100 posts

Oh, oh, I have written one hundred posts. I am two pages through an eight page list of things to write about and I add to the list every day or two so I have a few stories left to tell..

I have just started writing my novel again. I tried writing it before but, since I rarely read anything written later than the 70s, and since most of what I read was written in the 19th Century my style was odd and annoying. But I think writing these reminiscences and trying to keep language simple has straightened things out a bit.

I have every chapter outlined, more or less, in my head and the first is written. So, with luck, I will overcome my laziness and one day complete it. It is a science fiction book, but more in a Stanislaw Lem way than a George Lucas way.

Thanks for reading my inconsequential stories!

First Scar

I have six scars, I acquired my first when I was two years old playing with a tin can, or so I am told.

My mother rushed me to the hospital, the pad of my forefinger on my left hand needed stitching up. My scar is circular so I presume that It was almost cut through although being less than a centimetre in diameter today I can't imagine how small it was on my two year old finger.

It would be good if I were an audacious criminal, proudly leaving my tell tale fingerprint at the scene of every crime.

Ellipses

I have been a fan of ellipses for many years, sometimes indicating aposiopesis (a trailing off to silence) but usually denoting a pause for thought. In the past I would use three dots... But then I fell for Consuelo and, before she came to London, we exchanged endless romantic text messages and emails. She too was a big fan of ellipses, but she only ever used two dots. At first the two dots made me feel uncomfortable and I instinctively disliked them... But, over time, I came to see how much more beautiful two dots are and I too found myself adopting the two point ellipses.. I think it expresses the meaning that I am trying to convey so much better.

Today is Consuelo's birthday. I still can't get over her leaving when we were so very close. Happy birthday cariño! Felicidades! xxx You know, I think about her all the time..

Shoplifting

When I was nine I stole a pencil eraser from a stationary shop in Bracknell. I was so nervous that I almost got a heart attack when I was caught. And the guilt that followed. I was a superstitious child and actually believed in God. I also believed that my stealing an eraser would displease him so much that there was a real chance that I would spend eternity suffering the torments of Hell when my days are done.

Since I was going to Hell anyway and had nothing to lose, when I was twelve my friend Simon and I stole lots of sweets from a corner shop in the council estate where he lived. We went back for more when we realised how easy it was and then again for a third time. We had so many sweets we couldn't believe it. I felt guilty because the shop keeper was friendly but still, free sweets, and lots of them, that sort of wealth corrupts. We were sitting marvelling at our booty by the swings in a dreary play area covered in graffiti when a bigger boy came and told us that he had seen it all. He demanded the sweets in order for him not to turn us in.

When I was seventeen I stole a Travel Monopoly set from Woolworths. Howard and I took a look at it while we were drinking tea in Starburger next door. The pieces were too fiddly so I took it back and swapped it for Travel Scrabble.

A few years ago I went to Denmark Street to buy some replacement volume and tone pots for my guitar. The shop was charging £12 for a couple of mass produced, Chinese bits of plastic. Encouraged by my own sense of outrage I let the packet drop from my hand into the closed umbrella held in the other and walked out of the shop. I surprised myself with my cunning technique and it put me in a good mood for the rest of that day.

These were the only four acts of shoplifting that I have committed in my life aside from my having to steal packing tape shortly before leaving Glasgow (I hadn't a penny.)

Birdboxes

I once made bird boxes and sold them to a shop on Columbia Road by the flower market to make some extra money while I worked at the Bricklayer's Arms pub. My father had made one and I copied it. These bird boxes were pretty with little features made out of tin cans, chairs outside the house, buckets, rakes propped against the wall, things like that.

They looked ok for bird boxes but making, and painting them with a hangover is a chore when your heart isn't in it. I always had a hangover in those days. After only manufacturing a couple of dozen I gave up.

