unpopular

When Love Breaks Down

where did it go?, originally uploaded by unpop.

‘The Two Ronnies’ played silently on the television in the corner. ‘Last Christmas’ on the record player provided the soundtrack. Sharon’s new pink leather trousers lay neatly folded on the drum stool whilst beneath the duvet Marc imagined her legs warm and smooth.

‘Pickled onion?’ asked Sharon, passing the jar across the width of her double bed.
Marc nodded, said ‘sure, one, why not?’ in reply and plucked a silverskin. The vinegar made his hang nails sting but the onion was good: sharp and spicy.
‘It’s not Christmas without pickled onions in bed.’
Marc didn’t quite see what pickled onions in bed had to do with Christmas, but knew too that his lack of understanding didn’t matter. After all, our own personal traditions are worth a million of those worn thin by time’s passing. He reminded himself to listen to Cristina when he got home.

Outside the window the moon hung over the snow clad trees at the end of the garden. In the hedgerow beneath those trees lay piles of empty bottles and cans from surreptitious summer parties; an epitaph to dwindling youth and to glimmers of those impossible loves that flicker and fade in an instant, never to be reclaimed.

Marc sat on the edge of the bed, letting the moment seep slowly into his memory so that he might feed from the warmth in years to come. An envelope rested between his fingers. Sharon said she didn’t have any more cards to give, but he could have an envelope. She had written some of their favourite nonsensical words and phrases in her loping hand. Some festive cheer. Four crossed ink kisses. And although those were the closest he would ever come to the touch of her lips on his, in a quarter of a century they would seem physical enough amongst other x’s and o’s lost to digital decay.

Downstairs the front door crashed. Heavy steps on the stairs sounded beneath bellows of laughter. Then Robert’s grinning face at the door, flushed from vodka and the cold. He held up a large christmas bauble. ‘Mentl!’ was all he said, eyes flicking quickly between the bauble, Sharon and Marc. Sharon rolled her own to the ceiling and groaned.

A belch escaped Robert’s alcohol soaked stomach. Another grin. ‘We’ve been on a Commando raid’ he said, staggering to his feet and grabbing Marc’s wrist. ‘Come and see!’ Marc stumbled up from the bed and allowed himself to be pulled. He turned to Sharon and shrugged an apology, attempted a smile. He thought that Sharon smiled softly and sadly in return and would swear there was a breath of disappointment to the waggled fingers as she waved farewell.

Robert steered Marc back in Andy’s bedroom, where on the floor lay five more Christmas baubles.
‘We went through the woods and climbed the church wall’ said Andy, pausing briefly from swigging the contents of an angular bottle whose label said ‘Bezique’.
‘We raided the Christmas tree’ grinned Chris, pointing somewhat redundantly to the treasure laid on the carpet.
‘Came back through the woods too, to avoid the pigs’ nodded Robert, another belch making the word ‘pigs’ sound elongated and drenched in echo.
Marc nodded and tried to look serious; didn’t dare suggest the real reason his friends had walked back through the woods was more to do with avoiding the war memorial Punks than the Police.
Robert threw an empty Tennents lager can across the room. ‘Put on the Redskins!’ he called, and Marc slipped his single onto Andy’s record player. He joined in the communal singing, though secretly he knew he would rather still be hearing Wham!

Marc looked at the snowy residue that fell from his friends shoes as they stomped in time to the beat. In years to come he would sometimes wonder what might have happened if the three of them had not returned at that particular moment. What if they had not been content with six baubles from the village Christmas tree and had returned for more? What if the churchyard wall had been higher and had taken longer to climb? What if the snow in the woods had been deeper and their progress through the drifts much slower? Would Sharon’s inky kisses have transformed to reality? Would the looping circles have transformed themselves to embraces beneath the duvet?

He knew however that his shellshocked, skinny self-consciousness would have conspired against any unlikely opportunities that Sharon might have presented. Knew too that all he would then have remembered from the night would have been the disappointing taste of pickled onion kisses.

All I Need Is Everything

After a Fullarton Wheelers' 10 mile TT - summer 1984, originally uploaded by unpop.

