CHAPTER FOUR

After that time on the roofs I didn't talk to Tracy for three years. Then I think it was sometime shortly after my
sixteenth birthday, I was definitely still at school so it must have been before Easter.
This was during what can best be described as the year of the bong. Our metamorphosis into serious pot heads had
accelerated when we got connected to a steady reliable supply. Pogo's big brother Foggy had some kind of biker
connection, (the Centurions were Dellend's local geriatric greaser gang.) They sold him good hash and he served it up to
the WA in eights and teenths that we would all chip in for.
That night was the first time we all took acid. We were too young I suppose but the dosage was very low. We split
two (weak to start with)“Dancing Robots” between eight of us, everyone biting off a quarter, and sat on the Gash
smoking reefer waiting for something to happen. It was the usual core six, plus by complete coincidence Pogo and
Ullah chumming along again. From where we were sat I could see three of my Robotix tags. I'd bombed all over
Dellend by that time, in fact I was in the middle of what could be described as a tagging frenzy. My art teacher (who
liked me,) Mr Finlay, had warned me that the police were out to get me. They'd asked him and every art teacher in
Dellend if they recognised the extremely stylized robots that accompanied each violent tag, figuring rightly that Robotix
would be constantly drawing those Hip Hop androids on his books, satchel and every surface available.
I was part of a renaissance. Riggy had under Ullahs tutelage become a pretty sick BMX freestlyler. Buzzer was now
backing up Stilly's ever improving rapping with his own strange minimalist take on beat boxing. We were all about
skills that year. I think even Slacko was trying to transform shitting in gardens into an artform.
Some of Tracy's U.F.O.s were still on the Westgate and I saw them turn up around other parts of Dellend, but my
imagined nights out blamming with her had not happened.
As the sun set Pogo said he wanted to go and see my brother's band, which at that time was a youth club aided kid's
combo that our Phil sang and played guitar for called “Rockflections”. I actually didn't know much about them, my
understanding was that they mostly did Britpop covers. Ullah said we should all go. I disagreed.
“Fuck that! Let's get on the roofs.”
I didn't want to go to some tweenies concert. My feelings towards my little brother were at that time developing from
mild annoyance into something more like proper dislike. I couldn't stand Britpop and liked to stay well away from the
Ridge, but Ullah was keen on some action and since fuck all else was happening, he easily won the argument.
“We're going!.................. Oh c'mon Rod when was the last time you saw a band? I thought so....... Never!”
Paul shrugged at me from inside his gigacoat,
“It might be a laugh.”
The venue was a concrete annex hugging a church. Lots of Westgate younglings had shown up, I suppose because
the band were all Westgate. We felt a bit weird because we were the oldest fuckers to make the scene. It didn't cost
anything to get in and there was a bar selling pop and crisps. As the Acid was kicking in Ullah was trying to cause
aggro with some skate kids but they weren't into it. None of “The Ridge,” the smoother branded equivalent of us, (who
would have happily accommodated him,) were there. There was a disco before the band, playing rock and pop crap.
They played Express Yourself by NWA and we shuffled about self consciously for four minutes. Stilly and Riggy were
enjoying themselves, running around making these weird alien shrieks that they'd recently gotten into. Acid obviously
suited them.
Somebody let off some sort off smoke bomb, just a stupid kid's prank but I don't think this pleased the grown ups
there one bit. For a few moments we were in total white out. I saw people made of smoke running past me as I stumbled
over to the stage where I witnessed our Phil and his band arguing with the Vicar about something.
Not long after, some youth worker introduced,
“Rockflections!” and they burst into a noisy out of tune version of some Oasis song. Phil was up front, twelve years
old, wearing his school uniform, the only clothes he had. Almost immediately they were drowned out by the horrible
Skkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkhreeeeeeeeeeeech of feedback. It took about thirty seconds of this before Phil completely lost it
and started to scream blame at everyone around, calling them all the cunts under the sun. When the vicar came on and
tried to calm him down Phil told him to “Fuck off!” before launching his mike stand into the drums. That was it, the gig
was cancelled, the lights went on and the P.A. off. The bouncers who I suppose were church wardens or something
started pushing everyone out. Some of the Westgate girls began giving them shit and shouting, and then whoever it was
let off another smoke bomb and we all piled out onto the street.
We peeled off in our own little group, wanting to stick together and to ourselves,(we were really feeling the acid by
then.)We immediately took a wrong turn and got lost, none of us really knowing our way around the Ridge. An eldritch
mist surrounded us compounding the disorientating effects of the LSD.
We drifted into a graveyard where we were menaced by shadows, then decided the best thing was to sit down and
skin up. Ullah was good at helping us keep it together, cracking jokes and shit. We spent at least half an hour there
getting a throb from being lost behind enemy lines.
We had no idea which way to leave the graveyard so set off walking down the middle of some random street.
A hooded teenager materialised in front of us. A Kung-Fu silhouette wailing in high pitched faux oriental, waving a
bamboo stick three times longer than himself. We froze for a moment in shock before Slacko said,
“Lets do him!” We laughed and went to walk past the tiny Ninja. A gang of about twenty lads suddenly
corporealized from the mist. They'd probably been hanging around with the express purpose of picking off Westgate
stragglers leaving the concert.
They didn't just pile straight into us, rather they sort of started a conversation first. A few of them I knew from
school. I recognised Tug who was a bit of a nutjob from the year above me. I think a lot of them were from Our Lady's
which is where most of the WA went. Ullah certainly seemed to be familiar with them, he said,
“Allright Thomo!” to a big ugly looking fucker who replied quite casually,
“Allright Ullah. Did you get lost?”
“Just having a wander...” the atmosphere was tense but not deadly, even though the kid with the bamboo was still
circling us, making threatening noises. It was more like we were socially embarrassed than anything. Then Ullah asked,
“Is this were all the queers go for a bum is it?” They actually all laughed at that one, Thomo laughed the loudest and
replied,
“I wasn't aware of it but seeing you lot here, I guess it fucking must be!”
There was a silent pause, probably because no one could think of a zinger, then Slacko actually picked on one
individual lad opposite him and spat,
“Who the fuck are you giving the evils to McAuley you fucking little fucking prick, I swear down I'm gonna fuck
you up!” Thomo laughed some more. There was another awkward silence before Slacko started up again,
“I'm fucking being fucking serious you know, I swear down!” Before he could continue one of the Ridge said in a
real matter of fact voice,
“Allright then,” and they came at us with fists and trainers. Fucked up on drugs and heavily outnumbered we didn't
put up much of a fight. Or I certainly didn't, I went down immediately like the proverbial sack of shit then took some
punishment in the gutter. It was a psychedelic paggering, I could see acid traces coming of the Air Max and the bamboo
that kept coming repeatedly at my head. Buzzer was giving a good account of himself, actually beating back the three
lads that were on him. This caused the ones who were kicking me to desist so they could reinforce their mates, but
Buzzer was putting up such a good fight that one of them said,
“No leave him alone, he's allright Buzzer! I have chemistry and history with him!” Then after one beat, the same
voice,
“Get that one on the floor he's a fucking twat!” Which caused me to let out a groan. I heard Buzzer give what I'm sure
was his only spoken contribution to the whole night,
 “Fucking leave him!”
The whole battle didn't last more than two minutes, some old biddies appeared and started shouting at them to leave
us alone. As he walked away from my bleeding head one lad said,
“Don't fuck with The Ridge!” Good advice I thought.
One of the old dears helped me up and we tried to make the most dignified exit possible, shuffling off in the opposite
direction from our attackers, still lost, bleeding. Riggy was limping quite badly. Paul shook his head at me as though I
was somehow to blame.
Ullah's face had swollen up so that it looked like he was sucking on a rugby ball, he was really hard to look at. I was
O.K. though a bust nose had splattered blood all over me. Things can't have been too grim because when Ullah said,
“They think we shot Cyrus. Every gang in the city must be looking for us!” we all started laughing as if it was the
funniest shit we ever heard.
Eventually Pogo said he knew where we were and we started making some progress in the right direction. A pig van
appeared and pulled up besides us. They didn't bother getting out just called us over and we complied meekly feeling
more like victims than criminals at that particular moment.
“Out for a stroll are we lads?” They seemed only vaguely interested in us.
Things only started to go bad when we all spontaneously started laughing again. That pissed them right off,
“What's so fucking funny? Is there a joke we're missing?” but we couldn't stop. Then Stilly and Riggy started to run
around the van making their alien screeches and things got worse.
“You're actually annoying us now lads, don't act like little fucking dickheads.... I really don't want to have to get out
of this van and chase you! ..... Hey just fucking cut it out!” We couldn't help ourselves, every word that he said seemed
hilarious and Stilly and Riggy had actually started to push on the sides of the van, trying to rock it.
When another van came out of nowhere and untold pigs jumped out, we didn't really have a chance. We were too
busy cracking up to properly leg it. I think they were surprised at how easy it was to get a grip on us all. We were still
pissing ourselves laughing as they threw us in the back of the van.
Back at the station they put us in a cage then took us out to the desk one at a time. A sergeant looked right into my
eyes and said,
“You're high on drugs aren't you!” I managed a,
“Fuck off!” then some big fat plain clothes fucker came out of nowhere grabbed me round the throat and held me up
against a wall. He stank of booze, and there was white spittle leaking from the sides of his mouth. Some other cops were
seriously trying to pull him off me when I blacked out.
I woke up, not in a cell but back in the cage on my own. Then they just let me go without mentioning charges or
cautions, or the fact that they must have just dumped me passed out in a corner, or anything. They'd cut everyone else
loose with (I later found out) a half an hour gap in between each release. I suppose so we couldn't have any post cop-
shop camaraderie but had to walk home alone.
I stumbled towards the Westgate, covered in dried blood, aching all over, still tripping a bit. An unreasonable sun
was just coming up, having a go.
I spotted a milk float, the milk man nowhere to be seen, and decided to grab a pint. Just before I did Pogo's big
brother Foggy was there in front of me noiselessly helping himself to eggs, juice and cream. He mouthed,
“Come on!” I picked up as much milk as I could and followed him down a back alley.
Most of the WA, besides the odd Granny fed giant like Buzzer, were on what you might call the skinny side. I was
rocking the malnutrition look myself but Foggy took gaunt to another level. It was easy to imagine there was nothing
but skull and skeleton under the hoody, cap and tracksuit of this gangly Hip Hop affectionado, who was a good three
years older than his brother. He'd once been the best break dancer on the Westgate, until he'd come off a motorbike
during a police chase, fucking up his knee forever. Now he was the only real full time drug dealer the Westgate had.
Extremely available and always (because of his biker connections,) holding. Sometimes he hung around the Gash with
the WA, he had a peculiar habit of shouting out druggie futuristic non sequiturs, like,
“The planets collide!” Obviously a bit mad, he was generally considered to be a cool hombre. He was the first person
I knew to have a mobile phone.
He looked me up and down as we trotted along,
“You look well fucked!” I was cold and had started shaking a little, he stared into my eyes,
“Dancing Robot?”
“Yeah I was with your Peter. We all went up to the Ridge and got battered, then got nicked. I think we all got let out
though.”
“Battered by Ridge lads?” I nodded. Foggy seemed to ponder this information deeply. There were constant hostilities
between the Westgate and the Ridge, but there'd been no serious kick-off's for ages, probably because of Foggy's hash
chilling everyone the fuck out.
“Come round Scotch Mary's with us, we'll sort you out!” I'd never heard of Scotch Mary and must of looked unsure
because he said,
“You'll be welcome with all that milk, c'mon!” After that he just hurried ahead so I jogged after him.
Scotch Mary's was a bedsit on the top floor of a house on Arniston Terrace, a street full of tiny bedsits in the centre
of town. Foggy led me up the narrow steep staircase, from which a smelly carpet seemed to sprout like a five o clock
shadow. He went through an abused looking door right at the top.
Mary was sat on her knees skinning up in front of a one bar electric heater. An impressively large ghetto blaster was
pumping out Massive Attack. The tiny room was a converted attic, I was very short for my age and could just manage it
but Foggy couldn't stand up properly under the low sloping ceiling. Obviously I'd appeared during the late stages of
some sort of all night session, it seemed that Foggy had only popped out for supplies. I was still tripping and felt as
though I was entering a chilled space. The lampshade was draped over with a scarf so an orange glow gave everything a
drugs friendly patina, and the feeling that you were inside the glowing end of a giant cigarette. No light was squeezing
through the one greasy, A4 sized window. A Staffordshire Bull Terrier was half asleep on a cushion breathing in and
out like a big brown lung.
Scotch Mary was a beautiful eighteen year old, wearing baggy white addidas trackie bottoms and a roomy red
hoodie that matched her long dyed hair pouring out from inside the baseball hat she wore backwards. She looked at me
and my bloodstains a bit dubiously with eyes that seemed used to staring down young ragamuffins. Foggy reassured
her,
“This is little Rod Melrose he's a mate of our Peter's. I found him wandering the fucking streets all alone..... He's been
on them Dancing Robots, and he got battered by big boys...... Then locked up by the pigs!”
She jumped up into a crouch and took the milk off me,
“Show him where the bathroom is Foggy, let the boy get a wash......... Don't get it all dirty cos it's shared with the rest
of the house so it is.” She had a thick Scottish accent that sounded hard but also... welcoming.
It felt good to splash some water on my face, when I got back she said,
“Shoes off please, Foggy knows the score!” Foggy said,
“Welcome to the Crab Nebula!” a reference to the huge poster completely covering the sloped ceiling. I recognised it
from the front of a Prodigy LP, basically a photo of a crab on a beach.
The dog woke up and showed a little interest in me, Mary snorted,
“Gnuj is soft as fuck by the way... Just give him a wee stroke and he'll be your best pal!”
Whilst Foggy cooked the eggs Mary gave me a mug full of juice. I drank it whilst taking the cramped space in. I
thought it looked fucking wicked. Although the carpet, furniture and few fixtures and fittings were all tatty shit from the
eighties, it was layered over in hip postcards and pictures cut out from magazines. Coolio snarled at me from a poster
that obscured dense floral wallpaper. There was even a lot of original paintings of blue aliens and an easel set up in a
corner.
I was sat on the floor leaning against some cushions hoping my feet didn't smell too much, really enjoying the
morning after the night before in some far out girls place listening to music. Instead of being sat on the Gash or in a bus
shelter somewhere.
There were lots of books, not on shelves, just lining the edges of the walls and piled up on top of each other. They
were nearly all Science Fiction. I spotted “Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep” which I'd heard Blade Runner was
based on and “The Centauri Device” that I'd just read myself a few weeks earlier. I picked up “Trouble With Lichen” by
John Wyndnam which I'd never heard of. Mary was observing me whilst she made coffee and I felt as though I had to
say something. I managed,
“These books look good, are you into Science Fiction?”
“Well yeah sort of but they're Tracy's mostly. She does the paintings as well!” Almost exactly at the same moment
that her name was spoken Tracy appeared at the door of what must have been a bedroom.
She was wearing trackie bottoms and a vest as pyjamas. She'd grown up a lot since the last time I'd seen her. Now
she was as tall as a short adult woman and she had breasts. Her face had changed, it was less round and her nose had
grown meaning she looked less like an Inuit and more like an Apache. She'd obviously just woken and was smiling as
though thoroughly happy to see people still up. I couldn't tell if she recognised me.
“We have just began our orbit around Triton!” said Foggy, as he started passing round forks and plates of scrambled
eggs on toast. I accepted mine gratefully. Mary had made coffee by spooning instant powder into a big brown pot and
filling it up with boiling water from one of those heaters people used to have over the sink in bedsits.
Tracy sat on a big cushion next to Mary and looked me over.
“Its Rod from the Westgate innit? Fucking hell have you been fighting?” I couldn't think of anything to say but,
“Yeah!” She came over to me and started to make a fuss about my bust lip and black eye. She was hovering over me
and her breasts brushed against the side of my shoulder. I could feel myself going red and was hoping no one noticed.
There was a big difference between me and Tracy now, for whilst she had blossomed into a young woman, I was
physically a very late developer. Still as it turned out, almost two years away from puberty. She was a good foot taller
than me so it was easy for her to treat me as if I was some little kid, which I certainly looked like next to her.
“Not happy unless you have a fight are you, you little Westgate hardnuts!” She was teasing me, “WA are you?” I
nodded, realising how ridiculous it sounded when she said it.
I couldn't seem to stop myself looking at her. Not just at her breasts it was her regal looking neck that was attracting
me. I had to purposefully look at a picture of Run DMC to stop myself goggling.
Tracy went to get dressed, it seemed she was living there with Mary. I'd never known a girl before that didn't live
with her parents or whatever.
When Foggy and Mary said that they were going to bed nobody seemed in a rush to chuck me out. Tracy seemed
unworried about being left alone with me, the huge difference in our development meant that there was no sexual
tension, well not the sort that involves two people.
Tracy was a skinning up machine, and a keen talker. I was fascinated by her anyway and the small bit of acid left in
my system intensified that.
 “I see you're still doing the robots. They're all over the place, it is you right?” She sat herself in the one proper chair
in the place that Foggy had vacated.
“Oh yeah I'm Robotix!” I felt myself blush with pride now. For the first time in my life it seemed like an
achievement that really mattered but she just shrugged and said,
“Yeah I don't bother much any more,” she pointed at the paintings, “I prefer canvas now!” I nodded appreciatively
and squeaked,
“They're wicked!” then after a gap, “Are all these books yours?”
“Do you like Science Fiction?”
“Yeah I do. Actually, I just read one called Neuromancer.” Her eyebrows went up, “Er I think it's by erm.... William
Gibson.”
“Oh you like Cyberpunk do you?” I felt embarrassed but was eager to let her know that I really had spent the last
year reading tons of Sci-Fi. I didn't know anyone that really shared my passion so it was a novelty to meet someone
who did, never mind a girl.
“Well yeah I think that's the only, what did you call it Cyberpunk one that I've read. Before that I read one by Ian M
Banks have you heard of him? That was good an'all!”
“What a Culture novel?”
“Yeah they're in it.... Consider Phlebas it was called.” I didn't have a clue how to pronounce it so went with Fleabass.
“That's the first one... Here I've got some more.” She looked through her books and came up with “The Player of
Games” and “Use of Weapons”. She passed them to me and I looked at the covers and diligently read the blurbs. She
started to pull out more books, “Don't you just love the Culture?... They're like fucking massive hippies really but
hippies you don't fuck with!”
“Yeah but that guy in that one I've just read he hates them dunt he cos he thinks they make everything a bit boring
and that!” A look came across her face as though she was totally taken aback by the depth of my astute critique. She
picked up a book on graffiti and passed me that as well,
“Yeah you should check this out too actually, it's all like New York graff!” The tape that was playing on the big deck
had stopped and she quickly changed it for some weirder sounding Trip Hop. For me it was like my first day at some
kind of space art academy. I was being overloaded with culture and it was all coming from this amazing girl that used to
do Graff on my estate.
It's not that my mates were all illiterate. (Well maybe Slacko.) We were all into comics, Riggy had a thing about
biographies and Paul read just as much as me, but he'd gone down the sword and sorcery route and no one had been as
excited as me about the three big boxes of Sci-Fi I'd mysteriously found in our basement.(When I'd asked Dad how
they’d got there he'd just muttered something about meaning to sell them.) Like I've said, we were all into Hip Hop
culture but Tracy was on a different level. She was much more enthusiastic about stuff than what I was used to, and
seemed comfortable talking about things she'd read and watched and listened to in a positive eager way.
That morning time stretched out beyond reason, I felt like I'd been there all day but in fact it was just past noon when
Foggy surfaced again saying,
“The galaxy spins and keeps on spinning!” When he went to leave I thought I'd better go with him. Tracy insisted I
took “The Player of Games” with me.
“Your gonna love it!” she enthused, “Tell me if you think it's better than the other one.... I do!” She took the one step
that it took to see me to the door. As I took a last look at her I found myself mesmerised again and had to wrench my
gaze away before I walked home feeling a warm, excited buzz.
When I got in Phil and Dad were sat in the living room singing a Cat Steven's song. Phil on guitar Dad tapping a
tambourine.
“Where the fuck have you been?” my Dad's tone was playful. It wasn't unusual for me to be out all night. I slept at
Paul's so much his Mum joked that she'd adopted me.
I turned to Phil,
“I was at your gig last night you know? All two seconds of it!”
“I know, I've heard all about you getting paggered. Paul and Buzzer were here looking for you.” He adjusted his
tuning.
“Why are you always fucking..... Getting into aggro?” Dad shook his head as he lit a opened a can, “I'm not coming
down the cop shop to get you if you get pinched d'ya hear me? You can just just sit in a cell for all I fucking care. That's
a right pack of dickheads you hang out with!” He'd never been overly impressed by the WA.
They went back to singing Wild World and I went up to my bedroom and thought about Tracy whilst starting on the
book she'd lent me.
 CHAPTER 5
I climbed out of the bath just as Zaif rang,
“Sorry R2 I'm going to be going to this thing early tonight, like five o clock. I've got to make sure my mirrors are
hung properly.... You've got the address though right?”
“Yeah sure don't worry,” I wasn't overly keen on going on my own,
“Er look I didn't mention your name or anything, I was discreet, but I asked and er yeah that Tracy is definitely going
to be there.” I couldn't back out now.
It took me a long time to decide what to wear. I was actually trying to work out what look might impress Tracy.
Dead Dad was predictably scornful,
“You haven't seen this lass in over seventeen fucking years! You think it matters which pair of pumps you put on?”
I failed in my pathetic attempt not to smoke too much. I was soon so baked there was a real danger of me not
actually leaving the flat.
I tried to imagine what it would be like if the night ended with Tracy coming back to mine, tried to work out what
paintings I would point out, what books. What account I could give her of what I'd been up to for the last one and a half
decades. I realised I'd lived in that tiny housing co-op flat for nearly three years. I thought about what my dom said
about me. I cleaned and tided, but that made little difference to a place that was always clean and tidy. Everything still
seemed to be covered in a thick layer of loneliness.
Dead Dad got in my way.
“When you think about it, it's a fucking shame you never made anything of yourself. You know like what your Phil
did!” I pulled hard on a spliff.
“You know what, if he's so fucking great...... Why don't you go and fucking haunt him?”
I sat at my desk and stared at my Mac which is how I spend most of my life. In my leather swivel spaceship pilot's
chair usually wearing headphones as that's the only way I can seem to handle music. Connected to the internet, Skunked
out of my box. I'm mostly nocturnal but if I am up in the day I usually have the curtains closed. I thought about Tracy
seeing me like that and went off the idea of her coming back. When I first moved into my little dom, Dave called it
“The Module,” but it barely had enough character to retain a nickname. Shelves of books and records had shrunk an
already cramped space into a futuristic broom cupboard. The perfect place to be haunted in the 21st century I suppose.
“Tracy was an outdoorsy type wasn't she?” Dead Dad was skinning up behind me. “She won't be impressed with you.
You can fucking barely fucking make it downstairs to fetch the post!”
“Well actually …..Fuck you! I'm a writer!” Of course! I was a writer! So what if I liked staying in. My job would
impress Tracy surely. She was going to a poetry night. Any description of what it means to be a writer has the word
isolation in it. I turned and pointed at Dead Dad. “You can give me all the shit you want. The reason I sit here is so I can
write. That's something you'll never appreciate, because unless they have adult education in hell, you can barely fucking
read!”
I decided to write a glowing review of Zina's show before I even saw it and thought first I should do a bit of
research into airbrush art. After a bit of googling I found myself looking at one of the only artworks that graced our
walls when I was growing up. It was the cover of the Rod Stewart LP, “ Atlantic Crosssing”. Dad had opened out the
gatefold sleeve and nailed it up in the front room. Now for the first time, I learned that it was by an artist called Peter
Lloyd. Turns out he was one of just four California based artists that created the most familiar airbrush look. Looking at
the overly slick work that they had produced for album covers, magazine articles etc. I saw that it really was a very
particular, and extremely out of date style which made me again think how smart and brave Zina had been to choose to
work in it. The apparition looked over my shoulder and got enthused.
“Fucking hell some decent art at last. See look at the way that's painted it's fucking.......Well it's fucking better than
all that other shit you're into! You should write about that!” I was shocked to find myself agreeing with him. It was a
Void piece just waiting to be written. It was right inside my solar system because nowadays it existed primarily as a sort
of folk/street art, plus there was the connection to Sci-Fi book covers and also I'd be showing Dan that I could find my
own directions to stretch in. I decided to write two pieces and make them companions. One on airbrush art in general
and one on Zina, describing her as a continuer of tradition but also a maverick.
I started, then after half an hour decided I was going about it all wrong, started again, got stuck. Then stared at what
I'd done knowing it was wrong but not having the faintest clue how to fix it. I couldn't write the positive piece I wanted
to in Roboti'x usual maximal snarky prose. Thinking about it I realised I couldn't remember the last time I wrote a
positive piece about anything.
“Lost your muse?” my fathers ghost followed that with a loud belch. After two hours I gave up and decided I better
get on with the piece about ReFlect. I looked up some of his latest work and the words began to flow.
 “Some of you might be old enough to have read about ReFlect years ago in this magazine. Back then I came on like a
fanboy for his mannequin like figures that I NEVER compared to Kieth Haring. I said he was a bit like Konobi (look
him up) and I think no one would argue with what I said about his shiny mirror like people being the best technically
realised faceless humanoids ever to be sprayed on a wall. But I'll pay anyone who can point out the difference between
one of his pieces from six years ago and one he did yesterday. So unless his art is now some sort of meditation on
repetition (which let's face it it's not) and actually fuck it even if it is I would like to take this opportunity to ask him to
stop. Really if you're reading this ReFlect please.... STOP!
It's almost as if he's trying to start a new thread in the age old “Is graffiti art or vandalism” discussion by somehow
turning art into vandalism simply by doing the same shit so often that it really can't be seen as anything but vandalism.
He's vandalising my mind every time I have to look at his shit . It's like he did something that will always be associated
with 2010 and now is trying to make London continue to feel like 2010 for ever. It's the visual equivalent of a
neighbour playing Empire State Of Mind at full volume on a constant loop until you have to go round there with a
baseball bat and scream , “TURN THIS SHIT OFF!”
I have one of his pieces at the end of my road and you know, I could describe it to you in detail without having to
worry about any disgruntled fourth rate writers that I've dissed finding out where I live because there are at least forty
pieces EXACTLY THE SAME spread over London.
I really think what ReFlect is doing could be the symptom of some severe personality disorder, maybe even a cry for
help. Really I'm serious ReFlect if you're reading this STOP! Stop now for the love of Bhudda.
There really is no excuse for this kind of shit.”
Dead Dad reappeared at my shoulder,
“You're right son. Just show her your writing, Tracy Grimely will be well impressed with that!”
I continued smoking Skunk and got on with what was an average day for me. Fucking about with Roboti'x social
media. Mostly just linking stuff after adding a few pithy, usually scathing comments. I searched the web for new street
art finding it harder to ignore how fucked up it was that I was mining the internet for shit instead of doing my job and
feeding fresh hype into it's ravenous maw. I wondered how long I could get away with this cheap short circuit.
# # # # # # #
The first time I went back to Aniston Terrace I had the excuse of returning Tracy's book. Also I took “The Diamond
Age” by Neal Stephenson. I'd just read it, and thought that she might like it because a lot of it was about a girl. I turned
up just as Tracy, Foggy and Mary were about to start watching the film Twelve Monkeys and I was made to feel
welcome to take my trainers off, get stoned and watch it with them. Mary had a job at Key Video (they cut keys, sold
CDs and rented videos,) so there was always something new to watch at her place. When the film finished Mary started
a discussion,
“So what do you think then, will they ever be able to make a real time machine, and if so could there be time
travellers amongst us now?” Tracy who was putting three Rizlas together said,
“I'm more freaked out by the idea that one fucking nutter could decide to kill everyone in the world. I mean there
could be someone like that planning something right now!” They seemed very used to discussing stuff in this manner.
Mary rested her head in Foggy's lap, he said,
“I'm like Bruce Willis me. I am from the future and I've been sent back to get weed!” Later when Foggy and Mary
took Gnuj out for a walk Tracy again seemed quite happy for me to stay and again I did for ages, talking and smoking,
drinking coffee. At some point Tracy made a round of sausage sandwiches. I tried to say something on a different topic
than Science Fiction.
“So do you live with Mary all the time now.... I mean have you left home and that?” She passed me a sachet of
ketchup.
“Yeah we like share the rent and all that. I got thrown out of Our Lady's for calling Miss Willis a bitch. Well and a
few other things..... You know my Mum's inside?”
“No!... What.....”
“Housing Benefit fraud, she got six months didn't she. She's way up in Krassmore! It's a right pain getting up there to
visit, not that I can be bothered much.” She stuck a Prince tape on. “I mean I should be living at my Gran's with my
sister, or at home... But Kevin the creep is there.... He's my Mum's boyfriend.... Total fucking psycho!”
“So how do you know Mary?” she laughed,
“That's a long story that is. I met her at a party at Glenda's up at Hest Bank. D'yer know Glenda Norton? Well
anyway someone nicked Mary's bag and all these Hest Bank hussies we call them, they were all being dead tight to her,
starting on her and that for no reason. I stuck up for her and we left together and well.... We've been mates ever since.
I've lived here about eight weeks now,.... She's got a mad family back in Glasgow. I think she's trying to get away from
her brothers and that, you know what I mean?”
This time I left with two books. A skinny sixties paperback, “The Wanting Seed” by Anthony Burgess and the first
fat part of Frank Herbert's Dune saga. I'd seen the film and was curious. I also left with an understanding that I could
drop in any time I liked.
After that I quickly became a regular visitor and had many coffees from that brown pot. I always got a welcome,
even when Tracy wasn't there. There were lots of other callers. Some older women, Mary's aunt, who was I guess what
had drawn her to Dellend in the first place. Also various reprobates would often be sat around skinning up, some biker
bloke called Skull was there a lot during the day. I saw Maddah and Slacko's sister Kelly there a few times. Fact was,
that attic was the nexus for the biker, B-girl, old hippy woman cross over in Dellend. Foggy was nearly always there.
Though he never served up hash from the bedsit, he would take calls on his mobile then shoot out to meet people. He
seemed quite happy that Tracy had a little friend and quickly adopted a mentoring attitude towards me. At some point I
was drinking beer with him whilst the girls were out with the dog and he put his arm round me and said,
“I'm glad you're mates with our Peter you know. Some of them other lot are right dickheads, but I've always thought
you had a bit more going for you. Bit more up there like,” he tapped the side of my head. “You do right to try and get
yusen away from all that WA scene, I mean... I love Ullah and all that lot..... I mean fucking Maddah he's always been
sound with me, but they can be fucking nobs sometimes, do you know what I mean?”I thought that maybe I did but also
realised he was confusing me with our Phil, who did actually hang with Pogo on a regular.
Mary seemed to be fond of me as well. She'd get me to pop to the shops for her for milk and Rizlas and shit and I'd
often take the dog with me. Even if she was in bed on her own, she was still happy to throw the keys down. I'd make the
coffee then sit on the end of her bed skinning up. Even Gnuj liked me, jumping up on me whenever I arrived.
Me and Tracy started going to the shops together. The gap in physical maturity,(just height even,) between us was
significant. No one seeing us walking along together would ever have assumed we were boyfriend-girlfriend. People
were much more likely to think I was her little brother.
Similarly the dynamic at Mary's was not like two geezers hanging out with their birds. It was more like a family unit
with Mary and Foggy as Mum and Dad, Tracy and me as the children. Tracy was the older sibling definitely, and would
sometimes go out with our “parents” to the pub and stuff, but often when they went to gigs or whatever they would go
on Foggy's motorbike, leaving us “kids,” at home, and “Dad” was out at “work” a lot as well leaving “Mum” and the
“kids” on our own.
There was a “land of do as you please” atmosphere at that bedsit. It wasn't unusual to start watching a film like
Total Recall at eight in the morning or for everyone to share a Vienneta at two a.m. I felt like I was in a space where
normal shit like hours just didn't exist.
Tracy, Mary and Gnuj shared the bed, unless Foggy slept over, then Tracy was regulated to the floor in the main
room. I didn't really have a reason to sleep there but sometimes it would get late and I would get down on that floor too,
a blanket pulled round my shoulders. If Tracy was in there with me I would be excited about lying so close to her. We
would each read a book late into the night, then often talk for hours after we turned the lights off.
Music was a very big deal in that bedsit. There weren't any records but at least a hundred tapes, and a lot of C.D.s.
Foggy was all about aged academy Hip Hop, but he'd gotten heavily into his Drum and Bass as well. Sometimes we
were on our own there and he would crouch in front of the ghetto blaster, bouncing up and down, pointing at it saying,
“Just listen to this bit, there! Listen to that bassline, fucking... Cybernaught!” He was always bringing mix-tapes
round, obviously he knew some DJ somewhere. Mary liked Hip Hop a lot too but also house music and as well as being
a big fan of The Prodigy was into stuff like Tricky and Portishead. She also had a thing for old Dub Reggae and listened
to hours of it. Tracy was into more poppy stuff, she played a lot of Eternal and other girl groups and Maddona and
Prince also Queen Latifah stuff like that. The tapes I really remember being on constant rotation though were a
Barrington Levi compilation, Odelay by Beck (which was a sort of leftfield pick that we all loved,) and some tape of
Foggy's that had NWA mixed in with Public Enemy, KRS1 shit like that. It was like the best hip hop mix ever. I didn't
really contribute to the music, I was more like a sponge soaking it all in, and wouldn't have presumed to bring my badly
recorded Westwood tapes round to a place so well stocked with sick sounds.
I was a pretty good shoplifter at the time, so never arrived without at least a loaf of bread, a Jamaican ginger cake or
some milk. Tracy worked in Queens Street chippy so there was always spare pies and pastries to eat as well. It was a
five foot square, five foot high Utopia.
Before long me and Tracy didn't just hang out in the bedsit. We began to take the dog further and further afield.
Dellend might be a shithole but it's surrounded by some great countryside, especially if your keen on slate. The Dell
river is impressive and you can follow it's meanderings for miles walking through seeming wilderness. Also we'd often
walk over Turner's fields and Barrow hill which meant we always ended up on the canal. I'd never taken too much
notice of all this amazing nature all around me before, Tracy really opened my eyes.
She was very together about these trips, making sandwiches, taking a bottle of cider or lemonade, always making
sure we had hash, rizlas, baccy. After the first time when she noticed that I was worried about getting my trainers dirty,
she rustled up a pair of wellies for me, and I was perfectly happy to wear them, (secretly imagining they were space
boots.) It did seem to rain every time we went out but that didn't bother us.
We explored the town as well as the country, taking regular trips to Dellend's covered market, heading straight for
the “The Book End”, a stall literally brimming over with hundreds of books, all priced somewhere between twenty
pence and two pound fifty.
The stall was ran by an old eccentric known as hang-gliding Pete, (for the simple reason he was an unlikely hang-
glider.) He didn't really dress that weird, just big cardies, jeans and sandals, but he did have an Edwardian moustache,
and was constantly puffing away on a big Sherlock Holmes pipe.
He soon noticed Tracy had a sidekick. We spent ages looking through his Sci-Fi section, which was basically a
trestle table with untold books stacked on top of each other looking like an ancient crumbling city. We'd search through
them diligently with serious looks on our faces, staring at each cover as though it were art in a gallery. There was every
kind of robot imaginable, skeletons in spacesuits, reptilian aliens, furry aliens, lantern jawed heroes or sultry
spacemaidens in front of acid coloured spaceships. Cyborgs wielding weapons, a galaxy's worth of red and purple
spacescapes with giant stately looking ships floating through them. I got a throb just from the titles, “Humanity Prime”,
“The Chaos fighters” “The Domes of Pico” “Anima” “Babel 17.”
 Some of them were old with smoke yellow pages, and seemed like artefacts from another era. Some were almost
brand new, still crisp and shiny with a totally different smell. Despite both of us knowing what they say about books
and covers we often bought them just for how they looked. I purchased the best of Fritz Leiber, not because I'd ever
heard of him but because I couldn't resist a giant furry animal paw grabbing at a spaceship. I also had an thing for any
cover with a robot.
Pete dubbed us the “Cosmonauts”, which we loved, and he would keep aside newer stuff like Banks, Gibson or
Baxter for us, whilst trying to bring old masters like Assimov, Clark and Moorcock to our attention.
“Here they are,the Cosmonauts.....On a mission. Let me get these out for thee.... Some Frederick Pohl y'said yer liked
that last one!” We never left with less than three books and often had a placcy bag stuffed full.
We didn't only go to The Bookend. My experience of walking around Dellend pre Tracy had mostly been a negative
one, probably because I was usually with a crew of lads. It wasn't unusual for four WA to walk into a shop and hear,
“Get out! We don't want shoplifters!” or to be refused service in cafes. Security guards, hobby bobbies and any kind
of uniformed official would often blatantly follow us usually provoking a reaction like bin or bottle throwing. Plus we
were always on the lookout for the Ridge, chance meetings of the two crews often meant confrontation. Consequently I
mostly just stuck to the Westgate trying to save myself hassle, but walking around with Tracy was completely different.
It reminded me of a dim distant past, holding on to my Mothers hand as we went round the shops. I was introduced to a
huge cast of characters, shopkeepers, grannies, young mothers and all sorts of weird and wonderfuls that we would just
meet and chat to whilst walking along. Tracy was well known and well liked. I realised that there was a different
Dellend out there that was friendly and interesting and that there was adventure and fun to be had just strolling around
shooting the shit with whoever.
We would visit a biker woman called Maureen who sat in a little booth all day working as a car park attendant. She
would talk to us for hours. Obviously very fond of Tracy she'd spin tales that could all be headed “My adventures as a
lone female biker...Featuring all the bastards that try to fuck with me!” I realised that I was being given a front row seat
in a fantastic theatre that Tracy had V.I.P. tickets for.
At that time I would read every spare moment I got, often for whole afternoons and I literally couldn't sleep without
reading for at least two hours. I would quite often finish a book I'd started in the afternoon before nodding off late that
night. Tracy was just as avid and we read everything that each other read. Before Tracy I'd been a Sci-Fi fan, but had
read horror and other stuff as well, whatever was available, though I'd never been over keen on Paul's dragons and
knights. Together me and Tracy became proper fanatics. Our only filter was, we stuck to the one genre, besides that, we
read everything. I mean we didn't distinguish between hard or soft Sci-Fi, Golden age or Cyberpunk. Or even good or
bad books really. We had very little discernment I guess and in a way that was great.(Although having said that, we did
soon learn to avoid L.Ron Hubbard.) We read lots of trilogies and saga's, often out of order, as well as endless
compilations of short stories. We spent a shit load of time talking about what we'd read. Tracy loved discussing the
themes and moral lessons, I obsessed about the different civilisations, spaceships and robots.
We started to come up with our own ideas for a space opera. It started with her drawing and painting various aliens
and me coming up with names for them, then we'd describe their cultures and habits. We'd name their home planets,
talk about the allegiances between different civilisations on different star systems. We called our made up universe
Galaxis and Tracy started to keep our ever growing pile of drawings and writings in a folder including the pretend book
covers we made with titles and blurbs as well as artwork.
We gave each other Culture names. I was Robosoto Meeelraasa Wistgax. Tracy was Tracatatarca Grimix Deelendio.
Ian M Banks was a sub-obsession.
I wasn't a complete stranger down at the Gash because Foggy had started to subcontract a lot of deliveries of eighths
and teenths to me, but that summer I wasn't putting in my usual hours with the WA. Paul always went to stay with
relatives in county Durham for the school holidays and Riggy got put away for thieving but Stilly, Buzzer and Slacko
must have noticed my absence.
There was no real shame in me hanging out at Aniston Terrace. It wasn't like years earlier when I'd spent weeks
going to chess camp everyday and everyone took the piss. It was respectable to be spending time at the place where
Foggy went and there was nothing wrong with hanging out with a girl.
Still there was definitely some slight hum of resentment towards me simply because I'd found somewhere else to go.
Once after I'd been seen in town with Mary and Tracy, I was asked by Slacko back at the Gash,
“Are you shagging Eskimo Nell?”
“What? Fuck off dickhead!” I was busy trying to fix my old, knackered BMX and didn't want Slacko's shit. However
he'd noticed a chink so started singing a years old song that most people had forgotten,
“Eskimo Nell
Eskimo Nell
She lives in a house
Fuck me does it smell
Does she as well?
I can't tell
Cos I've never been close to Eskimo Nell!”
I threw down my BMX and strode towards him, he backed off laughing tightening his grip on Zoltan's lead. The
beast barked and showed me fangs, stopping me in my tracks. Slacko said,
“What a yer hanging out with them lesbians for anyway?” which made Pogo look up and Maddah say to his brother,
 “They're not lesbians! Scotch Mary is not a lesbian! Eski.... Tracy Grimley is not a lesbian! D'yer wanna tell Foggy
that his bird's a lesbian? Yeah are you gonna say it to his face? You're a fucking lesbian!”
Slacko walked off, his parting shot a muttered,
“Yeah still...I bet he hasn't fucked her!”
Another time I'd just said goodbye to Tracy outside the Arndale when I saw Foggy, Maddah and Ullah sat on a wall
with some more older lads. When I walked over some div called Slinks who obviously didn't realise there was a
connection between Foggy and Tracy, spat,
“Fucking hell.Were you just with Eskimo Nell? D'yer know her Dad's a Paki?” Foggy said,
“What are you on about Slinks? You fucking nob. Her Mum and my Mum are best mates. Her Dad's not a fucking
Paki. I think she’s got a Grandad who’s fucking Spanish or Morrocon or summat......Anyway what the fuck's it got to do
with you? Ignore this prick will yer Rod!”
