by Tim Vine
Am at Gatwick en route 4 Amsterdam. 7 or 8 highly pokeable Dutch birds here, 2 of them nudging 10/10. It’s horrible. Where can one get chemically castrated?
Will grinned as the train rumbled down the vintage tracks into the station. He negotiated his way onto the carriage, sitting next to a pleasantly plump Polish-looking girl who appeared to be under assault from her mp3 player’s tinny pop music, polluting the immediate surrounding area unapologetically, as well as her brain. It seemed that she was one of many who liked music that’s produced for people who don’t like music. He vaguely recognized the song, but it certainly didn’t sound as good as he remembered as it leaked out of her headphones, the repetition sending him into a mild trance as he stared unthinking out of the window. A shifty character with an unacceptable haircut – whose face looked like it had been pushed into a wall many years ago – stood by the door refusing to put down a brown box that he clasped into his side as the train rattled along. Handel with care had been scribbled onto a green sticker on the box’s side, and he thought that old George Frideric would have been fairly amused by this in his own Baroque manor. An oddly-shaped female of indeterminate age wore a vacant expression – was she actually an idiot or was it just a sign of extreme boredom? Her sinister make-up caught his eye as she splurged out a mighty cough. This caused her ample spongy bosom to morph into her ample spongy belly on the forward lean, tiny fat hand barely covering podgy mouth, her general mass disgusting him somewhat (although surely appealing to certain males . . . or perhaps not?). She could be 25, or maybe 48? Her bright neck scarf must be an attempt to cover some of the offensive mass, or at least distract from it. On his right the obligatory spotty youth sucked on a dry, salty pork pie as small pieces dropped to the floor, brow deeply furrowed and greedy eyes squinting in concentration, or possibly uncertainty in the enjoyment of the snack. Next to him sat an unlikely character, faded tattoo (of a swallow, was it?) a couple of centimetres long, barely protruding from his shirt collar. The same shirt cupped his mini pot belly, a silver ring dangled uselessly from his earlobe, and wet-look gel was streaked liberally through his thinning hair, like a storm-soaked marshland. All these people! Will found himself pondering where to find a piano tuner for the beaten-up upright that his grandma had recently left to him. He was considering calling the RNIB. Weren’t blind people supposed to be the best piano tuners? An awkwardly sexy young woman opposite him with grapefruit cheeks suddenly reminded him of someone, but he couldn’t place who. The more he admired her, the more her feline features drew him in. He studied her thick and extraordinary waterproof 70s porn green mascara until she suddenly held his gaze and scowled at him – he realised that he’d possibly scared her with his intense scrutiny, so hurriedly raised his eyes to an advert for vitamins for pregnant women above her head. Thoughts turned to the day ahead. As a struggling session guitarist doing gigs and scraps of recording – mainly around London – Will had recently reached the stage at which he’d accept pretty much anything in the way of work. He felt that he’d been scratching around for too long, and had even lately taken on three adult guitar students, although he hated teaching.
Only the previous weekend he had begrudgingly driven up to Edinburgh in a rusty old Post Office van with a tribute band to The Jam that he played in from time to time. They could barely nudge 55mph all the way and were crammed in with the scratched up flight cases and gear. After almost ten hours driving and nearly sick with crisps, sweets and biscuits, they eventually stumbled upon the venue which was a floating club on a dimly lit boat that had seen better days. The singer dropped down the short flight of steps from the manager’s office looking deflated. ‘All the bastard posters and flyers that we sent the twat a month ago are sat on a pile on the edge of his desk. There’s gonna be nobody there.’ And for a change, he was right. No-one came, and after they’d played half-heartedly for an hour, the manager told them to go home. At around 11 p.m. that night, the band of four young men, all with £75 pay in their pocket, set off for the 10-hour overnight journey home.
‘Well, that was shit.’ Baz was precise, and as if the situation required some sort of explanation, he added, ‘You know what Adam Ant said? He said that ‘being a musician is like being a boxer: if you don’t want to get punched in the face every day then this job isn’t for you.’ Well I think he might just have a point there.’
