In Search Of The Lost Chord - my new blog.

Right, I'm getting bored with not writing and cocking about on Facebook, so I'm off to find Richey Chord - missing in action with a made-up name since 8/6/89 - and have myself a little adventure, and you can read about it here. www.harleydread.blogspot.com

12 words beats 12 steps/fuck me, I'm finished...

If you ever get to look at my laptop, you might notice that the bookmark on my toolbar for Facebook actually says FACECRACK, because nostalgia is my new addiction and I can't seem to shake my terrible habit of looking at old photos of people who I vaguely knew back in the day. It's the main reason that this autoblography has taken 23 months rather than the nine or so that I had envisaged.

That, and the attacks of flashback fear that made we want to just turn off the computer and go and do something less interesting instead for weeks on end.

As ever, I blame The (Always) Late Kate Reeves RIP for the entire thing. She always said I should do this, and then she upped and died on us all justlikethat, so what I've really done is written my life story for somebody who can't read it, what with the being-dead thing and all. But I'd like to think that she would have enjoyed it, especially the slightly squirmy bits about shagging and that. Rest in peace, my darling Kato; a man couldn't have asked for a better mate-o...


Finally, I'd like to apologise to Rachel the love of my life for having had to put up with me doing my own head in for the last 23 months, because I've undoubtedly been a proper twat to live with for huge swathes of this, and I'm sorry, I really am, but you know how it is when you promise somebody dead that you're gonna do something; you've just got to get it done or they won't stop nagging at you...

At the time of writing, we've been married for nine years and together for 16, on and off, and we've lived through some good times, and some frankly fucking shocking ones as well. We fight and argue like many married and cohabiting couples tend to do, and we really shouldn't work together, but that's okay because I've finished this tale now, and feel certain that it's only a matter of weeks before I get approached to sign a hefty book deal and then we'll all live happily ever after. And back in the real world when that doesn't happen, I won't really care, because this stretch of writing this has been the biggest and bestest achievement of my life, apart from the fathering-a-beautiful-and-wise-daughter thing, obviously.

I've left loads of stuff out, and loads of people as well. Sometimes this was because I didn't remember about incidents until I was way down the timeline, sometimes it was because I couldn't think of anything to say about somebody other than I got hammered with them a few times, other things I just plain fucking forgot, there's been a few incidents where I have actually been discreet and just not mentioned them to avoid embarassing others, loads of sex stuff because I figured there was enough already without me compiling some sort of scuttle-graph of my life, and sometimes I've just not mentioned people because they are former England football internationals and local legends and I didn't fancy getting sued, or something...

Right, that really is me off now, I'm done, bar a bit of judicious editing here and there. Thanks for getting this far. If you're reading this and you know me, I hope it was enlightening for you. If you've got no idea who I am, I hope I don't come across as some kind of...whatever. I just hope that I don't, okay?

I'm 44 this year, and I ache in the places where I used to play, as L. Cohen would have it. Writing this, especially the bit between 19 and 33, has made me appreciate how much calmer I am these days. I've still got fucking appalling brakes, like, but I'm also a lot more sparing on the accelerator in my 40s.

Wise words at the very end: I do not follow the 12-step rules of recovery as advocated by the AA.
I do, however, have a great deal of time for the 12-word, wise old saying, "There's a difference between scratching your arse and tearing it to pieces", and I wish I'd known that when I was a younger man, because my metaphorical arse was in tatters for a decade-and-a-half. But whatever happens next, I know I won't be sitting down in 2019 and writing about how everything went turbo-grim again, because am I fuck ever going back there...

Bests,

Ettrick Scott/The Claw of TRUTH. June 26th 2009.

Where's mi homies at now, blud? part #11 last bit

Shieldfield remains much the same as it ever was, ie a bit grim and sad, although I believe that a couple of the scary pubs I never went in have closed down. Oh, and it now has two footbridges linking to the town instead of just one. Exciting times.

Although I feel sure that Rozz pined for me for many a year, she finally accepted that I was taken and got married herself not so long ago.

And finally, I took the ring out of my right nipple in late 2002, following a second snagging incident that made me squeal and squeak like a broken-backed hamster all over again.

Where's mi homies at now, blud? part #10

Room 101 is now AG Hair Design Ltd. It's been there for years and seems to be thriving, so I feel that it's unlikely that the owner lives in a building site above the shop and guzzles White Lighting for breakfast on a regular basis, like what we did.

My ever-lovin' GP continues to be a doctor, although I have now reverted to typical blokey behaviour and never go to the doc's unless forced at knifepoint, so I very rarely see him these days.

I have no doubt whatsoever that Chester is still too Northern to be truly civilised, and too civilised to be truly Northern, and I'll also post out a crisp tenner to anybody reading this who can find out where that quote comes from originally. I never see any of the ever-changing cast that I was in rehab with, but I wish them all well and hope that they're not dead, mad or still bang at it.

North Shields is still faintly depressing and I'm very glad I don't live there anymore.