One evening we were all at the bedsit, sat listening to Goldie's Timeless when Foggy suggested we all take acid. He
had some Red Planets and after we dropped half of one each, we trekked up to Rabbit Hill. It's gone now but for years
Dellend had a massive patch of wasteland smack bang in the middle of town. Fuck knows what brilliant strategy of
planning had led to the town centre having a big fucking tip right in the middle of it, but parts of it were worse than the
Gash. It was littered with used bottles cans and johnnies and there were sizeable wino camps hidden in it's overgrown
weed jungle. Some of it wasn’t too bad though it couldn’t pass as a nature reserve. Gnuj loved it because of all the
rabbits and pissheads he could startle. Foggy was really good value on acid, his random shouts of,
“Rocket ship explodes!” or “Black hole drop out!” sounded almost like space age poetry. Our family was functional,
taking a Sunday stroll. Foggy and Mary walked arm in arm whilst me and Tracy pointed at the just appearing moon and
stars. We found what we thought was Mars and talked about the Mars Rover that had just landed. It was great tripping
with Tracy talking and thinking about space.
Foggy and Mary wandered off for a while and we positioned ourselves on our backs at the top of the hill so we could
see nothing but the cloudless sky.
“Would you go into space if you could, I mean if someone said you could leave tomorrow?” Tracy had a habit of
asking questions like that, usually when we were stoned but being on acid made me want to really think about my
answer..
“Yeah I mean where would I be going... Just.. I mean..... To another planet?”
“Well.....If you could somehow travel like I don't know with warp speed or something... What if you could actually
really get out there beyond the known universe. To far away galaxies?”
The strange thing was that looking up there I didn't really connect with the stars. I focused on the blackness between
them and thinking about it on acid made me realise that despite my love of Sc-Fi and it's promise of other worlds and
peoples I essentially thought of space as a cold and empty place. Still, I said,
“Fuck it yeah let's go!” The stars bled through the velvet sky which seemed to wrap itself around us. I heard Foggy
shout,
“We are now docking at space station Omega!” It was dark by the time we walked back down into a town that was all
monochrome plastic with liquid light gushing from streetlamps. As we walked past the swimming baths Foggy told us
to wait outside a side exit. He appeared two minutes later opening the door from the inside.
We walked in like we were royalty walking into our own palace. The pool looked like a portal into another
dimension and moonlight poured through the windows like milk. Our shadows seemed to be acting out a play. Mary
and Foggy stripped naked and jumped in immediately, Tracy wasn't far behind. I was a bit more hesitant but couldn't
stand at the side and watch so thought “Fuck it.” Then we were all in the dark cellophane water. We frolicked like aqua-
aliens in a novel from The Bookend. The Moon's reflection seemed to be sunk leagues below us.
The water became thick, syrupy and the colour of slate. Tracy swam past in slow motion leaving multiple copies of
herself behind. Mary and Foggy were putting on a show, dancing like they were Indian gods with multiple limbs.
Tracy positioned herself in front of me then began talking in a balletic semaphore. Her body became vibrating light
right before my eyes. It was all a bit too much for me. I pulled myself out, feeling as though I was evolving onto land,
the other three weren't far behind.
We had to get dressed wet so rushed back to the bedsit for warmth. On the way home we found “The Device”. I
spotted a weird looking metallic thing about the size of a tin opener. It was winking like an object that you need to find
in a video game.
“What the fucks that!” I said, as Tracy picked it up. It was a strange handle with a wheel on it that seemed to have
been shrink wrapped in plastic, there was a big square button on the side. It could have been a futuristic instrument from
a Sc-Fi film. We took it back with us and studied it. The next day sober we still couldn't work out what the fuck it was.
It was Foggy that named it “The Device.”
It was I suppose inevitable that me and Tracy would start going out doing graff together. One night walking through
the town center I pulled out a can and she just took another one off me and joined in, painting her tag under mine. Soon
we became a team.
At first we just both did our usual tags side by side. Then we began to incorporate our shit together in throw ups or
pieces, so my robots would be coming out from one of her UFOs or they would have a UFO as a logo on their chest, or
the UFO would have a robot painted on its side.
After a while our styles began to melt together. Just even watching the way her body moved when she sprayed
influenced my line because I tried to move as if I was dancing with her. She began to shade like me. Sometimes when a
collaboration was finished we couldn't tell who'd painted what. I think the book covers we were constantly looking at
acted as a sort of art school. We got a lot better at things like composition, perspective, foreshortening. We shared a
piece book along side our Galaxis folder and began to really stretch ourselves doing more and more ambitious stuff
decorating it all with diagrams of atoms and painting sophisticated space scapes as background.
Soon UFO & Robotix were a big part of Dellend. I don't think I'm exaggerating too much if I say we changed the
way the town looked. No one who lived there at that time could have not been aware of the fiery Sc-Fi makeover going
on around them. Articles about us appeared in the Dellend Bugle (not positive ones I should add) and we became very
aware that the police badly wanted to catch us. I lost count of the times we crouched behind bins or walls staring into
each others eyes listening to the crackle of radios coming closer and closer whilst the pigs swept torches around.
However we seemed to operate inside an invisible protective bubble and kept egging each other on to do more and more
audacious pieces up in higher and more visible spots.
Tracy took to wearing a black addidas tracksuit on our night time excursions and I would watch her bend her lithe
body into shapes like a Marvel superhero as she sprayed. We imagined that we were doing the work of some rebel
alliance fighting some vast futuristic empire.
Sometimes Tracy would use the time spent blamming to try to explain the science in science fiction to me.
“No you see, planets stay in orbit because of centrifugal force....That is ,what I mean is, well at first they must have
been spinning yeah...So all the planets in this solar system were part of a big spinning cloud of shit that was you know
spinning and well there's inertia which is what.... Well basically gravity and centrifugal force have to be balanced
right...Like exactly right and that's what keeps us and you know other planets in orbit. We're always falling really but
also spinning round, well on our own axis yeah but also going round the Sun!” I was slow on the uptake,
“I don't get it.”
“Sorry no I'm not explaining it right. Just think about the moon,” she pointed her spray can at it, “Gravity right is
trying to pull it in O.K. That's the easy way of saying it. But momentum...Or no, inertia, has to be exactly balanced... So
that it's travelling in that direction, it's trying to get away. Like once an object is moving it won't stop, that's inertia so
gravity is just pulling at it enough to keep it from flying into space and momentum is just enough so that it doesn't get
pulled into the earth. That's why it stays in orbit. Then you know there's the Einstein model....” She started to spray a
sketch to help her explain, “Right so he says that Space-time is a fabric right, and mass distorts it. Gravity plays with the
curvuture of space so that's why it keeps circling round it's in this groove here and we're in a groove made by the Sun.”
Her finished diagram really helped me understand.
Once when we got back to Arniston Terrace, early morning after a long night painting, Tracy brought out a thin
paperback and after looking for a certain page said.
“This is a poem by a women called Sappho. It's about two thousand six hundred years old.....
The stars about the lovely moon
Fade back and vanish very soon
When round and full, her silver face
Swims into sight, and lights all space.”
Even if a love of poetry, like horseriding, was something I didn't really share with Tracy. I loved sitting there in that
soft orange glow listening to her reading.
Weeks went by and trouble began to appear in paradise, in as much as Foggy and Mary began to argue.... a lot. I
think it was mostly about her suspecting him of seeing other girls. This meant that me and Tracy kept out of their way
more which meant even more time spent alone together.
Thankfully she didn't seem bothered about boyfriends but she did sometimes go out without me. Often when
walking around town people would talk to her about goings on in a nightlife that I wasn’t part of.
“Did you hear that Mally's barred from the Queens? Yeah he was off his head the other night took all his fucking
clothes off, started headbutting the fruit machine!” Lads in their twenties who knew her from that world would often try
and chat her up whilst giving me and Gnuj friendly pats.
She never seemed that interested, but it made me nervous and jealous to think she was part of a world that I couldn't
acess filled with older lads. (I had more chance of going to Mars than getting served at a bar.) Still a lot of the time she
was happy to avoid the pub and as we became a graffiti force bigger than kids our age should have been, we were a
team, even if we were almost overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of what we’d created. Though our art was famous
few knew who we were, yet still we felt like celebrities and as if we were changing our environment to look like we
wanted. She also spent a lot of time at the stables without me but I was relaxed about that.
Once we were out buying food when we bumped into two dirty, hippy, rocker types a bit like my Dad. Both of them
fall over drunk. One of them had a guitar strapped to his back and wore a dreggy floppy hat embroidered with big
daisies. His mate who was in a Rolling Stones tongue T-Shirt, and had minging black hair sticking to his face giving
him a bizarre, horrible, dirty wolf man look, spotted Tracy as she tried to steer me out of their path and immediately
started shouting at her. Really nasty stuff like,
“There you are you little fucking bitch! You're a fucking shit stirring fucking slut! I know what you are!” His
swaying pal seemed shocked by his companions outburst and managed to mumble something like,
“Hey, hey c'mon now..... What's this?!” Tracy just tried to walk past them as fast as she could. The loud one lurched
and grabbed at her actually catching a handful of T-Shirt and exposing her shoulder for half a second before she pulled
away leaving him staggering. He tried to follow us but was too pissed to keep up. He kept on shouting,
“Hey I'm talking to you yer fucking whore! ...That's right you're a fucking trouble making little slut! Paki bitch! I
know what you are Mini fucking Ha Ha!” I'd like to say I stuck up for her and told this weirdo to fuck off, but..... I
didn't know who he was to her and wasn't used to that kind of aggro with actual grown ups. Maybe if she'd answered
him I would have joined in but...... I said and did exactly nothing. It turned out that he was her Mum's boyfriend, Kevin
the creep. After we got away from him she slumped down onto the curb and started crying. For the first time ever I
found myself with my arm around her, though I could only reach because I was still standing up.
Everyone in our “family” was, trying to escape some other situation. Even Foggy and Mary if you looked beyond
the adidas and the laughs were hurting and hiding I'm sure. Pogo once told me that their Dad regularly beat the shit out
of him and Foggy (who had only left home a few months before I came on the scene.).
One day Tracy suggested that me and her go up to Burnt Rog to pick magic mushrooms.
I'd taken a bit of acid by this point but every trip except the one at the swimming baths had involved me and at least
three other lads. The idea of it being an intimate experience, just me and Tracy going into nature, was exciting.
Burnt Rog was a stone circle, an hour from Dellend. Half an hour by bus and the same again walking. Tracy was her
usual organised self, she brought a bag with a bottle of cider and all the skinning up gubbins in a tin. We set off around
midday, Gnuj was with Mary somewhere so for once we were dogless. We started finding mushrooms as soon as we
got off the bus. Tracy assured me that she knew what she was looking for and once I'd been shown the distinctive
closed umbrella shape and the creamy colour I began finding my own. We soon realised we'd wandered into a bumper
crop, we came across huge clumps of them twenty or thirty together. At first we were thrilled but after two hours
picking them had almost become a chore. Tracy washed some with the cider and we started eating them.
We walked over the barren looking hill that lead to our destination, and into a gale. Tracy was wearing a red coat
buttoned at the neck like a cloak, an unusual white B-Girl hat of Mary's and a pair of shiny black riding boots. She
turned to look at me, one leg high up on a rock, her hair spilling out of the hat like it was animated, the cloak/coat
blown out horizontal. From that moment on we weren't in Lancashire at all but on some distant planet, agents of some
advanced, star system jumping space empire, engaged on some esoteric mission.
We took a rest in a field high up above a valley. When we noticed two people sat in the distance on the other side,
one of them wearing red, we began to imagine that they were a reflection of us. A gigantic mirror appeared, wobbling
slightly as though it was placed at the bottom of our hill reaching up into the mesosphere and as wide as it was tall. The
largest single thing I've ever hallucinated.
It was at that point that Tracy said,
“How madly are you tripping?” I looked up at the symmetrical clouds then out at my tiny reflection and waved at
myself,
“Yeah it's sick I'm..... I'm......I'm there.......Feeling it” The look on her face was one of pure mischief.
“Yeah but would you like to... You know, make sure that we have a full on trip?”
“What more mushrooms?”
“Well actually I've got these.....” She held up a little resealable bag that had what was obviously two acid tabs in it.
“Flying Saucers,” she giggled as she passed one to me. I stared at the UFO not dissimilar to the ones that she painted,
then saw that she was putting hers in her mouth, so quickly did the same.
We lay as close to the ground as we could to stay out of the wind. Tracy also magicked a pre rolled joint and we
smoked that, staying prone.
“You know that we're travelling through space?” Tracy was lay with her arms and legs splayed into an X. My face
was nearly in her hair.
“Yeah, yeah of course.... Like the planet is orbiting the Sun right.....”
“Well yes, but also the Sun is moving round the galaxy dragging us along...” With one hand she made a snake like
movement describing a vortex. “Then of course the galaxy is moving through space. I mean there's this little band of
atmosphere and that hides it all from us but we're fucking moving.....You know what I mean.”
“Yeah!” I almost said “Far out!” and it was amazing that right there in the middle of a grey day with my back firmly
on the ground I felt for the first time in my life that I was moving at great speed through the vastness of the cosmos. It
had a lot to do with the wind and the hallucinogenics I suppose but still it was a pretty impressive magic trick for Tracy
to perform.
We got to the top of the hill where the stones sat, just in time to see an old man in an unusual white Kagool, with a
long flowing white beard and a Gandalf staff, leave as though he'd been waiting for us to take over. He walked past us
with a twinkle in his eye and seemed to say,
“Now then!” without moving his lips which led me to believe that he'd communicated telepathically. We could see
the stones, they were glowing a metallic grey against a sea grey sky. At first I thought that they must be lit up somehow
but realised they weren't actually. There were about forty stones, each between a half a foot and two feet tall, all in
(obviously) a wide circle.
They stood on a plateau surrounded by hills, a natural amphitheatre. Two of the tallest stones seemed to make an
obvious entrance and we made our way towards them. The stones seemed to be vibrating now, and they were making a
kind of machine like, whistling noise.
Looking at one of the entrance stones I saw that it was covered in a baroque latticework of circuitry and dull winking
green lights. I tentatively experimented with what appeared to be buttons that seemed to want pushing then got a little
freaked when the lights seemed to respond and the noise changed pitch.
I followed Tracy towards the next stone along and saw that the wind was blowing the dust on the floor into
complicated fractal patterns that I then realised stretched as far as the eye could see.
 The next stone was more lit up with more futuristic looking electronics than the first two. Tracy looked as though
she was pushing buttons on it in some complicated sequence. Her mouth was moving as though she was silently
singing.
“It's some kind of machine, it needs turning on, somehow we have to....” she trailed off seeming to notice something
of great import on the stone. I looked around it, finding it hard to believe that the circuitry wasn't merely an effect of the
drugs, that it wasn't always there. Tracy said,
“We have to get to the centre!” As we walked inwards, the circle started to spin. Slowly at first but building up speed
as we approached the hub. The stones are said to be neolithic, but we weren't having a bronze age trip. Rather we were
in some impossibly far off future.
We got to the centre, Tracy crouched down and then with the most serious look on her face, reached under her cloak
and pulled the device from a pocket, holding it up in front of my eyes.
I knelt in front of her, the flapping of her cloak made it seem as though she was constantly disappearing only to keep
reappearing a millisecond later.
“We have to place it........ In the centre.” She started to dig into the earth with her hand and then tried to get the device
to stand up. She managed it and then there was a feeling of overwhelming gravitas as she ripped off the plastic covering
and span the tiny wheel. Immediately the speed that the stone circle was spinning accelerated from about three to sixty
miles an hour and it kept getting faster.
We looked up and saw that the clouds above us were forming a spiral, spinning in the opposite direction.
Tracy held onto my arms over the device and we felt the centrifugal force get stronger as it span faster and faster,
blue lights lit up now the stones green lights dull winking green span circuitry they moved then a moment of lucidity?
No that was the illusion, the spinning is the reality, we were citizens of the Foundation, we had to resist something, no
this was ours it was natural. The lights were for us, made to... Tracy was from the Westgate... From space, we were in
space, the time, her eyes. I had to move away, I saw a bird land near by it was robotic surely. The ground wasn't the
ground any more we were in the sky, I was made from clouds and yet not, the stones were trying to control... no we
controlled them the insect warriors the Destructobots that wish to sleep in the hills were sending their last message
before shut down, the noise was music now, only a certain tune could complete the sequence, sequence the complete
could tune certain a only now, music was noise the, down shut before message last their sending were hills the in sleep
to wish that Destructobots the warriors insect the them controlled we no... control to trying were stones the, not yet and
clouds from made was I sky the in were any more ground the wasn't ground the surely robotic was it by near land bird a
saw I stop this no it's OK and dull winking green lights where had Tracy gone???????????? She'd been taken no she was
by a stone trying to control our trajectory this portal was open and I could see if I was brave enough... Yes
Yes...Yes....No...Yes....I have to calm down, no no this is good. If I was over this if I was flying except that I'm not so
let's think about it I can see on my finger tip right there it's a map and I'm on that map no where is
she?..............................................................icanseemyselfwalkingtowardshernoicanseemyselfwalkingtowardsmeareflecti
onifihadaspraycanicouldpaintaroundhersssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssshadowornothat's
myshadowineedtosttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttopmovingforjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj
jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjustamomenticanseetheeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeereflectionofaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaashadowtheshadowofarefleccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc
cccccccccccccccccccccctionandthatismybodynothat'sacloudnothat'sthefloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooor................. switch it on switch it off. Fuck me it's windy,
where was it? It was way over there! We held hands around a stone, there was a code we held it the device. Where was
it? Over there. Was it still spinning? Yes a coda a code that we, no me, no she knew more than me no it was us together
this it what futuristic latticework of circuitry dull winking green lights electronics from the first two.
A colossal space traveller had the whole circle in the palm of his hand. Galaxus, no someone different and he peered
down on us as though longing to communicate, his face was a futuristic cathedral. The whole universe was now in tune.
I can't believe that. We ran now around the perimeter the hills don't look at them no its OK. I saw her she was my, she
wasn't I, why was I here? Well why not but if I couldn't.... The device it would all go wrong. No it was great, I held
myself up and stood facing the sky, the stones, Tracy I was allowed I could feel good there was nothing for me to be
scared of except the stones. Were they once people? No that was a stupid kids T.V. show I'd never even seen it.
It was amazing to think that somewhere just beyond the known universe was a galaxy exactly like ours and in that
galaxy was a Sun the same as our Sun around which orbited a planet on which was a circle just like this one where two
other agents....how much like us where they? Placed their own device sending the signal that would meet ours causing
the.......circuitry wasn't merely an effect of the drugs.
“Sit here Rod!” yes sit down with Tracy what? She's skinning up good. I was thirsty I..... How long had I been there?
The code, there was no narrative as we entered the circle no I'd been there. Now I'm melting into the wrong no the right
tense..... I need to walk my legs aren't part of it. Yes they're part of me they were part of me and I could walk to Tracy
where was she now what was that look? There she was, what was that look? We'd done it. It was good she'd made
contact.... Now we could.... If I could just sit down for a minute. I did.
We drank some cider and watched the clouds. The stones were in a line no that's stupid they were still in a circle the
device I could just walk over and pick it up, had fallen over. It didn't matter I should leave it.
“Rod!” she's calling me. Fucking hell she was miles away I................................. “Rod come here!” Two large stones
are obviously the entrance. It's good to sit down how long has she been talking to me? Has she been talking to me?
 “The Westgate fuck I so wanted to. But it can still throw up surprises, I think you're smart, sometimes I think you're
really smart, but can you defy gravity? Are you still in the WA? I mean come on! What's going on inside that
hoody? .......... Your'e a good artist. We're good together....it’s really... but I can't.... Do you want this?”
“Yeah thanks,”
“Sit opposite me I couldn't see you before.... Drink this, it's good no it's good we're definitely in the Culture now....
Roboto Meelrasa!”
“Tracatarata Grimelex.” The sun looked like it had had enough. Oh it's definitely stopped, stopped spinning.
“We should think about getting back,”
“Not yet lets just....Whoa I think I'm on the other side now.” We watched the sun setting then figuring it might be
difficult getting down in the dark, started to walk back the way we came. As we descended the trip subsided as though it
was the circle itself that had caused it. Back at the road we thought that we would never find the bustop and that
developed into a mini drama but then the bus appeared in the twilight before stopping and opening it's door right in
front of us like a deux ex machina. Against all the odds we managed to pay our fare and then shared our journey back
with just one old man that we were convinced was Philip K Dick.
We rode that near empty bus back into to town, me thinking for most of the time that I was watching a film being
projected onto the windows about the progress of man. It was by sheer luck that we realised we were at the end of
Arniston terrace and got off at the right stop. We walked back to the bedsit through a silent Japanese animé. Mary and
Gunj weren't home. We lit candles and sat in front of the electric fire. Tracy decided that this time she would read me
some of her own poetry.
“Moon debt
Promises I made
To tommorrow
Mean I can't
Pay
Or Stay
My rocket is waiting
The countdown begins
Earth's mud can't hold me
Forever.” Honestly I didn't really get it, but having her read it to me whilst the trip slowly faded watching the candle
flames dance to her words was the best experience of my life thus far.
We floated through the rest of the syrupy night listening to tapes and talking about science, falling asleep not long
before sunrise. Just before we drifted off Tracy said,
“Shit we left the device!” We never did find out what the fuck it was.
After that trip I felt closer to Tracy than I'd previously realised it was possible to be to anyone. Although on a trip
like that there is no actual what you'd call narrative I felt as though that day we'd broken through some magic barrier
and played out a story from one of our books. Now(with the help of the mushrooms we dried out) it was like we shared
a secret knowledge that the fantasy world of Sci-Fi was always there, waiting for us, just a sidestep away. It was no
longer about the family unit, it was just me and Tracy now and it seemed we were both happy with that. I seriously
began to believe that there would never come a time when we would be apart. We spent a lot of time together in silence,
once doing the biggest collaboration piece we'd ever done on a railway bridge without speaking one word.
A week later we went up to Krassmore where her Mum was locked up. I just waited by the woods outside with Gnuj,
and smoked a spliff whilst she was in there visiting for an hour. She came out looking like she was deep in thought. We
walked futher into the woods until we found a clearing, sat down and rolled one up.
Tracy never really talked about her Mum, so we sat in silence listening to the trees murmuring. After a while she
said,
“I've got something to tell you Rod...... I'm going to go away soon...I've er, I've got a job working in some stables.”
I snapped to attention almost doing a comedy double take,
“Where? When? When did this happen? What job?”
“Well it's in Bournemouth, I got it from the back of this magazine, Mary showed me it, you get jobs from it. The
Lady it's called, the thing is... I just found out the other day and I'm going in a week, well a week tomorrow!” My brain
did not want to compute this information. Tracy was my best friend now, she couldn't leave! It wasn't fair.
“Fucking hell I didn't know you wanted to leave Dellend!” This made her laugh out loud.
I hung my head, feeling as though I'd said the most unbelievably stupid thing ever. Like a hurt child I mumbled,
“But we have a laugh don't we?” She looked at me and smiled,
“Oh Rod you're fucking great you are, I mean it's you I'm gonna miss really....My partner in crime... Our Deb never
wants to see me. My Mum can, well you know...... You know without you I don't know.....This summer would have
been shit. I'm so glad I found you, and don't worry I'm going to keep in touch and all that and maybe when I've sussed it
out a bit and all that you can come and visit. I'm going to miss you and Mary and Foggy but Mary wants to go back to
Scotland for a while anyway... She's got things to sort out....... Oh don't be sad!” She put her arms around me and pulled
me close to her chest. For a brief moment I was happy there in her embrace, but then my desire for her, my lust as it
were which had never gone away, had only grown, it manoeuvred. It was an ignored passenger that now wanted to be in
the drivers seat. I decided that it was now or never.
I slipped free from her embrace and then attempted to reverse the roles, tried to put my arms around her, which was
ridiculous, I had to stand next to her sitting to do it. Anyone walking through those woods would have thought that
they'd come across one of the dwarfs trying it on with Snow White. Straight away she guessed I was up to something
and began to push me off.
This made me push back and then grab her round the wrists, so that within a few seconds, my seduction was about
unsuccessfully trying to wrestle her to the ground. For a moment she wore a nervous grin, then it turned into a pained
look. That's when I pushed my face at hers as though to kiss her.
“Rod get off!” I slipped as I pushed, then made an even uglier attempt to grab her but she pushed me off like an
annoying puppy. Gunj was stood in front of us, head cocked, regarding the scene with a disapproving look.
“Rod fuck off!” She pushed me quite violently and I reacted like an infant, shouting,
“Bitch!” before jumping up and running away. I heard her shout for me to come back but I kept on running.
I didn't see her for the next seven days. My fault, I just avoided Arniston Terrace. This was before everyone had a
mobile and she'd never been to my house. The truth was I think, not that I was too embarrassed to see her, more that I
was trying to punish her for leaving Dellend.
Then one day, I was sat watching some old western with Dad and Phil. I knew that it was the day of her departure.
There was an unfamiliar knock on the door. Phil came back from answering it with a daft grin hanging on his fizzog,
“Hey Dad! Tracy Grimely’s at the door! Wants to see Rod!” I jumped out of my chair and walked straight out and up
the path, telling Tracy who was stood there looking nervous to come with me. Dad and Phil both rushed to the door and
Dad started shouting stuff like,
“What the fuck’s all this! Have you got a bird?” as I led her out the gate. Maureen the biker was sat waiting in a rusty
car. Tracy said,
“Rod where the fuck have you been? I had to come and say goodbye!” Dad kept going,
“Go easy on him love, he's half your size!”
“Come to the station with me!” I nodded yes and got in the back of the car. That ride seemed to happen in a blur. We
drove through the inevitable Dellend drizzle, into town past the end of Arniston Terrace, past the swimming baths,
Rabbit Hill, right past the covered market and The Bookend where I could see hang gliding Pete puffing on his pipe.
We even drove past Foggy on his motorbike. Then I was on the platform with her and she was talking, she had been all
that time, but I couldn't focus on what she was saying. My mind was swirling. The train came far too fucking soon. She
bent over and hugged me, then got on it. The whistle blew, she waved from the window, I waved back and then she was
gone. Walking back from the station I saw one of our earliest UFO & Robotix on the back of a traffic sign and one of
our latest ones on a railway arch.

CHAPTER 6

It took me a while to build up enough courage or whatever it was I needed to get out of my dom. Dead Dad enjoyed
goading me,
“C'mon son. You're in no fit state to leave this flat tonight. When you've had a smoke you can't go out fucking
socialising, it's not happening. And let's face it........ You've had a smoke. I don't think you really want anyone seeing
you walking around like a fucking spaz, never mind your old what d'yer call it? Vandalism partner. Stay in and watch
Tron Legacy!” He only helped me realise that I really fucking had to go out. I made it out of there, with a bad feeling in
my guts and ten ready made joints in my adidas man bag.
I bought a few tall bottles of beer and decided to walk it, hoping a stroll might clear some of the steel wool from
inside my brain. Brixton was frothing like a freshly poured glass of Carva. The usual gumbo of bodies looking for a
Friday night throb. I weaved through, anonymous for about two minutes then walked right into Sheena, striding arm in
arm with an obvious boyfriend.
The fucker looked impossibly suave. A black dude in a sharp suit with a Fedora that appeared to be a much more
expensive model than those worn by the standard cove. With his neatly manicured moustache he looked like Andre
3000's taller, better looking, smarter dressed, younger brother, and as he shook my hand I felt chavtastic in my pisspoor
version of swag, (smart jeans, trainers, baseball hat and my best addidas jacket.) She was all shiny lips and legs. A
cocktail dress screamed for attention from under her coat. They looked like they could only be going to some incredibly
sophisticated Jazz club. I caught a look from her that seemed to say,
“See! Look how I traded up you fucking dick!” She said,
“I hear you don't go out much these days Rod?” Was that a dig? I really couldn't tell because as usual I was stoned
out of my gullivar.
“Well I'm out tonight!” I held my bag of bottles in the air as I walked into the crowd, quite a sharp retort for me.
Seeing Sheena got me thinking about my pitiful record with girlfriends. My relationships never lasted longer than a
year and the final six months always seemed to taste bitter. I cast a wide net, you couldn't say I had a definite type, the
only common denominator was me.
I wondered what exactly I was expecting to get out of the evening. Was my throb about seeing an old friend and
collaborator from my home town or was I actually deluded and pathetic enough to hope that there might still be some
romantic spark, seventeen years after Bournemouth. That was fucked up thinking surely. I had no idea whatsoever
where she'd been or what she'd been up to all those years. She could be married with kids, in fact she could have
had......... seventeen kids. Maybe not but people do change. There might have been little left of the Tracy I knew. Also
she might not actually be there! Where was I going, what the fuck was I doing?
I realised that the worst thing that could happen, would be that she was there, still as too cool for school as she'd ever
been. Then what would happen when she saw what a sad sack of shit I'd become? What could happen, but her being
disappointed and disgusted, before getting the fuck away from me as fast as she could, leaving me feeling worse than
ever. Why couldn't I have met her three years ago when I was riding high, surfing on a wave of urban cool. Instead of
now, when I was drowning in a glum puddle of inner-city gloom.
I'd nearly convinced myself to go home, when I realised that I was already on the right street. I decided I should at
least take a look at the place.
The house was a big dilapidated Victorian gaff hiding at the end of a long garden path. The three lights coming from
it's mouth like door and eye like windows made it look like a giant robot’s head that had fallen there centuries ago
before having the garden built around it. I stood at the gate watching a group of party guests being loudly welcomed
into the warmth and light. Another gaggle of people arrived behind me and I found myself tagging along. The idea that
Tracy was in there amongst the life and laughter was just far too much of a draw even for my fucked up psyche to resist.
I was half expecting to be turned away but the cove at the door, a camp Leon Trotsky lookalike in a polo neck didn't
realise that I wasn't part of the group. All he asked as I walked in was,
“Did you bring a poem?” to which I answered with the lie,
“A dozen!” .
I walked in to what would have once been called a squatty vibe. Bare brick and wiring everywhere, some not
unpleasant hippy smell, and a lot of theatrical shouting. In the hall there were two bevies of colourfully dressed
attractive young women sat on the wide stairway drinking wine. One group talking loudly in Italian the other in English.
The gang I'd followed were causing a jam saying their hellos. I suppose they were student types but it was hard to tell.
The loudest was a bearded youngster with a Scottish accent shouting stuff like,
“Who let these reprobates in! Is this a fucking AA meeting is it!”. I squeezed past them and wandered through what
seemed like a fuck of a lot of rooms, either busy with bodies chatting in huddles or with just a couple of people stood
about looking at lithographs or framed drawings. It wasn't an unfamiliar buzz for me. The mix was sort of like what you
might find at a new gallery showing some street artist trying to come in from the cold. The younger less moneyed end
of arty with a high percentage of young out and out weirdos. Also a lot of squares had made the scene so it was diverse
enough for nobody to look or feel too out of place. One cove wearing what looked like a full Merlin the magician’s
costume was casually sat on a window ledge, drinking beer, smoking a bifta, whilst two Goth types and a woman in a
power suit ignored him. I saw a few Brixtonites I knew well enough to nod at.
A couple of sandy haired hippy kids were in one room running around a cove who I presumed was their Dad. He
was playing a lute and dressed like an old fashioned bin man in one of those leather waistcoats and a spotty neckerchief.
Another cull rocking a top-man suit had a black helium filled balloon tied to float above him with the word LIAR
printed in white block capitols across it. I walked out into a garden lit up with strings of varicoloured light bulbs. There
was a small bonfire at the back being tended by two young studs in skinny jeans.
I wandered back into the house looking for either Zaif or Rodger but queezy with awareness that I could bump into
Tracy at any moment. It wasn't too hard to imagine her there. There was a tiny stage with a microphone set up in the
biggest room, waiting for the poetry to start. Poetry was one of the many forms of artistic expression that Tracy had
been into and I could easily imagine her growing up to be a bohemian type.
I came across one of Zaif's sculptures suspended from the ceiling by wires. There was a line of fun house mirrors,
the shape of rockets, hung across a long wall behind it. Zaif was still adjusting the last one in the series. I looked in it
and realised it was the special one he'd told me about ages ago. You had to stand at a certain distance or it just became a
blur but if you got it right, it didn't show a mirror image! That is it didn't flip you round, so you actually saw yourself
the way everyone else did. It sounds simple but looking into it was an extremely strange and surprisingly deep
experience. I wanted to stare at it for ages but other people were trying to get a look.
Zaif finished hanging it and stood back pleased with himself. Some cool dude in a suit and a backwards Kangol hat
was captivated by his own unusual reflection. He smiled at me and said with a friendly laid back American accent,
“That's so fucking weird!” Enjoying the mellow bo-ho buzz, I opened a beer and took a swig.
Zaif filled a plastic cup from my bottle and puffed on an e-tab.
“You know I didn't think you'd come. I thought you were much more Rap battle than poetry slam. You must really
want to meet up with this.... What's she called, is she an old girlfriend?”
“Tracy, yes, no well I mean she was once, but only for a very short time. I mean I knew her for years we well you
know not really....” I took a big drink, “I spent what I think was the most perfect sun drenched time of my life with her,
and you know what? It wasn't on the beaches of Goa or on the chilled side of Ibiza. It was in Bournemouth!”
“Hey it's a nice place!” Zaif smiled, he seemed glad I was there. I felt incredibly relaxed considering that I was out at
a party and surrounded by strangers. I considered that I might even be able to cure my social-phobia if I tried going to
more shin-digs like this, rather than the type filled with 20K of merciless sound, the type that had chased me into my
pothole in the first place. The only music I'd heard beside the guy with the lute was some world music being piped
quietly out of the speakers in the garden.
My buzz was harshed a little when I spotted Dad's ghost stumbling around with a can of wife beater in his paw. I lit a
J.
Just as I did Trotskyalike called everybody into the big room, saying,
“The poetry is about to start!” Me and Zaif squeezed in. I scanned the room for signs of Tracy but only saw Rodger,
smiling at me, holding up a glass of wine.
I realised Dead Dad was pressed up next to me. Someone was talking to a mate loudly in a Oxbridge accent,
explaining the situation with his girlfriend,
“Yeah you know we both decided to cool it for a bit! Develop separately for a while!”
“In other words,” Dead Dad opined in his laconic drawl, “She dumped you!” He punctuated this with the snap of a
ring pull. For a moment I thought the cove had heard him he seemed to look our way, but, obviously not.
The MC for the evening was a young woman wearing a man's tuxedo. She introduced the first poet, a bruiser in her
fifties dressed as a nun, who recited some, filthy, sacrileges limericks and haikus. It was hard to hear her because
despite the MC and various others trying to help her, she couldn't seem to speak into the mike properly. She was on for
about ten minutes, followed by an angry young white dude with dreads who was actually quite good and would have,
with some beats, almost been rap. Then there was a middle aged cove who came on naked causing everyone to laugh
and shriek all the way through his fifteen minute set.
The quality varied wildly from act to act. Lute man played whilst his children sang a vomit inducing sentimental
dirge. Then the man with the LIAR balloon shouted out some random words, that somehow made us all laugh till our
sides hurt.
It felt good to be in the middle a good natured crowd who seemed to have no firm expectations and little judgement,
being entertained by a bunch of random crackpots. I was amazed that I was right amongst them, packed in close yet not
getting the tightening at all. Dead Dad was'nt impressed though,
“I don't get it? What the fucks happening? Is it meant to be funny?”
The MC seemed confused about who was on next and was stalling when a woman jumped out from nowhere,
grabbed the mike and said,
“I found my family last night
Our tribal dances
Echoing a distant
Voice and rhythm
Of minds
Suddenly coming together
In one almighty
Crash of a banging drum
And I realised
We were all one
All sharing the same guilty moon
This same
Electric room
I cannot tell you
How warm I feel
In this surreal
Dream
This uncontrollable
Scream
Of realisation
Of our ancient song
We are lovers
Under a full moon
We are dancing on
On high
 We are marching
Towards a new time
When we lay down
Our weapons
Find out our cares
Dance round circles
And begin to rave
In amoebic spasms
Of sound and thought
You have brought
Me back
To understanding
The joining of souls
The depth of holes
Now filled up
In one divine and bloody
Heart filled mess.”
I've never really been into poetry, I wouldn't know what was Rakim from what was Chingy and just like all those
years ago I didn't really get it. The audience loved her though, they all started whooping and clapping, enough to make
me consider that maybe she was really big on the scene or something. She looked older of course but was still
immediately recognisable. It was Tracy.

CHAPTER 7

Not long after Tracy left Dellend, Mary told me she was going, “Back up the road !” to Scotland. Then Foggy got
put away for burgularising a golf club, meaning that my new family had totally disintegrated. I had no desire to hurry to
the bosom of my old one. The more Phil and Dad bonded over their love of Rock, and their belief in Phil's great future
as a musican, the more I became a spare prick at home. I was the butt of their jokes who they were always trying to
pressgang into a gofer.
“Hey dopey bollocks! I want you to go into town and get a C string for your brother's guitar. Take this. I know how
much they are so I want the right fucking change. On the way back go into Desi's and tell him I want twenty B&H on
tick.”
“Tell him not to paint one of his masterpieces on the way!”
“Yeah quick about it. Phil's writing a new song.”
My hatred of Phil was really fermenting. I was luckier than some, having my own bedroom, but it was around this
time that Dad gave the OK for Phil's band to rehearse in our front room. The drum kit became a permanent fixture,
somehow Phil had persuaded the youth club to let him keep their equipment at home meaning the amplified sound of
Rock became constant. Pogo had to be the worse drummer ever to pick up two sticks. He could not keep time and the
sound of this fuckwit banging away at the same slow paradiddle whilst Phil screamed at him, (obviously believing that
he could shout him better) was torture.
Dad who now saw himself as the manager would actually sit in and listen to this racket, and if ever the band weren't
there, Phil would carry on playing electric guitar and singing through the mike, whilst Dad took over on drums. Even
though he couldn't actually play at all, his minimalist efforts were marginally preferable to Pogo's deaf monkey beat.
Then in the rare moments when they weren't practising, they found a way to play Dad's records through the youth
club's amp and speakers. This meant The Rolling Stones, Slade, T-Rex, Thin Lizzy and Rod Stewart blasting out at full
volume, night and fucking day.
If this makes me sound like a whinging fucker, remember that besides a couple of Brit Pop LPs Phil had nicked from
somewhere they never played a record younger than me, and few younger than Dad, his taste must have been retro
when he was young. Anything I wanted to hear like Hip Hop wasn't allowed through the PA.
 Before all this I'd been able to sit in my room, reading books, listening to my Westwood tapes on my own tiny
tapedeck but now there was no way. So I was back in the ranks of the WA, where my recent absence seemed to have
made my full member status questionable.
I should have had some cred due for helping cover Dellend in aquamarine spacescapes in fact I should hafve been a
celebratory but it wasn't like that at all. It was more like I'd fucked off to become a fancy artist so I should just stay
fucked off but I completely quit doing Graff, I'd totally lost interest in doing it alone. Also I had no desire to go walking
around Dellend or on country hikes without Tracy.
Paul had acquired a Play Station so him Stilly and Riggy had set up camp in his front room. I was welcome to join
them but whilst I liked Gran Turismo, Tomb Raider and Resident Evil, they were all mad for FIFA which I could not
get into.
“We've got to play what everyone wants to play!” Paul spoke to me as though I was a four year old who needed the
art of sharing explained. Daring to hang elsewhere for a minute seemed to mean I'd been demoted.
So as the cold began to bite it was me Slacko and Buzzer out on the pavement repping.
I did start a campaign to get the Hip Hop scene back up and running, but real strong ennui had set in. No one
seemed bothered and I soon gave up.
Some sort of cultural sea change was happening on the Westgate. Foggy being locked up meant that our one real
solid connection to hash was gone and the whole estate went dry. Buzzer now looked old enough to get served in offies,
meaning we were irrigated in a different way. The year of the Bong gave way to the year of the bottle and the whole
Hip Hop, BMX, Sci-Fi, Transformers, stoner scene that I was into, was pushed out by a more mainstream pop , football,
Power Rangers, violent drunken buzz.
There were changes in the WA, a lot of younger kids swamped the roofs before we were ready to climb down
making it pretty crowded up there. Slacko got sent down for stealing motorbikes which would have been great, if our
Phil hadn't sensed a dickhead vacuum and started to hang out any time he wasn't rehearsing. He brought with him a
coterie of fuck witted followers, a palatable malevolence, and his fucking acoustic guitar that he always wore strapped
to his back, or played whilst singing his own unique mix of soft rock, Brit- Pop and seventies standards.
Unbelievably people seemed to lap his shit right up. Mates that I thought shared my belief that Rap was the superior
form, were suddenly, after a few bottles of Hooch, quite happy to sing along to Wonderwall, or Hi Ho Silver Lining for
fucks sake. This irked me no end, and put me off the very people who had cooled on me.
I didn't want my little brother anywhere fucking near me and resented the fact that he wouldn't even have passed the
WA dresscode if he hadn't taken to wearing my cast offs.
I tried hard to get him to fuck off. Out of sight of Dad I'd always had physical superiority but he was growing faster
than me so we were now equal in weight. That helped him decide that he didn't need to take shit of his older brother.
Whenever I told him to do one, he would just say,
“Why don't you fuck off!” And what really fucking pissed me off was no one jumped in on my side. Everyone
actually seemed to like the little fuck, saying stuff like,
“Leave him alone,he's allright!” When I told him to stop singing and playing guitar I got, “Let him sing, there's fuck
all else happening!” This wound me up to fuck, it was Slacko all over again, only worse. Of course I could have gone
back to my room when Phil was out and done some serious reading, but I felt that he was invading my territory. For
years I'd ceded the house to him and Dad, gone and made my own life out on the street. Now there he was, wearing my
clothes, right up in my grill. For months it played out like we were rival monkeys on some nature programme, until
finally it kicked off on the garage roofs.
The roofs were packed that night, like I said a lot of younglings had climbed up there early. I was daft on Stella and
Vodka, trying to get a reluctant Stilly to rap. Phil turned up with Pogo, swinging a fat jumbosized bottle of vile tasting
vino that he generously threw down every ones gullets. I'd already had one ding-dong with him earlier that day when I'd
objected to him and his lackeys drowning kittens in a bucket for twisted kicks. After yacking annoying bollocks for a
bit, the fucker strapped on his guitar and started up with “Goodbye T'Jane,” one of Dad's favourites.
