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This piece is transitional. Duggie has decided to let you into a secret part of his head…this is his recurring dream. After this we’ll get back into the story…the story we left so many of your human months ago.
Duggie: So, in my dream, I wake up and Fish from Marillion is standing over me. His tangly-rat-tail-like hair framing a welder’s face is making me scrunch up my nose. Twitching it to remove an invisible itch. [“Get to the point Dug…” No! It’s my dream, I’ll go where I wanna! “…ok, ok…cool it.” (Don’t forget, he’s a big lad is Duggie, I’m no messing with him, Steve.)]
Where was I? Oh, yeah, the invisble itch…and so I say: “Oi wot’s your game, pal…hey your Fish, aren’t you?”
Fish: Yeah, yeah, man. My friends call me Del [his real name is Derek Dick]
Duggie: What are you doing in my bedroom?
Fish: I’m not here…this is a dream….my dream!
Duggie: No way – this is my dream.
Fish: If that’s the case, where am I?
Duggie: Dunno, pal. None of my footin’ business! I’m the one asleep here.
Fish: Like hell you are! I’m on tour. I crashed out in a dunken stupor [hey Fish, this is fictional, don’t complain, I don’t mean it…Steve]
Duggie: I thought I could smell ale on yer breath. Look, what are we going to do now, I mean your hair is tickling my snozzle..and you’re hanging around in my bed.
Fish: I don’t know, I’ve never met a fellow dreamer in a dream. What can we do?
Duggie: I’ll count to 5 and we’ll both wake up.
(so Duggie counts to 5 and…)
The lights come up, it’s a full stage show. Maillion, 1984: Fugazi and Script for a Jester’s Tear. They’re also testing out the fledgling Kayleigh…
Duggie: This is awesome!
Fish winks from the stage: “never could resist the count…”
(just then a tall figure wearing black robes appears, as if from a bat…”No one can resist The Count)
[…and there we leave Duggie. He usually wakes up at this point. Screaming.]
Record Duggie Chop's into, right this moment:
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Friday 10 December 2010
Wednesday 8 December 2010
Duggie’s mate: Tribute to Lennon…08/12/80
I remember sitting at me Nan’s house in the late 1970s watching telly. She made me a cuppa and handed me a copy of the Daily Mail, pointing at the picture of a tramp-like figure, seemingly staggering down a city street somewhere.
I read the caption, it went something like: “Lost Lennon, a has-been in New York.” He was wearing a floppy hat, a long ragged trench coat, baggy trousers and a long, ‘Dr Who’ scarf.
At the time, my only images of the Beatles had been gathered from the front cover of ‘Please, Please, Me’: four young men gazing from an office-block staircase and ‘Help’ with four men dressed in blue skiing outfits making funny shapes to camera.
I’d also seen ‘Hard Days Night’, a black and white flick based on a train and hanging around a posh hotel room.
So the tramp picture didn’t really link up in my mind with The Beatles. It was just the picture of an old geezer (to a 10 year old boy) in a newspaper.
Then one day, a couple of years later, a kid from school that I didn’t know too well cycled past me while I was waiting for the bus home.
“Oi, mate. John Lennon’s been shot!” he said.
I don’t remember responding to him. He was a bit of a dick. But that photo from the paper came back to me and for some reason the fact that he was from The Beatles. It all seemed to tie up together in my mind. From that moment on I was a Beatles fanatic. It made sense.
Thinking back, it’s like John was always alive when I discovered how great The Beatles were. That they weren’t just some old group that me mum put on the record player while she was hovering on a Saturday. But he was dead and it was a long time ago. Doesn’t seem like it, but it was.
Then every morning, our local radio station would play 'Borrowed Time' from the posthumously cobbled together 'Milk and Honey' album. And so, in 1984, Lennon was kind of alive again...in a kind of sub-standard way.
At least we still had The Beatles.
Favourite Beatles song: (changes lots, but at the moment it’s a tie between ‘Flying’ from ‘Magical Mystery Tour’, ‘Good Morning’ from ‘Sgt Peppers’ and ‘Strawberry fields Forever’.
Favourite Lennon song: ‘Mind Games’ (this also regularly changes)
I read the caption, it went something like: “Lost Lennon, a has-been in New York.” He was wearing a floppy hat, a long ragged trench coat, baggy trousers and a long, ‘Dr Who’ scarf.
At the time, my only images of the Beatles had been gathered from the front cover of ‘Please, Please, Me’: four young men gazing from an office-block staircase and ‘Help’ with four men dressed in blue skiing outfits making funny shapes to camera.
I’d also seen ‘Hard Days Night’, a black and white flick based on a train and hanging around a posh hotel room.
So the tramp picture didn’t really link up in my mind with The Beatles. It was just the picture of an old geezer (to a 10 year old boy) in a newspaper.
Then one day, a couple of years later, a kid from school that I didn’t know too well cycled past me while I was waiting for the bus home.
“Oi, mate. John Lennon’s been shot!” he said.
I don’t remember responding to him. He was a bit of a dick. But that photo from the paper came back to me and for some reason the fact that he was from The Beatles. It all seemed to tie up together in my mind. From that moment on I was a Beatles fanatic. It made sense.
Thinking back, it’s like John was always alive when I discovered how great The Beatles were. That they weren’t just some old group that me mum put on the record player while she was hovering on a Saturday. But he was dead and it was a long time ago. Doesn’t seem like it, but it was.
Then every morning, our local radio station would play 'Borrowed Time' from the posthumously cobbled together 'Milk and Honey' album. And so, in 1984, Lennon was kind of alive again...in a kind of sub-standard way.
At least we still had The Beatles.
Favourite Beatles song: (changes lots, but at the moment it’s a tie between ‘Flying’ from ‘Magical Mystery Tour’, ‘Good Morning’ from ‘Sgt Peppers’ and ‘Strawberry fields Forever’.
Favourite Lennon song: ‘Mind Games’ (this also regularly changes)
Monday 6 December 2010
Donovan? or was it a dream?
“Sod Latvian heavy metal!” said this guy. He was standing on top a piano beneath the stairs at this stinking city-centre club in Riga.
Why stinking? For some reason there was a girl – fit, blonde, bit zitty – frying up a huge basket of chips right next to the stage.
Every now and then a cloud of fat-drenched steam engulfed the lead singer, making him shake his head wildly - a disharmonious Paul ‘Macca’ McCartney. He was a shouter, screaming in front of his incongruous Crass-inspired band of hippified long-hairs [purple prose alert, Duggie!]
“It’s the punk rooo-awk what we love!” continued the piano man. He actually said rock like that: rooo-awk, punching the air in time with his words.
“You’re not getting me alive!” blurted the lead singer for no apparent reason: “Punk is f**cked!” [come on! Gotta ‘bleep’ it - kids read this!] They launched into a rendition of ‘Punk is Dead’ from The Feeding of the Five Thousand [that’s the first Crass album from 1978 – true anarchy in the UK, not a fashion statement…]
The Latvians were confusing punk with heavy metal – or vice versa. I was just confused.
Behind the stage-side chip stall, sat a guy selling candy floss. Big pink whirls of spun sugar on a stick. Hmmm, could do with some of that. Need the energy.
Put me in mind of the jazzers of the past: kept playing all night drinking sugared water to keep going. Knackered their teeth, but at least their vibe was intact.
I gestured to the candy floss man and I thought, just for that moment: “I love everything in this god-almighty world, God knows I do!” Then I realised I was only quoting Donovan’s ‘Candy Man’.
I remember meeting Donovan [note to Donovan’s lawyers: this is a work of fiction…will that get me off the hook?] at a festival back in he ‘80s. Seemed like his career looked like it was on the skids. Maybe he was just past it. But I was a total fan.
Managed to catch the great man, stage side. He was wearing an ‘ethnic’ knitted hat and a hand made waistcoat [what? Nothing else, Duggie? – no, Steve, he had other stuff on, I was just trying to keep the prose clean and unclogged… ok, Dug, get on with it!]
“What are you doing in Hounslow?” I asked him.
“Being. Just being. How about you?” said Donovan.
“Being?” I said.
“Oh! You too! Good.” He said, and strummed a pure fresh chord on his really cool resonator guitar.
“No, I meant to ask the question. Being?” I said, realising that I wasn’t making myself clear.
“That’s a question. Being? Like ‘To be or not to be.’ It’s very deep.” Said Donovan. He really is pretty cool.
“Gets to the heart. Of where we. Are.” continued Donovan, looking at a passing aeroplane, way up above us, “He’s not going to Heathrow. Being. Somewhere else? Or here.” [this part used his spoken punctuation – not my fault…]
At this point I picked up a large T-shirt on Don’s merchandise stall. “How much?”
“Ten quid, man” said this long-bearded man, sitting to the side of mine and Don’s conversation. He was reading a thick paperback and smoking a pipe.
Donovan smiled and walked onto the stage. The sun shone.
So, that was the ‘80s, Hounslow free-festival.
“Just a single stick? Hey!” a sweet-smelling hand was waving up and down in front of my face… “Hmmm? No, yes, I’m a large,” In my mind I was still ordering a Donovan t-shirt from that hippy.
“A large what?” said the candy-floss man.
“Oh, ah. Yes. Sorry.” I said, “just the one.”
And I disappeared behind that pink cloud of sugar and sat down, while the band started to thrash out another late ‘70s punk cover and the guy on the piano did a handstand.
[Hmmm. Sweet! love Steve.]
Why stinking? For some reason there was a girl – fit, blonde, bit zitty – frying up a huge basket of chips right next to the stage.
Every now and then a cloud of fat-drenched steam engulfed the lead singer, making him shake his head wildly - a disharmonious Paul ‘Macca’ McCartney. He was a shouter, screaming in front of his incongruous Crass-inspired band of hippified long-hairs [purple prose alert, Duggie!]
“It’s the punk rooo-awk what we love!” continued the piano man. He actually said rock like that: rooo-awk, punching the air in time with his words.
“You’re not getting me alive!” blurted the lead singer for no apparent reason: “Punk is f**cked!” [come on! Gotta ‘bleep’ it - kids read this!] They launched into a rendition of ‘Punk is Dead’ from The Feeding of the Five Thousand [that’s the first Crass album from 1978 – true anarchy in the UK, not a fashion statement…]
The Latvians were confusing punk with heavy metal – or vice versa. I was just confused.
Behind the stage-side chip stall, sat a guy selling candy floss. Big pink whirls of spun sugar on a stick. Hmmm, could do with some of that. Need the energy.
Put me in mind of the jazzers of the past: kept playing all night drinking sugared water to keep going. Knackered their teeth, but at least their vibe was intact.
I gestured to the candy floss man and I thought, just for that moment: “I love everything in this god-almighty world, God knows I do!” Then I realised I was only quoting Donovan’s ‘Candy Man’.
I remember meeting Donovan [note to Donovan’s lawyers: this is a work of fiction…will that get me off the hook?] at a festival back in he ‘80s. Seemed like his career looked like it was on the skids. Maybe he was just past it. But I was a total fan.
Managed to catch the great man, stage side. He was wearing an ‘ethnic’ knitted hat and a hand made waistcoat [what? Nothing else, Duggie? – no, Steve, he had other stuff on, I was just trying to keep the prose clean and unclogged… ok, Dug, get on with it!]
“What are you doing in Hounslow?” I asked him.
“Being. Just being. How about you?” said Donovan.
“Being?” I said.
“Oh! You too! Good.” He said, and strummed a pure fresh chord on his really cool resonator guitar.
“No, I meant to ask the question. Being?” I said, realising that I wasn’t making myself clear.
“That’s a question. Being? Like ‘To be or not to be.’ It’s very deep.” Said Donovan. He really is pretty cool.
“Gets to the heart. Of where we. Are.” continued Donovan, looking at a passing aeroplane, way up above us, “He’s not going to Heathrow. Being. Somewhere else? Or here.” [this part used his spoken punctuation – not my fault…]
At this point I picked up a large T-shirt on Don’s merchandise stall. “How much?”
“Ten quid, man” said this long-bearded man, sitting to the side of mine and Don’s conversation. He was reading a thick paperback and smoking a pipe.
Donovan smiled and walked onto the stage. The sun shone.
So, that was the ‘80s, Hounslow free-festival.
“Just a single stick? Hey!” a sweet-smelling hand was waving up and down in front of my face… “Hmmm? No, yes, I’m a large,” In my mind I was still ordering a Donovan t-shirt from that hippy.
“A large what?” said the candy-floss man.
“Oh, ah. Yes. Sorry.” I said, “just the one.”
And I disappeared behind that pink cloud of sugar and sat down, while the band started to thrash out another late ‘70s punk cover and the guy on the piano did a handstand.
[Hmmm. Sweet! love Steve.]
Tuesday 23 November 2010
Duggie's travel report special - Heavy Metal in Latvia
Travel report by Duggie Chop (and Mr Stickleback):
Heavy metal in Latvia is a kind of way of life – even more than the UK (or Germany…) I visited ‘Depo’, a club in Riga, Latvia’a capital and was totally spaced out by the sounds resonating from this basement venue. [Less of the purple prose, Dugg]
(“Nah”, said Mr Stickleback, “I reckon he handled that ok Mr Writerman.”)
[Ok, I’ll let him off…]
Can I continue? Says Duggie Chop to these two invisible critics.
(Mr Stickleback: “Of course!”)
[Steve the writer: “Yes”]
Thanks. As I was saying, at Depo a wild mix of sounds resonated from the basement, on comment I read on the web said: “a musical programme that makes the Glastonbury line-up look like a commercial hit parade” combined with: “Decor consisting solely of broken furniture and black paint, toilets graffitied with sexual obscenities (in various languages).”
Yeah that sums it up. However, on the night I visited, there was no Heavy Metal, just some crap guy playing records…loud [you mean a DJ, Dugg]
I left by the side door, passing a couple of geezers throwing up this spirit drink that you had to keep in the fridge. One of them was leaning against a scantily clad…[censored!] Hey, don’t censor me – I was about to say scantily clad police officer, who had placed his warm winter cloak over the body of a large dog that had just been knocked down by a drunken driver! [blimey, me and my imagination!]
This bloke wearing Viking garb tapped me on the shoulder, “Svieks,” he said (“That’s Latvian for ‘Hello’, informally,” Mr Stickleback) “es esmu Edgars…” Hey, said Duggie at this point. I dunno what yer on about pal, but I’m not liking your Viking garb…
“Piedodiet (“that means ‘sorry’” Mr S) My name is Edgars, I can help you discover what is good about the heavy metal in this town.”
He took me to another bar, a broken down hole full of bearded weirdos and we drunk some strong shots of something and he told me more….
To be continued….
Report from Mr Stickleback:
Being a fish, I can’t frequent human bars, so I had to content myself with exploring the waterways of old Latvia. There’s like 1200 rivers in the place. I was swimming down the Daugava, through the Hydroelectric dams and other Soviet era architecture. Couldn’t understand a word of what the other fish said, except one carp family from the Humber who had decided to winter in Latvia, due to the abundance of a certain type of algae, glowing in the unique pollution of the area.
“snot bad,” they said, devouring another small flotilla of the stuff, “sorta exotic, you know and it’s dead cheap to gerr ‘ere, too”
Dead was a word that immediately can to my mind as I left to make my way towards the Gulf of Riga and the Baltic.
More later. Ta!
Heavy metal in Latvia is a kind of way of life – even more than the UK (or Germany…) I visited ‘Depo’, a club in Riga, Latvia’a capital and was totally spaced out by the sounds resonating from this basement venue. [Less of the purple prose, Dugg]
(“Nah”, said Mr Stickleback, “I reckon he handled that ok Mr Writerman.”)
[Ok, I’ll let him off…]
Can I continue? Says Duggie Chop to these two invisible critics.
(Mr Stickleback: “Of course!”)
[Steve the writer: “Yes”]
Thanks. As I was saying, at Depo a wild mix of sounds resonated from the basement, on comment I read on the web said: “a musical programme that makes the Glastonbury line-up look like a commercial hit parade” combined with: “Decor consisting solely of broken furniture and black paint, toilets graffitied with sexual obscenities (in various languages).”
Yeah that sums it up. However, on the night I visited, there was no Heavy Metal, just some crap guy playing records…loud [you mean a DJ, Dugg]
I left by the side door, passing a couple of geezers throwing up this spirit drink that you had to keep in the fridge. One of them was leaning against a scantily clad…[censored!] Hey, don’t censor me – I was about to say scantily clad police officer, who had placed his warm winter cloak over the body of a large dog that had just been knocked down by a drunken driver! [blimey, me and my imagination!]
This bloke wearing Viking garb tapped me on the shoulder, “Svieks,” he said (“That’s Latvian for ‘Hello’, informally,” Mr Stickleback) “es esmu Edgars…” Hey, said Duggie at this point. I dunno what yer on about pal, but I’m not liking your Viking garb…
“Piedodiet (“that means ‘sorry’” Mr S) My name is Edgars, I can help you discover what is good about the heavy metal in this town.”
He took me to another bar, a broken down hole full of bearded weirdos and we drunk some strong shots of something and he told me more….
To be continued….
Report from Mr Stickleback:
Being a fish, I can’t frequent human bars, so I had to content myself with exploring the waterways of old Latvia. There’s like 1200 rivers in the place. I was swimming down the Daugava, through the Hydroelectric dams and other Soviet era architecture. Couldn’t understand a word of what the other fish said, except one carp family from the Humber who had decided to winter in Latvia, due to the abundance of a certain type of algae, glowing in the unique pollution of the area.
“snot bad,” they said, devouring another small flotilla of the stuff, “sorta exotic, you know and it’s dead cheap to gerr ‘ere, too”
Dead was a word that immediately can to my mind as I left to make my way towards the Gulf of Riga and the Baltic.
More later. Ta!
Thursday 18 November 2010
Brrrrrrrrrroooogh-fffffffff. Blimey, the dust in here!
[Duggie shakes his head...vigorously, it seems]
"Gerrroffff!" Says his mate, "that's a flamin' snow storm!"
"You saying I've got Dandruff?" says Duggie, and I tell you, he's a large fella.
They start wrestling, like the guys in The Rainbow by Ken Russell (but not naked, too cold for that)
"Hey you two," says the writer, "what do you think you're doing?"
"Ugh?" [they say this collectively]
"Your public are watching..." says the writet.
"But we've been left in this bloody cupboard - along with a load of dancing porcelain figures for months!" says Duggie, spitting out a mouthful of hairy dust and flies.
"...and Duggie's been playing only Tangerine Dream all that time," says his mate.
"What the soundtrack-writing Krautrockers?" says the writer.
"You got it. And he's only using vinyl, Steve didn't give us a CD player when he locked us away..." says Duggie's mate, watching Dug unwrap a Twix, his first in 5 months.
"Mmmmmmmmmn" scrunch, scrunch, "ORRRmmmmmmm" says Duggie, immersed in Twix-dom.
"Alpha Centuri's gotta groove to it, but Zeit. Huh! I had to focus on the crackles on the record, it was weirding me out and no mistake!" said his mate, shaking hands with one of the porcelain dancers.
"Enchanted, my sir," says the dancer, curtsying, "do not say you are leaving us. So soon?"
"So soon," said Duggie's mate, "we've been in here for months!" He quite fancied this dancer, despite her being a 6 inch tall figurine.
"Months! Ha!" she said, "Myself and the troupe have been in here since 1956."
[NOTE: Porcelain timescales have no human comparison]
"mmmScrun...ttt, MMMwe...mmmm..brrr...here... now!" said twix-ed up Duggie.
"Duggie says," says Duggie's mate, "we're back and here to discuss music and other things. To pick up the thread that we dropped sometime ago. To bodly go, where no piece of psychedelic surrealism has gone before..."
[Oi - none of that splittinglyness of the infinitives...even in a paraphrase]
The writer pseaks: "Until next time viewers...I think it's Lativan Heavy metal then. Bet you can't wait."
["nor can I," says Mr Stickleback]
"Gerrroffff!" Says his mate, "that's a flamin' snow storm!"
"You saying I've got Dandruff?" says Duggie, and I tell you, he's a large fella.
They start wrestling, like the guys in The Rainbow by Ken Russell (but not naked, too cold for that)
"Hey you two," says the writer, "what do you think you're doing?"
"Ugh?" [they say this collectively]
"Your public are watching..." says the writet.
"But we've been left in this bloody cupboard - along with a load of dancing porcelain figures for months!" says Duggie, spitting out a mouthful of hairy dust and flies.
"...and Duggie's been playing only Tangerine Dream all that time," says his mate.
"What the soundtrack-writing Krautrockers?" says the writer.
"You got it. And he's only using vinyl, Steve didn't give us a CD player when he locked us away..." says Duggie's mate, watching Dug unwrap a Twix, his first in 5 months.
"Mmmmmmmmmn" scrunch, scrunch, "ORRRmmmmmmm" says Duggie, immersed in Twix-dom.
"Alpha Centuri's gotta groove to it, but Zeit. Huh! I had to focus on the crackles on the record, it was weirding me out and no mistake!" said his mate, shaking hands with one of the porcelain dancers.