“Bidon!”
A hand and a laugh in the air. Five boys on bikes. Nothing much in common except a whisper thin belief in themselves and the bonds that brought them together.
“Allez! Allez!”

So together they rode, each secretly playing out the roles of the faces they glimpsed frozen in the inky pages of The Comic; the faces they pinned on bedroom walls beside Madness and Morrissey. Hinault, Maertens, Van Impe, Moser, Zoetemelk, Saronni. Names filled with European magic. In moments too they thought of Kelly, Roche and Millar: the Celtic soul brothers ploughing their solitary ways through the peloton towards legend. The strong devoted, no less.

Five boys on bikes on a summer habble. Sprinting for road signs, no holds barred. Imaginary primes at the top of each gentle rise, no quarter given. Double points on any real hill. The illusion of a polka-dot maillot on someone’s shoulders, or a maglia verde if they were talking Italian. For whilst no-one enjoyed language lessons in school, out on the road it was different. Peloton, casquette, musette, maglia, maillot, bidon. Bella, bella.

Naturally it was important to dress the part. Chris wore the Splendor of Criquielion, Robert in Saronni’s Del Tongo. Andy sported the Gis of Moser whilst Nick went for Anderson’s Panasonic. Marc meanwhile favoured the Mondrian themed La Vie Claire of Hinault. A modernist classic, as he would tell anyone close enough to listen. Yet although each wore a different jersey, they thought of themselves as a team, a gang, a grupetto. The Velo. They were simply The Velo.

So The Velo rode the coast as they often did, but for once dropped down through the tree lined avenues to the castle on the cliffs. Roosevelt and Churchill met there in the second war, so it was said, and Robert insisted there were ghosts in the old mill. Bunny-hopping speed bumps, they passed cars on the left and right. An old gentleman soaked in the sun’s warmth on a felled tree trunk and Chris cried “Bonjour Monsieur!” as they passed. Andy, at the back of the bunch, saw a walking stick raised in a bemused returned salute. A gaggle of teen girls stood waiting for parents, bored in the car-park. “Ca va?!” called Marc. Banal glares bounced back at them and Marc looked to his friends. “Les mademoiselles - elles sont tres, tres froid.” he shouted, and Robert responded with his best Gallic shrug.

They soft pedalled around to the castle entrance, but its imposing facade held no interest. Three riders took quick drinks whilst the other two held track stands between the cream stone pillars of the elegant gateway. The sun continued to slide through the sky towards Arran in the west as the vapour trails of trans-atlantic airplanes drew chalk lines on the blue.

A call went up.
“Alors!”
“Allez, allez!”

A sprint back up the road and more miles in their legs. Further from home then eventually switching back: a return to the girls of summer and the illusion of love. Five boys on bikes with nothing much in common except a whisper thin belief in themselves and memories that momentarily brought them together.

Come Back

paris 1984, originally uploaded by unpop.

 

‘Love to Locust’ it said on the sketchbook page. Just that, with a smattering of kisses and hearts. 

At the time Marc had not known who had written it, though in his heart he had his thoughts, ideas and wishes. It could have been any one of the unknown faces he had spent the week with, cramped on coaches and in cheap hotels, trailing around Parisian galleries and along Normandy coastal paths. At the time it was the only scrawl on the page he didn’t recognise; the only one without a name by it. Funny thing was though, that when he looked through the sketchbook five years down the line, some of those names he wouldn’t remember either. In ten years he would have forgotten half. In twenty it would be all but two, whilst in twenty five he would have lost the page and would recall none of the entries except the unsigned one. The one with the kisses and the hearts. 

It had been a strange trip. Marc thrown together with a few faces he had left a year before and others he had no knowledge of. He had felt awkward amongst his peers: they grown confident by a year of being the seniors in school and he shrunken in stature from being thrown into the cacophony of art school a year younger than everyone else. And when you are seventeen a month is a lifetime, after all.

