Blog Story, pt.2
Listening to the TV, watching the radio,
everyone talking of the meltdown, one of the lowest times for
me was the winter before I started for Kerrang!, shacked-up
with an alcoholic speed-freak in Chiswick whose love I never
got, still saved for my older, much more exciting predecessor.
She had recently enrolled at St. Martin's as a mature student
studying fine art, yeah, right, and I was living on a quid a
day, pretending to look for a job, pretending to think about
going to college myself, pretending I knew what the fuck I was
doing. Because it was her gaff - a one-room shithole where we
shared the kitchen and bathroom with the gay couple in the next
room - she wouldn't let me have a key, so I would pocket the
backdoor kitchen key before leaving with her for the tube
station each morning, staggering down the road in the hungover
deathly cold not even speaking, her only thinking of college
and whatever masterpiece she was currently working on, me
hoping her train would come first so I could then walk back to
the flat, let myself in by the backdoor and crawl back into
bed.
Some mornings it didn't work out like that
though and my train came first, so it would be plan B. This
meant riding the tube from Chiswick Park to Ealing Broadway. No
electronic ticket barriers in those days, often no guards at
all, maybe some old black who didn't give a fuck, put 20p in
his hand, he was cool. Ealing was only a couple of stops away
and I would make for the baker's shop opposite the station. A
styrofoam cup of tomato soup and a ham salad roll could be
bought for 50p and starving as I always, always was back then I
would already be drooling as they handed it over in the white
paper bag.
I would save it though for the library,
which was a five-minute walk away. Week day mornings there was
hardly anyone ever in there and though you weren't supposed to
bring food or drink in I would carry my precious bag of goodies
in there, not looking left or right, find myself a cold seat in
the corner, look for some Henry Miller off the shelf - this was
very much my Tropic Of Whatfuckingever phase - and carry it
back and start reading as I ate, eking out every mouthful so
that it lasted as long as possible, my stomach still groaning
loudly for more when I'd finished, licking the crumbs and red
stains off my fingers, dreaming of a white Xmas and much, much
more.
Did the art-drink-speed-whore ever know
what I was up to? Of course not. That would have required
putting a name to a face in her mind and I would never tick
enough boxes in what passed for her thoughts for that. Instead,
when I could no longer get away with hiding in the library I
would walk through Lammas Park, smoking cigarettes to keep
warm, waiting for it to start to get dark. Sometimes I bumped
into Pete, an older loser whose wife had run off with someone
much more exciting and left him with twin daughters to clean up
after. He was in therapy, he said, when he said anything at
all, which wasn't often. He was dull, dull, dull but he let me
hang around a bit and sometimes we would go back to his
shithole for a cup of tea. But at least it was his. Me, I still
had to slope off back to the tube and go back to the room that
wasn't mine, make the bed that wasn't mine and wait for the
bitch that was never truly mine to come home and tell me all
about her day. How she and the guys were going to New York next
Spring, to see the whatever museum, or maybe Amsterdam, or
Paris, the art world was full of far out destinations full of
brilliant crazy kids just like her and all the other amazing
guys at college. By then she'd be pissed and speeding and
nothing else mattered. She'd pull out the half-bottle of voddy
in her bag and I'd fetch a couple of dirty glasses from the
kitchen, remembering to put back the key, and we'd sit there
playing records listening to how she was going to rule the
fucking world, me just toughing it out waiting for the sky to
fall which of course it eventually did, ha, yeah.
