Well, that's the end of the gigs set up for the Neurotics to say goodbye, and therefore it is the end of the blog. I am very pleased that I managed to keep it up whilst being so busy especially as before I started it, I was afraid that I would run out of things to say. That fear was unfounded and as such the concept has burst out from the blog format. The 1963 timeline I am going to compile into a book and will continue writing it offline until I feel I have a completed story. At that point I will try to find a publisher.
Consider what you have read so far to be a taster, and if you ever see it on a bookshelf or available on Amazon please buy it, you will make me very happy if you do.
For those of you who have followed what I have been writing day after day, thank you for your perseverance, it was for you that I made sure there was something to read each time you checked the blog out.
Steve Drewett
Sat 18th August 2007
Saturday, 18 August 2007
Friday, 17 August 2007
The end justifies the means.
August 12th 2007 6.00pm
Afterwards in the dressing room everyone is feeling very pleased with themselves and Simon whips out a bottle and some plastic cups to make a toast to the end of the band.
Back in the mists of time after he had auditioned for the Neurotics and we told him he had got the job, we toasted the acquisition of our new drummer with a bottle of Pomaigne!
Now at the end of our career we say goodbye to the band with a bottle of Cava.
We certainly know how to push the boat out.
But this was not about grand gestures, we know what the band has meant to us and it is not measured in the contents of a bottle of alcohol.
From this point on, people approach me back stage, I attend the festival the following day and they approached me on several occasions there and I even got stopped at a motorway service station by people who want to tell me how much they enjoyed the set and if it is really true that it is the end.
They make me laugh, they approach and say “Sorry to bother you but…” No one is ever bothering me if they are telling me how much they have enjoyed the Neurotics.
They would be bothering me if they were coming over to tell me how shit they thought we were but fortunately they don't.
The strange thing about this years gig is that everyone thought the hour we were on stage flew and it seemed like half the time. It certainly felt like that to me and the rest of the band, but we were performing so I suppose it would seem like that to us. However I kept bumping into people who immediately said the same, our crew felt the same way too. Last year we played the same length of set and no-one said it seemed short. It may be because we never got to play ‘Kick Out The Tories’ but that was because some of the other numbers we did were longer than what we performed in 2006.
There was a Quantum singularity on that stage I swear and time was warping for us all.
Just like last year, Clare, Rosa and myself decide to stay on for the Sunday and we spend the day hanging out in the Pirate bar (Yo Ho Ho, let’s go! There I go again, any excuse!) and catching the odd band, like the Adicts, who finished off the festival.
We also managed a visit to the top of Blackpool Tower. Whilst at the top I gazed back at the Winter Gardens hundreds of feet below and could still see hundreds of punks outside, they looked like smoker ants swarming around their hill crying ‘God Save The Queen’ whilst doing a curious dance as they followed intricate trails of larger.
I sauntered around to the other side of the tower to look out at a ruby red sunset. I knew we would be leaving soon and I, like all who have made this annual trek to punk heaven had a heavy heart, I knew I would leave part of me here, forcing me to think of it at totally unpredictable moments.
But unlike some British towns which try to seduce you into thinking you could live there for ever if you had the money, Blackpool is more honest, it treats you as transient and asks you for what ever you have got.
For the people who live and earn their living there it is probably a totally different town. But we will never know that, because we are going home, where ever that may be.
Squinting through the sunset I gazed out to sea and wondered what was out there. Isle of man first, then Ireland and then America. Hmmm.
I then realised that I still had to finish my blog and that it was probably going to go on for a while before concluding.
I thought hard about how I was going to end it. I imaged myself at home at my computer tapping out the final lines and I imaged it would end something like, this...
1963
Later I got bored with being in my room and went downstairs for a change of scenery. I placed myself down in my usual place, on a pouffe in-between my parents to watch the TV with the coffee table in front of me. I leafed through the magazines with little interest and yawned at the programmes they were had on as they held little facination for me. Eventually, at some point my dad would make a sarcastic remark to my mum or he would criticise the cup of tea she had just made him ,anything at all really and off they would go sniping at one another until it was a full scale blazing row, accusation and retort back and forth over my head till mind was ringing with ricocheting bullets of distorted facts that made up the rationale of his idiotic logic.
Trouble is they were a double act. Although my mother was never the driving force behind these acts of demoralisation she was the straight man in this duet of misery. Just like it is impossible for a tennis player to play without an opponent, my parents arguments also relied on each other to play out this game of spite. However where the tennis player needs to anticipate the next move of their opponent; they knew the combinations of outcomes so much that there were no surprises left in this tournament of the tormented. It was a well worn formulae and I too knew it inside out, you just needed to replace certain key elements for the rowing to start from and then it was predictable from then on. However this ball of confusion never touched the ground, it just got hit back and forth with great accuracy with me in the middle. The looser would be the one who finally burst into tears. That would be my mum mostly but it also included both my sisters and myself. You couldn’t beat him, this was his raison d'être and he would have infinite reservoirs of energy to wear you down and grind you into the dust. He was the ultimate long distance arguer. The weirdest thing was I don’t remember him swearing, at least when I was there, that means instead of this being a rage of passion, it was cold and controlled, maximum spite, minimum swearing, ‘to stop the boy picking up bad language’. This was akin to the police interrogation methods in the Seventies of beating confessions out of defendants through a pillow so their faces wouldn’t look bruised in the courtroom the following day. And if the battlefield should fall silent for any space of time, the television would elbow it’s way back into our consciousness filling our heads with now more meaningless words because they had lost all context and therefore had no value at all to our existence , if they ever had.
If there happened to be something on the television that interested me I would try to concentrate on it through a crackling and hissing rage within me and I’d try for all my worth to cut out the white noise of infantile strife. I never managed it though, I didn’t have the self control. If I could have cut half the noise out it might have been somewhere near tolerable but the TV, like my parents could never be switched off.
Unable to bear it any longer I would take myself off to my room and lose myself once again in comics and toys. Later in my life, when my sisters left home, I got their big room which was situated directly above the living room. When I'd had enough of their auguring and came upstairs I could still hear their muffled bloodletting rising up through the floor. Headphones had just appeared in England at this point and I knew why they had been invented. I’d put them on to my head and they wouldn’t come off until it was time to go to bed. Later it would be an amplified guitar that would keep this hateful noise at bay and provide an umbilical cord to reason and sanity.
For now, the comics and toys would simply have to do.
Finally as the weekend came to a close and Harlow prepared to move a further week away from being a ‘New Town’ my mother would kiss my slumbering cheek and with a sigh, shuffle off, to once again sleep with the enemy.
Afterwards in the dressing room everyone is feeling very pleased with themselves and Simon whips out a bottle and some plastic cups to make a toast to the end of the band.
Back in the mists of time after he had auditioned for the Neurotics and we told him he had got the job, we toasted the acquisition of our new drummer with a bottle of Pomaigne!
Now at the end of our career we say goodbye to the band with a bottle of Cava.
We certainly know how to push the boat out.
But this was not about grand gestures, we know what the band has meant to us and it is not measured in the contents of a bottle of alcohol.
From this point on, people approach me back stage, I attend the festival the following day and they approached me on several occasions there and I even got stopped at a motorway service station by people who want to tell me how much they enjoyed the set and if it is really true that it is the end.
They make me laugh, they approach and say “Sorry to bother you but…” No one is ever bothering me if they are telling me how much they have enjoyed the Neurotics.
They would be bothering me if they were coming over to tell me how shit they thought we were but fortunately they don't.
