Lost

He was lost. Fuck! He muttered into his scarf, head bent right down, trying, hopelessly, to avoid the needles of freezing rain. He hadn’t been here in thirty years and he was shocked that he couldn’t find the pub. He was lost. He’d lived here, not for long, but he had lived here and gone to the local newsagent and the bookie’s in the precinct…Jesus! Where’s the precinct? Was it on Royce Road, just by the church? Well, it wasn’t there now, nor those bloody awful, modern shithole flats, great big concrete rings; you’d think the fuckin’ architects were Spanish and homesick when they drew up the plans for those grey concrete bullfighting rings, with their permanently condensation-fogged windows. Wankers! It was no good, his neck was starting to ache now, and he was soaked to his skin. He looked up, squinting through the arrowing rain to the grey sky, to where he used to live.

Waiting

He hadn’t changed. He’d sworn he had, but he hadn’t. She looked at her watch again. A nervous tick that had disappeared almost as soon as he had last disappeared. Through the furls of cigarette smoke she stared out onto the street outside the window. The rain had turned into a fine mist, suspended, not falling, almost as if it were floating in front of your face. Passing buses washed the pub’s windows with tidal wave splashes of oil-filmed puddle water. She lifted her glass to her lips and realized, with dismay, that it was empty. She looked around to the bar and caught the man looking at her. He held his gaze, traces of a smile forming at the corners of his mouth. She looked down at the glass, with its waxy red lipstick traces. She’d always hated this part of Manchester, even when she lived here; why had she agreed to meet him here? She eased off the stool and walked up to the bar.

Watching

He had seen the red coat through the window, and though the sheeting rain had obscured and hidden her, he had seen her. She stood for a moment outside the frosted glass of the pub’s swing doors, a bright red blot, like spilt wine on kitchen roll. He saw her arm come up, held in front of her out-of-focus, pale, white face. The arm dropped and the doors swung inwards. She stood in the door’s open frame. Cold, damp air rushed in around her body. A bus heaved by, its menacing, slickly black tyres whooshing black water over the pavement. She turned at the noise, and seeing the spiralling wake of the approaching wheels, made her mind up. The swinging doors moved towards each other, meeting with a silent snap, sealing the outside world behind her. She looked quickly around the small room, as if not expecting to find what she was looking for. He watched her face, unable to look away.

Lost

He was worried now, he knew she wouldn’t wait; she’d bloody well made that clear on the phone. The thing was, he knew she was right, he hadn’t changed. He had tried, but he couldn’t change now, not after so long. He was beaten, he knew that this was his last throw, and the numbers hadn’t fallen for him. The shopkeeper he’d asked directions from hadn’t even heard of the pub, well, that’s if he understood any English at all. A bus steamed by, displacing as much water as a container ship. He jumped into the door well of a new block of flats in a frantic bid to outrun the malevolent reach of the spray. The water cascaded over his shoes, leaving dirty brown rivulets streaming off him and into the large puddle he was now standing in. He stared mournfully at the bus as it passed. Its windows were foggy with condensation, and ghostly apparitions sat with shoulders pressed to the damp glass. A vivid red blur flashed by and the bus was gone. He was lost.

Watching last year’s insanity of white men in balaclavas in the UK running up plastic Union flags onto lamp posts with ladders in the dead of night, or painting St George’s flags over mini-roundabouts, in the hope they can set the clocks back to the pre-Windrush 1950s, a time before most of these miserable miscreants were born, I got to pondering, and have been for a while, multiculturalism, or multi-kulti as my new neighbours here in Germany call it. And, not unnaturally, my own little part, let’s call it insignificant significance, in that seemingly impossible state of satisfactory being: tangible and successful multiculturalism. For multiculturalism, and I’m as sure of this as I am that chicken tikka masala and the döner kebap are both hugely desirable and delicious left-overs from the last suppers of two once great empires, the British and the Ottoman, is thricefold desirable, possible, and a very good thing. For everyone.

And yet, the growing clamour from the obliviously unaware hordes that their beloved dragon slayer, gorgeous George, for it is he of the red cross on a white background, and, hilariously ironically, was more Greek than English, or, if you’d prefer, more moussaka than a Sunday roast with all the trimmings, and his connections with Palestine were more concrete than any delusional links with Peterborough, Portsmouth or Putney. And yet this dissociation by the lunatic fringe (who, sadly, appear less on the fringes and more and more in the middle these days) tells us, loudly and ever more incomprehensibly, that multiculturalism is none of those three things. And that everything bad at the moment in that septic isle set in an excrement filled sea is entirely the fault of, well, brown and black skinned people who, in reality, have more in common with St George than do those pasty faced painters of mini-roundabouts and twisted fire starters who set alight buildings knowing full well they contain families with small children. But before we get into that, let’s just take a breather and enjoy this, and marvel how irony seems to fly over the heads of those who simply can’t see their own hands in front of their face.

But that’s good old Blighty, I hear you say, and that was then, when a ‘white riot’ merely entailed a bit more gobbing and pogoing, but what has that to do with Berlin from whence this postcard is despatched? Well, I’m glad you asked, because, as a keen observer of both Britain and Germany, and especially Berlin; the former where I’m from and the latter where I am now? Well, I’ve been taking notes and what I’ve found is that these two historically at odds next door-but-one-neighbours have much more in common than history may suggest. And, spoiler alert, neither of them likes reality or hard facts much…

So, as this postcard has a Deutsche Post stamp let’s start with him (Fatherland) first before we get onto her (Britannia). And I have to say, right from the off, that Germany, well, OK, Berlin, is bloody lucky. Lucky because it has a flourishing and, from what I can see at street level here in sunny Berlin, as successfully integrated an immigrant population as it could ever have hoped for, or, rather, than it ever deserved. For, let’s be honest here, who could ever have predicted a mere 70-odd years after Germany went berserk with a flamethrower around most of the world, intent on murdering or enslaving anyone who didn’t look, sound, or think like them, that they would have a, more or less, fully integrated multicultural society. One that even contains - shock…horror - Muslims, who, like the Jews before them, don’t eat pork or really drink beer, both of which are serious handicaps in a country where bier und bratwurst und brötchen consumption are matters of life and death signifiers of German something or other. Luckily, though, Muslims do eat bread, so one out of three is a kind of win, though the cuddly Alternative für Deutschland (AfD or Arseholes for Deutschland) demand the hat trick. Of course they do, because nothing says ‘German culture’ more than a bottle of Bavaria’s finest in one hand and a bratwurst mit brötchen in the other…

Which is patently nonsense; on a par with the nonsense spouted by Reform UK’s racist ideologues who insist a third generation non-white person, and born and bred in the UK (though their preferred national identity is English, I’m sticking with British because Reform racists appear to be found in every corner of the dis-United Kingdom), doesn’t necessarily qualify as British. Not really, ‘cos, not white, you know? And now, Restore Britain, though I’ve no idea what they’re restoring other than antique racist notions as peddled by Nazis and Enoch Powell, say that both (white, naturally) parents had to have been born in Britain before any child could lay claim to the glorious and unrivalled status of a ‘white Briton’. Well, that’s me buggered, then…

But apart from having similarly racist motivations, which they were obviously carefully taught while growing up, both organisations share one other key trait (I hesitate to call either Reform UK or the AfD political parties as they both have only one filthy red rag to wave in the faces of the afflicted, namely racism.) They have in common a shameless opportunism to exploit and further reduce the already impoverished lives of those existing on the lower rungs of both country’s unequal societies. In other words, they don’t give a fig for anyone, not a single person, for whom they claim to have the answer and the solution for all their woes. They are grifters, con men, and women, too… hello Suella and Alice, and are probably driven as much by hate as they are by a lust for power and influence. Or, more sadly, just trying to make up for their lifelong deficiencies…hello Nigel!

But irrespective of what malign influences turned them into the unpalatable specimens they are today, the lies they peddle are irrefutably and undeniably just that: lies.

And, of course, those of us with eyes to see and a brain with which to rationalise, and yes, perhaps, with a degree of comfort that prevents us from having to live a hand to mouth existence, something far too many people in both countries have to endure, know that immigration and its resultant positive influences on the indigenous culture has greatly enriched the lives of everyone. And that both Reform UK and the AfD are liars.

The post-war years were hard for both Britain and Germany; the former utterly exhausted by six years of warfare all across the globe and the latter utterly destroyed, both psychologically and physically, by its own collective madness. And rebuilding for either was simply not possible without some help from somewhere and from somebody else. Enter the immigrant.

For we lucky Brits, it was the descendants of those we had stolen from their own homes and then raped, both figuratively and literally, in order to make much of the map of the world as red as possible and delay the setting of the sun anywhere on the British Empire. How quaint, no? And for the equally lucky Germans, it was the SOS call to those countries where, and again, the irony is inescapable, within a mere half century, Germany had done its level best to murder and subjugate those very same people it was now begging to come to their aid. To help rebuild the ruins of a once great country and civilisation that it, and it alone, was responsible for its suicidally and psychopathic embrace of Nazism.

Here’s how it played out in London, just three years after the end of the Second World War, which, fortunately for cockneys and royalty alike, was the only place to be for the disembarking passengers from HMT Empire Windrush…

And a decade and a half later, Germany turned to Turkey, its old Austro-Hungarian/Ottoman/First World War ally to help rebuild its self-destructed state, along with other ‘invited’ Gastarbeiter (Yep! Literally invited working guests) from Italy, Greece, and assorted Balkan dolly mixtures. The once conquered and pillaged were now being ‘invited’ to help rebuild the new, modern, flourishing and decidedly not Nazi, but still complicated West Germany. Here’s Suleyman recounting his experience of German bureaucracy in the 1960s, which I can forlornly attest is still next level madness…

And so they came; largely from the Caribbean, East Africa, and the Indian sub-continent, to rebuild Mother England. And for those venturing to West Germany from continental Europe and Turkey, you can also add those Vietnamese and Africans from communist countries, as well as Cubans who went to East Germany. And no one in either Britain or the two Germanies gave much thought to what effect these new immigrants would have on their respective new countries. Because nobody thought they would stay long enough to have any significant impact on the indigenous culture. Because guests only stay for as long as they’re welcome, right?

Which, of course, we now know was never going to happen; for no matter how inhospitable the hosts may sometimes behave, and in both the United Kingdom and Germany inhospitality is currently being practised on a disturbing scale, the guests have long ceased to be mere visitors and are now firmly embedded in their new ‘home’. And home it is now. Their own little castle, for why wouldn’t they, like every Englishman, want their own castle? Their own Heimat. No matter what those in Little England may say about it being impossible for a non-white person to ever really be considered as belonging in Britain, as being ‘home’ in England. Or the AfD, OK, let’s just stop messing about with semantics, and call them Nazis, who tell us that Muslims can’t ever really be Germans because they don’t eat pork and don’t drink beer, and their very continued presence on sacred Fatherland soil is a stain on German blood ties…Hmm, that rings a bell somewhere. Oh, well, I’m sure it’ll come back to me before I finish this…

Intermission. Well, kinda..for what we all need now is a reminder that all needn't be all doom and gloom…and that if this is what we want, then why don’t we get it?

So, after that little palette cleanser, where was I?

Oh, yes. The Windrush generation, and those others from the Indian subcontinent, and East Africa, and the Turks, Italians, Greeks, Vietnamese, and now atomised ex-Yugoslavs and others from the Balkans, have built successful lives and families and homes in their new homelands of Britain and a reunited Germany. Some of them even married their hosts and raised children with them, such as me, while some stayed within the narrower confines of their originating cultural norms, and all while accepting that this was their new country and this was now home. And what did they do? How did they build their new successful lives in an often unwelcoming place?

They cleaned our toilets. They drove our buses and trains. They cooked our food for us. They looked after our children. They built our roads and railways. And schools and houses. They worked hard. Very hard. Doing the jobs that we didn’t want to do. Dirty, manual and menial work. And all for a relative pittance. But without their hard earned contributions would Germany be the world’s third biggest economy today? Or Britain the world’s fifth? No. They absolutely wouldn’t.

But never mind what these immigrants contributed to GDP, national economies or anything else relating to just money, which is not to say money isn’t important given the outrageous howls of indignation from some within the third and fifth largest economies of the world as people without a pot to piss in try to better their children’s lives by having the temerity to give them what we have; no, never mind just the money alone, but consider, instead, what riches to our culture these children of Empire and ‘die Gastarbeiter’ have added. Consider that and then consider how lucky we were and are that these people - the descendants of slaves and Empire indentured labourers, and those from more recently occupied places where the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine and the Waffen SS Einsatzgruppen bombed and raped and murdered with seemingly great enthusiasm and abandon - still wanted to come and live among us and help contribute to enriching our lives. Now that’s what I call lucky…

But, despite some evidence to the contrary, I’m not stupid. These people weren't coming just for the undeniable pleasure of eating fish and chips out of yesterday’s newspapers on Blackpool’s breathtakingly beautiful riviera, or tasting heaven in a Schnitzelbrötchen in the garden of Edenic delights that is the Ruhrpott. Of course not; they came because their countries were also devastated by the British Empire and the Third Reich; only much more so than the damage they caused to themselves. And so it was a transactional relationship, perhaps, but it soon became much more substantial and rewarding for all concerned. For both hosts and guests, as immigrants become citizens and their children, positive hybrids encompassing the best of both worlds (I’m only doing positivity here, but I do know that that hybridity can also come with some problems, too, but I’ll leave that for Nigel and Alice to exploit), further enrich the lives of friends, neighbours and their immediate community. Which in turn benefits the nation’s greater good.

But memory is selective, perhaps the most selective of all the activities the human brain carries out, and so now, in 2026, we seem unable to remember the catastrophic events of 1933 for the Germans and 1948 for the British, when the former embarked on the warpath to genocide and suicide and the latter begged for manual help from a disintegrating empire. And in the process we simultaneously seem to be prepared disregard and discard all the good things our immigrants brought to our shores and borders. Which, by the way, I’m not going to list because they are so obviously many and obvious and incontrovertible, and if you find my assertion debatable then I’m afraid you probably form part of that amnesiac number for whom this argument is too unpalatable. For those whose intolerance of difference and diversity is completely driven by stupidity, irrationality, and, yes, as we’re clearly labelling gardening tools here, their seemingly incurable racism.

And so, as Sachsen-Anhalt looks set to willingly choose the Nazi AfD to rule over them, and Reform and Restore appear to have convinced thousands, if not yet millions, that black and brown people are the reason why the ideologically bankrupt and deluded ex-empire on which the sun never set is in such dire straits, I’ll leave you with some reminders about just why the Nazi AfD and the racist Reform and Restore mob will never win in the long run, because we have all of us been so immeasurably enriched and rewarded by the multiculturalism both countries invited into their respective home and hearths.

Here’s what Germany needs to remember, and sharpish…and given humour can be both a relief and a trigger, I’ve gone for a laugh on a subject that is no laughing matter.

And in Britain, in which I have more than enough lived experience to confidently comment on the joys and riches of multiculturalism, and, alas, also when that diversity and difference comes hard up against a Doc Marten size 12. But as I’ve said, we’re only focussing on the good here…

So, please, good people of Sachsen-Anhalt and Lincolnshire and anywhere else still deluded by the contributions of those from elsewhere who have so empowered our two countries-do the right thing, and fight the malign power wherever you may meet it.

And, given her sad death earlier this week, is there a more appropriate way to assert that we are, all of us, just people? Different but the same and the same but different…

He knows this enduring connection isn’t unique to him and his friend, for at that same funeral will be yet another whose foundations within this house that friendship built go back that same half century and more. But it is, he thinks, worth thinking about at least, and if not for consciously celebrating reaching such a notable friendship milestone, then at least as a reminder that, though life can’t be taken for granted, they seem to have managed it without any conscious effort. And especially now, as they come together to celebrate the life of his friend’s mother while all around their other parents and older family and friends fall away, as surely they must, and even they themselves enter their ‘hospital years’, where more time is spent in Accident and Emergency waiting rooms than in their own homes. So that what they in youth thought would go on forever doesn’t; for time is meagrely and definitively and finitely allocated to all. Some may have more, and others less, but for all the number is finite and an end is unavoidable. That’s life, as the saying inadequately has it, for it relates to the end of life, surely, but he supposes it could also mean something like ‘well, that was your life so far, but it’s not over yet, so…’

And he remembers how they were possessed by life… Though none them could, or even would, have described themselves as having a lust for life then, they certainly looked and acted as though they did, and now he’s certain of it. They did have a lust for life, even if that life wasn’t always lust worthy.

And so, this is a big deal, he thinks, while soaring above the skies over Europe to attend the funeral of this woman who lived all her life in Manchester. How did he get here from there? Or, rather, from there to here? The place where his friend’s mother lived all her life and where he, too, was born and formed, but now lives elsewhere, yet feels, inescapably so, that some part of him will always reside in that rainy and oft gloomy and grey city.

So, perhaps does it have something to do with this city and their part in its story? Of how he and his two friends coming together to mourn the passing of one of their mothers have maintained a bond as enduring and ever present as the temperament of a city that prides itself on both its ingenuity and its endurance, and it’s sometimes exhausting insistence to keep on keeping on? Of course, other places also see and claim such relationships, so he isn’t co-opting those tedious brags that proclaim Manchester’s greatness, for doesn’t everywhere do things differently from everywhere else? But he does think there is something about these ties that have bound them together for so long as having been undeniably woven together by this city. This city of red brick and grey slates that was forged in the white heat of the Industrial Revolution; where resilience is vital but character and sensitivity and creative ingenuity are also appreciated.

Well, perhaps. For it is true the three of them spent their formative years as adolescents in the same school that regarded them as so much factory fodder, and then, as they made that oft parodied, but nonetheless true, working class journey from classroom and playground to workplace and pub as young men, they certainly did face hardships and challenges, both alone and together, and despite the dice being loaded against them, which was certainly not unique to them as children growing up in working class families in Manchester in the 1970s, they have all three managed to win something, sometimes, in the game of life.

And if life is a gamble and fate is the wheel, then these three can be said to have played it well, as the chips sometimes fell their way and sometimes not, but still they carried on playing. for really, what other choices did they have?

With five marriages and eight children between them, and the tragic early loss of one brother and five parents over the same half century or so that they’ve been knocking around together, this can be recorded as about par for the course, or rather, even odds for the table. And, though, in the end, the house always wins, of course, but until the game is over, surely the playing is the thing?

But now, as he reflects on those scores, those wins and those losses, he turns his thoughts again to his friend’s mother, whose life they’re coming together to celebrate and whose life they will commemorate with both sadness and joy. For without her, they would not be three, and the three would not have reached a half century and, with some luck and a great deal of hope, still more to come at the crease. Not yet out…

Like all the mothers they knew from their childhoods and some who remain still, his friend’s mother was a remarkable woman. Which, of course, many mothers are. And especially the mothers that featured in his life and the lives of all those people he grew up with. And his own mother, still raging against the injustices and slights that life has thrown her way, giving just as good as she got when people would peer into the pram she pushed and then spit on the ground as they recoiled in disgust at the sight of the brown skinned baby within. But he’s not here to think about his own mother…

No, its the passing of his friend’s mother that has prompted him to think about all those times, the great and the good and even the bad, that have bound them together in bonds that will, surely now, last until their own final bows. And the life that each of their own mother’s sacrifices in some part so that they could live their lives as fully as they have.

For they didn’t crumble when we fell…and he knows Brenda loved this, so this is for her…

Brenda Moss 1938-2026

And this is for mothers everywhere, for we’d be nowhere without you…

Scene 1

A small living room with bare walls. There is an open window, unadorned by curtains, through which bright sunshine floods in. Facing the window there is a closed, plain white panel door. In a corner sits a television, its screen facing away from the audience. The television is on and its low buzz mingles with the sound of traffic from the open window.

In the centre of the room there is a low table with an ashtray on it; a plume of smoke spirals up from it. There is also a coffee mug, with an open packet of chocolate biscuits lying next to it and an open packet of cigarettes. Set apart from these objects and on the edge of the table, lies a slim white envelope. The envelope has been torn open. Against the side wall, and facing towards the audience, there is a low and worn, sagging three seat sofa.

Sara, a young white woman, sits on the sofa, her legs tucked underneath her. She holds a lit cigarette in her hand, its ash growing longer and longer. She doesn’t put the cigarette in her mouth and when ash falls onto her thigh she slowly reaches over to the ashtray and drops it in without stubbing it out. More smoke rises from the ashtray. Sarah sits motionless, staring at the television. With a slight movement of her head she directs her gaze to the white envelope on the table. Turning her head back to the television, she reaches over to the table and picks up the pack of cigarettes. She fishes a cigarette and a lighter out of the pack. Still staring at the television, she places the cigarette between her pursed lips and lights it.

The door opens inwards and Neil, a young black man, stands at the threshold. He hesitates for a moment and then half enters the room, his hand still enclosed around the door handle. He looks across at Sara on the sofa.

Sara doesn’t move her gaze away from the television, but she does take the cigarette from her mouth and holds it as she did earlier. Neil steps fully into the room, closing the door behind him. He walks across the room, passing between the television and the table. He stops and stands by the window; first, looking out and then, looking at Sara. She continues to look at the television, cigarette ash drooping onto her thigh again. She doesn’t acknowledge his presence.

Neil turns and reaches down for the cigarettes on the table. He stops for just a second, his eyes distracted by the white envelope, then continues stretching for the cigarettes. He takes one out and lights it with the lighter, staring out of the window as he pulls deeply on it. A child’s laughter from the television makes him turn and look at Sara.

She turns her face to him, and then looks at the white envelope quickly, almost imperceptibly, before resuming her unblinking staring at the television.

