Plastic Pants and Gaffer Tape
by
Jules Benjamin

 

 

Prologue

The story you are about to read is true, and the characters on these pages exist. It’s amazing but true. More staggering still is that all of the events depicted in this book occurred. You are about to be exposed to the world of the musician; a dangerous and mentally unstable land where irreverence and vulgarity are the national language; a place where alcohol, sex and anything that can be smoked are the official currency; a realm with no rule … a kingdom without a king. It is a lawless place.
This is a tale of travel, discovery, debauchery, hedonism and incredible incident, where if something can possibly go wrong … it usually does. But most of all, it is a story of friendship. These pages chronicle a time when myself and four other young men grew up, all in the space of a summer.
Read on if you dare …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is still time to turn back …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well don’t say I didn’t warn you.

 

 

 

Music (was my first love)

Music is my forte. If I’m to tell you about myself, that’s the first thing you must know. It’s all I’ve ever been able to do, and it’s the only talent I’ve ever possessed worthy of people’s admiration. I can play anything on any instrument, if given a minute or two to work out how it functions. I can tell you what key a song is in just by listening to it. I can hear a piece of music and write it down, accurately, on manuscript paper. In short … I’m a genius. But, of course, there’s a catch. My immense powers of musicianship are far outweighed by inadequacies in other aspects of my life, such as tact, the ability to communicate effectively, and a myriad of other basic social skills. But it is a lack of these qualities that form the very constitution of a musician. We are a complex breed.
Unfortunately, most musicians get left on the hard shoulder of success unless they can consistently shine brighter than the others, and for this reason I’m grateful that I am so good. I was determined to be a musical genius.
Of course it wasn’t always that way. It was obvious to all, even as a young boy, that I had a God-given faculty that the majority didn’t possess, but a child prodigy? Nah, I don’t believe there’s such an entity as a virtuoso that can’t tie his own shoelaces (although I still have trouble with that at times). For this I refute the existence of the ‘child prodigy’. True artistic profundity is certainly fashioned upon that indefinable something – the way your genes combine and no doubt a touch of encouragement from social conditions – but it also requires experience of life. As for Mozart or Picasso or any other alleged ‘child prodigy’ … the truth is … they weren’t. Okay, Wolfgang wrote his first piano concerto when he was barely six … most commendable. But listen to it … it’s childish and naïve. It sounds like it was written by a six year old, which is hardly surprising because it was. It sounds even more naïve when compared to his later works of true genius. No matter. My genius reached maturity sometime after my first band.
Did you know ‘my-first-band’ is a condition?
‘So you’re in a band I hear. What sort of band is it?’
‘My-first-band.’
‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry to hear that.’
But it’s a stage every band has to go through. It’s a growing thing – a learning curve necessary to propel you beyond juvenile strummers and bashers. It’s a right-of-passage thing.
By the time our story starts, we were, shall we say, well out of the woods. No longer were we a my-first-band, no, we were now a my-first-college-band. They sound better but smell worse. We still thought we were the best thing since lager and lime flavoured condoms, that’s a belief that you must have. However, we weren’t too hot when we started a couple of years before. From the lofty perch of age I can now let it be known to anybody that saw us and had any doubts, we were wretched. This I’m certain of. Why, the main reason for our regular change of name was to dupe people into coming to see us again. Confronted by a poster ‘introducing the stunning new band … The Jay Arthurs’ (one of many of our names that was nothing more than a euphemism for masturbating), people may be ensnared into seeing us again. Rest assured they would stay well away if they knew it was us. We used to tell girls that frequent name changes were to elude the taxman. This leant us a slightly roguish edge, when in reality on the rare occasion we did actually get paid it was certainly never enough to incur deductions. We had oodles of names; The Velvet Underpants, Hanging Out With Moses, The Pearl Necklaces, Johnny Englander and the Incontinence, R. Soul and the Shy Tots to name but a few. We’d come a long way since then. We’d matured. This week we were ‘Special Clinic’.

I’d always wanted to be a professional musician, ever since hearing the travesty that was ‘Sugar Sugar’ when I was little more than a blob of genetic information, and thinking ‘I can do better than that’. I was sort of born with music in my blood or bones or somewhere. I credit my father for my musical brain, along with a foul mouth, an unhealthy passion for food and drink (not in that order), a childish delight for all things scatological, a middle-twenties spread and an imminent demise of follicles. The apple never falls far from the tree.
He left our family nest long before I can remember, but by way of redemption taught my brother and I the important things in life on our adventures, such as football, dining out, and driving around in open-top sport cars on sunny days and shouting ‘knockers’ at well-developed women. It’s fairly sad to think that we spent nearly all of our quality time together shouting at referees, waiters or tarts. Nevertheless, I got the musical instinct from him. The other half, the years of tuition fees and daily bludgeoning I got from my mother. Without those years of gentle coaxing (tyranny) I would be nothing but an ordinary chap with a penchant for karaoke. As it was, my mom persevered and I yielded - usually to threats involving pet rabbits and gas mark VI.

 

 

The Joker

Me, Dave, Woody, Karen, Geordie and as much of our equipment as would fit, were crammed into Woody’s van. We were trying to navigate lost and forgotten old country lanes in darkest Worcestershire, frantically trying to get to a last minute gig at a place called the ‘Frog and Sporran’. Nonsense, our lead guitarist, had phoned us a couple of hours previously to say that the band that was originally booked had not turned up and we could have a hundred and twenty quid if we could get there for nine, but it was about as far into nowhere as you could possibly drive without coming out the other side into somewhere.
‘Is this really such a good idea?’ remarked Dave, breaking our communal quiet.
‘So you think it’s one of Nonsense’s wind-ups as well?’ I replied.
‘If this is one of his practical jokes I’ll banjo the little twat,’ burst Woody, switching onto the offensive just at the thought of Nonsense roping us into one of his unfeasibly elaborate, but ultimately un-humorous pranks. Nonsense never brought out the best in Woody.
‘I-I-I still can’t get over that last one mon,’ twanged Geordie, ‘all that b-b-bloody effort for what?’
Dave asked ‘Which one Geordie?’
‘That one when he spent the best part of a year trying to get off with any bord in uniform, then when he finally did bed that Wren, he made sure we were all outside his bedroom door so he could come out after he shagged her, just, just so he could say “now that’s what you call an honourable discharge”, and the way he b-b-bloody stands there trying not to piss himself laughing and expecting us to find it as funny as he f-flippin’ does.’
‘That’s wankers for you,’ declared Woody.
‘Oh, good grief!’ sighed Karen at Woody’s choice of description, though by now Karen was almost resigned to the vocabulary that filled the air in the world of ‘rock ’n’ roll’. Karen’s nature was very ill suited to being in a band, being such a connoisseur of ‘political correctness’, that criminal misuse of the English language that makes a rat catcher a ‘rodent operative’.
We theorised for a while as to how Nonsense had managed to get this far into the sticks owning no mode of transport more substantial than a skateboard. We concluded that he had probably been kidnapped again. Yes it had happened before. The culprits were never found, though some questioned their existence, being familiar with the quantity of illegal substances Nonsense enjoyed filling his body with.

 

 

Absolute Beginners

Strictly speaking our-first-band wasn’t really my-first-band. There was the ‘my-first-school-band’. Myself, and three other thirteen year-old wannabes had a band called ‘Radiation’, chiefly because that simple circular radiation sign that always accompanies heavy elements was as much as we could muster with our combined artistic talents, and in those days you had to have a logo on your bass drum. It was the law.
Dave was in that first band with me. In fact we’d schooled together since we were five. Through first school, middle school and even high school we ended up being thrown into the same class more often than not. It’s as though we were supposed to be together – to make a band and to be bigger than the Beatles … and Elvis. I was always convinced that this was to be our kismet. But it was a friendship that I very nearly ended when we were fifteen. Dave broke his arm in a parascending accident, and was compelled to wear a plaster cast for what seemed like an age. Eventually he’d accumulated felt tip autographs from all at Bewdley High School and it was time to shed the plaster (I used to think you weren’t allowed to take them off until they were full of poor graffiti and signatures … thus explaining why the unpopular and smelly children seemed to spend half their school lives with a limb in gypsum). On the day the plaster was removed, for a reason that has always remained elusive to me, I decided to see how well his arm had healed by giving it a sharp tug. It’s the sort of rational decision only a teenage boy can make. You have to be mid-teens to even be able to justify a thought such as that, let alone carry it through. The crack of his tender arm breaking again was just audible under the bellowing, agonising, immortal yell that was ‘BENJAMIN YOU BASTARD’ (an idiom I was to hear again, much later, at the births of my children). This legend seemed to echo around the school quadrangle for many minutes, as I stood there helplessly, knowing that I’d put myself in one of those desperate situations that you can’t explain your way out of or apologise for, and very often the most prudent thing to do is to walk away with your head in your hands.
As I walked away with my head in my hands, I had to bulldoze my way through what was now a crazed mob of fellow pupils who were either flapping about in panic and fainting, or loudly enjoying the misfortune of my best friend. I think I was absolved eventually, but it took a hell of a long time, a lot of favours and an inordinate amount of extracurricular homework duty.
Broken arm or not we always had a band of some sort – Dave singing and myself on guitar or piano. But even at that early stage we were getting through truckloads of drummers and bass players, all of whom we considered to be dreadful at the time. When I consider how relatively talent-less we must have been at sixteen, I can only imagine our perpetual supply of deputies must have been godawful. However, this never chilled our spirits, as we knew that fate would eventually make our paths cross with the right musicians and our purpose would be accomplished.

 

 

Motorcycle Emptiness

We rolled onto the car park of the Frog and Sporran, being watchful to avoid the close-on 150 Harley-Davidsons, Triumphs and Nortons that sprawled and glinted in the late evening sunshine. Our collective eyes were drawn to the clutter of picnic tables at the front of this country retreat, where sat, perched and stood, a whole horizon full of leather and denim clad bikers. It was a sea of tattoos, beards, metal accessories and shiny helmets. The temperature in the van had markedly risen and the glare from a gross of mirrored sunglasses was near distressful. In the middle of this mass of ‘Vikings of the road’, sat Nonsense looking somewhat like a feverish sparrow precariously balanced on the edge of an alligator pit; A stranded ten-stone weakling with a Beatle-haircut, Cuban heels, and a meticulously pressed light grey Bavarian suit.
‘What the fuck … ?’ wheezed Woody through his teeth.
Nonsense had seen us and started to move over to meet us, and was watched by every one of the hairy patrons as he walked across the car park in the awkward and pointy manner that only Nonsense finds physically possible.
‘What the fuck is this, twathead?’ inquired Woody, instantly switching to his Woody/Nonsense speech mode.
‘Oh I got drinking with these blokes in town and they brought me out here to see a band, but they haven’t turned up cos one of them was shot, so I said we’d play for them. They’re really looking forward to it,’ explained Nonsense in his chirpy Birmingham public school droll.
‘So what sort of music did this other band play?’ questioned Dave in a slow and ironic way.
‘Dunno.’
‘So what sort of music do you think they play?’ joined in Woody.
‘Not sure,’ said Nonsense, ‘but they’re called Death Angel and they need a new guitarist,’ he chuckled.
‘Do you think perhaps … ’ Woody had now clasped Nonsense’s face quite firmly and pulled it into the van, ‘ … just maybe … they might be a heavy rock band?’
You could tell from his face that Nonsense had just spotted his oversight.
‘And do you think … ’ continued Woody, ‘that they’re really going to enjoy watching a band who on more than one occasion this year alone, have finished their set with ‘The Lady In Red’?’
‘Okay,’ said Nonsense realising his folly, ‘what about if I just jump in the back and we clear off?’
A few of the bikers were beginning to stand up and look towards us.
‘Yes I’m sure a hundred or so extremely fast road bikes would have great difficulty catching a sluggish, heavily laden van with six adults in it,’ replied Woody, keeping one eye on the handful of large men that were walking over to us.
‘Everything all right?’ said the largest of the large men.
‘We were just wondering where the stage was,’ butted in Karen, before anyone else could find the opportunity to make a bad situation worse.

 

 

The Little Drummer Boy

We had to wait until we got to college before we met Karen, our drummer. His real name was also Dave, so to avoid confusion it was changed to Karen. Our choice of name was made one night when in a state of abject lager, me and Dave (Mark I) decided to write down pages of famous drummers, and gauging various peripherals such as speed, style, power, looks, ability etc., place new Dave in a cross section of the grand scale of rhythmic maestros. So his name was appointed when we discovered, to our wonderment, that he had more in common with Karen Carpenter than anyone else, although he missed out on being called ‘Ringo’ by the smallest of margins. (It had often occurred to me … if only Karen Carpenter had eaten the sandwich that Mama Cass choked on … two lives and two great voices could have been saved). Despite his whining and petty complaints the name stuck, and he’s answered to nothing else for some years now, regardless of his mother’s extreme disappointment.
I shall never forget the night I met Karen. We’d seen him around the college canteen before but never known he was a drummer. Then one night, early term, I was staggering my way home from another nights heavy drinking. I’d just collected my statutory chips and gravy (it was the law) when I was hit by that age old dilemma, that old chestnut … if you’ve got your tightly wrapped packet of chips in one hand and you’ve got your plastic carton of gravy in the other, how do you a/open your chips b/open your gravy thus c/pour your gravy on your chips without putting it all down. Well you can’t. I always thought the council should furnish town centre streets with occasional small shelves for such purposes. (What do occasional table makers do for the rest of the time?) You could also use them for putting your can on when you need the toilet. However, on this occasion my best substitute table was to be a conveniently positioned cash dispenser. As I placed my chips down in the ‘hole in the wall’ my attention was drawn to the most eerie of noises. Walking towards me was this bloke I’d seen at college, not only drumming his legs as he walked, but also oralising the resulting rhythm at a volume that violently ping-ponged around the damp early morning streets.
‘Gu doo dap du ga, du dap di gu dap, ski ber dep sk dee, sku dabber du dabber du dabber du dap!’
He was clearly as drunk as me, and after we recognised each other it wasn’t long before we were engaged in conversation. He’d come here to college from Yorkshire, he was first year business studies and accounting and he was a drummer. He was a DRUMMER. I couldn’t believe my luck. I knew this HAD to be the drummer for our band, why else would we be the only two people on the streets at this time in the morning. All the signs were right. What serendipity. This was an act of God … divine Providence. I took his number, arranged to meet the next day and bade him farewell. Glee … what fortune! To me the signs couldn’t have been greater had a large grey-bearded man appeared with a bang out of a dark cloud, clasping a triton in one hand, a thunder bolt in the other and a sign around his neck saying ‘need anyone to play drums in your band mate?’ This called for a chips and gravy celebration.
I could feel the terror wash across my face when I turned to see that the Perspex door on the cash machine had closed down – with my chips inside. AAAAAH! Somebody must have used the machine just before I’d got there. AAAAAH! I thought they’d stopped making these ones with the doors. Don’t they know somebody could lose their fingers in there? A child could lose their hand in one of these. AAAAAH! A fully-grown man could lose his fucking chips in one of these and be reduced to tears.
So I stood there for a while watching the steam lapping up the other side of the clear divide, nose pressed to the glass, praying for someone to need to take some money out of their Birmingham Midshires account at 1.49 on a Tuesday morning. I waited for probably twenty minutes, but when the cold got too cold I gave in, said goodnight to my chips and scuffed off down the luminous orange high street slurping my gravy from its carton. It seemed to me that every time I found something that made me happy, something else was cynically taken from me. Woe of woes. This was a low.

 

 

Drive Safely Darlin’

Woody was driving because we’d recently sacked our fifth driver in as little as eighteen months. We’d had them all. Our last ‘Concert Transport Manager’ (as Karen liked to put it) had to go because he had this nerve-wrecking compulsion of avoiding cat’s eyes with the van wheels at eighty mile-an-hour on Britain’s highways and byways. As you can imagine, this resulted in a lot of high speed swerving. The one before was relieved of his position because, quite frankly, he really did smell. For six fully-grown musicians (of all people) to be reduced to nausea by the stench of one human gives you some idea of the man’s level of hygiene, although on the plus side he could roll a joint whilst negotiating Spaghetti Junction. The driver before was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. Unfortunately we, and our equipment, were his fare at the time. We had to sit in the van on a hard shoulder in deepest Lincolnshire until sobriety embraced one of us, about 7.30am if memory serves. These were only our regular drivers. There were a string of ‘once-onlys’ that we figured were all shacked up in a government-run convalescent home (probably called ‘Sunnydale’) for ex band drivers and roadies, sat gently rocking in chairs that weren’t designed to rock, and with soup down their vests.

Woody’s van was okay but it wasn’t really big enough for a six-piece band, instruments and P.A. system, not to mention a small nook extra in case we could hoodwink females into travelling with us after shows. However, we all preferred it when Woody drove. Woody was the only person not content with this arrangement. It meant he couldn’t indulge in the all-but compulsory rock ’n’ roll drinking ritual that inevitably started and rounded off each and every evening. But we were more than happy about it because he was such a good driver. It gave us enormous peace of mind to know that whatever happened and whatever condition you ended up in, you would wake up in your own bed, or more importantly you wouldn’t wake up in a state capitalised bed or worse still on a corridor trolley. He was an extremely good driver. He could pull out, pull in, turn on a sixpence and perform an emergency stop without you even knowing you were moving, exactly the same way that a taxi driver can’t.

 

 

North Country Boy

It turned out that Karen’s impromptu early morning drum show was about as far out of his shell as anybody had ever seen him stray. To this very day I have never seen him in such a blithe or boisterous mood. When Dave and I met Karen the next lunch time in the Farmer’s Boy, the preferred college drinking hole, we discovered that he was really rather quiet and studious. All of our questions were responded to with a slow, high-pitched, North Yorkshire ‘Yeeeees … ’ His dialogue was very deliberate and his face when talking, to our complete delight, resembled that of a constipated man on the toilet. Not that either of us had ever seen a constipated man on the toilet, but this is how we imagined one would look.
‘Weeelll, I’ve not been with many bands … but I’m sure you’ll find my drumming to be nothing short of adequate.’ Dave’s face began to crack a little.
‘In what type of music do you indulge?’ asked Karen.
‘Oh it’s fuckin’ brilliant!’ was Dave’s reply.
Our amusing new friend was very carefully writing down everything that was said in a small dark book, on a page that was headed ‘Proposition that I should join a new band’. This had been underlined using a small ruler. Dave had his elbows on the table and his face in his hands and he watched, in wide-eyed disbelief, as Karen repeated everything that was said, and then wrote points that he considered significant in red.
‘Fucking … brilliant … ,’ muttered Karen, entering the same words into his journal with his un-chewed red Bic.
‘Yeeeees, weeelll … sounds quite interesting. I’ve ascertained that I’ve about twelve hours free each week, in the evenings that is, after study time and other obligations. But I can possibly stretch to another two and a half on a Tuesday if I reschedule my advanced mathematics study tutorial, but I’d have to make the time up subsequently. But I could do it…if we had a public showing.’
‘What about in the day? How much free daytime do you have, in the day?’ I asked.
‘Weeelll … approximately … I’m down to my last three and a half days a week now.’
We decided that, somehow, we would manage.

 

 

Carry that Weight

It didn’t take long to get all of our equipment in the Frog and Sporran. Whilst the five of us carried things awkwardly and apprehensively (with the exception of Karen who always got out of carrying things – especially his own drums – drummers for you), there were a dozen burly, rippling animals dispatching loads far greater than our combined body weights, with a nonchalance you would normally associate with burly, rippling animals. Our nervousness must have been visible. It may even have been possible to smell our cowardice. Every time one of them passed one of us they would say … ‘You’d better be fuckin’ good mate’. Now I can tell you, this is not the ideal mental preparation for a gig.
Woody and I briefly made eye contact without actually looking at each other, and each drew the slightest of inhalations. We were scared to look at each other let alone one of them.
As we carried what was our part of the last load in, the door was held open by the largest, burliest, ripplingest of the animals.
‘You’d better be fuckin’ good mate,’ he seeped through his yellowing beard, in words of pure nicotine and cider that immediately made my eyes water.
‘Oh I’m sure you’ll like us,’ I said with a fresh burst of poise.
‘Well you look like a bunch of turd burglars to me,’ he sneered with the arrogance that a man of his size was licensed to.
This directly prompted Woody and I to laugh with him, as if to say… ‘Well, yes we are turd burglars, you’re quite right of course’.
At this point I knew I had to do something to make our stay at least a little more comfortable than it looked like it was going to be. With Woody at my side I summoned the man to one side in the most discreet way conceivable.
‘Now, we’re all game for a bit of a laugh mate,’ I whispered, slowly trying to consolidate a clever plan, ‘and God knows we all like to take the piss, and you’re quite welcome to do likewise of course. But be careful what you say to our singer,’ I added with a nod of my head in Dave’s direction who was now busy setting up the P.A. system.
The man looked back at me with his head tilted in curiosity.
‘You see he’s got a fiery temper on him and it takes the slightest thing to set him off. Now I know that wouldn’t normally worry a chap like you, what with all your mates here too, but Dave’s a bit different. Not only is he British kick-boxing champion and veteran of a number of other martial arts, but, and here’s my biggest concern, he’s still on parole for the time he took out a complete rugby team for taking the Mickey out of his hair.’
Woody had adopted the only facial expression he knew of that could prevent himself from releasing a spontaneous whimper, even though it made him look like an autistic chimp in need of medication.
‘And the thing is,’ I continued, ‘if he puts anyone else in hospital we’re going to lose our singer. Do you see my point?’
The large man with ‘BAD BOB’ embroidered amongst his sea of badges and paraphernalia was now looking a little more pensive at the prospect of such an unknown quantity.
‘Oh don’t get me wrong mate, we’re not into any agro. Just havin’ a bit of a laugh, you know,’ he assured me with a slap on the back that neatly broke my clavicle.
‘Aargh … just thought I’d let you know, that’s all mate,’ I nodded as if I was doing him a service.
At this Bad Bob left us and headed for the bar with undeserving respect for us and our singer, and we proceeded to set up our kit feeling slightly more at ease with our hosts, although I was far from being at ease with my collarbone.

 

 

The Carpenter

Woody was quite an old friend to Dave and me. Though he was very different to us we had a mutual esteem for one another’s outlooks, no matter how far apart they were. Whilst me and Dave lived, and lived for, the rock ’n’ roll life, Woody was content to amble through life as an artisan – fine one that he was – bedding plenty of women and generally having a good time. Not that me and Dave were loath to bedding plenty of women (fortune permitting) and generally having a good time, but the difference was, if there was no rock ’n’ roll tomorrow … Woody would still be perfectly happy.
He was one of the lads most of the time, but smooth when he needed to be. If he saw a woman he wanted, which was a lot of them to be fair, he could really turn it on. Once he even managed to bed a girl who had only gone round to his house with a view to buying his car after he had advertised it in the local paper. And after an afternoon of coital distractions, she even agreed to purchase the vehicle. The poor girl haggled and tried to save herself fifty pounds, but Woody pointed out that after what they had just done, any discount would make her a whore, so he even got the asking price. God he was sickeningly good. The finest cherry picker there ever was.
(cher’-i pick’er (n) one who deflowers women (colloq.)[etym. uncertain]).
But he did it with such style and honour. Where Nonsense, on the other hand, would skip from his stinky lair and announce “there’s another hymen for the old scrapbook”, conversely Woody would be more inclined to make the most dignified of entrances in a Gucci bathrobe and proclaim “Fait accompli” and slide off to the fridge for another bottle of Bollinger.
Not that we knew this for sure because none of us had ever lived with him. We cramped his style, to say the least. He needed his own space, his own domain and his own vehicles in order to perform the job to the standard he’d cultivated. Anyway, there was no way he was going to keep an expensive bottle of Champagne on ice with us around.

 

 

I am a Cider Drinker

‘I’m not so sure about this lads,’ said Dave as we sat trying to assemble a set list that would placate a room full of bikers, ‘they keep looking at me, and pointing sometimes. It’s making me nervous.’
I placed a supportive hand on his arm trying not to aggravate my collarbone and said, ‘as long as you don’t let them know you’re scared, you’ll be alright’.
Woody smiled knowing he was the only person in on my secret.
‘Neau lager!’ announced Geordie over his shoulder from the bar.
‘Have they got any Guinness?’ inquired Dave.
Geordie looked to the barman for ratification. He shook his head.
‘Oh, I’ll have a bitter then,’ said Dave burying his head in a pile of past set lists.
‘Neau bitter?’ said Geordie to the barman in a dangerously caustic tone.
Again the barman shook his head. It was manifest that he’d worked here so long he was now numb to life, and had certainly forgotten what customer relations were, if he’d ever known at all.
‘Can we save an eternity here … ’ I pleaded, ‘what has he got?’
‘Cider or cider?’ said Geordie not knowing how close he was coming to using up all of his sarcasm tokens.
We all shrugged in submission.
‘Six ciders please mate,’ conceded Geordie taking out his wallet.
‘Hang on … ’ said Woody, ‘I’m driving. I’ll have an orange juice and lemonade please.’
Another head shake from the barman, who, if he was going to serve any drinks, would surely have to uncross his arms at some stage.
‘Well … what do people drink around here when they’re driving?’ pressed Woody.
‘Babycham or Cherry B,’ was the barman’s first and last contribution to the interchange.
After a pause for great thought in which there was little to think about, Woody too nodded in acceptance and agreed to drink the same apple-based beverage as everyone else.
‘Six ciders,’ concluded Geordie sounding like a man who had been absorbed in intense international negotiations for the last week.

 

 

People are Strange

Nonsense had also been spotted in the refectory long before we knew him. Everyone knew of him – never had there been a more outwardly strange eccentric to walk England’s fair fields and subways. He used to practise his Tai Chi anywhere and anytime it took his fancy. Tai Chi is supposed to be an ancient, eastern meditative medium to enlightenment and piety, but to Nonsense it was nothing more than the Chinese art of looking ridiculous in a public place. When Dave, Karen and I moved into our house in the second year of college, we desperately needed to fill the fourth bedroom so as not to incur crippling extra rent. Our first and only applicant, after a small but strategic advertising campaign, was none other than Nonsense. After a few reservations we decided, okay it might be possible to rent the room to someone more befitting the description ‘of this universe’, but we were never going to find an easier target for our relentless, sledgehammer piss-taking. Perplexingly though, it was about six weeks before he picked up a guitar from the colossus of instruments permanently set up in the lounge for rehearsing, and showed what a fine guitarist he was, even if all he could play was Beatles and Monkees songs.
Dave and I were certain he was a serial weirdo, the greatest concern being where and when he would next strike. We lived in constant fear of being woken up by a pair of policemen on the doorstep at four in the morning.
‘Excuse me sir, is this the home of Mr. Duncan Marriott-Russell?’
‘Err … yes … what’s happened officer?’
‘I’m afraid he’s been weird.’
‘Oh … God … no, has anyone been hurt?’
‘I’m afraid it’s too early to tell sir,’ etc., etc.
Regardless of his strangeness and aptitude for untimely mishaps, as far as the band was concerned he fit, even though he and Woody had a blatant and healthy disrespect for one another, and despite the fact that he would often come out with meaningless, spontaneous utterances.

 

 

Traveller’s Tune

‘Fanny Batter! I’m telling you, drugs really do work,’ insisted Nonsense.
‘What the hell sort of statement is that?’ I pressed, speaking for five very bewildered musicians.
‘It’s true. They do exactly what they’re supposed to do,’ he continued.
‘Why don’t you kill yourself?’ inquired Woody with enormous contempt.
‘Think about it,’ said Nonsense, ‘you spend a bit extra on a bar of soap because it says it makes your skin look younger. Does it fuck as like. Or cod liver oil is supposed to make your joints better. It makes me fart. But drugs … I’m telling you man they work. You go out and buy some drugs and they’ll get you stoned man.’
There were a few confused looks being exchanged at this point.
‘B-but that’s like saying ‘if you shoot yourself in the head it’ll kill you,’’ said Geordie.
‘No … what I’m saying is … nine times out of ten it’ll say something on a packet and it’s complete bollocks, but with drugs …’
‘Drugs don’t come in packets,’ I interrupted.
‘Some of them do,’ replied Nonsense desperately trying to win a lost cause.
‘Yeah, but they don’t have anything written on them. I mean, you don’t buy a wrap of cocaine that says ‘contains no less than 85% pure cocaine’ with a little warning at the bottom saying ‘this drug may cause health problems, loss of friends, will make it necessary for you to start burgling your parents house but it doesn’t matter ‘cos it’ll kill you anyway’. You’re talking crap Nonsense.’
‘But you’re missing the point. If you go into a shop and ask for … ’
‘WILL YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP!’ Dave blasted. ‘So far we’ve got an hour and a half set list consisting of Born to be Wild and Greased fucking Lightning. So unless someone helps me think of a few more songs, Nonsense, you’re going to have to play some fucking long guitar solos.’
‘Do we do Greased Lightning?’ inquired Karen meekly.
‘No,’ said Dave, ‘but I know the words cos I played Rizzo in a school production of Grease.’
‘Rizzo was a girl,’ squeaked Karen.
‘Whoever, I’m just trying to think of some good transport songs for these bikers who, if they don’t like us, just might kill us.’
‘Yellow Submarine?’ suggested Nonsense.
‘Fuck off!’ was the communal response.
‘Convoy?’
‘No.’
‘The Locomotion, the Pushbike Song?’
‘No, no, no. I don’t think you’re taking this seriously,’ suggested Dave.
‘W-w-well, do they have to be transport songs? Can’t we just do our normal set but rock everything up a bit?’ said Geordie, ‘I mean we’ve got that Tau-au song, that’s quite rocky.’
Toto was Geordie’s favourite band, irrespective of the fact he couldn’t actually say Toto.

 

 

The Teacher

One couldn’t help thinking that Geordie was in the wrong place. He certainly mixed with the wrong people. Us, that is. For a start Geordie was educated. We used to call him Sheila Ferguson because he had three degrees. He had a real job, as a teacher. He had a wife. He had two children. But he chose to spend three or four nights a week in smelly pubs playing trumpet with us. He was an ‘almost rock’n’roller’. He didn’t smoke or chase the girls, but loved to play music and drink himself stupid. (He once commented on the pursuit of women; ‘I try to distance masel from tempteetion. I mean much as I adore ma wife, if av had a few sherbets and I discover a bord with large paps likes us then I’m afraid I’m likely to remove ma trousers right there an then’).
He led a carefully balanced double life. Devout Liberal conformism precariously counterpoised with dangerous hedonistic excesses. We weren’t allowed anywhere near his house, and phoning him was strictly prohibited. He would call us from a phone box each day on the way home from work, as if part of a carefully planned military operation. It was never obvious what he was trying to hide. Perhaps he just wanted to protect his family from this dangerous side-world that Geordie obviously had more than just a fondness for. He certainly didn’t join us for the money. In fact he needed to teach to pay for his nocturnal activities. If we’d been paid £40 each for a gig, more often than not he would need to take £40 out of his bank on the way home to have something to show for the evening.
Musically though he was a very useful asset. We were envied far and wide for having brass in our band. And he could play anything, though his true favourite was Tau-au.

 

 

Words (don’t come easy)

‘Good evening Frog and Sporran. We’re Special Clinic and we’re here to entertain you. We’re gonna rock you guys. You ain’t gonna be able to help yaselves, so let’s put on those dancing biker boots and let’s rock!’
‘That’s probably enough Dave,’ I interrupted aside.
‘Do you think?’
‘Yes.’
‘Just trying to get them in the mood you know. Gee them up. Okay, Last Train to Clarkesville guys’.
‘Have you learnt the second verse yet?’ I inquired.
‘No, but I’ll think of something. Anyway, they’re not likely to know the words are they?’
He’d always had trouble with the second verse. He used to sing …

Take the last train to Clarkesville and a-la-ma-ha-na-ha
Meen-a-hai-na-no-ma-na-na-hee-na-mey-na-ha oh no no no

Last time we played it the best he could manage was …

Take the last train to Clarkesville, and I’ll meet you at the station
I wonder if you’ll notice that this doesn’t even rhyme oh no, no, no.

The most peculiar thing was, nobody did notice. They never do, which was just as well because Dave was hopeless with lyrics. It’s quite a weakness for a singer to have.

Take the last train to Clarkesville, but I’m not sure of the words
But you won’t even notice cos you’re just a bunch of turds oh no, no, no

‘OH NO, NO, NO,’ we all mouthed in horror at Dave’s choice of improvisation, apart from Geordie who seemed to be shaking his head and saying ‘eau neau, neau, neau’. We were still shaking our heads in shock at the end of the song in amazement that indeed, nobody had seemed to notice. Even more surprising was that by the end of our first set, our audience of natives and cave-dwellers appeared to be warming to us, blindly unaware that we’d used up all the good rocky stuff.
‘Well, th-th-that wasn’t seau bad, was it?’ declared Geordie as we piled off stage and headed for our ciders.
‘Yeah but what the hell are we going to do now? We’ve done all of the best ones,’ pointed out Woody.
‘Well,’ said Dave, ‘we’ve got a few good ones left, and if the worst comes to the worst, you four could do some of your tossy Beatles songs, couldn’t you?’

 

 

Your Latest Trick

It was hard to believe that Dave was still jealous about our Beatles band ‘The Beatless’. It had started about six months before when Me, Woody, Nonsense and Karen thought that if we learnt a load of Beatles songs, wore some nice suits and each acquired a pageboy wig, that it would be a good way to earn some extra cash. He wasn’t jealous to start with. In fact he used to laugh like a lunatic each time he’d walk into the lounge and see us rehearsing with our wigs on, violently shaking our heads and singing ‘ooooh’ a lot. He found it amusing until we started to get a few gigs, a few decent gigs at that, with proper money and dressing rooms full of food and beer, and girlie Beatles fans that are notable on the circuit for being the loosest. (Some ‘Apple Scruffs’, as they are known, were proud to tell you that they’d actually slept with a real Beatle – ask Nonsense about these women). At that point his emotion changed from amusement to resent, and he did his level best to weasel his way into the band. He tried to convince us that it would be a better show if we mimicked the Beatles as they were in 1961 when they had five members, and were playing to bars full of drunken sailors in Hamburg. ‘But you’re not too clever on the guitar,’ we would argue, ‘neither was Stu Sutcliffe’, was his stock reply. When he resigned himself to the fact that we weren’t going to go for it, the emotion turned to bitterness, and it’s been like that ever since, and a very deep-rooted bitterness as well. He even resorted to sabotage on some occasions.

Dave had a colourful history of sabotage. When we both started to learn to drive we had a £10 wager on who would pass first. When my test date was set for the day before his, the devious planning and conniving started. At several points around the test route I had to swerve to avoid pedestrians leaping into the road, who bizarrely, were all of the general height, build and looks of a certain Dave Adams. I wasn’t having the best of tests as it was, and I would have surely failed, but as it turned out the examiner said that I’d handled the car so well ‘when that loony kept jumping out’, that he passed me. Dave should have known better. All of his sabotage efforts and practical jokes backfired on him. There was the time at school when he set up our German teacher. Mr Stalwart (who always smelled of Shredded Wheat cereal) was foolish enough to sport a small black moustache and let his straight, lank, greasy hair flop around Hitlerishly. When he was angry he even stood with his arms crossed high on his chest as if addressing scores of genetically perfect, fresh-faced, flawlessly blonde and handsome boys from the master-race. So, the day Dave incited a classroom riot moments before our lesson was to start, and drew a large swastika on the blackboard behind our Teutonic-looking teacher’s desk, all he had to do was wait for the angry Hitler stance, whip out his camera, and within a week the school would be plastered with proof of our teacher’s nasty Nazi sympathies. This would have been fine if it hadn’t been for the fact that Mrs Stalwart worked on the processing counter in Boots, and not only confiscated the incriminating picture and negative, but made sure Dave attended weekly detention for a term. But Dave never learnt.

 

 

Getting Away with it

‘I’ll tell you what’s really weird,’ continued Dave, ‘every time one of these smelly bastards passes me he’ll give a friendly, almost respectful nod and say “all right mate”.’
‘Perhaps they like your singing Dave,’ smirked Woody.
‘Yeah, but considering they were so hostile when we got here, I don’t understand it. I mean they’re not doing it to you lot.’
‘Like Woody said … they must like your singing,’ I joined in.
All in all, this bizarre gig at the Frog and Sporran went remarkably well. We threw in a couple more Tau-au songs and annoyed Dave by doing a handful of Beatles numbers (mostly good old solid transport songs like ‘Drive my Car’, ‘Ticket to Ride’ and ‘Day Tripper’ - we managed to resist the little temptation there was to do ‘Yellow Submarine’). Although it has to be said, we were fairly surprised when somebody suggested that Dave should learn the proper words to ‘Last Train to Clarkesville’, and positively agog when a large hairy man requested ‘The Lady in Red’ as our final encore. But we got out alive. And off we trundled in a state of flagrant cider, with twenty quid each, belching a large, apple-tasting communal sigh of relief.

‘You told him fucking what?’ yelled Dave with a slightly rabid expression.
‘Well it seemed like a good idea at the time,’ I reasoned. ‘Okay you might say it was a calculated risk but … ’
‘A calculated fucking risk? A calculated fucking risk?’ Dave was struggling for adjectives. ‘So what … please tell … would have happened if it had all gone pear-shaped? You know … if one of those gorillas had fancied a shot at the title?’
‘I hadn’t really thought of that to be honest. It was a spur of the moment thing, purely spontaneous. Anyway, it worked didn’t it?’
‘I don’t fucking believe you. Fucking fuck fuck fucking fuck,’ he said, gently embracing our beautiful language.
‘Brightened up my evening,’ added Woody soberly.
It was perhaps a little unfair for Dave that we were all sniggering like pre-pubescent children running from a farmer’s field with an apple each. It was also fairly fortunate for us that Dave was thoroughly wedged amongst a couple of hundredweight of amplifiers, especially when considering his famously short fuse.
‘Gusset chutney!’ interrupted Nonsense. We all agreed. ‘If I can bring to your attention an altogether more important matter, to wit, tomorrow evening’s bout of ‘Date A Dog’. The contest will commence at 7.30 in the Farmer’s Boy, tenner each in the kitty…winner takes all. No lunatics, vagrants or lepers, the judge’s decision is final.’

 

 

You’re Gorgeous

‘Date a Dog’ had been around for a while. It’s had a goulash of names over the years, including ‘Pull a Pug’, ‘Night With a Fright’, ‘Escort a Horse’ and ‘Look at Mine, She’s Uglier Than Yours’ to name but a few. The rules are simple and are as follows; the players meet at a specified drinking house. This is for two reasons … firstly to arrange a time and place to reconvene later in the evening, and secondly, and without doubt more critically, to ingest a few pints of Dutch courage. Believe me this is essential. The game may then begin. The players hence split up and go on their slightly merry ways. The object is to rendezvous (at designated hour and venue) with the most hideous, grotesque, deplorable looking female you can find. More often than not the tricky bit is convincing her that you want to go out with her. The verdict is reached through a method of silent voting. Each player votes for who he considers to be most repulsive (he cannot vote for his own date) by shaking hands with the player he feels has stooped to the lowest of depths. This is usually Nonsense.
There are a handful of embargoes. As Nonsense pointed out, lunatics, vagrants and lepers (even if you can find one) are strictly no-no. There is also a veto on women over 45 years old, 25 stones or both. Accident victims and disease sufferers are not considered eligible as this is deemed to be in poor taste. The player with the most votes takes the entire kitty with the provision that he must buy one round of drinks. The victims, if they haven’t already ascertained that this is all a big childish laugh at their expense, are usually told to sod off just before any more drinks are bought, except for the date with Nonsense who is invariably taken back to the house and subjected to excerpts from the Duncan Marriott-Russell version of the Karma Sutra (we’d never had the heart to tell him that he didn’t have to sleep with his date). Nonsense was something of an expert at ‘Date a Dog’. The only reason we played was for the pure adult enjoyment of it all. We never expected to win. We had too much pride to want to, and Nonsense had too much pride to let anyone else. It was worth the ten pounds just for the entertainment that he provided. There had been occasions in the past when voting for a winner was unnecessary. Once, Nonsense was the last man back, and as soon as he walked through the door with his ‘catch’, we impulsively erupted into painful belly-laughter at the sight of the odious, macabre companion on his arm. This is considered an instant result and has, ergo, not happened very often. Conversely Woody was lousy at ‘Date a Dog’. At the beginning of each game he would have the best intentions (or worst perhaps) and would announce with determination ‘I’m gonna do it this time’, but by the time he’d get back he would be with the most beautiful woman that none of us would ever dare to consider asking out. Still, he would usually apologise, something like … ‘I’m sorry guys, I tried, but I just couldn’t do it. Sorry’
Geordie, of course, didn’t partake in this juvenile pursuit.
‘Eau, neau, God, neau, how can you do it? It’s the merst degrading thing av ever hord of. I m-m-m-mean, where’s the respect, how can yez possibly gan out with an ugly bord?’
But of course Geordie was married anyway. Of the five of us that regularly partook, it tended to be Karen who always came out of it worst. Mind you it was his own fault, he never had the heart or the shortfall in principle to tell them to ‘get lost’. His predictable get-out method would be to apologise, almost sincerely, and then swap address with the carbuncle. As a consequence Karen had about thirty very objectionable looking pen pals (we preferred to call them pen-dwellers) with whom he corresponded regularly. His guilt wouldn’t allow him not to.

 

 

Wake up Dead

My brain woke up sometime before my eyes and the rest of my body. It sometimes happens that way, especially after a couple of gallons of cider it would seem. You wake into a warmly cocooned, but fragile feeling. Waking up from a cider sleep is a little like dozing off in the afternoon sunshine, after being punched half to death by an angry drayman; a gentle, lucid haze with a constant background pain. As I slowly stretched and contracted, I was reminded in a great rush by my nervous system that I had a broken clavicle. The pain burst into my consciousness like a two-pound lump hammer vying with a sheet of damp plasterboard. In an involuntary spasm my right side was thrown off the mattress sending me into a short roll. I came to a stop on the edge of the bed, rigid with pain, backside in the air and face in the pillow. After a relieving groan I slowly, almost cautiously, opened my eyes. Maybe my eyesight wasn’t as it should be, and who could be surprised about that considering my apple-related consumptions at the Frog and Sporran the night before, but my pillow cases were no longer the broad, green and white Gingham that so pleasantly complimented the rest of my spacious and well appointed, Mediterranean-style bedroom. Instead, the blurred, macro image hitting my retina was one of more vibrant colours. There was green, but it was sharp verdigris with no hint of the pastel I anticipated. There was a resonant red and shiny white and a whole pallet of browns. It had form. It was certainly organic. It had aroma too, or perhaps more of a whiff. There was definitely a doughy fragrance, married with some fairly dynamic suggestions of the east. Why was my nose wet? Why were my nostrils stinging? As I rolled back the way from which I came, the doner kebab stayed firmly attached to my face, still perfectly formed, salad and all, quite obviously untouched until now. This gruesome episode of my life found it’s apogee as I lay on my back, intact Turkish fare on my face, chilli sauce drizzling down my cheeks and either coming to a stop in my ears or running the length of my neck being sure to tickle and sting every square millimetre of flesh on the way. It was a welcome, albeit brief, distraction from my broken bone.

Dave was lounging on the settee, spinning a Marlboro into the air in the vain fancy that it might actually land in his mouth for once. To date this had happened only once. His celebration was so exuberant that he didn’t notice that the cigarette was the wrong way round, and in one graceful, egomaniacal motion, he lit the filter and half choked to death.
‘Good morning,’ I wheezed in pained, but oft-practised morning monotone.
‘All right? Why have you got kebab on your face?’ asked Dave matter-of-factly.
‘I was wondering if one of you lot could shed some light on that little mystery. I presume we went to the kebab shop last night?’
‘Obviously,’ said Dave, sounding like my mother, ‘and I see you’re using yours as a face pack.’
‘Yes. Thank you. Well spotted. If I need any more redundant observations …’ I continued as the pain in my shoulder sent me into another body-twisting paroxysm.
‘What’s up with you?’ asked Nonsense coming out of the bathroom. ‘Hey you’ve got kebab on your face.’
‘I think I’ve broken my collarbone.’
‘How the fuck did you manage that?’ queried Dave with a glint of intrigue in his eye.
‘I er … ’ realising that telling him the truth would lead to undue delectation and calls of instant karma for last night’s stunt, ‘I … think I fell out of bed in the night,’ I explained unremarkably.
‘Is that when you put the kebab on your face?’ asked Nonsense trying to work it all out.
‘I didn’t put … oh … just … ’ I was struggling, ‘ … fuck … I’m going to wash my face and go to the doctors, and when I get back I shall change my bed sheets.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Nonsense, ‘I’ve got to see my quack as well.’
‘So what’s the matter with you?’ asked Dave still hopelessly trying to catch a cigarette in his mouth.
‘Oh, it’s come back again.’ Dave and I each gave him a pause and a raised eyebrow that demanded elaboration. ‘My Athlete’s Bollocks, it’s come back.’
‘Athlete’s Bollocks?’ sang Dave and I in unison, palpably disbelieving.
‘It’s a very serious condition.’ His Birmingham accent was always puissant when he was trying to be convincing. ‘I had it a few years ago. It’s not actually called Athlete’s Bollocks officially. They’re thinking of calling it ‘Marriott-Russell Dry Groin Syndrome’. They’ve never seen anything like it before – it’s got them completely baffled. Must be something to do with all the shagging I do.’
‘So how come you’ve never mentioned your ‘Athlete’s Bollocks’ before?’ enquired Dave.
‘Well, it’s a sensitive area isn’t it?’
‘Apparently so,’ I said heading for the bathroom. ‘Come on then Linford, let’s go.’

 

 

In a Room

Our bathroom was unique. A shining individual in a world of dull, Xeroxed ablutionary facilities. The first thing to strike you would be the Herculean arena of reading material. This one room’s literary offerings would have been ample for the poorest of psychologists to ascertain the character, demeanour and history of its four cohabiters. Had we been famous (as we truly should have been) Loyd Grossman would have needed to say nothing as the camera panned across the shambolic shelving, whilst studio panel nodded reassuringly to each other, safe in the knowledge that they had their men. My books were mostly biographical or autobiographical. I would consider buying any autobiography provided I hadn’t spotted its author on a chat show promoting it. I also had a lot of twentieth century, American ‘beat’ writing, you know … like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. I’ve just always loved the flowing, unhindered liberty of that style of writing, the way it can effortlessly place you in a field in New Mexico after just a couple of lines. You can feel the warm, westerly breeze rolling off the side of your face and un-hosed ankles, you can smell the maize, and the rumble of a distant locomotive scarcely threatens the silence. Then smoke filled cellar bar Frisco ‘52, the crazy negro’s blowin’ the tenor like the Birdman, growlin’ low and squeelin’ high but always singin’ and always beautiful poetry. Shouldn’t stay too late gotta catcha boat in the bay at six a.m. but I guess I could go straight there.
Sorry … carried away.
Karen’s allotment was nothing but books full of statistics (my solitary reference book being a family medical companion – very good for making you worry about conditions that you would otherwise be completely oblivious to). These journals, crammed with nothing but data, were the tip of Karen’s proverbial iceberg of factual information, the rest filling an entire wall of his bedroom. He always used this constant flow of details to devastatingly annoying effect. Picture, if you will, four musicians about to tuck into their tea – Dave kindly volunteers to grab a beer each from the fridge.
‘Weelll … I don’t know if you were acquainted with the fact, that here in the U.K. we are the world’s ninth greatest beer drinkers, consuming an average of one hundred and eleven point two litres each on an annual basis, but ironically we’re the planets third dominant beer producing nation, materialising, staggeringly, in excess of six billion litres per calendar year, which peculiarly comes to one hundred and seven litres per poll of the U.K. population, postulating a constant of fifty six million people, which means it’s sine qua non to import two hundred and twenty four million litres, that is four litres per capita, to avoid a shortfall in relation to demand, but, and here’s the eeriest part, we actually import well in excess of four hundred and twenty million litres. So where does it go?’
‘We drink it.’
‘But you don’t underst...’
‘Fuck off.’
Dave’s compendium of digests were united by one distinct theme … violence … gratuitous, unadulterated violence. Whether they were novels (gangsters, organised crime, war) or reference books (Jane’s, ‘Which Tank’ etc.) or pictorials (natural disasters, great murderers, frank surgical chronicles), they were riddled with images of violence and destruction. Even his one concession to verse fell into this category, a collection of war poems by Wilfred Owen. You could regularly hear him, midway through lavatorial duties, shouting in enthused delight about the power of a missile or the bloodiness of a photograph or the shitty-ness of some poor bastard’s demise.
Which brings me to Nonsense’s prosaic distractions, I say prosaic, but the only part of these publications that exercise the English word would be the ‘letters page’. I think they used to call magazines like these ‘medical books’, but nothing so delicate for Nonsense who favoured the ribaldry of ‘wank-mags’ to classify his favourite ‘reading’ matter (with the exception of one accidental purchase entitled ‘The Joy of Chickens’. The less said etc.). Indeed, ‘banned books’ had long been a favourite motif of discussion behind the doors of 199 Hurcott Road. Many an afternoon had been spent conjecturing why Ford chose to call their new model of car the ‘Mondeo’. With such successful predecessors as the ‘escort’ and the ‘fiesta’, both obviously named after classy pornographic periodicals, why in God’s name didn’t they elect to name it the ‘Ford Big Jugs’ or the ‘Ford Over Fifties’ or the ‘Ford Razzle’ or perhaps even the ‘Ford Asian Babes’. And it was frequently propounded that the magazines could reciprocate by having a section called ‘Reader’s Cars’. Whatever.
The next assailing aspect of our bathroom chills me to this day. Not that there’s anything especially offensive about a Polaroid land camera. But when said camera is fastened by a length of string to a toilet, for the explicit purpose of recording momentous motions which are in turn tacked to the wall, it is fair to be jolly sceptical of the sensitivities of those who put it there, used it regularly, wrote the date and a comment on each picture and took pride in circulating the sordid snaps each time there was a party. Mind you, no one ever did beat Dave’s ‘11.24am Thursday 25th May, 1989’. Not for sheer mass anyway.
Otherwise our bathroom was fairly regular. Soap, sponge, pumice stone, shampoo and a jillion different unused deodorants, a sink, a brimming medicine cabinet and a bath that had no idea what fate had in stock for it in days to come.

‘Do you want anything from town?’ I asked Dave as I donned my most sensible going-to-the-doctor type jacket.
‘Yeah, just some fags ta. Oh, and some paper bags for on the way home tonight. And perhaps a tin of vegetable soup in case we have any trouble getting rid of the mutants.’
At this, Nonsense and I left for the medical centre with the assurance that on this particular Friday night we were going to play all of our favourite games.

 

 

Don’t stand so Close to me

I’ve long considered how comprehensively absurd it is to have communal waiting rooms in surgeries and medical centres. Where is the sagacity in a pack of contagious people with a miscellany of ailments being herded into the same twenty-square-foot space. Okay, so the doc gives you something for your chicken pox, but you catch diphtheria. In a week you’re back for something to combat the diphtheria that you’ve just realised you’ve got, and you inadvertently contract tuberculosis from some infectious git in a cagoule. Worst still is if you go to your doctor because you’ve got something that’s not infectious like, I don’t know … a broken collarbone say. You don’t even procure the satisfaction of knowing that you’ve transmitted your infirmity to some bank manager or solicitor - though such folk in the high-earning legal arena are more likely to attain their flu remedies from BUPA hospitals, or other such places. Typically I managed to choose as busy a day as was possible. And I was on my own now. Nonsense had to go to the special clinic. I pondered for a while at how much satisfaction he would glean from telling all the staff and orderlies that he was in a band call Special Clinic. I cringed quietly at how greatly he would surely be embarrassing himself at this very moment.
I chanced upon the only remaining seat with some reluctance. If there had been somewhere inconspicuous to stand, I would surely have stood there. However, I had already committed myself to taking the seat before eyeballing the odious pair of hags, between which my destiny lay. My insides wept for my nice jacket as I gazed upon. It was going to be a stinky Gypsy sandwich, and I was to be the filling. The one ‘woman’ was old and hairy. Her skin was like grey sandpaper, her lips bloodshot and her chin goatee-ed in spiky tufts. She leant into me as I carefully manoeuvred my buttocks into the inadequate space, kindly allowing me to feel the damp, punk, squalid texture of her overcoat, instantly compelling the back of my hand to itch violently. My other ‘bench-fellow’ didn’t need to lean into me as she was already occupying a third of each adjoining seat, as well as her own. The resemblance she bore to Jabba the Hut was uncanny. I just hoped that she’d already taken her mid-morning snack of a few medium sized mammals, and that I would be spared. As if the assault on my senses and airspace wasn’t enough she had a monstrous little pudding of a child, who was appeasing himself by balancing full stretch across one of her knees, kicking my leg with every flutter of equilibrium and causing his mother’s left thigh to ripple in a viscous and muddy wave with each movement (why do obese women insist on wearing skin-tight leggings that barely make it to the calf?). No matter how hard I stared at him, his kicking was relentless.
I bided my time.
I picked my moment.
I waited until one of the doctor’s buzzers went off on the sidewall and the bag looked around. With her errant son in the middle of a perfect balance I crossed my legs, inadvertently kicking his feet upward and dispatching the little oik into a spin that sent him tumbling halfway across the waiting room floor.
‘Fuggin’ paggit in Ashley!’ barked his delectable mater.
‘But, mom that man …’
‘Jus fuggin’ come ere now ya little sod.’
Splendidly executed Benjamin, I thought smugly.
With the energy that I wasn’t channelling on stifling my olfactory activities, I found it impossible not to imagine the back of her chair, the red plastic stressing and warping, with points of fulsome pressure suffering from the plastic furniture equivalent of white-knuckle. I wondered what these two ladies would be doing tonight. Sadly, neither was eligible to share my company in a game of ‘date a dog’. Anyway, it wouldn’t be fair on the others.

‘This is your first time here am I right?’ inquired the doctor without lifting his head from the pile of documents that occupied his desk.
‘Err … that’s right … yes,’ I said, still celebrating my liberation from the swamp beasts of Bing-Bang.
‘Well I am Doctor Singh. Please come in and be sitting.’
‘Pleased to meet you Doctor Singh,’ I said reaching out my hand. ‘How am I?’
Great line, and delivered with impeccable timing. I’d always wanted to say that to a doctor. And there it was … bang!
Doctor Singh scowled at me from behind his papers.
‘I am not in the habit of touching the patients if I can help it. Don’t know what you might catch. And I’m pleased to say that seeing as you have a suspected fracture I can leave any touching that might be necessary to the radiographer. How did you do this?’
‘Erm … somebody ‘patted’ me on the back,’ I said rather unconvincingly.
‘You should be thinking about circulating with a better class of friend Mr. Benjamin. I’ve made an appointment for an X-ray. Three pm if that’s convenient. Also, as this is your first time here you need to have an appointment for a medical. We don’t know what wretched diseases you might be bringing here to us. The receptionist will arrange one on the way out. You will also need to fill this sample bottle for your visitation. Try not to drink too much before you are filling it. You students are all the same … it takes us two hours to sieve through all the alcohol before we even find any urine. Even then all we usually find is gonorrhoea or syphilis or some such terror. Personally I don’t know how you people are finding the time for all of this copulation. When I was at medical college it took every hour that Allah sent just to do the course work, never mind chasing all of the girls around the place. Good day,’ he concluded, noisily clapping my file closed and pressing a button to summon the next patient. ‘Oh, and by the way,’ he called as I was closing the door behind me, ‘you appear to have something on your face, it looks like it might be food perhaps,’ he said, vaguely pointing to his own cheek.
Damn. I could have sworn I’d got it all off. I felt completely deflated. I’d never been so humiliated in my life. That was definitely one-nil to Doctor Singh. I left, being very careful not to infringe the flight path of ‘marsh woman’ who was presumably about to ask Doctor Singh about a cure for ugliness, angry that I never even managed to get a retort or two in. The Benjamin clockwork was definitely slipping. That’s cider for you.

 

 

Mama

‘Hello … ’ bang, ‘ … oh lord … ’ crash, ‘hang on, I’ll be back in a mo.’

Crunch.

Flap. Squaark
Flap.

‘Hello? Sorry about that, chickens in the kitchen.’
‘Buon giorno, Mama.’
‘Oh … Gianni?’ she shrieked, ‘my little Latin lover-boy. Where have you been? It’s been just too long. Let me see … it must have been … what … 1963. Am I right? How did you find me? I’ve been trying to … ’
‘Mom, it’s me … your son?’
‘Oh … hello … why were you speaking Italian?’
‘A friend’s been teaching me.’
‘Oh.’
‘Anyway … just thought I’d … hang on … weren’t you married to Dad in 1963?’
‘So pet, what have you been up to lately?’
‘Oh … nothing unusual … I just thought I’d … hang on … you haven’t got chickens have you?’
‘No. Those cursed neighbours still haven’t built a fence that can keep them in. Turn your back for a minute and they’re in the pantry pecking away at the bag of dog food.’
‘Oh I see, fair enough. Well I just thought I’d phone to tell you … hang on … you haven’t got a dog Mom, have you?’
‘Ah … well it was a bag I bought from Sainsbury by mistake. Thought it was charcoal briquettes you see. I can hardly ask for a refund now, what with it being full of little peck holes.’
‘Well why don’t you tell Mr. Pumfrey, in no uncertain terms, that the next time it happens you’ll eat one of the little bastards?’
‘Ooooh,’ she bawled, ‘you’re so rude. Anyway that would be a bit tricky because Mr. Pumfrey’s in gaol you see.’
‘In jail?’ I said in heartfelt surprise. ‘What did he do?’
‘Well, he was an accountant love.’
‘Yeesss, surely not quite grounds for penal correction though mother?’
‘Oh, I see, no he was, what do they say, boiling the books, don’t you know?’
‘Cooking. Yes. Component to the job I would have thought. Anyway, I just thought I’d call to let you know that I’ve broken my collarbone, and I’m all strapped up, so I won’t be over tomorrow for Aunt Catamenia’s dreaded monthly visit.’
‘Oh,’ she squalled, ‘my little baby, what did you do?’
‘I … er … got a kicking pulling some muggers off a vicar.’
‘Oh my little hero, you’re so brave, I always said you’d achieve greatness somehow. Will it be in the papers or on the news? I must phone my friend Mrs. Johnson to tell her. Her boy Martin’s a nothing and a wastrel just like I always … ’
‘No, really it’s no big deal Mom. As the constable said, it happens all the time.’
‘But surely you’ll receive some kind of commendation or award. I must organise a party to celebrate my son’s courage. I can’t wait to tell … ’
‘Really … Mom … I didn’t do much. Please don’t make a fuss.’
‘Well … I know the truth love. Does this mean you’re house bound? Will you still be able to go out and do your jigs? I know how much they mean to you.’
‘Gigs, no, I’ll just have to play keyboards one-handed. Anyway, if I play with my other hand it sounds like somebody else.’
I wasn’t sure if the ‘swish’ I heard was interference on the line or the sound of my sophisticated quip going over my mother’s head.
‘Well your Aunt will be disappointed not to see you, but under the circumstances I’m sure she’ll understand. Well now, what are you doing tonight?’
‘Oh, usual Friday night … me and the boys are going out for an evening of libation and gynaecology.’
‘Oh lovely, ooh … you’re so rude indeed,’ she yowled. ‘Don’t you get taking advantage of drunken girls now, it’s a terrible thing to do. I always knew you’d come to no good … oh lord … I’ve got to go, I think there are chickens in the pantry again.’
This fairly typical telephone communication with my mother was about as remarkable as this particular Friday afternoon at 199 Hurcott Road got. Roll on Friday night.

