Forgot to come back to this. I’ve been off down a right fucking rabbit hole. Cooley’s pics of Hastings got me thinking of when I was there once and then I started thinking of that week and that period of my life and loads of other stuff. For want of a better word I used to like getting myself into scrapes or situations. Not now, I think I’m a completely different person now but probably from being young up to my early 40s. I can’t think of the best way to describe it but doing anything slightly unconventional or with an element of risk was my preferred way of going about things. I didn’t want to fully conform, just a teeny bit. So I got myself into avoidable situations for a bit of a thrill. I tested the water more often than not and occasionally got out of my depth. I think I was just proving a point but of course a lot of the situations were drink or soft (occasionally less soft) drug induced.
In my late teens and 20s I liked to take myself off to odd places and hitch-hike around the country or indeed other countries. Some bloke who’d once given me a lift, said he was on local radio, pulled into a layby and got really fucking angry when I wouldn’t accept his advances. He had by the throat and I managed to elbow him in the side of the head and get out the car. That was weird but totally avoidable. I mean I could have just caught the train but that would have been boring. Looking back I also realise I was a tad naïve and too trustworthy or chose to ignore my sixth sense. I liked to talk to random people in backstreet pubs. I remember hitching down to Birmingham to see my mate. He said he finished work at 5 and to meet him in a certain boozer. I set off early and got a couple of good lifts and was there for 12. So I went to a shitty little pub and ended up chatting to these two old blokes, one claiming that he used to play for Derby. We ended up going on the piss all afternoon. Me and two old blokes round all of these run down pubs, chatting shit and getting arseholed. It’s just a weird thing to do but I think I just enjoyed doing things that I could talk about later. That regrets thread we had on here, I have loads of those where I’ve trusted people too much and putting myself in bad situations has resulted in me getting robbed, getting filled in, almost dying etc. I’m sure we’ve all done dickish stuff, I just seemed to do it more often than not. I mean why refuse a lift home after Palace away in a nice warm car when you can wander off into the night, find a covers band playing in some South London pub, get arseholed, chat to the locals, attempt to kip behind a takeaway and set off hitching home about 4ish - that’s sensible behaviour right? And that was a choice. I did all sorts of stupid shit like that. Not particularly dangerous, just the mildly uncertain. I was less Keith Moon, more Keith Harris.
Where the fuck am I going with this? Right, Hastings. January ’99 – Leeds are drawn away at Portsmouth in the FA Cup. The Saturday after that we were at Southampton. I decided I’d have a week of fannying around in the south and seeing what was about. The mid to late 90s were pretty good for me. I lived in York and had been sharing a house with a bloke I worked with. It was ok at first, all a bit Men Behaving Badly but after about three years I think we were getting on each other’s tits and I was looking for an excuse to get out. This came in the shape of two girls at work who had just started and were a bit younger than me. We all got along well, and so over a couple of drinks we decided to try and get somewhere between us. We ended up finding this old terraced house close to Rowntrees. It had a tiled floor hallway and tall ceilings – a lovely old place. So we soon moved in there. The lads at work couldn’t believe it, ‘You lucky bastard’, ‘Here he is, fucking Man About The House’. Admitedly for a while it was a right laugh. I’d been going out with the same girl for a few years. I should really have called it a day but we just plodded on. We shared a lot of interests e.g football, music, films, drinking etc and did loads together but I knew it wouldn’t last forever. I used to spend a lot of time staying over at her mum and dad’s and they were ace with me. I got fed there, had beer in the fridge, lifts all over from her as I didn’t have a car. I just got too used to having it easy. Then she decided to buy herself a new build, bottom floor flat. This was where the old rugby ground in York used to be. There was already a small, private hotel there and they built a few flats in the grounds. It was all owned by Ray Batten who I’d never heard of but was a big name for Leeds Rugby League club in the 60s and 70s apparently. The hotel had a good bar and he was usually serving there so we got to know him a bit. Once she moved in we used the bar as a local and the stagger home was all of 30 seconds. The time that we used to spent at her parents’ house was now spent at the new flat and this was a mere five minute walk from where I was now living myself in the Man About The House place. I had the best of both worlds – her place for the bar, food, shagging and all that sort of carry on, my place for chilling, sleeping, music and hanging out with the two girls (women? girls? birds?) and their mates when they came up.