"Enchanted, my sir," says the dancer, curtsying, "do not say you are leaving us. So soon?"
"So soon," said Duggie's mate, "we've been in here for months!" He quite fancied this dancer, despite her being a 6 inch tall figurine.
"Months! Ha!" she said, "Myself and the troupe have been in here since 1956."
[NOTE: Porcelain timescales have no human comparison]
"mmmScrun...ttt, MMMwe...mmmm..brrr...here... now!" said twix-ed up Duggie.
"Duggie says," says Duggie's mate, "we're back and here to discuss music and other things. To pick up the thread that we dropped sometime ago. To bodly go, where no piece of psychedelic surrealism has gone before..."
[Oi - none of that splittinglyness of the infinitives...even in a paraphrase]
The writer pseaks: "Until next time viewers...I think it's Lativan Heavy metal then. Bet you can't wait."
["nor can I," says Mr Stickleback]
Thursday 24 June 2010
Duggie and the cycle ride (that's where he's been...) - Iggy and The Stooges...
Hello!
I'm back...[sorry? who are you? - "I'm Duggie, Duggie Chop. You know me. I was sitting around like, talking about music with me mate. Loads of people surrounding us, some real, some figments...or fig rolls...or...perhaps I'm just hungry after all this cycling..." Oh, cycling, I wondered where you'd been. Did remember you really!]
Once again, hello!
Back in May, I was all set to take a breather. To return to me and me mate sitting down, fishing, reviewing the records that matter to us - for you, dear reader, when...I pressed play on me iPod and there was The Stooges:"Search and Destroy"off Raw Power[I'm a street-walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm..."yep, that's how it starts"]
So, I kept cycling and the iPod kept shuffling Iggy Pop and Stooges tracks. And I remembered going to see Iggy at the old Hammersmith Odeon back in 1986...totally hyperactive, he didn't stop moving, even when the music had finished, jiggling on and off the stage like a walking epileptic fit...then I was back in the late '60s with 'No Fun' - total boredom in a song, and such and exciting thing to listen to. Inspiration for the punks in the 70s, like the Sex Pistols who covered it.
Oh yeah, and I just remembered, Malcolm [McLaren) copped it while I've been away, no more cash from chaos...and the world has slipped on.
Slipped on into an entirely more boring period, when you can make money but you can't have fun...
"Hey Duggie," said Duggie's mate, cycling just behind Duggie, where d'ya put that tupperware container with last night's Lasagne in it?"
"Bloody Hell, you always muck up my train of thought. I was just going to say that Iggy and the Stooges were the original punks."
His mate thought for a moment, then concentrated once more on the cycle path as he'd neglected to see a small rock under his wheel and had to rescue his handle bars from spinning round, "oh, suuugaaaaaar...woah."
"Are you agreeing? Or what?" said Duggie, pulling the Lasagne box from the deep inside pocket of his mountaineering anorak.
"Um. Yeah, s'pose so. I'd like to include 'Love' as well. Cos they were proto-punks, too."
"Proto-punks? What you swallowed an edition of Mojo or something?"
With that they stopped and set up the camping stove to warm up the Lasagne.
"Let's review one of Iggy's records next," said Duggie.
"Ok, but first we've got to follow-up some of the other stories. I mean, we haven't heard from Nels and Hair Tom for ages, that artist is still in his never-to-open-cafe..."
"And what happened to Sergei the fledgling chip shop owner?"
"And Geoffrey from Rainbow...and the Pike."
["Oi! What about me?" (the voice of Mr Stickleback) "Never ind that bleedin' Pike!"]
The Lasagne started to bubble. Mr Ting was passing with a chip delivery and, as luck would have it, had a surplus ("trouble-makers, you know, they make up addresses and have me running all over the city with unwanted soggy chips!") So furnished Duggie and his mate with a couple of portions to go with their meal.
"Life's great, isn't it?" said Duggie.
The clouds were building-up, filtering the meagre sunshine.
"Life's great," said his mate.
I'm back...[sorry? who are you? - "I'm Duggie, Duggie Chop. You know me. I was sitting around like, talking about music with me mate. Loads of people surrounding us, some real, some figments...or fig rolls...or...perhaps I'm just hungry after all this cycling..." Oh, cycling, I wondered where you'd been. Did remember you really!]
Once again, hello!
Back in May, I was all set to take a breather. To return to me and me mate sitting down, fishing, reviewing the records that matter to us - for you, dear reader, when...I pressed play on me iPod and there was The Stooges:"Search and Destroy"off Raw Power[I'm a street-walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm..."yep, that's how it starts"]
So, I kept cycling and the iPod kept shuffling Iggy Pop and Stooges tracks. And I remembered going to see Iggy at the old Hammersmith Odeon back in 1986...totally hyperactive, he didn't stop moving, even when the music had finished, jiggling on and off the stage like a walking epileptic fit...then I was back in the late '60s with 'No Fun' - total boredom in a song, and such and exciting thing to listen to. Inspiration for the punks in the 70s, like the Sex Pistols who covered it.
Oh yeah, and I just remembered, Malcolm [McLaren) copped it while I've been away, no more cash from chaos...and the world has slipped on.
Slipped on into an entirely more boring period, when you can make money but you can't have fun...
"Hey Duggie," said Duggie's mate, cycling just behind Duggie, where d'ya put that tupperware container with last night's Lasagne in it?"
"Bloody Hell, you always muck up my train of thought. I was just going to say that Iggy and the Stooges were the original punks."
His mate thought for a moment, then concentrated once more on the cycle path as he'd neglected to see a small rock under his wheel and had to rescue his handle bars from spinning round, "oh, suuugaaaaaar...woah."
"Are you agreeing? Or what?" said Duggie, pulling the Lasagne box from the deep inside pocket of his mountaineering anorak.
"Um. Yeah, s'pose so. I'd like to include 'Love' as well. Cos they were proto-punks, too."
"Proto-punks? What you swallowed an edition of Mojo or something?"
With that they stopped and set up the camping stove to warm up the Lasagne.
"Let's review one of Iggy's records next," said Duggie.
"Ok, but first we've got to follow-up some of the other stories. I mean, we haven't heard from Nels and Hair Tom for ages, that artist is still in his never-to-open-cafe..."
"And what happened to Sergei the fledgling chip shop owner?"
"And Geoffrey from Rainbow...and the Pike."
["Oi! What about me?" (the voice of Mr Stickleback) "Never ind that bleedin' Pike!"]
The Lasagne started to bubble. Mr Ting was passing with a chip delivery and, as luck would have it, had a surplus ("trouble-makers, you know, they make up addresses and have me running all over the city with unwanted soggy chips!") So furnished Duggie and his mate with a couple of portions to go with their meal.
"Life's great, isn't it?" said Duggie.
The clouds were building-up, filtering the meagre sunshine.
"Life's great," said his mate.
Sunday 16 May 2010
Sturgess Cafe - and there's (yet) more
[...and they said it would never last! - Duggie reaches the half-century (in posts, no years...]
“So, this is ‘art’, is it?” said the local paper journalist, a 17 year-old creative writer, with ambitions to be investigative. His main interest was writing Dungeons and Dragons games and scripts for gothic, graphic novels, “I mean to say, ‘art’ for the people…”
[“So this is ‘art’, is it?” almost as much a cliché as the art it is usually describing. Let’s analyse this statement for a minute - oh, by the way, my name’s Quentin The Art, and I’m a Welsh art expert – that’s an expert in art who happens to have been born in Wales, rather than a critic of Max Boyce’s occasional sketches.
Art, to the local journalist, is a term that encompasses everything from Constable to Bacon. It probably includes street and performance art – and, most certainly, the ‘Turner Prize’.
But, in reality, the ‘art’ at the heart of the journalist’s question is the work of layabouts, potentially left-wingers and most certainly university educated and not in the business of producing something like a spanner or tube of toothpaste, that UK plc could export to foreign outposts. And certainly not making money for some faceless fat-cat or mega-global corporation.
It’s as if: to think, to reflect, to draw attention to the foibles of humanity, is somehow a lesser act than, say, making a bracket to hang a basket of flowers on, or manufacturing one of those plastic things that you put in a can of smooth-flow beer to make it frothy.
We should pay our poets as much as we pay our Doctors – unless, of course, you need medical attention, when (stop Quentin – it’s you who needs medical attention, my friend!)]
“Yeah it’s a comment,” said Nyman, affecting his most convincing (in his mind) rebel-with-a-cause poses: a curled up lip, uneven shoulders, slouching against the wall (unfortunately, the journalist mis-read the body language, noting in his pad: “his work might be rubbish and a waste of money, but the artist has had to battle against an obviously deformed body, with a peculiar facial expression and wonky posture, to pursue his art…”), “I’m commenting on the invisibility of the modern High Street, the way a business can just come and go with no one noticing, or caring, due to the ‘bloody’ malls and out of town supermarkets…”
“Can I stop you there,” said the journalist, picking a piece of bacon rind from his tooth with a thumb-nail, “people have noticed the café. I mean that’s why I’m here. People want to come in. I mean, what about the guy on the Mobility scooter? This café used to be his world!”
“But that was 1957 – he’s gaga! He lives in the ‘50s,” said Seeke, smirking all the while.
“Let me handle this, please Seeke,” said Nyman, “he was transposing memory on the manifestation of today. He didn’t really want to come into our, modern day café.”
“And the old lady and her friend who tried to buy a tea…”
“You know, sometimes art is cruel. It takes guts for an artist to start telling the truth. You know?” said Nyman. He was beginning to perspire.
“I mean, I don’t know why you don’t open the Caff,” said the journo, “your bacon butties are pukka – and your tes. The best in town…”
“But it’s art! Don’t you see? Art!” said Nyman.
“I think he knows,” said Seeke, “but prefers your cooking.”
Nyman thought for a moment, and the only argument he could come up with, in favour of the art, was the fact that a criminal skinhead was now involved in extremely violent performance art in Dorest. He thought it might be best not to mention it.
“Look,” said Nyman, “give me a nice write-up, and I’ll give you another cup of tea…”
“Alright then,” said the journo, who was already late for an interview with an amorous window-cleaner. [“And they say times change, huh!” – thanks for that comment, Mr Askwith, says Duggie]
“So, this is ‘art’, is it?” said the local paper journalist, a 17 year-old creative writer, with ambitions to be investigative. His main interest was writing Dungeons and Dragons games and scripts for gothic, graphic novels, “I mean to say, ‘art’ for the people…”
[“So this is ‘art’, is it?” almost as much a cliché as the art it is usually describing. Let’s analyse this statement for a minute - oh, by the way, my name’s Quentin The Art, and I’m a Welsh art expert – that’s an expert in art who happens to have been born in Wales, rather than a critic of Max Boyce’s occasional sketches.
Art, to the local journalist, is a term that encompasses everything from Constable to Bacon. It probably includes street and performance art – and, most certainly, the ‘Turner Prize’.
But, in reality, the ‘art’ at the heart of the journalist’s question is the work of layabouts, potentially left-wingers and most certainly university educated and not in the business of producing something like a spanner or tube of toothpaste, that UK plc could export to foreign outposts. And certainly not making money for some faceless fat-cat or mega-global corporation.
It’s as if: to think, to reflect, to draw attention to the foibles of humanity, is somehow a lesser act than, say, making a bracket to hang a basket of flowers on, or manufacturing one of those plastic things that you put in a can of smooth-flow beer to make it frothy.
We should pay our poets as much as we pay our Doctors – unless, of course, you need medical attention, when (stop Quentin – it’s you who needs medical attention, my friend!)]
“Yeah it’s a comment,” said Nyman, affecting his most convincing (in his mind) rebel-with-a-cause poses: a curled up lip, uneven shoulders, slouching against the wall (unfortunately, the journalist mis-read the body language, noting in his pad: “his work might be rubbish and a waste of money, but the artist has had to battle against an obviously deformed body, with a peculiar facial expression and wonky posture, to pursue his art…”), “I’m commenting on the invisibility of the modern High Street, the way a business can just come and go with no one noticing, or caring, due to the ‘bloody’ malls and out of town supermarkets…”
“Can I stop you there,” said the journalist, picking a piece of bacon rind from his tooth with a thumb-nail, “people have noticed the café. I mean that’s why I’m here. People want to come in. I mean, what about the guy on the Mobility scooter? This café used to be his world!”
“But that was 1957 – he’s gaga! He lives in the ‘50s,” said Seeke, smirking all the while.
“Let me handle this, please Seeke,” said Nyman, “he was transposing memory on the manifestation of today. He didn’t really want to come into our, modern day café.”
“And the old lady and her friend who tried to buy a tea…”
“You know, sometimes art is cruel. It takes guts for an artist to start telling the truth. You know?” said Nyman. He was beginning to perspire.
“I mean, I don’t know why you don’t open the Caff,” said the journo, “your bacon butties are pukka – and your tes. The best in town…”
“But it’s art! Don’t you see? Art!” said Nyman.
“I think he knows,” said Seeke, “but prefers your cooking.”
Nyman thought for a moment, and the only argument he could come up with, in favour of the art, was the fact that a criminal skinhead was now involved in extremely violent performance art in Dorest. He thought it might be best not to mention it.
“Look,” said Nyman, “give me a nice write-up, and I’ll give you another cup of tea…”
“Alright then,” said the journo, who was already late for an interview with an amorous window-cleaner. [“And they say times change, huh!” – thanks for that comment, Mr Askwith, says Duggie]
Monday 10 May 2010
Sturgess Cafe Pt 4...the pensioner speaks
Duggie says:
“Collect ideas like collecting rain in a bucket – just check there are no holes in the side…”
Back to the Sturgess Café.
“The ideas man, the instigator. As long as it’s not see you later alligator,” said Seeke.
“What are you on about?” said Nyman Chaw-Derek, Seeke’s partner and amazing conceptual artist – [that’s his description]. He’s the instigator, the ideas man. The café is his baby.
[Here’s the link to the previous part, so you can catch up…]
Things had settled down after the incident with the angry skinhead.
Turned out he’d just been released from remand, bit peeved due to the fact that he hadn’t done anything and had been locked up for it. So he’d taken out his anger on the café.
But when he found out about Nyman’s whole Arts Council funding scam [“erm…actually,” says Nyman, stepping through the invisible curtain between us and him, the character in my story, “I’m a professional artist. Sturgess Café is a conceptual piece…(he’s so post-modern)…and they don’t just give anyone a grant, you know]
Last heard, the skinhead was attempting to introduce violence, extreme violence into street theatre, somewhere in Dorset.
The local paper, ‘The Bugle’, had found out about the ‘Café Project’ following a letter writing campaign by the woman on the bus and a disabled pensioner, who’s mobility scooter always seemed to run out on his frequent visits too or from the café to buy a non-existent midday bacon sandwich.
“Oi awl-ways yoused to go to that caffy, when old Frank had it,” said the disabled pensioner, “ee dun a noice bacan butty, ‘im. They can’t keep nuffink the same…the police are all 16 years old…litter on the streets…get them in the army…National Service…corporal punishment…capital punishment…”
[…by the way, Café owner Frank died of complications related to a pork allergy in 1957.]
Duggie says: “to be continued…I think the hole is showing, I can hear a drip, drip drip…”
“Collect ideas like collecting rain in a bucket – just check there are no holes in the side…”
Back to the Sturgess Café.
“The ideas man, the instigator. As long as it’s not see you later alligator,” said Seeke.
“What are you on about?” said Nyman Chaw-Derek, Seeke’s partner and amazing conceptual artist – [that’s his description]. He’s the instigator, the ideas man. The café is his baby.
[Here’s the link to the previous part, so you can catch up…]
Things had settled down after the incident with the angry skinhead.
Turned out he’d just been released from remand, bit peeved due to the fact that he hadn’t done anything and had been locked up for it. So he’d taken out his anger on the café.
But when he found out about Nyman’s whole Arts Council funding scam [“erm…actually,” says Nyman, stepping through the invisible curtain between us and him, the character in my story, “I’m a professional artist. Sturgess Café is a conceptual piece…(he’s so post-modern)…and they don’t just give anyone a grant, you know]
Last heard, the skinhead was attempting to introduce violence, extreme violence into street theatre, somewhere in Dorset.
The local paper, ‘The Bugle’, had found out about the ‘Café Project’ following a letter writing campaign by the woman on the bus and a disabled pensioner, who’s mobility scooter always seemed to run out on his frequent visits too or from the café to buy a non-existent midday bacon sandwich.
“Oi awl-ways yoused to go to that caffy, when old Frank had it,” said the disabled pensioner, “ee dun a noice bacan butty, ‘im. They can’t keep nuffink the same…the police are all 16 years old…litter on the streets…get them in the army…National Service…corporal punishment…capital punishment…”
[…by the way, Café owner Frank died of complications related to a pork allergy in 1957.]
Duggie says: “to be continued…I think the hole is showing, I can hear a drip, drip drip…”
Tuesday 4 May 2010
Journey to Beatlemania - although it's probably not about that at all...
Geoffrey decided to give them a lift, that’s Duggie, his mate and the cyclist - let’s forget about the Pike, he’s sleeping.
[“We always sleep with our eyes open,” said the Pike, “actually, we haven’t got any eyelids anyway.”]
Geoffrey had wanted to pop into town to pick up Zippy and George from the dry-cleaners [“What!” said the Cyclist, “I thought they were real!”]
Bungle was waiting outside the shop.
[“Blimey!” said Duggie, “I thought there was a man inside Bungle!”
“...err there is,” said Geoffrey, “he’s just a little bit weird.”]
This being 1982, they could only find cheese sandwiches with curled-up crusts for sale locally. The Greek newsagent imported them from Hounslow via Zaire and a dodgy deal at Heathrow Airport.
[“My cheese tastes like rubber!” said Duggies’s mate.
“No, that is rubber,” said the Greek, “you’re eating an inner-tube.”]
“Look,” said the Cyclist, “I need a pint. We might have been in a lager bubble, but I’ve finished all me Red Stripe!”
“What, you’ll be lucky,” said Geoffrey, “it’s arf-past 2!”
[One of the problems with time-travel is that you’re tuned into the culture and traditions of your time, not the time you’re travelling in. You’re lumbered with that. In this case, the culture and tradition of getting as rat-arsed as possible before closing time, in order to get through to 6 or maybe 7pm when the pub doors open again.]
“What am I gonna do? said the Cyclist, “is there a Tesco or something round here?”
“Hey, Cyclist,” said a man on the radio - a big ghetto blaster that they were walking past.
“Who me?” said the Cyclist.
“Yes you. It’s 1982, mate, you’ve got more chance of buying booze from Al Johnson in prohibition Chicago than you have getting a drink round here after closing time.”
“Thanks radio man!” said Duggie, “and by the way, you’re thinking of Al Capone, not Al Jolson!”
“You’re wrong Duggie-boy.” said the man on the radio, “I’m talking about Al Jolson who owns an ‘offie’ in Illinois.”
Geoffrey: “We can always try the garage off that new bypass, there’s a Russian guy in there. He’ll serve us.”
“I know the place,” said Duggie, “and you’re dead right he’ll serve us! He’s in 2010.”
“Oh, is he?” said Geoffrey, “so that’s why my newspaper’s got colour photos in it. And I never knew that Nat King Cole had a daughter called Cheryl.”
Bungle declined to come, said he had a picnic to attend in the woods.
Geoffrey turned on his car radio and - yeah you can guess it - the ‘man on the radio’ was broadcasting: “Ok you lot, I’m gonna guide you through the time tunnel. Don’t want you getting lost now. But that’s after this classic tune from the mighty Hair Tom: “Plastic - didn’t know - Jam”, their Beatles pastiche.
[Yes, Hair Tom got there first. In 1982, no one was bothered about The Beatles. This was before the obligatory ‘A’ Level in Beatles Studies was handed out to every budding guitar band.
Their work also pre-dated the ‘Tears for Fears’ travesty of a Beatles Pastiche - Sowing the Seeds of Love and the more memorable XTC Oranges and Lemons and Dukes of the Stratosfear stuff.]
“Beatles, did you say The Beatles,” said Duggie....
“The Beatles” Said Duggie’s mate, “ we haven’t talked about them yet.”
“Yet,” said Duggie.
And they both went all starry eyed and had silly grins on their faces as Geoffrey’s car chugged off to the petrol station in the 21st Century.
“Oi - wot’s going on?” said The Cyclist
[“Nah Cyclist,” said the pedant, “that’s Marvin Gaye, not The Beatles”]
“Wot about my cans of Red Stripe - never mind the bleedin’ Beatles.”
“Ho, ho, Zippy,” said George, curled up in sports bag in the boot, “this is exciting, isn’t it”
“No, George, it’s dark!” said Zippy.
[“We always sleep with our eyes open,” said the Pike, “actually, we haven’t got any eyelids anyway.”]
Geoffrey had wanted to pop into town to pick up Zippy and George from the dry-cleaners [“What!” said the Cyclist, “I thought they were real!”]
Bungle was waiting outside the shop.
[“Blimey!” said Duggie, “I thought there was a man inside Bungle!”