The weirdest gig that he’d ever done was at a chair museum, but today that achievement was about to take second place to something even odder. His drummer mate Dave had somehow secured a series of educational concerts, consisting of a sporadic tour around a number of prisons starting in the south of England. They had rehearsed sketchily the day before at a wretched flea-bitten and cheap studio tucked under some railway arches, and Will was now en route to the agreed pick-up spot where the guys and all the gear would be ready in a van for the drive to Highcrest Prison, Suffolk. The general sentiment among the musicians was slight disbelief that someone in a position of power thought it a reasonable expense to the taxpayer for this band of young music-makers to be performing to inmates in any prison. It was triumph for Political Correctness, and the men – and women, of course – in suits would have garbled all the right words to justify reasons for the booking, citing therapy and rehabilitation. They were even talking about giving prisoners internet access too. What next: £100 vouchers for Ikea and a weekly coach trip there for meatballs? Still, they were getting handsomely rewarded and Dave remained happy with himself for securing this deal that looked like a possible ongoing gig for the group.
‘Why can’t we be called Maidenhead or something? It’s kinda a cross between Iron Maiden and Motörhead. Or maybe even Leatherhead? It gives us that funky bondage edge, you know?’ Dave joked.
‘How about Guildford?’ questioned Baz, tentatively. ‘Or something like Wasted Erection?’ Laughter.
For the remainder of the drive the guys entertained themselves by devising novel and disgusting drinks, named after old-skool British ‘celebrities’. The following unlikely menu of beverages was dreamt up:
jim davidson: double Baileys with a double vodka, no ice, served in a wine glass, preferably on a ferry
felicity kendall: vodka & Red Bull
keith chegwin: a Felicity Kendall with Champagne
gary wilmott: gin & any alcopop, no ice
mick hucknall: half pint of Carling shandy, perhaps a little warm
jimmy savile: vanilla ice cream diet Coke float with an umbrella, liberally splashed with Malibu, and a sprinkling of Smarties
noel edmonds: vodka & Pepto-Bismol
sandi toksvig: Crème de Menthe & lime cordial
craig david: Canada Dry & whisky, with a thin slice of lemon and a drizzle of honey, preferably served with a lit sparkler
ant & dec: just salt & lime, no tequila, × 2
It had been decided by the prison authorities that for the purpose of their UK tour, the group would be named The Prison Breakers. These dutiful Civil Servants viewed themselves as being very modern and forward-thinking for proposing and permitting this entire venture, especially with their humorous choice of band name, but Dave and the band hated it. That was that, though, and the musicians had no choice in the matter. They were a typically funny bunch of London-based musos, the odd group of disparate young guys searching for a place in the world of bands around town. The sullen bass player Baz seemed continually depressed and was constantly putting up barriers. This could have been for two reasons, and Will for one certainly couldn’t figure out which one it was: either Baz was fairly dumb so felt out of his depth, or it was a sign of genuine ennui and a hugely outwardly-apparent sign of general disappointment with life. He had certainly passed the point of feeling young and still expecting something out of life. At least he spoke from time to time, which was more to be said for T the singer, who – unusually for a front man – barely uttered a word off stage. He had nearly had a huge career (like so many others), having been sig
ned with his Indie band The Normals for a laughably large sum to a major label a few years previously. It had all gone pear-shaped, though (like so many others), and generally he had caned and spanked himself with drugs (like so many others), and now spent most of the time caring for his elderly and increasingly cantankerous mother in Liverpool. They even had a pretty comprehensive rider, on which, aside from the usual array of alcohol and snacks, was listed:
6 × Men’s pants, an assortment of sizes
Some Lego & Airfix kits
Local postcards, with stamps
Aloe Vera toilet rolls
6 packets of Malboro Lights, and a brick containing Swan Vesta matches
10 × £10 notes, crisp
Male facial moisturiser
A copy of the New Scientist, and Viz
3 × pencils and a metal sharpener
A bottle of Calvin Klein CK One
A USB lead
Mini Thesaurus
So where were the rest of The Normals?
