Money For Nothing

by Dom Price

  Dave Marsdon Esq

  15 Bleheim Pleasant

  Crookes

  Sheffield

  S10 1DH

  FAO: Dad

  Re: Christmas gifts, beliefs and snooping

  Dad, you have passed the test as a snoop, but it’s OK, because Santa is not gay. He can’t be, as he doesn’t exist. And even if he was gay, what he was just doing with the reindeer has a different name, although I do believe that the reindeer were males.

  As for Christmas Dad, Anne and I both know that you and Mum scurry out to get the presents between us writing our Santa letters and Xmas Day, and then try your hardest to hide them in the back of your wardrobe. For the last 13 years we have been eternally grateful for this gorgeous tradition, but we’ve elected to try something a little different this year. This year, we’ve decided what we want, and Anne has prepared a separate list that Mum will find when she goes looking for Anne’s diary. I know you have been saving the coupons and vouchers for transformer toys, new games for my computer and an array of socks that would be generous for even Gandi, but I would like the following for Christmas please:

  Any books on Richard Branson and Alan Sugar

  Subscription to Forbes magazine

  Subscription to Harvard Business Review and back dated copies

  Bill Gates; Is he the next big thing? (in hard back please. I believe this will be the new bible)

  The making of the Sinclair C5

  A word processing software package for the computer

  A Lexmark TD7 dot matrix printer

  A whiteboard and marker pens for my room

  I already have three copies of “The Best Christmas album EVER” so please do not get me that again. It’s a false economy. I will also require a selection of razor blades and shaving foam soon, but I don’t believe these should fall under the category of “gifts” as they are more like everyday consumables. We can go and get these in the January sales where we can no doubt get a better bargain.

  I also do not need that cable that I had originally asked for, to connect my ghetto blaster to Anne’s. Long story, but it is now surplus to requirements, so if you’ve still got the receipt, we can take that back to Tandy.

  Please understand that careful consideration has gone into our selection of gifts for this Xmas, and we have not taken these decisions lightly. Our main objective was to provide you and Mum with the easiest opportunity to get bang for your buck and maximize the efficiency of your transactions, viz-a-viz your spending threshold.

  Warmest Regards,

  Dave (your only son and future CEO of Marsdon Enterprises)

  Sitting there in a daze, Derek didn’t know what had happened in his kids busy life to cause what seemed like a dramatic change, but he did know one thing. They were growing up and he always said that there was nothing wrong with knowing what you wanted from life. And he was left with little uncertainty that Dave was pretty confident on what he wanted for Christmas, and maybe even what he wanted from life and Derek would be there to support them wherever possible. But a little part of him did wonder as he sat back on Dave’s office chair, “where did all this start?” Little did he know the significance of the ghetto blaster lead that he’d only recently purchased for Dave from Tandy electronics store. With teenage years came a loss of innocence.

  ***

  Chapter Look, Listen and Lust

  ***

  “Student single into town please driver?”

  It was just a month previous that Dave had been on the bus into town, listening to last year’s birthday present which was the ever impressive Sony WSD 75E Walkman, featuring the essential base boost and a set of carefully selected headphones which were so large that they actually doubled as earmuffs. In fact, to a novice or someone over the age of 35, they looked just like ear muffs but with wires and a dull din coming from them.

  The bus was full with the usual selection of local residents. There was the purple rinse brigade of older women sporting offensive combinations of gingham check, all within the boundaries of shades of beige and brown. It was almost as if they got to a certain age and went colour blind, able to only recognise dull colours. Dave didn’t know any of them personally, but guessed that they were all called Mary, June or Margaret.

  The brigade were in direct opposition to the younger crowd of boys that used the bus to just cruise around town causing trouble. Whilst the purple ladies muttered endlessly, they secretly enjoyed having something fresh to whinge about. In between the young boys and the old ladies was a mixture of single mums, battling to retain control of the snivelling children as the bus turned the corners around Sheffield’s city centre.