About a year after I knocked the pop on the head, (The) Safehouse reformed and rehearsed a new set of covers (The Clash, Rolling Stones, Iggy), which we then blasted out at my wedding party. It was such a laugh that we decided to write some new stuff and start gigging again...at the rate of about one gig every six months, obviously. The highlight of our reformation came in February 2002 when we supported you've-probably-never-heard-of-them punk legends Penetration at their big comeback gig in Newcastle. A packed-out crowd of some 400 people (who were trapped in the same room as us as the only bar was directly opposite the stage) witnessed us not suck ass and actually be canny good, I have to say.

Subsequent gigs saw us raid the dressing-up box to play at an Hallowe'en annual tribute to CBGB club in New York, where we performed as Wiggy Plop and The Splooges in 2003, and the New York Trolls in 2004. Bertie still vividly recalls the day he was up a ladder in the rain on a building site and I rang him on his mobile and started banging on about how I'd found a pair of ladies' high-heeled snakeskin boots in Oxfam that would be the very thing for my New York Trolls costume...

And then I got to thinking I was too old and too not-arsed to be in a band any more, and knocked it on the head at the end of 2004. My resignation failed to make the papers. I do sometimes miss the camaraderie and the patter of tiny bassists, but it was all getting a bit minor-chord plaintive towards the end, and I just wanted to sing dumb-ass rock songs over crunching barre chords: musical differences, innit.

Mr Albert Hall AKA Mr Albert Talbot AKA (but just by me) Bertie no longer has dreadlocks or a factory, having smartened up and slimmed down his operational base to an army of one. We have adventures, my favourite being the one where Chuck Berry played at a festival in Dorset last summer, where Bertie donned a hi-viz waistcoat and ushered me through the crowd pretending to be my carer, while I excitedly shouted "DO YOU LIKE CHUCK BERRRAAAH? LEGEND! AH LOVE CHUCK BERRAAAH!" at random faces in the crowd. He definitely encourages me to step outside myself once in a while, that's for sure...Soon to be driver and photographer on my next project, which is Doing A Lindy (Google it if you don't know what that is) outside all the houses I have ever lived in in Newcastle and its surrounds, which should be a nostalgiac jolly day out. I love Bertie dearly.

After accruing enough material for an as-yet unreleased triple concept-album about whether or not one should leave one's spouse, the John-Filter did exactly that a few years ago and now lives with a woman that everybody really likes who will hopefully never be the subject of any minor chord musings played on the old pajamacaster.

Ross was never an accountant for a chain of bakers, I got that wrong. He was a computer programmer for a chain of bakers, but I couldn't be arsed to go back and change it. Still is one. Married and lives on the wrong side of the river, but he was born over that way, so it may well be the right side side to him. I see him at the shops sometimes at lunch, he's got a card that gets him everything half price from the bakers, the jammy twat.

Where's mi homies at now, blud? part #9

The Barley Mow closed in the late 90s, briefly reopening as the truly risible Fog & Firkin, which was essentially a shit antique shop with a bar in it. It then became Stereo and served as a feeder bar for dance club Foundation, which is what the Riverside became once they'd shipped out the indie bands and shipped in a disco ball and a smoke machine. Then Foundation shut a couple of years back, leaving Stereo fucked, basically. It was closed when I passed last week, although whether that's permanent or for a refurb, I cannot say.

The theatre resisted my valiant attempt to burn it to the ground and still functions as a theatre to this day.

My septum is still deviated after that bloke twatted my nose across my face, which means my left nostril can breathe out, but not in. It would only take a minor operation to right it, my ever-lovin' GP tells me, but fixing it would mean it would accept powdered content once more, so I think I'll just leave it as it is for now.

I no longer visit Peeburra, as the daughter turned 13 last autumn and is now allowed to catch the Newcastle train on her own, so my presence there is no longer required. I can't say I'm exactly pining for the place...

The Daughter is thus far navigating her teen years without turning into a terrible grump who refuses to tidy her room. Pop music and fashion do not float her boat one little bit - books are where it's at with my daughter. Just like her dad and her grandad before her, put her in a book and she's gone... She wants to be a writer when she's older and she's already had a couple of travel articles published, so it's looking good. "Insanely proud" just about covers it...

We see each other for the whole of every half-term and half of the big holidays, which, to my mind, works out better than doing the 'weekend dad' thing that I'd probably be doing if she didn't live 250 miles away. A big shout must go out to Rachel here for doing the whole stepmother thing so brilliantly and showering unconditional love all around at all times. The difference between me and Rachel can be summed up by the fact that she believes that fairies exist, while I believe that fairies did exist, but then a load of bad goblins fucked them and ate them all. I can sometimes be a miserable twat with a negative outlook is what I'm trying to say, but being married to a ginger force of nature means that I do a lot less introspective navel-gazing and moping around the gaff than I would probably do if we weren't together.

Where's mi homies at now, blud? part #8

Rock-on's wife is still married to him, even after fifteen years of him spunking their cash on antique torches and broken pinball machines. Their house in Brighton is so nice that, in 2006, I opted to stay there for a few days rather than continue my tour-managing duties with Shitdisco, after three weeks of sharing the floor of the drummer's mam's living room in Leeds with seven or eight drunken radgies from art school and travelling in the world's least salubrious 'tour-bus' (a former carpet-cleaner's transit van with no stereo or heating, and with two sofas nailed to the floor in the back) drove me to the very edge of my sanity and sobriety once again...but that really is a different story.