They were kind though, those unknown faces with their familiar relationships. Stuart and Louise, the dauntingly mature couple who were clearly destined to be doctor and lawyer. Andrew and Eileen, so staggeringly fashionable and perfect, or Iain and Gillian, all whispered giggles and hands held tight. And then, always hanging on the periphery, Yvonne, skinny as a rake and so scornful of the world Marc was sure her permanent scowl must hurt like hell.

There was no great event to bring them together of course. No Saturday school detention and no body to be found at the end of the railway line. Just a school trip to France; a trip like a million others and no less or more important for all that. A trip where fragments of self would break off and be lost forever. A trip where imaginary kisses would descend amongst the sprinkles of blinding sunlight reflected from the towers of La Defense and where awkward conversations would dissolve in the drizzle outside the Orangerie.

In Normandy they had left messages for the hotel staff drawn on the paper table covers. Cartoon coffee pots and cups and ‘Pourquoi pas?’ in block capitals. Then, fuelled by cheap lager and pain killers they had walked the deserted streets of the town, two groups of four with arms entwined singing ‘Hey hey we’re The Monkees’, much to the bemusement of the elderly couple running the mobile creperie.

Back at the hotel Marc had played a mix tape called ‘Music To Kill Your Parents By’ that pretty much emptied the room. Only Yvonne stayed, rooted beside the greasy window, looking at the greyness of the English Channel lurking beyond the sands. The tape played ‘Come Back’ by The Mighty Wah! and Yvonne half turned, half smiled, said simply ‘I like this one’ and that was all.

They sat together on the coach for the long overnight journey north from Portsmouth. Sometimes they talked; already with remembrances of the week just past and occasionally of times to come. Marc had said something about wanting to live in London and Yvonne had shrugged and spoken of passing ‘O’ Levels. Mostly though they had plugged in their Walkmen and slumbered to their music; eyes closed and minds full of dreams. Yvonne had asked to borrow the tape with the Wah! song, had smiled into his eyes and lingered a moment, he was sure, as he passed it across.

The hours past midnight were spent in the midlands. Spaghetti Junction at 1am and Yvonne’s shoulder resting lightly against Marc’s arm. Through the Lakes and across the border with fingers gently touching; doves kissing as the dawn crept softly over the sky. Everyone asleep or at least with eyes closed and breath held deep, savouring the fragments of time that felt stalled and the feelings of hope frozen in the perfect amber light and the drone of the road.

The last thing he could remember was the sight of her walking across the parking lot. The morning sunlight bled through the trees that surrounded the Rector’s house and made things look like a 1970s episode of Columbo. A Californian tinge to a fading Ayrshire summer, Fujicolor halos on angels. They hadn’t even said goodbye.

Within a month she had gone. Moved to Liverpool so the story went, which might as well have been to the other side of the ocean. Marc wondered sometimes if she’d taken his tape with her; wondered if she played it and wondered if she thought of him. And sometimes too, down the years that followed, in moments of mad folly he wondered if he should have attempted to follow her. Insanity if course, for it wasn’t as if there was anything solid there, after all. Just some fleeting moments. Just the warmth of touching legs in the dark and dilated pupils in the sleepy early morning. Just some songs degrading on ferric tape, to be stretched and snapped by time.

‘Love to Locust’ it had said on the sketchbook page. Just that, with a smattering of kisses and hearts.

I'm Falling

Bluebells in Dundonald Wood, 1984, originally uploaded by unpop.

In years to come they would say that it was a great one for bluebells. Up in the woods they seemed to blanket everything. Great swathes of them stretched away into the shadows, gleaming in the soft evening sun of a late Spring.

They were not his woods, but Marc remembered them well all the same. Through a gap in the fence from Helen’s back garden, with Gary and Elaine. An old gold Halford’s bicycle abandoned on the pavement. The Jam on the tape recorder and Eileen breaking everyone’s heart. She’d gone off with the rich kids from the big houses down in the town: the ones nestling between golf courses and the old estate. They filled you with a mixture of hate and jealousy. The houses, the kids, the things they said and the things they could do. The way they stole everything beautiful and precious.

In the year of the bluebells Marc remembered Eileen’s white bedroom furniture and feathered hair. In the woods that afternoon they had almost kissed. Almost kissed. Well imagine that.