 

 

Our House

From a musicians, or general noise-mongers point of view, we had the pick of the properties in our locality. As our house number suggests, Hurcott Road is longer than a road with just 198 houses on it. In fact it got somewhere near the 300 mark, in a long, winding, tree-lined sort of suburban way. The lower your number, the nearer you were to town, and the greater your chance of being in a terrace. If you could make it past 120 or so you’d be the proud occupier of a spacious semi with a car-port, adequate drainage and a musical doorbell that played ‘Mozart’s 40th in G minor’ even though you’d programmed it to play ‘Greensleeves’. Around 200 onwards and you were beyond mere ‘leafy suburbia’. Your residence would be called The Gables, and be blessed with a double garage, a summerhouse in the garden and breathtaking landscapes of the Wyre Valley. You would have two expensive cars, one to go to work in and one for your wife to do expensive shopping in. Your children, Chloe and Henry, will excel in all areas academic, your favourite programme will feature the talents of either Jane Asher or David Attenborough, and you will have a red setter called ‘Timmy’.
We were on the cusp, semi-detached but greatly extended. The reason noise making wasn’t a problem was our immediate neighbours … octogenarians, stone-deaf octogenarians – one on each side. Dwelling at 197 was the wonderful Miss Venus, a spinster of our parish. Many was the morning we would see her hobbling out to her out-house, insisting that West Bromwich Albion were too good to be languishing at the bottom of the division, or raving about some new love drug, or generally letting us know how much she’d like to get her hands on Des Lynam’s wobbly bits. At 201 lived the social antonym of the kindly Miss Venus. Mr. Savic, an evil bastard. A crazed eastern European who had been in England easily long enough to be of fluid tongue, but purposely made no effort in the hope that it would be an affront to you, me, somebody, anybody. Despite the fact he didn’t drive, if we so much as parked an inch across his driveway he would call the police and come running out of his house shouting things like ‘eh focky bastas, moov yoo focky car’. One day he annoyed us so much that we bought fourteen pints of milk and left them on his doorstep. The sight of busybodies and emergency services bristling around his property went a long way to brightening up one particularly boring afternoon.
So it was not astonishing when Woody parked his shag-wagon directly across the drive of 201 that the barmy Ukranian was out like a shot to vent his spleen.
‘What the fock you doon wi tha? Yoo cant lee tha heer yoo litta sheet.’
‘Fuck off you gruff old git,’ retorted Woody, ‘I’m not stopping long.’
‘I get da focky o bill on you fa park across me drive. I’m ol man. I need get in an out yoo gray beeg enorma cont.’
‘But you haven’t even got a fucking car you obsolete spastic.’
‘Is focky princepul. Is no respec for ol peepa no more. I fight the wars to safe the lifes,’ clamoured Savic brandishing his arms dementedly.
‘Not fucking mine you didn’t,’ concluded Woody slamming our front door behind him.
‘Is everyone ready? Fuckin’ Geordie … you coming too?’ said Woody, realising the whole band was waiting for him.
‘W-w-w-well I thought I’d come along t-t-to see what all the t-t-t … ’
‘Totty was like?’ interrupted Nonsense.
‘T-t-t-t … ’
‘Tins of vegetable soup were for?’ tried Dave.
‘… what all the fuss was aboot,’ completed Geordie.
‘Well you’re in for … ’ Woody took a quick pause to cast Geordie a baffled gaze, ‘ … you’re in for a memorable evening. Got everything Dave?’
‘Yeah, it’s all here. I’ve even packed a telescopic white cane just in case.’
‘By the way guys,’ I stalled, ‘I wanted to wait until you were all here. I had a phone call earlier from Terry. The little tour of Europe is confirmed as of today. I’ll tell you all about it later.’
Great cheers, whoops and bellows. It was one of those proper moments when friends universally connect.
‘Will you be able to do it Geordie?’ asked Karen.
‘D-d-don’t neau. Maybe I can arrange to go on a seminar.’
‘Wagon roll then!’ enthused Woody.
‘Wagon roll!’ we all cried.

Dave and his telescopic white cane had seen some fun. He used to take it to concerts if he had poor seats. Equipped with a pair of dark glasses and his cane he could normally convince security that because of his distance from the P.A. system the proximity effect was inducing unnatural reproduction, and of course he comprehensively relied on his hearing to paint a faithful portrait of his environment. More often than not he would be chaperoned to the front of the auditorium. His choicest white cane related shenanigan was when returning to his parked car in town he would diligently feel the number plates of a couple of the cars parked near his, all the time playing the blind man role with great virtuosity. On identifying his own car by means of Braille, he would climb in and drive off erratically, leaving a throng of horrified bystanders. Although on one occasion a solicitous old gent actually helped him into his car and put his shopping in the boot, categorically missing the anomaly.

It was no surprise to us that Savic had clamped Woody’s van for the third time in a week. And it was unremarkable and without any kind of fuss that Woody removed a ferocious looking pair of metal cutters from his wagon and calmly snipped the lock from the contraption, hurling the ruined clamp onto Savic’s lawn, and liberating his four-wheeled pride and joy. It was worth all of the fifteen seconds we were delayed to see the old man running after us down the road shouting ‘focky bastas, focky bastas’, and his gaze of terror was exquisite when we all elected to show him our bottoms through the back window.

 

 

Man of the World

Meet Ted Prank, landlord of the Farmer’s Boy. Lancashire born, left home at sixteen to join the Navy, served twenty-two years rising to chief petty officer – been everywhere, done everything. If you need some advice, see Ted Prank. Although most of his advice forewarned you as to which countries it was or wasn’t safe to have sex in. ‘One thing al tell thee, if ya goin’ t’New York – don’t ‘ave a shag. Y’ll get dose of clap before y’ave got ya todger out,’ or ‘al give ye a bit of advice, if ya goin’ t’Nairobi – don’t ‘ave a shag. There ain’t a woman in Nairobi w’out AIDS’. Wise words Ted. During his years in the Navy Ted visited every country that most people could name. He claimed a tattoo for every land he’d stopped at. Most of his shore leave was taken up ‘operating’ in sordid circles. If it wasn’t gambling it was selling cherry boys (cher’- i boi (n) newly enlisted sailor with virginity intact [GK]) to the wealthy island women of Honolulu, or simply tasting the local talent in Indonesia. He was even part of a small gang of sailors that took it in turns to gratify rich businessmen whilst the rest of the clique turned over the poor buggers room for swag and goodies. It must have been true. You don’t blow your own horn about blowing someone else’s horn (if you see what I mean) in a Hong Kong penthouse if it’s not true. It’s just not the sort of thing you boast about.
The Farmer’s Boy was our kind of pub; just about nice enough to attract an honest, chaste sort of customer, but not quite nice enough to engage the pastel-shirted Friday night poseurs with their Italian shoes and shiny cars. Or was it shiny shoes and Italian cars? Besides, such folk wouldn’t have known how to cope with Ted Prank’s unique and brassy persuasion of customer care. Some found his loud frankness to be abrasive and downright offensive, but many returned time and time again, even voyaged many miles, to be the subject of Ted’s belittlement.
‘Still got that Yorksheer poof with ya then?’ were Ted’s welcoming words.
‘Hallo Ted,’ soughed Karen.
‘Aah. Why do you have to be so horrible to him Ted?’ I asked in mock sympathy.
‘It’s revenge for Wars ut Roses.’
‘That were more than five hundred year ago. Come on, forgive and forget,’ pleaded Karen.
‘Alright then lad,’ acknowledged Ted in calmer tones, ‘revenge for winning more bastard county championships than us ya Yorksheer puddin’,’ concluded Ted guffawing.
‘Hey Ted,’ I interrupted, ‘we’re going on tour in Europe in a few weeks, starting in Norway. What do you think of that?’
‘There’s one gem of counsel I can gi thee about Norway an that’s don’t ‘ave a shag.’
‘Why’s that? AIDS? Clap? Gonorrhoea?’
‘No, cus they’re frigid – every last six foot blonde bitch o’ them. Frigid or lesbian anyhow.’
‘We’ll see about that Ted,’ said Nonsense rising to the challenge.
‘Y’ve got about as much chance of plaiting fog man.’
At this Woody let out a slight chuckle and smiled with confidence.
‘Oh ay, you’ll probably be alright. Av seen you operate, randy little fanny rat.’
‘This may be so,’ declared Woody, ‘but tonight my objective is to court the most grisly harlot you have ever seen in your life. ‘Interesting looking’ girls need not apply. I’m talking about girls, if I can call them that, who have fallen out of the ugly tree and hit every single branch on the way down, and then had the misfortune to fall through the flight path of a Boeing 747 before landing on a sun-baked cattle grid. To wit, pug.’
‘Oh, ya not playin’ that game again are thee? Tra not to spill veg soup all over mi floower then. There’s still bits o’ carrot down in’t quarry tiles from last time.’
‘Ah … yes … ’ I recalled, ‘ … that was when Dave made me laugh. Sorry Ted. Besides, we’ve agreed not to bring them back here again. Bit like shitting on your own doorstep really. Anyway, unless I’m very much mistaken Ted, that’ll be six pints of lager please.’

It’s my theory that the further you progress through your twenties, the less of a lad you become. It sounds obvious, I know. But on a very rudimentary level your cravings and predilections are perpetually mutating. Your needs are organic. Whilst selfishness is prerequisite in the male species, at 20 or so it reaches its zenith. The desires of boy and girl cannot be further apart than they are at this stage. For example, when your girlfriend wants to spend time with you, you want to play football. When you want to spend time with her she has a headache as a direct response to you wanting to play football the last time she wanted to spend time with you. Girls want to kiss and cuddle after sex. You want to roll over and snore. Back then I certainly got more of a thrill out of scoring a goal than having sex. It meant more, and the memory lasted longer. And the irony is that after scoring a goal the first thing you do is kiss and embrace your team mates, then take them out for a drink and tell them all how wonderful they all were. So to substantiate this premise, here I was scouring the town for a girl that genuinely repulsed me, just so I could take her back to show my friends. These were strange days.

 

 

Searchin’

I tried all of the usual venues to either find them empty, full of gorgeous Friday night women (not an easy room to walk out of) or being sifted by one of my rivals in play. After nearly an hour of fruitless prospecting I eventually happened upon a dark, back street establishment called Barston’s Carpets Social Club. I was toying with my options when two young bingers bounced out.
‘What’s it like in there mate?’ I inquired.
‘Shit mate. Full of boilers.’
‘Is it really?’ I replied with far too much interest, and off I went to become the freshest member of Barston’s Carpets Social Club. As it was there was no trace of the customary 80-year-old power-crazed egomaniac patrolling the visitor’s book and collecting the 20 pence admissions, so in I waltzed.
It wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be from the reaction of the striplings that I spoke to outside, and from a positive slant it only took five minutes of banter with the brandy-faced gent behind the bar before I earned Special Clinic a gig. So enticed was I in my carefully crafted sales spiel that I didn’t, at first, notice the appalling rake that was standing next to me at the bar. She looked like somebody had hammered a spotty melon onto a fencepost.
‘Am yow in a band?’ she eavesdropped enthusiastically.
‘Erm … yes, yes I am,’ I told her with a very friendly glint in my eye.
‘My name’s Rusty,’ which she then proved by pulling down her bottom lip and revealing a cheap tattoo of her name inside her mouth. ‘D’yoo wanna snog? I love bands me.’
‘My god … you are … wonderful,’ I exclaimed a little too convincingly.
‘Reelay?’ she screeched in her blackboard scraping Black Country accent.
‘Well … of course you are. Has nobody ever told you?’
‘Am yow fuckin’ tryin’ it on with moy?’ she squealed supersonically.
‘Well … you know … I just might be,’ I said in my best Roger Moore.
‘Where m’ya gonna tek us then?’
‘Where do you want to go?’
‘Anywhere, let’s just get out of ere – it’s shit,’ she said grabbing my arm. ‘See ya Dad.’
‘Ar. See ya bab,’ replied the man behind the bar. I supposed that that was the end of the gig then.
Thankfully I only had to spend about twenty minutes alone with the repulsive Rusty. So as she imparted her theories on sex in nightclub toilets versus sex in parked vehicles, we slowly made our way to our pub of destiny, ‘The Condemned Man’. I wondered at this point whether she’d ever had sex without dropping her chips – probably not.

 

 

Nice Legs Shame about her Face

‘All right Dave?’ I said coolly strutting into the Condemned Man with my catch.
‘All right, long time no see,’ replied Dave, giving Rusty the once-over.
‘Who’s the super model?’ I asked of the girl who could have been Rusty’s sister.
‘Are you takin’ the piss?’ questioned Dave in a very convincing serious.
‘No. Far from it. There’s more than a passing resemblance to Linda Lusardi. And from some angles it’s quite uncanny.’
This was all part of my clever strategy. As it stood, Dave and I were in for a dead heat, so if I could make her feel good, there was a good chance that she would look more attractive in other people’s eyes. It’s simple psychology.
‘Well there’s lovely of ewe to say so. Thank you.’
Oh God she was Welsh. I stood no chance. Dave smiled reassuringly, knowing that our little battle was over. There was no point in me continuing. It was best to retire gracefully and enjoy the rest of the competition.
‘Erm … Rusty, terrible news I’m afraid. There’s just been a phone call. Your Dad’s club is on fire. Really badly,’ I stressed as her face washed over in horror. ‘It doesn’t look good.’
‘Oh shit … I gorra go … ’ she screamed in near hysteria.
‘Flames twenty foot high!’ I shouted as she bolted through the door at Mach 2.
‘Some girls,’ I said shaking my head.
‘Some girls,’ agreed Dave.
‘Well I might ‘ave ad three vodka and oranges but I didn’t hear a phone. Did ewe hear a phone David?’
‘Now don’t you worry your little head Nerys. Hey look, it’s Woody, Geordie and Karen. And they all seem to have the most beautiful dates.’
‘Bootiful ewe say? They all look ugly as sin to me,’ said Nerys.
Nerys wasn’t far off. Geordie was escorting a greasy little thing that certainly didn’t look old enough to be in a pub. Woody still hadn’t got the hang of the rules. He was with a girl who was ugly only by his standards. She would easily have procured a second glance from the rest of us. And Karen was with a girl that looked like a boy. I pondered for a short moment that if she was a boy she was probably not a bad looking boy, but as a girl, well it wasn’t good. I wasn’t sure what the rules would say about this.
Dave had a good look and nodded quietly to himself knowing that he was still in control of the game.
‘All right guys. Fancy seeing you here,’ I said.
‘Yeah … fancy,’ said Woody, ‘couldn’t you find someone to go out with?’
‘Yes but unfortunately she had to leave. Ah well.’
‘W-w-well everybody … this is J-J-Jenny,’ said Geordie introducing the oily little fry.
‘Hello J-J-Jenny,’ we all cried.
‘J-J-Jenny, you’ve already met Woody and Karen and their friends. Euver here this is Dave. And who’s the lovely young lady with you tonight David?’
‘Everybody … I’d like you to meet Nerys,’ said Dave presenting her with pride.
There befell a deadly silence. It was as if ‘Bad-arse McGreary’ had just swung the saloon doors open. The atmosphere was frigid and the air paused as Woody, Geordie and Karen stared at Nerys. You knew what they were thinking. It was obvious what they were thinking and it was only a matter of time before one of them broke the silence to say …
‘Aeerm … ’ coughed Karen, ‘are you Welsh Nerys?’
‘Well ewe just know I have to be with a name like Nerys isn’t it?’
‘Bollocks!’ said Woody slapping his forehead.
‘Th-th-that’s the end of that then,’ added Geordie.
‘I suppose it’s all down to Nonsense now,’ concluded Karen.
‘Mr. Gosforth,’ piped up Geordie’s little squib, ‘please can I go to the toilet?’
‘P-please don’t call me that Jenny,’ said Geordie in a loud whisper, ‘anyway you can go home now if you like. That’s it. I don’t need you now.’
‘But will you still give me full marks in the test on Monday?’
‘Ha ha … a’ve not a clue what you’re talking aboot, go on, on your way strange little girl,’ he shouted bundling her out of the door. ‘Ah … some girls,’ he said in a fake laugh as he rejoined the group red faced and fidgety.
‘You bastard. You devious little bastard,’ said Dave really meaning it. ‘There must be something in the rules about that. Not only is she a minor, but we’ve also got pretty strong evidence of blackmail and bribery. In fact it’s probably a federal offence.’
‘Neau, really, a’ve never set eyes on her before.’
‘Would somebody please have the decency to tell me what this is all about?’ inquired the boy with Karen, ‘I can’t help thinking there’s something very sinister going on.’
‘Weeeelll … I’m sure you’re just imagining it my dear,’ patronised Karen.
‘Well, what it is love … ’ interrupted Woody, ‘we’re having a bit of a contest to see who can pull the ugliest bird. And it’s quite obvious that as things stand, Davey boy here is the clear winner.’ The not-completely unattractive girl with Woody was slowly realising what was being said.
‘What? You rotten twat,’ she said with knives in her eyes. ‘So you think I’m ugly do you?’ she asked as she prodded him in the chest. ‘You brought me here to this shit-hole because you think I’m ugly?’
‘Calm down love,’ laughed Woody, ‘it’s only a game.’
‘Don’t you call me love,’ she flared as she started to hit him around the arms and shoulders. ‘Don’t you dare call me love after calling me ugly.’
‘Well I think you’re very attractive,’ I said with my finger in the air.
‘Now I didn’t actually say you were ugly. Now that’s ugly,’ added Woody nodding in the general direction of Nerys. ‘But I never said you were … ow … stop hitting me … I never said … ow … well you’re no fucking oil painting are you? No … don’t hit me in the fa … !’
It was too late. She was out of the pub before Woody could refocus his eyesight.
‘Fucking bitch. She’s made my nose bleed. You can’t really say I deserved that now can you? God, some girls.’
‘Some girls,’ agreed Dave, clearly enjoying himself.
‘Erm … did you get her number?’ I asked pessimistically.
‘So that’s what it’s all about,’ said the boy with enormous disappointment.
‘No it’s really not … ’ tried Karen
‘And I thought you were different.’
‘I am … I am different, honest.’
‘I thought you were special.’
‘Yes … I am special, special … yes.’
‘But you’re just the same as the rest.’
‘No, no I’m not … I’m … oh what’s the point. Fuck off you … fuckin’ bloke.’ She did so, quickly and with tears. ‘No fuckin’ sense of humour some people.’
‘Karen,’ I said clasping his hand firmly, ‘I’m very proud of you. You are now adult. That was your moment of passage from skinny child to skinny man. You are no longer the nurtured but the hunter. The world is at your feet my son. Go, make a tribe, gather wood, build a fire, kill an animal and do manly things.’
‘Thanks. I get your point,’ he said, looking a trifle ashamed.
‘Nerys, I can’t help thinking you’re taking this too well,’ said Woody.
‘Well it doesn’t apply to me does it? I mean I can’t believe Dave would do something like that after all the bootiful things he’s said to me tonight. You wouldn’t would you David?’
‘Of course not blossom. I’m not like that.’
‘Ewe see, I told ewe.’
I shook my head and grinned at Dave in recognition of his unrelenting commitment to the game.
Just as I was about to say ‘Nonsense is terribly late, I wonder if he’s been arrested or something’, in he bounced with a grin like the front of a Volkswagon Beetle.
‘Evening gay boys,’ he called as he propped the double bar doors open with stools.
‘Gentlemen, I would like you to meet Bertha.’
As Nonsense scanned our expressions for an indication of reaction, in came Bertha. Oh my God. She was gross, possibly the ultimate contestant for date-a-dog. She covered most criteria. She was fat and ripply. She had a big nose. She had goofy teeth. She had a limp and a gammy hand. She had glasses like Olive used to wear in ‘On the Buses’. She had greasy hair. She stunk, and the piece de resistance … an enormous wart, smack in the middle of her chin. These were unprecedented scenes.
‘Bastard … ’ raged Dave, ‘he’s done it again. I can’t believe it. Where does he get them from?’
The rest of us applauded Nonsense’s great skill, gathering various bemused looks from the rest of the drinkers. Woody’s pummelling had gone virtually unnoticed, but Bertha’s arrival was registered by all and greeted with motley comments like ‘look at the state of that’ and ‘that’ll keep the flies off the beer’ and ‘fuckin’ ‘ell, ‘ave you dropped your guts Roger?’
‘Wait a minute, wait a minute,’ said Dave, ‘I want a weight check.’
‘Twenty-three stone on the nose, first thing I made sure of mate.’
‘Bastard. Total bastard,’ was Dave’s calculated answer.
‘Champion again!’ shouted Nonsense from the doorway with his fists aloft. ‘Nobody can pull an ugly bird like me. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again … I am the boiler-king, master of the mutt and vanquisher of dodgy looking birds. It never fails. Hand over the money you miserable losers.’
I don’t know if it was the spontaneous applause on her entry, or Nonsense’s Oscar-winning victory speech, or perhaps a combination of the two. Whatever it was, Bertha didn’t make it over the threshold. Instead she turned her red face away and left with urine quite visibly dripping from the ankle of her over-burdened leggings.
‘Well thanks awfully for your company,’ said Dave turning to Nerys, ‘but it really is time we went our separate ways.’
‘Don’t be daft David. I’m just starting to enjoy myself.’
‘No really … it is. It was just part of the game.’
‘I know ewer just saying that. Oh ewe are sweet.’
‘No I mean it Nerys, I want you to go.’
‘Not on ewer life, when ewe find someone as special as ewe, ewe hold on to them.’
‘Oh joy,’ said Dave.
‘There you go Dave,’ I said with a supporting arm, ‘you always wanted a stalker.’
‘Plan B,’ said Dave.
‘Right you are skipper,’ said I.

‘Plan B’ involved me going to the toilet, opening the can of vegetable soup (although thanks to having the use of only one arm I needed Woody’s help for this) and taking a very large mouthful. To make this move work convincingly, it was important for me to return to the group, say nothing for a while (very difficult to speak with a mouthful of soup), and try to look a little ill.
‘Ewer not looking too well,’ noticed Nerys, ‘ave ewe ‘ad a bad pint or something?’
I frowned and held my stomach, then placed a precautionary hand over my mouth.
‘Oh shit, he’s going to be sick!’ said Dave grabbing an empty pint pot. After a few very convincing retches I pulled the glass to my face and proceeded to deposit my mouthful of Campbell’s cream of vegetable soup therein.
‘Sorry,’ I said wiping the saliva from my chin.
‘Certainly not the least attractive thing we’ve seen tonight,’ barbed Woody quietly.
‘It’s all right mate,’ said Dave still holding the pot, ‘in fact it … looks quite appetising. Do you mind if I … ’
Of course before he could finish the question and before I could answer, he necked the entire contents of the glass, belched and commented how much he had enjoyed it. The rest of the guys had seen this trick performed a dozen times, but still looked on in genuine disgust. I smiled, grateful that I was the one who got to spit it out on this occasion.
‘Oh David ewer so comical,’ said Nerys, ‘I aven’t ‘ad this much fun in ages.’
‘Now listen,’ said Dave wiping a piece of carrot from his chin, ‘you repugnant Welsh slut, I didn’t mean a word I said earlier. I said it all to lure you here in the vane hope that I might actually win this stupid game for once. I don’t think you’re beautiful or special, I think you’re an unfortunate looking Taffy trollop with about as much charisma as an accountant. And I’m not going to take you to dinner tomorrow, another ruse I’m afraid, no you can stay at home with your face in a bowl of Winalot for all I care.’
After a long silence Nerys took Dave’s hands and clutched them to her chest and looked up at him with the most loving of expressions, a vulnerable look that almost made her attractive.
‘I know what this is about David,’ she said, ‘I know ewer doing this for ewer friends, I know ewer doing this to look big in front of everyone. But I also know how ewe really feel. So I’ll be on my way now and leave ewe with all of ewer friends and ewe give me a call sometime when we can be alone.’
After tiptoeing to give Dave a kiss she left.
‘Fuckin’ ‘ell Dave,’ said Nonsense, ‘I think she likes you.’
‘Worst luck. Trust me to get the fatal attraction. I never get the good-looking fatal attraction. Oh no, the bloody spotty Welsh ones for me. I mean, if they’re gonna boil your bunny, at least let them be pretty. Dangers of the game I suppose. Anyway Nonsense, I may be wrong but is that the first time you haven’t taken your date back home and given her a good seeing to?’
‘Oh please, give me some credit,’ he said. ‘She gave me a hand job in the alley,’ he added quietly.
‘Romance truly lives on,’ I remarked. ‘Anyway chaps, I think a celebration is in order. Europe here we come!’
‘Europe!’ they chanted.
‘Wagon roll!’ shouted Dave.
‘Wagon roll a long way!’ I added.

 

 

Terry

The Norwegian part of the European jaunt came about through an old friend who’d travelled north a couple of years before, to make a mountain of cash from building quaint but practical wooden houses. That’s all they do up there – build wooden houses. However, he’d not been there long when he realised how starved they were of quality entertainment, particularly music. So he started to ferry bands across the North Sea for stints in the region of Romsdal, and the vibrant, contoured areas that surround it. The venues loved it, it made a nice change for the bands, and he had a pocket full of wedge for keeping everybody happy. I first knew Terry Mott when we played in the same Sunday morning football team. Before his knees decided they’d had enough, he’d actually broken a handful of county records; ‘the most sendings off in one season’ and ‘the most sendings off for a goalkeeper ever’. In one game he’d managed to break three different noses. Only two of them belonged to the opposing team. During another game he actually pushed the red card down the referee’s neck until he’d swallowed it, then voluntarily took an early bath. He’d even been booked for farting violently during the one-minute silence on remembrance Sunday one year. His biggest downfall was his mouth. He couldn’t control it. He was worse than me. If he thought something he would say it, and sometimes even before he had thought it. He’d tried to blame his utterances on Tourette's syndrome. It worked rarely. One referee summed it up when he said ‘people with Tourette's syndrome don’t say things like ‘you wouldn’t fackin’ know offside if it shagged you up the arse you grey haired little kant’’. That’s Londoners for you.

‘Where the fack ‘ave you been? I’ve been tryin’ to get you on the dog and bone all fackin’ morning.’
‘Sorry Terry. We had a bit of a heavy night last night … again.’
‘You’re avin’ a Steffi Graf aren’t ya? Anyway, you lot wanna lay off the Tom Cruise a bit you do, fack your Martin Chivers up. Just look at Oliver Reed.’
‘Oliver Reed? What’s that?’ I asked, trying to decipher his lingo.
‘Oliver Reed? The actor you kant. Do you want me to call you back when you’re not quite so little bo peep?’
‘No, it’s alright Terry, carry on.’
‘Right, well I’ve been trying to sort the Wilson Pickets for the Chuck Berry from Newcastle to Bergen. This geezer, I think he’s a bubble, says to me on the dog that they aven’t got naan left. So I says ‘hold on a minute bloke, you ‘ad ‘em two days ago when I spoke to ya, so do not cam the kant wiv me on a fursday’. So ‘ee goes ‘if I ain’t got the tickets I ain’t got ‘em’. So the Shelley Long and Martin Short is you’ll ‘ave to drive raand the corner instead.’
‘Round the corner? What do you mean?’
‘Well, you’ll have to go to Harwich, jump in the boat, get a Brian to the ‘ook of ‘olland, threw Krautland, another Tom and Jerry up to Denmark, up threw Burt Weedon, then ‘alf way up Norway.’
‘So that’s round the corner is it Terry?’ I sighed.
‘It’s a lavely Derek ‘n’ Clive. Once ya get out of Boschville anyway. Naffin’ but mountains and Francis Drakes.’
‘How long will it take though? And it’s going to cost a fortune in petrol,’ I moaned.
‘Don’t warry, I’ll send you some extra Bugs Bunny to cover the Pete Duel, and if you rotate drivers and don’t stop, you’ll do it in thirty hours from ‘olland.’
‘Thirty hours? Burlington Bertie fackin’ Tyrone Powers?’ I barked.
‘Pardon? Anyway stop yer worryin’ saan. You’ll have a bleedin’ marvellous ‘arry Lime. It’s the most clement John Selwyn Gummer they’ve ‘ad ‘ere for eighty Colin Mears.’
‘Who’s Colin Mears?’
‘A mate of mine.’
Terry didn't speak English. He spoke broad Mottish.
But that was it. We were off. An agent friend of Terry’s had sorted out the rest of the tour (on Terry’s word!!!), which would take us to Germany, Holland, and Spain. This was it … we were finally getting there. Surely this would be the first of many milestones in our now, inevitably, glorious career in popular music.

 

 

Whatever gets you through the Night

‘Bastard!’ cursed Nonsense leaving the bathroom bent in two.
‘There's always something wrong with you,’ I observed, ‘what is it now?’
‘My poor bloody ring. That kebab two nights ago must have been bad. I've been up and down all bloody night again. My bum-hole's like a blood orange and I can barely walk.’ To be fair, it was quite obvious that Nonsense was suffering severe discomfort at the very least.
‘Are you sure you didn't catch something from the beautiful Big Bertha?’
‘What from a hand-job?’
‘Are you telling me you didn't go down for gravy?’ I queried, ‘you always go down for gravy.’
‘No,’ insisted Nonsense, ‘I did have a look but her muff was so hairy it had its own climate, so I thought better of it.’
There was a lengthy pause, as is fitting when somebody delivers 22 words arranged so effectively.
‘Fanny like a busted sofa,’ he quietly continued.
‘You really are a terrible human being aren't you?’ I remarked with deliberation. ‘You’ve got about as much compassion as a solicitor’s letter.’
‘What?’ replied Nonsense indignantly, heading with pace for the bathroom door.
So we had twenty-two days to organise our Busman's holiday. In twenty-two days time we would have been out 22 times (six times to actually gig), drunk 921 pints of lager (and 35 pints of orange juice and lemonade – but no cider), smoked 1895 cigarettes (63 illegal), consumed 98 kebabs and 36 Pot Noodles, been banned from 3 pubs, broken 11 guitar strings, bought 11 guitar strings, had explicit contact with 23 women (mostly Woody), given a false name and address to 23 women (ditto), told Savic to ‘fuck off’ 27 times, told Karen to ‘shut up’ 29 times, and been close to arrest 5 times for playing immature games on the way home.
In the first 3 of those days, however, Nonsense ate nothing, drank nothing (excepting medicinal), smoked nothing, shagged nothing, and, most notably, had visited the toilet 51 times. By the third night of this he was truly fed up with the over regular visits and subsequent sleep deprivation. What happened then may haunt me forever.
‘What in the name of my cousin Jeremy are you doing?’ asked Dave, noticing Nonsense maniacally bastardising a heavy-duty bin bag with a pair of scissors. Who cousin Jeremy was, was of no consequence.
‘Precautions mate, precautions.’ Nonsense then removed his clothing. This was not perhaps the shock it could have been. By now we were quite used to it. You just learn to turn away. Just that morning I was in mid-shave, and enjoying the sun screaming through the frosted window, birds twittering outside, and in marched Nonsense, pulled down his trousers and underwear, sat on the throne and proceeded to evacuate his colon with great haste and verbal accompaniment. However, we'd never before witnessed him climbing into a crudely tailored bin liner.
‘What the … ’ we all gaped. He then picked up two full rolls of gaffer tape, one black the other silver. He weighed them up for a while before rejecting the silver in favour of the roll that matched his bin bag. Dave, Karen and I exchanged an expressionless look. Our odd housemate then wrapped the tape around his mid-rift half a dozen times until the top of the plastic was secure and airtight. He repeated, with silent industry, the same procedure around the top of each thigh until he looked like a reveller at a fetishist’s ball. The job completed, Nonsense rapped a hearty drum roll to his plastic coated thighs and declared ‘that should do it!’ and rustled off to bed. Dave, Karen and I shared another flat glance, then, sat soundless for a full thirty minutes before filing off to our respective bedrooms. It made for an interesting night’s sleep. Dreams of excitement and anticipation about glamorous foreign climes, interspersed with chilling, thigh-sweating awakenings concerning the mental health state of one of my housemates. The next morning saw the three of us in much the same mood and position that the previous ‘goodnight’ had left us, still flat-faced and with nothing to say.
‘Morning gay boys,’ announced Nonsense brightly. We all grunted. ‘What a brilliant nights sleep. I feel great,’ he continued.
I couldn't help noticing that Nonsense was walking very determinedly, his unusual pants seeming rather rounder and fuller than they had the night before, preventing him from ideal mobility … kind of bulging.
‘By the way, does anyone need a bath?’ said Nonsense. We all shook our heads. ‘Yeah, I haven't slept so well in weeks. Anybody seen the scissors? Oh, here they are, right where I left them. Stupid. Yeah, so much better when you don't have to go to the scutter every five minutes. Feel like a new man. Quite sure no one needs the bath?’ he said stepping into the bathroom with his scissors. It was just dawning on our collective faces what was about to happen, when it happened. Snip, gush, splatter. It sounded like five pounds of runny shit being dropped into a bath from three feet up. Sounded like that because it was that.
We actually beat Nonsense up later that day. Not too badly, after all, we did have a tour coming up that could perhaps make us. No, we kept clear of his face and fingers, concentrating, quite selflessly I think, on stern kicks to the abdomen and legs, and the occasional elbow to the stomach. We also made him spend £23 on bleach and various ‘industrial’ cleaning products, and 3 hours utilising every last drop of the stuff on every square inch of the bath and surrounding areas. It was tempting to draw a cross on the door, scribed from the blood of Nonsense.

So the three weeks passed, far slower than any of us wished for. When you have something to look forward to, time seems to travel so slowly. All of those things that you choose to do with your life, every day activities that normally keep you ticking, take on a mundane irrelevance, and become almost unjustifiable. In the same way that the period of time between handing in your notice and fulfilling your obligations in the workplace is completely fruitless, soul destroying and pointless, so our eternal wait to be unleashed on an adventure of a lifetime was like a long weekend in North Wales … unbearable. Also, it became fairly clear quite quickly that Geordie wouldn’t be able to make the entire trip and, if anything, would have to meet us in Holland on the way back down. But, like a council processing an application for something ever so basic, within three weeks we’d polished the finer points of our tour arrangements.

 

 

Get Ready

‘Who’s got the checklist?’ asked Dave.
‘Check,’ I replied with pride.
All of our kit, gear and provisions were laid out neatly on the lounge floor. Like a band of mercenaries preparing for a deadly mission over the border into Sierra Leone, we had all the essentials in order for travel, survival and rock ‘n’ roll.
‘Okay chaps,’ I said with command, ‘first of all, personal things. Current U.K. passport?’
‘Aye,’ chanted the men.
‘Insurance papers?’
‘Aye.’
‘Which one’s that?’ queried Nonsense.
‘Green one,’ said Woody.
‘Aye,’ assured Nonsense.
‘Okay … two types of clothing, erm … casual?’
‘Aye.’
‘And at least two sets for on stage?’
‘Aye.’
‘Good. Communal items … modest first aid kit?’
‘Check,’ said Dave.
‘Five cases of Carlsberg, in the larger can?’
‘Err … check,’ said Woody realising that that was his seat.
‘Compass, flares and a selection of European road maps?’
‘Check.’
‘Bumper sixty-four pack of ribbed condoms?’
‘Sixty-four?’ questioned Woody. ‘Be sensible for God’s sake.’
‘Oh … well … Ok … ’ I pondered, ‘ … don’t worry, we’ll pick up some more in the duty free.’
And so it went, through an eternity of items essential or otherwise, including sun tan lotion, paper bags, set lists, tape player, two dozen Pot noodles, list of emergency phone numbers, Polaroid Land camera for the overseas version of ‘How big’s my dump?’, a handful of phrase books, a football, and much, much more.
‘Gentlemen … ’ I demanded, ‘we have a long few weeks ahead and an early start tomorrow so please … get a good nights sleep.’
We dispersed in an orderly military manner, all retiring and thinking about the job in hand. Then Dave told me that the party was in his room. The word quickly spread to Nonsense, Karen and Woody. This is where planning and discipline went out of the window. We always had a strange idea about organising things, substantiated by the fact that we were about to drive through four other nations in order to get to a country that we share a modest sea border with. By dawn Woody was the only one just about straight enough to take the first shift behind the wheel on our great journey, but on a positive note, there were now only two cases of Carlsberg to load into the van. Now that’s what I call good planning.

 

 

Saddle up (and ride your Poney)

‘Ok men, this is how it works … ’ I said as I wedged the last few items into what would be their homes for the next 36 hours at least. All the equipment and baggage was rammed into the back half of the van, ceiling high and sky-bound. Behind the front seats I had fashioned a kind of bench from loud speakers and bedding, and I have to say it was comfy. For three people it would have been comfortable, but for two luxury.
‘Ok, we’ll drive in five hour stints. This end of the comfy sofa, next to the beer, is for the retiring driver. So you finish your shift and go straight to the nicest end of the sofa and start drinking beer if you so wish. Change of next driver you move along the sofa, change after that you go into the front seat by the window and so on. By my reckoning you can drink as much as you want while you’re in the back. As long as you stop when you get to the front you should be sober enough to drive when it’s your turn. Of course none of this applies to Nonsense who is a useless cunt because he can’t drive. Your punishment is to dwell in the front centre seat where you will look after the maps and oversee navigation.’
‘What?’ protested Nonsense, ‘that blows dogs. That’s so unfair I could get angry.’
‘Tough,’ I retorted.
‘Listen, I made a moral decision some time ago never to drive so that I could feel that I was doing my bit for pollution and the hole in the ozone layer. I feel that I’m being punished for trying to save the world. What’s more, I sense that no matter what I say, this mindless, bureaucratic little plan is going to stand.’
This was greeted by a barrage of things like ‘correct’, and ‘that’s right’, and ‘you got it dickhead’.
‘But that won’t stop me driving abroad will it?’
‘Why’s that?’ I pressed.
‘Well, it’s here in England that I haven’t got a driving licence.’
‘Oh sorry Nonsense, have you got a licence in Holland?’
‘No.’
‘Denmark?’
‘No.’
‘Sweden?’
‘Err … ’ he paused for serious thought, ‘ … no.’
‘And am I correct in assuming that no highway agencies in Norway, Germany, France or Spain or anywhere else have ever had the honour of having to process an application from you requesting the permission to use any class of vehicle on their roads or great Autobahn’s?’
‘Not really,’ he conceded in easy submission.
‘Very good,’ I concluded. ‘Well men, our ferry leaves Harwich in about seven hours, so I suggest we begin our expedition, and commence our thrilling passage into the unknown. Wagon roll!’
‘Wagon roll!’ they all cried with frank anticipation.

 

 

Movin’ Out

Harwich is only about two hundred miles from Worcestershire, but it’s cross-country. It’s literally across the country. People who wish to travel from the west of middle England to anywhere in the region of Suffolk or Essex, are not deemed important enough to enjoy the benefits of roads with multiple lanes. Whoever it is that makes the decisions about where motorways are built, and in which direction they run, have always been of the opinion that if you choose to live in the West Midlands and wish to travel to anywhere between the Wash and the Thames estuary, then really you deserve everything you get. You should move to a big city, and should it be necessary to travel by car anywhere, make sure you only have to travel to another big city. This said, it doesn’t have to be an unpleasant journey to Harwich, and it wasn’t on this particular Friday morning. The way was largely green and tree-lined, contact with populated areas kept to a minimum, and we were grateful for the relatively light traffic that accompanied us. However, the thing that really made this first stretch of the trip for me was that it was the most beautiful morning imaginable. It’s fair to say that none of us ever really saw this time of the day much unless we were on our way to bed in a bleary eyed state. Don’t get me wrong, this has always been the finest part of the day in my opinion, but I never seem to be able to fit it into my lifestyle. The word that sums it all up for me is fresh. Everything is fresh - the wonderful green fields touching the horizon, the trees and bushes that recoiled gently as we sped past them. It was as though the plant life had been born earlier that morning, and the watery blue sky, painted just an hour before, especially to frame our day. And it’s envious to be up breathing the brand new air, long before anybody else can breathe it in. So we were off on an exciting adventure to strange new lands that promised all sorts of delights, but could any of them truly match this wonderful land of ours for sheer beauty? I suspected not, and for a moment in my daydream I wondered whether I would miss England.
The temperature did swell as the journey lengthened, but so long as we were moving, and the crisp summer air was gently ventilating the van, it was all right.

 

 

Silly Games

‘Tell me, how does he piss?’ pushed Dave.
‘What do you mean?’ replied Karen suspiciously.
‘Well, I’ve noticed that he has no convenient way to urinate. Don’t get me wrong, I think Spiderman’s cool. Cool as anything. But, and I’d like to add that I think Superman has a similar problem here, he can’t go pee-pee. It would take half an hour to get your body suit off, and then you blow the whole anonymity thing. It’s not very practical for a super hero you know.’
We were playing a travel game. We were each choosing a super power in the slim hope that the five of us would be first in the queue when special super powers were handed out one day.
‘Well I don’t think Spiderman is so cool to be honest,’ I piped up. ‘I mean, it’s all very well having web shooting powers in a place like New York City where there’s loads of tall buildings and bridges. Imagine trying to do that in a small town like Droitwich, or worst still Eckington village. You’d look a right knob. You’d probably get beaten up.’
‘Spiderman can’t get beaten up, except perhaps by another Super power like the Green Goblin.’
‘Hang on Karen … ’ said Nonsense, ‘if you’re having the web you can’t have the strength, the Spidy sense or anything else. It’s only one super power.’
‘Oh … ’ said Karen disappointedly, ‘ … well, maybe I’ll leave Spiderman then. I suppose I could have Superman’s power of flight.’
‘Still, that’s all very well flying around, showing off and impressing girls,’ I said, ‘but when you land you can still have the crap kicked out of you by a bunch of Pikeys.’
‘Ok smart arse … what’s yours then?’ asked Dave, ‘Wit? Larger vocabulary? Talent?’
‘Invisibility!’ I declared proudly.
My choice procured a chorus of thoughtful ah’s and mmm’s.
‘That could be fun,’ chirped up Woody.
‘I’ll say,’ I enthused. ‘Just think, you’d be able to see anybody you wanted … naked. You’d be able to slip into banks unnoticed then rearrange the World’s finances in your favour. You could do anything. Knock policeman’s hats off without getting nicked, kick Savic up the arse whenever you felt like it, or just make things float around in order to totally screw around with people’s mind. The best thing you’d be able to do though is to just walk up to girls and grab their tits!’
‘But … you do that anyway,’ said Dave.
‘True … but … this way I don’t get slapped.’
‘Maybe I could have x-ray vision,’ groped Karen.
‘Am I allowed the power of time travel?’ asked Nonsense.
‘Wow, yeah,’ mused Karen, ‘just think of all the things you could see, the Crucifixion, who shot Kennedy, the day Lennon met McCartney. So what would you use your powers of time travel for Nonsense?’
‘To find out which of you cunts put his cigarette out in my beer can.’
And so it continued. We pondered and discussed the merits and virtues of every super power imaginable. This persisted until Woody declared that he wished for the super power that could ‘shut us the fuck up’.

It was a shame that we completed the first leg of our journey so smoothly and effortlessly, and in a comfortable four and a half hours. It was a great pity that we rolled onto the ferry terminal in Harwich with an arrogant aura, born of our good planning and seasoned worldliness. It was nothing short of a crime to discover that instead of a two and a half hour wait for our boat to float, we actually had a nine and a half hour wait. No matter how much I protested that the woman on the phone had said twelve o’clock noon, there was no way on Earth I could deny that it actually said seven o’clock pm on the tickets. It was a real schoolboy error, but not once did it occur to me that I should scrutinise every millimetre of the tickets. The plastic novelty pig’s ears were passed to me to wear, for being the biggest twat of the first day. The only good news about this being that, I would get to appoint the holder of the ears the next day. Still, sometimes it’s nice to have time to kill. It was a good (albeit lengthy) opportunity to freshen up, fill our tummies with good food, and get a few pints in. After all, we were getting the overnight ferry, so nobody would have to drive until the morning. Ten minutes were wasted, along with £37, on some European roadside cover for the van, which wouldn’t have happened had Woody not violently insisted upon it. Otherwise, this fine afternoon with nothing much else to do but drink, was dealt with most capably. Woody made sure he was still able to drive the van onto the ferry without scratching too many cars, I handed over the tickets that stated we float at seven o’clock and not twelve o’clock, and we boarded the ferry to the Hook of Holland. We set about the duty free shop like an air-born virus, and filled all of the remaining space in the van with quality European lager. The important stuff done, we settled down to a good night’s drinking, all except Dave who dutifully respected his impending driving shift, and settled down in a recliner with a Pot Noodle and a Thomas Harris book.

 

 

I Fought the Law and the Law won

‘Let me get zis straight,’ said the Dutch customs officer.
We’d been pulled, apparently randomly, on our way off the ferry. We’d been directed into a sort of yard, where two officers stood, cap peaks just about obscuring their eyes enough for it to be very threatening, holstered guns occasionally gleaming in the early morning light, matching moustaches gently twitching with a mixture of anticipation and power.
‘So … , you say zat you are Ingleesh musicians, ya? And zat you are going to Norvay?’ continued the officer with the more impressive of the two moustaches.
‘Er … that’s right,’ confirmed Dave.
‘Do you know that you are in zee Netherlands?’ he declared as if he was the first person to tell Dave that Elvis had died.
‘Yes, yes we know.’
‘Zen do you know vere Norvay is?’
‘Yes … it’s up past Sweden isn’t it?’
Our starched interrogator stopped his questions, rolled back on his heels and started regarding our van.
‘And vaat are you carrying vith you to Norvay, Ingleesh musician?’ he snarled through the window at Dave.
‘Oh, just instruments, you know … guitars, drums and stuff.’
The man, who’s name probably had a double ‘a’ in it, walked officiously around the van to the sliding door. After scrutinising for a while, he grabbed the handle and ripped open the side door. Everything seemed to go into slow motion from the moment the case of beer that had been nestled in the top of the pile, started falling, corner first and with what seemed precision guidance, toward the right foot of our Dutch inquisitor. After a moment of candid suffering he re-poised himself, regaining his former cool in a little under two seconds.
‘It seems zat you are carrying too much liquid. I must insist zat for the safety of your travelling you are relieved of zese items.’
With that, he and his cohort rid us of six cases of Carlsberg and one of Nonsense’s ‘wank-mags’ that just happened to take their fancy. On the whole, we’d all been sitting pretty pan-faced throughout the whole episode. In a combination of being out of our depth, and having stopped drinking only an hour and a half before on a bright and sunny early morning, this was pretty much more than we could handle. The officer slowly closed the side door.
‘You know you shouldn’t have passengers in ze back?’ he proliferated slowly. ‘But zen … it ees only you who will get killed. Goodbye Ingleesh musicians.’
His speech really needed a manic, super criminal laugh at the end. It may have had one but we drove away so quickly we had no way of knowing.

 

 

Idiots at the Wheel

And so we were truly on our way. By the time Dave relinquished the wheel just after Bremen in Germany, the scary fascist bullyboys that greeted us at the Hook of Holland not only seemed far away, but were far away. The beer that had been confiscated had been replaced and duly disposed of, then replaced again. Karen’s spell in the driver’s seat saw us travel through the great, dull tracts of flat nothingness that is Northern Germany. Our original feelings of great adventure and anticipation were beginning to become worn by the fact that, in this particular part of the World, there is seldom anything to truly enthuse the eye. Even the built up areas, which should have provided some respite, were merely like Croydon without a sense of humour. This monotony was broken, albeit temporarily, when our route took us closely past the great city of Hamburg. From a distance it could have been any industrial shipbuilding city, but there was a silent sense of awe as we all looked on, communally pondering that this was the place where the Beatles played on and off for two years. I always get a similar feeling as I’m approaching Liverpool on the M62, and in a way, this fine place could have been Liverpool or Newcastle or any of a number of places back home. But all too soon, Hamburg and our calm reminiscing were behind us. There would be nothing outside our van that would draw our curiosity until we began our drive across the thin key-like road through Fehmarnsund and onto the Northern headland of Puttgarden, where we would embark our ferry and travel the twelve miles across the Fehmarn Belt to Denmark, and finally leave Germany, albeit only for a couple of weeks.
With Denmark, the journey began to gain a little more interest. In appearance, certainly from the highways of Holland and Germany you don’t particularly feel like you’re in a manifestly different country, certainly not from the belly of a Ford tin box travelling at a steady sixty-five. But Denmark had a different expression. So far we had seen country houses and farmhouses not greatly dissimilar to the ones we left behind in England; isolated buildings, fields of grazing animals, occasional woodland, all broken up by intermittent towns and villages … dull looking ones at that. In Denmark, however, the houses were nearly all cocooned in their own little tufts of trees. Not big ones, by no means forests, but just enough good sized trees to surround and secrete a house. Then nothing but fields until the next house, and its own little collection of foliage, broke the grassland. ‘What a very private race of people’ I remember thinking. And the one sight that was impossible not to notice was that every house had a belting great flagpole in the garden, proudly supporting a far from modest Danish flag. I perceived, with surprise, that this lent the occupants a nationalistic air that I’d never associated with the Danes before. It was an enormous shame, and a discredit to our opinions, that our chosen style of transport and our stringent schedule meant that we couldn’t meet any people or acquire a genuine taste of these places, places that merely played backdrop to our journey.

 

 

Accidents will Happen

By the time night had fallen with a balmy thud, we had travelled from the bottom to the top of Denmark’s eastern chunk, skirting the wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen (where apparently the little mermaid lives), and moved north where we boarded another ferry in Helsingor which took us the three miles to Helsingborg on the Swedish mainland, where I was to take the wheel for the first time.
‘It’s really not that clear,’ snapped Nonsense, who had slowly been losing his temper for a good ten minutes.
‘You’re pissed aren’t you?’ I accused. ‘I’ve driven a mass total of about seven hundred yards, and now you’re too pissed to read the map. You couldn’t even read a ‘welcome mat’ right now.’
‘I’ve hardly had any sleep though. That’s the only flaw with your stupid plan, doesn’t allow silly bollocks here to get any shut-eye.’
‘Look, it’s quite simple … we’re facing northeast, there is ocean for the entire 180 degrees behind us, and we need to go north. Given you any clues? I mean … has that narrowed it down for you at all?’
‘Okay, try that road there, the one that goes to Angelholm.’
‘Try? Try? I’m not just going to try any old road. I want to know for sure.’
‘It’s right, honest. Angelholm. Yes, that’s the one.’
‘You’d better be right. If we end up in Russia I’ll kill you. Now get some sleep. I’ll wake you up when I need the next directions. Or if I need to kill you.’
So into the thick, bitumen-like night we rolled. It was a good shift to take behind the wheel. It had cooled down greatly, there was no traffic, and best of all my cohorts were all asleep, even though Dave was enjoying, verbally at times, a dream that seemed to feature the talents of Meg Ryan, some whipped cream, and an expansive sheet of bubble wrap.
‘Fuck me!’ I blurted out load, even though I meant to say it to myself.
‘What’s up?’ yawned Woody from the window seat as he stirred from his sleep.
‘Sorry mate, I didn’t mean to wake you, but look … in the distance … another car. That’s the first vehicle I’ve seen since we got off the ferry – our first Swedish car. There’s one for the Captain’s Log.’
‘I’m delighted for you.’
‘Woody … ?’ I slowly questioned.
‘I said I’m delighted for you.’
‘No, that car … is he on the same side of the road as us? Fuck he is as well. He’s coming right for us. Fucking maniac,’ I barked as I wound my window down and frantically started to flash my lights. ‘You’re a fucking loony!’ I shouted out of the window. ‘You’re going to kill someone! Well if it’s a game of chicken he wants he’s picked the wrong Joe.’
At that I held my course, and after a very alarming moment when it looked as if the crazed motorist wasn’t going to budge, he careered violently to our right and thudded into a ditch with a crunch.
‘Fucking idiot, I can’t believe that. Did you see that Woody, he’s a fucking psycho,’ I exclaimed as I pulled over.
‘He’s probably thinking exactly the same thing about you mate,’ said Woody, barely opening an eye.
‘What?’
‘And seeing as he’s in Sweden where they tend to drive on the right hand side of the road, he’s probably quite right in his assumptions.’
‘Oh shit … ’ I uttered in realisation, ‘Oh … that’s Okay,’ I said looking in my mirror at the wreck, ‘he’s all right. He’s out of the car.’
‘What’s he doing?’
‘He seems to be waving his arms a lot and running toward us.’
‘Well that’s good. I guess nothing’s broken then.’
‘Shall we go Woody?’
‘I think, all things considered, we probably should.’
So with the silhouette of a very irate Swede fanatically gesturing against the scenery of radiator steam and smoke in my wing mirror, we trundled off into the Scandinavian night, and I quietly slipped the pig’s ears onto my head. That would be the last excitement of my spell at the controls, and as we headed off up the Western coastal road that leads all the way to Göteborg and then on to Norway itself, I decided to be grateful that aside from Woody, the rest of the van slept through my embarrassing episode. I’d learnt an important lesson.

 

 

Change

I was glad to pass the wheel back to Woody when I did, a little way past the Norwegian capital, Oslo. For a start I had become fatigued from driving 300 or so miles on what in England would be described as B-roads – coastline hugging and unpredictable to say the least. More crucially, as the morning became lighter, the scenery was becoming breathtaking, and I wanted to take it all in. As we changed pilot, we took a collective roadside stretch in the pale and dewy early morning stillness. It was our first real stop in nearly 24 hours. For those that hadn’t been driving all night, it was a well-timed, natural moment to wake. Well, this was my conclusion as I looked enviously upon my companions, stiffly walking around our lay-by, yawning and stretching, their arms aloft, fresh from their gently vibrating slumber. It also occurred to me that Woody would probably be concluding this stretch of our tour behind the wheel, just as he had started it. Our impromptu stop on this quiet mountain road soon became a breakfast stop. Of course, we had no means of boiling water, so Pot Noodles were out of the question. Instead, we settled for crisps and beer, safe in the knowledge that once at our destination, probably early that afternoon, we would be treated to a very welcome, but none the less lavish, slap-up meal of reindeer steak or something.
‘Look at the size of that!’ announced Karen snapping out of his drowsy demeanour.
He’d found a very large, solitary ant doing the rounds around our van.
‘What do they feed them out here? I would have to say, without contradiction, that that is the largest ant I’ve seen in my brief but glorious existence.’
‘Let’s have a look,’ I asked, peeling the ring pull from a can of Carlsberg. ‘Wow, that’s one big mother. Give him one of your crisps Karen.’
‘You’re joking. He’ll probably take my arm off.’
‘Then you could join a Def Leppard tribute,’ chipped in Nonsense.
‘No, go on … ’ I pushed, ‘he looks a bit peckish.’
At that Karen dropped one of his ready salted crisps into the path of the insect, taking every care not to get within biting distance. Then, without pomp nor fanfare, or the slightest regard for the gallery that had amassed around him, the ant simply hoisted the crisp onto its back and marched off.
‘My God … ’ enthused Karen, ‘ … that’s … the insect-world equivalent of Geoff Capes or someone. That would be like me … ’ he pondered, ‘that would be like me carrying…’
‘Carrying your own drums?’ I offered.
‘Very funny.’
‘Thank you. Come on David Bellamy, let’s get moving.’
And so we did. As we drove off singing along at the tops of our voices to ‘Concrete And Clay’ on the portable cassette recorder, I couldn’t help thinking that from behind, the van probably appeared to rock in time to the music, as we bounced over a hill into the Norwegian sunrise. If it had been the finale of a cartoon or a happy Hollywood movie, there would have been birds and chipmunks and a multitude of other forest fauna joining in.

 

 

The Self Preservation Society

'At break of day when that man dove away I was waiting
I crossed the street to her house and she opened the door'

We were still rocking the van.

'She stood there laughing (ha ha ha ha)
I felt the knife in my hand and she laughed no more'

At the greatest volume we could muster.

'My, my, my, Delilah
Why, why, why, Delilah
So before they come to break down the door
Forgive me Delilah I just couldn’t take any more'

And then it came to the Mariachi trumpet solo.
‘Do you think Geordie’s going to catch up with us?’ enquired Karen, with a clean break of contemplation.
‘He will if he can,’ concluded Woody compassionately.
‘Is this one of your tapes Karen?’ spouted Dave, shattering the groups longing for their missing horn player.
‘Yes.’
‘Have you got anything newer?’
‘It’s brand new. I only bought it on Wednesday.’
‘I mean … have you got anything more musically recent that we can listen to?’
‘Well … if you’re prepared to wait a few tracks, I think you’ll be quite pleasantly surprised.’
‘I’ve been surprised so far already. Why? What’s coming up?’
‘A Rolling Stones track.’
‘A Rolling Stones track? And that’s new is it?’
‘Well I haven’t heard it before.’
‘Hey, do you want me to do my Mick Jagger impression?’ shouted Nonsense, animatedly springing to life.
‘Do you have to?’ replied Woody acerbically.
‘Yes, it’ll be fun. Here we go … ’
And with that Nonsense pushed his tongue over his top lip, protruded his bottom lip and proceeded to clap his hands and shake his shoulders in a manner that caused Dave to receive an unsolicited elbow to the face, and more perilously, Woody to veer violently across the oncoming lane of traffic, which was mercifully empty.
‘You’re a dickhead,’ sneered Woody as he straightened the vehicle.
‘That’s almost as good as your Frank Spencer impersonation,’ added Dave, clutching his cheekbone.
‘I always liked it when Mike Yarwood did his Frank Spencer,’ I reminisced. ‘But then he always did that bit at the end when he said ‘and now this is me’, and he would always sing a really shitty song, badly. I hated it when he was him. Stick with the impressions mate, don’t be you.’
And it persisted as we worked our way ever upward through Norway. With every mile our surroundings became more and more mountainous, and lakes and waterfalls became more voluminous. As our environment became more impressive, I started to get a little trigger-happy with my camera, so much so, that by the time we’d got to Lillehammer, I’d spent the four films I’d taken with me. The most frustrating thing was that it continued to get inspiring, and I no longer had any way of saving these astonishing highlights, aside from in the banks of my dubiously treacherous memory. I supposed that I could get them on the way back down. But that’s if we ever got back! As we made our way through the Kjølen Mountains, the roads became more and more perilous, in a sort of ‘Italian-Job-driving-along-steep-narrow-windy-mountain-roads’ type of way. This was especially true of the ‘Eagle Mountain Road’, a spectacular but nonetheless death-defying road that zigzags sharply eleven times to take you up 2100ft, then, all in less then two miles of road, you zagzig back down to the comparative reassurance of sea level. I was fairly convinced that we were to end up rocking over the road’s edge, and that I would have to announce ‘hang on a minute lads, I’ve got a great idea’, taking the day’s tally of poor impersonations up to two. After a while, we had to turn off the cassette machine just to secure our survival. Even with Woody’s relatively superior driving, when the wheels of the van are travelling a matter of inches from a 1000ft precipice, everybody on board is keen for the driver to pay supreme awareness to … well, everything really. As we completed our final descent into the valley where our destination lay, we caught a breath-taking glimpse of our first Fjord, spreading and diffusing like great arteries, through and around the sprawling and charming town of Valldal, where, no doubt, the townsfolk were excitedly and busily preparing for our arrival. It struck me as remarkable that although these huge Fjords were full of seawater the actual ocean was a full fifty miles away. This in turn could only make me contemplate just how colossal and magnificent the glaciers that carved this immense and intricate landscape, all those millennia ago, must have been: slowly flowing rivers of solid ice, sculpting the land and taking with them everything that wasn’t nailed down, trees and boulders, and not to mention the enormous quantities of discarded substance that had been whittled out of the helpless terrain. I’d allowed myself to blunder into one of those terrifying mind-sets, where the scale and magnitude of your thoughts reach a crest of incredulity, so I decided to snap out of it and simply enjoy this staggering vista that was to be our home for the next two weeks.