The Legendary Harley Dread Guitars, Amsterdam shut up shop within a year of my visit, after ever-declining sales forced their hands, and Hazy and Maddog returned home, bloodied but unbowed. My first ever gig as TM for Shitdisco took me to Amsterdam at the end of 2005, and I took a walk up their old strasse to discover that the building that housed the shop had been torn down and replaced by some grey and chrome office block. As Hazy has so wisely observed of this period in his life, "If only Anne Frank had thought of opening Legendary Harley Dread Guitars; the Nazis would never have fucking found her..."

Dulcie is still my hairdresser, some 20 years after she first gifted The Legendary Harley Dread with their revolutionary 'four different mullet-styles in one band' look. I've found that it's best to steer away from certain topics, like her ex-blokes, when she's doing my do, because otherwise she tends to get a bit heated and excited and miss bits.

I did not wish to imply that Nick from Chickendurge (his spelling) is some sort of dreary sell out cunt who probably works for the civil service. I saw him two weeks ago in TK Maxx while he was looking at horrible clothes and I was looking at lovely ones and he seemed very well and happy and with a six-month old nipper at home. Shame on his mam for hoying that top hat out, like, it was class.

Moor Court in Gosforth continues to be a highly desirable rental address for people with more money than sense, unless they've put some proper heating and security in by now. The Hoppings travelling funfair continues to visit the town moor; it's here as I'm writing this, halfway through its weekly run and I have thus far successfully body-swerved all contact with it for the 14th consecutive year. It remains the bane of my old man's life, however, as he lives a kick in the arse away from one of the main entrances and is forever capturing the underclass shagging and/or eating chips in his front garden.

Where's mi homies at now, blud? part #7

Danny the glue-sniffer died around the turn of the century, after accidentally setting himself on fire when he was off his nut one night, or so I heard. A horrible full-stop at the end of a largely wasted life.

Emma got married in 2000, a couple of months after me and Rachel. The daughter was a bridesmaid at both events. She moved out of Peeburra a few years back when it started getting a bit lairy, and now lives in the middle of nowhere in the Fens of East Anglia, at least three miles away from the nearest village. It is very flat where they live: it's the sort of place where, if your dog ran away from home, you could watch it go for three days. Whenever I go there, I pine for towerblocks and built-up areas after an hour or so, but it's a great place to bring up kids. Much better than Peeburra, which has an ever-increasing whiff of racial tension about it these days.

If it wasn't for Rachel, I can safely say that I'd probably be one of three things by now: dead, mad or still bang at it. She saved my life, or at the very least, provided me with a stable environment in which to have a decent crack at saving it myself. Deserves far more than a mere mention in this section, so the very, very last part of this autoblography will be all about her, innit.

The Drunken Brief continues to operate at a volume level several decibels louder than that of a normal person: I always hear him about 30 seconds walk away from where he actually is. Last time I saw him, he was perving on student girls in Tesco and sporting a pair of truly fucking horrible, raspberry-pink tight corduroy trousers that a flamboyant gay man in his 20s might have found a little OTT. Crazy like a fox until the day he drops down dead is my forecast here.

I very rarely see Topov, but his wedding a few years ago was notable for the fact that the shirt he was wearing was liberally coated in thick tar, as if he had been run over by a road-laying vehicle on the way to the church. I wish I'd asked him what that was all about.

Big Dom continues to hop on and off the wagon, I'm told. Now has really nice false teeth following an unfortunate incident in Prague a few years ago where several muscular policeman kicked his God-given ones down his neck.

Willow Teas Tearoom became Willow Tree Tearoom circa 1994, in a cynical bid to avoid paying Rachel a goodwill fee for the business that had her spitting yer actual bile for many years to come. I think it's a tapas gaff now, because they were royally fucked as a tearoom the second that Starbucks opened a branch directly opposite them a few years back. Ha.

The Fighting Cocks in Byker is now home to Karol Marketing, who market things, I presume. No idea why it's called Karol, though, because it's a bloke what owns it. It's probably safe to say that cats are no longer bitten in half by rogue pit-bull terriers at this address.

The Barn is now a fine Spanish tapas restaurant by the name of El Coto. Before that, it was called Barn Again, which is what it was when my dad walked out of it that aforementioned time when I turned up completely shitfaced at half-twelve bells in the afternoon. We still eat there once in a while, so I get to have booze-flashbacks to accompany my chorizo and beans, which is always good value.

Where's mi homies at now, blud? part #6

Steev Oliver now resides on a commune halfway up a mountain in deepest, darkest Wales somewhere.

Bambi now lives near Bristol and remains a keen aficionado of unfeasibly large motorcycles.

The Krute is a florist on the wrong side of the river these days. The name of his shop is based around a truly appalling pun that I can't bring myself to share with you.

I have no idea where The Robot Dancer is. As an interesting aside, though, I got to interview her idol, Gary Numan, on the phone for the paper in 2007. I was expecting him to be an absolute cock, but he turned out to be one of the nicest people I've ever interviewed, couldn't fucking shut him up. (My award for Biggest Absolute Cock Ever Interviewed goes to Matt Willis of Busted fame, incidentally. Hands down, no bother...)

