Excerpt: The Coleridge Tape

“Five minutes people, five minutes! Oh Jesus Christ, Joanna…”
“What? You said you wanted him to look like a great politician, a man of experience…”
“You’ve put grey in Luke’s hair Joanna, he’s 30 and running for MP, not 50 and fighting a war.”
Luke Coleridge took a good look at himself in the mirror. ‘To be fair’, he thought, ‘it might be better to give a grey first impression now and as the colour fades, he could spin it. Starting out grey and haggard and becoming young and spry the closer to the election. Nobody else had tried it before! Nobody else had thought so far out of the box! Luke cocked his head slightly and gave a heart-snatching smile to himself and his stylist, Joanna. This could work. It was crazy, but was there anything particularly sensible about politics?
“How do we get…” Luke started, brushing his chin and interrupting a fashion debate between Joanna and Nick, “… wrinkles?”
Nick threw his arms in the air and brought his hands crashing down onto his face. As he grunted and paced around the changing room as though he were chasing an invisible chicken, Joanna began blissfully rustling through her make-up bag for something, anything, that could create such a mask. Whereas Nick was perpetually moaning about any tactic that went against the grain so to speak, Joanna never stopped to ask. Sometimes, Luke even wondered if she stopped to think.
His first memory of Joanna dated back to their childhood at primary school. Panama Primary School for Estranged Boys and Beautiful Girls was an attempt by the Saint Earls council of 1984 to twin their diminutive South-East England town with the village of Panama in Central America. It wasn’t until after the school’s opening ceremony - attended by one hit wonder pop star Tony Caan (of Tony Caan and the Caan-Caans, one year after they hit number one with ‘Caan’t Do No Wrong’ and 11 months after Tony Caan was photographed snorting cocaine off a tart’s leg at a Manchester rave night) - that the man employed to be a Geography teacher pointed out that Panama was actually a continent, not a town. But by this point, the school had been built and the teachers employed, so the council proceeded with the opening regardless. Luke attended, alongside the ginger ponytailed Joanna, and during an early Geography lesson, Luke dared Joanna to correct the teacher on his earlier insistence that Panama was a continent, claiming instead that it was a country.
Well naturally at this age, you do not argue with a teacher. But at Luke’s encouragement, Joanna did so regardless and when she did…
“Two minutes everyone!”
“Flipping heck, already?” Luke exclaimed as Joanna stretched and squeezed together his cheeks in the hope that they would droop like a bulldog’s.
“Luke,” Nick began, slamming his palms on the desk, “you have been sitting here, in this stinking changing room, for what seems like an eternity, staring at yourself in the mirror and contemplating political suicide.”
“I’m not asking you to go down with me Nick.” Luke replied with a wry chuckle. Shooing Joanna aside with his left hand and no eye contact, Nick leaned down to Luke’s level. He took an obnoxious deep breath and gripped his party leader’s shoulders.
“Luke, please tell me you’re taking this seriously.”
“Nick, I have a stylist who’s going to ensure I die young and beautiful, I have an eager public awaiting me outside those doors,” he stood up, pointing to the military grey double doors to their right, “and I have a treasurer with a purse. How could you think I’m not taking this seriously?”
“I don’t like to lose five pence pieces Luke, and you know that!” Nick snapped back. Indeed, Luke did know it all too well. In fact, the only reason that he asked Nick Simpson to be his party’s treasurer in the first place was because he owned a purse. Nobody found out about his A grade in GCSE Maths until a few months after he was welcomed into the fold. But then, there was a lot that the rest of the party didn’t know about Nick until after the honeymoon period. One week in Tenerife, ten tequilas and a dash to a Spanish hospital later and all of a sudden…
“Mr. Coleridge?” A slender, frail lady with a librarian bob and heavy-looking glasses peered inside the changing room from behind one of the double doors.
“Yes Mrs. Fisher?”
“We’re ready for you now.” She smiled, raising her shoulders and widening her elderly eyes with excitement.
Luke gave Joanna a hug before she flapped her hands all over his suit jacket to wipe off some fluff and turned back to Nick, who flashed a supportive - but scared - smile.
“You don’t like to lose five pence pieces Nick,” Luke reiterated confidently, “and I don’t like to lose, at all.”
