No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy: Memoirs of a Working-Class Reader by Mark Hodkinson (Canongate 2022)

 

We had about four Caspers in my school class alone, lads from ‘broken’ homes dressed in hand-me-downs, not sure from where their next meal would come, dodging bullies, irate neighbours or members of their own family. These were shadow boys, a few yards behind the rest of us, unwilling to join in. They often played alone on the margins, down by the river near the chemical factory or on a piece of oily scrubland between the road and railway. Gerald Swanson was typical. We’d often ask him to join us but it was like trying to tame a feral cat; he didn’t trust us enough to draw close. He was always yawning and sometimes fell asleep in class, his forearm a pillow for his head. During the summer holidays we found him sleeping on a pallet near the canal, curled up tight. His face was mucky and looked to be tear-smeared.

‘Swanny.’

Gerald opened his eyes, blinked and scanned our faces. In an instant, he was off. He charged through the shrubs and bushes and was on the towpath within seconds.

‘What’s up with you? We’re not going to beat you up or owt.’

‘Fuck off,’ he yelled and jogged away.

On Days Like These: My Life in Football by Martin O'Neill (Macmillan 2022)

 

Within a few days I’m in residence above McKay’s Café, in a room – essentially a converted attic – with Seamus and another ten guys, much older than us, who rise much earlier than we do and arrive back at their digs much later than we do. They spend the night chatting about their respective jobs and at the weekend, if they don’t go back home, spend the early hours of the morning detailing their conquests of some hours before. Nottingham, I’m told early on, is a city with five girls to every fellow, so the chances of them getting hitched with someone, at least for the evening, are, I surmise, reasonably decent. Even so, I’m not convinced that their bawdy stories – told to each other at four o’clock on a Sunday morning – ring completely true. Some of these men have, in all honesty, not been introduced to a bar of soap in a week. So if these stories have a semblance of truth then Seamus and I feel that we must have a chance ourselves of finding a girlfriend, because we have not only washed, but also have a little aftershave to hand.

I have been at the club less than twenty-four hours. Bill Anderson, as he tends to do when under some stress, reaches for his breast pocket and produces an outsize handkerchief to wipe some beads of sweat from his brow. If my affair at the Henry Road landlord’s house is causing him to perspire, heaven knows what Saturday at White Hart Lane might do to him.

Regardless, he brings me into the reserve team dressing room and introduces me to the players. Most of these lads are my age, perhaps a year or eighteen months older, one or two are a little younger. In fact, John Robertson, almost a complete year younger than me, came on as a substitute last Saturday against Liverpool and may well start the game this coming weekend against Tottenham Hotspur.

Robertson is an interesting character. A young Scotsman from the outskirts of Glasgow, he has been at the club since he was fifteen years old. He is a very talented centre midfield player, with two really good feet, and can spray passes all over the pitch. Robertson is extremely well thought of at the club and a player of much promise. He is also extremely popular in this dressing room, despite the fact that he seems to have plenty to say for himself. All this I glean from my first fifteen minutes in the changing room on 21 October 1971. The introductions finished, Bill departs and I put on my Nottingham Forest training gear, with the number 10 sewn into the shirt and tracksuit. This will be my training number for the next decade. I am acutely self-conscious of the large birthmark over my right shoulder, and keep my back to the wall when disrobing. But they will spot it eventually after training when we jump into the communal bath adjacent to the dressing room. I suppose I will have to endure the almost endless ribbing I received from the Distillery players, who seemed to find continuous mirth at my expense.

Fergie Rises: How Britain's Greatest Football Manager Was Made At Aberdeen by Michael Grant (Aurum Press 2014)

 

Aberdeen made it back to the League Cup final, which was brought forward to December. The feeling in Scottish football was that they had done the hard part simply by reaching Hampden. They had won all four cup ties against Rangers and Celtic with an aggregate score of 9–3. Indeed, the quarter-final against Celtic at Pittodrie saw a demonstration of virtuoso finishing by Steve Archibald and evidence of how unpredictable and pragmatic Ferguson could be when wayward characters were useful to him. Archibald scored a hat-trick and defied Ferguson’s instructions by taking the match ball home as a souvenir. He was a strong character and a law unto himself, but he rubbed along with Ferguson even though the potential for conflict was never far from the surface. When Ferguson found out about the ball he called Archibald into his office and ordered him to return it. The following day he was sitting in the coaches’ room with Pat Stanton and Teddy Scott, drinking tea and chatting, when the door burst open. Archibald shouted: ‘There’s your fucking ball’ and booted it hard into the small room. The three of them ducked and spilled tea over the floor as it ricocheted around. Others would have been crucified, but no action was taken against Archibald. ‘That was Steve,’ said Ferguson.

