Greasy Spoon is a script by Matthew Bate
Time Placement : Post-Time on Our Hands
Synopsis: An average morning at Sid’s café…
Scene 1 – Peckham Market, lunch time
Workmen are exiting the café. A homeless man is playing a guitar beside a bag filled with pennies. Trigger approaches and stops by the homeless man.
Homeless man – alright mate, dya want a picture?
Trigger – That’s weird, that’s what all the women on the bus say when I stare at them gracefully. Then they go on about how their gonna get body builders to break my legs. God, women are a bunch of sports aren’t they?
Homeless man – Is there something wrong with you?
Trigger – yeah, I want a cup of tea. Do you do requests?
Homeless man – I’m not Tom Jones. Although, for a good price.
Trigger – Dya know “I Like Banana’s because I have no bones”?
Homeless man – No. That’s older than the queen innit?
Trigger enters Sid’s café.
Scene 2 – Sid’s café
The café is packed with builders and traders. Sid and a teenage blonde are behind the counter rushing around.
Builder 1 – Sid, cup of tea and a sausage roll.
Builder 2 – This place is like a petrol station on Valentine’s eve.
Trigger enters.
Trig – who’s this Eve. Is she a looker?
Builder 1 – Eve of valentine’s day trig.
Trigger – cup of tea please Sid.
Sid – I’ve only got one pair of hands, and she’s about as useful as a copper in a crisis.
Sid’s employee, Maisie, spills a pot of tea all over the counter and slings a piece of burnt toast in the air. Trig ducks as it comes towards him. It lands on the empty plate of an obese man sitting in the corner.
Sid – Great, we’ll never get him out now.
Builder 1 – We could get hold of a bulldozer for ya? We’ll have a tough job getting it from under our gaffer’s nose though.
Trigger – Has he got a deformed face or something your boss?
The two builders take their tea’s and sit at a table.
Sid – If anyone else wants a refill, just stick your cup below the counter. It’ll soon fill up.
Maisie – I’m sorry uncle Sid. I don’t know what happened?
Sid – I do. You may have a GCE in English but you’re got BNE at hard work?
Maisie – BNE?
Sid – Bloody no experience. You’re supposed to pour it into the cups. Not act like you’re watering flowers.
Trigger – Go easy on her Sid. I couldn’t make a cup of tea until I was 21. I kept using flower. What’s the difference?
Trigger takes his tea and sits down. Sid goes to put money in the till and spots the homeless man playing his guitar outside.
Sid – What’s his game?
Maisie – Shall I send him a cup of tea?
Sid – You will do no such thing. Why does my business always attract the residents of Peckham sewers?
Maisie – Maybe it’s the smell.
Sid rushes out of the counter and approaches the door. He passes Towser and a brunette girl, who are sat at a table.
Towser – OI Sid, I’m sure there’s a moggy or something in my porridge.
Sid – What dya want for 50p, Weetabix’s?
Sid exits the café.
Towser – Should we go somewhere else?
Nicola – Where, Greg’s Glorious Burger Van on the high street? There’s more of his saliva on them buns than meat.
Towser – Do you fancy going down the Nags Head later?
Nicola – Towser. You’re wasting your time. Yes, we may have bumped ugly in the past. But I was very drunk.
Towser – I know. So dya fancy having a drink with me or what? Just as friends mind.
Nicola laughs.
Scene 3 – Outside Sid’s café
Sid exits the café as the homeless man continues to play.
Sid – Oi, this isn’t a bloody homeless shelter. Hop it.
Homeless man – you can’t say that to me. My nan once got into a fight with a ninja.
Sid – what, a ninja turtle?
Homeless man – I’ll leave your area of disease riddled bacteria… if you make it worth me while.
Sid – That’s outrageous. I fought to save this country.
Homeless man – Oh yeah, how’d ya get on?
An old lady approaches and goes to put pennies in the guitar case. Sid catches them before they land in the case.
Homeless man – OI.
Sid – That’ll cover the cost of you driving away all my customers.
Homeless man – Blame the NHS. They’re the ones telling folk to stop chewing the fat.
Sid – If you clear off, there’s a bacon sarnie and a Baywatch calendar in it for ya.
Homeless – yeah alright, when I’ve gotten bored of it. I can always eat it.
Sid re-enters the café and exits a few minutes later holding a calendar and a bacon sandwich. The homeless man snatches the sarnie from his hands and begins eating it.
Sid – you done me a favour really. My new employee just tossed that into the mop bucket.