With that, Luke Coleridge stepped through the gaudy grey doors and away from the protection of his stylist and treasurer for five or ten minutes. Nick stepped back, not taking his eyes off where Luke last stood, and whispered to Joanna.
“Who on earth fed him that line?” He asked her, confused at his party leader’s fast thinking.
“Luci. There’s a retort for everything in that spin doctor’s brain, you know that.”
Nick rolled his eyes and groaned. He knew about Luci, everyone did. Luci was impossible to ignore.
“And the speech itself?” Nick continued to quiz Joanna as she tidied up the table and chuckled.
“Nick, will you relax?”
“It’s his first speech as party leader!”
“It’s hardly, you know, a demanding audience. I’d be surprised if they even pay attention.”
Outside, Luke Coleridge was going over his speech in his head. He had a five-minute slot. Ten minutes maximum if he starts to wax nostalgic. There was a lot of history to this building. These hallowed halls had seen their fair share of faces. Next to the curtain was a portrait of the infamous Ms. Crandall. Agatha Beth Crandall was her full name allegedly. But if you believe the people who told you that, then you would also believe that this eerie portrait of a stern, wizened grouch kept her spirit alive. Indeed, no matter where Luke stood, it felt like the portrait was watching him. Such a look of judgement on a face that looked like a pasty raisin, with eyes like almonds and lips that were as thin as crisps and probably just as salty to taste.
Slowly, Luke moved to the left. Still watching. Gradually, he moved right. The old crow continued to glare. Quickly, he skipped from left to right in a sharp jig.
‘Damn it,’ Luke laughed to himself, ‘they were right all along, the little buggers.’
Cautiously walking closer on tip-toes, Luke squinted eyes to make sure their mark was still made from back in the day. He hid a snigger behind his sleeve as he noticed a crude, marker drawn penis in the corner of some poor sod’s acrylic masterpiece.
‘Gotcha Oscar!’ Luke punched the air in victory, only to accidentally knock the painting down from the wall.
“Shoot! Freaking-fidgit-shoot!” He exclaimed, hurriedly fumbling to restore Ms. Crandall to her position of backstage omnipotence as he heard Mrs. Fisher’s voice from the other side of the black curtain.
“… Which is why there will be no Recorder Club next Tuesday lunch time. Now before we sing our next song, we’re very, very, lucky to have a very important man come to visit us.”
“Oh for frick’s sake!” Luke shook his head, hoping someone would notice him. Damn that Ms. Crandall! This was her revenge for tainting what was to be her legacy! Luke and his friends were just children. “How on earth were we supposed to know you didn’t like… penises?”
“A man with a lot of great plans for the future of both Saint Earls and our wonderful school here,” Mrs. Fisher continued with admirable - if exaggerated - aplomb, “so please, let’s give a big Panama Primary School hello to the leader of the Open Hearts Political Party.”
“Shoot!”
“Mr…”
“Wait!”
“Luke…”
“Shoot!”
“Coleridge!”
The curtains divided and as they did, there was nothing that Open Hearts Political Party Leader Luke Coleridge could do but smile and wave as he kicked the evil Ms. Crandall across the stage of the floor with his heel before anyone noticed. The half-hearted applause of 30 Year Two school children echoed throughout the obnoxiously large assembly hall. Mahogany from ceiling to floor. An urban myth continues through the Chinese whispers of Saint Earls to this day, telling of how the planners sold it to the council in the Eighties. It would look like a ballroom! Grand! Exquisite! Posh!
Behind his smile, Luke grimaced. All he could see was a landfill site of mahogany toilet seats haphazardly cobbled together. One might say it was a miracle that the entire assembly hall hadn’t collapsed in the past two decades. But really, it was the cement used to hold the unwanted bog seats in place. Grand! Exquisite! Posh!
‘My arse.’
“Good morning Mr. Coleridge!” Mrs. Fisher welcomed Luke with a sunny disposition that, somehow, had not rubbed off on the vacant-eyed bright sparks of Panama Primary School. Willing them on, the children eventually snapped out of it.
“Goooood mooooooooorning Mistaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh Colerrrrrrrrridggggggge.” They droned in unison. A tough crowd was the second-to-last thing that Luke expected this morning. The absolute last thing he expected was a tough crowd that seemed more interested in picking their noses and consuming the contents than listening to what he had to say. Cringing, Luke began to speak.