Intelligent, strong-willed, capricious, and ambitious: the blond, tousle-haired Archibald shared many of the manager’s own characteristics. He turned up to moan about one thing or another so often that Ferguson said there was ‘an Archibald chair’ in his office. ‘Stevie liked to have his say and Fergie liked that about him,’ said Stanton. ‘He’d probably have done it himself when he was a player because he was volatile too. He recognised something of himself in Stevie. He didn’t want his players to be wee choirboys. Even when he was angry with Stevie he appreciated where he was coming from. They had respect for each other.’ Archibald also happened to be a dashing, reliable goalscorer with great instincts and reactions. He gave Aberdeen real menace.

Fingers Crossed : How Music Saved Me from Success by Miki Berenyi (Nine Eight Books 2022)

 

At one of the Soho House soirées, while I order drinks from the bar, a drunk comedian slurs at me to either suck his cock or fuck off. As I stand chatting to friends, Alex from Blur is sprawled on the floor making ‘phwoarr’ noises and sinks his teeth into my arse. The Carry-On Sid James impersonations are a common theme. I fall into conversation with Keith Allen and try to ignore him sweeping his eyes around my body, twitching with overheating gestures and tugging at his collar to show he’s letting off steam. Another comedian sharing a cab ride for convenience suggests he come in for a bunk-up, despite having spent the entire night excitedly chatting about his imminent fatherhood. Liam Gallagher circles me, wondering aloud when I’ll be ready to fuck him in the toilets. Look, I know I’m hardly Mary Poppins, but this isn’t flirting, it’s harassment. It’s constant, relentless sexualisation. And there’s a nasty edge to it, implying that it’s me, not them, who is asking for it.

I recall Suzanne Vega once pointing out that Madonna may be breaking boundaries, but every teenage girl who dresses like her is still treated like a slut. I’m experiencing a similar uncomfortable side effect with the supposed androgyny of Britpop. While Justine from Elastica and Sonia from Echobelly and Louise from Sleeper, wearing ungendered suits or jeans and T-shirts, get treated as one of the boys, my long hair and short dresses are now a signal that I’m absolutely gagging for it. Sure, I could get a crop and stop wearing a skirt, but that’s no different to saying, ‘If you don’t want the grief, dress like a nun.’ I’ve been doing what I do for years and now I’m being reframed as happy to be objectified.

I’ve been reading feminist texts since college, however unfashionable that might be right now (and, to be fair, Chris has always found it a bit tiresome). My education, both at PNL and from the politicised bands I’ve followed, has taught me precisely to see through the ‘harmless fun’ to the misogyny that drives it. I’m not militant about it. I don’t crucify people for crossing a line, I just recognise there is one. And I need to know someone well enough to accept that they’re ‘just joking’; I’m not going to swallow it as a lame excuse from a bloke I’ve just met.

Why Me? by Donald E. Westlake (Mysterious Press 1983)

 

The back room at the O.J. looked like one of those paintings from the Russian Revolution—the storming of the Winter Palace—or, perhaps more appropriately, from the Revolution of the French: a Jacobin trial during the Terror. The place had never been so crowded, so smoky, so hot, so full of strife and contention. Tiny Bulcher and three assistant judges sat together on one side of the round card table, facing the door, with several other tough guys ranged behind them, on their feet, leaning against the stacked liquor cartons. A few more savage-looking types lurked to both sides. A couple of chairs had been left empty near the door, facing Tiny and the rest across the green felt table. Harsh illumination from the single hanging bare bulb with its tin reflector in the middle of the room washed out all subtlety of color, reducing the scene to the work of a genre painter with a poor palette, or perhaps a German silent film about Chicago gangsters. Menace and pitiless self-interest glinted on the planes of every face, the slouch of every shoulder, the bend of every knee, the sharpness of every eye, the slant of every smoldering cigarette. Everybody smoked, everybody  breathed, and—because it was hot in here—everybody sweated. Also, when there was no one being interviewed everybody talked at once, except when Tiny Bulcher wanted to make a general point, at which time he would thump the table with fist and forearm, bellow, “Shadap!” and insert a sentence into the resulting silence.

