Random Access Memories

I was going to tell Pam about my radio interview. Drop it subtly into the conversation at some point. “Oh, I’m going to be doing an interview on local radio this weekend.” Or “Oh I was on the radio last weekend.” Something like that. Pam was from Newcastle. An exiled Geordie. I’m not sure why I wanted to impress her. Pam had a boyfriend. He was in South Africa on some sort of rugby tour. He was bald (I forget how and why that came up in conversation, but it had). I assume he was a well built guy, because that’s the physique you need for rugby. So if Pam had a type, it certainly wouldn’t have been anyone who looked like me. Pam was working for the Royal Mail. We all were. A bunch of us. About twelve of us. It was a temporary job, three months over the summer to cover presumably for regular staff that took holidays during this time. After I left uni, I had made a couple of unsuccessful attempts at getting a fulltime job. I applied for a position in a local computing firm. A...

I had an aunt and uncle who lived in Kent. Not so far across from where we lived on the Essex coast, but of course the Thames estuary was between us, so to visit them entailed a trip into London and then back out again. One Saturday evening in the summer of 1986 they were listening to the radio – or I think more likely, the radio was on in the background while they were doing whatever old people did on a Saturday evening. The radio was tuned to BBC Essex. (Why they weren’t listening to BBC Kent, I don’t know. But given their location you would certainly have been able to pick up BBC Essex clearly enough.) One of them must’ve recognised either my voice or my name being mentioned on the radio. “Ooh, isn’t that our nephew Simon they’re talking to?” Something like that I imagine. The next time they were in contact with my parents they relayed this fact to them. “We heard your Simon on the radio the other day. I said to Bob, ‘Hey, isn’t that Simon they’re talking to?’” Several yea...

Click and collect. 4am. The streets are quiet because everyone’s asleep. I’m not scared of the dark. I’m scared of people. Unruly school children. Men on motorbikes. Drunks leaving the pub at chucking out time. Even the swans are probably sleeping now. Birds won’t announce the new day for at least another hour. It’s best to make it home before dawn. I can see the pick up point from a distance away. The road curves back on itself and dips down into a valley. There are lights that flicker. A beacon to guide you towards your destination. Always Open. That’s what the sign by the parcel locker says. There’s a keypad to enter your code. You just wait for it to register and then one of the slots will open and you can retrieve your parcel. At any time of the day or night. Always open. * Jen’s dad was a hoarder. Couldn’t throw anything away. Shopping receipts from forty years ago. Tinned goods long past their sell by date. Random in-flight airline magazines. Cracked glasses – of the...

At a service station somewhere off the M6 you’re sat outside eating sandwiches with your parents. The view is across a car park with some muddy pathways and a small area of unattractive grassland in the distance. The faint hum of nearby traffic. You’re still essentially the same child you’ve always been, just a bit taller and with a few edges smoothed out. You’ve lost some innocence and you’ve gained some insecurities in exchange. But a couple of hours later you’re unpacking all your belongings from the car and arranging them into a 12’ x 24’ room that’s going to be your home for the next nine months. Your parents depart and now you’re no longer a child. This is real life. On the first – or probably second – night you’re in the room next to yours, hanging out with a guy from Singapore who’s got a fascinating story to tell about how he came to be studying engineering in the UK. There’s also Navan, the sweet natured Indian guy. There’s probably others. It would be great to go back th...

Stafford in the mid 80s was not a stop off point for any of the big bands of the day. Even medium sized acts were probably giving the town   a wide berth to be fair. Musical entertainment was thin on the ground. You took what you could get. And what you could get wasn’t always the best. (No offence if you were once a member of The Boothill Foot Tappers and are reading this.) North Staffs Polytechnic was spread across two locations in the north Midlands – Stafford and Stoke. And I think Stoke was where bands mostly played. There was a venue in Stafford – the Whiteley Building – which belonged to the local Stafford College. That’s where we went to see live music and other related entertainment. (I vaguely recall a magic act that climaxed with bringing a dozen people up on stage and hypnotising them to do silly things – chicken impressions and the like..) There would be student disco nights where, because dance music had yet to happen in any meaningful way, the go-to record to fil...

