Chapter 1
A fatigued and battered-looking blue van pulled into the grass verge and sat sputtering and belching smoke into the summer dusk. It must have stopped to pick me up; no one in their right mind would risk stopping a wreck like that just to play the oh-so-hilarious game of driving away when I got close to the door. It might never build up enough speed to get away. After just over five hours of hitching – many of them spent reluctantly playing said game – it seemed that I finally had a ride, albeit one that moved no faster than walking pace.
The rear windows were filthy, impossible to see inside, so there was always the risk that the vehicle was full of drunken football thugs intent on pounding my face to mush, but there is a risk involved in taking any ride, every driver a potential rapist or serial killer. It’s not like I was in any position to be choosy, particularly now that it was starting to get dark. Not that there was ever really much of a plan, but there sure as hell wasn’t a Plan B.
Due as much to my own ignorance as a lack of luck with hitching, I was already running several hours later than anticipated. It’s roughly seven and a half miles from the Strand in central London – where I had stopped to buy a ticket for tomorrow’s Killing Joke show – to the start of the M1 motorway, and unaware that I could just get the tube up to Brent Cross – unaware that there even was a Brent Cross – I had walked all the way.
In my defence, I lived in a small village on the Isle of Wight and although I’d been to London many times for gigs, I’d never tried to hitch from London to anywhere and had no idea of its vast scale. In fact, I’d never tried to hitch anywhere that wasn’t on the island. Most of the time I’d taken the train up from Southampton, which conveniently plopped me out at Waterloo station, a short walk from the Lyceum where most of those gigs took place. And with bus services on the Isle of Wight being infrequent at best, I was also well accustomed to walking. It took an hour just to get to the ferry at Yarmouth.
With the benefit of hindsight and Google Maps, it seems rather foolish, to say the least, all the way up Southampton Row, up through Camden, Hampstead, and Golders Green, uphill all the way. But it was a pleasant walk, a hot summer’s day, with no overtly dodgy neighbourhoods – at least not during daylight hours – and the simple joy of seeing new sights before they became familiar and mundane. By the end of the year I’d be living in a squat in Stoke Newington, a predominately Jewish area, but on that day Golders Green, another Jewish neighbourhood, was like another world. Suffice to say, you don’t see many orthodox Jews growing up on the Isle of Wight. Even now it’s not what you’d call multicultural, so it was exciting to see such diversity, if not the greatest idea walking all that way when I could have taken the tube. Or more likely, got horribly lost on the tube, the maze that is the London Underground map still a complete mystery at that point.
I walked briskly to the van, quick enough to show that I was keen, but not so fast that the occupants would get any pleasure from me raising a sweat if they took off, perhaps under the impression that they were the first such wits to pull that stunt today. It happens a lot more often than you’d think, but thankfully is rarer than some fuckwit swerving at you for shits and giggles, which also happens with depressing frequency.
The dirt-caked van shudders and shakes, petrol dripping from the exhaust, like it has a runny nose. As I draw closer, the nearside window winds down in jerky movements, its winder obviously as shagged as the rest of the vehicle. Both driver and passenger look harmless enough – student-looking types, roughly my age – the driver wearing a Cure T-shirt and looking, despite his best efforts, almost entirely unlike Robert Smith.
“Leicester?” I ask hopefully.
“Jump in,” says Not Robert Smith, motioning to the back of the van.
The rear doors are almost rusted through and behind them is a haze of smoke that I think at first might be hash, but which turns out to be a combination of petrol fumes and patchouli oil. There are also four more student types in the back, which, given that it’s a very small van, doesn’t leave a lot of room for another passenger, but they ungrudgingly shuffle up and I clamber in as introductions are made, their names forgotten in an instant. Two boys, two girls, one of them with a vague body odour problem.
I sit on the wheel arch on top of my sleeping bag, which is wrapped in a black, plastic bin bag, and we make little conversation, stopping just once to refuel, but it’s not like I really want to talk to anyone, content to be thinking of nothing, and more so to be actually moving. The radio drifts between stations, barely audible above the rattle of the van. Progress is slow, but at least it’s progress. If nothing else I’ll get to Leicester today.
Not that I particularly want to go to Leicester, but it’s vaguely part of the deal I made with my mother; before I can be let loose hitching around the country for two weeks, I must first attend the birthday party of a cousin with whom I no longer have anything in common. Ever the black sheep of the family, I am still beholden to their rules so long as I still live with them. I work at a shitty factory job and have two weeks off to do with mostly as I please, but still there are stipulations. Well, one stipulation. Aside from which, they don’t seem to care what I get up to, no doubt hoping for the best while expecting the worst.
