Low life | 23 July 2015

‘I’ve lost my phone,’ yells Trev. We’re in a club. He’s come charging on to the dance floor to tell me. He’s always forgetting where he’s left his phone and getting in a state. Trev’s phone is old and crap and the screen is the most shattered screen I’ve seen on a phone that still works. Everyone knows Trev’s crap phone. People pinch it for a laugh just to wind him up, then give it back. It’s value to an opportunist thief is less than zero. He generally loses his phone two or three times of an evening. ‘Where did you have it last?’ I shout back. It’s an obvious question, but not one that has occurred to him, apparently. The pertinacity of it stuns him momentarily. He turns his head aside to ponder, an oasis of concentrated thinking amid the hectic dancing.

Suddenly the lights come on in Trev’s brain. He has remembered where he las left his phone. Mentally he leaps on to his horse, the horse rears twice, he fires his pistol into the air then gallops off in all directions. ‘Bogs!’ he shouts. ‘Bogs! Come on.’ Trev is one of those practical people who will always help you look for things, and he quite reasonably expects you to do the same for him. As we push through the crowd to the gentleman’s lavatory on the far side, he tells me that his phone has a new cover featuring wallet-style pockets for credit and debit cards. Unfortunately and uncharacteristically, Trev is using these bourgeois little appurtenances tonight for exactly this purpose. In other words, if his phone is lost or stolen he’s had it — though he uses a much stronger term than that.

Without breaking stride, Trev bashes open the gent’s outer door with a stiff arm and palm and marches in.