Table of Contents
About the Author
Title Page
Acknowledgements
Prologue: The End
Part One
Do You Remember the First Time?
Park Life
School’s Out
London Calling, 1986
Our House
Master and Servant
Up in Smoke
The Whole of the Moon
Oh, Superman
Sunday Afternoon
Kill All Hippies
On the Road
Hotel California
Venice Beach, 3 a.m.
Jon
Hollywood Nights
Hey, Joe
Six Months Later
Peace Frog
So You Wanna be a Rock ’n’ Roll Star?
Club Tropicana
I Wanna be Adored
Everything Starts with an E
Grateful When You’re Dead
Caught by the Fuzz
White Lines
San Francisco
Gangsta, Gangsta
Part Two
Deal
Up in the Sky
Glastonbury, 1994
Manchester
Supersonic?
Holidays in the Sun
It’s My Party
Limousine
Back on the Road
Be Here Now?
On Tour
Up the Beach
In the City
Brit(Popped)
Knebworth
Desolation Row
No Problems
Glastonbury, 1998
Southern Man
Going up the Country
Country House
Police and Thieves
End of a Century
You and Me
Blood on the Tracks
A Year Later
Monkeyman
Marrakech Express
We are Family
A Million Reasons
Going Solo
No Future
I Wanna Be Your Dog
Spanish Caravan
Orgiva, Spain
Man in the Corner Shop
Killing Me Softly
Everything Must Go
Bringing it all Back Home
The End
Maida Vale, London, Five Days Later
Epilogue: February 2013
Picture Section
Copyright
This book is dedicated to those no longer with us, for whatever reason.
And also, with much love and gratitude, to:
My mum, who I hope doesn’t read it! My sister Ruth and her family, Tamara, Sharon, Nick P. (RIP), Luke E., Matty P., Laura D., Shiv, Kiran G., Jerome R., Colin Goodwin, Michael P., Ralph H., Tony C., Darren from the ’Wood (YNWA), Banksy, Stoke Richard, James B., Alan McGee, Donny Chris, Joe, Alan, Josh B., Mick ‘Bigbear’ Hall, Pete L., Ken W., Dean (gas-head) G., Scott W., Mick (Diamondhead) Smith, Shesk, Monkeyman, Limousine, The Who (just to get a band of mine mentioned in the same sentence!), the staff past and present at City Roads, Barleywood, Clouds House, Milton House and the multitude of others who tried to help along the way – sorry it took a while – my agent David Luxton and of course my anonymous friends, you know who you are!
There are many others I could name. Please forgive me if you’re not included here; you are not forgotten.
Also in loving memory of my dad, John Anthony Mason, for being with me long after you moved on to wherever it is we go …
Finally, in the hope she never has to write anything like this, to my beautiful daughter, Tabitha Honey Mason, who teaches me so much and one day, when she’s old enough to read this, will still want us to go out to play together!
Love you, little bear.
It’s often a thin line between fact and fiction. I wouldn’t know, I snorted it.
The first drugs I ever bought cost me three quid from a guy I met on the beach in Weston-super-Mare. He seemed to find the popping of my narcotic cherry an amusing experience, chuckling to himself as he took the cash I’d pocketed earlier during a rare winning streak in the amusement arcades. I crouched next to him as he skinned up, suddenly convinced that the entire Weston Constabulary were about to charge over the sand dunes, truncheons drawn, and attack us in some sort of hysterical, authoritarian, seal-clubbing-inspired frenzy before dragging us away to be questioned/tortured back at the nick.
Is a shit £3 deal of Lebanese hash a good cure for paranoia?
I didn’t ask but neither did we end up getting battered to death by the local drug squad as I squatted alongside my ‘dealer’, keeping lookout while muttering, ‘Yeah, man, that shit smells really good,’ every few seconds as he skinned up.
He took several long drags before passing a soggy joint to me, grinning.
‘Here, get that down ya. Have fun and enjoy the party. See you later, man.’
Unaware I’d been ripped off in tandem with scoring drugs for the first time in my life, I smiled back as I took the half-smoked spliff and watched him slope away along the beach.
I looked down at the smouldering joint, fleetingly wondering if I actually did want to enter the drug world. I found life confusing enough as it was but concluded that maybe if I smoked the joint I’d understand ‘things’ better. So I did, as rapidly as my lungs would allow.
Nothing happened for about 30 seconds, by which time my dealer had disappeared behind a sand dune. Had I been ripped off?
Just before this unpleasant and humiliating thought made itself at home in my mind, to be greeted by the paranoia already waiting there, waving a sign saying, ‘Ha, ha, you’re a fucking idiot,’ I started to giggle and my first drug-induced smile started to spread softly across my face.
Fuck you, paranoia, I’m on drugs now. What’s the worst that could happen, eh?
I threw up.
Nobody had told me that would happen. Not the rock stars whose posters adorned my bedroom walls, nor the acne-encrusted goth hash dealer who’d just had my £3. Not that I’d have listened anyway. Listening wasn’t a strong point of mine. I was a master of nodding my head in agreement just to fit in, but actually listening? It would be many more years before I could hear anything over the sound of the nonsense inside my head. Besides, I was on a mission now and the cannabis making its debut in my bloodstream told me I could see for miles and miles – oh, yeah. So listening didn’t seem that important any more.
