*The Middle Eight

25th June 2018

“… the section of a song added towards the middle, usually eight bars in length, featuring a significantly different melody and lyrics, intended to break up the simple verse/chorus structure and introduce an element of surprise …”

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The consultants Stephen had hired to manage ‘Challenge 69’ (neither databases nor web design being his forte) advised him all was running to plan. Their regular reports backed this assertion, with everything operating like a well-oiled machine. “Unsuitably so perhaps,” he thought. Stephen would still push ahead with the mid-point review meeting though, having promised his client, his friend, that he would remain hands-on until the prize was won.

It made him smile to think again of his former drinking partner, which, Stephen felt, may just be the best way of defining friendship. He had always been a maverick, many had called him much worse, which occasionally (frequently in truth) had made it challenging, yet fun, to be his lawyer. The all too familiar cavalier stance taken on data protection had worried Stephen before launch, but mercifully this seemed to have escaped any regulatory attention.

In fact the whole ‘Challenge’ programme had, so far, attracted surprisingly little media interest (if only they knew what was at stake!). This would, Stephen knew, have annoyed his friend intensely. He had never been one for flying under radars, more inclined to blow them up. There was a Facebook forum that Stephen had been tracking, but he had seen this visibly dry up as its members veered ever further towards competition over collaboration.

Who though, Stephen chuckled, would ever have had his compadre down as a crossword fan? An intellectual yes, even if he had spent a lifetime aiming to disguise his Cambridge roots behind an (unconvincing) everyman façade, but a cruciverbalist? Surely not. Yet his eyes had rarely sparkled as much, during those last difficult days, as when he was explaining to Stephen how ‘Challenge 69’ should work. How clever it all was!

This task would finally complete Stephen’s duties as his old crony’s executor, all else having been settled years back. Never a material man, he had still desperately wanted the ‘Challenge’ prize, his most treasured possession, to go to, “a worthy winner.” When Stephen asked, “why wait so long?” he had simply replied, “the world needs to be ready.” Even though the disease had ravaged his body by then, his entertaining pomposity remained undimmed.

“Even with you, that still makes it less than a dozen people who even know this exists,” he had explained to Stephen, “and I swore the others to secrecy years back.” Stephen’s lawyerly instincts had kicked in at this point, “and there’s really only one copy?” he had asked, knowing that the ‘Challenge’s authenticity hung on this fact. “There is,” had come an immediate reply, “and I’m the only one who has clapped eyes on it for twenty-seven years.”

“And when it’s been won, you will hand it over in person Stephen, won’t you?”, he had asked, at least three times. “Yes,” Stephen had confirmed, “that’s clearly stipulated in your will, but why is it so important to you?” Eleven years later he still laughed at the response, “because, if I’ve got this wrong and some wanker’s won it by mistake, and I trust your judgement, then I need you to withdraw the offer. Whatever it takes.”

This would be legally suspect, if morally justifiable. Hopefully it wouldn’t prove necessary. With a year still to run, Stephen was confident that ‘Challenge 69’s phase two design (he had been pleased to hear the consultants had the new font sorted) would sort the wheat from the chaff, ensuring a deserving winner. One who would value the prize.  As the man had put it himself, with a wicked grin, “the second half Stephen, that’ll be the time to stir things up.”