© Evan Woods 2025
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Yeah. Harry, that’s me. Daily Mail eh? Sure I can tell you about Jake, although I don’t know what could possibly interest you about that mobile eclipse after all these months but fire away. Actually, of course I know. Still makes me shudder. Have a seat, park yer tenders.
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As it happens yeah, we were best mates. Oh, yes thanks I will. Just a half of the pale, second pump from the left, very kind of you miss.
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Berners Street. We lived in different buildings but basically neighbours. I still live there of course. On the day he died we were on our way to the Montague in Charing Cross Road which was the only nearby pub that could accommodate Jake’s huge frame. Not to mention ’Spoons are the only pubs with bogs big enough for him. Let me tell you, he was bloody immense, six foot nine inches and thirty-seven stone with plenty enough muscle to move the fat on his carcass, like a couple of those strongman fellers welded together. Jakey Two Chairs, they used to call him in the pub.
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Yes indeed! He’d been fitted with a pacemaker years earlier when he’d weighed considerably less. The NHS lost all interest when they clocked his BMI so he blew some of his savings on going private. Of all the things that body of his could’ve suffered from, it was a slow heartbeat. Mind you, he did spend a lot of time ‘at rest’, so to speak. Personally I reckon his heart was slow because of the amount of time the poor little bugger needed to work up the strength to pump gallons of blood around arteries in three different time zones. Boom, BOOM wheeeeze, Boom, BOOM wheeeeze, you can just imagine it eh!
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Oh, that day yeah. That day between Chrimbo and New Year we were out much earlier than usual. He normally held off drinking until ten, ten-thirty because he liked to digest his breakfast kebab. He made me laugh, those times when he bought two donners at night, one for supper and one for brekkie. So the day started with a TV camera crew and their cub interviewer risking their wallets in Oxford Street, asking people and passing pickpockets about their New Years’ resolutions. We’d stopped to watch for a while. The cub was getting answers ranging from “’k-off” to full-blown gush from those facepratt social blogger morons who specialise in teenage bollocks. Sorry miss, pardon me. For some reason the facefart berks got up Jake’s nose, a journey only for the brave. Anyway the girl eventually asked the wrong person, Jake that is, whose reply was “eat more, drink more, die as soon as possible” then he stormed off cracking paving slabs. The reporter girl picked another victim right quickly, I reckon her imitation seasonal cheer had been dented for a nanosecond.
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You’re right, I thought Jake was a trifle terse as well. Most of the time he was a naturally polite person, he could afford to be affable at that size. To be honest I thought it a wee bit strange when he’d called me, in a rather perfunctory manner, for a pint or twenty at eight-thirty in the morning. It’s a tad early for me to start pissing it up but what can you do when a mate calls?
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Nah, turned out his ex missus had called him for the first time in five years because he’d missed one little support payment and that made him pissed off in general. He fessed up that he’d already drunk half a bottle of brandy before he called me. They’d argued right from the ‘hello’ and it brought on his superhuman ability to consume vast quantities of alcohol and food and more alcohol. Once we were in the Monty wrapped around our pints and Jake wrapped around a table for four, just before he switched to even more brandy, he told me that one of the facepratt bloggers who’d been hovering around the TV crew had started filming him. I wasn’t surprised, a man with his own gravity field attracts satellites. Anyway Jake thumbed over his shoulder and lo and behold, there’s the blogger twit still filming, well live-streaming I suppose, from the railing near the bar. Rumour has it that ’Spoons aren’t too keen on video bloggers but he was getting away with it before they noticed. He also had a tasty looking portable power source, size of half a paving slab, strapped to his belt so obviously he felt the need for the full 240 volts while out and about being annoying. I can’t remember his name, or care. You’re the journalist, you already know those details, I can’t be arsed to bother with all that pathetic blogging crap. I think the police shut down his videos in the end.
