Above and Beyond by Tony Wilson
Chapter 15
David and Charlie arrived at El Campo in the early hours, and after they had a couple of hour’s kip we all assembled in the conference room, but if they were expecting any sympathy then they were fresh out of luck. They had alternated driving and sleeping every two hours as they cut across the Southern France, through Avignon and Perpignan and then down the AP-7 and into our neck of the woods, so half the time they were actually sleeping on the job. ‘I’ on the other hand had been dragged out of bed before the dawn chorus had even begun to tune up: as I repeatedly say, I am definitely not a ‘morning person’.
First on the agenda was Adéle’s E-mail to Maria, but just looking at it gave me a headache so we put it aside. Then it was the external hard drive, but that was frustratingly winging its way to a geek somewhere, we would have to wait until it was checked out (and several backups of its contents made) before we could access its files, ‘well perhaps not the faint of heart amongst us’ David said, which left us with the memory stick.
Maria provided us with one of her ‘DayGlo orange – one-time use only’ laptops, and it looked like any other lappy (apart from the colour), except than it had no wireless capability, and a built in aversion to allowing itself to be connected to another computer or network, although it did have its own dedicated printer. It was pre-installed with word processors, spread sheets and every anti-virus programme known to man (and woman), so if there was a virus or Trojan horse embedded in the memory stick, that Caroline was gingerly inserting into its USB port (half expecting it to explode) then nothing bad was going to happen to the rest of my network, and within minutes we were in stitches. Adéle had obviously created the original DVD as a labour of love as it showed Shaun and Franklin AKA Michael and Paul arriving, and Wilfred fawning all over them, but especially Shaun. There were then different scenes, from different angles (and occasionally different speeds, making it like an old Charlie Chaplin movie), and spread over a week or so, judging by their quick change acts, but what became clear was that:-
Wilfred was besotted with Shaun.
Shaun was not besotted with Wilfred.
Franklin was quickly becoming very pee’d off with Wilfred - and it all culminated in a classic ‘handbags at dawn’ showdown.
Shaun and Franklin ‘entered stage left’, approaching the reception desk and Franklin said something to another receptionist – there was no sound, just security video – and Wilfred came flouncing out of Adéle’s office and a shouting match of epic camp proportions ensued, with much flouncing and limp wrist-ing, but finally Shaun and Franklin got fed-up with his antics and tried to ‘exit stage right’, but Wilfred wasn’t having any of it and minced after them. He then tapped Franklin on the shoulder (as a sort of challenge) who turned, and then Wilfred starting flailing away, bouncing up and down, and jumping back and forth and even pirouetting once, and generally giving a good impression of Muhammad Ali – on speed, but the only thing that was in any fear of being hit was a passing mosquito, then Franklin decided that he had really had enough and delivered one straight right to Wilfred’s jaw (and ‘not a very good one’, ‘it wouldn’t have knocked the skin of mi’ grannies rice puddin’ Charlie reliably informed us - just enough to poleaxe him), and the last view they had was Wilfred spread-eagled on his back, and someone frantically waving a paper serviette above his face. No wonder they remembered Michael and Paul.
They then settled down to Adéle’s E-mail, and that took the rest of the morning to work through.
----------------
She had joined the hotel as its new ‘secretary/security’ (a newly created position) during its latter days as a normal(ish) hotel, it was neither AC nor DC, and with the advent of new technology she quickly became ‘virtually irreplaceable’, ‘and such a sweetie’ so they kept her on after the ‘transformation’ to DC only (and also because they both had their tapes). She was such a sweetie because her one ambition was to ‘cure’ every pervert that she could lay her hands on, her father had ‘caught’ the problem late in life and left the family to fend for its self. The then Manager knew a little about the hi-tec (for its day) system and managed to record her during some of her ‘therapy sessions’, but unfortunately not before she had done the same to some very ‘influential guests’/ members of staff, and hidden the tapes away. They had then co-existed fairly amicably, just as long as her ‘curing’ didn’t involve the more ‘special’ guests, but then Senior Staff changed and things started to turn nasty, and recently threats were starting to be made against her daughter and her family - and to put a cap on it - she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Realising that her mission in life was doomed to failure she started to collect all her tapes, cassettes, CD’s, DVD’s and finally computer files together and install them (along with a short note i.e. names, dates, who and/or what with etc.) in her little black box – the external hard drive, in the hope of ‘doing something’ with it, but a few weeks ago she was told ‘six months maximum’. She then started to panic, as her remaining time on Earth was disappearing fast, and she wanted to spend it with her grandchildren, and when a kindred spirit, in the form of David arrived she took the plunge, ‘please make this all worthwhile, ‘wiki-leaks’ has nothing on some of these files’, and then she gave the details of her family. ‘They will have Maria’s E-Mail address, and I will tell them to let her know at the end, then you must do with them (the files) what you must. People think they are so ‘quaint’ – but some are so vile’. XXXX
---------------
They reconvened that evening when the Hard Drive arrived, and it had a note stuck to it – ‘You would have had it back sooner, but I was sick all over it when I opened a file to check everything was OK’: they (as in ‘NOT ME’) drew lots on who would be handling it. The files were explosive, metaphorically not physically, but of absolutely no use to them in their current quest (but they were definitely going into ‘pending’) so David and Charlie (after Charlie burned his ‘Interpol’ identification, and all the cloths that he had been wearing the day before – whilst wearing two pairs of surgical gloves, ‘just in case ‘it’ was transmittable by touch’) embarked on what turned out to be the final leg of their mission.
