stuffed animals and fake flowers. There was an impressive collection of well-thumbed Jilly Cooper paperbacks. The owner said (imagine cryptic, crystal-gazing voice) ‘No one goes in the DINING-ROOM’.

I don’t think this is that holiday. What is certain is that my sense of social injustice, and indeed accommodation benchmark standards, were a bit skewed. There certainly wasn’t any of the things in the school toilets as described, with the exception of the occasional droplet of wee on the toilet. seat. You have to assume the rest was included for dramatic effect.

After my stay here (all 3 hours of it) I have decided that this is the most disgusting, flea-ridden, repulsive, sweaty, shit-infested bog-water arsehole piss-bucket I have EVER had the displeasure to see in my LIFE! Yes, EVEN my school toilets which have shit up the walls and piss on the floor / dead people hanging from the ceiling / blood, shit and all kinds of disgusting things in the sink – and that’s just the TEACHER’s loos.

And you look like the type of person that would irritate the hell out of me, you stupid old tart. This place stinks of fucking mothballs and fucking cat’s piss and dog’s shit. The bath is the size of MY BABRBIE HAS A BATH set, only fucking smaller. The taps DO NOT WORK, we are dying from carbon monoxide POISONING and I can hear what people in the next STREET are saying – oh, and talking of the ‘town’ it’s like the one in Amityville / Elm Street, only worse, cause the houses don’t look as nice, the houses looks like fucking industrial fucking concrete from World War fucking 2.

I HATE IT. I wish that I was in Prague, I am sure it would be more PRETTY than THIS! Am I making myself clear, you rip-off bitch? There’s a massive fucking spider the size of AMERICA crawling across the wall, like it’s going to TAKE OVER the fucking world or something.

Am I ranting? You bet I FUCKIN AM!!! I want to go home. And so you know where home is? CHESHAM, the epitome of crap. And I want to go BACK!

Anyway, I have to go. I’ve got some bogarts to tame, some fleas to catch, a tent to sleep in. A portaloo at Glastonbury would be better than this. What’s the point of the empty cabinets? Eh? And the SHITE furniture? There’s small animals living in the mattresses! I bet your house is dead nice, isn’t it? I bet you’ve got a nice TV and a proper bath and cupboards that don’t look like something out of TACK EMPORIUM CO, eh? Huh, huh huh? Cause you’ve got lots of money earned from shite accommodation like THIS. 

Where is.....Lars Mittank?

Lars Mittank has been missing since 8 July 2014, when he vanished from Bulgaria’s Varna airport.

The 28 year old German and his friends had travelled to Bulgaria on 30 June.  They checked into the Viva Hotel, in the seaside town of Golden Sands.  The town is 17km along the coast from the large port city of Varna and is popular with young European tourists who come to enjoy the nightlife, beaches and cheap booze.

Lars apparently got into two fights during the holiday; one during a day at the beach and one outside a McDonalds after a night out. One of these fights was with rival Bayern Munich fans (Lars supported Werder Bremen) and during one of the altercations, he damaged an eardrum.

Lars saw a doctor, was prescribed the antibiotic Cefuroxime 500, and was advised not to fly home on the scheduled date. His friends flew home as planned, and Lars checked into Kolor, a cheap hostel in the centre of Varna.

That night he phoned his mother, telling her he believed that he was being followed by four men who wanted to know ‘what the tablets were’. He asked her to cancel his credit cards, and said he was afraid because there was something strange about the hostel. He later texted her, asking ‘What is Cefuroxime 500?’

His mother booked him plane tickets home for the following day, 8 July.

The next morning, Lars made his way by taxi to the airport. He walked into the terminal with his holdall and back pack, and after a brief exchange with a woman (who looks like she might be airport staff) made his way to the doctor’s office.

CCTV captured Lars sprinting out of the doctor’s office approximately 46 minutes later; this sudden dash was apparently prompted by the appearance of  a mysterious ‘maintenance man’. It’s unclear if the maintenance man had accessed the consultation room or just the reception area, but either way, his presence was enough to spook Lars into running away.

 The CCTV shows Lars running back out into the terminal, before it picks him up running around outside, where he slows to a jog, pauses,  then runs towards the perimeter fence. Here, he scales the fence and disappears into the woodland. You can view the CCTV here: 

In Easter 2015, a truck driver told police that some months ago, he had given a man matching Lars’ description a lift. Where he taken him to is unknown, and  it has never been verified that this was Lars. 

Questions:

1)      Where is Lars’ passport and mobile phone?

2)     Was his room at the hostel searched?

3)     Were the bags he left in the doctor’s office searched?

4)     Who did he get into a fight/fights with?

5)     Who were the 4 men he told his mother about?

6)     Did Lars suffer a head injury during either the beach or McDonalds altercations?

7)     Who was the maintenance man, and why was he in the doctor’s office the same time as Lars?

8)     Why was Lars in with the doctor for so long? Was the doctor persuading him not to fly?