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The berk was eventually told to stop by one of the pub staff but Jake noticed he was secretly still at it, camera hidden under his jacket, and presumably nattering to his teenybopper audience, although he seemed to stop every couple of minutes to press buttons. I don’t think it was entirely about Jake, I think he was just generally trying to improve his shorts up-time or whatever they do but it pissed Jake off more and more. This had been going on for over two hours – and a couple of flagons of brandy on Jake’s part – when Jake flipped out, rolled across the creaking parquet (he could move bloody quick when necessary), slapped down the twit’s camera, ripped the power pack right off his belt and they nearly came to blows – you can imagine how that would turn out. The feller was still live-streaming, I hear it went viral in no time.
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Yes indeed, he did get barred and so did the blogger. The manager gave Jake two weeks, quite lenient I thought, probably on account of his unmistakeable presence most days of the year and gave the unknown twit a permanent ban. I followed them both out with the young areshole blathering on about calling the ‘feds’ because Jake wouldn’t let go of his power pack. ‘Feds’ eh, what a twerp. He didn’t ring anyone because he knew he’d be in trouble. Jake would’ve eventually given him the power pack, he just wanted to teach him a lesson.
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Yes, we’re coming to the part where poor old Jake parted company with most of his body mass. And you bet I’ll never forget it, neither will a hundred other people! Jake was clutching the power pack to his chest to make it even more difficult for the twit to take it from him. It had started pouring with rain, we were getting the heavy stuff. All three of us stopped next to some works on the pavement, you know, the usual ten year dig to pluck a daisy, where there was a big generator. The blogger was still arguing with Jake who decided to rest his gigantic arse on the generator. And that’s when the lightning bolt struck.
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Well, it all happened very quickly. The official report said something about all that combined power multiplying the destruction. Combining that with my point of view it was more like the brandy swilling around inside Jake’s body acted like C4 when the lightning hit that generator and this huge power surge leapt around him, through the power pack he was clutching to his chest, into his pacemaker then back into the generator through his arse and bounced right back up again. It was like the sun wet farted. He was surrounded by a giant mushroom cloud of plasma followed by a fuckin’, pardon me miss, massive bang! Jake got liquified and being nearest to him I tell you straight I was smothered head to foot in Jake-jelly and undigested burning brandy, not to mention majourly stunned by the explosion – in my confused mind Jeremy Clarkson was shouting POWER, you can work out the connection with what was happening for yourself. Everyone nearby copped a coating of horrible goo when Jake’s molecules suddenly parted company with his corporeals. I hope no-one swallowed. That’s kind of where time gets wafty for me with all the hoo-hah and confusion of coppers and ambulances and someone chucking a bucket of water over me, like it wasn’t already raining. There was a me-shaped silhouette on the wall behind where I’d been standing outlined with gunk. The blogger twit had legged it, what a surprise. Mind you he was on fire so I suppose he needed to run around in the rain for a bit.
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Oh yes, we gave him a good send off, well everything from the knees down. You know, the recognisable parts. There were some other bits they found on window sills, although they could just as easily have been bits of blistered pigeon. Obviously the coffin weighed nowhere near as much as it should have, but what can you do when the most significant portion of Jake had been either vapourised or rinsed off people and buildings in Charing Cross Road. Some of him had to be scraped off nearby roofs. I miss my old mate, he was one of a kind. I wanted a commemoration plaque put up in the Montague but seems it’s against policy – “Jakey Two Chairs was here breakfast, noon and night, he would finish every drink in sight. Now he’s blown this town in a fright, without his shadow we have so much light.”. Wrote it meself. Sometimes, because I’m a bit of an evil git, I tell people I’ve got a little jar at home on my mantlepiece with some of Jake’s goop in it to remember him by. Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t! I don’t know if any of that helps, it’s about all I can tell you. You could try his ex but they were only together a few months. Hated each other.
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What d’you mean, the moral of the story? There isn’t one, accidents are meaningless. What happened to poor Jake certainly was.
Evan Woods 