Nobody’s Perfect by Donald E. Westlake (Mysterious Press 1977)

 

Tiny said to him, “You the driver?”

“The best,” Murch said, matter-of-factly.

“It was a driver got me sent up my last stretch,” Tiny said. “Took back roads around a roadblock, made a wrong turn, come up behind the roadblock, thought he was still in front of it. We blasted our way through, back into the search area.”

Murch looked sympathetic. “That’s tough,” he said.

“Fella named Sigmond. You know him?”

“I don’t believe so,” Murch said.

“Looked a little like you,” Tiny said.

“Is that right?”

“Before we got outa the car, when the cops surrounded us, I broke his neck. We all said it was whiplash from the sudden stop.”

Another little silence fell. Stan Murch sipped thoughtfully at his beer. Dortmunder took a mouthful of bourbon. Tiny Bulcher slugged down the rest of his vodka-and-red-wine. Then Murch nodded, slowly, as though coming to a conclusion about something. “Whiplash,” he commented. “Yeah, whiplash. That can be pretty mean.”

“So can I,” said Tiny, and the door opened again . . .

Jimmy the Kid by Donald E. Westlake (Mysterious Press 1974)

A luminous afternoon in the black-and-white forest. The monster, played by Boris Karloff, pauses as he hears the sweet notes of a violin. His face lights, he lumbers through the woods, following the sound. He comes to a cosy cottage amid the trees, very gingerbread. Inside, the violin is being played by a blind hermit, who is being played by O. P. Heggie. The monster approaches, and pounds on the door.

Someone pounded on the door.

“Eee!” Murch’s Mom said, and jumped straight up out of her folding chair. Which folded, and fell over with a slap.

They had all been sitting around the battery-operated small television set they’d brought out to follow the kidnapping news. There’s been no kidnapping news—apparently the cops were keeping a news blackout on—so now they were watching the late movie. The three kerosene lamps, the hibachi in the fireplace, and the flickering television screen, all gave some light and less heat.

Someone pounded at the door again. On the TV screen, the blind hermit opened his door to the monster. The others had all scrambled to their feet too by now, though without knocking over their chairs. Harshly Kelp whispered, “What do we do?”

“They know we’re here,” Dortmunder said. “Let me do the talking.” He glanced upstairs, and said, “May, if the kid acts up, say something about him having nightmares and go up there and keep him quiet.”

May nodded. The pounding sounded at the door for a third time. Murch’s Mom said, “I’ll go.”

They all waited. Dortmunder’s hand was near the pocket with his revolver. Murch’s Mom opened the door and said, “Well, for God—”

And the kid walked in.

“Holy Toledo!” Murch said.

Kelp, slapping his hands to his face, yelled, “Masks!" “Masks! Don’t let him see your faces!”

Dortmunder didn’t believe it. He stared at the kid, looking as wet and muddy and ragged as a drowned kitten, and then he looked upstairs. And then he ran upstairs. He didn’t know what he thought, maybe that the kid was twins or something, but he just didn’t believe he wasn’t in that room.

Bank Shot by Donald E. Westlake (Mysterious Press 1972)

 

The lieutenant looked out the side window, though without any hope. They were climbing a hill, and just ahead was the sign for McKay’s Diner. The lieutenant remembered the free cheeseburger he’d been promised, and smiled. He was about to turn his head toward the captain and suggest they stop for a snack when he saw the diner was gone again. ‘Well, I’ll be darned,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘That diner, sir,’ the lieutenant said as they drove by. ‘They went out of business already.’

‘Is that right.’ The captain didn’t sound interested.

‘Even faster than I thought,’ the lieutenant said, looking back at the space where the diner had been.

‘We’re looking for a bank, Lieutenant, not a diner.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The lieutenant faced front, began again to scan the countryside. ‘I knew they wouldn’t make it,’ he said.