 

 

Hello Again

‘Terry, you look well!’ I enthused as I got out of the van. ‘Vicious new hair cut though mate.’
‘Yeah, thanks mate, Tony and Guy.’
‘Really?’ I replied a little impressed.
‘Yeah, but unfortunately not Toni & Guy the hairdressers, I got two mates called Tony and Guy. Nice enough chaps but they ‘aven’t got a fackin’ clue what to do when you put a pair of scissors in their hands, especially after a beer. Oh well.’
We were outside the hotel we were to be playing in for the next two weeks. Like all of the other wonderful buildings in Valldal, it was a beautifully assembled wooden structure, as keen to be as pleasing to the eye as it was functional. But unlike the other buildings in Valldal, it was big. It was the Minotel Fjellro.
As we all stretched and shook off the final sweep of our journey around the van, I became aware of a large and stocky, crazy looking man approaching us.
‘Here you go guys … this is Mike,’ said Terry, waving the man toward us with his arms. ‘Mike owns this place. Can you believe he’s from Bromyard?’
‘He’s from Bromyard?’ I thought. Bromyard isn’t too far from Worcester, but it has a hell of a reputation. It’s the sort of place where people say ‘she’s your sister, you shag her’, or where people are called Jimmy Bob Billy Joe Sue. It has a population of two thousand, but only five different surnames. In short, Bromyard is the buckle on the bumpkin belt.
‘Mike, how are you?’ I extended.
‘You’re all very welcome. I think you’re going to have a fine time here. We’ve done up the cottage for you all to stay in, and it has to be said – and Terry will back me up here – we’ve got some fantastic girls working in the hotel at the moment.’
‘Well … thank you. We’ll get to work right away then,’ I semi-jokingly said before introducing the rest of the band to our host.
‘Okay, well I’m sure Terry will be happy to show you around your house … ’ added Mike after the overtures, ‘and if you wander round to the hotel in about half an hour, I’ll be happy to sort you out with some dinner and a few beers. I may have been out of England for a few years, but I reckon I know how much you’d all like a few jars, especially after the long drive you’ve had.’
Little did he know that that was all we had done during the long drive to his hotel, but we weren’t about to complain.
‘He seems like a nice bloke Terry, considering he’s from Bromyard.’
‘Yeah, he’s a good geezer. Don’t wanna be around ‘im when he loses it though. Fackin’ Steve Gadd in the ‘ead. Anyway, pull the old Terry McCann up over there and I’ll show you where you’re kippin’.’
‘The Cottage’ was just around the side of the Fjellro. It was an exquisite, white wood stilted building that backed up against an immeasurable wall of sandstone, that presumably had been blasted out of the mountain many years before to accommodate the two dozen or so buildings that ran all the way down to the edge of the Fjord. From the sheltered porch at the front, the view extended across the sleepy town, past a handful of yet more desirable wooden buildings – seemingly built to obey no particular kind of order – across a central green where two children ran freely, and on to a magnificent white church with a panelled steeple. As the birds flitted around the virtuous summer sky, buzzing these wonderful homes and all being watched carefully by the three huge green mountains that permanently stand guard around the town, I wondered why anybody actually chose to live in Bromyard, or Worcester, or indeed anywhere that wasn’t Valldal.
The interior of the cottage was evidently a work in progress. Two of the four main rooms (one upstairs, with the other being directly below) had been decorated and suitably presented as bedrooms. The other two rooms, and what looked like it used to have been a small kitchen, were brimming with the evidence of renewal … paint, wallpaper, pasting tables and a myriad of tools. The only other room was a humble bathroom, nothing compared to the one we’d left behind on Hurcott Road, but as it got swiftly filled with wash bags and reading matter, it became clear that we would soon make it our own.
Of course, there was the childish squabble as to who was to dwell in which room, and then, in what had become a very hot summer indeed, secondary spats over who got the beds next to the windows. I ended up in the downstairs room with Woody, who threatened to leave the band if he had to coexist with Nonsense. I considered that bunking with Woody, at least I would see some action, even if I didn’t necessarily get any action of my own.
So here we were, in our comfortable rooms for what was to be the beginning of our great European tour. For the next fortnight all we had to do was play five nights a week, the best part being that we could leave our gear set up in the basement music bar where we were the star attraction. Ten gigs at two hours a throw, spread out over two weeks. That’s a lot of spare time. I looked forward to discovering the ‘real’ Norway.

 

 

Tongue Tied

When I was a wee boy, living in the no less than pleasant Norman town of Bewdley, I used to think that the River Severn, which ran through our town with great splendour and impressive girth, was in fact named from the number seven. A foolish enough schoolboy notion you may think. But in my Swiss-cheese childhood mind I had accumulated enough evidence to convince me that this was the case. It seemed to me that all British rivers took their names from numbers in one way or another. For a start, there were those magnificent Scottish waterways, the Fourth and the Five, and the river Tay was clearly a porridge eating colloquialism for the number two. Even London, our glorious capital, lay astride the river Tens. The Humber did puzzle me I must say, but I was happy to concede that perhaps the Humber was simply waiting for a number. There were many more but I don’t recall them now, and I’m not about to pour over an O.S. map of the U.K. just for you to chuckle at my naiveté. Even though there’s an element of embarrassment (like the time we were set a homework task to write a story about a ‘blizzard’, and I duly returned to school the next day with a wonderfully composed yarn about a friendly reptile called Warren, who I found on the door mat), the point is, the whole river thing has proved to be a good mnemonic over the years (why is mnemonic such a hard word to remember?). Rivers are now managed in my mind in a very orderly fashion. I use similar methods to remember foreign languages.
Takk for maten. That was all we had to say. Terry had explained how important a tradition it was to say ‘thank you’ for your food in this country. Thank you for the food. Takk for maten; pronounced ‘tac’, as in drawing pin; ‘for’, well that’s just for; and ‘martin’, which was easy because my uncle is called Martin. It didn’t help though that by the time the food came out we’d been bestowed untold beverages. I’d already fallen off my stool once. So when the first plate was placed before me and I declared, with great pride and independence, ‘pin for uncle’, well … the waitress’s face said it all really. The lovely Bodil (for that was her name), looked at me as if I’d just dabbed my appendage on the curtains. She was voluptuous and very pretty in a fresh faced way, but somehow she looked upon me as a crusty matron of a head mistress would upon an annoying and bothersome miscreant. And thus the tone was set and my reputation sealed for the next two weeks.
‘Some girls,’ I said as I twisted round to find the rest of the table shaking their heads, ‘God, what is wrong with her?’
‘Well … ’ sighed Mike, ‘you’ve just wished pain upon her uncle for a start.’
‘Worst thing is her uncle was hospitalised last week after falling off a roof,’ said Terry. ‘When she comes back you could just kick her in the growler and be done.’
‘Damn, already eliminated one from my list of possible Norwegian shags.’
Aside from my amnesic moment, we’d had a fine night, and were getting on famously with the three girls that were working – except for a somewhat uneasy atmosphere between Bodil and myself of course. Aside from Bodil, we were served in an amiable and homely manner by Marte and Inge. Inge, who worked behind the bar, was a tall, blonde, stunner of a young woman. She oozed supermodel qualities from the locks of her hair, to her very stance. But with this, she was also immensely frosty and seemingly (as Ted Prank might have put it) frigid. And for this reason she immediately fell into the sights of Woody’s sniper scope. Marte, who like Bodil was waiting tables, was quite simply stunningly beautiful. She had a classic hourglass figure, jet-black hair, and the most mesmerising appearance you could aspire to witness. She had a face that made you dizzy, and eyes that were so nice you could lick them. Needless to say, I forged an immediate attraction to her.
‘Wow, look at that,’ I gaped over my fish soup, ‘all those curves and me with no brakes.’
‘What are brakes?’ asked Bodil as she placed the last two soup bowls down at our table.
‘Bremsene,’ replied Mike with perfect dialect, ‘pa en bil ja?’
‘Ah…bremsene, ja,’ she smiled knowingly as she walked back to the bar.
‘Do you think it’s possible for me to say anything else without coming across as a complete dickhead?’ I asked my table of grinning friends, old and new.
The rest of the band silently shook their heads.
‘You’ve got to be very careful,’ said Mike, ‘their English is immensely good here. Virtually everyone under forty that didn’t skip school can speak fluent English. I found that out the hard way when I got here fifteen years ago.’
‘I think me and Bodil are destined to not get on.’
I turned to see that Bodil was now hurriedly explaining something in Norwegian to Marte, and occasionally looking in my direction, causing them both to giggle like schoolgirls.
‘Oh God, now she’s telling Marte. Right that’s it chaps, I’m not going to say another word. That’s it now.’
‘I’ll believe that when I don’t hear it,’ said Dave, ‘anyway, I can’t wait to hear what you’re going to say next. Go on … say something else stupid.’
‘I’m sorry to interrupt your meal,’ said Marte addressing the whole table (who along with Bodil was still grinning widely), ‘but we’re having a little party tonight in our coach to welcome you all to Norway. We wondered if you’d like to come around.’
At that, everybody at the table, except for big mouth here, greeted the invitation with enthusiastic positives like ‘yeah’, and ‘you bet’, and ‘sounds terrific’ (in Karen’s case).
‘And you,’ she queried switching her gaze to me, ‘even you are invited.’
‘That would be great Marte, I’d love to. Thank you,’ I announced with great appreciation, despite very quickly breaking my non-talking embargo.
Their invitation gracefully accepted, they went back to the bar and proceeded to recount the episode to a still stony-faced Inge, although with time, she too began to see the funny side of this little instalment.
‘Looks like you’re off the old Barry Took,’ laughed Terry, ‘you jammy sod.’

 

 

The Party

‘The coach’ was tucked around the opposite side of the Fjellro to our cottage. It was an old Greyhound bus that had clearly not been exploited as a mode of transport for some years. It seemed remarkable that we hadn’t noticed it when we arrived, but all praise for the strategic manner with which it had been nestled between a thicket of trees and the side of the hotel. This is where four of the hotel’s female staff lived. Marte, Bodil and Inge all cohabited here, along with the anonymous Christina, who had this particular night off and was nowhere to be seen.
The interior was split into three distinct sections. To the fore, where once an over-weight driver called Chuck would have steered this old tin beast along great American highways, lay a humble but practical bathroom. The other extreme of the coach had been turned into a fairly capacious bedroom, where the four girls expended their nights in the purpose-built pine bunks. The middle sector, the remainder of this considerable vehicle, had been agreeably transformed into a spacious living area with a modest kitchenette to one end. In truth, it humbled our living room at 199 Hurcott Road in terms of scale and décor. Like everything else in this country, wood was the material of choice for the two generous horseshoe shaped benches that dominated the room, one encircling the television, and the other favouring the proximity of the kitchen area. In all, an especially discerning job had been done, and thanks to the general design and lighting, you very quickly forgot that you were in fact, in a bus.
‘Now don’t keep them up too late,’ urged Mike as he ushered us up the step and through the door, ‘they’re all working in the morning and we’ve got a coach-load of Danes coming.’
‘Oh, why aren’t you joining us?’ I asked.
‘The long haired general,’ he replied dryly.
‘Who?’
‘The wife. She’d go up the wall. Don’t worry, I’ll sink a few beers with you tomorrow night after your first show.’
With Terry already having retired for the night, here we were – five musicians being entrusted with the company and welfare of three (soon to be four) young and beautiful Scandinavian girls, who we’d only just met, in a Greyhound bus under a mountain in Norway. Life is so full of surprises.
Of course, we did keep them up too late. We were all having far too good a time to turn in. These unprompted affairs are the best sort.
By the time Christina had returned from her friend’s house, the majority of us were lounging around the kitchen-side horseshoe, with the exception of Karen and Bodil, who were not only on the other seating bench, but were also getting along very well.
‘Hi, I’m Christina. You guys must be the band. Terry has told us so much about you.’
‘All good I hope?’ asked Woody.
‘All very good,’ she reassured, as she nestled onto the end next to Dave.
And with her choice of placement, a natural order was born. Karen and Bodil had relatively segregated themselves and were sincerely enthusing about their respective lives. Marte and I had been exchanging personal anecdotes for over an hour, and Woody, at last, had worked the nature of his conversation with Inge, to that of a fairly intimate one. And now, the proximity of Christina (who was every bit as lovely as the other three girls) encouraged close dialogue with Dave, who until now had seemed to be getting faintly fed up with how things were going. So now Nonsense, who was begrudgingly perched on the opposite end of the seat (next to me) became the odd man out. We all knew it would happen to somebody, but there was no way that Nonsense would have expected it to be him for one minute, especially while Karen was around.
After some time, the remnants of the lager, that had helped us during our great journey, had been imbibed. It was time for us to enjoy the Norwegian tipple that Christina now pulled from a cupboard in the kitchen, and accordingly distributed between shot glasses.
‘Cheers! As we say in England,’ I called as I raised my snifter.
‘Skål! As we say here in Norway,’ countered Marte.
‘What, Skol as in the beer?’ posed Nonsense, who didn’t really have much to toast.
‘No, Skål as in cheers.’
As I placed the glass to my mouth, I could immediately feel the treacherously intoxicating liquor begin to scorch my lower lip.
‘Jeeze, what is this stuff?’ I shrieked.
‘You’d be much better off drinking it down in one go,’ laughed Marte.
So I did, and I must confess, the sensation was greatly preferable to my original idea of letting the drink rest on my lip until it was smouldering and charring the soft skin of my mouth.
‘Wow, that’s got quite a kick,’ I barely whispered, even though I was attempting to talk naturally. ‘What the hell is it?’
‘It’s homemade. I think you call it moonshine? Everyone here drinks it.’
‘Can I ask why? I mean it’s very nice, but aren’t you even a little concerned as to what it might do to your internal organs? I can feel my liver trying to escape.’
‘And I thought you English were supposed to be able to handle your drink,’ she replied teasingly. ‘Everyone here drinks it because alcohol is very expensive in Norway. We usually drink a few glasses of this, and then go out quite late, say ten o’clock, so that we don’t have to buy much in the bars. The government taxes drink and tobacco very highly. You were lucky that Mike gave you your beer free tonight. But you will have to pay for it from now on.’
‘Well how much is it then?’ asked Nonsense, suddenly finding interest in the conversation.
‘Well … ’ pondered Marte, ‘for a pint of beer, it’s about 48 Kroner in most places.’
‘48 Kroner?’ squeaked Karen, ‘that’s £4.21.’
‘Four pound fucking twenty one for a fucking pint of lager?’ shouted Nonsense, who, had he been paired with a lovely female like the rest of us were, would probably have blown his chances at that point. ‘That’s three times more than at home. So how much are fags?’
The girls looked blankly, and perhaps a little alarmed, back at Nonsense.
‘He means cigarettes,’ I assisted.
‘Oh, they’re more, about 55 Kroner.’
Everybody looked to the human calculator that was Karen.
‘£4.80,’ he said unremarkably. ‘Glad I don’t smoke.’
‘God, that’s really pissed me off,’ announced Nonsense, ‘I’m going to bed.’
And he did.
The party continued quite happily without him, even though our discourse gradually got more inaccurate, and we progressively sank lower into our places. From this point on, I have only three more faithful memories of our first night in Valldal.
First, was craning round to look at Karen and Bodil who were intimately cocooned directly behind me. Bodil was in mid flow, telling Karen what seemed to be an enthralling fable about a horse and a boy, when Karen (and to this day I still cannot appreciate his reasoning) emitted the most colossal belch conceivable, unswervingly into Bodil’s face, from a matter of only a foot away. I cannot ever recall hearing an oral discharge of such immense volume and magnitude, the most astonishing detail being that she continued to recount her story with perfect unbroken English, and he to listen intently, as if no such foul thing had occurred. Looking around to see that nobody else in the room had noted this repulsively indecent gesture, I began to speculate as to whether or not I had perhaps imagined it, although I knew that I hadn’t. The episode still makes me cackle uncontrollably now, whenever I happen to think about it (usually when I’m somewhere like a library or a church).
Secondly, sometime subsequent to the ‘burp incident’, I once again turned, this time to find that Bodil was fast asleep in Karen’s embrace. I then noticed that the hand that he’d had draped over her shoulder was now freely, and with little or no sense of caution, massaging her ample right bosom (don’t worry – her left bosom was ample too). Then of course, several seconds later and quite predictably, Bodil opened her eyes, looked down at the hand and then back to Karen before asking him, with little emotion, what he was doing. Karen’s choice reply of ‘I’m sorry, I thought you were asleep’, led directly to enduring memory number three…leaving.
Staggering back to the cottage at four thirty in the morning, I noticed that, even though we were quite some way short of the Arctic Circle, here in the northern fjords it never gets completely dark on summer nights. The white church that greeted us in the basking afternoon sunshine of the previous day was still perfectly visible and well defined across the green. Even through my foggy and disjointed eyesight, it was all still beautiful. If our time here was to continue in the manner that it had begun, it was going to be a very memorable fortnight. I allowed myself to anticipate the following evening’s show. I couldn’t wait to prove to these people what we could do. For now though, I just wanted to sleep.

 

 

Up with the Cock

Now I don’t know about you, but pop me in a somewhat rural place where there are no discernable signs of industry or its noisy associated trappings, then give me something that looks remotely like a bed, and I will sleep like a carcass. Well, very nearly. I completely switch off and slumber so deeply, that I’m likely to wake in exactly the same position as when drowse initially enveloped me. The only problem with this of course is that rural areas, for all their lack of thundering trucks, clanking factories and general hustle-bustle, are often home to the occasional fauna, such as cockerels. I suspect you can predict where this is going. And the one thing about cockerels that distinguishes themselves from animals that don’t make you want to kill them with your bare hands, is that cockerels enjoy waking up early, and then making sure that everyone within two square miles is made indubitably aware of how clever they were to wake up so early. A cockerel’s crowing is a taunt, a cutting derision emitted to all creatures that weren’t ingenious enough to rise before them, which is to say, all living things. I hate sarcastic fowl.
Now, I’d never intentionally killed anything before in my life. Obviously I had the deaths of thousands if not millions of insects and simple organisms on my conscience; at least half a dozen wild rabbits whose chosen routes across country lanes had regrettably concurred with those of my car wheels; and not to mention a goldfish named Lester, whose demise taught me an incredibly costly lesson as regards leaving fishbowls on window ledges on agonizingly hot days. But the one thing that all these fatalities have in common is that they were inadvertent. Unwitting acts of chance. Even the time when my childhood next door neighbour’s dog, Randy, tried to procreate with my leg – unquestionably justifiable homicide – in a benevolent act I merely threw him at a wall, which accordingly gave me time to make good my flight.
‘What the fuck is that?’ asked Woody from under his quilt, resembling a dormant rodent taking his first squints at spring.
‘Cockerel.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Six thirty.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Getting up.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Kill it.’
‘Right,’ he said springing from his bed, ‘I’ve got to see this.’
‘Well I’m not really going to kill it. I’m just going to make it go away.’
‘Oh, well … I might as well watch. Something’s bound to go wrong. It always does with you Benjamin.’
‘And what is that supposed to mean?’ I quizzed, pulling on a t-shirt.
‘Well, I suppose you’ll be okay so long as you haven’t got to talk to any birds.’
Of course, our target wasn’t difficult to find. It had a built in siren, not very well thought out for an animal preyed upon. In fact, why don’t foxes, and their predatory forest buddies, kill more cockerels? They’re frightfully accommodating victims. They may as well carry a big flashing neon sign that says ‘over here Mr. Fox’. Anyway, our quarry was perched proudly on a wooden (surprise) fence just across the green, announcing its location to one and all, with a sort of ‘look at me you bastards, I’m already up’ kind of expression on its face. We comfortably skirted the perimeter of the green without provoking even the faintest suspicion in the cynical bird.
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Woody, as I picked up a handful of pebbles from the edge of the road.
‘I’m just trying to … ’ throw one misses wildly and clanks loudly against the hub cap of a car, ‘ … shit … I’m just trying … ’ throw two bangs against the side of the very tree we are hiding behind and narrowly misses Woody’s head, ‘shit, sorry … I’m just trying to get … the little sod to move.’
Throw three is true and just, and hits the cockerel on the side of his head, which, after a pause, causes him to stiffly fall to the floor with a dusty ‘bufff’, in very much the same way that Wylie Coyote might have done, having trod on a garden rake at the top of a cliff.
‘Shit.’
‘Oh, good shot. Well he’s moved all right.’
‘Shall we go Woody?’
‘I think, all things considered, we probably should.’
And we went rather swiftly, running all the way back to the cottage like twelve year olds playing their first game of ‘knock and run’. Mercifully it seemed that nobody saw us. Despite my remorse, going back to bed was very easy, and notwithstanding my penitence, sleeping until noon was even more effortless.

 

 

Big Mouth Strikes Again

Unlike the first sortie of the morning, this time I was up last. I’d still had a first-rate sleep, regardless of the impromptu manoeuvres some hours before that had acted as an unwelcome intermission to my heavy kipping.
I eventually found the breakfast room in the hotel. I was surprised that it was still open, but then I wasn’t surprised to see all the boys scoffing cooked meats, cheeses, bread and coffee around a large wooden table.
‘Morning, cock killer,’ announced Dave matter-of-factly.
‘Well,’ I said, dragging a seat beneath me, ‘I suppose that makes an amusing change to cock sucker. And thank you Woody. That’s a genuinely unique interpretation of the phrase ‘I’m not telling anyone’. Well done.’
‘Well, I had to tell the lads.’
‘And do you tell the lads everything?’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Nonsense laughing, ‘he told us all about your driving in Sweden too … hilarious.’
‘Woody, you great big cunt,’ I said emphasising the last word excessively.
‘What is cunt?’
‘Hello Bodil,’ I said, ‘and how are you this morning?’
‘It hasn’t been morning for over twenty minutes,’ she announced in a glacial mood, ‘there you are sir,’ she said hurling down Karen’s coffee in a way that caused it to spill onto the table, and subsequently onto Karen’s leg.
‘Ah yes … ’ I said recollecting the fragments of data from the prior night, ‘the Yorkshire Groper!’ It’s all as I remember it then…a drummer, with a girl’s name, first of all belches violently into face of Norwegian beauty, but then waits until aforementioned Norwegian beauty falls asleep before he begins to fondle the huge right breast of twice aforementioned Norwegian beauty, only to say ‘I’m sorry, I thought you were asleep’, when interrogated by thrice aforementioned Norwegian beauty. Brilliant. The only thing around here that’s been blown so far, are your chances, little drummer boy. Remind me to give you the pig’s ears.’
‘At least I’m not wanted for the murder of a cockerel.’
‘What?’
‘Well it’s not quite that bad…there’s no suspicion of murder,’ said Dave, ‘but there is a lot of mourning going on.’ He reacted to the blank expression on my face. ‘Well … he was a popular cock.’
‘You lot are winding me up. He’s probably not even dead. Oh, morning Mike,’ I said noticing our host enter, ‘and how are you today?’
‘Well, the girls are good for nothing today thanks to you lot, we’ve got fifty Danes arriving in half an hour, and now I’ve just found out that Bjorn has died.’
‘Bjorn?’
‘Bjorn. The town cockerel. I’m gutted, such a lovely cock. He’d been here as long as me. Apparently, there he was … crowing away, and then he just dropped dead, just like that, off his fence. Such a shame.’
‘Well … ’ I said, not knowing where to look, ‘I’m very sorry.’
Mike looked at me a little suspiciously.
‘I mean about keeping the birds up…erm…the girls up late. Yes, that’s what I’m sorry about. I’m sorry to hear about the Danes and the cock, but I’m actually sorry for my part in the whole female hotel staff not getting to bed before the cock crowed … so to speak … even though he didn’t for very long … by the … sound of it.’
He looked at me as if I was a bit mad.
‘You’re a bit mad aren’t you? Anyway, I can’t stand around talking all morning, too much to do. You can get into the cellar bar to set up any time today. I’ll see you later.’
‘Veeery smooth my good friend. You handled that sooo well,’ nodded Dave.
‘Oh shut up … you … git.’
‘Or what? Are you going to stone me as well?’

 

 

Ma, he’s making eyes at me

I was very relieved when, eventually, day turned into evening, and it was my hope that all cockerel-related chatter would be put behind everybody, to be replaced by the general having of a good time, and universal admiration for our band. We’d taken a great deal of time over the last portion of the afternoon in setting up our equipment, carefully checking the levels and equalisation of the instruments, after fastidiously positioning ourselves and our respective gear, so that rearrangement of the stage would not be a concern over the next two weeks. We were very pleased and reassured by our sound check, and we knew that all we had to do now would be to play our set as best we possibly could. Also, we were relieved and somewhat thankful that Mike had decided that we could buy our beer for a greatly reduced 30 Kroner a pint (a little under £3), which was still expensive, but far more within our budget now, especially taking into consideration that we were earning much better money than we ever had in England. So the evening became night, despite the suns reluctance to descend more than a degree below the horizon, and the cellar music bar in the Fjellro slowly, but surely, began to swell with young Norwegian revellers. There were tall ones, short ones, chunky ones, skinny ones, but predominantly – blonde ones. I’d never seen so many blonde heads of hair in the same room in my life. It was like a shampoo advertisement and I couldn’t stop thinking of the word jojoba. I did find it a little strange that there were so many youngsters, when here we were in a town that couldn’t possibly boast more than a couple of dozen people of this demographic.
‘Where did all this lot come from?’ I asked Mike, who was helping a couple of the girls behind the bar.
‘They’re all local.’
‘What … they all live in Valldal?’ I asked surprised.
‘You have to remember that Valldal is quite a sprawling place. Some of these kids live five or six miles away but they’ve still ‘popped into town’. Also, there’s a big caravan park up one of the mountains which is pretty much full of holidaying Norwegians from the inland. They come here most years. And they’ll be here for St. Olaf’s Day on Saturday.’
‘St. Olaf’s Day? What’s that?’
‘It’s a national flag day to celebrate King Olaf. He was spreading Christianity around Norway at about the same time that William the first was kicking crap out of us.’
‘So what happens on St. Olaf’s Day?’
‘Not a lot – people just meet up and eat and drink loads. Anyway, I’m sorry to end your little history lesson there, but I really think it’s about time you lot got playing.’
And so we started. As we launched into a sprightly version of the blues classic Sweet Home Chicago, our audience looked on a little quizzically, and perhaps even a trace amused. It was instantly apparent that this music was a smidgen alien to them. They’d heard music like it before, but as Terry had already told us, the few bands that there were up here, just didn’t play this sort of thing. This wasn’t the predicament that it could have been though, on the contrary, they seemed positively refreshed by our choice of repertoire, and within a couple of songs our spectators were starting to warm up – laughing, foot-tapping, cheering and shouting, all fuelled by cheap moonshine and expensive beer. Our first Scandinavian set was a triumph, aside perhaps, from a large menacing looking man that seemed to be glowering at Karen and myself in turn.
‘Great set,’ I congratulated Karen with a pat to the back.
‘Yeah … you too.’
As we left the stage, the scary staring man pushed himself up from his seat and began to walk over to Karen and me. My God, he was huge. He had to be seven foot tall. To add to the intimidation, from within his over-sized biker boots sprouted black leather trousers, over which, hung a matching jacket. In the centre of his face, framed by shoulder length, flowing golden locks of hair, was the piece de resistance…an impossibly large, well-cultivated and admirably maintained handlebar moustache. This man was a true Viking. He was the genuine article. I wondered if he’d parked his longboat outside.
‘Wasn’t he in The Frog and Sporran?’ I asked Karen. ‘Bollocks he’s coming over to us. Karen, it’s been a pleasure knowing you, but I think we’re going to die.’
He swaggered over without expression then paused for a full ten seconds before saying anything.
‘I think you boys are just divine!’ he exclaimed in the most camp voice I’d ever heard in my life.
‘Oh God,’ I muttered under my breath, ‘we’re going to get buggered to death. Er…thank you,’ I replied in more audible tones, ‘we think you’re divine too. Well, not really divine but we’re…glad you enjoyed it. Thank you for having us. N-n-not that you’ve had us, but…you know … just … thanks really.’
‘Well, can I buy you boys a drink?’
‘Ooh … that would be very kind,’ interjected Karen. ‘Two pints of lager please.’
‘Are you mad?’ I exclaimed, as the man who was probably called Thor walked to the bar. ‘You shouldn’t have accepted.’
‘At these prices I’d be foolhardy not to, why ever not?’
‘Because Karen, he’s a seven foot fruit.’
‘A … ?’
‘Seven foot poofta, rear gunner, kidney tickler, shirt lifter, cushion biter, a cock smoker or a bum boy, mincer, arse bandit, pansy, queer, knob jockey, faggot, gay, homo-fucking-sexual.’
‘Oh … that. Do you think so?’
‘Didn’t you hear his voice? He talked like Bette Midler.’
‘I thought it was just a regional dialect.’
‘Well it wasn’t. And doesn’t the way he’s dressed give you any clues?’
‘What about the way he’s dressed?’
‘All the leather … it’s typical whoopsy-wear – San Francisco and all that.’
‘Arnold Schwarzenegger dresses in exactly the same way in Terminator. Are you saying he’s a gay? Are you outing Arnie?’
‘Just trust me. He’s after our arses.’
‘What if he is a gay? It’s not as if he’s bottom-raping us over a cow trough, he’s just buying us a drink.’
‘But these people think differently,’ I implored, ‘if you accept a drink off them, in gay talk that’s like giving them permission to have their vile way with you.’
‘Well I’m sorry but I just don’t buy that. I’m afraid that I have a lot more faith in the genuine friendliness of strangers than you do, whether they’re gay or not. The way you’re talking he must want to shag everyone he meets.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you’re implying that everybody he talks to or offers to buy a drink for, is in serious danger of having a sore bottom in the morning. Do you really think that’s true?’
‘Well … I suppose not.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I said I suppose you’re right. I’m sorry I over-reacted. I guess he can’t possibly live his life like that. Hope I didn’t sound too homophobic.’
‘A little bit.’
‘Here we are then,’ announced the large man, handing us our drinks. ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking, but are either of you boys gay?’
‘Fuck off you bummer!’ shouted Karen, before handing back his drink and storming away.
‘Sorry about my friend,’ I said tactfully, ‘but he’s a little sensitive over such issues.’
‘Oh don’t worry. Anyway, if you don’t ask, you don’t get, right?’
‘I guess so.’
‘Besides, it means that we can talk now because we’re alone.’
‘Erm…I’m very sorry … ’ I said handing him my full glass, ‘but you’re really not my type.’
‘So what is your type?’ he questioned dejectedly.
‘Oh you know … breasts, reproductive organs that aren’t visible through tight trousers, pretty face, two X chromosomes … you know, that sort of thing.’
‘Oh well. I suppose we can still be friends though?’
‘I think … that would be very difficult now. Goodbye,’ I said, before wandering to the bar to get myself an obligation-free pint.
‘Who’s your new friend?’ asked Marte from behind the bar.
‘Not a friend, just an over-eager fan. So, what do you think?’
‘Well he’s a bit tall for me,’ she replied, knowing exactly what I meant.
‘He’s a bit something else for you too. I mean … what do you think of my band?’
‘I think you’re very good,’ she said smiling broadly.
‘Oh, thank you.’
‘No, I think the band, are quite good, but I think you, are very good.’
‘Oh,’ I said more vociferously, ‘thank you!’
At that, she was called back to her duties. Damn. But what progress? Wow, she was good. I could feel the Phenylethylamine, the unromantically named hormone which proves that attraction is chemical, coursing through my body. This is one of the wonders of life. The fact that we’re composed from lots of tiny, tiny pieces – our smallest pieces being made up of the biological equivalent of binary – yet a girl can say a few words to you and make you chemically feel wonderful, a rush that you have absolutely no control of. Last night I just thought she was very cool and very attractive. But it had all changed. Having known her for a little over twenty-four hours, I had already promoted her to primary subject for consideration. She was at the front of my mind and back, and every thought of her brought another wave of adrenalin pouring through my body. In the second set, I think I was probably poor. All I could concentrate on was Marte.

 

 

I Can’t Explain

Wherever I go, I always like to make an effort to learn at least a little of my host’s language. I think it displays good manners. I don’t accept this argument – and so many Brits use it – when they say ‘well most people on the continent speak a bit of English, so why should I bother?’ I find that approach discourteous and more than a little lazy, and I think that as a nation, we have a bad name for being that way. The fact that when you do endeavour to exchange niceties with foreigners in their own language, they always seem genuinely touched and appreciative of your labours, and for me, that’s incentive enough. I know it’s not easy, and with our tour taking us through numerous countries in a short period of time, I knew that I would be subjected to great confusion, but it is basic decency and propriety. It’s like living by the rules of somebody else’s house. What’s more, I think the fact that they do speak good English everywhere else is further reason for us to make that extra effort. I think they have a slight advantage, and you can thank the relentless spread of British and American popular music for the English language’s universal status (conversely, and by way of proving my point, if you ask the average Brit to speak French, one of their first sound bites is likely to be ‘Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir’).
Whatever.
I was determined to acquire some Norwegian conversational titbits. Hell, I’d managed to master English, and that’s an intricate language, especially once you start batting around conventions. The trouble with obeying the rules of a language is that there are too many exceptions, and that’s why I’m more inclined to stuff the rules and learn things article for article. Take, for example, the ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’ rule. That would be terrific if it truly was a rule, but it’s not. It doesn’t work. The rule actually runs ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’, unless it’s…ableism, abseil, ageing, albeit, ancient, atheism, beige, being, buddleia, capellmeister, codeine, coefficient, coheir, concierge, conscience, corporeity, counterfeit, cuneiform, cysteine, deficient, deicide, deictic, deify, deign, deil, deism, deity, ditheism, eident, eider, eidograph, eidolen, eidoscope, eight, eighteen, eighty, eigne, eikon, eill, eirack, eirenicon, eisel, eisteddfod, eiswool, epideictic, either, feisty, foreign, forfeit, heifer, height, heinous, inveigle, kaleidoscope, lammergeier, leishmaniasis, leister, leisure, leisurely, neighbour, neither, oleiferous, onomatopoeia, pantheism, plebeian, poltergeist, protein, reify, reign, reimburse, rein, reincarnation, reindeer, reintegrate, ribonucleic, science, seigniory, seismology, seize, sheikh, sovereign, species, spiegeleisen, sufficiency, surfeit, swingeing, terreplein, their, theism, veil, vein, weigh, weight, weir and weird. So just remember that.
My point is, that it’s more efficient (oops, there goes another one) in the long run to learn words and phrases as they are, and not to adhere to too many regulations, especially when the regulations are flawed.
So by the time Woody marched into the bedroom, interrupting not only my reading, but also the morning sunlight that had been blazing through the window and swathing me in warmth, I had learnt a moderate hotchpotch of beneficial phrases.
‘Whatcha doin’?’ he said, throwing himself into a supine position on his bed.
‘Oh, just familiarising myself with the native tongue.’
‘There’s a couple of native tongues I wouldn’t mind familiarising myself with.’
‘Weren’t you doing that at the end of last night?’
‘Yeah, a little bit. So what do you want to learn Norwegian for? They all speak English.’
‘It’s only polite. Anyway, you know me … I’m a knowledge junky.’
‘That’s fair enough. What you got then? Try a few on me.’
‘Okay … ’ I said, placing my phrasebook on the bedside table, ‘erm … here goes … fem glass pils takk.’
Woody pondered for a moment, looking hopeful that he would be able to fathom it out.
‘What’s that then?’ he conceded.
‘Five beers please.’
‘Excellent phrase score. Do another.’
‘All right then … erm … skal vi gå ut i kveld?’
‘No…go on…’ resigned Woody without trying.
‘Would you like to go out with me tonight.’
‘Useful … very useful. Another … ’
‘Okay then … Kan du forstørre dette?’
‘Not a clue. What’s that?’
‘It means … will you enlarge this, please.’
He looked at me very seriously, but somehow without expression.
‘Photographs?’ he quizzed.
‘Yeah, but I learnt it because it’s a multi-faceted phrase.’
‘Cool. Well, I suppose you’ll be wanting to order the food and drinks from now on then, as well as any photographic transactions we may get involved in. So, you missed breakfast.’
‘I know. I just can’t seem to wake up here. It’s so peaceful. Did I miss much?’
‘Not really … cold meat, cheese and bread, and you didn’t get to offend Bodil. But the lads and I did have a chat. We reckon that seeing as we haven’t got to play tonight or tomorrow night, that we should sod off somewhere … you know, explore.’
‘I would imagine that the whole of Norway has been thoroughly explored, and largely colonised by now.’
‘Not by us it hasn’t.’
‘What did you have in mind?’
‘Well, if we get our act together, we can make it to Bergen by teatime. Spend a couple of nights there … then amble back on Thursday morning.’
‘Yeah … okay then, Bergen’s supposed to be really nice.’
‘Sorted. I’ll tell the lads to meet us by the van in half an hour.’

 

 

Harbour Lights

Like all spontaneous ideas, there was a complete absence of research prior to what seemed to be a reasonably straightforward excursion. It was only about 150 miles from Valldal to Bergen. By our calculations that was about a two and a half hour drive, assuming a steady sixty, plus say, an hour for unforeseen circumstances, meaning we should roll through the outskirts of our destination somewhere between four-thirty and five that afternoon. But by their very nature, unforeseen circumstances are unforeseeable, and what we’d failed to foresee was the very character of these unforeseen circumstances, namely the quality of the roads, and the fact that water, and plenty of it, is a composite element of the landscape in the particular part of the World that we were attempting to negotiate. The consequence of this was firstly, a far slower drive than was anticipated; and secondly, untold ferries transferring us, and our van, across annoyingly trivial waterways, where it would be patently uncomplicated and universally beneficial to erect a bridge. This doubled our predicted travelling time. Even so, it was a pleasant drive, and the summer was still gloriously spreading its congenial attributes over every nook of this fine land. It mattered not that it took us six hours to reach Bergen. Our journey had been leisurely, good natured and full of song, and when we rolled into the centre of this unassuming city at eight in the evening we were ready to sample all that its array of bars and taverns had to offer.
After parking the van up by the harbour at the centre of the city, we took our first beer in the imaginatively named ‘American Bar’. What did this ambiguous title mean? What style were they trying to emulate and what clientele were they endeavouring to attract? It turned out that the bar was full of Americana, and drinkers with an average age higher than any of us wished to entertain or be entertained by, so we moved on. Next was the ‘Banco Rotto Pub’. This was a shade livelier and there was even a modicum of dancing, but like ‘The American Bar’, the general age group was a little mature and sensible for us, so after an extortionate pint we moved on and found the popular ‘Wessel Pub’. Now this was more like it. Not that it was said in so many words, but there was a definite feeling that we were all happy to stay here for the rest of the evening. We’d had an unexpectedly long drive and had worn some shoe leather since arriving, and now, finding this fine bar in the centre of Bergen – very well attended for a Tuesday night and largely populated with our kind of people – this was the signal to find a table, relax and do what we did best; drink and talk bollocks.
‘Wow, it’s a mountain of minge in here,’ observed Nonsense placing his costly beer on the table.
‘Is that the proper collective noun for girls?’ I asked light-heartedly.
‘I always thought it was a bevy of beaver,’ offered Dave.
‘Surely it’s a throng of thongs?’ fired Woody.
This was fun. We’d hit upon a game that we could all play.
‘Or maybe a flurry of flange?’ I laughed.
‘Or a stack of crack,’ was the second offering from Nonsense.
‘How about a gaggle of gash?’ proffered Dave.
‘Actually, in truth, it is a gaggle of women,’ said Karen unexceptionally.
‘You’re no fun are you?’ I said. ‘Why can’t you let us play our little games?’
‘I was just putting you straight. Anyway, you did ask.’
All in all, despite Karen’s matronly behaviour, we had a fine evening in ‘the Wessel Pub’. We sank enough beer to float a wessel in, and had good times attempting to engage the attentions of the ‘gaggle’ of females at hand, although as a group we were probably a little too loud and intimidating for anybody to genuinely want to get involved with. As we drunkenly ambled out onto the streets and back to the harbour – where the beautifully colourful houses along the front were vibrantly illuminating the night with a diversity of tinted glows – we realised that our van was to be our hotel. We didn’t really care. It would save us a small fortune in rooms, and we still had a surfeit of bedding in the back from the upward drive. Most of all it didn’t matter because we were drunk. Rip-roaringly drunk. As a collective (an ‘annoyance of musicians’ for sure) we were probably in the most cordial mood since we had first arrived in Norway, doubtless because the fatigue of travel had receded in us all. And this place was different to Valldal. We didn’t know anybody here, or have the stability of a base, so there was a frank excitement in us as we bedded down for the night, like adolescent boy Scouts at their first camp. And we did all the same things that boy Scouts might do; talked about girls, made shadow animals on the wall of the van, talked about girls, farted, told scary stories, talked about girls, passed around confectionary, laughed, belched and talked about girls some more, before slowly drifting off into our respective quiescence. The only aired concern was that Nonsense, who had gone an uncharacteristic eon since any female attention, may wake any of us up, quoting ‘forgive me, oh father, for I have sinned’, whilst treating us roughly from behind. With thanks this fate befell none of us, and ironically, on the undulating metal floor of Woody’s Transit van, I had the most complete sleep I’d had since leaving Hurcott Road some five days previously.

 

 

All by myself

By the light of day Bergen was even more astonishing to the gaze than when the pretty harbour lights had received us the previous evening. Thanks to the gently falling dusk of yesterday, there were a whole multitude of visual fascinations that we’d simply missed. For a start, Bergen was neatly nestled between seven proud mountains, and it’s jutting peninsulas infiltrated by the great diffusing subsidiaries of the Osterfjorden and all the other streams and channels that mingle their way through and around the landmasses before spewing their contents into the North Sea. The buildings around the harbour, that had been twinkling festively, were now even more colourful in their own right, standing sentinel along the front, vigilantly gazing out across the waters with rich, bright and confident hues. This place had a great feel about it, as did the people. They seemed to live a relatively uncomplicated and serene life, and appeared to share such an honest liberal outlook, that it was impossible to suppose that there was any crime here greater than taking the surroundings for granted. I certainly wasn’t about to spend a day here without appreciating what Bergen had to offer. I frittered a glorious hour or two on my own, randomly wandering the streets and skirting the water’s edge admiring what seemed to me to be a city built to the plans of one brilliant designer, who clearly knew the secret of agreeable living.
By chance, my ambling took me by a funicular terminal set, as it would be, at the foot of a great track that led sharply up Mount Floien, which rises to the east of the city centre. This was not to be missed. I did cast a thought for my fellow travellers, but the car was about to leave the lower station, and I presumed that even if I could find them they would have established their own agenda. Once atop, the views were exquisite. Only from here could you appreciate the true beauty with which Bergen was set into the landscape. It was as if the city had been built over a far greater area, then simply scooped up by the earth, and moulded into its present shape. I spent an hour and a twenty-four-exposure film on the top of the mountain, and eventually descended lost in my thoughts. Whilst enveloped in this tranquil disposition I decided to take the opportunity to phone my mother, but for some reason all she did was remind me of the time she took me swimming when I was younger, when upon seeing a small crowd stood around the deep-end pointing to what looked like a rubber wrist band languishing under the deepest part of the pool, I heroically dived in, then, with my arm triumphantly aloft emerged to discover that what I was actually holding was a small, firm stool. I was known as ‘poo-boy’ for quite some time afterwards. Nothing quite so refined and humorous as ‘Thunderturd 4’, no, childhood ridicule scuttles straight to the most cutting and humiliating epithet possible. ‘How are you darling? Having a nice time?’ No, none of that. Remind me of a story that I’ve been trying to forget in the fifteen years since it happened. Thanks Mom. My mood shattered, I returned to find the other four basking around a table at a harbour-side bar, each smugly flaunting a cold beer.
‘You’ve got to be joking?’ I greeted them with disbelief, ‘on the beers already? It’s only noon for God’s sake.’
‘It’s our second,’ replied Dave with a kind of honour.
‘You bloody wasters, I’ve seen most of this city already this morning, and from plenty of different angles too.’
‘Yeah, we thought about it … ’ Nonsense mused, ‘but decided we’d chill out here instead.’
‘Well so much for exploring guys. Well I for one am not going to waste the whole day sitting outside this lovely bar in the glorious sunshine drinking fine beer. Well, I might waste some of it … but not yet. I’m not going to have a beer until three o’clock, at least. Maybe two o’clock.’
As I preached I noticed, just a hundred yards away toward the road, a busy out-door market in full swing. It seemed from where I was that it was mostly offering foodstuffs. I presumed it was fish they were selling. That would explain the prevalent aroma that I’d been attempting to stifle for the last ten minutes.
‘Woody, can I have the keys please? I’m going to get my acoustic.’
‘What for, you going to sing to us?’
‘No…I’m going to busk. Care to join me David?’
‘Fuck off, I’m on holiday.’
‘Fine, you waste your day. I’ll do it on my own.’
I could hear them tittering, presumably at me, as I walked away. That didn’t bother me, and it certainly wasn’t the first time in my life I’d been laughed at. I’d had a genuinely pleasurable morning to myself, I really didn’t want to squander the day, and mostly I just wanted a little more time not with them. That’s what happens living at close quarters. Although I must admit, I had no idea why they thought me foolish. After all, I might make some money. This was a pricey country and we were spending most of our time swigging one of the most expensive commodities on offer.
I’d picked my spot the moment I’d made my decision to go busking. It was at one end of the row of market stalls at a confluence that led onto the paved waterside area where my chuckling band of losers drank beer. Because of the layout, milling shoppers and tourists would have to pass me, and the row of moorings that lined the walkway, in order to get to the main part of the harbour. I felt that I had my audience in a pretty secure bottleneck. And so, with a couple by the Beatles, one by the Monkees, a Stones, a Police, a couple of Kinks and a few more Beatles, I began to entertain the passing Wednesday lunchtime shoppers and visitors. It started quite well. Some folk busily tossed a coin or dropped a note into my guitar case as they hurried by. Others, with a little more time on their hands I supposed, nodded in time with the music for a few songs and perched on a mooring, a fence, even a newly bought chair in one case (still in its polythene), before reaching into their pockets, paying the singer, and then dawdling off. My only fear – not having a large enough repertoire – was instantly alleviated when I realised that a busker’s audience seldom stays at the show for more than four songs. I would simply repeat my set. The only people that this was going to annoy would be the market traders and Dave, Woody, Nonsense and Karen, who were sitting well within hearing range … so that was okay.
After about fifteen minutes I noticed a solitary policeman meandering in my general direction. It was soon clear that he was heading straight for me, his body language and eye contact being the big giveaway. That was the end of that then. I thought that policemen probably didn’t have much to do here, so a busker was a big fish; I’d more than likely committed the biggest crime in Bergen today. He courteously waited for me to finish the song I was singing. Prepared to be moved-on, I nodded toward him to concede that I’d noted his presence, and he stepped closer.
‘Do you know anything by our great Norwegian band A-ha?’ he asked in better English than you’d hear in Liverpool.
‘Err … ’ I mumbled, off my guard, ‘I’m sorry … no. Is there anything else you’d like me to sing?’
‘No, carry on with what you’re doing. It’s very good.’
‘Thank you.’
And he sauntered off whistling, but not before dropping ten Kroner in my case.
‘Takk,’ I repeated in his own patois, but without turning or breaking his lazy stride, he simply half raised an arm in acknowledgement.
I stuck it out for another hour and a half after being paid to continue by the local constabulary. I finally wound it up because I had noticed that the market was a little quieter than it had been two hours before, and because I was getting tired of hearing the same songs. Definitely time to stop.

The boys didn’t say a thing as I counted my money on their table. In truth, they looked on with invidious resent, particularly Dave who had turned down the opportunity to join me in my scheme. But I made no effort to ease their suffering. It was through choice that they had sat there and drunk five pints of beer each whilst I worked. I was very proud of myself. I’d drunk nothing yet, seen most of the city, and more importantly, I had made what looked like a not inconsiderable amount of money.
‘Wow … just over nine hundred Kroner. What’s that Karen?’
‘Eighty one quid you penis.’
‘Well, it must be hurting. I’ve made you swear. So lads, what do you want to explore this afternoon, the wine list, perhaps the sweet trolley? You know, there’s a saying they have here in Norway that seems rather appropriate right now … tomorrow is the day that idlers get busy.’
‘Well we’ve got an old saying in our family … ’ said Dave, ‘if you don’t like it, you can stick it up your arse.’
‘Not quite so poetic, but I get your point. Anyway, I’m playing catch up. Whose round is it?’
If I hadn’t had the best part of a thousand Kroner in my hand, I may have elicited a different reaction. Eight quietly raised eyebrows suggested that I should buy the next round if I knew what was good for me.

 

 

Like a Rolling Stone

My first ever journey abroad was as part of a school exchange trip to Germany when I was a spotty, flare-wearing fourteen-year-old. I spent a fortnight in the central town of Kassel living with the Hirsch family, and was shown the German way of life by the similarly aged Joachim. Aside from the fact that Joachim, like me, had an elder brother who presumably also beat crap out him when nobody was looking, our parallel age was where the similarities ended.
For a start, the Hirsch family was exactly that … a family – mom, dad and two children. I came from what’s now known as a broken home even though they were something of a rarity in those days. Okay, I didn’t know any better, but it didn’t feel broken. I had a sparklingly enjoyable childhood. However, the superficial differences were greater. They had a BMW and a Volkswagon. We had a Mini Metro. They had a huge modern house with not a right angle in sight. We had a three-bedroom semi with a carport. They wore pristine and expensive clothes. I had to silently suffer hand-me-downs that my brother had already scuffed a good two years use out of. But the most gaping difference was that they didn’t know how to enjoy themselves. When studying the disparities in outlook, character and general disposition, it’s best to compare my time in Germany with the return fixture exactly one year later. Between arriving in Kassel and getting on board the plane in Düsseldorf to come home, the most exciting distraction in two weeks was going to an ice cream parlour to get sticky and a little nauseous.
Seriously.
A year later in England, we were going to football matches, jamborees, fun fairs, even the pub on one occasion. Sausage-side, I remember Joachim crying his eyes out when I accidentally broke his Scalextric set. On the return leg, we spent a whole afternoon purposely trashing the toys in my bedroom, just for the laugh. We’d given them the Police, Queen, the Specials and Madness. They gave us ‘Da da da’, a wretched song by a wretched band called Trio, who just happened to be at number two in the charts when the class of Kassel were spending their time in Bewdley. In my young mind I couldn’t understand why they were so different. I know it’s very clichéd to say Germans have no perception of fun and even less sense of humour, and please don’t get me wrong, I think the Hirsch family were tremendously warm and lovely people. But recalling the episode re-affirmed my belief that you are extremely unlikely to ever see a German running down the street with their trousers around their ankles singing a song from ‘The Jungle Book’, or any other inane, but ultimately fun pastime. Okay, I know there are plenty of English people that wouldn’t humiliate themselves in the pursuit of mindless entertainment, but I think as a race, our Teutonic neighbours are less prepared to take life in such a light-hearted manner as us.
I’d started to think about my teenage trip to Germany because it had occurred to me that, in the years since that excursion I hadn’t done anywhere near as much travelling as I’d hoped to. I’d always seen myself as a kind of loner, loose-canon, eccentric, English pioneer, but had until now never really lived up to my self image. There had been a couple of jaunts. Myself, and nine other Performing Arts students had taken a couple of tents to the west coast of France one summer. But in truth, we drank so much that my only durable memory of the holiday was waking to enthusiastic fellatio each morning, administered very generously by a girl called Sarah. Another time, I visited the ‘old’ Yugoslavia with a girlfriend. We spent a week drinking cheap wine and sun bathing in a country that felt as if it were about to become embroiled in civil war, which of course it was. My only other foreign travel experience involved a long weekend in Amsterdam for a friend’s stag-do, but of course I have absolutely no memory of that. If it weren’t for a set of blurred photographs I would probably tell you that I’d never been to Holland before landing there at the weekend in the ‘Special Clinic’ van. Man, we’ve got to change our name.
The other reason Germany had suddenly reappeared in my mind, was because we were to return there in a week and a half. This time we would not be using Germany as a ‘long’ cut to Scandinavia, but we would be travelling to the southern city of Nuremberg as paid musicians, with the task of entertaining a hall full of Beatle fans at a convention. I was looking forward to this, a festival crowd who were paying to hear Beatles songs. I anticipated with caution before remembering that we still had a week and a half left in Norway, followed by a long drive, and I still had to tell Dave that he wasn’t playing that gig.

 

 

What a Difference a day makes

I gave Karen a sharp nudge in the back with my elbow. He stopped for a moment. Unlike the night before, I was having a horrid time sleeping on the van floor. I kicked out at Dave and probably connected with his head. He too, ceased briefly. And it wasn’t just horrid it was torrid. I was sweating like a Kenyan farm. I couldn’t reach Woody or Nonsense, though I wished I could. How things can change in twenty-four hours. I threw a shoe at Woody. This produced a grunt. Instead of tenderly nodding off into a restful, contented sleep, I now seemed to be adjudicating some kind of challenge that was probably called the Eurovision Snore Contest. I violently flicked Karen’s nose with my middle finger. This produced a spasm, followed by a stream of nonsensical diatribe. Between them they were making parts of the van audibly vibrate. It went on and on. Sleep deprivation is among my top ten pet hates. Hell, it’s not a pet hate. The mood I get into when I’m unwillingly being kept awake is enough for me to declare nuclear war upon someone. It was a good job I had no access to weapons grade plutonium. It went on some more. The only thing that kept me sane – and even smile a little – was the thought that at least two of my fellow band members would probably be boasting a multi-coloured array of mysterious bruises the next day. This masochistic sensation served as a brief respite. As the snoring continued my exhaustion augmented. My only prospect was to try to doze sufficiently between the bouts of snoring, in the hope that I would be too far-gone to be re-awoken when the next wave of noisemaking recommenced. I reserved my final cognitive activity for a thought of Marte in patent leather shoes, knee-length white socks, a crisp white blouse, and a short tartan skirt.

 

 

Flash

‘Benny … wake up.’
‘What?’
‘Wake up.’
That was Woody’s voice. That was about all I could deduce.
‘What? What time is it?’
‘About half eleven,’ he whispered softly.
‘Half-eleven? Shit! We’d better get moving. We’ve got a gig tonight.’
I looked up in my panic to see that there was nobody else in the van.
‘It’s okay, we’ve been moving for about two and a half hours. We’ve stopped for a break. It’s lovely out here. Come on, we’ve got breakfast and orange juice.’
‘What?’
‘We’re more than halfway back and we’ve got breakfast and orange juice.’
I emerged from the side door of the van, addled and perplexed. My friends were sitting around, cordially sharing bread and cold meats, between swigging from a gigantic carton of orange juice.
‘Morning sleeping ugly,’ said Dave, as he ripped a handful of bread from a large fresh loaf.
‘Morning,’ I replied in a bewildered state.
We seemed to be parked up on the summit of a fairly sizeable mountain from what I could see, though my eyes were struggling to become accustomed to the light. It was a fantastically hot morning and an immense view, and my cohorts were all sat with their bare feet in what looked like extremely soothing and inviting mountain-top rock ponds.
‘Besides, where would you put it all?’ asked Nonsense shaking his head at Dave. ‘And anyway, it’s all very well having all the money in the World but, if you’re the only one that’s got it, well … it would be no use.’
‘Bollocks. I’d have everyone at my beck and call,’ said Dave maniacally.
‘Actually,’ interrupted Karen, ‘my Brummy friend is quite right. A currency can only exist if it’s being exploited by the populous. If you’re the only one that possesses it, it ceases to be a currency. You see, it’s merely a token of a person’s power and ability to exchange goods of worth. In fact without even a modest level of distribution … ’
‘Oh fuck off … ’ snapped Dave, ‘it’s only hypothetical.’
‘Glad to see you kids are playing nicely,’ I said, slipping off my shoes and socks.
‘My nose hurts,’ said Karen, ‘does it look bruised?’
‘No,’ I answered.
‘Well it feels bruised.’
They were, of course, forgiven instantly for their middle of the night crimes. You can’t really blame somebody for snoring, and they had allowed me to sleep all morning (oblivious to the fact that it was they who had kept me up all night), when they could just as easily have done a bastard-squad on me, and woken me up in the most horrendous way possible. But they hadn’t. And now, here they were doing one of the things that I loved them for … being themselves, being my friends. I guess sometimes you need a break, even from the things you like.
‘To be honest,’ added Dave, ‘it would just be nice to have more money than sense.’
‘There you go … here’s a Kroner,’ said Woody offering his hand.
‘Yeah,’ enthused Nonsense, ‘and you haven’t got the sense you were born with.’ He turned his attentions to me. ‘So, what happened to you?’
‘Dunno. For some reason I was really tired. I had a well weird dream though.’
‘Go on … ’
‘Well, I dreamt I wrote ‘Lord of the Rings’.’
Karen giggled. ‘You must have been Tolkien in your sleep then.’
‘Very good,’ I applauded genuinely. ‘But in my dream, it wasn’t full of rampaging Auks, it was the same storyline as the novel I’m thinking of writing.’
‘Are you writing a novel?’ asked Woody.
‘Yeah, in his dreams,’ said Dave.
‘No, I’m thinking of writing one. You know what they say…everybody’s got one book in them.’
‘Yes,’ added Dave, ‘and it’s only a matter of time before you read your first.’
Over the course of the previous exchange, I’d noticed the sky getting darker and the air becoming exceptionally cool. Within two minutes the sky was almost black, and as we looked out to the West and the distant ocean, the sky was bubbling and cracking with electrical prongs.
‘What’s going on with the weather chaps?’ I asked.
‘Do you think it’s the Auks?’ enquired Karen.
At that, a fork of lightning that could resist the seductive charm of the earth no longer, lashed out and exploded a tree, just a couple of hundred yards from us. Frozen with trepidation, we allowed ourselves a prolonged glance at each other.
‘Do you think … ’ calculated Woody, ‘that being sat on top of a mountain with your feet in a pool of water is the best place to be in an electrical storm?’
‘Shall we go Woody?’
‘I think, all things considered, we probably should.’
It seemed like a good cue to pile into the large Faraday Cage that was the van. Strangely, the storm dissipated as quickly as it had appeared. That was okay though, I was keen to get back to Valldal.

 

 

Endless Summer Nights

And so we arrived back in good time for what was to be the most intensive stretch of gigs during our time here. Today was Thursday, and we had to play every night until, and including, Monday. This kind of concentration of performances has been known to bring on a condition called ‘fivegigitis’. Five gigs in a row, and for the record, a far more acute form of illness than ‘fourgigitis’. It probably wasn’t going to be a particularly severe variety of the complaint though because we had no daytime commitments, such as college or work, to hamper our recovery. And as it was, all of the shows went very well, and thanks to having sufficient time between performances without any obligations, we were fresh and full of energy by the time the local revellers had congregated in the cellar music bar of the Fjellro each evening. And didn’t we pack them in. With each progressive night, and as the word spread, there was less and less room, so, by the Monday folks were literally shoulder-to-shoulder, and the only place for their pints was aloft.
In truth the shows all blurred into one long and rowdy beer-drenched evening. If you ask any musician that works regularly, they will tell you the same thing. Unless it’s something a little bit special, they won’t remember the actual shows. All they will recall, and they will do so with surprising detail, is the travel to and from the venues, assuming nothing extraordinary happened on stage. Take me for example. I’ve been a regular live entertainer since I was fourteen, two or three nights a week on average since then. That’s a lot of gigs. But there are very few actual performances that spring to mind – it’s always the high jinks that take place before and after each show that make a firm foothold in the memory. For instance, ‘Rainbow Hill Working Men’s Club’, Worcester. In our first band we had played the place (and it was a proper club; old sod on the door, twenty pence a pint, glittery curtains at the back of the stage and a row of pushchairs in the aisles) at least twenty times. Yet the only occasion I recall actually being on stage there was when once, in mid-guitar solo, I bent over to read the set list on top of my amp – to chose the next song – and an un-trimmed guitar string found its way into the four-way extension lead that was also on my amp, the result of which was six melted guitar strings, a premature song-ending, and yours truly taking an unscheduled flight to the opposite side of the stage. Once my hair had grown back and I’d stopped shaking, I saw the funny side. Another time, and true to form I can’t remember the venue, I had just acquired the skill of vocal vibrato. That’s the warbling effect that’s so profitably over-employed by such greats as Tom Jones, Gene Pitney, Whitney Houston and Maria Carey, amongst many, many others. For me though in those early days, vibrato took a great deal of concentration and incredible physical poise. So when I readied myself for the last note of Buddy Holly’s ‘True Love Ways’, in what was thankfully the last song of our first set, I tried a little too hard and promptly soiled my pants, to the soundtrack of an embarrassingly short top G. I must have been a sight walking off the stage. I couldn’t see how anyone could fail to notice that I’d shit myself. Of course I fled post-haste to the dressing room, where it was necessary to flush my under-crackers down the toilet. Most of the stench remained, and I think Dave had a rough idea, but he never said anything. Then there was the time when we played a posh wedding (big marquee, fireworks, champagne and everything), and I had a violent cold that was consuming my will to live, not to mention virtually ridding me of my voice. Now, it’s quite common for singers with dry throats to hack up a good ball of phlegm, and hold it at the back of their throat for purposes of lubrication. It sounds disgusting, and it is disgusting, but it certainly stops your voice grinding to a halt in a pathetic manner in the middle of a song. Anyways, there I was, phlegm in place, waiting for the next chorus to start when, with very first word of chorus, orb of phlegm flies out and splats on open back of the bride who is in the middle of the first dance with her new husband. It was very fortunate that the globule landed on what was probably the only part of her body that the lovely new bride couldn’t reach, despite her efforts. It was nothing short of a miracle that nobody witnessed the flying gobbet coming to rest on the spotless back of the young newlywed.
What I’m trying to say is that, aside from these and a few other rare moments, I have no recollection of ever actually being on a stage. I suppose you switch off and produce most of what you do in a sort of robot-fashion. Like somebody that works on a production line, you do virtually the same thing each and every night, and I’m sure that Jim, who works on the production line at a factory in Longbridge, has little or no memory of the thousands of shifts when he has witnessed a wing mirror being shoved on the side of a Rover. Having said that … Jim never pays attention.