Neil comes and sits heavily on the sofa, just barely squeezing into the space at the end. Sara doesn’t lower her legs to give him more room and continues her staring. He leans forward to flick ash into the ashtray and with his left hand reaches slowly for the white envelope. Leaving the cigarette in the ashtray, he holds the white envelope up in his hand, reading the writing on the front. He half smiles as he pulls the single sheet of paper out. It is folded into four squares, and as he begins to unfold the letter, he looks hard at Sara. She returns his look, and then turns to the television again. Holding the letter in both hands, Neil reads silently, his head following the lines.

He lifts his head and drops the letter onto the floor, and now stares straight ahead, and out towards the audience. Sara looks first to him and then at the letter lying open on the floor between them both. Neil turns his face toward her, but she doesn’t look at him. She is staring at the letter on the floor.

Suddenly, Neil forces himself up in one quick movement. He stands there for a few seconds and then walks towards the door. With his back to Sara, he pulls the door open and then pauses, turning only his head to look at Sara. She looks at him, waiting. He opens his mouth, as if to speak, then slowly turns his head away from her and walks out of the room. He slowly closes the door behind him. Sara stares at the closed door, and then starts quietly sobbing, pulling a tatty handkerchief from her jeans

Children’s laughter is heard from the television again.

Blackout

Hungry Heart, Bruce Springsteen

Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack

I went out for a ride and I never went back

Like a river that don’t know where it’s flowing

I took a wrong turn and I just kept going

The loose floorboard made a rifle crack as he stepped across the landing floor; the balls of his feet being the only part of his body in contact with anything. He stopped. Still as a statue, or a deer in a forest when it hears the snapping of dry twigs that tell her danger is near. He stood there a long time, listening. He heard nothing but the insistent drum of his own blood throbbing through his ears. He swayed, his legs becoming cramped as he stood there, tensed and alert. Finally, he looked down at the floor, trying to identify the betraying board. He raised his left foot off the floor and lowered it tentatively down; hoping that he’d cleared the joist that had always been their ally, warning of the children’s nocturnal straying.

Taking another step found him at the top of the stairs. He put his hand on the bannister and paused, turning his head towards the two doors at the end of the landing. His gaze moved quickly from the door of his bedroom, behind which his wife lay sleeping her deeply innocent and uncomplicated sleep, to the second door. He stared, unblinking, at the door to his children’s bedroom. His eyes saw only the grain of the door’s wooden panels, but still his mind’s eye was tricked into picturing the scene within.

His daughter, half covered by twisted bed clothes, her skinny body contorted into an impossibly torturous shape, with only her beatific face indicating her true state of tranquillity. Her younger brother was a study in stillness, lying exactly as he did when his mother had turned off the light; his round head sunk in the pillow and his face staring up at the ceiling, eyes and mouth firmly closed; a very matter-of-fact kind of sleep.

He looked at that door for a long time, eyes still unblinking but becoming moist and a tightening in his throat forced him to swallow. His foot wavered over the top stair tread, not out of caution for fear of a creak, but out of desperation. Go now, or stay; either way, what was left of his life was now ruined.

A tear blinked free and ran its slow course down his pale cheek. Slowly, he drifted silently down the stairs. As he reached the bottom, he could just make out the yellowing light of the new day’s dawn as it seeped through the frosted glass of the front door. He gently pulled his coat off the coat hooks, revealing the pink and green jackets of his children, now vividly accusing, where before they were comforting.

He turned around quickly and keys jangled in his coat pocket, an everyday sound now amplified into church bells. He thrust his hand into the pocket, muffling the chimes. A thin line of cold sweat trickled down from the nape of his neck and seeped into his collar as he pulled on his coat and quickly moved to the front door.

The hum of an electric motor approached, then, with a start and clinking of milk bottles, suddenly stopped. He was now standing right in front of the glass door with its opaque view of the street outside when it began to darken with an ominous approaching shadow. The milkman’s shoes crunched on the gravel as he neared the house, his outline now becoming clearer as he carried two milk white bottles, serving as headlamps in the foggy frosted glass of the front door.

It occurred to him that if he could see the milkman, then it was probable that the milkman would be able to see him. He stumbled backwards into the still gloomy depths of the hallway. Halting before he fell, he resumed his statue like being. Struggling to breathe, he looked down at his hands, trembling and white as they clenched the silent keys in a deathly grip, he could see his chest heaving in and out, proof that he was still alive.

The milkman’s blur now filled the frame, eclipsing the morning’s weak rays. He stood there for a moment, the two bottles, one in each hand, dangling by his sides. He moved his face towards the glass, stopping only when the tip of his nose touched and flattened against the cold smooth glass. He pulled his face back and stood looking through the glass, another statue, not moving.

The muffled ‘whump’ of a car door closing down the street, followed by the starter motor’s cough, pulled both men out of their shadowy reveries.

Turning his head to find the car, the bottles swung in his hands. Looking down at the milk, he bent at the waist and gently placed them down with a soft musical note. As he straightened, he took one last look through the glass, into the shadowy mouth of the house’s entrance. Satisfied, he turned and walked down the short path to the pavement, his right hand raised to wave at the car as it pulled away.

As the milkman’s dark shadow receded, light swam back into the hallway, filling every fold and crevice in his clothing. He loosened his grip on the keys and felt the blood pump back into his hand, turning the white into pink. He waited, listening for sounds from above, and the hum of the milk float.

Finally, the electric motor clicked into life, and with the loose tinkling of glass bottles in plastic crates, the milkman continued on his round, with his comforting symphony of glassy musical notes to light his way.

The hallway was now beginning to fill with light, and his tired eyes shrunk as they fought against the day’s illumination. The dawn’s coming had ended his hopes for an exit unseen. There would be no hiding now, no chance of disappearing into a night already defeated by the world’s ceaseless turning. He turned the lock, opened the door quickly and stepped through into the light. He pulled the door silently to and his heart crashed deafening waves onto the rocks he had chosen to crash onto.

She turned over, the mummyfying bed clothes following her. The shroud tightened and her discomfortr rescued her from troubled dreams. She had been dreaming a dream of falling; falling backwards and down through a glass skylight. As she opened her eyes she heard the faint tinkling of glass bottles being left on the doorstep, and she drowsily wondered about the dream of breaking glass. The familiar sound of the morning milk’s arrival comforted her and she turned over again, now to his side of the bed. Her eyes widened in their search for him, and, not seeing him there, she reached out with probing fingers and was surprised to feel cold sheets where he should have been.

She heard the front door. Faint, yes. But definitely their front door. Was it being opened? Or closed? She couldn’t be sure, but it was definitely the front door, of that she was certain. She listened again, this time for sounds from the hallway, or perhaps the kitchen. Had he got up to pee? He’d been doing it quite a lot lately, which was unusual for him and for a man of his age; well, that was what he’d said anyway. No sound came from the bathroom, so he wasn’t there. Perhaps he had gone downstairs for a cup of tea; maybe he’d had another terrible night of tossing and turning? But she heard no sounds from downstairs and he would have almost certainly turned the radio on if he had been down there. She listened more attentively now, more keenly. A small seed of anxiety germinating in her mind. She couldn’t hear anything at all now; it was deathly silent.

Calling out his name, softly at first, then again, but with a heightened volume and tone, she felt a trickle of anxiety. There came no response. She sat up quickly and looked to the window. Light was invading the room, breaching the walls of the curtains’ defences. There was nothing to be heard from the street, just the faint whir and chink of the milkman as he made his way down to the end of the street. It hit her suddenly that she must have been lying there and listening for quite a while, as it normally took several minutes for the milkman to make his usual mazy run down the street. Where was he?

Getting out of bed, quickly, but not alarmingly so, she made her way to the window. She pulled the heavy curtains apart and was drowned by the light flooding in. Shielding her eyes from the morning’s glare, she looked down onto the street. It was completely still and deserted. Only the morning dew covered cars gave any indication of life. She noticed the gap in the line of cars, and worked out that her neighbour’s green car was gone. She was an early starter and had already left for work. It was odd that she hadn’t heard her leave. She must have been in a deep sleep, in spite of her bad dreams.

Searching now for their car, she was strangely reassured to find it parked in the same spot she had left it in last night. What was she expecting to find? The car gone? And if it had not been there, what of it? She was troubled by her mind’s line of questioning. Where was he?

She stepped out onto the landing and peered over the banister. Everything looked as it did when she had turned off the lights last night. Her son’s plastic tractor was still lying on its side as it had last night. Bending down to pick it up, she stood on the loose board and winced as it creaked its loud protest. The kids would be up now, and she didn’t want that, not until she knew where he was. But no sound came from the children’s room. Opening the door a fraction, she peered in and saw them in their respective sleeping positions, smiling at their predictability. Pulling the door to, she carefully avoided the troublesome spot on the floor and moved to the top of the stairs. She paused, at exactly the same spot as her husband had done just a few minutes earlier. The house was quiet, as it normally was at this hour, yet this everyday morning stillness was now ringing alarm bells as anxiety and fear began to rise within her.

After some hesitation she descended the stairs and entered the hallway, noticing immediately that his coat was missing from the rack of coat hooks on the side wall. She scanned the collection of jackets, coats and bags assembled there, not yet convinced that her eyes could be trusted. But it wasn’t there, his coat had definitely gone. She stood there perplexed; thinking everything and anything, every possible reason for his absence, and more worryingly, the manner of his leaving.

Sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of sweet tea before her, she tried to rationalise the events of the last ten minutes or so. She had heard the milk bottles being put down on the door step, and she had heard the front door being opened and, presumably, being closed. And he was gone, but had not said goodbye or where he was going. Why not?

The untouched tea was now stone cold, and she had not moved from the kitchen table since sitting down. The sounds of her children waking and leaving their beds stirred her from her daze. She watched the kitchen door, waiting for the first one, probably her daughter, to come stumbling through and ask where Daddy was. Why was she so fearful of this question? And of the answer? She had no idea, nor answer, for either question. All she knew, all she could say with any certainty was that he was gone.

Much later, when she could talk about this part of her life, after her children had grown up to be young people, with normal lives, and normal experiences, and normal expectations for their own happiness, she would say that she had always suspected something like this from him. Not specifically that he would disappear without a trace forever, no, it was more like a feeling, or a sense that she had always had about him. That he was different from other men she had known; that he had been carrying a load, a burden that she could feel, but couldn’t see. He hadn’t been a bad father or a bad husband for that matter. In fact, he’d been quite the opposite; loving, thoughtful and happy when he was with them. There was no other woman, well, none that they knew of, and the police didn’t suspect that either. They had said that it wasn’t unknown for an apparently happy family man to just disappear; yes, it was rare, but nonetheless these things sometimes did happen. She told the police that she knew then, that morning when her tea had gone cold and the children’s questions had remained unanswered, that he had left for good. She knew then that he had gone.

‘Received a letter just the other day
Don’t seem they wanna know you no more
They’ve laid it down given you their score
Within the first two lines it bluntly read

You’re not to come and see us no more
Keep away from our door
Don’t come ‘round here no more
What on earth did you do that for?

Our aunt, she don’t wanna know she says
“What will the neighbors think, they’ll think
We don’t, that’s what they’ll think, we don’t”
But I will, ‘cause I know they think I don’t

Our uncle he don’t wanna know he says
“We are a disgrace to the human race”, he says
“How can you show your face
When you’re a disgrace to the human race?”

No commitment, you’re an embarrassment
Yes, an embarrassment, a living endorsement
The intention that you have booked
Was an intention that was overlooked

They say, “Stay away
Don’t want you home today
Keep away from our door
Don’t come ‘round here no more”

Our dad, don’t wanna know he says
“This is a serious matter
Too late to reconsider
No one’s gonna wanna know ya”

Our mum, she don’t wanna know, she says
“I’m feelin’ twice as old”, she says
“Thought she had a head on her shoulder
‘Cause I’m feelin’ twice as older
I’m feelin’ twice as older”

You’re an embarrassment’

Embarrassment, written by Lee Thompson and Mike Barson (1980)

It wasn’t meant to be any sort of reckoning; for his beloved Gran had only recently died of a stroke that had come out of the blue and delivered them into blackness. No. This was no time for retribution or redemption. Reflection, yes, but…

But death’s shadow leads to reflections that in turn jog memory, which always digs up ghosts from the half-buried past; ghosts that were thought dead and buried but remain to come haunting again. And again. And tonight was a perfect night for haunting as he and his Grandad unravelled a barely stitched cloth that had covered up so many hidden scars and the words that cut so deeply.

His Grandad’s homebrew helped, of course. And now he, the firstborn of many grandchildren, was alone with his Grandad, with whom he had always had an affinity, of sorts, that had been bridged by their mutual love of history and politics. But what they’d never had was the same unconditional love he had shared with his Gran, his Grandad’s recently deceased wife. And as they downed the strong ale, the bitter came to the surface.

For talk had turned to that day in the past before his own birth, when his eldest daughter introduced to the family the man she was to marry; the man from India. The man over whom any other man, as long as he wasn’t from India, would have been more preferable to his Grandad than this man. This man who would go on to be the father of his eldest child’s son. And now, for his Grandad, who was now beyond caring about a past that he had very much once cared about, perhaps because of the recent loss of his wife, who was the floor, walls and roof that enveloped him and his large family, gave him the answer he had always known, to the question he had never asked.

And as he listened in sad resignation to a truth he had always, if not known, then always suspected, he was left with a sadness that night that would never leave him.

But his Grandad was a man of his time and place. Working class; ill educated; apprenticed as a panel beater in an aeroplane factory from the age of 15; and an enthusiastic participant in the daily diversion to the nearest pub when the factory hooter signalled the end of that day’s indentured labours, and he and his similarly inclined workmates would drink their fill until it was time to go home where their tea awaited them on the dining table. And all of this in a sea of white faces, just like his own, without even a trace of colour or cultural deviance from the life he, his father, and all his fathers before him had led. And even as his Grandad spoke, he could see him struggling with the confessional truth. A truth he had beaten and melded, just as he beat those steel panels at Hawker Siddeley, into the required shape to protect himself from his shameful realisation, so late in the day, that he had been wrong. Wrong about so many things, as it turned out as he confessed other sad regrets about his behaviour in the past, but it was with a real sense of tragic loss that he had not been strong enough at the time to not fear what other people-his neighbours, friends, and workmates-might say.

But he knew there were people from his Grandad’s generation who had attended their children’s marriages to black or brown brides and grooms. Who had welcomed these exciting and enriching additions to their families. Into their houses and into their lives. And he always, when he met these same people later on in their lives, admired their courage and, yes, their humanity. And the size of their hearts…

And that had always been the ‘truth’ he had to reckon with whenever he tried to reconcile his Grandad’s attitude to his father. A man far more worthy than a shameful source of embarrassment because of the colour of his skin.

As night passed into morning and a new day, he and his Grandad managed to rethread the needle, and re-cover those parts of the past with the patchwork of compromise and submission that life requires from us all.

But it was never as comforting nor warm again; for how could such a threadbare covering for a deep and unhealable wound such as this ever suffice?

His Grandad died not long after that night. And with him went the past; for better or for worse. Not that that past is gone, for embarrassment around this subject still, depressingly and incomprehensibly, too often raises its cowardly and ugly head, as the colour of a baby-to-be is deemed suitable for debate.

But for him it is gone. And as he marvels now at his own children’s uplifting and resolutely positive intolerance of intolerance, he wishes his Grandad was still here to see something he could, and absolutely, should be proud of.

With no trace of embarrassment.

PS His father and grandfather never again met after last seeing each other, in unhappy circumstances, some time in the early 1970s.

There was a grudging acknowledgement, on that night of home brewed bitter and even more bitter truths, from his Grandad that he thought his father was a good man. Redemption can be great or meagre, but in the end it’s still redemption…

He hadn’t seen any of the girls since the horrors of their Hattersley misadventures just a few weeks earlier, for they hadn’t been in Pips and he hadn’t been to any gigs since that night, which would have been the only two places he and his mates would have seen the girls. And there was no question of them returning to Hattersley for another night on the tiles in the Four In Hand. He doubted he’d ever go back there again after that night. Getting beaten up and then watching a father punch and kick his own daughter, his friend, in the stomach had traumatised him and his two mates to the point they would hardly ever talk about that night for a long time. Not even escaping to his great aunt’s house on the other side of that sprawling estate to sit out, with a warm brew and some biscuits, consoled him enough to be able, even if only temporarily, to put the memories of that night somewhere inaccessible where forgetting would be easier. Memories, so the song went, of the way they used to be were only supposed to be of the laughter shared and not the pain that severed their friendship.

But a Buzzcocks gig at the Russell Club/Factory in Hulme during Christmas week was coming up soon and he knew the girls would be there. As would he and his two friends in misadventure from that cold November night. Ordinarily, before their Hattersley trip, they would have phoned Judy Teen, the siren who’d unwittingly and obliviously reeled them in all those months ago, and arranged to meet in a pub or a bar in town before going onto the gig or Pips. The Butty Boat Bar in the Midland Hotel in St Peter’s Square was an unlikely and surprisingly welcoming place for these so-called punks, and they had all become friendly with the bar staff. It was, for want of a better label, their ‘local’. And despite sticking out like a sore thumb among the businessmen on expenses or (dirty?) weekender couples, he and his small but distinguished coterie of punks, Bowie and Roxy clones, and general misfits who didn’t in anywhere else, were welcomed and made to feel as though they belonged there. And none of them wanted to ‘destroy’ anything, so that clearly helped!

But after the events of that traumatic night, they were a little apprehensive about phoning and arranging a meet-up with them for the Buzzcocks gig. And so they went on their own, but knowing full well the girls would be at the Russell Club, they fortified themselves with some Dutch courage via a couple of pints of Wilson’s bitter, and made their way through town and into Hulme. Which was always a journey on foot that none of them looked forward to.

Though they themselves came from what might be described as ‘hard’ parts of Manchester, although none of them was remotely hard, Hulme and Moss Side were an entirely story altogether. Most of the tales about these two small neighbouring areas, which were about the only places in Manchester at that time that could have been described as ‘diverse’, had at their core a fiercely racist sentiment that was almost willing Enoch Powell’s rivers of blood to flow down Princess Road and into the Irwell. So it became a coded no-go zone for white people, branded through unfounded stories of violence and muggings as a dangerous area for whites to linger in, which was far from the reality of these two communities of predominantly Afro-Caribbean emigrants dating back to Windrush.

But still, they were always a little apprehensive about walking through the University campus, a Checkpoint Charlie of sorts as it marked the the departure point from Ardwick, solidly white, into Hulme, the ‘heart of darkness’. And then onto the bridge over the dual carriageway that really was an exposed no man’s land where ambush was most likely and dangerous as the only escape was down…

And, of course, they knew their anxieties were both illogical and unfounded. And they also knew the denigratory stuff they heard in their local was entirely driven by racism, which was especially ironic given they’d been beaten up by a gang of white thugs only a few weeks earlier, and the only ‘dark’ face present that night was his…the one getting punched! But still…

And, of course, their crossing was entirely uneventful, if a little chilly as Manchester in December is not the most hospitable place, but at least it wasn’t raining. Approaching the Russell Club they saw a small queue, which was to be expected for a Buzzcocks hometown gig, but they were early and knew the bouncers, so entry into this little corner of Paradise in Manchester, a city not then especially noted for any kind of ‘higher experience’ since Thomas de Quincey’s days. Or any other version of nirvana or paradise…lost or otherwise.

The Russell Club. Also known as the PSV Club, which legend had it stood for Public Service Vehicle, ie a bus, and that this was a social club for the local bus drivers, who were predominantly from the local Caribbean community, and given there was a massive SELNEC (South East Lancashire, North East Cheshire) bus station just up the road, it kind of did make sense. But it was hard to picture Blakey having a quiet half-pint in the place that was just the Russell Club to them, where they’d pogoed to Crass and Stiff Little Fingers, and the Damned had bastardised the Sweet’s finest moment to Ballroom Tits. No, it definitely wasn’t On the Buses territory anymore.

Because of its location at the heart of Manchester’s Afro-Caribbean community, and purportedly a social club for the predominantly black bus drivers working out of the nearby bus station, the Russell Club DJs played mostly reggae and some soul records, too. Even for the growing number of punk gigs on Factory nights, the warm up music was dominated by black records, and especially as there weren’t that many punk records out at that time to keep the crowd happy before the band s came onstage. And it was because of this that the boys first heard and grew to love reggae. Especially this…

And when he thinks back now to that night, and all those other nights at the Russell Club, there was an air of tolerance and joy that simply wasn’t found in the pubs around their own streets. It wasn’t anything pronounced or stated; it just was. And it was liberating. They were there for Buzzcocks, or the Skids, or Stiff Little Fingers, and a host of other white punk bands, and with a crowd overwhelmingly made up of white faces (apart, of course, from his!) but those bands were always played onto the stage with a reggae record, and it just seemed so normal. And in 1978, reggae, other than Bob Marley and the Wailers, was hardly played anywhere else they might go for a night out. Punk was embracing and inclusive, which they loved, but there was always some resistance from the less enlightened. Earlier in the year they had trekked all the way down to Stafford Bingley Hall to see the Stranglers on the Black and White tour, and they had Birmingham’s great Steel Pulse as their support. Unfortunately, some among the crowd took exception to a black reggae band supporting the Stranglers, and began pelting the band with empty beer bottles. It took the intervention of Hugh Cornwell to come out onstage and tell the neanderthals to pack it in, otherwise the Stranglers wouldn’t play. That did the trick, but it was very unpleasant. And a million miles away from the tolerance they‘d found in the Russell Club. But this was still England in 1978, after all.

