Wednesday 3 October 2012

On the post box outside the pub where Eeezi Goin’ are playing on Thursday night...



On the post box outside the pub where Eeezi Goin’ are playing on Thursday night, somebody has written ‘HYC’ in marker pen. I didn’t know the HYC were still around; they once gave me a beating in the toilets of the Most Luxurious Club In The North. I came out with two black eyes and a bust lip. It was 1988.

The proprietress of the shop was shouting into the phone in Urdu at the top of her voice when I dropped off the bags. Outside, a dope smoking, shaven headed man was showing off his new baby to his dope smoking, shaven headed friends. They were in broad agreement that she was a cutie.

Out in the sticks, where shreds of polythene stream like bunting from barbed wire along the fireweed verges, you can see around corners in the cracked convex mirrors. It’s all lavender and hydrangea, gravel paths and improvised containers, wellington boots, wooden windows, cabling suspended via a tree to a shed whose door is propped open with a lump of cement the shape of a bag of cement. The sign says “Caution, Free Range Children” and the black Lab’ is “deaf as a post”. An old man says “Thanks, Pat”, and gives me the thumbs up. I kick the ball for his dog. The first frost of the year has severed the head of the stone tortoise that stands by his door.