The Briggs Burst

Barry Briggs, a man whose life was less a journey and more a series of frantic dashes between plumbing fixtures, sat huddled on a moulded plastic seat that seemed to have been designed by a chiropractor with a grudge. The venue was Mammoth Arena, a concrete bowl of a stadium that channelled icy gusts with the efficiency of a wind tunnel.

Barry had been invited along by his ‘friend’ and colleague Kevin from IT, whose conversational skills were generally limited to computer programming code and the dietary habits of his pet bearded dragon. Today, however, Kevin was vibrating with a different kind of energy. His new girlfriend – a terrifyingly fit woman by the name of Davina ‘Dasher’ Dobson – was running in the 400-metres qualifier for the Olympic Games.

‘She’s a machine, Barry! A machine!’ Kevin enthused, spraying a fine mist of lukewarm latte over Barry’s frozen ear. ‘She’s a dead cert for the Olympics.’

Barry nodded, shivering inside his padded jacket. His primary concern was not Dasher Dobson’s mechanical ability, but his own bladder capacity. The cold was doing its work, and the thermos of coffee he’d brought along to ward off hypothermia was now seeking an exit with increasing belligerence.

‘When’s she running, Kev?’ Barry asked, his teeth chattering a rhythmic percussion.

Kevin checked his watch. ‘She’s in the next heat at 2:15. They should be out in a minute.’

Barry checked his own watch: 2:10. He could hold on. He was a professional. He was used to this. He clamped his knees together, creating a seal that would have impressed a submarine engineer, and he waited.

At 2:15, the Tannoy crackled into life. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Heat 4 of the women’s 400 metres will be delayed by approximately ten minutes.’

A discordant brass band version of Eye of the Tiger began to blare over the speakers. Barry winced. Ten minutes. That was okay. He could manage another ten minutes. He focused on a distant advertising hoarding for a local optician, and settled into the zen-like trance state he’d learnt from a rainbow-haired woman on YouTube.

At 2:30, with no sign of the race starting, the Tannoy voice returned. ‘Apologies once again for the delay. We’re just waiting for the wind to die down. Hopefully Heat 4 of the women’s 400 metres will go ahead within the next fifteen minutes or so.’

By this time, Barry’s internal pressure gauge had moved from amber to red alert. The seat – hard and unforgiving – pressed into him. Kevin, meanwhile, was oblivious, happily filming the empty track with his phone. ‘Just think, Barry,’ he chirped, ‘this is history in the making!’

‘History,’ Barry squeaked, ‘is taking a very long time.’

By 3:00, the situation was becoming critical, and a pole-vaulter had managed to get himself stuck on the crossbar nineteen feet in the air, which caused further delays. Barry’s bladder was now a dense ball of frantic energy that threatened to collapse the universe. He looked around the stadium. The toilets were situated at the northern curve. He and Kevin were seated at the southern curve. Between them lay a sea of spectators – an ocean of padded coats, woolly hats, and oversized foam hands.

‘I … I have to go,’ Barry gasped, standing up. His legs were stiff, partly frozen solid and partly locked into a permanent crouch from all the clamping and clenching.

‘Sit down, Barry!’ Kevin hissed, dragging him back down. ‘The announcer just said “Runners to your marks”.’

Barry sat – reluctantly. The pain was intense. But the track remained empty. The announcer coughed. ‘Apologies, ladies and gentlemen, some idiot’s given me the wrong timetable. That last call for “runners to your marks” was actually for the under-12s sack race, which was yesterday. Anyway, the wind has dropped, so Heat 4 of the women’s 400 metres will now follow the men’s 200-metres final, which is … right now. Runners to your marks!’

But Barry had had enough. Never mind Dasher Dobson, or the Olympics, or even the laws of physics – Barry’s biology trumped them all. ‘I can’t hold on any longer!’ he cried like a man possessed. ‘Nature calls – and she’s screaming at me through a megaphone!’

He scrambled over the row of seats in front of him – stepping on the toes of a burly man eating a pork pie, and receiving a glare and a raised fist that spurred him onwards even faster. He attempted to reach the aisle, but it was gridlocked with spectators hurrying back from the food stands to watch the race. Barry was trapped. The toilets beckoned to him like the Emerald City, but the yellow brick road was blocked by a solid wall of humanity.

Directly below him, just over a low concrete barrier, was the track. A red, rubberised expanse of unimpeded freedom that stretched all the way to the northern curve – and the toilets. Abandoning all reason, Barry jumped the barrier with the grace of a startled gazelle. A race official in a purple blazer spotted him and shouted, ‘Oi, you! Get off the track!’

But Barry ignored him – and the gasps of the crowd. He had only one goal, and he began to run.

The men’s 200-metres final was already underway, and eight of the country’s fastest sprinters were racing along the track. The crowd began roaring, and in all the confusion, Barry got it into his head that the runners were all racing for the toilet. And he was determined to get there first.

Imminent public trouser soiling is a powerful motivator, and it gave Barry a fair lick of speed. Unlike the highly trained athletes, he didn’t run with his knees raised high and his arms pumping; he ran with a peculiar, stiff-legged, clenched-buttocks shuffle that defied biomechanics. His knees were locked together to prevent leakage, his elbows were tucked into his ribs, and his eyes stared maniacally at the Toilets sign in the distance.

The crowd roared even louder. Some of them thought he was a late entry. ‘Look at the guy in the anorak and corduroy trousers!’ someone screamed. ‘He’s absolutely flying!’