“...err there is,” said Geoffrey, “he’s just a little bit weird.”]
This being 1982, they could only find cheese sandwiches with curled-up crusts for sale locally. The Greek newsagent imported them from Hounslow via Zaire and a dodgy deal at Heathrow Airport.
[“My cheese tastes like rubber!” said Duggies’s mate.
“No, that is rubber,” said the Greek, “you’re eating an inner-tube.”]
“Look,” said the Cyclist, “I need a pint. We might have been in a lager bubble, but I’ve finished all me Red Stripe!”
“What, you’ll be lucky,” said Geoffrey, “it’s arf-past 2!”
[One of the problems with time-travel is that you’re tuned into the culture and traditions of your time, not the time you’re travelling in. You’re lumbered with that. In this case, the culture and tradition of getting as rat-arsed as possible before closing time, in order to get through to 6 or maybe 7pm when the pub doors open again.]
“What am I gonna do? said the Cyclist, “is there a Tesco or something round here?”
“Hey, Cyclist,” said a man on the radio - a big ghetto blaster that they were walking past.
“Who me?” said the Cyclist.
“Yes you. It’s 1982, mate, you’ve got more chance of buying booze from Al Johnson in prohibition Chicago than you have getting a drink round here after closing time.”
“Thanks radio man!” said Duggie, “and by the way, you’re thinking of Al Capone, not Al Jolson!”
“You’re wrong Duggie-boy.” said the man on the radio, “I’m talking about Al Jolson who owns an ‘offie’ in Illinois.”
Geoffrey: “We can always try the garage off that new bypass, there’s a Russian guy in there. He’ll serve us.”
“I know the place,” said Duggie, “and you’re dead right he’ll serve us! He’s in 2010.”
“Oh, is he?” said Geoffrey, “so that’s why my newspaper’s got colour photos in it. And I never knew that Nat King Cole had a daughter called Cheryl.”
Bungle declined to come, said he had a picnic to attend in the woods.
Geoffrey turned on his car radio and - yeah you can guess it - the ‘man on the radio’ was broadcasting: “Ok you lot, I’m gonna guide you through the time tunnel. Don’t want you getting lost now. But that’s after this classic tune from the mighty Hair Tom: “Plastic - didn’t know - Jam”, their Beatles pastiche.
[Yes, Hair Tom got there first. In 1982, no one was bothered about The Beatles. This was before the obligatory ‘A’ Level in Beatles Studies was handed out to every budding guitar band.
Their work also pre-dated the ‘Tears for Fears’ travesty of a Beatles Pastiche - Sowing the Seeds of Love and the more memorable XTC Oranges and Lemons and Dukes of the Stratosfear stuff.]
“Beatles, did you say The Beatles,” said Duggie....
“The Beatles” Said Duggie’s mate, “ we haven’t talked about them yet.”
“Yet,” said Duggie.
And they both went all starry eyed and had silly grins on their faces as Geoffrey’s car chugged off to the petrol station in the 21st Century.
“Oi - wot’s going on?” said The Cyclist
[“Nah Cyclist,” said the pedant, “that’s Marvin Gaye, not The Beatles”]
“Wot about my cans of Red Stripe - never mind the bleedin’ Beatles.”
“Ho, ho, Zippy,” said George, curled up in sports bag in the boot, “this is exciting, isn’t it”
“No, George, it’s dark!” said Zippy.
Wednesday 21 April 2010
Sergei's second ending...with a little help from Ray Moore
As seen in the last Sergei instalment…
He'd seen the movies. Read thrillers. Been on the New York subway of the pre-zero-tolerance 1980s (while on tour as a fledgling shot-putter for the Moscow Worldwide Comrade Sports Team). But nothing prepared Sergei for the sight of a cold gun-barrel pointing in the region of his third eye.
He stopped dancing, pissed himself and tried to focus somewhere in the middle distance, near the petrol-pump that said 'cards only'. He didn't want to look the robber in the eyes, following the same philosophy that urges you not to lock eyes with a wild dog.
Two things could now happen and here's the first [well, an infinite array of things really, but as a limited author, Steve has selected two. We'll play this like a movie that has an ending and an alternate ending on the DVD reissue.
Now Sergei has recovered from post-traumatic shock, here’s the second ending]:
[Playing in the background: the late BBC Radio DJ Ray Moore singing: ‘O My Father Had a Rabbit’ for charity back in 1986…
Ray Moore: O My Father had a Rabbit and he thought it was a duck so he stuck it on the table with its legs cocked up
Sergei couldn’t avoid the almost touchable smell of the robber’s breath: a mixture of halitosis, stale smoke, Worcester sauce flavoured crisps (coming in waves of tiny belches), over-chewed spearmint gum and garlic. Sergei always had a good sense of smell and taste, for example he knew the difference between red and white wine without even looking at it, quite an achievement where he came from.
The smell drew a picture of the robber as a man, despite the fact that his face was covered by a long woolly hat with eyeholes, [that’s a balaclava, Sergei – but don’t worry, it’s nothing to do with the Crimean War] he was a smoker who ate junk food and failed to clean his teeth in between.
“I said, the contents of your till…” Nothing prepared Sergei for having a gun poked in his face. Because, unlike the cowardly Sergei whose body he usually occupied, this Sergei became a have-a-go hero.
The kind of citizen that you read about in the local papers (and The Sun) either collecting an award from some Mayor – or as an embarrassing school photo due to the fact that their contemporary image has had its head blown off, “…and all the fags you can carry, sunshine.”
“I don’t speak ingliss too well. Pa rooskie,” said Sergei feigning foreigness.
Ray Moore: He mixed a bowl of stuffing and he left it on the shelf…
“A roosky, from Moscock I shouldn’t wonder [that’s a reference to a 1980s Port advert – Cockburns Special Reserve – “…so I come from Moscock?” said the Russian Captain, who mispronounced Cockburns as ‘Cock Burns’ rather than ‘Co Burns’, so assumed that Moscow must be ‘Mos Cock’ in English. The British Captain replied: “Yes, you probably do…” as if everyone in the world should instantly recognise the name Cockburns as Co Burns.] well hand us all yer roubles and cigaretteskies, chum.”
For some reason, this robber’s lexicon scoured the ages, ‘chum’ being a term of endearment from the early to mid 20th Century: for example, “let’s get chummy back in the boat…” in movie depictions of Dunkirk.
“Bert vitch permp doos you needing? Comrade?” maybe Sergei was overdoing it a bit.
Ray Moore: but when he came to stuff the duck the duck had stuffed itself…
And that was the last from Mr Moore as the robber pointed his revolver at the radio and blasted.
“Look man,” said the robber, now aping the swinging ‘60s, “you comprendez vous? [sic] give me the dough!” said the robber.
“Would you like white sliced or brown? We have both…” said Sergei, edging towards the door.
Why was Sergei so determined to be a hero? It’s not as if he cared about the crappy Fuel&FagsCo organisation that employed him.
Who cared if they lost 40,000 fags and a day’s takings? Was it worth getting a bullet through the temple for? Perhaps it was the isolation. Maybe he was going do-lally, putting in so many shifts in the middle-of-nowhere service station to save up enough hard-earned to buy his chip van. Stuck in a place lacking human contact.
“Get away from that door! Get Away!” shouted the robber, making a leap past the black-and-white-chocolate-special-edition Mars Bar stand.
Sergei dived out onto the forecourt of the petrol station and grabbed a pump nozzle.
The robber reached the door and launched himself through, as Sergei lit the end of the nozzle, spraying flames and turning the robber to a charcoal crisp almost instantly.
The robber’s body crumbled onto the barbeque display next to the newspaper stand. By the way, somewhat ironically, the robber’s surname was Crisp.
The whole event had been witnessed by Geoffrey from Rainbow, who’d just arrived in his clean car, a car that contained Duggie, his mate, The cyclist and a pike sloshing around in bucket of water.
“Blimey!” said Geoffrey, stopping next to the diesel pump by mistake.
He'd seen the movies. Read thrillers. Been on the New York subway of the pre-zero-tolerance 1980s (while on tour as a fledgling shot-putter for the Moscow Worldwide Comrade Sports Team). But nothing prepared Sergei for the sight of a cold gun-barrel pointing in the region of his third eye.
He stopped dancing, pissed himself and tried to focus somewhere in the middle distance, near the petrol-pump that said 'cards only'. He didn't want to look the robber in the eyes, following the same philosophy that urges you not to lock eyes with a wild dog.
Two things could now happen and here's the first [well, an infinite array of things really, but as a limited author, Steve has selected two. We'll play this like a movie that has an ending and an alternate ending on the DVD reissue.
Now Sergei has recovered from post-traumatic shock, here’s the second ending]:
[Playing in the background: the late BBC Radio DJ Ray Moore singing: ‘O My Father Had a Rabbit’ for charity back in 1986…
Ray Moore: O My Father had a Rabbit and he thought it was a duck so he stuck it on the table with its legs cocked up
Sergei couldn’t avoid the almost touchable smell of the robber’s breath: a mixture of halitosis, stale smoke, Worcester sauce flavoured crisps (coming in waves of tiny belches), over-chewed spearmint gum and garlic. Sergei always had a good sense of smell and taste, for example he knew the difference between red and white wine without even looking at it, quite an achievement where he came from.
The smell drew a picture of the robber as a man, despite the fact that his face was covered by a long woolly hat with eyeholes, [that’s a balaclava, Sergei – but don’t worry, it’s nothing to do with the Crimean War] he was a smoker who ate junk food and failed to clean his teeth in between.
“I said, the contents of your till…” Nothing prepared Sergei for having a gun poked in his face. Because, unlike the cowardly Sergei whose body he usually occupied, this Sergei became a have-a-go hero.
The kind of citizen that you read about in the local papers (and The Sun) either collecting an award from some Mayor – or as an embarrassing school photo due to the fact that their contemporary image has had its head blown off, “…and all the fags you can carry, sunshine.”
“I don’t speak ingliss too well. Pa rooskie,” said Sergei feigning foreigness.
Ray Moore: He mixed a bowl of stuffing and he left it on the shelf…
“A roosky, from Moscock I shouldn’t wonder [that’s a reference to a 1980s Port advert – Cockburns Special Reserve – “…so I come from Moscock?” said the Russian Captain, who mispronounced Cockburns as ‘Cock Burns’ rather than ‘Co Burns’, so assumed that Moscow must be ‘Mos Cock’ in English. The British Captain replied: “Yes, you probably do…” as if everyone in the world should instantly recognise the name Cockburns as Co Burns.] well hand us all yer roubles and cigaretteskies, chum.”
For some reason, this robber’s lexicon scoured the ages, ‘chum’ being a term of endearment from the early to mid 20th Century: for example, “let’s get chummy back in the boat…” in movie depictions of Dunkirk.
“Bert vitch permp doos you needing? Comrade?” maybe Sergei was overdoing it a bit.
Ray Moore: but when he came to stuff the duck the duck had stuffed itself…
And that was the last from Mr Moore as the robber pointed his revolver at the radio and blasted.
“Look man,” said the robber, now aping the swinging ‘60s, “you comprendez vous? [sic] give me the dough!” said the robber.
“Would you like white sliced or brown? We have both…” said Sergei, edging towards the door.
Why was Sergei so determined to be a hero? It’s not as if he cared about the crappy Fuel&FagsCo organisation that employed him.
Who cared if they lost 40,000 fags and a day’s takings? Was it worth getting a bullet through the temple for? Perhaps it was the isolation. Maybe he was going do-lally, putting in so many shifts in the middle-of-nowhere service station to save up enough hard-earned to buy his chip van. Stuck in a place lacking human contact.
“Get away from that door! Get Away!” shouted the robber, making a leap past the black-and-white-chocolate-special-edition Mars Bar stand.
Sergei dived out onto the forecourt of the petrol station and grabbed a pump nozzle.
The robber reached the door and launched himself through, as Sergei lit the end of the nozzle, spraying flames and turning the robber to a charcoal crisp almost instantly.
The robber’s body crumbled onto the barbeque display next to the newspaper stand. By the way, somewhat ironically, the robber’s surname was Crisp.
The whole event had been witnessed by Geoffrey from Rainbow, who’d just arrived in his clean car, a car that contained Duggie, his mate, The cyclist and a pike sloshing around in bucket of water.
“Blimey!” said Geoffrey, stopping next to the diesel pump by mistake.
Monday 19 April 2010
Normal Service will be resumed...
Normal Service will be resumed as soon as possible.
Imagine someone is sitting here, in black and white, making a pot out of clay.
Or that a girl is teaching a stuffed clown to write on a blackboard.
Sergei's just dealing with post-traumatic stress from his ordeal with the robber.
Isolation, Isolation. Better than desolation, I suppose.
Imagine someone is sitting here, in black and white, making a pot out of clay.
Or that a girl is teaching a stuffed clown to write on a blackboard.
Sergei's just dealing with post-traumatic stress from his ordeal with the robber.
Isolation, Isolation. Better than desolation, I suppose.
Sunday 11 April 2010
Sergei - studying the barrel #1
He'd seen the movies. Read thrillers. Been on the New York subway of the pre-zero-tolerance 1980s (while on tour as a fledgling shot-putter for the Moscow Worldwide Comrade Sports Team). But nothing prepared Sergei for the sight of a cold gun-barrel pointing in the region of his thrid eye.
He stopped dancing, pissed himself and tried to focus somewhere in the middle distance, near the petrol-pump that said 'cards only'. He didn't want to look the robber in the eyes, following the same philosophy that urges you not to lock eyes with a wild dog.
Two things could now happen and here's the first [well, an infinite array of things really, but as a limited author, Steve has selected two. We'll play this like a movie that has an ending and an alternate ending on the DVD reissue. The first in this post the second in the next]:
Sergei was fundamentally a coward. There was no way he was going to fight to protect the takens of the blasted 'Fuel&FagsCoPetroleum', his employers and owners of this hellhole.
Not only did he hate them, he was also scared half to death. And in such times, the mind starts playing tricks.
As he stared at that middle-distant petrol pump, the screen telling the buyer how many litres he/she'd been ripped-off for turned into a miniature TV screen, flashing back through Sergei's childhood in the old USSR and his attempt to make it in the west.
What he focused on was the dream of owning a chip shop - buying a chippy and setting up in business. His Uncle Dimitri, who defected decades before the wall came down, always said, on those incognito postcards that he sent from his bedsit in Morden, Surrey (he used to describe the accomodation as "near-a the toob stayteon to geyt inta Loondon") - "Sergei, you-a moost give-a de Eengliss foood. Frie-ed food. 'itsa vart dey eeet. You wad becum ze Milly-yon-air!" He died after he was knocked off his moped while learning the cab driver's 'knowledge'. It may have been the KGB.
Sergei remembered his meeting last week (as his life flashed past him, the instant before an imagined bullet to the brain) with a guy selling a mobile chip shop, on eBay.
He made the trip over to Basildon in Essex, never been there before. The van (Buy-it-now price £2,650, with immediate £300 PayPal deposit after purchase) was parked up in the man's drive: a Transit, 'N-reg', bit of rust. The business was called "Not the Jackson Pollock's - All Cod Fish Bar", sign-written on the side of the ex-ambulance vehicle in day-glow yellow lettering, edged with silver.
"Why the Jackson Pollock?" said Sergei.
"We don't like that Pollock fish - we only use cod. It's a conspiracy thoery that fish stocks stuff. By the Icelanders, trying to put our fishermen out of business." said the fish shop seller, Benny Rubkins, "you'd know all about that stuff with the secret police and all."
Sergei didn't have a clue what he was on about.
"The beauty of this vehicle is that you've got minimal overheads. No rent, no rates. Just fill up with a bit of juice and Bob's your uncle!" said Rubkins.
"Bob's my...what?" said Sergei.
"Vladimir's your uncle - whatever. It's easy money!"
Sergei liked the idea more and more.
"And as it's an ambulance, I like the fact that we're still contributing to keeping our hospitals full. You know, bringing on ill-health all the junk food!" said Rubkins, laughing an showing off a mouth full of stained, caracked and missing teeth and a discoloured tongue. Looked alot like the average Russian, thought Sergei.
Rubkins fired up the fryers, lined up along the side of the ambulance, the entrance was at the rear, and led to a glass diplay area, just like a chippy in the High Street.
"Make up to £2,000 a week in the summer, this thing will. A couple of weeks work and it would have cost you nothing," said Rubkins, dipping a frozen fillet of cod into some pasty looking pale yellow batter before slipping into the fat where it sizzled and curled into a semi-circle.
"That's the way you want it, Serge me old mate," said Rubkins, tipping a bag of sliced potatoes into the adjacent fryer, "Let it curl up so it steams in the batter, don't want the fat to get through to the fish. Here, try out cooking the chips."
Sergei wrapped his hand round the handle of the frying basket, it wasn't like the pathetic Do-nut fryers installed at the petrol station - always spitting out molten liquid at the users, never cleaned: the weight and feel of this fryer made him feel like a man. Like a businessman. A Western businessman. "I'll take it, Mr Rubkins. Your business, I'll buy it. Full price."
"Wise decision Sergei. You won't regret it," said Rubkins and they shook on the deal. Sergei went back to the frying basket and dunked the chips into the popping fat. Yes it felt good.
When he came round, he held a ragged piece of woolly mask in his hand, above the Do-nut fryer. It was still attached to the head of the robber and somehow Sergei was dunking the head of the man into the boiling fat: in and out, in and out. His features had crisped up like a roasted chicken and he didn't seem to be breathing.
Wow, thought Serge, the power of the sub-conscious imagination, and promptly vomited over the pick and mix.
He stopped dancing, pissed himself and tried to focus somewhere in the middle distance, near the petrol-pump that said 'cards only'. He didn't want to look the robber in the eyes, following the same philosophy that urges you not to lock eyes with a wild dog.
Two things could now happen and here's the first [well, an infinite array of things really, but as a limited author, Steve has selected two. We'll play this like a movie that has an ending and an alternate ending on the DVD reissue. The first in this post the second in the next]:
Sergei was fundamentally a coward. There was no way he was going to fight to protect the takens of the blasted 'Fuel&FagsCoPetroleum', his employers and owners of this hellhole.
Not only did he hate them, he was also scared half to death. And in such times, the mind starts playing tricks.
As he stared at that middle-distant petrol pump, the screen telling the buyer how many litres he/she'd been ripped-off for turned into a miniature TV screen, flashing back through Sergei's childhood in the old USSR and his attempt to make it in the west.
What he focused on was the dream of owning a chip shop - buying a chippy and setting up in business. His Uncle Dimitri, who defected decades before the wall came down, always said, on those incognito postcards that he sent from his bedsit in Morden, Surrey (he used to describe the accomodation as "near-a the toob stayteon to geyt inta Loondon") - "Sergei, you-a moost give-a de Eengliss foood. Frie-ed food. 'itsa vart dey eeet. You wad becum ze Milly-yon-air!" He died after he was knocked off his moped while learning the cab driver's 'knowledge'. It may have been the KGB.
Sergei remembered his meeting last week (as his life flashed past him, the instant before an imagined bullet to the brain) with a guy selling a mobile chip shop, on eBay.
He made the trip over to Basildon in Essex, never been there before. The van (Buy-it-now price £2,650, with immediate £300 PayPal deposit after purchase) was parked up in the man's drive: a Transit, 'N-reg', bit of rust. The business was called "Not the Jackson Pollock's - All Cod Fish Bar", sign-written on the side of the ex-ambulance vehicle in day-glow yellow lettering, edged with silver.
"Why the Jackson Pollock?" said Sergei.
"We don't like that Pollock fish - we only use cod. It's a conspiracy thoery that fish stocks stuff. By the Icelanders, trying to put our fishermen out of business." said the fish shop seller, Benny Rubkins, "you'd know all about that stuff with the secret police and all."
Sergei didn't have a clue what he was on about.
"The beauty of this vehicle is that you've got minimal overheads. No rent, no rates. Just fill up with a bit of juice and Bob's your uncle!" said Rubkins.
"Bob's my...what?" said Sergei.
"Vladimir's your uncle - whatever. It's easy money!"
Sergei liked the idea more and more.
"And as it's an ambulance, I like the fact that we're still contributing to keeping our hospitals full. You know, bringing on ill-health all the junk food!" said Rubkins, laughing an showing off a mouth full of stained, caracked and missing teeth and a discoloured tongue. Looked alot like the average Russian, thought Sergei.
Rubkins fired up the fryers, lined up along the side of the ambulance, the entrance was at the rear, and led to a glass diplay area, just like a chippy in the High Street.
"Make up to £2,000 a week in the summer, this thing will. A couple of weeks work and it would have cost you nothing," said Rubkins, dipping a frozen fillet of cod into some pasty looking pale yellow batter before slipping into the fat where it sizzled and curled into a semi-circle.
"That's the way you want it, Serge me old mate," said Rubkins, tipping a bag of sliced potatoes into the adjacent fryer, "Let it curl up so it steams in the batter, don't want the fat to get through to the fish. Here, try out cooking the chips."
