I'm always burnin' on a short fuse.

I was in a meeting at work today with every manager above me in my chain of command reviewing our website (Harlow Council’s). We were picking through recommendations made by a government agency for Local Government website compliance.

The conversation turned to biting one’s fingernails and I was challenged to show everyone what my nail’s were like (I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP!).

I proudly showed my neatly trimmed nails and declared, "I play guitar so mine always need to be short."

It occurred to me that I must be the only Neurotic that does not bite their nails!

The head of my department is fairly new and it was interesting that when I brought my Les Paul in to work having collected it from Tones music shop after a service, he showed great interest in it and I think he stifled a drool. Anyway, he asked me if I had a band and I educated him on The Neurotics and what we did in the Eighties and that we had reformed for a while.

He admitted that he had completed missed punk as he was living in South Africa during the Seventies and Eighties.He then asked me if he could borrow one of our CD’s and I agreed to bring one in for him.

A week passed and he finally said to me, “ by the way, I really enjoyed that CD you lent me Steve.”
“I’m amazed, you were so….angry!”

“Yeah” we were", we still are!

“hhhmmm” he said, “can I buy a copy of this?”

“Why of- course”, I beamed!

And do you know, he did!

I’ve spent most of my life confronting my bosses, this was a welcome change.

Almost all of the people in the building I work in know about my alter ego, my secret identity, and perhaps my political beliefs. It is Harlow after all.

I think, they think, I am a responsible man and would never have done anything too stupid in my past.

1965

I opened up the door of the brown Bedford open back truck, I put one foot on to the footplate and my free hand on to the leather passenger seat and sprung two or there times on one leg until I judged that I could make it up with one last push.

I made it, the cab smelt of oldness, of leather, tobacco, petrol and a thousand curses. The passenger seat worn out by getting in and out a million times, this was the home of exaggeration where there was only one truth and it was shared between the driver and his mate.

As I scrambled in I was faintly aware of the bus stop with it’s neat queue of hopeful passengers visible through the driver side window, they looked like they were a sketch done in pastels hung on the side of the cab.

The protective sheath around the base of the gear stick had long since crumbled away and I was staring through the gaps around it to the floor of the car park and the broken glass that lay scattered around it.

I attempted to order the things I had in my hand in such a way that I could succeed in doing what I had promised to do.

I was so scared that my hands were shaking, I intended to jump in and then jump out quickly but time was sslloowwiinngg dowwnn ssoo mmuucchh. More haste, less speed popped into my head, it was something I had learnt from my parents, I had no idea what it meant but it felt good to remember it and it was if they were giving me guidance, like they were supporting what I was doing.

I know, it was stupid.

I pulled the glove compartment door down, these were the days they really expected you to put gloves in them. All this space had in it was the detritus from countless dirty finger nails as they searched for items that never seem to be there. Also oil, there were traces of old oil everywhere, as though they had to constantly coax the engine to do its job, to get them successfully to hell and back.

None of this made an immediate impression; this was a slow exposure, a picture that would be so definite in later years, such high definition that it felt I had made it all up.

I threw two Brocks bangers into the small space pushing aside some pages from the Harlow Gazette which had once been rapped around a greasy spanner or two and positioned the fuses so they pointed accusingly back at me.
I picked up the matches, took one out of the box and struck!

The head snapped off and skittered off on to the floor, "bloody Polish matches" I cursed imitating my father. I pulled out another and struck.

It was already spent, I never could fathom why, when people idly struck matches they would place them back in the box. It made no sense and it made me mad, especially now.

Third time lucky, I stuck, it lit, I received an instant hit of sulphur up my nose that made my head jerk back and delivered the promise of burned fingers if I didn’t get rid of it soon.

Recovering some composure I lit the two fuses, dropped the match, pushed open the door of the cab and jumped down to where Graham and Billy were staring wildly at me whilst their bodies were already pointing in the opposite direction.

Run! I shouted!