 

 

Staying out for the Summer

The only thing that broke up the steady flow of the weekend was the Saturday, St. Olaf’s Day, and what a curious day it was. King Olaf or Olav is credited with bringing Christianity to Norway in the eleventh century, despite the fact that the doctrine didn’t really catch on until after his death. It’s even more remarkable because eighty-five percent of today’s Norwegians belong to the Evangelical Lutheran state church of Norway. However, I racked my brain trying to think of somebody who lived a thousand years ago and whose life is celebrated in England, but to no avail. Okay, we have Saint’s days, but they don’t bring people out onto the streets on masse, and they’re certainly not likely to encourage colourful parades and festivities. In fact, all National holidays in the U.K. are either in honour of Jesus Christ, or are some kind of poor excuse for banks to close for the day. Maybe we’re not a race that appreciates its national heroes, which is quite a shame. The Scottish have Burns Night, and Robert Burns only died two hundred years ago. In the U.S.A. they have Martin Luther King’s Day and President’s Day. Do we really not have any son or daughter of our land worthy of honouring? Even our reigning monarch’s official birthday is a downbeat affair, overlooked by most. What’s more, virtually every nation on Earth has National holidays to celebrate great acts or battles, or even something simple that is deemed worthy of remembrance. The French remember the beginning of their republic with Bastille Day, although it’s more likely to run the course of a weekend. In Canada there is even one day a year put aside to mark the birthday of our very own Queen Victoria. The Japanese have no fewer than ten holidays a year, commemorating principles and events, religious and cultural, as diverse as the late Emperor’s birthday, Constitution day, and the intriguing Coming of Age day, on which anybody who turned twenty in the previous year may celebrate the fact that they are now afforded the right to smoke, drink and vote, and presumably they all go out to smoke, drink, and talk about who they’re going to vote for. I know many holidays Worldwide are in place to honour liberation from occupancy, and very often we were the oppressors. But is guilt really an excuse for having nothing to celebrate ourselves? I have a proposition. Let’s do away with Bank Holidays, and instead we’ll extend Remembrance Sunday into the Monday, that way people certainly won’t forget, nor should they. May Day, what the fuck is that about? Oh whoopee, it’s May, let’s have a day off and rejoice. Spring Bank Holiday? I don’t think so. Why not have Churchill Day, Shakespeare Day or Nelson Day, or even John Lennon day. You laugh at the last one, but at least he was always prepared to make a complete fool of himself for the sake of a more caring and peaceful World. He recognised that diplomacy was failing on a global level, and if it meant sitting tied in a bag for a few days to make people look at the problems on this planet in a different way, then so be it.
It seemed quite fitting then that a young Norwegian man was sitting to the side of Valldal’s most central area, whilst people congregated into a loose procession, singing ‘Imagine’ as he accompanied himself on his acoustic guitar. It was a very strange celebration. There were some stalls selling local delicacies and other things like hats and t-shirts, but there were no more than seven or eight. It was the poorest bazaar I’d ever seen. But this didn’t seem to bother the town’s people, or dampen their spirits. There was a sincere sense of occasion as people shook hands with and embraced those that they evidently hadn’t seen in some time. Others merely sat on the fringe drinking from bottles and eating traditional Norwegian fare, happy to be watching the milling revellers from the outskirts. There seemed to be no central focus for the celebration until the arrival of a couple of dozen skiers. Yes, skiers. The sun was throwing down its intensity and the temperature was nudging the nineties, and here were a load of skiers. I didn’t notice at first, but under scrutiny it became apparent that these weren’t ordinary skis, they all had miniature wheels built in, kind of ‘in-line skis’. The heat didn’t stop them dressing in the usual skiing paraphernalia, and I could only wonder how stifled they all were, as I sat in my shorts and vest drinking cold lemonade from a bottle. Once they’d skated up and down the road a few times, the main of the excitement seemed to be over. People slowly dispersed and drifted off, some back home, some to restaurants, but most to bars. It was fair to expect to see a lot of them tonight in the cellar bar, high-spirited and willing to be entertained. The most positive aspect about this particular St. Olaf’s Day was the weather. The climate on this day is traditionally a portent for the autumn to come, and if this were true, they were in for mild days and a spectacular harvest.

 

 

The Girl can’t help it

‘What do you English say … a penny for your thoughts?’
It was late Monday night, actually Tuesday morning, and most people had gone. I stood alone at the bar as Marte got on with her job.
‘Sorry? Oh, nothing. I wasn’t thinking anything, really. In fact, there was a total void of thought. I hadn’t even contemplated contemplation.’
‘Why have you been avoiding me?’ she said with brave candour.
‘I haven’t.’
‘Yes you have, for a few days.’
‘We went to Bergen.’
‘I don’t mean that. You’ve been back for four days and you’ve hardly spoken to me.’
She looked genuinely upset, even tearful.
‘Well, we have been playing a lot. And I must admit, I don’t know what it is – perhaps it’s the air up here – but I have been so tired.’
‘That’s rubbish. You’ve been doing two hours work a night, compared to my eight hours. What is it really?’
Her accent became even more adorable when she was close to weeping, and I felt very guilty for even noticing it, let alone finding her more attractive for it.
‘It’s really nothing,’ I said, attempting to evade her every inquisitive glance.
‘Okay then,’ she concluded, in a way that suggested that I either told her what was going on in my head, or we’d probably never need converse again.
‘It’s just … I don’t know. I think the problem is … that I’ve known from the start that I would only be here for two weeks.’
‘So?’
‘No, that’s not the problem. The problem is that I’m getting to really like you. What am I talking about, I’ve adored you from the moment I first clapped my eyes on you. That’s … an understatement actually. Do you know what Phenylethylamine is? Actually, it doesn’t matter. The point is … the point is that, as clichéd as it sounds, you make me feel like the cat that got the cream, which means something like the reindeer … that … got the reindeer moss. That’s actually a terrible example but, the point is, since you put the bread rolls on my table the night I arrived, so to speak, you’ve occupied my every thought, and the real problem is, that that, is not a feeling that I know how to deal with.’
It wasn’t a line, honestly, but she softened before my very eyes.
‘So why is that a problem, Benjamin?’ she asked in an understanding fashion.
‘Because it was never going to last more than two weeks, we’re going on Sunday.’
‘What!’
It seemed I had hit a nerve.
‘You tell me all that and then dismiss it because you’re going back off on your travels on Sunday? Has it never occurred to you that things that happen in your life are capable of changing your life? Otherwise experience would mean nothing. It would have no purpose. Everything we do or see either changes the way we think or the way we make our decisions in future. I mean, I’m two years younger than you so we’re in the same generation; we have an exceptional regard for one another; but most of all … we’re in the same World. There’s no excuse. You conceited … what do you say … wanker, how can you be so finite about everything? Can’t you accept that your life might go in a different direction?’
That seemed to silence me. I’d never thought about it like that. Was I naïve for thinking that what little relationship there was at the moment, would be over just because I was leaving in a few days? I was getting a genuinely fresh emotional feeling from this girl, yet I was willing to write the whole thing off because of vicinity. But could it really work? I mean, practically? I’m as capable of loving a girl as the next man. But the truth is, I’m a musician (for musician read ‘a creative type that needs to be reinforced constantly whilst relentlessly being made the centre of attention’) – I crave success at any cost; secondly I’m a man – I don’t enjoy being tied to responsibilities, even though many of my type pretend to get pleasure from it; most of all … I’m me. Regardless of how I felt about Marte at that time, and notwithstanding the way I actually thought she might have the necessary ingredients to severely revolutionize my life, I knew that it could never really work. A case in point: I’d once had a girlfriend, who incidentally meant the world to me at the time, and she was studying English at university in Crewe, maybe a two-hour drive. After she left, it took about two hours before I had to masturbate, one day before I felt the need to flirt heavily, and one day and twelve minutes before it was necessary to dive into bed with the first girl that noticed I was breathing. So how could this possibly work?
Marte continued to work behind the bar, as I stood there trying not to get drawn into conversation. I dearly wanted to hold her, but that wouldn’t have been a solution. There was no way of putting into words what I felt, without procuring a slap. So after an icy but thankfully short walk round to the coach, I pecked the girl goodnight, and staggered back to the cottage. If I’d known life was going to be such a test, I would have paid more attention.

 

 

Love on a Mountain Top

‘Honest lads, it’s all sorted,’ he said, as unconvincingly as he had the first time.
We’d been drinking moonshine with Arudel, the young man that lived next door to our cottage. In fact, between us, Arudel and his three friends, we had so far devoured over two and a half bottles. Nonsense was telling us about a girl he’d met in the cellar bar earlier that night, and was trying to convince us that she was a self-proclaimed nymphomaniac who had apparently confessed that there was nothing she’d like more than to indulge her condition with a whole load of guys at the same time.
‘I’m telling you, she’s really up for it.’
‘Sounds like a classy girl,’ said Karen, dryly.
‘She’s a peach, body to die for.’
‘So, where does she live?’ asked Arudel.
‘Well, that was the confusing bit.’
‘You mean she didn’t tell you? Wise girl I say,’ I said.
‘Nope, she told me, but I’m not sure I understood. She just kept pointing up that mountain, and saying she was in a white van with flowers in the window.’
‘Oh I see,’ clicked Arudel, ‘that means a caravan. There’s only one place she could be on that mountain.’
‘What are we waiting for then?’ urged Nonsense.
‘Even though, deep down,’ slurred Woody, ‘my brain is telling me not to even consider getting roped into anything that YOU, have organised, I can’t help thinking it’ll be a good laugh.’
‘What about Inge?’ I asked.
‘What about her?’
‘Well, haven’t you got something going on with her?’
‘Not any more.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, I’ve slept with her now,’ he laughed, ‘what about Marte?’
‘Oh, help yourself,’ I said.
‘No, I thought you and her were getting it together.’
‘Oh, no,’ I replied shaking my head, and allowing the accompanying silence to speak for me.
I was beginning to notice just how drunk our speech was. It had got to the stage where every word was delivered quite deliberately, as was necessary, otherwise the words simply wouldn’t get out. Arudel’s three friends had hardly muttered a word since we arrived. They simply sat in the corner smiling, and occasionally nodding. I don’t know where they were, but it was clearly a happy place.
‘Well Bodil still hasn’t talked to me,’ piped up Karen. ‘I suppose I should be grateful that she’s no longer throwing my meals at me.’
‘Yeah, Christina’s a non-starter. I think Ted was right … frigid,’ added Dave.
‘Bollocks to you lot … ’ interrupted Nonsense, ‘I haven’t had a shag in weeks, and if there’s some rough floozy up the mountain willing for me to abuse her without me having to pay for the privilege, then stand back while I take my trousers off.’
‘The only trouble is … ’ said Arudel, ‘the park is quite a way up the mountain. It’ll take a while to walk there.’
‘That’s okay!’ shouted Lars, springing to life from the corner, ‘I’ve got my car outside.’
This was met with a barrage of ‘no’s’ and ‘haven’t you had too much to drink’s’ from the five English boys.
‘It’s all right,’ hiccupped Lars, ‘I know these roads like the back of my hands.’
‘What about the police though?’ I asked, ‘I’ve heard that the permitted level is something like 0.2mg, that’s only about enough to cover a gentle drink the night before.’
‘Well … ’ said Arudel, ‘you know the guy that got thrown out earlier for being too drunk?’ We all nodded. ‘That was the police.’
After a little pondering, we all decided that it was probably going to be fun.
‘Wait a minute,’ asked Dave as we left, ‘will you fit us all in?’
‘Of course,’ said Lars, ‘I have a Volkswagon.’
It was true he did have a Volkswagon … a Volkswagon Golf to be precise. How Lars thought he was going to fit nine people into a family saloon I couldn’t imagine.
‘There we are, easy,’ declared Lars, after successfully closing the doors on two men on the passenger seat, and four men on the back seat.
‘But what about us?’ I asked, stood next to Nonsense.
‘You can sit in the boot,’ he replied, as if the answer was obvious.
Actually it felt quite safe sat on the rear wing with our feet in the boot. What’s more, it was a fantastically hot night so, not only did we have all the space but, we were also going to be a lot cooler than the cattle class by the time we reached the top of the mountain.
‘Wagon roll!’ cried the boys inside the car.
‘Wagon roll!’ echoed Nonsense and I.
When the car lurched forward, Nonsense instantly disappeared from sight.
‘Stop, stop!’ I banged on the roof, ‘we’ve lost Nonsense.’
‘Wow, that was fun,’ huffed Nonsense, climbing back into the boot.
‘Wagon roll!’ shouted Nonsense securing a better grip, before we trundled off up the hill.

 

 

Band on the Run

The ten-minute ride was nothing short of a pleasure for Nonsense and I, with the wind speeding against our faces and randomly throwing our hair around. Lars was really moving, and it became clear that it would have taken us an age to walk it, and that’s assuming we’d have actually made it at all. When we reached the caravan park, which was set in a large, flat crater-like dip in the hillside, it was quickly apparent that this was a sizable site, and most distressingly of all, about ninety percent of the ‘vans’ were white. They spread in every direction in the near darkness, like a vast defeated fibreglass army, silent and still, but nonetheless menacing. We stood taciturn looking out across this hazy graveyard, before one by one turning to look at Nonsense who was sporting a look of puzzled frustration.
‘Bollocks,’ he said.
‘Actually,’ suggested Arudel with confidence, ‘there are a few that still have a light on. It’s my guess that she’s in one of those. Let’s split up and look for flowers in the window.’
And so it was. We spread in nine different directions, a little like a crack military division, only drunkenly and more noisily. The second lit window I gazed into was dominated by a very proud bunch of flowers that had been very carefully cut, and arranged with great skill.
‘Nonsense,’ I whisper-shouted. No answer. ‘Nonsense!’ Still nothing. ‘Oi, dickhead!’ I projected into the night.
‘What?’ he urged, appearing from nowhere.
‘Look,’ I gestured toward the window.
As I had already tried once, he too peered through the window attempting to see beyond the large bouquet of flora that filled the frame, but to no avail. He moved to the door, readying himself to knock. With a giggle I moved quickly around the caravan into a safe and unseen hiding place. Nonsense made a small throat-clearing cough, and then gently tapped on the caravan. An overweight old man slowly opened his door.
‘Ja?’
‘Erm…sorry, wrong number,’ said Nonsense, who was in a fast walk before he’d started to apologise. ‘Bollocks,’ he announced, running past me, before tripping over a tree stump and landing as flat as a man that had forgotten to tie himself to the bungee rope.
‘Bollocks!’ he repeated, running past me for a second time.
Within a minute or so, we’d all reconvened fairly close to where we had started. It seemed that everybody had been as fruitless as Nonsense and I. It was clear that our little excursion was over; it had become difficult checking the caravans with lights on because, in our over-exuberance to find the willing girl in the white van with the flowers in the window, we had caused numerous other people to turn lights on just to see what all the clamour was about. As we edged slowly backwards towards our completely unsuitable transport, a man came out of a small brick cottage on the perimeter of the site. I guessed he was the caretaker. After shouting something angrily in Norwegian, we replied with the universal gesture that is the middle finger, before continuing our walk up the path with a chuckle. It was fortuitous that I happened to crane around to see the man re-emerge from his house with what looked like an old musket.
‘Leg it,’ I urged, picking up some speed.
All but Nonsense turned to see the same threatening picture.
‘God … don’t worry,’ said Nonsense calmly, ‘it’s just some old boy. What’s he going to do to nine blokes?’
‘Shoot them!’ I shouted, jumping into the open trunk of the car.
‘What?’
By the time Nonsense had turned to evaluate the impending danger, the elderly man had made a small amount of ground. Nonsense faced back to us, put his head down and sprinted. The car started and I urged him to run faster. The very moment he projected himself head first into the boot of the now slowly moving car, a shot rang out, seemingly repeating half a dozen times as it echoed around the terrain.
‘Go, go, go!’ I shouted, whilst banging on the roof.
As we sped off down the road, Nonsense, who lay face down in the boot with his legs hanging outside, lolled motionlessly. There was a distinct smell of burning.
‘Bollocks,’ he said, slowly turning to face me from the floor of the boot, ‘the bastard shot me in the arse.’

 

 

Shoot all the Clowns

A Boring man is he who cannot bear to spend his life more than a thousand yards from the nearest toilet. He will find no adventure. That’s what I’ve always thought. Of course it’s fairly figurative. The toilet is merely a metaphor for any point of safety or reassurance; if you’re familiar with your surroundings and you’re aware of the limits of what may happen in your life … you’re not living. Though it seemed that no matter how I reworded this idiom, Nonsense was taking little comfort from it. That’s probably because he was lying face down on his bed with four musicians taking it in turns to remove buckshot from his backside with a pair of tweezers. Dave was particularly enjoying it.
‘Brilliant … I’ve always wanted to see someone get shot.’
‘Thanks mate,’ said Nonsense, his speech a little muffled by his pillow.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘Of course it fucking hurts you twat.’
‘Brilliant.’
And yes, of course it hurt. Even though the four of us had shared a lot of laughter over this instalment, it was patently obvious that Nonsense was in quite some discomfort. It’s my opinion that the removal of the small lead shots was in fact more painful than their actual bottomly presence. With each of the eleven pellets that we’d so far retrieved, the vocal manifestation that accompanied each extraction had grown from whimper to fully-fledged man screams. Although this was nothing compared to the shrieks that came after the application of the moonshine antiseptic.
‘Aargh! What the fuck was that?’
‘Just some alcohol,’ I reassured. ‘It’s to stop the wounds going bad. Otherwise your arse might fall off, and you wouldn’t want that now, would you?’
‘You bastards, you’re enjoying this aren’t you?’
‘Yeah, a bit,’ commented Woody taking a slug from the same bottle, ‘but it is nice to see you on the receiving end of one of your own stupid ideas for once.’
‘And it has got to be pointed out,’ I added, ‘that your arse seems to be doing some kind of impersonation of the moon … craters and all.’
‘It’s all right for you. I’ve got to sit on the thing all the way down to Germany on Sunday. How long will that take anyway?’ His speech rose in pitch and volume as another pellet was removed.
‘Ooh,’ deliberated Woody, ‘a good couple of days I should say.’
‘Oh great … I think I’ll walk.’
‘Well, my nose still hurts,’ peeped Karen, ‘and it is bruised as well. I’m sure I don’t know how that happened.’
‘What? Are you after sympathy? I’ve been shot and you’re going on about your snoring organ hurting a bit. Well poor you. At least you haven’t got to sit on your snout for forty-eight hours. Mind you, you could put a saddle on it, it’s big enough to sit on.’
I’m told that Nonsense didn’t sleep so well. Each toss and every turn was supplemented with a great yelp of pain, which in turn meant that Karen and Dave didn’t sleep so well either. However, this certainly didn’t interrupt my moonshine fuelled dozing, and I’m certain that Woody too was oblivious to the screams of agony from above. On the bright side, it gave Nonsense something to moan about for the next few days, and there’s nothing that Nonsense likes more than to have a good gripe about something. We humoured him and bathed him in mock sympathy – that was easy – we were just grateful that it wasn’t our arses that had been riddled with shot.

 

 

(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay

Despite Nonsense’s grousing, those last few days bled into each other fairly swiftly. When a coach full of English holidaymakers arrived on the Saturday, I praised the timing of our imminent departure. I’m never keen to meet too many of my fellow patriots abroad, especially a coach load, and particularly when they’re a coach load of shell-suited, medallion wearing geezers and geezerettes from the home counties. The glistening from gold accessories and the discordant accents instantly transformed this idyllic haven into some kind of Margate from home. Gone was the subtle charm of mountain life, and here, in all its glory, was vulgarity and annoyance personified.
In a determined effort to enjoy my last day in the kind of lucid, solitary peacefulness that had iced the highlights of this visit, I decided to spend a large proportion of this final day sat on the edge of the Fjord submerged in consideration, by myself, like I had found time to on most days since arriving here. I bought myself a fresh bread and Jarlsberg lunch with some fruit juice from the Deli near the water’s edge, with a view to staring out across the Fjord in hushed consideration, watching the passing salmon boats and gently harnessing the sun’s rays. I was somewhat distraught to discover that ‘my bench’ was being occupied by a Kentish couple who were probably in their early fifties. I could tell that they were Kentish from where I was standing, there’s no mistaking that accent – it can soften your tooth enamel from thirty yards – fortified by the fact that they were wearing the Kent national dress, ironic that it should be sports wear when it was clear that neither had done anything remotely physical for some time, aside from maybe having to reach for another pork pie. I decided to bide my time and wait. They were unlikely to stay there for too long, certainly not all day. I continued to lean against my wall, waiting to pounce. At one point they both stood to observe something on the other side of the Fjord. I stepped forward anticipating their departure, but my move was noticed by the man, who immediately sat down again in an openly, territorial act. Damn, I’d been spotted. I didn’t fancy my chances of reclaiming my bench now. There was only one thing for it – hide. I slipped back into the shop unnoticed, and feigned interest in the wares on display. In fact, I didn’t have to pretend, as the shop was full to the brim with genuinely inviting goodies, and I did make another purchase of a type of sausage come black pudding made from Reindeer, which turned out to be delicious. As I collected my change from the shop assistant I spotted the bench thieves peering through the far end of the shop window. My plan had worked. I made a beeline for the door, and without looking back, walked straight to the bench and sat down, before exhaling a sigh of satisfaction. In my periphery I could sense that the couple had noted my mercurial move, and were probably glaring. They chose to walk past me as they headed on to a different and altogether less desirable spot on the waterside.
‘They’re so bladdy rude these foreigners, aren’t they darlin’?’ said the man.
‘Yeah, they are pet,’ she whined nasally.
‘Excuse me,’ I interrupted, bringing them to a halt, ‘but why must you southerners do this everywhere you go? Is it any wonder that we British have such a bad reputation on the continent when obnoxious, ignorant bastards like you are permitted to leave the country?’
He was truly caught out and lost for words, and his wife had to adjust her gaze to the ground in embarrassment. After what was arguably a very long and awkward three seconds for them, they turned away and continued their walk, leaving me on my bench with an unbearably large grin, and a lunch fit for King Olaf.

 

 

Farewell my Summer Love

It was with a mild sense of sorrow and lament that we finished our last show at the Fjellro, not least because we knew we had to pack our gear down and try to load it back into the van as efficiently as we had done so two weeks before. Of course our exciting journey would continue, but Valldal and its people had made an indelible mark on us that was unlikely to ever shift. It had been a seminal experience for us all, and we secretly hoped that we would live as long in their memories as they undoubtedly would in ours. With the gear dismantled and successfully jig-sawed into the van, we hit the sack in readiness for a relatively early start, with my mind consumed and frustrated by the fact that Marte hadn’t worked on our last night, and the fact that I would probably never see her again.
There was something of a departure committee waiting for us as we filed out of the cottage at eight the next morning. Mike, who had treated us finely and paid us beyond our greatest expectations, was there in his dressing gown to wish us well. Terry, who I’d hoped to see a lot more of, but had had too many wood-related work commitments, also made the effort. When I saw Christina, Inge and Bodil had also shown up to see us off, I brusquely looked in every direction expectantly, but there was no sign of Marte.
‘Look after yourself Karen,’ said Bodil, with the faintest of smiles.
‘Does this mean I’m forgiven then?’
‘Well, I guess my breasts are safe now,’ she said, offering an embrace that would have made for a very sweet moment had Karen not grabbed her left breast as he moved into the hug.
‘I guess they’ll be safer in ten minutes,’ said Bodil exasperated.
‘Sorry, I needed that one for the set,’ apologised Karen uncharacteristically, before taking his position in the back of the van with Woody.
‘Well boys,’ said Terry, ‘have a good Robert Fripp, and give us a bell on the dog and bone when you get back to Blighty.’
‘Will do Terry, thanks for everything mate,’ I said, ‘and thank you Mike, it’s been wonderful. Hope to see you again.’
‘Think nothing of it. It would be great to have you back.’
As all of the pleasantries were exchanged I scanned the vicinity again, but there was still no sign of Marte, so with cheerless resignation I took my place in the passenger seat, more than a little dejectedly, but as we began to roll away I could hear the distant shouting of ‘Benjamin, Benjamin’.
‘Dave, stop!’ I shouted.
‘What?’
‘Stop the van now or I will kill you.’
I jumped out of the van to see Marte jogging my way. There was a long silence as she attempted to catch her breath. Three or four times she was close to starting a sentence, but each time stalled. My head too was cluttered with all of the things I could have said, but none seemed appropriate.
‘Take care Benjamin,’ she eventually said, touching my hand.
‘I will,’ I smiled. ‘Thank you.’
Of the infinite exchanges possible at the time, this was just enough. We could both have said so much more, but of course we needn’t have – it wasn’t necessary. With a final smile I climbed back into the van much, much happier, and after one more wave, we were gone. From feeling disconsolate and hollow one minute, everything was now right – there was a suitable cadence to my fortnight, and once again we were Germany-bound. We spent a good couple of miles in silence mourning the end of our Norwegian encounter, before the calm was eventually broken by Woody.
‘I can’t believe you grabbed her tit man.’
‘Yes, I was just thinking about that,’ said Karen. ‘Not like me at all.’
‘Was it good?’
‘It was better than the right one.’
‘Nice bunch,’ I said.
‘What … Bodil’s tits?’
‘No, well yes, but I meant the people.’
‘Yeah,’ agreed everybody.
‘And considering he was supposed to be a bit barking, I thought Mike was a thoroughly nice chap.’
‘Yeah,’ they agreed again.
‘Hang on … ’ interjected Dave, ‘but did any of you, at any point ever meet his wife?’
We all looked to each other with expressions of moderate bemusement. She was certainly mentioned on a few occasions, but now it transpired that not only had none of us even seen her, nobody was entirely certain of her name.
‘Perhaps she lives in a rocking chair in the attic,’ I suggested. ‘Maybe he really is mad after all.’
‘Yeah,’ they quietly concurred.

 

 

International Rescue

Just outside the town of Dombås on the edge of the Kjølen Mountains, something extraordinary happened. About two hours – probably eighty miles into our journey southeast – the van ground to a halt with a wheeze and a ‘phut’. Nothing extraordinary there, a van full of musicians is always more likely to cease before any other van. Woody was very sprightly in taking the credit for the roadside cover we took out in Harwich and, as grateful as we were for his foresight, we couldn’t help feeling downbeat at the prospect of an immensely long wait in the baking sunshine atop of a mountain, about as close as was possible to get to the sun. After a short discussion I volunteered to stagger to the base of a mountain, and to the campsite we’d passed ten minutes previously, in search of a telephone. It had almost certainly been this steep ascent that had rendered the van inactive. Dripping with humidity, in my shorts and vest, I eventually found a payphone and, after talking to a charming young lady called Judy in Ipswich (a conversation that made me a speck homesick) I was transferred to a station somewhere in Norway.
‘Ja?’
‘Ja, hallo,’ I said, ‘er … snakker du Engelsk?’ I continued, using appropriate language for the first time in a fortnight.
‘Oh ja, sorry, yes … I do. What is the problem sir?’
After telling the man everything I knew, including the road we were on and roughly what area we were in, he said he would see what he could do. Something of a result, but I couldn’t help feeling perturbed by the certain reality that we were likely to spend the rest of the day waiting for recovery, and I then started to worry that we wouldn’t make it to Germany in time for our show. Hell, I know what they’re like in England. You can expect the AA or the RAC to take a good couple of hours (unless you’re a white female alone), and that’s without being transferred through an international operator to a man in Oslo on a sweltering day. So began my long hard slog back up the hill. It wasn’t a gradient designed for haste, but that didn’t matter because there was really no hurry. I ambled up, sometimes zigzagging diagonally to ease the slope, singing aloud and drenching every patch of highway that I strode with sweat. It took about forty-five minutes before the van was back in my sights, and as I saw the other four, who were sunbathing on a roadside bank, I heard a large vehicle powering up the hill behind me. It was the recovery vehicle and it was going to get to the van before me. The driver waved, and in my exhilaration I broke into a jog and jumped on the side of his truck, securing a keen grip on the plentiful metal work. We rolled up in front of the van and I saluted my lazing friends before jumping off the wagon and proudly declaring ‘all right lads’, like a gallant knight, as if it were all in a day’s work. As if that weren’t remarkable enough, the mechanic inspected our van, told us that our alternator was the problem and then proclaimed that he was fairly sure he had a Ford Transit alternator on his truck. I asked him if he was Jesus Christ and within ten minutes we were moving again, a little shell-shocked by the swiftness of it all, but unequivocally delighted. I decided that the next time I required the assistance of any of the British roadside recovery services, that if they weren’t there within ten minutes I would have some pretty searching questions for them. Better still, next time I’ll just use their Norwegian counterparts.

 

 

Sharp dressed man

The biggest catch-22 in my life regards the presence and removal of facial hair. Captain Yossarian, in Joseph Heller’s famous book, had it quite easy; all he had to do was make it to the end of the war without flying a plane or getting killed. My own little circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting conditions involves shaving. I hate shaving. The conflict lies in my equal abhorrence to the presence of facial hair. Beard, moustache, goatee, you name it. Ever since that very first time I dragged razor-sharp metal across the downy hair on my top lip as a teenager, I have despised the routine, and have even been known to reach the point of dejection when hair removal is imminent. ‘Shaving’ is such an ambiguous turn of phrase for what is more accurately described as facial mutilation. I dare say my views would be different if, along with a basin full of bristles, I didn’t lose half a pound of flesh each time I performed the action. The only thing that I loathe more is to allow said bristles to cultivate. It’s itchy, it’s tatty and I don’t think it ever looks good, unless you have some kind of facial deformity you’re striving to cloak, like an unfortunate lip or something (John Major should certainly have kept a moustache). More crucially, I think facial hair makes everybody look older (including Italian women), so why willingly do it unless you’re a sixteen year old with an astonishing yearning for lager? If there were a hormone available that halted the stuff, and didn’t lead to the growth of women’s breasts, I’d be the first in the queue to try it.
There were never any such dilemmas for Nonsense though. He shaved when we reminded him to, which in this instance had been about a week before. His appearance wasn’t something that listed high on his inventory of life’s priorities. He’d always been a strong advocate for the principle of people liking him for who he really was and not how he looked, a strategy that limited the excellence and quantity of his female bedfellows over the years, but nevertheless a quality that I genuinely admired in the man. Like most, I’ve always endeavoured to look my best as often as I can be bothered to, but Nonsense’s brutal honesty concerning such issues was one of his only traits that I envied, even though vanity always forbade me from employing it for myself.
‘You’ve got to shave before we play on Wednesday night. You look like a vagrant now. I dread to think what you’ll be like in three days,’ I said, as we began to retrace our route back down through Norway. We would be re-tracking ourselves all the way down to Hamburg where, instead of jutting west toward the Netherlands, we would continue south and onwards into Bavaria.
‘Don’t worry,’ he replied, ‘it’ll be gone before we get to Nürnberg.’
‘I could do with losing my spikes as well,’ remarked Dave, rubbing his chin.
‘What for?’ asked Nonsense, ‘you’re not even playing.’
‘What?’
I winced knowing a whole can of potentially unattractive worms had been opened, though I supposed it had to come out at some point.
‘What do you mean … I’m not playing?’ he pushed for an answer.
‘Sorry,’ I placated, ‘but they wanted a Beatles band.’
‘Yeah … well we can do Beatles songs.’
‘Dave, it’s a Beatles convention.’
‘So, I know a fair amount.’
‘They specifically asked for a Beatles tribute band.’
‘You bunch of bastards. That’s why you brought your stupid wigs isn’t it?’ Dave was angry. ‘When were you going to tell me then?’
‘I’m sorry mate. I really didn’t think you’d mind, I mean, you get the night off after all.’
‘Well I don’t want the night off. And I suppose that means that if I’m having the night off, I won’t get paid.’
‘Of course it doesn’t. We’re all in this together, one for all and all that.’
‘Hold on,’ butted in Woody, ‘why should he get paid if he’s not playing?’
‘Well there’ll be plenty of other stuff to do. He can help with the gear.’ All of a sudden it was me versus everybody else.
‘What?’ said Dave incredulously, ‘you want me to be a fucking roadie? Would you like me to wipe your arse too?’
‘Look,’ I declared, trying to please all, ‘it’s for one night only, for an hour and a half to be precise. I can’t see that it matters that much.’
‘Well it matters to me you tosser.’
‘Well God, I’m sorry. I’m not sure what to say. What am I supposed to do?’
‘Ah, don’t worry about it,’ he said, quickly changing his mood.
‘What?’
‘It’s all right. Woody told me about a week ago. I couldn’t give a flying fuck.’
‘You total wank stain. I thought you were being serious then.’
‘Yeah, but it was a laugh wasn’t it.’
With a slight smile I conceded defeat. As the others laughed I quietly accepted that I probably deserved the wind-up, but also made a mental note that I must, at all costs, get the bastards back.

 

 

 

My Old School

By night fall, we were once again approaching the southern Swedish city of Helsingborg, only this time from the north, and I was about to inherit the wheel from Karen in the very place that I had played chicken with an unsuspecting Swedish motorist two weeks before.
‘Drive on the right!’ they all shouted as I turned the engine over.
‘I know, I know,’ I said, secretly grateful for the reminder.
For some time now we’d been in avid reminiscence about our respective school lives; the teachers we detested and liked, but mostly detested; the pranks that we got away with but mostly got caught for; the girls that allowed us to grope them and then all of the girls that didn’t; the detentions, the fights and skiving off to rehearse with bands. Dave and I took most of the spotlight by virtue of our schooling together. At one point we’d had the other three in pieces when we told them of one of our old teachers, Mr. Pritchard, who had been close to retirement but was still living with his mother, who on one occasion had thrown a chair at my head because I was singing ‘Ole Man River’ as he walked into the classroom. Thankfully he missed me and made a smart contact with the girl sat behind me. Then there was Mr. Hinton at middle school. He kept a large knot from a tree that he used to call his ‘head-bonker’, and which he used to devastating effect (and actually knocked an unwary pupil out with it once). We marvelled at the fact that they would both be sat in prison playing harmonica were they to do something similar in this enlightened age, assuming they were still alive. Then there was the time Dave and I threw Tim Stanley in the river because we were bored. Ah, the harmless fun of it all … happy days.
All was well until Nonsense took centre stage and started to recount some of his grisly public school experiences.
‘Oh yes, I’ve tasted my own semen … not to mention a few other peoples,’ was the line that halted us in our tracks.
‘Hang on … ’ said Dave, after a considerable pause, ‘first things first. You’ve tasted your own semen?’
‘Of course, haven’t you ever wandered what it tastes like?’
‘No I have not. I’m quite happy for that to be a problem for girls to lose sleep over.’
Nonsense saw that we were all staring and shaking our heads, and he seemed to be aghast that he was in an exclusive club.
‘Now more importantly,’ added Dave, ‘other people’s semen?’
‘Well I did go to public school.’
‘Hang on,’ I said, ‘you can’t just write a comment like that off because you went to public school. I mean, there’s nothing in the ‘big public school rule book’ that says you have to drink everybody else’s man fat.’
‘No, not everyone’s, you see we used to have this game called ‘soggy biscuit’.’
‘I’m not sure I want to hear this,’ said Karen, lifting a blanket over his head.
‘Soggy biscuit?’ I asked tentatively.
‘Yeah. What you’d do is, all sit round a biscuit – usually a digestive or something equally absorbent – and the last one to crack one off over it, has to eat it.’
‘You what?’ shrieked Woody, ‘what on earth would make you wank off onto a biscuit?’
‘It was something to do. Tell you what, you make sure you never lose a second time.’
‘My God … ’ I pondered, ‘it’s Russian Roulette with jizz.’
‘Well I suppose it could be worse,’ said Dave.
‘No it couldn’t,’ yelled Woody, ‘what could be worse than a spunk cracker?’
‘Well,’ continued Dave, ‘what I mean is, I suppose he could have taken it straight from the tap, so to speak.’
‘Oh I tried that too.’ We all looked at him in dumbfounded astonishment. ‘Well, I was at public school.’
‘You’re a fucking freak,’ announced Woody.
‘I feel sick,’ added Karen.
‘I don’t suppose anyone wants a game of soggy biscuit then?’
‘No!’ we all shouted, before he’d even finished the sentence.
The following silence was sufficient enough to assume that this particular subject had gone away, hopefully never to rear its ugly head again.
‘So, how about a game of sticky naval then?’
‘No!’
‘Smelly Polo?’
‘Smelly polo?’ I asked, annoyed with myself for granting Nonsense the opportunity to elaborate.
‘Oh yeah, great game,’ he enthused. ‘What you’d do is pop a polo between your bum cheeks, then it’s a race up and down the common room, and the last one back or the first to drop their mint, gets to eat all the others.’
‘Why aren’t you in prison?’ asked Woody.
‘Ooh, I don’t want to go to prison. Might get arse raped.’
‘By the sound of it,’ I declared, ‘that’s about the only thing you haven’t tried.’

 

 

We’ve gotta get out of this place

Once again I thrived on the pleasures of driving through the night. We’d been making very good time so far so, from the offset I’d decided to take it easy, and I realised that it was beneficial for all to consign this dull tract of the drive to the anonymity of darkness. As before, my companions hardly stirred during my stretch at the controls, and lost in a world of my own creating, before I knew it a new dawn was upon us, and I’d been driving all night. I quietly prided myself for completing my jaunt without endangering our lives, or anybody else’s.
As is often the case, the slowing of the vehicle was enough to draw the other four from their sleep. We were just outside the medieval city of Hanover, and I’d found a large roadside service station that seemed to offer all that we could possibly require for a lengthy rest; an eatery that was serving an array of European breakfasts, a good sized shop, a bathroom, and more vitally, an outlet for the fuel that we needed in order to continue our journey. Being the only truly attentive member of the party, I made the decision that we could afford a good couple of hours at this place, to eat, freshen up and refuel; we would easily make Nürnberg by that evening, assuming all the checkpoints were long gone and that we wouldn’t have to show our papers every few miles.
Not for the first time in the last two weeks, we engaged the attention of a few onlookers when the side door of the van glided open, allowing a dozen or so empty beer cans to noisily clatter to the floor. After burdening a large bin to the point of overflow, we sauntered inside and gorged on a very fine banquet of eggs, bacon, sausages, toasted bread, fruit juice, and fresh coffee. After two weeks of uninspiring platters, we were finally getting our teeth into something that was worthy of the name ‘breakfast’. Afterwards, we took the opportunity to replenish our supplies in the not inconsiderable shop, or as the Germans so poetically call it, the ‘geschäft’. Apart from stocking up on communal beer, cigarettes and foodstuffs, Dave bought a model Messerschmitt, Woody some expensive chocolate, Nonsense got himself a German jazz mag, and Karen purchased a small packet of handkerchiefs. I bought a German translation version of a book on Gestalt theory for some unknown reason, although I suppose in years to come I’ll flick through the pages and fondly think back to this time, and probably wonder … just why I bought it.
By the time we were set to go, between us we’d occupied the bath room for over half an hour – I doubt if the toilet ever recovered – and we were simply waiting for Nonsense to conclude his ablutions before we could continue our trek southward. After several rasps on the horn, and with the engine running, Nonsense finally immerged, a refreshed man.
‘Oh no … ’ said Dave looking out of the passenger window, ‘you’re not going to believe this.’
‘Oh shit!’ declared Woody.
‘What is it … ?’ I asked, ‘hasn’t he had a shave?’
‘Oh, he’s had a shave all right.’
The intrigue was too much for Karen and I in the back of the van, so, standing up and hoisting our bodies halfway across the front seats, we got into just about the only position where the approaching Nonsense could be seen.
‘Oh no … ’ proclaimed Karen, ‘he’s going to get us killed.’
Nonsense had indeed shaved his face, all but a perfectly square patch directly below his nose. As if by chance, he’d also changed the style of his hair, now favouring a sweeping side parting. In fairness, the resemblance he bore to a certain fascist ruler was uncanny.
‘God, at least he’s not doing the walk,’ said Dave.
Then he saw that we’d noticed him.
‘Oh God, he’s doing the walk.’
‘Get in the van now you twat!’ shouted Woody from the driver’s seat. ‘You’re an even bigger twat than I thought.’
‘It’s just a bit of fun,’ argued Nonsense, climbing over Dave to reach the middle seat.
‘I don’t think many Germans will see it that way,’ I said. ‘They’re not particularly proud of what Hitler did. It’s up to you if you want to get yourself killed, but, and I think I’m speaking for everyone here, we’d like to complete this tour without getting lynched.’
As we rolled out of the service station, we passed a group of locals sat around garden furniture on a patch of grassland, picking at a picnic. Nonsense decided it would also be a bit of fun to treat them to a flat, motionless wave. When Woody noticed what he was doing, in a move that Bruce Lee would have been proud of, he sprang his left arm upwards from the gear stick, connecting rather sharply with Nonsense’s nose, which in turn caused him to yelp and lurch forward holding his face. At that, Dave pressed his elbow in Nonsense’s back, preventing him from sitting up again. Woody and Dave continued to wave to the folk, sincerely and with a smile, and when they waved back enthusiastically we drove away, relieved that they hadn’t seen Adolf Hitler sitting in the front seat of our van.
What followed can only be described as a scuffle. As Woody continued to drive, Nonsense was dragged into the back of the van, and while Dave and I held him down, Karen took responsibility for finishing the shave.
‘Nice weather we’ve been having sir,’ commented Karen, but Nonsense couldn’t talk because he had an apple pushed firmly into his mouth. Even so, he tried.
‘Shut up,’ shouted Woody, ‘or I’ll drive over some speed bumps.’
‘How about something for the weekend sir? No? Perhaps a pair of plastic novelty pig’s ears might go with sir’s trim? No? Well you’re obviously not the talking type. Well, have a nice day anyway sir,’ said Karen, as he made the last sweep with the razor.
It was hard to tell whether the majority of the blood was from Woody’s karate punch or from the Bic razor, but after a cup full of water to the face and a ruffle of the hair, Nonsense once again resembled nothing more than a musician with an apple in his mouth (with appropriate ears), and more specifically, he no longer looked like a dictator.
‘You bastards!’ he sprayed in chunks of ‘red delicious’ after being released. ‘Woody you total git, I’ll get you for that.’
‘Oh really?’ was Woody’s calm reply.
At that, Dave and Karen climbed into the vacant front seats, and conversation continued as if nothing had happened. As Nonsense lay prostrate on the back floor, panting and still bleeding a little, I studiously leafed through my new book, deliberately and unruffled.
‘Want an apple?’ I asked, groping in one of the food bags.
‘Fuck you,’ was his breathless reply.

 

 

The future’s so bright I gotta wear shades

As Andre, the promoter for the rest of our European tour, had assured me by telephone before we’d left England, we had two rooms booked for two nights at the Hotel Grille Enlangen, in the town of Enlangen just outside Nürnberg. It was a small and pleasant hotel in a small and pleasant town, one of the primary functions of which was to house the main campus of Nürnberg University. In those days arrangements had to be detailed, unswerving, and made in advance, mostly because communication wasn’t anywhere near as flexible or universal as it is now. Remember, this was before the widespread ownership of mobile phones. They were around, but they were the size of a pilot’s case and it was necessary to re-mortgage your house in order to acquire one, let alone make a call on one. Needless to say, five young musicians certainly wouldn’t be able to meet the expense of one between them. So, all communiqués were made using our landline at home, and if somebody wasn’t in, you didn’t talk to them. It’s not as if everybody had answer machines either, although I seem to remember Jim Rockford having one long before they were invented.
We easily made our six o’clock E.T.A. and were met enthusiastically in the lobby by Hans, who had been assigned by the event organiser to look after us throughout our stay. He first took a moment out to ask Nonsense what had happened to his face, and seemed happy with the reply of ‘bad shave’. He then directed us to our rooms, a double and a triple, before showing us the hotel restaurant, where a meal each would be ready for us whenever we said the word. But first we had to sit in the bar with Hans and run through the convention itinerary over a very welcome ice-cold beer. We could spend the next day as we pleased, so long as we got to the concert hall by five pm for the sound check. The convention was to run into the weekend, but we were opening and closing the first night.
‘What’s happening between our sets then Hans?’ I asked.
He rummaged through some papers.
‘Ah, ya, zat will be ze Pete Best Band,’ he answered matter-of-factly.
‘What? Pete Best … as in the Beatles original drummer?’
‘Ya, zat’s him … Pete Best.’
This was huge news. We were all big Beatles fans, except perhaps for Dave, and the opportunity to meet an original Beatle, let alone work with one, was intelligence that sent our excitement level through the hop-covered ceiling.
‘But hang on,’ interrupted Karen, ‘why, if you have a real Beatle at your disposal, are we headlining the evening?’
‘Zis is because they do not play ze Beatles songs … and it is a Beatles convention, ya?’
‘Wow!’ we all said quietly, apart from Dave who was silently sneering in the corner.
‘But zis is not the most exciting news.’
We looked on in anticipation.
‘Have you all heard of zis thing called ze internet ya?’ We shook our heads. ‘Vell, it is ze vay that all of ze computers around ze verld can talk to each other. It is a wery new thing.’
‘And?’ I prompted.
‘Vell, and zis is wery exciting, tomorrow night vill be ze first time ever zat a concert has been broadcast live over ze internet. People all over ze verld vill be able to vatch you playing.’
Hans had adopted the look of a man that had just witnessed his child open the Christmas present of his dreams, and was waiting for the overjoyed reaction.
‘Sounds good,’ I said, feigning thrill, yet not really knowing what he was talking about.
‘Vell, I’m sure you vill appreciate it von day. Anyvay, I must get back to organising. I vill see you tomorrow at ze hall at five ya?’
And off he went.
‘Pete fucking Best!’ I declared.
‘I can’t believe it,’ added Karen.
‘Yeah,’ enthused Nonsense, ‘he’s supporting us … and at the same time, we’re supporting him. Bizarre.’
‘What the fuck’s the internet anyway?’ asked Dave, turning his nose up.
‘Well,’ I explained, ‘it is ze vay that all of ze computers around ze verld can talk to each other.’
We all laughed, but Dave scowled.
‘Oh come on Dave, it’s going to be a memorable night for us. You’re not that much of a Beatles fan anyway. What’s the problem?’
‘I suppose so. And it gives me the chance to get stuck into some of the local talent.’
‘There you go … everyone’s happy. Anyway, let’s eat because your head’s turning into a giant cooked ham as we talk.’

 

 

The Emperor’s new clothes

After dinner, this particular evening turned into probably the most surreal of my entire life. I should have seen it coming. The omens were all there; musicians in a relatively empty wing of a hotel, a vending machine outside our bedroom doors that dispensed bottles of strong German lager for just a few coins, and a new country that brought with it a fresh excitement. In truth, things didn’t really start getting weird until after midnight. We were all sat drinking in the larger of the two rooms, which was officially home to myself, Woody and Karen. In fact, we weren’t all drinking because Karen had fallen asleep on his bed, sprawled and snoring like a bunged up rhino, and that’s when things started to get strange. It seemed like an opportune moment to take out my camera, and fashion the comatose and pliable Karen into compromising positions, all for the purpose of future amusement. This wasn’t something that hadn’t been done before…to any of us. We had piles of photographs of one or more of us, dead to the world, with a carrot up the nose, or ‘cunt’ written across the forehead, perhaps hand cream provocatively sprayed over the face, or on one very memorable occasion a half naked black man lying in bed with Dave. So when the cigarette stuffed up Karen’s nose failed to wake him, and when a brockwurst sausage emerging from his open fly wasn’t enough to stir him in the slightest, and even when an empty beer bottle materializing from the back of his pants had no effect on his consciousness, we knew we had to do better. This was when Nonsense decided to take his clothes off. In fact, he took his clothes off and then donned a small selection of Beatle-related garments; a leather waistcoat, some Cuban heeled boots and a Rickenbacker guitar, and that was it. Then he posed next to the snoring Karen in readiness for the photo shoot. Now I can say with pride, and this is even after living with the man for two years, that I’d never noticed the sheer scale of his genitalia before this moment. I’d be worried if I had. But there it all was, like a lemur dangling from the limb of a tree. This, combined with the situation, induced an enormous amount of hilarity from the rest of us. It really was belly-laugh time. There was beer being dribbled, tables being knocked over, all whilst Nonsense was attempting seriously to adopt Beatle-like poses wearing nothing more than a small leather waistcoat, some boots and a guitar with an immensely short strap. He looked completely ridiculous, but that was all part of the fun. Still there was no reviving Karen. So then Dave resolved to take a bigger part in the mayhem. Taking Karen’s leather waistcoat, wig and boots from his bag, he eventually ended up knelt on the bed, with his tackle waving around Karen’s face shouting ‘look at me … I’m a fucking Beatle’. Of course it didn’t take long before Woody and I followed suit (or lack of it) and dressed down appropriately, leaving the camera on a dressing table with the timer set, in order to snap what looked like Karen sleeping on the set of a very low budget gay movie. This chaos seemed to carry on for quite some time until, in mid-pose Karen woke up to see four almost naked men writhing around him, a little closer (say ten miles) than he would have wished.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he shouted in genuine panic.
‘Oh, go on, spoil our fun. You’re playmate of the month,’ said Woody.
‘You juveniles. You’re taking photographs aren’t you? What have you done? Actually, I don’t need to ask that, I think I can work it out. Fuckin’ hell Nonsense, what the fuck’s that? Did you steal Joe Bugner’s arm?’
‘Want to join our group?’ was Nonsense’s reply.
In his dazed condition, Karen must have thought it was a good idea to strip, and then put on his spare ‘emergency’ waistcoat, a wig and a pair of trainers, and join in with our tomfoolery. Within time, the confines of the room seemed to hold no danger or excitement to any of us, and like a wave of seventies porn stars we decided to organize a photo session in the hotel lobby, where we’d remembered there was a huge, full wall mirror. It wasn’t the hotel’s main lobby; we were in a separate annex so the foyer was unmanned. The sight of our reflections approaching this enormous mirror was enough to render us helpless for quite some time. Hysterical laughter echoed around the hallway as we modelled for the camera, guitars aloft, Beatle wigs dishevelled, and man-hoods hanging freely. Whilst recreating some of the Beatles more celebrated poses, we were trying to perfect our timing for the well-known star jump shot that graced the cover of the ‘Twist & Shout EP’ most famously, and somewhat predictably it was during one of these leaps that five men walked into the lobby. It was the obvious and only realistic moment that this could feasibly have happened. The sight of a couple of guitar cases and a few other giveaways made us quickly realise that it was the Pete Best Band, all of whom stood in the large doorway with a look of mild amusement on their faces.
‘You must be the other band,’ said Pete best, in his quiet Liverpool brogue.
‘Hi … ’ I said, a little taken aback, ‘you must be Pete. How are you?’
‘Glad to be here, I think.’
‘We er … didn’t expect to see anybody down here at four in the morning to be honest.’
‘Well we played a show in Munich and thought we’d make the drive tonight so we could get a good sleep. This is my brother Roag.’
We went over to meet them and started shaking hands.
‘And this is Andy our bass player, Paul, who plays keyboards, and finally Vince, our guitarist.’
I reciprocated by introducing my party, all of whom seemed to have forgotten that they were almost naked and meeting part of rock and rolls mythology and his band at four o’clock in the morning in the foyer of a German hotel.
‘Well,’ said Pete, ‘if you’ll excuse us, we’re very tired. But we’ll have a few beers tomorrow night, all right?’
‘Sure … yeah, it’s nice to meet you.’
With our enthusiasm for part-naked marauding quelled, we wondered back up to our rooms discussing what a nice chap Pete was.

 

 

If I Ruled the World

Nürnberg, or Nuremberg as we call it, is a most curious and interesting place. It has been a major centre for trade and crafts since at least the dark ages, not to mention being a city that has been central to many pivotal moments in Germany’s history. But unlike most important cities or towns, it lies a good distance from any ocean or major tributary. Since almost a thousand years ago it has been the place where kings have held their first parliamentary sessions, it is where Emperor’s decreed to keep the imperial jewels, and it has been the favoured city of artists, thinkers and royalty alike. For all its glory though, Nürnberg has witnessed parallel periods of tragic downfall and discomfort. Repeated outbreaks of the plague, alienation of the royal family due to Martin Luther’s reformation, and the annexation of the city by Napoleon, between them alone claimed the lives of many thousands and greatly reduced the status of this dynastic centre. But worse was to come. After once being known as ‘the treasure chest of the German Empire’, in the last seventy years or so it is more likely to be remembered as the ‘city of the Nazi Party rallies’. It was here, infamously, that the rise of National Socialism became unstoppable, and where a failed artist from Austria began to write his name throughout the history books in blood. It was here that Hitler pledged to unite German-speaking countries, and to rid that great new nation of Jews and communists. And he almost did it. Of course, the rest is history. But it was quite mind-blowing to think that we were standing in the city where the Fuhrer had once addressed anything up to four hundred thousand young Germans at a time, preaching the true aims of the Nazi party. Record states that he was an immense speaker of great impact, and a wizard of propaganda, but I began to wonder whether all those people really did believe that his way was the best. I’m more inclined to think that they were brainwashed or just plain scared.
We were standing in the courtyard of the Kaiserburg Castle, a fine medieval citadel that overlooks the city with dignity and grandeur. From this standpoint it was hard to believe that ninety percent of the old city had been reduced to rubble and ash by the allied bombers just half a century before. Even the castle, under the very turrets of which we stood, was badly hit, but like the rest of Nürnberg it had been carefully restored to something near its former splendour. And from our courtyard, the view indeed was glorious. It was a great shame that we couldn’t stay longer. We’d had every good intention of spending most of the day here, but by virtue of our nocturnal unclothed activities, there wasn’t a whole lot of the day left by the time we managed to surface. I spent a moment to shudder at what Pete Best and his band probably thought of us.
‘Look at this guys,’ shouted Nonsense from a far-off wall.
He’d found some German graffiti carved into one of the sandstone blocks that supported the mighty fortress.
‘Wenn nicht Hitler dann Stalin?’ I read, a little mystified, and a touch Englishly.
‘Yeah…’ said Nonsense, ‘it means ‘if not Hitler then Stalin’’
A few bewildered glances were exchanged.
‘Are they trying to excuse him?’ blasted Dave. ‘God, I mean Hitler was a total twat … apart from bombing Coventry anyway.’
‘Well it’s only one man’s opinion,’ I diplomatically pointed out.
‘Is it though?’ asked Dave. ‘These things lie dormant for years, but they always come back out again in the end. Just look at the Baltic States, the Middle East, even fucking Northern Ireland. It all gets passed on down through the generations. They might not say or do anything now, but it’s always brewing in the sub-culture. Okay, the people here might be embarrassed about Hitler and may consider him to have been completely barbaric, but I’ll bet there are a fair few out there who still empathise with his beliefs. After all, it all started here.’
The worrying thing was that there was a pinch of sense in Dave’s argument. However, I refused to let him sway my opinion of these people, who were every bit as nice as any other people that I’d ever met anywhere else.

 

 

All I want for Christmas is a Beatle

‘Hey, did you have a good sleep Pete?’ I asked, shaking one of the hands that used to play drums for the Beatles.
‘Yeah I did thanks. You’re a bit overdressed aren’t you?’
‘Oh that … yes, I’m sorry about that. Just a bit of fun and games, you know.’
‘What, so it’s not part of your act then?’
‘What?’
‘I thought it was part of your act … like ‘the Naked Beatles’ or something, you know?’
‘Oh, I see,’ I answered before I realised he was taking the piss.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he laughed. ‘We used to do it all the time.’
‘We?’ I enquired.
‘The Beatles,’ he exclaimed softly. ‘It’s a group I used to be in.’
‘Oh that … yes, sorry.’
‘Funnily enough, most of the times we did it, we were in Germany too.’
‘When you weren’t shagging whores and setting fire to cinemas I suppose.’
‘Eh … ’ he retaliated, ‘we never set fire to that cinema!’
At that he broke, and our combined laughter randomly reverberated around the concert hall. I was amazed at what a genuine and gentle man he was. For some reason I’d always assumed that he would be the bitterest man alive. After all, warfare and sport aside, he was probably the most famous loser in twentieth century history. But here he was, politely conversing with the guitarist/keyboard player from a lowly cover band, about when he used to arse around with John, Paul and George in German clubs. And he didn’t even mind that technically, he was supporting us.
‘To be honest it’s all water under the bridge. I make a pretty good living out of the connection so I don’t mind. Regardless of the fact that there was a lot of initial heartache, I’ve come through it and I think I’m better for it.’
It’s a rare man that can draw something so positive from something so famously negative and potentially destroying.
Despite the crazed grabbing of the aspirin box a few hours before, the day went excellently. The set up and sound check went without hitch, the banter with Pete and the boys was ripe, and our first set had gone like a dream. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Hans leaving our dressing room every ten minutes moaning ‘vot, you vont more beers?’ it would have been perfect.
‘You have ten minutes men until your second set,’ announced Hans through the door.
‘Okay, thanks Hans,’ I acknowledged.
‘Oh, by ze vay, I sink I forgot to remind you…’
‘Vot, er…what?’
‘Vell, at ze end of this set, ve vill count all of ze votes from ze Internet voters for ze best three Beatles songs ever.’
‘Oh, good … look forward to that then.’
‘No, you don’t understand, then you vill have to play zose songs ya?’
‘Nine.’
‘Oh ya, you must. Ve put it in ze contract.’
Nonsense, Woody and Karen all looked at me like Oliver Hardy used to look at Stanley Laurel after he’d done something stupid. Dave crossed his arms and broke into a wide grin.
‘Okay so you have nine minutes men,’ he re-announced, leaving.
‘Oh Hans?’ I called.
‘Ya?’
‘Could we have some more beers please?’
‘Vot, you vont more beers?’
‘Ya…er, yes. Please.’
The second set went very well, and it’s fair to assume that the audience couldn’t perceive our trepidation as to what the ‘favourite three’ Beatles songs might be. The problem was that we only knew about twenty-five Beatles songs. When you consider that they recorded over one hundred and ninety, the odds were stacked against us. At this memorable gig, we were almost certainly going to have to bumble our way through at least one song that none of us had ever played, let alone wondered what key it might be in. On the Internet as well, whatever that may have been.
All you need is love, our final song of the scheduled set, faded under the heavy blanket of rapturous applause. We timidly returned to our dressing room, expecting nothing but the worst. All was quiet as we sat there in pregnant fear.
‘One of them’s going to be I am the fucking walrus, isn’t it?’ shouted Nonsense.
‘All right, calm down,’ I said, ‘I’ve been thinking about this. Now I reckon two of them will be ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘Let It Be’, right? And we can manage those can’t we. I mean … they’re pretty easy.’
‘They might be songs we’ve already done,’ added Karen optimistically.
‘I doubt that. If they were their favourites, they’re not likely to be any more,’ said Dave.
‘Get Back?’ suggested Woody.
‘Well, I’m sure we could pull it off.’
‘What about ‘Yesterday’?’ asked Karen.
‘I can do that on my own,’ I said.
‘Hang on,’ interrupted Woody, ‘that’s a McCartney song. I play bass around here.’
‘Can you do it?’
‘No.’
‘Well shut up then.’
Then there was a knock at the door that passed a chill throughout the room.
‘Men, ve have a result,’ said Hans enthusiastically.
‘Vell?’ I urged impatiently.
‘Ze vinner is Hey Jude!’
‘And?’ I pleaded.
‘Second place is Yesterday!’
‘Be good,’ I whispered, clenching my fists.
‘In ze sird place … ’
‘Yes?’
‘In sird place is … ’
‘What man, what?’
‘I am ze valrus. Five minutes men.’
‘Oh Hans?’ I called.
‘You need more beer ya?’ he replied with understanding, before leaving.
‘Piss in my eye,’ declared Nonsense. ‘I fucking knew it. I am the fucking walrus.’