  Margaret was leaning over towards June, trying to combat her partial deafness and the roar of the diesel engine. “There is one at the back. I think it’s the Marsdon boy and he has got bloody wires coming out of his earmuffs? You know June, keeping up with all this electronic mumbo jumbo is impossible. What is next hey? I read in t’paper the other week that some idiot reckons we’ll all have t’computers and all that crap soon? I tell you summat for nowt June. I’m having no friggin machine like that in my house, I tell you that for FREE”. June nodded in complete agreement, oblivious to what was being said and concerned that she could have been potentially charged for that useless piece of information. “You’re right Margaret. They couldn’t have survived in our day this lot. Not with rations and the like.” As naturally as a chrysalis becomes a butterfly, the conversation diverted to the 50’s and 60’s, when times were tough and you respected your elders.

  Dave was as self aware as your average teenage boy, and saw no problems as he inevitably turned up the volume on his new tape to really test the base boost and new headphones. He’d borrowed a tape from his Dad’s car that had a song on it that he just couldn’t get enough of. Everyone has a song. From the past or from the now. A song that when it comes on, wherever you are, and whatever you are doing, you just want to turn it up and immerse yourself in the memory of when you first heard it, or feel like you are the video for the song. What you were doing? What you were wearing? How bad that looked? You can remember all of it. Dave had just found that song, and it was on its hundredth play of the weekend.

  It just so happened that with each passing year, the propensity to be embarrassed by immersing yourself in that moment, got significantly higher. But as a 12 year old approaching his teenage years, Dave was relatively care free and had only two thoughts on his mind.

  One, how hot is Veronica Cartwright, a girl from Dave’s class at school, and two, how much better does Dire Straits ‘Money for Nothing’ sound when you really turn it up. Sitting back on the bus, Dave cranked up the volume, pressed the headphone muffs close to his ears to limit any escaping music and went to that place…the place where he is on stage, guitar in hand and playing the unmistakable riff of ‘Money for Nothing’ with his luminous Mark Knopfler headband on, and as he looks to the side of the stage and sings the words “money for nothing and your chicks for free” he turns casually and romantically to see a grown up and very busty Veronica Cartwright ogling at his every move and every strum. She is his and he is hers. If only the real world existed behind the thin veil of our closed eyes.

  Dave was startled back into the now as one of the ladies belted him with a rolled up newspaper, as his quiet singing along hit new heights of volume and disturbed the whole bus. The breaking voice of a 12 year old Yorkshire lad really does have to work hard to reach the trained tones of Sting’s backing vocals in ‘Money For Nothing’. A little embarrassed, Dave was about to opt for a lower volume when he decided to conserve the batteries for another occasion. A decision well made, as it hadn’t been the singing or air guitar solo that had prompted the whack from the old lady.

  Mary, stunned at what she couldn’t see going on behind the chair, had convinced June of something completely different to the air drumming that Dave had been entertaining. “Boys at that age” muttered Mary to June. “They think it’s a toy. Tell him that it’ll
bloody well fall off if he carries on doing that to it. Or he’ll get arrested doing that in public!” June’s retort was simple but involved anger that caused splattering of spit to come with it towards a cowering Mary.

  Without music as a distraction, Dave surveyed the rest of the people of the bus. A row in front of him, a couple of boys from a few years ahead of him at big school were sat chatting away. Well chatting might be a bit of a stretch. At the age of 14 ¾ normal words were replaced with grunting in a kind of dull teenage language that resembled Neanderthal man crossed with the noise we all make when we’ve been to the dentist and had an anaesthetic.