Gary the Plasterer has probably never been the same since Big Country founding member Stuart Adamson hung himself in 2001.

Richey Chord remains ever elusive, which hugely bugs the fuck out of me. In fact, I've got half an idea that my next writing project might involve spending a few days in Lowestoft and trying to find out where he is these days. I could call it 'In Search of the Lost Chord'...

The last I heard of Sarah, she was teaching in Hong Kong, but that was years ago. I'm hoping that she now shares her life with somebody who is less promiscuous, and also less poly-addicted to assorted substances than my former self...

I never saw Mandy again from the day that I promised her boyfriend that I wouldn't, not even in passing. In many ways, she remains my ideal woman, which is totally fucking wrong, like, but there you go...

Marshall Hall has still not updated his website to acknowledge the fact that the Legendary Harley Dread played at Newcastle Riverside at least 10 times. Maybe when I come back in a decade or so to write part two of this, the situation will have been rectified. I wouldn't bet folding money on it, though.

Bewick Court/Fairy Towers/Bucket Street had a fancy makeover at the turn of the century and got reclad in futuristic grey plastic. However, the rubbish chutes still run through the middle of the building, so the inside honks just as much as it ever did.

Barb married a massive bloke, who, thankfully, never did carry out his threat to grind a glass into my face. Again, as with Sarah, all apologies to her for having the misfortune to get tangled up with me back then.

Last time I saw Purple Bob, she'd swapped the purple bob for brown ringlets and was working as a teacher. She also pretended not to recognise me for about 15 minutes, till I went over and said "Here, aren't you Purple Bob?", at which point, she did a very poor job of feigning surprise at seeing me.

Huw Lloyd Langton continues to play with Hawkwind every now and then. I saw him on a TV documentary a while back: he's still doing a very convincing impression of a man who isn't really there.

Where's mi homies at now, blud? part #5

The Mayfair and the Riverside clubs closed within three months of each other in 1999, instantly rendering Newcastle's gig scene a bit shit for a few years in two fell swoops. Where the Mayfair used to stand, we now have the Gate leisure complex, which is essentially an indoor shopping centre, but full of bars and restaurants instead of shops. It is truly fucking vile and I don't even like walking past the place very much, never mind actually going in there.

Johnny Thunders was found dead aged 38 in a New Orleans hotel room in 1991; there's compelling evidence that he was murdered. Tragic and sad, for sure, but who would ever have been foolish enough to bet on Johnny Thunders making old bones?

Cockney Ali Baxter married the divine Miss Roseblade (whilst wearing leather trousers and a battered topper, naturally) and moved to London, and then the Gloucestershire countryside. Found his spiritual calling as a roadie and band tech. I'm sure I heard a story a few years back about how he made himself indispensible when a new type of keyboard came out and he was the only person in the UK who understood how it worked and how to mend it.

Marty moved to Sheffield at the turn of the 90s; the climbing scene is a lot better down that way, apparently. Briefly saw him around two years after he left and he was sporting the crappest white-boy dreadlocks I've ever seen, and I've seen quite a lot, believe me...

Kelly did the My Drug Hell thing for most of the 90s, and married some pikey fella with whom she shared a mutual interest. And then she got straight, got divorced, re-entered society and remarried to a bloke who worships the ground under her feet, which is just how it should be.

Stiv Bators died in Paris in 1990, following an accident where he got knocked over by a car but refused to go to hospital. He went home, went to bed and died in his sleep from internal injuries. Again, tragic and sad, but, again, you would have got shocking odds at the bookies if you'd been wanting to bet on Stiv living long enough to collect his pension.

Where's mi homies at now, blud? part #4

Little Johnny died of an accidental heroin overdose in London on April Fool's Day, 2000. He did that classic thing of not using for a while, then using alone and misjudging the strength. We'd got back in touch not long before he died, and he seemed happy, albeit somewhat strung out. The last time we talked, about a week before he died, he had just joined the Territorial Army Paratrooper's Division and was trying to change the date of his first jump as it was meant to be on the same day as my wedding...but he never got to jump out of a plane or see me get wed, did he, the daft cunt? I still miss him loads. Bloodbrothers, innit.

The Broken Doll was demolished in the late 1990s to make way for a new road, but it had been shit for a good few years before that. Downstairs had become a haunt for West-End burglars, dealers and leg-breakers, while the gig room upstairs was briefly a cross-dressers bar called Dollies. You couldn't make it up...

Thanks to the magic of Facebook, I no longer wonder where all the 11th St Kids are today. Hazy builds cars on an assembly line and is still partial to a cheeky half and a bit of an exciting night out, Level is a geet hard-looking baldy roofer but still a total pussycat, Sam looks considerably less like Brigitte Bardot these days and travels the world filming interesting things, while Maddog Moore recently took voluntary redundancy from his job holding the camera on a long-running ITV police drama show and is currently dividing his time between the Toon and his other gaff by the sea in Spain, I believe.

Betty got married in the early 90s, in white, with her hair back-combed and crimped and massive like Siouxsie Sioux's: a long-held ambition of hers. Had a kid, split up with her man, moved away, never to be seen again.