Sergei wrapped his hand round the handle of the frying basket, it wasn't like the pathetic Do-nut fryers installed at the petrol station - always spitting out molten liquid at the users, never cleaned: the weight and feel of this fryer made him feel like a man. Like a businessman. A Western businessman. "I'll take it, Mr Rubkins. Your business, I'll buy it. Full price."
"Wise decision Sergei. You won't regret it," said Rubkins and they shook on the deal. Sergei went back to the frying basket and dunked the chips into the popping fat. Yes it felt good.
When he came round, he held a ragged piece of woolly mask in his hand, above the Do-nut fryer. It was still attached to the head of the robber and somehow Sergei was dunking the head of the man into the boiling fat: in and out, in and out. His features had crisped up like a roasted chicken and he didn't seem to be breathing.
Wow, thought Serge, the power of the sub-conscious imagination, and promptly vomited over the pick and mix.
Wednesday 7 April 2010
Sergei's dancing - to a Fall cover-version, of all things...
I don’t know where it came from, this obsession with isolation, thought Sergei.
Wherever I am I chose the option most suited to isolation.
He remembered being a guard on the Trans Siberian. Not so much a guard, although that’s what he told ‘the girls’, more a baggage handler.
“Hey. Hey Boy!” That’s what he heard, each time they stopped at a halt in some godforsaken hole, “Want to earn a rouble or two? Or you gonna sit there staring up your arse all day, huh!”
The gangsters were the worst. No respect for humankind, it was all about money. And they say the UK is a capitalist state.
So, Sergei would take the bags. Chuck them into a taxi, hopefully spilling some of the contents if he could get a zip undone.
He once found a bag of cocaine, nestling in the top of a holdall trust in his hands by the minder of one of these gangsters. Sergei managed to liberate the drugs, funding part of the next year selling small bags of coke to passengers.
Now the service station/petrol station/garage, whatever they’re called. We call them Gas stations in Russia, like the Yanks, he thought to himself.
“Gas!” said Sergei, “Gas! been-ZEEN! [that’s an approximation of the sound of the word petrol, in Russian] been-ZEEN!” and he danced around the room chanting the word, “been-ZEEN! been-ZEEN! been-ZEEN!”
Maybe that’s why he liked to be on his own. Maybe he was slightly deranged.
He danced and danced and tuned his movements into the music softly dribbling from his transistor radio: I can hear the grass grow [not the Move’s original, The Fall’s cover version]
[and here’s an aside by Duggie Chop about The Fall and cover versions…
“I’m not gonna say much now. Just this: Fall cover versions are rubbish when Brix had anything to do with ‘em, and only slightly better when she didn’t. And…”
“What about ‘Victoria’?” Said Duggie’s mate, flicking through a back issue of Mojo, the one with Kraftwerk on the front cover, “I reckon they did alright with that one. I mean, it was pretty obscure before they covered it. I think they made the charts.”
“You’re thinking of ‘Hit The North’,” said Duggie, “Ok, I’m just saying that The Fall’s cover versions are usually rubbish.”
“Why Are People Grudgeful’? ‘Lost in Music’? both from The Infotainment Scan, 1993” said Duggie’s mate.
“Yeah, but they’ve got nothing to do with Brix!” said Duggie, attempting to rescue his argument.
“Suppose so. I don’t particularly like them anyway. Much prefer The Fall’s originals. It’s good when Mark E Smith resurrects something that he was into. Might murder it, but at least people search out the original.” Said Duggie’s mate (in his mind were the four tracks from Black Monk Time by The Monks that The Fall had covered).
“I reckon Sergei’s gonna be in schtuck if we don’t shut up – look at him dancing around.” Said Duggie.
“And he doesn’t know what’s coming up either, does he?” said Duggie’s mate.
“Nah, But he soon will. Watch.” Said Duggie, fading away like a finger swish through dust on a warm CRT TV screen.]
We’re back with Sergei, swirling around and dancing, swirling and chanting. He collected the broom and he’s swinging it around like a rather thin dance partner, “been ZEEN! You are my Queen!” he said, eyes closed in a kind of ecstasy of movement.
And he would have continued all day, or at least until someone ordered petrol or fags, but his eyes opened on the barrel of a gun pointed straight at his face.
“Can I have the contents of your till please. And 40,000 cigarettes.” Said the voice behind a knitted mask.
Wherever I am I chose the option most suited to isolation.
He remembered being a guard on the Trans Siberian. Not so much a guard, although that’s what he told ‘the girls’, more a baggage handler.
“Hey. Hey Boy!” That’s what he heard, each time they stopped at a halt in some godforsaken hole, “Want to earn a rouble or two? Or you gonna sit there staring up your arse all day, huh!”
The gangsters were the worst. No respect for humankind, it was all about money. And they say the UK is a capitalist state.
So, Sergei would take the bags. Chuck them into a taxi, hopefully spilling some of the contents if he could get a zip undone.
He once found a bag of cocaine, nestling in the top of a holdall trust in his hands by the minder of one of these gangsters. Sergei managed to liberate the drugs, funding part of the next year selling small bags of coke to passengers.
Now the service station/petrol station/garage, whatever they’re called. We call them Gas stations in Russia, like the Yanks, he thought to himself.
“Gas!” said Sergei, “Gas! been-ZEEN! [that’s an approximation of the sound of the word petrol, in Russian] been-ZEEN!” and he danced around the room chanting the word, “been-ZEEN! been-ZEEN! been-ZEEN!”
Maybe that’s why he liked to be on his own. Maybe he was slightly deranged.
He danced and danced and tuned his movements into the music softly dribbling from his transistor radio: I can hear the grass grow [not the Move’s original, The Fall’s cover version]
[and here’s an aside by Duggie Chop about The Fall and cover versions…
“I’m not gonna say much now. Just this: Fall cover versions are rubbish when Brix had anything to do with ‘em, and only slightly better when she didn’t. And…”
“What about ‘Victoria’?” Said Duggie’s mate, flicking through a back issue of Mojo, the one with Kraftwerk on the front cover, “I reckon they did alright with that one. I mean, it was pretty obscure before they covered it. I think they made the charts.”
“You’re thinking of ‘Hit The North’,” said Duggie, “Ok, I’m just saying that The Fall’s cover versions are usually rubbish.”
“Why Are People Grudgeful’? ‘Lost in Music’? both from The Infotainment Scan, 1993” said Duggie’s mate.
“Yeah, but they’ve got nothing to do with Brix!” said Duggie, attempting to rescue his argument.
“Suppose so. I don’t particularly like them anyway. Much prefer The Fall’s originals. It’s good when Mark E Smith resurrects something that he was into. Might murder it, but at least people search out the original.” Said Duggie’s mate (in his mind were the four tracks from Black Monk Time by The Monks that The Fall had covered).
“I reckon Sergei’s gonna be in schtuck if we don’t shut up – look at him dancing around.” Said Duggie.
“And he doesn’t know what’s coming up either, does he?” said Duggie’s mate.
“Nah, But he soon will. Watch.” Said Duggie, fading away like a finger swish through dust on a warm CRT TV screen.]
We’re back with Sergei, swirling around and dancing, swirling and chanting. He collected the broom and he’s swinging it around like a rather thin dance partner, “been ZEEN! You are my Queen!” he said, eyes closed in a kind of ecstasy of movement.
And he would have continued all day, or at least until someone ordered petrol or fags, but his eyes opened on the barrel of a gun pointed straight at his face.
“Can I have the contents of your till please. And 40,000 cigarettes.” Said the voice behind a knitted mask.
Monday 29 March 2010
Sergei - a study of isolation
Imagine yourself as a drawing, the light scrub of a pencil tip on paper. Shaded, but easy to erase.
[That's just one of the thoughts floating through Sergei's mind as he stares at a yellow street lamp alongside the 'A' road passing the service station where he works.]
From a small building in the middle of nowhere. Sergei stares at that single point in space, just beyond the double strength security glass of the window, for a second too long and burns the image of nothingness into his retina.
"But it must be something," he thinks, rustling the foil wrapper of a Twix bar on display, fondling the lengths of chocolate-coated biscuit and blinking away the flash of light that blotted out his vision.
[What he didn't see was the trace in time of a lager bubble, falling through space 28 years ago. But that's another story]
He shook his head as someone entered the shop, saying, automatically: "Can you tell me which pump" But his sub-conscious changed the phrase as he was addressing an attractive woman to: "Can you tell me, any chance of a hump?"
"What!" came the reply in a broad Dartford accent, "Any chance of a what!"
"The pump, the pump," said Sergei, crushing the Twix bar, "can you tell me which?"
That's what comes of spending so much time on your own in a godforsaken hole like a service station off the A211. I mean, where is this place? There's no town nearby, no other shops, no people, no pubs, just...
"'scuse me," said the Dartford woman, pouting bright red lipstick, "are you listening to me? Pump 13. Oh, and a packet of Bensons. I don't want that Twix, though."
"I'm sorry, just thinking about Mother Russia, my mind goes blank sometimes," said Sergei.
"What's that about your mother?" said the woman, unwrapping the cigarettes and lighting one, "You're strange [takes in a breath of smoke] different [blows it in Sergei's direction]."
"You're not supposed to smoke in here," said Sergei.
"Where should I go then?" said the woman.
And that's how Sergei ended up in the stinky toilet behind the service station, near the Calor gas canisters, a rare closed sign on the front door of the 24-hr service station and a blonde bouncing around on top of him, rising and falling at a steady rhythm, his face and other parts smothered with red lipstick. Maybe working in such a lonely place had it's benefits after all.
"I never did pay you for that petrol," said the woman, inhaling another Benson and letting the smoke curl round her lips.
"Don't worry about it, I pick up the tab," said Sergei.
She turned to Sergei and gave him the kind of hard stare that Paddington Bear would have been proud of, "Not on your nelly, mate! What do you take me for? A prozzy or somthink?" she said.
[I must point out that it's now 3am. Sergei's on the night shift. The graveyard shift in this out of the way place, the wrong side of a major road.]
Behind the till, the telephone is ringing. It's the area manager. He's had a report that a closed sign has been seen on the front door of 'Gable Dongle' [that's the name of Sergei's service station]. Sergei pushes past the girl, singeing his trousers on the tip of her fag, and collects the receiver.
Can he explain the closed sign?
"Well, I heard something, out on the forecourt. Turned out to be a hedgehog. I followed it round the back to the Calor gas cage," said Sergei.
Hedgehog? What?
"I gave him some milk," said Sergei.
You what? That's coming out of your wages, my son!
Sergei replaced the receiver, shaking his head. He was saving up. Working hard. He had a plan. A vision. A chip shop in a small town. He'd done his research.
"You coming back, Sergei?" It was Donna from Dartford.
"Yes," said Sergei, "my hedgehog needs a little more milk."
Now it was Donna's turn to shake her head, "Yes, Sergei, you're strange. Different."
[That's just one of the thoughts floating through Sergei's mind as he stares at a yellow street lamp alongside the 'A' road passing the service station where he works.]
From a small building in the middle of nowhere. Sergei stares at that single point in space, just beyond the double strength security glass of the window, for a second too long and burns the image of nothingness into his retina.
"But it must be something," he thinks, rustling the foil wrapper of a Twix bar on display, fondling the lengths of chocolate-coated biscuit and blinking away the flash of light that blotted out his vision.
[What he didn't see was the trace in time of a lager bubble, falling through space 28 years ago. But that's another story]
He shook his head as someone entered the shop, saying, automatically: "Can you tell me which pump" But his sub-conscious changed the phrase as he was addressing an attractive woman to: "Can you tell me, any chance of a hump?"
"What!" came the reply in a broad Dartford accent, "Any chance of a what!"
"The pump, the pump," said Sergei, crushing the Twix bar, "can you tell me which?"
That's what comes of spending so much time on your own in a godforsaken hole like a service station off the A211. I mean, where is this place? There's no town nearby, no other shops, no people, no pubs, just...
"'scuse me," said the Dartford woman, pouting bright red lipstick, "are you listening to me? Pump 13. Oh, and a packet of Bensons. I don't want that Twix, though."
"I'm sorry, just thinking about Mother Russia, my mind goes blank sometimes," said Sergei.
"What's that about your mother?" said the woman, unwrapping the cigarettes and lighting one, "You're strange [takes in a breath of smoke] different [blows it in Sergei's direction]."
"You're not supposed to smoke in here," said Sergei.
"Where should I go then?" said the woman.
And that's how Sergei ended up in the stinky toilet behind the service station, near the Calor gas canisters, a rare closed sign on the front door of the 24-hr service station and a blonde bouncing around on top of him, rising and falling at a steady rhythm, his face and other parts smothered with red lipstick. Maybe working in such a lonely place had it's benefits after all.
"I never did pay you for that petrol," said the woman, inhaling another Benson and letting the smoke curl round her lips.
"Don't worry about it, I pick up the tab," said Sergei.
She turned to Sergei and gave him the kind of hard stare that Paddington Bear would have been proud of, "Not on your nelly, mate! What do you take me for? A prozzy or somthink?" she said.
[I must point out that it's now 3am. Sergei's on the night shift. The graveyard shift in this out of the way place, the wrong side of a major road.]
Behind the till, the telephone is ringing. It's the area manager. He's had a report that a closed sign has been seen on the front door of 'Gable Dongle' [that's the name of Sergei's service station]. Sergei pushes past the girl, singeing his trousers on the tip of her fag, and collects the receiver.
Can he explain the closed sign?
"Well, I heard something, out on the forecourt. Turned out to be a hedgehog. I followed it round the back to the Calor gas cage," said Sergei.
Hedgehog? What?
"I gave him some milk," said Sergei.
You what? That's coming out of your wages, my son!
Sergei replaced the receiver, shaking his head. He was saving up. Working hard. He had a plan. A vision. A chip shop in a small town. He'd done his research.
"You coming back, Sergei?" It was Donna from Dartford.
"Yes," said Sergei, "my hedgehog needs a little more milk."
Now it was Donna's turn to shake her head, "Yes, Sergei, you're strange. Different."
Monday 22 March 2010
Something of an interlude: The Cyclist gets philosophical
[this is face on - from the third eye of the cyclist, way up inside his forehead...]
Apart from the fact that I've floated around in a lager bubble for the past few days, passing through time zones and vortices, it has to be said that I've been floating around in a lager-induced bubble for even longer.
Cycling is a way to get from one drinking zone, to another. Without getting busted.
I met up with the freaks at the canal - who are they, Duggie Chop and his mate. We kind of gelled. But they're regular guys. It's me that's the freak in all honesty.
I haven't faced up to it, yet, but I'm, kind of, in denial. In denial of what? Of being an adult.
I haven't walked shoulder to shoulder with anyone. Not recently. I think back to me Nan. She understood me. I remember, we was walking down the street on a summers day. About 20 years ago. I was a teenager, 15 years old probably. So I was still living at home, at school and the like.
So, me and me Nan was walking down the street, the one that runs parallel with Carnegie Road, the one with the new shopping centre these days. And me Nan say's Colm (cos that's me name, I'm not actually called The Cyclist), "you've got such broad shoulders", and she patted me on the back, "and you're gonna make some girl proud, you know. Ah yes."
She really thought I could do anything. I think I was her favourite. When I left home she sent me a note setting the record straight about life and what was in store for me; the ups and the downs. She used to listen to the crap songs I wrote on me little Casio keyboard. She thought I was a great artist.
"Colm," she said, "you'll make something of your life. You won't be the kind to turn around aged 35 and regret not making it."
Then, all of a sudden, I was 35 and on the dole. Me Nan had passed on. But I still hold the image of her, turning to me on that warm, sunny day and patting me on the back.
I got hold of a bike, second hand, and filled up a bag with tins of Red Stripe. And that's me.
When we become adults, you know, we continue to disappoint: both ourselves and those around us.
The moments of being like a 'little emperor' in your home are short. But you never believe it when you're a kid.
[And after that, he came back into the real world with the others gawping at Geoffrey from Rainbow's face. It was still 1982 (this is the real world!) and maybe The Cyclist would, eventually, seek out his Nan...maybe he'd straighten out his life, but who knows.]
Apart from the fact that I've floated around in a lager bubble for the past few days, passing through time zones and vortices, it has to be said that I've been floating around in a lager-induced bubble for even longer.
Cycling is a way to get from one drinking zone, to another. Without getting busted.
I met up with the freaks at the canal - who are they, Duggie Chop and his mate. We kind of gelled. But they're regular guys. It's me that's the freak in all honesty.
I haven't faced up to it, yet, but I'm, kind of, in denial. In denial of what? Of being an adult.
I haven't walked shoulder to shoulder with anyone. Not recently. I think back to me Nan. She understood me. I remember, we was walking down the street on a summers day. About 20 years ago. I was a teenager, 15 years old probably. So I was still living at home, at school and the like.
So, me and me Nan was walking down the street, the one that runs parallel with Carnegie Road, the one with the new shopping centre these days. And me Nan say's Colm (cos that's me name, I'm not actually called The Cyclist), "you've got such broad shoulders", and she patted me on the back, "and you're gonna make some girl proud, you know. Ah yes."
She really thought I could do anything. I think I was her favourite. When I left home she sent me a note setting the record straight about life and what was in store for me; the ups and the downs. She used to listen to the crap songs I wrote on me little Casio keyboard. She thought I was a great artist.
"Colm," she said, "you'll make something of your life. You won't be the kind to turn around aged 35 and regret not making it."
Then, all of a sudden, I was 35 and on the dole. Me Nan had passed on. But I still hold the image of her, turning to me on that warm, sunny day and patting me on the back.
I got hold of a bike, second hand, and filled up a bag with tins of Red Stripe. And that's me.
When we become adults, you know, we continue to disappoint: both ourselves and those around us.
The moments of being like a 'little emperor' in your home are short. But you never believe it when you're a kid.
[And after that, he came back into the real world with the others gawping at Geoffrey from Rainbow's face. It was still 1982 (this is the real world!) and maybe The Cyclist would, eventually, seek out his Nan...maybe he'd straighten out his life, but who knows.]
Thursday 11 March 2010
The Bubble Explodes!
The story continues…
In the distance: a man washing his car. Pike, submerged in a polythene vat of lager, saw it first.
Pike couldn’t communicate the fact that he’d seen the future - life in collision with a bucket of soapy water that was being sloshed over the bonnet of an ‘X’-plate Renault 18 (resplendent in a kind of burnt amber metallic coachwork). [Like I say, he was in a flaming vat of lager! And he’s only a fish!]
[Note: “In this case, the future is the past,” so says Dr. Wagner, a time specialist. He continues: “At this moment, life in the lager bubble is floating towards the past, towards 1982. And yet, the past is being experienced as the present by the travellers.
Now, Mr Pike, if I may call him Mr Pike, can see the future: the collision with the bubble of lager and the soap bubbles. But, that future, by the nature of time travel, is in the past. 1982. And it is, therefore, the relative past of our journeying friends in the bubble: Duggie and his mate, the Cyclist and Mr Pike.
So, the question is: what constitutes the future, when the future is - relatively or otherwise – the past? And, if they are travelling towards the past are their body-clocks running backwards, like the analogue odometer of a car in reverse? Thus, are the compatriots actually getting younger? And so…]
“’E’s making a lot of bubbles, that Pike,” said Duggie, “it’s like he’s trying to tell us something.”
“Like Lassie, you mean?” said the cyclist.
“Yeah, only he’s not as strokable,” said Duggie.
[Just then, a huge orb rose up towards the floating bubble, transporting their orangey-yellow, lager-tinted world through the rainbow of a prism that slithered like a film of oil.
Then the lager bubble and the orb - a soap sud, in actual fact - plopped together and stuck like mating cray flies. And as it joined them, the oily-prism-rainbow burst the lager bubble and the soap-sud-bubble-rainbow-prism-oilyness became their reality. Their new world.]
(“Up above the streets and houses, rainbow flying high…everyone can see it smiling, over the sky” the soundtrack was in their minds)
The sheer weight of the soap bubble with the four ‘friends’ inside [“Hey!” said Pike, “don’t forget – I’m a victim here! Not a friend!” Ok, ok, that’s why I put inverted commas round the word friends says Steve.] makes the bubble stop rising and drop like a rock towards the sudsy bucket.
“I knew it!” gurgled the Pike. No one heard him.
“We’re dropping too fast – too fast!” said Duggie’s mate, slipping and sliding like Buster Keaton on marbles.
When they hit the bucket of soapy water, Apollo 11 stylee, the bubble exploded and merged with the rest of the suds.
It was catastrophic for our heroes, who, as if by magic, became full-sized, splitting the bucket into a prosthetic spring flower - the sides splayed out flat and white against a grey, car-bubble-water-wet tarmac – covered by the sprawling figures of Duggie, his mate, the cyclist and the pike…
Dazed for a moment, they opened their eyes simultaneously [except the Pike, whose eyes couldn’t close], and looked into the silhouetted face of Geoffrey from Rainbow, who’d been washing his new car. “What the…” he said.
In the distance: a man washing his car. Pike, submerged in a polythene vat of lager, saw it first.