I’d begun my drug-fuelled quest for whatever the fuck it was I thought I was looking for, sitting on my own, stoned and happily confused in a cloud of hash smoke and a puddle of vomit.
I eventually managed to stagger home before the beach party I’d intended to go to had even started, grinning like the proverbial village idiot and stopping en route to throw up the cider I’d attempted to drown myself in earlier. I crept into the house and proceeded to make a sandwich using almost an entire loaf of bread, cold baked beans, tinned sardines and about a pound of cheese, as you do. Midway through my first ever munchie-inspired snack, I coughed up a bit of sick on said sandwich but continued to eat it anyway, as I was too stoned and paranoid to go back into the kitchen and make another one.
Sick sandwich?
Welcome to the future, Simon.
I was 15 years old, bored, uncomfortable and unsure of anything. Four years earlier I’d been shipped off to a Catholic boys’ boarding school, which was apparently the best place to prepare me for life. My dad had been ill and he died not long after I went away to school. He had been a pilot in the Second World War, survived against all odds and found true love with my mum when he was in his 40s. He was my hero.
The two senior clergymen from the school who drove me home for the funeral were clearly under instruction not to reveal the awful truth awaiting me. They drove in silence at a priestly speed, then chose to stop at a motorway service station en route, leaving me sitting in the car outside, swallowing my tears as I worried about what had happened, while they enjoyed their lunch. In their defence, I don’t suppose there was much they could have said.
The sight of my granddad walking towards me with his arms outstretched, looking frail and devastated, left me in no doubt as to what had occurred. He didn’t have to say anything – he was crying and grown-ups didn’t do that unless something terrible had happened. He bent down to hug me, triggering the first spasm of grief that left me hysterical as he gently escorted me to my parents’ bedroom. There I found my mum and sister clinging to each other as they sobbed. When they saw me they both reached out as if beckoning me to join them in a human lifeboat that was being thrown about in a storm of unfathomable cruelty and despair – which was, of course, the truth.
There were family friends milling about, making endless cups of tea, all no doubt grief-stricken and wishing there was something they could do, but there is nothing you can do, is there?
I remember little of the next day or so. But at some point, my unrelenting thrashing about on my dad’s side of the bed, clutching a photograph of him to my chest and wrapping myself in the sheets that still retained his smell, became too painful either for me to endure or for others to witness, so the family GP prescribed a sedative. It’s what they did back then.
I have a theory that on some level an equation was made somewhere deep in the psyche of that distraught 11-year-old boy which roughly suggested that feelings can be avoided if there is sufficient medication to hand.
The fact you wake from the chemically induced slumber to confront the same problem a few short hours later is only explained in the small print that someone like me never reads.
It’s just a theory, of course, but I’m entitled to it, eh?
The next thing I remember is seeing my mum kissing the lips of my dead dad as he lay in the chapel of rest. I couldn’t move as the tears fell from my pallid, uncomprehending face onto the carpeted floor. This was not a place an 11-year-old boy should ever have had to visit. Not because taking me there to say goodbye was the wrong thing for my mother to have done but because losing my daddy was the worst thing that could have happened to me or any boy of that age.
I was 11 and knew only that my dad, my hero, my god, my everything was dead, gone for ever, and I hated myself for being too scared to walk over to the open coffin and kiss him goodbye like my mum had just done.
We vacated the chapel of rest, both still sobbing uncontrollably. I was consumed by an overwhelming sadness that already felt as everlasting as Christ and the heaven he apparently presided over. Neither of which my shattered 11-year-old heart could believe in any more – not that I was allowed to question it, of course.
I was returned to the ‘care’ of my school four days later, the badge on my blazer pronouncing the motto ‘Let God Reign’.
Fuck that, quite frankly. I was soon far more interested in listening to what The Jam had to say.
When I was at home during the school holidays, my wonderful grandfather tried to be a father to me as best he could in his 70s, but he passed away within two years of my dad. A well-meaning family friend told me on the day of his funeral, ‘You’ve got to be the man of the house now, Simon.’
I wasn’t even thirteen years old and still had three years of boarding school to survive. I didn’t feel like I had a house to be the man of, even if I’d known what that meant.
My school reports tell part of the story:
The reason for this change is, of course, not documented anywhere. Those bastards might be evil but they aren’t stupid.
A boy who’d lost his dad and grandfather within 18 months, whose favourite aunt had committed suicide, who’d witnessed a classmate drop dead in front of him at primary school and who now found himself placed in a school miles from his mum and sister would, I suspect, be classed as vulnerable.
The beast closed in, ready for the kill, sick with the pursuit of his thrill – me. There were late-night cigarette-and-whisky sessions in his office as he repeatedly told me he wanted to help. If I needed to talk about anything, I could trust him, he said.
‘You’re special, Simon, very special.’
We all know the fucking procedure now, eh? He followed it perfectly. He was, no doubt, an expert.
