Thursday 11 February 2016

The Infamous Smile

This story is all about working the Waltzers. If you are not sure what Waltzers are, they are a fairground ride - Watch the video and look out for the guy in the orange to see the kind of job Andy does.



For audio click here


“Hiya girls,” Andy said and smiled his famous smile.
“Hiya,” the girls replied as they snuggled into the car ready of for the ‘ride of their lives’. Well that’s what the advert for the Super Waltzers said, and with Andy as their spinner, they were going to get special treatment.
“You gonna show us a good time?” they said in their Birmingham accents. Andy loved Brummies.
“Hold tight!” Andy winked. “Time for the earth to move?”
The girls giggled. They were dressed in their best Madonna imitation garb, orange high heels, pink leggings, ra-ra skirts and about five or six tops. Their hair was perfectly backcombed, with luminous hairbands, and about a million bangles on each wrist. The ride started up, Andy gave the other cars a quick spin before focussing his attention on the two Brummies.
So far this had been the summer of Andy’s young life. He’d always dreamt of working on the Waltzers and, after working the log flume and pirate ship last year, this year he got the hot gig. He rode the platform like a surfer riding the waves and got the first choice of all the girls on the fairground. Andy could spot potential from a mile off. No Barry girls was his number one rule. Not that there weren’t plenty to choose from, but a Barry girl might want something more serious than a snog and a fumble over Lover’s Point and this was his summer of freedom. So Andy was always on the look out for accents; Valley, Brummie, London, anything that wasn’t Barry. Once he’d identified, it was easy. Flash the famous smile, offer a free ride, explain he’d be over the Acropolis, the late night bar, when the fair shut and no doubt they’d be there waiting for him and Adam, his trusty sidekick.
Lights flashed, Sister Sledge’s Frankie screamed from the speakers and the world spun for the two girls sitting in car number seven. Laughter filled the air and each time the car spun the girls caught a flash of Andy’s famous smile.
“Wanna another ride later girls? Just come and see me.”
The girls laughed together a bit unsteady on their feet. “See you later then,” they said. Andy smiled and gave Adam the thumbs up.
Go West’s Call Me was blaring out when the girls came back. Andy welcomed them like royalty and sat them in car five, promising that this was the fastest one. When they offered the tickets to pay for the ride, he checked his manager wasn’t around and then shook his head. The girls giggled and Andy moved away as the ride slowly cranked up. He walked backwards around the platform in rhythm to the music making sure the girls could see him. He span some cars flamboyantly and then surfed over to car five. He span them once.
“Faster?” he yelled.
“Yes,” they screamed.  He span them again.
“Again?” he said.
They nodded; their laughter was nearly drowning out the music.
 As he went to catch the car for the third spin, he missed and lost balance. As Five Star sang All Fall Down, Andy took it literally falling mouth first onto the steel edge of the car. He had been hoping to share bodily fluids with the girls later but he hadn’t counted on it being blood. His mouth was like a volcano shooting bloody lava across the girls who joined Andy in screaming the ride to a standstill.

Andy never worked the Waltzers again. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do it; it was more that he couldn’t face it. What was the point? It wasn’t like he could flash his famous smile at the girls any more. After all what good is a smile with its two front teeth missing?


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