The Oakhaven Gazette

FIFTY POUNDS. That is the price of a burner phone from behind the counter at Boss Man's Corner Shop - charged, topped up, and handed over when the money is on the counter.

“You'll want a phone, boss. Pay-as-you-go, behind the counter. Fifty. No receipts.”

That is the pitch. But fifty is only where he starts. Ask for less and he will hear an offer.

Offer thirty and you get a lecture.

“Thirty? This is a shop, boss, not a jumble sale. Forty.”

Take the forty and the phone is yours, with a parting shot about his wife, who does the books: “Forty? You're robbing an old man. Go on, boss. Don't tell Nasreen.”

One a customer. Come back with it and he wants to know it is working, and that is all he wants to know.

And Boss Man has competition. Baz, a regular at the Slag & Slurry, carries the same phone in his jacket at the same fifty and the same forty - except within a few yards of Boss Man's counter, where he keeps his jacket buttoned.

“Forty quid for a phone and a telling-off. My first one cost my mam a week's wages,” said Susie of 28 Radworth Road.

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ALSO INSIDE

Steel the show

A hundred steel houses at Kelsthorpe, on Bisto Road and Spangles Close. Page 3.

Bright sparks

Seventy-one gas lamps on Brunel Avenue. Page 3.

Shear genius

Terry, the cape and the razor. Page 2.

THE SWEATBOX · DOORS AT SEVEN

Having a ball

EIGHTEEN DEGREES A SECOND. That is how fast the new mirror ball turns over the floor at the Sweatbox, throwing a grid of dots across the old mill.

Above the yard door there is a wall of lights, twenty-four cells across and ten high, chasing the beat: purple through the intro, cyan on the build, magenta on the drop. A strip runs along the bar front and four colour washes come in from the corners.

The haze now hangs all the way down to the dance floor, round whoever is on it, and it thickens on every drop.

And Christie comes from somewhere.

The club's dancer is at home on Hollygate Place in the afternoon. At half six she is out of her garden gate and into the queue. The doors open at seven. At four in the morning she walks to Kebabylon, eats her chips standing at the shopfront, and walks home.

“Half an hour in a queue in October to dance for nine hours. That girl has more stamina than the bin wagon,” said Jackie of 1 Bramcote Row.

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ON THE PARADE · BARBER BLACK SHEEP

Shear genius

FIVE STAGES. That is a short back and sides at Barber Black Sheep: the cape on, the clippers, the scissors and comb, the razor, the cape off.

Terry of 56 Limekiln Close sets off at half seven and opens Monday to Saturday. This week the Gazette watched Percy go through the whole lot on a Tuesday morning. Then Terry swept up, and the next man sat down.

The mirrors have come forward off the wall, and the cape has been let out thirty per cent at the shoulders. “It looks a bit like a hot-air balloon from the front,” said Thomas of 8 Radworth Road. “But you don't get hair down your collar.”

On the same parade the hairdresser's has its name up: Fringe Benefits, cream letters on plum, scissors at one end and a hairdryer at the other, on the canopy where the street can see it.

KELSTHORPE · THE NEXT TOWN OUT

Steel the show

A HUNDRED HOMES. That is the new estate at Kelsthorpe, out past the north-east of Radworth, and every one of them is a steel house.

Forty-eight pairs of semis and a terrace of four. Rendered downstairs, ribbed steel sheet upstairs, a shallow roof and a low flat-roofed store on the end. The streets are Bisto Road, Brylcreem Close, Ovaltine Crescent and Spangles Close.

Concrete paths to every front door, privet, brick walls with piers, fences stepped down the banks, two wheelie bins a house, and a telegraph wire to every home. The wires swing when the wind gets up. Every house is furnished.

“Spangles Close. I'd move there for the name alone,” said Dave of 66 Limekiln Close.

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BRUNEL AVENUE · THE VILLAS

Bright sparks

SEVENTY-ONE GAS LAMPS light the new avenues of Victorian and Edwardian villas at the posh end of town - pools of warm light with the dark left in between.

Brunel Avenue, Arkwright Circus, Babbage Crescent, Stephenson Road, Baird Close and Whittle Avenue: forty-eight homes behind hedges, each with its own drive, and about fifty thousand plants in the gardens. Behind each of the seven big houses there is a parterre of roses round an urn.

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THE COUNCIL · THE DEPOT

Vest interests

FLUORESCENT YELLOW, two grey reflective bands and the city council's name across the back. That is the new vest on the bin crew. The wagon comes out of the depot and does its round; this week two lads loaded thirteen bins along two streets and put every one back where it came from.

Ian of 9 Stanwick Crescent leaves home at twenty-four minutes past five in his hi-vis and is at the depot by twenty to six. Vera, meanwhile, has moved: she has left 11 Radworth Road for 4 Tollerton Rise.

IN BRIEF

Bench press

The dinner crowd sit down at Chish & Fips now: three on the bench and three at the counter. Tracey and Vera had two of the seats this week, feet on the floor, facing into the shop.

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THE EDITOR WRITES

Steel and gas

A hundred steel houses in the next town out, seventy-one gas lamps on the posh side, and a phone at the corner shop for whatever you can talk the old man down to.

Start at thirty. Take the lecture. Pay the forty.

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Babbage

Brunel, Arkwright, Stephenson, Baird, Whittle. Five great men and Babbage, who designed a calculator the size of a bus. Put him on the bus route.

PETE, 67 Limekiln Close

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On the door

The big lad on the Sweatbox door has LOVE and HATE across his knuckles, a swallow on his neck and a gold ring on his little finger. Very polite, mind. Wears his licence on his arm like he's proud of it.

MO, 1 Stanwick Crescent

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Steel

My grandad lived in one of those steel houses. Warm as toast in summer and you could hear the rain on the walls. Ovaltine Crescent is the best thing this council has done.

SHIRLEY, 4 Radworth Road

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Phone

Fifty pounds for a phone in a corner shop. In my day you put twopence in the box at the end of the road and pressed button A.

Name and address supplied