Pike couldn’t communicate the fact that he’d seen the future - life in collision with a bucket of soapy water that was being sloshed over the bonnet of an ‘X’-plate Renault 18 (resplendent in a kind of burnt amber metallic coachwork). [Like I say, he was in a flaming vat of lager! And he’s only a fish!]
[Note: “In this case, the future is the past,” so says Dr. Wagner, a time specialist. He continues: “At this moment, life in the lager bubble is floating towards the past, towards 1982. And yet, the past is being experienced as the present by the travellers.
Now, Mr Pike, if I may call him Mr Pike, can see the future: the collision with the bubble of lager and the soap bubbles. But, that future, by the nature of time travel, is in the past. 1982. And it is, therefore, the relative past of our journeying friends in the bubble: Duggie and his mate, the Cyclist and Mr Pike.
So, the question is: what constitutes the future, when the future is - relatively or otherwise – the past? And, if they are travelling towards the past are their body-clocks running backwards, like the analogue odometer of a car in reverse? Thus, are the compatriots actually getting younger? And so…]
“’E’s making a lot of bubbles, that Pike,” said Duggie, “it’s like he’s trying to tell us something.”
“Like Lassie, you mean?” said the cyclist.
“Yeah, only he’s not as strokable,” said Duggie.
[Just then, a huge orb rose up towards the floating bubble, transporting their orangey-yellow, lager-tinted world through the rainbow of a prism that slithered like a film of oil.
Then the lager bubble and the orb - a soap sud, in actual fact - plopped together and stuck like mating cray flies. And as it joined them, the oily-prism-rainbow burst the lager bubble and the soap-sud-bubble-rainbow-prism-oilyness became their reality. Their new world.]
(“Up above the streets and houses, rainbow flying high…everyone can see it smiling, over the sky” the soundtrack was in their minds)
The sheer weight of the soap bubble with the four ‘friends’ inside [“Hey!” said Pike, “don’t forget – I’m a victim here! Not a friend!” Ok, ok, that’s why I put inverted commas round the word friends says Steve.] makes the bubble stop rising and drop like a rock towards the sudsy bucket.
“I knew it!” gurgled the Pike. No one heard him.
“We’re dropping too fast – too fast!” said Duggie’s mate, slipping and sliding like Buster Keaton on marbles.
When they hit the bucket of soapy water, Apollo 11 stylee, the bubble exploded and merged with the rest of the suds.
It was catastrophic for our heroes, who, as if by magic, became full-sized, splitting the bucket into a prosthetic spring flower - the sides splayed out flat and white against a grey, car-bubble-water-wet tarmac – covered by the sprawling figures of Duggie, his mate, the cyclist and the pike…
Dazed for a moment, they opened their eyes simultaneously [except the Pike, whose eyes couldn’t close], and looked into the silhouetted face of Geoffrey from Rainbow, who’d been washing his new car. “What the…” he said.
Tuesday 2 March 2010
Interlude: Flight of the Bubble – (and ‘Flying’ by The Beatles) [NOTE: No Pikes were harmed in the scribbling of this drivel].
[‘Flying’ from The Beatles’s ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ is playing in the ethereal background as the lager bubble, containing our heroes - plus the cyclist and a 20lb pike, floats to another era. Inside the bubble, each of them is floating around in a weightless atmosphere. Just like the spacemen from Apollo, well Apollo anything really…]
“Being in here, listening to ‘Flying’, floating around, kind of reminds me of the ‘Space Bouncer’ that we used to get excited about when we were kids and came to the seaside,” said Duggie’s mate.
“What, you mean that orange and white sort of enclosed-bouncy-castle thing that they set up on the beach?” said Duggie.
“Yeah, you me and my cousins jumped about in that thing for hours until our feet were black (because you weren’t allowed shoes and socks in there)” said his mate, “and we were red and sweaty and ready for an ice cream.”
“I remember thinking about that bloody thing as soon as we hit the motorway on our way down – literally 5 minutes from home,” said Duggie.
“But you’d already polished off the sarnies by then…” said Duggie’s mate, completing a back-flip, just like disco dancer used to in the ‘70s, only they had gravity to contend with.
“Why didn’t it float away,” said the cyclist, attempting to slurp a line of Red Stripe that was floating past, he missed, “I mean, it was on the beach, that bouncy thing, so why didn’t it just float away? What did they tie it to?”
“I don’t know,” said Duggie’s mate, “that’s a really good question.”
“I really dig flying,” said Duggie, “one of my favourite Beatles tunes as it goes. I love the funky, twugging bassline…”
“Twugging?” said Duggie’s mate and the cyclist in unison.
[…gasping for oxygen] “Hey, you guys! Are you nuts?” It was the pike.
“Yeah, twugging,” said Duggie, “that kind of blobby late-‘60s, high-up-in-the-mix bass sound.”
“They used to use ‘Flying’ all the time on the telly, like when there was a documentary with hot-air balloons in it,” said the cyclist.
“I don’t remember many documentaries featuring hot-air balloons,” said Duggie, “I remember that Nimble bread advert, but that used different music.”
[…sound of heavy gill-movement] “Hey! I’m drowning here!” gasped the pike, “stop talking rubbish about music and GIVE ME SOME WATER!”
Duggie turned and gave the pike a Paddington Bear-like hard stare: “Listen, mate,” said Duggie, looking straight down his own arm as the pike was still attached to his fishing line, “this is ‘Me and Duggie Chop Talk Music’ you know. It’s kinda what we do here: talk crap about tunes we like.”
Duggie continued: “Before I was interrupted by our fishy friend, I’m also into the ‘stylophone-esque’ keyboard tone and the ‘la, la, la, la, la chorus on Flying.”
“And it’s only about a minute and a half long, amazing,” added Duggie’s mate.
Meanwhile, the cyclist was emptying the contents of a six-pack of 500ml cans of Red Stripe into a fold-up camping-style water-butt that he’d just pulled out of his rucksack, “Bung the bugger in there,” he said, belching, “that’ll sort him out.”
[So, Duggie, his mate, the cyclist and a soon-to-be drunk pike continued on their journey to 1982. Who’d have thought that you could ‘boldly go’ (that’s a reference to Star Trek rather than an unintentional split-infinitive) so far in a bubble of lager? And they say there’s no chemicals in it…]
“Don’t forget,” said Duggie’s mate, as the bubble floated out of sight, “the Walrus was Paul.”
“Being in here, listening to ‘Flying’, floating around, kind of reminds me of the ‘Space Bouncer’ that we used to get excited about when we were kids and came to the seaside,” said Duggie’s mate.
“What, you mean that orange and white sort of enclosed-bouncy-castle thing that they set up on the beach?” said Duggie.
“Yeah, you me and my cousins jumped about in that thing for hours until our feet were black (because you weren’t allowed shoes and socks in there)” said his mate, “and we were red and sweaty and ready for an ice cream.”
“I remember thinking about that bloody thing as soon as we hit the motorway on our way down – literally 5 minutes from home,” said Duggie.
“But you’d already polished off the sarnies by then…” said Duggie’s mate, completing a back-flip, just like disco dancer used to in the ‘70s, only they had gravity to contend with.
“Why didn’t it float away,” said the cyclist, attempting to slurp a line of Red Stripe that was floating past, he missed, “I mean, it was on the beach, that bouncy thing, so why didn’t it just float away? What did they tie it to?”
“I don’t know,” said Duggie’s mate, “that’s a really good question.”
“I really dig flying,” said Duggie, “one of my favourite Beatles tunes as it goes. I love the funky, twugging bassline…”
“Twugging?” said Duggie’s mate and the cyclist in unison.
[…gasping for oxygen] “Hey, you guys! Are you nuts?” It was the pike.
“Yeah, twugging,” said Duggie, “that kind of blobby late-‘60s, high-up-in-the-mix bass sound.”
“They used to use ‘Flying’ all the time on the telly, like when there was a documentary with hot-air balloons in it,” said the cyclist.
“I don’t remember many documentaries featuring hot-air balloons,” said Duggie, “I remember that Nimble bread advert, but that used different music.”
[…sound of heavy gill-movement] “Hey! I’m drowning here!” gasped the pike, “stop talking rubbish about music and GIVE ME SOME WATER!”
Duggie turned and gave the pike a Paddington Bear-like hard stare: “Listen, mate,” said Duggie, looking straight down his own arm as the pike was still attached to his fishing line, “this is ‘Me and Duggie Chop Talk Music’ you know. It’s kinda what we do here: talk crap about tunes we like.”
Duggie continued: “Before I was interrupted by our fishy friend, I’m also into the ‘stylophone-esque’ keyboard tone and the ‘la, la, la, la, la chorus on Flying.”
“And it’s only about a minute and a half long, amazing,” added Duggie’s mate.
Meanwhile, the cyclist was emptying the contents of a six-pack of 500ml cans of Red Stripe into a fold-up camping-style water-butt that he’d just pulled out of his rucksack, “Bung the bugger in there,” he said, belching, “that’ll sort him out.”
[So, Duggie, his mate, the cyclist and a soon-to-be drunk pike continued on their journey to 1982. Who’d have thought that you could ‘boldly go’ (that’s a reference to Star Trek rather than an unintentional split-infinitive) so far in a bubble of lager? And they say there’s no chemicals in it…]
“Don’t forget,” said Duggie’s mate, as the bubble floated out of sight, “the Walrus was Paul.”
Friday 26 February 2010
The Bubbles Are Rising - Duggie and his mate on Iron Maiden, Iron Maiden (1980), Pikes, Pies and Red Stripe.
“The bubbles are rising, all golden and twirly and popping at the top of the glass. It’s given me an idea” says a random Lager drinker, who just happens to be using my web-surfing credits at the Cyber Café, as I nip round the back for a leak.
“If it was up to me,” says Lager man – who can now have square brackets ‘[…]’ (like those? – YES!)
[If it was up to me, I’d grab those poor sods from 1982 (that’s Duggie Chop and his mate) cos they’ve been stuck in that room with them musos breathing in 'Bob Hope' for too damn long. I’m gonna take ‘em back to the river (canal) bank, man! – hey…where am I going…AHHHH. (he becomes a cyclist)]
“As the sun sets, the sky is like a blank canvas, especially in February,” said Duggie’s mate, watching Duggie fiddle with his rod.
“You been reading poetry again?” said Duggie and he pricked his finger on a hook.
“No, not today. But look Dug. It’s like cracked ice on top of liquid Turkish Delight, that sky. Surrounded by peach melba and touched up with crushed Parma Violets,” said his mate.
Duggie added, shaking his head: “don’t forget the Corporation-grit-grey, I can see titillations of that up there, you soft get!”
Duggie went back to the canal edge and cast his bait into the middle of the water. Live bait. He was after the pike: “I’m gonna get that bugger!”
“Especially after what he did to poor old Mr Stickleback – scared him half to death,” said Duggie’s mate.
“Needs taking down a peg or two,” said Duggie.
What’s the underwater equivalent of a peg?” said Duggie’s mate.
[Mr Stickleback: “There isn’t one! We don’t have clothes lines or noses!”]
A guy cycled past with a retro-spec ‘ghetto-blaster’ strapped to the back of his bike, blaring out ‘old-skool’ Heavy Metal [actually, Maiden were at the forefront of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal back in the day]: Iron Maiden’s eponymous first album.
“Hey, Paul Di’anno on vocals, he was the greatest singer Maiden had, wasn’t he?” said Duggie.
“Get outta here!” said Duggie’s mate, “the greatest if Maiden had wanted to stay a pub band, or touring with the likes of ‘Saxon’ forever.”
“A bit strong,” said Duggie, “but I know where you’re coming from: Brucie had a bit more ambition .”
“And a bit less booze,” said the cyclist, who’d decided to hang out with the guys and threw them each a luke-warm can of Red Stripe.
“I always think of Lucozade when I hear that opening riff to Phantom Of The Opera on that album,” said Duggie’s mate, ”remember they used it in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LtaD63zYoQ. Something like a set of traffic lights change or a runner runs around a track or something…”
“Nah. They used Running Free [also from Iron Maiden, Iron Maiden] for the ad with the runner,” said the cyclist, sneezing a stream of lager though his left nostril.
“Got me into ‘prog’ that did,” said Duggie.
“What lucozade?” said his mate.
“No, Phantom Of The Opera,” said Duggie, easing his fishing line a little, so the bait wiggled. Just to tantalise that big fat pike, “all those time changes and guitar sections. Like a bloody opera. Di’anno sounds great on that track. In fact, I’m gonna stand by this: Di’anno sounds better on all pre-Bruce Dickinson tracks than Brucie does when he tries ‘em.” Duggie cracked open his Red Stripe, spraying lager over the cyclist’s rucksack.
“There’s something in that,” said the Cyclist, sucking the dregs out of his can and opening another.
Duggie’s mate was fiddling with a jammed ring pull on his can while he spoke: “I like the way Di’anno does Remember Tomorrow. He was a better ballad singer than the ‘Air-Raid Siren’ [Bruce Dickinson’s old nickname].
Duggie bit into a warm pie. “Cover was great,” he said, “a punk Eddie, just starting out. A sneering smile, leather jacket, spiked hair and all. A Derek Riggs classic.”
“I like the back cover, too,” said Duggie’s mate, still no closer to opening his Red Stripe, though he tried, “such a simple stage backdrop, tht silver Eddie head with smoke coming out of it, behind Clive Burr…”
“Now he really was the best. Best Drummer they ever had,” said the cyclist. The other two nodded, while eating their pies.
“Amazing how the Iron Maiden stage show got so big. I mean by 1985, they had hundreds of ‘arctics’ circumnavigating the globe. Says so in the ‘Live After Death’ album.” Said Duggie’s mate.
But the other two were looking at the canal. Duggie’s float was bobbing like crazy.
“It’s the pike!” said Duggie, “I’ve got him!”
“Be great to see that monster,” said the cyclist, “he’s legendary. Once ate a puppy. No word of a lie.”
Duggie’s mate was still flicking his ring-pull, the salt from his pie was making even a warm lager seem inviting, but it just would not open.
“Wow!” said Duggie as he pulled his line, “look at the size of his snout!”
“Like a bleedin’ duck-billed platypus or something,” said the cyclist, “and look how he’s snapping! The worm didn’t stand a chance.”
“Worm?” said Duggie, “I put a bloody mouse on there!”
Just then, Duggie’s mate’s can of Red Stripe exploded into a huge fountain of golden bubbles.
One bubble grew to the size of an elevator and before Duggie’s mate could warn the other two - and the pike - they were all inside the bubble and drifting upwards.
Upwards and on their way back to 1982. Duggie, his mate, the cyclist. And the Pike.
“If it was up to me,” says Lager man – who can now have square brackets ‘[…]’ (like those? – YES!)
[If it was up to me, I’d grab those poor sods from 1982 (that’s Duggie Chop and his mate) cos they’ve been stuck in that room with them musos breathing in 'Bob Hope' for too damn long. I’m gonna take ‘em back to the river (canal) bank, man! – hey…where am I going…AHHHH. (he becomes a cyclist)]
“As the sun sets, the sky is like a blank canvas, especially in February,” said Duggie’s mate, watching Duggie fiddle with his rod.
“You been reading poetry again?” said Duggie and he pricked his finger on a hook.
“No, not today. But look Dug. It’s like cracked ice on top of liquid Turkish Delight, that sky. Surrounded by peach melba and touched up with crushed Parma Violets,” said his mate.
Duggie added, shaking his head: “don’t forget the Corporation-grit-grey, I can see titillations of that up there, you soft get!”
Duggie went back to the canal edge and cast his bait into the middle of the water. Live bait. He was after the pike: “I’m gonna get that bugger!”
“Especially after what he did to poor old Mr Stickleback – scared him half to death,” said Duggie’s mate.
“Needs taking down a peg or two,” said Duggie.
What’s the underwater equivalent of a peg?” said Duggie’s mate.
[Mr Stickleback: “There isn’t one! We don’t have clothes lines or noses!”]
A guy cycled past with a retro-spec ‘ghetto-blaster’ strapped to the back of his bike, blaring out ‘old-skool’ Heavy Metal [actually, Maiden were at the forefront of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal back in the day]: Iron Maiden’s eponymous first album.
“Hey, Paul Di’anno on vocals, he was the greatest singer Maiden had, wasn’t he?” said Duggie.
“Get outta here!” said Duggie’s mate, “the greatest if Maiden had wanted to stay a pub band, or touring with the likes of ‘Saxon’ forever.”
“A bit strong,” said Duggie, “but I know where you’re coming from: Brucie had a bit more ambition .”
“And a bit less booze,” said the cyclist, who’d decided to hang out with the guys and threw them each a luke-warm can of Red Stripe.
“I always think of Lucozade when I hear that opening riff to Phantom Of The Opera on that album,” said Duggie’s mate, ”remember they used it in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LtaD63zYoQ. Something like a set of traffic lights change or a runner runs around a track or something…”
“Nah. They used Running Free [also from Iron Maiden, Iron Maiden] for the ad with the runner,” said the cyclist, sneezing a stream of lager though his left nostril.
“Got me into ‘prog’ that did,” said Duggie.
“What lucozade?” said his mate.
“No, Phantom Of The Opera,” said Duggie, easing his fishing line a little, so the bait wiggled. Just to tantalise that big fat pike, “all those time changes and guitar sections. Like a bloody opera. Di’anno sounds great on that track. In fact, I’m gonna stand by this: Di’anno sounds better on all pre-Bruce Dickinson tracks than Brucie does when he tries ‘em.” Duggie cracked open his Red Stripe, spraying lager over the cyclist’s rucksack.
“There’s something in that,” said the Cyclist, sucking the dregs out of his can and opening another.
Duggie’s mate was fiddling with a jammed ring pull on his can while he spoke: “I like the way Di’anno does Remember Tomorrow. He was a better ballad singer than the ‘Air-Raid Siren’ [Bruce Dickinson’s old nickname].
Duggie bit into a warm pie. “Cover was great,” he said, “a punk Eddie, just starting out. A sneering smile, leather jacket, spiked hair and all. A Derek Riggs classic.”
“I like the back cover, too,” said Duggie’s mate, still no closer to opening his Red Stripe, though he tried, “such a simple stage backdrop, tht silver Eddie head with smoke coming out of it, behind Clive Burr…”
“Now he really was the best. Best Drummer they ever had,” said the cyclist. The other two nodded, while eating their pies.
“Amazing how the Iron Maiden stage show got so big. I mean by 1985, they had hundreds of ‘arctics’ circumnavigating the globe. Says so in the ‘Live After Death’ album.” Said Duggie’s mate.
But the other two were looking at the canal. Duggie’s float was bobbing like crazy.
“It’s the pike!” said Duggie, “I’ve got him!”
“Be great to see that monster,” said the cyclist, “he’s legendary. Once ate a puppy. No word of a lie.”
Duggie’s mate was still flicking his ring-pull, the salt from his pie was making even a warm lager seem inviting, but it just would not open.
“Wow!” said Duggie as he pulled his line, “look at the size of his snout!”
“Like a bleedin’ duck-billed platypus or something,” said the cyclist, “and look how he’s snapping! The worm didn’t stand a chance.”
“Worm?” said Duggie, “I put a bloody mouse on there!”
Just then, Duggie’s mate’s can of Red Stripe exploded into a huge fountain of golden bubbles.
One bubble grew to the size of an elevator and before Duggie’s mate could warn the other two - and the pike - they were all inside the bubble and drifting upwards.
Upwards and on their way back to 1982. Duggie, his mate, the cyclist. And the Pike.
Tuesday 23 February 2010
Can you take the past seriously - when you've been there recently?
Spending time with your heroes. [Duggie Chop being philosophical]
About as natural as spreading honey on a smear of excrement.
And the way Matt [that’s Matt Score from Hair Tom – look at the earlier posts for info. Go on! You know you want to!] – sky high on Coca-Cola – was looking at the pair of us as if we were a sample of the honey and crap mix, residing on the sole of his Hush Puppy.
The other thing is, travelling back in time, you know, you’re never really there. [again, look it up, Duggie and his mate were back in 1982, or have been for a while now…] It’s like you’re always comparing things. Technology, the fact people can and do smoke anywhere, old cars that look new, fashions.
1982. Not just the year good taste forgot (I realise people were still tainted by the ‘70s until about 1985). 1982 is the year people have forgotten [Steve Hill obviously hasn’t, he writes this garbage] except for The Falklands.
Mainstream music was pants - nothing new there – telly was a pale imitation of life, except Minder, on three, soon to be four channels.
Start of Channel 4 [looking through Duggie’s eyes at his boring upbringing]
Duggie remembers the start of Channel 4 really well.
It was an exciting innovation. It sticks in Duggie’s mind because he had to fix a puncture on is bike - fast – so he didn’t miss the first edition of ‘Countdown’ ever broadcast.
Winter. A dark afternoon. Duggie sat in his parent’s front-room (“it was a front room, too,” says Duggie, “before they built the extension round the back of the house and moved the room there. I saw Tommy Cooper peg-out in the same room.”) he was wearing a baggy green, hand-knitted jumper. His fingers were caked in bike grease as he watched the new future unfold.