The strange thing about this years gig is that everyone thought the hour we were on stage flew and it seemed like half the time. It certainly felt like that to me and the rest of the band, but we were performing so I suppose it would seem like that to us. However I kept bumping into people who immediately said the same, our crew felt the same way too. Last year we played the same length of set and no-one said it seemed short. It may be because we never got to play ‘Kick Out The Tories’ but that was because some of the other numbers we did were longer than what we performed in 2006.
There was a Quantum singularity on that stage I swear and time was warping for us all.
Just like last year, Clare, Rosa and myself decide to stay on for the Sunday and we spend the day hanging out in the Pirate bar (Yo Ho Ho, let’s go! There I go again, any excuse!) and catching the odd band, like the Adicts, who finished off the festival.
We also managed a visit to the top of Blackpool Tower. Whilst at the top I gazed back at the Winter Gardens hundreds of feet below and could still see hundreds of punks outside, they looked like smoker ants swarming around their hill crying ‘God Save The Queen’ whilst doing a curious dance as they followed intricate trails of larger.
I sauntered around to the other side of the tower to look out at a ruby red sunset. I knew we would be leaving soon and I, like all who have made this annual trek to punk heaven had a heavy heart, I knew I would leave part of me here, forcing me to think of it at totally unpredictable moments.
But unlike some British towns which try to seduce you into thinking you could live there for ever if you had the money, Blackpool is more honest, it treats you as transient and asks you for what ever you have got.
For the people who live and earn their living there it is probably a totally different town. But we will never know that, because we are going home, where ever that may be.
Squinting through the sunset I gazed out to sea and wondered what was out there. Isle of man first, then Ireland and then America. Hmmm.
I then realised that I still had to finish my blog and that it was probably going to go on for a while before concluding.
I thought hard about how I was going to end it. I imaged myself at home at my computer tapping out the final lines and I imaged it would end something like, this...
1963
Later I got bored with being in my room and went downstairs for a change of scenery. I placed myself down in my usual place, on a pouffe in-between my parents to watch the TV with the coffee table in front of me. I leafed through the magazines with little interest and yawned at the programmes they were had on as they held little facination for me. Eventually, at some point my dad would make a sarcastic remark to my mum or he would criticise the cup of tea she had just made him ,anything at all really and off they would go sniping at one another until it was a full scale blazing row, accusation and retort back and forth over my head till mind was ringing with ricocheting bullets of distorted facts that made up the rationale of his idiotic logic.
Trouble is they were a double act. Although my mother was never the driving force behind these acts of demoralisation she was the straight man in this duet of misery. Just like it is impossible for a tennis player to play without an opponent, my parents arguments also relied on each other to play out this game of spite. However where the tennis player needs to anticipate the next move of their opponent; they knew the combinations of outcomes so much that there were no surprises left in this tournament of the tormented. It was a well worn formulae and I too knew it inside out, you just needed to replace certain key elements for the rowing to start from and then it was predictable from then on. However this ball of confusion never touched the ground, it just got hit back and forth with great accuracy with me in the middle. The looser would be the one who finally burst into tears. That would be my mum mostly but it also included both my sisters and myself. You couldn’t beat him, this was his raison d'être and he would have infinite reservoirs of energy to wear you down and grind you into the dust. He was the ultimate long distance arguer. The weirdest thing was I don’t remember him swearing, at least when I was there, that means instead of this being a rage of passion, it was cold and controlled, maximum spite, minimum swearing, ‘to stop the boy picking up bad language’. This was akin to the police interrogation methods in the Seventies of beating confessions out of defendants through a pillow so their faces wouldn’t look bruised in the courtroom the following day. And if the battlefield should fall silent for any space of time, the television would elbow it’s way back into our consciousness filling our heads with now more meaningless words because they had lost all context and therefore had no value at all to our existence , if they ever had.
If there happened to be something on the television that interested me I would try to concentrate on it through a crackling and hissing rage within me and I’d try for all my worth to cut out the white noise of infantile strife. I never managed it though, I didn’t have the self control. If I could have cut half the noise out it might have been somewhere near tolerable but the TV, like my parents could never be switched off.
Unable to bear it any longer I would take myself off to my room and lose myself once again in comics and toys. Later in my life, when my sisters left home, I got their big room which was situated directly above the living room. When I'd had enough of their auguring and came upstairs I could still hear their muffled bloodletting rising up through the floor. Headphones had just appeared in England at this point and I knew why they had been invented. I’d put them on to my head and they wouldn’t come off until it was time to go to bed. Later it would be an amplified guitar that would keep this hateful noise at bay and provide an umbilical cord to reason and sanity.
For now, the comics and toys would simply have to do.
Finally as the weekend came to a close and Harlow prepared to move a further week away from being a ‘New Town’ my mother would kiss my slumbering cheek and with a sigh, shuffle off, to once again sleep with the enemy.
Thursday, 16 August 2007
Looking out at you!
August 12th 2007 5.30pm
‘When The Oil Runs Out’ follows, dedicated to terrorists, Bush and Blair with the audience screaming out the chorus. I’m now relaxed for the first time in days and I’m really enjoying myself, as is the whole band which is showing in how well they are playing.This is a better executed set than last year and I am well pleased to improve onour performance in 2006 which we all thought would be difficult to do.
I introduce the next song by saying that it is really dispiriting to have so little choice politically these days and recognising that many in our audience have probably given up voting, I point out that apathy does not disturb our politicians, they get in anyway on a smaller share of the vote and carry on doing what ever they want to do. Activism is what scares them so getting involved in grass roots politics is the way to go. Then if there are enough of us doing that, we will arrive at the same destination anyway.
We then play ‘Get Up and Fight’ to further hammer home the point. It’s another number we haven’t performed for years but gets it’s third airing this tour.
I’m really enjoying playing this song, it’s like I have rediscovered it and live tonight it is a revelation! It just soars and takes the audience with it.
The band are so tight that when we end a number the last note rockets to the back of the huge ballroom over everyone’s heads and bounces back to us seconds later like an echo sounding, giving me a mental picture of the audience beyond the stage lights in the same way a bat uses sound to ‘see’.
The audience erupts and I am so relieved that we played that so well because I wanted this number to shine and it did.
We follow this with ‘You Must Be Mad’ yet another we haven’t played for years. The choice of what to play is always a hard one, you leave some favourites out to play others and the audience misses the ones you didn’t play. If we played the same set as last year, people would complain that it was exactly the same. Play a varied set and there are still numbers that have to be left out much to the disappointment of somebody. So we just have to go with our own feelings.
This number also has a new lease of life shown in the excitement the band generates with it by playing it so well.
Finally we come to our last number, the grand finale of ‘Living With Unemployment’ and towards the end the audience sing along with great gusto, so I allow the dub section to go on a little longer than usual because they are singing so loudly.
At this point, little do I know but we are running out of time, I had agreed with the stage manager to have a cue flashed up to us to let us know when there was only ten minutes left to go of our time on stage. However instead of flashing it up to me, he showed it to Simon who had no way of communicating it to me being so far back on the stage and not being within shouting distance. Living With Unemployment finishes in a blaze of glory and we go off with the fans screaming for more.
We had planned to do ‘Kick Out The Tories’ as an encore but we had run out of time and the stage manager wouldn’t allow it.
And so on our final gig, we left the stage with the audience wanting more but not getting it.
But then again they would always want more.
The question is, do I? At the moment I am not feeling emotional at this being the last gig, I am feeling a quiet satisfaction that we had played a good gig.
I just thought, “that wasn’t bad!”