The Drinkers In The Royal Oak

By the time I was finishing school and starting to attend sixth form college the dark and dangerous Waterloo pub was no longer popular and all the school children went to The Royak Oak in the village of Godmanchester. After a while Howard and I found ourselves in there all the time, playing pool in the basement room, even on empty weekdays.

Aside from the younger boys and girls many old men would be there, every day of their lives, getting drunk. They would sit at the bar, a dismal row of them. They were all slightly stupid, misogynist, racist, homophobic, uninspired and unambitious. One sticks out in my memory well, I think he was called Jim and he was a disgusting wretch. He was always drunk and he'd screech incoherently with a voice that was entirely hoarse like, as they say, sand paper. His skin was stretched taught over his flimsy, skinny body, he had a foul mouth, harassed girls and shouted abuse at boys.

He was a builder but I don't know when he found time to build anything since he was always in the pub.

Brothers who had worked on the plumbing of the family home that my dad worked on would always tell me, drunkenly, what a genius my dad was. They were amazed that he had carried out all of the electrical work and carpentry and most of the plumbing on the house himself, especially given that he was an amateur.

One Sunday afternoon I was sitting on the bench behind the place with Jane. All of a sudden all of the regulars ran out, announced that they were about to play 'flaming arse holes' and stood against the wall, pulled their trousers down, put toilet paper between their legs and used cigarette lighters to set the paper alight. They were unpleasant people. Jim declared himself the winner.

I overheard one of them, a stocky skinhead who I think was named James, boasting that he was a great arm wrestler as I was waiting one evening to be served at the bar. I told him that I was confident that I could beat him but he thought this impossible and dismissed me.

Later that evening Jane, Howard and I were standing out the back by Jane's green Morris Minor. We were in the habit of buying undrinkable, cheap 99p La Mancha wine from the local off licence when we were running out of money and drinking from the bottle. James the even heavier drinker walked past and I asked him if he was still too scared to have the arm wrestle, so he took me up on the challenge and we set about holding the competition on the bonnet of Jane's car. And I won. He stared at me momentarily and then punched me in the face. Honestly, the locals at the Royal Oak pub were a dismal bunch.

Computers

When I was little my friend Christian's dad had a ZX Spectrum computer. He had it in the study, it stood alone on a table with a small portable television and you were not allowed to bring drinks or snacks into the room. We played Harrier Attack and The Hobbit. I'm sure I walked past him on Commercial Street a few years ago but I was too amazed to say anything. After a couple of years I told my dad that all households would have a computer one day and requested that Santa bring me a ZX Spectrum. I was obviously paraphrasing TV's 'Tomorrow's World,' my dad disagreed but Santa brought me one all the same.

Quite a few years later, when I lived in Bracknell, my closest friend at the comprehensive school there was a boy named Andrew. He was a very good illustrator, always drawing cartoons with a Rotring pen. He was talented but very competitive. I would often visit his house in the nearby council estate at lunch time and we would play games on his ZX Spectrum. His mother always wore fluffy slippers and was always smoking. Sometimes Andrew would come round to my house on the weekend or an evening after school and she would still be wearing the pink, fluffy carpet slippers and be smoking a cigarette when she came to drop him off.

There were often photocopied sheets of racist/sexist/homophobic jokes lying around his room which his elder brother, I was told, would bring back from work. They weren't funny despite being distasteful. I remember one, which I needed explaining to me, went 'Q: Who likes eating pussy? A: You, me and Billy Jean King.' I didn't know who Billy Jean King was. He had a Sam Fox duvet cover, the page three girl who posed topless in The Sun. Her head was on the pillow case and a life size image of her topless body on the slip. It must have been almost like sleeping with Samantha Fox herself. The Projects once missed her by ten minutes in the rehearsal rooms that we used to use, incidentally.

One time his mother offered me a cup of tea and a doughnut. The mug was dirty and she wiped it with a dirty cloth, the doughnut was old and oily and had been squashed under lots of things in the fridge. I hid the doughnut in my bag when Andrew wasn't looking, pretending that I had eaten it.

