In 2010, I was approached by the music journalist and photographer Kevin Cummins to contribute to an anthology by northern writers he admired. The brief was to respond to one of Kevin’s photographs however we wished. I was sent this photograph—‘Bar Man’.
My response was to write a story about the smoking ban and its effects upon those who had worked in places synonymous with smoking. So I had my ‘Bar Man’ writing to the then sixteen-year-old Euan Blair, Tony Blair’s son, who had been arrested for drunkenness in London after his GCSE exam results.
DEAR EUAN, I wrote. Have a word with your dad, son. It’s not the fags. It’s the lack of future in general.
Love, Alvin and Ramona.
He never replied. He never has. But they came for me anyway. I said to them, ‘Do you know who I am?’ And I gave them me business card—Alvin Starr, Human Jukebox. Ramona would say I was out of order, but you’ve got to make the most of such chances in this bad weather. That copper might’ve thought himself high and almighty when he whacked on them cuffs but like I said, his daughter will be wanting a wedding disco come a couple of years, and she’ll need to know where to go.
‘Don’t you be going to Johnny Discs,’ I warned him. ‘He anna got the vinyl like me. And he charges double and a minicab if you go past two.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind, Alvie,’ he said. ‘But she’s only sixteen, remember.’
‘So was mine,’ I said. ‘And it would’ve been proper nice to have walked her down the aisle.’
It was three years ago when I woke up in a filthy mood and couldn’t put my finger on why. I felt like I needed to tell someone something, you know? And I’d been writing to Tony, I’d taught myself, like, and I was only telling him how disappointed I was. Oh, I know he rolled up his sleeves and went out without a tie, but that doesn’t mean he’s one of us, that he understands what it’s been like. Like I said to him, it’s like you’ve put an elastic band around the north and squeezed out its lifeblood. We’re choking, Tony, I wrote. And we’ve run out of ideas.
You see it’s no good when a class stops working. Hanging around in back kitchens, looking out of us windows, the wife shouting to shift the wardrobe so she could get to them skirtings—you’re as low as you can be when you’re on all fours with a cloth and a bowl of bleach. So I had a think while I was down there. What could I do? Who could I be now? Otherwise that’s it, isn’t it? Been somebody once, now a nobody with a Hoover in his hand. I said to the wife before she left, ‘Either you take that bloody Hoover with you or you let me burn it,’ but that’s the thing when you’re grieving on your own. Makes you do things you never thought your fists were capable of. But I would’ve loved a reply off Tony. House of Commons paper and that little gatehouse—would’ve really meant something to me that—stuck two fingers up at the old man at least.
So I wrote to his son. He seemed like a good lad and I wanted to thank him. Because if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have heard my calling. And it was a little goldmine for a while. Made a bit on the side with what I could under the decks and I know our Ramona was looking down at me shaking her head, but like I told her: it’s a world of entrepreneurs now. You’ve got to branch out. And that Johnny Discs, he was cleaning up with his compilation CDs and duty free. So I looked around the house at what I could sell and I thought, I won’t sell my vinyl, no I won’t. Not when every record was bought with an honest week’s work. It was tradition that—every Saturday, like a fag and a pint come Friday. Symbolised a hard grafter that, deserving it was, and I’d play it to death. So I told our Ramona. I’ll make those records my job. Everyone loves a party. Then came that ban. And it did more than help the country’s health.
Dear Euan, I wrote. We’ve all been drunk. Drunk because of love or drinking away the future, it’s all the same, and as for disorder, well. How do you order this many people? I said to our Ramona, it’s the dawning of a new decade and the sun is shining. Bit of fags and booze at his age, it’s to be expected. So I wrote to him: Come on Euan, do us a favour, eh? You’re one of us now mate, back on the streets with the rest of us, and you’re what, twenty-five now? Quarter of a century my son, you’re a lucky blighter. Mine never knew what it was like to pass big exams and become somebody else. While you were out there throwing up a new future, my daughter was in the garage dangling, the Hoover cable around her neck.
The wife had wanted to call her Sheila, but like I said, that’s no name for who she’s going to be. I had to change my name. No good being an every John like everyone else. I want her knowing who she is from the off, because God, I had plans for my little girl. I’d made some real plans I had. Like I said to Euan—me and you mate have a bit of common ground. We’ve all known what it’s like to have a disappointing dad.
Love, Alvin and Ramona.
Dear Euan, I wrote. I was like you son, the eldest of four and there’s some responsibility in that. I weren’t so lucky in getting a decent brood to watch over, but what I lacked in family members I had in decent mates. Course, you know who your friends are in times of redundancy. It’s a bit of shock when they stop calling in for a brew. Makes you wonder what you ever had in common. But never mind eh? Bit of solitude has its moments and you get gen and make do. Story of my life that. But our Ramona, she was writing and writing. It’s why I started learning. I thought there isn’t any point in me sitting here and just watching her with all them pens and filling out my forms. Like I wrote to Tony, don’t be judging my handwriting mate. It’s not how it looks, it’s what it says. People today, they take a pen for granted.
