Excerpts from ‘Cheap Day Return’

noire alley

Chapter 24: ‘Flickering lights and torn dirty tights.’

My heart beat like a tom tom drum being played by a heat crazed native. This sister was all hips and feline curves but it was way past the time all good kitties should be outdoors and the only milk I had in the broken office fridge was well past curdled and the SPAR had long since closed.

“Listen cute face” I rashly said as the index finger on my right hand flicked the safety off my British made Webley revolver I keep taped under the desk whilst my left hand deftly poured us both a stiff drink, neat, on the rocks. The triple Malt hit those icebergs with all the drama of the Titanic. The tension in the room was palpable.

“I don’t play cat sitter for no one and you couldn’t afford me if I did.”

I sat back down in my leatherette armchair with the aplomb of a dirty Tammany politician who’d just talked his way out of a sleaze racket at a press conference and made mother Teresa look like a penny sweet paid whore in the process. The chair squeaked in protest, I overruled.

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you just said but I think I like it.”

She murmured as she slid across the cheap wood board desk her bargain basement boob job knocking off the novelty snow globe my Aunt had brought back from Coney Island. She grabbed my neck tie and playfully throttled me with it, “I haven’t been this close to a man since my days in the convent but that was several lifetimes away and I’m all grown up now. This kitty has grown claws and knows how to scratch!” with that she nicked my eyelid with her single dirty nail which was held onto her finger more by prayer than anything else.

I couldn’t help but think that the cat thing was had run it’s course now she’d joined in with the theme.

pulp blonde“Maybe you are all grown up!” I snapped flinging her off the desk and into the faux leather chaise lounge I keep for emergencies, “But that don’t mean a damn thing in this cruel city, this city of the night, this cesspool of sleaze and corruption hanging onto the rocks of the Northern coast like some sort of parasitic bug on the malnourished caucus of a stray dog!” I sipped the bitter almond taste of my cheap dime store whiskey and sicked up a bit in my mouth, I covered the noise with a cough.

old crow whisky

“All this city cares about is eating up the good and pooping out what’s left and then making you wade through that poop to get the bus back to the one road town you call home. This ain’t no city of love it’s a Venus fly-trap made concrete and steel and I won’t let it make a meal out of us baby blue eyes! I just won’t dammit!”

She stood up, adjusted her huge bosom and grabbing me by the shoulders with the delicate touch of a blacksmith cried-

“But I like it here in Blackpool! It’s the Vegas of the North darling we can be it’s Rat Pack if only you’d get that through your thick skull or did the shrapnel you took in Korea kill what brains you had rattling around there to begin with?” She slapped me, it felt good, it felt real. Reality had been something I’d missed since I moved in across the road from the ‘Dame Miley Cyrus Arms Bar Floor Show Revue’ and the ‘Bulldog Café greasy spoon and B&B’ over a month ago.

You don’t come to Blackpool seeking reality.

The sting of her touch lingered on my face like a heatwave across the sunburnt ass of a mule.

Damn, Korea, I’d forgotten about Korea. Sure it had been hell but what could you expect from a cheap package flight and no knowledge of the lingo or the country, I’d been a fool to book my holiday there. The shrapnel was a constant reminder to me that the next time I travelled it was to be strictly first class and all the way to a luxury pad.

She shifted her D cups and made a move for the door, less a bee line than a hornets angered waltz. Stopping to gulp back the last of the bottle of Jacks I’d tried to hide behind the near empty filing cases she paused and looked at me with her one good eye, the other one looked directly at the crack in the yellowing celling.

“You know Johnny” she said “We could have made it you an I yet you chose to keep it business not pleasure.”

“If it’s pleasure you want you oughta try the theme park” I blithely uttered as I casually fingered yesterday’s Metro.

“Goodbye Johnny, maybe not goodbye but maybe lets just call it a farewell?”

She paused for effect her hand on the lead doorknob that was masquerading as brass.

“Well” I said, “Those are pretty much the same thing.”

She sighed, her boobs deflated marginally, “Don’t lets blame Blackpool, it’s just too easy.” and with that she had squeezed her plus size frame out of my doorway and into the neon lit night. Somewhere out there I heard a cat let out a distressed howl.

She’d be okay I thought, she was home on the mean streets of her beloved Blackpool…

and the day return ticket I’d slipped into her brassiere was valid until 12am.

blackpool 1950s

Nothing says Christmas quite like a wander around a graveyard.

I went for my usual Christmas ramble up to the old church yard and for a festively morbid and quiet wander around the gorgeously decayed Victorian memorials and monuments. At this time of year its eerily wonderful, like stepping into a M. R James tale or into the mind of an obsessive Anne Rice fan. The area is one of those wonderful things about living in a country that’s so rich in history, mostly though we’re either totally ignorant of it being in our locality and on our doorstep or we just take it for granted, which is rather tragic. grave11

The church tower is around 14th Century other parts are 16th and 19th century additions and behind the church sits a man made hill where once a Norman motte and bailey castle stood. The Norman’s built that shortly after William the Bastard’s ‘Harrying of the North’ and it was intended to guard the strategic crossing over the river that now flows just a minute’s walk from my home. I often pootle up to sit and take in the view of the modern city.