When he moved onto the Rod Stuart song book I decided that I had to make it stop. Half way through the chorus of
Maggie May I shouted,
“Just fucking less it will yer! Shut the fuck up!”
“What! Don't you like it? Are you embarrassed because you were named after Rod Stewart?” This made everybody
chortle and me go red. It was true, Dad was that big a fan. There was no point countering that he was named after Phil
Lynot because he was proud of the fact. I decided that he'd crossed a line and I couldn't engage in any more sabre
rattling. I just ran at him, intending to simply push the prick off the roof. However I was half wankerd and he had other
ideas. He easily sidestepped me whilst passing his guitar to one of his cronies.
After years dealing with Slacko I should have known that you can't just cry “Dickhead!” and expect everyone to fall
in line. Other lads had annoying younger brothers but even the numptiest siblings were accommodated and tolerated. I
just wanted to make Phil disappear, like the council cleaning up Graff.
That's not how it went down. Phil was meatier than me, harder, a better fighter and much more violent. He easily got
me in a headlock and then pulled me around the roof laughing. As I choked I could see everyone looking at me, not it
seemed with total sympathy. The thing was, if I had succeeded in pushing him off it could have done him some serious
damage and everyone knew that. Also Phil was popular, not just because of his music, he had a psychopath's magnetism
that really worked on the WA.
He pounded my face with his fist for a while and I felt the pain of humiliation almost as bad as the physical,
especially when I heard voices I recognised shouting stuff like,
“Fuck him up Phil!” and, “Teach him a lesson!” Encouragement for me, there was none. Only when it became
obvious that Phil wasn't going to stop did Buzzer wade in and wrestle him off. I felt the disgrace of the aggressor who is
easily defeated and the fighter who is abandoned by his own corner. Also I felt tears threatening to make my red face
glisten, so had to climb down from there immediately.
Everybody now spoke up, imploring me not to go. Ullah hugged me and said something about brothers. Phil spat,
“I've warned him so many times to fucking leave me alone!”
As I walked away from the roofs over the empty dark Gash, my face involuntarily gurning, wet with tears and blood,
I heard Phil's guitar, and him singing,
“Don't look back in anger!” it sounded like everyone was joining in.
After that night I became an inconsequential sulk, hugging the shadows. Taking a paggering from your younger
brother was a shameful defeat on the Gash. Phil continued to strut around unbothered by me, growing easily into his
two natural vocations, troubadour and bully.
At first I holed up in my room reading, until the noise of Phil's band learning the songs he'd written drove me to join
the Playstation set where my place was literally on the edge of the sofas arm. When spring came and my crew came out
of computer game hibernation, finally moving from the roofs to the Eagle's carpark, I was there with them. I was still a
sullen and marginalised figure but without the influence of Tracy or the annoyance of Phil who's own gang now ruled
the roofs, I found my way back in. Just as we left the restraining influence of school to become fully fledged NEETS.
I could write a whole book just about the adventures of those months. There was sex, drink, drugs,burglary and
arson. All the fun of being seventeen. Riggy started stealing cars, and joyriding took us further than we'd ever been.
Doing more crimes meant we were noticed by the higher ups in the WA. The night opened it's doors wider than before
and we met many other nocturnal creatures. It was like a dark crim version of the bigger picture that Tracy had shown
me.
At the same time, there was a gear change in the ongoing hostilities between the WA and The Ridge. Constant
skirmishing always had the potential to break out into total war, and one night wandering back through Hest Bank
alone, after seeing a girl, Paul got set upon and beaten so badly that they broke his jaw.
It wasn't the Bloods versus the Crips or even those hoody gangs from cities you see on You Tube. It was Dellend.
We were if anything only ever doing a poor imitation of a real city gang. Our senseless violence was of the lowest rent
known. Moronic youth engaged in reasonless postcode hostilities because of our own self defeating inability to see how
pitiful it was. The Ridge were almost a mirror reflection of us, yet we just went at each other. Not over turf, or drugs, or
money, or girls, or even rep. It was literally about nothing more than which council estate you lived on. The worst
example of the most negative part of crew culture. We could of only acted more self defeating by punching ourselves in
the face.
That summer aggro continued to ramp up. Lads from both sides were getting battered on a regular. For our crew, it
was like we'd finally ventured out into the world only to find it full of fuckers who wanted to do us in.
Also that was the year that I grew. Not meaning I matured emotionally, I physically grew. I finally reached puberty,
and shot up a couple of inches. I was still a shortarse but not quite as remarkably tiny as I had been.
Phil's band were now called Shadowzone, they started to gig, mostly on a youth circuit but also in pubs on weekend
afternoons. Everyone kept telling me how good they were but, (even though I had to admit that from my room Pogo
seemed to be getting better,) I still thought they sounded shit. Dad went every time they played and berated me for my
lack of interest.
“I can't believe you don't support your brother! He's got real fucking talent you know! You should get on board as a
roadie now, then you'll be right in there when he makes it big!” I don't think Dad knew or cared that Phil also seemed to
have taken up torture as a hobby. Stories were being told in my earshot, and once me and Riggy saw him and his mates
on the Gash making some poor lad they'd stripped naked, climb into a cardboard box filled with nettles which they then
kicked around. Phil placed a pile of doc leaves outside the box laughing manically as he said,
“See I'm not a complete bastard!”
At home and in general he was quite happy to ignore me.
I got a long letter from Tracy that I would read and re-read like it was my favourite comic. She described a life that
was hard for me to imagine, riding horses on golden sands. I wanted to reply but didn't know what to write, not wanting
to tell her that I was basically right back where she'd found me. She told me that she'd switched from looking after
horses to looking after children, somehow she'd got a job as a nanny. She suggested that I come and visit and I thought
about doing just that.
One night, Sketch, a WA stalwart of Foggy's generation got jumped and hospitalised by The Ridge. This was the
worst beating so far in the whole campaign. We were under attack and started to group. All the older boys including us
were suddenly always at the Gash like we felt we had to return to our ancestral hunting grounds. Every night there was
a war council. Paul was my best mate and my voice was as loud as anyone's calling for retribution.
Phil should have been busy becoming the next Jon Bon Jovi or whatever, but he couldn't pass up an opportunity to
get involved in some serious aggro. He became a sort of hate preacher against the Ridge, constantly suggesting violent
retaliation. I found myself woefully unable to outdo him.
“We should be out there looking for them, fucking them up whenever we find them!”
“We should fucking kidnap one of them. Tie him up and that, put a bag on his head. We could do some serious shit to
him!” (That was Phil.)
 With rehearsals becoming more and more frequent, I'd taken to going to Dellend library for some peace and quiet
during the day. I was sat in there reading a Bruce Sterling book when I heard a loud banging on the window I'd been
stupid enough to sit near. Riggy, Ullah, Pogo and Phil had been racing past when they'd spotted me sat there. They
motioned for me to come out and join them and they looked so agitated that I did, cursing myself for sitting where they
could spot me.
“What the fuck do you want!” They were waiting by the door looking like a gang from The Warriors who had just
declared war on the Riffs.
Ullah tried to put across the seriousness of the situation,
“Buzzer's been battered now! Fucking Ridge lads came to the Gash....TO THE GASH Rod and jumped him! There
was about ten of them Hugo said!” He wobbled as he spilt it, this unholy violation of tabu was unprecedented. Riggy
said in a slightly less hysterical tone,
“We were in the Arndale.... We just heard about it....... We're going to the Gash now. Maddah says we're going to go
up to the Ridge.....What were you doing in the library?” Phil laughed,
“Don't you know he's a fucking bookworm!” We rushed back to the Gash where an emergency committee was in full
swing. It had already been decided that that evening we were all going to pile into a fleet of cars and up to the Ridge.
Lads so old I didn't even recognised them were turning up in cars and vans whilst Maddah pointed and gave
instructions like a council estate Churchill on a delinquents D-Day. Dark came and engines revved.
There was no prearranged fight, and no plan other than we go up there and lay into any fucker we spotted walking
about.
I got into the back of a van with Riggy and was dismayed to see Phil already sat there slapping an ugly bit of wood
into his palm. He flashed a reptile smile,
“Time to crack some skulls big broth!” I came back with,
“What y'gonna do Marc Bolan?.... Hit em with yer guitar?” He snorted and gave me a “We'll see!” look.
We drove onto the Ridge but it was dead. Almost as if they knew we were coming and had decided to foil us with
the cunning plan of just staying in and watching telly. Our vehicles crept around the empty looking estate as though we
were in some film like Boys in The Hood, ready to do a drive-by.
Eventually we saw just three lads on the swings talking to some girls, all wearing the same leisurewear uniform as
us. We pulled up in the van but they didn't even perceive any danger, just peered in to see who it was. When we slid the
door open and all piled out screaming they ran off in different directions. The girls just stood there screaming back and
suddenly I'm running after a boy with our Phil right by my side, so close that I can hear him panting.
Most of the gang fights I was ever involved in were actually just one group of lads chasing after another. Being
either the chasers or the chased could be exiting and fun, quite often it wasn't that different than a big game of gang tig.
The danger came if someone got caught. When that happened things could get really nasty quite quickly. When the
lad that me and Phil were chasing fell meaning we were going to catch him, my heart sank. I looked at Phil and he gave
me what can only be accurately described as an evil grin.
When we reached him Phil's first move was to swing his cudgel deliberately at his head. He connected and blood
splashed out looking like Ribena, a strange affect of being halfway between a yellow and a blue streetlight. I heard the
lad whimper and Phil laugh.
He looked up at us, his eyes wide with terror. I recognised him from school, some kid that everyone called Squirrel,
a good rapper. He was about thirteen. Phil booted him around the body and legs for a bit as he squirmed on the floor,
trying to protect himself by curling into a ball. I just froze and was no help to Phil or the lad, besides being right there
on the other side of him. Then when Phil went as if to swing his stick at his head again the lad said something in a way
that made me feel sick. Just one word, a quiet plea,
“Don't!” I noticed that not ten yards from us there was a man stood on his doorstep, drinking a cup of tea, seemingly
watching us in a state of complete uncaring passivity. Whole seconds of nobody doing or saying anything went by and
the silence made the whole scene seem unreal. I noticed that there were lots of stars out and an anorexic moon staring
down at us. I had a sudden desire to be lay on Rabbit Hill with Tracy. I realised that the man hadn't sussed what was
happening, he probably thought that we were just kids playing, which I suppose we should have been. I finally spoke
up,
“Phil!” I said it just as he tossed the stick. Now he looked at me and I realised that he had stopped but my saying his
name in that anxious tone had egged him on. He gave me a look that said,
“I always new you were a fucking pussy!” then deliberately lifted his foot and stamped down as hard as I think he
could on the lad's head. I heard a noise like a wet slap and saw blood squirting out of his eyes, ears, mouth and nose. I
felt vomit hit the inside of my mouth but still didn't make a move to do anything.
The man with the tea started shouting, then a second later there was the sound of tyres and Ullah calling us. We both
ran back into the van that had pulled up beside us. As we piled in it took off with a screech. I sat opposite Phil shaking
and swallowing sick. He chuckled to himself as if he'd just thought of some witty jest. I made a choking sound and he
looked right into me.
Nobody else was aware of exactly what had happened, Ullah was asking,
“Did you get him? Who was that?” Neither of us answered, I just looked out of the window whilst Phil stared at me
till we got back to the Westgate. The other two lads had gotten away so the raid was considered a failure until Phil
started to explain that he had fucked somebody up.
“Some shit Rapper from school, I've never liked him!”
 I went home and straight to bed were I stayed awake for hours thinking dark thoughts. For the next few days
whenever I bumped into Phil, he would wordlessly leer at me.
Dad somehow got wind of the fact that there had been fighting, and decided that it must all be my fault. He grabbed
me one day as I was leaving the house and slapped me round the head saying,
“What are you dragging Phil into your shitty world for?” I tried to pull away from him.
“I mean all that fucking whacky backy you smoke, it's meant to make you mellow out innit? When I was your age
and I smoked weed I'd chill the fuck out and listen to Bob Marley! It's never made me want to go around twatting
people. It's all that fucking coon music you listen to, it's too violent.” I stood mute not wanting to hear it. He leaned in
so I could feel his tar like breath burning my cheek.
“I know you don't like it, but Phil's not like you. He's actually got a chance to do something with his life. Can't you at
least try not to fucking pull him down with you.” He let me go and punched my chest. “Don't you get it? He could be
fucking big!” I ran away from him and straight to the Gash, passing the next Bob Dylan flinging a frog at a lad he'd
made stand against a wall.
Days later and the whole Westgate was still on a war footing. I was sat in a flat watching the recently recuperated
Paul getting tattooed whilst I read a new letter from Tracy and waited my turn. I was flush with cash after some criminal
undertaking or other. Tracy said that I had to come to see her that summer. Little Tina, Buzzers sister, came in and said,
“The pigs are looking for you Rod... You and your brother. I think that lad you battered grassed you up!” Paul gave
me one of his disapproving looks,
“Yeah I heard that that Squirrels in a bad way you know!”
I'd been feeling a mixture of terrible guilt, and fear of getting caught every moment since it had happened.
I sat there thinking crazy thoughts, thoughts about running away. I didn't want to get nicked, I was scared that I
might be made to face the lad. More than that I didn't want to end up in a cell with our Phil. I went home and snuck in to
pack a few T-Shirts and socks into my old spray can bag. As I was sneaking out the back door Dad spotted me and
shouted,
“Hey the fucking police are looking for you! Hey hey come here hey! Come back fucking here you little fucker!” I
ran without looking back.
I went to the train station, my hood and cap covering my face as much as possible and bunked onto the first train that
was going south. I got caught without a ticket almost immediately but just got thrown off at the next stop. That was my
first ever train journey. I decided to hitch hike the rest of the way.
I walked through a shower catching rain on my tongue, following the signs that pointed the way out of the tiny
satellite of Dellend that I'd never been to before. Unsure about what I was doing, I found the entrance to the Motorway
and stood there sheepishly with my thumb out, the rain playing a tattoo on my hood. Amazingly I got my first lift
almost straight away from a hippy/yuppie type who wanted me to skin up for him whilst Queen blasted out all the way
to Stoke on Trent. The next lift was from a travelling salesman cove who bought me coffee at a service station. I'd
always been told that hitch hiking was really difficult but the roads seemed full of friendly drivers who couldn't wait to
tell you about the days when they thumbed lifts.
Then somewhere near Birmingham I got stuck at a godforsaken turn off where only one car went past every twenty
minutes. When it got slate dark and no one could even see me, I decided to get my head down inside some bushes in the
middle of a roundabout. I didn't even have a sleeping bag so it was a bit choppy, but as I looked up at the sky, clouds
shifted and I saw a ripe yellow moon with white stars sprayed onto a soil black sky. I realised that I was the furthest I'd
ever been from Dellend. I slipped into a fantasy in which I was a space traveller, halfway from one tiny planet to
another.
The next morning I was kissed awake by dew and had two battling feelings. Lead like dread about my desperate
situation, versus optimistic anticipation about seeing Tracy.
I arrived in Bournemouth, mid day, in the cab of a large lorry. I was dropped off just outside the town and decided I
would immediately go and check out the beach.
I couldn't find it, and got lost instead in an endless industrial estate. I felt rough, but the sun warmed me as I sat on a
bench. Even though I was completely unsure about what would happen next, just being out of Dellend was itself an
uplifting experience. I'd never been on holiday or anything like that. Also I was still inside my space traveller fantasy
which was potent enough to turn a trading estate into a spaceport.
I felt that there were two major possibilities. Either I was going to find Tracy and be given some kind of welcome
involving food and shelter, or I would spend the rest of the day anxious, suffer the massive anti-climax of not finding
her and have to spend that night sleeping rough again. I realised that of course there was a third. I could find her but not
be offered much succour at such short notice.
I cussed myself for acting so impulsively. I bought a can of coke from a caff and asked the lady who served me if
she had any idea where the address on Tracy's letter was. With the help of a customer she gave me directions and drew
a map, out of town past some roundabout, up a hill, second left, big posh housing estate beyond the trees.
As I walked up the hill my heart was pounding and every part of my body was tingling at the thought of seeing
Tracy again after eleven long months. Would we still get on? Would she look any different? Did she have a boyfriend?
Would it be thorny because of what happened that day in the woods, she'd never mentioned it in her letters but.....
Also I started to feel massive trepidation about what kind of reception I would get from her employers. Coming
down there might have seemed like a great idea the day before in Dellend, but the closer I got, the less of a fantastic
plan turning up unannounced seemed.
 The directions I had been given took me further and further into the suburbs, into what seemed like smarter and
richer territory. Territory that I was not at all familiar with. The sun was making me sweat under my baseball cap. I took
my puffa jacket off but it wouldn't fit into my tiny bag and was almost as uncomfortable to carry as to wear. I wished I
had something else to drink.
I imagined a rich nightmare scenario about what would happen when I got to the place. I would ring the bell and the
door would be answered by the owners handsome eighteen year old son, who would be dressed like a rich kid from The
Fresh Prince Of Bel Air. First he would think that I was a gypsy trying to sell pegs, then when I mentioned Tracy he
would be taken aback. Then Tracy's boss would come out, a stern looking type who would come to the door and say,
“Who is it Julian, we don't want our windows cleaned!”. And then yes Tracy would appear except she would look
completely different, all done up smart and she'd be carrying some cherubic looking blond haired posh kid piggy back
and they'd both be laughing, but when she saw me her jaw would hit the floor. Then she would look embarrassed and no
I would not be invited in! In fact she wouldn't even walk past her boss or the toffee nosed looking twat, who is
obviously by the way he's looking at me, her boyfriend! No she stays behind them as if for protection and little Lord
Faultenroy starts to cry and ask,
“Who is it Daddy who is it?” Tracy merely mumbles something about where am I staying and says that maybe her
and Julian could take me to the beach sometime. The nightmare fantasy ended with Julian walking me away from the
house whispering into my ear,
“Why don't you fuck off out of here you fucking Gippo! Before I get the law onto you!”
The closer I got to the address the more I became convinced that that was how it was going to go down. I found the
street, actually a cul de sac with stately looking houses that had such expansive front gardens the road was a thin black
river in a prosperous green valley where trees grew tall. Some chap in a rugby shirt watering his lawn, openly scowled
at me. I was really sweat-drenched now and felt like someone who had obviously spent the night in a hedge.
It dawned on me that turning up looking like I did might actually fuck things up for Tracy.
I'd never seen anywhere so upscale. I was waiting for the police to turn up and shake me down. I became
disorientated, couldn't find the house I was looking for. I was wandering up and down the same stretch again and again
the sweat flowing thicker and faster. I saw a woman pushing a pram, but she seemed less approachable than a swan with
cygnets so I didn't ask her anything.
I saw a middle aged couple blatantly scoping me out from their living room window. I was sure they'd pegged me as
a burglar, casing joints, swag bag at the ready.
When I finally found the house that I was looking for, (it was actually hidden down a sort of upper class ginnel.) I
nearly decided that the whole idea was stupid and turned back right then. It was the biggest most extravagant house of
the lot. It sat in a huge plot of land surrounded by a high wall which was skirted by trees inside and out. I felt a long
way away from the Westgate. The main feature that I noticed was the pair of giant uninviting iron gates which looked
like the entrance to some kind of castle. They actually spoke to me, in a loud voice they said,
“Fuck off!” The round white doorbell spoke as well, more quietly it muttered,
“Don't bother!”
I just stood there under the security camera for minutes, not sure what to do. I literally did not have the bottle to ring
that bell. I just didn't want anyone from that mansion actually seeing or talking to me. I tried to think of alternatives,
some other way I could get hold of Tracy without actually calling for her at that house, which sat in the distance like a
extravagant tabu temple. Maybe I could wait at the entrance of the Cul de Sac until Tracy walked past.
I thought about my lack of certainty that she was actually there, it just didn't seem likely that anybody I knew could
have any connection to such a palatial looking gaff.
I jumped with shock when a chocolate Labrador that had managed to sneak up on me from the inside barked loudly.
I heard her voice before I saw her, she was shouting the dog,
“Louis!” in those two syllables there was no mistaking the Dellend accent.
Impulsively I banged on the gates, then started to shake them. I felt electrified with excitement and relief. I could see
her in the distance looking puzzled so I put my face into a gap and shouted,
“Tracy!” She screamed,
“Rod!” and came running towards me. She pushed a button that made the gates yawn open, the dog squeezed through
first and put it's paws up on me. It bounced around us as she pulled me into a hug. We were both surprised that I was
almost the same height as her.
“Rod you mad bastard, how the fuck did you get here?” She dragged me inside and closed the gate. “Come inside!” I
looked down at myself,
“Won't your boss mind?”
“They're not here! They're in the Seychelles for another twelve days! They just left on Thursday!” I couldn't believe
my ariels. The perfect situation, almost exactly the opposite of what I'd imagined twenty minutes ago. The only thing I'd
got right was that Tracy was smartly dressed. There was no trace of the Dellend B girl, her hair was up in a bun just like
a nannies should be. I figured you'd have to adopt the look to work in a place like that. As we walked to the house the
dog tried to make friends with me by pushing a rubber ring into my hand. I happily snatched it then threw it over the
lawn.
Somehow whilst feeling the amazing high that I was, I managed to be polite enough not to take too much for
granted. I asked if it was OK for me to stay a couple of nights. Tracy just laughed and said,
“Shut the fuck up!”
 We walked past the house which is still the most lavish I've ever seen close up,(my brothers country place is not
quite as big, his city place doesn't have a pool) and went to what looked like a large conservatory on the other side of a
swimming pool. It was a converted poolhouse, Tracy's own nanny flat.
Inside there was a lot of evidence that the Tracy I knew lived there. A Prince poster hung above a book case filled
with paperbacks. Her easel was there and paintings were hanging and leaning all around. She'd ditched the alien and
UFO motifs and was now painting mostly horses but I could still recognise her style.
Tracy was obviously completely freaked out by my being there, but thankfully it seemed mostly in a good way. I did
most of the talking for the first few minutes just explaining how I'd got there. When I mentioned sleeping in a bush she
asked me if I wanted a shower.
After I'd dried myself off with the huge fluffy towel that she gave me, and was feeling lots better in a clean T-Shirt
and socks, she passed me a coffee and a plate of scrambled eggs. I thought about that first time at Scotch Mary's, but
this was very different. If Arniston Terrace had been a new world for me, this was an unfamiliar galaxy.
As I ate I took a good look at her. She had changed, she looked even more beautiful. I supposed that Bournemouth
must be good for her. She was holding herself differently, her neck seemed even longer. It was fucking weird for me
being in such an unfamiliar environment with someone I knew so well who was obviously very relaxed there. I couldn't
believe we were the only people around, it seemed too good to be true.
She took me outside to sit by the pool. The sun was really hot now, pouring down like thick glue and I felt like I'd
arrived at some tropical clime.
I had to ask her,
“How the fuck did you end up working here!”
“Well I met Susan at the stables were I was working, they're American, really nice ...Her and Gary have been great to
me and I love the children... Ben, Jessica and Anna.”
When she mentioned that there was a housekeeper called Margo who was also on holiday and that she had been left
there to look after the dog, the plants and the house and garden in general, I relaxed. Finally finding it plausible that we
really were alone in this wild crib, and that no one was about to turn up and ask who the fuck I was.
After a stash box appeared that had fags, rizlas and a tiny bit of weed, I did begin to wonder if I was still in the
middle of the roundabout and this was all a dream.
After we'd smoked some colitas Tracy said,
“I was just going to take Louis for a walk when you turned up. I'm nearly out of weed ..... I need to go see Kane. He's
down near the seafront!”
“Do they let you smoke dope here?”
“Well no, I mean they are pretty cool really, but I mean.....No......But y'know... They're not here!”
Strolling out of the Cul de Sac, Tracy linked arms with me, something that she just couldn't have done comfortably
back in Dellend because of the height difference. I felt none of the paranoia from earlier, I was clean and not too hot
without my jacket or bag. When the old couple I'd seen earlier waved at Tracy I waved back with her. She fiddled with
a mobile phone making her the second person I knew to have one.
I thought Bournemouth looked incredibly clean. I joked with Tracy about the lack of litter and dogshit and filled her
in on some of what had been going on back home. Not about the feuding just about Foggy being put away and some
inconsequential shit.
Things felt different between me and Tracy. The physical change alone was enough to cause a big adjustment in
even the body language between us. I didn't feel like I could fall back into the old “little mate” role but wasn't at all sure
what new part I'd be playing. All of this new circumstance was making me light headed and giddy. I kept giggling for
no reason.
We walked on immense immaculate beaches. The only time I'd ever seen the sea before was when I'd gone with
school on a day-trip to Morecambe. I stared at the waves hypnotised by their rhythm, then caught Tracy looking at me
as if checking my reaction. We smiled at each other and she squeezed my hand.
We turned up off the sea front and onto a road of terraced houses. The one we went to looked like what I'd expected
Tracy to be living in. It still looked deluxe to me but compared to where we'd just come from it wasn't shit. When we
got up to the front door I could see it was all a bit shabby, peeling paint and crap like that. When Tracy knocked on it a
dog started barking.
Kane let us in, whilst holding back a friendly looking Alsation by the collar. He was in his twenties and had long
blonde hair looking to me if anything, like a Californian surfer dude. The shorts and vest that he wore revealed tribal
looking tattoos written up and down his muscular limbs. The dogs were obviously old friends and ran off into a back
garden to play. Kane took us into a spacious room with a bed built up so it didn't take up floor space. It was neatly
covered with built in shelves, filled with smartly stacked records, books, skateboards and hip objects d'art, animal skulls
and cool looking helmets. I spotted one of Tracy's equine paintings which made me wonder how close those two were.
There was a large stencilled image covering the emptiest piece of wall, a man pointing a handgun out at the viewer. The
foreshortening was so extreme that the barrel of the gun was bigger than the man. It looked like a logo, maybe for a
record company. Kane tore weed from a fat block that he had out and weighed it up in front of us.
“Any friend of Tracy's,” he said to me, but I could still have easily felt uncomfortable in that room. Especially when
it started to fill up with house mates and other customers who were all dressed in similar shorts and T-Shirts. No one
wore air-wear like what I was used to. They all had on the same baseball boot type thing. Also everyone looked healthy
and talked in funny accents, not just southern, all kinds of posh and carrot crunching variations. At that point in my life
I'd never really been anywhere, and anyone not from the Westgate was strange to me. Scotch Mary had been the most
exotic person I'd ever met, and Paul was a bit “other” because he'd spent the first five years of his life in County
Durham. I struggled to even categorise this Bournemouth lot, but a few of them turned up holding skateboards so I
guessed they must be skaters. I was aware that it was highly unlikely I would ever have been sat with bods like that if
Tracy hadn't brought me round. As I sat there listening to them I noticed they seemed to constantly diss Trance music
and anyone that liked it. I got the idea that they mainly defined themselves by the fact that they hated rave culture, a
sentiment I could agree with.
So whatever alienation I felt, was softened by the fact that the Wu Tang Clan were pumping out of the biggest
speakers I'd ever seen, and a bong similar to Paul's was being passed around. Also there was a poster of some New York
Graffiti, in fact the place was full of really sick stuff, I actually felt a little bit like I was somewhere where I could fit in.
It was like Tracy was once again introducing me to the cool shit and people that are out there in the big wide world.
Everyone seemed to know her, I guessed that Tracy wasn't going to let looking after someone's horses or kids be her
whole life and she'd fallen in with some proper pot heads.
I might be able to look back now and realise that I was at some shared student digs and one of them was serving up a
bit of grass, but at the time I'd been introduced to an advanced civilisation that was by dint of various cultural signifiers,
strangely familiar and welcoming.
Certain snatches of conversation were probably the most foreign thing to me. People were chatting about going and
coming back from India, about university, and the gripes they talked about having with their parents seemed
unintelligible.
Two good looking blonde girls arrived, both, wearing tiny denim shorts and tight T'shirts. Everybody had to squeeze
up and one of them sat right next to me. I'm sure we had attractive blonde girls in Dellend but it was again like I'd
landed on the west coast of America. They seemed really.... interesting but I only had eyes for Tracy.
Everyone was friendly towards me, I suppose I must have looked like some little kid to them. They all started talking
about some party they'd been to and about how drunk and stoned they'd been, there was about eight bodies in there by
then.
I was glad to notice that there didn't seem to be any connection between Tracy and any of the lads, and she didn't
react one iota when someone went on about Kane snogging some girl before he'd passed out the night before.
Then a cull exploded into the room. He was tall and wiry with a shaven head, the same shorts as everyone else and a
cut-off Public Enemy T-Shirt, exhibiting lots of tats and what looked like tiny cuts all over his arms legs and head. He
threw himself onto the back of a couch causing drinks to spill and ashtrays and the bong to get knocked over, shouting
in a pirate voice something like,
“Fucking Wankers Oi Oi!”
“Fucks sake 3PO!” Kane laughed, then shouting,
“Pochahontas!” the barbarian scooped Tracy up in his arms and spun with her in the middle of the room whilst she
yelped with delight.
When Tracy introduced me he laughed,
“Another Bellender!” then he shook my hand saying, “No its great to meet you mate, any friend of this little girl here
is sound by me..... Safe yeah!” He slumped down between me and Tracy and started to chat to Kane in a slang that I
found barely intelligible.
“How much of that nine bar's left? Dinkies? What about leftovers. Fuck Mack he never comes through. That was his
brother. Friday then? OK Monday then! No comebacks, that's max!” Kane whispered his replies so I never caught them
but 3PO shouted every word.
After a few minutes of him shouting insults at nearly everyone,
“Thumper, when are you going to get a different T-Shirt boy? That ones had it! I saw you in town yesterday and I
swear to God you looked like a tramp! Rebbeca I wish you'd put a fucking bra on, I love your nipples and all that but
they follow me around the room!” He turned his attention to me and started to sort of interrogate me, without actually
giving me time to answer his questions,
“Brought up on an estate yeah? Like your Happy Hardcore do you? No! Hip Hop is it? Bet you got a BMX? In a
gang are you? Yeah Dellend massive all the way is it?” I was happy that he was only there for a short while. Kane gave
him a skateboard and he left with it shouting,
“Laters losers! ...Get out in the sunshine!” As soon as he'd gone everyone started talking about what seemed to be his
latest exploit. Apparently he'd run right through the window of a MacDonalds.
After another half an hour I was quite stoned and beginning to really enjoy myself. Though I had trouble
understanding half of what they said I liked the banter. They talked a lot in cod American accents,
“Word up my Wigga! That shit is the bomb cus!” It felt good to be sitting in with a group of people who were
obviously close, but happy for me to be there. Kane was playing Depth Charge and the bass came out of those speakers
like thick rubber bullets that bounced around the room. Eventually Tracy got up and said we should go.
“How long are you down for mate?” Kane bumped fists with me,
“Er I'm not sure.....”
“Well you'll be here Friday yeah... Get her to bring you to our party man... Yeah..Safe.... Little man.... Tracy...” he
gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek,
“Later on!” We spent the next few hours getting more stoned on a deserted white giggabeach. We got some sticks
and drew some of our old UFO & Robotix in the sand, making them fifty metres across.
 When we plotted atop a hillock, looking down on our handiwork, the conversation seemed to build easily like we
were making an abstract sculpture out of Lego. First we filled each other in on all the new books that we'd read. Whilst
I'd carried on working my way through the Sci-Fi cannon she seemed to have wandered off through other parts of the
library. Then she told me all about her adventures, coming to Bournemouth working at the stables, ending up at that
massive house.
I took a few deep breaths and told her the full story about the fight with the Ridge, that night with our Phil,
everything. It was a hard story to tell being about my involvement in the senseless battering of a younger lad. I was
ashamed really. It felt like the first time I'd talked to anyone for ages. She gave me a cuddle and said something like,
“Awww Rod,..... Y'see this is why I'm fucking glad to get away. I mean the WA fighting the Ridge........” She looked
at me questioningly, “I mean you can see what a load of shit it is can't you?” I nodded quickly,
“Yeah yeah I mean, they did batter Paul..... But yeah I suppose it's all fucking bollocks innit.” I looked out at the sun
plunging behind some hills. “I mean I can see why you like it here it's …. it's fucking nice. I mean that lad's where were
just at.. He seems sound and that, I mean it doesn't seem like they would all get up to go off and batter someone on the
other side of town!”
“Yeah I know they're a bit different...... They're students right. Kane believe it or not could have been a like an
Olympic show-jumper if he hadn't gotten so into weed. That 3PO he's a funny fucker, but I like them, they've been great
to me. The thing is being here...... I mean I miss our Debbie but you know I hardly ever saw her and I love my Mum but
I fucking hate her y'know and I'm so fucking glad to get away from Kevin the creep I was just so..... I mean I'm away
from all that and it's just like there's a lot of pressure off you know what I mean?”
Sat in the last rays of direct sunshine it was like I could look right at her for the first time since I got there. I could
see that she was different. Sat there she reminded me of when I used to seen her riding down the track....Like a princess.
Not in a Disney way, more like a warrior princess.
I actually wished I could be more like her. I wanted to change too and thought maybe it wasn't impossible. We'd
started off so similar, both from horrible smelly houses, both a few steps lower on the social ladder than nearly
everybody around us. Each of us with heads filled with distant planets, aliens, robots and space empires. I realised how
lonely I'd been since she'd left, how lucky I'd been in the first place to find someone who's private universe could meld
so well with mine. I hoped that maybe, even though she was obviously loving her new life, she'd missed me a bit as
well. We had after all been a graffiti phenomenon together.
Back at her flatlet we fed the dog then Tracy went into the house to make us Pizza and oven chips. We sat by the
pool drinking and smoking. She played Prince, Luther Van Dross, Stevie Wonder and then put on the same Beck LP
from the Arniston Terrace days and we listened to it as the night thickened.
I fancied Tracy more than ever now, but after last time had no intention of spoiling things by making a clumsy pass.
I was very happy to be given a duvet and a couch, a few feet from where she slept. She gave me a Margaret Atwood
novel to read, “The Handmaidens Tale” and we lay there reading for a couple of hours just like a year earlier in the
bedsit.
The next morning I was woken by the heat sneaking in through the French windows and spreading over me. I sat up
and saw that Tracy was doing a few lengths with the dog. She soon came slapping back in and before long I was sat
eating cornflakes in my boxers, watching Power Rangers on a tiny TV whilst Tracy watered all the plants that she had
to and did a few more random chores.
Then she packed a lunch as expertly as she always had and we went off for a walk around Bournemouth, me holding
the dogs lead. It seemed like we were already in a routine when we found another spot looking out over the sea and
skinned up. That day seemed to stretch out for a week, we did nothing except relax and enjoy the extremely hot
weather. We lay next to each other, silent like in the days after Burnt Rog, I felt a peace descend on me.
The days that came could have been a super idyllic rerun of our summer in Dellend, with sunshine instead of drizzle
but it was much more than that. The feeling that we were just one step away from a space adventure returned but also
there was something else.
Tracy was so different from how she'd been at home. The shadow thrown by having to deal with her mothers shit, or
wondering when some grown man might next shout abuse at her on the street had gone, allowing her to bloom healthily
into the sunlight. Also the dynamic between the two of us us had shifted massively. It was more than the height thing, I
was also acting different on my first time away from Dellend. Like my whole Westgate identity was something that I
just couldn't wear. The feeling I had was like we'd escaped from some horrid planet prison colony to some garden of
Eden type world.
When we did start talking we came on like two philosophy students. Usually we'd start with some Sci-Fi concept and
then stretch that out.
“So,” she would ask in that probing style of hers, “Do you think that robots should be allowed to have the same rights
as what humans do? I mean you know like freedom and all that?”
“Well no I've always thought no, because you know what I mean they're not.... I mean they're still just machines
aren't they I mean we made them, we should always be able to just turn them off if we want!”
“What so you think that we have souls do you?”
“No I'm not saying that! I mean...... No I don't believe in like no I don't believe in religious stuff like, but I guess
we're always going to be more..... Like we're made out of flesh aren't we?”
“Yeah well if that's the only difference, I mean yeah we're made out of flesh, but what if say you could make a robot
out of organic material, like so it was made....Like the thing is when it comes down to it we're only machines really
aren't we and if you don't think that we've got anything different like a soul well then....”
I could understand what she was saying and after a lot more tooing and froing and coming up with examples from
Assimov and M.Banks I had to admit that....
“Well yeah I suppose no I don't believe that we have a soul..... I mean I'm not sure if I'd put it like that but.....” I
ended up deciding that Robots should be allowed rights, but I didn't feel as though I'd been out argued, more that I'd
been made to realise what I really believed in.
By some strange act of mental black magic, I somehow managed to put the trouble I was in out of my mind. So
much so, I didn't think of either the recent past or the immediate future that should both have been weighing me down.
It was like the sun had evaporated them. Every now and then Squirrel's face would appear in my mind but I would force
the image to dissolve.
The weather played a big part in making those days extraordinary. Apparently it hadn't been great but had turned the
day I got there. The sun seemed to heat everything up to the extent that nothing could move, not the air, not time itself.
We were constantly surrounded by a wobbly haze. The days were so fucking long, starting when the sun shone through
the windows of the pool house, not ending till many hours later when we watched epic sunsets from some beauty spot.
When we weren't out sat by the sea we were lounging by the pool, where I got to be more and more relaxed. It was
the first time in my life that I'd hung around barefoot never mind in a pair of shorts.
I only went into the house once, and I didn't really see much because it was night and for some reason Tracy didn't
turn on the lights. She led me by my hand through the dark to show me the computer, and introduced me to the internet.
“It really is cyberspace. That's actually what they call it!” Even though all we saw were slow loading pages of text I
was infected by her throb. Sat there in a small tent of light that leaked from that cuboid Mac, I could feel the future
promised by Cyberpunk waiting for me behind that screen.
The night we went to Kane's party I was blown away by how fucking sick it was. The house was rammethd with
long haired skate dudes and untold sexy student girls. I'd never been to a party with an actual DJ playing on twin decks
before, and the music was disgusting, and fucking loud. The bass sounded like giant Metazoid type robots testing their
weapons.
There were bongs of every sort being passed around, hippy bongs, high-tech bongs, bongs inside plastic robots. Also
there was some really creative spliff making going on, not just ridiculously long ones but all kinds of artistic
experiments. I was high as fuck, drinking spirits and actually getting into conversations about art.
For the first time me and Tracy danced together. It was like that's what we'd been waiting to do since we'd met. I
was laughing and happier than I could ever remember feeling. Even before we split the E that Kane gave us.
I'd taken ecstasy before but like my early experiences with acid, it had always been a tiny bit of a weak as shit pill.
That night I felt like I was flying, falling and being caught in a massive soft hand all at the same time. When I danced I
was riding a space hopper inside the bouncy castle of love.
When the DJ dropped Back by Dope demand by Killer B, I nearly screamed, then started dancing like a mad man.
I noticed 3PO was there wearing a Tupac T-Shirt, watching me as he knocked back a bottle of brandy. Then without
warning he picked me up and held me above his head shouting,
“This midget's got some fucking moves!”
I could have felt embarrassed and got funny about it, but I went with it, laughing at the ceiling. I spent the next two
hours dancing with Tracy whilst grinning at everyone around us. She looked like she was having the time of her life as
well. She was a great dancer.
At some point I found myself in a bedroom packed with people skinning up, and some heavy rocker types doing
bucket bongs. I was sat next to 3PO who said,
“I hear you're a pretty sick writer!” It took me a moment to realise that Tracy must have told him about UFO &
Robotix. I'd stopped thinking about myself as a writer, but when 3PO started pointing to skateboards on the wall that
he'd painted, and to T-Shirts that people were wearing, saying that he'd designed and printed them, I wanted to think
about myself like that again. 3PO seemed to take a shine to me and I liked him as well despite the tiny cuts all over his
head that were a bit off-putting.
Tracy and I left the party around eight in the morning and walked back arm in arm laughing and joking. When we
got back we stripped and jumped straight into the pool. I thought about that night in Dellend swimming baths. When we
got out we lay next to each other naked and wet, and that's when I kissed her. She looked at me and my erection as
though she couldn't decide if she was OK with that or not. She didn't object, and when I stroked her leg, she responded
by kissing me back.
I wasn't a virgin but I hadn't had a lot of sex and had watched far too many of my Dad's porn tapes. My technique
was to get up on top of her and try and stick it in. These dope moves were just not working and she had to say,
“You've got to turn me on first!” which I took to mean that I had to finger her for a bit. When I tried unsuccessfully
to get it in again she took my cock in her hand and wanked me off, it took about twenty seconds. We lay next to each
other panting then just a short while later my cock stiffened again and I made another clumsy and fruitless attempt to
get inside her which ended with her giving me a longer wank as we kissed.
Afterwards we lay drying under the rising sun. Tracy told me to put my hand on her heart and I tried, but she
laughed and said,
“No. Mines on the other side!”
“It can't be!” but sure enough there it was on her right. “I knew it..... You're an Alien, sent here to observe!” She
laughed,
 “It's called Situs Inversus, all my organs are on the opposite side of yours.”
“I've never heard of it. Does it...... I mean...... Is it a problem?”
“No, no it's fine it all works it's just the other way round. Nobody noticed till I was three. Apparently the doctor
freaked out”
“How many people have it!”
“Hardly any.... Less than 0.01 percent!”
“Fuck! You really are quite special aren't you?”
“You always knew it?” she smiled curling in towards me, both of us sleepy and naked in the full daylight. I felt that
moment stretching out into my past rubbing a balm into the wounds that lay untended there, and also shining a light into
my future.