As I say, he was competitive and reticent to give complements or acknowledge anyone's successes and so being friends with him was tiring and unrewarding, but he was an interesting and intelligent person all the same.

I lost interest in computers until University when I discovered the internet. An English Literature professor had explained 'email' to us (we were all amazed and had difficulty coming to terms with the concept) so I went to the IT room. I looked up Geordie Mick from Prolapse's page on the internet but I couldn't really work out how Netscape Navigator worked and it was all so slow that I gave up for a few more years.

Long after University, realising that I had a potential job opportunity, I followed in Howard's footsteps and taught myself how to animate using Flash, securing a job in the dot com bubble. I'll talk more about this job later, so much money was wasted on such a stupid proposition. I taught myself how to program games with software called DIrector and then later with Flash. I taught myself c++. Then I decided to turn my back on programming.

New Year's Eve II

When I wrote the post 'New Year's Eve I' I didn't mention New Year's Eve in Devon, sometime around 2003/4. It was the best New Year's that I have ever experienced.

Sophie had the great idea of renting a cottage in Devon. Back then Sophie was my close friend Mat's girlfriend. She was in a band called 'Wet Dog' and Rebecca from the band also came along with her then boyfriend Lee (who also played in Mat's Ghosts) and John from Mat's band had a room along with his girlfriend. Lisa and I shared the fourth room.

We were there for a week and we had lots of fun playing music and going on walks and getting drunk but mostly getting drunk.

The local paper delivered through the door warned on its front page of increased paranormal activity in the county. Some of us thought that this accounted for unexplained sounds in the night and for three quarters of all the eggs cracked to make omelette having double yolks.

We spent the early evening of New Year's Eve in the lovely town of Clovelly, where motorised traffic is forbidden and therefore there are no street markings or signs. We took a long walk down a steep hill from a car park to an unremarkable pub by the sea front John's girlfriend started screaming on the return journey because all eight of us were in her car and it brought on a panic attack. As the new year began we were dancing back in the cottage.

One night I sat up late watching a crap 'On The Buses' film. Lisa came down from the bedroom and asked me again to come to bed. She was concerned about how much I was drinking and became quite upset. Mathew appeared from the kitchen and Lisa punched him on the way out of the room. I'm sure it was my fault for not simply following her request and going to bed. I only mention it because it sticks in my memory but, if the truth is told, Lisa and I got along tremendously well the whole time. She invented a great Cookie-Monster-eating impersonation and I have the video to prove it.

Lisa and I were travelling home by train and they all came to see us off at the station, Mathew having bought some comedy teeth for all of them especially.


----Love In The Graveyard----

St Albans

I have the vaguest recollection of sitting in the back seat of the family car, I think we were visiting the market town of St Albans and we were travelling around a roundabout when 'Video Killed the Radio Star' came on the radio. I asked my dad to explain what it meant and he did his best. I remember really loving the sound of the singer's voice.

Later that day my parents bought me a red helicopter pilot's jumpsuit for an Action Man doll which pleased me because I had an ambition to grow up to be a helicopter mountain rescue pilot. Later on that day I found a scuffed yellow 'Status Quo' pin badge on the pavement and I asked my dad what it meant.

Then we stopped and watched Morris dancers. I asked my dad just what they were doing carrying on like that but I wasn't satisfied with his explanations.

I clearly remember everyone dressing in dark colours and looking very dowdy in the early eighties, just before we all went wild with primary colours. I remember all the cars looking very old fashioned.

Jack The Ripper

After I left my second flat in Stamford Hill I rented Dino's room in Sandringham Road while he was out of town. Lisa and I got together and I'd stay in her room for a few months until we moved to the old red brick school house on Durwood Street.

Every Sunday morning one of the local Jack The Ripper tours would turn up and the guide would outline the economy of the Victorian East End. He would then explain how the body of Jack the Ripper's first victim 'was found in a building which stood here.'

