It was T.S Elliot who first uttered the famous phrase “This is the way the world ends not with a bang but a whimper” Little did he know how close he was to the real truth. For you see the world will end with not a bang, nor a whimper, no the world will end with a squawk.

It all began in a small Welsh town on an evening like any other. I was sat on my boat down the city docks. A boat that I bought shortly after graduating university. Everyone else had gone off to start there careers and get a life and here I was still in the same dingy little university town I had come to 6 years prior. It was an absolute steal though 30 foot of Victorian Oak all for only a quid. It’s previous owner had passed away and with no heirs to inherit it the local harbour master was looking for any excuse to lug it off to anyone willing to pay the docking fees.

And that’s how I ended up here aboard Ussain....Usain Boat. OK that’s not it’s original name but I’d be damned if i was gonna live aboard a boat named the Gertrude. It was bad enough living aboard a dead mans ship let alone one named after his deceased wife. It was a good life aboard Ussain, by day I made my keep helping Scully the harbour master maintain the ships on the dry dock: sanding, painting and any manner of odd job that he could think up; and in the evenings I would take the boat out on the straits or mosey down the pub with my long suffering friend Dillon. I say suffering but it was entirely self inflicted. He was one of those perma-students, the forever in academia. Dillon was always flitting around the worlds of academia from one erudite corner of obscure study to another. He was currently in the midst of his second PHD writing a paper on something to do with magnolia paint and MRI machines, I don't know it wasn't my kinda thing. I was a zoology major myself, back when I studied (if you can call it that). It was only after I started university I found out about the job market for zoologists....

And so one evening as I was bent over the sink attempting to jimmy open a can of spam I heard a thumping over head.

"Glen! Glen! Glen!" said Dillon before he poked his big beardy face through the cabin hatch. "Hey Glen I've got us a...." He stared down at the mutilated can of spam in my hands I was disastrously carving open with a knife (in my defence the ring pull had snapped off, plus violently stabbing open a can was pretty therapeutic).

"Your not seriously eating that are you?" He said looking down at the spam and the two stale pieces of bread next to it.

"Whats wrong with a good spamwich?"

"Well its full of shrapnel for one thing. Anyway grab your coat, we've gotta go"

"Go where? And what about my spamwich"

"We'll pop down the chippy on the way. I've got us a gig!"

Dillon and I had what one could generously call a band. It was just the two of us and we played a rather eclectic brand of random ......shit. We did everything from bluegrass versions of motorhead and Katy Perry to jazzy beat poems about love and curry. We played every now and then on the cities open mic scene to very...very mixed reviews. It seemed banjo filled renditions of motorhead tended to clash somewhat with the top 20 singer song writer crowd that usually comprised the clientele. But you don’t write 10 minute beat poems about vindaloo to become popular. No we did it for the joy of it all we did it because...well what else was there to do.

I grabbed my coat, did up the buttons on my brown tweed waistcoat and climbed out the hatchway into the cool evening air. Dillon stood on the wooden planks of the dock brushing back his long brown hair with the back of his hand as he went to light a cig.

"So about this gig then?" I asked clambering up onto the pontoon beside him.

He puffed a cloud of smoke upwards into the cold night sky before answering

"You'll like this one. We're actually getting paid for this one"

"Your shittin me." I replied, rounding the corner onto beach street "And what daft sod is gonna pay us to 'perform' in their place?"

"The swan, they’ve got a new owner. Nice enough bloke. Says he needs a couple bands to play this week to help get the punters in. So I told him I know a band and Toms your uncle"

"Hes taking a pretty big leap of faith paying for a band he never heard."

"What can I say, I've got a gift for the gab".

"Fair enough. So whens the gig?"

"8.30"

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"Tonight!?"

"Yup"

"It's 7.30 now! I haven't even got my instruments"

"Don't worry it's a Jazz night we'll do the beat poems, theyve got a piano and I left my bass there this afternoon."

I wanted to answer back, to give some form of protest but then the twinkling bell of the Codfather’s door opened and the thought had vanished, swept away on a tide of vinegar and grease

"Alright boys"

"Alright Dave" We said in unison

"What can I do you for?" Dave replied wiping the grease from his old wrinkled hands on his apron.

"Two large cod n' chips to go mate" Dillon said

"I'm afraid were all out o' fish at the moment. Didn't you see the sign?" He said pointing a finger over to the hieroglyphics scribbled on the chalk board by the door. "Haven't had any for days, fisherman say they haven't seen hide nor hair of a fish all week. Weird aint it. If it keeps up like this I’m gonna have to get some frozen ones from the cash and carry over by Caernarfon. Can't run a fish shop without fish after all....."

"Well, what have you got?" I said cutting him off mid rant. Dave was a big one for ranting. Normally it was a perk of the place, a free story and a history lesson with every greasy newspaper parcel but we were in a bit of a rush.