  The boy to the right had astounding amounts of bum fluff and wispy hair on his chin that literally looked like sporadic collections of dust, that needed brushing away rather than shaving away. The aroma from him suggested that he’d taken careful consideration before leaving his house and strangely decided to forgo a shower in preference of dousing himself in some horrendous cheap aftershave that was causing irreparable damage to everyone’s nose hair with its pungent smell. Dave’s mind working overdrive as usual was focusing on the irony of the scent. In school recently they’d had a chat from someone about the dangers of sniffing glue or inhaling the gas from aerosols, and yet this aftershave had been deemed legal. The one advantage to the whiff was that it overtook the normal winning combination of moth balls and lavender that the old ladies chose as their potion of passion. The boy chewed gum like a cross between a cow chewing grass, and the cement mixers that sat waiting to deliver their mixture where the new motorway was being built near Dave’s parents house. His hair contained so much gel, that Dave couldn’t help but think that its maintenance was a full time project and probably involved walking the hair version of a tight rope walk. It was styled to be messy. That made no sense to Dave.

  Dave was transfixed on the older boys, and this joyful new sport of people watching. What Dave loved most was that as well as being fun, it was free! The smell was so powerful that Dave didn’t have an opportunity to admire the boy’s Fred Flintstone jeans with the purpose ripped knees. He didn’t yet understand why you’d ruin a perfectly good pair of jeans by ripping them, but that was the difference between being 12 and becoming a fully fledged teenager.

  The second boy could only be described as the other half of the fire hazard. Whilst the gel and aftershave of the boy on the right was to a fire, what light is to a moth, the second boy was the accelerant. He was casually sporting a pristine shiny shell suit that created more static electricity than the local power station. The labelling was so prominent and large, that the shell suit paled into insignificance in comparison. It was really a true testament to his use of hair mousse and selection of the ‘flat top’ hair style, that meant that the static had no chance of affecting his already vertical hair style. His footwear had been clearly chosen with a growth spurt in mind, and would have suited an NBA basketball player as they didn’t fit him yet. The spots and the acne that adorned his face with a glow, would have made for a good dot-to-dot, but on reflection, Dave was fascinated to try and find Orion’s Belt and the Big Dipper within the boys puberty constellation. Feeling reflective, Dave touched his own face to feel his slightly greasy but extremely soft smooth face. There were no spots and no signs of the fluff that the first boy was sporting. The simple conclusion rang true in his head; “Must avoid aftershave and shell suits.”

  What the second boy lacked in chewing gum, he made up for in industrial strength snivelling. Surely if a man’s nose was actually that runny, he’d actually opt for some kind of surgery. Mind you, on reflection, it could well have been an allergic reaction to his friend’s aftershave. Admittedly, it was drawing into winter in Sheffield, and whilst some would comment that it was partly winter in every season, this year appeared to be comparably mild. In fact, Dave had opted for last year’s Xmas jumper, as much for the fact that he knew Nanna would be at home by the time he got back, rather than for the fashion statements that it didn’t make. Dave was convinced by now that once you got to a certain age, ie Nanna’s age, you thought all children had a secret fetish for obscenely bright colours, badly combined in an ill-fitting style; after all, that is what Nanna got for him and Anne every year!

  Back with the snivelling boy, Dave was suddenly dazzled by the jewellery that clogged his hands. A chain around the wrist, and a myriad of faux gold products on fingers and thumbs, including a rather brash looking ring that was sealed with a one pound coin. Dave wondered quietly if they actually used a one pound coin and just set it in the ring, and then moved on to wonder if it could be classed as legal tender…he really did need to get out more.

  Not besieged by the raw class being displayed by the two boys, Dave’s senses quickly changed place, and his hearing moved into first position as the overload of sights became too much. With the dull hum of the diesel bus churning away in the background as the driver navigated the old bus around the seven hills of Sheffield, Dave listened intently, without truly understanding the magnitude of what he was about to hear and how it would impact his life. In hindsight, learning who’d shot JFK could have had less of a life altering moment compared to this. Innocently listening in, with ears that his Dad Derek teased “could pick up a mouse’s fart from outer space”, Dave was now focused on the boy’s conversation.