One day I was out the front of the school house messing around with the carburettor of my my first MZ motorcycle in the sunshine, a small blue TS125, and I noticed that the tour guide pointed to our flat when he described the crime scene.

Darren/Ken/Mixed Grills

Darren was a committed vegetarian, Ken was not.

I moved in to share Darren's Stamford Hill flat after Jane and I had split up. He is an enthusiastic music lover (now working as a promoter in his home town of Belfast.) Darren loved television and radio's John Shuttleworth. John has a neighbour Ken the impresario. Ken is slightly timourous, has a heightened sense of self importance and entitlement and has a squeaky high pitched voice. Deep down he is a good person though I think.

Darren began to impersonate Ken, and he did it perfectly. But Ken became something of an alter ego and it got so as Ken was threatening to take over, especially when Darren/Ken drank.

Darren and Alison became a couple, they moved to Brighton for a while. When I visited them we went to an indie gig that Darren was promoting I was ever so drunk on the return journey but Ken was more drunk and he was becoming quite boisterous. He was jumping up and down in the black cab and yelping. The cab driver stopped more than once and told us to get out but Alison reasoned with him.

We arrived at their house in Hove, close to the beach. As soon as the cab had come to a halt Ken was off. He hopped out onto the road, dashing down the street and away along the beach not to be seen again until the following morning.

Darren told me that, while we were living in Stamford Hill, Ken would nip down to the greasy spoon under our flat and enjoy a mixed grill now and again and I honestly don't know if it was a joke.

I haven't seen Darren (or Ken) for a long time and I look forwards to the next time I do.

Understanding Music II

The older I get, the better at coming up with songs I am. Not to say that they are necessarily any good, just that I have become more productive, writing twenty songs over the last two years, and have a dozen more ideas hummed onto a little recorder or recorded on my mobile that will slowly be realised. None of them have been released yet. Soon I hope! I aim to write a song a fortnight from now until I die.

Singing to your cat always suggests a nice melody, you might hear someone say an interesting phrase in conversation or read it in a book or hear it on the news or on a film. It might just pop into your head when you are thinking about a few other things. Write it down! It could make a great song!

Understanding Music I

My grandfather sat beside the record player and I played him various records from my parents' collection when I was five years old. I was amazed that he didn't like The Beatles since, as I explained, 'they were old too.' No, he didn't dig The Beatles (a trait which skipped a generation.)

I confessed that I thought that I was too young to understand music and it was true. I was attracted to the records, their colourful, stiff card covers and their uniformity, in much the same way that I gravitated toward the club biscuits, with their varying designs, in the grocery shop or my mother's collection of herb jars with their colourful plastic lids, but the music itself meant nothing to me.

In fact, the only 'grown up' song that I liked was 'Yellow Submarine' and the only children's record was 'Bobby and Betty Go to the Moon,' although I didn't like the musical 'B' side, only the story-narrated 'A' side.

I anticipated liking music and only a few years later I did. By 1980 I was listening to the Top 20 every Sunday evening as I lay in the bath. I clearly remember 'Call Me' being announced as No. 1 and I was happy! My first love was Debbie Harry you see, I fell deeply in love with her. Having no idea about romance and little knowledge of human relations, I dreamt of a town house with many stories, each story housing a different Blondie band member, me with my own story and with Debbie, the matriarchal figure, in the penthouse.

Around this time my mother enrolled me in piano lessons but I was completely unmotivated and without talent. When I was eleven, I borrowed a violin from the comprehensive school that I went to after two awful terms at a boarding school, but I showed little sign of musical ability.

Robin's Bike

Robin, a German boy who lived with Dino, Nick, Lisa and all the many other people who came and went at Sandringham Road, once had his bike stolen from outside of his college (LSE perhaps).

Once it had been recycled via the second hand bike market at Brick Lane the new owner, who attended the very same college as Robin, oddly enough and much to Robin's surprise chained it to the very same lamp post from which it was stolen.