Last time I saw Abby to talk to rather than in passing was a couple of years back, and she swore blind she was off the gear, even off the methadone. Here's hoping...

In a parallel universe, Marie and I got married in around 94, I invented Loaded magazine and we moved to a cottage in the country with roses ringed around the door, where I now write the Woman's Own advice column under the nom de plume of Sally Butters. Back in the real world, however, she moved to Leeds, became a legal secretary and married some other bloke. Bah...

Where's mi homies at now, blud? part #3

Eli Wallach will be 94 later this year. I still can't hear his name without thinking about eating pussy, although, thankfully, I am now able to eat pussy without a vision of his leering face forever popping into my head, which is nice...

Liza with a Z is now a doctor in that London, says the grapevine.

Piss Shite is now president of the Boris Johnson Fan Club, or so his dress-sense and general demeanour last time I bumped into him would seem to suggest. I like Piss Shite; there's something quintessentially British about him that I'm not sure I'll be able to explain, but he's unfailingly well-mannered, always seems delighted to see me on the rare occasions that our paths cross and concludes each and every meeting with a firm, manly handshake. Given that most of my chums just give a little wave and say "Laters" when they really mean "Farewell, old chap", it's nice to hang with someone who's determinedly kickin' it old-skool when it comes to manners of etiquette.

Devo left Live Theatre a couple of years after me and went to do the light and sound at an arts centre in the Lakes, where he remains to this day. I met him there in 1992 and he still had a highly vivid, U-shaped scar on his forearm from the night he dressed up as Snow White and fell through a window.

Gillian- the first girl who broke my heart and introduced me to the bombed-out, sick gut feeling that accompanies love gone wrong - lives a couple of miles away from me. I still see her, although it's more of a blue moon thing these days. A psychologist would probably have a field day with the fact that I can still recite Gillian's parents telephone number from memory, some 26 years after she gave it to me...

Kaaaaaaaaarrrrren still lives in the West End, in the same flat. May well still have Billy Idol posters on the bedroom walls, for all I know. Still talks like Psycho Paul from Ideal. "Taaaaaaanyaaaaaarrrrr..."

Bun-chaka I've not seen in 20 years or so, he was a security guard in a recreation centre last time our paths crossed. I was briefly convinced that he'd landed the role of American shoe salesman Al Bundy in TV's Married With Children. However, this turned out to be an actor who was the total fucking spit of him, but with better hair.

Yorkie got ill not long after I moved out, ill in the head. Initially, everyone thought it was speed psychosis and that it would pass, but it turned into something a lot more serious than that, and he was diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia. I still see him once in a while and we'll share a ciggie and have a chat, and he's a lot more lucid and together than some supposedly sane people I know, but there's still something absent about him that makes it clear that the old Yorkie doesn't really live there anymore.

Where's mi homies at now, blud? part #2

Orlando AKA Orgaz: Major hilarity alert when I Googled the former uber-posh Dry Rat bassist around 18 months back and discovered that he had spent a few years in London owning chic and expensive boutique hotels and just generally being a bit of a Soho rake. Described in a newspaper article back in the day as "The palest man in all of London". Facebook found him crashed and burned and exiled from the Groucho club in a farmhouse with his wife and kids in rural Normandy, I think. Looks a lot less pale these days. His Facebook buddies list reads like a register of Britain's insanely posh and wealthy landed gentry.

Junkie Joe from Mexico: After he gave up the smack in the mid 90s, Joe always felt uncomfortable in his own body somehow. This came to a head in 2001 when he decided he wanted to live as a woman. After five years of counselling and hormone pills, he finally got his tackle lopped off in 2007 and now runs Jo-Jo A-Go-Go, a pre- and post-op transexual titty bar in Amsterdam, and good luck to him, I say.

Naa, I'm just lying because I know he's reading this: He's married with a couple of kids, learned a proper working man's trade after giving the skag up and lives up by the coast near me. Holds some rather strong views on race and immigration issues, but I very much suspect that he exaggerates these purely in order to fucking wind me up.

Jeez Louise: if there's one advantage to being born a lady Jock instead of a lady Geordie, it's that you can get married to a Mackem and move to Sunderland without feeling that you're cold-bloodedly betraying a thousand generations of your foremothers, I guess. Jeez Louise was big in digital media processing or something and now she's big in paper-sales, or something. Don't see enough of her, to the point where she dubbed me "The Angel Of Death" because I only rang her when mutual friends had shuffled off their mortal coils. Nobody's died for yonks now, though... (Touches wood, salutes lone magpie...)