The Fugitive Pigeon by Donald E. Westlake (Random House 1965)

 

It was a slow night, like any Tuesday. The late late show was High Sierra and there’s always a couple of Bogart fans around, in fact I’m a Bogart fan myself, so I figured to stay open till the movie was over and then lock up and go upstairs and get some sleep. After one-thirty I only had two customers, both regulars, both sitting at the bar, both watching the TV, both beer drinkers. I stood down to the far end of the bar, with my arms folded and my white apron on, and I watched the TV myself. Commercials, one or both customers had refills. I don’t drink on duty, so it was none for me.

My name is Charles Robert Poole, everybody calls me Charlie. Charlie Poole. Just so you know.

High Sierra ended with the cop shooting Bogart in the back and Ida Lupino glad society couldn’t treat Bogart bad any more, and I said, “Okay, gents, time to drink up. I need my beauty sleep.” It’s a neighborhood bar, regular customers, I like to keep an informal atmosphere.

These two were both good about it, not like some which come in mostly on weekends and want the night to go on forever. But not these two, they drank up and said, “Night, Charlie,” and out they went, waving to me.

I waved back and told them good night and rinsed their glasses and set them on the drainboard, and the door opened again and two guys came in with suits and topcoats, the topcoats all unbuttoned so you could see they were wearing white shirts and ties. Not what you mostly get in a bar in Canarsie two-thirty on a Tuesday night.

I said, “Sorry, gents, just closing up.”

“Yeah, that’s okay, nephew,” said one of them, and they came over and sat down on stools at the bar.

I looked at them then, and they were both grinning at me. Tough-guy types. I recognized them both, associates of my Uncle Al, they’d both been in before to drop off a package or a message or to pick one up. I said, “Oh..I didn’t recognize you at first.”

The one that talked said, “You know us, though, don’t you, nephew? I mean you know us to see, am I right?”

Be Stiff: The Stiff Records Story by Richard Balls (Soundcheck Books 2015)

Prologue

32 Alexander Street, London, W2

1977. An office in a former house in Bayswater, now home to a small record label. Inside is a garrulous Dubliner with scruffy hair, a couple of women hard at work, and a boyish-looking singer called Wreckless lounging in a chair. The door opens and a bloke comes in carrying several large cardboard cut-outs of some of the label’s exciting new acts. One cut-out is of a nerdy, pigeon-toed singer with a sneer and a Fender Jazzmaster.

“Ah great, they’re here. Great,” says the Irishman. “Jesus, these are pretty good. I love the one of Elvis. These look all right.” Excitedly he picks them up and admires them, before grabbing a hammer from a drawer and climbing on a chair. “Hey Suzanne, would you pass me a nail? I want to put these up. These are gonna look great up here.” Bemused at this sudden burst of activity, the singer looks on as the giant shop displays are banged into place. “That’s the sort of stupid thing I’d do,” he thinks to himself.

As the hammering goes on, a wild-eyed, intimidating figure bursts in and looks up at the wall, horrified. “Yeah, we’ve got the displays,” says the Irishman. “They’re fucking great aren’t they? Great.”

 

“What the fuck?” yells the other guy. “What fucking moron did that?” “Well we’ve got to put ‘em up, Jake, you know?” he replies. “Put ‘em up? Do you want to see Elvis Costello with a fucking nail through his head? I fucking don’t”. Jake then storms out of the office, slamming the door behind him, and disappears along the busy London street.

A storm is brewing. Something is going to blow.

Excerpt From: Richard Balls. “Be Stiff: The Stiff Records Story.” iBooks. 

Excerpt From: Richard Balls. “Be Stiff: The Stiff Records Story.” iBooks. 

Hooked: Addiction and the Long Road to Recovery by Paul Merson with Rob Bagchi (Headline 2021)

 

'Still,’ I thought, ‘who goes to the World Cup from the league I’m in?’

I did. To go to the World Cup when you’re not playing in the Premier League is a massive achievement, I realise now, and I owe it all to Glenn. I remember Ray Parlour saying to me after he’d just won the Double at Arsenal in 1998 and wasn’t getting a look-in with England, that Arsène rang Glenn to ask why. They knew each other from their time at Monaco together and he told Glenn that Ray was playing superbly, made a vital contribution to winning the Double and that he did not understand why he wasn’t involved. He turned to Ray after he put the phone down and said, ‘You’ve just got to hope he gets the sack.’ When Kevin Keegan came in, Ray played for England but I never got a call-up. Ray was no better in 2000 than he was in 1998, I was better in 2000 than I was two years earlier. It’s all about the manager. If he likes you, you’ve got a chance. If not . . . you’re stuffed.