 

 

The Final Countdown

Now it’s amazing how musicians can sometimes pick up an instrument and play a song that they’ve never played before. It’s one of the marvels of the world in my opinion. It’s an unexplainable instant miracle. It was by no means smooth or well rehearsed, but we got through it. Most of the way the chords were right, and between us we got most of Lennon’s lyrics out. Yesterday was a formality. I’d sung it a hundred times before and it was fine, aside from the handful of people that later told me that the bass player should have sung it.
I’d announced Hey Jude as the winner to very knowing and grateful applause. We were about to fire into the song when I noticed Pete waving at me from the side of the stage. It took a moment before I realised that he was asking to join us on stage for this last song. What a stupid question.
‘Ladies and gentlemen – damen und herrer – it was a great pleasure to meet him. It’s been fantastic working with him. But it’s nothing short of wunderbar to play on stage with him…please welcome back, Pete Best!’
As the audience cheered heartily and yelled unreservedly, Pete made his way to his own kit, which was still occupying the drum-riser next to Karen’s drum kit. Karen smiled like a child as one of his heroes sat at the kit next to him, on a stage before an auditorium of two thousand doting fans. This quickly turned into one of those few memories of being on stage that you even remember, let alone carry in detail and cherish. After going around the ‘na na na na na na na, na na na na, hey Jude’ section sixty-four times, we eventually decided to finish, complying to the old adage ‘leave the audience wanting more’.
‘Great set guys,’ raved Pete as we all came off.
‘What? No, you guys were the best,’ replied Nonsense, fired up.
‘No but that was great, really. You could do a lot with this tribute thing. Hardly anybody else is doing it.’
‘Well,’ I laughed, ‘I doubt if there’s a market for it.’
‘Well you never know. Anyway, I’ve just realised … apart from my own bands, you’re the first band I’ve played on stage with since the Beatles.’
‘No way!’ I yelled.
‘Yeah, really. I’ve just never fancied it. But tonight was great fun. So … ’
‘Sorry Pete, excuse me … oh Hans?’
‘Ya, I’ve got zem here,’ he said, handing us our beers.
‘Sorry Pete, carry on.’
‘Well I was going to say, we’re playing Hamburg tomorrow. Maybe you’d like to support us. There’s no money but we’ll get you a room and some beers.’
‘Oh damn. Shit. I wish we could but we’ve got to be in Amsterdam. Bollocks. We could have done it if it was the day after.’
‘Well never mind. There’ll be other times,’ he assured with great sincerity. ‘Anyway, shall we have a few beers?’
I nodded.
‘Hans!’ we both shouted.

 

 

I may never pass this way again

‘It just strikes me that deaf people are at a disadvantage,’ said Karen, trying to clarify his point.
‘Of course they are,’ I said, ‘they’re deaf.’
‘No apart from that. I was watching the television the other week and I pretended to be deaf. Now, the subtitles on page 888 only give you so much of the information.’
‘What, you mean the dialogue? What more do they need?’
‘Well for a start you don’t get the music, the pitches of people’s voices, and when you read it you have no appreciation for dialect and accent. Worst thing is you don’t get all of the sounds.’’
‘Yeah you do,’ I corrected, ‘it’ll say ‘laughter’, or ‘loud bang’ or ‘audience applause’ or something like that.’
‘I know that, but that’s only a very small part of the picture. What about in a passionate love scene? You don’t get the squelchy sounds that we take for granted. It would be good if they could agree on universal words for actions such as withdrawal.’
‘Like ‘thube’ or something?’ I suggested.
‘Thube would be a good choice. It has all of the right onomatopoeic qualities. And perhaps ejaculation could be represented by the word ‘squelp’?’
‘Oh I see … ’ said Nonsense, ‘so maybe the act of penetration could be accompanied by ‘take it bitch’?’
‘Not quite what I had in mind.’
‘Fuck ‘em,’ exclaimed Dave from behind the wheel.
‘That’s not very nice,’ observed Woody.
‘Well, they’ve got an imagination haven’t they? Let them use it. Anyway, I’m a little more concerned by the fact that we’ve been driving around fucking Frankfurt for over an hour now, and I haven’t seen a single sign that suggests anywhere else in the world exists other than fucking art galleries in fucking Frankfurt. This place is impossible. And I wish you’d turn that fucking tape recorder down, I’m trying to think. God, I wish I was deaf.’
‘What does the map say Nonsense?’ I asked.
‘It says we’re in Germany.’
‘But where do we have to go from here?’
‘I dunno … Frankfurt’s just a little dot on the map. Other than North, I can’t really help you.’
‘A-ha, I told you we’d need the compass at some point,’ I said, rummaging around in my bag. ‘Okay my good friend, we’re currently heading south, so I suggest you go right here, then take the next right, then carry on until we get to Holland.’
‘Well. Thank you Magellan. Now I see what I’ve been doing wrong, I haven’t been thinking like an eight-year old. And will you please turn that music down?’
‘Sorry, I’m only trying to help. We could always ask?’
Dave huffed a little and then begrudgingly pulled over.
‘Erm, excuse me … ’ called Dave, winding his window down. ‘Excuse me … sir … Nonsense, what’s excuse me in German?’
‘Entschuldigen sie mich.’
‘What? Enshil … , what the fuck?’
‘Entschuldigen sie mich,’ he repeated slowly.
‘How do you say it without spitting? Enshuldigon see … oi Fritz!’ he shouted, finally getting the attention of a passer-by.
‘Ya?’
‘Hello. Could you tell me please … how the fuck do you get out of this fucking place?’
The German man raised an eyebrow before silently walking away.
‘Well that should bring Europe closer together,’ I said.
‘That fucking music!’ shouted Dave, grabbing the cassette recorder off Nonsense’s lap. ‘I fucking hate Status Quo at the best of fucking times.’ With that he threw the tape machine out of his window and onto the footpath, where it cracked into a dozen separate pieces with a smash.
‘And their three fucking chords too!’ he yelled, slamming the van into first gear and speeding off.
There followed a long, tentative silence. A few glances were exchanged, but the general unspoken feeling was that it was best to let Dave get it out of his system. After all, he had been trying to find a way out of this city for well over an hour whilst we’d been having one of our convoluted, but ultimately pointless conversations. I suspect our inane deliberations would be enough to crack the calmest of Christians.
‘Sorry,’ Dave finally muttered.
‘It’s okay,’ said Nonsense.
‘No, I’m sorry about the tape recorder.’
‘That’s okay.’
‘No it’s not. I promise I’ll replace it.’
‘No need.’
‘Yes there is.’
‘No there isn’t, it was yours.’
‘Eh?’
‘It was yours. You lent it to me about a year ago.’
‘Oh, you’re fucking joking. I’ll have to go back and get it then.’
‘I’m sure we’ll drive past it again,’ I said. ‘We’ve already been past that same spot three times.’

 

 

Geordie in Wonderland

Of course we eventually found our way out of Frankfurt, with Dave still modelling the pig’s ears, and continued our northward journey. It was more by luck than anything else though – it certainly wasn’t anything to do with helpful road-signs pointing the way to major European cities and landmarks, because there weren’t any. If the erection of road-signs were a profitable business, there would be a fortune to be made in Frankfurt. And despite not finding Dave’s cassette recorder, in due course he calmed down, even though Nonsense devastated him with the news that the Status Quo tape within was also his.
Four hours later and with Bonn, Cologne and Düsseldorf behind us, we finally rolled into Amsterdam, and up to the doors of the Melkweg, our destination, on what had become a beautiful August teatime.
‘U kunt niet hier parkeren,’ said a man, whose face had magically appeared in my open window.
‘There’s no need for that,’ I retaliated, ‘just calm down mate, we’ve all had a drink.’
‘Ah, you are English. I just told you that I am sorry, but you cannot park here.’
‘Oh … ’ I said, ‘ … that makes more sense than what I thought. Anyway, we’re the band.’
‘What?’
‘We’re playing here tonight.’
‘No you’re not,’ he shook his head.
‘Yes we are.’
‘No you’re not.’
‘Yes we are … we’re Special Clinic,’ I said, thinking that it was about time we changed our name.
‘I can tell you you’re not playing here tonight, because tonight the Mission will be playing here.’
‘What? You’re wrong. This has been booked for ages.’
‘Who did you book it with?’
‘Our agent booked it for us.’
‘And who is your agent?’
‘A man called Andre Leech. He’s based in Spain.’
‘And who did your Andre Leech book it with?’
‘Yes … hang on, I’ve got a contact name on one of these pieces of paper … er … he’s called … Vim Kuyper.’
‘Okay, I am beginning to see. Mr. Kuyper left our services two months ago.’
‘But it’s still a booking, you can’t turn us away.’
‘May I see your contract?’
‘Contract?’ I asked, ‘I don’t think we have a contract.’
‘Well what can I say? You are up the canal without a paddle, or in the Netherlands without a venue, if you like.’
With a resigned huff we all slouched into our seats.
‘Listen, if you park over there I’ll get you some drinks and some food. I’m sorry but that’s the best I can give you,’ he said, before returning to the building.
‘I’m sorry lads,’ I sighed, ‘I thought it was all sorted.’
‘Not your fault,’ said Woody.
‘No,’ added Dave, ‘there’s nothing you could do about that.’
‘Well,’ I exclaimed, getting out of the van, ‘I suppose it would be rude if we didn’t take the man up on his offer of free food and drink. Shall we girls?’
Encouraged by sandwiches and the steady arrival of Amstel beer, our moods quickly changed, and we started to look forward to the prospect of a night off in what was perhaps the best city in Europe to spend such a thing.
‘What the fuck is a Melkweg anyway?’ asked Dave. ‘Sounds like a kind of cheese.’
‘Milky way,’ answered Nonsense.
‘Fancy naming a music venue after a bar of chocolate … that’s ridiculous, they might as well call it the Mars Bar or something … how dumb is that?’
‘I mean the galaxy,’ added Nonsense.
‘Oh no, I prefer milky ways. They’re so much lighter. You can eat them between meals without ruining your appetite.’
‘No you cretin, milky way as in the galaxy … stars and planets and things.’
‘Oh, right. I’m with you,’ he said a little disappointedly. ‘Not quite so much fun as the chocolate thing is it? Anyway, must go and unload some of this Amstel before I burst.’
As Dave went off to make more room for beer, our attentions were drawn to a man entering the bar – it was a very familiar looking man carrying a trumpet case.
‘Geordie!’ we all shouted as he moved over to greet us.
‘J-j-j-just look at you shites, you’re all brown.’
‘You know me … ’ said Woody, ‘I only have to look at a postcard and I get a tan.’
‘It’s been hot and we’ve had a lot of time to kill,’ I said. ‘We’ve missed you man.’
‘Av missed yous lot too.’
‘How did you manage to get over?’
‘Well, I had a barney with the missus, and she’s gan to her muthas for a few days, so I got on the train. It’s not like I started the row on purpose like,’ he smiled.
‘Well either way, it’s good to see you. Do you want the good news or the bad news?’
‘Always tek the bad news first.’
‘Okay, the bad news is that the gig’s not on tonight.’
‘W-what? You’re jerkin’ mon?’
‘Sorry? Oh, I see. No, sadly not. The guy who booked it … well it’s a long story but the gig is off.’
‘Ah shite, it’s the eaunly one I can play too. And I carried me trompet all the way here for nothin’. What’s the good news then?’
‘We’re in Amsterdam.’
Geordie smiled broadly, shrugged his shoulders and picked up a bottle of beer.
‘I’ll drink to that.’
‘Geordie!’ yelled Dave earnestly. ‘What it is?’
‘What?’
‘What it is?’
‘What’s what?’
‘It’s an expression.’
‘What is?’
‘What it is.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Never mind. Anyway, how the fuck are you?’
‘W-well am a bit pissed off aboot the gig being off, but not too much because av just discovered we’re in Amsterdam.’
‘That’s the spirit my northern friend. So what do you want to do lads? Anyone fancy a cup of coffee?’
‘From a coffee shop?’ asked Nonsense, with a twinkle in his eye.
‘I think,’ pondered Dave, ‘that a coffee shop would be just about the best place to obtain coffee from.’
‘Hang on lads,’ I interrupted, ‘but shouldn’t we sort out somewhere to sleep first?’
‘Yeah, I don’t think it’ll be very comfy with all six of us in the van, what with it being full of gear,’ added Woody.
‘Well I’ve got the address of the hotel that the venue were supposed to arrange for us, so I suggest we go there first.’

 

 

The Other man’s Grass (is always Greener)

On the way out we thanked the manager of the Melkveg for his kind hospitality, and set off to find the hotel Vijaya. I was caught a little off guard when we walked into the reception area and the lady behind the counter immediately asked us if we were the band from England. Thinking rather sprightly on my feet I told her we were. I was more proud still when I quickly answered ‘two’ to the question ‘I can’t remember – are you stopping for one night or two?’
She then told us that our rooms were ready, and that we were each entitled to a breakfast and an evening meal, beyond that we would have to pay. All of which improved our already buoyant moods, and we decadently decided to forego our complementary evening meal – mostly because we’d already been well fed at the expense of the Melkveg – in favour of tasting some of the produce on offer in Amsterdam’s finest coffee houses, though not the coffee.
‘Strange how they accommodate the musicians right next to the red light district,’ observed Karen, as we ambled through the sweltering, teeming, evening streets.
‘It’s like putting a fat kid next to a sweet shop,’ added Dave with a chuckle.
‘Or George Best above an offy,’ I added.
‘That actually happened,’ said Nonsense.
‘I know. That’s why I said it.’
‘Or … ’ considered Karen, ‘ … it’s like putting Marie Curie next to a cesium-135 manufacturer.’
‘Now Karen,’ I calmly explained, ‘you know you’re not allowed to play these games with us, it just spoils them for us.’
‘I was just trying to say something funny.’
‘Well, you should know better by now.’
And off we wandered into an uninhibited night, in a city where reserve and reticence dare not show their shy faces. Of course Nonsense had a field day with the hookers in their red-tinted, glass-fronted kiosks, and after a five-minute conference with one of the inhabitants wandered back to inform us that it was fifty Guilders for a fuck and a suck. Under questioning he revealed that it was also fifty Guilders for either a fuck or a suck. It became clear why he had probed her for so long (and not in a way that she was accustomed to being probed).
We eventually happened upon a coffee shop that took the eye, Baba’s, and proceeded to file in like teenagers about to down their first pint, all but Nonsense that is, who confidently sauntered up to the bar and ordered six bottles of Heineken and a bag of grass, in Dutch.
‘Have you been here before?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, loads of times. Why do you think I’m so fucked?’
You think you know somebody. Though I don’t know why I was so surprised, it was Nonsense, after all. This could also explain the period the summer before when we couldn’t find him for three weeks, and when he did turn up he couldn’t remember anything … including his name.
We settled in at Baba’s with ease and swiftness. The grass did just what it should do, and the beer was served at a temperature that could induce frostbite. The music being broadcast from the small DJ console behind the bar was a sort of slow reggae that had evidently been composed, performed and produced by the stoned, in order to be listened to by the stoned. The man in the ‘drug booth’ was clearly enthusing about the quality of his wares and the incredible variety on offer, as would a proud maître d' in full swing. After sampling a few of the options on the menu, we quickly developed a fondness for a fine grass called Kali Mist. Even Nonsense said it was the best he’d smoked in his life. It was a smooth and tasty smoke, and for half an hour made you feel like you were being massaged by geishas in a warm jacuzzi, but after that made you feel like you’d been hit around the head with a tin watering can. I think Karen was first to turn completely white, closely pursued by Geordie who had probably only smoked grass twice in his life before. Then one by one we all followed suit, except for Nonsense, whose greater experience was pompously allowed to show. I’m sure many other things happened but that, quite fittingly, is all that I know about our first night in Amsterdam.

 

Five get over excited

It is a great shame that so many wander the streets of Amsterdam in a meaningless state of, at the very least dribbling glee, at the very most catalepsy, because Amsterdam is a handsome city. For a start it has an enormously good feel about it. I can’t be more detailed than that – cities either feel good or they don’t, and this one does. It has a wonderful network of canals that spread concentrically from the centre of the city (the Centrum) in ever-outward reaches, like ripples in a giant pond. I care not that it has far fewer canals than Birmingham; it also has far fewer murders, far fewer ugly buildings, far fewer dog turds on the pavements, far fewer smelly cars, and far fewer reasons to want to get the hell out of there. There is so much on offer for the visitor. The city boasts some of the best art galleries and museums in the world, some exquisitely clever bridges (never thought I’d describe a bridge as being exquisitely clever), and some wonderful parks. But it is the buildings that literally add up to Amsterdam that I find truly captivating. They draw from such an incredibly diverse scope of styles, but are branded by one distinct theme – narrowness. It’s quite enchanting to see houses and shops so tall, yet so lacking in width. This trademark appearance is a throwback to when landlords were charged tax on the area their buildings occupied (its ‘footprint’), and as a consequence the structures tend to be at least four stories high, but relatively devoid of girth. In a defiant act of circumvention, a wily landlord once built a house many stories high, but only one metre wide. We looked for some time, but couldn’t find it. Even so, the Centrum is stuffed full of beautiful architecture, and even the public toilets are grand and colourful. Despite its eclecticism, everything seems to match. It’s not just the permanent man-made structures though; the buses and trams parade around in vibrant attire, there are flowers simply everywhere, and the people seem to look at you as if to say ‘be yourself, you are in Amsterdam’.
Not for the first time though, it was our destiny not to see any of this until about the same time of day that some Dutch office workers were doubtless thinking that they were perhaps abusing their rights to a lunch hour. But we got round a lot of it. Although, after a 3:3 split vote, it was necessary to visit the Vincent Van Gogh Museum as well as the world-renowned Sex Museum. It was in the Sex Museum where Nonsense and his public school upbringing became the centre of attention once more.
‘Wow, look at these pictures guys, chicks with dicks!’
‘W-w-what a load of freaks,’ said Geordie, with a sickly wince.
‘I dunno … it’s the best of both worlds really.’
‘B-but they’ve got cocks.’
‘Yeah, so no matter what mood you’re in … there’s something to entertain.’
‘Eaunly if you’re a heau-meau.’
‘Not at all, I think you should try everything in life, at least once.’
‘What, like getting your head blown off?’ asked Woody.
‘Now you’re just being silly. You’d only be able to do that once.’
‘I think Geordie’s right,’ said Dave, ‘if you wanna shag sluts with nuts, then as far as I’m concerned you’re a pillow biter.’
‘Not true. Girls are still my favourite.’
‘Yeah, and we’ve seen some of the girls you’ve been with. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of them had a little something extra swinging around in their pants. What do you reckon Benny?’
‘I think … Nonsense is entitled to his standpoint, even if it does make him a bum boy.’
‘I’m not gay!’ he shouted, ‘but if it gets busy, I’ll help out.’
‘I-I-I’m starting to worry about you,’ said Geordie, putting a little more distance between himself and Nonsense.
‘Oh, there’s so much you don’t know,’ I said. ‘One day, not now mind, but one day when we’re nowhere to be seen, ask him about soggy biscuit.’
‘S-soggy biscuit? I think I’ll give it a miss, thanks. Doesn’t sound very hygienic.’
With what was nothing more than a token cultural experience out of the way, and evening quickly approaching, we found a coffee bar called the Bluebird and promptly made it our own. Like so many places we had visited, I wanted to see so much more of Amsterdam. We were leaving for Spain in the morning and apart from the Van Gogh museum and some fine architecture, we’d completely squandered our brief time here. Damn our hedonism and curse our schedule. We’d decided to travel to Spain via Paris, and had made a group decision to spend half a day there, as our agenda could just about afford that luxury. Maybe we could feed our souls with a bit of Parisian culture. But that was all tomorrow. For now we were sat at a long table in the Bluebird trying to roll a six-man joint, a metre in length, to honour the house that we never found.
‘Geordie and Karen … ’ I said, ‘I have to say you’re letting the side down. Your end of the spliff is pathetic. Hang on, where’s Dave?’
‘He’s in the toilet laughing at the tiles on the wall,’ commented Nonsense, matter-of-factly.
‘Why? What’s on them?’
‘Nothing, they’re just plain white porcelain tiles.’
‘It sounds like someone’s had enough purple haze.’
‘I’m afraid av lost any sense of coordination,’ said Geordie. ‘I’d normally find this sort of thing easy, but I’m looking at me fingers and willing them to do things, but they’re not cooperating in the slightest.’
‘I couldn’t even roll a ball right now,’ added Karen.
‘Aye, think the eaunly rolling I’d be capable of right now is on the floor.’
‘Geordie,’ I mused, ‘this is very strange but you don’t seem to have your stammer when you’re stoned.’
‘Stammer?’
‘Yeah, s-s-stammer.’
‘But I don’t normally have a stammer.’
We all stopped rolling to allow a moment of sceptical looks at Geordie.
‘What?’ he said, looking around at our bemused expressions.
‘What’s up?’ asked Dave, still sniggering slightly.
‘They reckon I speak with a stammer.’
Dave repeated the look that the four of us had thrown at Geordie ten seconds before.
‘Geordie, sometimes it takes you a whole minute to get through the first word.’
‘No … you’re winding us up.’
‘I’m sorry mate,’ I added, ‘but sometimes it’s like the needle is stuck.’
‘Yeah,’ said Nonsense, ‘it takes you f-f-f-fucking ages to say some things.’
‘Oh mon, I’m devastated. I canny believe it. How come no one’s ever said? How come a’ve never noticed? Let’s get this joint lit, I think I need it.’
‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ I said. ‘It’s one of the qualities that makes you who you are. Like me, for example, always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.’
‘And I do have to work very hard to suppress my violent nature,’ said Dave. ‘But would you want me any other way?’
‘Apparently I’m anal,’ said Karen. ‘I’ve learned to live with it.’
‘You see,’ I said, ‘we’ve all got our little foibles. It’s like Woody’s bad breath.’
‘Have I got bad breath?’ he said, cupping a hand over his mouth and nose, and attempting to smell it.
‘Sorry man, it wreaks.’
‘What about me, what about me?’ asked Nonsense, like a left out child.
‘Well, you like boys,’ pointed out Geordie. ‘Yes, I see that it could be a lot worse.’
‘For the last time, I’m not gay. Right, I’m going to go and find a woman and shag her just to prove it,’ said Nonsense from halfway through the door. ‘A homo would never do that.’
‘Don’t be daft, come back,’ urged Karen.
‘Oh, let him go,’ I said. ‘Let him get it out of his system. Besides, we have been a bit hard on him.’
‘That’s because he’s a freak,’ said Woody.
‘Maybe, but consider the point I was trying to make … wouldn’t life be dull if he wasn’t like he is?’
‘That’s true enough,’ said Dave, ‘he probably wouldn’t be in the band. Anyway, who says we light this mother fucker and get ripped?’

 

 

Wide eyed and Legless

The metre-long doobie promised much in terms of spiritual splendour, but in practise it was almost impossible to smoke. The ends were simply too far from each other. It took a ridiculous enormity of suction to get the slightest wisp of smoke out. So when Dave collapsed into a pale heap underneath the table after a titanic draw, it was decided that the joint should be dismantled and reconstructed into nine or ten more smokeable lengths. It was a major feat of concentration and engineering, but by the time Nonsense got back, we were sat happily smoking around a fine looking pile of bangers.
‘Chaps, this is … what’s your name?’
‘Nina,’ said the girl in the fishnets/miniskirt combination.
‘Nina. That’s right. Anyway, Nina, have I just fucked you?’
‘Yes you have. After a fashion,’ she said, rather impatiently folding her arms.
‘Thank you. You can go now.’
‘Thanks a lot. Not even a drink,’ she muttered on her way out.
‘You’ve had your money. Piss off. By the way boys, in case you’re in any doubt … I fucked that girl,’ he said, sitting down and taking a joint from the table.
‘Did you just pay her?’ I asked with amazement. ‘Is she a hooker?’
‘Yeah, she’s a really nice girl actually.’
‘What did you have?’ enquired Dave sniggering eagerly.
‘Fuck and the suck of course.’
‘Good lad.’
’Well, you’ve got to get your tuppence worth.’
‘Fifty Guilders just to prove a point?’ I said, still aghast.
‘Actually it was seventy. I had to pay her another twenty to come back here.’
‘Well I can see why you didn’t buy her a drink then.’
‘What did she do?’ demanded Dave.
‘Well, she sucked me…then fucked me.’
‘Yeah but, anything … well … you know?’
‘What … dirtier than sucking and fucking a total stranger?’ I said.
‘Nah, quite straight forward really … I was only in there for ten minutes anyway.’
‘Is that including the cigarette?’ asked Karen.
‘Hey well done,’ I said aside, ‘you said a funny.’
‘You’ll never catch me paying for a woman. They usually want to pay me,’ announced Woody.
‘So what’s it like?’ pried Dave.
‘It’s all right. I prefer it when they’re free though.’
‘Hope you wore a blob,’ said Woody.
‘Of course.’
‘And … you didn’t go down for gravy did you?’ he continued with a grimace.
‘Give me some credit.’
‘Based on what?’
‘Might have to get me a slice of this action before the tour is through,’ said Dave.
‘Well I won’t be with you,’ I said.
‘I should hope not.’
‘You know what I mean fool.’
‘Why don’t you go now?’ suggested Nonsense.
‘Too stoned. Never get it up.’
‘I once bought a prostitute a drink,’ remarked Karen through the haze.
‘I’ll bet the whole World are after you,’ I quipped.
‘Yeah, then I killed her with an axe.’
The whole table stopped in mid draw. Even the smoke seemed to freeze for a moment. We slowly turned to face the slayer, but when Karen flashed an innocent smile the five of us spluttered out the thick, blue smoke that we’d forgotten to exhale.
‘Sorry, I’m working on a new style of conversational humour.’
It was then that Geordie pointed out that not only were we being very loud, but we were also being very loud. It made some kind of sense at the time. And it was at around about this time that things, once again, started to get more than a little vague. Like the previous night, the last half of the evening was consigned to a place beyond recollection, a buried memory that will presumably revisit the cognitive realms of our minds one day, just when we wouldn’t be expecting it.

 

 

Sweet little lies

‘ … I know … we’ll I’ve already said sorry. But there are no public telephones in Norway.’
‘Ooh, that’s a terrible fib. You’re a bad boy. Anyway, where are you now?’
‘We’re in Amsterdam, just about to leave.’
‘Ooh now, don’t you get smoking any of those mari-juana cigarettes.’
‘Don’t worry mom, I won’t.’
‘Ooh, they’ll send you high as a kite they will.’
‘Don’t worry, we’re just about to leave anyway.’
‘Do they still sell that blonde Morrocan?’
‘Mom!’
‘Well, it was the sixties. Everybody was doing it then.’
‘Did you smoke any of that stuff when you were pregnant with me?’
‘Ooh, now, your brother called the other day. It’s good news.’
‘What is it?’
‘Well he’s going to be a barrister.’
‘What?’
‘Yes, a barrister.’
‘But he’s got four O’levels.’
‘Well I’m sure that’s what he said. Yes, he said he was going to be working at the bar.’
‘Right, yes. Mom, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but he means working behind a bar.’
‘What?’
‘Serving drinks, probably in the Hop Pole.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes I’m sure. The Hop Pole … not Rumpole.’
‘Oh well. I thought it was too good to be true. Now I’ll never see him donning his powdered white wig in preparation for a battle of minds, with another man in a wig who’s very handsome indeed by the way, they lock horns … ’
‘Mom!’
‘ … and ram with all their might, until … ’
‘Mom!’
‘Yes dear?’
‘This is costing me a fortune.’
‘Ooh, yes, sorry dear. I’d better let you go.’
‘Okay then.’
‘Where are you going next?’
‘Paris, now.’
‘Ooh, I love Paris, so romantic. And the men are so handsome too, if not a little bit whiffy, but I don’t mind so long … ’
Beep beep beep.
‘Thank fuck for that. Coming lads,’ I shouted.
And away we moved, in the direction of Paris, travelling in our own private Amsterdam.

 

 

Remember the Days of the old School Yard

On the way to Paris, we talked and sang of many things. We attempted to coax Geordie into staying with us for the remainder of the tour, but his mind was made up, and for the sake of his marital relationship he was going to head back home after spending half a day in the French capital with us.
We made up a fun little song, drawing stylistically from somewhere between the American show tunes of the twenties and Noel Coward’s unique brand of ditty, which went along the lines of ‘Paris for me, Paris for you, Paris for both of us … mmm, that’s nice’. There followed a short tap dance solo, which caused Nonsense to rap his head on the windscreen of the moving van. The mark left on his head prompted the conversation toward the proud regaling of great yarns and pranks, particularly one.
Dave and I took it in turns to tell the other four of our most honourable moment as jokers. Back in Bewdley on a stylish back street, was a fine old stone edifice that had for years been a centre of some kind, for arts and crafts. For a short period (about the same time that we should have been frantically revising for our O’levels) the building was called ‘Bewdley Brass Rubbing Centre’, and boasted this epithet in large golden letters along the ceiling line of the ground floor. Well it was just asking for trouble. The temptation was too great to resist. Needless to say, like any other rational-thinking teenagers would have, we shinned our way up a drainpipe and removed the ‘B’ and the ‘R’, leaving the institution sounding more like a Cynthia Payne venture than an innocent arts centre. Dave, as Nonsense had just done, received a lasting red mark on the forehead when the first letter I prised off landed on his head, but when asked how he took delivery of his injury, he simply replied that it had been a ‘B’. A censored account of our stunt even made the parish magazine, and we celebrated the fact that it was our first prank to make the press, even though all of the drainpipes on the building were subjected to a thorough greasing shortly afterwards.
Nonsense then beamed as he recounted the story of his best head injury ever, which he earned by cycling down his stairs. We decided that it was funny, but possessed nowhere near the intellectual brilliance of our greatest capers. Such as the time, during a distant summer, we arranged for dozens of different people to converge on the house opposite mine. This was the punishment Mr. Phillips received for not returning my football. After an hour or so of deceitful telephone calls, we made three o’clock on this particular afternoon a time that Mr. Phillips would never forget. It seemed that everybody for miles wanted to deliver something to his house. There was a ton of coal, a case of champagne, a garden’s worth of turf, gravel, sand, a skip, a box from the hardware shop, a parcel from the grocers, another skip, a truck full of timber, two goats, a pallet of toilet rolls, and at least two more skips. The street was like a bizarre Victorian Fayre. But it wasn’t just people with something to deliver, we’d also arranged for a whole fleet of tradesmen to congregate at 2 Severn Way. There was a man from the Telecom, a man from the gas board, a man from the electricity company, a plumber, a landscape gardener, some nice Irish men who’d got wind that perhaps Mr. Phillips wanted a new drive, a chimney sweep, a mechanic, a carpenter, a band of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and we even managed to get a priest there to read him his last rite. When I strolled into the middle of this mêlée and asked for my ball back, I was clearly the least of his problems. I secured the liberation of my football and rejoined Dave behind the curtain for an afternoon of secret laughter.
Then Geordie surprised us all with the tale of when he met Joanna Lumley after a show. He asked her if there was any chance of a photo, and when she concurred, Geordie handed his camera to the famous actress and struck a pose with his wife. Miss Lumley, completely caught off guard, dutifully took the photo before wandering off with a bemused look.
All of which story telling suitably broke up the monotony of driving through Belgium. Aside from the momentary delight of skirting the beautiful city of Brussels (where apparently a little boy stands peeing twenty four hours a day), Belgium quickly became the dullest part of the drive to date. It was whilst rolling down one of their boring motorways that we began to play that old favourite … ‘who can name five famous Belgians?’
‘W-w-well, I suppose Rubens is the obvious one,’ said Geordie.
‘Okay, that’s one,’ I said.
‘I think you’ll find that Audrey Hepburn was born in Belgium,’ observed Karen.
‘Are you sure?’ I asked.
‘I’m fairly sure.’
‘Hercule Poirot,’ offered Nonsense.
‘He was a fictional character,’ pointed out Woody.
‘Was he?’
‘Yeah, Agatha Christie.’
‘Get off … everyone knows she was English.’
‘I’m just saying that she created Poirot. We’re really scraping the barrel if we’re to allow fictional Belgian detectives.’
‘What about Eddy Merckx?’ asked Dave.
‘Who?’
‘The cyclist.’
‘Hang on,’ I said, ‘but isn’t one of the prerequisites of being famous, that you have a name that everybody’s heard of?’
‘Well … he used to be quite famous.’
‘W-wasn’t the blerk who invented the saxophone Belgian?’
‘Who’s that then?’ asked Nonsense.
‘Mr. Sax I think.’
‘He’s making it up.’
‘Neau, really, I read it somewhere.’
‘Now Django Reinhard was definitely Belgian,’ I announced.
‘Is that the best we can do?’ questioned Karen, ‘a guitarist with two fingers? How many have we got now anyway?’
‘Fingers or famous Belgians?’ I asked.
‘Belgians.’
‘That’s five if you include Mr. Sax and the cyclist that only Dave’s heard of.’
‘Blimey,’ pondered Nonsense, ‘that’s piss poor.’
‘I know!’ I said, ‘Plastic Bertrand, remember him?’
‘Oh yeah, he was a one hit wonder wasn’t he?’ asked Woody. ‘Well, with Plastic Bertrand, Mr. Sax and Django Reinhard, we’ve almost got a band.’
‘I can think of another eleven,’ chipped in Dave.
‘Who?’
‘The Belgian national football team.’
‘Okay, name them then.’
‘Fair point.’
Like so many had before us, we retired frustrated. It was a sad condemnation of prominent Belgians that we managed to find five famous people from the West Midlands alone in a far quicker time. In fact, it took Karen approximately three seconds to reach the big five when he proposed Led Zeppelin and Edward Elgar, and there were plenty in reserve.

 

 

Take me to the Mardi Gras

I’ve always been intrigued by national reputations. Of course, by their very nature they’re not entirely trustworthy or fair; you can’t tar a population of say fifty million people with the same brush, in much the same way that the idiots that compose horoscopes can’t possibly predict for or advise a twelfth of the nation as to what’s going to happen today, not with any great accuracy anyway. But like personal reputations, national reputations don’t exist without reason, no smoke without fire and all that. In England, for example, hardly anyone stands around in a bowler hat, sipping tea and generally enquiring if anybody would care for a game of tennis. But over the years, a hell of a lot of English people have worn bowler hats, we’ve always consumed a great deal of tea, and despite our competitive failings on a global level, tennis is a pastime that has been enjoyed from Southampton to South Shields since it was conceived. So it’s fair to say that there’s an iota of truth in these things. Naturally, it would be wrong to suggest that all Germans are devoid of a sense of humour – I’ve met some very amusing Germans. Or that all German women have a propensity for hirsute underarms, although I once went out with a girl who was half German…she used to shave one armpit. And of course it would be erroneous to suggest that all Chinese people are short. After all, they do have an Olympic basketball team. And we know full well that Australians aren’t all beer-swilling womanisers. Well…Rolf Harris isn’t.
I discount the scapegoat element from my equation though. That’s the belittlement of a neighbouring country – in our case it’s usually Ireland. The Irish are no less intelligent than the English, but wherever you go on this planet, nations find it necessary to ridicule a close rival, and they treat them with the same derision that we’ve been guilty of treating the Irish for centuries. The U.S.A. has Mexico as the butt of its humour, India has long mocked Pakistan, and our new friends in Norway would rather you believed that Sweden was simply not on the map. This can all be put down to a sort of sibling rivalry. But reputations do carry a slice of accuracy, even though it’s wrong to generalise. I mean, it’s proven time and time again that Greeks aren’t all gay, Italian men don’t all walk around with a hand on their crotch, and Wales isn’t amuck with singing miners having intercourse with sheep.
However, there’s one reputation I’ve yet to see disproved, and that’s the arrogance of the French. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean that in a negative way, it’s actually a quality that I admire. They are a people that know exactly what they like, and they expect it. And if there’s something they don’t like, they’ll either sit down and stop working, or start a ruck. So began my search for a humble, outwardly welcoming French person, and if I didn’t find one by midnight, that would be it until next time.

 

 

Even more Swearing and Cussing

‘What the hell is this place?’ asked Nonsense.
‘The Place de la Concorde,’ said Karen. ‘The Guillotine took off a few heads here.’
We were wedged in amongst numerous cars that were all, like us, attempting to pull out and reach the other side of the square without any kind of collision or confrontation.
‘How the fuck did the Germans ever manage to invade this place?’
‘I’m not sure Saturday afternoon in Paris was quite like this in 1940,’ I advised. ‘Anyway, I don’t think a tank would have much trouble with this lot.’
‘We should get a tank. Are we allowed one?’
‘No Nonsense, you’re not even allowed to drive a 50cc moped. I can’t see anybody freely handing you the keys to a Chieftain.’
‘What shall we do?’ asked Karen.
‘Well, I suggest we park up as soon as possible and take a look around. That’s if we can find somewhere to park,’ I said.
‘I’ve noticed that the people here don’t exert much energy when it comes to parking. Actually, parking isn’t the best word for it. The verb ‘to park’ implies that some effort was made to manoeuvre a vehicle into a safe and orderly space. But here, they just seem to abandon their cars.’
‘Well then … ’ I said, ‘ … when in Paris.’
We found a good-sized space on a path, and actually considered momentarily that by comparison, we were parking with too much responsibility and consideration, but we soon got over that. Then began a lengthy amble around the busy Parisian streets and sights, and for a change, we actually managed a good exploration without being drawn into the first bar we saw. Once we had found our bearings we began our hike at the magnificent Arc de Triomphe, then wandered all the way down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, back through the Place de la Concorde (which proved even more difficult to cross by foot), past the Musée du Louvre which was sadly about to close, then the arc de triomphe du carrousel, and all the way down to Notre Dame where Nonsense quite predictably made a complete clown of himself with a pathetic hunchback impersonation, shouting ‘Esmeralda’ at the top of his voice. We then continued our jaunt down the right bank on to the Bastille, which we’d all naïvely expected to be a building, and were somewhat disappointed to find that it was now nothing more than a square with a fairly ordinary statue that these days marks the spot of the famous building. In all, it had been a fine mosey around a fine city, but as usual was laced with the regret that we had so little time to spend there, and was tarnished only by Nonsense who went into every single shop that we passed, only to leave empty handed each time.
‘Just going to pop into this shop chaps,’ said Nonsense, halting the tour once again.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘What?’
‘Why have you been into thirty different shops, yet bought nothing?’
‘I’ve got a bit of a hankering for some tropical fruit. I think it’s the heat.’
‘You are tropical fruit,’ commented Woody, sourly.
‘Just hurry up,’ I said. ‘This stop-starting is driving me mad.’
‘Do you realize,’ mused Karen, ‘that we haven’t seen a drop of rain for ages? I mean, there was that storm on the mountain, but it didn’t even rain then.’
‘Yeah, and that seems like months ago,’ added Dave.
‘Don’t knock it chaps,’ I said. ‘I’m sure there’ll be plenty of it when we get back to England.’
‘D-don’t remind me, I’m heading back tonight,’ said Geordie, looking suitably depressed. ‘All right for you b-bastards, two weeks in Spain.’
‘I’m sorry mate,’ I said sympathetically, ‘but we wish you were coming as much as you do.’
‘I d-doubt that.’
‘Here we go fellas!’ exclaimed Nonsense, who had actually made a purchase this time, and was holding a bag aloft for all to see.
‘What have you got?’ I asked, not really caring.
‘This my friends … ’ he said, pulling out an item of fruit, ‘ … this, is the last mango in Paris.’
We were then subjected to the look that Nonsense always wore when he thought he had done or said something clever or funny, a kind of expression that brimmed with the expectation of laughter and praise. It was with no emotion or facial change that we looked to each other, before leaping on Nonsense and giving him a good kicking. Woody was first in with a shoulder charge that sent him skittling to the ground. Then one by one we all started to lay in, not seriously, but the punches and kicks all carried sufficient sting to remind Nonsense that we didn’t think he was funny or clever. Soon enough we brushed ourselves off and left him whimpering on the floor.
‘What the fuck was that for?’ he whined, almost inaudibly.
‘I don’t know about you chaps,’ I said, ‘but I could sure use a drink now.’
‘Good idea,’ enthused Woody. ‘There’s a bar over there, look.’
‘You bastards,’ continued Nonsense, prostrate.
‘I enjoyed that,’ commented Dave, as we walked across the square.
‘Yes … ’ said Geordie, ‘it was rather satisfying wasn’t it?’
‘Very. We should do it more often. I particularly enjoyed punching him up the throat.’
‘Don’t forget you’re driving later,’ said Karen to me.
‘Oh yes, it had slipped my mind somewhat. I’ll just have a couple then.’
‘This place looks pleasant.’
‘Yes it does my friend, yes it does.’

 

 

Young Parisians

The inside of the bar was every bit as agreeable as its apparel. In appearance it was almost like an English Victorian bar, lots of dark wood and large, framed mirrors, with only the array of beer taps giving it away as a Continental bar. Huddled into the fixed seating were a few dozen young Parisians, fervently deliberating, boisterously and graphically. There was a wonderful feel of knowledge and passion spreading throughout the room. This was the Bohemian Paris that I’d always hoped existed, the sort of place that Voltaire or Wilde or Sartre may have come to impart their opinions on life.
‘Six beers please,’ I announced to the neat looking bar tender.
‘Certainly monsieur.’
‘Nonsense, it’s your round,’ I shouted.
‘Yeah, okay,’ he huffed, trying to straighten out his jaw.
‘Is your friend all right monsieur?’
‘He’ll be okay. We just beat him up.’
‘Oh, so he is not your friend then?’
‘He is, but he went too far.’
‘Oh, I understand monsieur.’
‘Strangers … ’ deliberated Karen, ‘ … are nothing more than friends that you’ve yet to meet.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘existentially speaking.’
‘What the fuck are you on about?’ asked Nonsense, straightening his clothing.
‘He’s gone a bit Jean-Paul Sartre,’ explained Karen.
‘Who?’
‘JPS.’
‘I wouldn’t bother Karen,’ I said, ‘the only JPS he knows about come in a black box with a health warning.’
‘Well instead of writing me off as a thicky, why don’t you try to educate me for once?’
‘Okay then,’ I said. ‘Jean-Paul Sartre was a French philosopher and writer and leading exponent of existentialism. He believed that humans create their own worlds based on accepting personal responsibility for their own actions, unaided by society, morality or religion. He believed that freedom and acceptance of responsibility were the main values in life.’
‘What?’
‘You see? That’s why I don’t bother.’
Unfortunately, Nonsense was in the sort of mood that forbade him from taking no for an answer. Perhaps he took a blow to the head when we roughed him up. So as we made ourselves comfortable in a corner nook, the conversation between Nonsense, Karen and I, edged deeper and deeper into subjects that he would find to be more and more unfathomable.
‘But what does it mean?’
‘It means,’ explained Karen, ‘that as a human being you are entitled to your own freedom of existence, and shouldn’t be swayed by anything, not even reason or morality.’
‘But that’s not very scientific. What’s the point in learning?’
‘That just proves that society has had an irreversible effect on you,’ I said. ‘You don’t think freely because your thoughts are based on what’s going on around you, and not what’s going on within you.’
‘Man, this is difficult.’
‘Well, you’re in the right place to learn about unhindered thinking and the pursuit of freedom. The French have been carping on about it for centuries.’
‘Yeah, like who?’
‘Well, people like Rousseau, Camus, Voltaire, even Victor Hugo’s stories were steeped in the quest for autonomy and a just existence. For example, in Les Misérables … ’
‘The musical?’
‘No, the novel. Did you learn anything at college? In the novel, Jean Valjean spends his life changing his identity in order to escape his past and the shackles that an unforgiving society has burdened him with. It’s a simple story, but it’s one of the strongest and most enduring subjects.’
‘I am so terribly sorry to interrupt you,’ exclaimed an immaculately dressed Frenchman on the next table, ‘but don’t you think that the central focus of the story is not Valjean’s great love for Cosette, and the agony of her marrying another man, and then Valjean dying a broken man? An even more enduring subject non?’
‘Well … ’ I said, a little taken aback, ‘I guess it’s a matter of interpretation, but it’s nice to have the choice. I suppose that’s what makes it such a good story.’
‘My name is Henri. I hope you don’t think I have been prying, but you all have a very good knowledge of French literature, except for your friend there who doesn’t seem to have read many books at all.’
‘I’m trying my best,’ said Nonsense, a little embarrassed.
‘I hope I don’t appear rude for having a little fun at your expense,’ he said to Nonsense.
‘No, I don’t mind. It’s nothing compared to what I get from this lot.’
‘And he’s the one that went to public school,’ I said.
‘Ah, now you English call it public school, but in fact it’s the complete opposite non?’
‘Yes, I’m not sure why we do that,’ answered Karen, ‘doesn’t make much sense.’
‘Well perhaps then,’ laughed Henri, ‘you can explain a couple of other English phenomena to me?’
We looked on in anticipation.
‘Cricket and pantomimes?’
‘Ah yes,’ I said, ‘but we could be here all night. And I don’t think you’d be too satisfied with the explanations either.’
‘Oh well, it was worth a try.’
Our new friend was exactly what I expected of a proletarian Parisian thinker; learned and well educated, not by the Sorbonne – but by the written word of his contemporaries. He was as handsome and urbane as the culture to which he belonged, with a look that was suitably capped with a flick of Jonathan Price grey hair, and of course, a packet of Gitanes.
‘You might be able to help me out with a question about the French, Henri.’
‘Well, what is it?’
‘Well … I was thinking earlier about the reputations that certain nations … acquire, shall we say.’
‘Yes … ’
‘And you French hold a repute back in England, as being … well … ’
‘Arrogant?’
‘Well … yes. Why is that?’
‘It is because we know exactly what we want, and don’t like to settle for anything less.’
‘Well I know that, but why the French? Why not…us for example?’
‘This goes back to what you were saying earlier.’
I cast him a blank look.
‘When you said … now what was it … oh yes, that we have been carping on about freedom for centuries.’
I took a brief moment to look humiliated.
‘Oh don’t worry, it’s true. But unlike you, we have borders with many countries and have been on the receiving end of … what do you say … arse-kickings. When you add corrupt governments and decadent monarchies to the equation, you see that we have been under the bludgeon a lot in the last few hundred years.’
‘Okay.’
‘And we are a race of thinkers, and when thinkers see such grave injustice, they fight for or write about what they believe to be right. It’s very rare that your way of life is threatened – like in the United States – but we have been the subject of inequality on many occasions.’
‘I see but, and I don’t mean this disrespectfully, why does it manifest itself as arrogance?’
‘Well, we are not arrogant really. I think that headstrong is a better word for the French. You see, we French are like our houses.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘The French are like their houses … on the outside they look a little hard and worn, but on the inside they are warm and full of nice things. Apart from in Paris that is, where the houses look grand and dignified, but they are full of shit,’ he chuckled.
‘I see,’ said Karen, ‘so you’re saying that it’s just the way that we perceive you?’
‘Exactly. Belgians, Dutch, Swiss, Italians or whoever, don’t see us as arrogant because they’ve had it as bad as us. The difference is that we produce better scholars,’ he stated, laughing at his own irony.
‘Perhaps we think you’re arrogant for pointing it out?’ asked Karen.
‘Perhaps, but it is nothing more than national pride. And because you English have nearly always had the upper hand, and very often been the aggressor, you have had less to fight for, and therefore less to be proud of.’
Henri was absolutely right, and I didn’t mind letting him know that I thought so. We stayed huddled in the corner for some hours, engrossed in intellectual conversation. Sometimes Nonsense, who was really making an effort to think on a different level, joined in, but most of the time he sat back, listened to the three of us and took it all in. The focus of dialogue – or should I say the tête-à-tête – floated freely from one notion to another, organically mutating as we pontificated some of life’s bigger questions. We had made a true cerebral ally in Henri, but we had to be on the south coast of Spain by Monday evening for our first show, and here we were in Paris at nearly midnight on Saturday night, with the south coast of Spain about a thousand miles away. We exchanged details with Henri in the event of us ever being in the same fifty square miles again, said goodbye to Geordie who had decided to stay in the French capital for the night, and began the long, long drive to the next leg of our tour.

 

 

C’est la Vie

And so we left France. That’s just the way it was.
Once again I was blessed with being at the helm for the night shift. We had some miles to cover, and in order not to jeopardise a timely arrival in Andalucia (between Marbella and Fuengirola to be precise), we would have to travel around the clock, stopping only to change driver.
It occurred to me that we had already voyaged well over three thousand miles since the trip began – the equivalent of driving to New York City (that would be a very long suspension bridge). This was when I started to imagine our journey as it would have been represented graphically in an old movie; a sepia map with a little bi-wing aeroplane leaving a red line behind it as it moved around the globe, except for us it would be a little Ford van. The music would be travel evoking and well arranged for jazz orchestra, with a constant, repetitive drum rhythm, driving us to our next port of call. Ideally, the next scene would see me in Tunisia, wearing a Panama hat and beige suit, talking to a weasel-faced local about the whereabouts of a certain hideout, but I was happy to settle for the south of Spain, our agent Andre, and a pub called the Elephant. I’d heard that the Málaga-Marbella strip was teeming with English people, most of them fugitives and petty criminals from the home-counties, hence my pet hate of meeting plenty of Brits abroad would be more than fed, but I’d never been to Spain before so I didn’t really mind. As the imaginary red line of our route stretched into the distance behind us, so too did the memories and the people of the last three weeks, all assuming a manner of remoteness. It was only seven days on, but already the features of our friends in Norway were receding, and even Marte’s face was hard to imagine in the detail that I had wished to remember it. The incident with the thieving customs men at the Hook of Holland seemed like it was months ago, and as for Miss Venus and Mr. Savic, our contrary neighbours, they could easily have been players in a previous life. As with all of the night time drives so far, we made immensely good time. I only had to stop once, and that was to refuel. I despise stopping at petrol stations … it’s so boring. The best that can happen is that you don’t get diesel on your shoes. I must admit that I did welcome the timing though, as I was beginning to feel tired and I could feel my eyes losing strength, so I decided to get a coffee to go. I took a moment or two to curse the design of the coffee cups after spilling half the contents on myself when trying to secure the lid, but I’ll say one thing … there’s nothing quite like a scalded hand to snap you out of a drowse.
We motored south through Orléans and Poitiers (where apparently Sidney doesn’t live), and in Bordeaux we made our clockwise rotation of the seating arrangement, leaving Woody holding the wheel once again. With dawn came a scintillating distant view of the Pyrenees, peeking through a half-hearted cloak of mist, a mist that had all but evaporated by the time we passed Biarritz at the gateway to Spain. The coastal drive round to San Sebastián, with the mountain range that divides France and Spain to one side – and the Bay of Biscay on the other, is a particularly fine one. All of this mountainous, sandy land is the thing that makes Spain so beautiful, but it is also the thing that makes driving in the country so taxing. Where a crow might fly fifty miles, it can be necessary to drive almost double that in order to reach the same destination. It was perhaps appropriate and prudent then that Woody took this rather demanding leg of the drive, and he delivered us unruffled and safely to the northern city of Burgos, where Dave would fill the driving seat, which, like all the other seats in the van, was beginning to get a little sticky and hot with perspiration. From Burgos it was simply a case of pointing the van south, where a single road would lead us for more than four hundred miles, through Madrid and Granada, and onto the south coast, and a mere one hundred and forty miles from our goal. It was only Sunday lunchtime when Dave took control, and we were beginning to think that we would make Marbella by that night, giving us twenty-four hours rest before our first show of the stretch. An early arrival was looking attractive for a myriad of reasons. For a start, everything in the van was beginning to stink. It had been such a hot drive that we no longer had any clothes that could honestly be described as dry, other than the items that hadn’t seen the inside of a washing machine since Scandinavia. It had been a very hot summer Europe-wide, but the temperature in Spain was something that we hadn’t bargained for. Even with the wind hurtling through the windows at fifty or sixty miles-per-hour, the seats would squeak with every shift of buttock, our bodies were slippery with pints of sweat, and our clothes were squalid from the hours spent in this mobile oven. We were also looking forward to a proper sleep in an air-conditioned room. The back of the van may have been comfortable when we left England three weeks before, but it wasn’t anymore – the quilts and sheets as fetid and foul as everything else. I was down to my last pair of pants, and all the deodorant had been used as air freshener.

 

 

In a Little Spanish Town

As predicted, we comfortably made our destination by late Sunday night, and the bars along the endless coast were still swinging when we pulled up the drive of the Miraflores. The Miraflores was a holiday village, offering all that the average holidaymaker could demand from a resort; countless apartments, bars, swimming pools, shops, more bars, entertainment, and a few more bars. In fairness, it was a bigger plot than any village I’d ever visited, but a series of multilingual signs led us straight to the centre of this sun-seekers city – we definitely weren’t in Frankfurt anymore. Good sense told me that we should find Andre before anything, for no other reason than to ensure we could get rooms that night. Terry told me that not only was Andre an agent, but he was also the host and resident singer at the Miraflores. We followed the sound of the music, and sure enough, there on an outdoor stage dressed like a Christmas cracker and singing ‘I Remember You’ badly, was the man that I just knew had to be our agent.

 

 

Some Guys have all the Luck

It occurs to me that in choosing a career path, people are surely told by others that they are good at whatever it is they’re doing. I mean, you’d never make it as a professional footballer without somebody noticing your abilities at a relatively early stage, and then letting you know how good they think you are.
So why then, do so many people insist that they can sing, and even manage to make money out of it? Don’t get me wrong, equal opportunities and all that, but here was Andre, not just doing a bad job of it but murdering every song that passed through his lips – draining the very life and passion out of an incessant stream of classics. He didn’t even possess any redeeming features such as good looks, the ability to move in time with the music, or a nice hair cut. He had about as much right to stand behind a microphone as a Trappist Monk or Marcel Marceau. (Apparently, in Strasbourg – Marcel Marceau’s birthplace – to commemorate his death each year they hold a minute’s noise).
Then I was disturbed to consider that at some point in Andre’s life, somebody must have told him that he was good at this singing lark, at least one person. I suppose that person could have been one of those individuals with absolutely no ear for music, or maybe the most sarcastic man on Earth, or perhaps somebody with a mental age of six. This would be a bit like a blind man showering acclaim on Beckham for his sporting prowess, or a double-glazing salesman eulogising to Hawking about his ‘no boundary universe’ theory (apologies to all genius double-glazing salesmen out there – but you get my point). But even if one solitary person had told Andre that he could sing, you’d have thought that there would have been a few hundred folk who were prepared to tell him that he sucked at it, and at no time should he ever consider doing it again, especially not with a microphone. It’s not just Andre that I have my gripe with, there are hundreds of so called ‘singers’ that can be seen on your television set any day of the week, and they’re making a small fortune from the pretence. Singing’s fun and everybody is entitled to do it and should do it, but not in front of an audience greater than say, a small family gathering. I still shudder to remember the agonising sound of Bananarama attempting to scrape their way through yet another hit single, Telly Savalas once got to number one by speaking a song for God’s sake, and we all know what happened with Milli Vanilli. Music is the most unjust business going. In no other profession will you find so many unworthy, contemptible scoundrels, who are somehow managing to accumulate a good deal of money, your money, at the same time. Can you imagine such pretenders getting away with it in any other industry? A doctor, with the equivalent ability for his chosen profession, would be struck off, a lawyer de-wigged, and a clergyman defrocked. So why was Andre standing on a stage and delivering his, thankfully, final number – a hatchet job of ‘Let It Be’ – to a very healthy audience, who were presumably paying for the right to be aurally abused? Although his ability to say ‘thank you, goodnight’ in about ten different languages was almost impressive, his departure was generally met with at best, lukewarm recognition. That didn’t bother him though. He leapt off the stage, magnificent mullet haircut bouncing behind him, and bounded towards the bar, smiling, waving and winking to all that he passed, just like the Mr. Celebrity that he wasn’t.
‘Andre?’ I enquired, perched at the bar.
‘Yeah, great, how are you?’ he crooned, offering his hand. ‘Glad you enjoyed the show,’ he added, taking an obvious step back from the aroma that had just hit him in the face.
‘Er … yes, very good. We’re the band.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Special Clinic?’ I said, wondering if he thought we should change our name. ‘Terry Mott set us up with you.’
‘Special Clinic … great, hi guys. But I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.’
‘Yes, well we made extraordinarily good time and … here we are. Is it a problem?’
‘No not at all, it’s great. We’ll have a few beers and I can talk you through what you’ll be doing here.’
‘Oh, thank God, I was worried we might have to sleep in the van again.’
‘Oh, your apartment … it’s not booked until tomorrow. That might be a problem. Give me a minute and I’ll see what I can do.’
‘Well, he seems like a nice enough chap to me,’ shared Karen.
‘Yeah, when he’s not singing,’ added Woody bluntly.
‘Well I hope he gets this sorted. I don’t think I could bear to sleep in the van with you smelly bastards tonight,’ announced Dave.
‘Us, smelly?’ I countered. ‘David, do you remember that summer when you stitched a dead pike into the hem of my curtains before we went to Glastonbury, and when we got back it took me a week to find it?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Well that’s what you smell like.’
‘Fuck off!’ he exclaimed, in amazement.
‘Yeah,’ raved Nonsense, ‘you smell like a cheap whore who’s been wrestling a skunk in sweaty minge drippings.’
‘Well you’d know.’
‘Hey, not fair.’
‘I think Nonsense smells like Smelly Cullen,’ I said.
‘Ooh yeah,’ agreed Dave, holding his nose.
‘Who’s Smelly Cullen?’ asked Nonsense, a little anxiously.
‘Smelliest kid in school,’ said Dave, ‘made a girl faint once.’
‘I smell like ammonia,’ declared Karen.
‘We all do mate,’ said Woody. ‘It’s making my eyes water.’
‘Great news!’ exclaimed Andre, rubbing his hands. ‘It’s all sorted, they’ve just cleaned your apartment. It’s ready for you now.’
‘Oh, fantastic,’ we all mumbled.
‘I think … ’ stuttered Andre, diplomatically, ‘that perhaps you might want to freshen up and meet me back here in, say, an hour?’
‘Yes, yes,’ we all declared firmly.
‘Great,’ he said.
‘Back here in an hour,’ I confirmed.
‘Great,’ he said, ‘see you then.”
‘Okay.’
‘Great.’