And this is what they wanted, but it wasn’t what they got…and they really shouldn’t’ve fallen…

They saw the girls straight after passing through the doors and into the club. Well, you couldn’t miss them, really, as they’d really gone to town on their appearance. They always stood out, a tall brunette and two vivacious blondes, but a Buzzcocks gig at the Russell Club was a special occasion that demanded they make even more of an impression. Well, they certainly managed that, and the small but growing band of male admirers, some merely boys, such as themselves, and a few older but still young men, who clearly looked like they’d jumped on the punk bandwagon but were really hippies with a new haircut. The girls knew how to attract and corral a crowd of men, that’s for sure.

He and his mates ignored the throng around the girls and headed to the bar, but almost drove themselves crosseyed as they tried to get the attention of the bar staff while simultaneously keeping an eye on the girls, and especially anyone of their newly acquired admirers that might posse a significant threat to their status as the girls, well, what? They weren’t their boyfriends, even though he in particular had been the most ardent and flagrant in his pursuit of Judy Teen, but they were more than just ‘mates’, and especially so after all they had gone through on that terrible night in Hattersley. But they were jealous of the attention the girls were getting, despite knowing that, by now, at least, their relationship was almost certainly going to be more platonic than romantic.

Which, given they were all there for Buzzcocks, was pretty ironic. Nine day wonders were their forte…it was in their blood.

But they needn’t’ve worried, for as soon as the girls spotted them at the bar, they came straight over to join them. They came up and made them smile…

They noticed straight away, though, that all three of them were spaced out. Rosy cheeked, dilated pupils, and near hysterical laughter, which given they laughed at most anything, even their dire living circumstances, meant their current state must have involved a few carrier bags and pots of Evo-Stick. And the boys didn’t like them after their glue sniffing experiments, as everything became so much more heightened and the girls abandoned any little restraint they had. Which made the lives of anyone around them that more trying and exposed them to danger from any other men that, like moths to the flame, might be attracted to these three wild things.

And wild they were. As the evening progressed, the condition of the girls, and in particular Judy Teen, became ever more parlous as they tottered around and even fell to the floor a couple of times. By now, the bouncers had started to notice them and if they continued carrying on like this they’d be sure to get thrown out, which the boys were doing their best to prevent. Repeated trips to the loos saw them return ever more wrecked, but the boys did their best to prop them up and stop them from bringing unwanted attention from any quarter.

But by the time Buzzcocks ambled onstage and had launched into Fast Cars, Judy Teen was beyond any help they could offer. She slumped in their arms, vomit slithering out of the side of her mouth, and her eyes rolling. the boys were scared now. She was in serious trouble and they were right in the crush of the crowd. They had to get her out of there, and by now the vomiting, which had, fortunately for all around her, only stained her dress, for that would have surely tested the club’s tolerance, had increased. Punky and Billy Idol were also now alive to their mate’s increasingly stricken condition, and helped the lads move her away from the stage and towards the toilets.

Reaching the relative calm of the back of the room, the six of them, well, five plus one incapacitated, they tried to sit her down at a table but she was unresponsive. Meanwhile, Buzzcocks carried on and the boys stole furtive glances at the stage. of course, they were concerned for Judy teen, but they were also pissed off about missing this gig they’d all been looking forward to for months. She was barely conscious by now and as they decided among themselves about what they should do, they were approached by one of the bouncers who told them she would have to leave the club; they could stay, but she had to go.

And so, heavy in heart, the boys helped the other two carry her out and into the cold night. She remained unresponsive even to the cold slap of air that hit them and they really had no idea what to do next. The rest of Buzzcocks’ set was a write-off, which, in hindsight, they accepted with good grace, but there was no question of them leaving the two girls to manage alone with their, by now, clearly overdosing friend. They wanted the boys to help them get back to Piccadilly Gardens and a night bus back to Hattersley, but they protested, for though they had never experienced anything like this, they could see that she needed some urgent medical intervention.

The girls agreed, albeit reluctantly, and they set off together to Manchester Royal Infirmary, which sat on the other side of the bridge the’d crossed earlier in the evening. They had to half carry, half drag Judy Teen, who was by now almost entirely unresponsive, and they became even more anxious. The two girls had either seen their friend do this before, or had even experienced similar themselves, for they were much more relaxed about their friend’s state than they were. This was really no fun…

They made it, eventually, into the crumbling Victorian hospital’s A&E, which was packed to the rafters, for it was a Saturday night, after all. But the triage nurse was sufficiently concerned to get Judy Teen, by now placed on a stretcher, whisked away behind the screening curtains and into the treatment area. The girls went with her, leaving the lads to sit there, too stupefied by the way the evening had panned out to even speak.

A couple of hours after she’d had her stomach pumped, the boys came to her bedside and bid their sad and worried goodbyes. She was going to be alright, and would be able to go home in the morning with her friends, both of whom would stay with her in the hospital. As the three bewildered boys started their long walk home in the late night darkness; where they knew no glue sniffers, nor, in fact, anyone imbibing anything stronger than pints of bitter or Pernod and Blacks. Of course, they spoke about what they’d witnessed, but none could understand the ‘why and the what for?’ of it all.

Years later, he did, of course, encounter a more sophisticated, and inconceivably more expensive drug culture than the one involving a pot of glue and a carrier bag. But what he saw that night reinforced for him that that life would never be for him. He was lucky, but entirely by chance and by circumstance, and not design.

They never saw the girls again. It really was no fun anymore…

Bing Crosby, who begat Frank Sinatra, who in turn helped beget Elvis Presley, who begat virtually everything else, including the great, great Public Enemy, perhaps the greatest American punk band of all time (cue ignorant outrage from folks whose heroes do appear on stamps…!) said of Louis Armstrong that he was the greatest pop (as in popular music) vocalist and that without his revolutionary vernacular style of singing there’d have been no Bing Crosby, Sinatra, etc. In other words, without the immortal Satchmo, we’d all still be freaking out to Maria Lanza…or not.

I’ve recently had some, ahem, correspondence on here with a few American music Stackers on the general theme of ‘Punk’ and, more especially, its provenance. And, it’s fair to say, there’s a wide disparity and range of views, with everyone from the MC5 to Iggy in Detroit to Johnny and the boys in London cited as the true source of this most overused and vexatious of labels. And that’s before we even walk the mean streets of Lower Manhattan and find ourselves in the home of country, bluegrass, and the blues on the Bowery where four bothers from four mothers in Queens first 1-2-3-4-ed their way into the world and every art school dropout formed their own version of ‘alternative’.

New York, London, Paris, Munich…everybody talkin’ about pop music…well, OK, definitely not Paris, too gayee Paree, and Munich, too Bavarian and already too blitzkrieged out to bop anymore. So, New York and London, it is, then. But, I hear those who know about these things, what about those Queenslanders who made perhaps one of the defining anthems of the nascent era we call ‘Punk’. Now we really are stranded! And, given ‘Punk’ was, if nothing else, a manifesto for burning Babylon down to the ground, surely we must give a tanned wave to the American Dream/Nightmare that is Los Angeles, which is, in all honesty, a real weak point in both my experience and general knowledge of what that scene entailed, but I think I can say there are plenty of others here who can more than fill me in on that score.

So, it’s complicated and, let’s be honest, for those of us who were there back in the day, our memories of it are compromised by both subjectivity and, erm, age. A little like this, perhaps?

So, you see? It ain’t easy. And beyond going back to the very roots of our popular music in the Western canon, in which case we have to go back to pre-Middle Passage times and the cradle of humanity in Kenya’s Rift Valley. But we’re not doing that today, because I’m neither informed enough about that shared ancient history of ours, nor do I have the time to address it with sufficient respect.

So, I’m just going to say that Louis Armstrong is the root source of ‘Punk’. For without him, Johnny would never have had ‘I’m Eighteen’ to mime to (neither would Alice Cooper have had, for that matter, the source material to record that great song!), and safety-pinned Richard Hell would never have arrived at that point of sartorial genius that so confuses those of us in the futile and faintly ridiculous game of who came first…to which the answer is Ol’ Satchmo.

So, until the summer of 2027, when I celebrate the Golden Jubilee of the, erm, Silver Jubilee when “punk’ not only saved us all, but also helped save the so-called non-human being who helped make us all morons, I’ll leave this peace offering to our American cousins who love their ‘Punk’ just as much as we love ours…

Yeah…alright…I can’t leave it like that. I’m magnanimous; not stupid! This is how it begins and ends.

Yes…on reflection, it really was a new beginning. And as a milestone of sorts, of when the boy becomes a man, a vote in his first General Election seemed perfect. And, even without the benefit of a nostalgia for a past yet to come (or, though the idea was still a good way off, a look back to the future), he knew the 1979 General Election was going to be momentous.

And if not for the rest of the country, though it seemed unlikely this would be the case, given the double whammy of the startling rise of Britain’s first ever female leader of a political party and her apparently unstoppable and undeviating nature, then it was certainly a big deal for him.

Politics had always intrigued him and along with his love of history, and how his family background, containing both coloniser and the colonised, played such a key part in the country’s present life, he now started to pay attention to politics with a much keener eye. Of course, having had the benefit of getting his head kicked in as a skinny 16-year old kid by a trio of burly blokes, their bellies and their minds filled with bitter and bitterness, he didn’t really need much persuading there were some abroad in this far from green and pleasant land that considered him and others like him as the cause of their unhappiness. That the discord, doubt, and despair that the Lady in waiting, who would also soon be not for turning, so shamelessly exploited was entirely down to people, like his own father, who had come to this country in its hour of need and helped get it back on its feet again after the end of the war and the end of Empire, was entirely down to these people. And the Lady who’d earlier snatched the milk from the children in a bid to prove she was, indeed, made of Iron, didn’t do much to disabuse those whose preference for ignorance over enlightenment of the incorrect notion that immigration was one of the cancers that had killed the Great in Britain. Just the previous year, in a television interview, she’d raised the spectre of many Britons fearing they would be ‘swamped by people of a different culture’ and called for an ‘end to immigration. With xenophobic Tories like her, who needed the National Front?

So, yes; voting against her was a no-brainer for him.

His family, which straddled two continents and contrasting positions of privilege, in which, ironically, the colonials had the distinctly upper hand and a social standing far more elevated than the half compromising the sons and daughters of labouring Empire builders. And they were resolutely of the left, which was the societal norm and expectation for those times, but, of course, today, it seems a laughably quaint idea that the poorest in society should actually vote for those whose stated intention is to actually raise them out of their abject poverty. For him, it had always been the cause he’d felt most strongly aligned with and for which he’d always had an innate affinity. This is how he was, and remains today, and even if his family, on both sides, had been otherwise, it’s unlikely he’d have followed them rightwards. It was in his blood. In his very soul.

His four years living in Karachi as a child in the mid to late 1960s had exposed him to appalling poverty, which had been made even more acute by the relative comfort within which he and his family lived. And the poverty was inescapable and omnipresent, and hit like a sledgehammer whenever they left the sanctuary of their home and were confronted by starving children begging for paisa, worth almost nothing in comparison even to Dickensian pennies. Families slept on pavements or in doorways and under bridges; with open sewers and filthy streams running through culverts, their only source of water, for both drinking and cleaning,that also served as rubbish bins for any passerby. So profound had this experience been, it would leave a lifelong scar on his conscience, and in 1979 his sensitivity to such seemingly cruel and unnecessary human suffering had barely abated since his return to England a decade earlier. And though Britain was no match for Pakistan in any kind of Olympic Games of the shocking and the shameful when it came to absolute poverty, it still had much to be ashamed about, given just how wealthy a country it was, and how its poorer inhabitants were treated. So, for him, any political solutions that bettered the lives of those suffering unnecessarily would be the ones he’d support. Then and now.

So the mould was already set. It was in his DNA. Ineradicable and irreducible. Forevermore. As in some grim fable or myth.

Though this was his first opportunity to vote, and he’d no previous experience of actually stepping into that polling station and making his mark against his preferred candidate, he knew exactly what it would entail, for he’d been a keen follower of what was going on in the country as he entered his teens. He’d experienced the prolonged electricity blackouts in the early 1970s and, along with millions of others, had done his school homework by candlelight. And just the previous year, the so-called Winter of Discontent, which would absolutely not transform into a glorious summer, but would, instead, see its final terrible denouement in a Yorkist stronghold at the Battle of Orgreave, had brought the country to yet another standstill as Capital and Labour fought for the soul of the nation and its future.

And just a couple of years before the lights went out for good, there was this clarion call for resistance, for people like him to get off their arses and do something, anything, to alleviate their discontent. It may not have been Shakespeare, but it was surely just as powerful and era defining as any soliloquy in iambic pentameter?

Or was it this? It’s confusing these days, is it not?

So, there was a lot at stake. And for him, it was, as only a teenager could declaim and truly believe, almost a matter of life and death.

He cast his vote.

And the next morning, learned most forcefully and with a sadness that has never fully dissipated, that most everyone else in the country disagreed with him. And would continue to do so…

It was a lesson he needed. As he found not everyone winces in anguish at the sight of a beggar. Not everyone thinks the poor shouldn’t be poor. Not everyone thinks as he does, that one for all, and all for one is a good way to live life. Not everyone is troubled by child poverty or egregious inequalities in education or quality of life that permanently blight lives. Not everyone wants to help those less fortunate in life; to put a roof over a homeless family for the sake of pennies more on income tax for those that can afford it. And some, he would soon learn, even rejoice in futile war and the tragic loss of lives caused by a deluded identity crisis that recast his now poor and broken country as somehow still being ‘Great’ for all the wrong reasons.

This awakening troubled him then, as it rightly should, and does still, to this day, periodically remind him that absolutes and certainties are, where individual morality and choice are concerned, nothing of the sort. That people are irrational, unpredictable, and individual in thought and action. Which isn’t always as you’d like it to be, but how else should we, could we, or even want to be?

The day after that election was the blackest day he thought he would ever experience…Ha! Oh, to be that teenager again!

They say hindsight is 20/20, but the evidence for this homil is scant. For doesn’t history show us, if nothing else, that the lessons of the past are rarely ever heeded?

On that day, everything changed, and history continues unheeded.

Yes, they all knew men like this, even if they didn’t have one within their own family, they’d seen enough of them in the vaults and saloons of pubs that stood on every corner of their mean and narrow streets. Or standing in a shuffling queue for hours on end as they waited to collect their dole money, all the while staring at the cigarette strewn floor, for to make eye contact with anyone else there was to invite either hostility or a burning shame that would glower until the first sip of bitter at opening time dowsed the embers of their senses and transported them back to a time when all was still possible and all was not yet lost. And, most of all, on the terraces at the match, where they apprenticed for a life that would only temporarily throw up snatches of euphoric release in tribal ceremonies drenched in beer and violence.

And because they recognised him, they feared him, too. Yes, they were three and he was one, and they had at least twenty years advantage over him, but they were no match for his untamed and unappeasable anger. They knew this was dangerous, and they knew they’d have to have their wits about them to safely get out of that cramped living room in that tiny house, and hope that Punky, the daughter of the father with hate in his very being, would not suffer just because of them.

But their wits would prove to be inadequate and hope had quietly left the house by the same front door Fear entered through.

His malevolent stare took all three of them in at the same time while he stood, for what seemed an age but in reality was only seconds, stock still, not even swaying now. And then, with no warning, he lunged for Punky, his daughter, and grabbed her short, cropped hair in his fist. She let out a small stifled scream and bent her body toward him to try and alleviate the pain. Nobody spoke; not the father, not the daughter, and neither of the three boys, who were so startled by this sudden explosion of violence from a father to his daughter, their friend and saviour only an hour ago, but now on the receiving end of something far worse than their travails at the Four In Hand, they simply froze and stared at the horror unfolding before their eyes.

They had no idea what to do; they couldn’t even bring themselves to speak even about what, if anything, they could do. Punky and her father were blocking the door into the hallway, so running out and away from the house wasn’t an option, but even if the exit had been clear, they were incapable of running out and leaving her. Not because of some sense of chivalry or a bravery they weren’t even aware of possessing; no, they were rooted to the spot in horror. Not terror, for this had all happened so quickly and they had not had time enough to comprehend that they themselves were probably in store for yet more violence and physical pain, let alone the emotional toll to be yet paid. And just as a car crash plays out in slow motion, with none of the protagonists able to change course or react in time to prevent the inevitable collision and terrifying sound of metal and glass grinding together as irresistible force meets resistant material, so it was for them.

But then the father, with one hand wrenching his daughter’s head ever downwards and the other curling into a preparatory fist, spoke for the first time since entering the room.

What are you fucking puffs doing in my house?

His words were slurred by drink, and his strong Glaswegian accent had neither been softened nor adapted by and to Manchester’s equally dominant stresses and intonations, but there was no misreading his intention. Even in sobriety it’s doubtful the three of them would have misunderstood his words. Because, yes; they knew, though perhaps never as intimately as now, men like him, and how to successfully steer themselves around and away from them. Well, that course of navigation was well and truly cut off to them now.

Dad, leave them alone. They’re going now…just let them go!

Punky was now gasping for breath as she implored him to let the boys be. His knuckles were white with the force, as he gripped her hair ever tighter still. She must have been in terrible pain, but barely made a sound. As she finished speaking, still gasping for air, he swung his free hand, now balled into a fist, around and into her stomach. With all his might.

She crumpled to the carpet as he released his hold on her hair, and faced the three of them full on, with both his hands now free and ready for war. The boys were now, finally, fully awakened from their reveries as the car finally came to a crashing stop and all the deafening sounds grinding in their heads suddenly fell silent. It was quiet now, but it wasn’t a peaceful silence. This was no armistice. They knew more was to come.

Hey, leave her alone, for fuck’s sake!

The biggest and strongest, and almost certainly the bravest of the three of them now opened his mouth in retaliation. The other two looked sideways at him, while still managing to keep their fearsome antagonist in sight, too, and silently acknowledged with barely perceptible nods they were grateful to him for saying what they were thinking and signalling they would follow his lead in whatever and wherever this horror went next. For what choice did they have? They were no heroes, but they couldn’t tolerate this…

Ya fucking shithouses…fuck off oot of ma house!

Punky groaned, and lifted her head off the floor. She looked at the boys, her face filled with shame more than anything else, and silently shook her head. Her dad looked down at her, but only for an instant, as he swung his leg back to kick her in the stomach and stare in demented defiance at the three of them. Daring them to do something; anything other than just stand there with their faces pinched white and their hands trembling with fear. He had their measure.

Dad…leave them alone. They’re going now…

But it didn’t stop or even slow his kick to her stomach, which sent her crumpling down onto the carpet again. He smiled at them.

The three, almost as one, lunged at him, with no other aim in mind than to stop him beating up his daughter, their friend. He wasn’t expecting any physical reaction from them, and though he was strong and certainly more familiar and comfortable with violence than them, this act of righteous aggression from these three ‘puffs’ took him completely by surprise. He fell backwards as they overwhelmed him; so quickly did it happen, he hadn’t even managed to get a punch away on any of them. There was a dull thudding sound as he hit the carpet. And then he lay still, staring wildly at the three of them, but not saying anything. He just lay still. Shocked, no doubt by what had just happened, but certainly not enough to immobilise him as it appeared to do. He rubbed the back of his head and checked his hand for signs of blood. There was none, much to his relief and of the boys, for they weren’t in this for anything but to get him to stop beating his daughter. After that? Well, they had no idea, which was clearly apparent to everyone as they just stood off and waited.

Her dad started to wearily lift himself off the floor, but fell back with a huge sigh. At this, Punky and the boys moved to help him. But she stopped them and said they should leave now and that everything would be alright if they just went.

This was obviously not an isolated incident for Punky, but the boys were reluctant to leave her to a fate worse than God knows what. But what good would it do her if they did stay and further antagonise her father. And though he was a hard man, his arteries were almost certainly harder after a lifetime of booze and fag, and all topped off with his bitter failure as a man who drove his wife away and then compound that sad bitterness by failing to be a father for his kids. Yes; he was a hard man, but he was out of shape.And his kind of poison had no antidote, and the boys most certainly couldn’t have helped him see the error of his ways.

And so they wavered on the threshold of making a decision. It was now gone midnight and any hope of a last night bus back to Manchester was long gone. Not that they had seriously considered the possibility of staying at Punky’s until the bus service resumed in the morning, but they’d been so traumatised by their own beating, which paled into insignificance after their friend’s violent torment at the hands of her own father, they’d not really given much thought to anything other than staying safe for a while longer.

But it was her safety that now exercised their fragile minds.

Just go…he’ll be OK in the morning. I’m alright.

She insisted, but she didn’t look alright. Her dad didn’t look particularly alright either and had given up trying to get himself up off the floor, and simply lay silent and still and stared up at the artex-rippled ceiling.

Are you sure? Because we can stay, or even get the police…

No! No! Just go…please!

With a reluctant and forlorn last look at her, they moved around her prone father’s shape on the floor and went out the door into the hallway, but not before asking him if we was alright and did he want a hand up? He didn’t respond.

Punky saw them out and they said their sad and shocked goodbyes at the door.

Look after yourself, mate, and we’ll see you at the Russell Club for Buzzcocks, yeah?

A brief hug between the four of them, and then they were gone into the dark and cold night.

And they never forgot the way they were…laughter and tears alike.

What to say that hasn't already been said? And what to add to an already filled to the brim canon of criticism, analysis, and appreciation of David Robert Jones; Bowie to you and me, and the rest of the world…and possibly even worlds far above our own? I’ve been here before, of course I have, as anyone who’s read my scribbles here can attest. And, of course, I did write a piece on the occasion of his premature passing away back in 2016, which I subsequently revisited and enlarged for one of my earliest Reasons to be Cheerful for this very same medium.

So, here I sit, much prompted by so many other great commemorative posts from some excellent Substackers, and I’m taken back in time and space to a me that had yet to have him in my orbit…or rather, me in his.