"Urrr.... well we got chips, sausages, battered sausages, battered mars bars, we got pies..."

" Two pie and chips then" I added.

"What flavour? we got steak and ale, chicken cur...."

"Dealers choice"

"Alright then" He said wondering off to put together the order

"So how much we getting paid for this gig?"

"50"

"each?"

"Together, it's not much but I figure it'll cover the bar tab"

"Maybe half of it. You seen the prices these days"

"Nah it'll be alright we can pop down spoons after we're done. It's pound a pint night"

"Sounds like a plan"

We picked up our orders and made our way down the high street shoveling mouth fulls of potato and pastry into our mouths as we went. Our tiny wooden sporks clearing away the last of them as we stood at the foot of the infamous bitch hill (so called as it was an absolute bitch to climb). It had in recent years been the topic of much debate due to its problematic name. The student council even had a vote in my first year to rename the thing. However none of the other names quite fit the nature of the near fourty degree monstrosity. It did have a real name of course I'd be damned if i could remember it though, even the locals couldn't tell you what it was. And so we stood at the fit of the hill, bellies laden with grease and pastry staring up at the monumental task before us.

"Why the bloody hell did they build this city on the side of a bloody mountain!" i cursed under.my breath as we made the twenty minute trek up the mountainous monstrosity before us. Panting and gasping for breath I stopped at the top to catch my breath turning to see Dillon lighting up another cig.

"Je....huh huh...sus. H....ow....do....you...do it" I panted out at the large hairy man before me. He wasn't even out of breath.

"Meh. You get used to it"

I had lived in this city for years now and despite climbing the damn thing.nearly every day I still found my lungs screaming at me just as loud as they did on the very first time.

"Come on now, we don't want to be late now do we." Dillon said heading of down the road to the swan. I stumbled along after him, huffing and heaving as i tried to catch my breath.

We made it to the pub with surprisingly good timing. It was just past eight and we had enough time to set up and do sound check before we began. We were the first band on for the night and although it was nearing half eight we made our way to the bar for some refreshments before we began. Being in a student town meant start times were mere suggestions anyway. Barely anyone would arrive before nine o clock anyway.

As it was just approaching nine we began to play our set. We had half an hour on stage before the real bands came on and so we launched into our more jazzy numbers. A dixie-land version of Dynamite by Taio Cruz, a ragtime version of Wellerman and topped of the set with a jazzy beat poem of our own creation.

Dillon started to drop a walking bass-line as I my way across the piano throwing in a some jazzy chords here and there as I read the lines

"Have you ever had a curry so hot, you had to bathe your asshole with milk,

that the only toilet roll, was your mothers best silk,

has it ever stung so much that you cried with laughter,

and put a toilet roll in the freezer for the morning after,

because a mans got to do what a mans got to do,

down a five chilli Nandos and a yard of vindaloo,

but baby it's not as hot as you..."

The crowd of the swan sat speechless and silent unsure how to react to the the sheer.....something-ness of what they had just heard. It was always a big divider that one, most of our songs had at least someone in the crowd singing a long. But this one... it was a Marmite song, people would either love it or....you wouldn't get invited back. The silence lingered uncomfortably for a while. My jaw shut tightly tension that hung in the air through the haunting silence. That was until

"Wooooooooo! Yeah!" A voice screamed from the door way clapping as they went. After a few seconds of lonely clapping the rest of the assembled began clap in kind as we made our way off stage. A familiar face emerged from the crowd coming to meet us as we wound our way towards the doorway.

"Cheers Lilly, it was getting a little awkward there"

"Why? you do the curry one again?"

"Yep"

"Ah man how many times I gotta tell ya people just aint ready for a song about assholes"

"What unenlightened times we live in" Dillon chimed in as we made our way out to the beer garden. "Anyway Lills what you doing back here? I thought you were headed down south"

"Ah I am, moved down to Brighton just in town for the week on a job. Take a look at this wee cutie" She said pulling her phone from her back pocket. " Found this little bugger bugger caught in basketball hoop." We leaned in closer to see a baby bat wrapped up in a towel like a little bat burrito. "Put him back to the wild last week, flippin and flappin on his merry way such a sweetie".

Lilly was one of the few people I knew from my course who had actually found a job in anything animal related. She managed to wrangle herself a job monitoring bat populations across the country. Apparently the meteorological havoc that had somehow made Britain’s weather even worse than it already was had spurred the government to invest funds towards protecting the British ecosystems. Bats being a key pollinator where high on the funding list and Lilly had an unusual love for the things. I mean they do look pretty damn cute wrapped in a towel.

"What you guys doing tonight then?" Lilly asked

"Spoons?" Dillon said pointing to the two of us

"Spoons" We replied nodding in agreement.

We lifted up the hatch to the beer gardens back gate and headed off down the treacherous hill once more, fifty pounds in pocket with plans on making the best of pound a pint night.