(“Early C4 was strange, the shows had no atmosphere, like fresh plaster drying in an unpainted new-build dining room”, says Duggie).
Once you’d been in the future and were a backward moving time-traveller, you couldn’t sit there like Duggie did that day in his parents front room, fingers smelling of rubber from his new inner-tube.
Channel Four travelled a timeline from showing unseen-for-years classic ‘60s films, like ‘Billy Liar’ and ‘Georgie Girl’ and resurrecting The Prisoner with Patrick McGoohan and Man About The House, to wading through the cess-pool of ‘reality TV’ and Property shows.
And TV went from something to catch – or you missed it – unless you had a £400 VHS recorder, to something to sample or discard at your own leisure, using iPlayer, DVD and Sky boxes.
“Duggie!” said Duggie’s mum, “your dinner’s ready. You want it in the front-room, so you can watch the new telly thingy?”
“Yes, Mum. What we got?” he said, picking some black muck from under his fingernails with his front teeth.
“Foreign. Them new frozen chicken Kievs,” said Duggie’s mum, “and a Findus mince pancake with minted, processed peas.”
Yes, when you’d seen the future, you couldn’t really take the past seriously.
About as natural as spreading honey on a smear of excrement.
And the way Matt [that’s Matt Score from Hair Tom – look at the earlier posts for info. Go on! You know you want to!] – sky high on Coca-Cola – was looking at the pair of us as if we were a sample of the honey and crap mix, residing on the sole of his Hush Puppy.
The other thing is, travelling back in time, you know, you’re never really there. [again, look it up, Duggie and his mate were back in 1982, or have been for a while now…] It’s like you’re always comparing things. Technology, the fact people can and do smoke anywhere, old cars that look new, fashions.
1982. Not just the year good taste forgot (I realise people were still tainted by the ‘70s until about 1985). 1982 is the year people have forgotten [Steve Hill obviously hasn’t, he writes this garbage] except for The Falklands.
Mainstream music was pants - nothing new there – telly was a pale imitation of life, except Minder, on three, soon to be four channels.
Start of Channel 4 [looking through Duggie’s eyes at his boring upbringing]
Duggie remembers the start of Channel 4 really well.
It was an exciting innovation. It sticks in Duggie’s mind because he had to fix a puncture on is bike - fast – so he didn’t miss the first edition of ‘Countdown’ ever broadcast.
Winter. A dark afternoon. Duggie sat in his parent’s front-room (“it was a front room, too,” says Duggie, “before they built the extension round the back of the house and moved the room there. I saw Tommy Cooper peg-out in the same room.”) he was wearing a baggy green, hand-knitted jumper. His fingers were caked in bike grease as he watched the new future unfold.
(“Early C4 was strange, the shows had no atmosphere, like fresh plaster drying in an unpainted new-build dining room”, says Duggie).
Once you’d been in the future and were a backward moving time-traveller, you couldn’t sit there like Duggie did that day in his parents front room, fingers smelling of rubber from his new inner-tube.
Channel Four travelled a timeline from showing unseen-for-years classic ‘60s films, like ‘Billy Liar’ and ‘Georgie Girl’ and resurrecting The Prisoner with Patrick McGoohan and Man About The House, to wading through the cess-pool of ‘reality TV’ and Property shows.
And TV went from something to catch – or you missed it – unless you had a £400 VHS recorder, to something to sample or discard at your own leisure, using iPlayer, DVD and Sky boxes.
“Duggie!” said Duggie’s mum, “your dinner’s ready. You want it in the front-room, so you can watch the new telly thingy?”
“Yes, Mum. What we got?” he said, picking some black muck from under his fingernails with his front teeth.
“Foreign. Them new frozen chicken Kievs,” said Duggie’s mum, “and a Findus mince pancake with minted, processed peas.”
Yes, when you’d seen the future, you couldn’t really take the past seriously.
Sunday 21 February 2010
Lee's assistant's grandad's dead. Gloria's story.
[Owner of the Chinese Chippy, known as Lee - a very minor, unseen character in the ‘Sturgess Café’ story - has an assistant. An 18 year-old student, Gloria. Her granddad died when she was six. Here’s Gloria’s story]
When Grandad died, there were 32 people in our front room. I know that because it’s the highest number that I could count to back then.
Mum didn’t ever let me eat without a plate in the front room, she was so worried about crumbs. But Aunty Kellie dropped half a pie on the floor and her husband Brad, from America (that’s how everyone referred to him) trod it in.
“Christ, Brad!” said Aunty Kellie, “can’t you watch where you’re stepping?”
“Hey, take it easy will ya,” said Brad, in a high-pitched whining voice, “you dropped the Goddamn thing!”
I could see Mum waving her hands, dismissing the squashed pie as if it didn’t matter. She was trying to keep things under control.
“Tense,” that’s what I heard Dad say to his friend Michael, the one who was restoring a rusty Cortina, “everybody’s a bit strung-out today.” Michael nodded, jangling his Cortina keys in time with each nod.
The day before he died, Grandad had been arguing with the TV man.
“When I turn on Channel 4 racing,” he said, juggling an unlit roll-up in his lips, “it’s a fuzzy picture. Like being up the Brighton course during a sea fret.”
“There’s nothing wrong with it, mate,” said the TV man.
“You bloody what!” said Grandad. And so it went on, “Bloody Japanese…”
Mum told me that Grandad had cataracts. That’s why he squashed Kipper the budgie when he hopped out of his cage onto the carpet. Couldn’t see him. I was so upset because I saw Kippers crushed head attached by a sinew of bird brain to Grandad’s slippers.
A freezing mist fell as we drove to the cemetery, the chill felt worse as we were driving so slowly. Why do hearses go so slow? It’s not as if the person who’s party it is would care.
And as we walked behind the coffin, fresh and shining wood, I imagined Grandad lying in there, looking the way he used to when he stayed over at our place and couldn’t be bothered to get up before we went to school (my brother) and nursery (me). But this time he wouldn’t be snoring.
He collapsed the morning after the TV man came. Brad, from America was the only person in the house. Brad, from America saw him on the patio window. Grandad had been mowing the lawn using a big, heavy petrol mower, his pride and joy – totally against the advice of Dr Akeel.
Brad, from America called 911. Yes, he got it wrong. Tried several times before abandoning the call altogether and pulling Grandad into his car.
Grandad died on the way to hospital. The Doctor in Casualty said he might have survived if the paramedics had treated him in the garden.
That’s why things had been so tense in the house on the day of the funeral.
Brad, from America didn’t know that 999 existed. He’d only been in the country for a few days.
When they put Grandad in the ground that dull day, the sun came out. Just once. The rays through the gloom kind of cuddled me, put they’re warm ‘arms’ round me.
I’m sure that it was Grandad. His spirit shining down. Then I remembered the last time I saw him, waving good bye through the kitchen window. We didn’t speak that day.
When Grandad died, there were 32 people in our front room. I know that because it’s the highest number that I could count to back then.
Mum didn’t ever let me eat without a plate in the front room, she was so worried about crumbs. But Aunty Kellie dropped half a pie on the floor and her husband Brad, from America (that’s how everyone referred to him) trod it in.
“Christ, Brad!” said Aunty Kellie, “can’t you watch where you’re stepping?”
“Hey, take it easy will ya,” said Brad, in a high-pitched whining voice, “you dropped the Goddamn thing!”
I could see Mum waving her hands, dismissing the squashed pie as if it didn’t matter. She was trying to keep things under control.
“Tense,” that’s what I heard Dad say to his friend Michael, the one who was restoring a rusty Cortina, “everybody’s a bit strung-out today.” Michael nodded, jangling his Cortina keys in time with each nod.
The day before he died, Grandad had been arguing with the TV man.
“When I turn on Channel 4 racing,” he said, juggling an unlit roll-up in his lips, “it’s a fuzzy picture. Like being up the Brighton course during a sea fret.”
“There’s nothing wrong with it, mate,” said the TV man.
“You bloody what!” said Grandad. And so it went on, “Bloody Japanese…”
Mum told me that Grandad had cataracts. That’s why he squashed Kipper the budgie when he hopped out of his cage onto the carpet. Couldn’t see him. I was so upset because I saw Kippers crushed head attached by a sinew of bird brain to Grandad’s slippers.
A freezing mist fell as we drove to the cemetery, the chill felt worse as we were driving so slowly. Why do hearses go so slow? It’s not as if the person who’s party it is would care.
And as we walked behind the coffin, fresh and shining wood, I imagined Grandad lying in there, looking the way he used to when he stayed over at our place and couldn’t be bothered to get up before we went to school (my brother) and nursery (me). But this time he wouldn’t be snoring.
He collapsed the morning after the TV man came. Brad, from America was the only person in the house. Brad, from America saw him on the patio window. Grandad had been mowing the lawn using a big, heavy petrol mower, his pride and joy – totally against the advice of Dr Akeel.
Brad, from America called 911. Yes, he got it wrong. Tried several times before abandoning the call altogether and pulling Grandad into his car.
Grandad died on the way to hospital. The Doctor in Casualty said he might have survived if the paramedics had treated him in the garden.
That’s why things had been so tense in the house on the day of the funeral.
Brad, from America didn’t know that 999 existed. He’d only been in the country for a few days.
When they put Grandad in the ground that dull day, the sun came out. Just once. The rays through the gloom kind of cuddled me, put they’re warm ‘arms’ round me.
I’m sure that it was Grandad. His spirit shining down. Then I remembered the last time I saw him, waving good bye through the kitchen window. We didn’t speak that day.
Wednesday 17 February 2010
The Story of Sturgess Cafe - Pt3
“Open the bloody door, open it!” said a skinhead, his DMs attempting to open the door by force. Kick, kick, kick, the noise of kicking was punctuated by the air-brakes on a bus, chuff, chuff, chuffing as the driver negotiated the tricky junction opposite.
[remember Pt 2 of the Sturgess Café story? On day 6, the bus passenger saw a shaven headed man kicking the door of the café. Here’s what happened…]
“My God!” said Nyman [Remember? He’s the ‘artist’ café owner], “he’ll have the thing down in no time. Nyman was hiding behind the one-way glass in the kitchen door.
“What do you expect, people are getting pissed about the café not being open,” said Seeke [his partner] demolishing a cheese burger between sentences, “Rachel’s was a great little café. It was doing a bomb, according to the books. I don’t think they would have sold up if Rachel hadn’t been bitten by that rabid dog in Brazil.
“How is she?” said Nyman. He didn’t really care, he was just saying anything to keep his nerves under control.
“I told you weeks ago, just after you put an offer in for this place. She’s emigrated to Melbourne. Got the money from an insurance claim, the dog owner just happened to be an airline’s security company.”
“Oi! Oi!” shouted the skinhead, “I’ll be back!” He pointed his finger in Nyman’s direction and then made a single finger salute. That gesture, combined with the almost comical sneer on the skinhead’s face, made Nyman think of a Skrewdriver album cover that the racist friend of a friend (who’d been busted out of the army on medical grounds – he may appear in a later instalment of this story) had shown him once, along with a collection of self-drawn charcoal sketches of Nazi soldiers.
“It doesn’t help your popularity keeping old ladies standing in the cold, while you stuff your face and laugh back here [reference to Pt 2 again]” said Seeke.
“You’re the one who doesn’t get it,” said Nyman, turning towards Seeke and flicking the kettle on, he was relieved that the nutter had at least left, “this is a major piece of art. The ‘Art Mag’ said so.”
“That ‘Art Mag’ journo had the hots for you!” said Seeke.
At the official launch of ‘The Café Project” - done in secret at Laughton’s Bar, a posh place on the other side of town - a flirtatious blonde-haired reporter from the Art Mag latched onto Nyman; partly because he had in his possession some pure-ish coke and she couldn’t resist a sniff or two (Which turned Nyman on all the more). It wasn’t likely that she’d be giving The Café Project a bad press anytime soon. Besides, Nyman had used a wodge of his Arts Council grant on lubricating the ensemble in Laughton’s. “Job’s a good ‘un!” he thought, before passing out on the toilet, beneath the writhing reporter. She didn’t notice, and, more importantly, neither did Seeke.
“A truly inclusive, original concept,” and “a response to the decline in interest in the moder High Street,” pretty much summed up the response in the cultural pages of the press to ‘The Café Project’.
“I mean, the High Street’s so compromised right now,” said Gray Wipper, arts correspondent of the Daily Liberated, “that’s what makes Nyman’s pro-ject sooo relevant. Irresistible!”
The Arts Council’s assessment: “What Nyman’s doing with the Sturgess Cafe is what we’ve needed for so long. A way of assisting local people with the re-evaluation of their locality and community through the medium of conceptual art. It’s a frank discussion of our future cultural life.”
Frank and his wife [she’s the bus passenger] had other things to discuss, beginning with: what would happen to the neighbourhood now these ‘unemployed’ people were moving in.
“It’s like that café,” said Frank, rubbing his bald head with rough hands, he’d spent his working life shifting blocks of concrete, “like a bloody squat. When’s that place bloody opening? Eh?”
“I rather like the orange chairs that they’ve installed,” said his wife, “reminds me of the seaside, like that little caff in Redcar.”
“They’ve never done a day’s work,” said Renee, who’d popped round for a tea. She was off sick from the library.
“Dunno why they don’t send ‘em somewhere.” Said Frank.
“But where?” said his wife.
“I dunno love. The army? Siberia? French Foreign Legion,” said Frank, “fancy going down the Chinky?”
[remember Pt 2 of the Sturgess Café story? On day 6, the bus passenger saw a shaven headed man kicking the door of the café. Here’s what happened…]
“My God!” said Nyman [Remember? He’s the ‘artist’ café owner], “he’ll have the thing down in no time. Nyman was hiding behind the one-way glass in the kitchen door.
“What do you expect, people are getting pissed about the café not being open,” said Seeke [his partner] demolishing a cheese burger between sentences, “Rachel’s was a great little café. It was doing a bomb, according to the books. I don’t think they would have sold up if Rachel hadn’t been bitten by that rabid dog in Brazil.
“How is she?” said Nyman. He didn’t really care, he was just saying anything to keep his nerves under control.
“I told you weeks ago, just after you put an offer in for this place. She’s emigrated to Melbourne. Got the money from an insurance claim, the dog owner just happened to be an airline’s security company.”
“Oi! Oi!” shouted the skinhead, “I’ll be back!” He pointed his finger in Nyman’s direction and then made a single finger salute. That gesture, combined with the almost comical sneer on the skinhead’s face, made Nyman think of a Skrewdriver album cover that the racist friend of a friend (who’d been busted out of the army on medical grounds – he may appear in a later instalment of this story) had shown him once, along with a collection of self-drawn charcoal sketches of Nazi soldiers.
“It doesn’t help your popularity keeping old ladies standing in the cold, while you stuff your face and laugh back here [reference to Pt 2 again]” said Seeke.
“You’re the one who doesn’t get it,” said Nyman, turning towards Seeke and flicking the kettle on, he was relieved that the nutter had at least left, “this is a major piece of art. The ‘Art Mag’ said so.”
“That ‘Art Mag’ journo had the hots for you!” said Seeke.
At the official launch of ‘The Café Project” - done in secret at Laughton’s Bar, a posh place on the other side of town - a flirtatious blonde-haired reporter from the Art Mag latched onto Nyman; partly because he had in his possession some pure-ish coke and she couldn’t resist a sniff or two (Which turned Nyman on all the more). It wasn’t likely that she’d be giving The Café Project a bad press anytime soon. Besides, Nyman had used a wodge of his Arts Council grant on lubricating the ensemble in Laughton’s. “Job’s a good ‘un!” he thought, before passing out on the toilet, beneath the writhing reporter. She didn’t notice, and, more importantly, neither did Seeke.
“A truly inclusive, original concept,” and “a response to the decline in interest in the moder High Street,” pretty much summed up the response in the cultural pages of the press to ‘The Café Project’.
“I mean, the High Street’s so compromised right now,” said Gray Wipper, arts correspondent of the Daily Liberated, “that’s what makes Nyman’s pro-ject sooo relevant. Irresistible!”
The Arts Council’s assessment: “What Nyman’s doing with the Sturgess Cafe is what we’ve needed for so long. A way of assisting local people with the re-evaluation of their locality and community through the medium of conceptual art. It’s a frank discussion of our future cultural life.”
Frank and his wife [she’s the bus passenger] had other things to discuss, beginning with: what would happen to the neighbourhood now these ‘unemployed’ people were moving in.
“It’s like that café,” said Frank, rubbing his bald head with rough hands, he’d spent his working life shifting blocks of concrete, “like a bloody squat. When’s that place bloody opening? Eh?”
“I rather like the orange chairs that they’ve installed,” said his wife, “reminds me of the seaside, like that little caff in Redcar.”
“They’ve never done a day’s work,” said Renee, who’d popped round for a tea. She was off sick from the library.
“Dunno why they don’t send ‘em somewhere.” Said Frank.
“But where?” said his wife.
“I dunno love. The army? Siberia? French Foreign Legion,” said Frank, “fancy going down the Chinky?”
Tuesday 16 February 2010
The Story of Sturgess Café pt 2
[View from the top deck of a passing bus - thoughts of a local passenger]
Day 1
Oh…Rachel’s old Caff’s been bought! How exciting! I could pop by there with Frank at the weekend.
Wonder when it opens?
Day 2
Well, the shutters are up. Can’t be long now. ‘Sturgess Café’, hmm it’s got a name.
I wonder if they do outside catering? We’ve got that wedding coming up. If I see a number I’ll give them a call – or get Sandra to do it.
Day 3
Ah, I can see inside now. There’s someone in there. I can see a few plates left out, on the tables. Mucky as far as I’m concerned! They should employ more staff. I wonder if young Julian could ask them if they have any vacancies, now he’s off from college?
Still, it’s only just opened. Then again, I’ve never actually seen the place open.
Day 4
No one I know has ever been in there. We have tried! All sorts of times of the day!
I mean, it’s 11am now, I catch different buses on different days, different times of the day.
It’s not as if they only open at lunchtimes. I know Gilbert went past yesterday afternoon and it still wasn’t open (although I go past at different times, I don’t come back until 5pm).
Gilbert said that the sign in the door said something about ‘family problems’. Like a bloomin’ soap opera, I shouldn’t wonder!
Day 5
I was really annoyed yesterday. Got off the bus near the Sturgess Café to find out about outside catering - Sandra hasn’t had time to ring - and I fanicied meeting up with Renee from the Library. She sent me a text message the other day, told me about the problems she was having with Timothy.
Anyway, the Café wasn’t open. We were stood there, outside in the freezing wind (it really whips round those tower-blocks on the Dogley Estate). Renee turned to light her fag out of the wind and noticed a note on the door. Really small lettering it had: “Watch This Space” it said.
“Watch This Space” said Renee through a cloud of smoke, “Watch This flamin’ Space,” she repeated (adding the expletive), her lungs erupting in a cackle of coughing, “what space?”
“I don’t know, I really don’t know,” I said, shaking my head and clutching my Daily Mail until the paper crinkled, “what is the world coming to?”
In the end we both popped into the Chinese chippy a couple of doors away. Lee’s got a few chairs opposite the counter. Had a Chinese tea (that weak stuff in a big pot) and a portion of chips each with a spring roll.
Day 6
There’s a young man with a shaven head kicking the door of Sturgess Café. And I must say, I don’t blame him!
[Time passes, not much changes]
Day 29
We don’t talk about it anymore.
The Sturgess Café. We don’t talk about it anymore.
Stupid place.
And it must be open some of the time, I mean, the shutters open and close. Lights on, then off. There’s even food left on the table. The menu changes and there’s these strange notices on the door.
Stupid place.
I wish life wasn’t so complicated these days.
Day 1
Oh…Rachel’s old Caff’s been bought! How exciting! I could pop by there with Frank at the weekend.
Wonder when it opens?
Day 2
Well, the shutters are up. Can’t be long now. ‘Sturgess Café’, hmm it’s got a name.
I wonder if they do outside catering? We’ve got that wedding coming up. If I see a number I’ll give them a call – or get Sandra to do it.
Day 3
Ah, I can see inside now. There’s someone in there. I can see a few plates left out, on the tables. Mucky as far as I’m concerned! They should employ more staff. I wonder if young Julian could ask them if they have any vacancies, now he’s off from college?
Still, it’s only just opened. Then again, I’ve never actually seen the place open.
Day 4
No one I know has ever been in there. We have tried! All sorts of times of the day!
I mean, it’s 11am now, I catch different buses on different days, different times of the day.
It’s not as if they only open at lunchtimes. I know Gilbert went past yesterday afternoon and it still wasn’t open (although I go past at different times, I don’t come back until 5pm).
Gilbert said that the sign in the door said something about ‘family problems’. Like a bloomin’ soap opera, I shouldn’t wonder!
Day 5
I was really annoyed yesterday. Got off the bus near the Sturgess Café to find out about outside catering - Sandra hasn’t had time to ring - and I fanicied meeting up with Renee from the Library. She sent me a text message the other day, told me about the problems she was having with Timothy.
