A Godawful Small Affair
Page 22
DON’T TELL DAD.
When they got home from the mural, they ordered a takeaway and watched television for a while and then Nathan’s dad climbed on a chair and stuck Jupiter back on Nathan’s bedroom ceiling. He switched the lights off and made sure there was no gap between the curtains and they both lay down on Nathan’s bed, looking up at the newly restored galaxy. Nathan told his dad where Orion’s Belt was and which dot on the ceiling was the pole star.
“Venus should be over there,” Nathan said, pointing at a blank black space on the ceiling.
“I can move it if you want?”
“It’s okay.”
“Maybe tomorrow then,” his dad said. “The sky could do with repainting too. Which star do you think is the one we named after your mum?”
Nathan searched the sky. “That one.”
“So that would be Zoe next to her?”
Nathan nodded. He was making it up, of course, but it didn’t matter.
“And there’s David Bowie,” Nathan said.
“And whereabouts in the sky are we?”
“We’re not there.”
“Where are we then?”
“Down here.”
“Brixton?”
Nathan nodded and they said it together, “London, England, the World, Earth, the Solar System, the Universe.”
For the next ten minutes they lay close together on Nathan’s single bed while he named the planets. Venus and Mars, Jupiter and Pluto, Uranus, Mercury, Saturn and all its moons. He showed his dad the stars, too, all the ones with names – his mum and David Bowie, and his sister, of course. If anyone ever asked now: Where is Zoe Love? Even if it was the middle of the day or if the sky was hidden behind a thick cloud of light pollution, Nathan would be able to show them the exact point in Space that was named after her. And it would always be there, because it was a star and not a planet.
❖
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you Holly, Marc, Chris, Neil and Mark Reynolds for early reading and encouraging. Thank you Mark Reynolds for the amazing cover art and the disintegrating Saturns and to Nathan Eighty for the book’s interior design. Thank you Richard Anderson, Matt Ingham, Adam Velasco, Ricky Martin and everyone at Cherry Red. Thank you Michael Cobb for putting my commas in the right place(s). Thank you Nicola Barr. Thank you Jonathan, Justine and Karen at the Bookseller Crow. Support your local bookshops. Thank you Emma Ollington. Thanks Les and Tim. Thank you Becca Lockley for advice on police procedurals. And of course, thanks as ever to Jacqueline.
When writing ‘A Godawful Small Affair’ I did my best to get the astronomical details correct. If there are mistakes, I will say in my defence that the story is told from the viewpoint of a ten-year-old boy living on a council estate in Brixton, rather than a fifty-five-year-old particle physicist at the CERN institute. So obviously, all mistakes are deliberate. There were two books that were invaluable during the writing of ‘A Godawful Small Affair’. ‘Apollo’ by Zack Scott, published by Wildfire, and ‘100 Things to Know About Space’ by Alex Frith, Alice James, Jerome Martin, Fredrico Mariani and Shaw Nielsen, published by Usborne.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J.B. Morrison is the author of six novels and two memoirs. His books have been translated into eight different languages. In 2015 his fourth novel Frank Derrick’s Holiday of a Lifetime won the ‘Best Older Person’s Character in a Book, Film, TV or Radio Drama’ in Gransnet’s Older People in the Media Awards. As Jim Bob, J.B. Morrison was the lead singer with chart-topping, Glastonbury headlining, indie pop superstars, Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine. He continues to write and perform music. J.B. lives in London and watches far too much television. He hopes to one day be successful enough to not have to write his own ‘about the author’ blurbs.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR:
Fiction:
AS JIM BOB
‘Storage Stories’
‘Driving Jarvis Ham’
AS J.B. MORRISON:
‘The Extra Ordinary Life of Frank Derrick, Age 81’
‘Frank Derrick’s Holiday Of A Lifetime’
Biography/memoir:
‘Goodnight Jim Bob – On the Road with Carter The
Unstoppable Sex Machine’
‘Jim Bob from Carter – In the Shadow of my Former Self’
“Jim captures the very essence of life on the road for the ‘90s least likely pop stars”
ANDREW COLLINS
“This is a book about everyband, and should be read by every other band”
MOJO
“A cracking page turner from one of the finest song lyricists of the last twenty years. This book deserves to be seen as the ‘Fever Pitch’ of rock ‘n’ roll”
ROBERT NEWMAN
“Mr Bob writes touchingly of the joy he felt on stage for an hour a night, and with an Alan Bennett eye about the twenty -three hours of tedium that goes with it”
CHANNEL 4
“A sometimes bitter sweet, sometimes smug, always evocative look at a time that I, for one, would rather forget”
EVERETT TRUE
“A sequel of sorts to ‘Goodnight Jim Bob… each fresh project the victim of his previous success and saddling the poor bloke with an identity crisis that he confronts with good humour”
RECORD COLLECTOR
“The unshowbizziest showbiz biography you’ll ever read. It does the magic thing of being about something very personal but that feels entirely relatable”
DAVE GORMAN
“A really funny and beautiful love letter to Jim Bob's favourite band, which he just happened to be in.”
MICHAEL LEGGE
“So joyous and charming and funny”
IAIN LEE
“All the lunacy and hilarity you’d expect, with a strong self-deprecating streak”
LOUDER THAN WAR
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Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Cherry Red Books (a division
of Cherry Red Records), Power Road Studios, 114
Power Road, London W4 5PY
© James Morrison 2020
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or manual, including photocopying, recording or any data retrieval system without written permission from the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.
A CIP Catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ePub ISBN: 978–1–909454–80–4
Mobi ISBN: 978–1–909454–81–1
PDF ISBN: 978–1–909454–82–8
Layout by Nathan Eighty (nathan.eighty@gmail.com)
Cover design and Illustrations by Mark Reynolds.
‘And God Created Brixton’
Words & Music by James Morrison & Leslie Carter
© Copyright 1996 Island Music Ltd.
Universal/Island Music Limited.
All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.
Used with kind permission of Hal Leonard Europe Limited.