1963
So I gazed out of my bedroom window watching people and the occasional car go by. Across the road I can see the square Billy lives in and Graham lives a little further up the street. If Graham were to call on Billy I would see them both from here, but I don’t, they must be confined to their homes too. A green double decker 804 bus stops a little way up the road and picks some passengers up, it’s a Sunday so there aren’t many. The only thing to do on a boring Sunday is go to church, go to the pub or both, I wasn’t interested in either of those pastimes, I just wanted to play with my friends. The bus passes slowly by, the top deck almost level with my window, bored passengers like mobile jurors gaze back at me, taking in a snapshot of my silent misery, I still feel like I’m in the dock. The feeling passes with the bus and I look around to see if I can spot my friends.
I did have friends at this time, they were my gang, I didn’t mean to have a gang but all the kids would couldn’t make it into the proper gangs, the rejects, ended up with me, and I was leader due to being the oldest.
But I was crap at it because this is not what I wanted. I wanted to be in a proper gang, I didn’t want to lead, I wanted to be lead, I wanted to belong and I needed a father figure in the shape of an older boy to seek praise from.
Not that my gang were a bad bunch, they were good friends and we did have a seriously great time together but I just didn’t feel that grown up with them.
At one point I see one of them, Steven Taylor spot me in the window and he mouths, “are you coming out”? I mouth back “I can’t, I’m not allowed out”. He shrugged with as much sympathy as he could muster and then headed off to the “Hills”. His freedom seems to further agitate me and my lack of it. I dragged some toy cars and a few action figures on to the window sill and use the outside world as a backdrop to an imaginary one, where I had as much freedom as I required and I was in control.
‘When The Oil Runs Out’ follows, dedicated to terrorists, Bush and Blair with the audience screaming out the chorus. I’m now relaxed for the first time in days and I’m really enjoying myself, as is the whole band which is showing in how well they are playing.This is a better executed set than last year and I am well pleased to improve onour performance in 2006 which we all thought would be difficult to do.
I introduce the next song by saying that it is really dispiriting to have so little choice politically these days and recognising that many in our audience have probably given up voting, I point out that apathy does not disturb our politicians, they get in anyway on a smaller share of the vote and carry on doing what ever they want to do. Activism is what scares them so getting involved in grass roots politics is the way to go. Then if there are enough of us doing that, we will arrive at the same destination anyway.
We then play ‘Get Up and Fight’ to further hammer home the point. It’s another number we haven’t performed for years but gets it’s third airing this tour.
I’m really enjoying playing this song, it’s like I have rediscovered it and live tonight it is a revelation! It just soars and takes the audience with it.
The band are so tight that when we end a number the last note rockets to the back of the huge ballroom over everyone’s heads and bounces back to us seconds later like an echo sounding, giving me a mental picture of the audience beyond the stage lights in the same way a bat uses sound to ‘see’.
The audience erupts and I am so relieved that we played that so well because I wanted this number to shine and it did.
We follow this with ‘You Must Be Mad’ yet another we haven’t played for years. The choice of what to play is always a hard one, you leave some favourites out to play others and the audience misses the ones you didn’t play. If we played the same set as last year, people would complain that it was exactly the same. Play a varied set and there are still numbers that have to be left out much to the disappointment of somebody. So we just have to go with our own feelings.
This number also has a new lease of life shown in the excitement the band generates with it by playing it so well.
Finally we come to our last number, the grand finale of ‘Living With Unemployment’ and towards the end the audience sing along with great gusto, so I allow the dub section to go on a little longer than usual because they are singing so loudly.
At this point, little do I know but we are running out of time, I had agreed with the stage manager to have a cue flashed up to us to let us know when there was only ten minutes left to go of our time on stage. However instead of flashing it up to me, he showed it to Simon who had no way of communicating it to me being so far back on the stage and not being within shouting distance. Living With Unemployment finishes in a blaze of glory and we go off with the fans screaming for more.
We had planned to do ‘Kick Out The Tories’ as an encore but we had run out of time and the stage manager wouldn’t allow it.
And so on our final gig, we left the stage with the audience wanting more but not getting it.
But then again they would always want more.
The question is, do I? At the moment I am not feeling emotional at this being the last gig, I am feeling a quiet satisfaction that we had played a good gig.
I just thought, “that wasn’t bad!”
1963
So I gazed out of my bedroom window watching people and the occasional car go by. Across the road I can see the square Billy lives in and Graham lives a little further up the street. If Graham were to call on Billy I would see them both from here, but I don’t, they must be confined to their homes too. A green double decker 804 bus stops a little way up the road and picks some passengers up, it’s a Sunday so there aren’t many. The only thing to do on a boring Sunday is go to church, go to the pub or both, I wasn’t interested in either of those pastimes, I just wanted to play with my friends. The bus passes slowly by, the top deck almost level with my window, bored passengers like mobile jurors gaze back at me, taking in a snapshot of my silent misery, I still feel like I’m in the dock. The feeling passes with the bus and I look around to see if I can spot my friends.
I did have friends at this time, they were my gang, I didn’t mean to have a gang but all the kids would couldn’t make it into the proper gangs, the rejects, ended up with me, and I was leader due to being the oldest.
But I was crap at it because this is not what I wanted. I wanted to be in a proper gang, I didn’t want to lead, I wanted to be lead, I wanted to belong and I needed a father figure in the shape of an older boy to seek praise from.
Not that my gang were a bad bunch, they were good friends and we did have a seriously great time together but I just didn’t feel that grown up with them.
At one point I see one of them, Steven Taylor spot me in the window and he mouths, “are you coming out”? I mouth back “I can’t, I’m not allowed out”. He shrugged with as much sympathy as he could muster and then headed off to the “Hills”. His freedom seems to further agitate me and my lack of it. I dragged some toy cars and a few action figures on to the window sill and use the outside world as a backdrop to an imaginary one, where I had as much freedom as I required and I was in control.
Wednesday, 15 August 2007
One is the loneliest number since you've gone away
August 12th 2007 5.55pm
Back in the dressing room Simon says to me, “the audience has all gone”
I said, “I know but there’s nothing we can do about it so we may as well just go and play our hearts out, after all that’s what we are here for”.
“Let’s go”, I add and we begin our short walk to face an empty hall.
The traditional opening number ‘Wake Up’ has been dropped on this occasion and we start with an elongated drum intro for The Mess. I walk up to the mike and introduce ourselves and we are off. The nerves, the anxiety are all gone. They don’t exist on the stage, they only exist in the anticipation of going on stage.
The number really rocks, it is great to play on a large stage with an excellent PA and we begin by just enjoying that sound and space. As we play the first number, faces begin appearing below us at the front of the stage and they are singing every word, it’s a little embarrassing as they are remembering them a little better than myself at this stage. The set is designed to have Mindless Violence start directly after the end of The Mess and that happens with great efficiency only allowing a couple of seconds of applause to elbow it’s way in before we are off again.
We are playing really well, I am delighted by the way I feel too, I have managed to get a little more sleep before this gig than I did last year and our appearance is a little earlier in the evening too so I am feeling none of the fatigue I was experiencing the last time I performed on this stage. As I introduced ‘Licensing Hours’ I could see that we had an audience stretching a few rows back and once the number had finished the applause was warm and full.
We then performed ‘No Respect’ for the first time at Blackpool and it was obvious that it had been anticipated last time and disappointed many by its absence. This time though its inclusion delighted the audience and the response was fantastic.