‘What’s up with yer?’ our Ramona said, and I had to say to her, ‘I don’t know if I’m right or left.’ And she said, ‘Just go with the flow, Dad. See which feels most right.’
Course, it was stuck in me head then, but so was being left, and I can’t tell you how much that got me down at first. Right-handed Alvie, I thought to myself. Never thought I’d see myself with a pen in my right hand. My father will be turning in his grave. Course, like I said to Tony. It weren’t the fags but the job that killed him. It’s why I never added dust to my stage name. All that dust on my father’s lungs, strikes a nerve that. Not a penny in compensation.
Dear Euan, I wrote right-handed. Sorry to bug you again mate, but I’m starting to feel a bit cheated. This ban like, I don’t think your dad’s thought it through—because an empty ashtray is an empty pub. And an empty pub means they’re all at home putting their own records on. And if they’re putting their records on then they’re having a party. And if they’re having a party at home then there’s no need to go out. Do you see what I’m getting at, Euan? Because a fuller factory makes a better place to live, and a fuller ashtray means I’ve got a wage. So I’m making a point here. Them buckets of sand for the butts and the dimps, that’s what your old fella’s doing to us lot. He’s burying us in daft laws and yet his head’s in the sand.
Love, Alvin and Ramona.
The wife used to say that all she ever wanted was a bay window. If you had a bay window you had a semi. And if you had a semi you had a better view. Oh, she kept a decent house and she weren’t that bad a wife when she wasn’t wanting. We’d be sat at the table doing us writing, me and our Ramona, and there the wife would be sat, staring out of the window. ‘They’ve had a new car at number 6,’ she’d bleat. ‘They only decorated last week, and those kids are all in new uniforms. Blazers an’ everything.’
And our Ramona, she’d be chewing her pen, I can see her now, and she’d tell her mother, ‘Only swots have blazers.’
‘Yes, I live on the wrong side of the bloody road,’ the wife would say. But I could picture her in mind as the wife pictured fresh wallpaper, and so I put a bit aside and got her one.
‘Oh Alvie,’ said the wife. ‘What are you trying to do to her?’
I used to watch her take it off when the bus came, see her coming out of school with it screwed up in her bag. Like I wrote to Tony, I agree with you mate. Sometimes you don’t succeed, do you? You just don’t know what it feels like knowing you’re the new future. Shame though. The wife wanted to give it to the social but like I said to her: I’ve paid in my taxes for thirty odd years, asked no one for nothing and lived off hand-me-downs all my life. That blazer stays where she left it.
Dear Euan, I wrote, and my letters were in double figures by now. Treat it like learning to tie your own shoelaces. He’s your dad. You must have a chat now and then, have a view, make a point, put the world to right, isn’t that his job? Mind you, farting about in other countries, he’s forgotten about the world back home. So tell him this while you’re at it, Euan. Because shoelaces, son, are what family was to this country. They tie us all together, and it’s the same process whether on the left or the right. Course, our Ramona was all heels by then; another six inches and she would’ve touched the garage floor and saved her life. I told her the night before, it won’t matter a jot what letters your exam results come in. You’re Ramona Starr. But what can you do, eh Euan? Ten years ago, I wouldn’t even have recognised the word fail. But that’s what I’ve found when you properly start learning. You see the word and then you see what other people think of it. And you know what the worst thing is, Euan? When you wish you hadn’t bloody learnt. When you wish you couldn’t read her words. Because if I hadn’t learnt, I wouldn’t have been able to read, ‘Sorry Dad, but that’s me done.’
Love, Alvin and Ramona.
Dear Euan, I wrote. What do you think about this then? Friday night in the Six Bells was my night. It was all I had left. Fifty quid, and I’d made sure it was damn right. I’d start around nine-ish, bit of Bowie to ease them in, jig things up around midnight, keep the ladies happy with some Abba. Then the old bloody landlord keeled over in the cellar. Brewery sent some young things in and gutted it. Like a bloody kitchen with all that stainless steel around. Menus for God’s sake, cups and saucers and servi-bloody-ettes! I sit in here every day I do, nowt better on other than to sit here staring at my face in the stainless bloody steel and striking matches for fags I can’t smoke. Like I keep saying, it was a proper pub was this. This bar was propped up—Grafters, people, pint and a fag every Friday, a little bop and a bag of cheese and onion. Because it’s a bigger picture up here, Euan, I wrote, and it’s clogging up my veins, because look in that stainless steel bar, Euan. Don’t see a single working man’s face in that bar, do you? I’m sat by myself, wanting work, bit of company, and all them lot are sat at home with a special bloody offer from Tesco and playing ‘Now that’s what I call fuck off’ for the wife.
Love, Alvin and Ramona.
Dear Euan, I wrote for the last time. Just so you know son, that bar burnt down and another John bites the dust. It’s been a pleasure mate.
Love, Alvin and Ramona.