It was strange the way my mind operated 20-odd years ago. I don’t recall planning to study History and English Literature at Bath College of Further Education. I suppose it would have been because my grades stank. In the event, Bath was twee and harmless, like a pretty old lady – the land that time forgot. It was just about random enough for me.
When I got there, no one understood my Scottish accent, so they christened me ‘Hamish’. Soon, however, I withdrew from student activities, dropping out early in the second year. I’m never comfortable going through the motions as a rule – unless I’m moving my bowels, of course. The reason there’s nothing as underrated as a good shit is because there’s nothing worse than being full of shit. That’s one thing I do know.
To justify dropping out of a BA Honours degree, it was imperative I read a lot of books – if only to prove to myself I wasn’t actually thick. I tended towards ‘underground’ writers – Russian, Irish, Black American and even occasionally women – until I was put right off by a rambling old soak who called herself Joyce. For light relief, I enjoyed the cartoon Peanuts and especially the character Snoopy, mainly because he was a dog rather than a stupid human.
Soon I had turned to music, performing distorted, down-tuned bass guitar and snarling facial expressions in a band called Swing – art-noise terrorists who would sabotage polite jazz soirées and confront the audience with dissonant squalls of feedback. Alex – half-Indonesian, Baudelaire-obsessed and fond of wearing a monocle – was the star of the show. He would manipulate an old miked-up violin with a food mixer before studiously sawing it in half, as though performing a magic trick at the London Palladium.
Alex slept in a customised open coffin and tried to convince me that golden autumn leaves are nothing more then ‘tree shit’. Instead of making a big deal about thinking outside the box, he just kicked back and thought inside the box. Alex was intensely lazy and rarely left the flat, possibly on account of the ridicule he invited from passers-by, but he was my friend and I didn’t care. In fact, that’s what bound us together – neither of us cared. Or at least, we tried not to.
I took my cue from the opening passage of Henry Miller’s ode to apathy, Tropic Of Capricorn: ‘Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos.’ One day, in the midst of said chaos, my father reappeared out of the blue, after 16 years without so much as a bang on the ear. He possessed a magnificent beard and a shit-eating grin that spread from one big ear to the next like bush fire. I had to admit, when push came to shove, he was my father. And as long as he didn’t try to push me, I’d try my best not to tell him to shove it.