The two girls were polar opposites. One was from near Nottingham, I liked her a lot and we got on well, once or twice too well. She was a real laugh, liked a drink, talked absolute filth and had an enormous set of tits. A couple of times we had a bit of this and a bit of that but nothing more. Often we lounged about on her bed watching TV and I’d end up kipping in there rather than walking the ten yards along the landing to my own pit. I went down to her mum and dad’s a couple of times so we could go out with her mates around Nottingham. I fancied her mother, she was just an older version and thinking back to that mother/daughter thing now gets me all of a fucking dither. She wasn’t averse to wandering around the house in just a t-shirt and pants either…need to pause…The other house-mate was from Bolton and wasn’t in possession of a big set of churns, just dead plain and slightly odd. I once knocked on the door of the bathroom to tell her there was a phone call. She shouted back that she’d be there in a sec as she was just coming out of the shower and would need to put something on. She appeared wearing a pair of tights and holding the bath mat to her. I’ve never worn tights but I’d imagine they’re not the easiest to slip into quickly and even more so against wet legs. She was ok, just strange. Her dad was a vicar and had OCD about cleanliness. I saw her parents now and again when they visited for the day. Her mum sat nibbling sandwiches in the corner while her dad set about the place with a duster and a tin of Mr Sheen. You crack on your Reverance, don’t let me stop you.
Opposite the house was a working man’s club. Many’s the time the three of us crashed weddings and birthday parties after coming back from the pub. At the end of the road was an offy which also got some hammer. The Nottingham one’s mates were up every few weeks and one of them who I wasn’t that keen on seem to take a shine to me but I wasn’t really interested. I staggered up to my room one Saturday night after we’d all been out and found her lying on my bed completely bollocko reading the back of one of my CDs. It might have been a Kinks compilation, I can’t remember now.
All good things come to end and eventually they moved out. The one from Bolton had got the hump when she had her hair cut short, started weraring lumberjack shirts, turned up jeans and docs. I suggested that this KD Lang tribute act look wasn’t really doing much for her and things got a touch fractious. When I helped her pack and move out she said don’t look in that drawer so I looked in that drawer. There was a whole array of different sized dildos, plugs, lube etc. One big nobbly thing looked like it could do some serious damage both inside and out. Strangely, this vicars’s daughter with the checked shirts then moved in with her boyfriend which came as a shock to us all. I’d also found him sparked out on my bed one night too, not, I assume for the reason he wanted a shag, just that he was wazzed up and had collapsed in the wrong room.
I ended up having to recruit two more lodgers before I moved out myself soon after. The first was a girl from Scarborough who was fine with the no animals rule but turned up to move in carrying a daschund as she ‘thought it would be ok as he’s only small’. I had no choice. She had loud sex with her boyfriend most nights in the room that was once mine as I’d moved to the bigger one where I could now only dream of the gigantic chest that had recently occupied it. The dog rarely left the room even when her and her bloke were audibly fucking. They probably shoved him in the drawer as he was ‘only small’.
The other lodger was either in the army or about to go in or had just left. I never quite worked it out. He was posh, had massive feet and heavily polished shoes. I rarely talked to him but he said if ever I wanted to borrow one of his porn videos I was more than welcome. Some might not be quite to my taste he warned me, a bit specialist. I didn’t find out what this meant thankfully.
I digress. January 1999 – FA Cup fourth round, Portsmouth versus Leeds United. I went down in the car with the usual lot. I remember vividly standing early morning opposite the hospital in York with my bag for the week and it being dark and freezing cold – my mate was half an hour late. Mobile phones for all were still for the future. We spent a few hours in some hostelry not far from the ground and it was pretty lively walking there for kick-off. We were down some alley and big lumps of wood kept appearing from nowhere – Incoming!!! Anyway, a fine performance all round, battered them 5-1 and that was that. Went back to the car, grabbed my bag and said I’d ring them to meet up next Saturday – and I fucked off to Southsea. I don’t know why I picked there, probably because it was cheap. I can’t really recall what I did there other than wander round a few pubs and top up the dinner-time ale. By the end of the night I was pretty arseholed and set off walking without having a clue where my digs were. I wandered round and round for ages and bumped into some squaddies who said they’d show me but even in my pissed state I realised they were just going to fill me in and nick my wallet. After walking round seemingly for ever I found the place, a couple of hundred yards from where I’d started.