Now it was time to bring Colin Dredd on for his guest appearance. Whilst I introduce him and Don Adams is taking off his bass and handing it to him, I notice that our audience had grown considerably, we now have a more than respectable crowd in this huge Empress Ballroom and I am feeling soooo good.
As Colin readies himself I announce that this is our final gig and that it is only fitting to bring on the man that was part of the Neurotics for so long. The response was a great cry of anguish from the crowd, a huge “NOOOOOOOOO”. This was news they didn’t want to hear. This appearance in the Empress Ballroom at the Rebellion Festival 2007 was meant to be billed as our final gig but Darren the main organiser didn’t want us to split and hoped it would not be our last so he didn’t make a point of billing it as such. Because of this it came as a complete shock to our fans.
We do Blitzkreig Bop and Hypocrite with Colin, last year this point in the set felt like a dip, this time the news that this is goodbye helps to build the atmosphere and it now makes perfect sense.
After Hypocrite, Colin leaves to great applause and I look out at the size of our crowd and here they all are. We have been worried about the earlier billing we have been given and the effect of the smoking ban but apparently the attendance at the festival was 20% down on last year. The smoking ban had changed the behaviour of the audience with a mass exodus every time a band finishes. This results in the beginning of everyone’s set having decimated numbers but the fans come swarming in as soon as the nicotine intake has been satisfied.
Our audience numbers are now very satisfying indeed, sure, they are down on 2006 but then so is everyone’s on this Saturday. Ari Up and the Slits who come on after us have only half the audience they had last time. I feel good because last year it felt hat we had hijacked 999’s audience by default, this time we know they are all here because they want to be, because they are dying to see the Newtown Neurotics.
1963
After the police left having told my father that the boys stories had confirmed that it was I that set light to the lorry, I was given a withering dressing down that left me feeling wretched. I was told that the only thing that prevented me from going to prison was my age and that I had had a close call. The threat of going to gaol had been lifted but my gloom hadn’t.
I was confined to the house and when ever any of my friends called they were turned away with the news that I could not come out because I had been a bad boy. Billy and Graham did not call for me.
Any opportunity to revive my sins in conversation was taken up by my dad. For example, my mum would say, “Oh isn’t it a lovely day out” to which my Dad would say “yeah and if he’d hadn’t set light to a lorry he’d be out there with his friends at this moment.
I knew now that as the seconds ticked by I was getting closer to the whole thing blowing over but with every mention of that act of arson he reset the clock back to the beginning.
The atmosphere was so thick downstairs you could cut it with a wooden spoon. It was only punctuated by various sisters coming and going but not staying. No, escape was the main pre-occupation for the children of this house, to do anything but remain anywhere near arguing parents. This is a common pre-occupation of children in any household but with us there was a grim determination that set us aside from others.
I took myself up to the quiet of my room and gazed out of my window at the road that passed our house. We lived at the start of a terrace of ten houses. Our door number was number 1, I was impressed with that, there can’t be many people in this world that live in the very first house of an estate. We were elite, comprised of families that live at house number 1.
Because of that number I was convinced that our house was the very first one to be built in Harlow and at one time all roads led to our little abode. I cannot recall to this day ever visiting another house in Harlow that was numbered 1.
I’m not saying they don’t exist, I’m just saying that in the normal day to day of one’s life, you don’t often find yourself knocking on the door of Number 1, unless you were in the Drewett family or the police.
The most amazing reinforcement of the specialness of this number was the estate I was gazing at through my window on the other side of the road to us. Spinning Wheel Mead, didn’t have a number 1, the estate started at number 2, what’s the chances of that happening eh?
The word from the street was that in the scramble to build this pioneer town (yeah I know, Welwyn Garden City was the very first) Number 1 Spinning Wheel Mead was designated to be a pub and therefore needed a different set of blueprints for its construction. They built the estate and waited for further instructions for the public house. They never came, for what reason no-one ever found out. Instead the space was turned a square and a large peice of grass.
In my darkest days of low self esteem, I used to look at our door number and think to myself that it was an omen that one day I would be the best, I would be number 1. These days I think it was trying to tell me to look after number 1.
I don’t know, what’s in a number eh?
If I asked that same question to a mathematician, they would say a whole universe can lie in a number, I’m sure they are right, but I don’t really want to know.
The universe I know is as much as I can handle.
Back in the dressing room Simon says to me, “the audience has all gone”
I said, “I know but there’s nothing we can do about it so we may as well just go and play our hearts out, after all that’s what we are here for”.
“Let’s go”, I add and we begin our short walk to face an empty hall.
The traditional opening number ‘Wake Up’ has been dropped on this occasion and we start with an elongated drum intro for The Mess. I walk up to the mike and introduce ourselves and we are off. The nerves, the anxiety are all gone. They don’t exist on the stage, they only exist in the anticipation of going on stage.
The number really rocks, it is great to play on a large stage with an excellent PA and we begin by just enjoying that sound and space. As we play the first number, faces begin appearing below us at the front of the stage and they are singing every word, it’s a little embarrassing as they are remembering them a little better than myself at this stage. The set is designed to have Mindless Violence start directly after the end of The Mess and that happens with great efficiency only allowing a couple of seconds of applause to elbow it’s way in before we are off again.
We are playing really well, I am delighted by the way I feel too, I have managed to get a little more sleep before this gig than I did last year and our appearance is a little earlier in the evening too so I am feeling none of the fatigue I was experiencing the last time I performed on this stage. As I introduced ‘Licensing Hours’ I could see that we had an audience stretching a few rows back and once the number had finished the applause was warm and full.
We then performed ‘No Respect’ for the first time at Blackpool and it was obvious that it had been anticipated last time and disappointed many by its absence. This time though its inclusion delighted the audience and the response was fantastic.
Now it was time to bring Colin Dredd on for his guest appearance. Whilst I introduce him and Don Adams is taking off his bass and handing it to him, I notice that our audience had grown considerably, we now have a more than respectable crowd in this huge Empress Ballroom and I am feeling soooo good.
As Colin readies himself I announce that this is our final gig and that it is only fitting to bring on the man that was part of the Neurotics for so long. The response was a great cry of anguish from the crowd, a huge “NOOOOOOOOO”. This was news they didn’t want to hear. This appearance in the Empress Ballroom at the Rebellion Festival 2007 was meant to be billed as our final gig but Darren the main organiser didn’t want us to split and hoped it would not be our last so he didn’t make a point of billing it as such. Because of this it came as a complete shock to our fans.
We do Blitzkreig Bop and Hypocrite with Colin, last year this point in the set felt like a dip, this time the news that this is goodbye helps to build the atmosphere and it now makes perfect sense.
After Hypocrite, Colin leaves to great applause and I look out at the size of our crowd and here they all are. We have been worried about the earlier billing we have been given and the effect of the smoking ban but apparently the attendance at the festival was 20% down on last year. The smoking ban had changed the behaviour of the audience with a mass exodus every time a band finishes. This results in the beginning of everyone’s set having decimated numbers but the fans come swarming in as soon as the nicotine intake has been satisfied.
Our audience numbers are now very satisfying indeed, sure, they are down on 2006 but then so is everyone’s on this Saturday. Ari Up and the Slits who come on after us have only half the audience they had last time. I feel good because last year it felt hat we had hijacked 999’s audience by default, this time we know they are all here because they want to be, because they are dying to see the Newtown Neurotics.
1963
After the police left having told my father that the boys stories had confirmed that it was I that set light to the lorry, I was given a withering dressing down that left me feeling wretched. I was told that the only thing that prevented me from going to prison was my age and that I had had a close call. The threat of going to gaol had been lifted but my gloom hadn’t.