Ray having a laugh with the lads about what he claimed to have said when he went to see Glenn’s faith healer Eileen Drewery – ‘short back and sides, please, Eileen’ – didn’t help. I went to Eileen with an open mind and liked her. I was struggling so badly with the gambling relapse, bottling it up and keeping it secret out of shame, that I would try anything. It had sent me into a deep depression, but I didn’t know that’s what it was. I’d be so down that I couldn’t get out of bed and the paranoia, which had never really gone away, ramped up. It seemed that everybody was looking at me, judging me. I thought, ‘I need something to work here.’ And whatever help was offered, I would try it. Eileen gave me that calmness, settled my raging doubts and was a big part of me being in the right frame of mind to go out to La Manga with the squad of twenty-eight, which was to be cut to twenty-two after the warm-up games.

It was an odd week. Too many of us felt on trial and I was convinced I’d be one of the six who wouldn’t make it to the World Cup. I don’t know why Glenn did it that way, it was unsettling and there was an air of tension. I expect Glenn thought it would keep everyone on their toes, but most players were a bag of nerves. He wasn’t the best man-manager, at times he became impatient when a player couldn’t do what he wanted. Because he could still play, he often joined in and demonstrated something by doing it himself. After a while players get frustrated with that, a bit jealous. If he had been better at handling people and hadn’t said all that weird stuff about disabled people and karma, he would still be England manager now. No one could touch him as a tactician.

Remainders of the Day: More Diaries from The Bookshop, Wigtown by Shaun Bythell (Profile Books 2022)

Left the shop at 10 a.m. for a book deal in Dunscore (an hour away). The house belonged to a woman who had inherited her brother’s books. It was full of dogs (I lost count after seven). The books were in a predictably filthy state, and their content was even more unsavoury than their condition – Holocaust denial, extreme religious right, anti-abortion. After a while I discovered that these were her books, rather than her brother’s. She had decided to keep her brother’s books because she ‘didn’t want that kind of liberal nonsense to be read by anyone’ and to sell some of her own. She was a member of Opus Dei, and while he was alive she would regularly send her poor brother cuttings from the Daily Telegraph; he was a Guardian reader. I managed to salvage a handful of the slightly more palatable titles.

A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin (Orion 2022)

 

'Are you quite sure?’ Bartleby had asked him on more than one occasion.

‘I’ve a life’s worth of mitigation,’ Rebus had assured him.

‘Then not guilty it is,’ Bartleby had agreed.

Doors were being opened to allow access to the Crown’s first witness. Andrew, who had handed police the CCTV from Cafferty’s penthouse, strode in. He wore an expensive suit and sported a new haircut. Dapper and ready for bigger things, he locked eyes with Rebus, and grinned.

Life Without Children by Roddy Doyle (Viking 2021)

Every morning, for ten days – his slot was ten o’clock – he sat at the kitchen table and waited for the call. He held up the iPad with one hand and pressed the green circle.

The screen this time, the camera – he was looking straight at her face. The mask was off, beside her on the pillow, leaning against her ear.

She was saying something – speaking.

—I – heard – one. Joe.

—Did you? he said.

He seemed to see each word before he heard it.

—At first – I was – afraid – I was pet – rified.

He knew the song.

—‘I Will Survive’, he said.

The words were heavy – she worked hard at pulling them out.

—I – might.

—Jesus – I love you, he said.

Something struck him now, the thought that had been lurking for months.

—Your worms, he said. —You’ve been making them up all the time, haven’t you?

He looked at her mouth on the screen, and waited. It was ages before she answered.

(From the short story, 'Worms'.)

Fire and Brimstone by Colin Bateman (Headline 2013)

He gave me a big smile and continued his work. After a bit, two female Seekers emerged from the bus, pristine now in their gowns and wimples but destined to be covered in coffee and juice and vomit as the night wore into early morning. One of them gave me a wide smile and said, 'I remember you!'

'Jane,' I said, 'how're you doing?'

'Fabulous/ she said. 'Can I get you a coffee . . . Andrew . . . wasn't it?'