In the morning I had a look at a map and decided to head for Bognor Regis, no idea why. I must have had a day wandering round there and/or sleeping in the cheap B&B I’d found. From memory it was pretty dull and I went out for a few at night and it was dead. It was the Morrisey song being played out right there, it was Sunday and it was a coastal town and closing it down seemed no bad thing. Then I heard some music coming from somewhere and found a place that on going in, was pretty packed. It was a bit of a studenty type pub, indie music, cheap drinks. It’d do for a couple and then I’d go back. I was sat a table on my own and a group of four girls came over and asked if they could sit with the sad, lonely fucker as it was starting to fill up. After a while I got talking to the one next to me and we seemed to hit it off. ‘Why would you choose to come to Bognor?’ She had a point. I bought her a drink, then a couple more. We may have had a shuffle on the makeshift dancefloor, I hope not. It was getting late and a couple of her mates had gone. Next thing I remember was being in a taxi heading to her place, I think one of her mates was in the front. We were in the back behaving inappropriately for a Sunday or any other day. I had no clue where we were going as we sped through country lanes. It seemed ages but was probably only twenty minutes or so when the car stopped and we got out. I’m stood there staring along a drive at this big fuck-off house. As we walk up to it she’s giggling and shushing me and trying to find her key. She said we had to keep quiet so we didn’t wake her parents. Parents? No one mentioned parents. After a couple of attempts her key goes in the door and that was it, the dog’s barking, lights are coming on, inside door’s open. And there stands a parent. He ushers her in with his thumb and by his expression I’ve quickly deduced he’s not making me a bacon sarnie in the morning. Words are said, nothing heated but I’m soon back crunching down the gravel. When I get walking I realise I have no idea where the fuck I am. I walk for a couple of hundred yards and find a bench by a little village green type thing and sit down. It’s the early hours, deathly quiet, hardly any street lights, deserted and freezing. The street seems to go out into fields both ways and I’m not even sure which way we came in as the big house was in a small cul de sac and we’d been busy in the back of the taxi. I’m in a pickle and no denying.
I sit there shivering for a bit and blowing on my hands thinking what the fuck do I do now and decide I should at least attempt to walk somewhere and see what happens. Then I see some headlights driving slowly along and the car stops a few yards away. As I go over the passenger side window slides down and I look inside. It’s her dad again. I’m wondering if he’s got a gun. Fucker’s going to shoot me, sort of thing they do in rural Sussex I reckon. Am I still in Sussex? I don’t know any more. ‘You’d better get in.’ One way or another in the next hour I’m dying in a ditch. Either he’s going to put a bullet in my head for trying to shag his daughter under his roof, who despite being in her mid 20s, still lives at home because have you seen the price of property round here and she has a point but maybe it’s best not laid on me two seconds before I meet Pops who’s now just asked me to get in his car to drive me to a remote part of rural Sussex or a neighbouring county, still to be established, to deal with this situation of my doing – or – I’ll start walking, catch hypothermia and collapse. Either way, it’s a ditch and I’m unlikely to discovered by a farm worker on his way to work who’s stopped for a piss, for at least two weeks. I look in the back and she’s sat there with a coat pulled up and gives me a look of ‘don’t ask’. He tells me to get in again, he says he’ll give me a lift back to Bognor. Well this has all gone unexpectedly. I mumble about being fine and thanks very much and other niceities. He tells me he reckons I have no idea where I am, he’s right, I’ll freeze to death out here, he’s right and I’ll not get a better offer - hat-trick.
The car’s warm, the chat isn’t. Seems his daughter pleaded my case when they’d closed the door and reluctantly he pulled on his fleece and grabbed the car keys. She’s now fast asleep in the back or pretending to be and he’s chainsmoking whilst navigating the bends in the road. I decide not to push my luck and ask for the radio on. Seeing the bright lights of Bognor comes as a huge relief. ‘Erm, here’s fine thanks, my place is just down there’. I tell him how grateful I am but he just carries on smoking. She’s still sleeping/pretend sleeping as I get out thinking do I wave him off or not. I walk the fifteen minutes to the B&B which isn’t just down there at all but the silence was killing me.