I was confined to the house and when ever any of my friends called they were turned away with the news that I could not come out because I had been a bad boy. Billy and Graham did not call for me.
Any opportunity to revive my sins in conversation was taken up by my dad. For example, my mum would say, “Oh isn’t it a lovely day out” to which my Dad would say “yeah and if he’d hadn’t set light to a lorry he’d be out there with his friends at this moment.
I knew now that as the seconds ticked by I was getting closer to the whole thing blowing over but with every mention of that act of arson he reset the clock back to the beginning.
The atmosphere was so thick downstairs you could cut it with a wooden spoon. It was only punctuated by various sisters coming and going but not staying. No, escape was the main pre-occupation for the children of this house, to do anything but remain anywhere near arguing parents. This is a common pre-occupation of children in any household but with us there was a grim determination that set us aside from others.
I took myself up to the quiet of my room and gazed out of my window at the road that passed our house. We lived at the start of a terrace of ten houses. Our door number was number 1, I was impressed with that, there can’t be many people in this world that live in the very first house of an estate. We were elite, comprised of families that live at house number 1.
Because of that number I was convinced that our house was the very first one to be built in Harlow and at one time all roads led to our little abode. I cannot recall to this day ever visiting another house in Harlow that was numbered 1.
I’m not saying they don’t exist, I’m just saying that in the normal day to day of one’s life, you don’t often find yourself knocking on the door of Number 1, unless you were in the Drewett family or the police.
The most amazing reinforcement of the specialness of this number was the estate I was gazing at through my window on the other side of the road to us. Spinning Wheel Mead, didn’t have a number 1, the estate started at number 2, what’s the chances of that happening eh?
The word from the street was that in the scramble to build this pioneer town (yeah I know, Welwyn Garden City was the very first) Number 1 Spinning Wheel Mead was designated to be a pub and therefore needed a different set of blueprints for its construction. They built the estate and waited for further instructions for the public house. They never came, for what reason no-one ever found out. Instead the space was turned a square and a large peice of grass.
In my darkest days of low self esteem, I used to look at our door number and think to myself that it was an omen that one day I would be the best, I would be number 1. These days I think it was trying to tell me to look after number 1.
I don’t know, what’s in a number eh?
If I asked that same question to a mathematician, they would say a whole universe can lie in a number, I’m sure they are right, but I don’t really want to know.
The universe I know is as much as I can handle.
Tuesday, 14 August 2007
Memories and Un-memories!
12th August 2007 1.30pm
I am enjoying being back in Blackpool and at the Rebellion Festival.
Whilst last year was pretty much a process of acclimatisation, this year, everything is more familiar and it is more enjoyable for it. I really didn’t expect to be back here and now I am, it makes me realise how much I got into it last year.
We went over to the venue at lunch time and had a couple of beers in the Pirate bar, it’s actually called the Spanish bar but it is designed like a pirate galleon so I prefer ‘The Pirate Bar’, it also plays non-stop Ramones tracks (at least through the duration of this punk festival) so whenever we set out to have a drink in there I cry “Yo Ho Ho, Lets Go!”, but I guess you have to be there for the full effect.
We spend some time there just watching the punks and skins coming and going and soaking up the atmosphere, I love it! Next thing I know, we’ve got to return to the Hotel to get ready for the gig.
Because we are playing a couple of hours earlier than last year there is less time to hang around waiting to take the stage and the hours have just flown.
Once we get back, I realise that I should have something to eat before it gets too late. I am now becoming really nervous as the evening draws nearer. I have no appetite but must eat something as I'll only feel like drinking beer after the gig, it will take me ages before I will feel hungry again. We go off in search of a chip shop but could only find a sandwich shop that sold chips. I had a plate of them, they were fresh and hot but tasted like pulped paper, my throat had trouble with them because it was dry through nerves and therefore I had no saliva.
It was a joyless meal and then we returned to our hotel to get ready.
Finally, when we had made all our preparations and were ready to take the gear to the venue, I felt like I was going to pass out, it was a panic attack and I did my best to ignore it and carry on like it hadn’t happened. Clare knows the change in me though, for her it is obvious even if others don’t pick it up, she knows I am feeling deeply uncomfortable and that I will not be easy to be with until the gig is done, and if it doesn’t go well I will continue to be difficult to around for some time after.
We are asked to be backstage two full hours before we take the stage, no-one really knows why and the band think it is excessive, after all we are not trying to take a flight to somewhere sunnier and drier. I take the attitude that if I am going to be nervous I would rather be so backstage where I can see what is going on, than in a pub outside the venue just imagining the worst. The band finally turn up an hour before the performance, a time agreed with me to be the latest they should appear.
Just before they do, I am at my worse and feel like collapsing for the second (and last) time, once everyone turns up it fades and as we make ready to take the stage, I am too busy to think of it.
Once again, like last year, 999 are on before us and once they had finished and vacated the stage I took my guitars over to my side of the performance area.
Last year I looked up and no-one had moved, we had a packed house to play to, this year I look up and everyone has gone, as soon as 999 had finished they disappeared, the hall is empty!!!!
1963
I can’t recall when he died exactly, I can’t remember his birthday, I can’t remember a kind word he may have once said to me.
But what I do know is that I hated him, really hated him. My sisters hated him, my mother hated him but she was loyal to him to the end. Now we all have trouble remembering him and when we do, it is for all the wrong reasons.
Sometimes I look at my daughter and think, “What horrible things would I have to do for this five year old girl to erase me from her memory”.
If that was to happen it would be a tragedy, and yet it has happened, not to me but to him. How tragic is it when the sum of a man’s life is collective amnesia and loathing from his offspring.
Now all these years later, I feel sorry for him, I do. I cannot continue hating him, I cannot continue forgetting him and simutaniously, unconsciously hating him. For in the end it consumes you in it’s subtle and yet damaging ways.
How does this damage manifest itself?
It’s in your relationships with other people, in an unkind word, sarcasm, insensitivity and lack of patience.
When I was a boy, I spent what seemed like forever asking, pleading and whining for a bike and when I finally got one it was an ancient second hand boneshaker. That was all we could afford but because it was old, it needed quite a bit of maintenance. I couldn’t do it on my own so I relied on my dad to help me and in the end I learnt to dread asking him.
It was always so stressful.
As we would work to undo a nut or replace a brake block, everything I did was wrong and the more I got wrong the harder it was for me to get things right. He would start off talking to me in an irritated tone, then it would move to exasperation and then he would end up barking at me. Why are you touching that? Did I tell you to touch that? Can’t you follow simple instructions? It’s quite obvious what you need to do here! Where is your common sense? Can’t you do anything without breaking it. Here, don’t be such a chump give it to me I’ll do it, he would say and then snatch the tool from my hand.
As much as I have done to forget him, he is still here, inside me waiting, lurking and at times he reappears like a ghost.
For instance, my partner Clare sometimes struggles to do something on our PC, she’s not too IT literate but she does try and is improving all the time. There have been occasions when I have been tired and cannot face looking at a computer screen any longer and she has sought my help. When I have discovered what she has been doing wrong I offer advice which she sometimes mis-understands. Later when she is in trouble again I come over and I’d say something like...
Why are you clicking on that? Did I tell you to click on that, can’t you follow simple instructions? It’s quite obvious what you need to do here, where’s your common sense. Can’t you do anything on this PC without breaking it? Here, give it to me I’ll do it. As I snatch the mouse from her hand, I realise I have been barking at her and a chill runs down my spine. That’s when I get the feeling that he is in the room with me, almost standing next to me.