'Orange juice,' 1 said, 'and you have a good memory.'

'I do . . . but then there was also something happened with you at Ballyferris . . . wasn't there?'

'Oh, yes,' I said. 'I got thrown out for sedition.'

She laughed and went to get the juice. When she came back with it, she asked how I'd been and if 1 was still in that bad place with my life, and I said no, everything was fine and dandy; I had just spotted the bus on the way home and wanted to call over and say hello and thank the New Seekers for their support, and her, in particular, for helping me.

'Ah, it was nothing. Sure, that's what we're here for.'

'Well,' I said, 'I appreciate it.'

I lifted the orange juice and drained it in one. 'Better be getting home,' I said, and handed her the glass.

'Good night, Andrew,' she said as she took it from me. 'And may God be with you.'

She gave me another smile and turned away.

'And may God be with you, Alison,' I said.

It stopped her in her tracks, but just for a moment. Then she continued on into the bus. 1 followed her progress along the inside to the small kitchen area. She began to wash the glass. She did not look towards me.

I smiled to myself and turned away.

She had been right there with me, right at the start, and I hadn't noticed. But a colleague of Jonathan's in Culchie's Corner had picked up the photo I'd left and remembered her from a rumpus in the bar when she was collecting for the New Seekers and someone pulled her headdress off. I had no idea how she had ended up with the Seekers, if the trauma of the Wellington Street massacre had caused her to turn to them or they had picked her up, broken or shot, from the street and then slowly brainwashed her, or, indeed, if she had simply been converted because she believed in Eve, just like thousands and thousands of others. Ultimately, it didn't matter. My job was done: I'd been paid handsomely, the puzzle was solved and Alison was alive and free to live that life as she saw fit.

Perfect.

As I walked away from the New Seeker bus, my phone began to ring.

'Well,' Sara asked breezily, 'what's happening?'

'Funny you should ask,' I said.

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey (Peter Davies Ltd. 1951)

Grant lay on his high white cot and stared at the ceiling. Stared at it with loathing. He knew by heart every last minute crack on its nice clean surface. He had made maps of the ceiling and gone exploring on them; rivers, islands, and continents. He had made guessing games of it and discovered hidden objects; faces, birds, and fishes. He had made mathematical calculations of it and rediscovered his childhood; theorems, angles, and triangles. There was practically nothing else he could do but look at it. He hated the sight of it. 

Whatever Happened to the C86 Kids?: An Indie Odyssey by Nige Tassell (Nine Eight Books 2022)

When Malcolm returned to Essex from university in Sheffield, his ears full of a new band called the Smiths and his head full of Marxist theory, the three of them resumed making music together. This was the point at which the idea of fusing tuneful pop music with political lyrics was forged.

‘It was political almost from the start. “There’s no point writing love songs” became a thing because we couldn’t be as good as the Beatles. We could never hope to write something like “I Saw Her Standing There”. So Malcolm decided what he could do was write political songs because there hadn’t really been any particularly fantastic ones written in the way he was thinking about politics. There obviously had been political songs, but not from a real, properly thought-out Marxist perspective.’

The concept was sound. Pop tunes to get people over the threshold and then encourage them to think about the lyrics. Another iron fist in another velvet glove.

‘It made us stand out from everyone else. We weren’t marching around. We weren’t Stalinists or anything.’ At the time, Billy Bragg was the most conspicuous political songwriter. He was from their home patch, a few years ahead of them at the same comprehensive school. ‘We knew him as one of the big Jam fans in Barking. He was in that band Riff Raff who, for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, played on the back of a lorry in Tim’s street.’

This top-floor office is level with a railway viaduct just outside the window, carrying trains back and forth between Clapham Junction and Richmond. They rumble past every couple of minutes, occasionally emitting a metallic screech. John is clearly used to it. He’s been at Domino now for fifteen years.

‘At the beginning, we always aimed for Top of the Pops,’ he explains. To some, being an anti-capitalist band aiming to work in an industry known for its rapaciousness and greed might seem a little contradictory. ‘My favourite quote about this is from John Cooper Clarke – “There’s no point being an island of Marxism in a sea of capitalism”.