Anyway, the Café wasn’t open. We were stood there, outside in the freezing wind (it really whips round those tower-blocks on the Dogley Estate). Renee turned to light her fag out of the wind and noticed a note on the door. Really small lettering it had: “Watch This Space” it said.
“Watch This Space” said Renee through a cloud of smoke, “Watch This flamin’ Space,” she repeated (adding the expletive), her lungs erupting in a cackle of coughing, “what space?”
“I don’t know, I really don’t know,” I said, shaking my head and clutching my Daily Mail until the paper crinkled, “what is the world coming to?”
In the end we both popped into the Chinese chippy a couple of doors away. Lee’s got a few chairs opposite the counter. Had a Chinese tea (that weak stuff in a big pot) and a portion of chips each with a spring roll.
Day 6
There’s a young man with a shaven head kicking the door of Sturgess Café. And I must say, I don’t blame him!
[Time passes, not much changes]
Day 29
We don’t talk about it anymore.
The Sturgess Café. We don’t talk about it anymore.
Stupid place.
And it must be open some of the time, I mean, the shutters open and close. Lights on, then off. There’s even food left on the table. The menu changes and there’s these strange notices on the door.
Stupid place.
I wish life wasn’t so complicated these days.
Tuesday 9 February 2010
Mr Stickleback and the Pike
Can’t sit still in a shady nook where I come from. Oh no!
So I’m swimming along, looking for some weed for the wife (It’s a delicacy down here. Hey, not the kind of weed you’re thinking of, though!) and I come across this beautiful stretch of riverbank. I mean, beautiful. Glistening with dappled light like you wouldn’t believe.
P’raps it’s difficult for you to think of a fish feeling like that, but I tell you, it stopped me in my wake.
I edged towards that tranquil place, thinking that I might get a few moments of float - a fishy version of a human doze – when…Whoosh!
I’ll say it again. Louder. WHOOSH!
A swirling of sediment and the whole riverbed is moving, while a big fish turns to look at me, a big green and brown striped Pike, a silvery streamlined monster.
Must be at least 3 foot long, this Pike, snout like a bird’s bill (and they don’t half send shivers through yer gills!) and two huge eyes, gleaming through the murk.
He was there waiting, that killer. In a peaceful, idyllic spot, waiting for his dinner to swim by, the lazy get! They never chase you. They just wait. Then. Snap, his jaws have sliced you in two. Filleted and down the hatch.
Pikes are cannibals. No less. Why, the female will often eat their mate after they’ve had it away with them. For dessert she’ll even try the kids!
Well, I wasn’t sticking around, no, not this little Stickleback. I mean, I’ve got a wife and kids waiting for me back in the canal. Not much meat on me for a whopping great Pike, but all the same, I might just make a tasty appetiser.
I dived down low, into the sludge and shook a bit, like I’d seen a John Dory do in a colour supplement, disturbing some more of the dirt and clouding the river water even more.
Yes, that’s right, a colour supplement. The people who deliver those free papers that you lot like to read - or line budgie cages with - they usually dump a few hundred in the canal. We all race over to read ‘em before they disintegrate. Yes, I can read and write (how else did you think I was telling you this story!)
Anyway, so there’s loads more sediment in the water, and I can tell that the Pike’s having trouble. His eyes are so big you see. Big eyes, more surface area to be irritated by the filth. And by this time I’m totally hidden in the mud.
He’s on the move now, that Pike and I can feel his slippery scales rubbing over mine as I lay in the river bed. Now it’s my turn to wait.
Didn’t have to wait long, though. He was gone. Like I said, they’re too lazy to take the trouble to hunt for you.
That’s enough from me. I’m off to listen to the latest Baroness album – the Blue Album. They’re a sludge metal band you see and all this talk of muddy riverbeds has whetted my appetite.
Happy hunting!
So I’m swimming along, looking for some weed for the wife (It’s a delicacy down here. Hey, not the kind of weed you’re thinking of, though!) and I come across this beautiful stretch of riverbank. I mean, beautiful. Glistening with dappled light like you wouldn’t believe.
P’raps it’s difficult for you to think of a fish feeling like that, but I tell you, it stopped me in my wake.
I edged towards that tranquil place, thinking that I might get a few moments of float - a fishy version of a human doze – when…Whoosh!
I’ll say it again. Louder. WHOOSH!
A swirling of sediment and the whole riverbed is moving, while a big fish turns to look at me, a big green and brown striped Pike, a silvery streamlined monster.
Must be at least 3 foot long, this Pike, snout like a bird’s bill (and they don’t half send shivers through yer gills!) and two huge eyes, gleaming through the murk.
He was there waiting, that killer. In a peaceful, idyllic spot, waiting for his dinner to swim by, the lazy get! They never chase you. They just wait. Then. Snap, his jaws have sliced you in two. Filleted and down the hatch.
Pikes are cannibals. No less. Why, the female will often eat their mate after they’ve had it away with them. For dessert she’ll even try the kids!
Well, I wasn’t sticking around, no, not this little Stickleback. I mean, I’ve got a wife and kids waiting for me back in the canal. Not much meat on me for a whopping great Pike, but all the same, I might just make a tasty appetiser.
I dived down low, into the sludge and shook a bit, like I’d seen a John Dory do in a colour supplement, disturbing some more of the dirt and clouding the river water even more.
Yes, that’s right, a colour supplement. The people who deliver those free papers that you lot like to read - or line budgie cages with - they usually dump a few hundred in the canal. We all race over to read ‘em before they disintegrate. Yes, I can read and write (how else did you think I was telling you this story!)
Anyway, so there’s loads more sediment in the water, and I can tell that the Pike’s having trouble. His eyes are so big you see. Big eyes, more surface area to be irritated by the filth. And by this time I’m totally hidden in the mud.
He’s on the move now, that Pike and I can feel his slippery scales rubbing over mine as I lay in the river bed. Now it’s my turn to wait.
Didn’t have to wait long, though. He was gone. Like I said, they’re too lazy to take the trouble to hunt for you.
That’s enough from me. I’m off to listen to the latest Baroness album – the Blue Album. They’re a sludge metal band you see and all this talk of muddy riverbeds has whetted my appetite.
Happy hunting!
Thursday 28 January 2010
The Story of Sturgess Cafe - Pt1
Shutters open, slowly. Dust explosion. Start of a new day.
Sturgess Cafe opposite the intersection with Coolridge Road and Kenton Street, is open for business. That is, it's open, but not for cafe business. Let me explain.
Although the cafe is set for a breakfast serving - knives and forks set out, polished vinyl on plywood tables buffed by the light of the early morning sun, menu and tomato shaped ketchup pot, next to a tall, cylindrical 'brown sauce' bottle – the front door remains locked.
A builder puts his hand over his eyes to peer into the glass window. He walks away shaking his head.
Nyman Chaw-Derek, artist, 31, sicks his head out from behind a faded curtain. Nearly spotted. He spends some of the late evening repositioning tables and chairs, moving menus, placing stains on the lino. Smearing areas of the cafe with grease. Telling the story of the life of a cafe. Without ever opening the doors. He runs the cafe – the project. It was his idea.
A cafe that never opens. But still lives. Part of the street, part of the life of local people, but not really existing.
Here's what Nyman's successful Arts Council funding application said (an extract):
“...this piece of art - Sturgess Cafe, the cafe that never opens - is a comment on the life of ephemera. When is a familiar object an artefact? An artwork? Is it possible to 'corrupt' the street scene - the heart of a local community, the High Street – with an artistic intervention? What question will people ask as they pass by? What questions will the cafe pose and ask of us? Will it impact on our identities, or purpose as human beings? How much of our environment do we really notice?”
“I suppose £50,000 will keep us in wine,” said Nyman's partner, Seeke.
“£50,000 [that's the grant he received per year for the 3 year cafe project, plus an additional £10k from the local council, to “enhance the regeneration of the urban cultural offer.”] is the tip of the iceburg.” said Nyman. “Seeke, if this goes national, I could be the new Damien Hurst, Tracey Emin and Banksy all rolled into one!”
“But why can't we just open the cafe, normally? Throw a big party, sell organic, locally sourced food...” said Seeke, before being interrupted by an uber-patronising Nyman.
“You're missing the point, love,” he said, “I'm a new urban knight, a creator of perceptions, a magician – a modern Merlin.”
“No you're not,” said Seeke, dialling the local bakers for a bacon butty delivery, “you're an ok painter with a creative block. Want brown or red with yours?”
Sturgess Cafe opposite the intersection with Coolridge Road and Kenton Street, is open for business. That is, it's open, but not for cafe business. Let me explain.
Although the cafe is set for a breakfast serving - knives and forks set out, polished vinyl on plywood tables buffed by the light of the early morning sun, menu and tomato shaped ketchup pot, next to a tall, cylindrical 'brown sauce' bottle – the front door remains locked.
A builder puts his hand over his eyes to peer into the glass window. He walks away shaking his head.
Nyman Chaw-Derek, artist, 31, sicks his head out from behind a faded curtain. Nearly spotted. He spends some of the late evening repositioning tables and chairs, moving menus, placing stains on the lino. Smearing areas of the cafe with grease. Telling the story of the life of a cafe. Without ever opening the doors. He runs the cafe – the project. It was his idea.
A cafe that never opens. But still lives. Part of the street, part of the life of local people, but not really existing.
Here's what Nyman's successful Arts Council funding application said (an extract):
“...this piece of art - Sturgess Cafe, the cafe that never opens - is a comment on the life of ephemera. When is a familiar object an artefact? An artwork? Is it possible to 'corrupt' the street scene - the heart of a local community, the High Street – with an artistic intervention? What question will people ask as they pass by? What questions will the cafe pose and ask of us? Will it impact on our identities, or purpose as human beings? How much of our environment do we really notice?”
“I suppose £50,000 will keep us in wine,” said Nyman's partner, Seeke.
“£50,000 [that's the grant he received per year for the 3 year cafe project, plus an additional £10k from the local council, to “enhance the regeneration of the urban cultural offer.”] is the tip of the iceburg.” said Nyman. “Seeke, if this goes national, I could be the new Damien Hurst, Tracey Emin and Banksy all rolled into one!”
“But why can't we just open the cafe, normally? Throw a big party, sell organic, locally sourced food...” said Seeke, before being interrupted by an uber-patronising Nyman.
“You're missing the point, love,” he said, “I'm a new urban knight, a creator of perceptions, a magician – a modern Merlin.”
“No you're not,” said Seeke, dialling the local bakers for a bacon butty delivery, “you're an ok painter with a creative block. Want brown or red with yours?”
Monday 25 January 2010
It all kinda fell apart...Duggie in '82, plus a little Quo-ology
When Duggie tried to grab a guitar, things kind of fell apart.
Doland, a bit shaky from the dope just cowered in the corner [remember, Duggie's a big lad - even when he was a lad].
Nels tripped over the guitar lead - now taut, as Duggie was pulling the guitar - and demolished the drum kit. This time, rather than a guitar amp, a cymbal crashed out the window. They could hear it land, a distant dinner gong, crash-bonging as it began to roll down the High Street. Some kids were laughing and a police car blipped it's siren.
Matt, lead guitarist to Donald's rhythm [Duggie had grabbed Doland's yellow guitar], pushed down his shades, picked up his Gibson and got ready to battle Duggie in the guitar hero stakes.
"Ready to rock, big man?" said Matt, like a cheesey bit-part in a cliched rock 'n' roll road story, "there's a reason why they call these babies axes, you dig?"
"Balls!" said Duggie, "I know totally why they call 'em axes, big...whatever." And Mr Chop raised the guitar above his head - like Sidney Vicious, all those years ago - and bashed Matt over the head with it.
I suppose dope can make some people violent.
Duggie's mate, on the other hand, was comatosed by the door, sitting in a knackered looking armchair. The dust coming off that thing'll play havoc with his asthma.
[Then again, perhaps this was just Duggie's dope-dream vision - or nightmare]
"Woah," said Duggie, "I mean. What d'ya want to play Matt. I mean Mr Score, I mean..."
"Look my man, just chug along a bit of 12-bar, and we'll take it from there. You know, like Status Quo."
Duggie nodded. Just like the Beatles and the Let It Be film, more like. They just sat about chugging 12-bar. What is it about 12-bar and bands rehearsing? Why can't we jam some of 'Illustrations of Gargoyle'? [simple Duggie, Hair Tom didn't record it until 1985 - you're stuck in 1982!]
[Excuse me! (what? who are you?) I happen to be very much into Quo. And I don't like the fact that you associate Quo with 12-bar. It's as if you are saying that Quo is nothing BUT 12-bar. (a fair assumption Mr Status Quo man). Ah, but that's where you're wrong. It's not a fair assumption. Quo have done a wide range of music in their time. From hoary rockers, Alan Lancaster stylee, to country-tinged-pop, when Mr Rossi lets rip. Rick would always create the poppy, drug-referencing-rock-oriented-ballad. Or things like 'Mystery Song' (1976). But, you know, when it all comes togetheer. Well. Magic. Look, I remember compiling, back in 1986, a C90 (that's an audio cassette to you kids out there) that demonstrated the versatility of the Quo. From the lesser known work on 'Dog of Two Head' (1971) and 'Piledriver' (1972), right through to the classic 'Whatever You Want' (1979) LP tracks like 'Living on an Island'- featuring electro-acoustic guitars and the balls out/head down rockin' of 'Come Rock With Me/Rockin'On' from the same album. (you quite finished? I mean you've had your say) Yes, I'm satisfied - or, in Status Quo speak 'I Ain't Complaining' (1988).(anyway, you've had your say - but who's gonna defend the Beatles? I mean, they were accused of being good for nothing 12-bar-ers, too!)]
Meanwhile, across the road, across the decades to 2010, the shutters were coming up for the first time, from the windows of a cafe that no one had ever noticed before.
Inside, an artist scratched his head and squinted in the sunlight. The first day, he thought. The first day of nothing happening. No one will ever eat in this cafe. No one was ever going to.
Who was he artist? What was he doing? Find out soon.
Doland, a bit shaky from the dope just cowered in the corner [remember, Duggie's a big lad - even when he was a lad].
Nels tripped over the guitar lead - now taut, as Duggie was pulling the guitar - and demolished the drum kit. This time, rather than a guitar amp, a cymbal crashed out the window. They could hear it land, a distant dinner gong, crash-bonging as it began to roll down the High Street. Some kids were laughing and a police car blipped it's siren.
Matt, lead guitarist to Donald's rhythm [Duggie had grabbed Doland's yellow guitar], pushed down his shades, picked up his Gibson and got ready to battle Duggie in the guitar hero stakes.
"Ready to rock, big man?" said Matt, like a cheesey bit-part in a cliched rock 'n' roll road story, "there's a reason why they call these babies axes, you dig?"
"Balls!" said Duggie, "I know totally why they call 'em axes, big...whatever." And Mr Chop raised the guitar above his head - like Sidney Vicious, all those years ago - and bashed Matt over the head with it.
I suppose dope can make some people violent.
Duggie's mate, on the other hand, was comatosed by the door, sitting in a knackered looking armchair. The dust coming off that thing'll play havoc with his asthma.
[Then again, perhaps this was just Duggie's dope-dream vision - or nightmare]
"Woah," said Duggie, "I mean. What d'ya want to play Matt. I mean Mr Score, I mean..."
"Look my man, just chug along a bit of 12-bar, and we'll take it from there. You know, like Status Quo."
Duggie nodded. Just like the Beatles and the Let It Be film, more like. They just sat about chugging 12-bar. What is it about 12-bar and bands rehearsing? Why can't we jam some of 'Illustrations of Gargoyle'? [simple Duggie, Hair Tom didn't record it until 1985 - you're stuck in 1982!]
[Excuse me! (what? who are you?) I happen to be very much into Quo. And I don't like the fact that you associate Quo with 12-bar. It's as if you are saying that Quo is nothing BUT 12-bar. (a fair assumption Mr Status Quo man). Ah, but that's where you're wrong. It's not a fair assumption. Quo have done a wide range of music in their time. From hoary rockers, Alan Lancaster stylee, to country-tinged-pop, when Mr Rossi lets rip. Rick would always create the poppy, drug-referencing-rock-oriented-ballad. Or things like 'Mystery Song' (1976). But, you know, when it all comes togetheer. Well. Magic. Look, I remember compiling, back in 1986, a C90 (that's an audio cassette to you kids out there) that demonstrated the versatility of the Quo. From the lesser known work on 'Dog of Two Head' (1971) and 'Piledriver' (1972), right through to the classic 'Whatever You Want' (1979) LP tracks like 'Living on an Island'- featuring electro-acoustic guitars and the balls out/head down rockin' of 'Come Rock With Me/Rockin'On' from the same album. (you quite finished? I mean you've had your say) Yes, I'm satisfied - or, in Status Quo speak 'I Ain't Complaining' (1988).(anyway, you've had your say - but who's gonna defend the Beatles? I mean, they were accused of being good for nothing 12-bar-ers, too!)]
Meanwhile, across the road, across the decades to 2010, the shutters were coming up for the first time, from the windows of a cafe that no one had ever noticed before.
Inside, an artist scratched his head and squinted in the sunlight. The first day, he thought. The first day of nothing happening. No one will ever eat in this cafe. No one was ever going to.
Who was he artist? What was he doing? Find out soon.
Sunday 17 January 2010
Interlude - My short trip, by Duggie's mate.
[Looking through the eyes of Duggie's mate and using his mind to directly translate the experience as a piece of prose. It's a bit clumsy here and there, but that's what 'stream-of-thought' monologues are like, isn't it?]
(We - me and Duggie - are in the studio in the Torpid Emancipator with Hair Tom. It's 1982 and me and Duggie are 14 years-old again, travelling through time. Just to let you know, our role in life is to fish in the canal [“...don't remind me!” -Mr Stickleback] and tell strangers about the music we are into. At the moment we are giving you - via time travel – the full story of the great 'Hair Tom', a group at the forefront of the 'Sound Of Torpidity' prog-rock movement...So far, Matt Score - lead guitar, Hair Tom - has invited us into the studio to watch a rehearsal and Doland - rhythm, acoustic and percussion - has skinned-up a powerful looking 'funny fag'...)
First I'm passed a joint. Not really seen one in 'the flesh' before. Like a roll-up, but more kind of triangular (conical?). Sort of. It's a bit soggy, too. Doland is laughing as I put it in my mouth and suck a bit.
Sort of cool sensation of smoke and air - like sucking dry-ice through a straw. Tastes like ground up earth - an intense version of the smell of formerly bone-dry pavements, following a cloudburst.
I breathe in the smoke and try to hold it down without gagging. It's an effort. But the more I hold it, the looser I get and the release of smoke, from my lungs into the air, feels like floating down the river on a gondola made of silk.
“Take another toke, man!” I can hear Doland saying, “The first toke has laid the foundation, for exploration...”
Oh, yeah [exhales] he's right...
I hand the joint to Duggie, or somebody to my left. I'm really not too sure.
Sitting 'in' the chair now. Not on it, coveted by material that shimmers over and around me, like 'the dance of the seven veils', or something.
Bob-bob-bob-bobbing bassline...tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, tinkly-too keyboard. I can actually see the notes coming out of the speakers, quaver by crochet by double clef and treble clef. Oh, not forgetting the bass clef too.
Some of the notes bash into each other, like when there's a distorted note, or something. Then they bow to each other and apologise before continuing. Others dance together and merge, jiggling into shape.
Words are coming out of everyone's mouth. I can see them, written up in the air, as if I was watching some film credits roll by.
The joint returns again, soggier and shorter than before and I have another bit of its cool and earthy substance, feel a little bit queasy with that one. I pass it on quick.
It's sort of dark outside now, though it's about mid-afternoon in the summer. I think. [to explain, he thinks he's looking through a window, when in fact he's staring at a blank frame that used to contain a mirror.] In fact it's totally black, no stars or nothing. Mr Moon, Mr Moon. You asleep, or something?
I've never seen it that dark before. Suddenly a white image appears, at first a little melty, then sharp as sharp. It's an owl. A kind of simple graphic design of an owl. then I recognise it. It's the picture from the label of a 'midnight mint' choc-ice [unavailable these days, by the way. They were a plain chocolate choc-ice filled with mint flavoured ice cream. A premium product]. And then the owl winks at me...
Oh, no. I've messed up my brain! I look up, and the low roof of the studio has attained cathedral dimensions, a cavernous space and I can see my thoughts echoing around.
Ok. Get up. I try. (Need to get away, bed, piss. Both) But my legs won't operate. They're as stiff and heavy as the girders they make Irn Bru out of. Girders. or Grrdrrs (as they might say in Scotland). GrrDuzz. Gurrrdezz. Grrrrrdrrrrs.
[At that point, Duggie's mate passes out. Musical notes flying from his ears like loose wax].
“Guess the kid wasn't ready for a peace pipe, man,” says Doland.
