Long Time No See by Hannah Lowe

Author:Hannah Lowe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Garnet Publishing (UK) Ltd
Published: 2015-04-21T04:00:00+00:00

11

Oi, Nelson!

Sticks and stones may break my bones …

It was 1990 and there was a new scene happening – indie music coming out of Manchester and Liverpool and dance music everywhere. Kim and I were too young to go to the actual parties, but we knew all about them. People were taking Ecstasy at raves, dancing to sound systems in marquees and fields and warehouses, or in people’s front rooms. Somehow the mores of that subculture diluted themselves into signs and symbols we could be part of. Boys grew their hair long. We wore T-shirts with yellow smiley faces on, hooded tops patterned with psychedelic suns and moons, strange new shoes called Wallerbees in lilac and pink.

Romford was our stomping ground, equidistant between Ilford, where I lived, and Upminster, where Pinners was, and not far from Kim’s house. We were fourteen and looked it, but there was an off-licence there that would sell us bottles of dry Martini or Cinzano or Thunderbird. We’d walk the town centre, swigging straight from the bottle, my vision blurred and spinning from the booze – the shops and alleyways and bus shelters doused in refracted light. There were boys we saw around the town, beautiful boys whose names we didn’t know. We didn’t talk to them, but talked endlessly about them, watching from a distance as they knocked around a football, or stood smoking cigarettes, or sat perched on the back on a bench, high up, their feet on the seats where they deserved to be – kings of the shopping parade.

I’d tell my parents we’d gone to see a film, but really we were drinking and mooching until my father came to pick me up. I didn’t swim at the Dolphin any more, but it was a landmark for him to fetch me from. The yellow Triumph had finally gone, replaced by the more economical Mini – electric green, a joke of a car, shameful when he came to meet me, shameful as he was, parked up under a street light outside the pool with a roll-up on the go.

Once, I was sick into my bag all the way home, sat beside him in the car. He pretended not to notice, didn’t say a word as we swerved back to Ashgrove Road, and by the time we got there I was recovered, my head no longer swimming. I thought I’d gotten away with it but he walked through to the kitchen and told my mother. I was standing in the hall, holding a bag full of my own sick. In the living room, he flicked the television on and sat down in his armchair. Not a word from him the whole way home, but he told her, and as usual passed the problem – me – straight on.

♦

It was ironic that the most significant role my father had in my life was as a driver, since he was a notoriously bad one, the butt of a running joke between Uncle Terry and my mother.

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