When you’ve lost the two most significant male figures in your life and the man who steps in to ‘replace’ them then proceeds to steal what little faith in life you have left, time after time, late at night while you lie paralysed with fear in bed, doesn’t just create a ‘hole’ but also tells you on some level that you surely deserve to stay there.
A ‘hole’ in what exactly?
How the hell would I know? I was a child. I just knew that when I found something to fill it, I felt better. When something allowed me to escape myself I embraced it utterly.
Time passed slowly, very fucking slowly, but you knew that already, huh?
We formed the escape committee in desperation. Not to physically escape, as there were no locked doors or barbed-wire fences to cut. There was nowhere to run where you would not eventually be found and returned to face a wait outside the head’s office, resigned to another whipping that apparently hurt him more than you.
No, the escape committee enabled our young minds to play with time, concerning itself purely with what we were going to do when we had served our sentence at school and would be free to do whatever we wanted to.
Or would we?
We assembled in the woods by the old bomb crater, a symbolic reminder that there was indeed ‘a war on, you know’. Them and us.
Them, the establishment: alcoholic, sexually repressed, angry priests; dysfunctional teachers who never left the kids alone.
Us, the kids: the escape committee.
We had no leaders but we had our tree in the woods. You took your place in the branches according to the length of time already served. The fifth formers perched high up like birds waiting to fly away. They sat amongst yellowing names carved into the branches by previous occupants, which reminded us that one day we too would be gone and perhaps happy and free. Younger boys sat lower down with spit and fag ash dropped from above in their hair.
We built bonfires to boil water for tea and to toast our contraband bread that we spread thickly with illicit butter and jam smuggled from the dining room. We smoked our cigarettes slowly, casually flicking the butts into the fire. No one who wanted to went without a smoke during committee meetings. We smoked and talked.
Henry talked about playing baseball while making his coffee – he was a Yank and didn’t like tea. Malcolm was going into the army, so he said in between blowing smoke rings and burping. Andrew farted a lot and talked about playing for West Ham one day and the rest of us laughed because West Ham were shit …
Me? I’d lost any notion of what I wanted to be by now. If I had been able, I would have told the escape committee about the late-night visits – what he did and what he said afterwards. About the whispered warnings he gave that no one would believe me anyway, before issuing a balmy slap upon my ashen face and then silently disappearing out into the corridor, leaving me shaking and hating myself for being too scared, too ashamed, too fucking scared, to tell the escape committee or anybody else.
I didn’t have to explain myself to the escape committee as we sat trying to be men, away from that red-brick building and the monsters who walked its corridors late at night. I just talked about the things I was passionate about – music and Liverpool Football Club, because both allowed me to escape myself better than anything else I’d found up to that point.
One day the beast was gone. We’d returned for our final year and vague explanations were given about why he was no longer present. The Catholic Church did what it did so often – protected its own and ignored the victims, or certainly did nothing to help repair the devastation the sick bastard had left behind.
They could have stopped him, reported him and prevented him from hurting others. They didn’t.
Let God Reign?
No, thanks! I’ll get stuck into the NME, cheap cider, hash and speed, if you don’t mind, because unlike ‘Christ’, they actually exist. I can see them, feel them, buy them, plus they’re more honest and reliable. I had to survive the final year at school, so thank fuck The Smiths had arrived.
Their first album pretty much gave me hope that, despite all that had occurred during my ‘education’, life was still capable of delivering moments of true beauty.
Did I think The Smiths were miserable?
Not a bit of it; they simply said everything I wanted to say but couldn’t, and they looked so utterly cool at the same time. That album breathed life into me and for that I will be forever grateful.
Back in Weston-super-Mare during the summer of my first spliff, my £3 hash, vomit, cheese, beans and sardine sandwich experience had given me something new to think about other than myself, how to lose my virginity and why Paul Weller was pretending to be French and had taken to wearing a beret.
How to score more hash?
I decided my best bet was to find some of the people the teachers at school had warned us about. The ones who ‘had not studied hard enough, had failed their exams, would amount to nothing and were probably on drugs’.
Best advice I’d ever had from those bastards.
The unemployed people in Grove Park were to my desperate eyes a somewhat scruffy, slightly intimidating, mildly mysterious, exclusive group who frequented the park or the Italian gardens in the high street most afternoons, probably shortly after they’d got out of bed. They made doing nothing look like an art form as they lazed about drinking cider and Special Brew, listening to music provided by a tape recorder the size of a small shed. The fact that they all wore sunglasses convinced me they must be on drugs. The devil is indeed in the detail, or in the park in this case, with the best tunes, naturally. These people obviously had better things to do than go to school or work, and if this was failing I wanted some of it.
I’d never previously had the balls to sit with them. I’d often sauntered past and wanted to, but now they suddenly looked less scary and I wanted some more hash.
Needed, actually.
Walking into the park I saw Fergie and his mates looking drunk and bored. We nodded to each other and I assumed it was cool for me to sit down.
‘All right, Fergie? Er, listen, I, er, need to, er, you know, score some dope, man. I’ve got money. Chris [beach boy] usually sorts me out but he’s not in. Any chance of …’
‘No probs, mate,’ he said, eyeing my money. ‘Here you go.’