“Morning,” he began, walking into the centre of the stage, “and thank you for making this such a great homecoming. Now you may not know this, but I used to go to Panama Primary School and…”
Luke scanned the practically empty hall. They weren’t paying any attention whatsoever.
“I want to tell you a story about a man. A farmer, in the times of the Bible…”
Almost immediately, the children let out an almighty groan. Philistines! Luke hadn’t even got to the punch line yet! At least hold off on the groaning before…
‘Oh dear God, one of them is trying to fit two fingers up one nostril!’
Luke turned and shrugged at Mrs. Fisher with a bewildered smile, but the sweet tea fuelled teacher simply raised her own shoulders in glee once again, anticipating the next thing her special guest was going to utter. ‘Come on Luke’, he scolded himself, ‘you’re only 30, you know what kids want to hear, go for gold!’
“A farmer, boys and girls,” he continued, “named Santa Claus.”
Confused, the kids looked at each other as though he’d just told them that their school was primarily constructed from discarded household fittings.
“Now I know what you’re thinking. Santa Claus lives in the North Pole, flies reindeer, delivers presents, kisses Mummy, evades air traffic control on the night of Christmas Eve. I’m talking about the same Santa Claus and many years ago, Santa was just a farmer. A simple reindeer farmer. But!” Luke called out, pointing at the wide-eyed children in the front row, who jumped to attention as he did, “Santa Claus was a reindeer farmer with a vision. You see back then, reindeer couldn’t fly. Children didn’t get presents for Christmas. Heck, there wasn’t even such a thing as ‘Christmas’! Imagine that! 25th of December and you would all be in school!”
The kids looked mortified. Luke grinned from ear to ear as he paced back and forth across the stage.
“So you know what Santa did? He believed in his vision. That’s all, just a little belief was all it took. And Santa would continue to believe! And people would say, ‘Santa, you’re so crazy! Reindeer can’t fly!’ They’d say, ‘Children don’t want presents!’ And they’d say… they’d say, ‘Hey, Santa! Carrots will make your reindeer fart something chronic!’”
The kids laughed at the f-word! The classics work! Toilet humour lives! Grasping the attention of the assembly hall in his tightly-gripped fist, Luke pressed on.
“And still, Santa continued to believe in his vision! And eventually, one day, on the very first Christmas Eve…”
‘Shoot, I’m losing them! Think man, think!’
“On the first Christmas Eve, Jesus came to Santa Claus and said, you will have flying reindeer! And you will give presents to the children of the world! And it will be goo-”
‘Down with the kids Luke, down with the kids.’
“Totally radical! To the max!”
‘Beautiful.’
“And I guess you may be asking yourself, what has this got to do with this ‘Luke Coleridge’? What has this got to do with the Open Hearts Political Party? Well, much like Santa, we work hard and aim high for goals that some people might call ‘crazy’. The larger parties, they’re not cool enough for Christmas. They want to take Christmas away from Saint Earls! They want to take Christmas away from each and every single one of you!”
At the back of the room, one short-back-and-sides boy began to cry. Some would think that Luke had gone too far. Not in his mind.
“We’re new yes, and we may sound crazy. But if Saint Earls is willing to believe in the Open Hearts party, we’re willing to make good on our promises. And I will make Election Night a second Christmas Eve if this town is willing to believe. So! Boys and girls of proud Panama Primary School! When you go home and your parents ask you what you did at school today, don’t just run up to your bedrooms and play on your Playstation 64s. Instead, tell them that all you want for Christmas, all any of you want for Christmas, is Luke Coleridge as the Member of Parliament for a Greater Britain!”
Stretching his arms out to the sides, Luke basked in three-quarter-hearted applause from the children as though he was their rock god. To a fair degree, that’s how Luke felt. Or rather, how he allowed himself to feel after instinctively bullshitting his way through a rousing political speech to 30 young people who couldn’t actually vote, much less understand a word he said other than ‘Christmas’ and ‘fart’. Clapping daintily, Mrs. Fisher joined Luke at the centre of the stage and shook his hand.
“Questions for Mr. Coleridge, children?” Mrs. Fisher asked. A freckled girl in the third row raised her hand.
“Can we see your reindeer?”