Some Theories

• The most popular theory is that Lars ran into either some members of an organised crime gang, or someone in the organ trafficking business, or possibly both. Once a doctor had established that Lars was alone in the country, and was staying in a dodgy part of town, he was able to have someone follow him (the 4 men that Lars told his mother about in his last phone call) How likely is it that Lars was targeted for the organ black market? I thought it sounded improbable that a German tourist, someone who would be missed, would be a viable target. But then during my research for this post, there was really very little media coverage of the case outside of Germany. Lars’ disappearance seems to be mainly the focus of Reddit threads, with there being little information elsewhere. A report published earlier this year found that there was a perception that Bulgaria had the highest level of corruption out of all the EU countries.      When Lars got to the airport, either the doctor there, or the maintenance man, (both also possibly in on the business) spooked him. This doesn’t explain why he slows to a jog once he’s outside the airport, but does explain why he might have been fearful enough to escape into the woods. From there, he was either caught by the people chasing him, or got lost and succumbed to the elements or to whatever was in the woods - wolves still live in rural Bulgaria
• Lars was a drugs mule. He had swallowed the drugs and was worried the bags would rupture
• Another theory is that during his stay in the hostel, Lars was witness to something he shouldn’t have been. Again, this would explain his odd phone calls to his mother – where he told her he was very freaked out, but couldn’t say by what, other than he was being followed by 4 men
• The next theory is that during one of the fights, Lars suffered a head injury and was experiencing a form of psychosis (where have we heard that one before?) resulting in paranoid delusions. This may account for the belief that he was being followed, and then, when he got to the doctor’s office, that he was going to be harmed
• A last theory is that he had an adverse reaction to the antibiotics, but a bit of reading suggests that temporary psychosis is not a side effect of Cefuroxime 500.  You can read about the side effects here, and judge for yourself:

cefuroxime 500

 So, what do you think happened to Lars? 

Vintage Musings # 1 - 2009

Round the corner from my house, sitting in the middle of a dreary (looking even more dreary in today's non stop drizzle) housing estate, is a parade of shops.

 The Parade has been there at least thirty years - there's the newsagents that forever will be known as Bunce’s, even though it hasn’t been Bunce’s since about 1989 when it changed to Stars and is now called something else like Quik News.   Next to Bunce's is a hairdressers. it's a pretty random place to have a hairdressers and I can't imagine who would go there. My mother did once - 'never again', she said through the kind of tears that can only be induced by a God-awful haircut that means you'll have to spend the next six months hiding under a hat, 'never again!'

Then there's the Supa Price Kutters that sells everything, but marks it all up by about three times the price of what you'd find it for in the supermarket.  They employ strange times of operation in that place - it opens at what feels like 11.55am and then closes at 12pm. Quick-E-Mart it is not. I am foraging for vegetables - as it's such a miserable day I don't know if I can be bothered to get soaking wet walking into town but I am all out of anything tasty and nutritious to eat. They have a decent, fresh-ish bag of mixed salad and some ok, if a bit squidgy tomatoes and some nice red onions but everything else is dreadful - the carrots have the feel of a squeaky dog toy, the lettuce is brown and the green beans are mottled with rot. Next to me is a poor little old lady desperately trying to find some fresh green beans and failing horribly.

 This shop also sells, randomly, a big selection of pet food and own brand fizzy drinks, bird tables, baked Alaska and Findus crispy pancakes, bleach, some organic lime surface cleaner, big bags of Bombay (Mumbai??) mix,  cheap make-up and also has a DVD rental service.  After I’ve bought some earthy looking spuds and a red onion that will probably turn out to be spoiled, I go into Bunce’s, where something a little bit strange and quite funny happens.

There's two teenage girls in there with someone who looks like their mother. But there seems to be some weird, Freaky Friday thing going on. The elder teenage girl is saying:

'what is it you want, then?'

The mother is stood at the magazine racks, her face covered by the pages of an open magazine, she's totally engrossed. She mumbles something inaudible to the teenage girl, but I hear it as: 'I dunno,'

'What?!' the teenage girl barks, in the manner of a posh dog trainer shouting, 'heel!' to an unruly puppy.

'I said I don't know,' says the woman. 'I haven't seen anything,'

'WHAT?' bellows the girl again, and slides over. She tugs at the sleeve of the woman's coat.

'I said I haven't seen anything,' says the woman.

'Come on then,' says the girl, flicking her hair over her shoulder, all exasperated, and they leave the shop. But my Bunce’s experience is not over yet!

  My sister has left a load of her art stuff at dad's house. Today I decided I was going to have a go at being creative (anything to detract from what I am actually supposed to be doing, which is *cringe* writing a novel.) I realised that when I cleared out the old stuff I'd thrown away some of the more useful things like palettes and little wooden spatulas. I thought that the Post office (also sells a vast variety of knitting / sewing stuff) along the parade might have a cheap oil paint set with a palette. They didn't, hence why I had gone into Bunce’s.

'You looking for something?' asks the girl. She says it in a way that suggests I'm on the rob. Her accent is a curious mix  - half Pakistani, half the local, slangy accent, so she drops her aitches and over-pronounces her K's.

 I ask her if they have a paint set.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ she says and marches to the front of the shop, from where she produces a set of kids paints in primary colours that are sitting in a plastic box.

‘Uhm, that’s not really what I was -’   I start to say.

‘I know what you’re looking for,’ she says, and rattles the box in my face, like she’s trying to say, ‘these, buy these, you want these,’

‘Uhm, yeah, not really the paints but just a palette,’ I say.

‘Have you tried the post office?’ she demands.

I say that I have and thank her for her help, but I don’t want the paints. I pay for my magazine and run.

On the way home, the two girls and the woman are standing at the bus stop. The woman has adopted the posture of a teenage girl, and is slurping from a Lucozade bottle, standing on one foot, the other bent at the knee, the foot resting on the wall behind her.

‘Linda,’ says the youngest girl - it’s unclear if she’s addressing the older girl or the woman, ‘do you know why I wanted this magazine?’

I don’t hear the rest of the exchange - I am way past the bus stop by then.

I’ve also had a driving lesson today.  It didn’t go well, so I’ll be having to my shopping at the Parade on rainy days for a while longer.