The 1970s weren’t, contrary to most reports of that period, really all that bad; well, not for me anyway. Or is that, yet again, memory proving itself to be an unreliable companion for life’s journey into the future as the past retreats in the rear view mirror, as it keeps on insisting we turn back and take this or that turn that we missed along the way? So of course I can’t be sure of everything memory insidiously whispers in my ear, but there are moments that simply must be true; they were true then and they remain true now, because they were always true. And how I know this is by moments I recall that are, well, just as fresh today as they were five years ago, ten years ago, and even more than fifty years ago. They are memories that feel as though they could be just a day old, so strong is their imprint.

And some of those immutable and indestructible memories do date back to the 1970s, which is why I can say with some confidence that it was not a bad decade for me. Yes, some terrible stuff happened to me, such as getting beaten up twice; once was caused by my and my friends’ stupidity, so I’ve no real complaints about that, and the other happened entirely because one of my parents was born in India, over which I had no control, and so, consequently, I’ll never fully be able to reconcile that event. So, you see, those are two very good examples of memory and I being in assured complete accord, albeit rather darkly.

But a lot of very good things came into my life in the 1970s, one of which, obviously was David Bowie, which is why we’re here, after all. But before we get to him, I’d like to take you back to me before him, and the atmosphere we were all breathing in before the alien landed. What was the Earth like onto which that man fell?

Often described as beige or brown in tone, with the monochrome Swinging Sixties long left behind in a cavern on Carnaby Street, and its bastard offspring of the Technicolor tie-dyed gorgeous hippy dream now revealed to be a soul destroying iniquitous lie as it changed into dull faded denim to match the dim-witted dullards who fell for it, the early Seventies had settled into a miasma of what the young folk today might call ‘Meh! Colour was, albeit only briefly, absent from both our real lives and on the burgeoning television screens now intruding ever further into our lives from the corner of the front room. And that magic box went ‘Pop!’

I loved pop music, and the 1970s was a great decade for all things ‘pop’; well, that’s how I remember it, anyway. But I experienced my teenage years entirely in that ‘brown and boring decade’, so of course it was a significant, and highly subjective, time for me. And yes, subjective memory always trumps any attempts at critical objectivity, but I’m aiming for verity here, which is why I will say that a ‘great decade for pop music’ doesn’t necessarily mean the music was always great. Because, as Joe Dolce, Clive Dunne, and hundreds of others amply testify, there was an awful lot of plain old dross littering the charts, too. But it was immensely varied and never boring, but often it was, well, a little uninspiring, and especially so to little old me, and others like me, looking for a peg to hang our coats on or trying a hat that fits. In other words…to find ourselves or, better yet, make sure our parents and our teachers and every other authority figure knew we were not like them. That we were different, and not only that, but that we were the first generation in the history of mankind to have ever been as different as we were. Separate from the rest of the pathetic lot that had come before us. Yes, of course, we were the first…hmm.

And that raging was made much easier by what was happening in front of our very eyes on Thursday evenings as we sat with bated breath and adolescent tingling in front of our television screens, and the evidence was incontrovertible. The Sixties were dead and buried in the same grave occupied by the Fifties, and the birth of the Seventies saw it plugged into a life support machine as artists gasped for air in a popular culture atmosphere that now turned a little fetid, polluted as it was by the cream souring. It wasn’t quite yet the time of ‘No Elvis, Beatles, or the Rolling Stones’, but that guillotine was about to be sharpened and trundled out for the baying mob. But not quite yet.

And so, as we scanned the horizon, like Jason, searching for the Golden Fleece, or Montezuma on the beach with the waves lapping at his feet, looking out over the Atlantic with dread and wondering what was coming over the curvature of the earth, we were waiting…and Ernie, fast as he was, was not ‘it’, and neither were Middle of the Road, nor any of the other incantations and incarnations of this brave new variety-filled world.

But there were very encouraging green shoots breaking through the lumpen earth. And the greenest of those was Marc Bolan’s T Rex, for he was the first to bang the gong and announce that satin and tat, glitter and glam, were going to deliver the ‘Wham Bam, thank you, Mam!’ that we had been looking for…though, of course, we didn’t really know it then, but in the same way we also knew Ernie’s Gold Top wasn’t it, either.

Yes; Bolan was the first, which is too often forgotten, but is worth restating for as long as it’s ever necessary that without him it’s arguable the rest of the Seventies might not have turned out as brilliantly as they did. For without him, there’d be no ‘Bowie, Roxy, or the Sex Pistols’ for future generations to diss and bitch about. Plus ça change, no? So, yes; Marc Bolan really was the man who started it all, and what’s more, surely his long friendship, dating back to the 1960s, with that other fellow traveller and good friend, David Bowie, led to Bolan’s producer, Tony Visconti, going on to be, ultimately, Bowie’s greatest and most successful collaborator. Would Bowie have had any other significant other as significant as Visconti if it hadn’t been for Marc Bolan? I suspect not, and if that’s so, then would Bowie himself have had the career he had without Visconti in his life? Again, I think not. So, let’s bang a gong for the Metal Guru…The Godfather of Glam.

But, of course, if satin and tat and glitter and glam alone were all that were needed, we might today be celebrating the greatness of Brian Connolly, Les Gray and the still (thankfully!) very much alive and kicking Noddy Holder. Which is not to say that any of the three above were not great themselves, for they most certainly had their moments of truly great pop stardom, but none of them, as yet, has a whole V&A warehouse of pop culture ephemera dedicated solely to them. As yet…but who knows? Because Sweet, Mud, and most triumphantly of all, Slade, all got on the Glam Express to Pop Stardom and near-permanent Top of the Pops residencies. And if a direct musical line is hard to trace from T Rex to the rest, and even to Bowie himself, then the sheer exuberance evident in the look and the style and the vitality that Glam insisted upon was common to all. Ballroom Blitz, Tiger Feet, Cum On Feel The Noize, and yes, Jean Genie, were simply irresistible to those of us looking for colour in a colourless world, and needing that hit to the heart and the central nervous system that only 3 minutes and 30 seconds of 7 inches of plastic at 45 revolutions per minute could supply. There is a reason why the dark side of the moon is dark, and that’s because no light shines on it (which I know isn’t scientifically correct, but we’re here for the heart, not the brain, so…) and that’s why Pink Floyd aren’t as great as both they and their admirers think they are, because they simply can’t, and never could, make a 7-inch piece of plastic as great as any of those four singles above. And certainly nothing to match any of Bolan’s string of masterpieces from 1970 onwards. Which is why I chose to dance in the cosmic light, and not gaze at my navel in the gloom.

But satin fades and loses its lustre, tat is eventually revealed to be just tat, and glitter and glam must, eventually, be washed away, and so it came to pass that all those great bands, with some truly great songs that remain great songs to this day, faded and lost their lustre, too. Bolan burnt as brightly, if not the most brightly and most briefly of all the great pop stars in history, as it was humanly possible to do, and that proved, as inevitably and sadly as nature dictates, unsustainable. But that run of hit singles from 1970 to 1973 is one of the greatest achievements in all of pop history. And that should never be forgotten whenever we talk about Pop.

And then there was one. Well, two actually, for have I mentioned these art school chancers yet? Plenty of satin and tat on show here, no? But plenty of genius, too, and not just, as some would have us believe, emanating from the other Brian…

Roxy Music are, by any reckoning or measurement, or listing of talent and influence, or, well, just by any and all critical judgement, severely underrated. Severely. For, just as with Marc Bolan and the ostensible centre piece of this wayward and divergent recollection of both Bowie and the world he transformed in the 1970s, it really is hard to see how the late ‘70s punk revolution would have come about in the first place, let alone evolve into post-punk and all that jazz the early 80s threw at us, without the very being of the musically brilliant and visually fabulous Roxy Music.

‘Hyperbole!’, I hear some young Turk at the front say, aided and abetted by an older man at the back who really should know better by now that Prog can’t beat Pop, and certainly not when that ephemeral ‘throwaway’ pop is as fantastic and enduring as Virginia Plain. But am I hyperventilating? Are the first five Roxy albums not a match for the Beatles’ first five? Or the Rolling Stones’? In terms of consistency, musical invention, and sheer style, I’d rank them, as a quintuplet, higher than the Fabs’ first five…and they’re certainly better than Bowie’s first five. Heresy, I know, and especially as I’m here to say ‘Hi!” to the great man, but sometimes you’ve just go to say it as it is; and in the early 1970s, this is how it was. And, what’s more, along with these great albums came a series of blistering singles that made Thursday evenings in front of the box even more compelling. Bye, bye denim and long lank hair; hello space-age futurism, synthesisers, buzzsaw guitar riffs, saxophones and oboes (?!), US Army surplus uniforms, feather boas, and every shimmering and spangly fabric, plus leopard and tiger prints, known to man…

So to deny Roxy Music’s substantial fertilising of the rows furrowed by T Rex in which the grand Dame would later come swishing along in his bipperty-bopperty hat would be both wrong and churlish in the extreme. Yes, both Bolan and Roxy were different in terms of musical heritage and roots, and they arrived at their respective peaks along very different paths, but the one thing they had in common was their shock of the now… and the NEW. And how!

And then, of course, along came the man who would be King, and in the end, fully ascended to the throne of…whatever it was, but whatever it was, it was undeniable and it was omnipotent.

Which means we have arrived here and, sadly for some but very happily for me, must at least add just a few more words to the veritable Himalayan range of essays and tributes about this video…never in the field of cultural criticism have so many given their all for a mere 3:33 minutes of POP.

Compare and contrast. What differences can you spot between this ‘event’ and the other ‘event’ at the top of the page? They’re both landmark events and they’re only separated by a period of around five months; one was seen by a relative handful of people watching a late night BBC Two ‘serious’ music programme on a dark winter night in February 1972, and the other by the millions of teenagers (and their perturbed and anxious parents) who sat transfixed in front of their TV screens to watch Top of the Pops over on BBC One on a light and bright Thursday evening in June of the same year.

So; similarities first, shall we? Red PVC knee-length boots? Yep! Similar but different space-age jumpsuit? Uh-huh! Electric blue (blue, blue electric blue…) 12-string acoustic guitar? You betcha! Three resoundingly blokeish blokes visibly disconcerted by the, erm, satin and tat their ringleader has forced them to wear, but still managing to churn out a cracking tune? That’s the Spiders from Mars for you. Fantastic songs performed brilliantly by a charismatic singer backed by a musically superb band? Yes…of course!

And what about the differences, then? Well, about five months of consistent touring of this new and ch-ch-ch-changed David Bowie as he introduced Ziggy Stardust to the world at large certainly didn’t harm; and the dawning realisation that something was in the air, however nebulous or unformed that ‘something’ was, it was definitely there. And the 1972-73 Ziggy Stardust tour that started in small venues but ended on that cataclysmic and final note at the Hammersmith Odeon in July, 1973, was perhaps one of the key elements in whatever was in the ‘air’.

Oh! And the hair. The barnet that launched a thousand, if not millions, of dodgy copies as kids, yep…like me, rushed out to our family barbers up and down the country with a tightly clutched copy of the Ziggy Stardust album in hand, and demanded of these poor white-jacketed scissors and Brylcreem wielders, whose stock in trade was the classic short back and sides, that they reproduce Suzi Fussey’s (who would go on to become Suzi Ronson; yep, that Ronson) brilliantly inspired ‘Ziggy’ cut on our own delusional crowns. Can you see the subtle change between the two styles in these two videos? The spikes are there in the first, but the colour is all David’s. By the time Starman made its debut on Top of the Pops, Suzi had added the flame red-orange dye that cast the die and turned Dave from Bromley into Ziggy from Mars…or who knows where, but definitely not from here! The haircut, and the man on whose head it sat, had well and truly fallen to Earth. And so did we…in our thousands and millions.

As to the legend and its many mythic and continuously propagating chapters, I can only add my own impressions of that night. But, truth be told…I can’t remember much about it, other than I did see it, just as I’d seen the earlier, but only by a matter of weeks, debut broadcast of a very similar performance of the song on Lift Off With Ayshea, which was a teatime pop programme broadcast solely in the Granada TV region of Manchester and its north west England environs. That tape is sadly lost in time, but even if it had survived somewhere, either in an archive or somebody’s loft, it would have been overtaken and subsumed by that Top of the Pops broadcast. For it was huge…but not yet for me. I was only 11-years old and still some way from my teenage rampage that, though prepared by Bowie, was only fully inflamed and instigated by the summer of 1976 and you-know-who. But, and it’s a huge but, I later, but not much later, at that, understood the significance of that Starman performance, because within it are all the signals and signs, freedoms and permissions, inspiration and influence that would lead, not just Bowie fans, but, seemingly the whole country, out of the monochromatic gloom of the early ‘70s and into the Technicolor future that awaited us further down the road.

Compare and contrast. Here’s just a sample of what else was on Top of the Pops that evening: Dr Hook, who were imploring Sylvia’s Mother to spill the beans as to her whereabouts and quick…as they only had 40 cents for the call!; Sweet and their Little Willie…not what you think, and no match for their Blockbuster; Donny Osmond and his love for his puppy…or have I got that wrong?; and the highlight for the dads, Pan’s People shaking their bits to Frederick Knight’s I’ve Been Lonely For So Long…no, me neither. So, no contest, then…but Gary Glitter’s Rock ‘N’ Roll (Part 2) was on that evening, too, and though it was better than any of the other songs bar Starman, Paul Gadd (Glitter) is distinctly, and most assuredly deservedly so, persona non grata today, so we have to disqualify him, if not entirely erase him, from the history books. And that’s despite him being one of the biggest beneficiaries of Bolan, Bowie, and Roxy’s frequent trips to London’s satin and tat haberdashers.

And who could have foretold the colossal cultural tidal wave that ensued when Bowie draped an arm around his only slightly less effeminate mate’s shoulder, and smiling suggestively while doing so, then stretched his arm out to point and waggle his finger straight down the camera at…who, me? You? Us? Again, that moment, and at that time, was lost on pre-teen me, but I knew something had happened because the next day at school, the less enlightened of my class mates were more exercised by the question of whether David Bowie was a ‘puff’ or not, than they were by United’s slippery slope to relegation. And, of course, because there were no ‘puffs’ (Ha! right…of course there weren’t) in my hard-knock life secondary school, there were no restraints or bounds on how gay people were talked about (though, of course, we’d never even heard the term ‘gay’ at that time to describe homosexuals; sadly, queer and puff were the order of the day). And, as you can imagine, it was grim.

And it was something I was acutely and squirmingly aware of, as I distinctly remember my sense of discomfort at the idiotic and ignorant sneering jibes thrown about by some of my ‘friends’ concerning people they had absolutely no idea of…or, even knew. And of course I kept quiet, and didn’t protest, because for as long as they were occupied and exercised by that ‘puff’ Bowie, then they wouldn’t be focussing their other favourite idiotic and ignorant energies on Pakis (me, but technically not me; my Dad was born in India and my Mum was Harpurhey born and bred indigenous working class white, but…brown skin and all, so hey…), niggers, wogs, sambos, and chinks (sometimes me, depending on how imaginatively their numbskull minds were working…or not). Because those words were often directed at me, and the handful of other non-white kids in my working class comp in 1970s Manchester, I can’t in the context of this piece, not write out those words fully, and neither should I. And though I’m not gay, I was aware that those insults, triggered by Bowie’s appearance, directed at gay people would be just as hurtful as the songs about Paki-bashing sung in my school playground. So, I knew, even then, that David Bowie was not like every other pop star. Not like Donny Osmond or David Cassidy, or even Bryan Ferry and Marc Bolan.

This was the world as it was when the Starman landed. Not a good place. Life on mars couldn’t have been more inhospitable than this place if you weren’t white or straight. Only one of those applied to me, and that was more than enough for me…God knows how someone who hit both those bullseyes coped with life in Manchester in 1972.

Count the sambos and nig-nogs, and all on prime time British television…

Or how about this? Colour me gay…? Or merely an invitation for the bootboys to lace up their Doc Martens and kick a few sensitive heads in?

And in this inhospitable terrain for outsiders, he provided an atmosphere that allowed us to breathe…and live. And flourish. But the bar was low, was it not? Even so, not many other contemporaries of Bowie’s were approaching that bar head on, let alone clearing it. Not Elton John; not Freddie Mercury; not even dear old housewife’s favourite, Cliff Richard, who’d been at the game for so long you’d have thought he’d have found the door that would let him out by the mid-’70s…but no; he’s still securely ensconced in whatever or wherever that sanctuary is. Which is not a criticism of him, nor of his updated version, St Stephen of Stretford, who definitely saw Starman on Top of the Pops, and yet…well, that’s their business. But Bowie wouldn’t, simply couldn’t, tolerate any societal or music business pressure to conform. He said be whatever you want to be. Be whatever you have to be. And above all, just BE. And he was the greatest exemplar of that philosophy.

And so we did. Just be ourselves. Perhaps not as gloriously as this, but then who else could have carried this off as fantastically as he did? Not Gary Numan, for one, but I don’t blame him for being in thrall to Bowie because, after all, so was I. Just boys really, but he swung…

Starman came and went, and was quickly followed by a succession of terrific singles, and an even more impressive series of albums, some of them made back to back, giving the impression that David Bowie, despite his appearances seemingly everywhere in both the music press and in the gossip columns, ate, drank and slept in the recording studio. But we know, and knew even more vitally then, in a pre-internet world where access to new information and experiences had to be hard earned or lived vicariously through ciphers such as Bowie. And he was forever out in the world and just absorbing everything he could lay his hands on, and then talking about it…to us, his willing disciples. Books, films, theatre, painting, and, yes, music, were all up for grabs. He was a human sponge that just absorbed every kind of cultural artefact or happening and yet never seemed to ever get saturated or even remotely sated, so huge and voracious was his appetite for life.

And as he moved from Ziggy Stardust to Aladdin Sane and through the dystopian Orwellian year of the Diamond Dogs, the doors swung closed behind me and I found myself in ‘that’ room… and I’ve never left it to this day. Never wanted to; who would? And in that room, filled with endless possibilities and opportunity, I lived and flourished and shrugged off fears and anxieties. I realised that I would always be different, and would always look it, too, but instead of fearing how those differences marked me out, as they did when neanderthals called Bowie a ‘puff’ and me a Paki, I now revelled in them. Because I knew I was right, and they were wrong. I knew that I was better than them; not because I was smarter or superior, but because I was living freely. I had been shown there was another way.

Yes, of course, there were moments, for how could there not have been for someone who’d always lived just outside two circles, two cultures, and two countries, when I retreated back into those performative tropes that dictated assimilation above all else. But for the most part, and so it has proved right up until the present, I have celebrated my difference, my true self…my unique me. And, yes; we all of us have that ‘unique me’ within us, but sometimes, and especially more so for some of us, that gets lost or even hidden by our desire to be just like everyone else. To fit in and, in return, be allowed in, to be accepted and treated just like everyone else, so that skin colour, religion, or sexual preference never becomes the main determinant of who you are.

This might seem a terribly overblown case to make, namely, that David Bowie freed us all up and banished racism, misogyny, homophobia and general misanthropy in the wider world, which, of course, is neither true nor what I’m saying. But what I most definitely am saying is that he seemed the only one at that time to be saying that it was OK to be gay, or to be a perennial outsider, and that art was important to life; that we should, all of us, devour life. And that if you were different, then relish it and celebrate that which made you stand apart from the herd.

Was anyone else saying this in the early 1970s? Because if they were, their messages never reached my ears in Manchester. But his did, and reassured us that we were not alone when he encouraged us not to blow it. Well, we didn’t, and, yes…he did blow our minds.

I made my usual bleary eyed descent down the stairs, fixated on the first coffee of the day, and then planning how to survive the mad half hour in which I had to turf the kids out of bed and make them get ready for school as I fed the dog, fixed breakfast for them, and tried to wake up myself. Before the coffee had time to sit and brew in the cafetière, and then, thank the Lord, be poured, my next autopilot action was to turn on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. Heroes came drifting out of the radio, which, because it was tuned permanently to Radio 4, somehow neither seemed or sounded right. But then I remembered the great shock Where Are We Now had caused when it was released out of the blue three years earlier, and that, too, had garnered a big Today programme news spot. Oh! Fantastic…this must be because of the great stir Blackstar, released just a few days earlier, had caused. Did the Today programme have an exclusive interview with the by now reclusive pop star? As the song continued and I waited for my morning cup of coffee, I looked down at my phone and saw a veritable number of missed calls and unusual activity…and it very quickly became evident that there would be no new interview. No new anything…only shock and a sense of loss that I couldn’t satisfactorily put into words then, and still can’t really do so to this day. Yes, I still feel the loss sometimes, but much more than that I feel the joy, and I know I’m lucky, and very, very grateful that David Bowie said ‘Hi!’ to me. And always there will be the songs and the music and the creativity and the expression of cultural and personal freedom. Always.

I don’t believe in heaven, but if I’m wrong, then David Bowie most certainly is up there now.

But we can’t leave without this, surely? Recorded in Manchester’s Granada studios for Marc Bolan’s TV show, there’s a nice circling back for the Glam Master and his Apprentice who would watch and learn and go far…very, very far.

David Bowie recorded this segment on 07/09/1977. Marc Bolan died in a car crash just over a week later on 16/09/1977. The original Lady Stardust was gone…but like, Ziggy, always with us still.

It had barely lasted five minutes, though nobody was keeping an eye on the time as they desperately tried to fend off the mob. And then, suddenly and almost as in a dream, it stopped. Picking themselves up off the floor, they stood and first surveyed each other, and were all simultaneously relieved to find no obvious signs of blood or serious injury, and then looked nervously at the angry faces of the gang who were still surrounding them. Though the violence had come to an inexplicable halt, apart from a few swear words spat their way, and the mob just stood there; bellies full of bellicose bitter and hearts poisoned with fear that had curdled to hate, they knew this was likely only a temporary respite. And then, through the silent fog that had enveloped them, they heard the girls.

