More "Life on Mars" snippets :o)

[belphegor1982]

Been writing on the bus again, and it feels good after what seems like an eternity :o) I don't know whether there will be more where it came from, but for the moment I'm enjoying it for what it's worth :D

No romance, except a bit of Sam/Annie in the second one.

NO SPOILERS, circa 1973

Good Times, Bad Times

On a good day, Gene Hunt is the Guv, the Manc Lion, the Sheriff, John Wayne in a Ford Cortina cleaning up the city and making it safe and warm and good to live in. He’s tall, broad, loud and he drinks and smokes and swears, and on these days you can go right against him and have a punch-up over something you think is right that he doesn’t, but he’ll buy you a drink afterwards. Just the one drink, mind.

On a bad day, Gene Hunt is the black walls and the stormy grey skies, he’s the executioner, the Grim Reaper; he scrapes scum off the gutters and on these days it seems to him it’s all he ever does. He stands less tall then but seems larger, and you know that if he gets going he just won’t stop till he finds the bastards and makes them pay. He’s like a brick wall, unnaturally cold and quiet. On a bad day, if you find the spark of anger in the middle and light it, the punch-up is short and vicious and you slam your fists and knees into each other like you don’t know you might as well punch a mirror. And then you get the job done, because you’re both coppers, and that’s what you do. Only then can you go to the pub and between two beers, wait for the next day, and the one after that.

(241 words)

SPOILERS FOR LIFE ON MARS, 1974

Name That Tune

Since his return from the train tunnel and shooting Johns, Sam was noticeably less … strange than he had been from the first day Annie had set eyes on him all those months ago. Granted, there had been such a lot of strange to begin with, but at least he didn’t unplug his TV before going to sleep anymore and if he listened to the radio, he didn’t clung to it like to a buoy, although Annie sometimes caught a wistful sort of awe when a favourite group of his got a new single out and he listened with an odd smile on his face. As though he couldn’t quite believe it.

Sam Tyler was a far cry from an average woman’s version of “normal”, but Annie was not exactly an average woman. And she was willing to put up with any oddness, as long as he appeared to have both feet on the ground and believe this was the real world after all.

Still, it was a bit of a shock the first time she heard David Bowie’s Rebel Rebel, a good six months after she heard Sam whistle it off-key in the shower every now and then.

(200 words)


SPOILERS FOR ASHES TO ASHES (sort of), mid-1960s

First And Only Time
Gene Hunt prided himself on being a good judge of character; he figured that you couldn’t be a good copper without the sort of instinct you could always rely on in a second’s time. However, his decision to suggest DC Carling to Harry Woolf for promotion to DS was carefully thought through. The man was a copper after his own heart – knew what to do to shake the truth out of a suspect and didn’t mind doing it, tough as nails and rightfully appreciative of a pint or more after a job well done.

That was why Gene decided not to mention to his DCI that, when he came across the purple-faced corpse of a suicide by hanging on his first day as a DS, Ray Carling lurched outside in a hurry and sicked up what seemed like every breakfast since the invention of beans on toast.

First and only time, though, so in the end Gene didn’t set great store by it.

 

(164 words)


Also, I've been doodling with watercolours and ink again, but I'll scan the results and put 'em up some other time, because it's nearly midnight here :o) G'night!