Author: chrisnickson2

The Dog Days Of Leeds

On By chrisnickson2In UncategorizedLeave a comment

August is in its slow crawl towards closing. At some point in the next few weeks – and that point is still undetermined, even after three months – we’ll have a moving date, load up all the boxes that are packed and head up to a new life in Leeds.

So perhaps the dog days of summer, that last sigh, will be spent in my hometown. After so long in hurry up and wait mode, it would be welcome. I want to have the luxury of time to explore the place again, fully. I want to see those nooks and crannies, to dig deeper into the history and mystery. I want to be involved with the place.

God knows that I was glad to move when I went off to college all those years ago. But I came back after a year and ended up staying until 1976 when the lure of America drew me. And now I’m going back again to enjoy those dog days. And quite a few more years, I hope.

Each time I’m there I see something new to fascinate me. It might be the date on a building, the promise of a Cloth Hall restoration, the intakes for the old water engine (pointed out to me by someone else). In those dog days and beyond I’ll have the chance to discover, if not everything, then a good chunk of it.

Lyrics? Poetry? Both?

On By chrisnickson2In UncategorizedLeave a comment

I hit my teens and became interested in music in  1967. That was the year that progressive rock – prog rock to most of us now – really began. Music changed. Pop became Art. As well as groups making music more complex (until it would eventually disappear up its own arse), there came the advent of the singer-songwriters.

And with it, to my young ears, the realisation that song lyrics could be poetry. Of course, I didn’t know then that Leonard Cohen had already enjoyed a distinguished career as a poet and novelist, for instance. But that first album of his hit me – an aspiring musician and writer – as a revelation. Then add in some others, the Joni Mitchells, the Nick Drakes, who seemed to distil experience and feeling into lines and verses in the manner of the best poets. It says a great deal that even now I’m more likely to quote a lyric than a poem or a line of Shakespeare.

That’s not to say poetry couldn’t be pop. The Liverpool Poets showed that, Pete Brown crossed between one world and the other as lyricist for Cream, and the A.A. Alvarez Anthology of New Poetry was as vital as the newest Beatles album. I groped my way into culture as I grew.

Of course, not all attempts at poetic lyrics worked. Pete Sinfield’s work with King Crimson was often nothing short of embarrassing, while Yes was twee and post-Syd Barrett Pink Floyd was 6th form solipsism masquerading as profundity. But when things worked, and it always seemed to be the singer-songwriters who made it work, it could be beautiful.

Not that pop couldn’t use words well, as popular song had for decades. But there it was a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. A marriage of words and music that was generally less effective when taken apart. While it could very powerfully pinpoint a time, a place, a mood, a romance or a breakup, it wasn’t the same.

It wasn’t poetry.

That was what I truly believed back then. I tried to make the songs that I wrote into poetic gems. I polished my poems. I was a pretentious little git.

These days I know better. I can still appreciate old Leonard as a rare talent, and Joni’s Blue stands as a near-perfect record even after all these years. But I’ve hopefully grown out of my leanings towards Art. Maybe, just maybe, I’ve come to understand that what’s important is that it moves me, whether it’s “Suzanne,” “Anarchy In The UK” or Bobby Bland singing “Two Steps From The Blues.” It was always that way, of course. I simply chose to be too blind to see it.

My Son

On By chrisnickson2In Uncategorized1 Comment

Yesterday my son flew home to Seattle at the end of his annual summer visit. It’s never the easiest day for either of us, but by now we’re used to it. After all, this is the eighth year in a row. But there was something a little different about this trip. It might well be his last for a few years.

In 2005 I moved back to the UK from America. My wife and I had divorced, and for many reasons I chose to leave the US. I’d weighed things out very carefully before coming to a decision. After all, my son was there, just 10 when I left. But he could spend every summer here with me, we could talk every day – I’d bought him a cell phone and there was MSN for chatting, onscreen and even with a webcam.

We were lucky. As a writer I’d been able to work from home since he was born. We’d had the chance to spend time together, to form a real bond and become close. That made a huge difference. I believe that I could move away and that bond would remain strong.

