Saturday, June 04, 2005

Steves story

my stay at my nans house became permanant towards the end of the summer holidays, this was down to the fact that my mum decided i was "better off with my nan" and as it turned out she was right, because living with my nan was like a breath of fresh air, no pressure from my dad to go and live with him and no fear of rejection anymore from my mother, I never laid eyes on my mother again until 1985 but we will cover that on a later date.

At first i used to sleep on a put u up bed in my nans lounge and her dog Kim used to lay at the bottom of the bed as if to keep me company, then Doug did out the store room as a bedroom for me which was fantastic as i now had my little bit of privacy back, i took great pleasure in plastering the walls with posters of my favourite bands and playing music really loud until i was told to turn it down, it was always quite surreal to come out of my room to get a drink and find my auntie Mabel singing along to bat out of hell, i used to say do you like this one Mabel and she would say "yes it's one of your nicer ones" , not bad for a lady of 60 odd years old!.

Around late 1979 we as a gang started experimenting with different substances like gas lighter fuel, evo stick glue, cannabis, speed and acid, we thought it was really great getting high and halucinating, we did this mostly at weekends but sometimes we would skive off school and go to the local d.i.y. store and steal some glue and gas then go to a place called Gill Banks and get really wasted, this went on for about a year until two girls at school died, one from solvent abuse and the other took an overdose, this really shocked us all and we were given lectures in assembley about the dangers of glue sniffing and butane gas abuse, this really hit home and we gave it all up apart from the odd joint or two at the weekend.

I got dumped by my girlfriend just before christmas 1979 she had decided to find out what being a "MOD" was all about and could not be seen with a "Grebo" "local slang for a Rocker" i was absolutely gutted, i had dealt with my parents break up and thought that was hard but this felt like total dispair and did not go out for weeks afterwards.

When i emerged to the world once more there was talk of going to live rock concerts but we had no idea of how to get tickets, until one day tony and i went to Barrow in Furness on the bus to do some "shopping" for sew on patches for our denim jackets, on the way to the badge shop we went past EARTHQUAKE RECORDS a fantastic shop that had all the latest singles and Lp's so we went in and they were advertising coach trips to concerts, one of which was MOTORHEAD at Manchester Apollo if i remember rightly the cost of the tickets were £2.50 each plus £4.00 for the coach so, we put a deposit down for eight tickets so our mates could go as well, so,we were going to see motorhead we could not wait, we got to manchester about 4hrs early dad and mary had followed the coach so they could keep an eye on us in the city it was great fun mingling with all the other Grebo's that were around you felt like kindred spirits even though we did not know each other, anyway concert time finally arrived and dad and mary saw us into the apollo then went for a meal while we were in the concert, i seem to remember being very scared as motorhead had such a reputation for being eventful gigs, but i need not have worried as it was brilliant this was total raw motorhead just before thier peak, they played some old hawkwind tracks like "the watcher" "lost johnny"and the seminal track "motorhead" i have seen motorhead three times since but none can compare to this it was just electric.

Christmas this year was interesting as it was the first christmas i spent in the company of my stepmum Mary, she was very excited to have me at the dinner table along with the rest of the family, she was trying so hard to be the perfect hostess, After we had dinner Mary started offering around cake and biscuits, Tony and I were still at the dinner table but she did not offer us anything, Auntie Fernanda said "are you two not having any" we said that "we had not been offered any" not wanting to appear rude, with that Mary spun round and said "they have got bloody legs haven't they, they can get it themselves" to that we said no thanks, later that night Tony and I had a few joints and got the munchies, we went to the kitchen and ate all the fucking cakes and biscuits we could find, she always offered after that episode................
see you next week, steve...x

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

always left wanting more lol - cant wait till next week Lisa x
what a memory you have!

piddy77 said...

it's fantastic...the story makes me cry every week and i love steve for the humanist that he is...i wish there was a lot more steves in the world!