He pulled out a peanut-sized lump of something wrapped in cling film.
‘Three-pound-fifty, mate. It’s a nice bit of rocky that. Skin one up, then.’
Problem: I might well have just scored my second piece of hash but I had never made a joint in my life and now, surrounded by seasoned dopeheads, I was on the spot.
‘Er, tell you what, Fergie, I’ll go and get a couple of beers from the shop. You can get a spliff together, if you want. Here, may as well use it all … if you want.’
He looked at me and smiled in a manner I could not quite fathom before handing me some change.
‘Bob fucking Marley, you, eh? OK, I’ll have a Special Brew. Make sure it’s cold, though.’
‘Yeah, yeah, of course.’
I headed over to the off-licence. The woman in the shop didn’t even bother to look up as I placed the two gold cans on the counter; she just took the money and continued reading The Sun.
‘Thanks … oh, and a packet of green Rizlas too, please. Long size,’ I said, in my gruffest over-18 voice.
She remained engrossed in whatever nonsense was in the paper, placed my change on the counter and I headed back to the park.
Half an hour after sitting down with Fergie and friends I was unconscious, having smoked half the joint he had made and finished the can of Brew in just a couple of minutes.
Comfortable nothingness.
Result.
The rain woke me a few hours later, after everybody else had obviously relocated and left me to my nothingness, having also ‘accidentally’ taken my packet of ten Benson and Hedges with them.
I went and sat in the park shelter until I felt I could stand up properly, after which I headed towards the seafront and made my way home, a little unsure on my feet and of what to think about my new life. Obviously getting wrecked would take practice.
In the safety of my bedroom I fell asleep listening to Quadrophenia by The Who, delighted to discover that my favourite album now sounded different – it sounded better, it sounded like it had been written exclusively for me.
I was back in the park practising the fine art of passing out the next day and the next and then every day after that, weather permitting. The result of my endeavours was that the point of oblivion rapidly started to take longer to reach – a fact that didn’t go unnoticed by my new mates, who were quick to acknowledge my efforts by, amongst other things, actually speaking to me without feeling the need to ‘borrow’ money and no longer ‘accidentally’ walking off with my fags.
I was ‘in’ with the failures and they were lovely – most of them, anyway. Hysterically eloquent in stoned logic, passionate about music, clothes and smoking dope, they looked cool, talked in a language that made sense to me, introduced me to bands I’d never heard of and never once told me I was a waste of space like the bastards at my school had routinely been doing for a long time.
What’s not to like?
We built absurdly oversized joints, got stoned using chillums, bath bongs, bucket bongs, cider-bottle bongs, Ouzo-bottle bongs and hot knives. Sometimes we’d just eat lumps of hash when only a ‘pure’ state of total catatonia would do or we didn’t have any fags, always with music to provide a soundtrack to the day’s/night’s proceedings.
If we were feeling sophisticated and were at Doug the Slug’s flat, we listened to Miles Davis and the Velvet Underground while wearing sunglasses and chain-smoking all night. I felt part of something. Studying album sleeves while discovering new bands, or indeed new ‘old’ bands, getting stoned, drinking cider and trying to look cool while hanging out in the park seemed to be a necessity in order to survive the boredom of my seaside town, and the addition of cheap speed to my bloodstream soon provided an almost Olympian ability to talk utter nonsense while doing so.
We ranted against Thatcher and the ‘System’, the dole office and how much hassle you had to tolerate for your free money, not that many of us were old enough to be on the dole. The prospect of signing on became something to look forward to – almost as if it were the next rite of passage required to be a fully fledged failure and all that encompassed, which was by now the sum total of my ambitions.
Nothing really happened as the time passed, sometimes sedately, sometimes flushed with the linoleum sparkle of amphetamines. It didn’t really matter as we were permanently stoned, in the process of getting stoned, or figuring out the ways and means to get as stoned as possible, as soon as possible.
It might sound boring and much of the time it probably was, but because we were always stoned, it didn’t seem to matter. Besides, if boredom is a necessity of youth and youth is wasted on the young, it seemed best to be wasted at all times.
I thought about a lot of ‘stuff’ when I was wrecked, although I rarely remembered much of it the following day. But of course that didn’t matter either. I just got stoned, thought some different kind of stoned thoughts, then forgot them all over again. As long as there was a stereo, some vinyl, booze and dope, all was well.
Getting a musical education from Gil Scott-Heron, The Smiths, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, The Waterboys and The Only Ones, while enthusiastically smoking yourself towards a state of utter catatonia was, without doubt, a whole lot more exciting than listening to some noncey priest telling me my life would amount to nothing if I didn’t understand why certain sides of a triangle added up to … oh, FUCK OFF, I don’t care.
I was with ‘my people’, some of whom I was convinced were surely destined for great things and might just take me with them for the ride. As I had no obvious talent for anything other than being skint all the time and generally a pain in the neck, I was going to have to attach myself to somebody or something if I was ever going to achieve my ultimate goal of escaping Weston-super-Mare.
Music and drug ‘culture’ seemed to offer a way out from what, in my stupefied mind, my home town had to offer, which was nothing – certainly nothing that interested me, anyway.
