The Night Watchman

Because editors such as Dixon always insist on working late the facility employs a night security guard. Of course this doesn't get me off the hook, I've still got to sit around and wait till all the poncey fuckers decide to turn it in for the night, just in case they need to call their 'bell boy' for anything. If Dixon cut out all the time he spends looking at porn and pissing about with his latest imported Japanese toy and I’m sure he could nail it in the nine to five instead. More and more each day it begins to feel I'm working in a hotel, but the great thing is I can go and play cards and listen to the ever amazing stories of Sergei the security guard.

Currently editing in the building we have, ‘2 Fat 2 Fly’ (a heavily obese eight year old trying to loose enough weight to fit into a airline seat and fly to the US for revolutionary gastro reconditioning) and School Jumpers (a Etonian schoolboy trades places with a boy from a shanty town classroom in South Africa). While their fabricating documentary stories of freak shows and social engineering if any of them spent five minutes talking to the night watchman they might realize there are real life stories out there much more interesting than the latest celeb fronted ‘journey’.

Sergei is keeping his head down in London. He looks like the bloke in Eastern Promises and has the tattoos to prove it. Don’t get him talking about his scars or you’ll be in for a blow by blow description of how the Stassi officer came off much worse. He's killed men with his bare hands and survived in the coldest, remotest Russian wildernesses. From behind his hip flask of cheap vodka he will tell tales of escaping the Russian secret police and smuggling East German double agents across the border at the height of the cold war. Apparently he’s only working in this post house to lie low in London with his daughter. He's a wanted man and needs the cover provided by working as a humble nightwatch man. He seems to have taken a shine to me as I like listening to his stories.

“That Putin is a pig, he is dog, I spit on him. Until he is gone I cannot return to my motherland. I keep my head low…. I say little… I look after my daughter. Nadja she is very beautiful. Her hair is like a Altai cornfield at sunset, her eyes like the full moon glistening over the Caucasus. The smile she gives her father makes every day so very happy for me. Alan I think you are good man, I would very much like you to meet my daughter, maybe you marry and I be even prouder father.”

I really like Sergei. For all I know everything that comes out of his mouth could be utter bollocks, but his stories, sure pass the hours. And he's refreshingly normall compared to the prima donnas in the edit suites. Then the phone rings. Fucking Dixon wants some sushi.

Sergei grabs my arm “be very careful with the sushi around here, Alan. A friend of mine fell very ill after eating it. FSB is everywhere.”

With any luck i'll take Dixon a nuclear Maki roll.