“Ahh…” Luke laughed nervously. He reminded himself of what the Open Hearts party stood for - unbroken promises - but could even his crack team pull off flying deers? “If your Mummy and Daddy vote for me, then…”
“My Daddy doesn’t live with me anymore and Mummy says she has a… a risterainering order.’
“Well…” Luke almost fell at the hurdle, “send him a Facebook message or something, how about that? Anyone else?”
A stocky young lad threw his hand in the air and immediately let it fall back down again.
“Do we still get toys if you win?”
‘Nick is going to freaking kill me.’
“Yes. Yes! The Open Hearts Party will help Santa deliver all of your Christmas presents! Early! In fact, I will bring you all Election Night Presents! How does that sound?”
“Mmm, cool.” The boy replied as he stared at the floor, cross-legged.
Back inside the P.E boys changing room, Nick and Joanna were eagerly waiting Luke’s arrival.
“I heard clapping, that has to be a good sign!” Joanna told Nick enthusiastically, as he just sipped from a plastic cup of orange juice and prodded an ice cream tub full of soil.
“Mmm, that was probably because he left the stage.”
“Well obviously they’re going to clap when he leaves the stage Nick, that’s just polite.”
“Hmm, I’d rather it was because he said something stirring and interesting. We need all the support we can get. If we can get these kids to tell their parents to vote for us, that’s thirty kids times two parents. Sixty votes right there! In a town this size, we’d be well on our way to a landslide!” Nick finally perked up and as he did, Luke strode back through the doors and immediately grabbed his coat from a hanger.
“So…” Joanna lingered on the ‘o’, “how did it go?”
“Umm… rather well. You know kids, tell a few jokes and they’re putty in your hands.”
“And the votes?” Nick enthused.
“I think… Yeah, I reckon we’ve got them.” Luke told him with a confident grin. Placing a hand on his shoulder, he took in the sight of Nick grinning too, rare as it was. “This afternoon’s meeting… Can you give us an update on the budget? I think we may need to smash open a few piggies.”
Nick’s antique grin faded to a commonplace frown.
“How many piggies, Luke?”
“Enough for a Santa costume, waist size 34, some novelty reindeer ears, and 30 action figures with something called ‘Power Punch Missile Action’. Joanna, get an Argos catalogue in time for lunch. I need to make a few calls…”
As Joanna dashed out the door and sprinted across the playing field in the general direction of Saint Earls high street and Nick stood flabbergasted and surrounded by Year 1’s Potted Plants Project, Luke began to round up his troops for the next big strategy meeting. It was time to start making good on some promises. He went to step into his dark blue Nissan Sunny but as he was struck by the humidity of the car’s interior, Luke ran back inside, passing a babbling treasurer and grabbed the portrait of Ms. Crandall. Positioning it in the window ahead of the passenger’s seat, Luke Coleridge had a message of defiance for his rivals and this dead headmistress was going to scare them into submission.
Saint Earls Town Hall was situated on Poundcake Place, ten minutes from the high street at the average legal speed limit of a Nissan Sunny, and somewhat inaccessible by car as it was surrounded by cul-de-sacs on all sides. Another architectural highlight of the town, the hall has a reputation for being something of a landmark. True, this was primarily in lieu of anything else worthy of being described as a ‘landmark’ - except, perhaps, the farmers market every Thursday which took over the library car park and also made that inaccessible, frustrating the Saint Earls Book Club to no end - but as Luke lifted Ms. Crandall out of his car in the supermarket parking area, he found himself just as awestruck by the 30-foot chimney now as he was when he was a baby. He still needed to rear his neck back as far as he possibly could without breaking it to see the top of it. Every hour, fumes of smoke from the open fire of the annual general meeting room would whoosh out from the top. Luke checked his watch. 9:58 in the morning. Did it really take him that long to get through the high street? Flipping rush hour. Hopefully Joanna was having better luck on foot. Argos was conveniently placed, just tucked behind the Evangelical Church, between the estate agents and the pet store, with another estate agents at the back.
9:59.
FWOOSH. FWOOSH. FWOOSH.
There it was, Saint Earls’ o-zone murdering tribute to Big Ben. One minute ahead of schedule. Luke took a blue biro out of his coat pocket and began to scribble on the back of his wrist.
FIX THE CHUGGER!
