The Outside Of Everything

Chapter 50
The Race Is Run

The journey’s end. The end of an era. Full circle. Sitting around once again, listening to Nancy and Lee singing about strawberries, cherries, and an angel’s kiss in spring, and how summer wine is really made of all these things. The sort of thing we’d been doing for a long time now. But somehow it wasn’t the same. Something seemed to be slipping away. And anyway the net was closing in. More interviews being arranged to discuss employment plans. Threats of compulsory work placements. Benefits being suspended if we didn’t co-operate. A more aggressive timbre to the questioning. Were we sure we hadn’t done any paid work over the past two weeks? Ha.

The last of the summer wine perhaps? Perhaps an end to mooching round the streets, hands in golf jacket pockets, whistling Van Morrison songs, browsing round the charity shops, killing time in the library, wasting time round the park, putting together cassette compilations of our favourite old soul sounds, reading too many books, writing too many letters. All the things our lives had revolved around. For so long. So long. Our Fair One had already headed off into the sunset. With his Adidas holdall packed he was Barcelona bound, distantly echoing Patrice Chaplin’s Albany Park, to meet up with his beloved Ana Lucia and spend a summer loafing around the way that young lovers do. Amour. The first chink in our armour. The first link in the chain to break. How long would it be before we all sat around again listening to Vic Godard and his Subway Sect sing about chainsmoking?

With the three of us left we were increasingly worried about ending up like the characters in Last of The Summer Wine, whiling away our days, niggling each other. Almost imperceptibly we were beginning to drift off and do our own things. Inexorably I suppose would be the word. With the benefit of hindsight. At the time we wouldn’t have noticed. You don’t. But our Fair One heading off to Catalonia, or wherever, with the lovelight shining in his eyes was a symptom of something. A new restlessness. A new independence.

Our Redhead, for example, was off doing his own thing more and more. Increasingly he was becoming absorbed in his art. It was more than a passion. He was a natural. Put a chisel or mallet in his paws and he was away. And he had a gift. He could gradually, little by little, turn a lump of clay or a block of wood into a beautiful object. His talent being recognised he was being encouraged to apply for a place at one of the London art schools. Camberwell perhaps. And he would have been a fool not to pursue his vision.

Similarly our Quiet One was increasingly consumed by his two obsessions, namely the world of the garden and the world of the computer. Odd obsessions perhaps but in his mind they complemented each other perfectly. The natural and the unnatural. The future and the past. Something like that. But again it brought out the best in a long time compadre. Secret gifts of people we perhaps know too well and maybe not at all. Anyway, the garden and the computer, these were solitary pursuits, suiting perfectly the taciturn nature of a special person who was increasingly out of love with the world around him.

And then there was me. I had my writing at least. But I wasn’t sure where I should go with it. Did I have a vocation? Did I have a gift? Should I settle for the scholastic, monastic life? Losing myself in research and dusty tomes perhaps? Or maybe I had more of a bent for the journalistic craft? I could see myself as a seeker for truth. Like in Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest, taking on the polluters of Poisonville. A crusader. Cleaning up after the corrupters. But to achieve either of these goals I’d perhaps need to put myself through the rigours of learning, studying in a structured way. So I was struggling with the idea of putting myself forward to go to University to do the literature thing or apply to train as a journalist. These were big things to consider. It would mean a lot of personal sacrifice, in terms of changing lifestyle and outlook, and to be honest either option scared the living daylights out of me. But in the meantime there were those history books to be written, those stories to be told, all of which kept at bay the day of decision.

If there were one thing that highlighted how the times were a changing, the tide turning, it would be our last ever Northern Soul for the Masses night out, when we’d cast caution to the wind, hired a function room in Covent Garden, in the shadow of the sinister Masonic headquarters, only to find ourselves playing records for our friends and ourselves. There are worse ways of spending an evening, but it doesn’t satisfy those evangelistic urges. I remember going home, listening to Van Morrison singing about lonely, sad eyes, and thinking do I need all this? Different people need different things at different times of their lives. It’s an important lesson to learn. Do I need to hear the latest underground hip hop record right now? Does a young kid need to hear Sister Rosetta Tharp right now? Does it matter?

Anyway, after that last ill-fated Northern Soul for the Masses event an old friend, who’d lived round our way but was now long gone, having moved far away from us in many ways, well, he rang to say sorry and all that for missing the bash but he was otherwise engaged, and anyway he didn’t mean to be rude or anything but he wasn’t sure he needed our Northern Soul for the Masses just at that moment anyway. He carried on talking about this and that, and my attention was drifting. Not that I intended to be rude either, but, hmm. Anyway I did seem to catch something about whether we’d heard how the king of the skinheads, the chief of the Chelsea headhunters, had been sent down. Something about being caught. Stoned. Stealing gnomes. Garden gnomes. They’ll have a whale of a time with him inside, said our long gone friend. Fishing rods. What with his tattoos and his Chelsea connections, he added.

I had to say something. How did you hear about that, I asked? Well, said our not so dear departed friend. Do you remember so-and-so, one of his lieutenants? The one with the wonky eye? Did all the dirty work. Well, he’s very different now. Grown his hair. Goes to the same sort of clubs as I do now. Helps a bit with security. He’s alright really. Once you get to know him. Anyway, we were laughing about when we were younger. Joking about some of the mad chases. The ambushes. The dust ups. And that’s when he said how his old leader had been sent down. Bang to rights. He laughed. Hollowly. I had to say something again. Right, I said. Feeling a million miles away, a million years old. The voice on the ‘phone burbled on. I let it.

All these years on. I missed an important ‘phone call today. I wish I had have missed that ‘phone call all those years ago too. I can still hear those words. Good bloke, he said. Changed now, he said. Right. That’s alright then. There was something in the local paper today. A young kid stabbed. A mother mourning. Steel toe caps then, knives now. Someone out for kicks. Someone wanting revenge. Whatever it takes. Is it the wrong shoes now? The wrong records? I dunno. There was a passage in a wonderful Victor Serge book I read recently. A beautiful passage. About how the thing we least recognise in the eyes of others is the flame of our own youth. Indeed. Flames burn in different ways. They change. Lights change. Directions change. People change. I remember putting down that ‘phone years ago, knowing it was time for a change. I needed to do something different. Something that allowed me less time to think. I had to throw things up in the air, or I’d be throwing my arms up in despair. Maybe it was time to sort of stop the world and get back on. From the outside of everything to ...