I remember picking him up at Heathrow Airport in 2006, having to sign for him like a package. He’d flown on his own, looked after by cabin crew and escorted through the airport. I’d never, ever been happier to see someone. We took the train into London, then the underground, and finally another train north. He was tired – it’s a nine-and-a-half hour flight – but still wide-eyes and marvelling at how large and just how green England was.

The parting that year was tearful, on both sides, the journey back to my flat bleak and empty. Next year was better, even with the adventure of the 2007 floods that left us stranded overnight in Derby. He’d grown, as he has every year since.

In just over a week from now he’ll turn 18. He’ll spend his birthday at his university orientation. But he’s already a man, thoughtful, responsible, intelligent and creative. His loves – manga, anime, mathematics – aren’t mine, but that’s as it should be. We share other things. We talk three times a week, but that will change soon enough, I’m sure. The options for communication – email, Facebook, phone, Skype, Facetime – have grown exponentially. We can be in touch anytime. I can be there for him if he needs me.

He’s the very best part of me. I’m proud of who he’s become, although much of the credit for that goes to his mother. And now he’s about to begin this new life as a college student. He seems to be ready to take it in his stride. Me? I’m full of trepidation, although I’m sure he’ll be fine. I’m as anxious as…a parent. I’m lucky. The bond is still strong between us. But he’ll be making new friends, and have new plans for his year. Already he’s talking about taking classes next summer. Things will be different now. I always knew they would, he’s growing up and growing away into his own life, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

But I’ll always love him and be proud of him.

Thinking About Tattoos

On By chrisnickson2In Uncategorized7 Comments

Back in 1989, when the Re/Search book Modern Primitives appeared, I was living in Seattle and saw the ripples it caused. Within a few very short years people who weren’t ex-cons, ex-service or gang members were wearing barbed wire and Celtic design tattoo bands around biceps and calves, and a healthy smattering of California’s finest tattoo artists had set up shop in the Emerald City.

Nowadays I’m back in England and until last week I worked a few hours a week in a corner shop. Both there and in supermarkets- everywhere, in fact – I’ve been quite amazed at the number of men of all ages with tattoos. There was a customer in his 20s, with a shaved head and menacing manner, with a scorpion on the side of his skull and a teardrop under his eye (and yes, I know what the latter is meant to signify). So many with tattoos on their necks. Women with them inside their forearms, on their backs, feet.

The speculation in the 90s, as the percentage of tattoos among white folk shot up, was that it was a need to belong, to feel part of a tribe. That was 20 years ago and tattoos are now more prevalent than ever, certainly in England. Is that sense of identity so lacking that the need to tattoos has become much greater? Does this explain the fact that so many EDL members seem to be tattooed in pictures (they all also seem to have shaved heads, but that’s another topic), this urge to belong?

Modern Primitives dealt not only with tattoos but also piercings, although (in England, anyway) the fad for them has passed.  That seems strange, given how widespread they became. But why do tattoos remain so vital? I do genuinely want ideas and opinions. If you have a tat, why did you get it? Do you want more? What do you think is the reason so many have/desire them?

Coming Home to Leeds

On By chrisnickson2In Uncategorized7 Comments

Any week now I’ll be living in Leeds again. I’ve been telling myself that for the last several weeks. We’re in that strange legal limbo, the no-man’s land between selling and buying a house and actually signing the contracts then moving in. It’s an odd space, where time seems to expand, making a day feel like a week, a week like a month and – well, you get the picture.

I grew up in Leeds but I haven’t lived there since January 3, 1976. I’ve been back regularly, sometimes for a week or more at a time. But it’s only in recent years that I’ve realised it’s where I need to be, it’s where my heart lies. Most of my books are set there, albeit well in the past. I know it in my bones in a way I’ll never know anywhere else.

My partner’s daughter went to university there and stayed. She’s made a life for herself but she’s stayed close to her mother. Events have aligned in a way that makes this a perfect time to sell, buy and put ourselves in that great Yorkshire city.

It’s a big, daunting adventure, of course. And right now, after hanging around as lawyers do whatever it is they do in these situations, all we want is for it to be over. Most everything’s packed, boxes all over the house.

Soon, though, we’ll be in Leeds. And you know what? It’s going to feel just like coming home.

