Ged Bryant and the Flying Eye

To say that Ged Bryant was drunk was like saying the Mersey was a body of water: it was that obvious. Staggering and falling, laughing and cursing, he sang a faltering song as he weaved his lanky, inebriated form up Hardman Street, Liverpool.

He decided he needed to urinate in imitation of a wanton racehorse.

Up this wee side-street here, he thinks. Pulls out his walloper and begins to let loose the amber fluid. Such sweet relief! He la-las his way through, funny enough a song by The La’s. Very appropriate for Liverpool, he thinks. Jangly, Beatle-y band. My Christ, there’s enough of this piss coming out: maybe he’s leaking alcohol. He chortles at the thought and the possible headline ‘Man leaks to death on Roscoe Street’. Something of the Raymond Chandler about it.

At first, he thinks the voice is in his head, until he looks up, his lad still in hand and spouting furiously. And, he hears..!

“YOU ARE COMMITTING AN OFFENCE AGAINST PUBLIC DECENCY. PLEASE DESIST AND WAIT FOR THE POLICE CAR WHICH IS ON ITS WAY’

He can barely make it out through the glaring lights, but the megaphoned voice gives it away that there is actually a giant speaking fly hovering some fifty feet above his head. The noise from its engine is hideous like the devil’s own hoarse breath.

“PLEASE PUT YOUR PENIS BACK IN YOUR TROUSERS AND WAIT THERE PEACEFULLY FOR POLICE ATTENDANCE”

Fucking hell! Is this actually happening? He finishes his piss and does as the voice ordered. He shields his eyes against the flashing lights. He’s in no fit state to do a runner, though having a helicoptered policeman bark orders at you from the dark heavens does tend to have a sobering effect. Two policemen emerge from a car at the end of the alley and walk towards him.

It’s a fair cop…!

I heard one morning on City Radio which operates out of that non-sensical space-age tower which dwarfs the Liverpool sky-line that a group of lads had allegedly stolen an entire street of valued Yorkshire-stone cobbles somewhere in Knowsley (my guess is Huyton) and rumbled off north to sell them.

But, you try taking a piss in the place.