After that morning things changed . Since that time I'd seen her at Arniston Terrace I'd wanted to be her boyfriend or
I'd wanted to be intimate with her but now it seemed to be really happening it turned out that Boyfriend- Girlfriend were
not roles that we would slip into as easily as we'd become Graff partners. I'd never really had a girlfriend before and I
had no idea how to act. We attempted to get close to each other by kissing, holding hands and putting our arms round
each other but it was always strangely awkward. I'd really gotten comfortable hanging around that pool in the sun
wearing nothing but shorts but now I didn't seem to know what to do with myself. I began sleeping in her bed with her
but that seemed wrong too. She got her period and though that was something I knew fuck all about I quickly decided
that that was what was causing the weird buzz and was also the reason we never attempted full sex again. Although we
did what teenage boys always describe as “everything else” it just didn't seem to come naturally for us. After two days
of strangeness we backed away from each other a little, gave up on the kissing and hugging. Putting a bit of distance
between us seemed to put us in a place that we were both more comfortable with but always we knew that something
wasn't quite right. Besides all this my teenage brain was sure that we were now boyfriend and girlfriend who would
eventually work it all out, have full sex and live happily ever after.
One day Tracy told me that she was going to do some riding at the stables where she used to work and suggested that
I go hang with 3PO. She gave me detailed instructions on how to get to where he was staying, told me what bus to get,
even drawing a little map showing me where his caravan was. She rang him and told him that I was coming then walked
me to the bus stop and left me with Louis.
The caravan park were 3PO lived was hidden away beyond the edge of the suburbs, and looked like a strange
dystopian village. There didn't seem to be anyone around at first, not even in it's miniature self contained shopping
centre but by the time I got to 3PO's caravan which was on it's own, out on the edge of the edge of that silent place, I'd
realised that besides him, it was populated only by geriatrics, gliding around on mobility scooters.
3PO was sat on a lawn chair outside his caravan (which was not like what I'd expected, a tiny thing like my uncle
Eric's, but a fucking huge American style trailer,) smoking a doobie and drinking beer. He raised an arm and shouted,
“Little Bellender!” Obviously suffering from a hangover he took me inside to get me a beer and show me the
skateboards and T-Shirts he was working on. He was wearing one of his latest creations which showed Dr Zeuss's Cat
in the Hat smoking a big reefer. It said “THE CAT IN THE HAT SMOKES BLACK!”
The inside of his caravan looked cool, but was obviously originally decked out for an old granny. It was an extreme
case of the overlay effect that I'd first seen at Arniston Terrace, burgundy flowers printed everywhere on brown soft
furnishings, but then covered with his T-Shirts and skateboards and loads of paint and mess and his silk screen printing
equipment and comics and C.D.s and other shit. He explained that the caravan did in fact belonged to his Gran who was
now in a home..
“So did you do a lot of Graff back in Dellend?”
“Yeah you know, sometimes.” I noticed that he was still covered in those tiny little cuts although they were healing.
They looked like ticks in red biro.
“Want to draw me something now so I can see what your styles like?”
“Eh yeah sure.” He gave me some paper and some felt tips, and we went back outside. He put Rage Against The
Machine on his boom box at full blast saying,
“Everyone that lives here is stone fucking deaf. So what else do you get up to in Dellend? Cause fucking mayhem I
bet! I think I drove past it once, it looked like a right shitehole! Are you into skateboarding?” I shook my head, “No
B.M.X. aint it for you types. I've done it, broke my wrist once on a half pipe trying to flip one over, I was wankered at
the time!”
Before I realised, he'd interrogated me again about the details of my situation and lifestyle, all whilst I drew one of
my best Robots which was spraypainting another Robot that was in turn writing my tag. He asked me how I'd gotten to
Bournemouth.
“I just hitch-hiked you know?” he nodded,
“I see, I see. Must be strange for a pov like you staying up at that huge fucking house!”
“Yeah I suppose. I mean, I never go in it,” I showed him what I'd done.
“Hey that's fucking sick! Tracy wasn't kidding. Why don't we go down the skatepark and you can spray it up?”
He picked up a skateboard and filled a bag with spraycans asking me what colours I wanted. We walked out of the
caravan park, onto a clifftop path then off that and up to some woods. Then out of them through a graveyard and sure
enough there was a long, weirdly flat skatepark that was all graffed up like they are. 3PO helped me choose a spot then I
got to it whilst he did some skating. I noticed that he fell off and hurt himself quite a lot.
Two long haired teenagers turned up and started to skate. They talked to 3PO like he was some sort of elder
statesman for a while, then all three of them sat and watched me paint giving me words of encouragement like,
“Thats rad!” I just kept at it with my back to them glad that they couldn't see how much I was grinning. I wished
Tracy was there to paint with me, I hadn't worked alone for ages. When I finished we all sat in front of it smoking a
joint. Eventually the two skaters left giving me fist bumps and saying it was cool to meet me. Kane appeared from
nowhere with his Alsation and lay down next to us groaning whilst his dog tumbled around with Louis. He went on to
tell us what a marathon drinking session he'd been on. When 3PO pointed out what I'd done he said,
“Fucking hell he's better than you! Hey that's fucking great that is well done! You know what 3PO you should get
him on.... You know, get him on your little crew. Them robots would look good on a T-Shirt!” Then he looked at 3PO
and said, “Fucking hell man this is the first time I've seen you out in fucking daylight! You're fucking covered in cuts
still!” I asked,
“Was it a protest like?” I'd heard that some students didn't like Macdonalds. They both laughed. Kane said,
“The only thing he's got against Maccy D's is they don't give him enough. They wouldn't serve him because he was
too pissed! He ran out straight through the window! What you've got to understand about 3PO is little man,..... He's a
stupid mad cunt!”
“This is the worst of it,” 3PO pulled his cock out which had a bandage wrapped around the bell end. “I don't know
how but fucking somehow a bit got in my fucking shorts and fucking cut the end of my cock! Just a tiny nick but it
fucking kills!” We all three of us laughed furiously. It felt great to be there with these cool dudes having a zoot in the
sunshine. 3PO waved his bandaged member at Kane saying,
“Sometimes justice.... like the hawk must go hooded!” We sat there pissing ourselves till Kane looked at me and said,
“So are you Tracy's boyfriend then?” I felt a bit embarrassed but shrugged and said,
“Yeah!” They both laughed, Kane said,
“You little fucker..... So you're actually having sex with her?” I nodded and grinned feeling a bit uneasy, not sure if I
was telling the truth. “How do you do it? Doggy style?” 3PO could see that I was going red so interjected,
“Leave the little man alone you jealous cunt!”
“Me jealous?!” Kane laughed some more and said, “You're lucky little man that 3PO hasn't.... Well you're lucky he's
still talking to you. No fair play son. Rod aint it. Hey looking at you two together you know what we've got to call him.
He laughed louder than before, “R2D2 ...or R2 for short! Yeah definitely R2”.
Obviously it was a reference to my height. Me being near 3PO really accentuated what a titch I was, and that is when
I was given the name that people still call me now, even though I've never really been into Star Wars. Over the years
I've given up trying to explain how a Sci-Fi obsessive called R2-D2 can not be a massive fan of the movies, (I don't
mind some of the books.)
Afterwards we walked to a big country type pub near the beach and I hid out in the outer reaches of the beergarden
with Kane and the dogs whilst 3PO got us all a pint. We talked about films and Hip Hop. Kane and 3PO talked business
and I grokked that they'd just cropped a grow of Skunk. They agreed that 3PO should go to London soon. Kane asked
me,
“Has he laid out his philosophy to you yet?”
“Just a few rules I like to live by!” said 3PO.
“He thinks he's like Tu-Pac or something but he's full of shit!” 3PO took a swig from his pint then went into a poorly
delivered rap.
“Rule one don't let those who would fuck with you-
Fuck with them if they try
I don't lie that's why I.... no fuck that bit.
Rule two...... no.... Rule one
Keep yourself together son
Stay clean and smart
Eat right from the start
Rule two don't let those that would fuck with you fuck with you
Fuck with them if they try
I don't lie don't bother another man true
But if he fucks with you BOO!
Rule three TCB get me
Take care of business see rule four aw fuck how does it go?” Kane punched him hard on the arm,
“You're the shittest rapper ever. Aint he R2! Snoop Doggy Crap they sometimes call him. Too Crap Shakur.”
“Yeah well you get the picture!” 3PO grinned and drank his beer. The next round we took down to the beach and sure
enough Kane did start going on about surfing. Then 3PO said,
“Here comes your bird!” There were five horses riding towards us. After saying hello to Kane as he patted some
horse's heads the others kept going, but Tracy who was on a giant black Stallion that matched her hair, circled us for a
while.
“Are they looking after you?” Kane said,
“That's R2D2 your talking to now!” 3PO interrupted,
“So Pocohontas.... How many scalps did you get today?”
“Day's not over yet! Are they going to keep you out late.. You all look wankered allready! I told you, don't get pissed
with him!” 3PO got me in a headlock,
 “Don't worry we'll take care of him he's the best miniature, council estate, B-boy writer we've ever met!”
“See you later then!” She winked at me then rode off down the beach at a gallup. I watched her go as 3PO and Kane
smirked at each other and I felt a strange sensation swell up inside me.
“What a little fucking bastard!” Kane threw me into the sand and they gave me a play kicking.
We all ended up sat outside 3PO's caravan, smoking his chillum and blasting out sounds like Jay-Z and Nas into the
early morning. Kane said,
“That graff you did really was something you know? A lot better than what any fucker around here can do. You
should take him London with you 3PO. Get him in in with your big hippy art collective.” 3PO eyed me.
“First of all...Riddle me this Batman......What are you gonna do when Tracy's Yank family gets back.? They're not
going to be happy to see a peasant like you living in their poolhouse!”
It was like reality had just given me a slap. What the fuck was I going to do? I was on the run from the police and
the carefree life that I was living was about to come to an end. I'd ran out of money the fifth day and was basically
scrounging off Tracy. Also she'd let slip that she was a bit worried about the neighbours letting her bosses know that
she'd had someone stay. 3PO was right, there was no way I could still be around when they returned.
“You can crash here if you want, but I'm off to London the day after tomorrow so.....You should come with me, you
can help me with the T-Shirts.”
I couldn't believe that a viable plan had appeared out of nowhere. I spent one more day with Tracy then she came to
3PO's caravan with me to see me off lending me fifty quid and all the time looking as though she wasn't sure how to
take the latest turn of events.
“Just look after yourself OK. Don't go on the piss with him, he's a fucking nutter when he's pissed. Think about what
you're going to do when you get back. I suppose you can move down here if that's what you want. There's probably
more opportunities than in Dellened.” I'd never said I love you to anyone in my life and I couldn't make the words come
out then as I kissed her goodbye. I've often thought about that parting, wondered what I would have done different if I'd
had even an inkling of what was going to happen next.
I didn't really want to leave Tracy for two weeks but knew I had to grab this opportunity to move forward. I thought
there was a chance I could actually carve out a life and I was stoked about going to London for the first time. I figured
that when I returned to live in the caravan it would be as Tracy's boyfriend, though we'd never discussed it I hoped (and
presumed) we were a couple.
3PO had a transit van that I helped fill with boxes of T-Shirts and his silk screen equipment. Plus his mountain bike,
skateboard and loads of other shit. He laughed when he saw my tiny paint bag with all my worldlies in it, then winked
at me as he hid a large rucksack in the back,
“Mustn't forget the sensemilia! By the way if..... R2, if we do get stopped by the imperial forces or whatever
don't....Well it won't happen but you could just say that you were hitch hiking, OK! Whatever...You don't know
anything about the weed OK?” He slapped on some shades, stuck a Beastie Boys cassette in and off we went.
I stayed in a permanent state of excitement throughout the whole journey, slapping my hand on my thigh in time to
the music. 3PO told me more of his story. He was from Frome originally, some town near Bristol but had spent
summers in Bournemouth since he was a kid. Now he basically lived in London but still used his Gran's caravan a lot,
intending to return after this trip till October at least. Him and Kane were in the weed cultivation business together, that
was the main reason he was going up to London. He planned to sell most of it in one go.
“I should stay on the weed me really cos the thing is, I mean don't get it twisted I'm not a massive piss head or
anything, but when I do have a drink it's all over for me. I go apeshit! That's what gets me in trouble.... The demon
booze! I just don't give a fuck when I'm pissed!” The tiny cuts were nearly healed.
It took us about three hours to get to London. As we drove through the city I could not take my eyes off the streets. It
wasn't so much the bricks that fascinated, more the biology. I thought nearly everyone looked like they were from
another dimension, planet or timezone.
The place 3PO took me to was a squatted factory in Camden, near the canal, some sort of artists collective. There
was a sign up outside, a picture of a chimpanzee scratching it's head whilst looking at a human skull. It said Bonze in a
bone font. We were let in through a gate by a Black dude with long dreads, a real bit part from some post apocalyptic
movie, and 3PO parked the van next to a clapped out VW camper and a double decker hippy bus in a yard that was half
full of big broken fibreglass dinosaurs. We walked through swing doors into a scene straight from Sci-Fi, a cavernous
area filled with people in outlandish duds. There was a lot to look at, but what really stood out were the six sculptures of
silver angels in mid flight, all wearing shades and holding Uzis. On closer inspection they were shop dummies with toy
guns, hung from the ceiling by copper wire, but the wings made out of white dust covers were by themselves very
impressive.
About a minute after we walked in, a skinny lurcher curled a shit out on the floor right in front of me, but two
seconds later a crusty looking cull with a lot of facial piercings scooped it up with a shovel.
The walls were covered with a sort of fucked up version of wild style graffiti, rendered in sickly oranges, purples and
greens. The Bonze logo was everywhere, sprayed as a stencil in at least five different sizes and untold colours. We were
just in time to be given a veg curry by an Asian looking cove with wild hair wearing fluorescent blue overalls. He
seemed to be good friends with 3PO and was obviously high up in whatever hierarchy there was.
“Good to have you back bro. I think you can crash in the yellow room with Pablo.”
“Good to be back Samit. This is R2D2, he's from Dellend but don't hold it against him.”
If going round to Kane's was a mind blowing experience, this was completely off the orrery. In the continuing Sci-Fi
saga that went on in my mind I had definitely been taken aboard a Culture ship. 3PO took me to a little room that we
were sharing with a cull in his twenties. He had a scruffy purple Mohawk, wore head phones around his neck and a
tracksuit that would have looked normal if it hadn't been for the strange lime green and yellow colour, and the fact that
he accessorised it with a pair of dirty big jackboots. 3PO hung up a hammock and threw me a sleeping bag, there were
no beds.
We unpacked everything from the van then drove to the other side of London. To a builders yard that definitely
looked like a hangout for crims. Three Bull mastifs bounced around us as 3PO introduced me to some cull called Dee
and two other coves wearing big puffa jackets. It looked a lot scarier than Bonze but after 3PO sold a big bag of weed
we all shared an ornate pipe and everyone was well friendly. 3PO double checked a big wad in the van before we drove
back, saying,
“It's all about the cheddar!” That night we smoked on the roof of the factory with some of the other tenants. I was
surprised that the collective wasn't a Hip-Hop one but they didn't all look like hippy/punks. There was a tiny sort of
scruffy B-Boy element. 3PO obviously gravitated to them or more like they gravitated to him. They all seemed like
really sound lads, just a bit stranger than anyone I'd so far encountered. I stayed fairly quiet under my cap and hood.
Somebody pointed out to me that the factory was Art Deco but I wasn't a great connoisseur of architecture at the time.
The view from the roof was panoramic and we stayed up there drinking and blazing till about three a.m.
The next day I woke up early thinking, “I'm in fucking London!” It wasn't like I'd always dreamed of going there but
I was there and it was sick as fuck. I missed Tracy but was already planning on the two of us somehow being in London
together.
There were about fifteen bods living in that squat, and an assortment of all manner of hip and strange coves and
culls, women and girls, coming and going. In the central room there was always some sort of funky art installation
being constructed and there was a proper nasty big sound system built in. Someone seemed to be constantly deejaying,
either sick Drum and Bass or more often, horrible sounding bat signal Trance.
3PO reminded me of Foggy but with a lot more feathers in his cap and I wasn't sure that Foggy could have ever have
been such a smooth operating hustler in a big city like London.
I'd thought that we were going to be vending T-Shirts from a market stall, but that was not the procedure. 3PO drove
us to what I thought were really crisp looking shops that flogged Hip Hop records, spraycans, skateboards and trainers.
Often they were minimalist looking gaffeterias with surprisingly little on display. 3PO seemed to know everyone who
worked in them, usually smart looking B-Boy or skater types who made me feel scruffy, although now I was always
wearing one of 3PO's T-Shirts. They always seemed happy to buy merch of him, though he never got bulk orders for
one design, rather having to sell lots of singles and doubles. Five of one T-Shirt was a big order. Whilst hanging about
in these places I would pick up zines of the like that I'd never seen before, and reading them turned me on to a world
that I'd never really realised was so big and rich. Photos and articles about skateboarding and Graff, Hip Hop and all
kinds of mad urban shit. I was really into them, I even bought a few.
3PO taught me the silk screen printing process and soon I'd designed some Robotix T-Shirts, we'd printed them up
and they were in the shops. I never saw anyone wearing one (besides 3PO,) but was told that they were selling well and
that made me feel fucking great.
The shop we hung out in the most was a place called Wiped, which wasn't far from the Bonze squat. 3PO was very
tight with the owner and there was a lad who worked there called Digger who was young and small like me. Digger
could have resented another underage urchin hanging around but instead he became my first ever Cockney mate. (As I
thought of him at the time, though now I'd probably realise that he was actually from Reigate or somewhere.) He liked
my T-Shirts.
“Your designs are sick bro!” I got a kick from his accent. He seemed unbothered by my lack of city smarts and we
teamed up. When I did a massive piece on the back wall of Bonze, Digger helped me out filling in and shit and he
happily acted as my guide to the London B-Boy scene.
3PO stayed busy. He did do smaller weed deals though his business model was wildly different to Foggy's. He
wasn't selling it exclusively by the ounce but he certainly didn't fuck about with eighths or teenths. Once I saw him buy
trainers from a shop that he then sold on for a profit to some lads who looked like they were in a band. He got both of us
a couple of days work gardening and one afternoon we helped hang paintings in a tiny art gallery laughing joking and
blazing weed as we did so. We got paid twenty five quid each and drank free wine at the private view. Everywhere we
went I was introduced as R2 so that was always my name in London.
The attitude that 3PO took to food was different from the one I was used to. On the Westgate everyone's energy was
fuelled by hunger and cigarettes, maybe some Space Raiders. Chips were considered a luxury. 3PO was all about eating
big and then burning it all up. We guzzled greasy fry ups, Burger King, Macdonald’s, Wendy's, Jamaican patties, chips,
chicken and chips and then would accept the big bowls of veggie stew and rice we were given back at Bonze.
“Cheers I'm fucking starving!” 3PO would say, then wink at me as we wolfed it down. I realised there were some
people at the squat who weren't super keen on 3PO. A couple of hippy women were openly hostile to him, I heard them
say stuff like,
“Don't contribute.....Just somewhere to crash!” There was definitely a disconnect between the scene at Bonze and the
more B-Boy world he inhabited away from there, and I got the idea that he did just see it as somewhere to sleep, but
most of the Bonze men seemed to think of him as a benefactor. He spread a lot of weed and T-Shirts around although
we never did get started on a promised run of Bonze shirts.
It was from 3-PO that I first learnt the correct way to deport myself in an urban environment. Greeting everyone
politely, showing respect to every cull and cove you met and yet somehow he was also a huge piss taking fucker.
“Yes Chops safe yeah. This is Chops, R2 one of my old Bristol posse from way back in the day. He's always shown
me nuff love here in London as well. Helped me out when I needed help. Respect to the old school....... Mind you he
wasn't such a fat fucker back then. What the fuck have you been eating Chops?... Well not fucking salad we know
that?”
Even though 3PO wasn't actually playing that big a part in the collective and as far as I could see didn't seem to be in
any kind of crew, paradoxically he was always emphasizing the importance of working with other people.
“If you want to do anything worthwhile R2 it's all about cooperation yeah.” He often said shit like this yet definitely
ran a lone wolf operation, (with me as his temp cub.) I did get more independent as days went by. I saw that he was
frustrated that I couldn't get in pubs and I didn't mind when he went off without me, like the time he went with Pablo to
a RedMan concert. I had Digger. There were rap battles at Wiped and he took me to a Graffiti jam in Kings Cross once.
Also there was plenty to interest me at Bonze. There was a free pool table in one room that I honed my skills on. Samit
showed films on a video projector, Kung-Fu and Sci- Fi mostly, lot's of weird old shit that I'd never heard of. One night
he showed the French film La Jetee. Half way into it I realised that 12 Monkeys had ripped it off. I wished Tracy was
there watching it with me so we could talk about it.
There were a lot of parties at Bonze. The first weekend we were there there, one started on Friday night, and it was
ten the next morning when we slithered up to our room to sleep. We woke up around six pm and the party was still
limping along before hotting up again for Saturday night, meaning that it hadn't stopped all weekend. They mostly
played eight variations of unlistenable hard trance but there always seemed to be one small room somewhere, reserved
for decent beats that I could dance to. It was some mate of 3PO's who was sorting him out who gave me my first ever
line of cocaine. For the most part 3PO was relatively clean living. That is he smoked a shit load of weed but didn't seem
too bothered about anything else and tried to avoid hitting the booze too hard because of the crazy shit that it made him
do.
He let me use his Nokia to phone Tracy every couple of night's until when we'd been there for about twelve days
and her phone was dead. I had the number of the house so I tried that. An American woman answered and told me that
Tracy's Mum had died, and that in the rush to get back to Dellend she'd left her phone charger behind.
3PO called Kane but he didn't know anything. We were due to go back in a couple of days, but I wasn't sure whether
I should go to Dellend instead. 3PO said that probably wasn't such a great idea, he reckoned Tracy would be back in
Bournemouth by the time we returned.
Eventually 3PO did get a proper drink on and he was a proper mad fucker. The night before we were due to go back,
we both got fucked up on Absinthe and Tequila at a party in some other different squat collective place. When he got
going there was no stopping him and I was too drunk myself to even try. After getting thrown out of the party, we were
walking back, past a small park at about five in the morning when he spotted a JCB and insisted that we took it for a
ride. We did actually get it going, but were just lurching back and forth in one spot for ages. When the police arrived we
were too wasted to do anything but sit there laughing. 3PO said,
“We are not the Droids you are looking for.” I can't remember much about what happened next that night, but I must
have given them my real name. In the morning we found ourselves in a cell then before we were fully awake we were in
front of a beak charged with criminal damage. 3PO just sat there with his head in his hands looking like he was going to
throw up. Afterwards we were separated and I never saw him again. The day after that, I was in a car with two coppers
driving me back to Dellend. Back to face the music.

CHAPTER 8
As soon as Tracy finished her poem she fled the stage whilst the MC announced a thirty minute break. I watched the
black bob of Tracy's hair bounce out into the garden whilst I elbowed through the throng trying to gain her slipstream.
Dad's ghost said,
“Fuck me....... She still looks fit dun't she!”
Outside people were crowding round Tracy like she was the star of the show. Some avant garde type was actually
filming her with a professional looking camera. I felt the trepidation spike in my ribcage. There she was not three feet
from me. Her hair, still as black and shiny as coal, her neck still sculptural. She wore the simplest blue dress with a pair
of basic no logo black trainers, just the sort of thing she'd been wearing the last time I'd seen her. Her body, her arms,
her legs, were all the same shape I remembered, but still I could tell even from a distance that she wasn't the girl that I'd
known. It was a fully grown adult woman that stood there, accepting a light from some beardy poetry fan. Feeling like I
was walking through a thick dream I squeezed past people until I was stood directly in front of her.
“Hello Tracy.” For the longest second ever she looked at me without recognition, then her eyes went wide.
“Rod!!!!” she screamed with unbridled shock then grabbed both my hands and stared at me open mouthed. The small
crowd that had gathered around her dispersed sensing that I was going to get her undivided attention. (The cameraman
kept filming, obviously thinking he was getting some great footage.)
I realised that as expected, I was too fucking blazed not to fumble this big moment. Immediately she sensed the
weird disconnected buzz coming off me. I saw it infect her, making her unsure whether to kiss me or shake my hand.
For her it must have been a lot more random than it was for me. She'd had no clue that she was going to see me that
night. She probably thought that it was pure chance that I was there in front of her.
Close up I could see changes. Her face was more angular, unfamiliar expressions kept appearing, new smiles and
aspects that I'd never seen before, like the Tracy I knew was wearing a mask of experience. Her eyes were as severe as
ever but strangely we kept averting each others gaze.
That was the moment that the thought decided to cross my mind, that maybe it wasn't such a big whoo hoo for her to
see me. I mean she'd been such an influence on me but, who was I to her? Just a boy that got near her for a minute,
seventeen years ago. It wasn't me that had introduced her to new worlds, people or places. I'd ridden on her coat tails for
a while and that had changed my life, but what had I ever done for her? Dog her footsteps for the short time it took her
to out stride me.
My stoned noia was working away, doing it's best to fuck things up and it all got a lot worse when the next thing that
came out of her mouth was,
“What about your Phil then?! Fucking world famous rock star!...... Not bad for a lad from the Westgate!!!” I was sure
that she caught the pained look that must have flashed across my face and that she realised that all things considered,
she'd just made a faux pas.
Could I blame her..... really? When someone becomes as big as our Phil it has a huge effect on the little people that
knew him back when. One of the reasons I never visit Dellend is because I spend all my time there listening to people
gush about my dick of a brother, or fielding questions from idiots who presume that he must be the reason I'm in
London. He just is so fucking tremendously huge that I become a speck in relation. He's massive in America,
recognised worldwide, constantly in the news, on the telly all over the papers and the internet. His music has been
described as the soundtrack of this decade. For anyone from an unconnected backwater like Dellend that knew this
behemoth when he was a young lizard, it's like there's a magic portal between them and the world of high flying
superstar glamour. The effect is overwhelming for most. If she hadn't mentioned him, he would have just become the
fast growing, Rock and Roll woolly mammoth in the room.
Still even if I should have expected us to talk about Phil at some point, I hadn't reckoned on him popping up in the
first few moments. Diplomatically she tried her best to change the subject before I even replied.
“What about you!? Fuck I can't believe it, you haven't changed a bit! Do you live in London? What do you do? I
mean have you got a job?”
“I'm an art critic!” I blurted it out without really meaning or wanting to but for the first time ever I felt like revealing
my secret persona. Ironically whilst talking to one of the only people who might remember where my pseudonym
originated. I definitely had a strong desire to impress her, maybe it was something about the way she'd felt the need to
politely add on, “I mean have you got a job?” Maybe I wanted to let her know that I was not, and never would be, just
our Phil's brother.
“I mean... I'm a writer.... I write about art... you know Graff and shit, I review other stuff sometimes too I......”
She seemed taken aback by this revelation and also maybe a bit freaked out by how weird I must have seemed
behind my usual Skunk curtain.
“Well fucking hell yeah I suppose that makes sense......” Her voice had changed, her accent wasn't more southern like
mine, just different.
“How about you, do you live in London?”
“Well yeah up in Holloway, I mean I've just got back from travelling.....again..... Tibet, and Thailand, Cambodia. I
spend half my life travelling, but I'm back for a while....Well for good now.... I've got a job in some stables up near
Brent Cross at the moment. I want to go back to college, well I mean... go to college.”
And then I just stood there nodding my head. There was a huge pause as if we were two casual acquaintances who
hadn't seen each other for a year and didn't have much to say. I became genuinely afraid that we might kiss on the cheek
and then go our separate ways. Of course thinking this made the awkwardness worse. She stared at some distant star
hanging over my shoulder then after an ice age managed,
“Do you go to Dellend much?”
“No! Christ I haven't....”
A thin cull in a very tight suit with a sleek Sicilian looking head appeared at Tracy's side. I recognised him from his
facebook profile, as Jonas. He kissed her theatrically saying,
“Marvellous poem kid, you were the highlight of the night... I told you they'd love you! It's all about to start up again
if you want to come through....”
She said something then which stopped the whole reunion being just one complete unmitigated nothing,
 “Jonas this is an old, old, old friend of mine.... Rod who I haven't seen for a long, long time. I know that it's really too
rude, but......We just can't stand around now and listen to poetry without first talking to each other. We need to find a
quiet room!”
“Well hello old friend.” He shook my hand and made it clear that that was O.K.with him. “Go....go reminisce...we'll
talk later.” We filled two plastic cups from a bottle in the kitchen, then slid through the big room were the MC was
calling everyone to order. We had to squeeze past Rodger who was fingering a woman's hair. He gave us a drunken
grin,
“So is it a big...you know...Dellend reunited is it?” As we walked past Zaif's mirrors I noticed our wobbling
reflections keeping pace beside us for a few moments. I thought I spotted a strange look on Tracy's face like she was
scowling at me, but when I turned to look at her unreflected countenance, it wasn't there.
I felt a lot better now that it was confirmed that she was arsed about this reunion. We sat down in an empty room by
an unlit fireplace.
“You know it's er it's not a complete coincidence that I'm here tonight....... I mean it is, but you know what I mean... I
had an idea that you might be here. Someone I know told me that they'd met a woman from Dellend... Him that we just
passed! It sounded like you..well of course it was you...Do you know Rodger....the hairdresser? That pissed bloke!”
“Oh yeah he was here the other week,” I thought I detected just the slightest wrinkle of the nose, “He's a mate of
your's is he?”
“Well he's....I know him from round Brixton... Know what I mean. How long have you known that Jonas?”
“Oh I met him in India about... Ten years ago..It's a long story but funnily enough I hadn't seen him for about, I don't
know seven years until we met up again a bit like this...about three months ago...Just when I got back to London!” I
didn't like the weird notion that I was just the latest friend from her past to reappear.
“So.... Sorry....Have you lived in London before?”
“Well sort off, I lived in Wimbledon for a bit. Oh God that was years ago....Then before, before I went travelling
again this time, I lived in Archway, I suppose that was a couple of years ago!”
“Oh yeah by the way... How come I can't find you on the internet? I mean sorry.... You don't live off the grid or
something do you? Not that I've been trying to cyberstalk you or anything....”
“Oh no don't worry...No it's just I was married. Yeah when I was nineteen and well...” I think my eyebrows went
right up at that one, “Oh God yeah I was married for six years, I lived in in Italy. Tivoli......... Well outside Tivoli, I
mean I was married to an Italian.....Yeah....... We got divorced but you know I kept the name Abelli.” she suddenly
looked a bit coy, “I just prefer it to Grimeley...You know...So...”
“So do you have any kid's? ..Or..”
“No no I've never y'know...No no kids. Have you?!”
I shook my head, quite pleased that despite a shockingly early marriage she seemed to have quite a clean slate and
surprised that I could feel a stab of jealousy for a man that she must have divorced eleven years ago. I was excited to be
with her now, fascinated by every revelation.
“So you still ride horses?” she laughed,
“Oh yeah when I can, I mean I haven't got one at the moment, but yeah, I mean a lot of my life you know I've kept on
working with horses. I lived on a ranch in Italy.” I hadn't been surprised by her saying she worked in a stable, even
though I had imagined she might be doing something else I wasn't sure what. Top scientist maybe.Painter.
“Do you still paint?”
“Everyday.....yeah I never gave that up. I mean I don't do graff anymore but.... I mean I never got anywhere with it
but you know I keep going, How about you?”
“Not for years, I just write about art now I... I see that you still write poetry!”
“Aw fuck you know I don't normally do that... I mean read it out in public or anything. Jonah he talked me into it
you know. What about Sci-Fi..... You're still into it yeah?”
“Oh yeah I'm still a geek....”
“Yeah me too, though..... I've never been as dedicated to it as when I knew you.... ” and then we went on talking,
almost in a relaxed manner. At some point a black woman wearing purple tights and Doc Martins looked in.
“Hey do you still want a lift back? Tom's getting ready to leave!”
“No thanks Sal I'm gonna.... Make my own way back. I'll erm..... Get a tube later!”
“Yeah OK.... I think it's all just about to finish!” Tracy turned to me,
“Do you fancy getting out of here before we get flooded? Do you know any good pubs round here?” As we left I saw
Dad's ghost sat on the stairs with some bookish types. He shouted,
“I am thy fathers spirit, doom'd for a certain time to walk the night!”
I decided to take her to the Bull and it felt good when on the way there she casually linked arms with me. Though
not so great when I noticed the row of Phils staring out at us through their shades. She glanced at him, looked as though
she might mention him again, then didn't.
As we walked along I thought I caught a weird look on her face again as if she was linking arms with someone that
she didn't like, but it could have just been a look of discomfort from having a stone in her shoe or something.
The Bull was just round the corner from Jonas's house. It was a quiet pub, half empty even on a Friday night.
Catering mostly for locals from the estate it stood next to. It was just enough off the beaten track to have so far avoided
any trendy take over. We got established in one of the proper aged academy little booths with a gin and tonic each. I
was glad that after the initial weird frazzle of us meeting, we seemed to be finding a more comfortable rhythm and buzz,
though she was acting just a bit like she'd worked out that I wasn't firing on all cylinders. Once she'd given me the broad
strokes on her life I went large, telling her that I ran parties named after our own private space opera from all those
years ago. I'd even brought some old Galaxis flyers along to show her and she looked suitably impressed. Luckily they
didn't have the year on them.
Then I began to big up my uber hip existence on the underground. I told her exactly what a cool hombre her old
Graffiti partner most certainly was. Omitting any pertinent details that would of revealed that it wasn't my life I was
describing but the life of the person I was two years ago.
She went into more detail about how she'd gotten married. After Bournemouth she'd lived in Manchester for a bit,
then she'd gone travelling... to Goa. That was where she'd met Antonio the Italian rancher. There was something odd
about her, there were these strange pauses in the conversation where I thought she was about to reveal that she'd found
Christ or something.
She mentioning enough far flung destinations for me to get the picture. She was a genuine citizen of the world.
Strangely when we tried to find common ground somewhere on this planet it was like she'd been everywhere I hadn't
and vice versa. Me-
“Madrid?”
“No I wanted to.... I spent a month in Barcelona!”
“Oh, I've always meant to go... What about America... New York was almost my second home for a while!”
“No God I'd love to though.... What about Mexico? I lived there for well over a year!”
“Nah never been...... Obviously I want to...” We filled in just about the whole globe like this, and whilst my travels
were nearly all city breaks, long weekends, stuff for work, she'd been on much longer journeys, six months here a year
or two there. I know plenty of world traveler types but Tracy had followed a trajectory I wasn't at all familiar with.
Marrying early living in the Italian countryside, then divorcing and travelling the globe constantly for years it seemed
London was somewhere she was trying to settle only as she got older rather than it being the base from which she'd
struck out. It also became clear, that she'd spent half her life sat in a saddle which also was a lifestyle I knew little
about.
I got more and more glimpses of the old Tracy peeking out from inside this woman who was obviously a very
different person from the one I'd known. She was in no way a typical, road less travelled, hippy ex-pat isn't it shit in
Britain type but there was something distinctly un-English about her. Probably comparable to how I come over like a
southerner to anyone who never left Dellend. London was unfamiliar to her, somewhere I sensed where she wasn't
entirely comfortable. Perversely the unease I detected made me feel better about my own anxious demeanour, that I was
sure was apparent.
“So go on then how did you become a writer?.. I mean the kind of writer you are, I would have always thought you
were much more likely to become an artist, or you know I thought you might still be doing Graff! ”
“I don't know. I think originally I fell into it because I was living in a squat with some geezers who were doing a
fanzine I mean...It used to be just one thing that I did you know what I mean, but it sort of took over. Mainly I think
because I kept getting paid for it. Triks that was the first magazine I wrote for. It was just some coves I knew back
then.... Like I say they did it all in our squat and I don't know.... Somehow I got a job writing for Void when it first
came out!” It was clear that she'd never heard of Robotix the writer or any magazine I ever wrote for, even Void. She
said,
“Well I always thought you'd end up doing something creative!” and there it was, the main twist in my knickers.
Deep down I didn't really believe that what I did was creative at all in the raw sense of the word. I actually felt guilty as
fuck about making a living from criticising the efforts of others so caustically. I mean they say that a critic is a failed
whatever and in my case that was absolutely spot on. I hadn't felt so bad about it when writing was just one arrow in my
quiver, but now all the other arrows had been shot it just seemed to make me feel shit, but if I gave it up, I'd have
nothing.
I tried not to give Tracy any hint of the many negative aspects of my existence. I certainly did not mention the
“Incident”, or my chronic chronic habit. I did my best to give the impression that I was a healthy individual with a full
schedule. Also I glossed over past girlfriends, quickly, but she never mentioned any men besides her ex husband so that
was even.
We nipped out the back for a fag and I saw Chris out there with some of his squad. I recognised five lads but none of
the women. I realised that we weren't far from Steppers and figured that they'd probably been setting shit up for
Universe all day and were now taking a break before kick off.
Chris had been the youngest member of the Galaxis crew and I was glad he was getting on with his own thing. We
were always lucky to have him on the team. Brixton born and bred he was very connected, related to some big sound
system dynasty. Him and his mates were proper tuff yoot. If there was some sort of street authenticity scale I'd
definitely lie between them and Mede, probably closer to Mede. They're the nearest thing I know to the WA in London
but although they look like gang members or drug dealers from some Channel 4 drama and they do talk the lingo, (and
I'm sure they've all sold cocaine to me at some point,) they only fit a stereotype when viewed from a distance. Close up
they're a lot more complex and idiosyncratic than anyone would guess. Shotting yeo is only part of who they are, never
as important to them as music I'm sure. Also they must be one of the most racially mixed groups of youngsters on the
planet.
Chris came over and went to great lengths to show me proper respect, introducing me to some new lads as an aged
academy head. Making a big deal of me, being very polite to Tracy.
 “Back in the day man Galaxis rocked... And this is the man who made it happen, well one of the men. You Dave and
Tony innit..... That was the core to me!” The lads bumped fists with me.
This show of deference impressed Tracy and it backed up everything I'd just been telling her. The glitch came when
Chris said,
“So you coming to Universe then?.... Man's got bare speakers in there you know! Three rooms, well arches of music!
Well four rooms in three arches... Fuck!.... Tony's playing man, of course, you have to come! There's gonna be bare old
Galaxis heads there. Don't say you got no love for Steppers R2!”
“What's this?” Tracy seemed extremely interested in the prospect of a party and I found myself squirming in my seat,
having a hard time working out how the fuck I was going to explain that no, I couldn't actually take her.
Then Chris made things worse. As he was leaving he brought out two tickets decorated with that same snake lady
from the flyer. He handed them to me saying,
“Here you go R2.... two comps... Standard for the man who brought Galaxis to life!”
I began to tie myself up in knots trying to explain why the same dude who'd just been boasting about what a full time
urban party fox he was couldn't take his long lost original dance partner round the corner to a happening rave that we
had two free tickets for.
“Thing is..... I've got shit loads on tomorrow....And you know...Lots of writing to catch up on!”
By then though, Tracy had the bit between her teeth. Obviously deciding that a night dancing was what was needed
to blow away whatever strange awkward smoke was fogging up this get together.
“You are taking me to this party Rod Melrose and we are going to dance!” I exhaled and then looked up from a
slump into two steely silver eyes.
She seemed absolutely outraged by the idea that I might not take her. I thought about her poem, it had been about
going out raving hadn't it? I felt like I was fucking the evening up.
As a Bad Self track came on the pub stereo I made a decision. Maybe this was why she'd come back into my life. To
force me out of my pathetic paralysis. If I went to this party with Tracy I might actually have a good time. It could be
what finding her again was all about, me being forced to rejoin the hip human race.
I had to admit to myself that I hadn't felt the tightening once that whole evening. I reckoned because my nerves had
been so occupied with the business of meeting Tracy they hadn't had time for their usual shit, and when was I going to
try to re-enter society if not tonight. It was reckless but I found myself saying,
“Yeah fuck it lets go.... I mean it's only been seventeen years since we went to a party!”
Dad's ghost was stood by the fruit machine shaking his head, but ten minutes later I was leaving with Tracy. Then
walking closer and closer to Steppers.
In a final analysis, I reckoned I might just get away with it, if I didn't take any serious drugs.
“By the way did that Black lad call you R2? Fucking hell that name has lasted!”
“Yeah it really stuck I guess.”
“Well 3PO has gone back to his real name, Martin if you can believe it!”
“What do you still see him?”
“No, not really. I've got him on facebook. He lives in Spain.... I mean talk about small world. About three years ago
we were working at the same resort. I was doing the horse riding. He's a scuba diving instructor. He looks totally
different now, he's got a big beard and that and he's had his ears done you know like when they have those big holes put
in them? He asked about you actually! Obviously I couldn't tell him anything.”
“Well it's good of him to remember me, I only knew him for a few weeks. I was thinking of him today actually.”
The streets were lathered with thrillseekers of all types. A lot of them probably coming or going from some gastro
experience actually but still. Someone asked us for directions to a different railway arch where another party was
happening. I felt the biomass pulsating all around us. Bass leapt out from passing cars like an overture.
When I saw the small rowdy queue at the door and heard the loud coming from inside, I changed my mind. I felt
sweat break out all over my skin as the imaginary nano claws started to bite. I seriously considered feigning illness.
Standing outside in that mini crowd I felt that old familiar sensation, the thrill of shared anticipation. However I was
also really feeling the tightening now and noticed Tracy giving me another odd sideways look. Then suddenly the
bouncer let a trounce of people in, the bass whumped out of the open door for a few seconds making the arch sound like
a firing range for sonic weapons and we were front of the que. The doorman gave me a friendly nod of recognition.
Tracy clapped her hands together excitedly, like she'd been waiting for a good rave up for years.
The next moment, Avis, my downstairs neighbour, came falling out of the door and almost right into my arms. She
was out of it, probably on a cocktail of drink and drugs, and muttering something about not being able to breathe. This
made me feel more trepidation than I could stand and I tried to use Avis as a last second reprieve. I feigned more
friendship and concern for her than I genuinely had and asked,
“Hey Avis are you OK? Do you need me to walk you home?” I shrugged at Tracy trying my best to communicate in
one look that I was sorry but this was a good friend of mine that I obviously had to help get home. I caught the look on
Tracy's face as I mouthed,
“She's my neighbour!” and could see that she was not impressed.
Avis managed to slur,
“Nah I'm allright!” and then fell, giving me the opportunity to catch her again. I was just thinking that my escape was
secured, and wondering if Tracy would help me take Avis home then come up to mine, when Debs, Avis's live in
lesbian lover came out looking reasonably sober and took her off me saying,
 “It's OK I've got her!” The bouncer said.