In the year of the bluebells, when the Spring had come late, there were lots of almost kisses and nearly hands held. It had been cold forever and winter held firm all the way to Easter Sunday. Then, in one miraculous afternoon, the air suddenly warmed and everyone blinked in astonishment. Marc had been on The Screws with Chris and Robert when it happened, stealing bicycle race signs from telephone poles. It made for a struggle home with pockets stuffed with winter clothes, but the feeling of the sun on blinding white legs made it more than worthwhile. The fledgling southerly breeze helped too, blowing them home with the signs strapped to their backs like sails. Tail wind out and home? The old wizened club riders told them you could count your lifetime allocation of those days on the fingers of one hand, but it took that lifetime before any of the three would realise it was true.

Up in the woods the evening drooped silently onto Marc’s shoulders, Eileen’s almost kisses taunting him gently. Back in the houses there were more than kisses and more than almosts, just not for him. Not for now and not for ever. When he closed his eyes it sometimes seemed like he could touch the possibilities lingering in front of him, but when he opened them again they just laughed in his face then darted away in dances of wild abandon.

To the west the mountains of islands were just visible between the branches whilst in the east the crazy skinheads of the council estates guarded the war memorial. To the north the fading smoke from the Monsanto factory breathed its last and to the south, behind Marc’s back, the old radar station pointed its dish to the sky and pretended to look for aliens. A week ago he’d sat with Robert on this tree trunk and listened to him tell scrumpy-fuelled stories of universes and giants. Now all he heard were just whispers of times to come, memories of those almost kisses and the songs of bluebells stretching forever.

Breaking Point

playing mini-munchman, originally uploaded by unpop.

“It’s called Mini-Munchman” said Sharon, not looking up from the tiny yellow object in her hands. Marc peered over her shoulder, close enough to breath the smell of hairspray and her mother’s Chanel perfume.
“You mean its a Pac-Man ripoff?” he laughed into a silence broken only by cheap electronic chirps. Then, after a moment, “can I have a go?”

They sat together on the sofa then, passing the game to and fro, the warmth of their touch transferred through cheap plastic buttons. Between turns each of them glanced at the TV. Something about the miners strike on the news, then quickly flicked through to rest on Jules Holland and Paula Yates. Echo and The Bunnymen on The Tube. Sharon called it shit and hit the ‘mute’ button. Marc agreed in spite of himself. Some things were more important than music, after all.

The electric blips soundtracked McCulloch’s lips and big hair, prompting Marc to smile in spite of himself. He slouched further down in the worn sofa, resting his head on the tartan blanket thrown over the back cushions. Cat hairs clung to his cream Matinique shirt and he idly plucked them off, waiting his turn on the game.
“Hey Sharon” he said, savouring the heat of her thigh next to his through her pink leather trousers. “You want to go to the pictures next weekend?”
Sharon barely blinked. Marc knew because he was watching her eyes closely. Two brown pools that tempted you in with the promise of a warm embrace then cut you deep with a cold hard shoulder. Oh sure, he knew all about eyes. He looked at his own for too long every morning in the bathroom mirror and fought the urge to pierce them with the tiny points of his Rotring drawing pens. Sure, he knew all about eyes.

Sharon turned hers to him and passed over the game. “Your go” she breathed, and that was all.

Speed Your Love To Me

speed your love to me, originally uploaded by unpop.

 

A shiver the size of Finland and a sigh as deep as the North Sea. The wind scything in from the Firth bore snow flakes and mistrust; icicles and dancing skaters in the mist of frozen ponds. Marc watched the storms blow in from on top of Greystones hill. Below him the bay arced to the south. Behind him lurked starry eyes and insolent, pouting lips.

Freewheeling in the cold, hunched over bars with woollen gloves loose on the drops. Slice through the winter, a dream of warmth ahead. Always the dreams.

