Stuart signed and printed his name on the list where all the stewards registered themselves, hoping administrator lady wouldn’t snigger at his name’s near match of the column heading. She didn’t. He’d been told to come wearing a white shirt and black trousers, which he had. Now the lady gave him a clip-on tie and a reversible puffer jacket - blue one side, florescent green the other, ‘SAFETY STYLE’ tapered across the back. STYLE? Stuart smiled at the new irony.
He stepped down from the makeshift office and joined a throng of idly waiting others. A few were older than you might imagine, a couple decidedly out of shape and some were women. Some even looked vaguely feminine. Of course you had your typical ones too: hard looking blokes who stood together in a corner grunting at each other, disappointed at the low prospect of fighting at this event. This cluster were distinctly clone-like: white, just under six foot, shaved heads, mean eyes, goatie beards and muscles. Lots of them.
Their attention was gathered by the wiry character who had given Stuart his application form (no space for education but a full page in which to detail previous convictions). Magic, as the man had introduced himself to Stuart - stood in his different coloured T-Shirt (purple, for proper authority), then led his team out onto the field to be divided up. Stuart was pointed in the direction of a corner near the entrance, where he was supposed to look menacing. He stood there trying to push his eyebrows out as far as they could go: this would surely make him look hard and protect his eyes from a dipping but still powerful sun.
As well as not looking at all intimidating, Stuart had never been in a fight in his life and was moderately concerned at the possibility of any trouble. If the worst came to the worst, he had young legs and could run a bit.
The gates opened.
Holding his hands round his back and practicing stern eyebrows, Stuart noticed a man working the field who he’d worked with the previous summer at a call centre. Bob was working for the merchandising people. It was his job to hold glossy over-priced programmes above his head shouting - PROGRAMMES! - To which people would ask how much, Bob would tell them, and he’d be laughed at and walked past. At least he was used to being maltreated by the general public.
The sun blazed down and the well behaved people squirmed in.
Rod Stewart arrived onstage: the crowd rose, clapped, whooped then politely sat back down. The mild, good-feeling buzz passed through Stuart which he tried to dismiss. The last few people spurted through the gate.
Stuart’s team leader, a slightly older clone - the close shaved head wasn’t so much chosen as forced - approached him, looking hard. Once the clone saw that Stuart had noticed him, he beckoned him with an aggressive come-here finger. Stuart followed the clone between the blocks of condensed people. The clone stopped suddenly, put his hands firmly on Stuart’s shoulders and turned him so he was facing away from the stage, looking into a sea of faces.
“You stay there and make sure they don’t stand in the aisles, right?”
Stuart was standing at a Y-shaped junction between blocks. He was relieved he wasn’t on the front line, in the pit between the stage and first block. Several middle-aged women in the row directly in front of him smirked in his direction as the clone disappeared. Stuart ignored them, listened to the pleasantly inoffensive pop music and watched a full moon rise over the heads of several thousand people.
His attention was soon jerked back by a colleague pointing at something in Stuart’s zone.
People dancing in the aisles. He approached two ladies, early thirties, without seats but crammed into the sides of the aisles.
“Can you dance by your seats please?”
“We can’t find them and we’re not moving. So no,” said the blonde, big nostrilled one.
“Please, look, you can dance over there? They look like they’re having a good time,” he said pointing to a flank of the field where dancing was unrestricted.
“We’re not moving.” Her gawky looking brunette friend said nothing.
“Look, I get in trouble if you don’t.”
“I don’t care.”
“Can you just... I-”
“-Look, maybe we should...” The brunette interjected.
“No! We’re not moving.”
“Just stay to the side of the aisle then, yeah?” The blonde looked dreamily at Rod Stewart, ignoring Stuart entirely; the brunette smiled meekly.
Stuart scuttled back to his standing place and congratulated himself for being crap. The moon still looked pretty.