“Two more!” and Tracy grabbed my arm and pulled me in.
The girl with long boxbraids who took our tickets greeted me loudly.
“R2D2....long time, where the fuck have you been?” I accepted her hug and kiss like a polite robot not having a clue
who she was. Even such a minor morsel of social awkwardness filled me with foreboding. I stood petrified in front of
Stepper's musty old leopard skin drapes listening to the sounds, louder than conflict, coming from within.
Tracy had either not noticed or not cared that I was having a hard time. Also she'd decided to take the initiative and
led me by the hand through the curtain.
It was rammethed inside and I was just about knocked down by a fist of nausea and fear. There was little room to
breath, never mind move. The difference between your normal average club and an underground night like Universe
packing an unfeasible amount of sound, is like the difference between watching a Sci-Fi, Kung-Fu flick on your I-
Phone and watching it in Imax 3-D. No actually it's more like being in the film dodging lazerblasts and hi-tec ninja
throwing stars. I could feel the bass passing through my flesh, retuning my bones. I instantly lost Tracy's hand and had
to lurch to a wall and lean against it. It was like a battlezone from one of my more esoteric Sci-Fi novels. The space was
dark and yet over supplied with every conceivable disco light, laser and projector going. It was impossible to focus on
anything successfully, except the tinted shadows that chased each other randomly across the curve of the ceiling like
giant insane moths. If I thought I recognised any shape as vaguely humanoid, it would split into six pieces that flew
away from each other an instant later.
I was pressed so far into the wall that I was almost climbing up it. Smoke poured from a hidden machine somewhere,
blinding me with white just as the bass hit a low frequency that made my psyche quake.
I had just decided that I'd actually been transported into a futuristic Bosch painting when the smoke was blown away
and a slide projector somewhere clicked onto an image that was white enough to illuminate part of the room. For a
moment I glimpsed lucidity and saw that I was in half a railway arch with about seventy sweat soaked people and a
massive rig. Those people were dancing, moving in and out of each over with slinky stylish movements. They all
looked sharply dressed in a sports gear kind of way, confident and intimate with each other in a thick hedonistic throb.
I looked down at myself, I was a shaking, shell shocked urgi. Trying my best to become part of the wall. What a
contrast from the old R2, who would have darted through the crowd faster than one of the laser beams, meeting and
greeting as he went. Feeling at ease with these electric bodies.
What the fuck was I doing there? Why had I so soon after meeting her let Tracy see me like this, lost and uncool,
totally freaked out by a few lights and a bit of loud music. It seemed I'd already lost her anyway and there was a real
possibility that I might not find her again. I was only capable of stumbling around getting in peoples way.
Was this the reason that I'd met her again, so she could see what a fucking loser I'd become. Was this some sort of
complicated karmic payback? My due because of..... I don't know.... being a wanker.
Whatever had happened afterwards, the memory of me and Tracy in Bournemouth had always been like a calm oasis
in my mind, somewhere I could go and relax when times got grim. Now that she was going to see what a piece of
human jetsam I'd become, she could only be expected to express disgust, and when I registered her revulsion that would
surely make that sanctuary of calm inaccessible for ever more.
I decided that I had better get out of there. I put one hand against the wall and started to follow it round figuring that
eventually I must find my way back to the door. It took forever, occasionally a hand would help me along, it must have
been obvious that I was having a bad time. More often though I saw disapproving faces screwing me out, intolerant of
some wasteman who'd lost the map, wandering about like a numpty, getting in the way of everybody's good time.
When I realised that I'd actually just made it through to a bigger more kinetic looking dancefloor, I despaired, but I
recognised the door to the back yard in Steppers where you could go for a smoke. I decided to go out there.
I tucked myself into a little alcove and found the last of my ready made joints. I pulled out my lighter but it wouldn't
work so I stood there endlessly clicking it desperate for that zoot but too fucked up to even walk up to one of the
smokers stood in the dark and ask them for a light.
“I don't think it's working mate!” It was Warren the last person I wanted to see in the state that I was in. Warren had
lit the fuse that had led to the dynamite of the “Incident” by giving me his long and complicated intellectual critique of
Galaxis whilst I was coming up on an insane amount of liquid acid. Warren was I suppose my Brixton Slacko, except
instead of being too thick he was too smart. He was an old mate of Tony's who spent a lot of time round Zero Zero the
big house that me Tony and Dave used to share. He looked and acted like an achingly hip young Black professor and
always seemed to regard me as some sort of novelty. Sometimes I think it's almost like a chemical thing between two
men, we never had a falling out but I always got a weird vibe off him, as if he was looking down his nose at me. Like he
couldn't work out why Dave hung with me. This was when I was mentally healthy but I didn't like getting stoned with
him around, he seemed to think it was his job to call me out on bullshit. Not that he ever really had a go at me except
the last time we'd met on the night of the Incident when he basically told me that Galaxis was a juvenile sausage party. I
wasn't sure if later that night he'd seen me getting held down or carried out but seeing me looking so fucked up in
Stepper's yard seemed to make him want to give me more shit.
“See this is how a blues is meant to be R2. There's women at this party see... Dancing and moving.” He did a little
gyration. “They've got it right these youth... It's what Chris's family does. You see it's about family..... This is real you
see, it's not some Sci-Fi fantasy.” He walked back inside leaving me with the spliff dangling unlit from my mouth.
A flame appeared in front of my face. It was held by Big-Mark, Chris's uncle, an aged academy proper Jamaican
Rastaman, and sound system aristocrat to boot. He used to loan us some monster bass bins for Galaxis and I always
thought he was a top cove even if I could only understand one word in three of what he said.
“So R2D2.....Still a heavy smoker?” he was puffing away on his own ganja, which smelt nice. Something more
wholesome than my PPP. I accepted the light gratefully.
“Yeah..... you know!” I always felt kind of bashful around Big-Mark, like I was talking to a monk. Not a Benedictine,
more like the head of a Shaolin temple. He had that whole gravitas thing going on which really made me feel my own
buoyancy.
“You know me never know a man lick a weed so much as you.... And yet never it seems you ever relax!” Yoda that's
who he was, and when did Yoda ever talk to R2D2. That's why I couldn't relate, there never was a robot Jedi. I sucked
hard on my joint.
“Of course you must know you'll never get down from the garage roofs because you won't do what you know you
must! Not for the why that you might think!” He couldn't have said what I thought he said yet he was talking right at me
in a steady way with that sandpaper voice of his, stars circling his head eyes flashing like knives in the moonlight. “A
man has to be complete, you can't just look at your reflection, and think that is I. For what is I? I is both seen? You have
to.... Let the whole in, from the parts. Do you overstand me R2?!”
“Nuh huh not really Mark!” I shook my head. He sighed finished his spliff and left me stood there wondering if I
was hallucinating whole sentences now, as well as dead parents. Nevertheless I felt slightly calmer and thought I should
at least try and find Tracy, tell her I was ill and that I had to go home. I took a look in the second arch. Chris had done
good, there was a proper reggae sound system in there. It wasn't a couple of old students deejaying either, there were
about five authentic looking Rastas including Big-Mark hovering around the decks.
I'd never really been that into the whole spiritual side of Bass Culture. I knew it was there and I knew that it was a
big thing to a lot of people but I just never really connected to that part of it all. It wasn't what I got out of music. For
me it was more about swimming in the cold than being wrapped in the warmth. As Warren put it, I liked sounds to
“Transport me into an aseptic future, not root me in a supernal present.”
At that moment though in that room, feeling that Bass unbutton my core, feeling the heads around me nodding like
we were at some space age devotional, I was like a repentant sinner who'd stumbled into a cathedral.
Whatever shit had been on my mind, I could not help but start moving to the music, bending my knees, allowing it to
vibrate me. The bass was fucking immense. The act of dancing seemed to change the whole episode. Now I was in a
place that felt safe, that felt like home.
Faces started to appear out of the wobbling meatcluster around me. Friendly ones, people actually glad to see me.
Tag was there Chris's brother, Jonathan said hello. Trudie came over and gave me a hug. Canadian Dave introduced me
to his new girlfriend. I was glad that I wasn't some old dude at a teenage party, no... The old Galaxis crew were out in
force. I worried if any of them had witnessed the "Incident" but if they had they didn't give any indication.
I felt hands kneading my shoulders and a feeling of well being rippled down through my whole body. I turned and
saw Tracy smiling at me, she said,
“There you are.!...... I thought I'd lost you for good!” And at that moment I felt fine. The tightening did something it
had never done before without me running home first. It loosened. She danced with me and we bopped along to the
industrial weight dub, grinning like fresh faced students at a Jah Shaka gig.
We kept that up for half an hour. I felt like I was in tidal pool, the waves of music cleansing me.
Then she took my hand and led me through to the third arch. This was where the party was really happening, even
more ramethed than the second room. I knew the DJ, another old Galaxian called Testar, attending to his decks and
computers like he was piloting a spaceship, but I didn't recognise the music at all. It sounded agile, up-tempo, a bit like
Disco. Well if Disco was being DeeJayed by Darth Vader. The criticism levelled against Galaxis by people like Warren
that it was strictly for heads, meaning lots of men stood around nodding, wasn't entirely fair. I'd always danced, but
looking at Universe, I could see the point. This mob was if anything more women than men, all dressed to party, and
everyone in there was getting the fuck down.
This arch had a sexy buzz. It was a glacier cool futuristic club. The lighting was much more minimal and there were
some sick details, like the tiny lights all over the ceiling that looked like stars in a night sky.
Tracy danced slowly at first, clicking her fingers and gyrating her hands in front of her face. I grinned at her like a
village idiot feeling actually very good in the sort of atmosphere that I was so convinced for so long I had to avoid. I
was just too happy to be dancing with her for my anxiety to get a look in.
She got right into it, hopping lightly from one foot to another performing little spins and peculiar ducking
movements. Some cove in a bright white top started coiling beside her. They grinned at each other pointing their fingers
up as though jabbing at the synth slabs that were sliding machine like over the bass.
I was bending my knees in time with the rhythm, my arms started flapping of their own accord. Tracy span around
me opening up a tiny space inside the heaving crowd, her eyes more hypnotising than any of the lights or lasers. When
she smiled at me she seemed to say,
“I know you’re fucked up!”
“Don't worry I understand!” and
“Let's dance!” I responded by executing small genuflections in front of her and letting the rhythm control me. The
bass injected itself into me then bounced around inside whilst I snatched in the air at trebly whispers that teased me,
disappearing in my hands.
The lights dimmed and bathed us in a deep blue glow with hot reds crackling throughout. The kick drum sounded
like molten silver dripping onto shiny steel. Tracy got closer and we moved in unison. The whole dancefloor was
oscillating along with the bass. I saw a young girl who looked like an angel from addidas heaven, moving as though she
were treading carefully across a field of glass flowers. Her hands reached up in the air in a religious seeming gesture as
she smiled encouragingly at me.
I turned again and saw the cove in the white top pumping his fist artistically his eyes widened at me in a gesture of
camaraderie. Other bodies seemed to fuse together into a human ring around us, then one individual would appear for a
second and pull off a slick move, then another, then another, then another.
I saw Pete from Stockwell falling about, dancing like a Ragga Cossack.
I jittered along with Tracy, both of us reacting as though the bass was a giant ball we were bouncing around in. I was
getting into it, it was so easy and natural to dance with her, as though we'd been partying together for years and knew
exactly how to anticipate and respond to each others moves. Almost like we were choreographed.
I noticed the UV backdrop behind Tracy, reminiscent of an exploding Rubik's cube. It looked like it was coming out
at me in 3D. As if she knew what I could see behind her Tracy made cube shapes with her hands like some back in the
day raver. Sub bass filled the arch like heavy air FOOOOOOOOOOOOOM and the beat changed up to a more frenetic
gear. We danced up close our legs touching. It was crushed in there but now we were in our own magic circle. We
moved in a spiral past some familiar heads, Pappa grabbed me by the neck and kissed me Tim hugged me. Chris just
grinned at me.
I hadn't felt so up in years. When I went to the bar to get drinks I almost bounced there like my old self, bumping
fists, laughing in faces.
The same rave that just over an hour ago had felt like one of the unfriendlier corners of hell, now was like my own,
welcome back to life party. I even felt in tune with strangers. It was like I'd taken a miracle cure to the phsychoailment
that I'd been suffering from. I noodled this whilst at the bar and wondered if really all I'd ever needed was to force
myself to get back out there. After all I'd only tried this twice before, both times shortly after the incident and both times
I'd not got as far as through the door.
More likely though, Tracy was the medicine, like I'd imagined she would be, just like the memory of her had been so
many times.
When I got back with the plastic cups filled with vodka tonic and two cold tinnies in my pockets, Testar had the
crowd bouncing and the arch was filling up beyond capacity with punters eager to groove.
I was reminded how incredible a throb was when shared with a pack. I was getting into it, my old moves were
coming out, not just because I wanted to impress Tracy but because I was having a fucking great time.
I couldn't believe how easy it was to be with her. I decided that she was the key, separation from her was the
problem. She leant her back against a wall, motioning me to come close. As I leant in she held out the end of her finger.
It took me a moment to comprehend that there was some unidentified gel cap balanced there.
I noticed her notice me recoil then she looked embarrassed as if she thought that she'd just done something stupidly
declasse. The second time she'd had that look that evening. I wished I could get some words out to say that it was OK,
she wasn't being out of order or anything, that it was me that was at fault, not being able to enjoy the pleasures of
hedonism because I'd made such a fucking pig of myself in the past.
Then a voice started to shout in my head louder than any other,
“GET IT DOWN YOUR FUCKING NECK YOU UPTIGHT PRICK!” and I obeyed that voice. Tracy hugged me as
if I was the long lost freind that I was, then moved back into the throng. I followed.
I noticed Tony take over on the decks and the arch seethed even more and popped with wet electricity. Most of the
multitude had probably made the scene specifically to hear Tony play. I took off my jacket and stashed it behind a
speaker. We began shaking like thirties Jazz dancers, then briefly reeled and jigged as though at some sort of Celtic
barn dance. The crowd switched from backdrop to intrinsic and back again every twenty seconds.
Whatever we'd taken was quickly coming up. There was an orange haze smoking from everything that the music cut
through like an acid coated knife. For a while me and Tracy mirrored each others every move.
I recognised the tunes, I'd heard them round at Tony's the night before but they sounded way different at this volume.
There was detail that would always be hidden on home monitors.
It flashed into my brain that the last time me and Tracy danced together was seventeen years ago. There in the half
dark she looked unchanged. She'd walked out of my memory and into my reality as fantastically as a character stepping
out of a book.
Dry ice poured out from somewhere blinding me, Tracy became a grey silhouette. She looked like she was dancing
like a bird, or more like she was a ballerina dancing the part of a bird. Then she was a bird which alerted me that
whatever drug I'd taken, was pulling me deep. Instinctively I knew that I had to go with it if I wanted to stand a chance
of staying on the dance floor with Tracy instead of staggering back into the dark yard to have a panic attack.
When the smoke cleared we were at a caveman party. Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon together at a huge prehistoric
bash, round a lively fire under an angry blood red moon. A rabid apeman was banging on a huge rock with two club like
bones. We had to dodge the cartoon like shockwaves he caused.
Abruptly the scene changed to the inside of a pirate space ship. A tormented space storm threw us around whilst we
danced in celebration of a good raid. The stars above us raced about forming any constellation they fancied, the
spaceship, the robot, the great orb. Tracy made a complicated gesture with her whole body that seemed to say,
“Dance closer!” I responded.
A distant planet, a hidden chamber inside a pyramid, a secret society, sworn enemies of the Emperor cavorting
wildly. Hieroglyphs written in neon by renegade craftsmen, leapt from the walls and joined in, each one introducing a
new metallic sound as it hit the ground. I tried to say something meaningful with my movements but couldn't get it out.
Outside some ancient city, we danced with the barbarians prior to scaling the walls. Tracy said with precise gestures
that I would have to express myself better if I wanted her to take me seriously.
Suddenly we were underwater in huge unwieldy diving suits. Psychedelic looking squid floated past like
synchronised swimmers each one popping like a balloon and making a noise like an alien tuning fork. Twin octopi
played drums.
Everyone looked rotoscoped for a moment and then they were moving in slow motion. Tracy was a alien folk dancer
telling me some ancient fable with her hands.
Outer space, on an asteroid, hidden from the prying eyes of the empire. The rendezvous for every type of space
outlaw from around the Galaxy. Where they go for the forbidden practise of dancing. Cyborgs, androids, humanoids of
every hue got down and fucking grooved.
The space was suddenly filled with giant menacing looking robots of Japanese/Inuit looking design. Their huge
spherical heads lit up like eighties computer terminals, the atmosphere turned almost sinister, exciting, everything
accelerated, futuristic Aztec like aliens span jumped and wigged out with super high-tec torches in their hands.
We became electrons flashing through circuits. I lost sight of Tracy. Testar grabbed me, held my hand and pulled me
to his chest. Richard was there grinning at me before giving me a full on hug. Richard was the Galaxis crew member
who miraculously managed to get me home after the "Incident". His obvious good will towards me left me feeling a lot
better than I thought I would if I saw anyone who definitely witnessed my acid freak out.
Tracy reappeared moving like a flamenco dancer in a spacesuit. I danced around her into the night. I melded with the
drove so when I shook my arms they shook theirs, when I moved my legs so did they. There was a ball of blue flame
moving through the crowd at hip level being chased by five white and five red glowing orbs.
The bass seemed to come from the centre of the arch which moved as if the whole thing was resting on top of a
fairground ride that jerks then glides, jerks then glides.
We both moved towards the bar and walked into Tony who'd just finished playing. A faint smile from him let me
know that he was pleased to see me out. He led us to a door and out into the tiniest yard where two of Chris's boys were
smoking weed and we could just about fit around some sort of generator. I skinned up grinning like a bastard. Tracy sat
squashed up against me her limbs glowing. She was trying to say something to me but even out there the music was too
loud and all I heard was,
“Westgate.. Culture wild...... Dellend hoodie galaxy!” Then she just stared at the fuzzy velvet sky giving me a great
view of her neck.
When we got back inside, whatever it was that had caused such far out visions had subsided, and we were back in
Brixton in 2016, dancing with the rich mix that made it to that kind of event, hardly less exciting than my
hallucinations. We went through to the first room, got on a motorik groove, then rode that fucker till morning.
Fantasy, memory and reality were intertwined. For a moment I thought Tracy was wearing the headdress of some
Native American Shamen, but she was actually just putting on her jumper. I clicked that that was a signal to go, and
after working out where I'd put it, I fetched my jacket and we both headed for the exit.
I bumped fists, shook hands and hugged untold people on the way out. Chris gave me a big chunk of sweaty man
love saying,
“Fucking great to see you R2! Yes bro really good that you came down!” He kissed Tracy, I gushed,
“Fuck well done mate, you've fucking done it mate ….That was whoa that was sick an amazing fucking night....
Chris you smashed it!” Outside the sun was just about to stick it's nose in. I told Tracy that I lived a bricks throw away
and she gave me a tired nod. She looked as though coming outside had undone a magic spell. She seemed shocked by
the reality of hard pavement. We didn't link arms this time but rather a distance between us quickly appeared from
nowhere. I thought that I caught that same look that I'd seen earlier, something like weary disappointment.
As we traversed the two bent streets that led to the Module, one old geezer stalked us, singing some old country and
western song before another came from the other direction and tried to sell us weed. A far too fat and cocky looking fox
bowled past as though he too had just left a party. I managed to watch Tracy walking unobserved for a moment and
wondered what strange lunacy of youth had allowed me to ever lose sight of her. How different life might have been if I
hadn't.
Just hours after meeting her, I was cured of the nervous malady that had been keeping me prisoner.
She caught me looking and again I thought I saw some strange almost....was it resentment in her eyes? I told myself
that I couldn't let my noid get the better of me after the night that we'd just had but I found myself lost for words, and
started spilling inane shit like,
“So.... Fucking good night yeah?”
“Mnnn!” she'd frozen up, her arms were folded across her chest. I figured that we were both quite out of it, told
myself that some alienation was always part of the druggie experience, that if I could just get us back to mine and make
some tea everything would be great. Again we walked past a row of Phils, Tracy pointed at them and blurted,
“Heyeeeerp!” then went quiet. He glared at us as we traipsed past.
I let us into my block and we climbed the wooden stairs in silence. I fumbled the keys and when I looked at her, was
sure that a sour buzz was coming off her as though she'd decided on the walk back that actually I was a right dickhead.
There was something shifty in her manner, an almost fearful air. I struggled to think of something reassuring to say
coming up with nothing better than,
“Don't worry.....I.....!” before drying up.
 When we got in she scoped the dom from top to bottom, which took about three seconds and said,
“Fucking hell it's posh innit!” That was an obviously fallacious opening gambit. Whatever bells and whistles it might
have there's no way a drum the size of a I-pad could ever be considered posh. Still her analysis embarrassed me. She sat
down gingerly whilst I went to make tea. I was glad that there was no sign of the spectre but still when I got back
couldn't come up with a single sentence.
I'd never seen anyone look so uncomfortable sat in my diggings. She gave off the definite vibe that she regretted
getting so fucked up that she had to go back to a man's flat. The lack of chit chat quickly became excruciating. I couldn't
believe that after such a great ride through the night, the wheels were coming off like this. It was like the time that Zaif
had given me one of his smaller mirror sculptures that I'd coveted for years. It was the best piece of art I'd ever owned,
all shiny and sleek. Then one second after getting it home I dropped it, reducing it to glittery dust that needed hoovering
up.
I looked at my records and couldn't decide what to put on. I chose an old Dubstep Allstars LP then did what I always
do in any stressful situation. I built one.
“What was in that pill?” I felt as though I should ask.
“I don't know.... I got it off your mate!”
“Who?” I had no idea who she was talking about, and then she just mumbled something like,
“I dunno that bloke.....” and the chasm of non communication widened between us.
“You couldn't call me a taxi could you?” she was a Cinderella who had already turned back into a pumpkin.
“Sure I .. You know it's great to see you.... I can't get over it. You know what I mean!”
“Yes I know but.... look I...” she breathed out and put her head into her hands.... “It's been a really long day for me.....
I didn't finish work until late and then went straight to that.....you know... And that pill.... oh it's wiped me out!”
“Do you want a shower or something...” as soon as I spilt it I realised that it wasn't quite the right thing to suggest.
“No..... look call me a cab....!” She stretched and yawned, she did look fucking done in, “But listen why don't you
come over to mine on Sunday and I'll cook you a proper dinner and you know we can talk about..... You know
everything!” That was good to hear. She sat drinking her tea looking a little less ill at ease, then when I picked up the
landline said,
“No I better get the tube...” and we sat there in not completely awkward silence for about twenty minutes. The sun
came on full strength behind the curtains, she kissed me ever so lightly on the cheek, hugged me in the same way then
hurried out. I said,
“Sunday then yeah?”
I turned the music off then skinned up again. Dead Dad came in and collapsed next to me. He gave me a wide eyed
drunken stare and said,
“Fuck me.... You're one rare breed of cunt aren't yer?!” I turned my Mac on, googled Tracy's new name then sat
looking at photographs of the years I'd missed. They were lit by foreign sunlight and filled with people and horses I
didn't know and mountains and beaches I'd never seen. She smiled and laughed from my screen wearing shades and
sarongs. When not in a saddle she sat poolside drinking brightly coloured drinks with small groups of women. I sent her
a friend request wondering what she would make of all the photo's of me stood by the decks hanging a fake gang sign. I
tried to imagine this whole story from her perspective, wondered how much more interesting it would be. My legs
ached, I wasn't used to dancing.

CHAPTER 10
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
I said,
“Spray,” and white nanofoam burst out hard and fast from nozzles fixed all over the inside of my egg. It hit the
smaller Attercop that were running towards me and quickly coagulated into shaggy white balls that covered their legs
slowing them into a stop.
 The “Mother” was soon covered in a thickening white shroud. I was glad to see it's eyes blinded, and it's still gaping
maw being filled with the frothy spray. I hoped it would drown, the foam was smart enough to identify threats and do
it’s best to neutralise them.
It knew enough to let itself slide off my visor which was good because I still couldn't move. Just as I turned the
spray off by saying “Cease!” an ultra-def hologram materialised in the centre of my ship. It was Tracatattarca Grimix
Deelendio wearing the same uniform she'd worn all those years ago when we'd activated the device. I guessed she was
being beamed from the other egg. She shook her head at me, a look of pity on her face.
“What knots have you tied yourself up in Robotix? You're malfunctioning so badly my diagnostics can't even tell me
what's wrong.”
“Can you do something about my suit? It's frozen!”
“What...... do you think that I'm real?” she waved an arm and her projection glistened. “Sure that's right, a beautiful
girl who's so into Sci-Fi she's willing to snuggle up with you inside your little fantasy world! Do you think it's possible
that you might have just made me up?.....What the fuck is going on here by the way.... Why did you spray foam?.... You
nearly killed your spiders! They could help you!”
I was confused, she made no sense to me and it felt like half my brain was in shadow. “What's going on Tracy?
Why did you call them my spiders?”
“O.K... Our spiders if you insist.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? The Attercrop are our enemy!”
“Ah shit! Looks like you've got the old implanted memories. I think your wiring might have gone to shit. I'm going to
have to come over. In the flesh I mean.” She looked at the spider stuck in the entry hatch. “I won't be long. Just hope I
can get in.” She disappeared.
I said,
“View,” and the interior vanished, I could see that her egg was now parked a few metres from mine. After one
moment I saw it's hatch open and she came floating out, barely visible in her white suit and drifted towards me. She
held out her palms and looked as though she was manipulating grav fields trying to push the Attercop out of the way.
She disappeared as the inside of my egg suddenly without my bidding, became visible again. A blue light started to
pulse and my suit vibrated with the low throb of an alarm. I felt myself floating up out of my chair my arms went down
by my sides and my legs straightened out. I looked up and saw that the top of the egg was twisting open. I realised that
Oonomi was ejecting me.
I reached the widening hole just as it was big enough for me to squeeze through. As soon as my head went through,
space returned to it's natural blackness. I looked down and saw Tracy still between the eggs, she and them now very
visible against the black of the universe.
Then as I completely left my ship I realised that my head had detached itself from my body. I looked down and saw
that my limbs were doing the same. It was if I were a doll being pulled apart by giant invisible hands. Soon I was in six
pieces that were slowly drifting away from each other. Also my head began to spin, increasing my disorientation. As
troubling as this new development was, I stayed very calm and I wondered if the suit (or the helmet at least) was
manipulating my brains chemical makeup so I didn't freak out.
I saw that Tracy was floating towards me her arms outstretched, index fingers pointing forwards so as to make
herself move faster.
The whole scene was beyond bizarre. I'd had the sensation of feeling small in space before but being no more than a
disembodied head spinning through the vastness was something else. Tracy came into view. Each spin took a half
second and each time I saw her she was closer like I was watching some primitive animation. I went to say something
but the silence was so immense that to break it seemed like some sort of desecration. I saw her reach out to me and felt
myself stop spinning as she caught me. She held my helmeted head up to hers, she had a look of peaceful composure as
if she were completing some spiritual ritual. Then she put me under an arm.
We set off chasing a white blob that was falling through the void. As we got closer I could see that it was a leg.
Tracy reached out and grabbed it tucking it under her other arm. Then we turned round and began to chase another
distant glob of white.
That was my torso and when we eventually caught it she held it with her legs whilst she attached my errant parts. I
was grateful to be reintroduced to my body again, it hardly mattered that I was still missing two arms and a leg. She left
me where I was then went flying after one of my other limbs which was now nothing but a dot. I saw that I was floating
some distance away from our eggs.
She returned to attach a leg and then went away for a longer period, coming back with an arm. As she flew off for the
final limb I wondered what the fuck was going on. I found my voice as she attached my left arm.
“OK …..Do you want to fucking clue me in here?”
“Hold on lets get back to the eggs. Can you move?” I found that I could so outstretched my arms, pointed my toes
and set off in the direction of our ships.
The hole was still open and I followed Tracy feet first into Oonomi. I saw that she had succeeded in pushing the
spider inside, so now it was on the floor with it's children which I noticed were twitching.
Tracy waved a hand in front of a panel and the twisted hatch came down and miraculously closed and sealed. She
took off her helmet releasing the black swell of her hair. Then she bent over the Attercop and seemed to administer first
aid.
%%%%%%%%%%%%
 ####################################
I woke up on my chair with my headphones on. My screen saver was a space scene and for a moment I wasn't sure
if I was still in some layer of dream. Dead Dad was sat on the tiny sofa still steadily drinking. He waved a bottle at me.
“Why don't you go to fucking bed?” I noted the irony of a ghost being the sign that I was awake.
I gathered some of the debris scattered on my desk and began making a joint. The Skunk felt wet and heavy in my
hands. I thought of opening the curtains but instead left them and smoked in the silent gloom. Sat there I wondered if
that was were I was destined to live. The previous nights return to the land of the hep had already been stored in my
memory in such a way that it too seemed like a dream. Sat like I was in the grey quarter light with a ghost was a reality
more familiar than partying with friends. Could I really escape for more than one night? I had a strange sensation like I
was being dolly zoomed then I could hear my own breathing like it was amplified.
Eventually I stumbled through to my bedroom shedding clothes as I went. I clambered into bed but couldn’t go back
to sleep.

########################################

The policemen drove me through the night and back to Dellend. I was delivered to the cop shop and chucked into a
cell. I couldn't stop wondering how I could get a message to Tracy. I'd somehow cast us as star crossed lovers and was
freaked out because I didn't have a clue where she was, Dellend or Bournemouth. Despite everything else, contacting
her was my main priority. That night I stared at a full moon dissected by cell bars wishing that someone would come
and tie a chain to them, pull the whole wall down with a monster truck and spring me.
The next day I was taken to an interview room and pushed into a chair. Dad walked in and we were left alone. He
gave me a cigarette, then began talking in what was almost a whisper. There was a dark rasp in his voice, like he'd just
swallowed poison and was dying.
“Right this is what's gonna happen. You're gonna fucking tell them that your Phil had nowt to do with it.... That it
was you that battered that lad..... And that you forced Phil to come along with yer!” I blinked under the harsh white
light. It was as though I could really clearly see him for the first time in my life. He looked like a fucking zombie. Most
of his teeth were missing, his head was a hairy skull and he was completely grey. Everything about him was grey, his
denims, his Queen T-Shirt, his skin. His stubble was grey and seemed to be filled with a dirty grey dust. I had the
thought that he must rub cigarette ash into his chin. His eyes were milky, his pupils slate chips. His breath fucking
stank.
He looked as though he was getting angry waiting for a response, like he was willing me to say something with the
power of his mind. So I replied,
“But that's bollocks!” He quickly and expertly grabbed me by the arm, squeezed tight and pulled me towards him.
“You fucking listen here right, don't think you can..... You don't try and come the fucking innocent.... I told you not
to get him involved in your shit....didn't I? Didn't I?!” Finally his voice cracked into a shout, “You might want to spend
your whole life being a fucking waster, but I fucking told you, Phil has got a future! He's gonna be someone do yer
fucking understand? Can you get that into yer fucking stupid head?” He slapped me hard round the ear as I tried to pull
away from him,
“Fuck off!” He punched me. Caught me a good one on the side of my mouth with his bony fist. He punched hard did
my Dad. I would have fell off the chair if he hadn't been holding me with his other fist. He somehow got past the table
and kept on punching me, he was shouting really loud now,
“YOU ARE NOT GOING TO FUCK HIS LIFE UP YOU LITTLE FUCKING TWAT! YOU'RE GONNA DO
WHAT I SAY AND TELL THEM THE TRUTH!”
He was still punching me when two rozzers ran in and dragged him off me shouting,
“George what are you doing? Leave him!” They bundled him out and I was left alone hanging over a chair bleeding.
After a while I was allowed to get a wash and told that my lawyer was on his way.
My solicitor was a balding hippy type in a worn out shiny suit. At first he became extremely animated, asking me if I
wanted to give a statement about the police beating me up, but after I told him that it was my Dad he calmed right
down. He explained what was happening, that I was being charged with GBH and suggested I plead guilty. Squirrel's
statement was apparently devastating. He'd recognised both of us from school and wasn't aware that his beating came
from one side or the other or which brother had stomped his head. My only other option beside going guilty was to
claim that it wasn't me, that I wasn't there, and Phil had already said I was. Apparently he'd also admitted his own guilt
and there was now nothing anyone could say or do to stop that train. So everything Dad had shouted about me taking
the blame was a load of shit anyway. With Phil, they were waiting for reports to be done and for me to be caught. Then
they were going to sentence us together. The solicitor said that I was about to go through a similar reports process and
he thought it likely that like Phil I would get bail. The idea that I was getting out made everything else inconsequential
to me. I couldn't think beyond getting to a phone and calling Tracy. I went through the police interview in a strung out
daze refusing to answer questions.
Thankfully that night they threw a book into my cell, some crime thriller, I was happy to read it. My stomach was
churning but still all I could really think about was Tracy.
The next day in magistrates court I didn't really have any clue what was going on. I pleaded guilty and was told that I
would have to go to Crown Court to be sentenced with Phil and that just like the solicitor said, they would get probation
reports, to help the judge decide how to deal with me. Then I realised that someone was talking about my bail,
suggesting that I shouldn't get it.
My solicitor seemed to have been caught on the back foot. I heard a policeman say that the difference between me
and Phil, was that when Phil was up, Dad had been with him in court, and also that I'd been missing for four weeks
before being found in London living fuck knows where, and committing more crime.
Sure enough I was refused bail. That night I was handcuffed, put in a tiny van and taken to Risley, a remand centre
for young offenders. However after driving all the way there it turned out that Risley was chock o block with
delinquents, so full that they couldn't fit another tyke in. So we turned right the fuck around and drove back to Dellend,
where I was dashed back into the same cell. Only now I had a cellmate.
I spent the next week in there chewing the walls. I'd just gone from being freer than I'd ever known to being locked
up with some drug head numpty from the Ridge. A burglar called Splitz, who used to go out with Buzzers's older sister
Gail. He was one fucked up, cold turkey going, idiot, kettard who constantly muttered about his criminal masterplan.
Which was as far as I could tell, to steal the letter Y from the alphabet.
“You’re Phil Rose's brother aren't you. Yeah Shadowzone! They fucking rock!”
“Phil who?” I was very lucky to get given Heilens “Time Enough for Love,” which had enough heft to last a few
days.
When the court day came, I searched the public gallery, hoping that somehow Tracy had heard about me, but besides
Pogo and a few more of Phil's followers only Paul and Dad were there. Phil barely grunted at me then sat impassive. I
was definitely the one that had lost his cool acting jumpy as fuck, but more because I was worried about missing any
opportunity to get a message to my girlfriend than anything else.
A victim impact statement was read out on behalf of Squirrel. He said that he couldn't get over what happened that
night, that he no longer felt safe out on the street, even his own street. It was a massive piece of luck that he hadn't been
permanently or severely damaged by that final stomp on the head. Knowing that this was all the result of something that
I'd been involved in, gave me a strange sensation of weightlessness. Like my insides, my brain and my body had been
hollowed out. I tried to remember why I'd been unable to stop Phil but then had to remind myself that I hadn't actually
gone there with the intention of preventing violence. I'd gone there to batter someone and Phil had got the job done. I
looked at him and could tell that he was having a hard time suppressing a grin.
We were each given two years. The judge said that although my brother was younger than me, it seemed to him that
we were both as responsible. He said some other stuff about gangs and violence, I wasn't really listening but caught,
“Violent anti social behaviour doubtless making life miserable for all those around you.” They took us down.
We were put in a cell below the court. As far as keeping cool goes our roles sort of reversed, I sat with my head in
my hands fairly collected, Phil was kicking the walls, the door, screaming cunts at anyone who might hear him. I think
he'd been led to expect more leniency. Again my main concern was how could I get a message to Tracy. I did think that
I was going to be put in a cell with Phil for the next two years and that was not a prospect that cheered me one fucking
bit.
I was pleased as punch when it became apparent that we weren't even going to the same jail. It turned out that Phil
was too young to get sent to Kert Lev where I was heading although he would probably be transferred there in six
months, when he was seventeen. I was happy when they took me and left him in the cell.
After arriving at Kurt Lev, I was marched into a concrete block and told to strip. Then after putting my now quite
minging duds into a cardboard box, I was led past a line of tables where I was handed all my prison gear, clothes,
blankets, a piss pot. It was Foggy who handed me my prison shoes. He'd put on a little weight.
“Allright Rod!” he was grinning like he'd just met me in town, “This nick is filling up with the Westgate! Alternative
universe or what! Multidimensional! What are you in for?”
“Do you know him?” a screw stood in front of me his hands in his pockets, chewing gum, giving me the evils, like he
was Foggy's mate and I was some unknown scrote who had approached their crew.
“Hey he's alright this lad.” The screw looked unconvinced. “No seriously I know him really well..... He's mates with
my little brother, keep an eye on him for me will you sir? Where's he going? C wing is it? You'll be OK on there. I'm
sorry mate I'd sort you all out and that but... I'm getting out in two days! Mr Johnson will look after you though won't
you sir? Sir seriously he's a good lad this one... Melrose he's called..... please keep an eye out for him. He's only little,
look at him!”
The screw shrugged non-committally. I was hurried along for the rest of my induction, which meant being read a list
of rules and then hearing a short speech from the Governor about rehabilitation and cleanliness. Afterwards I was led to
a cell by a screw who was whistling a tune like he was the most happy go lucky fellow you could ever meet. As we
went past some cons mopping the floor he said,
“Two fucking nil!” One lad looked up,
“Yeah but sir that first goal should have been disallowed!”
“Fuck off should it!” the screw turned to me,
“Are you another bitter blue are you Melrose?” I've never followed football so didn't have a clue what he was on
about. I shook my head.
A cell door was opened to reveal a Black cove laid on the top bunk scowling over the top of a book at me.
“Here you go!” the screw said in a sing song voice, “East facing as requested!” As the door was being locked behind
me my new cellmate shouted a complaint in what sounded to me like a Yorkshire accent.
“Wait up! You can't put little kids in here with me now..... That's not on!” He scoped me out and looked unimpressed,
“Fucking hell how old are you?”
 “Seventeen.” he laughed,
“Don't they feed you at home?” he turned his attention to the piss pot that I was holding,
“I'm telling you dread I don't want to see any shit in that pot do you hear me? No Poo poo understand!” Already he'd
addressed me in three seemingly different accents. The Yorkshire, a sort of posh voice and thick Jamaican patois. He
could switch between all three in one sentence.
“Well what do I.....”
“Try and do it in the morning or whenever we get out to get dinner and that yeah! We get half an hours association....
Do it then man just really, please no shitting in this cell. What's your name?”
“Rod.” He laughed louder than before, gold winked from inside his mouth. He was a sizeable cove, I thought he
looked like a farm labourer. Scruffy overgrown hair hung over a yellow face covered with fat freckles as big as
fingerprints.
“Yo this is Kurt Lev son! Nobody wants to know your first name. You better get that straight!”
“Melrose.”
“O.K. I'm Donaldson.... We're going to get on just fine, I can tell. If you don't give me any shit..... And you know...
Just don't fucking bother I...whatsoever... OK! Yeah what are you a fucking skinhead? No of course not!”
I nodded then shook my head nervously then sat down on the bottom bunk. I noticed two other books on the
windowsill and straightaway asked him,
“Can I read one of those?” After all he didn't seem that keen on any more chit chat.
“What you can read can you!” I nodded, “Yeah go on then chose one, they're both good!” I picked up “A Clockwork
Orange” and recognised the name of the author, Donaldson said,
“What heartless Judge locked up a baby face like you? What did you do?”
“GBH,” I must have looked hilarious the way I said it with a shrug because he started laughing his balls off,
“Well, yeah go on killer, read that.... It's all about a bwad boy like you!” and so I settled down on the bed and read it.
Kurt Lev was a bit like waiting at a deserted bus stop in the middle of the night in a really dangerous part of town. It
was unbelievably non eventful and deathly boring, yet also there was always a very strong feeling that danger and
violence were hovering closeby.
It took a while to get used to the avuncular nature of the screws. They all seemed to be constantly, singing, laughing
and joking like some gang of funny uncles. They wrote supposedly humorous messages on a chalk board positioned
near where you collected your gruel, stuff like,
“We found a caterpillar in the vegetables today. Don't worry we took it out...and put it in the custard to revive!” Once
one of them passed me a copy of the Sun but before giving it to me said,
“Oh better censor it!” and then scribbled over the page three nipples with a Biro. This sort of joke was standard.
It might have been called Youth Custody but Kurt Lev was just a jail really. The only difference being, all the cons
were under twenty one years old.
On films prisoners are always up to some scheme, or fighting battles for supremacy of the yard, but in Kurt Lev you
spent twenty two hours of each day banged up in your cell, which didn't leave a lot of room for any sort of manoeuvre.
In the morning you were let out to slop out your piss pot and fill a bowl full of water for a wash. That was when
everyone tried to have a shit. Then you went and fetched your breakfast which you got on a little metal tray and ate in
your cell. Then the same for lunch. Apparently there was a dining hall somewhere but all the time I was there it was
being redecorated or something. At some point in the afternoon you got let into a yard for half an hours exercise.
Everyone just walked around in a circle chatting banalities. Then we were given dinner and another opportunity to take
a crap. Around six in the evening we were allowed half an hour of what they called association. That was the only half
hour that resembled the way jail looks on TV or whatever, everyone playing pool and watching telly or sat around
talking. Then back into your peter, and at about eight pm an urn of tea and a tray of tasteless buns was brought round.
Not long after that it was lights out. There were a couple of other less frequent activities, a shower once a week and a
laundry change. You could go to church on Sunday if you wanted. Getting any kind of job even scrubbing the floors
was seen as a big privilege because it got you out of your cell.