The Boy James: Graduated from furniture school very early 90's and is now a self-employed pedlar of finely tooled stuff made out of wood. He built me some lovely bookcases a couple of years back, with a hidden ledge and a false bottom in them, for to stash valuables in. Cost a fucking fortune, like, but they'll live longer than anybody reading this. The Boy James is also a fine companion to have if I've got a +1 to review a gig, because I can usually rely on him to say something witty and wry about the band, so then I can just stick that in quotes and it eats up 50 words, no bother.
Once told my my mother to fuck off. In a church. On my wedding day. Taking his Best Man's responsibilities waaaay beyond the call of duty. (Rachel was a bit late getting to the church. She was on a horse and cart. Not a carriage, a cart. Long story...Anyway, after about 40 minutes of waiting, my mam tapped me on the shoulder and said "It's not too late to change your mind, you know..." "And you can fuck off, as well" replied The Boy James, quick as a flash.
In her defence, I think my mam was trying to be funny, but her delivery, timing and choice of material were definitely a bit off, I reckon. The point of this story is that every Groom needs a Best Man who is ready and willing to tell the Groom's mother to Fuck Right Off whenever needed throughout the day's proceedings.)

Where's mi homies at now, blud? part #1

What everyone who featured in this is up to these days, in loose order of appearance:

My Mam: lives over in the West End, psychotherapises people in a private practice. It would be fair to say that we're not close. She finds it difficult to talk to anybody without analysing them on the quiet, which can get very wearing very quickly, I've found.

My Dad: lives about a mile up the road from me. We do lunch together every couple of months or so. He seems happier than he has done in years and I hope he stays that way. Doing a marvellous job of being a wise and witty Grandad, or so the daughter reliably informs me.

Wor Kid: has a flat in a sheltered accomodation place in the West End for people with long-term mental health problems. Does quite a lot of voluntary work. I don't see him as much as I should do. Doing a marvellous job of being a doting uncle, or so the daughter reliably informs me.

Lachlan the ginger kid: Went off his head after being convicted of grave-robbing and never really came back. Last time I saw him, he was riding about on a tiny, kiddy-sized girl's bike. Not a good look when you're over six foot tall...

Nana AKA my Dad's mam: Died in 1987. I don't think I've eaten Battenburg cake since...

Hamlet AKA Wingrove School's answer to David Watts: I found him on Facebook last year, happy to report that he is no longer employed by the Benefits Agency.

Queen Elizabeth II: still top dog in the Royal Family, last time I checked. Her golden jubilee in 2002 was a fucking washout, mind.

Paul Frost off the telly: got fucked-over when ITV had that shake-up a few years back. Continues to work in his own PR company, says the internet.

Muhammad Ali: has lived with Parkinson's disease for many years. Still the coolest boxer that ever drew breath, and no Vietcong ever called him "Nigger". Unlikely to get his face tattooed or bite somebody's ear off at any point in the immediate future.

Rutherford School: Had a massive rebuild in the early 90s and was renamed Westgate Community College, which fooled nobody, then closed down a few years later. They may well have knocked the fucker down by now, but I only get over that way these days if I'm going to a funeral at the Crem, so I'll have to wait for someone I know to die before I find out for sure.

Mice Fartin': Not a clue, not seen him since school.

Princess Margaret: Died a few years back following a frankly implausible accident where she apparently hurled herself into a scalding-hot bath without getting a minion to check how warm it was first. And if you believe that then you'll fucking believe anything...

Punk Kev: A divorcee by the grand old age of 19, Punk Kev then met a lovely girl, settled down properly and became Bank Kev instead. Bumped into him about five years back, he was on his way to play drums in a covers band at a charity do at the City Hall. Much as I would love to play the City Hall, I feel that I would knock the chance back if it neccesitated doing cover versions of Walking On The Bastard Moon and other much-loved classics...

Rock-on AKA Tom: Lives in Brighton in a lovely house with his lovely wife and lovely kids. Bit of a 'face' in the heady world of college management these days. Golfs and coaches under-11 Rugby. Collects antique torches. Still one of the funniest people I have ever met in my life.

Gleen the Spleen AKA Glen: property-manages in LA. Currently ignoring me on Facebook, possibly because I mentioned coming over to stay with him later this year. Saw him in Newcastle last year for the first time since 1992, still exactly the same, albeit larger and with not much hair. Geezer.

Pip Tomkinson AKA Phil: Found drowned in a reservoir near Sheffield, 2001 or 2002. I don't know if it was suicide or an accident, but I think he'd been living with a brain tumour or something similar for a while: we'd lost touch over the years, but he turned up at my wedding in 2000, shaven-headed and a bit distant and distracted. Mind, later on that night, a mutual friend of ours collared him pissing all over their back-yard and sniggering to himself, so the old Phil was obviously still in there somewhere.

Wagsley: still bang at it, I'm afraid. It takes less than a minute to walk across Wagsley's World; that's the distance between his mam's house - where he lives- and the offie. White Lighting and wobbly eggs for weeks and weeks on end, then detox, stop for a bit and then, inevitably, repeat. No idea how he's not dead or suffered organ collapse yet. I worry about Wagsley something fucking terrible, but what's a boy to do, eh? I don't see him these days, principally because I absolutely can't bear it. Haway man, Wagsley, is this really what you dreamed your fucking life would be like when you were a kid?

Epilogue part #3 - the happy ending and beyond...

Rachel hasn't figured in all of this nearly as much as was originally planned. I figured out pretty early on that this is my autobiography and not someone else's biography, and I've been so mad and crap that there really wasn't the space for another person's mad crapness as well. Suffice to say that she was a horrible drunk, more so towards the end of her drinking, but sober, she's like something out of Disney a lot of the time, and small children and woodland creatures rush to gather at the hem of her garments etc.