Almost, but he’s not, he’s in me,
I am him.
I am not going let him get to my partner or my daughter, but I cannot reach out to stop him.
The only thing I can do is change myself and I’m going to do that with forgiveness.
I am enjoying being back in Blackpool and at the Rebellion Festival.
Whilst last year was pretty much a process of acclimatisation, this year, everything is more familiar and it is more enjoyable for it. I really didn’t expect to be back here and now I am, it makes me realise how much I got into it last year.
We went over to the venue at lunch time and had a couple of beers in the Pirate bar, it’s actually called the Spanish bar but it is designed like a pirate galleon so I prefer ‘The Pirate Bar’, it also plays non-stop Ramones tracks (at least through the duration of this punk festival) so whenever we set out to have a drink in there I cry “Yo Ho Ho, Lets Go!”, but I guess you have to be there for the full effect.
We spend some time there just watching the punks and skins coming and going and soaking up the atmosphere, I love it! Next thing I know, we’ve got to return to the Hotel to get ready for the gig.
Because we are playing a couple of hours earlier than last year there is less time to hang around waiting to take the stage and the hours have just flown.
Once we get back, I realise that I should have something to eat before it gets too late. I am now becoming really nervous as the evening draws nearer. I have no appetite but must eat something as I'll only feel like drinking beer after the gig, it will take me ages before I will feel hungry again. We go off in search of a chip shop but could only find a sandwich shop that sold chips. I had a plate of them, they were fresh and hot but tasted like pulped paper, my throat had trouble with them because it was dry through nerves and therefore I had no saliva.
It was a joyless meal and then we returned to our hotel to get ready.
Finally, when we had made all our preparations and were ready to take the gear to the venue, I felt like I was going to pass out, it was a panic attack and I did my best to ignore it and carry on like it hadn’t happened. Clare knows the change in me though, for her it is obvious even if others don’t pick it up, she knows I am feeling deeply uncomfortable and that I will not be easy to be with until the gig is done, and if it doesn’t go well I will continue to be difficult to around for some time after.
We are asked to be backstage two full hours before we take the stage, no-one really knows why and the band think it is excessive, after all we are not trying to take a flight to somewhere sunnier and drier. I take the attitude that if I am going to be nervous I would rather be so backstage where I can see what is going on, than in a pub outside the venue just imagining the worst. The band finally turn up an hour before the performance, a time agreed with me to be the latest they should appear.
Just before they do, I am at my worse and feel like collapsing for the second (and last) time, once everyone turns up it fades and as we make ready to take the stage, I am too busy to think of it.
Once again, like last year, 999 are on before us and once they had finished and vacated the stage I took my guitars over to my side of the performance area.
Last year I looked up and no-one had moved, we had a packed house to play to, this year I look up and everyone has gone, as soon as 999 had finished they disappeared, the hall is empty!!!!
1963
I can’t recall when he died exactly, I can’t remember his birthday, I can’t remember a kind word he may have once said to me.
But what I do know is that I hated him, really hated him. My sisters hated him, my mother hated him but she was loyal to him to the end. Now we all have trouble remembering him and when we do, it is for all the wrong reasons.
Sometimes I look at my daughter and think, “What horrible things would I have to do for this five year old girl to erase me from her memory”.
If that was to happen it would be a tragedy, and yet it has happened, not to me but to him. How tragic is it when the sum of a man’s life is collective amnesia and loathing from his offspring.
Now all these years later, I feel sorry for him, I do. I cannot continue hating him, I cannot continue forgetting him and simutaniously, unconsciously hating him. For in the end it consumes you in it’s subtle and yet damaging ways.
How does this damage manifest itself?
It’s in your relationships with other people, in an unkind word, sarcasm, insensitivity and lack of patience.
When I was a boy, I spent what seemed like forever asking, pleading and whining for a bike and when I finally got one it was an ancient second hand boneshaker. That was all we could afford but because it was old, it needed quite a bit of maintenance. I couldn’t do it on my own so I relied on my dad to help me and in the end I learnt to dread asking him.
It was always so stressful.
As we would work to undo a nut or replace a brake block, everything I did was wrong and the more I got wrong the harder it was for me to get things right. He would start off talking to me in an irritated tone, then it would move to exasperation and then he would end up barking at me. Why are you touching that? Did I tell you to touch that? Can’t you follow simple instructions? It’s quite obvious what you need to do here! Where is your common sense? Can’t you do anything without breaking it. Here, don’t be such a chump give it to me I’ll do it, he would say and then snatch the tool from my hand.
As much as I have done to forget him, he is still here, inside me waiting, lurking and at times he reappears like a ghost.
For instance, my partner Clare sometimes struggles to do something on our PC, she’s not too IT literate but she does try and is improving all the time. There have been occasions when I have been tired and cannot face looking at a computer screen any longer and she has sought my help. When I have discovered what she has been doing wrong I offer advice which she sometimes mis-understands. Later when she is in trouble again I come over and I’d say something like...
Why are you clicking on that? Did I tell you to click on that, can’t you follow simple instructions? It’s quite obvious what you need to do here, where’s your common sense. Can’t you do anything on this PC without breaking it? Here, give it to me I’ll do it. As I snatch the mouse from her hand, I realise I have been barking at her and a chill runs down my spine. That’s when I get the feeling that he is in the room with me, almost standing next to me.
Almost, but he’s not, he’s in me,
I am him.
I am not going let him get to my partner or my daughter, but I cannot reach out to stop him.
The only thing I can do is change myself and I’m going to do that with forgiveness.
Saturday, 11 August 2007
I can feel the growing alarm!
I’m back in Blackpool Central library a year to the day when the Neurotics appeared at the Wasted Festival in 2006. Renamed the Rebellion Festival, the band are back in town to perform again and I am here using the free Internet access of the library to try to keep my blog of it all, up to date.
I must say I failed yesterday, I did try to write something using the Internet access of my mobile but unfortunately after going to the trouble of writing a piece, the form refused to submit, I think it is something to do with the cut down version of Internet Explorer not liking forms, I don’t know.
Anyway, what I was trying to relate was, I had spent a drug filled night trying to get a decent night’s sleep. I had taken 'Ibruprophen' to reduce some pain in my side, 'Milk of Magnesia' to ward of some indigestion I was experiencing, two spoonfuls of cough mixture to fight a tickly cough that was threatening to keep me awake and then on top of all that I awoke to a panic attack realising that I had committed myself and my fiends to stand once again on the imposing stage of the huge Empress Ballroom in the Blackpool Winter Gardens. It was such a great experience last year that when we were asked if we would like to do it again, I wanted to jump at the chance. Simon wasn’t so sure, reasoning that we couldn’t possibly beat what we had experienced in 2006. I had to do a lot of persuading to get him to change his mind. I am now worried that he may be proved right and it will be a disappointment, we have such high expectations of this gig that it is bound to disappoint. I was now lying in bed suffering from stage fright and the gig is still over a day away.
I knew that I was going to have trouble getting back off to sleep in this state of high anxiety so added a couple of Nytol herbal sleeping tablets to the mix sloshing around in my blood.
Fortunately it worked, so a reasonable amount of sleep was obtained.
The following morning we said goodbye to our friends and headed off to Blackpool.
Once again, after spending the evening sampling the delights of the acts playing on the Friday night at the Rebellion event, I was in our bed in the New President hotel on the Blackpool seafront trying to get some quality rest as the following day is the day of our big gig. A good night sleep is the holy grail for me this night. However it was not to be.