For a trio, they were making an absolute racket, enough noise to put a full orchestra to shame. He was sure they could be heard at least a half dozen streets away from the scene of, what, the crime? Screaming obscenities at the gang, and not asking them to stop, but absolutely demanding them to cease their violence against these three hopeless, and, truth be told, pretty helpless, lads. And there was no doubt that within the gang’s ranks were some boys they had known from school, and possibly lived, if not next door to, then maybe only two or three doors down. For Hattersley absolutely was the kind of place where most everyone of a certain age knew everybody else of the same age; a place for local people, and most definitely a pub for local people that didn’t particularly welcome three boys from Manchester larking around and trying it on with their girls. But the girls were having none of it, especially not Punky, who was the unquestionable leader of her small wolf pack, and whose assertiveness belied her small frame. She was fierce, and touchingly, and also a little shamingly, for the boys, clearly cared enough for them to front up to the biggest of the aggressors and face him down. Which she succeeded enough in doing to make them first stop, and then disperse and make their way back upstairs into the pub for last orders. Where they’d carry on drinking, and they’d drink until the bitter could get no more bitter, and, if they were lucky, perhaps come across other unwitting victims at kicking out time. Which was unlikely, given the only probable tourists in town were the three unwise men they’d just dispatched their own unique brand of ‘wisdom’ to…but if those three idiots were still out on the street later…well, it’d serve them right, wouldn’t it?

If the three were momentarily relieved to have gotten off lightly with just a few punches and a kicking, and, in reality, they really had been lucky that the Four In Hand gang were either too distracted or intimidated by the girls screaming or, more likely, they’d delivered their message to the interlopers, they now had to find a safe haven somewhere here on this dark estate. Loitering at the bus stop for the night bus back to Piccadilly was a non-starter, and they had to get far away from that infernal pub before closing time. Or else…

So, they walked as quickly as they could without breaking into a run, for that could have sent a fatal signal to their attackers that these three dickheads well and truly deserved a final and even more violent coup de grâce. Much as they say you shouldn’t run when faced with a rabid dog, so, it was also said, by some, you should never appear cowardly when faced with a violent aggressor, and though that’s a theory not one of them had much belief in, they managed to retain a degree of composure that would shamefully desert them later on as the night turned much blacker

Walking away from the pub through the dark streets of the estate to where they knew not, they heard the clip-clopping of the girls’s heels as they caught up with them. They were filled with profuse apologies for the behaviour of their erstwhile neighbours and childhood ‘friends’, and plenty of swear words that comprehensively detailed what they thought of them, too. Punky’s house was the closest, so she suggested they go home with her while deciding how best to get back home to Manchester. The other two girls chose to go home, so pissed off were they with the evening’s events, but the boys weren’t bothered about anything other than getting away and home to safety, and so said their desultory goodbyes to them. They were all meeting up the next weekend at the Russell Club in Hulme for a Buzzcocks gig, anyway, so hopefully they’d all manage to have a better time then. When everybody would be happier then…

Punky lived with her father and younger sister in a two bedroom terrace on the estate. It was just like the council houses he had lived in, and though a little smaller than his mates’ houses on an estate in Ardwick, was exactly like theirs, too. Did all the council houses on all the council estates in Britain that were built in those post-war years all look like this, he wondered? Of course, his experience then was limited to a handful of estates in and around Manchester, so he couldn’t possibly have known, but, as he was to find out much later, that the answer was yes; they were all the same. Little boxes, parcelled out on estates out in the middle of nowhere, with their own shops, pubs, and last, and most probably, least, their own schools. Out of sight and out of mind. And even if that wasn’t the intention of those who made the decisions about how people should live, and who never themselves had to live in these places, the reality was whole swathes of the population were forgotten and ignored on these satellite estates sitting in seeming twilit darkness on the edge of town. And so, as careless neglect became indifferent abuse, so, too, did that turn into, well, what? A kick in the head for the innocent and blameless?

They sat in Punky’s front room; the three of them packed tightly onto a two-seater sofa while she went into the kitchen to make them a consoling brew. They’d realised very quickly that evening that, although she was the toughest on the outside of the three girls, she was also, paradoxically, the most sensitive and caring. And they also individually, and silently, lamented she was the one they should have most lavished their attentions on, for, after all, she was just as attractive as the other two, but her hard demeanour had hidden her sensitivity and genuine gentleness. But now, fully revealed as the one who so obviously cared more for them than did the other two; who were now now long gone without, seemingly, any real concern about how these three boys, who’d made the risky expedition up to Hattersley solely to see them, were going to get home safely. And as it so often is with such dawnings, when the illusion is revealed to be just that, a delusional fantasy obscuring a reality much more beautiful than whatever it was in their minds that was hiding the truth, it came too late. And though better late than never is better than never at all, the events that quickly followed this epiphany in her living room would shatter any hopes of any readjustment of their relationship with this sweet, gentle beautiful girl who had, for reasons not yet apparent to them, disguised herself as a hard and tough character. Much, much tougher than any of those three boys, but that, in all honesty, wouldn’t have been difficult. Yes; she took no crap from anyone, or so it seemed…

And so they all sat in that small front room, nursing their mugs of tea, and feeling infinitely much better now that she’d massaged their bruised egos and soothed even their real physical bruises. After even managing to laugh about their less than successful evening at the Four In Hand, and just as they had decided they should leave soon for any potential late bus back to Manchester, they heard footsteps on the tarmacked front garden path. Punky clearly tensed up at the sound of the approaching footsteps, which, of course, made them nervous, too. Was it the lads from the pub, who knew, of course, where she lived and probably knew it was her house they were hiding in? But, no; there was only the sound of one set of footsteps, though they knew not whose. At the sound of the scratching key turning in the lock, Punky suddenly sprang up and began gathering the empty tea mugs and, without saying anything to them, took them into the kitchen. The three of them sat still as statues; surely the night had done its worst with them, and would allow them to just go home quietly…and promise never to return? Or was there yet more sport to be had in this nightmare up on the shoulder of the moors where so much hellish misery had indelibly marked this place as a no-man’s land of hopeless despair?

Punky quickly re-entered from the kitchen just as the door from the tiny hallway opened and a short, stocky middle-aged man with scruffy red hair to match his general air of unkempt indifference to the wider world almost stumbled into the room. But he was clearly practised and stopped himself from falling forward, and then stopped and just stared for what seemed like a very long time at the three boys squeezed onto the sofa. His crimson features, now made more vivid and alarming by his naked and unmistakeable belligerence, were like those signals found in nature that warn of danger and so must be heeded with caution. And the boys couldn’t have been more cautiously aware of the danger signs now radiating out to them from this small but intimidating man who now blocked their only exit from the oppressively claustrophobic place they now found themselves in. And he was on home ground.

He was, it quickly became apparent, her father. They knew there was no mother, for she had told them before about her abandonment of her and her sister when they were still very young. She had left their father for another man, escaping far away from Hattersley and its invisible but very real prison bars. And so it was that Punky became the surrogate mum to her young sister, and the last line of defence for them both against the frequent swings and punches from their alcoholic father, who, worked in a hosiery factory in Glossop, alongside his punk rocker daughter, and drank hard in The Four In Hand pub when Friday evenings mercifully came along to erase, if only fleetingly, the toil and humiliations of the preceding week. He had come down to Manchester from Glasgow as a younger man, for love and with, as all young men have, an ambition for something, anything, better than what he had left behind. And Hattersley, with an escapee wife and her inviolable gift of the two girls to him, who were far too often cast as reminders of failures past rather than as victories against all odds, was not anything or any more better than what he had left behind in Glasgow.

And the boys recognised him. Not from that evening’s adventures in the pub, for while they cavorted foolishly in the Lounge, he, undoubtedly, drowned his bitter in the Vault. No; they recognised him because they knew him. Because they had versions of him in their own families. One of their fathers was exactly like that, while he himself had a grandfather for whom family, even with ten kids and many more grandkids, of whom he was the first, but not the most favoured, and the warmth of the home might just as well have been the dog shit they slipped on while making their way to the Working Men’s Club for last orders. Having only, mind, left there a couple of hours earlier to go home for their tea waiting on the table, and a wash up before continuing their conversations and their bitter drinking from earlier in the evening. From bed to work; to lathe and tea break; and then from factory hooter to pub…a life cycle with no life in it.

And who, in all honesty, could really blame these men? But that question, of course, was only ever aimed at the men…for what choice did the women have? Certainly no blame on them…only bondage. Yeah, well, as his own grandmother might have said, but sadly never really did, up yours!

And the night was, unimaginably and terrifyingly, just about to get worse. Much worse…

But before that…it’s worth remembering that children, for that is what those three foolish but good hearted boys were, just kids, and Punky, too. Only kids…

Not festive or seasonal, I know, but then, life isn’t always festive or seasonal, either, is it? But I’ll leave you with this lovely little hymn to kids-to-be, and I hear there’s a significant birthday party coming up, so it’s not entirely coincidental; a song that those three boys, and Punky and her friends, but probably not her father or some others who passed along the way here, knew and loved. And will always love. And if Joseph really was a carpenter, which I’m not doubting, by the way, but, you know, son of God, virgin mother, and all that, well…but anyway, Joseph would most definitely have known what to do with that crib on which the paint wouldn’t dry.

Have a very, very peaceful and love-filled end to the old and the beginning of the new. See you in 2026!

Three girls; an ideal number for three boys. A short and vivacious blonde, who they’d later find was the real ‘punk’ of the three and the leader of the pack, and who they christened Punky; a slightly taller girl channeling Billy Idol with peroxide spikes, but feminised so as not to detract from her looks, erm, Billy, of course; and lastly, the best of them all: a tall willowy brunette with a sultry gaze and a long side ponytail draping over her shoulder that made her look like some art school maven. Or at least, given they knew no one who’d been to art school, what they imagined an art school girl might look like. The creative one. Yeah...she was definitely the attention grabber of the three, even though she was clearly not setting out, deliberately or otherwise, to get anybody’s attention, approval or admiration. And least of all from these three clueless but, or so they hoped, obviously good ‘uns. But she certainly got the attention, wanted or not, from him. Lots. And they had, as yet, not been able to find a suitably appropriate moniker for her, other than ponytail, but that would change...

And so followed a few weekends of nervy navigating and jostling, and furtive glances across the dance floor to keep themselves in constant view of this trio of unattainable angels who not only looked great but clearly had great taste in music, clothes, and style. Well those last three attributes were imagined, given they hadn’t yet plucked up the nerve to speak to them and find out if any of their suppositions about them were true. But they did make an intriguing and stunning trio, so surely their guesses about them had to be right, didn’t they? They also danced, and danced well, to Bowie, Roxy Music, and the few punk records the DJ deigned to spin. So if the boys didn’t move soon, someone else would; of that there was no doubt.

And, finally, after what seemed like an eternity but was in reality only a few weeks, they finally and collectively mustered up enough Dutch courage to approach and, after downing the required pints of lager shandy, even speak to these girls, who had, by now, attained some kind of mythical status in the boys’ groupthink. Because, miracle of miracles, even though they had been approached by other boys, either individually or in pairs, but no trios, they had rebuffed all advances from all of them, which was clearly, he now sees, their very good fortune to be the only unwieldy and awkward number of three (well, some say it is the magic number) in the Roxy Room during that period. So, now, finally, they had to do something…for what did they have to lose other than their rickety pride and fragile egos? And now, when he thinks back to when she shook her head with her ponytail, the memory of it takes him right back to when he was young. Ah, but when you were young…!

And so, as he and his two co-aspirant sailors came face to face with these three sirens, no treacherous rocks were sighted and all was calm on the surface. But the sea in which these sirens sat upon submerged rocks was, as they would soon discover, far from still underneath its seemingly calm surface. Though, truth be told, even had there been any obvious signs of turbulence, or rocks upon which their good ship HMS Teenage Kicks could be dashed, it’s doubtful those three poor swimmers would have heeded any warnings to not go in the water.

So, it began. Three boys with a shared love of Bowie, Roxy Music, and punk, and three girls hooked, respectively, on the Sex Pistols, Generation X, and...Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel?! That ridiculous and mannered pretender who’d tried and failed to hijack the Starman’s spaceship? Hmm, they collectively sighed. And none so loud as his sighs. Oh well, nothing’s perfect, right? But the problem was really only his alone, as it was he who was most set on her; a living, breathing Queen of the Scene. Well, OK then. He would just have to hide his scorn for the risible ‘cockney rebel’, and pretend that, though he obviously wasn’t in Bowie’s league, he was actually OK. Which was a big pretence for him and would stretch his acting abilities to the limit, but she was clearly worth it. And, so, Judy Teen it was…

They discovered the girls were from Hattersley and had lived all their lives within a stone’s throw from each other, and so attended the same schools together. Hattersley estate was then, and probably remains, the grimmest of Manchester’s post-war, edge-of-the-city satellite overspill council estates that promised so much but delivered so little for its tenants, who’d been forced out of their Manchester inner city ‘slums’ during the post-war clearances. He himself had lived for a year, and only a few years earlier, on nearby Gamesley; a similar, but much smaller and less dark estate further up the same valley as Hattersley. So he had some idea about the lives of these three. Or, so he imagined. But some lives are better than others, and some are considerably worse.

Now, he and his mates lived just on the edge of central Manchester, and however hard they may sometimes have found their lives, or however grim it really was, and often it was really grim, it couldn’t compare with this forbidding grey concrete estate; an East Berlin for the Pennines, betwixt the dying city and the bleakly inhospitable moors. The same moors where two of Hattersley’s most notorious tenants had done their very worst to innocent children, as well as committing the same heinous crimes in their house on this estate. Unimaginable and unspeakable atrocities that were still recent and unshakeable horrors in the memories and nightmares of all Mancunians. And this was the place where these three girls had been born, and where they had lived all their lives. And where they still lived. In the darkness at the edge of town.

But these girls exuded light and laughter and promise, though there was, he remembers now, an almost manic sense of ‘escape from somewhere’ in their weekend nights in the Roxy Room where they looked like they belonged, while all the while looking as though they came from somewhere far, far away. But wasn’t that also how he and his mates looked, too? And all the rest of the crowd done up to the nines in their Bowie and Roxy regalia, and especially him, in his punk gear, as copied from the black and white photos of the Kings Road punks in the NME? Weren’t they all also from somewhere else, but yet completely at home in this one of a few places in Manchester where you could be, and do, exactly what you wanted? Where the lights are much brighter there, and you can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares there? Yes, of course, these girls were just like them, but still, there was something there, perhaps a desperation that neither he nor his friends had ever experienced. Yes, the lights were much brighter there, but these girls had a much longer journey back to the real darkness when the music stopped and the neon signs were switched off.

Still, stormy waters in a city of persistent water falling from the sky were not exactly unknown hazards to the boys, and in the beginning they were blindly oblivious to any possible signs of trouble ahead anyway, so smitten were they by this three-ring circus of fantastical and varied delights. And as their friendship with them approached the critical mass of transformation from purely platonic to romantic, so they got to know them better. and learn things about them that they’d had no prior experience of. Yes; he’d have to shift his ideas and make his own mind up about…

….Drugs? He had no idea. Not then, and really not that much more now. Which, given the circles he moved in and the places he went, and some of the people he met, who were users and imbibers, and abusers, too, remains, even to this day, surprising to him. Which, depending on whether that glass is half empty or half full, was, and remains, probably a blessing for him

But this trio of temptresses, now in more ways than one, were his first real encounter with that world. It was 1978; and this was Manchester, before Manchester became the Madchester of Hacienda and Happy Mondays lore; and he and his mates and the three girls from Hattersley were the absolute classical definition of working-class, so much so, that if they’d been transported back to the 1950s and found themselves working the lathe beside Arthur Seaton, their Saturday nights and Sunday mornings wouldn’t have been too dissimilar (safety pins and spiked hair apart!); and so any narcotic available to them would have had to have been of the bargain basement variety. And, as it turned out, it was of the sub-bargain basement variety…

They had now started walking the girls to their night bus stop in Piccadilly Gardens, a dangerous no-mans’ land inhabited by drunks, daytime football hooligans and pub thugs by night, and the plain or garden variety psychotics Manchester seemed to specialise in producing specifically for that time of night when the pubs and clubs turfed their clientele out onto the drizzly streets. And it was in that nervy time between leaving Pips and walking to the bus stop that he saw the three girls repeatedly pass around a plastic carrier bag, that seemed to appear from nowhere, and then furtively dip their heads down and into it. His mates had seen it, too, but didn’t appear to be as distracted by it as he was. So, while the girls were a little distance ahead of them, he asked them what was going on.

They looked at him quizzically, and then laughed at his naivety. Sniffing glue, they laughed. They were sniffing glue. Glue. Which, yes, he knew was a thing, but of which he really had no idea, and nor could he really possibly imagine how it was done. And, so, here it was: three girls, a pot of Bostik, and a Tesco carrier bag. Simple, and, from what ensued, as the three of them became more hazy and distant, clearly effective. And as they waited with the girls for their bus to arrive, he wondered the most obvious question: Why? Why were they doing it?

Of course, no answer came, but their friendships developed; alas, purely along terminally platonic lines, much to his own disappointment. His friends didn’t seem to be as bothered as he was, but then, they hadn’t (potentially) lost as much as he (potentially) had. And, so, they witnessed more of these solvent highs, and ever more openly than in the beginning. They never spoke of it, and the boys never asked. But it made him nervous, and he didn’t like it because it changed their personalities, albeit not for long, but still…And he couldn’t then, and really can’t even now, explain why it made him so uncomfortable.

And of course it was dangerous, but it wasn’t just that. It depressed him to think these three girls, kids really, just like him and his mates, who were vivaciously attractive, smart, and sharp as tacks all, found it necessary to escape the reality of their lives in such a way. And to what end? For five or ten minutes of ‘anywhere but here’ while they stood in the cold rain in Piccadilly Gardens waiting for the night bus that would return them to Hattersley? Maybe he took it personally, which, now that he looks back and remembers his precocious sensitivity then, and felt it as a rejection. Which was, if it were true, both incredibly narcissistic and stupid of him, for what did he know about the lives these girls led when they weren’t escaping, just as he was, for a few hours every Saturday night? But he wasn’t judging, for though Hattersley was, by all objective comparisons, a grey and grim place, who was to say his Levenshulme and his mates’ Gorton were any better?

They were about to find out, though, that their lives were idyllic in comparison to the girls. And that these were most definitely not typical girls…

Still blinded beyond delusion that a romantic tryst was still possible between himself and she who carried only a torch for the rebellious cockney, and with some pitying and mocking sympathy from his mates, the three of them drove up to Hattersley one Saturday for a night in the girls’ local. The local that was the estate’s most notoriously hard and unwelcoming pub (only to strangers, that is, but still…), The Four In Hand. Not that thosse three dolts had any idea about any of that...yet. But they would soon enough...

So, yeah, of course they got their heads kicked in. Which was bad enough, but what came after the kicking, marking the end of this very sorry evening, would prove to be even worse than being jumped by Hattersley’s bootboy elite. And yet, it had all started so promisingly…

They’d been up to Hattersley quite a few times already, but had only ever spent those evenings in the maisonette above a parade of shops in which Judy Teen lived with her mother and slightly older sister. Her older, more worldly, and, it has to be said, very beautiful, to the point of distraction, sister. But because she was clearly a woman, and they were clearly mere boys, there was no question whatsoever of any of them having the remotest chance with her. And she, in turn, knew that, and probably liked them all the more because of that shared knowledge between them, for she certainly seemed to enjoy their company. Perhaps as a big sister ‘enjoys’, or even, perhaps, merely tolerates her younger brother? Regardless, they all liked her, and they certainly enjoyed looking at her.

So, on that fateful evening, after meeting up at Judy’s place and saying their hellos to her mother and sister, and after receiving a cautionary warning from them, too, which went in the proverbial one and out the other, they left together and went around to pickup Billy and Punky on the way to the pub. The Four In Hand was Hattersley’s biggest pub, and situated as it was on the upper level of a shopping centre in the centre of that sprawling council estate, it attracted all and sundry through its doors. Old men nursing halves of mild; couples out for their weekend kicks, with a pint of best bitter for him and a Babycham for her; and girls who liked boys and, of course, boys who liked girls, but not as much, perhaps, as they liked football and the opportunities it afforded them to give someone a good kicking. But they were the cocks of that pub, and made sure everyone knew it, and that these were their girls, and this was their pub. Their local…their kingdom.

Which those three idiots from anywhere but Hattersley obviously should have known, given they had their own local version of The Four In Hand back in their own neighbourhood, but maybe it was the beer, or maybe it was the girls’ absolute abandon (for though they knew everyone in there, they hardly ever went in themselves, and, so, seemed to be making the most of this rare outing to their ‘local’), which left them all feeling good, relaxed, and loose.

And, looking, in all their punk glory, as though they’d just landed from another planet. Which wasn’t a million miles from the truth, given the flares, penny round collars, and platform shoe uniformly worn by the locals, suggesting it was still 1975 in there and Johnny Rotten’s Time Machine had yet to reach them. A culture shock was about to be made real, but it would be more shocking for the incomers than the indigenous people.