~~~~
David and Charlie arrived at El Campo in the early hours, and after they had a couple of hour’s kip we all assembled in the conference room, but if they were expecting any sympathy then they were fresh out of luck. They had alternated driving and sleeping every two hours as they cut across the Southern France, through Avignon and Perpignan and then down the AP-7 and into our neck of the woods, so half the time they were actually sleeping on the job. ‘I’ on the other hand had been dragged out of bed before the dawn chorus had even begun to tune up: as I repeatedly say, I am definitely not a ‘morning person’.
First on the agenda was Adéle’s E-mail to Maria, but just looking at it gave me a headache so we put it aside. Then it was the external hard drive, but that was frustratingly winging its way to a geek somewhere, we would have to wait until it was checked out (and several backups of its contents made) before we could access its files, ‘well perhaps not the faint of heart amongst us’ David said, which left us with the memory stick.
Maria provided us with one of her ‘DayGlo orange – one-time use only’ laptops, and it looked like any other lappy (apart from the colour), except than it had no wireless capability, and a built in aversion to allowing itself to be connected to another computer or network, although it did have its own dedicated printer. It was pre-installed with word processors, spread sheets and every anti-virus programme known to man (and woman), so if there was a virus or Trojan horse embedded in the memory stick, that Caroline was gingerly inserting into its USB port (half expecting it to explode) then nothing bad was going to happen to the rest of my network, and within minutes we were in stitches. Adéle had obviously created the original DVD as a labour of love as it showed Shaun and Franklin AKA Michael and Paul arriving, and Wilfred fawning all over them, but especially Shaun. There were then different scenes, from different angles (and occasionally different speeds, making it like an old Charlie Chaplin movie), and spread over a week or so, judging by their quick change acts, but what became clear was that:-
Wilfred was besotted with Shaun.
Shaun was not besotted with Wilfred.
Franklin was quickly becoming very pee’d off with Wilfred - and it all culminated in a classic ‘handbags at dawn’ showdown.
Shaun and Franklin ‘entered stage left’, approaching the reception desk and Franklin said something to another receptionist – there was no sound, just security video – and Wilfred came flouncing out of Adéle’s office and a shouting match of epic camp proportions ensued, with much flouncing and limp wrist-ing, but finally Shaun and Franklin got fed-up with his antics and tried to ‘exit stage right’, but Wilfred wasn’t having any of it and minced after them. He then tapped Franklin on the shoulder (as a sort of challenge) who turned, and then Wilfred starting flailing away, bouncing up and down, and jumping back and forth and even pirouetting once, and generally giving a good impression of Muhammad Ali – on speed, but the only thing that was in any fear of being hit was a passing mosquito, then Franklin decided that he had really had enough and delivered one straight right to Wilfred’s jaw (and ‘not a very good one’, ‘it wouldn’t have knocked the skin of mi’ grannies rice puddin’ Charlie reliably informed us - just enough to poleaxe him), and the last view they had was Wilfred spread-eagled on his back, and someone frantically waving a paper serviette above his face. No wonder they remembered Michael and Paul.
They then settled down to Adéle’s E-mail, and that took the rest of the morning to work through.
----------------
She had joined the hotel as its new ‘secretary/security’ (a newly created position) during its latter days as a normal(ish) hotel, it was neither AC nor DC, and with the advent of new technology she quickly became ‘virtually irreplaceable’, ‘and such a sweetie’ so they kept her on after the ‘transformation’ to DC only (and also because they both had their tapes). She was such a sweetie because her one ambition was to ‘cure’ every pervert that she could lay her hands on, her father had ‘caught’ the problem late in life and left the family to fend for its self. The then Manager knew a little about the hi-tec (for its day) system and managed to record her during some of her ‘therapy sessions’, but unfortunately not before she had done the same to some very ‘influential guests’/ members of staff, and hidden the tapes away. They had then co-existed fairly amicably, just as long as her ‘curing’ didn’t involve the more ‘special’ guests, but then Senior Staff changed and things started to turn nasty, and recently threats were starting to be made against her daughter and her family - and to put a cap on it - she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Realising that her mission in life was doomed to failure she started to collect all her tapes, cassettes, CD’s, DVD’s and finally computer files together and install them (along with a short note i.e. names, dates, who and/or what with etc.) in her little black box – the external hard drive, in the hope of ‘doing something’ with it, but a few weeks ago she was told ‘six months maximum’. She then started to panic, as her remaining time on Earth was disappearing fast, and she wanted to spend it with her grandchildren, and when a kindred spirit, in the form of David arrived she took the plunge, ‘please make this all worthwhile, ‘wiki-leaks’ has nothing on some of these files’, and then she gave the details of her family. ‘They will have Maria’s E-Mail address, and I will tell them to let her know at the end, then you must do with them (the files) what you must. People think they are so ‘quaint’ – but some are so vile’. XXXX
---------------
They reconvened that evening when the Hard Drive arrived, and it had a note stuck to it – ‘You would have had it back sooner, but I was sick all over it when I opened a file to check everything was OK’: they (as in ‘NOT ME’) drew lots on who would be handling it. The files were explosive, metaphorically not physically, but of absolutely no use to them in their current quest (but they were definitely going into ‘pending’) so David and Charlie (after Charlie burned his ‘Interpol’ identification, and all the cloths that he had been wearing the day before – whilst wearing two pairs of surgical gloves, ‘just in case ‘it’ was transmittable by touch’) embarked on what turned out to be the final leg of their mission.
~~~~