I buy some sort of day rider bus pass and plan to head for Hastings for a couple of nights and stop off at a couple of villages on the way for a mooch round. I know Brighton quite well so ended up going there first. It’s late morning and they’re open so I decide to have a couple, get some scran and plan where to go. I find a tucked away boozer and get parked up for what became a mini session chatting to whoever wants to chat. A couple of hours whizzes by and I abandon the day excursion and decide to head straight to Hastings. A bit wobbly, I leave there, find the bus and set off. Five minutes in and nicely settled I realise I’ve left my bag back in the pub, what a knob. I have to get off and run back which seems to take forever. The landlord has it behind the bar so I have another couple of pints, the first as I was fucked from the jog, the second as a thankyou. And then fuck off to Hastings for a second time. I must have booked something ahead, I don’t recall, but stay at this arty/bar/restaurant/music venue called Pisarros which apparently is still there now. I don’t remember anything remarkable happening that night which was probably for the best. I headed into the old town and watched the Monday night football in a pub and had a look around.
I spend the next day wandering for miles around Hastings and the coast. I sit by the sea, walk on the beach and generally chill. The place I was staying is nice, found a pub or two, fish and chips, all of that kind of thing. That night I head out again to see what’s what. The evening’s a bit of a blur and at some point I find myself plonked in a bar and catch sight of this nice looking girl with her friend. Seems to be just the two of them. How we got talking I don’t know but it turns out she’s German and studying over here. Sehr gut. The three of us move on elsewhere, then her mate fucks off and it’s just the pair of us. I check if she lives out in the country and her dad owns any firearms and it seems not. Her mate returns and they chat privately. She needs to go as she can’t leave her friend on her own. Fair enough. We arrange to meet the next night, just us two – peck on the cheek and off they go. Smashing. Right let’s see what else is happening. I end up in a bar/club called The Crypyt. There’s a DJ on and it’s reasonably full for a midweek. I find myself chatting to this lad and his mate and soon establish the pair of them are both fucked. The place is pretty chilled and we have a couple of smokes and sit in the corner, all banjoed. Then something wrapped gets unwrapped and we’re all into it like it’s a sherbert dip. When closing time comes, one of the lads says let’s go back to his and get more fucked up. That‘s a reasonable suggestion I think, to go off to some bloke’s flat in a strange town who I’ve only known for two hours whilst struggling to walk or string a decent sentence together. Yeh, let’s do that. So we do.
His place is in St Leonards which is a couple of miles away, fuck knows how we got there. Everything now becomes hazy. I’m sat in the front room, smashed on a sofa, to my left, equally as fucked sit the other two. The music’s on, we’re all rolling up, cans appear, spirits appear and the music gets louder. I don’t stop to think about what I’m doing and we’ve all got the constant, stupid stoned giggles and my cheeks hurt from laughing so much. It could have been twenty minutes in, it could have been two hours but at some point the mate of the lad who’s house we’re in, knocks a glass over and it breaks. ‘Ooh fuck, sorry man.’ The other lad looks at the broken glass through squinting red eyes, ‘Don’t worry about it’, drains his own glass and hurls it across the room where it shatters on the far wall, ‘Have that one on me!’ There’s a small pause and we’re all laughing again. His mate’s holding his stomach and has turned bright red trying to repeat what he’s just heard but can’t get his words out as he’s struggling to breathe with laughing so much. Then the lad who’s house it is stumbles over, picks my glass up and pelts that at the same wall, ‘Make it a double’ and we’re all roaring again.
Then things move up a notch as a CD gets launched, then another, then another and then the cases. And we’re all up on different sides of the room frisbeeing fucking CDs at each other and attempting to duck to avoid stitches. The CD tower gets tipped up in the middle of the room for ammo for this Battle of Hastings and all manner of greatest hits, compilations and live recordings are whizzing around the room like a clay pigeon test centre. And then the lad goes big, picks up a speaker, mid song and hoys the fucking thing at where I’m standing, straight into the wall with a thud. So I chuck it back. The other lad pitches in with the other speaker, then someone picks up the stereo and that gets launched. This leads to a free for all and the next two minutes are spent in full battle combat as anything that isn’t nailed down gets pinged around the room either at the wall or at each other. The TV goes, video, mirrors, pictures, ornaments, the lot. Nothing is spared in this war. Then we all collapse, too fucked to fight any more and someone skins up again.