I signed on and signed up, my first ever giro spent on cider, a lump of hash and the latest single by The Smiths, as the rain fell hard on my humdrum town, my morning’s shopping providing me and my mates with shelter from the ever-prevailing storm of boredom.
Was it really that boring?
You’re asking the wrong person. I was too stoned and drunk to notice, really.
I made it through the final year; I’d survived.
The parting shot from a teacher at school?
‘Mason, you’re a worthless piece of shit that’s going to end up dead or in jail.’
Thanks for that and thanks for reminding me there’s always someone I can hate more than I hate myself. Cheerio, Mr Teacher, you utter fucking bastard.
I wish I’d said that. I’m generally not one for regrets, but if only I’d said that to his face instead of bloody nodding in agreement with him.
Living in Weston-super-Mare?
DULL.
Going back to college to retake failed exams?
BORING AND REQUIRED DISCIPLINE.
As I had little choice in relation to my current location and lacked the motivation to do what was needed at college, it’s not surprising that my appetite for getting stoned increased as I dreamt of escape and began to study.
I started reading everything I could get my hands on about drugs, the people who took drugs, the people who grew drugs and the people who smuggled drugs. My LP and singles collection starting to take in albums written by people clearly off their fucking tits on drugs, who clearly made music for people to listen to while similarly afflicted.
Weston-super-Mare was awash with drugs of all varieties due to the simple fact it was a popular location for two particular kinds of institution: nursing homes and drug rehabilitation centres. The first full of people full of drugs, nodding out as they waited to die; the second full of people previously full of drugs, trying (or not) to figure out how to stay off the fuckers and live.
There was no shortage of prescription pills of varying colour and effect for sale and a relatively large displaced community of heroin addicts who’d been kicked out of rehab and decided to stay in the area and deal to satisfy the needs of other relapsed and now relocated junkies from all over the UK – the basic law of economics, never more evident than when practised between drug addicts, being supply and demand.
I stumbled through a few more seasons of failing to not be a failure: two college courses started, two college courses abandoned. My other failure friends didn’t seem to care, of course, but my poor recently remarried mum was tearing her hair out and her new husband, although clearly in love with my mum and doing his very best to make her happy, was soon suggesting I join the army! I needed the discipline, apparently.
I discussed the possibility of joining the army and getting to drive a tank with my mate Tim. His response: ‘What in god’s name makes you think the army is going to let a fucking idiot like you have a tank?’ was a very good question and one for which I obviously had no answer.
Things came to a head after my stepdad was punched in the face by the father of a girl who despite turning up for our second or third date with an industrial-sized box of condoms still managed to become pregnant.
My options, as far as I was concerned anyway, were clear: army training in the West Midlands or run away and take lots of drugs.
Hmmmmmmmm, let me think about that.
Join the army and quite possibly get blown to pieces by the IRA on the streets of Belfast or go and blow my mind to bits in London?
Doug the Slug had a friend, who had a friend, who knew someone looking for a flatmate in Kilburn, so after yet another unpleasant but probably well-deserved confrontation with my stepdad I got their address, packed a bag, scored some hash and speed, then fled.
There are only 130 miles between London and Weston-super-Mare. It’s just over two hours away on the train but a different universe entirely.
After snorting some amphetamines seemingly strong enough to have fuelled the space shuttle, I found myself drinking can after can of lager, speeding my tits off as the train pulled out of Weston station and transported me towards the new life that was possibly on offer in the metropolis. I was actually terrified, but six cans and a million light years later the speed had reduced any fears I might have had, while also reducing the size of my cock. Speed’s good like that: big plans, big eyeballs, shrunken penis.
With a head short-circuiting with hundreds of new ideas every second and full of drug-induced attitude, I leapt off the train at Paddington, my eyes on fire, cheeks sucked in, fag at the correct angle, shades glued to my face and dressed to kill. Hey, ho, let’s fucking go, indeed!
When you arrive in a strange and mesmerising new place, planning (I use the word loosely) to make it your new home, there are usually some simple things to consider. Locating the address you hope to stay at is probably one of them; most people may even consider it rather important. Snorting another massive line of nasty jaw-clenching amphetamine then heading into Soho and all that was on offer there is probably not the most sensible move.
I was 17 and speeding my face off; nothing really seemed to matter. I was in the big smoke and life, unlike my dick, was suddenly looking up.
The noises, the smells, the desperate, glorious energy became a beautiful sensory overload, sucking me in and, unlike the prostitute that would shortly spy me as I glided through Soho, sucking me off, too.
The neon lights, clip joints, police sirens, whores, homos and hustlers of mid ’80s Soho and the wonderful array of multicoloured people, hustling, shouting and scurrying about, getting/having a life, all informed me I had arrived. I’d made it.
Yes! I’ve fucking MADE IT.
Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, ME.
I feel so alive – a sensation complemented by the total anonymity of being surrounded by strangers. No one in this city knows me, not one of the multitude of souls who call this home, but I am now a part of it, or at the very least I’ve got a chance to be, and for the moment that is more than enough.