Marc reached one hand round to his back, reseating the musette on the curve of his spine. The letters on the fabric said ‘Campagnolo’ and in his mind Marc talked Italian just like Robert De Niro or Francesco Moser. Inside the musette sat a record. A gift. A quick step and a sidestep. Into a gap. Sprint. Relax. Then sprint and sprint some more. Something like that anyway.

The intended recipient of the gift was on the telephone, cord twirled idly through painted fingers. A bundle of cheap bracelets twinkled on her wrist, chinking a metallic and plastic discord when she moved. John Taylor gazed benevolently on her from the wall behind. Nik Kershaw smirked from the sidelines. Across the hallway her brother raised dumbbells and thought of flying.

Marc wanted to say that his mind was empty as he pedalled into the village, but the truth was that his mind was never emptied; was instead always filled with incessant voices that argued over every action. The impetuous optimism of a vivacious youth crossing swords with the doomed nihilism of a reality glimpsed daily in mirrors. The ‘yes she will’ attempting to raise a voice above the overpowering crescendo of ‘no she never will’. At the moment, as he guided the wheels around the bend and sprinted past the war memorial the chirping optimist was winning. The tubulars thrummed with that ‘yes she will’ on the cold tarmac and Marc’s lips cracked the smile of the limitless winner.

Sharon replaced the handset and looked out at the skeleton limbs of the trees that lined the foot of the garden. In a year the hedgerow beyond would be a graveyard of empty vodka bottles and crushed cans of cheap Dutch lager. Her brother would keep an inventory: lists of different drinks accounted for. At first it would seem like a joke, but in years to come it would haunt them as a nagging reminder of something lost, never to be reclaimed. But in that February cold all she could see were slender arms waving in the darkening sky. The door bell rang above Fiction Factory.

Pale yellow light glowed beyond the crinkled glass of the front door. Marc looked at the underside of the overhang and glimpsed cracking paint in the fading twilight. He rested his bicycle against the garage and twisted the musette to rest on his side. Gloved fingers grasped the record, sleeved in a cardboard envelope decorated with hand coloured stars. In his head he could see the music winding out of the cardboard, away from the vinyl, creating spirals in the night, dropping glimmering kisses of tremulous imperfection. He could hear all the sounds even as he watched the door crack open.

Her eyes blinked. One single heart shaped glow of lingering love seemed to pulse in the space between them before dissolving into the chill. A stammered greeting. An uncertain exchange and a smile that crept along her shadowed lips. Fragments of possibility and then, from far too close, the refrain of ‘no she never will’ hammering in his heart again.

Doors closing, tyres crunching on driveway gravel. A shiver the size of Finland and a sigh as deep as the North Sea. Marc ran his tongue over cracked lips as he hunkered down and rode hard into the headwind. Always the headwind home: biting, unflinching and uncaring.

Skip. Return. Replay.

Eyes closed, Martin thought how strange it was that you could see almost anywhere in the world frozen in a moment. He turned in his head to look at the gap between the lush green hedgerows. Just down there. Glide forward. Peer down. Through the leaves and into the dappled, sunlit grass. If you looked really carefully, he wondered, would you see drops of candle wax on the ground? Three tones of blue. Some cookie crumbs and a champagne cork.

A girl cycled past. In a daydream she waved and Martin shuffled on regardless with something about not falling in love if you wanted to die in peace flickering in his ears. Skip. Return. Replay. If there is music that can haunt and hurt, he remembered Julie saying, it is only because you want it to. There was something in that, wasn’t there?

Skip. Return. Replay.

Eyes still closed, there were ducks on the water, geese and goslings on the garden path. Summer shuffled off in a huff and Julie, resting her hands gently on his shoulders, whispered almost inaudibly in his ear.

“Did you ever believe in anniversaries?” she asked.
“Hell, no.” he replied, eyes still resolutely closed.
“Don’t you ever count the years then?”
“Never. The years count themselves, like drum sticks clicking on a count-in that just goes on forever. The music never starts. The rest of the group stand immobile, waiting for the crack on the snare that never comes.”
That was when he opened his eyes, adding “it’s better that way by far”.

Big Flame part 11 - we sat friendly on a slab of stone

Part 11 of Big Flame is online now.