A New Richard Nottingham Short Story

On By chrisnickson2In Uncategorized4 Comments

 

I like working with publishers. The knowledge that someone else, someone in the industry, thinks enough of my work to put their reputation on the line and put it out under their imprint is what every writer desires.

 

I’m proud of all the fiction I’ve put out (hey, I’m even proud of some of the non-fiction and all the music journalism). I want my name on it. But some things don’t fit into any publisher’s niche. A few weeks ago I wrote a short story featuring Richard Nottingham, Constable of Leeds. Those of you who know my work will know him.

 

What to do with it? In the past I’ve made stories available for free. This time, with a longer story, I wanted something a little more. So I decided to publish it for Kindle. Via Twitter and Facebook I know several writers who self-publish. Some of them are excellent writers, the equal of anyone traditionally published; others, less so. But with the rise of the ereader it’s become a very successful medium.

 

For me it’s an experiment. The story keeps the name of Richard Nottingham out there. I hope it’ll please those who like the books and that they’ll buy it and enjoy it. I also hope that some people who’ve never read the novels will take a look, think, hey, that’s pretty good, and want to discover more. Finally, it keeps everything simmering until the UK hardback publication of Fair and Tender Ladies at the end of September (January 2014 for the US and ebook). It may pique a little interest and raise the sales. We do what we can.

 

I priced the story as cheaply as Amazon would seem to allow. But it’s a story, 5,000 words, not a novel. It’s something to pass a few idle minutes, not to take over your life.

 

Have I raised your curiosity? I hope so – that’s the aim of this, after all. It’s 77p (or $1.16 – I asked for 99 cents but it seems to have gone out of my control in the US). You’d spend that much of a bar of chocolate. Much more on a coffee or a cup of tea.

 

Oh, and you can buy it here in the UK.

 

Or here in America.

Thank you for your indulgence. I hope you like it if you buy it.

Image

The Government I Want

On By chrisnickson2In UncategorizedLeave a comment

The government I want will desire the best for its citizens – for all of them, not merely a few. It will look first to the welfare of the neediest and most deprived, to create a society that strives for equality, which those that have least given the most.

It will take ownership of the NHS, take responsibility for this most vital of services, not hold it at arm’s length, and keep it close, free from privatisation and profit, in the hands of the government and people, where it should be. It will be properly funded and staffed, a service of pride, not excuses.

The government I want won’t sell off its stock of social housing and then not replace it. Instead it will ensure that every person has a decent place to live, somewhere affordable. They will be a government that creates real jobs, not part-time employment or zero-hour contracts, and put into law that the minimum wage will be a living wage, one on which people can live, more barely exist.

The government I want will be made up of people of integrity, ones with no outside income or interests. Public servants in the truest sense, but also people with experience of the real world. No candidate would be eligible for selection until they’d held a job outside politics for 10 years, to know what existing on a wage packet means. Every expense would have to be justified, and every member of Parliament fully accountable to his or her constituents.

The government I want would tend to those who are disabled. It would ensure their carers were well paid, that they were trained and did a thorough job, that the companies carers worked for were thoroughly vetted.

The government I wanted would not be motivated by the profit to be found in everything, but by the way it could serve the people of the country. Sections of the population would not be demonised for political purpose. Politicians who lie to Parliament, especially to party ends, would be de-selected and dismissed without pensions. If what they did was illegal, they would be prosecuted without fear or favour, to the full extent of the law. Members of Parliament would receive a fair salary and expenses, but no raises beyond those of any other public servants.

The government I want would create fair taxation. No loopholes, no special exemptions, no deals made by HMRC with large corporations. Money earned in Great Britain would be taxed in Great Britain at the amount set in law. No excuses accepted.

The government I want would understand that this country is no longer a global power. Because of that, there’s no need to spend vast amounts on defence or to have a nuclear deterrent when the money involved could be spend for the benefit of people in the country.

The government I want would return public utilities – gas, electric, water, post office  – to public ownership and use the money that would otherwise have gone on profits for investment in infrastructure.

Does this sound socialist? Probably it does. More likely it sounds like the Labour manifesto from 1945. And it’s worth remembering that they won a landslide that year.

Gods of Gold

On By chrisnickson2In UncategorizedLeave a comment

Yesterday my agent heard back from the publisher which had been weighing whether to publish my new book. Needless to say, I’d been on tenterhooks (a good Leeds expression, by the way) since it had been sent off.