‘Bareback’ Len, guitarist, born 26-09-81, in Cardiff. Got a girl pregnant in Cleveland, Ohio, on the band’s one and only professionally disastrous but hugely entertaining promotional trip to the States. Disappeared back over there after record label dropped them to set up new life with her on her trailer park. Tried to punt his demo CD Unsigned, Sealed and Delivered by his newly-formed punk outfit Lemon Layer Pudding around various record labels and managers, but unsurprisingly nobody wanted to know. Hasn’t been seen or heard of since.
Favourite food: Pringles.
Quote: ‘It’s a beautiful thing.’
Derek ‘What U Lookin’ At?’, drummer, born Bristol, 03-05-79. Got massively shafted by the Inland Revenue after some highly suspicious accounting submitted by his accountant friend who he’d met in the local pub. Had just found out that he got a groupie pregnant in Chicago on the band’s one and only promotional trip to the States. Also around the same time, he realised that he was gay, and started taking even more drugs. A heady cocktail of guilt, confusion, hangovers and disappointment – merged with his brush with fame – lead to his tragic end. He unfortunately jumped off the famous suicide bridge onto the A1 in North London one sunny Tuesday morning after a particularly heavy weekend. He’d watched Frank Sinatra in Can-Can on the Monday afternoon, and one quote rang and rebounded around his head until one of the options made nothing but total sense to him whilst in that particular day’s morbidly specific frame of mind: ‘I’ve considered murder, suicide and chronic alcoholism . . .’
Favourite colour: yellow.
‘Deaf-Aid’ Mike, Bass player, born 01-12-84, somewhere in Somerset. Last known to be studying geology at an establishment in Copenhagen. Loves chilli, and once suffered a serious nosebleed backstage after eating a couple of small pieces of Bhut Jolokia, recognized as the hottest pepper in the world by the Guinness Book of Records in 2007. Favourite stunt on tour: shitting inside the front of hairdryers in hotel rooms, a present for the next user. Quotes: ‘I slightly collapsed, well . . . I think I may have slightly collapsed . . .’ and ‘Did we get really pissed last night?’
Back in the near-glory days of their career they supported a band whose first album cost £40,000 to make and sold 1,000,000 copies, but whose second album cost £1,000,000 to make yet sold 40,000 copies. The day that their record label dropped them publicly was the day of the gig that the two bands did together at Norwich University. Still, even such a monumental disaster as this was almost a goal for The Normals. They once blagged a pretty decent slot mid-afternoon on one of the larger Glastonbury stages, but it had all gone wrong. They had driven down in a tour bus the day before the show with twelve bottles of vodka, a generous wrap of MDMA each, and far too many kilograms of meat. That night turned from messy to outrageous as they consumed all the drugs and heavily dented the vodka supply. Mike was Missing in Action the day of the show, and the rest of the group were too terrified to leave the bus, instead they sat sweating and shaking in fear on a heavy comedown. They never made it to the stage. Needless to say, the glistening pile of meat was never to see the grills of the barbecue which lay in its box shining to itself in the darkness, untouched.
People nowadays would be hard-pressed to notice the fact, but Will had suffered with severe mental problems a few years back. Once, after driving a stolen car in a straight line up Ladbroke Crescent thereby smashing into twenty or so cars (the geometry didn’t work out), he uttered the immortal lines ‘It’s a fair cop, guv’ to the arresting officer. The policeman was subsequently forced to repeat this in court, much to the amusement of those attending. This alone had generated huge respect from Mark who found this one of the funnier stories he’d ever heard.
Will was now much better and appeared these days to be out of the woods. It had all started after a particularly bad acid trip. He turned into a walking soap opera. After burning the only surviving picture of a friend’s grandmother in the kitchen sink, ‘because the coffee machine was haunted’, he was picked up completely naked by Surbiton Constabulary after ringing the Ambulance Service from a public call box not far from the station at 6 a.m. one chilly Saturday morning. He was confused, rambling idiotically on his way to the police station, and although the number of words per minute spouting crazily out of his dry mouth soon diminished, the jumbled confusion in his brain continued. This incident and subsequent evaluations were to eventually lead to his incarceration in an imposing Victorian psychiatric hospital, surrounded by woods. Although his manner would become erratic and slightly crazed at times, he could equally often appear perfectly sane. The other unfortunate inmates were at varying stages of illness, and the general atmosphere was one of barely-controlled chaos.