On this occasion though my usually quiet walk was somewhat ruined by the sight of a hundred parked cars awaiting their owners in the rarely packed church car park. Anyway the Church looked just fantastic with the stained glass illuminated by candles, the grim silhouette of the building looked both foreboding and welcoming cast against the grey darkening skies. So I wandered over and as I did so the sound of choral & carol singing gently greeted me, it felt as though I was intruding in some seasonal and rather middle class fantasy… naturally I wanted in! But sadly the doors to the Church were barred and no one was answering my pitiful tapping on them So I ended up reduced to my usual state of being on the outside looking in, tsk, ruddy typical.

In the end I kicked around the tombstones for a bit until it got very dark and I ran the risk of looking a bit odd frankly, stomping around a graveyard on my lonesome in a bit of a huff, also it didn’t help that I kept thinking I was doing everything that the protagonists in almost all M. R James stories do to come to a sticky end, namely mindlessly poking around graves and monuments and that started to creep me out, then the owls came out and I scrambled back to civilisation and homewards.

So that was my kick ass Xmas eve, locked out of a church, wandering around graves and frightening myself. Good old fashioned wholesome fun. Currently I’m listening to the Hextalls, The Leftovers & the Unlovables whilst fighting off the excesses of Christmas dinner and wondering why I’m being so damn anti-social when I’m surrounded with family.

It’s a start… of sorts.

Hullo and welcome to the Blog… such as it is at the moment.

Firstly please let me introduce myself and attempt to give you some idea about me via my back story.

roadieI’m Drew a former roadie for both Punk and Psychobilly bands, a large part of my teenage years and my twenties being almost entirely devoted to the promotion of gigs locally and attempting to form a band myself. As it stands today the band I started aged 18 (which is yet again in hiatus) has had around 40 plus members over its eleven year history and still has never managed to play a single gig, which I think you can agree is a bold strategy for any band and I’m oddly proud of that achievement. I think the last genre ‘mash up’ we had settled on was a uniquely local take on the whole Folk-Punk thing which was quite a leap from the terrible shouty, red faced anger we attempted to convey by being a total rip off of the Exploited.

I have a bad back from sleeping in vans and on floors and deafening tinnitus in both my ears which is more of a legacy than people remembering that I put on some rather nifty fund raisers or brought some very cool bands to the town… but I’m not bitter, not in the slightest.

Please rest assured that whilst I am a chunky excuse of a fading punk caricature hurtling towards middle aged oblivion this blog will not be given over to musings on ‘scene’ past or present as to be truthful I’m no longer in any position to comment.

metropolis_27cI’ve lots of interests in all manner of somewhat interesting things that I’m sure will crop up and feed some posts in the future. History, the works of M. R. James, H. P Lovecraft, wasting time with my illustrations, doodling and artsy stuff in general (I even briefly “studied” art), Science & Fantasy Fiction, Art Deco, Comix & comic strips their history and the art itself, wandering around old ruins, cathedrals and historic places of interest and muttering rather loudly because I want the place to myself and there are other tourists about, the Diesel Punk and CyberPunk genres, I’m an obsessive collector and reader of books, I can spend hours telling you about the detailed history of the kilt, I love so called ‘Cult’ TV’ things like The Avengers, The Persuaders, Adam Adamant, Kolchak etc. all the classics as well as the newer things like the X Files, Dark Skies, Warehouse 13 (list is pretty long) …and of course a host of other rather nerdy crap that isn’t really as cool as the whole ‘Geek-Chic’ shtick would have you first think but you get the basic idea.

I love muncloudedjoyusic and music history which means anything from ‘classic’ US Hardcore punk to the Ramones inspired Punk Rock (DO check out Scottish band The Murderburgers, they’re the future of UK punk in my opinion). Anyhow, here’s a short list of a few favs for you to digest: Dan Vapid, The Lillingtons, Screeching Weasel, Teenage Bottlerocket, The Ergs, Circle Jerks, Enemy You, Teen Idols, Masked Intruder, The Descendents, Minor Threat, Murderburgers, Bad Brains, The Riverdales, The Queers, The Unlovables, The Methadones, Squirtgun… et al.

 

I’m also not adverse to hoovering around the house to the accompaniment of embarrassingly camp Electro as well as enjoying a bit of Punkabilly, some Psychobiily (a lot of those ‘Billy’ genres around isn’t there?) post-punk, indie, Blues, Gospel and Trad Jazz (George Melly, Humphrey Lyttelton, Acker Bilk, Johnny Dankworth all the greats)1960s Psychedelia, Fuzzed out garage Rock/ Proto-Punk and Freakbeat.

In short the only thing I personally cant take to is Dubstep and Prog, I’m too old to enjoy the former and too young to enjoy the later.

So there you go, most people will have taken one look and wisely decided not to check back in for the updates based on that alone, the worst of all possibly intros I shouldn’t wonder. I will no doubt develop a theme and pattern for the blog in time but that will no doubt shift and be rather fluid as I find new things to get excited about and comment on and in time I hope to gain some interest from people other than myself.

I’m needy like that.

TTFN

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