 

 

Never on a Sunday

‘Five bedrooms!’ yelped Woody, in tones of pure glee.
Our apartment was spacious and fine. We had a large lounge with a T.V. and a stereo, and a more than adequate kitchenette, the most eye-catching feature of which was a gleaming Zanussi washing machine. One end of the lounge led through sliding doors onto a good-sized balcony with a table and chairs, but it was far too dark to get any idea of what the view had to offer. By precedent, we expected two bedrooms with a few single beds crammed into each of the less than accommodating spaces, but five bedrooms? This was beyond our wildest dreams. There wasn’t even the predictable argument about who would sleep where because the rooms were all identical, aside from the view, but we were happy for that to be a window lottery, the result of which would be announced in the morning. After a brief scuffle for the washing machine, we autonomously elected to share the first load, just so that we could all enjoy crisp, clean clothes the following day. With all of us showered and changed, we flicked the air conditioning to arctic and dawdled back to the bar to meet Andre.
I hate to keep carping on about this, but I can’t emphasise enough the technological differences between the time of writing this, and that period when we were gallivanting around Europe in a Transit van. I know it wasn’t that long ago, but compared to the communicational breakthroughs that are on offer today, the days when the eighties turned to the nineties was by contrast, the dark ages. With mobile phones and global computing at such primitive stages of development, all that was available was the fax machine (which of course we didn’t have), the traditional telephone, and the good old letter or postcard. It makes me wonder how people managed to contact each other in more distant years gone by. When I was growing up as a child in the seventies, I can still remember the excitement of the real bell in our large, stylish, plastic telephone ringing, which was always followed by a race with my brother to lift the receiver first, and gabble out 3485 as quickly as was humanly possible. But in retrospect, it seems to me that folks stayed at home more in those days, probably because there was far less to drag you out of the house. It truly has been an unprecedented age of advance; almost anywhere in the World can now be considered virtually next-door. All of which fills me with admiration for races like the Romans, who, two thousand years ago were sending detailed messages miles and miles in minutes, using nothing more than flags and fire. Anyway, our intelligence had been, and continued to be, hazy. This was why our Spanish itinerary had changed (mostly for the better) so radically since the last we’d heard – it bore little resemblance to the copy that had been posted to me nearly two months before we actually got to meet Andre.
‘Well I’ve had to shuffle it around a bit,’ explained Andre, ‘since White Fever phoned to say they couldn’t make it. Something about a large gateaux and three arrests.’
‘White Fever?’ I enquired.
‘Yeah, they do Barry White songs in the style of the Bee Gees.’
‘Novel.’
‘Perhaps, but limited market I’ve discovered. Anyway, this means you’ve got an extra gig, and it’s a great one. Next Saturday you’re doing the officer’s summer ball at the army base in Gibraltar.’
‘Gibraltar? Cool. Is it far?’
‘Only fifty miles. Then you’ve got another great one in Estepona on Sunday afternoon, and that’s about half way between here and Gib.’
‘Sunday afternoon?’
‘Yeah, on a beach. It’s great. Another drink anyone?’
I was trying to pinpoint a sentence that Andre had uttered since we met him, that didn’t incorporate the word great. I couldn’t.
‘Does he say ‘great’ every time he opens his mouth?’ asked Dave, as Andre ordered more drinks.
‘Exactly what I was just wondering. Who cares, as long as he keeps bringing us drinks?’
‘Yeah, great.’
It must have been at least two in the morning, and still the place was busy. Most of the tables in this part of the resort were all still taken, not just with drinkers, but also entire families dining on spurious Anglo-Spanish dishes. There was a very welcome gentle breeze skulking in from the direction of the sea, and we were being further refreshed by a seemingly endless reserve of vodka and fresh orange juice on ice. I was particularly taken by the non-existence of optics and spirit measures behind the bar. It seemed very much up to the discretion of the bar staff, as to how much vodka ended up in your glass, and it was usually enough to leave precious little space for orange juice.
‘Do they ever shut here?’ asked Woody.
‘Only when there’s nobody to serve,’ replied Andre, with a tray full of vaguely orange coloured drinks. ‘The whole south coast is the same…it’s all about serving holiday-makers.’
‘So what’s your story?’ I asked. ‘How come you’re a singer and an agent on the south coast of Spain?’
‘Five years ago I was working as a brickie in Streatham. Not bad money but I thought … life’s got to be better than this. So here I am.’
Finding out that Andre was a bricklayer merely compounded my disgust that he was making money from singing.
‘Fair play to you,’ I said. ‘Jimmy Nail would be proud.’
‘Why?’ Andre asked.
‘Well … because … ’ I stuttered, not expecting to have to explain, ‘you know … Auf Wiedersehen Pet and all that?’
‘Well, he wasn’t a real brickie. And he was a Geordie.’
‘It’s just the whole … you know … working class kid makes it big, you know.’
‘I’m not working class, my Dad’s a doctor.’
‘Well … you know … ’
‘And I’d hardly say I’ve made it big.’
‘So,’ I interrupted, trying to change the subject, ‘what’s the gig tomorrow like?’
‘What, the Elephant? It’s great. It’s an English pub just down the road. Great audience, all Londoners.’
It was at this moment that I realised Andre was utilising a definition of the word ‘great’ that had previously been unfamiliar to me. How can a pub full of Londoners possibly be described as great? There are plenty of words that spring to mind before ‘great’, such as wretched, hellish and bollocks for starters, but not ‘great’. If I wanted to play to a pub full of Londoners, I’d get a fucking gig in a London pub.
‘Great,’ I said, ‘look forward to that then.’
‘Then you’re here at the Miraflores on Wednesday, Gib on Saturday, Sharky’s Beach Shack on Sunday afternoon, the Elephant again next Monday, a few days off, then back here the following Thursday. How does that sound?’
‘Great,’ we all said, in mixed tones.
‘Great,’ Andre acknowledged. ‘Well I’ve got to head off, but I’ll call your apartment tomorrow about times. By the way, your drinks are all in tonight, just see the barman.’
‘Great!’ we chanted, unanimously.
‘Are you not going to have a drink with us? I notice you’ve been on the coke all night,’ I said.
‘Oh, no thanks, I don’t’
‘Don’t drink?’ we all muttered in bewilderment, ‘why ever not?’ I asked.
‘Well…a couple of reasons. For a start, my body is a temple.’
‘Really?’ I asked, ‘that’s strange because mine’s a small Baptist Church.’
‘I know what you mean Andre. Mine’s a temple too,’ said Nonsense, being as serious as he ever could be.
‘Fuck off!’ interrupted Dave, ‘a temple my arse. Your body’s a kebab house.’
‘Yeah … well,’ retaliated Nonsense, ‘at least mine isn’t a garden shed with pooh in it.’
‘Pooh in it? Well in that case your body is an old tent that’s been soaked in piss and stuff, and then pitched near Grimsby.’
‘Fellas?’ interrupted Woody, embarrassed and nodding toward our new company.
‘We’ve been in the van a long time,’ I said.
He put his thumbs up and said ‘No worries’.
‘So what’s the other reason you don’t take a drink? Is it something medical?’
‘No, not really. It’s just … it’s just that I turn into a complete arsehole – really bad. Coiled spring me … when I’ve got a drink in me.’
He looked reflective, but not at all embarrassed. He even looked a bit bashful.
‘Anyway … ’ he said, snapping out of it, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow guys.’
‘Great!’ we uttered, trying to take in the information.

 

 

Somethin’ Stupid

I like to think the unconditional best of anybody before I meet them. I’m not saying that I don’t judge a book by its cover, because I do, of course I do … we all do. It’s almost impossible not to. But what I’m saying is, that some people take a starting point of assuming that people are generally dodgy, and then they have to work hard and prove themselves in order to warrant a higher regard. I take the opposite ground. I take the, perhaps optimistic and naive view that people are essentially good, and that they all want good things to happen to others. I would sooner let people give me reasons to think less of them, without instilling disregard from the start. So, people that I’ve never met, seen, or even know the names of, are all model human beings to me. Then, when I am exposed to them in any quantity, the opinions can be formed.
When Terry told me on the phone two months ago that an agent in Spain wanted to give us some work, he began life in my head like all the others do … flawless (particularly because he wanted to give us work). He tells me his name is Andre Leech. Andre, that’s a pretty sound name. Leech, well he’s an agent, how appropriate. He’s obviously got a sense of humour. However, from the moment I saw Andre, I knew he was going to be a complete dickhead. It was a monumental drop from esteem. In fact, I think it’s a record. You’d think one could only go up from there, but you’d be wrong. Just in the hour that we talked to him after our arrival, he rapidly sank into a muddy mire of contempt. I can’t even put my finger on it, but there was something right from the start that made me wish to pluck out his eyes on pencils (preferably 6H pencils … that little bit sharper and harder). As it happened I wasn’t alone. We sat on the balcony slurping cheap wine for the majority of the night, and most of the chat – or should I say disdain – was aimed at Andre. It was things like, Andre insisting that he provide and operate the P.A. system for our shows despite the fact we had a perfectly good system in the back of the van. With statements like ‘these are new jobs, I want to make sure they’re done properly’, what professional wouldn’t fill with sheer rage? And generally commenting on our musical delivery was never going to rub, especially after telling us he was a bricklayer.
‘Did you hear … Andre Leech is not his real name?’ aired Woody.
‘Really?’ I asked, ‘What is it?’
‘Chris Leech.’
‘What?’ I shouted, ‘he’s got a surname like Leech and he chooses to change his Christian name?’
‘Yup.’
‘Well he’s a bigger twat than we thought he was chaps.’
‘Yup.’
‘Well I don’t think we should upset him,’ piped up Karen, ‘after all, we’re here for nearly two weeks, and he’s paying us.’
‘No you’re right. Once he’s paid us we’ll bury him up to the neck in sand, then pour treacle on his head.’
‘What’s the big deal?’ asked Dave, with his feet dangling over the side of the balcony, ‘I’m on fuckin’ holiday. Chill out.’
‘Yeah … ’ agreed Woody, ‘we’re in the middle of a five week free holiday of a lifetime here guys. Let’s lap it up.’
‘Fuck!’ shouted Nonsense from the bathroom. ‘Oh fuck!’
This idiom was closely followed by a dripping wet, half naked man running out of the toilet, before slipping on the lino floor and taking out a dining table and chairs like a locomotive bowling into a group of deer.
‘One of the toilet’s is fucked,’ he groaned from the floor.
‘One of the toilets? What do you mean, one of the toilets?’ I asked.
‘I got up to wipe, pressed the button to flush, and I got fucking soaked!’
‘Have you shit in the bidet?’ glared Woody.
‘Bidet?’ he deliberated. ‘Is that what it is?’
‘You total knob.’
‘If you weren’t lying there soaked in your pants, and a bit shitty,’ I asserted, ‘you’d probably be on the receiving end of a good kicking, like after the Hitler or the mango incidents.’
‘How was I supposed to know?’
‘How were you supposed to know? Who puts two scutters in one bathroom? It was clearly a bidet. I can’t believe you shit in the bidet,’ I replied.
‘Well, what am I going to do?’
‘You’re going to get it out,’ said Woody.
‘If there’s any left in there,’ I added.
‘And then,’ continued Woody, ‘you’re going to clean the bathroom until it’s spotless.’
‘This is an eerily familiar scenario,’ commented Karen.
‘Then I suggest you take a shower because you smell of shit,’ concluded Woody.
With a huff and a tsk, he hoisted himself up off the wet floor, being sure to slip over once more for the watching gallery. Mumbling a multitude of expletives he shuffled into the bathroom and closed the door behind himself, and wasn’t to resurface for an hour, in which time the pig’s ears had found their way onto his bed.
‘Where would we be without him?’ I asked, vaguely amused.
‘Oh we’d still be here,’ answered Woody, ‘but we’d be in far less danger.’
‘What are we going to do with him?’ I laughed.
‘Fuck him,’ said Dave, still wearing his sunglasses, ‘I’m on fuckin’ holiday.’

 

 

Staring at the Rude Boys

From the moment I saw the Elephant, I knew that I was going to utterly dislike it, and that was without the help of Andre’s grave intelligence from the day before, of hordes of Londoners eating jellied eels and referring to all females as ‘babe’ or ‘princess’. The exterior didn’t even evoke thoughts of upmarket London establishments. It was a huge stone-clad edifice, painted in a garish pink with a sort of off-black reserved for window frames and doors; in a word … tasteful. It was the worst sort of place – rough pub come working man’s club – the kind you’d expect to find in Sidcup or Lewisham, the only differences being that it was stiflingly hot here, and it was fair to assume that this particular tavern had been built without the appropriate planning permission. The windows were proudly exhibiting about eight years worth of the dusty sand that fills the air in this coastal region, aided by the swirling eddies, playfully buzzing the uneven desert car park to the side of the building. To cap the woe, we were dismayed to spy a lone fluorescent orange piece of A3 card tacked to an A-board, announcing in scrawled handwriting ‘Special Clinic – here tonite’. After I pondered as to whether we should change our name, I determined that it didn’t really matter tonight, as the minimalist advertising supplied by the Elephant was hardly likely to cram the punters in. On the inside it was as you’d imagine – row upon row of tatty tables enwrapped in alcove seating, with foam guts occasionally spewing out of the ripped imitation-leather covering. Andre did introduce us to the manager, but I don’t remember his name, as I was a little preoccupied by trying to liberate my left foot from a particularly sticky patch of carpet.
There’s no way it should ever take a five-piece band two and a half hours to set up in a pub (half an hour was the norm for us), but thanks to Andre’s incompetence, that’s exactly how long it took. It seemed that no amount of expert advice would steer him from his pig-headed resolve to set up the P.A. in his own inexperienced way. In the end, we had to covertly fiddle with knobs when he wasn’t looking. We eventually got ourselves sounding good, and Andre was happy to take all of the credit. We were cheered, however, to discover that we could leave our equipment in the Elephant until the following day, and quickly set about finding the cleanest table in the room, and systematically began to fill it with beer glasses. By the time the place began to fill with tattooed, overweight, medallion-wearing men and their diminutive molls, we were already a little light-headed, and had slipped into a somewhat coarse style of vernacular.
‘That’s what makes you a bigger cunt than the rest of us,’ said Dave, giving Nonsense a mischievous cuddle.
‘Well I wasn’t a cunt until I met you lot.’
‘What? You can’t blame your cuntish behaviour on us. There must have been an inherent cuntiness long before you knew us.’
‘Oh please!’ sighed Karen, shaking his head at the language.
‘Oh don’t be such a cunt Karen,’ laughed Woody.
‘Yeah,’ I added, ‘why don’t you ever say cunt, you cunt?’
‘I regard it as seldom appropriate, that’s all.’
‘But we are talking about Nonsense here.’
‘Yes,’ he slowly reflected, ‘I suppose you’re right. He is a cunt.’
We all cheered. Then we became aware of a large sweaty man and his short pale wife who were sitting at the next table, taking turns to glower at us.
‘Oh, I’m sorry about that bad word,’ I humbly craned, ‘but it’s the word of the day.’
The couple frowned, disapprovingly.
‘Shame you didn’t meet us yesterday,’ announced Dave, ‘the word of the day was potato.’
Fuelled by that lethal combination of sunshine, beer and spontaneity, it was all too much for us not to fall into hysterics.
‘Oh … brilliant … ’ I giggled, trying to regain my composure, ‘you spud Dave!’
‘Which of you spuds is buying the beer?’ laughed Woody.
‘I think it’s my turn you bunch of Maris Pipers,’ answered Karen.
The laughter quickly fizzled to a halt.
‘You’ve done it again,’ I said. ‘Why do you do it? You total spud.’
‘Spud!’ shouted Nonsense.
‘Fuckin’ spud!’ added Dave.
And so a new cliquey expletive was born. It would mean nothing to anybody else, but those are the best ones. ‘Spud this, spud that’. We wore the word out, but that’s still better than the alternative. The word was even seen mouthed across the stage during our set, by all of us – to all of us (except for Karen, who was excluded from the game). Despite our over-exuberance and the unprofessional quantity of liquid indulgence, both Andre and the bar’s manager were suitably impressed with us, not to mention an audience that were probably wearing about a half of all the gold in Spain. The Iberian leg of the tour was well under way. With no gig for two days, we partook in a few more drinks, then after much discussion decided that tomorrow would be left unplanned, the only certainty being that there would be a beach involved.

 

 

The Stonk

The best features of Spanish beaches just happen to be the same things that are wrong with British beaches. In fact, they only have one thing in common with each other … they’re both full of British people. The differences though are plentiful. Here we go, and in no particular order – first the sea. In Spain the sea is big and blue, and it moves. A lot of people seem to hold the opinion that the sea around the coasts of Devon and Cornwall is lively and invigorating, but they’re wrong. The best the English coastline has to offer is, by comparison, a stagnant pond. Second – the beaches in Spain are grand and golden and largely clean. Weymouth it ain’t. In Spain there are bars on the beaches. Somebody, at some point, has had the incredible realisation that if there are two things that people like – it’s beaches and drinking. Let’s stick them together! If the truth must be known, I don’t think there’s a country on Earth with oceanic attractions that hasn’t realised this yet, aside from the United Kingdom. And it’s not just bars. Spanish resorts are … I was going to say fantastically equipped but it’s only common sense really … no, they’re fantastically equipped compared to ours. My enduring memories of British beaches seem to consist of me walking miles to the nearest toilet. Either that, or chancing hypothermia and letting one go in the sea. And there’s also usually a bit of a trek involved if you ever want to do such basic things as…buy a hat, get some food, or telephone the lifeguard. On the Hispanic equivalent, everything is somewhere close to arm’s reach, if not actually in your lap. Next up is sunshine. Need I say more? Here’s another one (and it’s a good one), on a Spanish beach, there is always plenty of nudity. I said they were in no particular order but I lied, I’ve clearly saved the best one until last. Yes nudity, and a profusion of it. So we’ve got a good beach, an azure, enthusiastic ocean, a relentless sun, and all the food and drink you could wish for. Wait a minute, chaps, there’s something missing! Yes, that’s it…squadrons of nubile and confident women, walking around in nothing but thongs that are so thin, that thong is far too long a word for them. Some girls were just wearing a ‘th’. It was like we had died peacefully and been given the ‘all expenses paid’ treatment in heaven. But we were alive which meant that…it was a mirage that you could touch. If I’m truthful we were a little too alive. If you were to take five young musicians that hadn’t had any for a few weeks, sit them on a hot beach with a Margarita each, and then stage a nearly-naked Miss World pageant before them, the last thing you’d want them to be wearing would be skimpy Speedo trunks. Actually, that was only the unfortunate attire for four of us … Karen seemed to be wearing some kind of a nightshirt that ably hid any telltale signs of arousal.
As we lay there on our wooden beach recliners, one by one we became very conscious of our extra mass. First, Woody bashfully pulled a beach towel over his mid-rift … Dave and I following suit shortly afterwards. When our eyes were lured to Nonsense, who was proudly lying with his hands behind his head and smiling, it was Karen who threw a towel over the offending area, followed by a T-shirt, another towel, and then a baseball cap.
‘Cor … ’ moaned Nonsense, ‘I’m gonna have to go and crack one off in a minute.’
‘Please be far away when you do,’ I warned.
‘Am I allowed to have sex with any of these women?’
‘Only if they agree to it first. Not under duress.’
‘Cool.’
‘Shit, look at her,’ wowed Dave, pointing ahead, ‘she’s going straight into the wank-bank. I’m saving her.’
‘The wank-bank?’ I casually asked. ‘You have a storage facility for masturbatory stimuli?’
‘Sure. Why, haven’t you?’
‘Well no, I don’t think so. With me it’s just whatever I feel like at the time.’
‘Oh no, couldn’t do that. She has to be resurrected at some point. I mean, she’s not gonna sleep with me is she?’
‘No,’ we all sighed, pensively.
‘And even if she did, I’d still want to hang on to that particular memory for future use.’
‘Man, I’ve never had such a huge boner. It’s draining all the blood from my brain,’ announced Nonsense.
‘That won’t take long then,’ commented Woody.
‘You need some cool water – guaranteed to promote shrinkage,’ I said.
‘Race to the sea anybody?’ asked Dave.
‘You’re on.’
With that we were gone. The four of us may have sprinted to the water, but that only drew attention to us, and our bursting swimwear. We certainly derived some choice looks, and thankfully a few smiles. One girl screamed as Nonsense ran past her, only to break into a devilish grin once we’d passed. As we approached the water’s edge, some women were grabbing their children and covering their eyes, before scowling disapprovingly. Nonsense made it to the water first, but completely mistimed his entry, diving headlong into about twelve inches of lapping tide. He was heard to shout ‘Ouch, my bell end’, but we just ran past giggling, and purposely took the opportunity to stamp water in his face. He eventually caught up – holding his groin – and we all agreed that being submerged in five and a half feet of water was probably the best place for us. Somewhat surprisingly, after swimming in a different direction to Woody and Nonsense, Dave and I managed to secure the attention of two pretty girls (one far prettier than the other) from Oxford. Even more surprisingly Dave managed to weasel his way next to the more attractive of the two – though I didn’t really mind because I’d never been to Spain before – but I couldn’t help thinking that he was trying to get one up on me, purely by the way he stood next to her as if he’d just caught her in the wild. Even so, we all chatted pleasantly as we frolicked in the excitable waves, and before long, I plucked up the courage to do something about the fact that I had no solid plans with any woman that evening, nor had I for weeks or was I likely to for perhaps months.
‘So Rachel,’ I hesitated, ‘do you think it would be all right if I took you out somewhere tonight?’
‘That sounds nice,’ she replied as she bounced, slightly out of her depth.
‘Great. Where are you staying?’
‘Wait a minute,’ interrupted the prettier girl who was called Jane, ‘but do you mind me asking … why did you ask Rachel out and not me?’
‘Well … I thought you were with Dave.’
‘I’m certainly standing next to him, but that doesn’t mean anything.’
Dave looked a trifle offended.
‘So why did you ask Rachel out?’ reiterated Jane, with a genuinely curious look on her face.
‘Well, if I’m honest, it’s because I thought you were out of my league.’
‘Excuse me?’ demanded Rachel.
‘Well, she’s very pretty.’
‘And I’m in your league?’
‘I meant that … oh … I see what I’ve done. I suppose you won’t be talking to us anymore then?’
‘Fucking creeps!’ they uttered, as they paddled away from us.
‘Some girls!’ I said.
‘Well … nice work Errol. I think I’d stand a better chance swimming with Nonsense, or Karen, or even Jaws,’ grimaced Dave.
‘Sorry mate. Couldn’t have you taking the prettiest one could we?’
‘You total spud.’
‘Not that I think you’d cracked it, or she wouldn’t have asked me, would she?’
‘Oh, my friend, you have a lot to learn about the workings of a woman’s mind.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You heard.’
‘Dave … I would accept that remark quite happily if I hadn’t seen and known, and on one occasion accidentally shared, all of your bed mates in the last umpteen years.’
‘I had her in the palm of my hand. But we’ll never know now because of your enormous mouth, you spud.’
‘Yes we do know, because if by some immense miracle, you had actually taken her out, and then by some far less likely miracle, you had managed to get her into a compromising situation worthy of respect, you would have totally screwed it up by doing something stupid like ejaculating on her mohair jumper like you did with that nurse a couple of years ago.’
‘I knew you’d bring that up. She said ‘come into my arms’ and I didn’t understand. You had to bring that up didn’t you? She was just one in an illustrious line of quality shags.’
‘But you didn’t shag her, you shagged her sleeve. And that was what stopped her very, very sexy friend from seeing me, so we’re quits.’
‘Oh fuck off, I’m on holiday.’
And so we ambled back to our beach chairs, Dave muttering under his breath, and I likewise.

 

 

The Games People Play

‘You’d have to have Billy Whizz up front,’ declared Woody.
‘All right you lot? What you talking about?’ I asked, as Dave and I rejoined the others with thankfully, not an arousal in sight.
‘Fantasy football team,’ said Nonsense. ‘So far we’ve got Bruce Banner and Hannibal Lecter in defence, Superman in the holding role in midfield, and Billy Whizz up front. Got any suggestions?’
‘Bruce Banner may be liability. The referee wouldn’t like him when he’s angry. I feel he’d be sent off a lot. Ooh but wait,’ I enthused, ‘what about the Invisible Man up front with Billy Whizz? He’d never be offside, would he?’
‘Good shout,’ said Karen, carefully writing the same name under the number 10 shirt on his homemade squad sheet. ‘I’m keeping the Hulk at the back though. I feel he’d be useful.’
‘Who else in defence then?’ Woody pondered.
‘The Hulk, Hannibal Lecter, what about Godzilla?’ suggested Dave.
‘Yes, I like it. Put him down as centre-half Karen,’ ordered Woody.
‘Will do. Okay, one more defender.’
‘Well … ’ said Dave, ‘it’s got to be Bobby Moore hasn’t it?’
‘Yeah … ’ we all agreed.
‘Ooh … ’ raved Nonsense, ‘I’ve got a goalie … Mr. Tickle.’
‘The one with the really long arms? Great idea,’ I concurred.
‘But Spiderman could be useful as well,’ said Woody, ‘he could spin a web across the goal.’
‘That’s cheating,’ I pointed out.
‘What? And having the Invisible Man as striker isn’t?’
‘Mmm, let’s put him on the bench. Peter Parker would be quite a useful utility player.’
So the theme for a wasted afternoon was set, and after much debate, the final squad was decided. It was only then that we recognized that there wasn’t a team on earth that would take on Special Clinic United, and so we had to create another team of worthy contenders. This was the point that we were certain that the whole operation was a complete waste of time.

 

 

Benny and the Jets

The Miraflores thankfully had an in-house P.A. system, which meant that Andre could only screw up our general sound, but not the setting up of the amplification. It was still too much technology for a bricklayer to take responsibility for, but at least this time he wouldn’t have the opportunity to plug things into the ‘in’ hole, when they inherently wanted to be plugged into the ‘out’ hole, and vice versa. It was still somewhat unnerving to have a complete incompetent at the bridge; shaping our very product – the very thing we do. It was a bit like Pablo Picasso instructing a milkman what to put on the canvas, but only a bit.
The Miraflores was certainly a more desirable venue than the Elephant. Gone were the hordes of drunken, loudmouthed British southerners – well there were still a few, but not enough to make an irritating mark on a far more pleasing and diverse audience. Instead they were from places like France and Germany and Italy, and even Russia and Sweden were represented. And it was a more virtuous and innocent gathering of people; some couples, and some entire families, but generally just people who wanted to get away from work and home for a couple of weeks and relax, but not necessarily drink Spain dryer than it already was. We welcomed the prospect. Sure, we enjoyed being rowdy, but that’s pretty much all we’d done for the last three weeks – if not years – and all of a sudden playing a family show to a couple of hundred politely acknowledging, intelligent people seemed refreshing and inviting. It was a nice layout too. From the stage, directly in front you could see a large service area, partially roofed with the trademark Spanish thatch. But in between were three large, glistening blue pools, infiltrated by mazy dry areas covered in tables, also sporting the fake palm tree canopies. Aside from the busy glow of the bars and the very professional stage lighting, all other illumination came from hundreds of candles that had been generously placed around the tables, and a few dozen outdoor torches, planted carefully to light up the exotic trees and plants that dotted their way around the area. Amazingly, the crowd survived Andre’s tuneless warm-up, and after he impressively said ‘thank you’ in eleven different languages, he introduced Special Clinic.
‘We’ve got to change our name lads,’ I said, as we bounded onto the stage.
‘Special Clinic was your idea, you spud,’ said Dave.
‘I know, and it’s my idea to change it.’
So we ripped through a pair of sets with energy, performance, and most of all … professionalism. For some reason the time and the environment just brought out the best in us. It was the first time I could honestly say to myself ‘wow, we’re a proper band’ … everything was perfect. We played our instruments and sang with immense skill, like true craftsmen. We looked fantastic – for some reason we all chose to wear sandy-beige clothing, which wonderfully showed off our amazing tans, but still retained a modicum of smartness. Our banter between songs was calculated but natural and relaxed, and oozed charm and guile. In short, we had come of age. We had really clicked. Rock and Roll mythology would have it that, before the Beatles went to Hamburg, they were a pretty lousy band. But when they came back … well, that’s when they became the best band in the World. This tour had been our Hamburg even though ironically, that was the one place we would have liked to have gone, and had actually been invited to, but couldn’t go to.
We, I would go as far as to say, mesmerised the audience. We couldn’t put a foot wrong, to such an extent that, when Dave speedily brought the microphone to his mouth and quite obviously chipped a tooth, the listeners and watchers laughed heartily before quickly breaking into loving applause – as opposed to the usual jeer and well-aimed bottle that we were accustomed to getting. And we impressed them right to the end. We had an audience that truly appreciated us, and they showed it. As we finished our set we took a deep and grateful bow, then at the sight of Andre returning to stage to thank us and finish the night off with more of his corny crooning, we all jumped headlong into the pool in front of the stage, feigning panic. At this, we were prized more, and were helped out of the pool by smiling, thankful and appreciative new friends, bearing towels and drinks. Andre later tried to take credit for all of the euphoria, and stated that his idea of playing stooge to us was always going to be a winner. Of course we humoured him until he went home, and then continued to congratulate ourselves through the night.
With time we ran out of adoring admirers as they duly bade us goodnight, but all promised to come to the next show. Inevitably we ended up being the only reason the staff remained at their posts, though it was somewhat surprising that Woody, Nonsense and Karen were all admitting to great fatigue, and announced that their respective beds were the only place for them. Dave and I were both wide-awake though, more awake certainly than I’d been for days. We wanted to stay up some more, explore the night, and perhaps the culture, and eventually wake the next afternoon feeling like we’d gone ten rounds with a grizzly – and lost. We hadn’t really gone anywhere since we’d been in Spain, and for some reason, now seemed to be the perfect time for both Dave and I. With the other three retired, we asked the barman where we could go to get a drink and a good time. After a few aborted attempts to tell us in his watery English, he simply said ‘I put you in taxi.’

 

 

Big Spender

‘This is the life eh, mate?’ I said, as we sped through the still hot streets of Marbella.
‘Yeah, I need a shit though.’
‘You’ve got your whole life to shit man,’ I said romantically. ‘Live a little tonight my friend.’
‘I will, as soon as I’ve had a shit.’
Finally the car settled in a sandy little back street, outside a stony taupe building that offered no evidence of being a bar.
‘Is this it?’ I queried.
‘Si, good time,’ the driver replied, pointing to a large, faded blue door.
Trusting, we got out and I fumbled about in my pockets for the fare, but the driver signalled that it wasn’t necessary to pay him, and drove off.
‘Isn’t that strange … ’ I marvelled, ‘don’t you think that’s strange? I mean, he’s driven us halfway to Portugal at stupid o’clock in the morning, and he doesn’t want to be paid. It’s his bloody job! Dave…what do you think?’
‘I think I need a shit.’
‘I for one find it very odd. Oh, here we are … yes, it is a bar after all,’ I said, pushing open the big old door. ‘What do you want?’
‘I want a shit.’
‘To drink you prat.’
‘Good eefening gentlemen, what would you lieke?’ asked a large, strong looking man from behind the bar.
‘I-would-like-a-sheet,’ muttered Dave, monosyllabically and under his breath.
‘Two beers please,’ I said. ‘Hey Dave, have you noticed that there are only girls in here? Okay, there’s only six of them but, bring it on I say. Think we’ve landed on our feet tonight Davy-boy.’
I handed over an amount of money.
‘And what’s more mate, they’re all looking at us. That one over there’s totally checking you out. Thank you,’ I said, taking my change. ‘Hang on…this is exactly the same amount of money that I just gave him.’
I looked to the barman who merely smiled and continued to dry glasses.
‘Oh, I see, he must be running a tab for us. So buddy, which one do you fancy?’
‘I fancy a shit.’
‘Oh, go and have one for fuck’s sake.’
‘Excuse me mate?’ Dave called, ‘but, where are the toilets?’
‘They are in thee rooms.’
‘Aren’t all toilets in rooms?’ Dave asked me, mystified. ‘God, I’m gonna crap myself in a minute.’
‘Dunno, but I’m very into that buxom dark one in the corner, and even though I say it myself, I think you’ll find she’s very into me as well.’
As I said this, the barman returned and leaned over to ask us…
‘’Ave you deecided what you want yet?’
‘I … oh forget it,’ said Dave.
I frowned at the barman’s face, looked to my full drink and then looked back at him as to imply that he was mad. He then quickly nodded his head in the direction of the girls, still with the question on his face. I looked at the girls, then I looked back at the barman, and then I began to very slowly mouth the word ‘oh’.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, as if requesting a moment’s more thought. ‘Dave, you’re not gonna get a shit without paying,’ I whispered.
‘What? Whoever heard of that, pay for a shit? Except in one of those posh scutters in big cities.’
‘No, you don’t understand. This isn’t a bar.’
‘Isn’t a bar? What are you on about?’
‘It’s a knocking shop.’
‘A what? A knocking … ’
‘Shop … a brothel. That’s why there are only girls here, and that’s also why we didn’t pay for our drinks, or the taxi I’m guessing. So what I’m saying is … if you want to have a shit, you’ll have to take one of these young ladies into one of those rooms.’
‘Oh,’ he said, unremarkably. ‘Oh fine then. How much of this Monopoly money do you want mate?’ he said, holding out a bundle of currency to the barman. ‘I’ll take the little blonde one.’
‘You’re not are you? I don’t believe you Dave.’
‘Oh … I’m sorry mate, is it my round?’ Dave said. ‘My friend will take the buxom brunette,’ he shouted over the bar.
And before I knew it, I was in an eight-foot by eight-foot room accompanied by a Spanish hooker with little command of English, and I’m quite sure that I had a startled expression on my face.
‘So what do you do?’ I asked, awkwardly.
‘Doo?’ she pouted, as she removed her dress.
‘What do you do?’ I repeated, this time waving my hands and hoping that that would make a difference. She had a facial realisation.
‘I am prostitute.’
‘No, what do you do … in here?’
‘Do … in here?’ she mimicked, as she took off her bra, ‘I have sex.’
‘Oh, never mind. How long do we have then?’
‘Ow long?’ she said as she started the general removal of my clothes.
‘Yes.’
‘We ‘ave?’
‘How long?’ I patiently reiterated.
‘Oh! I see. Well … when you come … I go,’ she enunciated slowly, ‘or twenty minute … whichever is the first.’
I found that due to her silent, well-practised industriousness, I was now wearing nearly nothing.
‘Are you goin’ to tek off your socks?’ she asked.
‘Sorry … I didn’t know if you wanted to go all the way.’
‘Go all the way?’
Then I thought that I didn’t really want to do this. It wasn’t right and I’d said so in public that very week. There was no way I was going to go through with this … it was against everything I stood for.
She slid next to me on the bed and gently pushed me down. When she started to kiss me I thought ‘hang on, I’m a young musician who’s had a really good night, I’m drunk, and I’m in a brothel room with a real looker who’s wearing nothing really, and what’s more, Dave has paid for her … fuck it.’ In truth though, I’d spent so long nervously asking her questions that, by the time twenty minutes had elapsed (and you were kindly reminded of this by a stern knock to the door), I wasn’t even half as aroused as I had been on the beach the day before. I must have been a dream customer though because, as we parted she pecked me on the cheek and said, ‘you can come again’, in a way that made Dave (who was waiting outside my door) frown at me jealously.
‘How did you do?’ asked Dave.
‘How did I do? What do you mean how did I do? I was with a hooker. What do you think?’
‘Just asking you how it went,’ he said, counting his money.
‘It was fine. It wasn’t very long though was it?’
‘Tell me about it … just managed to blow my rice as the door was knocked.’
‘Still, nice girl though,’ I said as we wandered into the early morning streets.
‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ Dave invited, still counting his money.
‘What’s that then?’
‘That’s the most expensive shit I’ve ever had in my life!’

 

 

Two Little Boys

Owing to the lateness of our activities, the distance from our base, our generally drunken demeanour, and the fact that we didn’t have a clue where we were or where we were going, Dave and I eventually rolled into the apartment not long before noon, only to be greeted by the other three who were tucking into a late breakfast of fresh fruit and toast.
‘Eh up. Where did you two get to?’ said Woody, with a mouth full of melon.
‘Oh, just out for a bit of fun,’ replied Dave.
‘Did you get lucky?’ smiled Nonsense.
‘I don’t think luck had much to do with it,’ I said, truthfully.
‘Cocky sod. Come on then, spill the beans … ’
‘I don’t know about Dave, but I’m knackered and I really want to go to bed.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ added Dave.
‘But we were just about to crack open some tinnies. Care to join us?’ said Nonsense, holding a beer next to his face, provocatively.
I looked at Dave and he looked back. After a beat, we both shrugged and headed for the table. I supposed that you couldn’t really go to bed at lunchtime, no matter what you’d been up to.
‘So … come on then … ’ said Nonsense inquisitively.
‘Well … ’ I stalled, ‘well we met these two girls in a bar, and then they took us back to their rooms for sex. That’s about it really.’
‘Cool. So what were they called?’
‘What?’
‘What were their names?’
‘Oh, well … I’m not sure … ’ I looked to Dave, but he too shrugged and shook his head.
‘You don’t even know their names? Fair play, everyone loves a bastard.’
‘No they told us their names … ’
‘Yes,’ interrupted Dave, ‘but they were Spanish and we can’t remember them.’
‘Yes, that’s it,’ I added.
‘Well, you pair of dogs,’ smiled Woody. ‘I’m glad to see I’m finally rubbing off on you.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ I said.
‘Well I hope you took precautions,’ said Karen, sternly.
‘Yes Mom!’ said Dave and I in unison.
‘Still,’ he continued through his toast, ‘that’s no guarantee is it? I mean … condoms aren’t a hundred percent are they?’
‘No,’ added Nonsense, ‘you’ll probably come back to Spain one day to find that you’ve got a greasy little bambino with a big nose and a guitar and a really sarcastic sense of humour, and he’ll lead a life of crime because you abandoned his mo … ’
‘Thank you!’ I shouted. ‘That’s quite enough thank you Nonsense.’
‘Well … ’ continued Karen, ‘it isn’t just pregnancy that should concern you. No, it’s the myriad of sexual diseases.’
‘Yeah,’ enthused Nonsense, ‘you’ll have to go to the special clinic. Brilliant. And then they’ll stick one of those umbrellas up your bell end and then pull it back down and all the … ’
‘THAT WILL DO! As it happens,’ I said more calmly, ‘they were very, very nice girls.’
‘Yes,’ mused Karen, ‘I suppose that says something. At least you didn’t go with prostitutes like someone I could mention.’
Dave and I both spontaneously shifted in our seats.
‘Stick it up your arse,’ said Nonsense. ‘I’ll have you know that whores are really clean living. They can’t afford not to be. And now I’m going for a pee. Hope the colour’s calmed down … my piss has been bright yellow since we got here. That’s never right is it?’
‘You’re not drinking enough water,’ I said.
‘Is that what it is?’
‘Yeah, you’ve got to drink a lot of water in this sort of climate. A few litres a day should clear it up.’
Characteristically, this chat over late breakfast meandered into a typically organic stream of utter twaddle, shifting from this subject to that, moving effortlessly from vulgar to downright profound. After a few beers, and with the harsh lunchtime sunshine playing cruelly on our retinas, Dave and I conceded, went to our respective beds, and slept until the next afternoon.

 

 

Rock ‘n’ Roll Mercenaries

In one way, I’ve always liked the idea of British colonies. Of course, they inherently have one appalling downside; for a colony to exist, it means a country must be invaded and occupied at the very least, and a fair amount of the populous losing at best, a good slice of their civil liberties. But there is an aspect of colonial Great Britain that is romantically and indelibly etched upon my psyche. It stems from black and white films with people like Alec Guinness or James Mason sipping martinis in high-ceilinged white rooms with grand paintings hanging on the large white walls; their faces are sweating from the top of their white suits, and the dark shadow of a busily rotating fan is cast long across the vast white ceiling. Granted, it’s a peculiar fantasy, but it was imprinted on me as a child thanks to an unhealthy love of monochrome movies, and for me the image has come to represent a simpler time when men were all intelligent, women were all demure, and if you had a problem you could always pop into the officers lounge and share a single malt with the colonel. Naturally, it’s just not right, even though the British always had the best of intentions (in the films anyway). Colonisation is colonisation, and in reality even British colonisations embodied progress and oppression concurrently. Nevertheless, the image, I just can’t shake. And here we were, early Saturday morning, driving down the coast to one of only two colonies that the once great British Empire had managed to cling to – and the other one, Hong Kong, was due to revert back to Chinese rule a few years later. I could barely contain my excitement. When Andre told us earlier that week that we’d be playing in Gibraltar it washed over me and didn’t really register. But now, as we followed the coast-hugging road along the south shoreline, I was thrilled. After about an hour of driving we could even see the tip of ‘the Rock’, even though we were still some way away. That’s about all I really knew about Gibraltar, that it was a rock…with monkeys. But the fact that we were playing for the Officer’s summer dinner and dance pleased me even more. Ah yes, service, fine crystal, incredible moustaches, aristocratic talk, expensive cigars, top girls, and the finest food for miles even though the boys on the front line haven’t eaten for five days, what. It’s all very well going to a local tavern and drinking all night with the conscripts, but put me in the officer’s mess with a glass of sherry and I’ll show you what I was born for. All of a sudden I’d wished I’d joined the army, but that feeling went away just as quickly as it had arrived. Okay, I wasn’t about to go and sign up, but I was still subject to a tingling of exhilaration, and the further we drove, the bigger the Rock became…far more enormous than ever I’d imagined. Then, the wonder spread to everybody in the van when we looked out south over the cobalt ocean, and realised that we could see the northern tip of Africa.
We finally made the Gibraltar border-control to discover that there was a lengthy queue to get through customs, mostly consisting of Spaniards wanting to stock up on tax-free booze and cigarettes, but it was a tailback that would take an hour and a half to work our way to the front of. That was a long time to sit in a metal box, especially considering the temperature had recently become a three-digit number, so we occupied our time sat around the shady side of the van, seeing who could string together the most obnoxious combination of otherwise innocent words. Nonsense won hands down with the inspired combo ‘milky discharge’.
When we finally crossed the border we were a little perplexed to be immediately stopped by a very sizable level crossing. But as we peered through the windscreen and tried to spot the rail tracks, an enormous aircraft touched down on the road right in front of us, causing us all to break into spontaneous, albeit slightly nervous laughter. After this unusual distraction, we drove across the runway and the few hundred yards more to the officers’ mess, and set up our equipment on the large enclosed patio that led from the bar – leaving us the rest of the day to explore Gibraltar at our leisure.

 

 

Trouble in Paradise

‘Well I’ve got to say chaps, I’m a little disappointed,’ I said, as we dawdled up the hill into the centre of the colony.
‘Why?’ Dave asked.
‘Well, it doesn’t look like it’s been painted for about fifty years.’
‘What doesn’t look like it’s been painted for about fifty years?’
‘Gibraltar. Look at it … it’s rather tatty.’
‘We’re in a tax-free-haven about fifteen miles from Morocco. What did you expect, Windsor? Bath?’
‘I dunno, I just expected it to be a bit more … regal or something?’
‘Who cares?’ said Nonsense. ‘It’s cheaper than the seventies here.’
And it was. Gibraltar is basically shop upon shop full of cheap electrical goods, perfume, alcohol and cigarettes. It’s like a huge, open-air duty free airport shop, but with real reductions in prices. Aside from these endless retail outlets, pretty much the only other buildings were pubs, and after we looked inside four of them and found them to be full of rowdy squaddies, we eventually settled in the fifth, which was full of rowdy squaddies.
After noticing that five pints of beer would come to far less than five pounds, Dave quickly volunteered to buy the first round.
‘Mate … ’ Dave whispered to me, ‘can you lend me some money until we get paid tonight?’
‘You run out of money?’ bellowed Nonsense, ‘how come?’
‘I don’t know, I must have lost some.’
‘Lost some?’
‘Yeah, lost some. Unless I’ve been paying through the nose because I’m a pissed up bloody tourist and they can see me coming from miles away,’ he said through gritted teeth.
‘There you go mate, there’s a twenty,’ I said.
‘Thanks.’
‘I’ve still got loads left, and there’s a few more gigs to go yet,’ said Nonsense.
‘Well I’ve got even more,’ added Woody, ‘because unlike some people I don’t find it necessary to part with good money just to get a shag.’
‘Well,’ said Karen, ‘I’ll bet I’ve got even more than you still, because I don’t smoke and I don’t drink anywhere near as much as you lot do.’
‘Will you lot shut the fuck up?’ pleaded Dave, ‘I’m on fuckin’ holiday. Cheers mate,’ he said, acknowledging his change from the barman.
After one drink (for the squaddies were very rowdy and Dave was of a somewhat volatile mood – and it was only going to be a matter of time before there was some kind of a merger between the two) we headed back out into the baking streets and immediately became covered in the sweat that we’d just spent twenty minutes alleviating. After a brief conference we decided to make our way to the top of the Rock to check out the view and the monkeys. When we finally reached the summit at the Upper Rock Nature Reserve, we discovered that they weren’t really monkeys at all but Barbary Apes, and we also discovered that they were all complete bastards. It started as we all looked out over the magnificent Mediterranean view, and one of the pesky little blighters snatched Woody’s can of coke from its resting place, a few inches from his hand. Of course, we all found this most amusing except for Woody who gave pointless chase to the ape, who, as he sprayed the contents of the can far and wide, also seemed to be laughing at him. Five minutes later and not so funny, another one of the critters made a daring grab and got away with Karen’s camera that had been swinging freely around his neck. This time we all gave chase, but gave up when the creature darted up a tree, turned to us, and made a very human gesture with his right hand. We’d had enough of Barbary Apes and started to wonder back down the hill commiserating Karen, who was consolable only by the fact that it was a fresh film in his camera, and then he proceeded to rant for some time saying things like ‘you can never replace those sort of memories once they’re lost’. So it was all back to the rooms that Sergeant Pascoe had so efficiently shown us to upon arrival, for a rest, a freshen-up, and our first Armed Forces gig.

 

 

In the Army Now

We liked Sergeant Pascoe. To me, he seemed to possess all the qualities you’d expect of a sergeant – assertion, volume, a clinical brand of honesty, and size fifteen boots. He also seemed remarkably keen to answer any questions that we might throw at him, including queries concerning the military workings of Gibraltar.
‘Not just because it’s at the gateway to the Mediterranean and of huge strategic importance to the region, there are plenty more reasons why we can’t and never will give it back to the Spanish,’ he said, rather brashly.
‘Why’s that?’ I asked.
‘Tunnels.’
‘Tunnels?’
‘Tunnels, and lots of them.’
‘Tunnels … here?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes, there are over sixty miles of tunnels in that rock.’
‘Really?’ we all wowed.
‘Oh yes. Some of them are so wide you can drive lorries down them two-a-breast.’
‘Wow, what’s in them?’ asked Nonsense.
‘Military things.’
‘Carry on good man,’ said Dave, with more than a twinkle of interest.
‘Well, weapons … ’
‘Good … ’
‘Secrets that they’ve been stashing in there for years.’
‘Secrets? What sort of secrets?’ I asked.
‘I couldn’t say sir, they’re secrets. Private, get these gentlemen more drinks,’ he bellowed at the fresh-faced junior behind the bar.
‘Yes sar’nt,’ he nodded without expression, and quickly set to the task.
I know that he’d been assigned to look after us, but he seemed to be taking the duty to heart – he was completely at our service, and we felt that we could ask him anything. He was like a guardian angel.
‘So … sergeant,’ asked Dave cockily, ‘any chance of me having a go in a Harrier Jump Jet?’
‘No sir, no chance whatsoever.’
‘Didn’t think so. But if you don’t ask you don’t get, right?’
‘Indeed you don’t sir … and indeed you won’t.’
‘Sergeant Pascoe,’ I said, ‘at what time are we due on stage?’
‘Twenty-two hundred sir.’
‘Ten o’clock,’ Karen whispered in my ear, at which I scowled.
‘Cool, a late one. Does it go on until midnight then?’
‘No sir, much later. There is another act on after you gentlemen for a start.’
‘Really, who?’
‘A tribute to Miss Whitney Houston I believe sir.’
‘What time will it go on ‘til then?’
‘Until it’s light sir.’
He looked around us at our collectively raised eyebrows and our cheeky boy grins.
‘Oh yes gentlemen, these affairs happen only twice a year, now and Christmas. They don’t hold back. These functions go on all night. After Miss Houston does her turn there will be dancing until the early hours courtesy of Crazy Jake’s mobile discotheque. Then, at about o five hundred,’ I sharply turned to Karen to prevent him from translating the time, ‘that’s when they’ll serve the champagne breakfast. After that, folks just sit around talking and drinking until they either manage to get to bed, or until they pass out where they sit.’
‘My kind of party,’ I said.
‘But now gentlemen,’ he said, looking at his watch, ‘now I will take you to the lounge where you can eat.’
We entered the lounge as the last of the proper guests were stacking their plates from the buffet. And what a buffet it was. It ran the entire length of the room, each huge table being artistically laid out and arranged so that the fare gently sloped up and away from you, where a long line of chefs stood waiting to serve. Every food group had been considered; the first stage boasted a mesmerising array of breads; then salads – bright, vivid and glistening in their rich dressings; then an entire table of pulses, beans and couscous and the like; then roasted vegetables, pastas, truffles, succotash, asparagus and pickles; the central table was reserved for seafood, the crown being a magnificent salmon on a table-sized mirror, surrounded by shellfish, caviar and shrimps as big as your hand; next was every kind of meat imaginable – poultry, kebabs, steak, tongue, liver, salamis and haggis, all presented in grand bowls and plates that had probably been acquired in the days of His Majesty’s Armed Forces, and more chefs, dutifully slicing prime meat from enormous joints of beef, venison, ham and pork; then more tables, all exquisitely laid out, all covered with the best food that the tax-payer’s money could buy – morsels, cheeses, stews, curry, pâté, mousse – and on, until the final table which was desserts – gateaux, roulade, éclairs, pastries, compote, fritters, soufflés and fruit of every colour. It looked every bit good enough to dive headlong into. We gazed in awe as the men in crisp white linen waited for our culinary commands, and Karen, who was at the head of our little queue, was prompted with a brusque ‘Sir?’ from the head chef.
‘Have you got any egg vol-au-vents?’
The chef glared back as if Karen had just asked him for one of his kidneys.
‘No sir.’
‘I’ll just have a small piece of chicken then please.’
‘Right!’ I said, rubbing my hands, ‘I’ll take the soup in a basket, a leg of salmon and some black pudding thermidor please.’
The man stared back at me with the same contempt that had greeted Karen’s request.
‘Jackson, look after these boys please,’ he said with disdain, heading back to the kitchen.
‘Yes sir. I’m afraid he hasn’t got much of a sense of humour sir,’ he remarked quietly.
‘Well, to be fair,’ I said, ‘we are a bunch of dick heads.’
‘Have you got any diet pork pies?’ asked Nonsense.
‘I think that proves my point,’ I said.
So we gorged, all the time being plied with ice-cold bottles of Carlsberg Export. Sergeant Pascoe was treating us as he would like to have been treated himself, and no request seemed to be more than his job’s worth.
The show itself went exceptionally well, mostly by virtue of the fact that Andre had other commitments – so we sounded great, and it was a pleasure playing outdoors, the gentle sea breeze holding us at a very agreeable temperature. Half way through our set Dave nodded in the direction of the Rock, which was over our left shoulders. I looked around to see the Rock illuminated in a greenish white hue, and the west face gently bathed in the deep red glow that the sunset had left in the sky. It truly was a breath-taking sight. For the rest of our set I was transfixed by this awe-inspiring spectacle, and I only faced our audience (who were drunkenly frolicking) to provide backing vocals. In the blurred, undefined vaults of our onstage experiences, this would doubtless become the most enduring image. Nature and mankind had come together in the most pleasing of fashions, and the sheer beauty and majesty of this scene sat heavy in me all night. We completed our set, politely applauded the tribute to Whitney Houston (even though she was white), hobnobbed with the officers and staff, and managed to sustain our party until o six hundred. But throughout all, my only thought was of the magnificence and splendour of the Rock, and I was grateful for the warm sentiment that it had placed in my heart.

 

 

Pleasant Valley Sunday

With every nook in the van crammed with tax-free contraband, and the morning sun playfully darting miniature spectral effects across our windscreen, we made our way the thirty miles up coast to Estepona. With my insides still weighty and fervent from the Gibraltar experience, it was with a sudden jolt of sadness that I realised we had just entered the final week of our adventure. The time had seemed to go so quickly, even though it was packed to the gunwales with concentrated life, pure and undiluted. It was a time that I would never forget. My mood, prompted by the gentle movement through the warm quilted morning, forced me into a contemplative frame of mind. Was this what my life should be about? I’d never really thought about it much before. Was I to spend my days absorbing existence decadently; tearing away at what the world had to offer, and greedily stuffing my face with it? Or was this just one of the experiences that everybody went through, and all the information helped you to evaluate yourself, and was then skilfully used to shape all that followed? I didn’t know. I know I’d enjoyed myself, and this was all I’d ever wanted to do. I could live like this. More to the point, I could live like this – hedonism sustained at this level would probably deny me of a thirty-fifth birthday (although, Keith Richard seems to have laughed in the face of medical science, and all it knows, for a couple of decades). But I had enjoyed myself. But was that really enough? I wondered if an epitaph of ‘He Enjoyed Himself’ was going to impress anybody much, let alone fulfil the enormous expectations that I’d long cultivated for myself. It was a subject that I didn’t particularly enjoy pondering, mostly because I wasn’t equipped to argue the case either way. I didn’t know whether I was a success or a failure. It had been an amazing and rewarding six weeks. But wasn’t one of the main reasons that it had been so gratifying that we’d met so many people; wonderful people like Marte, Bodil, Christina, Inge, Mike, Pete Best and his band, Henri – our intellectual Parisian friend, Sergeant Pascoe; and wasn’t it extremely unlikely that we’d ever see any of them again? Of course I’d try to, but that was one thing that I did know about life even then – and it’s something to do with best-laid plans. I suddenly felt uncomfortable with the way I was thinking, and with a deep swallow, I consciously snapped out of my frame of mind as we rolled up to the side of Sharkey’s Beach Shack.

 

 

Seaside Shuffle

The one thing that disappointed me about the south of Spain – the unnecessary abundance of British people – was reinforced when the owner of Sharkey’s, a man called Alan, came out to greet us as we parked up. Don’t get me wrong, most of the Brits that we’d met had actually been pleasant and warm at the very least, but when I travel so many miles I don’t expect a place to be like Ramsgate in a heat wave. True to form, Alan was a very welcoming and accommodating man, and immediately took the opportunity to introduce us to his bar staff, along with the order not to charge us for anything. The fool. And then, as I considered how genuine and likable nearly everybody really was on the southern strip, up pulled Andre in his van. His previous evening’s commitments duly dispatched, here he was, determined to make us sound terrible – and there was little doubt that he would succeed.
‘He scares me,’ I muttered to Woody.
‘Who, Andre?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Does he scare you in the same way that Nonsense scares you?’
‘No … that’s a different type of scared. Nonsense scares me like pressure cookers scare me, but Andre scares me in the same way that … I don’t know … the same way that perhaps corduroy trousers scare me.’
‘Pressure cookers?’
‘God yes. They’re potential bombs, and we put them on cookers. It’s madness…asking for trouble.’
‘Well, you think you know somebody … ’
‘What?’
‘Well, pressure cookers? It’s a strange phobia. Anything else you want to tell me about?’
‘Plasters and stickers worry me greatly.’
‘That’s odd Benjamin.’
‘That’s nothing. I knew a girl that had a phobia of finger buffets.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh yes. She’d go pale and start shaking if she got near one.’
‘That’s just weird.’
‘Tell me.’
‘How did last night go?’ asked Andre.
‘Very well indeed, they seemed very pleased,’ I said, but I wasn’t about to tell him that not only had the party coordinator taken my number and next time the middleman would be cut out, but the promoter friend of an officer had also taken my details after paying us some very flattering compliments.
‘Great. I’m just sorry I couldn’t have been there to help with the sound.’
‘Oh that’s okay, we’re used to doing it ourselves. In fact we may as well use our stuff today.’
‘But I brought my P.A., it’s in the van,’ he said, looking a little wounded.
‘Yes but it’s an outdoor gig again today, so our settings won’t need to be altered.’
No person in their right mind could argue with that kind of logic, and with a reluctant shrug he conceded that my idea made a lot of sense. It was a valuable victory.
‘Alan, great. How are you?’ Andre said, reaching out his hand to the owner.
‘Andre,’ he replied, in a manner that made it faintly clear that he held Andre in the same esteem as we. ‘I was wondering if you guys wanted to eat now or later on?’
‘I think maybe we’ll set our stuff up and eat then if that’s okay,’ I said.
‘Steak all right?’
‘Steak sounds great.’
Sharkey’s Beach Shack, as the name suggests, was a shack on the beach. Obviously not a real shack, but a bar-come-restaurant made to look shack-like; rickety and wooden like a mining building from an old cartoon. A large covered porch area looked out on to the lapping sea, and to the side stood an equally rickety looking wooden stage, surrounded on three sides by a multitude of tables, chairs and beach umbrellas. It was only early lunchtime, but already there was activity, and a gentle drone as people made themselves comfortable and ordered their food and drink from the roving staff. It was a great place. You could have a drink, eat a meal, go for a swim (not too soon after eating though), have another drink and take in the band, maybe another swim later, followed by more drinks. I was a little envious of the people that had come to Sharkey’s Beach Shack to enjoy their Sunday afternoon. By the time we started our first set the place was buzzing and the atmosphere incomparable; it was plain to see that it was going to be a belter. We were already a little light-headed from the combination of alcohol (a lot still present from the night before too) and a blistering sun, except for Woody who thanks to our fortuity, seemed to get most of the iniquitous driving deals. Performing in a merry state wasn’t a problem for us though, we were used to it. We’d done it for so long now that we were actually a slightly better band after we’d had half a skin-full (that famous musical starring Tommy Steele!). The crowd were lapping it up; many dancing barefoot on the hot sand, girls in bikinis and swimsuits distracting us from our duties, and even the staff were happily nodding in time with the music as they distributed trays of food and drink, before dancing back into the restaurant. The cars approaching us from the east on the adjacent dusty road could clearly see us, and most offered a flash of lights or a toot of the horn with their amused smiles and waves. The shortness of our break was a clear testimony to how much we were enjoying playing, leaving the stage barely long enough to neck another large ice cold schnapps and orange juice (our officially designated drink of the day), and procure a quick recharge or two for the second set. And it was a set that exceeded the first, storming through classic after classic, and stirring the now enormously respectable crowd to the very limits of non-sexual enjoyment. Dave did throw in the occasional accidental drunken Spoonerism (mostly in ‘Mr. Postman’), and seemed to garner enormous enjoyment from changing ‘Day Tripper’ into ‘Gay Stripper’, but nobody cared and it soon became the gig of the tour in terms of audience appreciation and on-stage fun having. The perfect crown for our efforts came at the end of our last song (a rousing but seemingly endless rendition of ‘Hey Jude’ again) when, in his efforts to conclude the song with a suitably thunderous crash to the cymbals, Karen slipped off the back of his stool, and disappeared behind the stage. Bent double we eventually made our way around the back of the stage, but were too weak with laughter to help him, especially after seeing that he hadn’t moved a muscle since falling, he just lay flat in the deep imprint he’d made in the soft sand, his feet still perched on the edge of the stage some three feet above his head. For the second time in a week we were applauded as we moved through an admiring audience and into the bar, even though one member of the band appeared invisible from behind, courtesy of the fine sand that had stuck to every dot of his sweat-drenched reverse.
Alan showed his thanks by paying us more than had been agreed – for he had been far busier than he’d expected – and showed further appreciation in the form of rapidly flowing schnapps, which we giddily slurped as we dismantled our equipment.
‘Great,’ said Andre, ‘six o’clock. We’ll be back at the Miraflores by seven. We’ll meet you back there at the restaurant for dinner, okay?’
With Karen, who had opted for the comfort of Andre’s passenger seat, he set off towards the road, dislodging a gossamer curtain of sand as they went.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked Woody, who was sat expressionless and motionless in the driver’s seat.
‘The keys,’ was his minimalist reply.
‘What about them?’
‘They’re in my bag.’
‘So why don’t you get them out?’
‘I can’t.’
‘Go on … ’
‘Because I gave my bag to Andre to look after.’
The four of us peered through the windscreen, and beyond, at the little white van that was powering over the dusty horizon, a quarter of a mile in front of us. Woody eventually turned to us, his face bathed in an excruciating realisation.
‘Well I can’t possibly say anything,’ said Nonsense from the back. ‘It’s the first twatty thing you’ve done in over a month. Though you’re still getting the pig’s ears.’
‘These things happen mate,’ I said, and Dave agreed.
‘Thanks guys,’ Woody nodded in appreciation. ‘I reckon we’ve got a bit of a wait on our hands though.’
‘Do you think we should go and have a drink or two?’ I asked.
‘I think, all things considered, we probably should.’