  “So I made the tape round at me Dad’s house right, and I just stuck a few love songs and stuff on, and then some stuff that would you know, really make her think that I liked her right…and then I just posted it through her door with a note that kinda said that I’d made it for her and that the songs made me think of her” retold the chewy boy.

  Aftershave man’s face was aghast, and simply managed a very focused “so…what happened then?”

  “Well after school last week, she grabs me in the playground and asked for a chat right. So I’m like yeah, and she is like, so, I listened to your tape. Next thing I know, she leans forward and sticks lips on me. Like full on lips and tongue and allsorts.”

  “Did you touch her ass or tits or anything like that?” Aftershave boy interrupted, eagerly wanting more details.

  “Ha, well I was about to reach for some cheek, when Mr Johnson from Science bangs on the window and shouted something about decorum and stuff, so we legged it. But I swear mate, mix tapes are the way forward. You need to get a good variety of stuff on there, and apparently if you really want a girl to like you, you just add in your own chat, in between songs, kinda like you are running your own radio station. Girls love it!” chewy surmised, with an ease that made the entire process sound like a stroll in the park. Aftershave boy nodded and was fully sold on the idea.

  David had heard enough, and the plan was already devised in his head. He’d borrow the small stereo from the kitchen that his mum listened to whilst preparing the family meals. He’d get a collection of tapes from the downstairs dresser and the car, which was a great source of classic sing along love songs. The finishing touches would have to be some of Anne’s chart music that her and her friends seemed to hover around like men around a TV when there is sport on. Dave’s only concern was that whilst he had a good grasp on the older music that his parents indulged in, he was less comfortable with the chart music that Anne embraced so naturally. He did have the option of asking her advice or even explaining his plan, but whilst Dave and Anne were extremely close, this was a solo mission that required the utmost secrecy, preparation and delivery.

  ***

  Chapter Target, Aim and Misfire

  ***

  “Veronica Marsdon. Ronny Marsdon for short.”

  The more he said it, the more David was convinced that her name had a definite ring to it.

  Dave collected his pencil case and marker pen, and made it official. Across his pencil case and school bag, the words were etched. “Dave Ronny, I.D.S.T.”

  Before commencing on the journey of preparing a mix tape, David had already defined success as getting a snog from Veronica. It surely wasn’t too much to ask given the
apparent joy that the boy on the bus had experienced. It seemed relatively straight forward and almost fool proof.

  He’d never really kissed a girl, and hadn’t actually ever thought he’d wanted to. Girls had been fun for some Kiss Chasey around the playground in his formative years, but Dave had never actually followed through with a kiss on the lips, always preferring the safe option of kissing them on the cheek. Commitment wasn’t his strong point from an early age, but he was also risk averse having seen the consequences of others actions. He’d learnt this from his best friend, Tony. Recently besieged with a constant flow of cold sores around his mouth, Tony blamed the incarnations of his bad judgement in kissing Nina Menzies on the lips in a junior school game of Kiss Chasey. Nina was a favourite with the boys due to her cute bunches, lofty stature and early adoption of more significant female attributes. She was the first girl in their year to acquire boobs, much to the joy of all the immature boys.

  Tony hadn’t been humble in his victories at Kiss Chasey, kissing Nina firmly on the lips and then parading around the playground as “The Champion of Kiss Chasey”. His humbleness came later with the reaction on his face. The frequent resurgence of his cold sores were the only reminder of his ‘victory’ which was no longer shouted about with such pleasure. During a recent kick around of football after school, Tony had revealed that he’d had a reaction to kissing Nina other than the sores, and that this particular reaction was what happened when you kissed a girl.

  David was curious. “Did you get some more cream for it?”, but Tony had laughed this off as a joke, and went on to give Dave a rather interesting interpretation of the birds and the bees.

  “So when you kiss a girl, if you like her, and she likes you, then it causes this reaction in your trousers and it feels really nice.”