CADAN ANGARRACK DIDN’T MIND THE RAIN. NOR DID HE mind the spectacle that he knew he presented to the limited world of Casvelyn. He trundled along on his freestyle BMX, with his knees rising to the height of his waist and his elbows shooting out like bent arrows, intent only on getting home to make his announcement. Pooh bounced on his shoulder, squawking in protest and occasionally shrieking, “Landlubber scum!” into Cadan’s ear. This was decidedly better than applying his beak to Cadan’s earlobe, which had happened in the past before the parrot learned the error of his ways, so Cadan didn’t try to silence the bird. Instead he said, “You tell ’em, Pooh,” to which the parrot cried, “Blow holes in the attic!” an expression whose provenance was a mystery to his master.
Had he been out working with the bicycle instead of using it as a means of transport, Cadan wouldn’t have had the parrot with him. In early days, he’d taken Pooh along, finding a perch for him near the side of the empty swimming pool while he ran through his routines and developed strategies for improving not only his tricks but the area in which he practised them. But some damn teacher from the infants’ school next door to the leisure centre had raised the alarm about Pooh’s vocabulary and what it was doing to the innocent ears of the seven-year-olds whose minds she was trying to mould, and Cadan had been given the word. Leave the bird at home if he couldn’t keep him quiet and if he wanted to use the empty pool. So there had been no choice in the matter. Until today, he’d had to use the pool because so far he’d made not the slightest inroad with the town council about establishing trails for air jumping on Binner Down. Instead, they’d looked at him the way they would have looked at a psycho, and Cadan knew what they were thinking, which was just what his father not only thought but said: Twenty-two years old and you’re playing with a bicycle? What the hell’s the matter with you?
Nothing, Cadan thought. Not a sodding thing. You think this is easy? Tabletop? Tailwhip? Try it sometime.
But of course, they never would. Not the town councilors and not his dad. They’d just look at him and their expressions would say, Make something of your life. Get a job, for God’s sake.
And that was what he had to tell his father: Gainful employment was his. Pooh on his shoulder or not, he’d actually managed to acquire another job. Of course, his dad didn’t need to know how he’d acquired it. He didn’t need to know it was really all about Cadan asking if Adventures Unlimited had thought about the use to which its decrepit crazy golf course could be put and ending up with a brokered deal of maintenance work in the old hotel in exchange for utilising the crazy golf course’s hills and dales?minus their windmills, barns, and other assorted structures, naturally?for perfecting air tricks. All Lew Angarrack had to know was that, sacked once again for his myriad failures in the family business?and who the hell wanted to shape surfboards anyway??Cadan had gone out and replaced Job A with Job B within seventy-two hours. Which was something of a record, Cadan decided. He usually gave his dad an excuse to remain in a state of cheesed-off-at-him for five or six weeks at least.