Now can ye imagine that, Norman? he goes. Stick a bloke in a tumble dryer just because you’re away to get minced? Nae bloody manners at all. James sounded just like Frankie Boyle and I really wished Jax could have been there to hear him. And then when James said about needing to detour to get the keys to his moped and maybe even his dad’s money and was that okay with me, I really, really wished Jax could have been there. To hear me say yes.

James said that a twelve-year-old kid wasn’t exactly the regular kind of punter they got at the Whiskey-a-Go-Go so it might be best if I wore a disguise just in case anyone asked questions. But even though you’d think a laundry would be a pretty good place to find a disguise, being full of clothes, everything we pulled out of the dryers looked the same. Out of three giant big tumble dryers the only things in there was a load of black-and-white-checked pants and a mountain of white jackets. So, James reckoned, kitchen staff it was.

James held up all the pants against me until he found the smallest ones, which were still about a million times too big for me. But when I put them on over the top of my jeans and turned them up a few times he reckoned I looked the business. I didn’t let on they actually felt like they were going to fall down any minute, I just grabbed a handful of material and twisted it up and tucked it into the back of my underpants. Then I put on the smallest of all the white jackets and it was so big that when I saw my reflection in the door of the tumble dryer I thought I looked like a fridge with a couple of black-and-white-checked legs sticking out the bottom. Like someone had been squashed underneath me. But James said, you’ll do lad, and I thought, well, maybe I look okay.

He definitely looked a lot more like a proper chef than I did when he put on his outfit, but he said, nae bother and there wasnae any more time to worry about it because it was a fair bet Slim’s mum’s ninetieth birthday party wasn’t going to kick on so time was of the essence. But then he said, wait a sec, and rummaged through the dryer again and found a couple of crumpled-up black chef caps and told me to put one on my wee scone. But even when he pulled it down right over my ears to make it fit better it still didn’t look as good as the one on his scone. Because with all his hair sticking out every which way his head looked like it was made for a cap to top it off. Mine just looked like it was trying to get away from it. And even if I’d had a Post-it with me so I could write down what might actually happen if your head did try to run away from your hat, I wouldn’t have been able to. Because time was of the essence and because I was so nervous and excited I felt like I might be about to wee those big old chef’s pants right off my legs.