‘How’s things, Will? Great to see you, mate. I’ve brought you some garibaldis and a bunch of grapes.’ The grapes were a kind of ironic joke, but he knew that Will loved his Garibaldi biscuits. Mark had been led through to the secure wing where he found Will watching a gardening show on daytime TV – with the sound off.
‘I’m strong,’ Will replied simply, getting up from the worn and frayed armchair.
‘Let me show you the two Jesus guys. It’s weird, you know, there are these two geezers who are both convinced that they are the Second Coming of Jesus, and d’you know what the crazy wardens have done? They’ve put them both in a tiny padded room together so they can battle it out! How mad is that!? You’ve got to check it out!’ So Will led Mark down a bright corridor to show him the two men in a room together, one huddled up in a corner and the other just sitting, staring at the wall. They both had bushy beards and longish hair, but there appeared to be no contact between the Jesus men as Mark peered in inquisitively. They hung around outside the room for a while but disappointingly it appeared that there was no matinee performance from the two Sons of God this particular afternoon. Mark couldn’t suppress a chuckle at the unusual set-up.
A short while later and without any warning Will became excited like a small child and ran across to the wall, gleefully smashing glass to set off the fire alarm, showing off with a jumpy manner Mark hadn’t witnessed in him before. After laughing strangely and madly for a few minutes, Will quietly admitted to one of the staff with a cheeky old-fashioned wink that the alarm had been set off by him. Becoming angry and upset after being mildly reprimanded, the situation rapidly turned ugly, and before long there were several hassled nurses bundling him onto the floor, restraining him then marching him off down a long corridor. Mark’s visit had been abruptly cut short. He had seen enough of the place by this time anyway; it was the kind of horrendous establishment that he had no idea still existed in quite such an antiquated form in the UK, and he felt more than just a little uncomfortable there. What the fuck was that hideously ugly and imposing bust of Beethoven doing in the entrance hall anyway? The entire hospital conjured up scenes that were remarkably close to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and he had been particularly disturbed although not unamused a
fter seeing one patient in the art block lying on a sofa in his dressing-gown suddenly start to furiously masturbate and emit a weird walrus-like noise as a female member of staff swiftly scuttled by. What he would never know was that Colin was a serial masturbator, whose desultory actions never enhanced his life: doing this many times a day, feeling no emotion, becoming neither happier nor more depressed, more tired or awake. It was his direction in life.
‘Over here, friend, over here,’ beckoned a wiry, friendly-looking character. ‘If gay’s your way then that’s okay . . .’ Mark shook his head slowly, holding his gaze. ‘I’ve got to tell you something important, seriously, you’ve got to hear me.’ The man was at Mark’s elbow now, frowning. Mark smiled wryly at something written clearly and neatly on the wall in felt tip above the guy’s head: neverbeensectioned.com
He took his time. ‘It’s ketchup. It makes me cross. Really cross. I get angry at the sight of it, its unnecessary redness, its artificial smell . . . the vinegar. And what winds me right up, my friend, is that everyone always assumes that you’ll like it, that it’s universally adored, that you want it ruining and staining your food. Well, I’m going to let you into a little secret – they’re wrong! Not everyone likes ketchup . . . I mean, look at me, I HATE IT! Can’t stand the vile jelly-like putrid fake matter. Soggy ketchup-ridden chips, absolutely disgusting.’ The incensed man paused for breath. ‘Absolutely fucking dis-gust-ing!’ He almost spat out the words. ‘Some people are even rude enough to put it on your food.’ He pulled a face.
‘What, not even on the side of the plate or whatever? It does have certain properties, you know,’ taunted Mark, rather enjoying himself now.