Head tingling, back sweating, legs rocket-propelled by cheap speed, I shoot through the labyrinth and out into Piccadilly Circus, where I quickly change my mind about trying to shag a prostitute after being approached by the third street worker in as many minutes with fewer teeth than my granddad had.
‘Maybe another time, baby?’
‘Are you here tomorrow, love?’
She walks away laughing then coughs up a big greenie and deposits it on the pavement. ‘Yeah, baby … every day, every day.’
Another line I think, no, insist to myself as I march through the streets, soaking it all up and sweating it out again, can after can of Stella reaching the parts that the beer that reaches the parts others don’t doesn’t reach either. The familiarity of various buildings previously only seen on television gives me the feeling of knowing exactly where I am, even though I’ve only visited London once before. More speed, more Stella, more, more, more LONDON.
I lose some money in the arcades in Leicester Square but don’t care. I’ve won something anyway – more speed, more fags, more Stella. More, more, more.
It gets dark and the West End comes alive, more vibrant and seductive in a few hours than the hometown I’m escaping from could be if it existed for eternity. As I choke back the sulphate that’s sliding down my throat, I fall in love with the greatest city on earth and instantly divorce myself from that place at the other end of the train tracks.
Weston-Super-WHERE?
I’m home.
Some time later I realised I was tired. Some more time after that I realised I had no fucking clue where I was or where I was going to sleep.
Sleep? Glancing at my watch, I saw it was 4.30 a.m.
I searched my jeans pocket to try to find the wrap of sulphate that had my friend’s friend’s address scribbled inside it. A short while after emptying my pockets for the tenth time I remembered that I’d chewed it and swallowed it when the last of my speed had become impregnated in it after I had been dancing – I use the term loosely – in some tourist hell-hole nightclub.
Unknown faces had stared at me as I tried to demand that the DJ play something by The Smiths. When my demands went unmet I’d proceeded to call him a stupid, fat, music-hating cunt and was then thrown out by the thugs in dinner jackets who had in all probability taken the remaining few pounds out of my jacket as they smashed my throbbing head against every stair in the process of wishing me a ‘Goodnight, sir’.
I got a sinking feeling of Titanic proportions as I realised I was now totally broke with nowhere to go, no one to call and, worst of all, no more speed, alcohol or fags. My legs felt like they were melting, my new life disintegrating as the Technicolor explosion from the previous day’s/night’s drugs fizzled out and I in turn fell to earth, or Trafalgar Square to be more precise.
Here was the early-morning madness: people hanging out and waiting for a night bus, liquid eyes rolling around up-all-night faces just like mine. People beginning the start of the journey home after a night of debauchery, talking shit and searching out somewhere still serving a drink at 4 a.m.
Buses came and went, delivering the coming-down-but-wide-awake people back to redundant beds to stare at the ceiling for hours until sleep slowly, eventually arrived.
Home?
Seeing as I’d eaten the address of the home I’d hoped to go to, I skulked around feeling drained and disoriented, watching the night crawlers slope off and wishing someone would take me with them.
It felt scary all of a sudden, as the (lack of) speed started to slow down my body and mind, allowing reality and tiredness to begin to catch up. Fuck.
I perched next to one of the lions at the base of Nelson’s Column for what seemed like hours in freefall. I thought about skinning up a joint but was suddenly far too paranoid, so I just sat there, jaws clenched, waiting.
Waiting for what? I don’t know! I had no idea of what to do next.
Someone else did, though.
A shark circles in his car. Above us the rats with wings circle Nelson, his lions and the speed-wrecked, shipwrecked idiot below. No one knows I am here, but I am. Just about.
No doubt I am looking bewildered, lost and vulnerable, so the shark closes in for a thrill/kill.
‘Hello, you look a bit lost, can I help?’
A bit lost? This guy must have been following me for years, right?
Instinct, of a kind, kicks in.
‘Got a cigarette, mate?’
‘Yeah, sure. Are you all right? Can I help?’
‘I don’t know, can you?’
I think I know what he has in mind but this is not a situation I am prepared for, or maybe I am?
‘Do you want a coffee, maybe go for a bite to eat, a chat?’
I’ve seen that expression before. I know what it means but I don’t really care. I don’t know how to.
We’re in a car, an old car, warm and reeking of fags and stale spunk (which in retrospect was probably more fragrant than how I smelt by this point) as we head towards the river, looking for somewhere to get coffee. As we pass another McDonald’s, I enquire as to where we’re actually going.
‘You said we were going to get some food, mate!’
‘Oh, I thought I’d get you home first,’ says the shark, revealing a salacious smile that suddenly leaves me in no doubt whatsoever as to his preferred early-morning fancy. His hand hovers above my knee.
‘No! I want a McDonald’s. Here! Look!’
I’m attempting but failing to avoid sounding anxious and this is akin to blood in the water in which a predator of his kind swims.
He places a hand on my leg and pulls over. I slip out of the front seat and into the safety of neon burger-land. Looking back, he is right behind me.
‘Give me some money, please. I’m hungry and need to get my energy back up, you know …’
I try to avoid eye contact as he passes me a crumpled £5 note and disappears down the stairs to go to the toilets, leaving me in the queue.