An attractive girl asked Stuart where the toilet was; he told her and stared a little to obviously at her bum as she walked away. Two housewife sorts at the front of block twenty two, all glammed up for the evening, smiled knowingly at Stuart. He met their glance then quickly looked over their heads into the knitted expanse.
A song later a squat, drunken man in a cowboy hat started to dance next to one of the women at the front of block twenty two. His seat was over the aisle in the next block, twenty three, and Stuart was slow on the scene again. The man was grinding himself against the older looking lady. It was painful to watch. A small boy in the seat next to the one vacated by the drunken cowboy studied the floor. Stuart’s felt a sharp surge of pity, then got a grip of himself.
“Sir, can you dance where you’re sitting please?!” Stuart yelled into the cowboy’s ear, battling over a rockier Stewart song.
“Yeah, go on, go back.” The arse-grinding victim told the cowboy; he said nothing, grinned at nobody in particular and went on grinding.
“Sir,” Stuart said with a firm hand on his shoulder and what he hoped was a gruffer tone, “get back to your own seat now!”
“Yeah, c’mon now, off you go.” Probably more under the advice of his victim, the cowboy tottered off across the aisle and into his row next to the boy, a matter of yards away. The victim’s slightly younger friend smiled at Stuart, “Never mind. What’s your name?”
He had hoped nobody would ask that, then pounce on the obvious Stuart-Steward hilarity.
“Erm, Stuart.” Stuart hastily retreated back to his spot. She hadn’t laughed.
Everyone stood for the next track. Stuart saw the girl with the bottom who’d asked where the toilet was being swayed in her boyfriend’s arms. The bloke was thoroughly enjoying himself, singing and smiling, unaware that his beautiful girlfriend looked so bored. Stuart caught the girl’s eye and looked away again.
It’s impossible not to catch eyes when you’re stood facing a few thousand pairs, he reasoned, before dreaming up a scenario whereby he prised the girl from her boyfriend’s grasp, whisked her away... -Stuart’s reverie was broken when he was hit on the back of the head by a football and six sweaty, hairy drunken men piled on top of him.
Clones were quickly there and ordered the men back to their seats; one of them, the proud new owner of a football signed by Rod Stewart and his band. Stuart emerged shocked but unharmed, which was fortunate as he wasn’t asked if he was okay and certainly wasn’t given the option to take a break. His row of friends were still laughing as he resumed his standing position.
Stuart didn’t feel like he was commanding respect very well.
A hippy looking middle-aged woman approached down the middle aisle - which Stuart had long since tried to keep clear. She wore a thick cap and mischievous grin, and stopped short of the two person barrier Stuart had become half of. He could see what was coming but couldn’t do anything. She put her cap on Stuart’s head. He immediately took it off and offered it back to her.
“You look like one of them people who stand outside Buckingham Palace.”
She didn’t accept it back.
“Oh,” he raised his eyebrows, held her cap, looked over her head and tried not to feel stupid.
“Smile! Does it urt?”
“Yeah. I’m a miserable bastard.” She smiled and took her cap back.
“No offence like, but d’you feel like a birruva twat?” She’d said it softly, without malice, it deserved an honest answer.
Stuart took longer to answer than normal and thought properly about it, reassessing everything he’d done since he’d clocked in: denying that warm buzz of humanity, being a general nuisance to people by obstructing their views and not allowing people to dance in certain places; wearing a ridiculous flourescent green puffer jacket and clip-on tie, obeying the clones, having a boss called Magic.
“Completely,” he said.
Rod Stewart’s final track. A popular song, The Popular Song. The crowd rose, hands in the air, “We are sailing… WE ARE SAILING!!” some screeching like they’d never need their voices again. Rippling, intense swells of good feeling like none before. Thousands of people united. Stuart remained apparently untouchable.
Rod Stewart said his goodbyes and left the stage. The lighting on the stage changed and a recorded song by a different artist started playing at lower volume. Disappointed groans joined the applause, which slowly faded into the hubbub of chatter.
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