Whenever I hear complaints about young offender institutes being like holiday camps and everyone having
flatscreens and Playstations and shit, I think about Kurt Lev where every brick seemed to be made out of some grimy,
oppressive, Victorian crap and wonder if people are completely full of shit about that, or if I was just unlucky enough to
be put in the shittiest, most horrible Youth Custody in Britain.
It wasn't long before I realised that the screw's jovial manner, didn't stop them from being total arseholes. Despite the
jokes, they wrangled us with an attitude that was mindless to humanity and impervious to any petty request or desperate
plea. Their approach was like that of lab technicians who liked to tease the rhesus monkeys they were supervising.
Donaldson quickly warmed to me. He was I think very pleased to be sharing a cell with someone who was into
books. The second day he was shocked to see that I'd already finished A Clockwork Orange.
“Did it seem real to you?”
“Sort of yeah.... I guess so!”
“And what about you my little droog? If they offered it... would you take the Ludovico technique.... Give up your life
of ultra violence?”
“Well no..... It sounds fucking horrible! I guess you have to... I mean you wouldn't..... Like it wouldn't be your choice
would it you know like the priest says.... There's no what do you call it, erm free will....”
“What's it gonna be then!” he interjected. I hadn't actually realised the full significance of that phrase being repeated
in the book until he said it, so I was being educated.
“I mean I get that bit at the end when he gets a girlfriend and that. I mean when I got a girlfriend you know what I
mean, the last thing I felt like doing was going out battling!” He put his hand on my head and shook it playfully,
“Melrose has a woman has he... Rah, and he's an advocate of free will!”
He was overjoyed when I told him that yes I did play chess and he soon rustled up a plastic set. The board was Biro'd
onto a wooden chair.
He won the first couple of games, I hadn't played for years. Then I beat him on the third game and won nine out of
ten times from then on. He nearly always opened with the Ruy Lopez or the Queens Gambit and he really had no end
game. He never gave up though, he knew it was good to play with someone better and he didn't resent me giving him
advice.
He started to talk to me in another different voice, one that sounded educated and warm. He seemed to take a
genuine interest in me. It was possible to get hold of books in Kurt Lev, not easy, but Donaldson knew enough cons and
was respected enough to be able to get stuff. When he saw that I was mad for Sci-Fi he started to make suggestions,
“Read this!” he said, “It's a dystopian future. Fuck me it's the Daddy of all dystopian futures.” He gave me 1984.
“Check this out it's a completely different type of fuckri, but fucked up still!” he tossed Brave New World onto the bed.
I was on a book a day, a lot of his recommendations, but also I had to read whatever was available which meant I got to
read some great stuff that wasn't in my preferred genre, (and some proper old shite.)
So I went through The Illustrated Man, A Walk On The Wild Side, Wheels, Bravo Two Zero, Blitzfreeze, Mother
London, Slaughter House Five, Bonfire Of The Vanities, Underworld, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, The Rats,
Moby fucking Dick. Big books are popular in jail, and anything with war, crime or violence. I must have read nearly
every book floating around that prison. Someone said there was a library somewhere, but I never saw it. Donaldson was
a good droog and always managed to dig up one more novel. He also suggested I get out of the cell and go to what was
called education. I bumped into the screw that Foggy had asked to look after me and he begrudgingly got me onto what
was a sort of creative writing course, two one hour classes a week.
I was shocked as fuck the first time that I went, to see Slacko sat there amongst the five other pupils, looking like a
keen learner. I have to admit I was pleased to see a face from my own gang.
“Hey Slacko, you know I never even knew you were in here!” He gave me a look of exasperation, as though I were a
bothersome child who needed to be told the exact score.
“Well yeah I've been here for a while Melrose! In fact I get out in a couple of weeks.” I was lost for words. The truth
was I'd never cared for him, but for some reason meeting him like that made me feel like I was the dick. “And another
thing mate, don't call me Slacko in here! Heggarty that's my name.” Surprisingly he was very attentive in the class and
in the short time that we studied together, seemed to be the star pupil.
The teacher was a little old lady who smoked huge cigars and looked about a hundred years old. There was no actual
course or structure, no exam to work towards. I spent all my time there writing a Sci-Fi story set in mine and Tracy's
Galaxis reality, starring a thinly disguised me and Tracy. It was about the genesis of the device. She was a good teacher
I suppose, very encouraging.
I settled in to jail though not like what Donaldson called,
“Those soulless,brainless fuckwits who actually enjoy being locked up!” Believe it or not I still indulged in my
childish space fantasy imaginings. I looked up through the bars at the stars, pretending I was in a prison on some
faraway planets moon.
I got no shit on C wing. Like I say Donaldson was quite well respected and nobody was going to bother a cell mate
of his that he liked. We smoked a lot of dope and sometimes he would give me one of his headphones so we could both
listen to heavy Dub on his CD Walkman.
One day when we were playing chess he asked me,
“So when you get out, are you going straight back to your little gang of droogs? Or have you been rehabilitated?”
“Fuck that I'm gonna find Tracy and.... You know.... I was in London when they caught me, I wanna go back there!”
“Yo that's a big city man! Melrose has got plans innit! And you know if you don't mind me asking how do you feel
about all this jail stuff and what you done and all that!” I shrugged,
“I dunno, what about you? How do you feel? What did you do?” He laughed,
“I my friend got caught with a lot of marijuana, and what I feel is that I should make sure that next time I don't get
caught. That's what I feel! Fuck the Babylon! Weed should be legal anyway so..”
“Well to be honest I.... I mean I never actually touched the lad that I was supposed to have battered, it was all my
dick of a brother really!”
“Oh fuck sorry! So you've got nothing to feel bad about, is that it... You did fuck all wrong. I suppose if you're
completely fucking blameless well then....Rehabilitation isn't an issue for you!”
“Well that's what you're saying innit?” He cuffed me round the head,
“Listen! I wasn't found out in the night kicking someone in the raas or not kicking someone as you say....I mean if
you are innocent, I guess well.....”
“I suppose I should have tried to stop him..... Or I suppose I should have.... Well I was there I guess...” My mind went
through the events of that night. I realised that the first thing I did wrong was not just stay in the library earlier in the
day and read my book. “I should have done something different I suppose.” I thought about Squirrel, the blood coming
out of him from three directions. I went further back than me in the library, thought about the whole build up to that day
and my part in that. Then I raced back through time, to before I was in the WA. When I was really young, playing chess
with Paul in his front garden. Somebody..... was it Slacko? Jumped the wall, kicked the chess board and all the pieces
into the air. Somebody else, Ullah? Maddah? Foggy? appeared saying,
“Leave them alone you tight bastard!” before saying something that seemed totally innocuous.....something like.......
“Why don't you come down the Gash?” Was that where I went wrong? When me and Paul followed them. All of a
sudden I felt like I was going to cry. I held it back for a few moments then sort of vomited a big blub right up and off I
went. I was worried that Donaldson would not be best impressed by this, but he just said stuff like,
“Go on let it all out mate!” and then when I eventually stopped he passed me some bog roll, “Here sort yourself out!”
Then he left me alone to lie on my bunk in silence.
I was in that cell with Donaldson for nine months and we became very good droogs indeed. I felt real trepidation as
his sentence neared it's end, I knew that I'd been fucking lucky to get petered up with him. Then when he had about two
weeks left to serve a screw came in and announced that I was being transferred to D wing, no explanation given. So it
was an abrupt farewell, we bumped fists and he said,
“Look after yourself little droog....Don't ever get yourself put back into a shithole like this, do you hear me? What's it
gonna be then?”.
I was marched over to D wing schlepping all my crap, my blankets, my piss pot. Then the screw opened a cell door
to reveal......Phil! One leg up on a bunk, a guitar strapped on, strumming a chord. Wrapround Raybans wrapped round
his head. My spirits sank.
“Big Broth!” I walked in to a peter crowded with biscuits, sweets and toiletries, FHM pin-ups plastered all over the
walls. The screw that brought me said,
“Here he is then!” Phil replied,
“Thank you sir nice one!” I didn't know what to say, I just sat on the bed in shock.
“Don't worry broth they'll do anything for me. I'm doing a concert for them on Friday! Do you want a biscuit?”
He wasn't lying, he had them screws, and the fucking governor if you please eating out of his hand. They were
nearly all into Rock and seemed to have the same attitude to Phil as what Dad had. That is they acted as though he was
already some kind of superstar, treating him like they were honoured to be near such a massive talent and would do
anything they could for him until he got out and made it big.
For the next few months the fucker never shut up. He was either yakking about what a big star he was going to be, or
describing violent fantasies that would have given Alex the droog nightmares.
I had the top bunk and his words came up from below and right through the cente of my brain. I found it difficult to
read with his constant monologue going on.
They had him do a concert in the church and I sat at the back incredulous as the crowd went mental to him singing
and playing guitar doing covers of Rock standards. Then he did a few of his own compositions and everybody jumped
around still, cons and screws. I knew that I was in prison, but felt that this was a cruel and unusual punishment. From
then on I was really counting the fucking minutes and I had three months left till what was called my earliest date of
release.
One morning three lads from Manchester started on me during slop out. One of them kidney punched me before
another tried to push me onto the floor. Phil came up from behind, grabbed two of them by the hair and cracked their
heads into the third one's which instantly killed their bravado. I must admit at that moment I was glad he had my back.
Dad who hadn't been near the place until Phil landed, began to visit every two weeks. I would sit there with my arms
folded whilst they fantasised about his upcoming domination of Rock. The tours, the hit albums.
My final six weeks crawled by. I was getting out two weeks before Phil because of the time I spent in Dellend cop
shop. One night he said quite casually.
“You know Eskimo Nell don't you? Didn't she come to our house once looking for you?”
“Yeah why?”
“Did you fuck her?” I bristled,
“Mind your own fucking business!”
“I'll take that as a no. I did.... not long before they brought you back from London.”
“You fucking liar!” I jumped off the top bunk and looked down at him. He was eating a Twix.
“Whoa don't get all fucking agg... I knew her before you did anyway. Me and Pogo did. What was she your bird or
something? I didn't fucking know! I met her in the Eagle car park one night and she was well up for it..... Took her
back to Pogo's! What a dirty bitch!” I tried to kick him in the head but missed and cracked my toe on the bunk instead.
“You're a fucking liar! There's no way that she would go near a fucking tosspot like you, no fucking way!” I managed
to connect my foot to his head. He got up quickly and shoved his face into mine.
“I fucking did........ Her heart's on the wrong side of her body, did you know that?!” I felt sick, I tried to punch him
but he expertly ducked then got me in a full nelson and forced me onto the floor. I swore and spat and tried to wrestle
free but he just held me there for ages saying,
“Calm the fuck down!” over and over. Eventually I went all limp and he left me lying against a cell wall. I started
crying and didn't want to turn and face him,
“She was a shit fuck anyway. Like an ironing board if I remember rightly!” He picked up his guitar and started to
sing Wonderwall. I stayed frozen on the floor for at least an hour then climbed onto my bunk and cried some more.
I didn't say a word for the next two days. He carried on chatting his usual shit but didn't mention Tracy again. Then
one afternoon the cell door opened and a fat vicar wobbled in, which made us both sit up.
The vicar sat on a little wooden chair with a look of such sombre seriousness that I think we both guessed what it was
about before he said a word.
After he told us, we both cried, but unlike me Phil kept going right into the night. I was blindsided by my own
emotions when he picked up his guitar and sang Maggie May, (one of Dad's all time favourites,) and I cried some more.
I didn't want to give a shit.
Dad had had a massive heart attack, alone at home, and that was that.
They took us to the funeral in a prison van, handcuffed like we were the fucking Krays or something. Two suits were
gotten to us from somewhere, uncle Eric or someone it must have been. Mine was for someone twice my size but Phil's
fitted him like it was tailor made and he spent most of the day in his Raybans acting as if he was in a shit Brit gangster
flick.
There weren't shit loads of people there, some relatives that I hardly knew, a few old rockers and some burnt out
looking women from the pub.
Phil got up and sang the Cat Stevens song,“Father and Son”. I felt a bit nauseous at this point and didn't know where
to look. Even the applause that followed sounded wrong to me. As the coffin went in to the furnace Thin Lizzy's “The
Boys Are Back In Town” blasted out and that got a big laugh
We were allowed to shake hands with everyone as they left. It wasn't just my suit that fitted worse than Phil's, I felt
out of place, and I thought it was obvious that I just wasn't that bothered. Everyone made a big fuss over Phil and sort of
ignored me which was fair enough, he seemed to know them all by name. One bearded old fucker in a Status Quo T-
Shirt rasped,
“He's still rocking! Somewhere up there he's still rocking son!” Phil actually hugged the smelly old fuck.
Outside the church as we were being led to the van, I spotted Tracy across the road stood in front of an old UFO &
Robotix piece watching us. She called out something that I didn't quite catch and waved. Phil grinned and waved back
before I reacted. Then we were shoved back into the van and cuffed back together. As we drove us away I looked
through the back window at her stood in the middle of the road in front of our graff, waving mournfully. It was a long
street so she became quite small in the distance before we turned.
A few weeks later as I left I actually gave Phil a hug. He'd been completely morose since Dad had died which meant
that we had both lay on our bunks in silence. I got off the train in Dellend and went straight to the Westgate. The
council had already cleared our house out and locked it all up. I stood outside looking at it in a sort of trance for ages
until Kelly Statter went past on a bicycle and shouted,
“Buzzer's looking for you!” First I had to go and see my probation officer. She'd arranged for me to stay in some
dosser's B&B up in the Northend. Though straight after seeing her, I went back to the Westgate and Ullah dragged me
into the Eagle for the first time in my life where he, Paul, Buzzer, Slacko, Maddah, Stilly, Pogo, Foggy and Riggy
bought me drinks until I was pissed senseless. I ended up staying on Pauls floor in his bedsit on Arniston Terrace, in the
same building where Scotch Mary's had been.
“I'm not bothered if you wanna crash here for a bit.” Whilst I'd been away he seemed to have developed a world
weariness, depression and an ambivalence towards me. He had a job at Harrisons factory so during the day I lay on his
bed playing X-Box alone. It always seemed to be pissing it down outside. I quickly fell into a state of inactivity
punctuated only by visits to the dole office, I'd had more of a life in jail. I knew my old crew were all sat in the Eagle
but even when Paul tried to persude me to go with him I just couldn't be arsed.
One day I was walking through town and saw Maureen, the biker woman who used to tell me and Tracy stories. She
barely remembered me but when I asked, told me,
“No love Tracy was only back for a couple of days a little while back, but no she lives in Manchester now! I think
she left that job in Bournemouth ages ago. Sorry I haven't got an address for her or owt!” .
The day our Phil got out there was a massive party in the Eagle. His band were ready and waiting for him and they
played that very night. Again I was aghast to see the excitement he generated, the gaff was rammethed. I couldn't get
near Phil for more than a moment that day, he was so crowded by well wishers and..... well, fans I suppose.
I left just before the band started, wandered over to the garage roofs and sat there alone looking at the stars as the
music drifted over from the pub, sounding like noise to me. Eventually a gang of tiny urchins that I didn't know jumped
up and asked,
“Who the fuck are you?”
My probation officer turned out to be alright. She managed to get me on a course where I learnt how to work with
asbestos. Removing it that is. Then straight after I finished the training the same company that did the course offered me
a job working in London. Removing asbestos from huge tunnels that were buried right underneath the BT tower.
My PO helped me arrange some cheap digs. I went down on the coach and then there I was, working in London,
staying somewhere around Kings Cross in a crappy B&B. The work was fucking hard and you had to wear all this
breathing equipment and special suits, but to me of course that meant I could fantasise that I was part of a team sent to
salvage some huge spacecraft.
For the first week in London I simply went to work, then back to my tiny room where I would fall asleep reading the
latest Ian M Banks. The first weekend I spent all Saturday looking for places that I'd been to with 3PO. The big squat
were Bonze was, was a busy building site. The skate shop Wiped was still there one street away. I mooched around
inside for a while. As I was flicking through some records someone said,
“Hey it's R2 innit? I remember you.... I haven't seen you for years mate!” it was Digger, I was well pleased to see
him. I'd just given up on the idea of being able to find any old connection from those earlier furtive weeks. Straight
away he told me about a party that he was going to that night. When I asked about 3PO he told me he'd heard he was in
America.
Meeting Digger changed everything. The rest of the weekend I was palled up with him, experiencing London more
like that first time with 3PO, partying hard. I felt too fucked to go back to work on Monday morning, but I did and spent
the rest of the week in the tunnels, desperately waiting for the weekend. When it came, I hooked up with Digger again
who took me to his squat, a council flat in Brixton. We went to a party in a basement where there was a five hour long
rap cypher.
Before long I'd moved into the squat thinking what my probation officer didn't know wouldn't hurt her.
I had a sixteen week work contract and I saw it through till the end. By the time it was over Brixton was my home. I
lived with Digger and a graff writer called Total who was a friend of Black Dave's so that was when I first met him and
then Tony shortly after. I got my first mobile phone and steadily filled it up with numbers. At this point in the story you
might be waiting for some older lad to appear and take me under his wing but although I will always be shorter than
most people, I no longer looked so much younger than those around me and wasn't up for another sidekick role. I was
now spending time with lads whom I was just about equal to in age and experience, London and Brixton were as new to
them as they were to me.
My first two years in the big city were mental and messy but fast and fun and mostly trouble free. It wasn't all plain
sailing of course but it was never grim. I lived in about six different places all in and around Brixton. Then me Dave and
Tony moved into “Zero Zero,” (it was actually number 100 but the 1 had fallen off,) some cheap as fuck, run down yet
palatial old vicarage that we rented and transformed together. It's hard to believe in today's climate how much space we
had so cheaply. It's still there, five minutes away from the Module, now totally renovated beyond recognition into
yuppie flats.
When we lived there that dom was the zenith of spliffed up laddish street culture. It was like the house the Monkees
lived in reimagined by graffiti artists for Dubstep heads. A mixture of artspace, party house and record and book archive
with the expansive unkempt garden having just a hint of psychedelic sculpture park. The first thing that greeted you in
the hall was a massive image of Marvel's Black Bolt surrounded by Kirby Krackle, his finger pointing at you, letting
you know what a sick dom you were entering. Amongst the many objet-d'art was a nine foot tall scrap metal robot that
guarded the back door with it's awsome weapons and in one room was an addidas gazelle trainer big enough to sleep on.
Void paid us to use Zero Zero for a fashion shoot once and some Trip-Hop producer shot a video there.
The house sat in the middle of a circular garden and there was an old garage between us and our nearest neighbours
at 98 meaning that we never heard any complaints about parties or the mix of Broken Beat, Drum and Bass, Dub and
Dubstep that was constantly pounding out of the sound system we'd built in.
Me Dave and Tony were the perfect triumvirate, complimenting each others skills, interests and collections. When I
sold hash, Dave sold commercial and Tony Skunk. When Tony obsessively collected Bruk 12 inches, Dave bought
cartloads of old Dub and I amassed esoteric Trip Hop. My books on Sci-Fi cover artists were joined on the shelf by
Tony's Jean Michel Basquiat and Kieth Haring books and by the ones on Piccasso and Matisse that Dave inherited from
his Dad. Our comics, books and magazines smothered every available surface. When we first moved in I worked in the
warehouse of Hydra Sports, Tony worked at Resilient Records and Dave was a cook at “Alesha's”, an upmarket
Caribbean restaurant, meaning we had bare trainers, records and jerk chicken.
Why then whilst living in this crucible of street culture did my Graff decline? There were a few reasons why
Robotix became a critic instead of an artist. When I got caught painting a big piece in Brixton, a not unreasonable
policeman told me,
“Listen son.... I'm one of the good guys and I'm giving you a warning..... I know some of you lads can get away with
this yeah and we are very tolerant around here. But with your record! I'd seriously think of retiring....Unless you want to
do some more jail time.” I really didn't. Another reason was that I was getting paid for writing for zines persuading me
to lean heavily in that direction. It wasn't like I never picked up a spray can again, but after every corner of Zero Zero
had a robot dancing in it I began to let it slide, never getting the same kick from legal walls. Deep down I think the real
reason was I knew that I'd been at my best when partnered with UFO.
I could write another whole book about the times at Zero Zero. Dave and Tony were the best friends I've ever had
and we lived in the dopest environment imaginable. It wasn't all about the partying, it was also that when the party was
over there was always someone to burn weed, play computer games and chat shit with. Not just computer games Dave
was a much better chess player than me and we had weekly poker schools. At Zero Zero there was a real cosy edge to
the urban slickness, a lot of tea got drunk as the weed got smoked. Many other people came in and out sleeping on the
couch or the giant trainer but everyone was I'm sure envious of the three of us who actually had the bedrooms. When
the legendary Dubstep night Automoton started in the crypt of the old church that Zero Zero was the vicarage to, we
would get there by walking through our own private alley that led into a tiny graveyard behind the club. It was after
coming home from a night there that we first began to plot our own organisation. The birth of Galaxis marked the
completion of our shift from wannabe, avid B-Boy consumers into UK bass scene creators and my personal transition
from WA runaway, into full on city wise dudester.
Phil was relocated from Dellend into a house in Camden by his record company, round about the same time as I
moved into Zero Zero. We tried meeting up a few times but always quickly began reenacting our old fights. I think it's
fair to say that his growing fame was not making him more tolerable. I adopted a policy of avoidance but the more I
ignored him the bigger his profile became. Within a year of moving down south he really became the megastar he
always thought he would and his gloating bearded profile became unavoidable, even to someone living in a world were
Rock had zero traction. Dellend became nothing more than a bad memory for me even as it gained notoriety for
spawning my brother but I never forgot the time I spent with Tracy. I became wise enough to realise that a few days and
two wanks do not make a relationship and I suppose I sort of forgave her for shagging Phil. I remembered her as a
friend, thought about the times we lived inside a Sci- Fi fantasy whilst bombing a whole town and I was always
mindful that it was Tracy who introduced me to 3PO who introduced me to Digger who introduced me to Total who
introduced me to Dave who introduced me to Tony, meaning there was always a thread leading back to her and those
ten days in Bournemouth that had given me my first taste of how good life could be.

CHAPTER 11
%%%%%%%%%%%
All of the spiders seemed to be reviving. The big one had spewd up a bucketful of white foam and was breathing
heavily. I tried to check the weapons on my suit but couldn't get a display up. Tracy turned to me,
“How are you feeling stud?”
“Are you going to explain to me what's happening here? Did you just help that spider? ”
“Oh come on R2 it's classic Philip K Dick. You really never realised you were a robot? Let me have a look inside
your head.” She walked behind me and took my helmet off. Then I could feel something like a panel being slid open on
the back of my skull.
“Wow! What a state you are in!”
“OK I get it I'm a robot. Who knew? Now are you going to help me get these fucking Attercop out of here or what?”
She pulled a face.
“Robotix I need you to listen to me. I think you've been imprinted with false memories!”
“You said that. What memories exactly?”
“I think it's a result of you being alone out here for so long. We were supposed to rendezvous ages ago but I couldn't
find you. You've been wandering parts of the galaxy where you were never meant to be. Also it could be the way your
mind was designed. It was supposed to help you face the challenges of a mission like this but I think ultimately it's
worked against you.”
“Please can you just try and explain. What are we doing here?”
“Listen Rod or R2 or Robotix, whatever you call yourself. Whatever you think is going on right now is not what's
happening. You were programmed to have an imagination but that's obviously........ Well it's fucked up. I know that
being told that you're a robot is a big shock for you. But I'm sure after seeing your body fall apart and float off in
different directions you can't doubt it. Of course robots like you can function fine knowing what you are. The problems
only come when you're led to believe that you're human. It's hard to readjust. It's called the reverse Pinnochio. I wish I
could reprogramme you right now but it's not that easy. I was sent because it was me and you who activated the device
all those years ago, do you remember that? What's happening now is in a way a culmination of what we set in motion
then.”
My eyes widened in horror as I realised that the big Attercop had completely recovered and positioned itself behind
Tracy as if it were her loyal pet. It regarded me with a cool gaze.
“Why did Oonoomi spit me out?”
“Our eggs were supposed to merge and that couldn't' happen with you inside suffering who knows what delusion.
You'd already nearly killed Atrax here.” She looked at some sort of device on her wrist, “Turns out our eggs can't fuse
anyway so....... But we still need to complete this mission. It's vital to the future of our galaxy.” Her suit slid open in
horizontal blocks leaving a space in the middle that she stepped out of. Once again she was dressed in the uniform and
red cloak I remembered from all those years ago. She pressed a button on my chest and my suit opened up the same as
hers. I stepped out of it wearing an addidas tracksuit and my intergalactic wellies.
“We need to fix you R2.” She'd picked up two of the small spiders and walked towards me with them moving like
eight fingered hands flexing and closing. Slots snapped open in my arms legs and chest into which she placed the
Attercop. I realised that there must be a lot of hollow space inside me, I could feel them crawling around. Tracy stroked
my face and gave me a sad look, “I really hope this works Rod.”
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

#####################################
 “Get up yer fucking lazy fuck!” My Dads ghost banged two saucepans together directly above my head. “You're
meeting your kid today!” I let a foot slap onto the floor and the phantom stormed off towards the kitchen as if he was
going to cook up a big breakfast, muttering,
“Yer might even enjoy yerself.....”
I felt wary of the coming day and needed a proper think about the night before. An unfamiliar putrid hangover was
piggybacking my usual sense of dread, but I did have Tracy's number on my phone, and despite all the weird static at
the start and the end of our reunion, we'd had a great night and I'd gotten a dinner invite. It was easy to believe that in
some way or other she was back in my life.
Even my dominant paranoid self, couldn't deny that something peta had happened. I'd been out, not just to some bo-
ho poetry reading, but to a proper night of skull squashing Snikt and Thwip where I'd got the fuck down, just like the
old R2! I'd rode out the tightening, dropped pills, (well singular)and had a great fucking time. That had to be a positive
thing. I opened my curtains and tried my best to make the light feel welcome.
As per, I got straight into the Mary Jane, but for once it seemed to have a calming effect and after a breakfast of
coffee and eggs I felt ready to meet my little brother.
I took a bus up to the West End, walked into Mayfair and found “Man”, the unskillfuly named bar we'd arraigned to
meet in. Man wasn't really exclusive in that any fucker at all could walk in off the street, but the prices were
ridiculously high enough to deter the average civilian. It was crowded with what looked like successful meeja types
dining and drinking. I sat at the bar with a Bloody Mary, fifteen minutes late but still no sign of Phil.
Pogo came running into the bar at full pelt, then started to trot around it scanning, going so fast he actually went past
twice without clocking me. He looked enough like some sort of hopped up hooligan to draw worried looks from
customers and staff. On the third pass I reached out and touched his arm.
“Pogo...... Where is he?”
“Oh Rod....alright mate, sorry yeah... He can't come in... He's waiting in the car outside!” Then he ran out. I drained
my glass, sighed, and girded myself for whatever was cracking in the crazy world of Rock.
Outside Pogo was sprinting up and down the street, looking for Phil's car. He'd come to London as the drummer in
Bad Self, then after a few minutes his lack of chops got him sacked. He'd stayed on the payroll as a flunky, now he was
a sort of long serving super toady. I watched him putting in his best effort to do his master's bidding, but Phil's car must
have driven round the block. When he walked back to me pulling a face and lifting his shoulders high I offered him a
ciggy.
“Hey how's your brother...uh... How's Foggy getting on.....You know I don't even know his real name?” Pogo smiled,
“It's Allen but ...yeah don't worry... He's the same really. He had that thing with his arm did you hear about that?...
But yeah he's sound really. He split up with that Lorraine he was with I don't think you met her. Council gave him a flat
at the top of the Ridge. It's all right. I went round there a few months back. I was in there you know what I mean, and
there he was revving a motorbike up in the middle of his kitchen, fucking fumes everywhere..... Big joint in his
mouth....Talking absolute shite about asteroids or something!”
“Why couldn't Phil come in?” but he didn't hear me, he'd ran off up the street, attracting attention again. He was
easily mistakable for a big Manc drug dealer, looking for the London connection who'd just done one with the big bag
of cash.
In fact if Phil hadn't been so famous, him and his whole entourage could have easily been taken for a council estate
gang like the WA. Until he whipped out his platinum Amex that is.
Finally Pogo ran towards a super sized Bentley, it's horn beeping as it crawled down the street. He frantically waved
at me to come over. I steeled myself, then crossed the road and followed him into the car.
It was like crashing a tiny bedsit the morning after an all night party. There were nine bodies in there. Phil slumped
in a corner, naked except for his boxer shorts, still wearing the unruly beard and hair that he'd been sporting in the
papers the day before. He looked completely comatose and didn't notice me get in.
I was shocked to see the white American rapper, Piggy sat in there. When I first moved into Zero Zero, we'd had his
debut comedy rap LP, “Mud Brothers” on heavy rotation. Instead of the regular tropes he rhymed about pigs, tractors
and moonshine. A guilty pleasure I suppose but he did have flow. I'd never before known Phil to hang with any
musician that couldn't be filed in the Rock/Pop section, but there he was, larger than life, wearing checked shorts and a
striped polo shirt, filling a bong from the pile of chronic that sat on a newspaper in front of him. There were a couple
more fat arsed American looking dudes in generic hip hop attire flanking him, one black one white, who could have
been bodyguards, fellow rappers, or just friends. In another corner there were three long legged, high end Rock chicks
curled up together in their fur coats, half asleep. They peered at me through tired slits, looking bored enough to have
been with Phil for more than a couple of hours. Beeny was there as well, some giant Manc monster I'd met before. He
was supposed to be some sort of actor, but was actually, I think, Phil's drug dealer/professional mate. I certainly hadn't
ever seen him on Netflix and doubted he was playing the Dane anytime soon.
It was pointless trying to ask questions or introduce myself with Led Zeppelin honking out at eleven. I was grateful
when Piggy offered me a hit on the bong.
Phil looked right through me nodding, mumbling something like,
“Rod..... Sound!” I threw him his birthday present which was a cardboard Phil Rose mask. There was a strange
moment whilst he tried it on, he looked slightly more two dimensional than usual.
He pulled it off his face and roused himself enough to introduce me,
“This is my brother Rod..... Named after the great Rod Stewart I'll have you know.... He's a fucking prick!..... No
sorry broth.... But well he is, he won't deny it. But he knows a lot about art. Well he says he does..... Anyway he's gonna
take us around show us the score like...Er, Rod this is Piggy you're probably a fan of his int yer. He's come along with
us, says he wants to buy some paintings though I don't think he's got much dosh. How many did yer new one sell on
release day?... He's alright for a septic.”
Piggy nodded at me saying,
“Sho nuff sho nuff!” his voice sounded exactly the same as on his records. Nobody else I didn't know was deemed
important enough for an intro. Pogo passed Phil two brace of placcy JD sports bags and he pulled out a brand new
tracksuit, socks and trainers, ripping their labels off before contorting into them. Like me he'd never really moved that
far from the basic Chav leisurewear look. We both tried to rock I suppose a muted take on it. I pondered the fact that
even though me and my brother lived vastly different lifestyles, he'd just put on nearly the exact same threads that I
was wearing. The only real difference was all his hair and bling, (plus he never wore a hat.)
The car pulled to a halt, and nearly everyone piled out, Phil said,
“Sorry Rod I've just got to get me hair cut!” I wasn't given a chance to complain or question. I scrambled out and
followed the entourage into an exclusive looking hairdressers. The door was being held open for us by a star struck
young girl.
I turned back and saw the Continental speed away with the women still inside. The hairdressers wasn't open for
regular business and besides the girl who let us in, there was just one cool Latino looking hombre in a tight T-Shirt,
waiting by one of four luxurious looking barber chairs.
Phil sat down, burped loudly and said,
“Take the fucking lot off Andre!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah beard, hair, fucking all over, you know...... Shave it. I'm sick off it..... Number one all over. No fuck it!
Numero zero.”
“Really Phil, are you sure? That's a pretty big image change!”
“How much am I paying you? I mean I'm not paying you to question my fucking.....Whatisit. If I say take it off take
it fucking off! Get shaving will yer? Hey Piggy have you heard that one? Man goes into a barber says how much for a
haircut? Barber says a tenner. How much for a shave? A fiver........ He says shave me head wilt thee!”
I was used to hearing sycophantic laughter around Phil. Beeny and Pogo laughed at his farts but Piggy and his crew
sounded like they genuinely thought he was funny.
The girl was sent off to fetch coffee whilst the rest of us sat and watched Phil getting shorn. Andre just quickly
shaved Phil's hair off like he'd been told and I could hardly recognise my brother without the thick mane and ridiculous
beard and tache he'd worn at different lengths since he was seventeen. He got up wiping his neck and feeling his chin.
“Thank you Andre, that feels oh...Better definitely...Hey by the way are you still going out with that Mellisa? Hey
Piggy have you heard of Mellisa Jones? You know the singer? This fucker is shagging her.......Hey you don't mind if we
have a little livener whilst we're here do you?” Andre made an unenthusiastic “Mi casa es tu casa,” gesture and Beeny
quickly started to expertly chop them out on a marble coffee table.
I looked over at the fat rock star sized lines, lying there shining yellow/white and crystalline. I'd known that
temptation like this was part of hanging with Phil but had hoped I'd be safe walking around art galleries with him. I
realised it had been a bit daft to imagine it would be just me and him on his birthday. I thought about the night before,
how allowing myself to neck a pill had seemed to actually help me. Maybe that was proof that I should stop being so
uptight. I watched Piggy hoover one up then when Beeny offered me the rolled up purple note, even though part of me
would have loved to say no, I couldn't resist.
Phil seemed completely recovered from the wankered state he'd been in just twenty minutes earlier, as he accepted
his coffee from the girl he leered, saying,
“How about you sweetheart..... fancy a line?” She nervously shook her head as he reached out and took her hand.
“That looks like a fucking massive pair of tits you've got there. Sorry I'm not trying to be rude it's just really. That is one
big pair of knockers!...... Can I see them?” Andre spoke up,
“C'mon Phil don't fuck about.... That's not cool, she's my employee. There's rules about that sort of thing! Fucking
Me-Too!” Phil threw her hand away,
“Oh fuck off I'm only fucking having a laugh with her. Believe me there's plenty of birds only too happy to show me
their tits. I bet she would if you lot weren't here.”
She sensibly, briskly walked away, not even realising that Phil tried to slap her arse, missing by a half inch.
“Right Rod, where are you taking us?”
“Well yeah, we should go to Cork street and take a look at the galleries there, I know there's a TeeZee exhibition
on ..... I thought you might like him.” Piggy lifted a hand like he was asking a question at school,
“Yeah that's the street artist dude right? From LA?”
“Er yeah that's him....”
“Yeah his shit is tight! I would definitely want to check it out.” I sniffed at the coke left inside my nose.
“Yep er.... What do we do? Get a cab or.....”
“No fuck it we're walking. Give me the hat please Pogo!” Phil put on a basic baseball cap, “There.... I'm in
disguise!” Pogo started laughing,
“I can't believe I've never noticed before...... How much you two look alike..... Well besides the height!”
“Fuck yeah!” said Piggy, “I mean...I know I've only just met you bro and this may sound harsh, but you're like his
mini-me dude. Are you much younger?”
“You just said the wrong thing there pal!” Phil threw an empty coffee cup at him. “I'm obviously the youngest....and
the most handsome....Much more virile an all! C'mon anyway lets hit the streets!” Piggy complained,
“Well you might be in disguise, but I'm still exposed right!”
“Fuck off! I could be wearing a fucking whatchacallit ...A fucking Burkha and people would still recognise me before
you! And even if they do.... Honestly Piggy I think most people, to be honest..... Here my brothers actually big into Rap
and all that ...Tell him honestly Rod... Most English people if they have heard of you...I think.... Well...... They think
you're dead!” I laughed along with everyone else. Piggy tried to kick him and I was glad to see Phil hanging with
someone who would make a move like that. Although Piggy was a white dwarf to Phil's super giant star they seemed to
be proper mates.
One thing I can confirm about our Phil, when he says in interviews that he doesn't need bodyguards because he's a
big hard fucker from Dellend, he's not actually bullshitting. He really does bowl through the streets, casual as you like,
not giving a fuck, and whether he's famous or not, it would be a brave soul who tried to give any shit to him and his
crew. Pogo and Beeny look like they could be security anyway, both being big beefy fuckers.
Piggy turned out to be personality of the year, cracking jokes, talking to passing strangers, fucking about like an
overgrown kid. At one point we passed a restaurant and he stuck a big sad hungry face up against it’s window. The
diners tried to ignore him but he wouldn't give up till he got a reaction. Eventually everybody was laughing, even the
waiters. Whenever he got recognised he happily posed for a quick selfie. Phil told the few Rocktastick chickadees who
saw through his disguise, to show him their tits. I was shocked by how many did give him a quick flash. He just told the
blokes to fuck off but to be fair, that did seem to be the response they craved.
I saw I had a text from Tracy,
“Grt 2 C u lst nght havnt dancd like tht 4 ages sory if was bit weird after bit fckd wud realy luv 2 C u again soon its
grt 2 hav u bck in my lifex.” This had an amazing affect on me, much better than the line of coke. Feeling like a happy
schoolboy, I texted back,
“Yeh me 2 must hav bin the drugs that made us a bit spaced talk 2U soon luv to reminis about old daysx.” As soon
as I pressed send I regretted adding the bit about reminiscing, like I couldn't wait to start droning on about Dellend and
Bournemouth to someone who'd been five times round the planet.
I was amazed that we got to Cork street and the Blond gallery without causing any kind of scene or being followed
by an ever growing crowd but the haircut, shave and baseball cap really did work like Superman's glasses, turning Phil
into Clark Kent.
Inside the sterile silent atmosphere of Blond, we couldn't help but draw attention from the handful of punters in
there. The upper class young woman tending shop as it were, was clued up enough to recognise the big Rock star and
when the black American dude weirdly asked,
“Miss can we have this door locked, just whilst we're here?” she happily complied . Then she hovered obviously
feeling there was a real chance of a sale. Phil didn't seem overly impressed as he looked at a Peter Blake painting. There
were some sculptures by Blake as well, all very modern looking, lots of bright colours. I thought they might grab his
attention. He did give a second look to a sort of shrine to Elvis but not for long.
“You know this is the guy who did the cover of that Beatles LP?” Phil grunted, he didn't seem a tiny bit bothered. He
snorted at a target painting,
“I could have done that!” I felt despondent and like I'd already shot my load. I'd thought Phil might get a throb for
Blake and all the paintings on sale would have fulfilled his desire for investment. I realised that I didn't have the first
clue what he was into art wise and hadn't fully reckoned on how quickly he'd get bored. After six minutes he was ready
to leave. Then in the gallery next door which was full of Kandinskies, he lasted exactly three minutes. He barely looked
at the art in a gallery exhibiting Robert Longo's and David Salle's. He openly laughed at a Julien Schnabal. It got
embarrassing in a gallery that had a few Jean Michel Basquaits. He shouted at the top of his voice.
“You're fucking taking the piss now.... I mean fuck's sake! It's like something a fucking toddler would paint!” The
other patrons scowled at him, not caring that he was a big celeb. A George Mellyish type was walking towards him as if
about to tear a strip so I steered him quickly out the door. I couldn't bring myself to take him inside the Tee Zee
exhibition so I didn't stop him walking past. It was a shame because Piggy and the others looked like they could get into
it but Phil was definitely their leader who they followed without question.
We walked past one gallery that was full of awful tacky bronze sculptures of rabbits and cats, proper gack. For one
horrible moment I thought Phil was going to get excited about it and rush in but no... he wasn't into that either.
I was glad when he suggested we go eat, I was starving and looking forward to some proper expensive comfort
scran. I have to hand it to Phil, he might take you somewhere with three Michelin stars, but he'll walk out if they don't
do chips. We were walking in the direction of a restaurant when Phil pointed and said,
“Hey, this is were The Diamondback Toad is! Piggy, man I gotta show you the shit they got in here!” He led us off
down a thin West End street.
He walked up to a plain looking doorway that had no sign or fuck all, just a bell and a camera. He rang the bell and
took his hat off to look up into the lens. The door buzzed and in we went passing a Damien Hirst spot painting on the
stairwell.
We had to be buzzed through another door and then a security guard greeted us with nods as we walked in to what
was an Alladins cave of bling. That is if Alladin was into bigger bling than Slick Rick.
There were cases and cases of crunchy clusters of horrid looking rocks. Chains and rings with jewels the size of
mutant popcorn, all kinds of fucking tacky colours, colours that I never knew jewellery came in. Viler shit than you
could imagine. I almost started laughing the place seemed to go so against the grain of Phil's normal Northern lad
image. He was looking at Piggy nodding as if to say,
“See isn't it sick!” Piggy whistled dutifully but I could tell he was suppressing a laugh too. A tiny Arabic looking
cove came out wearing the clunkiest chain that you have ever seen over a canary yellow suit. He held his arms out to
Phil like an Arabic stall holder being played by Omid Djalili in a Hollywood movie.
“Phil!” his voice was from that same film, “So good to see you. Are you wearing it?” He took Phil's hand and looked
at an ugly Rolex on his wrist. I realised all Phil's jewellery could have come from this weird shop but I'd never before
noticed exactly how vulgar it was.
“Every day Cristos everyday...... You can really see it on my new video you know....... I hold the mike like this.” A
dusky maiden appeared with a tray of full Champagne flutes,
“Drink my friend!”
“Always Cristos always. Hey Piggy come and check this out!” I sat back on a purple leather sofa under a huge
bejewelled mirror and accepted a glass of bubbly.
“I don't know!” said Piggy, “This is some next level pimp shit!” Another text from Tracy came through.
“Yeh me 2 once again grt 2 c u lets ctch up soon dinr 2morrow?x” Each text was like an injection of some happy
drug. I was again amazed by how relaxed I was whilst out in the world, easily breathing in the laddish troposphere that
Phil moved around in. I had to admit to myself that in a way I was fucking loving it. It was like being fifteen again. I
had to wonder how Phil managed to remain so much like a kid off the Westgate whilst living his superstar lifestyle. In
his own way he was healthy, I mean completely un neurotic, relaxed and happy go fucking lucky. I wondered if that
was where going through life without reading a single fucking book got you.