The scene is one of utter devastation. It’s like a Dresden living room. No-one yet comprehends the damage and what’s occurred. It’s quiet, nothing electrical has survived and the laughter has turned to quiet contemplation ie what the fuck just happened? We carry on smoking and get fresh drinks from the untouched kitchen. The atmosphere’s different now. Soon the lad who’s house it is - it might not be his house – shit – maybe we’ve broken in and I’m too fucked to realise and the neighbours will have called the rozzers – anyway he’s mumbling incoherently and then just falls asleep mid sentence on a sofa of debris. I say something that I think is mildly amusing and it seems to the other lad it isn’t and he comes back at me with a load of abuse, thinking I’m ripping the piss out of his mate. He’s smoking on his own now and occasionally utters something incomprehensible. I’m utterly wasted and begin to get the fear Withnail. I’m feeling pinned down, unable to move. I desperately need cold water on my face and a piss and it takes an age to talk myself out of the paralysis and into the downstairs bog. I stare into the mirror and try to talk myself into a degree of sensibility. I stay like this for a while, privately chatting, agreeing, disagreeing, smiling, nodding with what stares back. I’m in there for ages I reckon and throw a load of cold water on my face before heading back to the bomb crater. A break from the mayhem and now it all looks a whole lot worse. It makes Led Zep’s hotel rooms look like a balloon fight in a play gym. I can barely see the floor for shrapnel. There are bits of speaker, wires, plugs, springs, CDs – so many CDs. There’s glass, splintered wood, broken frames, pottery, plates, fag ends, cans, bottles and a TV lying on its front. The walls are pitted with holes and scrapes and video tape is hanging off the fireplace like streamers. The two occupants of the sofa by the window are now both fast asleep and I know I have to get out sharpish. Once Wreck-it Ralph and his chum come round and see this, then see me, they’re going to be clueless to what’s happened and I’m back in the firing line all over again. I tread as carefully as I can in my screwed up state over the wasteland of plastic and metal. I notice in the ashtray on the sofa between them is a big block of the squidgy black we’ve been consuming so I decide to take it. Then decide not to. They’re going to need it when they open they’re eyes to this shit tip. I break a bit off for personal use, trouser that and put the rest back in the space where a coffee table had recently stood, then creep to the door. One last look round and I’m out of the madhouse and running like fuck along the sea-front, heart and head pumping like bastards.
I’m woken by seagulls. They’re squawking and I lay there with my eyes closed feeling hugely uncomfortable and knowing things aren’t right but not sure what sort of wrong just yet. I don’t open my eyes for a few minutes, I daren’t. The tiniest snippets of last night’s carry on are starting to seep through to my brain. When the room comes into focus I’m thrown. I appear to be wedged under the window and on the floor. I’m fully dressed including my coat and still have my boots on. I’m lying under a…what’s the fuck’s this… a curtain. Oh and a couple of towels. Ok. Sitting up brings on a spin and once I ride that I scan the room. What the fuck’s happened here then? The mattress has been dragged from the bed and is on its end up against the door with another towel draped over it. The curtain pole is down and is minus a curtain which I pull back off me and attempt to stand. I’m soon sitting again on the low mattress-less bed. My right hand is cut and plastered in dried blood which I can now see is also on my jeans and the kettle on the table. This isn’t good. I want to go back to sleep. I feel like complete dogshit. In the bathroom I find the duvet in the bath which I assume I’ve attempted to kip in. There’s more blood dotted about. I’m back looking in the mirror and there’s blood on my face. I wash this off and my face seems to have escaped any major damage other than a couple of small friendly fire CD injuries. The blood must be from my hand. I wonder if this was sustained attempting to tip a well aimed cheap vase around the armchair or perhaps block an assault from a small Ikea bookshelf but I guess I’ll never know.
This is the second fucked up room I’ve been in recently. What happened? Fuck knows. I’ve no memory of getting in. Last I remember was running like fuck from the house of horrors. I must have got in and had some paronia type shit going on of been hunted down by those two fuckers who’ve awoken from their war-torn bunker.
I’ve got a room to put back together. My hand’s borderline needing stitches. My head is banging like a fucking drum. I’m shivering, sweating and shaking at the same time. My feet are throbbing from not removing my boots for around 14 hours. I can only taste nicotine and belched beer and…whisky maybe? Rum? Fuck knows. I can smell myself and it’s not pleasant. I might have been sick and possibly pissed myself and that’s when I remember – I’ve got a date in a few hours.