 

 

Amigo’s Para Siempre

There’s a lot to be said for unplanned, spontaneous situations. Of course given the choice, we wouldn’t have opted to be stuck on a beach fifty miles from our base, with a van that was about as much use as an ice pick would have been at the time. But the sinking feeling that we’d all experienced upon realising that the keys were being driven away from us was unnecessary, as here we were, Dave, Woody and I, engrossed in the most enjoyable of conversations, whilst Nonsense played at the water’s edge like a child who’d never seen an ocean before; tentatively skipping out of the way of the waves as they crashed onto the beach.
Alan was continuing to accommodate us in the generous style he’d set upon our arrival, and we sat in beach chairs as the setting sun touched and coloured the sky around us with rich red tones, and we talked of the future – a matter that had been at the very front of my mind for a day or so. Dave and I had always shared an image of the future that wasn’t so far removed from what we’d been doing for the last month; furiously travelling on a tight schedule; boats, roads and planes; hotels and airports; large adoring audiences; men that wanted to be like us, and women that wanted to sleep with us; Jack Daniels and marijuana; interviews and T.V. appearances; and a steady succession of favourably selling records. Our travels throughout Europe had allowed us to sample some of these flavours on a modest level. We’d had a taste, and now we wanted more. But Woody was still not gung ho about achieving a slice of celebrity, even though he’d had a fantastic time. He’d even said that he was in two minds whether or not to take this tour on in the first place because of all the work he’d had to turn down.
‘But that’s okay if you’re doing gigs instead isn’t it?’ I said.
‘Well the money’s nothing compared to what I earn at home.’
‘Yes but the more we did it, the better the gigs would become.’
‘It’s not just that. It’s okay for you guys, you’ve just finished college you can do anything you like, your lives are a blank canvas if you like. It’s taken me the last three or four years to build my business up to its current level. I can just about get away with this jaunt, but any longer and I’d lose too many of the regular jobs that I’ve built up.’
‘But that’s what it’s all about isn’t it?’ chipped in Dave.
‘What?’
‘Well … the whole doing it thing, you know, taking a chance in life … what’s the worst thing that can happen? Okay so maybe it doesn’t work out, so you go back to what you were doing before, or something else. At least you’ll have had a go, and you’ll have had a great time thrown into the bargain.’
‘I’m afraid I’m just not that sort of person.’
‘Won’t that make your life a bit predictable?’ I asked.
‘I like predictable. Existence throws enough unpredictable stuff at you as it is, I’d rather keep control of some aspects of my life if I can.’
At that moment Nonsense, who had just bounced out of the way of one wave, was caught out by the very speedy arrival of a second, which caused him to slip and in turn get washed a couple of yards up the beach. We could hear him laughing over the sound of the sea and spume retracting.
‘That’s exactly why I’m not playing chicken with the sea,’ said Woody.
‘He’s happy in his work,’ I said with a snigger.
‘Besides, no matter how good we are, we’ll never make it big doing what we’re doing now, will we?’
Dave and I turned to Woody looking genuinely hurt.
‘Well come on … no matter how good we are we’re only a covers band. Nobody makes it big doing covers any more.’
He was right of course, but something like that wasn’t going to be a barrier for me.
‘I’ve written songs before,’ I said.
‘No disrespect, but I think you’ll have to do a bit better than ‘Standing in the Chippy Waiting for a Sausage’.’
‘That was ages ago. Besides, I’ve started a couple in the last few weeks.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. And even if I say so myself, they’re pretty good.’
‘I’d like to hear them.’
‘Then you shall,’ I replied, and hoisted myself out of my chair and headed towards the van.
I returned with my acoustic guitar, and Dave and Woody sat silently in expectance. I gently thumbed through the chord sequence, an A9, an F# minor, a D9, and then another A9, before croakily singing a plaintive and reflective version of ‘Early River Place’, for the very first time ever.

In Early River Place I found my way
I found my life
And I found you

In Early River Place I looked around
I saw a light
And I saw you

And the fire of your expression kisses my soul
It will ride with me in everything I do
And the thought of you will make me want to roll
Back to Early River Place where I found you

In Early River Place I found my way
I found my life
And I found you

‘That’s beautiful,’ said Woody, observing the golden rule of making certain that the last chord had completely faded before he spoke.
‘Thanks,’ I replied.
‘Nice tune big nose!’ shouted Nonsense from his ocean playground.
We all laughed softly.
‘Wow. And you’ve got more you say?’ said Dave.
‘Yeah a few, but I could do loads more.’
‘Well let’s start sticking them in the set then.’
‘Okay, we will,’ I said, dropping my guitar to the sand, and replacing it in my hand with another strong schnapps and orange juice.
For some time we sat silently and thoughtfully as we sipped our drinks – cocooned in a restful and unspoken aura, and watched Nonsense making a fool of himself in the distance. The quiet remained unbroken for some time, until we noticed that Nonsense was now in a chair, the growing waves breaking and licking his feet, his arms gesturing manically.
‘I command you to retreat!’ he shouted at the top of his voice. ‘Go back from whence you came foul sea. Go back, back, back!’
‘What’s he doing now?’ asked Woody.
‘I … ’ bellowed Nonsense, ‘I order you back, for I am King Cnut!’
‘It’s the right letters!’ we all shouted in unison.
‘What?’ he queried as he craned round to look at us.
As he glanced around at us for a repeat, a large wave assaulted him, throwing his chair backwards, and temporarily engulfing him in the white churning spray. This sight kept us in laughter for a good ten minutes. The next hour or so went in a comparable manner; a few more drinks, a bit more chat, another song or two, while all the time a strange looking man attempted to control the Mediterranean Sea. By the time Andre returned with the keys for our van, my mood was as calm and settled as the falling night that now surrounded us.

 

 

Blue Monday

Anticlimax is a rum and unwarranted affair. I suppose it stands to reason. Anticlimax can only exist if something resembling climax is present in the first place. I suspect people who live an unexceptional life are never very disappointed because there isn’t too far to fall. And that was exactly why we were all moping around as we set up on the stage of the Elephant, communicating with grunts, reluctant to be there, and generally scowling at Andre when he wasn’t looking. After a milestone weekend boasting two first class shows and all the peripheral extras that we were growing to love, here we were preparing to play the second (and thankfully final) instalment of the gig from hell. Unsurprisingly, the place was still a mess; the tables and chairs were still tatty, the windows were even more opaque than before – caused by smoke from one side and sand from the other. Also, from the taste of it the beer hadn’t improved, and it was still necessary to physically prise your feet from certain areas of the carpet. I’m not sure why I expected a miracle cure within one week. Andre introduced us to the manager again, but I still don’t remember his name, and he seemed even more miserable than he had done the week before. To top it all, Andre had had a fight with his fiery Portuguese girlfriend, Paola, the upside of which was that she had managed to apply an area of bruise-coloured shading around his left eye, the downside of which was that he was in a foul mood, and he had decided that he was going to drink. To begin with, the drink didn’t manifest itself problematically – in fact he’d taken a turn for the better and was quite buoyant. We were positively starting to like the ‘new’ Andre when he kept insisting on buying the beers. He was still okay as we cruised through our first set; moving in time to the music and tapping his hand on the mixing desk, and greeting the end of each song with hearty applause and a rowdy shout of ‘great’, a holler that would increase in volume as the set progressed. It was during our break that all the signs changed, and it became evident that there was a storm front coming. He’d decided to pick up on the fact that Dave had this quirky little dance that he often did during a guitar solo, or some such other break in the singing. It was a kind of one man twist, and it involved a leg being brought high up into the air whilst arms were tucked under – chicken-like, all rotating and twisting around the foot that remained on the floor. It was a big, looping, spiralling affair.
‘What do you do it for?’ gabbled Andre.
‘Well I’ve got to do something. You can’t just do nothing when you’re on stage.’
‘Well it looks fucking stupid,’ he said, his head now wobbling with every syllable.
‘You say. A lot of people like it, and as I said, it’s better than doing nothing.’
‘It looks like you’re having a shit man.’
I could see that even though Dave was doing his best not to get drawn in, he was never the less beginning to get a little agitated, so I placed a cautionary hand on his arm.
‘Whatever,’ was his calm reply.
‘Hey, anyone fancy a dance? I feel like dancing,’ announced Andre, heading with pace for dance floor. Once there, he successfully managed to tread on virtually every foot, and clumsily bang into every shoulder of the people who, until then, were enjoying a gentle bop to the sounds of Black Lace.
‘Prick!’ declared Dave.
‘You got that right,’ I said.
‘I can feel controversy coursing through my bones. If I don’t hit him tonight I’ll be very surprised.’
‘Do you think he should be today’s recipient of the novelty porcine listening organs?’ asked Karen.
‘Nail them to his fuckin’ head. They’re for keeps,’ suggested Dave.
We managed to avoid Andre for the rest of our break, though it was easy to track him, as a commotion seemed to follow him wherever he went in the room. If a glass got knocked over with a wet splash, Andre would be close at hand. When the woman in the shell-suit tripped and bounced across the dance floor on her backside, Andre was there to hold out an apologetic hand, and then feel the need to grovel for mercy to her husband. And when the man wearing the Burberry cap punched the man in the T-shirt and braces, it was a case of mistaken identity – and largely down to something that Andre had said about the man’s wife. He was a walking (just about) disaster area.

 

 

Kung Fu Fighting

We started the second set a little covertly with the vain aspiration that Andre would be too busy drunkenly making a fool of himself to notice us, thus sparing any fiddling with our sound, but of course he was straight over to the mixing desk to do what he did best – piss everybody off. Slowly but surely he got more and more noticeably intoxicated; his swaying and staggering became more pronounced, he got louder, and he even started shouting and gesturing to people that simply weren’t there. In short…he was plastered. We tried in equal measures to ignore him and amuse him, but he seemed to be on some unswerving mission to become crowned as the ‘King of Obnoxiousness’, and his repulsiveness was becoming increasingly aimed at Dave.
‘G’an Davey boy, gis another song,’ he shouted. He was on the dance floor, arms aloft, and using the front of our stage to hold himself up by the knees. ‘Davey boy … you big fucker, gis some fuckin’ Tom Jones ya bastard.’
‘It’s nice to see you've set aside this special time to humiliate yourself in public sir,’ said Dave calmly over the mic.
‘Fuck ya’s arse,’ he replied, flicking Dave two of his fingers.
‘What’s that sir? A request? ‘Swanny River’ sir? Certainly. I’ll sing it, you can jump in it sir.’
The audience were beginning to enjoy the situation, and many were pointing at Andre and openly ridiculing him.
‘Ah ya’s all fuckers!’ he taunted the rest of the room.
‘Yes I'm already visualizing the duct tape over your mouth sir.’
‘Why don ya stick it up ya arse!’ he spluttered, allowing time to belch somewhere in the middle.
‘Well, listen to that ladies and gentlemen, he can make complete sentences without using a single word in the Oxford English Dictionary. Anyway sir, shouldn’t you be out dating a cousin tonight?’
By now Andre was standing (barely) at the front of the dance floor, one hand retaining the upstanding middle finger, the other hand cupping his crotch.
‘Anyway folks, enough of the side show. We’re here to play music, not to mock the troubled members of the audience. Talking of which, this is quite appropriate … here’s a bit of Monkees for you. ‘Last Train to Clarkesville’ guys,’ he prompted us aside.
As Nonsense ripped into the guitar intro, Woody and I grinned at each other, wondering what lyrical treat Dave would have in store for us. All the way through the first verse (the only verse that Dave knew) Andre was getting more and more aggressive at Dave’s feet, and had moved onto masturbating gestures accompanied with shouts of ‘wanker’ and ‘tosser’.
‘He wants to be careful,’ I shouted into Woody’s ear, over the music.
Woody smiled and nodded.

Take the last train to Clarkesville
Yes you sir, at the front
Has anybody told you that you’re
Nothing but a…wouldn’t you like to know
Oh no, no, no…

It was an excellent choice of mystery verse, but it did nothing but inflame the already agitated Andre, who was now trying to clamber onto the stage.
‘Guitar solo … ’ cried Dave, and with that, made a huge Las Vegas style, show biz swing of his microphone, which quite intentionally connected at speed with Andre’s forehead, causing a ‘thud’ over the P.A. system. Andre, who must have been seeing stars, careered backwards through the dancing throng, but they’d seen him coming, and a few of the larger men in the pack simply caught him, and carried him to the back of the room where they pitched him onto a sofa as if he were a throw cushion. Dave broke into his little dance that had so antagonised Andre, with a cool and calculated swagger, as Andre disappeared through the drunken mob.
And that was the last we saw of him on that particular Monday night. The show was nothing short of a triumph in the end, the unexpected cabaret endearing us to the audience. The manager, whose name escapes me, told us that he’d put Andre in a taxi and sent him home. He had certainly cheered up, and he thanked us very much, gave us a few bottles of wine on top of our fee, and we headed back to our apartment laughing, and congratulating our singer for doing what we’d all wanted to do since we’d very first set eyes on Andre Leech.

 

 

Black Eyed Boy

‘It’s such a waste of money,’ said Karen.
‘Don’t care,’ was Nonsense’s swift reply.
‘It smells!’
‘Tough,’ I said.
‘It’s so bad for you.’
‘Don’t care,’ said Dave.
‘Well you should care.’
Karen was taking the opportunity to have one of his mother hen rants at us about smoking, as we poured over our lunchtime breakfast. It was having the little effect that it normally had.
‘Listen … ’ said Dave, ‘I’m young. I’ve got the rest of my life to worry about what’s bad for me.’
‘Well the rest of your life is likely to be considerably shorter than the rest of my life. Don’t you know that smoking can cause a slow and painful death?’
‘My friend,’ said Dave, ‘life … is a slow and painful death, especially with you around.’
‘Well that’s very pessimistic I must say.’
‘Will you shut up? I’m on fuckin’ holiday. How am I supposed to relax with you blathering on at me like my Auntie Bob?’
‘Surely Bob’s your uncle?’ I interrupted.
‘You’d think so, but no.’
‘You’ve got an Auntie Bob?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Explain yourself David.’
‘Look, he’s been gay since the year dot. Early on in his relationship with Derek, somehow between them they made the decision that he would be the Auntie. I don’t know how gays work these things out, but there it is.’
‘So you’ve got an Auntie Bob and Uncle Derek?’
‘Yes,’ he answered, not looking terribly proud of the fact.
‘How very liberal,’ mused Karen.
‘Does he wear a dress?’ asked Nonsense.
‘No, he doesn’t wear a dress.’
‘So when it’s bedtime, who … ’
Dave looked very relieved to hear the doorbell, and very quickly got up to answer the door.
‘Guys, great.’
‘Andre?’ I said, ‘we didn’t expect to see you today.’
‘Well I thought I’d pop in and say well done for last night. Great. First class.’
‘No problems. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves,’ I said, a little taken aback.
He looked terrible. To accompany the pallid, crazed look of a man who had been on a major session, he still had a colourful left eye, and now he also had the clear imprint of a direct hit from a microphone in the centre of his forehead, with it’s mesh pattern prominent.
‘Great. Well I’m just grateful that I didn’t make an arse of myself. Never know which way it’ll go when I have a drink.’
‘Yes, it’s good that you didn’t make a fool of yourself. How did you find that out then?’ asked Dave
‘The manager at the bar … ’
But just as he said the manager’s name, the doorbell rang again, completely obscuring his identity.
‘Ah, fellas, this is Paola.’
A very frosty looking, but essentially beautiful Mediterranean woman stood, expressionless in the doorway. She took a transitory glance at us before snapping her head back towards Andre.
‘Andre, can we go?’
‘Yes darling, of course,’ he nodded, frantically grovelling. ‘If you wait in the car I’ll be one minute … please?’
After a brief pause in which he looked puppy-eyed and longing, she eventually turned without comment and went.
‘Anyway, I wanted to tell you that I’ve arranged with a mate of mine for you to go out in his boat today if you like?’
‘That would be great!’ we said.
‘Great … well just go down to the harbour in Porto Banus, right down to the end on the left, and Tony’s boat is the last one … Princess Melissa. He’ll be expecting you.’
‘Well, thanks Andre, that’s very kind of you.’
‘No probs. It occurred to me that you’ve got a couple of days off, didn’t want you getting bored.’
‘What’s happened to your head?’ asked Dave, ironically pointing to his own handy work.
‘I’m not really sure. I think Paola may have set on me again when I got home last night,’ he said, looking round to make sure she wasn’t behind him. ‘Memory’s a little fuzzy though.’
‘It looks like you’ve been mugged by a large man, armed only with a sieve.’
Andre shrugged.
‘Anyway, I’ll see you back here on Thursday night guys. Last show in Spain … ’ he said, widening his eyes, dramatically. ‘I’ll make sure we have a good one. Might even join you for a couple of drinks.’
We all stood quickly and expressed ourselves with comments like ‘you shouldn’t’ and ‘no need’ and ‘are you sure that’s a good idea?’
‘Well, we’ll see. Great!’ he shouted, and turned to go with a thumb in the air.
We took a moment to raise eyebrows and look incredulous.
‘That’s a turn up for the books,’ commented Karen.
‘I’ll say,’ said Dave. ‘Still … at least he didn’t make an arse of himself.’
We shared a hearty laugh and then discussed for a while just what the manager of the Elephant, whatever his name was, had actually told him. He’d obviously opted for the easy life, unless he just enjoyed having a bit of fun at Andre’s expense, which was fair enough.

 

 

Don’t Laugh at me (‘cause I’m a Fool)

As we had made no plans we decided to go find our man with the boat immediately after brunch. Porto Banus is a very prosperous part of the strip and boasts a fine harbour area, crammed with pricey restaurants and ludicrously expensive looking yachts and cruisers. It had the appearance of a place that would have been more at home in the South of France, and one wouldn’t have been surprised to see James Bond swanning around in a nifty motor, with a girl whose name was probably Fanny Akimbo in the passenger seat. It reeked of money and everybody had it, all except for the five lads from the band Special Clinic, who tattily kicked around whistling at the boats and the women.
‘Benny … quick! Take my picture.’
I looked around to find that Nonsense had jumped onto the fore of a very grand and gleaming white, luxury yacht, and was lying across the deck like Peter Sellers or Prince Rainier – in fact, exactly like the Mediterranean playboy that he wasn’t. Before I could say ‘I’m sorry Nonsense, I haven’t my camera with me’, a large American in Speedo’s and RayBan glasses came from below and told him in no uncertain terms to ‘fuck the hell off his baby’. In his escape Nonsense managed to shout something back in German, then wave his arse at him whilst pointing at it and performing a ‘raspberry’.
‘Damn Jerries!’ the man shouted after him, with a fist in the air.
‘That was fun,’ exclaimed Nonsense.
‘Yeah, great,’ I said. ‘You know … I think you probably are capable of starting a war, aren’t you?’
‘Bloody Yanks. No sense of humour. Not like us Germans.’
‘You’re not German.’
‘Yes I am.’
‘Marriott-Russell? Are you sure?’
‘We changed the family name when Grandad got executed for war crimes.’
And off he skipped.
I was happiest to think that he was just winding me up. It had all the characteristics of an entry in the Nonsense joke book … it was poor, in bad taste, and a complete waste of everybody’s time. But having said that, his German was impeccable was it not? I’d never questioned that. But, if he really was German, surely he would never have pulled the whole Hitler prank two weeks before … or would he? It didn’t bear thinking about. It was a page that I was joyful to leave unconcluded.
After numerous stares that suggested we were out of place, we eventually found the boat, and her owner Tony.

 

 

Shipbuilding

‘Are you Tony?’ I asked.
‘’pends who’s askin’,’ he replied, tinkering with his engine.
‘Andre sent us down. Said you’d be expecting us.’
‘You the music boys?’
How could we travel so far and be in such an affluent place, and still find ourselves in the charge of the Porto Banus village idiot with a Devonshire accent?
We nodded. He spat overboard.
‘Cruiser’s down. Engine ent firin’ properly.’
‘Oh dear. Does that mean … ’
‘That means yer can go out on the sausage.’
‘The sausage?’ we all mouthed.
‘Sausage. It’s a ‘flatable I drags along with you sat on. Great fun they tell me.’
We nodded between us, though I couldn’t help feeling an impending sense of dread and danger. I knew that this experience would somehow leave me with an injury of some kind.
‘Is on different jetty. Follow me.’
We followed.
‘Shame about Princess Melissa.’
‘Princess Melissa?’ I asked.
‘The cruiser. She’s a beauty that one. Shame is ‘cos the dolphins are jumpin’ this week.’
‘The dolphins?’
‘Yeah dolphins. We gets loads of ‘em round here, but I ent seen ‘em jumpin’ like this for a year now.’
‘Oh, I love dolphins,’ said Karen.
‘Who doesn’t love dolphins?’ added Nonsense.
‘Can’t we see the dolphins from the … ‘sausage’, Tony?’ I asked.
‘Can’t go out far enough. ‘s only a lil’ speedboat.’
‘Oh well. I’m sure I can have fun on a sausage,’ I said.
‘That’s not the first time you’ve said that, is it?’ said Dave.
‘You’re a prick,’ I replied, before he’d finished speaking.
Soon enough we got to the sausage, moored up some distance away from the conspicuous affluence that shone where we were previously. And it was a sausage – a big, bright yellow sausage with six handles. Tony dished out our life jackets, immediately setting me at ease. He sat us on the ‘sausage’, and then took his position in the speedboat that was to pull us, by means of the plastic-coated wire that was currently floating on the lilting harbour water. As we left the marina I was very encouraged to see a sign that ordered fun boats, jet skis and general sausage-related craft users, to travel at no greater speed than fifteen miles-an-hour. How dangerous can that be? But as soon as we’d hit open waters it was clear that Tony was going to be trouble. He put his foot down (or perhaps pushed his hand forward) as soon as we were in the clear. It was apparent, fairly soon, that we were moving far, far faster than fifteen. But I can’t complain, because it was great fun. It was invigorating. My fears had abandoned me.
Tony was intentionally guiding us across waves, causing us to be thrown high in the air with each collision of boat and water. The impacts meant that it took all of the strength that we had to hang on. It was so violently physical, but at the same time it caused enormous spontaneous laughter every time you subsisted an assault. With each survival the agony and the hilarity were greater. The sixth or seventh wave we hit was a biggie. We had a side-on of such influence that we were thrown off the sausage; we afforded the sort of resistance you’d expect from ash being blown off a glass table. You’d never think that connecting with water could hurt you so much. I was frankly staggered by the smarting that the convergence caused, but of course I was laughing so hard that I didn’t care, even though it seemed to take an age to get back on the inflatable. A combination of the hilarity of the situation, and the bodily pain, made it very difficult to muster the energy required to remount the floating beast. But we eventually did, although Karen needed all of our help to clamber back on. Tony then took the opportunity to tell us that the best ride was on the back, ‘so they tell me’. As we were occupying the front five seats, Nonsense delighted in hopping backward a seat to the very back of the sausage. I was happy to stay put though, knowing how difficult it had been to get into this seat in the first place. And so the ride continued, wave upon wave, at probably forty or fifty mile-an-hour. We managed to survive a few more potential ‘wipe-outs’, but soon enough, Tony took us face first into a particularly ferocious wave, which in turn caused the sausage to flip over. The flight through fresh air seemed to go on for as long as a bad comedian, except it was accompanied with laughter. In mid twist during my fall, I remember seeing the silhouette of a spread eagle Nonsense high above me, perfectly eclipsing the mid-afternoon sun, but travelling downwards with intensity. The lapse of time between my back smacking against the water at mach three, and Nonsense landing knees-first on my chest is negligible. I do recall having just enough time to acknowledge that I was in excruciating pain, before quickly realising that I was about to get a very sharp knee connecting with my torso at high speed. The worst part about it was that I’d just temporarily surfaced – long enough to start a desperate inhalation – when I was plunged back under the surface by a curious looking projectile with a daft haircut. That stopped my amusement. From his point of view, I probably cushioned him nicely. But for me…all I remember is plummeting downward, and with such force. By the time I’d resurfaced, I was struggling for air, but I was so delighted to reach the atmosphere, and the ringing laughter of my band mates, that the pain subsided hastily – though adrenalin leant a hand no doubt. This time it took even longer to reattach our selves to the floating breakfast foodstuff. It seemed so far up. I was very disappointed to find that when I really needed to find that extra Joule of energy, I simply couldn’t. I was zapped. We all helped each other on in the end, but we had to. Tony appeared to get the message, despite our continued mirth, that we probably wanted to get back on dry land now. And with a few ‘choice’ West Country mumbles, we spluttered back to the harbour, this time at a very sober speed. We chortled all the way back, but the more my pulse slowed, the more the pain in my chest forced its way through my senses. Could it be that I’d broken another bone? I’d never broken anything in my life until three months before, courtesy of ‘Bad Bob’, and here I was again gleaning much discomfort from my skeleton.
As we bounced back into the harbour I became very grateful that we had a couple of days off, and for the first time since we’d left, I began to think about my own bed with great fondness. We were going home in three days, and it had only just occurred to me that I had absolutely no plans, except for a few gigs that had already been booked. What was I going to do with the rest of my life, and why was it only now that I was starting to even give it any thought? I suppose in my naivety I’d been convinced that our trek around Europe was going to have a positive influence on my future, but now it was clear that nothing of the sort was going to happen I found myself wondering just what I was going to do…forever. I’d frightened myself sufficiently to forget about my internal aching, and decided that it was time to call a band meeting.

 

 

Summertime Blues

The table on the balcony was a-clutter with glasses, ashtrays and various bowls of cheap Spanish snack foods, as the setting sun cast a rich amber swathe on all that got in its way. Underneath the table was a box of six, two-litre bottles of questionable local wine that Dave and I had managed to haggle and swindle from the shopkeeper, so much so that in the end they were ours for about three pounds. Karen, the self-appointed minute taker, sat at one end of the table with his A4 pad of paper under the throw of a large fragrant candle, a candle that was supposed to repel insects, but of course didn’t.
The scene was set … we would be ready for our band meeting as soon as Nonsense returned from the toilet.
‘Well,’ he announced, ‘the good news is my urine’s clear again. The bad news is I’m pissing out my arse.’
We all stared.
‘Anyway, what’s all this about Benjamin?’ asked Dave.
‘The future,’ I said, seriously.
‘What about it?’
‘Well … we haven’t made any plans.’
‘What do we need to make plans for,’ said Nonsense. ‘Why can’t we just enjoy our last couple of days without making plans?’
‘I don’t mean tomorrow or for the rest of the week. I mean when we get back … the future.’
‘Oh, I see.’
They all looked deeply ponderous.
‘So what are we going to do?’ I prodded.
‘Well I’ve got fifty metres of larch lap fencing to make, and a trailer to build,’ said Woody.
‘Well we haven’t Woody,’ I said. ‘We’ve just left college, and unless I’m mistaken, none of us four have a single idea what we’re going to do next.’
‘I must admit,’ said Dave, ‘that I really thought we’d get something from this tour. I mean, don’t get me wrong I’ve had a brilliant time, but I really thought that something, I don’t know what, but something would happen.’
‘We all did mate, but it hasn’t. And apart from a few gigs back at home, we have absolutely nothing.’
My sudden burst of reality had dropped the boys into a dour mood, and verbal contributions weren’t offered too readily.
‘Come on guys, what do you want to do? Karen, you’re sensible. Don’t tell me that you haven’t given the future any thought?’
‘Well, to be frank, I also thought that something positive would come from this expedition. I can’t say I looked any further than that.’
‘Well it’s time we all did. Right, give me your thoughts fellas. What do you want?’
They all looked blankly back.
‘Nonsense … come on, you’re never lost for words. What do you want?’
‘Well … ’ he deliberated, ‘I think … no, I’m sure that I want to be famous.’
‘Okay, carry on.’
‘All right … I want people to sing our songs, and turn up at our shows by the thousand, and buy our records by the million. I want Top of the Pops to beg for us to come back on their show week after week. I want to be swept past the queue at exclusive West End nightspots, and for international supermodels to fight over me, and perhaps even resort to physical violence to settle matters. I want Richard Branson and John Peel to pretend they know me better than they really do, just to impress people. I want Kylie Minogue to give me a blow job under a table at the Brit Awards and … ’
‘Okay, I think you’ve painted the picture.’
‘How do you spell Minogue?’ asked Karen.
‘You don’t need to write everything down Karen,’ I said. ‘What about the rest of you? Dave?’
‘Yeah, sounds great. I’ll settle for that.’
‘You can get your own blow job,’ said Nonsense, ‘Kylie’s mine.’
‘I must declare I like the sound of it,’ added Karen.
‘So we’re agreed!’ said Nonsense. ‘Sorted. Let’s get pissed.’
They all moved to charge their glasses with refreshed buoyancy.
‘Hang on guys … ’ I interrupted, ‘you can’t just say you’re going to be famous, then expect it to happen. It doesn’t work that way. If it did everybody would be doing it. Andre fucking Leech would have a string of chart-toppers if all you had to do were hope for it. We need a practical plan. We’ve sat around being hopeful for long enough.’
‘How am I supposed to fit in being famous around building window frames and fireplaces?’ said Woody.
‘If you were famous, would you give a toss about window frames and fireplaces?’ asked Dave.
‘Look I’m sorry Woody,’ I said, ‘but you’ve got something to fall back on, we haven’t. I want to do something with my life, and to be perfectly honest, constructing things out of wood doesn’t land very high on the list of possibilities.’
‘Well excuse me, but I’m very fond of what I do.’
‘Well then maybe that’s what you should do.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that you obviously like the band-saw better than you like the band.’
My rant had forced all into an embarrassed, momentary silence.
‘I’m sorry. I guess I’m trying to say … at least give it some thought. That way, when we get back we can approach the whole thing in a constructive way. Okay?’
‘Sure.’
‘Of course.’
‘Are you done?’ asked Nonsense.
‘Yes,’ I said in despair.
‘Cool. Can we get pissed now?’
‘Yes,’ I sighed, quietly pleased that we had at least begun to broach the subject.
Nonsense pulled a fresh bottle of vinegar from the box. I was beginning to think that perhaps we’d been ripped off a little, paying the equivalent of three pounds for two boxes, but then it occurred to me that it would still have the desired effect, even though it wasn’t astonishingly pleasing to the palette. Nonsense then attempted a party trick by trying to fill five glasses in one continuous pour – not once correcting the bottle – the result of which was half a glassful of wine on Karen’s notes.
‘Oh well done butter fingers. Now I’ll have to write it all out again.’
‘Fuck it,’ said Dave, ‘you’re on holiday.’
‘Minutes are minutes my associate. You’ll express gratitude to me in the morning when you can’t remember what was said.’
‘I can’t remember what was said any morning, but I’ve managed to get this far through life without taking fucking minutes.’
‘Shall I put down Geordie as an apology?’
‘What? For being from Newcastle?’ asked Woody.
‘No, for missing the meeting.’
‘He can hardly be expected to be here. After all, he’s in an entirely different part of the continent.’
‘It’s merely to keep the summation of proceedings comprehensive.’
‘Karen,’ I said calmly, placing a hand on one of his, ‘Karen my dear, dear friend. We’re all very, very fond of you. You’re a wonderful person. But you’re also an obsessively anal fucking freak. What’s the point of keeping minutes, when the meeting itself didn’t even last for one of them? Now, put the pen down…and move away from the pad.’
He stared back with his lower lip prominent.
‘Just being efficient.’
‘Well don’t.’
‘I’ll tell you what is efficient,’ said Dave getting up, ‘this wine. I need another slash again already.’
‘Delightful,’ said Karen.
‘Do you think we can make it?’ Nonsense asked me.
‘Me? Of course I do. For a start, it’s all I’ve ever wanted…since I can remember. I don’t think I’d bother doing it if I knew I was never going to make it. Even my earliest dreams see me in the future as a world dominating, highly successful songwriter and musician. It’s all I want to do and it’s all I can do. Music. We’ve got a talent here. Not just as Special Clinic … we’ve got to change that name by the way … no, not just as a band, but also as individuals. We can do things that most people can’t. You know what…I’m a big believer in the notion that people with a talent for something, anything generally pleasing, have a responsibility to utilise that talent for the benefit of all. For example, take art. Now I’m a complete duffer at painting, or anything arty like that, but I really, really wish I could paint. It’s such a brilliant medium. Imagine being able to capture your thoughts and sights like that. It’s unique. Okay, now take Rembrandt or Michelangelo, both of whom I adore – and both of who were probably lousy guitarists by the way. But now imagine we didn’t have them. What size chasm would be left by the void of two great masters like them? And there must be plenty of Rembrandt’s and Michelangelo’s that didn’t make it for one reason or another. That’s why it’s imperative. We do something unique in the universe. We create. And that’s the icing on the cake, hell, it is the cake…it’s what brings colour to the world. Without it existence would be hollow. It’s not just a reflection of life … it’s the fabric of life itself.’
‘Wow, I’d never really looked at it quite like that. Well said.’
‘But it’s true, isn’t it?’
‘Yes … yes it is.’
‘So … the big question Nonsense. Do you think we can make it?’
He paused to fiddle with his chin.
‘Two months ago I would have said no. But a lot’s happened since then. Okay, I know we haven’t got that much out of this trip other than a suntan, a fucked liver, and in my case a nasty little rash in the groinal area. Dutch bitch. Anyway … we didn’t get anything likely to catapult us to stardom. But my god man we’ve tightened up. We’re as tight as a nun’s growler right now. Also, I’ve seen how we can work the stage when we’re relaxed and confident. We’ve done some pretty stunning shows in the last few weeks you know. And then there’s your song from the other day…what’s it called … hairy nipple face?’
‘Early River Place,’ I sighed.
‘Early River Place, that’s the badger. Anyway, that was top banana. I can hear the crowd singing along to that in a huge stadium. Ten thousand lighters being gently waved in time to the music, and there’s always one bird that wears too much hairspray, and ‘goes up’ in the last chorus.’
‘Really?’ I said, delighted with the compliment.
‘Oh yeah, there’s always one.’
‘No, I mean the song.’
‘Oh definitely. That’s a winner that one. And the cool thing is … there’ll be more, right?’
‘Oh there will. I’ve got a few swimming around in my head right now.’
‘Exactly. I knew it. And that’s the one thing that was missing, the original songs. And now we’ve got them. And that’s the way we must go. We could play covers like ‘Last Train to Clarkesville’ until we’re blue in the fucking face, and not only would we not find fame, but you can also bet your grandma’s spare teeth that Dave still wouldn’t know the god damn lyrics. It’s our only chance. You keep churning them out like that and we’ve got a chance.’
‘Well … thank you. Nonsense, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,’ I said, genuinely touched, and showing it in my expression.
He looked back realising that in his own little way, he was being uncharacteristically sensitive, candid and even vulnerable.
‘Fuck off you cunt.’
‘No, I mean it. That meant a lot.’
‘You’re not going to hug me are you?’
‘You know what? I think I am.’
And in a rare moment of bonding I did. It was allowed. After all, we were having a good, honest chat about things that meant the world to us, and it had almost been a religious experience; we’d also necked sufficient wine to lose a little inhibition; and most importantly I was certain that I wasn’t gay.
‘You fuckin’ homo’s,’ said Dave, still adjusting his dress. ‘I dunno, I leave you alone for ten minutes and you turn the corner on me, and go all Larry.’
‘You were away a long time for a ‘slash’,’ said Karen.
‘Yeah, well when I got in there I felt a colonic surge, so I thought I’d better make my bum sick.’
‘Anyway Nonsense,’ I said, relaxing my grip, ‘I think you’re a good and honest man. I’m proud to know you.’
‘Cool. Anyway, shall I roll a joint?’
‘What with?’ I asked.
‘What with? I’ve still got loads left from Amsterdam.’
And off he went to get his grass from his bedroom, completely oblivious to the fact that he’d broken sufficient smuggling laws to get him locked up for the rest of our lives. Bless.

 

 

Rain

And so, began the final day of our tour. Somewhat inevitably, the day started quite some time before we did. When I stumbled into the kitchen at two-thirty, cursing my tardy approach to life, I didn’t think for one minute that I had been the first to rise, but I was. As it was the last day, I thought it might be nice to wander down to the shop by reception for the last time, purchase a couple of bags of goodies, go back and prepare our last lunch. When I say prepare I mean simply open the packets and place the contents on plates, and so to conform to this rule I bought a fine selection of breads, cheeses, no less than seven different cooked meats, and all manner of pick-it-up-and-eat-it foods. I was fairly startled on leaving the shop to find that it had started to rain. ‘Wow, what is this stuff?’ I said out loud. It had been so long since I’d seen any that it genuinely looked odd. But it was so refreshing. Almost instantly it had given me the thirst-quenching, revitalization that I had craved for weeks. It had been so incredibly hot that no matter how many showers you took, it didn’t quite hit the mark; but this was nature’s way of energizing and cleaning things up. Within a minute the volume and intensity of the shower had quickly worked its way to heavy and the sky was almost entirely black. Heavy then turned into the kind of torrent so violent that it hurts your head, shoulders and face, which at first made me laugh like a child being tickled, but before long became too sharp on the skin to bear, so I chose to run the remaining 300 yards to the apartment. By the time I reached the apartment my eyes were clenched, my face was sore, and every, last moment of my body was drenched. I kicked the front door open only to face Nonsense, who was standing in the doorway of his room, stretching, yawning and adjusting his testicles.
‘Hello you. Is it raining out?’
‘No, my boat sank and I had to swim the last two miles.’
‘Oh,’ he replied, before shuffling to the bathroom.
I stood for a while, arms outstretched, as the pints of rainwater dripped furiously onto the lino floor.
‘Is it raining?’ said Dave surfacing, ‘or did you forget to take your clothes off before getting in the shower?’
‘Second one you said.’
‘Cool. What’s in the bags?’
‘Food.’
‘Cool. Food for all of us?’
‘Yes.’
‘Cool, I’m starving. I could eat a scabby badger.’
‘Oh,’ I said, searching through the bags for a scabby badger, ‘do you want me to go back?’
‘Naa, I’ll eat whatever you’ve got.’
‘Well, I don’t mind … ’ I said with excessive cynicism.
‘No really … ’ he pointed at the bags, ‘that’s fine.’ Then he sat himself down at the table with a look of expectation. ‘Come on then,’ he gestured at the bags.
‘What about the others?’ I asked.
‘Fuck ‘em. If they can’t be bothered to get up at a sensible time, that’s their lookout.’
‘But you’re in your pants. Are we not dressing for dinner anymore?’
‘Fuck it, I’m on holiday … come on,’ he banged the table.
‘Okay, I’ll get changed, you wake the others up.’
He was about to say ‘fuck ‘em’ again when I intervened.
‘David … expensive hooker,’ I sang.
With a spoilt huff of exasperation he concurred and scuffled off.

 

 

The Last Waltz

By the time our long, slow lunch had turned to crumbs, it was almost time to start thinking about our final show, just a short trundle away at the bottom of the hill in this very resort. But as we rolled the van down to the entertainment area, the rain was still pounding everything in its way, and it seemed that we were driving down a small river, say the Teme or the Calder. The area was a washout. The stage itself was now a pool, and the actual swimming pools in the centre of the vicinity were being bombarded so heavily that it was hard to discern whether the rain was going up or down. The straw canopies, accustomed to protecting diners from the harsh sunlight, were now corrupt, and looped and sagged under the downpour, dripping persistently onto the seats beneath. We ran over to the covered bar area next to the restaurant, where Andre was standing arms out, looking to the heavens.
‘Great!’ he said, using irony for the first time since we’d met him.
‘What do you think?’ I asked.
‘Well, I think it’s pissing it down.’
‘Not what I meant. I mean … what’s the plan?’
‘I dunno,’ he shrugged.
‘Well what do you do when this happens?’
‘This doesn’t happen.’
‘Have you never made a plan for in case this happens?’
‘What’s the point … it never happens,’ he replied, incredulously shaking his head.
‘Well … I’m sorry to break it to you, but it’s happened. So what do we do?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Shall we play inside?’
‘Not enough room.’
‘Well we can’t play out here.’
‘No you can’t.’
‘So … what’s the plan?’
‘Well … ’ he deliberated, ‘you can’t play.’
We all took turns to look at each other, utilising an impressive array of facial expressions.
‘So … how does that work?’ I asked.
‘Well … instead of turning up, setting up your gear and playing two sets … just don’t.’
This fine piece of sarcasm drew a prolonged, bitchy and girly ‘ooh’ from the rest of the boys.
‘I mean … do we still get paid?’
‘Oh yes, it’s contracted. Looks like you’ve got your last night off.’
And all of a sudden, I felt the weather had become a most appropriate metaphor for the way this whole tour had gone. It started fine, got hot, hit an all time high … then it pissed it down. I thought that it was probably going to be a miserable and long drive home.

 

 

Busy Doing Nothing

And so the five of us sat across the balcony on wrong-way-round chairs, watching the weather chill and douse the formerly baked Spanish terrain. They’d even decided to close the Miraflores bar, despite our futile mumblings, so our final night of an epic journey was to be spent in the dreary solitude of the apartment, with nothing but another consignment of cheap wine, and Nonsense’s Dutch herbal remnants to comfort us. As we sat quietly contemplating, I belatedly gave a first thought as to whether or not we may have left the cooker on or the back door open at home. I suspected that six weeks on was perhaps a little late to be concerned about such oversights.
‘You know synchronised swimmers?’ mused Nonsense from amidst his drug paraphernalia. ‘If one of them drowns … does that mean they all have to drown?’
‘Let’s hope so,’ said Woody. ‘Crap sport.’
‘If you can call it a sport at all,’ added Dave.
‘It’s more of a sport than snooker or darts,’ I said.
‘Darts is a sport,’ said Nonsense, ‘they have to keep their right arms at the very peak of physical excellence.’
‘Why … to pick their beer up?’
‘Exactly.’
‘I like synchronised swimming,’ announced Karen.
‘I’ll just try to suppress my amazement,’ I said.
‘I played water polo once,’ said Nonsense, ‘but my horse drowned.’
‘That’s a crap joke,’ I said. ‘And anyway, are you sure it wasn’t smelly polo you were playing?’
‘Ooh … that’s a good idea … ’
‘No!’ we all shouted.
‘I’ve got to say,’ I started, after a suitable pause, ‘this has been a real adventure for me.’ They all nodded. ‘And I didn’t think it was possible for us to be any better bonded than we were before. I know you guys so much more than I did six weeks ago. But, I’ve also got to say – Nonsense – that I feel I know far too much about you. Far more than I ever wanted to know.’
‘And there’s so much that you don’t know,’ he chuckled, with a look of pride.
‘Believe me, if the rest is anything like some of the gems you’ve imparted during this trip … keep it to yourself.’
And then we were quiet again, staring out through the black, drenched night, all absorbed in our own thoughts. It may not have been the finale that we’d envisaged for the trip, but it was a very welcome opportunity for calm reflection, and personally, I found myself in a wistful but happy place. I didn’t care what the others were thinking about; I was cocooned in warm consideration, and I felt contented.
Woody started to quietly snigger to himself. Soon enough the snigger grew into a chuckle and before long it had become a raucous belly laugh.
‘Twat!’ he laughed.
‘What?’ we tittered, succumbing to the infectious nature of his outbreak.
‘Last mango in Paris … you complete twat,’ he said, struggling to fit the words between the laughter.
‘I can’t believe it’s taken you a fortnight to get it,’ smiled Nonsense.
‘It hasn’t. There’s nothing to get,’ he continued, now laughing so hard that his eyes were clearly leaking, ‘it’s just the ridiculous length you went to in order to make such a crap joke.’
We were all now cackling as heartily as Woody.
‘Fucking Adolf Hitler?’ cried Dave, bringing on a renewed wave of hysterics. ‘What the fuck was that about?’
‘I just thought it would be a laugh,’ replied Nonsense, clearly enjoying what was as near to respect as he ever got.
‘You’re lucky we didn’t get lynched!’ howled Dave, shaking his head as he extinguished a joint.
‘I can’t believe you managed to get as far as from the washroom to the van without getting nailed,’ added Woody. ‘You must be charmed because you always get away with it.’
‘Get away with it?’ Nonsense laughed, ‘You beat me up!’
‘We didn’t beat you up,’ I said, ‘we merely adjusted your facial hair arrangement – admittedly in a fairly brutal manner.’
‘What about the mango episode?’
‘Oh yeah, we beat you up that time.’
‘Sound thrashing,’ added Dave.
‘It wasn’t for the first time though was it?’
‘Mate … ’ said Woody, still trying to contain his chortling, ‘ … it’s just our way of expressing our appreciation. It’s quite right – what we were talking about in Amsterdam – we wouldn’t want you any other way. Call you a twat, a spud, a raving bummer … ’
‘Is there a point to this?’ asked Nonsense.
‘My point is … to us you’ll always be Nonsense, and that’s just how we like you.’
‘Aw shucks, thanks. Hang on, you’re not going to hug me are you?’
‘Fat chance. You’ll probably try it on with me.’
‘Gentlemen, if I may … ’ I announced, still wiping tears of laughter from my eyes, ‘please raise your glasses to Nonsense, arguably the biggest cunt we know!’
‘Nonsense!’ they chanted.
‘Oh, thanks guys, that means a lot.’
‘And long may he continue to be a complete freak!’ added Dave.
‘Hooray!’
And so the evening evolved into a self-appreciation awards ceremony, and a light-hearted review of our endeavour to conquer Europe. The laughter continued for some time, no doubt impelled by the last of the marijuana reserve, and by the time the preposterously large bottles had yielded their last drops of the cheeky little brew that we’d somehow become accustomed to, we were all spent, and gauchely made our way to bed, respectful of the fact that we needed to make a comparatively early start to the next day. As I lay in my bed, my final thought of our final day considered how intensely dry my mouth was – not dissimilar to the floor of a bird cage – and whether or not I possessed the inclination, strength or the motor skills to do anything about it – which of course, I didn’t.

 

 

Travelin’ Band

Travel shares many similarities with relationships. Bear with me here. You hear about a country, or see pictures of it, and on the limited insight that you have, opinions and fantasies (usually inaccurate) are formed, very much in the same manner that arises when purveying an attractive member of the opposite sex from afar. Then there is that certain knowledge that you are going to go to that country – or be with that woman – and the inherent excitement and perhaps trepidation that accompanies that knowledge; ‘this is going to be so good’, ‘I can’t wait to get there’, ‘I can’t wait to do this … that … the other’, ‘hope everything is going to be okay’. Then you get there, and it’s every bit as wonderful as you guessed it would be, but not in a manner that you could have predicted. You embrace. It’s a feeling unlike any other, totally unique, and common only to you and that country/person. And so you explore the terrain, the sites of natural beauty (yes, the metaphor is still active), the hidden glories that you really have to look hard for, even the occasional unexpected dark area that you perhaps wished you hadn’t discovered. Then you fall in love. An indelible mark is made upon your life. Nothing will ever make you forget this. The next stage, if you spend sufficient time there, is to maybe take for granted some of the aspects (which is only natural), but still retain an exclusive love and respect for the object of your desires. Inevitably and unfortunately though, this all leads to the journey home. The separation. You physically leave behind something you have grown to love. This places a weight in your heart as you contemplate all the good times you had, the places you went to, the people you met, the laughter you shared and the sheer beauty of what you left behind. Yes, driving home is like a break-up. In fact, going home is like leaving an exciting, vivacious and gregarious woman, and getting back with an old girlfriend, albeit one that you’re comfortable with – like a good old pair of slippers. And you’ll be back in that house and you’ll be fine there, but it won’t stop you fantasising about the next journey.
God! I couldn’t believe how generally depressed I’d allowed myself to get these past few days. This wasn’t like me. That’s when I decided I had to snap out of it … just as we drove past a little town called Lecrin, and I thought to myself ‘goodbye Lecrin’. It’s pathetic. Life is a journey right? And you must go which ever way you think you should – make your own choices. And what is more, that house isn’t an ex-girlfriend. No, it’s more like your mother. It’s somewhere you go back to occasionally to obtain a little solace and to take a fleeting reality check between conquests. I’d wasted enough time in the past few days feeling sorry for myself. It’s not as if this trip even came about because of my actions, I just happened to know somebody who’d offered to arrange it. I hadn’t done anything.
Ever.
I hadn’t done anything ever.
This was going to be the moment when that changed. I made a large subconscious post-it note, upon which I wrote ‘DO SOMETHING’, in bright red ink (which is quite keen to be read when it’s on imaginary yellow paper). When we got back I would go into overdrive. I wanted this life of variety, unpredictability and stimulation, and I was going to make sure I got it, whether or not the others helped me.

 

 

Living in a Box

Karen was gently singing Alouette from the passenger seat by the window. It seemed an appropriately placid soundtrack for our moods.

Alouette, gentille Alouette
Alouette je te plumerai
Alouette, gentille Alouette
Alouette je te plumerai
Je te plumerai la tête
Je te…

‘What the fuck does that mean anyway?’ asked Dave.
Karen looked at Dave in the driver’s seat as if he was a small piece of rotten cabbage.
‘I sometimes speculate as to whether you ever attended school. It’s about plucking a lark.’
‘What?’
‘Plucking a lark.’
‘I heard you, but … are you sure? Plucking a lark? It sounds like such a sweet song, sounds like it should be about something like ‘oh how I wish to stroke your shoulders and buy you chocolates and get you fitted for a new pair of tennis shoes’ or something.’
‘No. It’s about plucking a lark.’
‘Unbelievable. So what does it mean exactly?’
‘Well, its along the lines of ‘Lark, nice Lark, I will pluck you, nice Lark, I will pluck you, I will pluck you the head, I will pluck you the head, and the head, and the head, Lark, Lark, O-o-o-o-oh…’’
‘What?’
‘Yes, and then it goes on to describe the plucking of various body parts like the nose, the eyes, the wings, and the back I think.’
‘Pluck the eyes? He’s making it up.’
‘Hey … ’ enthused Nonsense, ‘I know a great version of this song. It’s a real sing-a-long.’
And without even chance for appeal, he launched himself into his particular rendering of the classic French rhyme.
‘How I love your slanty eyes … ’
We stared as he swung his arms in an effort to encourage participation.
‘That’s where you guys go ‘how I love your slanty eyes’.’
There came further silence and heavy staring.
‘What does it mean?’ I asked. ‘I understood it better when it was in French.’
‘How I love your slanty eyes,’ he encouraged, still waving his arms, but this time in an effort to aid us to realisation. ‘Then it goes on about how I love your yellow skin and your tiny tits and … ’
‘Nonsense?’ Karen interrupted. ‘Is this about Chinese people?’
‘Yeah. Course. Why?’
‘Don’t you think it’s a bit racist?’
‘What? Why?’
‘Because you’re stereotyping the Chinese by saying they’ve all got slanty eyes, yellow skin and less than fulsome mammary glands.’
‘But they have.’
‘That’s typecasting people.’
‘Yeah, but they have. You can accuse me of generalising, but not of racism.’
‘Yes but … ’
‘Yes but gentlemen,’ I shouted from the back, ‘we’ve got a long journey home and this kind of debate isn’t conducive to relaxed travelling, so for the sake of serenity let’s say you’re both right. Karen, Chinese people have got ‘slanty’ eyes, they have got slightly yellowish skin, and let’s face it, Sam Fox hasn’t got too much to worry about. But conversely Nonsense, it’s very rude to notice this, and it can certainly be construed as racist to point it out in a polite society, let alone compose a song about it. So let’s just have a bit of peace and quiet, or at the very least, let’s try and stick to harmless conversation matter, eh?’
They both mumbled in acknowledgement like reproached children, and returned their focus to the stretched out road ahead.
‘I wonder where dead birds go?’ mused Woody.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Birds. Whether or not they’ve had them the head plucked, where do they go when they’re dead? You never see dead birds. You’d think we’d be up to our ankles in them.’
‘I’ll bet they go to the same place as fireworks,’ said Karen.
‘You mean dead fireworks?’ Dave pointed out.
‘Yes dead ones. You see lots of live ones in retail outlets, but I’ve constantly been inquisitive regarding the whereabouts of used fireworks.’
‘Apparently about a billion of them die every year flying into the sides of buildings,’ continued Woody.
‘What, fireworks?’ Karen probed.
‘No … birds. That’s a lot of dead birds, but you just don’t see them.’
‘They probably get picked up by conscientious citizens then placed in litter bins,’ suggested Karen.
‘What … birds?’
‘No, fireworks. Birds probably get eaten by foxes and other urban mammalian scavengers.’
‘Have you ever put a banger up a frogs arse?’ asked Nonsense. ‘Makes a right old mess.’
‘You cruel bastard,’ I said for us all.
‘It’s all right, they don’t feel anything.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Well it all happens so quickly. They wouldn’t know anything about it. Bang … ’ he shouted, and supported the cry with a hand gesture.
‘I doubt if they particularly enjoy it being shoved up their rectums,’ said Karen.
‘Well they do usually look a little surprised, but not really distressed as such. Anyway, frogs are stupid, they deserve to die.’
‘I don’t think anything deserves to die,’ I said. ‘Especially not in such a cruel manner. Apart from maybe Morris Dancers.’
‘Mosquitoes … they’d get it too. What the fuck was Noah thinking when he let two of those bastards on the ark? Tell you what else deserve to die … scampi. Pathetic little twats.’
‘A scampi isn’t an animal you cretin,’ said Woody. ‘Even I know that and I’m just a chippy. I thought you went to public school.’
‘What is it then?’
‘Bits of lobster or something.’
‘That’s why I could never find one with a face, or fins and stuff. Explains a lot.’

We took a slightly different route on our northward return, taking a minor detour through the Pyrenean city of Pamplona (where apparently the people enjoy being chased by crazed bulls – but only in July strangely).
By nightfall, thanks to our ingenious rotation driving system, we were crossing the border into southern France and once again heading for Biarritz, and in all of the time that it took to get there, not once did Nonsense keep his mouth closed for longer than about thirty seconds; ranting constantly about which animals deserved to be put out of their misery; what he would do with various famous women should they ever be so unlucky as to be trapped in a lift with him; and most frighteningly, about the time he shoved a five pence piece up the end of his willy. By the time I handed control of the van to Woody, on the road just outside Bayonne, we’d all had enough.
‘Right … ’ announced Woody, ‘Nonsense, you are as annoying as a happy couple. You really need to shut up now unless you want to walk the rest of the way home.’
‘I can’t help it, I’ve always been like this.’
‘Well you’ll have to help it because I mean it … shut the fuck up or you’re walking.’
With an adolescent ‘huff’ he ceased, and apart from our new driver we all slouched in our seats in readiness for a good night’s sleep. We were going home.

 

 

Fat Bottomed Girls

Language is a strange affair. I’ve always thought that ‘maintenant’ is an extraordinarily long word for ‘now’, but that’s what the French choose to use. They also elect to apply the word ‘dactylographier’ when they wish to describe the verb ‘to type’. The Italians say ‘dormicchiare’ instead of the far more economical, and timesaving ‘doze’. And the poor Spanish are under the impression that ‘calzoncillos’ is the natural and sensible way to say ‘pants’. It is, of course, illogical. Why use a long word when there are cheaper alternatives? You’d think that more common meanings would have first dibs on the shortest words. Admittedly, I use the word ‘pants’ at an unfashionably high rate, but it’s still a fairly common word. It just makes no sense. Why would you use a twenty-nine-letter word when there are two-letter words that are yet to be been taken? For example, we English-speaking people (well, some of them) prefer the word Floccinaucinihilipilification (meaning ‘an estimation of something as worthless’) to…well anything smaller really. As far as I know the word ‘ip’ hasn’t been taken. Let’s use that.
“It’s floccinaucinihilipilification.”
or
“It’s ip.”
Take your pick. I know which one I think makes the most sense, and I know which one people will be able to, firstly, remember, and then of course be able to spell.
Now, I know words don’t just get made up – there’s obviously evolution and derivation of language to consider. But you’d think that every now and then somebody would just stand up and say, ‘Stop! This is madness. From now on the word for something esteemed to be insignificant is ‘ip’’. They could announce it on the news one night, or make a public information film about it and show it on BBC2 at nine o’clock on a Tuesday evening.
The bigwigs in Europe certainly marched into England fairly quickly and made sure that we all started using kilograms, and then ensured that we would get arrested if we ever had the audacity to try and sell anything by the pound (a far more cost-effective word, not to mention weight). Why can’t the Brussels bureaucrats run around cleaning up untidy and weighty words. It would be a far better use of our national and continental resources.
Never mind.
Nonsense, our beloved navigator, had seriously misdirected Karen by virtue of his incredible plan to find a shortcut between Paris and Calais. We rumbled him pretty quickly when, after a brief peek at the map, we discovered we’d taken this particular route in order to pass through a town called Arras. However, we were nowhere near Arras. We didn’t know where we were.
‘I just thought it would be a laugh, sorry.’
‘Isn’t it amusing enough just to see it on the map?’ I asked.
‘Well, I was kind of hoping to get my picture taken next to the sign.’
‘In that case we’ll see if we can find a town called Arras-hole then dickhead,’ suggested Woody.
‘Well Nonsense … ’ I announced, ‘you got us into this mess. You can get us out. You could have my compass if I could find it, but I can’t. Wake me up when we get to Calais.’
‘I don’t need your compass. I’ve managed to get us this far without it thank you very much.’
I merely grunted at him.

Karen started singing.

I was lost in France
In the fields the birds were singing
I was lost in France
And the day was just beginning

‘Karen … ’ I croaked from under my cap, ‘no matter how fitting the subject matter, there is never an excuse to sing a Bonnie Tyler song.’
‘Ironic though isn’t it?’
‘Why?’
‘Well, she could have chosen to sing a song called ‘Lost in Spain’, but she didn’t, and we didn’t get lost in Spain. But we are lost in France.’
‘Well for your information the day isn’t just beginning, it feels like it’s going on forever, so shut up and drive. Bonnie Tyler indeed.’
‘I like Bonnie Tyler.’
‘Of course you do Karen. You like a lot of shite. It’s really no great revelation to me that Bonnie Tyler is on your list of preferred artists.’
‘I like your songs.’
‘Well … I didn’t say everything you like is shite, just that you like a lot of … oh never mind.’
‘Kind of dug yourself into a hole there buddy,’ observed Dave.
‘Here we are … ’ shouted Nonsense, ‘Arras. We’ve found it. Brilliant. Benny, where’s your camera?’
‘Got no film,’ I replied with little interest.
‘Aw … you’re joking? And I went to all this trouble.’
‘You make it sound like you were doing us a favour!’
‘Come on … Arras … how funny does that want to be? You can’t pass up an opportunity to visit Arras.’
‘Oh God, we’ve got a navigator with a three-year-old’s sense of humour, and a driver that likes Bonnie Tyler. We’re never going to get home are we?’
‘Excuse me … ’ shouted Nonsense out of the window, ‘pardon, Madame … ’
A middle-aged lady approached the window.
‘Excuse me but do you live here?’
‘Why yes,’ she replied in confident English.
‘So this is your Arras?’
‘Well, I suppose it is.’
‘We’ve got one back at home but it’s not as big as yours. So, could you tell me then, how many people live in your Arras?’ he said, just about containing his smirk.
‘Oh, well…my Arras is quite big. It has a population of about sirty-five thousand.’
This, of course, inspired some muffled sniggering.
‘Really, that’s interesting,’ continued Nonsense, doing very well to hide his enjoyment. ‘So tell me more about your Arras, if you don’t mind.’
‘Not at all. Well, a large river called the Scarpe flows right through the centre of it. Also it was the scene of some fierce battles in both World Wars. Sousands of troops fighting for position.’
Woody exhaled a large snort, and then did very well to disguise it as a cough.
‘My Arras also boasts some very fine tapestries.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh yes. It has been known for its lace work for a long, long time.’
‘That’s fascinating,’ said Nonsense, whose eyes were now visibly damp.
I was beginning to appreciate the benefits of the detour now, and thought it only fair that I join in the fun.
‘Are there many hotels in your Arras?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes, there are very many. And lots of other things to keep you entertained.’
It was becoming unbearable, as our contorted faces and tied lips testified.
‘Would you like to see more of my Arras?’ she asked innocently.
That was the killer, and it produced five huge splutters.
‘I have a map … ’ she continued, attempting to decipher our amusement.
‘Drive Karen … ’ shouted Nonsense, ‘for fuck’s sake drive!’
And so we roared off through her sizable Arras, emitting uncontrollable hilarity, whilst a very bemused French lady stood, shopping in hand, watching us disappear into the distance and wondering what the hell had just happened.
‘Nonsense,’ I spluttered, ‘I take it all back. That was inspired. As a mark of respect I shall voluntarily wear the pig’s ears until we find ourselves on British soil. You’re an evil genius.’
‘Thank you my friend. Chaos, panic, & disorder - my work here is done. Now get me away from this big Arras.’