He was drooling over a ridiculous looking dagger in a heavily jewelled scabbard on a orange leather holster. It
looked like what Sinbad the sailor would wear in a Baz Lohman re-boot. Phil was really taken by it, more interested
than he had been in any of the art on Cork street.
“That's fucking sick that is..... Check this out Piggy!” He pulled the blade out and started dangerously swiping it
around. Light bounced off it around the room like an angry wasp. I remembered what a proper mad bastard I was
dealing with. The blade looked quite tasty. I saw Pogo flinch and noticed one of Piggy's companions give the other a
real WTF! look.
“Fuck it I want it! How much is it?” It seemed to me then that Cristos was actually taking the piss, like he was putting
it all on, the voice and everything.
“For you my friend.... Special price.You know there is only one more like this in the whole world.... I sold it in the
seventies..... To a friend of yours.”
“Who?” Cristos laughed, held his hands together for a beat then opened them wide and said,
“Keith Richards.”
“Allright Cristos don't overcharge me too much yer robbing bastard. You wouldn't believe how much money this
fucker makes out of me.” I thought he was right, I probably wouldn't.
“I will have it sent!”
“Fuck that! I'm wearing it now!” Phil took his tracksuit top off and started to put the holster on. This genuinely
dismayed Cristos, he started making all kinds of noise,
“The insurance... It's for decoration Phil... We need to...... Phil it is not legal to wear a knife like this... Concealed....”
Phil simply put an arm round his shoulder and gave him the smug patronising smile of someone who was rich enough to
get whatever he wanted. Cristos hung his head.
Phil put his top back on and said to Piggy,
“What are you saying Piggy, you gonna invest in some shine or what?”
Piggy couldn't hide the fact that he was being totally weirded out by this detour into tastefree, crazy, Liberace-land,
“Not today bro not today!” There was an embarrassing moment of silence then Piggy rubbed his hands together
saying, “Man lets go eat! Piggy needs some swill!”
Phil took us to a very fancy smancy place indeed. It had a red leather floor for fuck's sake. The menu was great
though. Between us we ordered lobster, fried chicken, ribs, chips. I had a huge juicy burger which was the best I'd ever
tasted and it went great with the bucket of Champagne I swallowed. I spent a while trying to think what to text back to
Tracy, I wanted to get it right.
The heavily tattooed chef came out and joked around with Phil for a while. He looked about sixteen.
“Happy birthday then you fucking wanker! You didn't get us to do your catering did you?”
“No I wanted something people would fucking eat!” A cake appeared and we all dutifully sang happy birthday. A
different sleb seemed to walk over to Phil every two minutes and shoot the shit with him. I was at the other end of the
table so couldn't hear everything but was sure he told Johnny Depp and Ricky Gervais to fuck off. When some model
type woman was walking away after saying hello he leant after her and bit her on the arse. Everyone, including me,
went back and forth to the toilets snorting more and more chalk. I was feeling increasingly like a full member of the
entourage. I kept finding myself between Pogo and Piggy laughing at something Phil did or said. I felt much more
comfortable than I usually did when around him. It might have been down to Piggy and his boys being there, like there
was someone else sane around instead of the usual pub darts team of Rock. It was the most time we'd spent together
since we'd been locked up in Kurt Lev.
In fact the constant flow of champagne and top notch yao had loosened me up so much that in a moment of cocaine
madness I decided to ask everyone if they wanted to come to Zina's private view. I didn't like people knowing who my
brother was but I had to reluctantly admit that him showing up would probably create a lot of PR noise for Zina.
“Yeah fuck it we've got time...I still need to buy summat.” He said it like the total un interest he'd shown earlier
hadn't happened, and he was actually very likely to purchase some art.
We left the restaurant and walked down a tight alley towards Soho, all a bit pissed and lairy with that clean coke
buzz you only get from the really good stuff someone like Phil can acquire. Piggy sang “ Werewolves Of London,” at
some passing hipster with outsized mutton chops, until Phil kicked him up the arse nearly sending him flying. I was
amazed by myself. There I was like a normal non anxious person, out dancing all night and then the very next day, on
the piss with my brother.
Phil stepped into a building site to have a slash behind a wall. Again one Yank flashed a look at the other as though
he thought this was sketchy behaviour. A young Japanese couple straight from central casting, actually wearing T-Shirts
with Phil's face emblazoned, approached as he was putting his cock away. They were too timid to get close but were
trying to ask with gentle sign language from ten feet away, if it was OK to take a photo.
Phil beckoned them over. They approached beaming with pure joy. He whipped out his new dagger and waved it in
the girls face before putting it to the boys throat saying,
“Give me your fucking wallets!” Everyone froze in horror. I saw the American dude who'd been giving the looks,
now give a real big wide eyed one, as if to say,
“See Motherfucker!” Piggy went to say something but just came out with a confused,
“Hey! Bro....fuck!” Pogo made a face like, here we go again. I was motionless and silent and suddenly could feel all
the Bollinger and coke fighting for control of me. The two kids had looks that will stay with me for the rest of my life.
Worse than plain terrified, it was the confusion, like small children that had just been attacked by Micky Mouse. The
girl was saying something really fast in Japanese.
“I said give me your fucking wallets you slitty eyed fucks!” He made a noise precisely half way between a laugh and
a snort, “I'm not fucking around, I swear down! Fucking get your wallets out now!” Nervously they did as they were
told, the boy's was leather, her's rainbow coloured plastic. Phil grabbed them, then said to the girl,
“Right lift your top up, I wanna see some Jap titties!” Piggy spoke up properly now,
“Dude shit this aint cool bro! Phil, dude, c'mon.... You're my boy but!” Phil seemed to accept that he'd gone too far,
he grunted,
“Go on then... fuck off,” and they both ran off clutching each other. I'm sure they were crying. Phil still had their
wallets. The space filled up with builders about half a second after he put the knife away. He emptied the wallets of
cash, and then seemingly expertly, threw them onto a rooftop.
Piggy really found his voice now,
“Dude shit man that's not cool.... Fuck man you took the kid's wallets?” I noticed that Pogo and Beeny were looking
very shifty, like they'd been here before and were ready to fight if Piggy and his boys got too agg. I could feel the
tension like broken glass being pushed into everyone's face.
“Fuck off!.... I'm having a laugh! They'll be telling the story of how Phil Rose mugged them to all their fucking nip
mates back home....It's probably the biggest thing that's ever fucking happened to them!”
I was about to say something about the police but saw the ridiculousness of that. Two kids who could hardly speak
English in Phil Rose T-Shirts trying to say that they'd been mugged by Britain's biggest Rock-star. I couldn't imagine
their identification would be taken too seriously. I remembered all the reasons why I was supposed to avoid him. He
was unpredictable, unstoppable, like a spoilt toddler with super powers. He was my little brother and I'd never been able
to curb him.
From then on in, Phil's attitude to Piggy cooled. I knew what he was thinking, something like, “Some people like to
act like they're up for it, but cry like bitches when you try and have a proper laugh.”
All the champagne and coke was now laying like heavy sludge on my stomach and brain. We walked around a
corner, everyone but Phil and his flunkies in shock. Phil was behind Piggy,
“You're not just fat are you Piggy? You've actually got the shape of a woman. I mean, not just moobs, you've got a
woman's arse an all!” and then there in front of us was Zina's show. A crowd of people stood outside smoking and
holding wine glasses. I spotted Zina, she looked luminous in a sexy dress and a pair of white Reeboks, puffing on a fag,
enjoying her big day.
Everybody saw us coming and somebody must have recognized Phil because there was a definite murmuration as we
approached. He swaggered up to the throng and said,
“How do! This the place is it? Are yer gonna let us through then?” before pushing his way in. I sat down on the curb
outside and started making a reefer. Zina stood over me all excited,
“Did you just turn up with Phil fucking Rose!? That is him right, he's not got a beard but.... And is that fucking
Piggy over there?” Piggy was talking excitedly to his two cohorts, nodding his head quickly. One of them said
something like,
“I don't care about John Lennon.... This dude ain't that anyway..... Fuck that!”
I nodded at Zina,
“Yep I sure did! Piggy over there, and that's him.... The great Phil Rose!”
“Wait a fucking minute!” she looked at me and then inside the gallery at Phil, “Your name's Melrose right! Fuck
you're related to him!” Pogo had sat down next to me,
“That's his brother.”
 “Shit I can't believe it!!!! He's one of the most famous people on the...” she caught the look on my face and stopped,
composed herself, then said, “Well fuck it, thanks for bringing him?”
“Not a problem!” I lit the J. I could have just walked away at that point I suppose, but felt that now I'd brought him
near friends of mine, I couldn't just leave him to wreak havoc. Also I was wasted and Phil's magnetic field seemed to
have trapped me as skilfully as my chair in the Module usually did. In the past I'd never had trouble walking away from
Phil, knowing that I could get back to Brixton and Zero Zero where plenty of my own shit was happening. Now leaving
meant going back to my tiny, lonely, haunted dom alone and that wasn't appealing. Also not getting the tightening was a
real novelty for me, and I was curious as to how long that would last. I texted Tracy, “Sorry to bang on but it really is so
gud 2 C U agn.”.
I'd sort of hoped that Zina's show would be alternative and hip enough not to be totally warped out of shape by our
Phil rocking up. It was a similar crowd to the one at the poetry reading the night before, just a bit more hip and
obviously urban, a lot more trainers than boots. I was disappointed when I walked in and saw that he was already acting
like a super massive black hole sucking in everything around him. The few proper photogs there, including Mede, were
now all focused on Phil. Plus a lot of other people had started to oh so surreptitiously take snaps or film him on their
mobiles.
Phil showed no interested in the paintings or his surroundings in general. He had somehow found a chair and was
slumped in it looking like he was about to sleep off his dinner.
He was being crowded by an ever growing knot of gawkers, some trying to engage him. I wandered around looking
at the paintings that had just become second fiddle to my nasty shit of a little brother. I had seen them all being wrapped
up the day before but they looked a lot better properly hung and given some space. I stared at the one she'd used for the
invite, getting lost in the imaginary landscape in the background. I drifted back outside with a glass of wine to have
another smoke.
Mede appeared besides me and gave me his usual loud salutations.
“R2D2 up in the place!” Then he asked, “Is it true R2? Phil Rose is your brother!” and I realised I'd better ask him and
Zina to keep it schtum if I didn't want every fucker in Brixton knowing.
I wondered why I couldn't just get up and leave. I remembered I had the Starr exhibition to go to. I hadn't seen Phil
express any interest in buying any of the art that he'd seen that day, or any interest full stop. Deep down I knew I'd been
affected by his gravity as much as all the other no mark asteroids floating around but when Mede said,
“Isn't it time that we went to the Sheldon Starr show?” I replied,
“That Mede, is a good idea,” but then Phil was suddenly there right by my side with his full entourage behind him.
Fuck knows what strange motivation kept Piggy hanging in there, he looked like he'd been kicked in the balls.
A cove in a suit who must have worked for the gallery came out and gave Phil some sort of receipt. It turned out he'd
bought five of Zina's paintings and she looked suitably thrilled. It wasn't just about making some scratch, it could be a
big deal for her publicity wise.
“We're closing up here now,” she said to me, “Is it OK if I tag along to the Starr thing with you and Mede......Sorry
Mede told me about it earlier and I just heard you say....” I shrugged,
“Why the fuck not!”
“Yeah that's a great idea. More art!” Phil put his arms around me and Zina. “What do you say Piggy? Then after that
we can go to my party. I always like to be late at my own do's, you know what I mean?”
We set of walking in one big cumbrous group, this time drawing a lot of throb despite the haircut and hat. Word
must have spread that Phil was about, half the street was stalking him, holding up mobiles.
There was a tiny queue outside the Shape gallery and I realised that I only had one invite. However that was never
going to be a problem with Phil in tow. The cull on the door was very happy to let him in, with I think as many people
as he wanted. Going in, we all had to individually step into a strange Sci-Fi box that seemed to take photo's of us from
every conceivable angle. It looked like some sort of bizarre security measure but I guessed it was actually something to
do with the show itself.
We walked into the biggest most rammethed white gallery space I've ever seen. It looked like a swish futuristic party
in full swing. The crowd was a slightly older and much more moneyed version of the scene we'd just left. The only art
on show was a dozen robots waltzing and wheeling around the room, each one featuring some sort of screen. They
weren't all impressive androids or anything like that but rather all had different levels of sophistication. Starting with
what looked like a rack of flat screens on a trolley, finishing with a humanoid on roller-skates covered in a bleeding
edge digital screen like a body hugging onesie.
Thinking about my review, I wondered if Starr was trying to say something about how technology develops.
Everybody seemed fascinated by whatever was on the screens. I made a bee line to a waitress with a tray of wine and
then wandered off on my own. I saw Mede was still photographing Phil. Also a film crew were on him and some yoof
TV presenter was sticking a mike in his face. Phil took all this in his stride, looking perfectly relaxed.
A robot whirred up to me, on it's screens an image of a woman. I looked at her and she started to morph, I realised,
into an image of me. When it went speeding off, I looked around and noticed that for a while at least, most of the
screens were showing me.
Despite what I'd said to Dan about me not knowing the real art world, the Starr show actually fell well into my
catchment. It was more high tech entertainment than high brow concept, I should have felt comfortable there. Yet it was
Phil who seemed at home, laughing and joking with Zina, Mede and some cove in a white snood who I think was
Sheldon Starr, whilst I stood glugging wine alone.
 An attractive young woman walked up and positioned herself directly in front of Phil. It took me a moment to
recognise her as Sabrina Prest, another kid's pop TV show presenter, a big deal It girl and teen guru. Even though this
was much more of a celebrity shin dig than Zina's, an only slightly less blatant circle of interest had formed around Phil.
Even the robots seemed to be hovering and I was appalled to find myself stuck on the circumference looking in, for
some reason as fascinated as every other fucker by this Queen of style meeting the evil prince of Rock.
Phil whispered something in her ear and she laughed out loud. Mede came up to me, flanked by two Mede Robots.
“Hey he's a fairly cool dude your bro! He's er... Invited me to his party!” I grimaced. I hated to see people falling for
Phil, even if I sort of had myself earlier that day. For all my lukewarm feelings about Mede I thought he should have
been clued up enough to be immune to Phil's corrosive rocker charms.
“We had a laugh about that review I wrote! He said he was glad not everyone was trying to suck his cock!” A
warning alarm went off in my head, “DANGER DANGER!” I knew for a fact that universal fellatio was precisely what
Phil expected. There was something deeply disturbing about Phil inviting Mede to his party if he knew that he'd written
that review.
“Look mate, I want you to do me a big favour right. Listen seriously I don't want you to go to that party. I mean
please, listen, really don't go!”
Mede laughed,
“What? C'mon, I could get some snaps. He said it was cool for me to you know.... Bring my camera. It’s like a
big....Fucking hell......Opportunity! I'm sorry he’s your brother....Fuck that’s...It must be a bit of a head fuck.. I mean...
I can’t believe you've never mentioned it..... Are you a bit weird about him being your brother? Look I won't tell anyone
at Void! I mean I've always kept your other secret... I mean I've never told anyone we know that you're Robotix! I know
Zina doesn't know. I just told her you were coming here with me but I didn't say....”
“Thanks... But listen! If my brother knows that you wrote that review, you have to believe me....” At that point
everyone else in the gallery gave a huge gasp. The robots had formed a big spinning circle and were now executing a
complicated dance move. The people they were representing were changing faster and faster so that the screens started
to flicker. Mede rushed off to take photo's.
Phil was professionally gathering his squad, and at that point I had to ask myself why the fuck I would want more.
Yet I couldn't let Mede to go off with him on his own. Sure he was a grown man, but I knew he didn't have a clue what
he was dealing with. I determined to keep him from danger.
A wave of drunken exhaustion washed over me, I didn't have the stamina to knock back and snort up Rock star
servings of Champers and coke. I crouched down on the floor and put my head in my hands. Five robots with Phil's face
and body simulated joining hands in a circle around me, then began to spin. They all looked like me, then my brother
again. The real Phil touched me on the shoulder.
“So you might as well come to my party now, I mean we've been out all day together and you know we've er not
argued yet have we? C'mon it'll be good. I'm not even going to tell you how much money I've spent on it. I think Piggy
would like you to come!” I shook my head without lifting it.
“Are you alright broth you seem a bit....I don't know....Fucked up!”
Outside the same Bentley and driver from before were already waiting and everyone started to pile in. I looked
around and was relieved to see that Mede had disappeared, and not that surprised to notice Zina jump in the back.
Sabrina was holding them up, saying long goodbyes. I gave a little wave and started to walk away, Pogo jumped back
out of the car and got a friendly grip on me.
“Hey don't go off on your own Rod. C'mon this is gonna be a fucking banging party yer know.. ....” he dropped his
voice to a whisper, “Look I know........You know what I mean...... I know! But c'mon Rod he really does want you to be
there you know.” Piggy was leaning out of the window imploring me as well,
“C'mon Bro don't split up the group!” I'm not sure if it was that deep down I just really did want to go to the big party
full of slebs, or if I was so thrilled to be out without having a panic attack, or if I wanted more coke, or if I wanted to be
there at my little brothers thirtieth, or if I didn't want to go home and be alone. Whatever the reason, I climbed into the
whip.
Sabrina was still holding us up, Phil had got back out now and was physically pulling at her,
“Look come if your coming!” She moved towards the car but then stopped again just before getting in so she could
say goodbye to Alexa Chung. Phil got back in but then she started to take someone's number causing him to shout,
“Right... We're going without you!”
Finally she jumped in and we set off, her yakking a thousand to the dozen in what can only be called a loud coke
voice,
“Sorry I've just got to tweet where I'm going. You know I'm going to tell everyone that they've got it wrong about you
Phil. I mean there you are at an art gallery.... Please that's just too unexpected. You know who that was who's number I
was getting?... Sharon Twining you know the editor of Klaxon magazine she's a real love. Hang on I forgot to tweet that
I met her.” Her phone rang and she started to shout even louder into it!
“AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH Guess who I'm with....... Who I'm in a car with. No ….no...no. Phil fucking Rose
yes..YES I FUCKING ..hang on.” She took a photo of Phil and sent it. His face was expressionless. “Yes I know yes I
know, YES YES.” Her laugh was unpleasant. Pogo was staring at her as he chopped out lines on a big mirror that was
obviously in the car for that very purpose. He and I both knew that Phil wasn't keen on anyone louder than him,
especially not women. “Oh is that cocaine? Marvellous!That was Jonathan Laime on the phone you know the writer!”
I'd seen her on TV or You -Tube or whatever and she was always pleasant enough, she was unbelievably different in the
flesh. I saw Phil visibly wince. She went on,
“Y'know it's so strange, I really fucking wanted to go to this party. I was going to go with Alice because she had an
invite....do you know Alice? We went glamping together last weekend... and y'know but now wow wait wait slow down
driver slow down!” She thrust her head out of the window and started screaming, “BAAAAAAZZ BAAAAZ look it's
me!” Pogo was laughing now. Phil shouted,
“Stop the car!” We pulled over and he got out whilst saying to her in a calm reassuring voice,
“Look Sabrina, I need you to do something for me. Just step out of the car for one moment I need to show you
something it's a sort of experiment.” She did as he asked, intrigued but obviously a little nervous.
“Oh... OK … You know I've heard some wicked stories about you. I hope this is nothing bad.....” There on the
pavement he pushed her arms into an artistic pose as if positioning a shop dummy into the shape of a ballerina. She
began to look a bit scared but complied and didn't stop talking.
“What is it that you're doing? Are you going to take a photo? Is this a prank?”
“Yeah just like that!” Then he leapt back into the car shouting,
“Drive!” and we sped away leaving her there at the side of the road with a folorn look on her face. The whole car
burst into evil laughter. I noticed Zina was in stitches, which I thought wasn't very sisterly of her. He'd gone too far
earlier but now I marvelled at Phil's power to twist people into his own cruel mindset. No matter how much of a pain
she was, I couldn't imagine his prank flying in any other mileu, and yet there we all were yukking it up, feeling the full
power of the darkside.
The rest of the journey was spent snorting Phil's coke whilst listening to shit like The Cult and Guns and Roses. Zina
partook, her wide eyes the only give away that she was actually struggling to retain frost in superstar world.
Phils Rock and Roll mansion didn't really look all that from the outside. Just a big old house in Islington not standing
out much from the others around it, but I'd been there once before and knew that it was ridiculously grandiose on the
inside and had a garden the size of a small farm. Phil walked right on in and we all sort of sheepishly followed. Piggy
grabbed me and shook me as if to say,
“Well we made it! Here we are at the kick ass party!”
Walking in to Phil's dom I was set upon immediately by his retarded taste. Hanging on the wall was what must have
been the largest poster in existence of Tony Montana in his white suit, smoking a cigar and nursing a machine gun. I
realised how hopeless it had been taking him around galleries, then remembered that he'd bought Zina's paintings and
wondered if it was because it was airbrush art. Maybe they reminded him of that Rod Stewart LP we'd had up on the
wall as kids. A lot of guests were there already, drinking. They all cheered when Phil walked in, then a lot of people
commented on his lack of hair. Just to the right was a ballroom all done up with disco lights and balloons. A DJ who
looked as though she could have been Lenny Kravitz's bass player or something, was mixing in the Faces as the Rolling
Stones faded out. I wondered where you would even find a DJ like that. There was Dead Dad drinking straight from a
bottle of Jack, looking like he was having a blast. He waved at me as though he'd been waiting for me to arrive. I
walked out into the garden alone. Phil's idea of a good party was as extra as the shit in the Diamond Backed Toad. It
looked like the party a billionaire would put on for his twelve year old son who was dying of cancer. There was a whole
circus worth of acrobats and jugglers. Sideshows, a coconut shy, fairground rides. Real pornographic looking ice
sculptures, human sculptures, vodka fountains. I saw a circus tent with it's flaps wide open, empty except for a stage
with a drum kit and a Bad Self backdrop, all set up for a gig. I found a quiet spot by an ornamental pond, sat down and
almost fell asleep. Pogo sat next to me and made a spliff. Piggy and his boys joined us like we were a unit now. He
started to rap, his white mate did beatbox.
“S'up
Gonna fuck you up
Put your head in a cycle
Ain't gonna fuck around with little kid's like Micheal
Jackson
I'm here for the action
That's a fact son
Put your body in traction
Get some traction
On my tractor
It's a factor
That it's a caterpillar
Killer, aint no tractor iller”
Me and Pogo were both nodding our heads in appreciation, he passed me a very welcome zoot,
“What d'yer reckon... better than Stilly?” I had to smile at that one.
“Hey Pogo I wanna ask you. Do you remember Tracy?”
“Tracy Grimely who you graffed up the whole of Dellend with? Course I fucking do. I knew her before you. My
Mum and her Mum were mates for years. Why?”
“Nothing really just asking....... She's turned up in London, I saw her last night actually.” Pogo smiled.
“UFO and Robotix. People still remember you two back in Dellend yer know. There's still some of your graff up in
places. Yeah you totally plastered the whole town didn't yer. How come you don't do it no more? I suppose you were a
team weren't yer?” He gave me a conspiratorial look.“Look Rod. You know yer mate's still coming?”
 “Who? What... You mean Mede?.....The photographer?”
“Yeah... Phil gave him an invite, told him to make his own way here!” He lifted an eyebrow high. Pogo had betrayed
his boss to give me that warning. Obviously Phil had sussed that I would have tried to stop Mede from coming. I
thought I better go find the clueless fucker. I gave Pogo the spliff and walked back towards the house dodging
performers done up like feathered snakes in multicoloured lycra as they cartwheeled past.
The party was quickly filling up. There were many gaggles of women like the ones we'd left in the car earlier, all
oddly wearing the same sort of fur coat and all of them with really long legs made longer by really high, high heels.
Phil was stood near the door greeting people like a normal attentive host. Five lads who looked about seventeen had
just turned up. I think they were some new Rock band, young pretenders to Phil's crown I supposed. I don't know much
about that scene. As some kind of stunt they all did handstands and then walked past Phil, upside down. It seemed to me
they'd been practising. Phil gave them a half hearted clap.
The place was filling up with the Rock and Pop gliterati and various other slebs. Old rockstars new rockstars,
popstars, everyone trying their best to fit in with the laddish vibe. Drinks were being spillled voices raised. It was like
being inside a copy of FHM magazine, I think there were a lot of footballers there. I saw someone, it looked like
Richard Branson, pick a woman up and turn her upside down. I went into a kitchen and thought I saw Chris Martin
pouring a glass of wine but realised that it was just a waiter that looked like him.
“Alright Rod!” I turned and saw at a very large cull in a Puma tracksuit. He had a shaved head and some wide tattoos
darkening his big fat neck. The face wasn't familiar but I recognised the Dellend accent so guessed it was somebody I
was supposed to know, probably one of Phil's old mates.
“It's OK you don't recognise me.... I'm a fat bastard now I know. It's funny you look exactly the same as what you
used to, well I mean you look older but..... Living in London all these years I thought you might look.... I don't know...
different...Your brother's the same...”
“I'm sorry mate, I know I know you...” but then looking right into his eyes recognition hit me like an electric shock,
“Slacko! Fuck man....... What the fuck are you doing here? I didn't realise you even knew our Phil.... Hey there's not a
bus load of WA here is there?” I actually looked around the room thinking that maybe there was. I surprised myself
realising that the prospect seemed pleasing to me.
“No no.... There's just me... Actually Pogo's here somewhere. Look er I hate to come over like a dick or whatever....
But I've er, gotta tell you I don't go by the name Slacko anymore. I've got four kids now you know!”
“Oh fuck sorry of course..... I do know your real name I can't.... Sorry mate I can't remember it?”
“That's OK.... Nowadays people call me Slacks!”
I kept a straight face.
“So how come you're here Slacks? Did you get matey with our Phil after I left Dellend or...”
“No I didn't really get to know your brother till...Well...... A couple of years back.... You know...... I told him I was
mates with you.... You know back in the day but he doesn't actually remember me from then.... Obviously he
remembers my brother, my oldest brother who you can still call Maddah by the way he hasn't changed a bit either, well
you know.... He has but....”
I was getting more and more confused. So Slacks had met our Phil after he became a famous Rock star? It didn't add
up.
“Has he never told you about it?... The thing is I run the old youth club now ...You know where Phil learnt to play and
all that. Well we never went did we? We were too busy sniffing gas down at the Gash.... I mean that's the thing I try to
keep the kids..... You know on the straight and narrow. Now.... I mean that's my job like, I try and keep the new crop
away from the Gash as it were. I mean it's not actually really there anymore it's been done up but........ And your
brother..... He's been great, I don't just mean the money that he gives us... Remember the old garages? Well that's where
we built the new centre... Y'know... With Phil's money.... It's great for the kids! Now they've got a studio. They can play
as loud as they like in there you see.... I mean they're miles away from any fucker, but I mean the thing that really helps
is all the times he visits and you know gets involved..... You know the fact that he can take time out...Well you must
work for him do yer? Has he not told you about all this?....”
“No I...” I spotted Mede taking a photo in Phil's kitchen looking exactly like an innocent hipster lamb, ready for the
slaughter. I needed to go and wise the fucker up. I was getting a bit freaked out by Slacks anyway. Not just by his
revelations about Phil the altruistic benefactor, but also by his new youth worker persona. I worried that if I spent much
more time with the person I'd always voted most likely to grow up as a complete wasteman, he might suss how fragile I
was, or what a prize nobber I'd become.
“Er Slacks sorry I,.....I've just got to er....... I just saw someone I know. I won't be a....” I wandered over to Mede.
“Hey R2!” he took a photo of me, “Gotta admit this is a rocking par-tay!”
I sighed and put my hand on his shoulder,
“I told you not to come.... I...”
“Yeah but just taste this, please it is the most fucking amazing drink that I've ever.... Oh it's so lovely!” He was
sucking an ethereal looking green concoction through a straw.
“Listen to me Mede! I don't know what possessed you to tell him that you wrote that review....”
“He just recognised my name actually. Well you know I mentioned that I worked with you...”
“What!” That was, if anything a lot worse. If Phil was angry enough about it to actually remember his name, he
probably had the review printed and framed somewhere, centrepiece of some voodoo altar. I took a swift slug of his
weird looking drink, it tasted fucking lovely, some sort of Mojito.
 “Look come with me, we can share a taxi....” Mede wasn't listening, he was taking a photo of Thom Yorke talking to
Damon Albern and Alice Cooper. I took another swig of his cocktail.
“It is nice that isn't it? My man Beeny made that especially for me!”
“What!” my stomach contracted like it was trying to grab a marble. Now I wasn't sure if we'd been slipped a rufey or
just plain poisoned. I threw the drink straight onto the kitchen floor. It landed right by Ronnie Wood's feet and he gave
me a very black look.
“What the fuck!” said Mede. He took another photo of me.
“OK now we need to share a taxi.... To a hospital...Listen Mede my brother he's not......”
“They're about to go on!” A young American girl, I think it was Miley Cyrus, screamed that right into my ear. There
was a sudden ugly surge out into the garden and I lost Mede in the crush. I think he wanted to get away from me and
took his chance. He seemed to think I was just acting a bit mental because I couldn't hack having a famous brother. I
hadn't drank a lot of whatever foul brew Beeny had so lovingly prepared, but I was seriously worried about what secret
ingredients it might have. I followed the crowd out into the garden and walked over to the now rammethed big top but
didn't spot Mede. I thought it was a bit crass of Phil to be playing at his own birthday party but couldn't really
rationalize exactly why I thought it was wrong.
I could feel throb coming from the crowd like heat. I realised that the last time I'd seen him on stage was in Kurt
Lev, and if I watched him now that would make three gigs altogether including that one at the Ridge that never got
started. Four if I counted Dad's funeral. I stayed at the back but was still squashed and elbowed. I saw Zina thrusting
towards the front, looking more like a massive Rock fan than a regular on the bleeding edge, bass underground. Dead
Dad was there, he hugged me, spilt beer all over me and shouted,
“Here we go son... This is going to be fucking great!” I'd never seen him so excited, alive or dead. I supposed it was a
shame for him that he never got to witness the phenomenal success of the son, that he had, after all, always predicted
stardom for.
Iggy Pop appeared on the stage, shirtless in a white suit and stood in front of a mike like he was about to give a
father of the bride speech.
“Ladies and Gentlemen.... Are you ready to hear the most kick ass Rock and Roll band on the planet!” The crowd
squealed.“I give you the birthday boy. Phil Rose.... And Bad Self!” Pyrotechnics went off and Phil leaped onto the stage
almost knocking the Ig over. They went straight into Jailbreak, I presumed the much older geezer playing guitar with
them must be someone out of Thin Lizzy. The whole tent went gorilla shit (sort of), I'm sure it wasn't your average
moshpit. I found myself being bounced up and down in the middle of a group of what seemed to be fat businessmen in
motorbike leathers. Dad was in front of me in the centre of a gaggle of models, grinning and screaming and groping
their tits.
Liam Gallagher might have been Phil's childhood hero but he didn't copy his stage craft. Rather he bounced around
like an insane orangutang, then got down like a cross between Elvis, James Brown and a punk Mick Jagger who could
really dance. I knew that he hadn't played guitar for years, but was shocked by how much he leapt around the stage and
had to grudgingly admit that he had some moves. He threw the mike stand around with abandon yet always had it in his
hand when he needed it. He fell about like a drunk trying to start a fight with both the audience and the band, yet each
lurch, every lunge and fall seemed to be in synch with the music. I couldn't take my eyes of him. I could almost believe
I was watching the greatest contemporary dancer of the age dancing the choreographed part of a Rock star but then
constantly leaping out of script with genius improvisations. Having never rated his singing, for the first time I had some
clue as to why he was so successful, he was amazing to watch.
I knew I wasn't getting the experience that an average fan would because I was surrounded by the great and the good
at his own private party, not stood in a muddy field with thousands of punters in T-Shirts. Still when they went into T-
Rex's The Groover and the bouncing assemblage really took off, I had to admit to myself that not only was he was good
at what he did but Bad Self were a good band. Dad's ghost held my head in his hands and screamed something
unintelligible at me. I could feel warm sweat somehow coming off his cold ghostly fingers.
I thought about when I was seven, Phil was five. We would leap up and down on the couch to Dad's records. We
weren't listening to what was current in the charts, Dad was always obsessed with the music from his own childhood.
He and Mum would dance and sing along. I couldn't picture Mum's face, couldn't remember it. Dad had kept photo’s of
the two of them but then ripped every image of her out, leaving fat white lacerations on one edge of each snapshot.
I liked that music when I was really young, punching out of those ginormous Goodman's speakers, making me jump
and shake. I loved the bass. Those dancing sessions were the only fun times I remember from when our family was still
nuclear. I looked at Phil up on the stage and could remember the infant him leaping around to the same song.
Dad's ghost put his arms around me and shouted in my ear,
“C'mon you Electro loving cunt!... Admit it. He's fucking brilliant inhe!” I hung and nodded my head. Then I saw
something, spotted a weird glob in my peripheral vision. A drop of multi coloured gloop that moved like a tiny limbless
lizard. Then thousands of minuscule glassy shapes appeared like a film covering my eyeballs. I sussed it straight away,
that's what was in the drink..... psychedelic drugs. Phil had spiked Mede with acid or something. One of his cronies was
probably shadowing him now, getting ready to put him through some crazy shit. I forced my way out of the marquee
and walked back up to the house. The music seemed to be out of tune now, high pitched and a sickly green. When I
looked back the entrance to the tent looked like the mouth of a dying monster.
I moved my hand and saw the classic traces. I was definitely tripping and I'd only had a couple of large sips! How
much had Mede actually gotten down before I'd chucked it.
 The house was mostly empty now except for Lenha Dunham sat talking to Dizzy Rascal, and the catering staff who
were cleaning up, getting ready for when everyone came back. I thought I saw Katie Perry clear away some glasses.
I had another Text from Tracy and I managed to read it before the letters floated away off my phones screen. “Pls do
cm rnd fr yr dinn 2morrow wud luv 2 show u my paintings get yr proffes opinx.” I was touched by this day long... well
what was it.... a flirtation? I texted back whilst I still could, “Try 2 stp mex”. I tried ringing Mede but got his
answerphone, so I searched the house for him then tried to position myself so that I would be able to spot everyone as
they came back in. The hallucinogen turned the sky a yellowish purple.
Bad Self played a forty minute set of covers and then most people began to drift back inside. I just wanted to find
Mede and take us both home. I desperately scanned the crowd but couldn't spot his joke hipster specs amongst the
famous faces.
I saw a sweat soaked Phil sneak through a side door, he was pushing someone in front of him but I didn't see who. I
tried to follow but the door was locked. A few moments later Kate Moss came stumbling out of it and I slipped in. It
was not the entrance to a secret torture chamber just another wing of the superdom with a few guests milling. I walked
up a stair and into a long corridor lined with doors. As I stood looking, the corridor stretched out, making it look like
that hotel where infinity goes to stay. I moved forward.
I heard definite moaning coming from behind a door and thought, this is it, he's behind there doing some sick shit to
Mede. I listened for a minute then burst in to a dark room where some sort of strange hairy creature was rocking on it's
haunches. It took me a ridiculous amount of time to realise that the beast I was staring at was the one with two backs! It
was our Phil... inside Zina, taking her from behind. I saw the confused look on her face obviously wondering why the
fuck I was stood there staring instead of fucking off and shutting the door. Phil grinned and gave me a double thumbs
up.
I closed the door and wandered back the way I came, wanting a portal to another dimension to open up and suck me
through. I had no legit reason to be upset about what I'd seen, neither of them was doing anything wrong, but I went
ahead and got upset anyway. At least I knew that if Phil was upstairs tupping Zina he couldn't be somewhere else
waterboarding Mede.
I drifted through the party, properly tripping my nuts off. Now everyone I looked at was famous, and/or had melting
flesh that dripped off in meaty gobbets to reveal shiny white skull.
Jamie Oliver shoved a plate of pigs in blankets into my face, I had to push past Leona Lewis and Henry Rollins to
get away from him. I made it to a sofa and slid down next to Kyane West who was in a heated discussion with Danny
Dyer. He turned to look at me and the flesh evaporated messily from his face as if it had been sprayed with some sort of
acid. His skull asked me in a Brummie accent,
“You all right mate?” I looked beyond him and saw that the room was filling with all types of famous zombie aliens.
It was an A-list jamboree reimagined as a Jake and Dinos Chapman hell vitrine. I found myself having to constantly
move, someone always seemed to be lurching towards me as though they intended to bite. Peter Mandelson and Bret
Easton Ellis ganged up and chased me into the ballroom where Simon Cowell and Ozzie Osbourne where biting chunks
out of a fully made up Gene Simmons. Sue Perkins and Paris Hilton were flanking Robbie Williams whispering in his
ears, then they began to bite as well. Everyone in the room began to do the zombie shuffle, seemingly in my direction.
Bohemian Rhapsody was playing really loud so I had to get out of there.
I stumbled into a much quieter room that seemed to have been decorated to look like the seventies and found myself
beside three blokes talking football.
“They just came up against a better side,”
“A very fit side.”
“Yeah but for all the running....It's got to be coordinated.” One of them had a northern accent the other two sounded
proper London. It meant nothing to me, but their chat seemed reassuringly normal like something I might hear down at
the Lion. I took a bottle of beer out of an ice bucket but then dropped it. It didn't smash but made enough noise for the
three of them to turn and look at me. It was Russel Brand, Noel Gallaghar and Rod Stewart.
Rod asked me,
“Are you all right there mate?” I gave a little shrug and laughed.
“I'm named after you.” This made them all laugh.
“Alright.... OK... Your Mum was a fan was she?” All three of them were regarding me like I was an unstable nutter
who needed humouring but also might provide a little entertainment, which I suppose I totally fucking was. I looked
around for Dad's ghost thinking he wouldn't want to miss this, but he wasn't around.
“No it was my Dad actually,” they all laughed again, Russel Brand asked me,
“Are you feeling OK Rod? You look a bit....Disconfabulated pal.” For one moment I wondered how he knew my
name, then I realised what I'd just said.
“Yeah I'm just....Sorry yeah I'm a bit fucked up” Their heads began to look like three grinning skulls. They turned
away from me and continued their conversation.
“You've got to admit this is not their season.....” As much as a relief some ordinary chat was, it was ordinary chat I
couldn't join in with, so I picked up the beer and left.
I found a circular room that looked like a tokamak with a neon lit bar in it's hub, sat down in the middle of a white
sofa and drank my beer. The music was mellow, some Bob Dylan track. After a while Jarvis Cocker brought me another
beer and I sat staring at it unable to handle doing much of anything else. There was a mirror curved right round half of
the room and I saw that my reflection wasn't sitting petrified like me, rather it was laughing and joking, with Jimmy
Carr, Boy George and Robert Plant. I managed to find my skins my cigs my weed and put one together. Smoking it
calmed me a little.
I sat there for what seemed like hours worrying about Mede before the trip eventually subsided to a manageable
level. I saw Pogo rushing through the room looking stressed, he ran straight into Phil. They had a brief confab before
hurrying off. I could tell by Phil's body language that they were up to something and I just knew in my bones that it was
something bad. I jumped up and followed, passing Chas and Dave who were in a heated argument with Eminem and
Labi Sifre. I just caught a glimpse of Pogo and Phil heading down a spiral staircase. By the time I got to it and stuck my
head over the top, they'd disappeared. I hurried to the bottom and found a door with a keypad lock. I tapped in Phil's
DOB. It opened. I slipped in and continued down more spiral staircase, only now with dark stone stairs. It seemed to go
on for ever and got darker the further down I went and it became a strange spiral escalator somehow going up and down
at the same time.At one point I stopped and thought about turning back, but I knew I couldn't.
Eventually the stairs stopped. I was almost surprised to find myself not in a dungeon straight from an Edgar Allen
Poe story but in a proper rich bastards underground garage. It was dark but dirty light was leaking from behind a
concrete partition. I heard moaning again but this time was certain that it wasn't the sound of sex. There was also an
eerie crackling sound, and flashes of ominous looking red. I knew that I was about to witness some twisted shit.
I crept low past a few flash cars, some motorbikes and a Vespa, then peered round the wall. What I saw was harder
to focus on than Phil and Zina having sex. Dark shapes with seemingly red luminous tails lumbered about. I thought
they might be butchering someone. When I did work out what I was seeing I doubted the evidence of my own
hallucinating eyes.
A naked male body hung from the ceiling, suspended from one leg. He was emitting a noise like he was screaming
in slow motion. It was Mede, barely recognisable upside down without his clothes and glasses, surrounded by four men
wearing what looked like quite expensive, Halloween masks, each one a different scary animal. Three of them were
holding cattle prods that they kept jabbing him with, causing the sharp red glints. The “goat” was taking photo's. Mede
was writhing, trying to avoid the prods. The atmosphere was heavy and sleazy like something that you wished you
hadn't come across on the internet or in the woods. I cowered behind a pillar for a while unsure what to do but knowing
that I had to do something. The drug increased the fear factor but also the melodrama of me as actor with a moral duty.
I stepped out quickly and walked towards the fucked up scene shouting,
“Phil what the fuck are you doing!” my voice echoed back to me. Four terrifying animal faces turned and looked at
me, I couldn't tell which one was Phil. The dog took his off, shrugged and gave me his usual villainous grin. I froze for
a moment then forced myself to walk towards him. I had to face the fucker down this time, had to save Mede. I
surprised myself when I spoke, my voice sounded large and steady, “Really? I mean.....Phil really?... Is this really
because the man wrote a bad review....What... Three years ago? You torture the fucker? How the fuck do you think
you're going to get away with this one? It's too much Phil too fucking much! Even for you!” He kept grinning. “It's got
to STOP PHIL!” I shouted that last bit. He laughed,
“We're just fucking around with him, he's not hurt! Look these aren't even real!” He touched the prod against me and
it lit up, giving me a shock but not an actual electric one.
“I had some of his Micky Fin Phil.... Just a few sips... And I've been tripping my fucking tits off!” Phil turned and
looked at the pig, wolf and goat grinning wide and nasty.“You could fucking damage him, like you know..... Mentally!