It’s mid morning and I’ve missed breakfast. I desperately need junk food to kick-start the day. I’m already dressed so that saves a job. In the reception area there’s a bloke fixing a small glass panel on the front door. As I pass him, ‘Morning’, I look at my hand..mmm…best not think about it. I buy crisps, cheese slices, crisps, Peperamis, crisps and Lucozade. On my return the manager is stood in reception. She’s about my age, pretty, nicely dressed, hair in a pony tail. I’m sporting minor injuries, gripping a plastic bag of scooby snacks and still wearing a coat from the night before. I look like I’ve just crawled out of a skip. Over the noise of the bloke mending the broken window she informs me that checkout was half an hour ago. Fuck, forgot all about that. I tell her I’ll stay for another night if that’s ok. She half smiles, looks me up and down and tells me it’s a good decision.
Back in my room I munch my way through the balanced diet and strip off. I’m bruised to fuck. I forego a shower and with the mattress now on the floor I collapse on it and fall into a deep sleep. When I wake up it’s getting dark again and I feel remarkably human so set about fixing the room and myself. Everything, including me scrubs up ok. As the place I’m staying has a pretty nice bar too, I’ve arranged to meet with the German girl downstairs. I feel like a nervous fucking teenager, genuinely. I was pissed when we met a couple of nights previously, cocky and full of bravado. Now I’m sober and it’s no longer a loud pub but a quiet intimate spot. I go down early, get a drink and plonk myself in a corner. She arrives soon after and looks as nice as I remember and I’m glad I mended the curtain pole now. We get on great and she laughs at the edited version of the previous night’s escapades. After a while we head off to get something to eat and then to a few pubs and bars – she likes a drink. We have a long walk along the pier and things develop nicely. There’s a bar/club at the end and we get parked in there for a while – chatting, drinking laughing. It’s only years later that I found out loads of great band had played Hastings Pier eg The Pistols, The Clash, The Kinks and I wished I’d taken a moment to have a look round and take that in but too late.
The pier’s near where I’m staying. ‘It’s your choice,’ I say and she nods ok. Eek. There’s no-one about and we manage to sneak in. I’m now so glad I took the time to tidy the place. Let battle commence.
Things start badly as that cool little one-handed flick of the bra-strap that I’d seen in films turns into a two minute pulling and twanging and for fuck’s saking Krypton factor challenge. Eventually, with the romance meter at zero, she sits up in a huff. In the half-light her hair’s all messed up and with one had on a hip she points the other at her ample Deutsch chest and loudly whispers, ‘It’s at ze front!!!’ Ahhh. How was I to know it was a front loader, what am I, a fucking lingerie expert? It seems not. When play restarts this minor blip soon pales into insignificance and Anglo/German relations are at an all time high. Much later she says she’d better get going but the bed was too comfortable to move from. You like the mattress yeh? You should have been here this morning love, we’d have been shagging up against the door.
I walk her the twenty minutes home and that was that. Over the next few months we talked quite a bit on the phone, there were even letters, remember those? There was talk of moving things on but sooner or later the only thing that moved on was us. And that was Hastings.
If it’s Thursday, it must be Salisbury. At the tourist office I book a room in a house close by that’s owned by a retired couple. ‘We’ll put you in Mark’s room.’ Fine by me. I know very little about Salisbury other than it has a big fuck off cathedral so I go and have a look round the big fuck off cathedral. Other than that, I remember very little other than mooching around the place with occasional pub-stops. At night I get ready to go out and spend half an hour chatting to the couple about this and that, all very pleasant.
Sooner or later I stumble into an old pub that I can hear music coming out of. Inside there’s a band playing, it’s folk night! This’ll do for a bit. I get a pew near the front and the trip to the bar is around three yards. Then mulled wine becomes a thing. I can’t recall if it was free or dead cheap or get one free with a pint or what but there was some deal. So as well as drinking whatever I was drinking, I’m also banging down mulled wine chasers – shudder. I’ve also ended up on a someone else’s table and there’s fucking mulled wine everywhere. Everyone’s arseholed and singing along to Streets of London or Dirty Old Town and chugging back this free/cheap winter warmer. I’m up and down to the bar getting drinks and coming back with jugs of the stuff. When the fiddle and accordian’s played its last, I attempt to get back to my digs and bounce off every wall on the way.