Sid re-enters the cafe, leaving the homeless man shocked.
Scene 4 – Sid’s cafe
Sid goes behind the counter.
Maisie – If he comes back in here in a wheelchair with two health inspectors, you’ll be buggered.
Sid – Wouldn’t be the first time. Anyway, any health inspector would have him put down.
Trigger is sitting beside the counter at a side table.
Trig – Yeah, I seen him get into a fight with a bunch of dogs over a tin of meat.
Sid – Have you been sacked or something trig? You seem to be in here all day every day.
Trig – I was just going. You coming down the Nags Head later Maisie. Meet all the local characters.
Maisie – I work in a café trig. We’re like a chain. The only difference is. We sell tea and bacon and they sell booze and tobacco.
Trig – I’m lost.
Sid – That explains a lot.
Maisie – What I mean is. This place is a local gathering place by day, and then we close up, and hand over the trade to the pubs. Brilliant when you think.
Trig – Like gravity.
Sid – Let’s leave this university challenged topic shall we? Go and clean some tables instead of standing there eyeing up the builders arses?
Maisie – Trig. He’s talking to you.
Maisie laughs.
Trig – Right, I’ll be off. I’ve gotta get some shopping in. I’ve adopted a duck.
Trigger exits. Sid shakes his head at his friend stupidity.
Maisie – Has Trigger ever suffered a breakdown of some sorts?
Sid – Once, when his nan told him that Santa wasn’t real?
Doris Gee enter.
Sid – Oh god. It’s Doris the deviant.
Maisie – That old tart who cleans at the Nag’s Head.
Sid – Yeah. How do you know her?
Maisie – My dad told me about her. He said she was like the dodgems. Everyone’s had a go.
Doris – Ah Sid. It’s been too long. You must come to see me sometime. I’ve just moved into a lovely little flat in Nelson Mandella House.
Maisie – Oh nice. Are you having a knees up to celebrate?
Doris – Can’t risk the old bag next door calling the council. They might want to rent the place out.
Sid laughs.
Sid – Still the hippy you always were eh Dor.
Doris – Back in the swinging sixties that was Sid. Still, not a lot’s changed. I can still swing for six.
Sid – I know the feeling. I feel 18 again when I’m talking to you.
Doris – All excited and frisked?
Sid – No… nervous, very, very nervous.
Maisie – What can we get you anyhow?
Doris – Give me a cream Danish please. I know Sid always buys them especially for me to purchase.
Sid – Yeah, and to get up the nose of the bakery across the street. I though you hated cream Danishes. Don’t they remind you of your second wedding anniversary?
Maisie – Why?
Doris – My ex-husband Ralph, on our second wedding anniversary, arranged a big party at the Nags Head. If I’d of cared, I’d of suspected he was having it off with Joyce the landlady.
Sid – Tit for tat. You were practicing the Kamasutra with her husband… and her son.
Doris smiles.
Doris – Anyway, the gimp that he was. My darling husband couldn’t hold his ale. He was even a little bit tipsy after a sherry. He started jigging around the pub like Fred Astaire on steroids and sent me hurtling head first into a plate of cream Danishes. Mind you, it wasn’t all bad, a nice Australian man cleaned me up and we finished off the night in the back of his Mondeo.
Maisie – What about Ralph?
Doris – He passed out after singing to choruses of “Sex Bomb”. We left him in a skip to sleep it off. Happy days.
Maisie hands Doris a cream Danish in a plastic bag.
Doris – Thank you my dear. I’ve not seen you in here before.
Sid – This is my niece Maisie.
Doris – Of course, you’re Patty’s daughter. I was at your christening.
Sid – Yeah, you got off with the vicar.
Doris – How is your mother? We were like French and Saunders back in the day. We stuck by each other through thick and thin. I was always thin of course.
Maisie – She’s living down in Devon with an antiques dealer.
Doris – Oh dear, I thought she’d always end up with someone like Dennis Waterman.
Sid – Instead, she’s settled with Hugh Scully.
Doris laughs.
Doris – Oh, I better be off. Mike’ll dock my wages if I’m late. The git. See you around Maisie, and remember Sid, my doors always open.
Sid – Your door isn’t even your door. It’s some poor old loves who’ll come off of holiday to find a squatter living in their flat.
Doris exits.
Sid – You know, some days my girl, I seriously consider selling up and moving to an uninhabited island.
Maisie – Are all Peckhamers like you?
Sid – Like what, dignified and defeat?
Maisie – No, miserable old gits.
Maisie enters the kitchen.
The End