The Shoe by Gordon Legge (Polygon 1989)

Eight

At school Richard had been the boy most likely. He won a debating competition and collected A-grade Highers with case. When punk came along in '76/'77 Richard embraced it. Only two copies of Anarchy in the UK reached town: Richard got one and Senga Somerville the other. At youth clubs and school discos, Richard acted as DJ playing Shirley and Co’s Shame Shame Shame while his friends were listening to Tales from Topographic Oceans. Richard was first to wear an anti-Nazi League badge. Students who took part in the sit-ins to protest against the Biafran war would later admit to taking part ‘just for fun’: punk seemed different. Those who marched against the loathsome National Front in Lewisham projected an intensity of feeling. It was unfortunate that not all such demonstrations were as well motivated and executed. Too many causes were led by the ill-informed and supported by the ignorant. Mental said that pickets and demonstrators aspired to strength through exploitation and intimidation. It wasn’t honest like arguing and fighting.

Richard read avidly the music press of the late seventies: Julie Burchill, Tony Parsons, Jane Suck, Jonh Ingham, Jon Savage and the old guard: Charles Shaar Murray, Giovanni Dadomo and Nick Kent. Julie continued to write, adopting an extreme position then justifying it. She slagged off Catholics, worshipped Russia and supported Maggie in the Falklands. (Richard wrote into The Face saying that although Julie was right to support the fight against a Fascist junta, the British public would always be more motivated by the xenophobic side of the conflict.) Jon Savage became an art groupie. Tony Parsons wrote three bile-filled novels that never fully showed his talent. (His review of the first Clash LP was stuck on Richard's wall. Now that was writing.) Jane Suck became Jane Solanas, superdyke. Nick Kent’s signature appeared at the end of a few articles but they didn't seem very enthusiastic. He loved The Smiths, though. As for the others Richard didn't know where they were. He presumed they'd given up and gone fat. One of Richard's deepest regrets was that he hadn’t kept a chart of his most played records. He knew, though, that Parsons' and Burchill's The Boy Looked at Johnny was the book he had read most. While punk in the south attracted the arse-end of the media (high and low-brow), the provinces adopted the ‘No Fun’, ‘No Feelings’, ‘No Future’ triumvirate as dogma and it stuck like glue. Pun intended. The legacy of Sid Vicious meant spiky tops, leather jackets. The UK Subs, Oi and circles with A in the middle. Richard, though, continued to wear his anti-Nazi League badge through Tom Robinson, The Gang of Four, Cut, London Calling, Paul Morley and Dave McCullough.

Richard thought he'd be intimidated at university. He expected to meet people who knew everything about Dylan, Kafka and Scorsese. He was wrong, of course. The spirit of the Biafra sit-ins reigned. Like the hippies who had never heard of Muddy Waters and the punks who never bought any reggae, the students never did more than they had to. Richard left his degree course in English at the end of the third year. ‘I wanted to be trained in logic,’ he told Archie. 'I wanted to be educated to the extent whereby I no longer made stupid mistakes about things. I wanted common sense. One of my teachers at school said that he had been trained in logic at university. He was completely cool. He could see through lies like that. 

The Shoe by Gordon Legge (Polygon 1989)

 

One

‘Buy a couple of fags, mister?’

The enquiring youth wore Wrangler jeans and a Wrangler jacket. The jacket sadly failed to reach his wrists. His T-shirt read AC/DC. You could smell the shampoo and talc, see the shiny hair and smart trainers but he was still a Heavy Metal fan; he’d rather have been scruffy. He had acne. Bad acne.

‘Don’t bother. It’s okay,' said Archie, declining the offer of 16p as he handed the youth two Benson and Hedges.

‘Save your money and buy some cream,’ scorned The Mental Kid.

‘Thanks,’ said the Heavy Metal fan, embarrassed by The Kid’s remark. He lit the cigarettes using a disposable green lighter and returned to his two friends in the next carriage, handing one of the cigarettes to the smaller of the two, who in turn nodded and smiled appreciatively at Archie.

‘Heavy Metal,’ mused The Kid, ‘it’s okay if you don’t have a brain, I suppose.’

