BigSaltyDog

The wooden bench outside the leisure centre was holding on for dear life under Sgt. Salty’s back-end. He’d just finished an absolute blood-bath of a gym session—mostly heavy bench press, three minutes on the exercise bike to say he did cardio, and forty minutes looking out the window at the foot traffic. He was sitting there in his rain-soaked trackies, holding a shaker bottle of chocolate whey that tasted like wet cement and broken promises, squinting down at his phone. "I’m tellin’ ya, Govna," Salty said, wiping a lather of sweat off his eyebrow with his sleeve. "The talent in that gym today. Absolute top-tier. Cracking pair of legs on half the broads, and the fellas are all built like brick shithouses.  Look at McFinleyyy over there by the vending machine—man is absolutely ripped to the gills. Sitting beside him, perched on the absolute edge of the timber so his trousers wouldn't touch Salty’s sweaty leg, was The Govna. Impeccably turned out as usual, ...

The tea in Sergeant Salty’s mug had gone completely cold, but nobody dared point it out. On the screen of the battered CRT television, a dramatic voiceover blared over grainy phone footage: “Ireland’s Joyriding Crisis: High-Speed Thrills and Local Terror!” The footage showed a stolen hatchback doing chaotic, smoke-filled donuts at a suburban junction while a group of teenagers filmed it on their phones. Whizzley was practically leaning into the glass, his eyes wide, twirling a screwdriver between his fingers. “Look at the diff on that! Proper locked differential! Well, either that or he’s completely bald on the left rear, which is statistically more likely in—” “It’s a disgrace is what it is,” rumbled Ye Olde Large Lad from his reinforced armchair, which creaked in direct proportion to his outrage. He gestured with a half-eaten pork pie. “In my day, if you stole a car, you at least had the decency to chop it for parts in silence. Filming it? Making a production out of it? A...

Chapter 3: The Polish Stand-off & The Journey Home Part 1: The Great Paintball Stand-Off in the Polish Woods The morning after the pub crawl, the Govna had envisioned a quiet, cultured stroll through Krakow's botanical gardens. Instead, he found himself ducking behind a wooden fort in the middle of a dense Polish forest, holding a tactical marker rifle and wiping bright neon-yellow splatters off his tweed lapels. "I explicitly requested a relaxing spa morning, Dannyboy!" the Govna shouted over the relentless thwack-thwack-thwack of paintball fire echoing through the trees. "Plans evolved, Govna!" Dannyboy yelled back from behind a nearby pine tree, still wearing his tailored waistcoat-which now sported three fresh green paint splatters right next to his Gentleman-in-Training rosette. "Besides, McFinleyyy said this was a traditional local sport!" At the front lines, McFinleyyy-ye old large lad himself-was living his absolute best life. B...

Chapter 2  The Govna’s morning composure didn’t survive past 10:00 AM, which was precisely when the hotel lobby doors swung open and the rest of the crew spilled in with all the subtlety of a runaway freight train. Leading the charge was Sarah, sporting a red-and-white Polish football scarf wrapped three times around her neck, a fanny pack slung across her chest, and a laminated guide titled 100 Polish Phrases to Make Friends Fast. Right behind her came Susan, whose idea of international travel attire was a leather jacket, fishnets, and bright orange hair that looked like a minor electrical fire. Sgt. Salty brought up the rear, wearing a flashing neon flat cap he’d bought at the airport and holding a giant tourist map covered in red sharpie arrows. “Govna! Dannyboy!” Sarah beamed, dropping a heavy tote bag onto the marble coffee table with a resounding thud. “We heard you two were doing ‘diplomatic outreach’ without us, so we caught the early flight from Dublin to super...

The damp Warsaw drizzle did nothing to take the shine off Dannyboy’s newly polished shoes, though the mood inside the cab was considerably darker. “I’m just sayin’, Govna,” Dannyboy muttered, adjusting his cuff links for the third time since leaving the Chopin Airport terminal. “When you said we were coming to Poland on 'official diplomatic relations', I assumed there’d be a red carpet.  Maybe a mayor with a key. Not us ducking into a cobblestone side street behind a bakery.” The Govna didn't look up from his pocket watch, its gold casing catching the amber glow of the streetlamps outside. “Diplomatic protocol is flexible, Dannyboy. True understanding between cultures isn’t forged in municipal halls over bad filter coffee. It’s cultivated in environments of refined luxury, discretion, and quiet gentlemen’s agreements.” “Right,” Dannyboy said, peering out the fogged window at a neon sign flickered gently in Polish. “And these 'gentlemen’s agreements'... t...

Chapter 5 The hideout was an old, disused boathouse on the banks of the Grand Canal. It smelled of damp timber, diesel fumes, and the lukewarm takeaway fish and chips Dannyboy had insisted on picking up on the way back. The heavy mahogany chest rested in the centre of a battered wooden table. Under the harsh glare of a single overhead bulb, the diamonds and antique jewelry practically blinded everyone in the room. Ye Olde Large Lad leaned over the loot, poking a massive ruby brooch with the tip of his iron bar. “Right then. What’s the split? I reckon I get an extra five percent for lugging this box through the rain.” “You did five yards of carrying and three minutes of complaining, Large Lad,” McFinleyyy said, wiping his glasses with a microfibre cloth. “The heavy lifting was done by my diagnostic tablet.” “Excuse me?” Dannyboy chimed in, leaning against the doorframe with a chip hanging out of his mouth. “Who slipped the knock-out drops into the guards’ Earl Grey? I practi...