The result, as those who saw my Facebook and Twitter posts will know, is that Crème de la Crime will publish Gods of Gold in April next year – and four months later in the US, as usual.

So what is Gods of Gold? It’s the first in a new series set in Leeds, this time in the 1890s. The small town on Richard Nottingham’s time has grown and grown, bringing in the suburbs. It’s an industrial place now, full of dark Satanic mills and factories. Street after street is filled with back-to-back housing, the homes of the poor. Most of the buildings are black with soot from all the chimneys.

It’s a place much closer to the Leeds of the present day. Not just in time, but in attitude; it’s very recognisable. The main character is Detective Inspector Tom Harper. He’s 31, from a working-class background. Left school at the age of nine and worked 12 hours a day in a brewery, but was determined to become a policeman. He’s worked his way up from walking a beat in the yards and courts off Briggate – still around 160 years after my earlier Leeds series – to plain clothes.

His partner is Detective Sergeant Billy Reed, a man who spent time in the West Yorkshire Regiment and was in Afghanistan during the Second Afghan War. The nightmares of those times still come to him, leaving him a troubled man who finds it safer not to grow attached to people.

As the book opens, Harper’s wedding to Annabelle Atkinson is just a few weeks away. She’s a new type of women, not so much ahead of her time, but in the vanguard. After growing up very poor in the Bank – the area of Leeds where most of the Irish settled – she became a servant at the Victoria pub in Sheepscar. The landlord, an older widower, fell for her and married her. When he died, she took over the business and made it more successful, then opened two bakeries to cater for the working men at the factories all around. She’s based, in part at least, on stories about a relative of mine who was the landlady at the Victoria (the pub is now gone, turned into an Indian community centre. I did have a drink there once, back in the ‘90s, and it seemed a wonderful place). So a fictionalised version of my own family’s tale is one thread in the tapestry.

The books are more political. The first one unfolds over the backdrop of the 1890 Leeds Gas Strike, one that the workers won (and it’s well worth reading about the strike).

I suppose that this series is part of my continuing love affair with Leeds. The place won’t let me go – possibly just as well as I’ll be moving back there within a month. It’s the start of something new, and it pulls at me just as hard as Richard Nottingham ever has.

The big test, of course, will to be see how all of you like it…

A Third Leeds Story

On By chrisnickson2In UncategorizedLeave a comment

This will definitely, certainly, and unequivocally be the last story from Leeds, The Autobiography that I’ll post on the blog. After all, if I continue doing it there’ll be nothing fresh when I try to interest a publisher in the book. But no book that presumes to offer a history of Leeds would be complete without something about the great Ralph Thoresby, the antiquarian who wrote the first – and still the definitive – history of Leeds and its surroundings. A remarkable man, he’s commemorated by a blue plaque where his house once stood and Kirkgate and his memorial is in the Parish Church, although on the wall these days, not the floor of the choir.

 

MR. THORESBY’S CURIOSITIES – 1725

 

“It won’t do,” he said, shaking his head and pursing his lips. “It just won’t do.”

            “No, sir,” I agreed.

            Mr. Brocklehurst looked slowly around the room once more. He’d tied his stock too tightly in the morning and his large face had been red all day.

            “No,” he repeated. “It just won’t do.”

            But it would have to be done. Every item in this collection of curiosities needed to be catalogued. And I knew it wouldn’t fall to Brocklehurst the lawyer to do it. It would be my job, his clerk.

            Mr. Thoresby had amassed thousands upon thousands of objects during his life, so many that he’d needed to build an annexe to this modest house on Kirkgate for them all. Now he’d passed on his heirs needed an inventory of everything.

            I’d miss the man. He’d been my favourite of Mr. Brocklehurst’s clients. Whenever he’d visit the office he’d ask after my wife and children with honest interest. No matter that he was a gentleman with his independent means and I was no more than a law clerk.

            Even after his first stroke his mind had been alert. I’d come here several times with papers to be signed and he’d always been polite. He’d even insisted on showing me around this place, his museum as he called it with a wry little smile, and he’d pressed a copy of his book on me, his history of Leeds and the areas around it, picking it from a tall pile, blowing off the dust and inscribing it with his name, writing in an awkward scrawl. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that only gentlemen had the leisure for reading and learning. For the rest of us, life was made for work and sleep. So his Ducatus Leodiensis propped up a broken table leg in our house now, the gold letters on the spine growing dustier each month.