Archie smiled at The Kid’s smug disdain while wondering if it was worth getting upset at being called ‘mister'. The previous Friday, a door-to-door salesman had asked if his wife was in. Archie had blushed and said ‘No’. They never asked that. It was always 'Is your mother in, son?’ And now a fat, ugly (Archie had decided to get upset) Heavy Metal fan called him ‘mister. Twenyy-four next month. Older than Johnny Marr and Pat Nevin.

‘Who was playing in Edinburgh tonight, anyway?' asked Mental, three months Archie’s junior.

Archie shrugged a don’t know don’t care whilst wondering how old The Kid looked. Pretty rather than handsome, punky rather than cool; the triumph of content over style. The Kid wore a black Royal Navy raincoat, Levi’s slit at the right knee, black Doc Marten shoes and a Celtic scarf, which until a couple of years ago he had worn with the regularity of a birthmark; now he only wore it for the Hun games and when it was cold. After every Celtic defeat he would begin the post-mortem with the words, ‘What a nightmare, I was going mental!' The Kid’s concession to ageing was an increased dependency on cliché. But he was still too lean and gorgeous to be addressed as an adult. The Kid leaned forward, resting his elbow's on his knees while tapping his fingers in accompaniment to the noise of the train. Bored out of his skull, like.

‘What time is it?’ he asked.

‘11.18.'

‘Okay. So we get food and drink, go to the Apollo, watch the fights, more food and drink then home.' Mental related the forthcoming events as if he were a hesitant bank robber. Mental didn’t like Glasgow and he didn’t like staying up all night. Were he a bird, he would have chosen to be a budgie. ‘If the Hun had brought his van we wouldn't have had all this hassle.’ The Kid referred to the sleeping hulk across the hallway.

Big Davie looked married (within the year it was expected he would be) and he looked twenty-four (which he was); a ‘mister’. Big Davie wore an old man’s bunnet (10p from a jumble sale), a quilted blue jerkin, brand new Levi’s and brand new Sambas. Solid rather than fat, a team man rather than an individual. The Daihatsu van remained at home so that Davie could have a drink on his night out. He couldn’t be arsed driving to Glasgow, anyway.

‘Work does that to you,' said Mental pointing a derisory finger at the sleeper. ‘Fat bastard!' shouted The Kid, hoping, but failing, to wake Davie.

Work was laying insulation for the council. Ten weeks into a six-month job, Davie hated it, but needed the money. He shared a private flat with his fiancee, Terasa.

Mental had never worked in his life. After school he attended college for three years, switching courses continually until one day he had the flu and never went back. The Protestant work ethic was anathema to him.

Archie left school at eighteen with three Highers: English, Modern Studies and a crash course History. His father was disappointed with Archie staying on at school. ‘Get a trade, an apprenticeship. You'll always have it to fall back on.’ Archie asked what the difference between a twenty-year-old tradesman and a fifty-year-old tradesman was. An argument ensued. Arguments never seemed to resolve anything, never a means to an end. Just an outburst of frustration. The father thought in terms of the home rather than holidays, relatives rather than friends, and work rather than play. Archie didn’t know what he wanted, but when Morrissey sang about never having had a job because he was too shy, Archie understood, while his father would never know or admit to knowing.

For Archie, work had been a petrol pump attendant, a double-glazing salesman and a brickie’s labourer. He had been unemployed for three years. The work provided fond memories and a few anecdotes but at the time it all seemed embarrassment and confrontation. He didn’t know' if he would ever work again; he supposed he would.

The Shoe by Gordon Legge (Polygon 1989)

They always had good rants, Mental and Richard. The miners' strike provided eighteen months of debating material. Mental was completely disillusioned with the Protestant work ethic and found the refusal to hold a ballot smug and disturbing. Richard blamed the miners' loss on their amateurish use of the media and the media's innate bias. He talked of camera angles, interview locations and distorted emphasis. A ballot was useless, Richard said, since the media determined the information supply and the media was biased. The miners had elected leaders to make decisions on their behalf. That's what Scargill's job was. But Mental was unimpressed. The miners represented everything he hated about the 'mince and tatties mentality': 'All these places are Hun cities. Take Bo'ness, for example, typical fucking mining community. Hun bastards. You've got all these fat bastards moaning about not having any food. And I hate the word "scab". People degrade themselves by using that kind of attack.' They all wanted to see the miners win and they all agreed that Leonard Parkin was a fascist. But mostly they wanted to see Margaret Hilda Thatcher melt.