If I had a larger wrist, Luke probably would’ve made a note to rearrange the structure of this end of town. Everything was so claustrophobic and closed it, it was as though Saint Earls was determined to wrap itself up in a ball and hide in its own little bubble away from the rest of the region. The rest of country. Luke sighed; it was no wonder that this town had always been left off the road maps. So many people come from out of town, follow the route recommended to them by the RAC and have a fit when they think they’re seeing the Houses of Parliament on fire!
“No, no, no,” Luke always tells them, “you’ve still got a long way to go yet, this is just our giant chimney choking out the middle class families.”
‘Welcome to Saint Earls, eh?’
Locking his car door behind him, Luke strode across the car park and made his way towards the town hall.
“Good morning Luke!”
“Good morning Mrs. Barber!”
“Alright Collie?”
“Alright Tim.”
“Off to a meeting, Mr. Coleridge?”
“Off to a meeting, Mrs. Sanderson.”
Without a doubt, the greatest, most perfect thing about local politics is how easy it is to get people to recognise your face and know your name.
Stage 1. You are born into the town in which you are opting to run for office in. You can be conceived wherever your parents choose to conceive you. On Luke’s 21st birthday, his father - very, very drunk - confided in Luke that he was more likely than not conceived during a visit that he made - when extremely drunk - to an Eastern European call girl in London who advertised herself as a particularly kinky kind of nurse. Thankfully, there was little chance of ‘Anjelika’ being Luke’s real mother. The appointment was made as a dare by a just-as-drunk - and also apparently quite stoned - girl that Luke’s father was seeing. She went along and when they found Anjelika in the bathroom of an Islington flat surrounded by bath water and with a small television set tied around her neck, they decided it was wiser to go home, enjoy each other’s company and pretend it all never happened. Until, of course, Luke’s father took his only son to The Pig and Falcon, where he relayed the entire story over a pint of Adnams. Nobody really likes to hear the story of how they were conceived, but at least Luke thought his was interesting. And really, at least his mother was a real nurse. Luke much preferred her as a mother to the potential of having a suicidal Russian sex worker with a speciality fetish for stethoscopes.
Stage 2. The parents who give birth to you just so happen to be quite well-known in the town you want to look after and improve. Again, Luke’s mother was - eventually - a nurse. A childhood spent sniffing marker pens and troublesome teenage years spent snorting coke meant that the learning process did not come all that easy to Luke’s mother and so, once she was off the drugs, she spent most of her adulthood paying for her top class education at the University of Postbridge. Five times over. There were a few stories in the Coleridge family about how his mother actually got a degree at all. Some quite unsettling ones too. But Luke didn’t care. He admired his mother. She was so driven by determination that even when she get slipping up or stumbling back, she picked herself up and kept on going. And for two years, she proudly held the position of Head Nurse at Saint Earls Best of Both Worlds Surgery and Sweet Shop. The opening of the sweet shop was a particularly proud day for Luke’s Mum. When the dentist finally lost his patience with a bleeding gums child one afternoon, she had him arrested for assault and battery of a minor and really dug the knife in deep by dismantling the dental surgery and establishing a pick and mix sweet shop in its place. Gummy snakes, jelly tots and Black Jacks galore! Everyone went to visit Mrs. Coleridge when they wanted some sweeties and everyone went right back to her when they had a stomach ache afterwards! Luke never forgot his wonderful Mum’s reaction when he told her how proud he was, as a son, to have such a perfect mother.
“Sweetie, I have a headache, can it wait?”
So admirable that she would value her work so much, even over the son she raised. What a woman! And the inspiration behind Luke vowing never to father a child by any means necessary.
Likewise, everyone knew Luke’s father too, but that was more for being the ‘psycho dentist from hell’ than anything else.