I feel like a seventeen-year-old again when I crash through the door. It’s a terraced house so you walk straight into the living room and just like my mum and dad years before, the couple are up watching TV. ‘Evening, good night?’ the bloke says. I’m leaning on the door that I’ve just slammed and grinning like a loon. ‘D’you know what, I have a good night thankyou,’ as I’m ushered into an armchair, stairs being too big a challenge for now. We talk for a while, me too loudly I’d imagine and the same thing repeated time and time again. I’ve no memory of going to my room and the morning finds me on top of the bed, not in it, jeans still on but thankfully I’ve managed to remove my shoes. My head’s thick and fuzzy, ears are still ringing with banjos and penny whistles and fucks knows what else. My jeans are splattered with a mix of mulled wine and Guinness and there’s a garlic odour on my fingers – kebab??? I don’t feel too clever.
‘Morning,’ the bloke says as I plonk myself down at the set table. They have two guest rooms and I’m the only one staying. ‘Sleep well?’ Yeh, terrific, could do with another five hours like. She’s in the kitchen and there’s a waft of bacon drifting through. ‘How was Mark’s room? Comfy bed?’ And she appears with a fry up. While I’m tackling that the bloke keeps chuckling. I know it’s about me as I was bollocksed last night. ‘Can I ask you a question?’ I say, ‘Who’s Mark? Is it your son?’
The bloke laughs even harder. ‘Have you forgotten already? We had all this last night.’
We did?
He pulls a photo album from the shelf and puts it on the table where I’m eating. There’s a faint glimmer of recognition, I think I’ve seen this before.
‘That’s Mark, the…what was it you said now…shitty haired scum bastard, that was it.’ Oh fuck. And there he is, grinning away with his arms round the couple who’s living room I’m now in, eating their bacon and eggs. Former Man United and Wales striker, Mark Hughes, the shitty haired scum bastard stares back at me.
‘I’ m so sorry,’ I offer. And the bloke’s laughing again as he snaps the book shut and places it back on the shelf.
‘Yeh, you said that last night as well.’
Turns out they are big friends with his mum and dad and they’ve been going down to Salisbury to visit since Hughes was little. He’d always stayed in that room before they’d even thought of renting it out. No-one else ever really used it so it became Mark’s room. He did have shit hair though.
Winchester, which is where I go for my final night, is another place I know little about other than it also has a big fuck off cathedral. The tourist office finds me another cheap room in a lovely big house run by a woman on her own who, as far as I know, has no links to professional footballers, shitty haired or otherwise. The town seems a nice enough place and after visiting the big fuck off cathedral I have a pint and then walk up this big hill that overlooks the city and sit down to have a smoke and watch the world go by. It’s a cold, bright January day and my merry jaunt’s coming to an end – tomorrow means football again. Back in the town I have a look around and end up at The Great Hall which houses, allegedly, King Arthur’s Round Table. It’s a big bastard alright, hoisted up on the wall, definitely not from Ikea. All historied out, I sit down on a bench in the hall to contemplate my next move, which appears to be scran and beer. After a few minutes a girl sits down at the opposite end and starts making notes or drawing or something. She catches me looking at her and I try to look up at the table but it’s obvious. ‘Err…it’s enormous isn’t it.’ Who said that? Me, it was fucking me. Eh? It’s enormous? What the fuck?
‘Sorry?’ Yeh me too. She must think I’m a right oddball.
‘The table,’ I points, ‘..err, it’s a big old thing’. Remarkably she doesn’t leave to phone the police and we agree that yes, it’s fucking enormous. I take a photo of the table, she asks if I want her to take one with me in. Not really but I say yeh which means sitting a bit closer to her to put the camera back in my bag once it’s taken. She’s American. ‘What part of America you from?’
‘Canada’
She’s Canadian.
Amazingly, we’re having a conversation that’s lasted more than five minutes. She’s a student, over for a year, lives in Winchester and this is part of her course, the table bit. I don’t think it’s a course on furniture, history perhaps. I tell her a précised story of my week, leaving out most of the details re heavy drinking, casual sex, destroying a living room etc. I try my best not to sound weird.
‘Erm, I was thinking about going for a coffee after here,’ she says.
‘So was I.’
I wasn’t. I was thinking of going for four or five pints, a chilli and a couple of hours kip but coffee would have to do for now.
She goes all studenty and offers to pay for her own coffee and I reckon I can jut about cover it but it seems she gets a taste for it. She’s taking the piss now.
Times flies and we’re both soon buzzing on lattes and cinnamon buns. ‘I don’t think you’re weird,’ she says. Well that’s a start. We’re at that point of do I now go home? Does she go home? Do we go somewhere together? I stand up, spread my arms and do my Mike Yarwood, ‘Well this is me,’ in a bid to disprove any weirdness but have probably just added to it.