            Brocklehurst paced around the room, hands clasped together in the small of his back, pausing here and there to look at this and that. Finally he announced,

            “Well, you’d better get to work. And don’t be too long about it. I want you back in the office as soon as possible. There’s plenty of work among the living.”

            “Yes, sir.” I opened the ledger on an old table then set down the quill and the ink pot, hearing the door slam in the empty house as the lawyer left. I knew I should begin the task, but instead I walked to a shelf at the far end of the room and picked up a small object.

            I’d last been here two months earlier, no more than a fortnight before Mr. Thoresby suffered his second stroke and died. I’d come on a trifling errand, his signature on a note to append to an annuity. He’d been sitting in his parlour, lost in thought when I was shown through.

            “Young man,” he said with real pleasure, as if I’d been his first visitor in an age. He struggled to his feet with the help of a stick, putting out a heavy, palsied hand to grip mine. Wigless, he showed wisps of grey hair over a shiny pink skull, and a mouth that drooped on one side. But his eyes still twinkled. Over the last months he’d grown portly, his movements confined to his house or the streets close by. No more wanderings around England or setting off in the morning to walk to York and dine with the archbishop. And invalid now, his wide world had become so small. “Come with me, come on. I have something very special to show you,” he urged, his voice just an echo of the cannon boom it had once been.

            I followed him through to this room of wonders. He shuffled slowly, pausing two or three times to catch his breath. Yet once we reached the shelf and he reached out, it was as if his illness had never happened. His hand was steady as a youth’s and his thick sausage fingers were deft as he plucked up the item.

            “Do you see that?” he asked me, letting it sit on his palm. “The vicar in Rothwell sent it to me last week.” He displayed it like something precious but I had no idea what it could be. I wasn’t like him, I had no knowledge of these things, no chance to learn. My only learning had been letters and numbers before I had to earn my way in the world. It seemed nothing more than a piece of sharp stone, nothing of value. He saw my look and smiled. “Would you like me to tell you?”

            “Yes, sir, I would.” If it was important to him then it must have a purpose, I thought.

            “Long ago, before there was any Cambodunum, or Leodis or Leeds, long before anyone thought of a town here, there were people in this country,” he began. It wasn’t the chiding, strident tone of my old schoolmaster. Instead, there was enjoyment in his voice sharing these things with all the eagerness of an enthusiast.

            “Where did they live?” I wondered.

            “In caves, perhaps, or out in the open. We don’t know that yet,” he answered with a small sigh, as if he was disappointed that he’d never know. “But they hunted. They had to, for food. And they possessed spears and arrows, we do know that. And clubs, I suppose,” he added, as if it was an aside to himself. “This, young man, is an arrowhead made of flint.”

            Once he told me, I could discern the shape of it, the point at one end. It was delicate, crude yet carefully worked and I marvelled at how anyone could have made that so long ago and that it could still be found like this.

            “Just imagine,” Mr. Thoresby continued, “that a man might have killed many animals with this arrow. Perhaps it ended up in some beast that escaped him. Or maybe it was a wild shot he never found again. Or,” he winked at me, “he might simply have lost it somewhere.”

            He replaced the arrowhead on the shelf and we returned to the parlour to finish our business. Since then I’d thought of it often. I told my wife about it but she paid it little mind. Seeing an arrowhead wouldn’t put food on our table or clothe our children. It came to me later that I’d never asked him just how old it was. He would have known; after all, he was acknowledged to be the most learned man in Leeds. Now, though, he was interred under the choir of the Parish Church, his widow gone to live with one of their sons.

            I lifted the arrowhead very carefully, astonished that something with all this wait of years on it could be so light. I ran my thumb along the edge and gasped out loud to discover it was still sharp enough to cut the skin. How long had it taken to fashion something like this? What tools had he used? Suddenly I had so many questions ringing like Sunday morning bells in my head and no one to answer them.