Twenty metres from the finishing line, Lenny ‘Lightning’ Lewis, the pre-race favourite, glanced to his left and then to his right. He was way out in front – or so he thought – and he expected to see an empty track. Instead, he saw Barry, eyes wide with terror and still locked on the toilet sign, muttering, ‘Out of the way, get out of the way!’

Barry surged past Lightning Lewis, hitting a gear that elite athletes train a lifetime to find. He wasn’t running on the track; he was skimming over it, propelled by a jet-stream of pure panic.

He crossed the finishing line five metres ahead of Lighting Lewis, but he didn’t slow down. Nor did he wave to the crowd or loop around the track again for a victory lap. Instead, he maintained full velocity, smashed through the double doors at the apex of the northern curve, banked hard left, and vanished into the Gents’.

The crowd fell silent. Then, pandemonium erupted.

Ten minutes later, significantly lighter and profoundly relieved, Barry stepped back out into the arena, smoothing the creases from his jacket and expecting to slink back to his seat unnoticed. Instead, he was met by a wall of flashing cameras and three men wearing tracksuits so bright they could be seen from space.

‘There he is!’ one of them shouted – a giant of a man with a neck thicker than Barry’s torso. This, Barry later learnt, was Cliff Facey, a legendary athletics coach who – according to certain tabloid newspapers – trained sprinters by having rottweilers and pitbulls chase them. Cliff grabbed Barry’s hand and pumped it up and down. ‘You’ve got the gift, son. We want you on the team!’ He looked at Barry’s padded jacket, cord trousers and brown loafers. ‘Just think how much faster you’d be in proper sports gear and spikes. Do you fancy training for the Olympics?’

Barry recoiled. The Olympics? Training? ‘No … I was just going to the loo.’

‘So modest,’ another track-suited man, Henry McHighland, proclaimed, revealing his Scottish accent. ‘Now, listen here, laddie. Training starts tomorrow morning at 5:00 AM sharp. We’ll get you suited and booted and then do hill sprints until you vomit. Five days a week, four hours a session.’

‘Then off to work by nine,’ Cliff added. ‘And back here at 6:00 for another two hours in the evening.’

‘I hope you like raw eggs and kale,’ Malcolm ‘Meat’ Margrave chipped in, ‘because you’ll be living on them for the foreseeable.’

‘What? No tea and biscuits?’ Barry exclaimed.

‘Dear me, no. It’s the price you have to pay for an Olympic gold medal, son,’ Cliff said, slapping him on the back and nearly dislocating several vertebrae. ‘We’ll make you a star! You’ll be on cereal boxes!’

‘I can see how the diet would make me run faster,’ Barry said. ‘But maybe not in the way you think.’ He looked at the three fanatical coaches. Then he looked at the track, which seemed awfully long now that he wasn’t bursting – not to mention freezing cold. He thought about his job at Thrones & Trends, crawling under desks and untangling dusty cables in a warm office. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, drawing himself up to his full height (which wasn’t much). ‘I’m truly flattered. But alas, I must decline.’

The three coaches gasped. ‘Decline?’ Henry said, completely aghast. ‘But we’ve never seen such an efficient gait and superior aerodynamics!’

‘I have … prior commitments,’ Barry lied, adopting an air of international mystery. ‘My work in fluid dynamics requires my full attention. I can’t possibly spare four hours a day. I barely had time for lunch yesterday.’

The coaches looked crushed. ‘Don’t waste your talent, laddie!’ Henry urged. ‘Could we at least study your running style for a wee while?’

Barry was reluctant to even commit to that. ‘You were filming the race, weren’t you?’ he queried. ‘Can’t you study the video to see my running style?’

The coaches conceded that they could.

‘Right then; that’s settled,’ Barry said. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s freezing cold and I need to get back to my seat. My mate’s girlfriend is running in the next race.’ He pushed past the stunned coaches and made his way back to the stands.

Kevin was waiting, his mouth agape. ‘Barry!’ he screamed when Barry made it back to the southern end. ‘That was unbelievable! You beat Lightning Lewis! You set a new world record! Davina missed her race because she was watching you!’

‘Did she?’ Barry muttered, collapsing onto the uncomfortable plastic seat. ‘That’s a shame. Pass me my thermos, Kev. I’m gasping.’

Months later, Barry was sitting in the break room at Thrones & Trends, chatting to Kevin, and Brenda from Accounts. The television was showing the highlights of the World Athletics Championships.

‘… and Simpson and Broadhurst take gold and silver for Britain,’ the commentator screamed. ‘This new “Briggs Burst” technique the British athletes are using is absolutely revolutionary. Look at that distinctive, stiff-legged waddle! Knees locked, elbows in, the expressions of sheer terror! It’s truly incredible; it really is.’

On the screen, the two British athletes sprinted across the line, smashing all previous records, and carried on running at full pelt for the stadium tunnel.

Barry sipped his tea and said knowledgably, ‘That’ll be the raw eggs and kale.’

Barry’s manager entered the break room and spotted Barry. ‘Briggs! Stop watching the telly! We’re relocating Quality Assurance to the ground floor and we need you to move the computers and cables.’

‘Right away, sir,’ Barry said, standing up.

He walked towards the door. He didn’t run. He didn’t sprint. But as he felt the first, familiar twinge of his bladder waking up after his drink of tea, he picked up the pace just a little. A subtle, stiff-legged shuffle. The gait of a champion. The walk of a legend. The original “Briggs Burst”.

And then he woke up, at home, in his own bed … bursting to go to the toilet.