Wheelchair Elvis

Driving home to Bristol with Jane, returning from a visit to Huntingdon, we decided to take a short detour to Bracknell, just to take a look at it. I'd lived there when I was eleven years old.

The morning streets were deserted as we wandered in the rain toward the town centre. I was telling Jane mundane reminiscences. Somewhere an Elvis record could be heard playing, as if through a PA. The closer to the centre that we arrived, the louder the music grew. It became clear that it was not the original Elvis but someone playing his tunes on an organ, over a loudspeaker.

Bracknell town centre, a concrete new town, is built in such a way so as its single office block facing the town square (where my mother once worked,) and an arcade of shops leading toward it, form a wind tunnel. And down this wind tunnel we walked, hand in hand, and the rain beat harder and 'Are You Lonesome Tonight' grew louder.

There he was, sitting in a wheelchair in the rain in the empty town square. Elvis. He had had large speakers welded to the sides of the chair and a synthesizer and an organ lay on its arms. He wore a microphone resting in a harness about his chest. I recall him wearing a dirty, ragged jacket and having dirt under his fingernails but I can't say that my memory might not have invented those details. Although I am no big fan of the king I do remember that this man was a very accomplished Elvis impersonator.

Curly Hair

Years ago you wouldn't see many boys walking around with huge mops of curly hair like mine but now it's not too uncommon.

But I wasn't original, oh no. When I was in the fifth form at school (that it now called year eleven) I'd hang around with the sixth form kids who smoked down in a patch of woodland near the school boundary. They all dressed like an indie band on Sarah records called the Sea Urchins with skinny black jeans and Chelsea boots and I copied them. Let's see, there was Rick (who took slightly too many drugs back there at some point but is now back on track and works in TV,) Neil (I have no idea what he's doing,) Simon (who played in a local band called The Charlottes and later in a band called Slowdive who were on Creation) and Ian. I really looked up to Ian. He was very quick, very smart and he had a great big mop of curly hair. So I let mine grow out. After a while I pretty much looked like him and for a short time we got along just fine, a barman at The Waterloo (a very dark and dangerous pub back then) took us for brothers and we were pretty good friends. Rick, Ian, Neil and myself would meet up at places if someone's parents were away and do 'buckets' (a method of getting so stoned that it's not actually enjoyable.)

It's no surprise that he grew sick of a younger boy looking like him and, since he had a mean streak, he became very unfriendly, quite nasty even.

I have no idea what he is doing now. I know that he went to Art School after he left the sixth form. I think my memories correct when I say that he began to dress a little like Sky Sunlight Saxon. I heard that, quite a few years ago now, he was working as a waiter in our home town.

It's odd, when I think back to many of those people who I knew from my home town and I compare them to my friends today they all seem up-tight and guarded, slightly manipulative even. Perhaps I am imagining it or perhaps the strain of living in a drab, dull, small town has this effect on people. Perhaps it was the atmosphere of Huntingdon.

My/Our New Record

I am so excited about the new record that I have just written, recorded. I am so excited and so eager to see it finished and released that I shall write about it.

It is the third (or fourth if you count an extended, extended player) LP attributed to the band but the second LP that I have made at home. For the last one I used mediocre equipment and I was learning as I went. Alex, who played the bass guitar, said of it that it sounded like a 'collection of B sides.' At the time that hurt my feelings, but it's the truth. There's only a couple of songs that could possibly be singles on it. It's a great record and the songs are actually better than B sides, but it is a little bit slow. I should have sped the songs up a bit. I sped up the drums before recording everything else for 'Unhappy House' and I was really tempted to speed all the songs afterwards, but I didn't. And then the year before last Pete from Spacemen 3 was around here for a few days using my studio to master his record (his house had been flooded and Randall from Mind Expansion Records put him in touch with me.) He said that he always speeds songs up a tiny bit. it's true, even speeding up by as little as a half percent makes a song sound more engaging and a bit tighter too. We released a single from the Words of Love record, 'A Million Crimson Roses' (an Alla Pugacheva cover) and I sped the B side 'Flamenco' (a Los Brincos cover) up by a whole percent. If you plan on doing this then use a program that uses the DIRAC algorithm. It's exceptionally good.