"The emptiness is infectious. All we do is die. What’s so wrong with wanting love and desperation?"

Hooptedoodle

I can’t say I’m a great Elmore Leonard fan, but his ten rules of writing (as linked to by ET this morning) are quite compelling and entertaining. I’ll be flicking back to those when I embark on my NaNoWriMo effort in a couple of months. It also occurred to me whilst in the bookstore this morning that James Sallis has surely written some kind of similar ‘rules’ for writing. There is nothing more than an obscure memory that suggests this, which inevitably means he has probably written no such thing, but what the hell. I just felt it suddenly necessary to remember James Sallis. His sole tome on the ‘crime’ shelves (the extraordinarily fine ‘Ghost Of A Flea’) looked quite forlorn this morning and I was sorely tempted to buy it regardless of the fact that I have it already. I often get that impulse in bookstores; the urge to ‘rescue’ favourites from the shelves. Used to get it occasionally in record stores too, but I can’t even remember the last time I was in a real record store, which probably says a lot about how times change and all that. In fact I’m sorely tempted to dig out all of Sallis’ Lew Griffin novels and give them another spin. They were superb pieces of writing, weren’t they?

Pink Flag

Whilst writing yesterday I took a moment to glance back at a few older pieces. It can be strange looking back on your old work, regardless of media. You recognize the impulses and meanings behind their creation, but you don’t necessarily recognize them as still being yours.

One of the pieces I looked at was this one. It was from a series of fragments that cropped up on the very first incarnation of the Tangents website, and were themselves variations on the theme started several years previously when I was making a desperate attempt at a novel. The asterisks are a stylistic fragmentation hangover from that.

I still like this piece, although I am unsure if that’s just because it captures a long lost moment from my past. Perhaps I kid myself that I actually like it because of the clipped structure. There is a nod to The Great Gatsby in there too, though I am not sure anyone would spot it, just as I am not sure anyone would notice the old switcheroo at the end of the story I posted yesterday.

I also used this story as the basis of my first ‘published’ recording. A very rudimentary hash of sampling recorded on an old HP PC and a four track tape machine that I borrowed from school. All the samples were taken from the Wire album. My track appeared on the infamous ‘The Family Twee’ double CD in 1998 and I think I can safely say it was the least musical effort on there. I think I may have also performed it ‘live’ at my one and only performance, upstairs at the Betsey Trotwood prior to the first Bowlie. I was very nervous then after spotting Nick Currie and Amelia Fletcher in the audience…

Anyway, here for your aural torture is the track. And the story.

The Duke Of Harringay: ‘Pink Flag’

PINK FLAG

[militia]

Lucy and Sarah came around at two. This was usual.

*

Sundays are so boring, said Sarah, and Lucy and I said Uh-huh together as a reply. I said How's school? and Sarah goes, Usual.

*

You Bored? I ask Lucy, and she says No in a strange drawl, pushing the fingers of her right hand up through her hair.

*

Lucy did that a lot.

*

Around half two Sarah goes, Let's go out for a walk, and we say Okay, and Why not.

[shells]

There was still a building site in those days, and we walked around through shells of houses. We climbed up large mounds of earth, and clambered down the other side.

*

I've got a flag, said Sarah, and she did. It was an old broom handle with a piece of pink plastic that she stuck on top. A Pink Flag, I said. Very Wire. Lucy said Huh? and I said nothing.

*

I'm going to claim that hill, said Sarah, pointing to an earth mound near the burn that ran the length of the golf course. There was a yellow bulldozer parked near it and I said It won't be there tomorrow but Sarah just goes I don't care.

*

Lucy grabbed my hand and smiled. Come on, she said, and that was all.

[pink flag]

We stood, the three of us together, on top of the earth mound. Sarah stuck the broom handle into it. It leaned slightly towards the west and the sea, and the pink plastic flapped almost imperceptibly in the slight breeze. Lucy's white skirt wafted too, and I noticed that it had small smudges of brown around the hem.

*

This is my hill, said Sarah. This is my flag.

*

It was a pink flag.

Alistair Fitchett, 1995