The living quarters are split into two halves, four people in each half. In the centre there’s a washroom and showers. There’s a mini kitchen with a fridge, a kettle and a toaster. Above a counter someone has stuck up a promotional leaflet entitled The McDonald’s Guide to Healthy Eating. Who are these band of merry men – for they are all indeed men, whether they are merry will depend on what time of day you encounter them. There’s Dave. There’s Ray. There’s John the Bastard (son of John the Bastard John). Mad Mark Fletcher. There’s Navan, a quiet and unassuming Indian guy. He smiles a lot, but you rarely see him. There was a student from Singapore living in the room opposite but he didn’t last out the first month. Now there’s Ian, a stocky guy from Southampton. One of the many engineering students. High times and high jinks. A mess of cultures and personalities rattling along together. Then there’s Eunice, the saintly cleaner. Heaven knows what she makes of it all, but then she...

Punk rock can trace its roots back to the garage bands of the 60s and the influence of The Stooges/ MC5 and their ilk in the early 70s. For many it’s the debut album from The Ramones that marks the true beginnings of punk rock. In the UK you have The Sex Pistols and The Clash and then dozens of other bands that followed after them, or existing bands that jumped on to the punk bandwagon. It’s messy, as all history tends to be if you look at it up close. Out story focusses on Mike Spenser. He was an American who came to the UK via France in the mid 70s to be at the vanguard of the changing musical climate in and around London. His first band were The Count Bishops, somewhat ahead of the curve when it came to the punk scene. Punk before punk had officially become a thing. His stint with the band didn’t last long. After that came The Cannibals. They had their own label, Big Cock Records. The logo they used was repurposed from the local brewery of the time (Courage) and showed a cockerel ...

This is the story of nine siblings and a boy named Billy. We meet the nine for the first time in early summer. Accompanied by their parents. They are not babies, not chicks. But they are still very young – still small, still fluffy. Nine siblings. Nine cygnets. Herded protectively by their parents. Dad at the front, mum bringing up the rear. The tide is in and water flows inland between the central arches of the Coombe viaduct. The parents forage for food among the shallows – saltmarsh grass, sea plantain, algae. They teach their young where and how to find food. This inlet lies in a small valley sheltered to the north and south, but exposed to the easterly winds blowing from across the river. On the northern side there are houses with gardens that back on to these tidal waters. Closest to the viaduct, in an ancient looking house with a large chimney that appears to lean at an impossible angle, lives Billy. He’s perched in his wheelchair watching as the young swans parade past hi...

Chaddlewood St Maurice Whitleigh and Ernesettle Victoria Road Beech Hill Cross Cowley & Higher Moor Awliscombe Roborough Woolwell The names are like poetry. It’s best if you don’t go there. It’s best if you just imagine.    

In the early 90s there was a band from somewhere in South London who had some moderate chart success, under the improbable name of Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine (later shortened to Carter USM). (Suddenly Christians on Mega Acid doesn’t sound quite so silly, right? Err, well anyway…) One of their songs - After The Watershed   -  came to the attention of The Rolling Stones because they’d adapted the chorus from Ruby Tuesday . It was a brief, half-joking reference within their song. But The Rolling Stones turned out not to have a sense of humour – or more precisely it seems, their manager didn’t have a sense of humour. Legal action ensued. The single was banned from radio play and any chance of chart success was scuppered. Neither myself nor my brother were devotees of Carter USM, but the story was making news in the music press and we certainly saw the irony of a band who’d forged a whole career off the back of impoverished blues musicians, suing someone else for...

It’s a shame that everyone’s known by their surnames at this school. There’s a James and a Lee and a Russell. Surnames that could be first names. First names that could be surnames. There’s a Mather and two Mathers. The latter are twins, but they’re unrelated to the former. There’s an Allen, but not spelt the way it would be if it was a first name. A Summerhayes and a Winterton. The permutations seem endless. The party’s been organised by James Lee and Lee Winterton. You can see the problem. Outside of school, which one is Lee? They’re also cousins, but that’s by the by. I’m thinking all these things as Patrick drives us to the beach. It’s late spring and the light’s about to fade. There’s an impressive sunset somewhere behind us, but we’re headed east. To the posh side of town. Patrick’s girlfriend is in the back seat. Ellen. I have to try and remember that. I’m not good with names. I didn’t know Patrick had a girlfriend. He’d never mentioned it before, but here she Is. Blonde h...