There are – or were – two cousins, Steven and Paul, and I can’t recall which one was having a party. Probably Steven, but it makes no odds now. I learned a few years ago that Paul had died, and it would be rude to speak ill of the dead, not to mention unnecessary since there was no ill will between us. At a young age we’d play together, but those years were long gone even then. It wasn’t that I disliked them, we had simply grown apart, their worlds revolving around football and mine around music. Visiting them seemed like a chore.
A couple of hours later Not Robert Smith called back to ask if I wanted the Leicester South junction or the city centre, but I didn’t really know. The centre seemed less likely to be wrong, simply because it’s in the middle, but it was no better than a guess, my knowledge of Leicester amounting to little more than childhood visits to my grandparents’ place. Which was in a different house and more than likely a different part of town. So, city centre it is.
Half an hour later the van rattles and farts off into the warm night air, leaving me outside a piss-filled phone box. I step inside, trying not to breathe the stink in while I dial the number for my aunt and uncle’s place, pleasantly surprised that the phone hasn’t been vandalised beyond being used as a toilet. A less pleasant surprise is when there’s no answer.
Assuming that I’d dialled the wrong number, I try again. It’s my cousin’s birthday, after all, and they’re expecting me, albeit several hours ago. It’s not like they would have gone somewhere else. Would they? I let it ring longer this time, allowing for the fact that the party must be underway and maybe they didn’t hear the phone. It’s still ringing when two blokes stop outside the phone box to light cigarettes, one of them swaying a little as he shields the flame from a non-existent breeze. Aware that my sleeping bag is a bright neon sign that I’m a non-resident of this fair city, and that such a thing is a kicking offence for a lone punk rocker, I do my best to pretend not to have seen them. You’d be surprised how often that works as a form of self-defence.
The phone keeps ringing and still there is no answer. I try to compose my thoughts, but panic begins to set in. Fuck. What am I going to do? I have no idea where they live, nothing but a phone number, and the two blokes are still lurking outside the phone box, so pissed they can barely light their cigarettes. It’s Saturday night, pub closing time or thereabouts, not a good time to be out on the street. Closing time means drunks, and drunks don’t like punks.
With no other choice I decide to wait, give it five minutes, and try the number again. My mum and step dad are away for the weekend, so I can’t call them and check the number, but that wouldn’t be an option anyway, admitting failure on my first night. I’d rather sleep in the phone box. Just as I’m thinking that, the two drunk blokes stumble on their way, only to be replaced by two more, both blundering up the street clutching suspicious-looking food stuffs wrapped in greasy paper. The smaller of the two – though they’re both bigger than me – presses his face up against the window of the phone box and stares at me.
“Awright, Sid,” he burps, glaring through the dirty glass.
The bigger one tugs his sleeve, trying to get him to move on, but he’s having none of it.
“’Ss Sid Vicious,” he growls, apparently annoyed that his friend hasn’t recognised me as a deceased Sex Pistol, or perhaps perturbed that he’s seen a ghost.
Granted, at the tender age of seventeen I still fashioned myself after Sidney – black leather jacket, spiky hair, and the obligatory padlock and chain – but given that he rather publicly popped his clogs a couple of years ago, it seems like a fairly obvious mistake. This doesn’t seem to have occurred to my new friend, however, and he beckons me out of the phone box so he can have a closer look. I don’t have a lot of say in the matter. He even holds the door open for me, performing a little jig that he seems to think I’ll recognise, but in the process drops a large part of his kebab onto the pavement. There is a brief look of disbelief on his face, and then confusion as he tries to work out why his food is on the ground and whose fault it is. Evidentially he reaches the conclusion that it’s my fault.
His friend tugs his sleeve again in an effort to get him moving, home or wherever they were headed, but Kebab Man shrugs him off, studying my face intently. I look him back in the eyes, trying to appear confident, neither scared nor threatening, but he’s a nasty-looking bastard, wiry, with shark-cold eyes, and a heavy scar through his left eyebrow. His cheekbones have that puffy, hardened look of someone who’s been in frequent punch-ups, and his nose has been broken at least once in the past. He keeps staring and, foolishly, I break eye contact, gazing past his clumpy knuckles at the ground, all the time growing ever expectant of that first sudden movement. I’ve seen enough random violence against punks to know that it’s a distinct possibility. The familiar knot tightens in my stomach, fight or flight, flight being the only realistic option. This fucker looks like he’d win either way, especially since he has me cornered. He slobbers something about punk, incomprehensible, but nonetheless confrontational.
“Leave it, Tone,” his friend implores, trying to steer him away with an arm around his shoulder.
They’ve obviously been through this scene a hundred times before: Tone has hospitalised some poor cunt every weekend since he reached puberty, while his dimwit pal has stood by, too scared, too desperate for friendship, or maybe just too fucking stupid to do anything about it. And tonight it’s my turn.
