Crap Dad

Mark Catley

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781840024470
• eBook ISBN: 9781783197859
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

When Paul meets Marie outside the headmaster's office it's hardly love at first sight. More like "what you playing at you frigging psycho?" And when the two sixteen-year-olds find out Marie is pregnant, things get a little dicey. But hindsight is a wonderful thing, and as a grown up Paul waits to meet his children for the first time it's time for some serious thinking. "I drink too much, my toilet looks like a bomb site and I eat crisps for breakfast. I'm not fit to be someone's father".

Characters

NARRATOR (PAUL)

Aged twenty-six. Lives in a bed-sit in Leeds. An under-achiever. Ex-boyfriend of Marie, father to her two children. Ben and Jessica.

BOY (YOUNGER PAUL)

Fifteen. Bit of a bad-boy but quite intelligent. Loves Marie.

GIRL (MARIE)

Seen as fifteen and twenty-six (same actor), a wild-child, Goth/Punk. Very intelligent and mature. Loves Paul.

SHAUN

Best friend of Narrator. Complete waster.

Resident school lunatic.

DIGGER

Marie’s new partner and stepfather to Ben and Jessica.

New-age punk, dreadlocks and ‘world’ clothes.

DAD

Paul’s father. In prison. Old-school villain, confident and scary. Dated opinions.

TEACHER

HEAD-TEACHER

DOORMAN

Action takes place eleven years in the future.

Therefore the ‘flashbacks’ are present day.

Cast of three actors (Narrator, Boy and Girl) are constant, other characters to be played by fourth actor or shared by other members of cast where appropriate.

Setting:

In the future – Narrator’s front room.

In present – various (School, Canal, Marie’s bedroom).

BOY sat on plastic school chair, agitated. Enter GIRL, also agitated. She sits next to BOY without registering him and looks out, fuming. GIRL is dressed Goth and BOY finds this amusing. He, quite obviously, looks her up and down and snorts derisively. She notices.

GIRL: Yeah?

BOY: (Smiling and shaking his head.) Nowt.

They go back to silence and both stare out, after a while, GIRL pulls up her stripy pop socks, BOY notices, more surreptitiously this time, and smirks to himself, GIRL notices, she sits back, smiles to herself. Slowly she wets her finger in her mouth, turns to look at BOY, who is trying to ignore her and makes an aeroplane noise whilst moving her finger around the air, finally she pokes BOY in the ear with her wet finger. He leaps up.

(Disgusted.) What you playing at, you frigging psycho! (Rubbing his ear.)

GIRL: (Impersonating Joe Pesci in Goodfellas.) Do I amuse you? What is so funny about me? Cos I don’t know, maybe it’s me, I’m a little messed up maybe. Am I a clown? I’m here to amuse you?

BOY: Huh?

GIRL: Goodfellas.

BOY: Pizza?

GIRL: Film.

BOY: What you do that for? (Indicating ear.)

GIRL: Felt like it.

BOY: (Sits down, serious.) Don’t do it again.

GIRL: Then don’t laugh at me again.

Long silence. Enter NARRATOR.

NARRATOR: (Giddy.) That’s me that. (Points to BOY.) Fifteen. And without knowing it, that little exchange was the start of the most important event of my life so far. It’s taken me eleven years to realise that! (He sits and begins to roll a cigarette.) That’s what life is in the end. A series of important events, separated by boredom. Often, the events are obvious, like someone dying, or getting a job, or getting off with someone. But what we tend to forget is the coincidence that led to these events. Like a mate of mine graduated from university when he was twenty-five. That was, for a scuffer like him, a big event, life-changing. But we have to go further back to see the coincidence that led him to it. When he were nineteen, he was working on a building site. Some knobhead plasterer dropped a trowel off a window ledge, my mate’s sat underneath, eating his meat paste butties, and he gets a trowel in the leg. (Imitates.) Chops a couple of tendons and he can’t work anymore. Goes on the sick, bored shitless after three weeks. Gets cable, watches the discovery channel, gets interested in History, reads a few books, doesn’t go back to work, goes to college, turns out he’s a frigging genius, graduates from Oxford with a first and now he lectures all around the country getting paid £200 an hour for talking about dead people! Go figure! A trowel! A flaming filthy plasterer’s trowel to £200 an hour! (Puts cigarette in his mouth and is about to light it.)

GIRL: You can’t smoke that in here.

NARRATOR: Why not?

GIRL: It’ll stink.

NARRATOR: Soz. (Puts cig behind ear.) So, what was the moment that led me to be sat in the headteacher’s office meeting Marie for the first time? It all came down to choice.

BOY and TEACHER set up classroom.

TEACHER: And that would lead us to believe…what?

BOY: What?

TEACHER: (Sighs.) By the poet writing this line that would lead us to believe…what?

BOY: (Pause.) What?

NARRATOR: (Interrupting.) Actually we need to go back a little further…

BOY getting ready for school.

I’d visited me dad the day before and he told me some right stuff. My head was buzzing with it, I’d stopped up late, thinking about it all. So, I wasn’t happy at having to get up for school and then to top it all off…

BOY: (Rummaging for something.) Mam! (No answer.) Mam! Where’s me cap? (No answer.) Mam! (Pause, angry.) You’d better stop tidying my stuff away! I mean it you stupid cow! (Freeze.)

NARRATOR: A baseball cap don’t mean owt to me now, but back then it was important, you know? And I wouldn’t normally talk to me mum like that. But that was one of the things me dad had said. He told me to keep looking after me mum and sister, but to let them know who’s in charge. Don’t let ’em take the piss, like. So I went to school in a foul mood.

BOY and TEACHER.

TEACHER: It begs the question. ‘Are you really thi...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Cast
• Creatives
• Half-Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Characters