Community Service Ch. 07

"Here's your cane back, CSO Karen," said Norma Newlove, smiling. "It's still in one piece."

"Yes - but I don't know how!" said CSO Karen admiringly. "You are a natural with the cane, Mrs Newlove. With just a few, words-to-the-wise tips from me and CSO Linda, and a bit of trial-and-error practice, I bet you'd stroll the CSOs' cane craft passing-out exam."

"Yes, and with flying colours!" CSO Linda agreed effusively. "Double-oh-seven will vouch for that. Mrs Newlove nearly made him, pass out!"

"Get David out of this barbaric contraption!" Tina yelled, at CSOs Karen and Linda. "This isn't funny!"

"Aw, look at the two lovebirds," chuckled Gina Stainham. "Ah ... doesn't it make you remember your own, first love, Cheryl?"

"Oh ... yes," said Cheryl Chubb, playing along. "It's a real whirlwind romance, isn't it? It's plucking my heartstrings, watching the two of them."

Norma Newlove said to Tina, "So now you know - Burger Girl! Now you know, what happens when you get on the wrong side of me! And, if you want my advice: you'll forget about this loser. Find yourself a proper boyfriend. Ditch him, and walk away from him now. All he's good for, and all he'll ever be good for, is working in the Sock Room, and washing our dirty socks. So-"

"Well, I don't want your advice! Advice? From you?" responded Tina spiritedly. "Norma Newlove, your are a heartless, cruel, malicious, vindictive woman, who ..."

Cheryl Chubb, throwing her head back, let out a high peal of delighted, tickled-pink laughter.

So infectious was it, that Gina Stainham and Norma Newlove immediately contracted the unseemly contagion. The only cure: to laugh out the affliction's tickly course.

Laughing themselves, CSOs Karen and Linda began extricating me from the centre set of stocks. "Let's get you out of this thing, double-oh-seven," said CSO Linda, chuckling. "See what happens, double-oh-seven, when you take on the super-villains?"

And, laughing herself, was Kathy Newton. How could she!

"Ha, ha, ha - 'double-oh-seven' - that's a good one!" squealed Kathy, in hilarity.

No: I didn't think I could ever view my former favourite TV newsgirl Kathy Newton in the same, rose-tinted light, ever again.

Not, after this!

"Come on, David," said Tina. "Let's go back to mine and Janice's place. She'll be finishing her shift at Burger Heaven soon. Janice will help me to, um, get you tidied up."

Norma Newlove and her Sock Room cronies Gina Stainham and Cheryl Chubb were still laughing themselves fit to bust.

"Tidied up?" Cheryl Chubb managed to get out, between laughs. "He needs a bit more than tidying up - after what we've done to him!"

I looked over, at Canford town's Authoritarian Female Party representative. The woman, who had officially presided over these vile and barbaric public caning punishment proceedings. Ms Harmman was smiling at me.

And, seemingly right on cue, and deliberately, Ms Harriet Harmman slipped her rather long and slender, dark-nylon stockinged right foot from her well-worn, two-inch heeled, black leather office pump. And, pressing her toes down inside the heel of her shoe, she caused her pump to stand on end, displaying to me the scratched, scuffed and scarred leather sole of her office pump.

Ms Harmman's smile said she'd got the measure of me: I was such a schmuck.

I was in a world of agony and anguish.

I had never felt so physically, and so mentally wounded: Being made to suffer, like this, at my across the road neighbour from hell Norma Newlove's, very own hand.

And all of it, covered live at the scene by the world's media.

I shuddered to think, what Dad would say. And what Mum would think.

And what about my two sisters Alison and Denise? There was bound to be some unwelcome and uncomfortable, behind-their-backs gossip at the town centre solicitors' office where they both worked - Black, Brown, and Grey.

And then there was my brother John. He was away at present, working as a chef on the Omega 3 oil rig, in the North Sea. John still had another two weeks left, of his usual three-week working stint.

What were they all going to think, of their younger brother's famous (infamous!), history-making exploits?

This was yet another, of Norma Newlove's emphatic victories. And it was, by far, her greatest and most satisfying triumph yet, that she'd chalked up against me.

Slowly, gradually, and inexorably, Norma was crushing me - both physically and mentally - under her heel.

I was the gift, that kept on giving ... and Norma was the woman, who kept on accepting.

Already, I was dreading the coming Monday.

On Monday - in less than two days' time - I would be starting Week 3, as Canford town's Sock Room community servant: the Unemployment-Benefit-earning duties, assigned to me by the local Authoritarian Female Party representative, Ms Harriet Harmman.

And in less than two days' time, I could expect Norma Newlove and her cohorts in cruelty Gina Stainham and Cheryl Chubb, to come and 'visit' me, in the Sock Room.

As Tina began helping me back to her and her work colleague and friend Janice's place, my every, pain-filled movement, hindering her struggling efforts at progress, I thought it would be nice to meet Janice properly. I just wished it could have been under better circumstances.

Norma Newlove shouted after Tina and me.

"So, you remember - Burger Girl! What happens, when you cross me! When you get on the wrong side of Norma Newlove!"

Tina looked back over her shoulder at Norma. But sensibly, Tina said nothing in reply.

"And, as for you - Community servant David double-oh-seven!" yelled my neighbour from hell Norma Newlove, tauntingly. "We'll see you on Monday!"

"Yes!" chorused Gina Stainham and Chery Chubb. "In the Sock Room!"

Community Service continues, in Chapter 8.