‘Ooh, how did you cut your hand?’
Do you know what, I wish I fucking knew myself.
‘Train door, little piece of jagged metal.’
‘Wow, really? You should sue them.’
‘Hold on, I thought you said you weren’t American.’
And she laughs a bit too much and that seals it, I’m not weird and we’re off to her place. It’s on.
The house is not what I’m expecting and you wouldn’t know it’s a student gaff at all. It’s clean for one thing and her big room has wooden panels on the walls. We’d picked up a bottle of red on the short walk from town and that’s soon opened. I don’t really know how this is going to progress. I’m sat in a big old comfy sofa in a bay window and she’s on her bed. We both drink, chat and laugh for some time and get on well. She gets up to go to the toilet so I go over and sit on her bed and thumb through her CDs which are stacked on a nearby shelf. When she returns we put some music on and both lay back to listen. And then, inevitably, we’re canoodling. Her bra strap clasp is in the regulation rear position which is reassuring. But then things stall.
‘I can’t.’
That’s ok, this is a rare treat as it is believe me, any more is a brucie bonus alright.
‘Ok, that’s fine.’
‘It’s not that I don’t want to it’s just..’ and she nods toward what’s just become a no-go area. I deduce that this means she either has a cock, unlikely, or it’s her time of the month. Shame. She has another glug of wine. ‘Lay back.’
Oh Jesus. There’s a crack in the curtain and I can see it’s dark outside and the streetlights are on.
I’m in the room of a Canadian student who I’ve known for around four hours. We’re on her bed. I’ve got a nice little wine buzz on and she’s topless, oh, and she’s now blowing me off. I think that about covers it and it’s all rather splendid.
She says when can she see me again. Well that progressed quickly. I suggest I go back to get showered and changed and we can go out later, get something to eat. She says it’s her friends birthday and they’re all going out on the piss. I don’t invite myself along and she doesn’t ask.
‘What about next weekend? Can you come down again?’
I like her but y’know, a 500 mile round trip for a shag, big ask. However, ask me again when you’ve put your top on because at the moment I’m thinking where will I need to change trains.
‘Next weekend? I can’t…it’s Newcastle at home.’ (lost 0-1, Salono ’63)
She saw me off at her front door and I never saw her again. There were a couple of phone calls and maybe a card but soon after all relations with Canada were broken off.
Back at the place I’m staying the woman asks if I’ve had a nice day and been up to much. I tell her I’ve had a great day thanks and have been busy with all sorts. I need a shower and to chill out before heading out for a couple on my last night so start moving towards the stairs.
‘Oh,’ she shouts after me, ‘Breakfast at eight thirty to nine if that’s ok. I’ve had another young lady check in earlier and that suits her too, that suit you?’
Young…lady? Young. Lady. A lady, a younger lady…’No problem, cheers.’
Upstairs I can hear the young lady when I pass her room and her TV’s on. Mmm. Little man you’ve had a busy day. Surely you’re not up for another challenge. what is wrong with you?
After a shower I wander down to the TV lounge and it’s not too long before I hear a door close upstairs and footsteps approaching. Right, look cool and chilled as fuck. Be Steve McQueen not Gordon. The door opens and in she walks. Oh my God. When the woman said ‘young lady’, she was being ironic. Ha, good one. The thing before me is a dead ringer for a slightly older version of Miss Jones from Rising Damp and no way I’m, playing Rigsby. We exchange pleasantries and I go out to get pissed.
It’s another cold Saturday morning, shivering with my bag at my feet. Matchday. The night before I’d rung my mate to arrange when and where to pick me up to go to Southampton. He’s one of the few people I know with a mobile phone. I’ve arranged to be picked up by a phone box on the outskirts of Winchester so they can call me in case of fuck ups. They call me, there’s been a fuck up. Half an hour wait in which time I think how glad I am I can now talk to people I know instead of piss about with pleasantries and chitchat.
They finally arrive and I sling my bag in the boot and myself in the back seat where I immediately have a can thrust at me. ‘Good week?’
‘Aye, not bad.’
‘Get up to much?’
‘Ah, this and that y’know.’
‘Yeh?’
‘Yeh…oh, shagged a German bird and got sucked off by a Canadian bird.’
‘Yeh? Same time?’
‘Nah.’
‘Shame.’
‘Aye.’
I open my can.
‘Any team news?’