(We - me and Duggie - are in the studio in the Torpid Emancipator with Hair Tom. It's 1982 and me and Duggie are 14 years-old again, travelling through time. Just to let you know, our role in life is to fish in the canal [“...don't remind me!” -Mr Stickleback] and tell strangers about the music we are into. At the moment we are giving you - via time travel – the full story of the great 'Hair Tom', a group at the forefront of the 'Sound Of Torpidity' prog-rock movement...So far, Matt Score - lead guitar, Hair Tom - has invited us into the studio to watch a rehearsal and Doland - rhythm, acoustic and percussion - has skinned-up a powerful looking 'funny fag'...)
First I'm passed a joint. Not really seen one in 'the flesh' before. Like a roll-up, but more kind of triangular (conical?). Sort of. It's a bit soggy, too. Doland is laughing as I put it in my mouth and suck a bit.
Sort of cool sensation of smoke and air - like sucking dry-ice through a straw. Tastes like ground up earth - an intense version of the smell of formerly bone-dry pavements, following a cloudburst.
I breathe in the smoke and try to hold it down without gagging. It's an effort. But the more I hold it, the looser I get and the release of smoke, from my lungs into the air, feels like floating down the river on a gondola made of silk.
“Take another toke, man!” I can hear Doland saying, “The first toke has laid the foundation, for exploration...”
Oh, yeah [exhales] he's right...
I hand the joint to Duggie, or somebody to my left. I'm really not too sure.
Sitting 'in' the chair now. Not on it, coveted by material that shimmers over and around me, like 'the dance of the seven veils', or something.
Bob-bob-bob-bobbing bassline...tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, tinkly-too keyboard. I can actually see the notes coming out of the speakers, quaver by crochet by double clef and treble clef. Oh, not forgetting the bass clef too.
Some of the notes bash into each other, like when there's a distorted note, or something. Then they bow to each other and apologise before continuing. Others dance together and merge, jiggling into shape.
Words are coming out of everyone's mouth. I can see them, written up in the air, as if I was watching some film credits roll by.
The joint returns again, soggier and shorter than before and I have another bit of its cool and earthy substance, feel a little bit queasy with that one. I pass it on quick.
It's sort of dark outside now, though it's about mid-afternoon in the summer. I think. [to explain, he thinks he's looking through a window, when in fact he's staring at a blank frame that used to contain a mirror.] In fact it's totally black, no stars or nothing. Mr Moon, Mr Moon. You asleep, or something?
I've never seen it that dark before. Suddenly a white image appears, at first a little melty, then sharp as sharp. It's an owl. A kind of simple graphic design of an owl. then I recognise it. It's the picture from the label of a 'midnight mint' choc-ice [unavailable these days, by the way. They were a plain chocolate choc-ice filled with mint flavoured ice cream. A premium product]. And then the owl winks at me...
Oh, no. I've messed up my brain! I look up, and the low roof of the studio has attained cathedral dimensions, a cavernous space and I can see my thoughts echoing around.
Ok. Get up. I try. (Need to get away, bed, piss. Both) But my legs won't operate. They're as stiff and heavy as the girders they make Irn Bru out of. Girders. or Grrdrrs (as they might say in Scotland). GrrDuzz. Gurrrdezz. Grrrrrdrrrrs.
[At that point, Duggie's mate passes out. Musical notes flying from his ears like loose wax].
“Guess the kid wasn't ready for a peace pipe, man,” says Doland.
Monday 11 January 2010
Nothing like 'Give My Regards To Broad Street' - meeting Hair Tom in 1982
Going back to the story...click here for where we got to.
[In the corner of the studio, there's a pile of six or seven broken chairs, cheap metal 'bistro' style chairs, with legs bent in impossible shapes. No one knows how they got there or who bent them. It was rumoured that a local 'sneak-sculptor' was breaking in and turning furniture into off-the-cuff artworks. But that may have been the drugs talking.]
Matt brought Duggie and his mate upstairs.
Nels played a walking bassline, booming through at ultra-low frequencies through a 50 watt amplifier: Boong, Bong, Boong, Bong, Boong, Bong [I'm sure get the idea!] Swedish keyboard player [from this 1982 period 'Hair Tom' line up – the keyboard players tended not to last long in the group] Anders Lornsvelg was accompanying Nels with impromptu trills and noodles.
Drummer, Tony Cort sat behind the drums, in half-shadow, eating an orange without removing the skin. Every now and then, a citric acid burst made him scowl.
Doland McGregory, Rhythm Guitar, Acoustic Guitar and occasional percussion, was skinning up on the cover of a Cliff Richard gospel album: 'Now You See Me...Now You Don't'.
For many fans, this early 80s line up was the definitive 'Hair Tom'. Apart from Lornsvelg, this line up recorded the astoundingly successful LP 'Illustrations of Gargoyle' (1985) [more info on this ground breaking album and the biog of the band 'Hair Tom', soon - Steve].
But the band wasn't operating like a unit. As Nels had suggested, bringing Duggie and his mate into this studio would be like taking someone to meet The Beatles during 'Let It Be'.
Like The Beatles [surely the only valid comparison between The Beatles and Hair Tom...] at this time Hair Tom was more of a loose collective of almost like-minded souls (i.e. work-shy musicians) seeking any opportunity to express themselves individually – or take more drugs, while still claiming some social security payment [“Hey, lay off, that was never proven” says Nels, “don't want those anal retentive freaks investigating me now!”]
[“Excuse me for holding up proceedings,” says Herbert Glumm, Civic Servant (retired), former Benefits Agency Administrative Officer, “but it is unlikely that your case would be re-opened after nearly 30 years. Besides, now you would be eligible for an Arts Council England Grant for doing what you're doing. Why, I remember, not too long ago, the so-called 'Arts' Council funded some layabout for setting up a cafe that never opened.
A kind of installation, commenting on the transitory nature of the fast food trade in the UK, the fact that so many cafes and kebab establishments open their doors only to close them again, with no one very much the wiser. The artist was trying to make a connection between this phenomenon and the fact that so many people are unaware if precisely what's going on in their neighbourhoods...and...” “Herbert! That's enough!” (says Steve). “Sorry Steve, it's just that it gets lonely, you know, being retired and all. I don't have many people to talk to, apart from the Blue Tits on my bird table, and a neighbour's cat ate the last one...”]
Tension also developed as each band member, sporadically, wanted to take the 'artistic' lead. Currently Matt Score, Lead Guitar, was the most forceful. He was attempting to stage a coup, taking 'Hair Tom' away from festival-style space rock, and towards the latest craze in guitar twiddling at lightning speeds (soon to be exemplified by the likes of Yngwie Malmstreem).
Others were content to hibernate between gigs, act like kids and waste time.
“It was like, we went in there,” said Duggie Chop to his mate, a little later, “and these people are just sitting around in a dim, smoke-filled room. There was some music, a plonky bass and an irritating load of organ stuff, but mainly it was like being in the school bogs on a wet dinner break. I was expecting a jam session to be in progress, you know, the band getting stuff together.”
“What, like in Paul McCartney's 'Give My Regards To Broad Street' film?” said Duggie's mate.
“Sort of, only not crap.” said Duggie. [I must say, if you're reading this, Sir Paul, that I'm a fan of yours (this is Steve Hill speaking) and take no responsibility for what these people decide to say. What do they know? I went to see your film 5 times back in 1984 at the Picturedrome in Bognor and bought the LP.]
“Things went downhill even quicker after the owner of 'the Torpid One' [he means Fleesey, also Hair Tom's Manager at the time] came in and told them they were rubbish,” said Duggie, “I mean, he was talking to Hair Tom. Hair-bloody-Tom!”
Fleesey did have a point, though. He was riding high after securing Hair Tom a gig at the first WOMAD festival in Shepton Mallet: “this'll raise your profile again,” he told them, “you'll be going on before Echo and The Bunnymen!” [Nels: “Echo and the... bloody hell, did it really get that bad!”]
But, the band was mucking about a wee bit too much. For example, a week before, Doland, after inhaling the smoke of some particularly strong hash, decided to 'defrost' an emptied out, tinned Ox Tongue by pissing on it – before being told that the tongue wasn't frozen but suspended in aspic jelly. [“Piss all over me Mam's rug 'an all,” recollected Fleesey, from his villa in LA (that's Little'ampton, by the way – local joke)].
So, Duggie and his mate, time travellers, Austin Maxi crashers, stepped into the gloom. “Hey kids,” said Doland, “Wanna turn on?”
Duggie looked at his mate and nodded. He nodded a “that's more like it” kind of nod. Nels was laughing in time with her walking bass. Matt cracked open yet another can of full sugar Coke.
Next stop WOMAD? Right on!
[In the corner of the studio, there's a pile of six or seven broken chairs, cheap metal 'bistro' style chairs, with legs bent in impossible shapes. No one knows how they got there or who bent them. It was rumoured that a local 'sneak-sculptor' was breaking in and turning furniture into off-the-cuff artworks. But that may have been the drugs talking.]
Matt brought Duggie and his mate upstairs.
Nels played a walking bassline, booming through at ultra-low frequencies through a 50 watt amplifier: Boong, Bong, Boong, Bong, Boong, Bong [I'm sure get the idea!] Swedish keyboard player [from this 1982 period 'Hair Tom' line up – the keyboard players tended not to last long in the group] Anders Lornsvelg was accompanying Nels with impromptu trills and noodles.
Drummer, Tony Cort sat behind the drums, in half-shadow, eating an orange without removing the skin. Every now and then, a citric acid burst made him scowl.
Doland McGregory, Rhythm Guitar, Acoustic Guitar and occasional percussion, was skinning up on the cover of a Cliff Richard gospel album: 'Now You See Me...Now You Don't'.
For many fans, this early 80s line up was the definitive 'Hair Tom'. Apart from Lornsvelg, this line up recorded the astoundingly successful LP 'Illustrations of Gargoyle' (1985) [more info on this ground breaking album and the biog of the band 'Hair Tom', soon - Steve].
But the band wasn't operating like a unit. As Nels had suggested, bringing Duggie and his mate into this studio would be like taking someone to meet The Beatles during 'Let It Be'.
Like The Beatles [surely the only valid comparison between The Beatles and Hair Tom...] at this time Hair Tom was more of a loose collective of almost like-minded souls (i.e. work-shy musicians) seeking any opportunity to express themselves individually – or take more drugs, while still claiming some social security payment [“Hey, lay off, that was never proven” says Nels, “don't want those anal retentive freaks investigating me now!”]
[“Excuse me for holding up proceedings,” says Herbert Glumm, Civic Servant (retired), former Benefits Agency Administrative Officer, “but it is unlikely that your case would be re-opened after nearly 30 years. Besides, now you would be eligible for an Arts Council England Grant for doing what you're doing. Why, I remember, not too long ago, the so-called 'Arts' Council funded some layabout for setting up a cafe that never opened.
A kind of installation, commenting on the transitory nature of the fast food trade in the UK, the fact that so many cafes and kebab establishments open their doors only to close them again, with no one very much the wiser. The artist was trying to make a connection between this phenomenon and the fact that so many people are unaware if precisely what's going on in their neighbourhoods...and...” “Herbert! That's enough!” (says Steve). “Sorry Steve, it's just that it gets lonely, you know, being retired and all. I don't have many people to talk to, apart from the Blue Tits on my bird table, and a neighbour's cat ate the last one...”]
Tension also developed as each band member, sporadically, wanted to take the 'artistic' lead. Currently Matt Score, Lead Guitar, was the most forceful. He was attempting to stage a coup, taking 'Hair Tom' away from festival-style space rock, and towards the latest craze in guitar twiddling at lightning speeds (soon to be exemplified by the likes of Yngwie Malmstreem).
Others were content to hibernate between gigs, act like kids and waste time.
“It was like, we went in there,” said Duggie Chop to his mate, a little later, “and these people are just sitting around in a dim, smoke-filled room. There was some music, a plonky bass and an irritating load of organ stuff, but mainly it was like being in the school bogs on a wet dinner break. I was expecting a jam session to be in progress, you know, the band getting stuff together.”
“What, like in Paul McCartney's 'Give My Regards To Broad Street' film?” said Duggie's mate.
“Sort of, only not crap.” said Duggie. [I must say, if you're reading this, Sir Paul, that I'm a fan of yours (this is Steve Hill speaking) and take no responsibility for what these people decide to say. What do they know? I went to see your film 5 times back in 1984 at the Picturedrome in Bognor and bought the LP.]
“Things went downhill even quicker after the owner of 'the Torpid One' [he means Fleesey, also Hair Tom's Manager at the time] came in and told them they were rubbish,” said Duggie, “I mean, he was talking to Hair Tom. Hair-bloody-Tom!”
Fleesey did have a point, though. He was riding high after securing Hair Tom a gig at the first WOMAD festival in Shepton Mallet: “this'll raise your profile again,” he told them, “you'll be going on before Echo and The Bunnymen!” [Nels: “Echo and the... bloody hell, did it really get that bad!”]
But, the band was mucking about a wee bit too much. For example, a week before, Doland, after inhaling the smoke of some particularly strong hash, decided to 'defrost' an emptied out, tinned Ox Tongue by pissing on it – before being told that the tongue wasn't frozen but suspended in aspic jelly. [“Piss all over me Mam's rug 'an all,” recollected Fleesey, from his villa in LA (that's Little'ampton, by the way – local joke)].
So, Duggie and his mate, time travellers, Austin Maxi crashers, stepped into the gloom. “Hey kids,” said Doland, “Wanna turn on?”
Duggie looked at his mate and nodded. He nodded a “that's more like it” kind of nod. Nels was laughing in time with her walking bass. Matt cracked open yet another can of full sugar Coke.
Next stop WOMAD? Right on!
Thursday 7 January 2010
Biography Spot # 1: The Torpid Emancipator
[Following a request, by Mr Stickleback, in a previous post, Brinfield Copse (Chief Fact Checker for Duggie Chop) will take us through the background of places, people and things that feature in the story. Brinfield will start with 'the old torpid one'...]
Greetings people, my name is Brinfield Copse and I'll post the occasional entry to help you understand what on earth is going on in this story.
Duggie and the others have been extremely lazy, not posting enough to keep you entertained during the holiday period, therefore I feel this is an opportune moment to tell you more about an element of the story [for pity's sake get on with it! I didn't realise you had such a boring style of writing Brin], 'The Torpid Emancipator'.
The Torpid Emancipator first appeared in this story on 15th November 2009
But it's been around for a long time.
Founded in 1971 by Davey 'Ringold' Crew, The Torpid Emancipator, known as 'the torpid one' or 'the old torpid one' is a record shop/studio/cafe and place for young people to 'hang-out'.
It's in a town called 'Chadlesome', situated in the middle of nowhere south of England.
The town of Chadlesome and The Torpid Emancipator became famous during the early 1970s, and remained so until the mid-1980s, as home to a progressive rock movement known as 'The Sound of Torpidity'. 'Hair Tom' is probably the most well known (and notorious) band to emerge from the movement.
Since 1979 (following the unusual death of founder 'Ringold'), the torpid one has been run by Ricky Fleese, or Fleesey for short. Fleesey's a chancer and a self-promoter, but there's no doubt that The Torpid Emancipator would be but a shadow of it's current self without him. Fleesey's like a poor man's Richard Branson, with a bit of Peter Stringfellow thrown in for good measure. [I like how your writing's improving as you go along, Brin]
What does 'The Torpid Emancipator' look like? Built in the mid-19th Century, with a double shop frontage, it has ornate plaster work in cream and white on the facade. At least it was cream, white and ornate in 1860. Now it's a little grubby - more grime-grey and battleship - and plaster flakes off as if the building had eczema.
[You know, once they thought that kids in the town - particularly teenage lads - were suffering from a mass scalp problem, as they all walked around with large showers of white stuff on the shoulders of their black school blazers. The local paper and the BBC news programme (the one that comes on the telly after the 6pm news) was always going on about it. Turned out that the dandruff was just plaster falling off The Torpid Emancipator. Chandlesome's young men, and some women, spent so much time standing outside the front of the crumbling building.]
The Torpid Emancipator is tall, at least five floors, including a suite of eerie rooms in the roof [I'm sure they'll feature in a future post].
Downstairs it's new records at the front (CDs too, of course and now video games, I think Duggie Chop went on about this a couple of months ago), second-hand music at the rear with the more specialist stuff, rarities and the like, on the first floor.
Fleesey's 'office' including some kind of sauna is to the rear of the first floor, overlooking a kind of courtyard in front of a modern office block (where everyone comes outside to smoke and eat their lunch).
There's loads of musical instruments - guitars, drums, keyboards, you name it - for sale in a large portacabin that's attached to the rear of the building adjacent to the courtyard and accessible through the second-hand music area. [Many bands have started using instruments bought from this almost sacred space.]
A small cafe, always full to bursting is situated in the front left hand window of the ground floor, right next to the new music. You can always get the people running the cafe to spin your newly purchased discs, results in an eclectic [hey, big word alert!] mix of music played while you sip your tea and eat a cake (another speciality of the torpid one).
The thing I haven't mentioned yet is the studio space, the real sacred space in the building: the place that gave birth to the Sound of Torpidity. Its all on the second floor and above. There are rehearsal rooms, digital studios, the lot. I could reel off bands that you would have heard off who either had their first session or recorded their best music up there. It's got a great feeling to it. But a musician will give you the lowdown, soon [It'll be me probably, Nels from Hair Tom - I'll let you know! Busy drinking cider at the moment...]
Oh, another thing, there's no opening times at The Torpid Emancipator. It's open all the time, 24/7, before they even invented the phrase.
[Phew! Thanks for that, Brin. Speak soon.]
Greetings people, my name is Brinfield Copse and I'll post the occasional entry to help you understand what on earth is going on in this story.
Duggie and the others have been extremely lazy, not posting enough to keep you entertained during the holiday period, therefore I feel this is an opportune moment to tell you more about an element of the story [for pity's sake get on with it! I didn't realise you had such a boring style of writing Brin], 'The Torpid Emancipator'.
The Torpid Emancipator first appeared in this story on 15th November 2009
But it's been around for a long time.
Founded in 1971 by Davey 'Ringold' Crew, The Torpid Emancipator, known as 'the torpid one' or 'the old torpid one' is a record shop/studio/cafe and place for young people to 'hang-out'.
It's in a town called 'Chadlesome', situated in the middle of nowhere south of England.
The town of Chadlesome and The Torpid Emancipator became famous during the early 1970s, and remained so until the mid-1980s, as home to a progressive rock movement known as 'The Sound of Torpidity'. 'Hair Tom' is probably the most well known (and notorious) band to emerge from the movement.
Since 1979 (following the unusual death of founder 'Ringold'), the torpid one has been run by Ricky Fleese, or Fleesey for short. Fleesey's a chancer and a self-promoter, but there's no doubt that The Torpid Emancipator would be but a shadow of it's current self without him. Fleesey's like a poor man's Richard Branson, with a bit of Peter Stringfellow thrown in for good measure. [I like how your writing's improving as you go along, Brin]
What does 'The Torpid Emancipator' look like? Built in the mid-19th Century, with a double shop frontage, it has ornate plaster work in cream and white on the facade. At least it was cream, white and ornate in 1860. Now it's a little grubby - more grime-grey and battleship - and plaster flakes off as if the building had eczema.
[You know, once they thought that kids in the town - particularly teenage lads - were suffering from a mass scalp problem, as they all walked around with large showers of white stuff on the shoulders of their black school blazers. The local paper and the BBC news programme (the one that comes on the telly after the 6pm news) was always going on about it. Turned out that the dandruff was just plaster falling off The Torpid Emancipator. Chandlesome's young men, and some women, spent so much time standing outside the front of the crumbling building.]
The Torpid Emancipator is tall, at least five floors, including a suite of eerie rooms in the roof [I'm sure they'll feature in a future post].
Downstairs it's new records at the front (CDs too, of course and now video games, I think Duggie Chop went on about this a couple of months ago), second-hand music at the rear with the more specialist stuff, rarities and the like, on the first floor.
Fleesey's 'office' including some kind of sauna is to the rear of the first floor, overlooking a kind of courtyard in front of a modern office block (where everyone comes outside to smoke and eat their lunch).
There's loads of musical instruments - guitars, drums, keyboards, you name it - for sale in a large portacabin that's attached to the rear of the building adjacent to the courtyard and accessible through the second-hand music area. [Many bands have started using instruments bought from this almost sacred space.]
A small cafe, always full to bursting is situated in the front left hand window of the ground floor, right next to the new music. You can always get the people running the cafe to spin your newly purchased discs, results in an eclectic [hey, big word alert!] mix of music played while you sip your tea and eat a cake (another speciality of the torpid one).
The thing I haven't mentioned yet is the studio space, the real sacred space in the building: the place that gave birth to the Sound of Torpidity. Its all on the second floor and above. There are rehearsal rooms, digital studios, the lot. I could reel off bands that you would have heard off who either had their first session or recorded their best music up there. It's got a great feeling to it. But a musician will give you the lowdown, soon [It'll be me probably, Nels from Hair Tom - I'll let you know! Busy drinking cider at the moment...]
Oh, another thing, there's no opening times at The Torpid Emancipator. It's open all the time, 24/7, before they even invented the phrase.
[Phew! Thanks for that, Brin. Speak soon.]
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