She's outgoing and exuberant in a way that I never could be unless I'd researched and achieved some perfect balance of booze and class A's, and people love her, on the whole. She can be over the top and gets hold of the wrong end of the stick quite a lot, but she's aware of both of those things and doesn't really give a fuck about either of them, preferring to view them as character quirks rather than character faults, and who am I to argue?

She refuses to learn how to work a computer, only recently started using a mobile phone and has a general mistrust of any technology that features a digital or LCD display, and, while I often find this Luddite approach to the world frustrating, it's also very funny at times, usually when she's on the phone to someone work-related, and says something like "Now, if you could just download me your e-mail number..."

We fight a bit still, but happily, no longer the kind of fights that require intervention from the drivers of vehicles that flash blue lights and make the nee-nar nee-nar sound, more the kind of fights that viciously scrutinise one another's shortcomings and feature liberal use of the F and C words.

I'm pretty damn sure that working together doesn't help - in 2002, Rachel started renting the kitchen in a music/arts venue in Newcastle, the place we'd had our wedding reception at, and that's where we're at to this day, knocking out proper, home-cooked food that the Daily Telegraph recently described as "Absurdly delicious" while the New Musical Express went mental and said that it was "A life-changing burger experience"...which is all well and groovy, except that I'm not a caterer, I'm a bloke who's married to a caterer, a bloke who has made himself otherwise unemployable after years of abuse and doing fuck-all tore a gaping hole in his CV that's impossible to put a spin on.

I don't really like being a boss, but, having taken the piss in kitchens before, I'm aware when someone is taking the piss in ours, and I can often be acerbic and short-tempered when expressing my displeasure. I may well come across as being more of a cunt than I actually am (or believe myself to be) at times, and the fact that people might sometimes not like me does fuck with my ego and my id every once in a while, so I'm trying not be that arsey bloke so much these days, but it ain't easy, because my heart isn't in that kitchen; it's sat here, and it's writing...

Happily, 2003 saw my superior writing skillz collide with a fat slice of luck and five years of the best blag EVER fell into my lap out of nowhere. I was perusing our local Sunday paper, the (Soaraway) Sunday Sun one day when I noticed their Champion Columns page, where readers could score £50 for writing articles of around 600 words or so. As it happened, I had an article already written that I'd done for a magazine that never happened, all about Goth kids and Charver kids fighting in town, so I brushed that up, took out all the swearing and drug references and sent it off to them. They liked it and ran it, so I submitted another one about the hassles of living in the posh wanker student ghetto that is Jesmond, and they ran that as well.

One of our waitresses at work was seeing a bloke from the Sunday Sun, a lovely fella called Rory, and he'd said he'd liked my articles, thus establishing his lovely fella credentials forever in my eyes. I wasn't 100% sure what he did at the paper until the day he phoned me out of the blue and asked if I fancied going to London for a few days to review a swank new hotel and the odd tourist attraction for the travel section? They couldn't pay me, but they'd sort out my travel and lodgings and food/watering needs for nixie if I was up for it. Fucking rights, man, show me as attending, for sure..

And so began five wonderful years of legging it from the kitchen every six weeks or so and entering the magical world of travel PR, where absolutely everybody called me Ettrick without question because that's what it says right there on my passport, so Skotty didn't get a look-in, and it was like Andy had never happened. I'd go to an airport, meet up with a load of strangers and go away somewhere with them for a few days. It was all a bit Big Brother Goes On Holiday at times, but I never met anybody that I wanted to kill with a hammer in the whole five years, not really, anyway, so that was good.

The 'You Jammy Bastard!' list of places I went to includes Ibiza, Majorca, Croatia, Rome, Milan, a week learning how to sail in Turkey, four days in Miami reviewing a ridiculously OTT cruise liner going round in a big circle in the Atlantic, several trips to a theme park near Barcelona to review their new roller-coasters and death-drop rides and, as a grand finale before the wheels on my travel-wagon went tits-up, a week in the Cayman Islands to review Michael Fucking Bolton at a Carribean Jazz Festival and swim with stingrays. Plus loads of little trips to London and Glasgow to review hotels, restaurants, music festivals and art events and just generally be Mr. Culture Vulture from the paper.

Sadly for me, amalgamations and down-sizing and crunched credit at the end of 2008 led to major reshuffling and policy changes at the paper and the services of freelancers like me were no longer required, which is a bit of a bluey, for sure, but honestly, I had the best of times while it lasted, and I'd like to say a big fat heart-felt thankyou to Mr Rory Foster for having the smarts to recognise my fledging genius and making it all possible...

Epilogue part #2

Rachel and I got wed on June 10th 2000, in a church, the same one I lost my virginity in in 1982. I wore a hand-made Teddy Boy drape suit and electric purple brothel creepers, while the Mrs sported an ivory silk affair that the genius hand of Kate Reeves knocked up using an old pair of curtains from our living room. So, she had the curtains and I had the drapes. Boom, boom...

Apart from the whole splicing the knot with a wonderful woman thing, the undoubted highlight of the day for me was the bit that happened because a somewhat flippant suggestion of mine made a week previously had reached the "Why not?" seal of approval from us both.