So this time I set about writing a record that was faster and catchier and I think it worked. It's fast enough not to need any speeding up. Half the songs are contenders for a single and I think that 'Elektrichka's Favourite Party Record' is destined to be a hit!

And there are great musicians performing on it, I'm very lucky. It's all finished except for vocals on a couple of songs but now the singer, Mira, is tied up directing a short film so it will be a couple of weeks yet.

Owow, it's such a shame that I can't play it to you! I'm sure you'd love it!

Turning Up Out Of The Blue In Germany

I don't get scared that easily but I got slightly scared when I was twenty, on a bus in the middle of nowhere travelling through some German city (I forget which.)

Daniel had invited me along to his German TVPs tour you see. He didn't know Sexton or Liam so very, very well (playing as his backing band for the first time ever) and thought it would be nice to have me along too, we had been spending an awful lot of time together.

He gave me a crumpled up fax with the dates and venues on it and said that he would arrange everything with Andy from the band The Bartlebees who promoted the tour.

So there I was, in the middle of nowhere it seemed and I suddenly panicked slightly. I was usually absolutely relaxed about everything in those days but I suddenly realised that I had been a bit too relaxed. I had no contact telephone numbers, no map book, just a few lines of scribbled directions.

I found the place ok in the end. I couldn't work out why the snare drum was being hit on stage by Armin the drummer repeatedly, I'd never been to a sound check before. And I was surprised by the graffiti and general dinginess of the back stage area. Back stage in Germany is slightly dingier than back stage elsewhere, a reaction, I presume, to the general order and tidiness in Germany as a whole.

Of course Daniel had given Andy absolutely no warning of my arrival. I was very fortunate that there was a spare seat in the van. I think it was Liam who started calling me 'coach' to reflect my role. The Toerag studio set (where Liam was the recording engineer) all called me coach from then on - people like Bruce from the Headcoats, Holly and Debbie from the Headcoatees, and still do.)

I have a suspicion that the Bartlebees, Patrick Andy and Armin, thought that I supplied Daniel with smack too. Kenji was visiting from Japan to film the performances and Stefan drove, wearing a chauffeur's peaked cap.

The only time in my life when I have consumed more alcohol in two weeks was a year later when I returned to tour with the TV Personalities, this time playing bass guitar.

And so these tours and and The Projects touring Germany years later, along with my parents taking my brother and myself to Germany for most of my childhood summer holidays means that I have visited more German towns and cities than English ones. In fact, I think I've been to them all.

Gareth

Working in the Bricklayer's Arms in Shoreditch, around the time that Shoreditch was still a nice place, was a lot of fun. Dave the manager would give you cocktails and you could help yourself to beer, I liked the people that I worked with, it was an interesting bunch of people.

Emma started working there, she became a duty manager. She was slender, wore black usually, with her hair dyed black also, and was friendly and bright. One time she took a holiday back home in Sweden. I was working when she arrived back at Stansted and was confused as to where her boyfriend was since they planned that he would meet her there. I had to explain that he had gone into hiding.

Gareth was a painter. He painted in the style of Caravaggio he’d say and I suppose he did. He was, more or less, addicted to cocaine and would consume it habitually. He was very funny and very quick, perhaps a bit too quick. I’d often spend evenings with Howard and Gareth when Howard lived in Sandringham Road but it was quite tiring, I thought that Gareth turned everything into a competition of wit.