It's not fucking funny..... People don't always recover from bad trips that they have when they're not tied up and shit.....
Look at him....... You're fucking sick!” There was a moment when Mede's groaning was the only sound. “CUT HIM
DOWN!” I screamed this at the three animals, I could see my words come out of my mouth like flames and burn against
their masks. They all looked at Phil. I shouted louder, “CUT HIM DOWN!” He shrugged,
“Yeah go on..... He's had enough anyway!” He threw his mask on the floor as he walked past me. The others peeled
theirs off. I recognised Pogo and Beeny, the other one looked like a bouncer, probably some paid heavy. They helped
me get Mede down who was whimpering now like a kicked dog. It was horrible seeing someone I knew looking so
vulnerable, naked and scared.
“Where are his clothes at?” Pogo looked at a corner where they sat in a pile. “Well get them!” I held Mede and
squeezed his hand, he was in a bad way panting and staring with insane looking eyes. Pogo switched a brighter light on
then they left me alone with him. I helped him get dressed, found his camera. Whilst looking for his glasses I found a
discarded instant photo of him hanging there naked and for a few moments I couldn't stop staring at it. I threw it aside
then just helped Mede up and walked him back up the stairs. The party was still going, just. A few stragglers left. I sat
Mede on a chair in between Will.i.am and Jonathan Ross then asked Jesse J who was dressed like a waitress for some
orange juice. I drank some myself though I've never been sure if it's even true that it helps bring you down off acid.
Zina appeared besides me bending over Mede,
“Fucking hell Mede are you OK. Christ R2 he looks like he's overdone it a bit!”
“He's fucked up Zina! He's er... He's had too much acid can you believe? Listen could you do me a fucking massive
favour Zina. If I pay for it, could you call a cab and take him home? You know where he lives right? I would take him
Zina but I've got to stay and talk to my brother!” She put her head to the side and studied me for a moment as though
trying to work out who I was. She looked like someone who was already regretting fucking a Rock star at a party.
“Well yeah sure I mean yeah. I know where he lives. Hey Mede it's me Zina! Do you want to share a taxi with me
mate?”
“Mede listen... Zina is going to take you home..... OK... Are you hurt anywhere?”
“Oh I'm you know, oh … Fuck....Oh sorry mate oh fuck...Oh you did warn me! Oh that wasn't funny.... I'm fucked.
Fucking hell what did they give me... Imagine if you hadn't... Oh fucking Jesus... That wasn't funny fuck....Fuck!” He
actually seemed not too bad considering. I guessed he was lucky I'd got to that drink.
“Stay with him Zina yeah he's had like..... A lot of acid, I think he's having a ...” I laughed, “A bad trip! Sorry it's not
funny.” I waited with them till the taxi rang to say it was outside then I helped her walk Mede out and put him in the
back. She gave me an embarrassed smile as she got in.
I went back to the house and walked around looking for Phil but realised that it was hopeless. I tried ringing him. I
was surprised when he answered,
“Come to the main staircase the wide one at the front!” There was a security cove guarding it but Phil appeared above
him, once again wearing nothing but boxer shorts.
“Let my brother up!”
He led me to another room that made you feel you were in the wrong decade. Impractical white carpet and two ultra
luxurious red sofas surrounded by ostentatious looking speakers. I wondered what he did in all these fucking massive
rooms when he wasn't throwing a party. I sat in front of him and watched him fill a bowl.
I noticed that a cleaner was making her way through the room. A little old lady in an apron, bent double like she'd
just wandered in from some Russian folk tale. Emptying ashtrays and polishing as she went. At first I was fascinated by
her slow progress, then I wanted to ask Phil if she could leave because it would have felt weird to just ignore her whilst
I had a go. She started polishing the table in front of me and before I said anything she raised her head and our eyes met.
Her face looked weirdly familiar and when she looked at me it seemed to be with recognition. She turned to Phil and
asked in what was definitely a Dellend accent,
“Is that your Rod?” It took a moment before I had the same shock that I'd gotten from Slacks only times a million. It
was our Mum. I said,
“Mum?” it barely came out as a whisper and it seemed strange using that word, like it wasn't really her true title, but
I didn't know what else to call her. I couldn't remember her name. She looked back to me,
“Oh it is you Rod? How are you? Phil said you weren't coming to his party!” I stared at her, frozen for what seemed
like forever until she asked,
“Are you still criticising?” I looked over at Phil who was about to light the bong, he shrugged, “That's what Phil said
you did for a living.”
“Yeah..... Yes Mum I'm still.....Yeah still...Still at it!” Then silence again. I took a hit when Phil offered then sat
there completely floored by this latest plot twist. Eventually she got up saying,
“Well as you can imagine I've got a lot on this morning!” Then excruciatingly she cleaned her way out, taking ages.
Phil concentrated on refilling the bong completely ignoring her. When she'd gone he said,
“Sorry broth I was going to tell you... Honest............ I was ..Yer know, waiting for the right time..... I...Well yer
know...... I didn't think you were coming tonight. I was...Honestly broth I was going to arrange a big reunion for
you..Yer know I've been in Japan, before that I only just got out of the studio....” He looked like he genuinely felt bad,
like he'd been caught out doing something really wrong. I laughed,
“So.......... What? You've got her working as your cleaner now? When..... I mean where the fuck did you find her?”
Phil let out a big laugh that turned into a hacking cough.
“No, no, she lives here! I don't ask her.....She doesn't have to clean, but I mean ….Well I can't stop her...Honestly you
try. It's what she's done all her life and you know what I mean.... It seems to make her happy. She's not..... As you can
see, well she's not very talkative, I mean I've had a doctor look at her and he says that she's OK I mean there's nothing
seriously wrong with her apparently..... But...... Well you don't get much out of her. I mean I don't think she's the full
shilling but..... I found her living in a B&B in Morecambe. Well I hired a private detective and he found her. She's er
been here for a few months now.... She's had a hard life our Mum you know.....Mmmmmmnnn yeah... I'm taking her to
Fiji in a month....... Hey you should come!”
“Wait a minute...... Phil I'm finding this all a bit... Hard to compute. I mean this is the woman who abandoned us
when... Well when you were five..... I don't think Dad would be best fucking pleased if he knew that you were looking
after her. He fucking hated her!”
“Yeah well that's just it innit!” he raised his voice to just below a shout. “We only ever got Dad's side of the story...
D'yer know that he used to beat her? That he broke her arm.... And her fucking collar bone!” I just sat there open
mouthed unable to formulate a reply. “And it was Dad who made her leave without us... And he threatened her you
know … You've got to understand it was hard for her back then, she had no one... You know she had no family....Has
no family.......Besides us. She had you when she was sixteen you know? Dad said that if she tried to get custody... It was
horrible.... What he did to her!”
“But wasn't Dad you know..... Your fucking whatever.... Dad did everything for you he....You know.........What are
you slagging off Dad for? He fucking brought you up didn't he!” I was getting hot now, I stood up. There was enough
drug left in my system to make colours flare up around me as I rose. Phil stood up too,
“Look he wasn't all he was cracked up to be Dad you know! Look at that!” He put his hand on a scar on his shoulder,
“That was Dad! With the fucking buckle end of his belt! He was a fucking violent prick!”
“He worshipped the ground you walked on!”
“I don't care he was a twat!”
Without thinking I leapt at him and grabbed him round the neck. He dropped underneath me, head butted me in the
chest then threw me by a leg onto my back. I kicked him in the face then he punched me hard in the bollocks before we
bounced off the marble coffee table and rolled around the white carpet staining it with blood. I bit his ear then got him
round the neck again and banged his head against the floor. I saw Dad's ghost sneaking out the door with an ugly look
on his face like he'd been caught out lying. He put a bottle of whisky in his coat pocket as he left, raising a finger to his
mouth as if to say “Shhhhhhh!” Phil wrestled me underneath him.
I called on a reservoir of strength that I'd been unaware existed and pushed myself on top. I got my hands around
Phil's throat a third time and squeezed but that seemed unsatisfactory so I punched him until blood erupted from his
nose. I punched him again and he seemed to give up. I rolled of him and we both lay there panting and bleeding. Phil
got up first then offered me a hand. He went and fetched two beers from a fridge. We sat and drank them in silence.
I remembered a few days after Mum left, me and Phil in a room upstairs, freaked out by the new situation. I was
reading a comic, Phil was being annoying as usual running up and down the room.
Then we heard her come in and start arguing with Dad. We didn't go rushing down, we'd been told to stay upstairs
and we didn't disobey in those days. We crept out onto the landing though and tried to listen but we couldn't hear
properly, they were in the front room. Mum's voice sounded shrill and pleading Dad's was big and booming. That's all
we got, the sounds. It went on for ages. Phil was right beside me his eyes and his mouth open wide in what looked like
terror, like he knew what was going on, how important it all was. Eventually she came to the bottom of the stairs and
looked up and called our names. She looked bizarre, the black lines of tear stained mascara were like spiders legs
coming out of her eyes. Dad appeared and shoved her out of the door before slamming it. We could still hear her calling
us until Dad put a record on and cranked the volume up. Slade I think it was. C'mon feel the noise.
Phil got up and unwrapped the cellophane from Piggies new LP. He spent a moment looking blankly at some promo
material that it had come with before he put it on and then we sat there, drinking beer, smoking weed and bleeding.
Piggies LP sounded OK, and it was fucking genius for the fact that both me and Phil seemed able to enjoy the same
music.
I remembered I was there to give Phil a lecture about the error of his ways, but he dug into me first,
“Did you watch us tonight?”
“Yeah I caught the first two numbers... erm...... You know then..Well I... I started coming up on that acid or whatever
that was intended for Mede, I mean how fucking much...”
“It was just a bit of fucking peyote.You aint never seen me play have you?”
“Well I....” I didn't think it was a good idea to point out that I'd seen him that time in Kurt Lev. “Yeah well it's not
really my thing is it...”
“Rod, I'm your fucking brother! Mick Jagger's seen me play. Prince Charles has seen me play
...Fucking.......Whatshisname.. Obama he's watched me.. I might not really be his thing!”
I sighed,
“I don't know, I mean... You never came to Galaxis.”
“I never did what?”
“Y'know the parties I... Them raves I put on.”
“I can't fucking....Oh fuck me you're taking the piss!” He got up and stormed over to a cupboard in the corner. He
came back with a huge pile of magazines and books and dropped them onto the couch beside me. They were back
copies of Void and Triks and lots of other zines that I'd written for. He even had that book I'd written on tagging years
ago, the one that no fucker bought, and the other four books I'd had something to do with. I was genuinely shocked. I'd
thought he was barely aware of what I did yet he seemed to have a copy of everything of mine in print. He had more
than I did!
He sat back down.
“Fucking hell Phil you never told me you read my stuff!”
“Well I've never actually fucking read any of it! Be fair it's not really the kind of shit anyone actually reads is it......
But yeah I told Pogo years ago to make sure he buys everything. Y'know I always ….............It's always me that makes
the effort innit.. Yer know what I mean, you always act like it's such a fucking massive pain to even talk to yer little
brother..... You know and you're so fucking scared one of yer stuck up posh mates might find out who I am. Yeah, I
know you don't tell anyone. Are you fucking ashamed of me!”
“What posh mates?”
“You know what I mean, all your trendy bum chums. You're all just too fucking cool for Rock int yer.”
“Well I..... I don't know...... I didn't..... I mean you know we've got different lives aint we....I mean be honest........
You don't even fucking like me!”
“OK......... I fucking don't! But you know.... You're my brother. I don't know.... We're supposed to look out for each
other or I don't know.....Something! You just fucking ignore me. Would it kill you to come to a gig?!”
“You're right you're right I don't see you much. It's all the mad shit though innit! I mean hanging some poor fucker
upside down, feeding him drugs. Mugging fucking little kids!”
“Yeah so fucking what?....Like you're so.... I dunno you've always been so fucking superior haven't you. Like when
we were in jail, the way you acted. It was like you had nothing to do with booting the shit out of that lad. Like it was all
me.”
“I never stomped on his head!”
“Yeah but you helped give him a good kicking didn't yer. Then you just pretended it was fuck all to do with you.
Like you weren't even there or something!”
“I never.......I was.....” What the fuck was he on about. The memory of that night came up in my mind like a You-
Tube video. I saw Squirrel on the floor, curled into a ball, Phil kicking him the way I've always remembered.
Then............Does my Airmax Plus go into Squirrel's head? Did I slip? Maybe I did....It could have looked like I kicked
him. How had I forgotten that.
Phil must of clocked the look of confusion on my face, he said,
“Fucking hell! You really are some sort of fucking........ Dickhead aren't yer. Oh no not me! I didn't batter him.
You've actually managed to convinced yourself that you really are all innocent haven't yer. Fucking hell if yer that self
deluded it's no wonder you're so fucked up! Don't try and pretend there isn't summat fucking wrong with yer. All day
you were like fucking.... I don't know, yer like a scared fucking rabbit or summat. What happened to the big party
promoter. Mr cool Hip Hop Brixton. Where did he go?”
I had to admit he was a bit more observant and perceptive than I'd given him credit for. He passed me a spliff and I
took a long pull. As I passed it back I saw that he was grinning from ear to ear as if remembering a particularly great
joke. He started laughing. I wanted to tell him to stop but when he looked me in the eye and said,
“It was funny though tonight. Your mate. Watching him when he thought we were zapping him.... He kept trying to
you know... Get away... Like swing out of the way... ” I stared at him incredulous, then thought about Mede swinging,
trying to avoid the cattle prods. Something happened to me. It started somewhere deep inside, contractions in my
stomach like I was going to vomit. Then a laugh, a short “Ha!” came out of my mouth. Then a longer one. It seemed to
be involuntary. I looked over at Phil and he was silently laughing with his eyes closed. I tried to control myself but I
couldn't. My body started shaking as though it was controlled by Phil's vibrations. Tears started streaming from my
eyes. Then Phil lurched forward and put his hand on my knee. He looked me in the eye and it was as if I was trapped in
his stare by tractor beams. The you- tube video started playing again, Squirrel on the floor. I'm caught up in the
moment. I do aim the odd kick. I'd forgotten about that.......but the video is still playing and I can see that I'm definitely
kicking him....again and again. Not half heartedly either. I quickly build up to a frenzy. I'm looking at Phil on the other
side of Squirrel's body and it's like we're trying to out do each other. How did I forget that? I mean how did I trick
myself into believing it didn't happen? I'm looking into Phil's eyes still and I'm wondering how I could have blocked out
the truth for so long. Immediately afterwards my guilt must have warped reality, made me deny it to myself. Then
somehow I'd lived with a lie for seventeen fucking years.
“I mean when he was trying to swing......out of the fucking.......” I felt the peyote come back up again but it also felt
like I'd just had a huge sniff of poppers. Through all of this I'm still laughing and I'm thinking about Mede again and I'm
barking with laughter. Then I was literally holding my ribcage because my sides were properly hurting. I slid off the
couch and on to the floor and Phil was on the floor with me, our limbs intertwined. With a great force of will I managed
to stop for a moment but then our eyes met again and it started all over. I seriously worried that I might do myself some
damage. Somehow my head got under Phil's torso, he was slapping my back which seemed to make it worse. Finally
we stopped and lay together on the floor as if recovering from a fit. Eventually I pulled myself back onto the couch.
Phil fetched some more beer and put some generic Rock on full blast. We sat there covered in blood surrounded by
debris, wordlessly drinking and smoking again. I felt like I was almost drowning in the expensive sofa. There was
enough peyote left to make me forensically analyse the strange sensation I had, like the opposite of the tightening. I
decided it was something to do with Phil's near naked physical presence, something about the easy way we passed a
spliff. I wished he would put some decent fucking sounds through his Bang and Olufsen speakers but after a while I
found I could force myself if not to enjoy the Rock, certainly to tolerate it.
It was only when Phil's voice came in that I realised the twat had put his own new LP on. I let it wash over me and
thought about the performance I’d seen earlier deciding that as far as that kind of shit goes, his record wasn't too bad.
After a while our Mum came back in. She looked at the mess, made a loud tutting sound then turned around as
though she was off to get a broom or something. Phil jumped up and stopped her,
“Mum, Mum leave it just... Mum fucking leave it will yer... I want you to come and sit with me and Rod. She sighed
a deep sigh as he pushed her down into a comfy chair. She put her feet up, then pulled a thick Robert Heinlen novel out
of nowhere and stuck her head right into it. The three of us continued to sit like that listening to Rock for what must
have been over an hour. At some point Phil got up and made a cafeteria of coffee. It was weird seeing him do that, like
watching Ming the Merciless make a pot of tea. I got another text of Tracy saying,
“Dn't forgt u sed u wre cmng round 4 dinn 2day hope ur still up 4 it I was going 2 cuk Lamb ur not vege or anythng r
u?” I looked at Phil.
“Listen Phil I need to ask you? Are you ever gonna....” he cut right into my sentence,
“C'mon come to Fiji with us, we'll be like a family.” He grinned at me and I swear there was something so sweet and
cloying about the way he said it, that I almost started crying.
“Maybe Phil maybe!” I got up to leave and gave our Mother a little peck on the cheek which made her look up from
her book and say,
“Oh OK... Take care love, see you soon I hope!” Me and Phil had a man hug which felt very strange as did leaving
him and Mum sat there in the wreckage of our fight like they were two members of a normal quiet contented family.
After I'd come out of a bathroom Phil shouted,
“Wait up, Gregor can take you.....”
It was strange being in the back of the Bentley on my own, it felt bigger than my dom. I wound the window down
and put my face to it letting the wind slap me.
I had a sudden urge to call Tracy, she answered after two rings,
“Hi Rod. I'm just out at the supermarket buying our dinner. Please don't say you're not coming!”
“No just the opposite actually, I was just coming back from our Phil's in Islington and well I was going near
Holloway well you know sorry obviously I'm not going near it, not really, but I'm up at this end...... I wondered if I
could come round now...... If that's not too weird!”
“Um er yeah I suppose you can watch me cook... I'll be back in about twenty minutes I guess. You've got the address
right!”
“OK great see you in a bit!” I asked the driver to turn round then had him wait outside a Sainsbury's local whilst I
ran in to get a bottle of wine. After that we found the place easily then drove around the block for a bit, I didn't want to
be waiting on the step when she got back.
I found Pogo's coke mirror and checked myself out. I looked as rough as fuck. I stared right into my own eyes, and
like Narcicuss, I couldn't tear myself away.

CHAPTER 12

When did I begin my descent from fun loving B-Boy bon vivant and bass-scene impresario, to haunted fuck up? The
day I left Zero Zero. Dave was more than ready to relocate his pregnant girlfriend to Brighton. Tony also seemed quite
happy to move on meaning I was the only one not ready to leave bro-hemia and face up to being 30. At first I was
grateful to get a housing association place I could afford in Brixton but it soon became apparent that I was extremely
unsuited to living alone.
After me and Sheena split up I tried to fend of loneliness by hanging with the larger Galaxis crew. I was definitely
the old man of the group but I regressed into my most laddish state and started hoovering up gak, getting pissed, doing
pills. I've always been a big weed head but it was then that I started to seriously chain smoke Skunk zoots. Me and Tony
tried to keep Galaxis going but with no Dave and without Zero Zero as a base it just didn't work. We managed a couple
more parties the final one being the night of the “Incident”.
The Incident happened for many convoluted reasons but mainly because I accidental swallowed more liquid acid than
anyone ever should, and that happened because I'd hoovered up more cocaine than anyone ever should. Certainly
nobody should be that fucked at a party they've organised. Tony wasn't even there, he'd got stuck in Amsterdam after a
gig. The atmosphere seemed to mirror the state that I was in. It was rowdy laddish, I was happy with the way it was
going at first.
I don't think I'd ever been passed a bottle of liquid acid out at a party before, certainly not at Galaxis. I wouldn't have
taken it if I hadn't already been so mash up. Certainly I wouldn't have knocked back a gulp like a fucking dickhead. I
knew straight away, I'd swallowed too much, it was actually dripping down my chin. Then Warren appeared and
decided to let me know how little he thought of the buzz I'd created.
“I don't know how you do it! I mean do you actually give the DJ's instructions. Do you tell them that they can't play
anything with a female vocal. Actually fuck it I don't think I've heard any vocal except for aggressive sounding robots.
It's like you've taken all the soul out of it. Is it more that the DJ's just somehow know? I mean it's the whole atmosphere
that you create isn't it?” We were stood in front of a backdrop of a Robot with huge phallic weapons protruding from it's
arms. I think Dave not being around meant Warren no longer felt the need to be polite to me.
“You do realise how cheesy it is? This dark vibe you go for. It looks like a teenagers bedroom in here. I don't get it.
Dave told me you write about art but I mean..... Is it meant to be really camp?” I struggled to think of any come back. I
looked around for one of Zina's backdrops so I could point out they were painted by a woman but realised we didn't
have any that night. I managed,
“But we don't play Bro-step!”
“No no, you're too cool for that but still.... Try counting how many women are in here.” I was coming up fast and
strong, he leant in on me seemingly trapping me against a wall and gave me his full righteous intellectual critique of the
vibe that he thought I was responsible for. The words he used were like weapons that I had no defence against.
Eventually he left me alone but as the trip really got going I could only experience everything through his filter. The
party did now seem ridiculous and I really couldn't see one woman in the place. The music sounded all wrong, really
aggressive but silly as well.
I tried to dance it off but couldn't. My whole body seemed connected to the now comical and boyish atmosphere and
it wouldn't move like I wanted it to. Things went really quickly downhill from there. I've had bad trips before I've had
bad trips at raves before but this was a genuine full on visit to Chapel Perilous made worse because it was me that had
built the ridiculously manly looking chapel. I'll never be completely sure how I ended up in a corner being held down
and I don't know how Pete managed to get me home but I did and he did. I calmed down a lot when I entered the
Module but still it was a rough few hours of self flagellation of the mind before I slept. Pete stayed on the couch and the
next day, though he didn't deny that I'd had a full on meltdown he tried to reassure me that not that many people had
actually witnessed me freaking out. I'd stayed in a dark corner and everyone was too busy partying apparently. It was
straight after he left that dead Dad first appeared. He wasn't much more than a faint voice and a shadow at first but
smoking Skunk seemed to feed him, make him louder.
 ##################################################
After texting to check that she was home and getting the reply “Yes cum x”, I let Phil's driver go. She lived in a
small bungalow in the centre of one of those sixties council estates that emulate a futuristic village. There was washing
hung outside her flat in a tiny garden full of crap. It looked very different from the mountain ranges and forests she was
riding horses through on her facebook feed but I knew it wasn't unusual for travellers like her to rest up in London in
places like this.
She answered the door wearing a denim dress and a wide grin. She seemed pleased to see me, even if the
awkwardness that we'd felt a couple of nights ago was replaced by a milder strain caused by me rocking up early
looking so fucked with fresh bloodstains on my clothes. Still she hugged me and brought me in as though she'd
determined to enjoy this time with me no matter what weirdness tried to get in the way.
The place smelled of lemony joss sticks. A rough looking old cat with a fucked up face greeted me by rubbing itself
around my ankles. Tracy felt the need to tell me,
“This place belongs to my friend Kath, she's out in Ethiopia at the moment working so....” I tried to take it all in,
frustrated that there was no easy way to tell what was Tracy's stamp and what belonged to the owner. It was green with
thick houseplants resting on every spare surface, which I presumed along with the cat were indigenous. The general feel
of the place was retro almost like it had been styled to look like a thirties dom. A lot of Art Deco looking wallpaper and
ornaments. The overall effect thwarted by a few things that didn't match. Like the humongous nineties style TV that
dominated the living room, the framed photograph of a Sarah Lucas sculpture, some Ikea lamps and a glossy poster of a
Buddhist monk. Overall it was cosy, flooded with books and magazines. I sat next to a copy of Equus a mag that I
guessed was Tracy's. I wasn't sure about the pile of New Scientists but thought they could have been hers as well.
Even though her style, technique and motifs had changed massively, I still recognised the paintings that were leant
against the walls as hers. The thing was the paintings were so bad I wished that they weren't. It was as if she was trying
to emulate Alex Grey's paintings of skeletons, nervous systems and chakras but failing badly. Her figures were meant, I
supposed to radiate inner light but instead looked more like they'd been damaged in a flood. She might have just gotten
away with it if every woman she'd painted wasn't astride a horse that was also stripped back to reveal it's Buddha
nature. I was amazed that someone who'd spent their whole life around horses was so unable to capture their anatomy or
essence and small mistakes in scale and perspective hadn't been fixed. She'd painted horses better all those years ago in
Bournemouth when she'd done them with a few quick brushstrokes. It was very different from anything I was used to.
The only other time I'd seen the colours she used was when stumbling around lost at Glastonbury. They looked like the
work of some old hippy who'd never been near a city in her life.
I was not impressed but told myself that not everyone could be an uber hip wanker like me and at least she was still
at it, which was more than I could say. Looking at the place she called home, regardless of what was hers or not I could
understand why she might have felt uncomfortable round at mine. It must have looked sterile to her. Maybe Sheena was
right and no woman could ever relax in the Module.
She gave me tea in a mug with, “For most of history Anonymous was a woman” written across it, then with what
seemed like forced jocularity asked,
“So come on then ...how's your Phil? He can't really be as big of a twat as he seems on the telly and all that...... Is
he?” She'd obviously decided to slay that dragon immediately.
“Fuck... Honestly you don't know the half.... He's er well.... The same as he always was really...You knew him when
he was tiny but not when he was older.... Did you?” She laughed, sat down, shook her head and made a sort of,
“BRRRRRRRGGGH!!!” noise.“OK listen I can't believe that I'm going to talk about this, I mean I suppose that it
was all so long ago but I dunno I feel as though I should say something about it and get it out of the way.” She clapped
her hands. I took a big gulp. I'd actually figured that if we were going to be friends we'd have to leave this buried, but no
she was digging it up.
“I don't know if you know about this but I'm sort of guessing that you do....” She gave me a pleading look, hoping
that I was going to help make it easier. I nodded,
“I think I know what your talking about.... But look it was a long time ago.....”
“No listen.... let me just..... I've been feeling bad about this for seventeen years... Well.....You know especially
because... You know well I mean you can't actually get away from your brother can you? I mean he's fucking
everywhere...... Really...... I went to the most isolated corner of Mexico once...Seriously they only have Mariachi bands
they don't even fucking listen to western music, but honestly they had a poster of him in this restaurant, I
mean..............Well that night.....The night that I went back with your Phil.... The night that I slept with him...See it was
the night after my Mother's funeral...”
“Oh I...” she ploughed on,
“And the thing is, I was pissed out of my head, I mean I know it's not an excuse..... I'd drank a bottle of wine and a
bottle of Vodka... Really... I was out of it........Completely fucking...... I said a lot of bad things to a lot of people that
day, I mean at the funeral....Things that kind of affected...Well the rest of my life really. It wasn't just burning bridges it
was..... Anyway I, well.... The thing is by the time I met your brother..... I know it's probably not what you want to hear
but... Oh God I think I sort of gravitated towards him in the first place because of the connection with you... I mean I
know that you're very different, but I did know him when we were really young and I was really missing you and that
night he sort of looked like you. Sorry that's the wrong thing to say isn't it. I mean that's the thing, when I woke up next
morning it quickly became apparent that he was nothing like you. Well it wasn't nice........ But what I wanted to say was
that, well after that I really did keep trying to get hold of you... But I was away..... All that time that you were in jail I
was back in Bournemouth. I was only there by chance that weekend when I heard about your Dad's funeral. Stupidly I
thought I might get a chance to talk to you then..... And... Oh fuck you know after that... I don't know I got it into my
head that you were angry with me and anyway I just...... Had to stay away from Dellend.... Then over the years I don't
know.... I thought about you a lot.”
It was obviously painful for her trying to apologise for something that happened so long ago. I felt for her and had
no clue how I could explain from my side why I'd never found her again. I managed to push through the wall built from
years and from awkwardness, put my arms around her and squeeze her tight. She patted my shoulder. It felt good but I
thought it best not to hold her for too long.
After sitting next to me in silence for a while squeezing my hand she said,
“Well I'll get on with dinner,” then she put on some gentle house music and went back to the kitchen. I relaxed and
very easily, slid into sleep.
###################################################
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
I could feel the spiders moving around inside me, their legs tapping away at internal schematics. Reaching into my
cortex adjusting my neural circuitry. Memories weren't wiped or even exposed as fake. They were put into context.
Other memories appeared and took up residence in the same space, it was left for me to decide what was real. The
Attercop weren't my enemy, Atrax had always been with me travelling through space holding on to the bottom of my
egg. I was never supposed to be alone out on the edge of the galaxy. My egg and Tracy's were two parts of a whole.
They where supposed to fuse before we began our journey into the beyond, using the mysterious gateway that we'd
helped open all that time ago. What the consequences of taking that trip would be, I couldn't know but now I was aware
that it was why I had been designed and built. It was actually a mission that involved ancient sites on hidden planets,
alien technology, strange prophecies, codes that needed deciphering, devices that had to be retrieved from the centre of
gas giants, old forgotten robot prophets and sages living inside teeming planet sized spaceships, biotech that had to be
transmitted like a disease.
My mission to patrol a border, looking for the Attercop was a fiction. Written by my own defective circuits that had
used their ability to imagine to try and protect themselves from what they couldn't face. My real mission.
Despite the spiders medicament, I still felt human. Maybe that was just the way I was built but the truth remained
that there was no complete certainty as to which reality was counterfeit. Like Tracy said, it was classic Philip K Dick.
Believing in Tracy and the new reality was a choice I made. I had to believe in something and I decided to believe in
her. She said,
“OK Rod it's time.” I knew instinctively what had to happen next. I positioned myself in the centre of the egg with
my head looking up and my arms stretched out in front of me. The spider crawled behind me, then began to climb up
my back. I saw it's spiky legs wrap round my torso, felt it's abdomen press into my spine. I felt pain as it bit into the
back of my neck then pulled me in tight as though it meant to crush me. I screamed a silent scream, my voice was
disabled. It placed two of it's legs over my arms that then seemed to melt and the blackness of it's being poured over me
like liquid tar. I felt it spreading over my whole body until it covered me completely. It formed itself into a spacesuit of
hard polished black. Patches of fur and thin spikes sprouted on my knuckles, my shoulders, my knees, all around my
head.
I saw that Tracy had stepped back into her suit. She said,
“View.” And we were surrounded by nothing but the thick blanket of white space again. I could feel us moving,
knew that soon we'd enter the tunnel or highway or track. The passage that joined us to the unknown galaxy on the
other side of the universe. I heard the bass.
For a while she stood directly in front of me and we stared at each other, breathing in unison as if performing some
prearranged ritual. When I lifted my right hand she lifted her left and our palms touched.
“Are you ready?” I nodded and she turned around so for a moment I saw my reflection in the back of her helmet. As
I regarded my new self in that distorting mirror the universe went black, the stars became their natural white and
seemed to be floating in reach of the reflected me. She took one step back into me and we occupied the same place in
space and time.
I knew that what we were doing was more about transferring into a different reality than actually moving. I
remembered when we planted the device, how we had to step sideways out of some other reality then, like walking
through a mirror. The stars began to spin.............
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
#####################################################
It was a shock to wake from the sheeny reality of my dream and find myself on a vintage couch underneath a
crocheted blanket. The smell of lamb roasting and the cat asleep on my legs completed the homely vibe that was so
unfamiliar to me.
Tracy appeared with a mug of coffee. I felt embarrassed to be lying there soaked in sleep.
“Aw fuck,” I said, “I'm sorry about crashing out... I er Christ I've had a real fucking hectic few days. You wouldn't
believe it but I don't ...” I laughed, “I don't actually go out that much!” She didn't seem to hear that last remark.
“I've got something to show you, I think you're going to like it!” She passed me a tattered folder that I recognised a
few seconds quicker than I had my Mother. I couldn't believe that I really had it in my hands, but there it was, one word
on the cover in faded felt tip, “Galaxis.” Juvenilia started spilling out before I opened it. I guessed what the thick lump I
could feel was, our old piece book. There they were, drawings of nearly all the artworks that UFO & Robotix covered
Dellend with all those years ago. There was complete silence as I looked at them. I was equally amazed by the other
stuff. There was a little comic that I'd completely forgotten drawing, and in amongst the many artworks, twenty pretend
book covers. Though I didn't have a huge memory of it, I wasn't surprised to find the cover of an imaginary book called
“The Narcissus Incident.” It showed an android inside a tiny space craft being attacked by a giant spider. The blurb on
the back read “When mankind is given the chance to transcend it has to design it's most sophisticated robot yet. A robot
that can imagine!” It was funny reading through the blurbs, my writing so clumsy yet so fucking out there. I was
impressed by how much effort we'd put into making them look like genuine book covers, even artificially ageing some
of them.
“Fucking hell!” Tracy went back to the kitchen leaving me to sift through it all, she shouted,
“Funnily enough I only got that back recently! Our Deb had it! She'd kept it in her attic for years. She lives in Leeds
now you know, I was up there two weeks ago..... You never knew her really did you?”
“Not really no.....No I didn't..” I was mesmerised by the contents of the folder.
I had to tear myself away from it all when Tracy served dinner. I'd forgotten that such a thing as a home cooked
Sunday roast existed and it seemed so much more wholesome than the ones I was used to eating in pubs. I devoured it
and drank some wine. She told me that she'd spent the previous day on the internet tracking down things that I'd written.
“I must admit, I would have never worked out that that was you, even if I did see the name Robotix... I mean you
used to be such a nice lad.” I squirmed a little, it was I suppose hard to believe that the kid who'd collaborated on the
wonderfully naive Galaxis cache had grown up to be such a cynical snarkarse.
“Well you know.... It's not.... it's not really me...Well I suppose it is... Actually I've just recently
remembered...Realized that I wasn't all that nice back in the day. I did something, then just pretended that... Fuck do
you remember.....Anyway Robotix the critic, it's like a persona you know?”
“I mean that catchphrase that you've got... Is that the right term for it, catchphrase? What is it? There's no excuse for
this kind of shit! That's just mean. Sorry I suppose that's the point of it is it? I'm not sure if I want you to look at my
paintings now! Or I mean... I'd love to know what you think..... I'm just not sure if I want to know what Robotix
thinks!”
“Well yeah, these are all yours aren't they? It's been a while but I can still tell.... I mean your style has changed, I can
see that!”
She walked through into another room then returned with a few more paintings and began holding them up, one at a
time for me to see. Looking at them fucked my head up. I so much wanted to like her art, I so much could not. I tied my
mind up in knots trying to find a way in, anything positive that I could latch on to. To make it worse she kept looking at
me and making expectant facial expressions.
I did became fascinated by one painting. It was in a different style than the others, more like a more Surealist version
of one of her old Arniston Terrace pieces. It was of a figure stood in front of a large pot pouring water into from a
goblet whilst seemingly adding fire with the other hand. There was a badly painted lion and eagle stood by the pot. The
figure had two heads, I thought one of them looked like Tracy and I got the strange idea that the other one might have
been me. Whatever meaning it might have, was very obscure.
“I like that one!” It was only really true in relation to the others, and seemed to have been the wrong thing to say
anyway.
“Oh that one! Sorry don't look at that it's not quite finished....” she hid it behind one of a naked woman riding a lion. I
felt bad, I was sure it was obvious that I didn't like her art.
I tried not to let it bother me. I decided that for some reason it might be good for me to have a friend who did
paintings I thought were absolute crap. I found myself spilling shit like,
“Well I can honestly say it's very different! I mean you really have your own style and that's good!”
It was no surprise to see that Tracy had a well appointed stash box and I was glad when she put one together. We
went back to the living room and sat facing each other in identical armchairs.
“So that was a great party that you took me to! A bit hipper than what I'm used to I must say. So I hope you know
that I'll be relying on you from now on... You know to be my connection to the world of sick raves. I do go out, I love
dancing but........... I've never been to anything like that.”
I hung my head, I wanted to come clean about who I really was.
“Listen Tracy I want to tell you something...... It's a bit difficult to....... You know I was telling you all about what a
great party organiser I was and how many DJ's I knew and how I'm always out there living it up, just what a cool
fucking hombre I am in general?” She nodded and leant forward.
“Yeah.... I felt bad cos I dunno, I thought at first that you might be bullshitting a little or you know exaggerating, but
fucking hell I mean you can still fucking dance can't you? God I love dancing with you.. And fuck me you knew
everybody in there didn't you. It was cool I mean like I say I've never been to a night like that before you know... Last
week I was at a rave but...You know it was different. Last night was amazing?”
“Well no this is the thing... I was bullshitting. That was the first party that I'd been to in two years. I mean even going
to that poetry thing..... That was a big deal for me.... See I don't actually go anywhere I stay at home getting stoned
looking at my computer..... That's all I do! I had a sort of breakdown see I...”
“What are you talking about? What sort of breakdown? C'mon then tell me everything!”
“Well I think it must have been over two years ago. The Incident I call it.... The thing is I was taking a lot of cocaine,
I mean a lot of cocaine! I kind of overdid it for a while but well.... There were other factors. I don't know... If I try to
explain it to you I think that you're just going to think that I'm a total dick! You see it was well.... We put on a party. It
was the last time we did Galaxis you know what I showed you. Then well I'm out at this party and I keep taking more
drugs and more drugs you know just lots of cocaine and well in the end I'm off my tits right but I'm having a good time
I suppose until someone passes me a bottle of fucking liquid acid and I don't know.... I drink it ... I don't know how
much I had but it was you know.....A lot. Well I know it sounds crazy, I mean you know it wasn't like I was a total
stranger to tripping but I just went into a weird space. I won't get into the whole thing it's hard to explain. The thing is
all kind of weird shit starts going off in my head. Then later somehow I don't know I fucking totally lose it, it all got
really weird you know with the acid and oh fuck Tracy.... I ended up with people holding me down and someone
splashing water onto my face or some shit. I'm sorry It probably all sounds stupid ... I can't really explain why it was so
bad. I mean the truth is, I think hardly anyone even saw me and I got taken home in a taxi.... But well after that I don't
know, I never really recovered.... I tried going out again and had a fucking panic attack before I even got there and since
then... Well when I saw you that was the first time that I'd really been out at all. I've got like one mate that I go and see.
I smoke a lot of Skunk.”
There was a massive pause whilst she looked at me as though unable to decide what to make of it all. What she
eventually said was unexpected,
“You know it's fucking strange but I had a sort of similar experience. In Ko-Phanghan at a full moon party..... I was
with my mate Sally, I'd been to one before but this was...... Well it's a similar story because we got spiked or not really
spiked we knew that we were taking something we just didn't......... Well you know I ended up tripping more than I
expected...... The thing is someone got stabbed like right in front of us, not right in front of us, but you know what I
mean..... Local gangsters fighting I think.. Oh fuck it was a horrible night.... It sounds similar .... Fuck...I lost Sally,
God I freaked right out, oh there was some creepy guy and....Yeah I mean.... It took me a while to get over that!”
Her words were like a magic incantation spoken to chase demons out. She somehow managed to tell me that my
experience wasn't far too left field for her to relate to, she'd been there done that in what sounded like horrific
circumstances and understood, whilst also seemingly calling me out as a drama Queen. I'd had a bad trip.......so what. It
reminded me of the time a chiropractor I met at a party had with one swift pull fixed the pain in my neck that had been
bothering me for months.
She didn't seem to even register what I'd said about being a recluse. I realised that she probably just didn't take that
particular confession seriously from someone who'd spent the night dancing with her at a party like Universe, then
turned up one day later, obviously just back from a night of Rock and Roll debauchery. She simply ignored the invite to
my pity party.
“You know I really do mean it Rod it's great to have you back in my life...You know my old partner in crime. I've
missed you you know. I really do hope that you are back in it, I mean the thing is. Well I've never actually met anyone
else from Dellend not in Dellend..... If you know what I mean. There's my sister but......” We were both grinning now.
For the second time that morning I felt a feeling of belonging wrap round me like a blanket. I said,
“Yeah likewise. You haven't got a boyfriend I take it... That you know what I mean might object to me you know....
Me being your mate... Sorry to ask!” That one came straight out of my mouth from nowhere like my subconscious had
managed to sneak it past all my filters and throw it out there before I could object. I was embarrassed as soon as I spilt it
but despite the clumsiness was quite glad that I had. She gave me a look that was hard to interpret but it reminded me of
the looks she'd been giving me the other night, sort of pity and disdain mixed with incredulity.
“Rod are you?......” She pushed her face forward and said in a clear confident voice as though she were talking to a
child, “I'm a lesbian!” I couldn't control my face and stop myself looking like a slack jawed moron. I was a blind idiot.
Slacko's gaydar had been spot on all along. However it wasn't about not knowing all them years ago, I guessed that she
hadn't been completely committed back then, but I was extremely embarrassed about not sussing it out in the last couple
of days. She clearly thought that it was obvious. Was it insulting of me not to realise. It seemed really apparent one
millisecond after she'd told me. Looking at her I could only think , “Yeah she does look like a lesbian!” but what clues
were there for me to miss really? I stuttered like the moron that I was,
“But.... But you were married weren't you?... Oh I'm sorry I suppose you could have... Did you?...”
“No! That was. It was a marriage of convenience. Antonio was gay.... I mean we loved each other.... Christ I don't
want to get into all of that but no I knew by then....In fact I guess that I always knew I just.... I don't know it was like I'd
had to try to... You know to be.... Well back when I knew you in Dellend I thought you know........ I had to try to be
normal! Oh it wasn't even that. It was.....”
She looked at me obviously more shocked by my ignorance of it than I was by her sexuality. For my part I was
flabbergasted by my own squareness. I was trying to think of a way to recover and found myself about to say
something monumentally cringeworthy like, “You know I've got a lot of lesbian friends?” Instead for no logical reason
I said,
“I saw my Mum this morning.”
“Oh!” she was obviously taken a-back. “You know I always thought that your Mum was dead.” After a moment of
silence I laughed, for a minute, then started to cry. She came over to me and held me in her arms. She said,
“Do you want to go for a walk?.... We're right by the park.”
FIN