 

 

History Repeating

‘So you finally decided to call…’
‘I’m sorry Mom, it’s been difficult.’
‘What? Difficult to find a phone box in two weeks in the whole of Spain?’
‘But there’s … Spain’s been embroiled in civil war since the day we got there.’
‘Funny, there was nothing about it on the news.’
‘Well … they’re trying to keep it quiet?’
‘Really?’
‘No. I … I just forgot.’
‘I knew it. Having too much fun to call your mother. It’s easy to forget about me when you’re off gallivanting around Europe with your friends isn’t it? I suppose … ’
‘Mom!’
‘Yes … ’
‘How are you?’
‘Oh not too bad. Mrs Pumfrey’s got it in for me though.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, the other day I was trying to get her chickens out of the pantry again, and I swung my broom a bit too hard … and accidentally killed one of them.’
My god … the death of one cockerel can perhaps be considered an accident. But a second! You must admit it looks a little careless.
‘You don’t say. Not a good month for domestic wildfowl. We’ll start to get a reputation,’ I said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Oh … nothing. How’s my brother?’
‘Oh, you were right about his job. Serving drinkers … not the crown.’
‘Listen, I’ve got to go, not much change left. Just to say that we’ll be back some time late tomorrow, so I’ll come and see you on Monday. Okay?’
‘Ooh, lovely. I can’t wait to see what presents you’ve got for me on your travels. Safe journey my love.’
‘Bye Mom.’
Shit. Presents. I shook my head and cursed my oversight, dearly hoping that she would be pacified with a German book on Gestalt theory, and a cheap straw donkey in a sun hat.
‘Oi! Big nose,’ shouted Woody, ‘they’re about to shut the gate and it’s a long swim to Dover.’
‘Do you want to sell me that chocolate you bought in Germany?’
‘Eaten it.’
‘Worth a try.’
We drifted out of the port of Calais as night fell. It looked like it was going to be a choppy crossing, and I was silently grateful that it was only a two-hour voyage. The other four exploited the unfavourable conditions to full effect by initiating a game that involved throwing back a double whisky, and then seeing who could walk the farthest in a straight line. As the game progressed and the weather worsened, the best anybody could manage was about two steps, and most of those attempts ended in a relatively painful fall to floor. My exclusion from this diversion (for being driver in waiting) also made me thankful, as I watched the colour of their faces blanch, and one by one they made their way to the railing on the ship’s deck to be separated from the Famous Grouse that they’d not long become acquainted with. A trifle bored with their idiocy (as is often the way when you’re the only sober mind in a melee of drunkenness) I decided to stock up on duty-free goods, and see if I could find a suitable last-minute gift for my mother, but had to settle with a jar of boiled sweets and a framed print of Charles de Gaulle. God only knew what she would make of that. Knowing my mother she’d find it either totally enchanting or annoying to the point where she’d find it necessary to lambaste me for several years about it, but nowhere in between.
I went and sat out on the deck. The sea was churning nicely but it was still quite warm, and the weather and the enthusiastic outdoors in general made me feel good. I sat for some time on a bench overlooking the agitated sea that trailed behind us, and for the first time (more than two weeks on) I realised that we could have done the gig with Pete Best in Hamburg after all. That was the night when our show in Amsterdam had been cancelled. Hell, it hadn’t been cancelled … it had barely existed. The Mission played at the Melkweg that night … not Special Clinic. ‘The Mission’ is a much better name for a band than ‘Special Clinic’. But we could have done the gig in Hamburg as it turns out. Of course it was too late by the time we’d made Amsterdam. It’s not as if we could have turned around and gone back…there wasn’t time. But fate, it seemed, had dealt us a sour hand. The chance to play in Hamburg with Pete Best! The opportunity had been whipped from beneath us like the tablecloth in a cheap parlour trick, and I personally felt violated – and not in the good way.
I decided that I should take an hour or so of sleep whilst I had the inclination and the opportunity, comfortable in the knowledge that a large boat bumping its way into the port of Dover would wake me up. ‘Night night’ I said to myself.

 

 

My Favorite Waste of Time

True to form, in a fashion that still accurately mirrored the emotional peaks and troughs of our tour, the sky above Dover was maliciously spitting at us, and even though it was the middle of the night, you could still guarantee that all would be grey if it wasn’t so dark. It was to be my final and least favourite night time shift behind the wheel, certainly for this tour, and unlike all of the other nocturnal stints I’d led, this time my cohorts were far from sleepy and far from quiet. Karen was sprawled in the back singing Vera Lynn songs (no doubt inspired by the White Cliffs of Dover) next to Dave, who was entertaining himself by violently breaking wind at alarmingly regular intervals. In the front Woody and Nonsense were having an argument about who had slept with the most women, a quarrel that I for one had marginally less than zero interest in.
‘You just can’t face up to the fact that I’ve shagged more girls than you Woody,’ announced Nonsense, triumphantly.
‘Oh please. I’ve seen some of the things you’ve shagged, and I wouldn’t use the word ‘girl’ to describe any of them.’
‘Well, I wear my beer goggles more than you do. But the point is … I’ve bedded more girls than you.’
‘I’d rather give myself the white thumb than go with any of the girls you’ve slept with.’
‘They weren’t all so bad. What about … let me see, yes, what about Ruth? She was pretty.’
‘Yes, yes she was pretty Nonsense. Shame she didn’t have two legs.’
‘Hey, don’t knock it. She could get into some fantastic positions in bed. Okay, what about Sandy? Two legs and very pretty.’
‘She was bald!’
‘Through no choice of her own! Can’t really condemn her for that.’
‘The problem with you is you’ve got no quality control. It’s no good shagging lots of girls if they’re all complete boilers. It’s like saying you’ve got ten cars … but they’re all Reliant Robins. I’d rather have one Ferrari.’
‘How many girls have you had then?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t count.’
‘You don’t count? Where’s your pride man?’
‘Okay, fine. If it makes you happy … you’ve slept with more girls than me.’
‘Thank you.’
‘And more blokes.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Anyway I’m bored with you now so shut up. And can you keep the noise down please Benny?’ said Woody sarcastically, craning round Nonsense to talk to me.
‘Sorry?’
‘I said can you keep … are you okay?’
‘Yeah. I’m fine.’
‘You just don’t seem very with it.’
‘I was just … counting.’
‘Counting? Counting what?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘Yeah it does,’ he pushed with amused intrigue, ‘what were you counting?’
‘No … really, it doesn’t matter.’
‘Not sheep I hope,’ said Nonsense, ‘not while you’re driving.’
‘Come on … ’ pushed Woody.
‘Well, it’s something I’ve discovered I can do.’
‘What, counting?’ asked Nonsense. ‘Anyone can count.’
‘Ah, but not like I can.’
They all looked on, absorbed.
‘I count letters.’
‘How many have you had?’
‘Not that sort.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Woody.
‘Thirteen.’
‘Eh?’
‘Two.’
‘What the fuck is he on about?’ said Nonsense.
‘Twenty-two,’ I announced, as quickly as I had with the previous calculations.
‘I think you’ll find … ’ said Karen, ‘that he’s telling you how many letters there are in each sentence you say.’
‘Quite right my friend,’ I replied. ‘Oh, seventy-four by the way.’
‘What?’ exclaimed Nonsense, ‘How the fuck do you do that?’
‘Twenty-five. Quite easy really.’
‘Well, how do we know you’re right?’
‘Twenty-five again. Count them.’
‘But … ’
‘Three.’
‘Stop it!’
‘Six.’
‘Will you just stop for a minute? How the hell am I supposed to count them if you’re going so quick?’
I desperately wanted to say ‘seventy-six’, but held my tongue.
‘Well, why don’t you write down a sentence, count the letters up, and then read it out and I’ll tell you,’ I said.
‘Good idea.’
‘Eight.’
‘Not yet … !’
So he took a pad from the dashboard and started scrawling, with Woody observing from his side, and Dave and Karen peering over his shoulders. After some whispering and what sounded like a slight disagreement, Nonsense began to chuckle.
‘Right, nice easy one for you to start with.’
‘Thirty-three.’
‘Hang on, that wasn’t it.’
‘Oh, sorry. How will I know?’
‘You’ll know when I’m starting because I’ll say ‘now’ just before.’
‘Okay. Ooh, hang on … does the ‘now’ count as part of the sentence?’
‘No, everything after the ‘now’. Ready?’
‘Ready.’
‘Benjamin is full of bollocks.’
I looked blankly at him.
‘Come on, that’s an easy one.’
‘You didn’t say ‘now’.’
‘Oh god, NOW … Benjamin is full of bollocks.’
‘Twenty-four.’
‘Ha! You’re wrong. It’s twenty-two knob-head.’
‘You spelt bollocks with an ‘x’ didn’t you?’ I said.
‘I told you it was ‘cks’,’ pointed out Karen. ‘Let me do one.’
So Karen took the pad and began to scribe. After some time he cleared his throat and began to read.
‘Okay, NOW … the application that can compute an algebraic formula over a set of matrices that are specified as arguments.’
‘You bastard.’
‘Have I got you?’
‘Ninety-one.’
‘You git.’
‘Just needed a little more time.’
‘How the hell do you do that?’
‘I just see the words in my head as I hear them, I dunno … like shapes. And they sort themselves into multiples of five, and whatever’s left over you add to the end … well sort of.’
‘I don’t know if that’s a talent or just downright freaky,’ said Nonsense. ‘I’m inclined to think freaky.’
At that, Dave broke wind in the most violent manner imaginable.
‘Count the letters in that fucker, Rain Man.’
Then came another more vocal emission that made a sort of ‘quack’ sound.
‘Ooh, get out and walk Donald Duck.’
‘You’ll be getting out and walking if you shit yourself,’ I warned. ‘It already smells like a camel crawled into the van and died about a month ago, you smelly bastard.’
‘It doesn’t smell,’ he laughed.
‘So why are my eyes watering? And why has Woody got his head out of the window on a rainy night? And why has Nonsense got his shirt pulled over his head? And why … what’s happened to Karen back there? If you’ve killed Karen with your noxious bottom emanations I’ll be very disappointed.’
‘I’m … ’ coughed Karen, ‘I think I’m going to be sick. Can we pull over please?’
‘You bastard, you’ve poisoned him. Don’t worry Karen, any minute now mate.’
Throughout all of this, Dave was laughing like a lunatic, and between the bouts of laughter you could clearly hear more wind being liberated, each release being accompanied with an infantile comment like ‘more tea vicar’, or ‘twist’, or his all time favourite ‘ooh, better out than in’.
Then, before I knew it, Dave’s backside appeared in the front of the van, directly between the heads of Nonsense and I. Before we realised what was going on – in fact just as we turned to see his arse pointing in our direction – he unleashed the Masterfart. It was colossal. Nonsense made an instinctive dive across Woody towards the window, and I too thrust my head out of the open window on my side, causing the van to swerve fiercely. After about a minute of driving with my head outside the van in the beating rain, I tentatively brought my face back inside, meekly testing the air as I did so. Dave had been curled on the floor in the back in uncontrollable hysterics the whole time, screaming in delight and kicking the van sides in triumph. I checked that my eyebrows were still attached to my face, and then confirmed that my band-mates were all still alive, before turning in to a very fortuitously placed twenty-four hour service station on the M25. The moment the van had stopped, both front doors and the side door sprang open, and four very relieved musicians bailed out through a mist of green sulphur, coughing and groaning.
‘I’m not going back in there until it’s been fumigated,’ announced Woody.
‘I can’t believe all of that came from one man,’ I said.
‘I doubt if my sinuses will ever recover,’ added Karen.
‘Hey, anyone fancy breakfast?’ asked Nonsense. ‘They do full English here.’
‘Breakfast sounds good,’ I replied.
‘What about the van?’
Dave could still be heard laughing from within.
‘Leave him to stew in his own stench.’
‘But what about when he comes out? We should lock it.’
‘Who in their right mind is going to go in there, let alone steal it?’
‘Good point. They’d be doing us a favour anyway. Especially if they took Dave too.’

 

 

England Swings

After the rare adventure that the past month and a half had afforded us, it was a very surreal sensation to be sat in a motorway service station on the World’s biggest roundabout at three in the morning, eating sausage, bacon, beans and eggs, whilst the rain lashed down outside.
‘Welcome home lads,’ I quietly said.
‘Yeah,’ they agreed, with slow irony.
‘Looking forward to my bed,’ said Woody, after a suitable pause.
We all agreed with that notion in far more genuine tones. As we sipped our coffees (Earl Grey tea for Karen) Dave bounced in, still smiling and exceedingly proud of himself.
‘Has it stopped yet?’ I asked cautiously.
‘You should be safe now. I just dropped one the size of an alligator. In fact, you’d better phone the water board and tell them that the submarine on its way is friendly.’
‘The warning shots didn’t seem that friendly to me,’ said Karen.
‘Your arse amazes me,’ I said.
‘Thanks. Anyway,’ he said, rubbing his hands together, ‘what’s for brekky?’
‘That’s all you need … more ammo,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid you’ve missed out. We’re about to go.’
‘Oh no … unfair. I’m starving.’
‘Then get a roll to take out. There’s no way I’m letting you eat beans. We’ve still got about two hours to drive. It would be a real shame to travel all these thousands of miles, only to die of asphyxiation a few miles from home.’
So once again I climbed behind the wheel for what would be the last little slice of an epic journey, a passage that had seen the mileage of Woody’s van soar by about six thousand miles in the space of six weeks, and a trip that had profoundly changed the lives of the five young men in a group called Special Clinic.
‘That’s it lads … first thing tomorrow, I’m changing the name of the band.’

 

 

Almost There

‘So let me get this right … ’ said Woody, who had just woken up, ‘I just want to get the facts straight in my mind.’
‘Sure,’ I said.
‘It’s five-thirty in the morning?’
‘Correct.’
‘We’ve travelled about six thousand miles in the past month and a half?’
‘About that.’
‘We’ve just passed a sign that says it’s about three miles to home?’
‘Three miles, yes.’
‘And you’re telling me we’ve run out of petrol?’
‘That…pretty much sums up the situation, yes.’
‘What are you?’ he asked rhetorically.
‘Well … I would think a word like ‘twat’ or ‘wanker’ would be appropriate right now,’ I said, as I stared blankly into the distance.
‘Why have we stopped?’ asked Dave, stretching free from his slumber.
‘We’re three miles home and Benjamin’s run out of petrol,’ Woody said, placing much emphasis on my name.
‘Hey Karen … ’ Dave shook Karen, ‘Karen, we’re three miles from home and Benjamin’s run out of petrol.’
‘What’s happening?’ said Nonsense, bolting upright.
‘We’re three miles from home and I’ve run out of fucking petrol!’ I shouted.
‘All right, all right. I only asked,’ he said, calmly handing me the ears, which I dutifully placed on my head.
‘What’s the plan then big nose?’ asked Dave.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Woody. ‘We’ll just call roadside recovery and play it dumb. They always carry fuel for these situations, although it’s usually for women.’
‘Yeah, yeah. Get it all out chaps,’ I said.
‘Well … ’ pondered Karen, ‘I suggest we call recovery and sit on the verge.’
‘I suppose the good news is that we’re right next to an emergency phone box,’ said Woody, ‘so they’ll have no trouble finding us.’
How silly did I feel? How unbelievably stupid did I feel? I did cast a glance at the fuel gauge about an hour before, but it looked in quite a healthy state then, at least a quarter of a tank. How could I have been so sloppy as to not check since then? I’m normally a compulsive gauge checker. In fact, I usually have to rebuke myself for constantly looking at the dials. More often than not, I spend more time with my eyes on the controls than on the road. I could only blame the arduous conditions of first light, and a general state of fatigue brought about by six weeks (then some) of wild, self-indulgent immoderation. So close to home, closer than we’d been for ages, yet so damn far.
I apologised to the other four incessantly for about half an hour, but when it became apparent that they were enjoying ribbing me so much, and that it wasn’t going to subside for a while, I left it.
We’d made ourselves comfortable at the roadside, beyond that silver barrier that assiduously separates the vehicles from the countryside, and vice versa. In fact, Dave and Woody were perched against said silver barrier talking to myself, Karen and Nonsense, all lazily lounging on a grass bank overlooking the carriageway. At least it was no longer raining. In fact it was turning into a rather glorious morning. I was still donning the pig’s ears, and had reconciled myself with the reality that I’d be wearing them until we got home, whenever that may be. Whilst the other four heartily sang a quick chorus of ‘For he’s a jolly big wanker’, I raised my hands in mock recognition, respectfully taking my punishment for being the biggest twat of the last day of the tour. First and last day – that was the full set, I was proud to consider. I was also grateful that my friends weren’t genuinely enraged with me, instead opting to consider the absolute irony of the situation I’d put us all in.

 

 

This Wheel’s on Fire

‘Fellas. I’ve got a new name for the band,’ I said.
They gazed in anticipation from our roadside stop place.
‘The Badgers. What do you reckon?’
They gazed back and said nothing.
‘Hey, bags first in the bath when we get home,’ shouted Dave to interrupt a lull.
‘Bags second,’ I quickly blurted, as soon as I’d realised what Dave was doing.
‘I’ll go third then,’ said Karen, narrowly before Nonsense tried to lay claim.
‘Hang on,’ said Nonsense, ‘you didn’t say ‘bags’. That means it’s my go third.’
‘What?’ Karen demanded.
‘You’ve got to say ‘bags’ or it doesn’t count.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty. Why?’
‘I think … ’ said Dave, ‘he’s implying that you’re being childish.’
‘Childish? Me? Well you started it Dave.’
‘What?’
‘You were the first one to bags the bath.’
‘I was merely claiming the first use of the bathroom when we get home. How else do you want me to do it … application in triplicate signed by the Pope? Besides, there’s no way I’d want to use the bath after you. I’ve seen what you do to baths. It’s sick.’
‘So do I get third place or what?’
‘I don’t see why I should suffer just because I didn’t say ‘bags’.’ announced Karen, almost complaining to himself.
‘For crying out loud,’ yelled Dave. ‘Who gives a fuck? Really?’
‘Then you won’t mind me having your slot then,’ said Karen.
‘Right!’ I shouted. ‘I may be the one who got us into this mess, and I’m happy to concede that if I hadn’t, we’d be home and we’d have all had a bath by now. I may also be the one who’s wearing the pig’s ears. Again. But I have to insist that the conversation be changed right now, otherwise I’ll throw the keys into that hedge and we’ll all have to walk home.’
‘Hey … ’ said Woody insistently, ‘ … this is fuck all to do with me … I’ve got my own bath. And what’s more, I’m not going anywhere without my van.’
‘I know,’ I said, as if only Woody could hear me. ‘But I had to stop their bickering somehow.’
He nodded in appreciation.
Then, in the newfound silence I stared at the van and recognised how proud she had done us. Her only fault had been the perished alternator on that Norwegian mountaintop, which seemed like months ago, and she could hardly be blamed for that. And I carried on staring … and staring. Then, there was the loudest bang I’d ever heard in my life. Where the van had been, a fraction of a second before, there was now the big green side of a hurtling truck. Then just as rapidly the lorry too was gone, and there was just empty road. It all happened so quickly. The initial impact and its fearsome accompanying blast instinctively caused Dave and Woody to throw themselves in the direction of the grass bank where the three of us had been loafing. In the split-second quickness of it all, I remembered being mildly indebted to Woody for landing on me, as I could see and hear thousands of minute pieces of debris falling around us … bits of glass, splinters of wood, shards of metal, exploded beer cans, a shower of dehydrated noodles, paper, a windscreen wiper, rubber, then finally hundreds of feathers … presumable from our quilts. When we eventually pulled ourselves to our feet, what was left of the lorry was still hurtling, but now it was far away and shrouded in a cloud of wreckage, its noise now a receding and distant rumble and screech. What was left of the van however, was now showered over probably a square mile of Worcestershire. We stood slack-jawed for some time, switching our gaze from the cloud of carnage that was now evidently slowing some way up the road, to the bombsite in front of us that was now peppered with many things, although none of those things was an intact van.
‘My van … ’ croaked Woody quietly, wide eyed in disbelief.
Then we were silent as we once again looked up the carriageway at the distant puff of dust and fragments.
‘Brilliant!’ I whispered.
‘Fucking brilliant!’ Dave reinforced, taking as much time as was possible to find his way through five syllables.
And we continued to stand and stare with our lower jaws somewhere in the vicinity of our navels.
A minute or two later our trance-like state was hardly altered as the AA vehicle crackled and crunched to a halt in front of us, pulverising the miniscule remains further. The driver looked bemused as he climbed down from his cab and scratched his head as he approached us.
‘Are you the chaps that reported the breakdown?’ he queried slowly.
I managed a half nod.
‘Well … where … where’s your van then?’ he asked, scouring the rubble on the floor.
‘It’s not here anymore,’ uttered Woody monosyllabically and in monotone.
‘Well … is it working again then?’ he asked, as he squinted through the morning sunshine.
In well-timed unison we all shifted our gape to the smouldering chaos that now lay about a quarter of a mile up the road. The man shifted his focus to the same point, and with a slow and studious methodology, followed the trail of devastation back down the road until he was staring at the detritus beneath and around his feet. Then he looked back to us with his eyes bulging, and snapped his head back towards the distant lorry.
‘Shit!’
He looked back, and once again I managed something like a nod, acknowledging that what he was thinking was correct.
‘Well … I suppose I’m a bit late then. Although … I have to say … for once, I’m glad I am. Do the emergency services know?’
‘It … just happened. Just before you got here,’ I said.
He raced back to his cab and immediately got on his radio. We couldn’t hear what he was saying but his hand movements and gestures made it very clear how he was describing the situation. He then started his engine and sped up the road to the smouldering truck, where he positioned his vehicle, lights flashing, across the inside lane, and deflected the thankfully light early morning traffic away from the wreckage. We continued to stare in astonishment, and were still doing so five minutes later when two police cars and an ambulance raced by us with their sirens in full wail. And soon more followed, and all we could do was to stand on our bank in total disbelief.
‘Did that really happen?’ said Karen eventually.
‘I’m afraid it did, yes,’ replied Woody.
‘Fucking shit!’ added Dave.
‘Do you think we should try and salvage something?’ asked Karen.
I shot him an incredulous look and said, ‘What? Salvage what? There’s nothing left Karen. The van disintegrated.’
‘Well I’m going to look,’ said Nonsense, stepping over the barrier.
‘So you don’t think we’ll find anything?’ pushed Karen.
‘No,’ I laughed nervously. ‘There won’t be anything left after that, I’m telling you.’
‘Well … ’ he mused, ‘I suppose at least I won’t have to carry my drums now.’
We all craned round to share our looks of puzzlement at him. He caught our glares.
‘Sorry, but I’m just trying to draw on the positive aspects of the situation.’
Woody and I shook our heads in wonder.
‘Hey Benny!’ shouted Nonsense, who was kicking his way through the flotsam and jetsam on the hard shoulder.
‘What?’
‘Brilliant news … look … ’ he shouted with something in his aloft hand.
‘What is it?’ I squinted.
‘I’ve found your compass.’ He adjusted it in his hand. ‘The van is now due north. Well, most of it anyway,’ he announced.
‘So let me get this straight,’ said Woody to me. ‘We’ve lost the van and all our gear … guitars and all, but he’s happy because he’s found a tuppenny Christmas cracker compass?’
‘Seems to be about the size of it,’ I replied.
‘My van!’ he said again.
At that, a police car that had been steadily reversing up the hard shoulder for the last minute or so, crunched to a halt in front of us, though not before shifting Nonsense and Karen with a cautionary blast on his siren.
‘Are you gentlemen all right?’ asked the officer.
‘A little shaken,’ I replied.
‘Would you mind telling me what happened?’
‘Well, we … broke down (I lied), called recovery, sat up here, and then the van was gone. Just…disappeared in a cloud of lorry. Is the driver okay?’
‘He doesn’t remember anything but amazingly he’s only hurt his neck and suffered a few bruises. That’s the only benefit of him falling asleep. He’s going to get more trouble from work though I would think. Especially when they tot up how much this is going to cost their insurance company.’
And after a few more questions, various shared details, and reassurance that we would get all of our property replaced by the insurance, we were free to go. He was virtuous enough to overlook the detail that we’d had people travelling in the back of the van on account of the fact that he hadn’t actually caught us doing it – but he did seem to glean great enjoyment from the fact that I was wearing a pair of fake, plastic pig’s ears throughout everything, and that I had seemed to have forgotten, which I had. However, by way of redeeming himself, he did offer to organise some transport for us, but the general consensus was that perhaps the three-mile stroll would do us good.
So I nonchalantly threw Woody’s van keys over my shoulder and into the hedge, as I’d threatened to do some time before, and off we dawdled, back to the comparative security of 199 Hurcott Road.

 

 

Welcome Home

We all slept extremely well. I think it was a combination of the early morning trauma, the length of the tour, and the incomparable feeling of being back in our own beds. Perhaps the only person that didn’t get the restful and homely sleep they deserved was Woody, whose house key was somewhere in a hedge on the M5, on a ring with his obsolete van keys. It wasn’t a long-term problem … his mother had a spare key to his house. However, as a consequence of my oversight, I received a hard punch to the shoulder, and he had to spend the night on our sofa. Naturally, it didn’t occur to me that he would need that set of keys again. How wrong I was. However, even he napped until late afternoon, enjoying the comfort of being in his own town, even if he wasn’t in his own bed. We’d got back at about eight-thirty in the morning, and there was a mountain of mail and a hundred other things to think about, but sleep was the only place to be. For once we were not drunk, but strangely we felt drunker than ever, thanks to all that had happened.
I was first up – sometime around five in the afternoon – and took the opportunity to purvey the garden. I’d rested and it was time to smell the environment and truly let my senses know that I was home. It was wonderful. I stood, in the modest patch of grassland that was our estate, and took in the flavour that was our Middle-English garden. I inhaled the perfume of the abundant roses until I could bear it no more, but that wasn’t possible. I couldn’t get enough of it. I’d had no idea how much I’d missed being here. I’d never felt such a feeling of being so indelibly home. The ground was mine, the air was mine, and every passing thought of mine felt that it was in the right place, no matter how much my thoughts had enjoyed visiting other grounds and airs.
I heard a rattle of metal against wood, and looked over the adjoining fence. There was Miss Venus retreating from her outhouse. What a sight for sore eyes she was. It took a moment for her to notice me as she gathered her bearings.
‘Hello stranger,’ she said, with a great fondness in her eye.
‘Hello Miss Venus,’ I returned, with equal affection.
‘Haven’t seen you for a couple of days.’
This made me smile greatly. And it made me wonder how slowly time travelled for her. But it didn’t matter. To me she was the same as this town – adorable, but living in a different timescale. Nothing had changed. She’d missed us marginally, the town … well, probably less. But neither she nor our home or our hometown had changed. I wasn’t sure what all this meant. Did it mean that I was happy to be back home, or was this a sign that this whole World I lived in would always be a constant, and that no matter what I did, where I went, who I loved…that this would always be here for me to fall back into? Probably yes. I felt greatly secure being in this realm. But in truth I felt that this sanctuary was all very well, but I didn’t need it. I realised at that very moment that I needed it to be there … but I didn’t always need to be there myself.
‘Yes, we went away for a week,’ I said, not wanting her to question her own sanity.
‘Ooh, was it that long? Well now, where did you go?’
‘Well, we just popped into Europe.’
‘Ooh, how lovely.’
‘Bastas!’ shouted Savic from over the other fence.
‘Now, who was that?’
‘Don’t worry Miss Venus. It’s just Mr. Savic.’
‘Yoo park in fronta ma hous evry day for a fornite ya focky bastas.’
‘Please ignore him,’ I said. ‘He’s a bit mad.’
‘Ooh I know. The meals on wheels people say that too. So how do you think West Brom. will do next season?’
‘Well, for your sake, I hope they do well.’
‘Focky conts!’ was the last thing I heard before I went back inside.

 

 

The Letter

Dave was snuggled on the sofa next to a very peevish looking Woody, and was still trying to catch a Marlboro in his mouth. Woody was clearly not yet fully awake, and it was obvious that he didn’t enjoy the adverse sofa movements that Dave was initiating.
‘Well, who wants their mail?’ I asked, coming out of the kitchen with a ghastly amount of envelopes.
‘I hope you haven’t got any of mine there,’ announced Woody.
‘No, you’re okay. Just for residents.’
‘Bring it on big nose. Give me that fan mail now, bitch,’ asserted Nonsense.
‘Fan mail?’ I asked.
‘Yeah. Bring it on, bitch.’
‘Okay. Well, you’ve only got one. And it looks to me like it’s from the special clinic. Or is it from the badgers? Not sure. Do you want me to open it for you?’
‘No, that’s fine thanks. I’ll take it,’ he urged, holding out a hand.
‘Okay, there you go. Now then … young Karen, here we go…two copies of the Reader’s Digest and a couple of letters – presumably from your pen-dwellers club?’
‘Yeeees … thank you, if you could just hand them over without all the cutting barbs.’
I handed them over.
‘Now then … David.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, you’re a popular boy.’
‘Why so?’
‘Well, you’ve got a bank statement, two correspondence from Jane’s military books, and no less than thirteen hand-written letters.’
‘Cool!’ he shouted, jumping to his feet and grabbing the stack of dispatches.
For the next moment or two I was lost, firstly mentally acknowledging the several house bills that it was my job to take care of, and then skipping through the letter that Marte had sent me. I didn’t like the fact that I was reading it in the same room as everyone else for a start, it would have been more appropriate to pour over it in my own room at the end of the night. That, however wasn’t to be. But it was a nice letter if not a very un-committal letter – it was neither here nor there. But after the way I’d treated her I was glad of any letter, and it was especially nice that she had remembered me for no other reason than her address had been disintegrated with Woody’s van on the hard shoulder of the M5 that very morning.
I noticed that Dave was looking very alarmed over his pile of letters.
‘David?’ I prompted.
‘Fuckin’ ‘ell!’ he shouted.
‘What’s up?’ I asked.
‘These letters … they’re all from Nerys.’
‘Fuck off!’ laughed Nonsense.
‘Seriously.’
‘What do they say?’ I asked.
‘She’s a fucking fruitcake! She’s got our lives planned out.’
‘Like what?’ I asked, trying to keep the smile from my face.
‘She says she wants to kiss me awake each morning so that I drift into the day knowing that she loves me, and then she’ll cook eggs for me, iron my shirt and polish my shoes. That’s just the first fucking letter!’
‘Well, we did say she liked you,’ I sniggered.
Dave turned to me looking frightened and very serious.
‘I’m gonna have to kill her aren’t I?’ he asked.
‘You mean you’d rather have prison food and get boned up the arse in the shower block, than have scrambled egg with the lovely Nerys?’
His face told us that he was weighing up the two options in his head.
‘I’m sure that if you read the more recent letters she’ll have given up on you,’ I added.
‘Yes,’ he said confidently opening another letter. ‘Yes, let’s try this one.’
He speed read through another letter, but verbally accompanied the words with only a selection of ‘du’s’, preventing us from knowing the content.
‘Du du du du … my God, she even writes in Welsh. Du du du du du du du du du … yeah right, as if I’d let you do that, du du du du du du du du … fuck! Dirty bitch!’
‘What? What?’ we all pleaded.
‘I … don’t think it would be appropriate to read that out,’ he said, quickly gathering all of the letters up.
‘Oh come on,’ I said, ‘you’ve got to tell us!’
‘No, these are personal letters and I don’t think you need to know any more,’ he said as he made for the stairs.
We shared an array of facial expressions that ranged from quizzical to downright bemusement.
‘Well … ’ uttered Nonsense, ‘he’s either gone to burn the letters in some kind of ritualistic Voodoo ceremony … ’
‘Or?’ I asked.
‘Or he’s gone to bash one off.’
‘I knew I could count on you to turn my stomach. Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome. Anyway, who fancies a pint?’
‘Yeah, why not,’ I agreed. ‘Let’s go and see Ted. Dave?’ I shouted up the stairs. ‘Coming to the pub?’
‘Erm … No,’ he called back. ‘No thanks.’
‘You know they sell beer?’
‘Yeah … but, I think I’ll get some more shut-eye ta. Might come out later.’
Now that was strange. Who was this impostor, and what had he done with our Dave? We grabbed a paper bag and ambled off to the Farmer’s Boy shaking our heads, and saying things like ‘that’s never right’ and ‘I’ve seen it all now’.

 

 

The Boys are back in Town

The Farmer’s Boy was the same as ever, the clientele had altered little, and of course Ted Prank was universally unchanged. I expected these things, and welcomed them. As with everything and everybody else in this town that had greeted us back from our voyage, there was something reassuring and embracing about the lack of transformation – a uniformity and stability that receives you unconditionally. I suppose you notice it more when you’ve been subjected to a long period of variety and diversity – unfamiliar faces and scenes, shifting daily. As the gentle citizens of Bergen unquestionably took for granted the majesty of its setting, and the uncontaminated calm of their society, I realised that I too was guilty of not appreciating the finer elements of where I lived. And for a fleeting moment the Farmer’s Boy became ‘Cheers’, where everybody knows your name.
‘Benjamin!’ shouted Ted, as I led the party through his door. ‘Don’t you ever do that again.’
‘What?’ I smiled, delighted to see Ted.
‘This applies to all of you … ’
‘What?’ we all asked.
‘Never, ever leave me for so long again. Me takings have tecken a nors-dive since you went away. Close to bankrupt.’
‘Oh shit, sorry Ted. But don’t worry we’ll make up for it now. Four pints please.’
‘Right you are. Eh, where’s young David? Ya didn’t leave him behind did ya?’
‘No he’s at home. He’s being a bit strange actually.’
‘Didn’t pick up a dose did he?’
‘No. But somebody might have … ’ I said, looking at Nonsense.
‘Oh bollocks you lot,’ said Nonsense. ‘They’ve been having a go at me for sleeping with a hooker Ted.’
‘Nowt wrong with that lad, s’long as ya wore a blob.’
‘Thank you Ted. Try telling this lot.’
‘How about thee … ?’ he taunted Karen. ‘Did ya dip ya little Yorksheer wick?’
‘I don’t find it necessary to sexually prove myself everywhere I go Ted, like a cat marking his territory.’
‘Ay. That’s why you’re not a man,’ he guffawed.
So Ted became the first recipient of the great yarns that were our European adventure. We regaled him with every nook of our famous quest; from the girls, to the endless drives, the mishaps – the many mishaps, the shows we played, and everything else. And all the time Ted’s huge bellowing laughter filled the bar. I hadn’t realised how full and entertaining the previous month and a half had been until we recounted the trip to somebody else. Nor had I comprehended how completely absurd, if not unlikely, some of our escapades had been. Whether it had been throwing stones and killing a cockerel at stupid o’clock in the morning, flouncing around a German hotel in the nip at stupid o’clock in the morning, or trying to find a strangely accommodating girl in a caravan park on top of a mountain at stupid o’clock in the morning … quite frankly it beggared belief. I also realised at that moment why we had slept away so many daylight hours of our journey – because we spent so many of the night time hours gallivanting around like juvenile, horny fools. But that was how God had created us and for the time being, we were happy to be that way.
Dave didn’t make it out that night. We thought it was strange, to say the least, but we accepted it. There were plenty of reasons why he might not have come out, and we were content to recognize whichever one he may have chosen.
So we made our way home. And for the first time in a long stretch we managed to utilise a paper bag. Okay, I’m sure you’re dying to know what the paper bags are for. Well here we go. It’s a game – surprisingly. It involves scraping some dog shit off the pavement – or any shit for that matter … human excrement has been used before – and placing it inside the paper bag. Now, the paper bag needs to be one of those fairly heavy-duty bags that you might get at a supermarket. The kind that they use in America, the kind I fondly remember Rhoda carrying in the opening sequence of the much-missed TV series of the same name. Reason being … they burn for longer. So, the poo (and as much as possible) is loaded into the bag. The top of the bag is twisted into a slow-burning fuse. The bag is then placed onto a doorstep (preferably not the doorstep of somebody you wish to endear yourself to), and the twisted top is then set on fire. What happens next is enormous fun. After you ignite the bag, the doorbell is rung violently, followed by a fairly sharpish hiding act … behind a hedge, a car, a wall, or whatever. Now the beauty of this prank is that it plays upon the instinctive nature of human beings. It’s a little cruel really, but aren’t all practical jokes? If you open your door, and see a small fire … well, let’s face it … your initial gut reaction is to stamp on it until it’s no longer a fire. And that’s exactly what happens nine out of ten times. And it worked on the way back from the Farmer’s Boy. We set the trap on an unfamiliar doorstep, lit the taper, rang and knocked like buggery, and retreated to a safe distance. At one o’clock in the morning most sensible people are off their guard, and on this particular occasion the reaction had all the hallmarks of somebody that wasn’t thinking quite straight. The man ambled out through the door expecting a friend or a knock-and-run merchant, but instead was confronted by a small fire on his step. Like almost everybody that preceded him in this experience he took the only sensible route possible, and stamped on the offending blaze, thus sending shit in every direction possible … mostly up his legs. I never said it was going to be an intelligent pursuit. The sad thing is that after all the years of entertaining this diversion we’ve never managed to come up with a decisive, snappy name for the game, and so it has always been, and will no doubt remain ‘burny poo bag’. Suggestions are welcome.

 

 

The Bitch is Back

I felt truly at home now. I’d had a phenomenal night’s sleep, and all in the reassuring familiarity of my own bed. I was also struck by the familiarity of having a thumping head, eyesight that refused to focus, and a mouth as dry as a Saharan wit. My entire body demanded water; my mouth to combat the feel of ‘old egg box’, my brain and blood supply to wash out the alcohol that coursed through my veins, and the rest of my body looked forward to utilising the cleansing qualities that water possesses. Such was the urgency that I made a dash for the kitchen in my pants. When my eyes eventually became accustomed to the severe morning light, I was somewhat surprised to see the unfamiliar shape of somebody making cups of tea. It was a female.
‘Hello ewe.’
‘Hello Nerys,’ I replied, more than a little off my guard. She was the last person I’d expected to find in our kitchen. In fact, if you’d asked me before I went downstairs, ‘who’s in the kitchen?’, I would have said plenty of people, such as Valerie Singleton, the Duke of Gloucester or Lulu, before I’d have even considered Dave’s Welsh date-a-dog partner.
What must she have written in those letters to Dave? It must have been good. I was beginning to find the situation amusing, especially considering how hard Dave had tried to get rid of her on that night a couple of months before.
‘Can I make ewe a cup of tea?’ she asked, standing only in Dave’s American football shirt.
‘That would be very welcome Nerys, thank you.’
‘Oh, hello … you’re up,’ said Dave shiftily.
‘Good morning David,’ I said, smiling broadly. ‘And how are you today?’
‘Fine … fine,’ he muttered, being sure to avoid eye contact.
‘And what did you kids get up to last night then?’
‘Ooh, never ewe mind now,’ said Nerys, ‘what goes on behind the bedroom door is private. I ‘ope we didn’t keep you up? We were at it all night.’
Dave started to cough loudly, in an uncomfortable attempt to change the course of the conversation, and took Karen’s arrival as a chance to do just that.
‘Ah, morning Karen,’ said Dave. Karen didn’t answer, but just stood face to face with Nerys, silent and with no facial emotion.
He eventually said, ‘Where am I?’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘it’s not a dream. Nerys is here.’
‘Yes, and ewe better get used to it. You’ll be seeing a lot more of me,’ said Nerys, cuddling up to Dave.
‘Where am I?’ repeated Karen.
‘Your name is Karen, you’re a drummer and you’re at home in England,’ I said.
At that, Nonsense appeared from the bottom of the stairs across the lounge, saw Nerys, rubbed his eyes, looked startled then quickly retreated back upstairs.
‘Shall we go back to bed?’ suggested Nerys, still locked in a cosy embrace with Dave. They collected their cups of tea and went, leaving Karen and I in the kitchen.
‘Where am I?’ said Karen again.
‘I don’t think you’ve had enough sleep Karen. Why not go and grab another hour or so. You’ll be able to cope with the day a little better.’ He turned and walked stiffly back to his room.
And we did see a lot more of Nerys. She was round most nights, even though they spent most of their time together locked in Dave’s room, no doubt working their way through all of the manoeuvres that she’d previously outlined in her letters. Her presence had a negative effect on our drinking practises (other than at gigs where we’d managed to negotiate a ‘no girlfriend embargo’), but Dave seemed happy, if not a little embarrassed by the looks of his quarry, and indeed the circumstances that lead to their union. I was just grateful that this fate hadn’t chosen me and the delectable Rusty.

 

 

Doctor Doctor

‘Hello again Dr. Singh,’ I nodded in embarrassment.
‘Mr. Benjamin, we’re meeting again. What’s wrong with you this time? Perhaps a friend broke your elbow or your sternum?’
‘Close … it was a friend, but I think he’s cracked my rib.’
‘And how, prey tell, did this happen?’
‘Well, you see we were in Spain on a giant inflatable sausage, and … ’
‘On second thoughts … I think I’m happy for it to be remaining a mystery. I’m sure I don’t understand how you students carry on. And I’m very dubious regarding your choice of friends.’
‘I’m not a student anymore, I’m a musician,’ I announced with pride. ‘Anyway, it was really quite innocent.’
‘Fine. Take off your shirt please,’ he said shaking his head. ‘Where does it hurt?’
‘Just here,’ I tentatively pointed.
‘Does this hurt?’ he asked, gently pushing the rib with his thumb.
‘A little … ’
‘And this … ’
‘Also a little … ’ I winced.
‘So how about this,’ he asked, pushing his index finger with force between two ribs.
‘Shit yeah … that would have hurt before the accident,’ I shouted, bent in two, ‘bastard.’
‘Well Mr. Benjamin, I think you’ve probably cracked a rib.’
‘That’s what I told you.’
‘I’ll book you an x-ray for three o’clock tomorrow if that’s okay.’
‘Yes, that’s fine,’ I wheezed, still trying to get my breath.
‘Now, would you like to take the opportunity of buying shares in the x-ray department?’
‘You’re a very sarcastic doctor Dr. Singh.’
‘Thank you. I’ve no doubt I’ll see you soon, good day.’

 

 

Rainy Days and Mondays

The following weeks were relatively quiet. As the English autumn spread its rustic virtues, our great European adventure receded into a distant dream. It seemed more like a delusion, or perhaps a movie that we’d all seen one drunken night. We had a steady flow of gigs that we executed with our newfound professionalism and tightness, not to mention all of the nice new equipment we’d bought courtesy of a slightly displeased insurance company. We were definitely a better band than we had been when we left for Harwich on that sunny July morning, and this didn’t go unnoticed by our audiences who kindly enthused about the apparent improvement of our show. As we’d promised ourselves, we started to throw in a handful of original songs, all of which were greeted with the same eagerness by our astute listeners. Even though our tour hadn’t produced any great openings, in a way it had made us. It had made us a very good band, as opposed to the average band that we had been previously. Sadly though, we’d lost Geordie who was forced to make the enormous choice between rock ‘n’ roll and the survival of his marriage. We were surprised how long he’d taken to make his decision, but despite our loss he’d quite fittingly taken the only realistic and responsible option. And as the dynamic of our band changed from run of the mill covers outfit to exciting new original band, it became clear that brass was surplus to our requirements. We put more and more new songs in the set until we were able to perform entire gigs of original songs, and steadily built up a young and fervent fan base, who would dutifully travel to wherever ‘the Badgers’ were playing. I was fulfilling the oath I’d made to myself as we left Spain by way of hounding agents, managers and bookers, sending off demo tapes, producing shiny, professional photographs and large glossy posters introducing the ‘savage young Badgers’, and the fruits of my efforts were manifest in the quality of the work that we were beginning to get.
And so it went. Gig, rehearsal, gig, binge, gig, binge, burny poo bag, pot noodle feast, rehearsal, gig, white stick related pranks, date-a-dog (which Nerys heartily encouraged and even delighted in taking part in the judging process), visit to the special clinic, binge, gig, rehearsal, beating up of Nonsense for contemptible effort at being humorous, binge, gig, and so on. We’d cultivated a steady cycle of all the things we enjoyed, and we continued to improve, as did the quality of our bookings, until I received a phone call one frosty afternoon early in December.

‘Hello?’
‘Hello.’
‘Hello?’
‘Yes?’ I urged.
‘Ah, hello, is this the right number for Special Clinic?’ said the voice.
‘That depends. If you’re after the special clinic, then you’ve got the wrong number. But if you’re after the band that used to be called Special Clinic then yes, you’re through.’
‘Oh. Does that mean you’ve split up?’
‘No, we’ve just changed our name. We’re the Badgers now,’ I said proudly.
‘Oh thank goodness. It took me ages to find your number.’
‘I hope you don’t mind me asking,’ I said diplomatically, ‘but who the hell are you?’
‘Oh, sorry yes, it’s Sam Jackson.’
‘Ah, Sam Jackson … yes, of course. And who the hell are you Sam Jackson?’
‘Sorry, I’m not being very helpful am I?’
‘Not really.’
‘Sam Jackson, I met you at the army base in Gibraltar in August. I was a guest of one of the officers?’
‘Sam Jackson! Of course. Sorry, that seems like years ago.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch sooner, but as I said I lost your number, but I managed to get it from the coordinator at the base in Gib.’
‘Well I’m very glad you did. So what can I do for you?’ I asked with palpable hope.
‘Well I wanted to offer you some work.’
‘Always nice, but I should tell you that we’re doing more gigs as an original band now. It’s kind of the way we want to go.’
‘In that case I might be able to offer you something even better. What sort of style would you describe yourself as?’
‘Well, I suppose if pushed I would say it’s melodic rock/pop.’
‘Amazing, and I was going to offer you a fortnight doing U.S. bases in Germany.’
‘That would be great. Hang on … you were going to … but now you’re not?’
‘No. Have you got anything recorded?’
‘Yes, half a dozen songs.’
‘Great. Send a tape to my office in New York.’
‘New York?’ I barked.
‘Yes … New York. It’s a big place in America.’
‘Yes, I’ve heard of it. It’s just that…you’ve got an English accent … and … I … ’
‘Yes, well since they invented aeroplanes lots of English people have been coming to America.’
‘I see. So, what have you got in mind Sam?’
‘Well if your stuff’s up to scratch, there’s a new band here I’m promoting, and they need a support act for a tour of the north-east in February and March.’
‘The north-east?’
‘Don’t worry I’m not talking about Scarborough. No, New York, Boston, Philadelphia … that sort of thing.’
If I’d been standing up I would have swiftly fallen over. My hands had begun to sweat so much that I could barely hold onto the phone.
‘Are you sure you’ve got the right number Sam?’
He laughed.
‘Yes. I’m not making any promises right now though. You appreciate I’ll have to listen to your demo first.’
‘Of course … ’
‘But you’ll definitely get the German job if this tour doesn’t come off.’
I wrote down his address and number three times with my shaking hand. This was huge, and I couldn’t afford to make a mistake. This was so exciting but there were no guarantees, so I made the conscious decision to keep it to myself until I knew for sure, as agonising as it was going to be. The next morning I was waiting outside the post office before the doors were even open, jiffy envelope in hand - inside which was a cassette tape, a photograph, a letter, and all of my dreams. I put way too much postage on the package to make sure it got to where it was supposed to, sealed it with a superstitious kiss, then gently dropped it into the ‘first class and international’ slot. There. It was now out of my hands – we would be judged on our merits.

 

 

Calling America

The following days were unbearably excruciating. I so wanted to tell the others about the phone call, but figured that if there was to be any disappointment it would only befall one of us, me. After all, if it didn’t come off there would still be the fortnight in Germany to console me, and in their ignorance that would represent something of a coup.
The days turned into a week, at which point I was fairly certain that Sam would have received the parcel. How long should I wait before I phoned him? Should I phone him at all? No, I probably shouldn’t … I would appear too eager and needy. Oh, the agony. The others knew that something was going on, especially Dave who pushed me to the point of near collapse, but I managed to keep my mouth shut.
The week turned into two. Hope was beginning to dwindle, and I’d pretty much resigned to the fact that we would be going to Germany.
Then came the phone call.
Dave, Karen and Nonsense lounged around the lounge only able to hear my side of the discourse.
‘Sam! How are you?’
‘Who’s Sam?’ said Dave.
‘Dunno,’ said Nonsense. I gestured to them with my hand in an attempt to keep the dialogue down.
‘Yes … ’ I said, ‘okay. I see … ’
‘Who is it Benny?’ pushed Dave.
‘Sssh,’ I urged, ‘no not you Sam. Yes … right … you really think so?’
Dave tried to move his ear close enough to the receiver to hear what was being said. I pushed him across the sofa with an extended leg.
‘Well that’s very kind … yes … we think so too but from you … really? Are you sure? That would be … ’ I was now standing up, wide-eyed and grinning.
‘Is it a girl Sam or a boy Sam?’ asked Karen.
‘Okay … yes sure … ’ I mimed the action of writing to the assembled gallery in the futile hope that one of them would decode my actions.
‘What’s he doing?’ queried Nonsense.
‘Pen!’ I whispered loudly. Karen passed me one.
‘Yeah … hang on Sam … ’ I glared at the boys. ‘Paper!’ Dave obliged. ‘Okay, fire away … third of February … yeah … UA317 … okay … JFK, yes … okay … uh huh … okay … all right … yeah … great. That’s brilliant Sam.’ The others were trying to work out what this series of dates, numbers and deceased presidents meant, but sat looking very puzzled. ‘Sam you’re a star, thank you so much. Okay … speak to you then … bye.’
I hung up.
They really knew that something was going on now, but still had absolutely no idea what.
‘Well?’ they barked in unison.
‘Boys … we’re going to America.’ I beamed.
What transpired next can only be described as ten minutes of complete chaos. I told them everything, including the unbearable two weeks I’d spent waiting for Sam to get back to me. I passed on the details of the tour that would take us through every major city in the northeast, a tour that would keep us in the United States for two whole months.
‘I fucking well knew you were up to something,’ shouted Dave in near-hysterical laughter. ‘You total bastard! How did you manage to keep that to yourself?’
‘I can tell you it wasn’t easy.’
‘Woody!’ yelled Nonsense. ‘We’ve got to tell Woody.’
I called him immediately at his workshop, but instead of blurting it all out on the phone, I invited him round that evening. I couldn’t wait to tell him.

 

 

Anarchy in the U.K.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in wild, unbridled celebration. We bought wine and whisky and cigarettes, and set about consuming it all with a childlike glee. We weren’t completely thoughtless in our absorption though, and respectfully discussed the practicalities of the tour. The money wasn’t going to be brilliant. It would be enough to live on whilst we were there, as all of the travel and accommodation would be covered. However, it wasn’t going to be enough to pay our bills at home while we were gallivanting around the United States, and so we all agreed to take on extra work in the mean time to ensure that we could pay three months of rent before we left for New York. And we would need to make some new recordings and make certain we had enough tapes and handouts to thrust upon all the influential parties we hoped we would meet on our travels.
By the time Woody arrived, we were all several sheets to the wind.
‘So, what’s going on?’ he asked, as we sat around grinning wildly.
‘I had a phone call today,’ I said.
‘Really … a phone call? Well, I’m glad you got me round. I mean, you hear about it happening to other people, but you never think it’ll be someone you know.’
‘Can I finish?’
‘Sorry.’
‘Anyway, remember that chap I was talking to in Gibraltar? That officer’s friend … ’
‘Yeah … ’
‘Sam Jackson is his name. Anyway, he’s a promoter … ’
‘Okay … ’
‘He phoned me this afternoon … ’
‘And … ’
‘And he’s offered us a tour supporting a band in the north-east.’
‘Cool. I like Newcastle, great party town.’
‘Not the northeast of England Woody, the U.S.A. I’m talking about New York, Boston and Philadelphia. It sounds brilliant, two whole months, February and March, on the road with an up and coming rock band. All the flights, travel and hotels are covered. How cool is that?’
Woody looked numbed, and I was waiting for him to burst into ecstatic delight, when he calmly said, ‘I can’t do it.’
‘What?’
‘I just can’t, it’s too long. We went through all of this in Spain, I’ve got a business. I simply can’t afford to lose two months of work. I’m sorry.’
Woody’s words had immediately sobered us.
‘But Woody … this is a huge opportunity, this band are signed. Sam seems to think that if we play well, which of course we will, we’ve got a chance of getting in with their label. We may never get another chance like this.’
He stared at the floor and slowly shook his head. He looked back at the four of us looking on as helpless and fraught as a quartet of rescue puppies.
He eventually said, ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t see it.’
‘Well … ’ I desperately interjected, ‘will you at least think about it?’
After a few seconds thought he nodded and muttered ‘sure’.
Then he left.
This was something that we hadn’t bargained for. Who in his right mind would turn down a prospect like this? Who could turn his back on a possibility of success in such a flippant manner? Woody, that’s who. And he was single-handedly scuttling what was for the four of us, the very zenith of our aspirations. It was where all our hard work would pay off. We didn’t talk about it much, there was little to talk about other than the ugly probability of having to find a new bass player – an option that none of us wished to pursue. We went to bed. The party was over.

 

 

I can’t stand up (for Falling Down)

The following week was every bit as excruciating as the previous two weeks had been for me, but instead of the anguish of not knowing whether we’d be making an Atlantic flight, it was now the torture of not knowing whether we’d be taking our bass player with us. For an entire week Woody hadn’t been in touch. He wouldn’t even answer his phone despite the fact that I tried to call him about ten times a day. What’s more he wasn’t at his workshop, and his house was seemingly unoccupied. It appeared that we’d lost him in the very literal sense of the word.
The mood was very dour in ‘Camp Badger’, as we’d humorously renamed our house, and the days felt endless and without purpose. The appointment of a new Badger was beginning to look inevitable.
Then, that following Thursday night there was, not so much a knock at the door, as a tumultuous cacophony. I opened the door and Woody fell, face first into the hallway.
‘Woody’s here,’ I shouted into the lounge.
‘Hello mate,’ said Dave, springing to his feet. Nonsense and Karen followed.
‘Well … ’ I continued, ‘he’s sort of here.’
‘He doesn’t look very conscious,’ said Karen.
‘I don’t think he is very conscious,’ I said.
‘I think we should move him because he’s dribbling on the carpet.’
‘Okay, one limb each,’ I ordered, ‘let’s get him in the lounge.’
We struggled with his flaccid form for a full thirty seconds before managing to get him to his feet, although his feet, nor indeed any other part of his body were offering any help what so ever. After great exertion we finally directed him to the sofa, where he slumped with a lifeless wilt.
‘Have we got any smelling salts?’ asked Karen.
‘You watch too many old movies,’ I said, ‘what he needs is a good slap.’
‘Well I’m not doing it.’
‘Leave it to me,’ said Dave.
‘That’s okay,’ I said, ‘I’ve got it.’
‘You get all the fun jobs,’ said Nonsense.
‘Woody?’ I whispered, gently slapping his cheek, ‘can you hear me?’
‘Come out,’ said Dave, ‘you’ve got to do it harder than that.’ He nudged me out of the way, positioned himself between Woody’s listless legs, and gave him an almighty slap across the face which caused his head to recoil violently before flopping onto his shoulder.
‘Oh well done Florence Nightingale,’ I shouted, ‘if he wasn’t struggling for life before, he certainly is now. Come out.’
‘I was just trying to help.’
‘Woody?’ I gently inquired again, this time easing his eyelids open with my thumbs. ‘Can you hear me mate?’
There was a flicker of life in his eyes, and for the first time he took control of the support of his own head.
‘Benjamin? ‘ello ya big cunty bollocks.’
‘Oh thank god, he’s okay,’ said Karen.
‘Didju jus’ slap me ya fucker?’
‘Oh yeah, he’ll be fine,’ I said to the others. I turned back to Woody just in time to receive a well-aimed, meaty punch to the chin, which sent me flying across the lounge in an acrobatic arc.
‘Yeah … he’s fine,’ I slurred from the floor, holding my jaw.
That was about all the sense we could get out of him that night. It was clear that he wasn’t going to sleep anywhere but on the sofa, so we draped a blanket over him and let him snore and dribble where he lay.
I was more concerned about my jaw, which I was fairly certain Woody had broken. It wasn’t the same shape as it was before, and it was producing the same agonising stream of pain that my two other recent maladies had. I went to bed and delighted in the prospect of seeing Dr. Singh the next day. How would I explain this one? Shares in the x-ray department were beginning to look like a very shrewd investment.

 

 

Catch us if you can

Flick.
Grunt.
Flick.
Mumble.
Flick.
‘Uh.’
Flick.
‘Ouch!’
Flick.
‘What the … ’
Flick.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’
I was sat on the arm of the sofa, flicking Woody’s nose with all my might. After his unjustifiable right hook the night before, I relished in making the decision to wake him up in the most uncomfortable fashion imaginable.
‘I’m flicking your nose.’
Another sturdy flick connects heavily with the bridge of Woody’s nose.
‘Well fucking stop it you git,’ he yelped, burying his head under his blanket.
‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
‘Do I ever. I feel like I’ve had my head sucked inside out. So why were you flicking my nose you sadistic bastard?’
‘As recompense for your behaviour last night,’ I replied, handing him a cup of tea.
‘What behaviour? I don’t remember anything.’
‘Well that’s hardly surprising considering you collapsed through the front door.’
‘Did I? Hardly deserves being woken up by incessant nose-flicking though.’
‘No, the nose-flicking was payback for breaking my jaw.’
‘What?’
‘You broke my jaw.’
‘No I didn’t.’
‘I’m afraid you did.’
‘Well … how?’
‘A well executed punch.’
‘No!’
‘Again Rocky, I wish I could say I was making it up, but the pain in my face is constantly reminding me of the truth.’
‘Well, why did I do that?’
‘You thought I’d slapped you across the face.’
‘Had you?’
‘No. Dave did.’
‘Oh. Sorry mate. I really don’t remember. Remind me that I owe Dave a smack.’
‘It will be my pleasure. Do you remember anything at all?’
‘I remember going out. I was in the Farmer’s until Ted decided I’d had too many, then … then I went somewhere else and drank more. Not sure where though.’
‘And what brought about this one-man binge?’
He sighed.
‘Look, I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you all week. This whole America thing’s been chewing me up.’
‘Why? I thought you’d made your mind up.’
‘I had. But then I realised that I was being a bit selfish. I mean for me, the most sensible thing to do is to not go. Like I’ve said …two months out could damage my business irredeemably.’
‘I know … I appreciate that. You’re more than entitled to make that decision.’
‘But the last couple of days have made me realise how much that decision would affect you guys. I know you could easily get another bass player, but you probably want to do that about as much as I want to leave the band.’
‘That’s very true.’
‘And there was one thing you said that’s stuck in my mind.’
I raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
‘We may never get another chance like this. That’s what you said and I think you’re right.’
‘So then, the big question … shall we go Woody?’
‘I think, all things considered, we probably should.’

THE BEGINNING