He was always hanging around the pub. He got some work decorating gold leaf behind the bar at the soon-to-open ‘Mother Bar’ above the 333 nightclub. He worked so slowly it became a joke. He worked for half an hour here, half an hour there, in the meantime drinking lots of free beer and nothing much was done. He had completed only a couple of metres after a couple of weeks and was sacked.

Well, it turned out that Gareth was stealing from the pub. He had found out the pub’s alarm code from Emma and, while she was on holiday, used it after the pub had closed.

Vicky, who owned the pub along with a few other locations, the Red Lion pub and the 333 nightclub, became aware that something was up so she had some thugs watch over the place and catch him in the act. For some reason or other Gareth had a hold over Vicky, he knew something about her business dealings that she didn’t want people to know and so he was beaten up and that was the end of it. He ran away.

Emma and he moved to Wales.

Free Electricity, Squirrels

Electricity was free at Amhurst Parade, Stamford Hill, well, the nice, young Algerian couple from downstairs paid for mine I think.

This was the second place that I lived at in Stamford Hill, the one that my friend Darren found After he had moved out Tony from Huntingdon moved in and then Howard. It was above a Hasidic Pizza Shop ran by a man who told me in confidence that he was not cut out to be a member of the sect and dreamt of leaving, although i don't know if he ever did. He supported Manchester United and would, secretly, visit a pub in Manor House now and again, incognito. An old Hasidic couple ran the grocery shop below my flat a few doors down and always gave me strange looks when I went in every day for peanuts. I'd walk on down to Springfield Park, a small park but my favourite in London, and feed the squirrels. The couple in the grocery shop roasted their peanuts themselves they would proudly let me know. Sometimes they were very burnt.

Another person with too much free time, an untidy middle aged lady, began to feed my squirrels as well. We would both eye each other suspiciously when we passed and began to arrive earlier and earlier in order to out-manoeuvre the other.

A couple of weeks before I moved out of the flat I bumped into one of the Algerian students on the stairs. "Isn't electricity expensive here?" she asked as she topped up the key meter. I agreed with her although I had never seen an electricity bill since moving in and had, just that moment, realised that she was probably paying for the electricity used by both of our flats.

I felt very guilty about this and lost sleep planning on coming clean but then I left. Poor Algerian couple! They were so polite and friendly! I should at least have left them a note!

2000AD

In the days when the year 2000 was unimaginably far away, when I was eight or nine years old, my brother and I collected the 2000AD comic.

We had pretty much all the issues from 200 on when I saw an advert in the local shop declaring the sale of the first one hundred and fifty, from issue one, for a ridiculously low price.

Adrian and I picked the comics up from two young brothers. But their father telephoned that evening and said that they had made a mistake and asked to reverse the deal. My father felt sure that there was no going back on the deal. I thought that we should, it was obviously a mistake in some sense of the word, but I kept my mouth shut because I was really happy to have an almost-complete collection.

Classmates At Sixth Form College

In the six form college I studied Psychology, English Literature and History.

Of my classmates I only remember three. Tom in my literature class, who loved Faith No More and mocked my adoration for The Pastels. We had common ground with Spacemen 3. He took a train to London with me one evening with me to see The Pastels play at the Islington Powerhouse once. Before the show we met a French girl who had been living in Glasgow and had moved there with the intention of stalking Stephen Pastel. Tom knew some bad lads, Danny's gang who were speed addicts and sometimes he acted very world weary and superior as though he was so experienced in the criminal world (and as though this was a good thing.)

There was a mature student studying History with me who was paralysed from the neck down following a holiday diving accident. An assistant would take notes for him. He seemed like he didn't really want to be there and I wondered if he always seemed so or only in History lessons.

The oddest of the three was this boy, average height and build, probably quite good looking with dark hair and always in a good mood. I remember him because at every history class, he would come in to the room and, putting on a bad American accent half sing 'Sit On My Face Bay-beeeeee' to himself a few times. It was odd, he had no friends in the class, he was just absent mindedly singing the same phrase to himself, before every lesson, as he arranged his pens and opened his books.