Praise Routine No. 4. Michael Rands

      ‘No. No. I have to go,’ I said, and started walking away before she could force me to participate.

      What a strange woman. I was relieved that she wasn’t a police informer. Whenever I became paranoid I could literally feel the muscles in my body tensing up, and then when the paranoia passed I could feel them relaxing again, as I did now.

      I started to enjoy being stoned. The sky looked beautiful, so did the trees. There was a general sense of failure about the fair. A band whined away in the hall, but no one paid any attention. The sellers sold things half-heartedly as if they didn’t really care. It was all rather melancholy. But at that moment the melancholy seemed poetic.

      Then I noticed a man in a bear suit watching me as I made my way across the playground. Could he be an undercover policeman sent to look out for suspicious characters like myself?

      I started to speed up. But now he was forcing the children off his legs and following me. I was terrified. I felt the muscles in my chest begin to tighten. I looked down at my feet and tried to pretend that nothing was happening. But then he was standing right next to me, looking at me with his big black plastic eyes.

      ‘Byron,’ the bear said.

      Shit. They’d already built up a profile on me. They’d been watching.

      ‘Sorry,’ I said.

      ‘What for?’ the bear asked.

      ‘Umm …’

      ‘It’s me. It’s Roddy,’ the bear said.

      ‘Roddy!’ I screamed. I knew he’d done a lot of strange jobs in his time, but I’d never known him to dress as a bear.

      ‘Yes. Come. Keep walking out of here. I’ll follow you.’

      I didn’t feel any relief. This could all be a part of their plan. But I kept going, out of the gate, past the lady with the tin and into the park. The bear continued to follow me. I started to pick up pace. I would run home and slam the gate behind me.

      ‘Slow down, Byron!’ the bear shouted again.

      ‘What do you want?’

      ‘Do you have any weed on you?’

      ‘No! No, no!’ I tried to run away, but the bear picked up pace.

      ‘It’s me, Roddy. Come here.’

      ‘What do you want?’

      ‘I just want to smoke with you.’

      ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

      We were standing in the middle of the park, under a low tree. The bear kept scraping its head on the top of the branches.

      ‘Come to the bathroom,’ he said, and pointed to a public loo.

      ‘Take your head off,’ I said to the bear.

      ‘I can’t. Not here. I don’t want to be seen like this, man!’

      ‘I’ve got to go.’

      The bear took hold of my right sleeve and gently tugged me toward to toilet.

      ‘I’ll take my head off in there! Come to the bathroom.’

      I cautiously followed the bear into the public toilet. It was made of dark bricks, and the inside hadn’t been cleaned in months. The toilet seat had been ripped off and the urinal stuffed with newspaper. It smelt of shit and urine.

      The bear took its head off.

      ‘It’s me, Byron’ said Roddy.

      Sure enough, it was him. His puffy white face was red and dripping with sweat. His long grey ponytail was hanging down his back. He’s a dirty man, Roddy. I’d been to his flat a few times, and I knew that he washed himself and his dishes with the same bar of soap. He smelt strongly of sweat, and greasy onions I think, but I was so relieved it wasn’t a cop that I didn’t care. He put the bear’s head down on the floor.

      ‘You’ll make it stink, Roddy,’ I said.

      ‘How you doing, Byron?’ he asked me.

      ‘I’m all right. The head.’ I pointed at it.

      I could feel my heart slowing down and my muscles relaxing.

      ‘Ag,’ he said. ‘Times a bit tough at the moment. Waiting for my payment on the Beatles royalties. Then I’ll be set. For now, having to do this kind of shit. You got some weed?’

      ‘I do,’ I said.

      I took the little dime bag out of my pocket and picked a few heads off the plant.

      ‘We’ll have to smoke it in a cigarette’ I said.

      ‘OK with me man.’

      I emptied some tobacco out of a cigarette, and stuffed the bright green weed in its place. I removed the filter, then lit up. We finished it in a couple of minutes.

      ‘Thanks, Byron. I’ll come see you sometime.’

      ‘OK.’

      He put the head back on, and walked off to the fair.

      I made my way through the park to Station Road. The hawkers on the far side of the street were selling single cigarettes and orange chips to passers-by. Underneath the old Spar, groups of hobos were sitting about shouting curses regarding the others’ mothers’ vaginas, and I fancied I could smell some rather rancid genitals in the air. I think it was the smell of the extractor fans.

      I walked past a barefoot man in a tie-dyed top, and then straight into a young woman dressed all in black. The books she’d been carrying fell out of her hands and crashed onto the floor. She muttered as she bent down to pick them up. She had piercings all over her face, and as she bent down I could see the tops of her pale breasts. And she was scrambling to pick up all the books, but paused for a moment too long on my right foot. I was convinced that she was examining it and so kicked the book away and carried on walking.

      ‘Hey!’ she shouted at me. She had a boyish harshness in her voice. ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you?’

      ‘Nothing!’ I said. I started jogging. I really couldn’t handle another second of the outside world.

      ‘Fucking cunt!’ she shouted after me.

      I scrambled into my house and pulled the lock behind me. I’d had enough of the world for one day. I really did have to stop smoking weed. I made myself a promise that as soon as I was finished the current bankie I would give it a break for a little while. If I was going to get respect from people I had to stop acting like a moron.

      I went into the kitchen and searched through the shelves for my teapot. I couldn’t find it anywhere. I’d used it recently to make myself some weed tea, but right now all I wanted was a cup of Five Roses. I’d never really been a tea person. But when Victoria came to stay at my house she brought her teapot along with her, and when she left said I could keep it. Since then I’d developed a liking for Ceylon tea, and had discovered that if you add a few heads of higher grade weed into the mix you can preserve the taste and still get fucked. Of course I hadn’t told Victoria that her teapot was put to such use. It made her happy to think of me sipping tea on my balcony like an English gentleman, and I didn’t want to ruin the image for her.