He remembers putting ‘Something Better Change’ on the jukebox, the only punkish thing on it, sitting incongruously alongside ‘Stayin’ Alive’, the irony of which makes him smile now, and Rod’s ridiculous, even then, pleas to find him ‘sexy’. And they may have thrown some ‘punk’ shapes around the pool table while the Stranglers did their thing, which, of course, didn’t go unnoticed. Not that they noticed anything, so idiotically enamoured were they with themselves. So whether it was that ‘alien’ behaviour (Planet Punk might just as well have been from another solar system, rather than just some other weird thing from down the road in the big city) or just the fact they were not from ‘around there’, their cards were being marked by a small, but growing, band of young, bored teenagers with too much bitter in their bellies and not a lot of tolerance in their hearts. To say nothing of their candle-dim wattage brightness.

And as the bell rang for last orders, so the six of them made for the exit, beyond which lay the open concrete staircase down to street level. Laughing and joking as they made their way down the staircase, they suddenly became aware of a flurry of flares and a hurried clip-clopping of platform shoes behind them. Quickly turning their heads, they saw a mob of lads, all seemingly crowned by five years-too-late Ziggy mullets, fast descending on them, with the murder in their eyes almost as powerful as the reek of Brut they were all all drenched in.

The girls, who clearly didn’t lack for courage, stood their ground mid-stairs in a vain attempt to slow them down, for they knew most of these lads, and fully understood their malign intent. Blocking the stairs and screaming at the mob to stop and leave them alone gave the three boys some precious breathing space, but not, unfortunately, enough time to make a successful getaway. For no sooner had they all three reached the street and turned to see where the girls were, when he was hit in the side of his face and fell to the cold pavement. Though he was the first to be punched, it wasn’t because of the colour of his skin, it was only because he was the closest to Hattersley’s finest young men. Looking back on it later, he marvelled there was no racist element to any of this. They were being attacked because they didn’t belong there; pure and simple. Which was of some small, though no doubt perverse, comfort to him.

Next came the blows to his mates, neither of whom was capable of matching these goons for violence, for they none of them had a violent bone in their bodies. As they reeled around in the street, they heard the girls screaming their defiance at these boys with whom they’d grown up with. Their screams and shouts halted the assault for just long enough for the three of them to pick themselves up off the pavement and make a run for it. But to where? It was dark, and they were in an unfamiliar place. And the darkness was everywhere in Hattersley…

RIP Steve Harley, for they would never have been invited to come up and see them if it hadn’t been for you...

Side-B coming soon, in which the boys find out that their lives are not as bad as they might have thought they were. And, yes, the glue sniffing becomes much easier to understand. Get ready to drop the needle on that scratch…

With those three words in those few moments sharing the screen in close up with Paul Newman, already a genuine and established Hollywood superstar, Robert Redford made the leap from ‘most likely to’ and parked in the same place we, the matinee flicks and Saturday night-date cinema goers, reserve for our grandest and most beloved stars.

The great William Goldman wrote those three words, among many, many significant others, and it is the key scene in the film, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, for it allowed the possibility that the Sundance Kid was not, contrary to all appearances, a golden god burnished by the Sun. Or rather, it showed us, mere mortals agog with stupefaction at the sheer ridiculous and implausible beauty of this man, that Robert Redford was capable of showing us that, yes, he was a mere mortal, too, with very human failings. Just like us; well, kind of…

A man, let’s not forget, sharing that giant screen with another who was no slouch himself when it came to getting to the front of the queue when ‘Handsome and Charismatic’ was being dished out.

And yes, of course Redford would have attained superstardom status sooner or later, for he’d been knocking on the door behind which opportunity awaits for at least a decade. And always displaying he had all the attributes required to share what is basically a two-hander stage (where even Katherine Ross’ quiet beauty is overshadowed by these two men with all the gifts) with Paul Newman and, at times, even managing to dim that great man’s piercing blue eyes to a pale shadow of themselves.

But let’s forget, or at least set aside, his distracting looks, which isn’t easy, and look instead at his acting ability. His talent. His chops. For sometimes, with great beauty comes great expectation, which is irrational and grossly unfair on both the blessedly beautiful and those of us less fortunate in our appearance. And the orbit of Planet Superstar is littered with the anonymous debris of multitudes of This Year’s Models that simply couldn’t land on beauty alone. But those who can stop traffic and fill cinemas survive and endure, and we, not unnaturally, love them for the light they shine on our earthbound and prosaic Planet Normal. Brando, Newman, Elvis, Sinatra, Montgomery Clift, Marilyn, Burton and Taylor, Eastwood, McQueen, Julie Christie, and now Brad Pitt and Scarlett Johansson, plus many others, too, had the talent to match their looks. And the careers to match those talents. So it was with Redford, who, not coincidentally, was also one of those rare stellar entities instantly recognisable by a singular name alone, just like his great friend Newman.

And though he would go on to turn in many more great performances during his near-seven decade film and stage career, it was the Sundance Kid that set a kind of template for ‘Robert Redford’ to both evolve from and develop into. Virtuous, laconic, slyly and drily humorous, quietly spoken, but with a determined assurance, charismatic, physically imposing, and, yes, implausibly handsome; to the extent that it’s impossible to fully focus on anyone else unfortunate to be sharing the screen with him. And given Sundance is supposed to be a ruthless killer, indeed, the fastest gun in the West, we really can’t believe that he is such a man, or, well, that even if he is a killer, it’s only because he had no choice; after all, in the wild Wild West it’s a simple question of survival; kill or be killed. Never mind that Butch Cassidy has never killed anyone, and has got by on his wits and inescapable charm alone, which is why we come to love him (and, of course, because he is Paul Newman). And we allow Sundance that similar latitude because we’ve fallen in love with him, too.

Which happens immediately and instantaneously from the moment we first set eyes on him in sepia, where his very being – seated, still, lips pursed in contemplation, and eyes unblinking, as he gazes into and completely captures the camera. And we learn very quickly, through a combination of Goldman’s extraordinarily spare, yet fully comprehensive, exposition, and Redford’s celluloid presence that overwhelms the cinema screen, that the Sundance Kid is irresistible. Not even Paul Newman’s arrival on the scene just a minute or so later can dilute his effect or distract us from looking, no, staring, in wide eyed wonder at Robert Redford.

It was his moment, and no one, not even that other powerful magnet of the silver screen, Paul Newman, was going to lure any eyes away from him. And though it wasn’t his feature film debut, it was, to all intent and purposes, the one marked Big Star Debut, despite the fact he’d already made a huge and growing impact from his preceding four films. Starting with Inside Daisy Clover (1965), co-starring Natalie Wood, in which he convincingly and winningly played a bisexual character, in itself quite revolutionary for a big Hollywood film at that time. The next saw him share the screen with no less a giant than Marlon Brando in The Chase (1966), which also paired him with a young Jane Fonda for the second of five films they would eventually go on to make together (the first, Tall Story (1960), saw him as an uncredited extra, so perhaps doesn’t even count as working ‘with’ Jane Fonda, and the last, Our Souls At Night (2017), was a beautifully poignant signing off on a cinematic ‘marriage’ that spanned six decades). After The Chase, he rose higher up the bill and co-starred with Natalie Wood in This property Is Condemned (1966), which was the first of seven films he would go on to make with Sydney Pollack, and though Redford’s most famous works were with other directors, Pollack was an undoubted influence on Redford, both as an actor and as a successful director to be. Barefoot In The Park (1967) reunited him with Jane Fonda (was there ever a more beautiful on-screen coupling than these two here?); a role he had made his own in the Broadway play and so was a shoe-in for the film version where he showed he could not only look great but could make you laugh, too, which is, so I am told, the winningest combination for any man in the game of love!

And then the Sundance Kid came calling in 1968, and the rest is the stuff of Hollywood legend. The 1970s is considered by many to be the last decade of truly great film making from Hollywood; the last gasp of the big studios before the independent film makers arrived and staked their claims by dismantling outdated and outmoded, not to say expensive, ways to tell a story. And if that theory is correct, then Robert Redford most definitely played his part in ensuring old Hollywood went out with a fitting and appropriate bang. After Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid firmly established him on the launchpad to interstellar greatness, the cinematic universe was his oyster, and he, with nary a dud between Butch Cassidy and 1980’s Brubaker, found and polished many pearls in that decade. The truly great highlights were The Candidate (1972) and All The President’s Men (1976), but also highly noteworthy were Downhill Racer (1969), in which he plays, brilliantly, mind, his one and only truly unlikeable character; The Hot Rock (1972) is a tragically overlooked and sadly rarely screened gem of a comedy that pitched him with George Segal in a brilliantly comedic pairing that showed the both of them at the height of their acting chops; another sadly overlooked great is Jeremiah Johnson (1972), where Redford carries much of the film by himself, albeit almost unrecognisable as the bearded and reclusive mountain man; and the years 1973 to 1975 produced The Way We Were (1973), a remarriage with Paul Newman in The Sting (1973), The Great Gatsby (1974), The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), and perhaps the best of that bunch, Three Days of The Condor (1975), which came amongst a raft of conspiracy paranoia flicks of the time, but is no less the greater for that.

Later came, inevitably, some duds and misfires, where his age and appearance faced greater scrutiny than before, for is that not always the way with the beautiful (and thus, the damned?) when their looks fade and inner beauty must now carry more of the load? And Redford, who had burned so, so brightly, now, through a combination of innate intelligence, a passion for creative expression, and a realism that recognised his time as a matinee idol had passed (which, as an aside, I vividly and sorely remember as a time in the mid-70s when every prospective teenage kicks ambition had to contend with his blue-eyed blond visage adorning seemingly every girl’s bedroom wall in the land!), explored other avenues and byways. From film directing (for which he won his first ever Oscar in 1980 for his directing debut, Ordinary People) to setting up the Sundance Institute, also in 1980, which is now one of the leading promoters of independent cinema anywhere in the world, and has been largely responsible for a great deal of truly great cinema since its inception. So his wattage may have dimmed, but his influence only ever grew.

But I’ll leave you now with the trailer for my favourite late Robert Redford film, All Is Lost (2013), in which he barely speaks, for he holds virtually the whole of the film alone, and so has to tell the story through his physical actions alone. But his eyes, yes, a little grizzled now, and perhaps a tad watery, too, still hold their power as they did back in 1968 when the Sundance Kid faced down his accuser in a sepia tint that could neither dim nor deny their wattage.

Butch is long gone now, but he’ll surely be relieved to find the Kid has, at last, learned to swim, and, who knows, perhaps the two of them are now larking about in some idyllic river canyon together, and maybe even planning that Australian outing they last spoke of together?

Well…actually the last word rightly belongs to these two…RIP Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, and thank you for all that intangible magic you shone on that giant screen at the Levenshulme Palace with which you enriched our lives forever.

Paul Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008)

and

Robert Redford (August 18, 1936 – September 16, 2025)

The night hadn’t always held its terrors for him, for he loved those warm late evenings in courtyards and on verandas in Karachi. Surrounded by family and friends, with endless talking and music. And in his life to come, the night would always be the time when he would be most alive. But now, a little older and a lot more wary, and concious of his unwanted differences, the dark, dank and cold Manchester nights were something to, if not fear, then at least treat with respect and caution. Which, on this night, he abjectly failed to do, and paid a terrible price.

It was his school’s Sixth Form Christmas party, and though he was staying at his mother’s house all the way over on the other side of north Manchester in Oldham, he was prepared to risk the two late night buses that would get him from his school to her house. Because he was simply not going to miss this first real party with his school friends; mates who’d all grown up together from primary school but had accepted him, a late incomer at the age of 11 and markedly different from them, as one of their own, which, given his transient life up until that point (this was his ninth, and final, school), was worth taking the risk for. And it was a real risk for a boy like him to be travelling at midnight through Piccadilly Gardens in the city centre, and then onto the long bus ride up to Oldham town centre from where he had at least a half hour’s walk back to his Mum’s. But he knew that, and there was no way he was going to miss the party of the year. And, if the party was a success, which they all knew it would be, well, then it would be well worth the risk.

Oldham was then, and perhaps remains to this day, the very epitome of dark. Black. Absent of light, or hope, and, sometimes, even life; or a life worth living itself, at any rate. And in 1976, long redundant satanic mills, now mere hulking carcasses, with faraway exotic names picked out in white brick on their eerie chimneys (Rome, Durban, Melbourne…) were never darker nor more hellish in appearance than in those late 70s years of unemployment and depression; both economically and societally. Row upon row of mean red-brick terraces, with their dull grey slated roofs, and narrow claustrophobic cobbled streets, ever slick from the seemingly perma drizzle, cast day-long shadows on dim front parlours and narrow backyards where no grass or trees grew where only cold and cobwebbed outdoor toilets sat.

And everyday life can be hard, and mean. Which makes people hard, and mean. And especially so when times are hard. And times were hard then. The mills which once despatched textiles to every corner of the Empire had, one by one, fallen like dominoes, made silent by the modern world conquering the old. And as cotton moved out of Lancashire’s dank and humid hills into the tropical humidity of climes at the further reaches of the old Empire, now rebranded a Commonwealth, what became of these hard, and hardy, folk who manned the machines and spun the cloth? Did new, cleaner, and safer industries move in and keep the community alive and the children fed and the women happy because their men had meaning and purpose in their lives? No, they did not. Just as they also wouldn’t a decade later as the coal seams were deliberately flooded and the people of Yorkshire, South Wales, and Nottinghamshire suffered a similar fate to their cousins in the mills across the Pennines.

Cotton was the only reason why there was an Oldham, and a Rochdale, and a Burnley, and so many other northern mill towns west of the Pennines. And the mills needed strong backs and arms to work their shuttling jennies and flying looms; and so the people came, and were herded into the mean narrow streets with their two-up, two-down boxes (‘an Englishman’s home is his castle’ made risible), and a loo in the yard, and they existed in the shadow of the mills where they lived their hard lives until they died. And hopefully ended up somewhere better than the place they’d left…

But now the cacophonous machines, like the colonies, had gone, and the cotton was woven elsewhere. Somewhere cheaper and more profitably. The mill owners, too, had retired to their mansions in Cheshire and those green and pleasant lands of Lancashire far from where the smoke from their mill chimneys clouded the skies.

And all that remained were the people. Now living even harder and much meaner lives, because their livelihood had gone. And when faced with such adversity, such hardship, when children go unshod, and unfed, it hardens the heart and empties the soul.

Barricades spring up, protecting those within and repelling those outside. And Oldham’s newly arrived ‘outsiders’, who’d, irony upon irony, been lured from Empire’s dusk to the ‘mother country’ to help keep those jennies shuttling; even by making up a workforce struggling to recruit from the indigenous local community, they remained ever ‘the outsiders’. And job losses, though felt by both sides, were, not unnaturally, most keenly felt by those whose families had generationally built up towns such as Blackburn, Burnley, and Oldham. And when those who have nothing left to lose risk losing their humanity, well, what does it matter?

And he knew he would always, in Oldham, at least, and certainly at that time, stand out. He would never be able to go unnoticed or unremarked upon. And he would have to fight harder than others to be himself. On his terms, with him deciding who or what he was, or might become. Whether that was in south Manchester or, Lord help him, in Oldham, and when faced with an irrational and uncomprehending foe, it would be magnified many times over. Just because of his skin.

And it was to be this night that determined forever after for him that he would no longer allow others to direct the way he saw himself. And he would, from this night on, never allow others to label and tell him how or what to be; from now on he would be the one to tell and show others how to accept him. Or not.

And he would, after this night’s passing into day, get there eventually. But not yet. Not on this December night. Nor in the hours and days and weeks that followed. A time filled with an inexplicable bewilderment and searing pain. A pain not arising from his physical injuries; from his bruised ribs where their boots had kicked; nor his black eye where their fists had aimed; or the top of his head which had suffered blow after blow from hard knuckles. No; his pain was borne from a burning anger, and deep shame, at his own reckless stupidity for allowing himself to be seduced by an evening that hinted at something that could never be. That he would and could be viewed as just the same as everybody else. And by everybody else.

For hadn’t he danced, and kissed a girl, at his school Christmas party? Just like everybody else? Hadn’t he laughed, and made others laugh too, as they all enjoyed a great night? Hadn’t he, in short, and for however long that party lasted, been just like anybody else there?

The city centre was negotiated surprisingly easily, and the bus up to the foothills of the Pennines was also pleasingly empty of potential troublemakers and the alcoholically challenged. But the most daunting of his tasks, the one he had never during the course of the evenings wondrous events been able to forget, was the half-hour walk from the town centre to his mum’s house. Not especially long, but, and at that time of night, long enough to invite trouble, which is when trouble dependably comes looking for a cause. But he was careful, and long practised, and alert. Though not, as it turned out, and almost certainly because of that evening’s warm revelries, as keenly alert as he should have been.

He first saw them off in the distance. Three men. Tall, young, but most definitely grown men. Drunkenly stumbling and singing their way home from the pub. And going his way. The road was a fenced-in dual carriageway, so crossing over wasn’t the easiest option, but it might have been the best. But they were moving forward, albeit in a shambolic fashion, so he slowed his own walk down and stared ahead at them, all the while silently urging them to get a lick on and allow everyone to get home and safely into bed. So he slowed down some more, until, eventually, he came to a dead stop just as the dual carriageway ended and the road narrowed and the rows of terraced houses began their parade again.

For they had stopped, and then stood still and started singing football songs while drunkenly embracing each other. And they were singing United songs, too, which, foolishly, he took as a good sign, for that was his team and so, surely, they now had more in common than not? Surely? Whatever temporary madness that had convinced him that three drunken men singing United songs in the dead of night on a deserted street was better than say, them singing City or Latics songs, now began worming its way into his next course of action. For he reasoned, and not unreasonably, that he simply couldn’t just wait there while these three men worked their way through the Manchester United songbook; for to stay there on that street, however far behind them he remained, would, and most probably sooner rather than later, invite possible danger from another source behind him as pub after pub disgorged their potentially lethal cargoes into the cold and dark night,

So, he determined, while they caroused his own beloved Georgie Best, that he would just have to get it done and overtake them. With a wide berth, of course, but just plant his eyes resolutely ahead and absolutely not look any of them in their eye. Well, that was the plan. And so, he resumed his walking, all the while picking up the pace, until he was almost running, but not quite, for that would surely invite even more danger, as he drew level with them.

They said something to him. Was it, perhaps, ‘You a United fan?’ To which he, for, of course, he absolutely was one, replied, ‘Yeah, mate’, but didn’t stop or even slow down. From them came no reply, so he just kept walking, and walking until they were first five yards behind him, then ten, and then, when he saw the church on the corner at the top of his mum’s street just ahead of him, he dispensed even with the quick furtive backward glances he’d been making to ensurethe growing distance between himself and them continued. Because he was nearly home; nearly safe.

As he rounded the corner at the church, which took up a fair plot of the street before ending at a dark and narrow alley opening up. And as he approached this forbidding passageway, he heard the familiar clack-clack of platform shoes running on the smooth cobbles. And the terrifying sound was getting louder and nearer as he moved inexorably and inevitably towards it, for what else was he to do? Turn around and walk away from the safety of his mum’s house? And then what?

But by then it was already too late for hypothesising or desperate wishful thinking, for even as his puzzled mind was figuring out what was happening, the three of them emerged from the darkness and rounded on him. Now they didn’t look so comically drunk or incapable. Now they were alert and ready, and up for it. For they had run some distance, unseen and unheard, down this unlit alley, which ran parallel to the main road he’d walked. They had decided, made a conscious decision, to chase after -to do what? - this skinny young boy who was simply trying to get home after a wonderful evening out with his school friends at the Sixth Form Christmas party.

But first, way back before inaction and stumbling and tuneless football yobbery, way before they had set eyes on him as he hurried past, they had each and collectively made a decision. A decision to carry out a cruel and callous and violent attack on someone not like them whenever the opportunity presented. Maybe this had happened while they were schoolboys, listening to their parents bemoan the simultaneous fall in jobs with the rise of more brown and black people in the town. Or perhaps as they themselves experienced the misery of dead-end jobs and futile lives as they moved from shit schools to shit mills, and hardness enveloped their hearts? Who really knows the how and the why and where this cancer starts, but it isn’t natural, and neither are its outcomes.

But all of this was mere academia to him; for now they had caught him.

Long after his cries for help pierced the quiet, which was met by house lights coming on and windows opening, and the cowards had fled, preventing more serious injuries, or, had they achieved their ambition to drag him down into that dark and forbidding entry way, undoubtedly more fatal consequences, an unbearably painful question would keep him awake at night.

Why? Why had three big and grown men hunted him down, and then kicked the crap out of him, with perhaps more serious intent planned, too? Why?

But at least now, for better and for worse, he knew. He would always stand out. He would never be able to go unnoticed or unremarked upon. And he would have to fight harder than most to be himself. On his terms, with him deciding who or what he was, or might become. It was his identity, and no one else’s idea about who or what he should be, that he would focus on, and determine, and, eventually, live for himself.

Sadly, the bootboys are still here, but he knows they can’t prevail when people are determined to be what they want to be.

A biblical famine

Michael Buerk and Mohammed Amin’s 1984 BBC news reports of the catastrophic climate induced famine in Ethiopia, which Buerk described as ‘biblical’, are well remembered by those who watched them in real time. And if you did, I imagine you, as I was, were similarly distraught and stricken with helpless frustration that people were dying of starvation in the 20^th century. A starvation that seemed completely needless and cruel. Images similar to Kevin Carter’s harrowing photograph of the starving and distraught child, Kong Nyong, below, though taken a decade later, filled our TV screens nightly and brought the sheer horror of watching people die of starvation in real time into our homes; safe homes filled with plentiful supplies of food to keep us nourished, sated, and alive.

And these feelings of shame, disgust, and righteous anger, all overridden by helpless frustration, were also shared by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, who had watched British journalist Buerk’s and Kenyan cameraman Amin’s reports broadcast from a remote region of Ethiopia. A Boomtown Rat and an Ultravoxer respectively, two mere pop stars; singers of pop songs. And not particularly A-listers at that. But what they did next would elevate them both to something akin to Top of the Pops sainthood, and in Geldof’s case, bona fide global recognition as some kind of seer for the modern age.