I’m instantly out into Victoria Station, heart racing, leg muscles disintegrating but carrying me back out and away along Victoria Street, no longer scared but peculiarly encouraged by what has just occurred.
Maybe the streets are paved with gold after all? Or at least walked upon by dirty old men with more money than either morality or sense?
With the £5 note clutched tightly in my sweaty palm, I scuttle off towards Soho again, stopping only to buy cigarettes, chewing gum and orange juice, then float through St James’s Park to eventually find myself back in Piccadilly Circus – the old main drag.
Sitting below Eros, with a freshly lit fag, I smile and go to make a call.
After a few calls to Weston I managed to get hold of the address I’d inadvertently swallowed the previous night and found myself on a Tube heading north to Kilburn.
Ten minutes’ walk from the station along Shoot-up Hill and I was standing by the front door of a large semi-detached house with what resembled a refuse tip out front where the garden once was many years and student tenancies ago. Locating the doorbell, I drew breath, pressed it and waited … pressed it again and waited again … before I gave up trying to be considerate and left my finger on the doorbell until I got a response.
‘Who the fuck is it? Fuck off, eh!’
Welcome to Kilburn, country boy.
‘Hello, I’m looking for …’
A just-been-woken-up voice angrily interrupted me from somewhere inside.
‘Who the fuck is it? What fucking time is it? If you’re the landlord or Skinny Pete, Mr Boyd is not in. Now stop hassling me, I know my rights, man.’
‘Er, I’m Simon … I’m one of Doug the Slug’s mates from Weston. He said you had a spare room for rent and I’ve got nowhere to stay and I don’t know anybody and I’m really tired.’
‘Fuck off! Do you know what the bloody time is?’
‘Er, yeah, look, I’m really sorry about that. I got lost on the way here, sort of …’
No response.
‘Look, I’ll pay rent and everything. I won’t be a freeloader.’
No response.
‘Listen, do you want to skin up and we can talk about it? I’ve got a nice bit of rocky here.’
The sound of a Golden Virginia-induced hacking cough followed by the resulting phlegm being flushed down the toilet indicated I’d possibly made a breakthrough.
I heard somebody half walk, half fall down the stairs. The door opened and there stood a thin, long-haired hippy with a grey sheet wrapped round a body that obviously hadn’t seen a bacon sarnie in years. He looked me up and down, yawned and turned back towards the stairs. I took it as my cue to enter.
‘Rocky, eh? Let’s have a cup of tea and we’ll get a smoke together and have a chat. My name’s Rob. Will’s not got in yet. Been out all night speeding his tits off somewhere, I expect. Come in.’
Yes! Yes! Yes! FUCKING YES!!!!!!
Rob farted and then padded up the stairs. I stumbled along behind, holding my breath as I navigated my way through the gaseous residue of last night’s veggie curry. We entered the kitchen to be met by another aroma – one unique to such an environment. A smell you will not encounter anywhere else. An odour so particular that it stays in the consciousness for ever. Anybody who has ever been a student, squatted or lived communally with other young men knows this smell. It’s as much a part of the experience as taking drugs and staying up all night talking shit, putting Che Guevara posters on the wall, regrettable one-night stands, wearing shabby clothes and pretending to be left-wing for three years.
It’s the aroma of the male student kitchen and to me it smelt like home.
Rob offered me a cup of Earl Grey and stuck out his hand. ‘Right, then, let’s have a look at this ganja.’
I handed it over and he proceeded to inspect it as if it were a precious gem, rolling it around his hand for a while before burning a corner with his Zippo lighter and sniffing the ensuing smoke.
‘Ah, yeah, there’s been quite a bit of this around lately. Right, do you mind if I get one together?’
‘No, course not. Help yourself. That’s what it’s for, eh?’
As he proceeded to put seven Rizlas together, I surveyed the kitchen. Apart from several different-coloured moulds growing unchecked on the woodchip-covered walls, there was nothing but a poster of Fat Freddy’s cat and a clock with no hands left to indicate anybody ever used this room.
Rob looked up and read my thoughts. ‘Yeah, it’s a bit barren right now but we’re getting it together. Only moved in recently, you know.’
‘Oh, right, when was that, then?’
‘When we got kicked out of halls by the fascist scum – couple of years ago now.’
He finished building the longest joint I had ever seen, sparked up, smoked silently for a few minutes and then passed it to me. I pulled on it as he wandered off.
‘I’ll put some tunes on. What you into?’
‘Whatever, mate. The Smiths, Velvet Underground?’
Rob returned and The Velvet Underground drifted after him into the room.
No, really, it’s true. At least one of them apparently just had! The seven-skinner had almost finished me off. I felt absolutely fucked and was now clearly hallucinating – either that or Rob’s flatmate had just walked in dressed entirely in black, strumming an acoustic guitar, fag hanging out of his gob and wearing a pair of Ray-Bans, singing ‘Sweet Jane’.
Either situation was fine by me as my head hit the table and I began to mumble incoherently to myself while resting face down in a small puddle of my own saliva.
Somebody was poking me, almost shouting at me. ‘Hello in there … Rob says you want to move in, yeah? Well, that’s all right with me as long as you pay the rent and don’t vote for Thatcher. Simple rules, man, yeah?