Stage 3. Most importantly, you have to establish yourself as an individual, rather than hang on to the coat tails of your parents. During his halcyon days at Panama Primary School, Luke was at the top of his class in spelling and not much else. However, he stood out for his incredible ability to articulate ‘dodecahedron’ at the early age of eight years young. Of course, his teacher was absolutely 100% right in her claim that ‘there was no bloody need for a lad his age to use words like ‘dodecahedron’ anyway’, but he made a name for himself this way. Luke first realised how well-known he had become amongst the school - and ergo, his local community - when he noticed that his name was scrawled all over the walls of the boys toilets. The fact that his name was written most often in a disparaging context (usually, ‘Luke is a bender’) didn’t really matter to him because eventually, Joanna would find out who had written such comments and kick them square in the balls with her Clarks shoes, curved at the toes. With the support of his friends around him and a mother to admire, Luke soldiered on through Panama Primary School, into Saint Earls Sabbath Secondary School, through to Montsegur & Paschendale College, and graduated from university with a 2:2 in the guinea pig year of the University of South-West London’s ‘Creative Political Theology with Advanced Studies in Social Satisfaction’ degree (or as the editor of the Daily News once described it, ‘a study in keeping the masses smiling by telling them what they want to hear, what radical thinking!’). After which, he returned to Saint Earls with a sense of purpose and goal, to put his studies to good use and succeed in ways that no other local politician could. For the sole long-term goal of improving the town that imprisoned his father, implied he was ‘bent’ and loved his mother.
But before he could accomplish that, he had to wage the war to win the west side of the town.
Luke only had the knock on Laura Millar’s door once to send her six-year-old son scrambling excitedly to the door and directly into the frosted glass. Luke coyly waved down through the glass at little Jake, jumping up to try to reach the lock before Laura lifted him aside and opened the door for Luke, greeting him with that rare smile that said to Luke, ‘I don’t mind you having to walk through my house to get to work because I know you’re going to make this town fantastic and the moment you do, I’ll agree to marry you because I’ll know then just how amazing you are’.
“Hi, hi!” was the most that Luke had to settle for at this point as Laura gracefully swept her light brown hair behind her ears and stamped on the hoover’s power button. Luke thought he must’ve been going deaf; he didn’t even realise it was on. But then, it took Luke ten seconds to realise that he was just standing there, staring at Laura, grinning like the cat that got the cream, caught the mouse and beat up all the other cats to get there, rather than actually getting inside and making his way to the door to her back garden.
“Is everything okay?” Luke asked Laura, who picked up a pile of tiny t-shirts off the floor and flung them over her arm, letting out a long drawn out breath and leading Luke into the kitchen.
“I don’t know sometimes Luke, I really don’t know. Do you know what? I have been up and down the road to that school more times than- I don’t even know, and the worst part, the - worst - part is that they still won’t take him back into the classes. I’m like there’s nothing even wrong with him like, you know? All he does is just get a little excitable and a little energetic and they say, ‘Oh ah, Miss Millar, he’s got a problem’. Bloody cheek of it all, I’ll tell you what, if they want a problem I’ll give them a bloody problem.”
This was typically how a conversation with Laura Millar would go on a weekday morning. Her son, Jake Millar, has now been expelled from the school repeatedly for a laundry list of reasons. Bullying, not playing fair, not sharing, breaking toys, breaking noses, breaking teacher’s noses and general hyperactivity. Eventually, they concluded that Jake had ADHD and that Laura should, in their opinion, seek professional help.
“Professional bloody help! My Jake, and I don’t mean to be rude like or anything Luke, but my Jake, he’s not like one of those… you know, he’s just got a lotta energy, it ain’t bad or anything, he’s a good kid. Well, apart from when he threw his shoe at Mrs. Gaston’s face but when I told my Mum about it, she said Mrs. Gaston deserved it.”
“Really? Sweet, kind Mrs. Gaston deserved a shoe to the face and a broken nose?” Luke asked with a chuckle and a tone of joke disbelief.
“Well my Mum said she overheard her bad-mouthing our Jake in The Boxer’s Arms on Sunday afternoon, you can ask her yourself, and she said something about, ‘Oooohhh, he’s not a good ‘un’ so when I went to the school and that, I said to them that I know that Luke Coleridge feller who’s running for MP and all that and I hope you don’t mind Luke, but I said you’d sort them out.”
“In what sense?”
“Well… you’d fix them like you know?”
“You… didn’t say I’d fire anyone or close anything again did you?” Luke quietly asked cautiously. After Laura had told the new landlord of The Pig and Falcon that Luke was going to ‘do ‘im in’ after he kicked out her best friend’s hen party last month, Luke wasn’t taking any chances. He quite liked The Pig and Falcon, so he wasn’t enjoying being barred from it and if he could stay on the good side of the school, particularly after this morning, it’d be a great boon.
“Nah, just that you’d make it so that they didn’t discriminate against my Jake or like, you know?”
Luke nodded, relieved.