John then cites McCarthy’s ‘Use a Bank I’d Rather Die’, a song written with heavy irony. ‘Just because you think a certain way, you’re not going to stop using the bank. You’re not necessarily going to cut things off.’ (The use of irony and sarcasm – those traits much enjoyed by the Manics – often led to the band being misunderstood. ‘Almost all of the McCarthy songs are sung by a “character”,’ Malcolm explained in a 2007 interview before he fell silent on the subject of the band, ‘like a character in a play. I often don’t agree with the sentiments expressed in the song. Quite the reverse.’)

Nine Inches by Colin Bateman (Headline 2011)

I’ve always had a soft spot for the Shankill Road, even though it’s hard as nails. One and a half miles of arterial road through a twenty-five-thousand-strong Unionist working-class ghetto. It’s one of the few places you can still buy a pasty, rather than a panini or a panacotta without them looking at you like you’re a fucking space cadet. The Shankill bore the brunt of, and equally was responsible for, some of the worst violence of the Troubles. Paramilitaries ruled it, and they still do, only they’ve transmogrified from Loyalist freedom fighters financing their struggle through robbery, drugs, protection and murder into gangsters who finance their lifestyles through robbery, drugs, protection and murder. They justify their continued existence in the face of widespread peace by occasionally rolling out their flags and yelling about their loyalty to the Queen and the imminent danger of a Republican uprising. Republicans usually oblige by shooting someone. It is the gangster equivalent of fixing the market. It works equally well for both sides.

Belfast Confidential by Colin Bateman (CB Creative Books 2005)

 

It used to be that I was the well-known one – I had a column in the local paper, I stirred up all kinds of shit – but just as terrorists eventually hang up their guns and enter politics, I had long since resigned myself to the security and boredom of the post-Troubles newsroom. Belfast is like any city that has suffered war or pestilence or disaster – hugely relieved to no longer be the focus of world attention, but also slightly aggrieved that it isn't. In the old days you could say, 'I'm from Belfast,' anywhere in the world and it was like shorthand: a thousand images of explosions and soldiers and barbed wire and rioting and foam-mouthed politicians were thrown up by that simple statement. You were automatically hard, even if you were a freckle-armed accountant in National Health specs; you earned the sympathy of slack-jawed women for surviving so long, and you habitually buffed up your life story like you'd just crawled out of the Warsaw ghetto. You joked about the Troubles, but in such a way that you made it seem like you were covering something up. Perhaps you said you were once in a lift with that Gerry Adams and you thought he bore a remarkable resemblance to Rolf Harris, and you pointed out that you never saw the two of them in the same place at the same time, and your audience laughed and said, 'Right enough,' but at the same time you knew what they were thinking, that you were making light of it because actually you'd suffered horribly at the hands of masked terrorists or your mother had been blown through a window at Omagh or your father was shot down on the Bogside for demanding basic human rights. To say you were from Belfast was to say you were a Jew in Berlin, or a soldier of the Somme. But no longer. And as the Troubles had waned, so had the world's interest, and so had my star.

The Horse with My Name by Colin Bateman (Headline 2002)

It was cold and dark outside. I went up the plank. It wasn’t a plank, of course. It was like boarding an aircraft. I did a quick tour. I bought a McDonald’s strawberry milkshake and then went to the newsagent and asked for a packet of Opal Fruits. The girl looked at me and I groaned and said, ‘Starburst.’ She nodded and lifted them off the shelf. ‘They used to be called Opal Fruits,’ I said. ‘They changed the name because the Americans call their Opal Fruits “Starburst”.’

‘Oh,’ she said.

‘And do you know why they call them Starburst?’

‘No.’

‘Because the astronauts took them into space. Existed on them. They’re packed with fruit juice. There’s a dozen square meals in this packet, and all for just thirty-two pence.’

‘Thirty-five.’

I handed her the money. ‘You’re okay. You’re young. You don’t remember. The glory days of Marathons and Pacers and Toblerones.’

‘We still have Toblerones.’

‘Yes, but they’re the size of fuck all. Used to be you’d break your teeth on them. Like Wagon Wheels.”

'You couldn’t break your teeth on a Wagon Wheel. They’re soft.’

Behind me a man in a blue tracksuit said, ‘No, I know what he means, Wagon Wheels used to be huge.’

I looked from him to the shop assistant and sighed. ‘Maybe they still are. Maybe we just got bigger.’

We all nodded sagely for several moments .  .  .