            Furtively I looked around, as if there might be someone spying on me. It was a ridiculous fancy, of course. The house was all closed up, the shutters pulled tight, the air inside stuffy, still holding that old, desperate smell of disease and death that tugged at the nostrils. Then I took out my kerchief and gently wrapped it around the arrowhead. Another glance over my shoulder and I tucked it away in my coat pocket. No one would know. No one but me would count all the curiosities here.

Another Leeds Story

On By chrisnickson2In UncategorizedLeave a comment

Your reaction to the Roman Leeds story, and to the idea of a fictional history of Leeds in stories, has been so lovely that I’m going to post one more. This is from 1963, about as far from Roman times as this is going to get. It was the year England went boom! – although it took quite a while before the reverberations reached Leeds.

BEAT MUSIC

 

“Are you going?”

“Don’t be daft. Of course I’m going.” He hesitated. “If we can still get tickets.”

They were walking along Duncan Street, past Rawcliffe’s with all the neat, clean school uniforms in the window, crossing Briggate and out along Boar Lane.

“There’ll be tickets, they only went on sale half an hour ago,” James told him. “They won’t have sold out yet.”

“Hope not.” His fist was curled around the pound note in his pocket. Before taking the bus into Leeds he’d queued for ten minutes to draw it from his Post Office account. His father had disapproved, of course, wasting all that money on a pop concert. But it was just one more criticism on top of so many in the last year.

It was May, almost summer, and the air was warm enough to leave his windbreaker unzipped, the old grey school shirt underneath.

They turned by the station, down onto Bishopgate Street, through the tunnel under the tracks, bricks black and sooty, all the sound amplified. Now they were close to the Queen’s Hall he speeded up, his steps tapping quickly on the pavement.

“Did I tell you what my uncle did?”

James glanced over at him, keeping pace easily, wearing a striped tee shirt, a pair of American jeans his father had brought back from a trip, and his plimsolls. He looked relaxed, bemused by the whole idea of spending a little over ten bob to see a group.

“What?”

“You know he’s a commercial traveller?”

“Yes.”

“He was up in Sunderland last week, at the hotel where he always stays and sitting in the bar with the other salesmen there. You’ll never guess who was staying there and came walking in.”

“Go on,” Chris said with a smile. “You’re dying to tell me, anyway.”

“Only the Stones.”

“What, the Rolling Stones?”

James nodded and continued,

“My uncle and the others took one look at them and went off to talk to the manager. They said they weren’t going to stay in a place that let in animals. Either the Stones went or they did, and they were the ones who came back week after week.”

“Are you serious?” He was close to laughter, his soft smirk cracking into a grin. “What happened?”

“The manager kicked out the Stones.”

“Bloody hell.”

The words came out as astonishment. James followed his gaze and saw why. There were hundreds of people queueing outside the Queen’s Hall, all the way down the side of the building.

“We’re going to be here all day trying to get a ticket.”

“Worth it, though.” And it would be if he could get to see the Beatles. He hadn’t managed to buy a ticket for their show at the Odeon, but this would be bigger and better. They were even going to be onstage twice during the night. Any money, any length of time spent queuing would be worthwhile. “Going to stay?”

“I don’t know,” James answered doubtfully. “I said I’d be home by dinnertime to revise for my exams.”

Chris shrugged.

“Your loss. Take a look.”

“What?”

“Girls. Lots of girls” He grinned and pushed his quiff into place, the scent of Brylcreem on his hands, then began to walk to the end of the line. “But if you want to go, it’s OK. I don’t mind.”

 

In the end it only took an hour and a half to move to the ticket window. James tried to chat up the girls around them, but they weren’t interested; all they cared about was seeing the Beatles and he wasn’t John, Paul, Ringo or the other one. In the end there’d been nothing to do but enjoy the sunshine and wait.

            Chris bought his ticket, paid and began to turn away, when James said,

            “One for me, too.”

            “I thought you didn’t care about the music,” Chris said as they walked back towards Briggate.

            “I don’t,” he insisted briskly, it was true. For all his casual appearance, James was the perfect grammar school pupil. Piano to grade six, always at the top of his year, certain to do well in his O-levels next month. Then there’d be a smooth passage through the sixth form all the way to Cambridge. A boy to fulfil all his father’s aspirations.