In the early hours of the morning the fire alarm went off in the Hotel, which pulled me out of my stupor, I lay there for several minutes in disbelief that this could be happening to me and that I never seem to get a good night’s sleep before a gig. I then thought we'd better get out of here, it did sound like a fire alarm but then again it didn’t, I couldn’t work it out.
I dragged myself out of bed and opened up our door.
Sure enough there was sounds of the hotel occupants ignoring the lift and thundering down the stairs in a controlled panic. I said to Clare, "oh Christ, we’d better get out of hereand quick!" I put my pants on and then thought whether I had enough time to put more clothes on. I then realised that I hadn’t and all I should do is to pick up our sleeping daughter without alarming her and carry her downstairs without loosing my step in my sleepy state and stand outside in the freezing cold in just my underpants.
I put my arms out to pick her up and the alarm stopped. Now completely confused I didn’t know if we should be coming or going. I got on the phone to reception and they confirmed that a fire alarm had gone off on the first floor (we are on the third) but it had been switched off as there wasn’t a fire.
Rosa hadn’t stirred at all during all this so I dropped back into bed with my heart still pumping in my chest and reached out for a couple of Nytol sleeping tablets, knocked them back with a slug of water and grumbled, “I just gotta get some sleep”
Fortunately it worked, so a reasonable amount of sleep was obtained.
Today is the day though, all we are waiting for now is Colin’s arrival, all the rest of the band are here, all booked in to the hotel successfully, all our passes for the weekend and guestlist places all correctly issued with no problem. This is great.
There are a lot of people who are trekking out to the outside of the Winter Gardens on a regular basis to have a cigarette throughout the day and evening. This is a miserable experience as you cannot take your drink outside, so you have to judge it so that when a band has just finished, so has your drink and then you race outside for a quick smoke and then race back in, to the bar, get a new drink and then on to watch a band.
We shall find out tonight if that effects then number of casual audience that have not seen the band before and may fancy catching us.
Our maybe the addiction will win. We shall see and I will keep you informed.
1963
I was too young to feel the wrench in any appreciable way despite having to change schools but I suppose I must have absorbed some of the angst like one can inhale second hand smoke without touching a cigarette.
It must have upset me to some extent, and what about happiness?
I look back and think, I must have laughed, I must have had happy moments, I must have been excited about something.
But I can’t remember hardly anything, it’s nearly all gone.
There is so little there that I have to employ the same methodology the astrophysicists use to discover Exoplanets, these are planets that are too far away to see their reflected light but have been discovered by the gravitational influence they have on their parent star. If the parent’s orbit wobbles it is being influenced by something nearby but unseen.
In this case it was me who was wobbling and sometimes swaying down through those early years and now I am trying to recall the influences that caused those wobbles. Unfortunately it always comes back to my father
I thought that it was happy memories that you retained and bad ones repressed, but for me it seems to be the other way around.
My sister Sandra says she couldn’t remember the first sixteen years of her life!
What are we if we are defined by events that we are no longer able to recall? How can we move forward and try to continue to enrich our lives when we don’t know which way we are facing or where we have come from.
It is very common that elderly people cannot recall yesterday but can relive events from way back in their childhood. If this is the case then I feel I have a very unpleasant retirement to look forward to.
Later I consciously erased my father from my mind. When he died, I stood over this wizened corpse and thought “Well, that’s that then”. That was the extent of the emotions I felt. I was relieved. I had been waiting for this day for years. There were times I contemplated hastening his end but I had been caught doing far too many things bad things in the past and I wanted no more of it. I decided to let time and his illness stop his blackened heart. But it had been a long painful wait.
I walked out of Princess Alexandra hospital and barely thought of him for 30 years.
Until now.
I must say I failed yesterday, I did try to write something using the Internet access of my mobile but unfortunately after going to the trouble of writing a piece, the form refused to submit, I think it is something to do with the cut down version of Internet Explorer not liking forms, I don’t know.
Anyway, what I was trying to relate was, I had spent a drug filled night trying to get a decent night’s sleep. I had taken 'Ibruprophen' to reduce some pain in my side, 'Milk of Magnesia' to ward of some indigestion I was experiencing, two spoonfuls of cough mixture to fight a tickly cough that was threatening to keep me awake and then on top of all that I awoke to a panic attack realising that I had committed myself and my fiends to stand once again on the imposing stage of the huge Empress Ballroom in the Blackpool Winter Gardens. It was such a great experience last year that when we were asked if we would like to do it again, I wanted to jump at the chance. Simon wasn’t so sure, reasoning that we couldn’t possibly beat what we had experienced in 2006. I had to do a lot of persuading to get him to change his mind. I am now worried that he may be proved right and it will be a disappointment, we have such high expectations of this gig that it is bound to disappoint. I was now lying in bed suffering from stage fright and the gig is still over a day away.
I knew that I was going to have trouble getting back off to sleep in this state of high anxiety so added a couple of Nytol herbal sleeping tablets to the mix sloshing around in my blood.
Fortunately it worked, so a reasonable amount of sleep was obtained.
The following morning we said goodbye to our friends and headed off to Blackpool.
Once again, after spending the evening sampling the delights of the acts playing on the Friday night at the Rebellion event, I was in our bed in the New President hotel on the Blackpool seafront trying to get some quality rest as the following day is the day of our big gig. A good night sleep is the holy grail for me this night. However it was not to be.
In the early hours of the morning the fire alarm went off in the Hotel, which pulled me out of my stupor, I lay there for several minutes in disbelief that this could be happening to me and that I never seem to get a good night’s sleep before a gig. I then thought we'd better get out of here, it did sound like a fire alarm but then again it didn’t, I couldn’t work it out.
I dragged myself out of bed and opened up our door.
Sure enough there was sounds of the hotel occupants ignoring the lift and thundering down the stairs in a controlled panic. I said to Clare, "oh Christ, we’d better get out of hereand quick!" I put my pants on and then thought whether I had enough time to put more clothes on. I then realised that I hadn’t and all I should do is to pick up our sleeping daughter without alarming her and carry her downstairs without loosing my step in my sleepy state and stand outside in the freezing cold in just my underpants.
I put my arms out to pick her up and the alarm stopped. Now completely confused I didn’t know if we should be coming or going. I got on the phone to reception and they confirmed that a fire alarm had gone off on the first floor (we are on the third) but it had been switched off as there wasn’t a fire.
Rosa hadn’t stirred at all during all this so I dropped back into bed with my heart still pumping in my chest and reached out for a couple of Nytol sleeping tablets, knocked them back with a slug of water and grumbled, “I just gotta get some sleep”
Fortunately it worked, so a reasonable amount of sleep was obtained.
Today is the day though, all we are waiting for now is Colin’s arrival, all the rest of the band are here, all booked in to the hotel successfully, all our passes for the weekend and guestlist places all correctly issued with no problem. This is great.
There are a lot of people who are trekking out to the outside of the Winter Gardens on a regular basis to have a cigarette throughout the day and evening. This is a miserable experience as you cannot take your drink outside, so you have to judge it so that when a band has just finished, so has your drink and then you race outside for a quick smoke and then race back in, to the bar, get a new drink and then on to watch a band.
We shall find out tonight if that effects then number of casual audience that have not seen the band before and may fancy catching us.
Our maybe the addiction will win. We shall see and I will keep you informed.
1963
I was too young to feel the wrench in any appreciable way despite having to change schools but I suppose I must have absorbed some of the angst like one can inhale second hand smoke without touching a cigarette.