Amin’s filming contained images not dissimilar to Carter’s nightmare photographs of the stricken child seemingly on the verge of death from starvation while a vulture waits patiently for its opportunity. Most of us, in fact the vast majority of us, as shocked and distraught as we were, could only shrug our shoulders in helpless despair at a simply impossible situation; for what could we, ordinary and powerless people, do to help? Fortunately, Bob Geldof, for better or for worse, was no ordinary person. He was so stricken and appalled by what he had seen unfold on the Nine ‘O’ Clock News, that he, for Bob being Bob, got on the phone to Midge, who had also been similarly distressed by the footage of dying babies and their emaciated mothers, and insisted that they had to do something. Anything. But they had to do something, and do it now!

Here’s the harrowing original report from Michael Buerk and Kenyan cameraman Mohammed Amani in 1984. If you’ve never seen it, be warned it is truly distressing. But I’d urge you to not look away, for these images of people dying needlessly and shamefully because we in the developed world seemingly didn’t care enough, would soon reconnect us all to our innate humanity and decency. And that can never be a bad thing.

So, given they had no power or influence over anyone who may have held such political power to successfully intervene and help feed the hungry, they did what songwriters do, and given they both had previous at writing the words and music to big hit singles, they started playing around with a guitar and a notepad and pencil, with a view to making a charity record that would donate all its money from sales to hunger relief charities in Ethiopia. Of course they did. But, as already stated, Geldof and Ure were no ordinary pop stars. And while coming up with the bones of the song we’ve all come to know and love today, they started thinking about how best to get this record out in the open, so as many people as possible would hear it, buy it, and contribute to the aid programme.

We’re gonna need a bigger band…

Well, a Bob and Midge record, no matter how good it might have been, was never going to reach the numbers needed for a project like this. Something the two were clearly aware of…fortunately. But Geldof was a well connected schmoozer in the pop world, as was his wife, the late Paula Yates, who as a presenter on the live TV music show, The Tube, appeared to know and be friends with just about anybody who was anybody in the UK’s pop orbit. Midge Ure had also been around the pop block more than a few times himself, and between them all they had a pretty impressive list of Who’s Who in the charts. So, they opened up their little black books and started ringing around. Bowie…Sting…Bono…the Frankies and Durannies and Spandaus…Wham! and the Bananaramas…Quo and the Style Council…Paul Young…Culture Club…Americans Kool and the Gang and Jody Watley, well, they were in town, so why not?…And last but not least among some other fine British pop stars and one hit wonders, the drummer in Genesis. Erm, Phil Collins. Forty of ‘em in all.

Missing in action

There were some notable exceptions, though. David Bowie, for whom the opening lines were originally intended, but were eventually recorded by Paul Young, couldn’t make the session. But he did get to sing those opening lines the following year at the ensuing Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium. Holly Johnson didn’t make his flight down to London, but Boy George did; he flew in from New York on Concorde, and all at his own expense. But as for Queen, Elton John, Bryan Ferry, Elvis Costello, and perhaps the biggest star absent from this galaxy, Paul McCartney, there was no sign, though they would all make hugely welcome and successful appearances at the concert.

Bowie, Holly and Macca all recorded messages for the B-side, though, so they were there in spirit for the original single. Oh! And our very own Stephen Morrissey, once of my parish, but now living in some dark, narrow corridor of his now closed mind, hated the project…which he charmlessly restated ad nauseam to anyone who’d listen.

You may have noticed the relative absence of black artists in the lineup, and that in itself would later lead to some of the complaints and necessary caveating about the event much later. But sadly, they were missing, and that was a shame. More on that later.

Where egos dare

Now that’s a lot of ego, not to mention hairspray and blusher, and that was just the Duran/Spandau axis of fabulousness, for anyone to contend with, but Geldof and Ure were well liked and respected in equal measure by all concerned, and, of course, everyone there had presumably also seen the same film report, so they knew this wasn’t a time or place for posing or grandstanding. One by one they paraded into Trevor Horn’s SARM Studios in Notting Hill over the course of a bright November and set about the business of recording the single. No tears; no tantrums; and no artistic differences…well, certainly not visible ones, anyway. Just every one of them wanting and helping to make a positive difference. And, who knows, perhaps, while they were, get some make-up tips from Boy George or highlights for hair from the other George? Well, we can imagine, can’t we?

Next stop…world domination with Live Aid and USA for Africa

And the rest is, of course, history. It’s still the fastest single in the UK, and was only supplanted at the top of the all-time sales charts by Elton John’s Candle in the Wind tribute to Princess Diana. And, of course, it also inspired the Americans to do something similar with USA for Africa’s We Are The World which, laudable as it was, and as truly star-studded, too, it was nowhere near as brilliant as the original. And that’s despite the involvement of the late, great Quincy Jones, Ray Charles, Michael Jackson, Harry Belafonte, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan (who would go on to disgrace himself at the shambolic American Live Aid concert by asking for some of the money from Live Aid to go to American farmers so they could pay their mortgages…!?), and many other genuine American greats. Perhaps needlessly telling the world it was the ‘USA’ doing something for Africa might have had something to do with it comparing unfavourably with the much more brilliantly and aptly named Band Aid?

Anyway, here it is, and they meant well…but the bombast sits uneasily on a project such as this, and clearly, some egos weren’t checked at the door as thoroughly as they were in London. But you judge…

But the biggest single direct legacy of that momentous phone call from Bob to Midge, apart from its continuing legacy of still saving lives wherever famines occur, was that astonishing day of live music the following year, as countries all over the world hosted Live Aid concerts to help alleviate the famine in Ethiopia. Events that were watched on TV by 40% of the world’s population; all 1.9 billion of us. We were fortunate in the UK to watch the whole kit and caboodle seamlessly, courtesy of the professionalism of the BBC, and without garish and obscene ads; a tightly organised and successful operation that was too often lacking from the concert broadcast from Philadelphia. But, as it must be said, it was for a great and worthy cause, so we can forgive our American friends for their bigger, brasher, and sadly, too often, inappropriate handling of Live Aid at their end.

But…

So, why the lack of Black artists on Band Aid, and even at the following year’s Live Aid concerts? Well, it’s a long story, and entirely valid, and because I’m not African and nor do I have any Black African heritage, I think it’s best if I let someone who is and/or does have that necessary connection explain. Which British-Ghanaian Afrobeat artist Fuse ODG so eloquently does here. And Bob Geldof, equally eloquently states his case for the defence here.

For what it’s worth, my tuppence says it was an extremely worthwhile and laudable venture, for which Geldof and Ure should face no opprobrium nor accusations of racism, colonialism or prejudice. They did what they thought was for the best in an age much less enlightened than today’s, and so context is all. But of course it wouldn’t be done in the manner it was then if something similar were to be done today, but in these highly fractious and atomised times, it’s hard to see how such a near universal event like this could come together now. So, and as it bears repeating yet again, they did it because it was the right thing to do, while most of us did nothing but sit on our hands. For that alone, they both deserve every award and recognition that came their way, and still continue to do so to this day.

So, it’s Christmas time, there’s no need to be afraid…

And it just isn’t Christmas without it, so firmly has it ensconced itself into our popular and wider culture. So, ahem, Merry Christmas in advance everybody, and let’s raise a glass and a cheer and remember that magical time when hope became a real possibility, even if for only a short time. Millions of lives were saved by Band Aid, and continue to be saved to this day by all of the umbrella offshoots from that initial bright November day when we were asked to do something…and do something we did! And two fading pop stars shone more brightly than they could ever have dreamt…

And if you’re still in doubt about pop’s power to change the world for the better…the subject, as the late great David Bowie said, speaks for itself. Again, if you haven’t seen this video from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, set to the song Drive, by The Cars, be prepared to be moved to tears…and then send them your money.

PS A shorter version of this article first appeared in Manchester’s Glossy Magazine late last year, complete with fabulous ‘80s era graphics, courtesy of Paul and Claire King at Twistedgifted. Here’s the article…

…

He’d thought things couldn’t get any worse than when he’d returned from America in late 1980, his head filled with nightmares of the American Dream and its rows and rows of perfect teeth with which to bite into its supersized burgers. His horizon had opened up to brighter and bigger widescreen vistas, true, but they were also paradoxically shallower, too, so his return was confusing, unsettling, even. For his own country was now, if it were at all possible, even darker, more dismal, and immeasurably more depressed than it was upon his departure for the New World two years earlier. Factory after factory, and shop after shop, and business after business folded, with all those millions of people left, from one day to the next, without a job. Without an income. With no means to feed and clothe their children. Or, worse still, unable to keep a roof over their heads. But perhaps the greatest damage, the most lethal effect, was the one on their very being. On their humanity and sense of self-worth and value. And to their loved ones, of course, but especially to themselves, as ‘society’ rendered them obsolete, or surplus to requirements; an unnecessary and downright inconvenience; an irritating mark in the Loss column of a bookkeeper’s double entry ledger. Impotent.

And yet there he was, just a couple of years later, still watching the numbers of unemployed rise on a daily basis and reported on News at Ten in a macabre Top of the (Dole) Pops rundown by region and city. And, as ever when it came to any distribution of the (de)spoils of this most brutal experiment in late 20th century capitalism, his city and its great near neighbours, Liverpool and Leeds, always topped the charts of the dispossessed and soon to be scrapped. And so striking was the demarcation between the Haves-in-the South and the Have Nots-in-the North, it could easily have been mistaken by an uninformed visitor to these shores, ignorant of England’s stark geographic economic divide, as some kind of attritional, but non-violent, civil war that had, as yet, not been formally declared as a state of war, but hostilities were almost certainly on the way. And, of course, that non-declared and non-violent status would very soon escalate into full blown hostilities and a very real state of war for the striking Yorkshire coal miners and their families who had the temerity to ask for the right to work. And the Battle of Orgreave would soon be described as such, with even some similarities in social and political legacy as the battles of Marston Moor and Naseby, though without the mortal and physical casualties of those two; though some might argue not for the want of trying from the Met’s finest.

But that, and much worse, was yet to come. For now, it was enough to deal with the daily misery of mounting unemployment figures and the aftermath of a murderous and, as time would go on to confirm, utterly pointless war. When, which seems so prescient in hindsight now, kidney machines were considered disposable for the greater cause of Empire’s rocket and guns for its gunboats in the South Atlantic. But if going underground had been an option available to him then, would he have taken it?

Probably not. For he wasn’t numbered among the tragic one-in-ten who’d been thrown onto the scrapheap, and his life was relatively good, but still, he knew millions of others were far less fortunate than he. Which, given his family and his upbringing in a series of council houses and flits across the length and breadth of Manchester, made him uncomfortable about not only his own good fortune, but also about the complacency, or was it disinterest, around the plight of those predominantly northern one-in-ten that was so vividly visible in his new home in West Sussex. And his hyper awareness of his own relative material comfort made his discomfort with his new surroundings much more heightened than he’d expected.

But, in his more rational moments, he knew it wasn’t their fault, this ignorance or indifference to what was going on in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, and all other points north. After all, they could only live their lives as they unfolded before them in that leafy, safe and secure outpost of the English Home Counties. And though they may have sympathised, for many most surely did, there wasn’t really much they could do to change the situation. Which, given, also, they overwhelmingly voted for Margaret Thatcher and her policies that had resulted in such catastrophic tragedy, made it highly unlikely they’d change things anyway…especially if it meant their actions, if driven by compassion, meant their own lives might inversely suffer. In other words, if they had to pay more taxes to support the great dispossessed.

No; salvation for the three million without work was never going to come from Crawley, which, as these things often have a way of working out, had the lowest unemployment in the country. No wonder, he thought, they voted for Thatcher, while his people back in Manchester voted, as usual, for Labour. But did they really deserve to suffer so terribly from those entirely (wo)man-made policies that weighted such an incredibly iniquitous imbalance in life chances against them? No; of course they didn’t, but even trying to point out the obvious unfairness of Tory policy was a lost cause among his new friends and colleagues as they blissfully enjoyed myriad bounties of winning the game of life.

And yet, there he was. Living in a bucolic, picture postcard, albeit from the sepia tinted 1950s, little village where he was certain he was the only one there that looked like him. The one that would have stood out like a sore thumb if the whole population of the village (probably fewer than 1500) posed for a group photograph on the village green, for it’s doubtful it would have differed much in both colour and palette, not to mention fashion, from any similar exercise, if one had been undertaken, from the heady days of the post-war Festival of Britain age. Apart from him. For his presence among the rosy-cheeked, gingham and Tattersall shirted, but now hatless, good folk of West Hoathly in the post-modern world, made it impossible for the two photographs to be overlaid and cause some puzzlement for the viewer as they tried to date the decade of the image’s creation. He was, in every sense of the word, a living palimpsest; overwriting and obscuring what once was and now presenting a new ‘is’. Well, that’s what he tells himself today, but at the time he had no idea, even, what a palimpsest was, let alone think of himself as any such thing.

No; he was just a young man from the North living in the South at a time of great social and cultural division between the two. Oh…and he was the only brown-skinned among their number, and now he remembers he was also the only one wearing skin tight uPVC drainpipes paired with a Buzzcocks badge-bejewelled oversized mohair jumper, and a jet-black Ziggy cut that, depending on the Sussex climate, either behaved itself and pointed skyward, or flopped forward in his eyes, necessitating frequent hand brushing of his hair. All of which merely reinforced the confirmation of the village people that he was not like other men, and the abandonment of National Service had, indeed, been a very bad mistake.

So, yes, he was very different to them. Which wasn’t exactly an unfamiliar scenario for him, given he was always the only non-white kid in every school, bar his last two, he attended — apart, of course, from the two or three schools he attended in Karachi, from which the Raj had retreated and so no white faces, other than his mother’s, could be found…and yet, perversely, there he was ‘classified’ as white. Race, hey; does anyone know how it works?

But in his temporary little home of Camberwick Green made real, and much to his very pleasant surprise, reality presented no real challenges, and certainly nothing to match the sense of alienation and terror a wrong turn into a wrong neighbourhood in a wrong part of Manchester would almost certainly induce. Perhaps he was viewed as a tolerable curio? The only punk in the village? Or, likelier still, the only Paki? Well, whatever it was, he was grateful to be not, at least openly, marked out as an outsider just because of the colour of his skin. No; he was far happier being an object of derision and ostracism for his fashion statements and strongly held political views and righteous sense of injustice in the country; feelings he thought all young people shared with him. Which, of course, wasn’t true then, and isn’t true today. Youth really is wasted on the young.

And the greatest source of his righteous indignation was the war in the South Atlantic over some rocky corner of a (sea) field that is forever England. And, of course, she held the winning hand in that game of life and death, too. Not content to be just a home wrecker, she had greater ambitions to be some kind of Boadicea of the waves overseas. There simply was no escaping her in this Tory stronghold of Daily Mail and Telegraph readers, Mothers’ Union jam sales in the church hall, and warm pints of Harvey’s finest hand-pulled in The Cat; the village’s focal point and forum for openly hostile discussions about feckless unemployed northerners and unpatriotic cowards who would rather be Argies than proud Britons.

Which is where he would often slip away for a quiet pint and a chance to ‘manufacture’ a chance meeting with a Dutch girl he’d espied there on one of his first visits to the pub. Well, he suspected her ‘Dutchness’, because he didn’t really know where she was from, other than she was clearly not English, and certainly not from the village, which if she had have been, would have been an absolute non-starter for him to even consider developing any kind of romantic entanglement. No; she was Dutch, because though his bank of knowledge of European was near non-existent, he just thought she looked it. Tall, lithe, blonde and blue eyed, and probably capable of making a monkey out of him with a perfectly executed Cruyff switchback with a football glued to her foot. Yeah, she was definitely from Holland. And as it turned out, she really was. Orangee…boom!

So, escape from the reality of life in a Southern town for a boy from a Northern town, however brief, was essential for his own sense of wellbeing, and if being bamboozled by an orange Cruyff Turn from her could do the trick, well, why not? And so the summer passed, at least for him, much more favourably than he could ever have dreamt possible…as the war against the people ground on and the real war, with real death and blood and dirt, sailed ever more into pointless and needless and completely avoidable tragedy.

RIP Bernard Hill; born in Manchester but made in Liverpool. Whatever happened to Yossa? Is he with Terry and Bob, sat in the corner of some pub, in the vault, perhaps, nursing their pints of bitter and mild, and reminiscing about whatever happened…to them, and to us.

It was what they loved and it was simple. No complications and no unnecessary thoughts. Just get the ball past the goalie and in between whichever solitary sapling and bundle of clothes passed for the posts. And the only thing that stopped play was the sun slipping over the roof of the library that backed onto the park. Not even the rain, of which they had plenty of experience, nor the cold, could ever daunt their enthusiasm for football in the park. And looking back now, he struggles to think of anything else they did that didn’t involve kicking a ball. Either in the park or along the narrow terrace house-lined streets on the way there, or, failing that, just clambering over the wrought iron railings of the tiny primary school just over the street from their houses and having a kick about on its tarmacked playground. But this was, of course, in those innocent days before they hit their testosterone-tuned teens and girls fatally emerged from the wings and into the limelight of the respective stages of their lives. Some among them would fall sooner than others, but in the end they all succumbed to the meaning of life, which, unlike football in the park, was complicated and required a great deal of necessary thinking.

But those pleasures and pains had yet to make their marks on their minds and scars on their hearts, so for now their unruly, yet innately ordered, game continued in the early evening warmth. School was out for summer, and there was nothing more pressing for them to consider than how they could emulate their heroes by getting that ball back and shooting and scoring. This evening, he was attacking the school end, and so had the full glare of the setting sun in his eyes, while the other side had the brilliantly golden glow of the baths to guide them goal wards as the glow of the fading light hit the Baths’ redbrick and white Portland stone facade.

And perhaps it was the setting sun’s low glare that had blinded him, and the others, too, to the seemingly sudden appearance in the sky, almost over them, in fact, of this huge, no gigantic, flying machine that had seemingly silently glided towards and now over them, but now they could see it, so, too, could they now also hear it…and it was a noise befitting of such a magnificent machine. Not that any of them had any real idea what such an aeroplane might sound like, but having the full audio visual experience right here, right now over their own home ground, it was satisfyingly appropriate.

And, as boys will, where the immediate reigns uncontested over all other considerations, with even the open goal now begging to be closed, they stopped and craned their heads upwards, as the ball came to a lonely stop in no man’s land. Staring up into that blue turning to gold sky, where, held up by who knew what, suspended and seemingly frozen, came their, and most especially his, first sighting of an age yet to come. This was tomorrow calling; in all its apocalyptic ear splitting and visually arresting glory, and it simply couldn’t be ignored, even if they’d wanted to; even if George Best were to wander into their ever deadly serious game.

Huge. Gigantic. Immense. And much, much bigger than the elephant it was supposedly nicknamed after. It defied credibility as it got lower and bigger and seemingly faster...and louder still. Yes, they'd seen aeroplanes before, and often in the very same quarter of the sky into which they were now all focusing their gaze, but nothing like this one. Nothing to match the majesty and power and sheer size of this apparition gracing the sky over their everyday kickabout in the park.

With wings long and deep, and four huge engines hanging improbably low like silver apples, it defied any laws of science that any of them was aware of...though, in all truth, science was neither a strength nor a love for any of them. But even they knew what gravity was, and this impossibly futuristic flying machine was absolutely, and against all odds, defying even that inarguable science. Even its colour was royally imperial! Silver and white, with an immense blade of dark blue knifing up at the tail like a gigantic spinnaker or shark fin. And a raised crown of sorts above the nose where the pilots sat, and presumably also those incalculably rich and royal people, such as Georgie, that both marked it out from the crowd and stamped its authority as the Queen of the Skies.

The letters BOAC were spelt out in huge blue block capitals on its side, reminiscent, if only in style, perhaps, of imperial Rome’s SPQR. and a futuristic-but-very-1950s symbol of a golden bird, a Speedbird, in flight graced the tail. They didn't know what BOAC meant; well, he did, because of all of them he was the one who’d earliest expressed a desire to get away and to travel. To where, he didn’t really know, only that it was away somewhere else. Which might have explained his long held interest in aeroplanes and flight travel, though not to the extent of geeky plane spotting, but nevertheless, of course he knew this was the newest aeroplane in the sky, and it belonged to the British Overseas Airways Corporation.

Perhaps the analogy to imperial Rome’s SPQR wasn’t so fanciful, after all, given the letters BOAC were, if nothing else, a reminder of what once was an ‘overseas’ empire that overshadowed even the extent of Rome’s reach. A name that even then, and even after all those losses and joyously celebrated independence days around the world, suggested still a British empire over the seas. A name intrinsically linked to the past but now, in this shape and guise, and in particular with this flagship of the new overseas fleet, looking towards the future. Both history and now history making.

Just as he, along with both his brothers, also spellbound on that scrap of dirt and grass by this sudden interjection of history, science, and the future yet to be written, were also the living embodiment of both that history, and the history yet to be made. The very real future from out of a past now gone forever, so perfectly represented by this symbol of wealth, power, and ingenuity; but now carried by a new empire in the West. Which, if they’d understood irony then, would have added to their bemusement and overpowering awe of what was happening in front of their eyes there and then in this little nondescript inner-city suburb of Manchester, which was itself, once, one of the chief captains of the industry and ingenuity of that lost overseas empire. Yes; that was ironic. But what does any twelve-year old know of irony? It was enough for all of them to have just been witness to the future; to have been there when tomorrow came calling.