            They’d known each other since primary school. On the second day James had stopped Chris from hitting a girl who’d bitten his arm. They’d been friends ever since, a curious bond that neither of them really understood.

            It would change soon enough, Chris knew that. He’d sit his exams then leave school. His father already had a job lined up for him, clerking in an office. The two of them would spend less time together, drifting apart. Probably in weeks rather than months. Somewhere in the future they’d bump into each other, say hello, and wonder how they’d ever been friends in the first place.

“Did you see how many were still waiting?” James asked.

            Chris shook his head.

            “There must have been at least another thousand behind us. It’s going to be something.” He shrugged. “I thought I might as well see it.”

            “You’ll hate it. It’ll be loud. And all those girls who were there, they’ll be screaming. That’s what they do for the Beatles.”

            “Maybe,” James answered doubtfully, as if he couldn’t believe anyone would behave like that. “I suppose you want to go up to Vallance’s.”

            Of course he did. Down in the basement there he could go into a booth and listen to the latest singles and hear what was new. That was the draw, the music. He’d played guitar since he was thirteen, and old instrument one of his aunts had passed on when she saw how he liked what he heard on the radio. He learned to play it properly, the lessons his father insisted on, hours of practicing scales and classical pieces, and enough theory to understand how songs were put together.

            And once he realised how simple it all was, pop music had bored him. Until the Beatles came along. With three singles they’d made him realise there was more to it than he’d ever imagined. He’d bought them all, worked out the chords and listened to the way the voices all worked together. It was a new world. And he wanted to step into it.

            Once he was working he’d be able to save money for an amplifier and an electric guitar. A Burns, like Hank Marvin played in the Shadows. He’d find a few others who loved the new music and form a group. Give it a little time and they’d be able to play youth club dances. Church halls. And if things went really well there was always the Mecca. After that…well, it would be fun, if nothing else. His dad would hate it, but by now he was used to that. He couldn’t live his father’s life.

            He picked out three singles, the Saturday girl with the beehive hair and tight skirt telling him to go to booth three. He and James were cramped inside, but then the music began and he was lost, listening to the lines the guitars played and the power of the drums. Beat music, they called it, and the term was right. It needed the beat to work properly. James looked bored, but ten minutes later it was over. Chris was smiling as they walked out into the sun on the Headrow.

            In the end they simply went and caught the bus home, the long pull up Chapeltown Road. James was itching to go, to put in more time revising for his O-levels, as if he didn’t do enough already. They were the only people on the top deck, the windows wide to catch the breeze. They were sitting right at the front, the best seats, where overhanging branches would hit against the glass as if they might break it.

            James stared straight ahead, lost in one thought or another. Chris gazed out of the window. The street was full of dark faces. West Indians. A few white people remained, passing through the crowds like fading ghosts. The business signs were colourful, each one offering a mystery. It was a different world. A dangerous one, his father said. But the world was full of fear, according to him. It seemed strange when the man had fought in Burma during the war. What could be so fearful about home?

            Soon enough he’d be home. The usual Saturday summer dinner, ham, lettuce and tomato with salad cream. He knew he should spend the afternoon revising, trying to make some sense of calculus. He’d try. He always tried, until it defeated him and he’d put the book away in frustration and pick up his guitar. That always made sense, the logic of chords and notes.

            Another month and he’d be washing the ink from his fingers for the last time. He’d hand in his books and walk out of school, take off the tie. Then life could begin. Sometimes he believed that he’d spent all his life just holding his breath, waiting for something to happen.

            The bus juddered to a stop across from the war memorial in Chapel Allerton. Wreaths of paper poppies laid in the two minutes of silence last November, still stood against it, their blood colour faded to pink by the weather.

            He hadn’t even been born in 1945. He could only faintly remember the very end of rationing. But so many of his father’s generation still lived in that time, as if the fighting had never ended. He’d heard their evening conversations over a bottle of whisky, the longing reminiscences of their finest years, when they were allowed to be real men.

            He stood.

            “I’ll see you on Monday,” he told James, receiving a nod in reply. At the bottom of the stairs the conductor rang the bell. Chris jumped off before the bus stopped moving, almost stumbling until he found his feet.

            A new England, he thought as he walked away. That was what they needed.