‘Hello, anybody in there?’
I couldn’t open my eyes but the voice continued …
‘Look, I’m sorry if I’ve woken you up but you need to answer a few questions before we make a very important decision. I know it’s early but if you want to take the room you have to understand the rules and now’s as good a time as any to get things sorted, yeah?’
My eyes were still refusing to work but the voice was also refusing to leave me alone.
‘Can I skin up, man? I’m a bit wired at the moment. Been up all night, yeah. Did some whizz, yeah. Went to the fuckin’ Wag club. Fuckin’ excellent, man, yeah. Have you ever been to the Wag? It’s fuckin’ excellent, man. Listen, I’ll get some tea together and we’ll have this chat, yeah?’
I was still face down at the table, eyes still closed. But the voice continued.
‘Do you like The Velvet Underground? Fuckin’ Lou Reed, man. Fuckin’ excellent man … yeah?’
I opened one eye and tried to focus on the source of this babble.
‘Oh, I’m Will by the way. Very pleased to meet you.’
Will wasn’t even looking in my direction as he stirred in five sugars and spilt tea everywhere.
‘Yeah, man, been out all night at the fuckin’ Wag, man. Excellent, yeah? So, tell me, how’s Doug the Slug doing in Weston? Heard he’s moving back up here soon. Fuckin’ excellent, man, yeah. Hey, have you got any skins? Need to get a reefer together, man. Been up all night. Did some speed and went to the …’
‘The fucking Wag,’ I interrupted.
Will turned to face me.
‘Yeah, man, how do you know? Were you there? Fuckin’ excellent night, wasn’t it? I didn’t see you … I was totally off my face, man. Did some speed … Have you got those skins I asked for? Right, kettle’s boiled, let’s get a cup of tea together, have that spliff, yeah?’
I pushed the Rizlas in his direction as he stared at the four mugs of tea he’d just made, obviously trying to figure who’d made the extra three, then giggling as he realised it was his doing. ‘Woops, need to slow down here. You know, you seem pretty cool, so I guess the room’s yours, man. Nice one. I’ll show you where the social is, if you like. I’m going down there myself later … wankers owe me some money! How do they expect us to live, man? Good job I like amphetamines. Couldn’t afford to eat every day, yeah? Anyway, welcome to the house. I’m Will by the way. Pleased to meet you, nice one.’
He finished rolling the joint, lit it and stood up and walked away, mumbling to himself. ‘Right, new flatmate, that calls for a drink. I’ll just have a quick nap, then we can get things sorted. See ya in a bit, yeah?’
Five minutes later he reappeared at the door amid a cloud of fag smoke, having wet and combed his hair back and now looking like a cross between Marty Feldman and a demented, undernourished vampire who’d just spotted his first neck in weeks.
‘Fancy a line of whizz and a quick pint before we go to the social?’
It was obviously a rhetorical question, as sleep seemed to be off the agenda for that morning. I thought it sounded like a good idea given the circumstances and the fact Will was fumbling with a wad of notes big enough to club a whale to death with.
‘Right, fuckin’ excellent, yeah? Let’s go. I’m buying.’
We headed out the door. Rob had gone back to bed, so it was just the two of us who approached his/our/my local, which was less than two minutes’ walk away – well, more of a unwavering stride as far as Will was concerned. I staggered along behind him as he mumbled something about getting home later to finish some work before steaming into the boozer and striding up to the bar.
‘Good morning, barman. Two pints of Guinness and two large whiskies, please. Oh, and one for yourself.’
It was shortly after midday and the place was mental already. This was definitely not Weston-super-Mare.
I’ve made it, I thought to myself as the first Guinness and whisky slid down the back of my throat, I’ve really fucking made it.
Will was in the third and final year of his university studies, although when pressed on the subject he seemed reluctant to discuss anything about what exactly it was he had been studying.
‘Yeah, you know, it’s all utter bollocks, really. I can’t really be bothered with it any more but it keeps the family off my back. They’re expecting me to get a job soon, whatever that means, fuckin’ yeah, no fuckin’ way, man. Too much like hard work that, yeah, know what I mean?’
I nodded in empathy, although to be honest I hadn’t really understood much of what Will had said during the previous few hours we’d been in the pub. It was all I could do just to stop myself from sliding underneath the table and eventually I had been forced to undo the belt from around my waist and actually strap myself into the chair, while Will had continued getting in Christ knows how many pints of Guinness with accompanying whisky chasers. His trips to the bar were the only times he actually broke off his ‘conversation’ at me – a barrage of mildly psychotic rambling that ceased for only as long as it took to demand more booze from the seemingly unfazed barman.
Just as I was about to slip into unconsciousness, Will informed me that we were ready to face ‘the fuckin’ brain-dead morons at the fuckin’ social security office. Fuckin’ expect me to live on twenty quid a fuckin’ week, fuckers.’
‘Listen, Will mate, I’m not sure if I can stand up at the moment, mate, you know? I’ve been up all night too, mate. I’m absolutely fucked, mate. I’m not really in the right frame of mind for the social. I really could do with some sleep, yeah?’