It was, even if only in hindsight, for who can ever be sure about notoriously unreliable memory, an epiphany of sorts for him. An awakening of something deep within him that this indefinable and intangible event had sparked, and whether it was merely the aeroplane itself or the possibilities it offered, he couldn’t then have said, and even today he remains unsure of just what, exactly, that summer evening’s events portended. But, of course, as it turned out, and as he looks back on a life that once was, and remains still, inextricably intertwined with jet planes, travel, and reckonings with empire in this age of isolation and a seemingly infinite appetite from every quarter for delusions and illusions to soothe unsatisfactory lives, that first glimpse of science fiction made real in the sky was hugely significant.

And, as the aeroplane descended further and below the tops of the trees skirting the park, until only the fading roar of its engines could be heard as it made its stately descent into Ringway, the future quickly now became the past, and so the ball was picked up as they debated whether to continue as they always had, or whether to go home and get ready for Top of the Pops. And consider tomorrow…

But their games would never be the same again.

Farewell to a future now past. And that was tomorrow calling…

PS British Airways retired the last of their Boeing 747 fleet on October 25th, 2020, as the devastating effects of Covid continued to take its toll on, not only lives, but our way of living.

And talking of irony, wasn’t it also a very human virus that did for HG Wells’ invading Martians in War of the Worlds? Fact will always trump fiction in the real world, though fiction improves that real world to make it more tolerable, irony seems everywhere!

If you’re lucky, you might still catch this magnificent flying machine somewhere overhead, but probably not for very much longer.

So, children, let’s see which window we’re looking through today…

The Beeb. Auntie. London Calling. The World Service. Blue Peter. Top of the Pops. The Old Grey Whistle Test. The Nine ‘O’ Clock News (and Not). Monty Python. John Peel, punkily. David Attenborough, universally. Panorama. Radios One through to Six, and beyond, especially locally. Eastenders, inevitably. The Archers, even more inevitably. Live Aid, superlatively. Match of the Day, not so much anymore. And, well, I could go on and on and on about the sheer unique brilliance, diversity and range of the British Broadcasting Corporation, but the above are just a few of the ways the BBC has profoundly affected and influenced my life. And, if you’re of a similar vintage to me, and grew up in Britain during the same period, no doubt you, too.

So I know I’m not alone in having so greatly benefitted from this unique and near unclassifiable organisation. Radio, as it was in the beginning; yes. Then television; of course. Then films, festivals, and political events, and even propaganda during wartime. Print in magazines, books and educational tools. A cultural behemoth with simply no equal anywhere in the world, ever. Not even at the height of Soviet media saturation within the vast USSR could they compete or compare with the BBC. As for the cultural dominance of the Americans, and they are, for better or for worse, the dominant cultural ideology shapers of the world, but the rapacious nature of their unregulated capitalist controlled, ie money talks, and dominated media will always see them put profit before any other ‘cultural’ or beneficial principle. Ad-free television in the land of the free…? Not a chance.

Oh! And talking of ads, did I mention the BBC is (almost!) entirely funded by a license fee levied on every UK household containing a television set within its walls? In other words, it is not beholden to advertisers or other financial concerns with either soap to sell or an ideology to propagate. It is, from an editorial aspect, entirely free from outside bias or political pressure…perhaps only in theory, but that intention is vitally crucial to the Corporation’s raison d'être. But of course everything is mediated, and a complete absence of bias is impossible in any arena, something the BBC is very much struggling with today in an atomised world that bears very little relation to the world in which it came into being back in the 1920s, when absolutes and certainties ruled the airwaves as surely as gunboats ruled Britannia’s waves. That was a time when John Reith, the Beeb’s first Director General could say, and believe, that his certainties and ambitions for the BBC to provide ‘all that is best in every department of human knowledge, endeavour and achievement’ and that ‘the preservation of a high moral tone is obviously of paramount importance’ would be a mantra that all decent, moral, and like-minded intellects would, and could, absolutely share and endeavour to support. But that, of course, was then, and today that one-size-fits-all shoe barely fits anyone anywhere anymore. Thank post-modernism for that! As, for instance, the BBC is finding to the cost of both its reputation and its ongoing viewing figures as audiences shirk away from its news coverage of the war in Gaza, or its insistence on giving equal coverage to climate-change deniers, and, most paradoxically of all, its completely one-sided coverage of the Brexit campaign. Still, in comparison to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News in the USA or the late Silvio Berlusconi’s Fininvest (now Mediaset) in Italy, the BBC appears a paragon of impartial and respectable broadcasting.

So, what is it? This ‘thing’ we affectionately call the Beeb, plus many other names, some of which currently aren’t so affectionate? Is it a global multi-media organisation? Yes; of course it is. But it’s also so very much more than that. Fox, Sky, Amazon, and other multi-media organisations in other corners of the non-English speaking world, such as China and India, where market reach theoretically far exceeds the relatively small global reach of the BBC, are all global multi-media concerns. But none has the cultural cachet of the Beeb. And, certainly, none can match its history. For my money, and what it means to me, the BBC is an integral part of life not only in Britain, but in many other prts of the world, too, and it’s simply impossible for me to imagine my life without the BBC in it. And I can say with a degree of certainty that I wouldn’t be who I am today without the significant input of the BBC and its contribution to my cultural DNA. And, again, I can say that’s almost certainly true for those of the UK population, and even further afield, who’ve ever encountered the Corporation in some prolonged form or other.

Hyperbole? Well, no. Not really. For here’s an example, and I could just as easily have chosen another out of so many others, but given this is my reason to be cheerful - ha-ha- I’m going with this…something that launched a million hairstyles, helped free the anxiously closeted, and influenced more artists across all media - print, music, and film - than perhaps any other single event in late 20th century Britain. And it was delivered right into our front rooms on a Thursday evening, of all things, courtesy of Aunty. Talk about shining a light in the hope that he might land tonight…

Or how about this? Different strokes for different folks, but the effect was just the same. Well, it was for the 32.3 million Brits who watched it on the box, minus, of course, a sizeable proportion of Scots for whom this was anything but an occasion to celebrate!

And for those who would argue that these are just examples of a medium merely doing what its raison d'être compels it to do, ie broadcast an event, I would counter and say that, in the first instance, a programme such as Top of the Pops had first of all to be created and reguarly broadcast for David Bowie and his Spiders from Mars to capture the hearts, minds and imagination of the nation’s youth as vividly and as completely as they did that Thursday evening back in July, 1972. And as for that commentary on the final goal in that World Cup Final, it has become iconic because it was both brilliantly said by the match commentator, Kenneth Wolstenholme, and it was on the Beeb, which is where 90% of that record breaking audience watched it, as opposed to the other 10% who watched the match over on ITV. And the reason why such a massive proportion of the audience chose the BBC over ITV is because they trusted and expected the professionalism and expertise the corporation had built up over the years leading to the tournament, which included the launch in 1964 of Match of the Day. And that trust, which, as far as sport and even music are concerned, is still the case today. Match of the Day marches on and is still the flagbearer for the Beeb’s football coverage, and, even in the face of the newly dominant streamers, is still the best and most favoured choice for the nation’s armchair fans. And that 1966 World Cup Final viewing figure for the BBC is still the most watched event ever on British TV. Top of the Pops, sadly, is no more, but its inevitable demise had more to do with technological ‘progress’ that fundamentally changed how we consume popular music more than anything to do with the BBC and how it managed the programme. But it ran from 1964 to 2006, and was, and remains still, the world’s longest running weekly popular music TV show. At its height, everyone wanted to be on Top of the Pops, and everyone wanted to watch it. A stock market for your hi-fi, indeed…

The Beeb is trusted; whether that’s because it’s still ad free and therefore not perceived to be ‘selling’ anything, or it’s because of it’s much vaunted and globally admired and envied reputation for expertise, professionalism, and editorial independence, is almost beside the point. For the BBC is where it is today for many reasons, of which the above are merely two among the many responsible for its position as the world’s leading media organisation. Bar none.

BBC. Brilliant…Broad…Caster. As a global multi-media corporation, the BBC, similarly to other such organisations, has its fingers in many, many pies. And the first pie, way back in the beginning, in 1922, was radio. And it was radio that gave birth to the British Broadcasting Corporation. The newly fangled invention of radio, was seized upon by the founders of the BBC, though I suspect even they had not guessed that its arrival was, at that time, second only to Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press as the mass communication tool. Of course, radio would eventually be superseded by television and then, most comprehensively thrashed, by the internet, both of which, as you’d expect, the BBC quickly, and brilliantly, adopted and are now peerless practitioners of both those media. But before the nascent dominance of the former in the 1950s and the fin de siècle, in every sense, global conquest of the latter, radio was the great medium. And no other organisation in the world harnessed it as effectively and as successfully as the BBC. London Calling, anyone? Time for another ad break musical interlude?

Well, where did you think they got it from…? And, of course, little John Mellor, aka Woody Mellor, aka Joe Strummer, was probably advised by his public school careers advisor that brewing up at the Beeb wasn’t such a bad option.

From wartime propaganda when London called out to the oppressed in Nazi-occupied Europe to today’s shining beacon of how radio should be done with stations from BBC Radio One to Six Music broadcasting to the nation and, for now, at least, the rest of the world, everything from Grime to Beethoven, and comedy to serious political discourse in a knowledgeable, professional and completely ad-free style.No other nation on earth can match the BBC’s radio output. Neither in quality nor sheer diversity and range, and probably quantity, too…though it’s quality we’re measuring here, and of that I’ve no doubt the BBC excels above all others.

And, of course, there is the BBC World Service, arguably the Jewel in the (Radio) Crown, which we at home largely overlook for obvious reasons, but for many millions (450 million listeners a week, a WEEK, in 2024) around the world it remains their prime source of news and entertainment.

As I said right at the top, this is a highly personal thanks and expression of gratitude, after all, it’s certainly been a reason to be cheerful for me. So, yes, it’s highly subjective, but also not also absent of any sense of reality about the Corporation’s true standing in the world in relation to other media outlets. I have, for instance, lived and worked in Australia, where their ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), which is closely modelled on the BBC, struggles valiantly against the twin forces of Mordor as represented by Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer’s race to the bottom media outlets. But it’s simply no contest between the Beeb and its antipodean cousin, as the Australian version is a mere fraction of the size of the original. Plus, Murdoch long ago relegated Australian mainstream media to a dustbin into which the country appears happy to dive deep down.

And given I’ve spent at least a couple of year’s worth of time over hundreds of cumulative trips to every corner of the USA, and…well, do I have to say any more? OK…I will. American TV is largely unwatchable because of its innumerable ad breaks…which makes it largely crap. For it is, largely but not entirely, lacking in quality, because as the hucksters and the grifters have always known, lowest common denominator stuff sells the most. Just ask the Colonels Tom Parker or Sanders. And as for its so-called news coverage, it’s an absolute non-starter, for which we have, yes, you guessed it, the Dirty Digger from Down Under to, yet again, thank. He who, incidentally, became an American citizen, with unseemly haste and alleged personal interference from the original cowboy president, Ronald Reagan. Australia sure has a lot to answer for…

As for the rest of the world, other respected and reputable public service broadcasters do exist, but again, for reasons of historical and geopolitical dominance by the good old, bad old British Empire, their reach can’t compete with the Beeb’s. Britons never, never, ad nauseam shall be slaves, goes the delusional refrain from a land that time forgot, but when it comes to cultural colonialism, and that applies equally to both the good and the bad, the BBC has few serious competitors. Though it appears the American Broliarchy might have something to say about how free we Britons really are, ie not very free at all. But in an enslaved and homogenised world such as ours today, why would we be any different than everyone else?

Which is all the more reason why we should treasure and defend, but most of all, continue to use the BBC, so it can’t be countered and diminished by those cultural vandals currently ransacking the world and raping resources that have a value immeasurably more precious than the cost of something the money men can count. And when I say ‘we’, I mean all of us with access to the BBC; not just in Britain, but anywhere across the globe where its airwaves reach. Because, World Service listener (free!), or BBC America viewer, this is your BBC, too. Admittedly, that’s about to change somewhat, and very soon, as a payment vehicle is launched for those listeners and viewers overseas. Which, on reflection, seems entirely reasonable given all that content is currently solely funded by British TV Licence payers, but will, of course, inevitably result in a decline of those who will continue to use the BBC’s services. But in this world where you very rarely get what you pay for, I would hope that the BBC, whatever its cost, will always represent excellent value for money.

Just as it always has for those of lucky to have grown up with it. My life, and the lives of millions of others, has been incalculably enriched by the BBC. And it is one of only a handful of things, friends and family excepted, that I miss about Britain here in Berlin. But I’m determined to never let the Beeb leave my life. How could I, when it did so much for me?

Here’s one of the greatest televisual events of all time, anywhere in the world, ever. And if you compare it to its sister event over in Philadelphia at about the same time, and, of course, for the same great motive, then perhaps you could have skipped the previous two and a half thousand words, for it proves my point decisively. Nobody does it better…all over the world.

PS As well as kind words, Mike Press also provided me with an example of that rare and precious quality the in which the BBC excel. Laugh, cry…it’s all here, courtesy of Aunty..

And some might also say you get what you deserve, which is perhaps appropriately and rightly reflected in the Gallagher Brothers’ reported £50 million each for the Oasis reunion tour, but what they truly deserve, and I suspect it is finally coming, is due recognition of their true power.

No; not their music, which pales in comparison with that of the Beatles, whose influence they’ve not so much merely stated as tattooed on their bodies. Nor is it their somewhat hackneyed, and now tiresome, reputation for controversy, which can’t hold a candle to the shock and awe of the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen having to be kept off the number one spot in 1977’s Silver Jubilee Week by everyone from the BBC to MI5!

But what Oasis do have in megawatts, and I say do, for they clearly still have it, is power. The power to wake up the bored, indifferent, disaffected and despairing, and change, however briefly or fleetingly, but in many cases, permanently, their lives and their aspirations. Because without Oasis, many of those lives would have remained dreary, despondent and unfulfilled. And isn’t that a real power? To change someone’s life for the better? The Beatles had it, of course, and so too, although in a much different vein, did the Sex Pistols. So it’s no coincidence, of course, that both those two earlier bands were the prime influences on Noel and Liam. And superficially, it’s easy to spot the similarities: Noel’s ‘tuneful’, ie music by numbers, adaptations of Lennon and McCartney’s melodic genius, and Liam acting out a Poundland version of Johnny Rotten’s anarchic Devil.

Compare and contrast this one they made earlier, with a little help from their friends…

And can you spot the difference here? What’re a few shared mannerisms between friends, anyway? The Artful Dodger meets the Mancunian Malcontent…

But there’s more to Oasis than some mere karaoke tribute act, or Stars in their Eyes pastiche, because Noel isn’t really doing John or Paul, or even George (though he was always the best drummer in Oasis, or so he says, so perhaps Ringo was ‘done’?). But who could ever do the Fabs? And Liam’s from Burnage, not Finsbury Park, where, I would argue, being intimately familiar with both neighbourhoods, the streets are far harder than those little Johnny Rotten-to-be prowled as a dentally disturbed kid in the 1970s. Which is not to say The Brothers Grim haven’t played up their influences, perhaps even over-egged their cultural puddings; in fact, very often, they wore their hearts on their sleeves so blatantly you’d fear for the patient’s wellbeing!

So theirs is a very special power indeed, and all the more so because, though Oasis didn’t really have that affect on me, as I’d already had my transformational hit much earlier in the 1970s from David Bowie and then the Sex Pistols, I can see, finally, now, what Oasis mean to so many people who came from a similar background to me.
And so, despite their musical limitations (of course, Noel is a very good guitarist as well as a more than capable songwriter, but whether he’s ‘great’ at either is debatable), and great indebtedness to their influences (and of course Liam has a terrific voice, but he’s no Johnny Rotten in the revolutionary stakes), they survive, and thrive beyond belief to this day. How? But, more to the point, why?

Why them, and not Blur? Their so-called Britpop nemesis? Who may have won the battle back in 1995 to get to Number One, but were, as time and distance have so crushingly proved, thrashed in the long war of both sales and lasting influence, and of, indeed, true and everlasting love. Something even the Bay City Rollers managed much more successfully than Blur.

Speaking of…Perhaps the single best encapsulation of why Oasis endure and Blur don’t, and why this so clearly didn’t speak to common people like me…

And yes, Damon still pops up every now and then with his mockney utterances (mainly in Manchester, for some inexplicable and mildly irritating reason), but ask kids today who they’d rather be, and I’ll bet the Noels and Liams outnumber the Albarns and the one with the smug rictus grin who hosts ‘cheesey’ festivals with his neighbour, David Cameron. In fact, I’d argue that Britpop, a marketing slur, if ever there was one, couldn’t have existed without Oasis, because all of the other supposed combatants in this war of domestic pop, including some, such as Pulp and Suede, who were excellent in their own right, were merely cannon fodder caught in the unwitting University Challenge versus State Schools Out crossfire between Blur (University attenders all) and Oasis (School leavers at age 16 to a boy).

And, tellingly, most of that same crop of 90s bands who eventually found themselves trailing in Oasis’ supernova slipstream were comprised of, well, solidly middle class kids who not only looked different to Oasis, but, crucially, spoke and sounded as if they came from a Britain unrecognisable to the one in which Burnage, and its thousands of equivalents all over the country, resided. Which is not without precedent in the history of social and cultural upheaval in our gloriously united, but also very often, disunited little kingdom somewhere just outside Europe. Yes, of course, we’re talking, not about a revolution, as might be wished for, but class. Class; that great instrument for identifying, labelling, and compartmentalising every aspect of life in Britain.

I believe this little ditty sums it up rather well, and yet Jarvis, Candida, and Co, still didn’t grab the hearts and minds of the descendants of Shakespeare’s yeomen, or better still, of the industrial working class whose terrible lives Friedrich Engels surveilled in the god forsaken streets of, where else, Manchester, to the extent Oasis did and continue to do today. Still, it’s a right belter, and though their accents betray them, their heart’s in the right place, bless…but I still don’t see anyone smiling around here…

By the way, just as an amuse bouche, does anyone else see the hilarious irony of thousands of Glastonbury attendees, many of whom may well have also studied sculpture at St Martin’s while simultaneously slaking a thirst for knowledge, singing obliviously along to this? No? Just me, then.

Class. Different class. And that’s what they were; no, not Pulp, who were and remain exceptionally brilliant, but Oasis. They were of and from a different class. A class that hadn’t had a voice or a cipher or a light shone on them since the Sex Pistols. And the wait for such a voice to emerge had been a long one, so when it was finally heard, the resulting joy and exhilaration that erupted upon its arrival was unlike almost anything comparable before it, other than perhaps the seemingly out of nowhere explosion of the Fabs more than thirty years earlier.

Spot the difference (Part 2)…cut your hair and get a job, smoke some fags and play some pool, pretend you never went to skool…well, these two didn't need to pretend. Same year; different class.

So, was it just class that marked them out as different to all the others who’ve fallen by the wayside?

Definitely…well, maybe. Because of course, the music matters, too, and though Oasis weren’t pretending to push any musical envelopes a la Radiohead or Queen sorry, Muse (who couldn’t fold a postcard, let alone push the inside of an envelope), they did what they did exceptionally well. And what they did was make music for people who needed a release from their everyday humdrum existence, which doesn’t preclude those who can comfortably afford to pay the exorbitant ticket prices their current comeback tour requires, but the people who love Oasis the most are the ones who, back in the early 1990s, needed them the most.

And, yes, their music is melodic, if a little basic (Paul Weller describes his friend Noel’s guitar playing as rudimentary), and powerfully anthemic; rather like football terrace chants, it’s almost tailor-made for repetition and adoption as a sign of belonging to ‘something’. Anything. Other than being alone in a crowd, and feeling hopelessly lost and adrift. Oasis was an anchor for those adrift from the rest of society, and their songs were easy to cling onto. And just as the Pistols did, Oasis made music that could be easily emulated, and so their followers went out and bought cheap guitars and learnt to play them, and perhaps even went out and formed bands that bore more than a passing resemblance to Oasis. Just as they themselves had been influenced by the Beatles and the Sex Pistols to go out and form their band.

But, of course, the proof is in the pudding, and Oasis’ standing today, right now, as they play to hundreds of thousands in their home city of Manchester and then many more thousands all around the world, makes for compulsive viewing in a combination befitting of Oasis: that of shock and awe. And I, for one, am completely awed by their comeback in as much as I realise now how they affected so many, and so profoundly. And that perhaps, because of my own fortunate rise from council estate to less challenging environments at around the same time as Liam and Noel were making their move from Burnage to world domination, I’d forgotten that such epiphanies, or escapes, or salvation, even, was possible within the confines of a three and a half minute pop song.

Because, of course, that had once worked its magic for me, and perhaps I’d overlooked the boys from Burnage because, unlike Bowie and the Pistols who came from exotic London, the Gallaghers came from just down the road. And, of course, age doesn’t always come loaded with wisdom, so though I make no claims to be any wiser now than I was in my late teens (though I sincerely hope I am!), my blindness around the brothers’, shall we say, ‘social imperfections’, reflects more badly on my acquired petit bourgeois affectations than it does their inchoate stumbling around in a media minefield just waiting and feverishly praying for them to step on a bomb. So, yes…I was wrong.

I am right about Bowie, because I know my life changed because of him. I am right about the Sex Pistols, too, because they not only changed me, but they changed everything around me as well. And though Oasis didn’t do for me what those two did, I know now they did all that and more for millions of others who came after me and my generation; for people who came from the same places I came from; for people who spoke as I did; and for people who might have led quiet lives of despair if it hadn’t been for the profound effect Oasis had on them, just as Bowie and the Pistols had saved me.

I guess I just needed a little time to wake up…