It must have upset me to some extent, and what about happiness?
I look back and think, I must have laughed, I must have had happy moments, I must have been excited about something.
But I can’t remember hardly anything, it’s nearly all gone.
There is so little there that I have to employ the same methodology the astrophysicists use to discover Exoplanets, these are planets that are too far away to see their reflected light but have been discovered by the gravitational influence they have on their parent star. If the parent’s orbit wobbles it is being influenced by something nearby but unseen.
In this case it was me who was wobbling and sometimes swaying down through those early years and now I am trying to recall the influences that caused those wobbles. Unfortunately it always comes back to my father
I thought that it was happy memories that you retained and bad ones repressed, but for me it seems to be the other way around.
My sister Sandra says she couldn’t remember the first sixteen years of her life!
What are we if we are defined by events that we are no longer able to recall? How can we move forward and try to continue to enrich our lives when we don’t know which way we are facing or where we have come from.
It is very common that elderly people cannot recall yesterday but can relive events from way back in their childhood. If this is the case then I feel I have a very unpleasant retirement to look forward to.
Later I consciously erased my father from my mind. When he died, I stood over this wizened corpse and thought “Well, that’s that then”. That was the extent of the emotions I felt. I was relieved. I had been waiting for this day for years. There were times I contemplated hastening his end but I had been caught doing far too many things bad things in the past and I wanted no more of it. I decided to let time and his illness stop his blackened heart. But it had been a long painful wait.
I walked out of Princess Alexandra hospital and barely thought of him for 30 years.
Until now.
Thursday, 9 August 2007
There's no smoke without fire.
I’m sitting in Warrington visiting some old friends in exactly the same way I did last year before the Wasted Festival. Being here is a chance to catch up and know that the greater part of the journey to Blackpool has already been accomplished. Rosa is with us again and luckily, being a year older, didn’t spend the entire journey saying “are we there yet” like she did last year.
There is so much that is similar to 2006, being in Warrington, the festival continuing in Blackpool, playing the same night in the same venue with the same acts on before us and after us (although all these bands are appearing a little earlier this time). One could lazily conclude that every thing will have the same outcome but I think it is dangerous to believe this.
Regarding the audience numbers in front of each act, where there are multiple stages running all day, there is a big proportion of people who hang on after watching a band to check out the following act who they have heard are good. I’m wondering how the new smoking ban is going to effect the behaviour of this floating audience, and in a way the advantages of having all these venues under one roof makes going out to have a cigarette completely arduous.
When ever we went outside last year there was a sea of punks everywhere around the streets surrounding the Winter Gardens, with the new ban I can’t image what it will be like this year. When ever a band finishes, the smokers will probably wish they could catch a tram out to the front of the Winter Gardens and then, after having a smoke catch one back in to the stage of their choice.
I am a little worried that this going to affect audience numbers on the night. I don’t just want to play to committed fans, I want to convert people who have never heard us before, lets just hope that those potential Neurotics newbies are not heavy smokers eh?.
1963
Once we had moved to Harlow New Town both made attempts to recreate that close relationship in other church groups, but it was very hard to do and Sandra found it impossible. She had to keep returning to her old school to finish her course and take her exams as the curriculum was completely different in Brays Grove in Harlow.
She returned again and again to meet up with her old friends but the link was hard to keep up.
It was hard for my parents too; they were used to a very polarised close nit community in the East End where friends were all just around the corner and could be called upon to help with babysitting at the drop of a hat. Support in times of trouble was a quick run down the road.
As they closed the door on the first night in the new house in Pear Tree Mead all of that was shut out and was never seen again. The friends they agreed to keep contact with didn’t get to hear a lot of us from then on, we were two far away.
Although the distance doesn’t seem much now, meeting up with them was a long cold wait at a bus stop for a 718 bus that quite often suffered cancellations and then a long journey on the twisting roads that were all we had before the arrival of motorways.
We couldn’t drive to see them, we couldn’t afford a car and my parents had never learnt to drive. The train was expensive and the station was situated on the edge of town on the opposite side of it to us, a separate journey was needed just to traverse it. The tube started in Epping which also needed a separate journey to start the bigger one.
Nothing was easy.
We couldn’t even ring them, we didn’t have a telephone. Communication was by letter only and neither of my parents were very literate. My mother only wrote when forced to and always needed supervision.
The support network collapsed, and because of that so did the relationships with each other, slowly, but surely.
Whilst we lay in our new beds on our first night, the wind blew round our little house, over the big green fields and down the almost endless cycle tracks of our newly adopted town. In this environment, this buffeted silence, so different to what we had previously been used to, everyone must have felt an open claustrophobia even if some of them didn’t dare to admit it
For the very first time we were truly on our own.
There is so much that is similar to 2006, being in Warrington, the festival continuing in Blackpool, playing the same night in the same venue with the same acts on before us and after us (although all these bands are appearing a little earlier this time). One could lazily conclude that every thing will have the same outcome but I think it is dangerous to believe this.
Regarding the audience numbers in front of each act, where there are multiple stages running all day, there is a big proportion of people who hang on after watching a band to check out the following act who they have heard are good. I’m wondering how the new smoking ban is going to effect the behaviour of this floating audience, and in a way the advantages of having all these venues under one roof makes going out to have a cigarette completely arduous.
When ever we went outside last year there was a sea of punks everywhere around the streets surrounding the Winter Gardens, with the new ban I can’t image what it will be like this year. When ever a band finishes, the smokers will probably wish they could catch a tram out to the front of the Winter Gardens and then, after having a smoke catch one back in to the stage of their choice.
I am a little worried that this going to affect audience numbers on the night. I don’t just want to play to committed fans, I want to convert people who have never heard us before, lets just hope that those potential Neurotics newbies are not heavy smokers eh?.
1963
Once we had moved to Harlow New Town both made attempts to recreate that close relationship in other church groups, but it was very hard to do and Sandra found it impossible. She had to keep returning to her old school to finish her course and take her exams as the curriculum was completely different in Brays Grove in Harlow.
She returned again and again to meet up with her old friends but the link was hard to keep up.
It was hard for my parents too; they were used to a very polarised close nit community in the East End where friends were all just around the corner and could be called upon to help with babysitting at the drop of a hat. Support in times of trouble was a quick run down the road.
As they closed the door on the first night in the new house in Pear Tree Mead all of that was shut out and was never seen again. The friends they agreed to keep contact with didn’t get to hear a lot of us from then on, we were two far away.
Although the distance doesn’t seem much now, meeting up with them was a long cold wait at a bus stop for a 718 bus that quite often suffered cancellations and then a long journey on the twisting roads that were all we had before the arrival of motorways.
We couldn’t drive to see them, we couldn’t afford a car and my parents had never learnt to drive. The train was expensive and the station was situated on the edge of town on the opposite side of it to us, a separate journey was needed just to traverse it. The tube started in Epping which also needed a separate journey to start the bigger one.
Nothing was easy.
We couldn’t even ring them, we didn’t have a telephone. Communication was by letter only and neither of my parents were very literate. My mother only wrote when forced to and always needed supervision.
The support network collapsed, and because of that so did the relationships with each other, slowly, but surely.
Whilst we lay in our new beds on our first night, the wind blew round our little house, over the big green fields and down the almost endless cycle tracks of our newly adopted town. In this environment, this buffeted silence, so different to what we had previously been used to, everyone must have felt an open claustrophobia even if some of them didn’t dare to admit it
For the very first time we were truly on our own.
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