I'm sure most people plan their weddings with military-like precision, but ours was a bit more chaotic and ad hoc than that, as evidenced by the fact that I spent my wedding morning folding the hymn sheets with Wagsley, and, on my way into the church, I was handed all the seating name-cards for the reception, which, in an ideal world, should have been on tables in the reception venue two miles away by that point in the proceedings...

Anyways, five days before W-Day, we finally got around to discussing what music we wanted the organist to play for the trips to and from the aisle. The Wedding March was a shoo-in for the way down, but what about the way back?

"What about the theme music from The Archers?" says the groom-to-be, all jovial and flippant-like.

"Yeah, why not, oh future spouse of mine?" says the bride-to-be, all chirpy at the very thought of it. So, off went the future spouse to track down the sheet music to give to the organist.

Happily, it isn't called The Theme From The Archers, because that would have telegraphed it a bit on the wedding order/hymn sheet thing. No, it's called Barwick Green, by a fella called Arthur Wood...and it sounds fucking great belting out of a massive church organ, as we discovered when the entire church started laughing and clapping along in time to it as we walked back down the aisle. And the moral is...have faith in your flippancy, sometimes the first thing that pops into your head is the right thing. Very fucking rarely, like, but sometimes...

Epilogue part #1

So I got sober, and that's how I stayed for years. I went to a couple of AA meetings in that first week of sobriety, but, like I said earlier, they weren't really my sort of thing. However, I did borrow one of the 12 steps for my own use, and that worked really well as a useful tool to keep me sober, even if it did involve talking things over in my head with a fat lad who died while trying to strain one out on his gold-plated bog.

Allow me to explain - one of the steps involves handing all of your problems over to a God of your own understanding. Unfortunately, in my case, a God of my own understanding is me, basically, but getting me to sort my shit out had never worked too well in the past, so I scouted about for a suitable replacement. It had to be someone who would have an understanding of my problems, and they also had to have a good speaking voice with which to relay their words of wisdom.

I tried out Marlon Brando for a while but I couldn't hear what he was mumbling on about half the time so that was no good, and Johnny Thunders' whiny way of speaking grated on me in my head just as much as it had done when when I'd met him in real life. Plus, despite the fact that he'd been dead for nearly a decade, he didn't really seem 100% committed to his sobriety.

And then I thought of Elvis, with that warm, rich voice like Tupelo honey and those long, invaluable years of experience as a total pill-munching monster, the man was tailor-made to be the imaginary sobriety buddy that I seemed to need.

And so, for the next few years, whenever I was having a bad time and wanted to slip into the arms of oblivion once again, variations of the following conversation would take place inside my napper:

Me - Fucking hell, man, Elvis, fuck all this fucking shit, man, let's go and get fucking fucked up!

Elvis - Uh huh huh, young Ettrick, sir, I'm not so sure you wanna do that. Let's just take it one day at a time, sweet Jesus, uh huh huh, thangyouverymuch...

Me - You know what, Elvis? You're totally on the money there, dude. Let's not go and get fucking fucked up today after all. Cheers, mate, you're the man!

Fast-forward a couple of years and I'm sitting at home reading a biography of Aerosmith. In it, front-man Steven Tyler opines that the hardest drugs in the world to give up are heroin and valium, as they stay in your bone marrow for forever and a day, or so he reckons, anyway, and I have no reason to doubt his narcotic-related expertise.

"Hmmm, that's interesting", I sort of half-think to myself, "I've been on a valium script for nearly two years now. I wonder what coming off it would be like?"

F>F again for few months more to a beautiful sunny spring day. I'm walking through a park into town, when, suddenly, I start cramping up and feeling utterly shit, like I'm in the early stages of drug withdrawal. Which is exactly what it is - I hadn't taken my little yellow pill that morning, and now, a mere four hours later, my body was beginning to seriously wonder exactly where the fuck the medication was. "Fuck this lark for a game of soldiers", I thought to myself, and booked in to see my ever-lovin' GP, who had previously reassured me that valium wasn't really that addictive.

Turns out he'd only told me that to get me to take it in the first place, reasoning that I probably wouldn't have succumbed to its calming effects quite so easily if I'd known just what a fucker it is to come off them mother's little helpers.

Basically, I had three alternatives, and these were (A) keep taking the tablets, (B) spend around three weeks in hospital, taking librium to withdraw from the valium and then gradually withdrawing from the librium, or (C), withdraw from the valium gradually, reducing the rate at a miligram a month. I went for (C) - I was taking 10 mils a day and it took 11 months to kick it altogether, with a two-month sticking period where I found it impossible to reduce down from five mils to four.

It was absolutely horrible; knowing for a fact that I was going to spend five or six days out of every month in a state of mild cold turkey while my body adjusted to the new regime definitely put a big fucking crimp in my year, for sure, but the freedom that came at the end of it, the fact that I could go anywhere without wondering if I'd packed my pills, that made all the twitching limbs and sleepless nights seem like nothing at all; a tiny price to pay.

Born Sloppy blog stats.

For people who like numbers.

Born Sloppy: August 4th 2007 - June 5th 2009 = 672 days.
Total word-count = 156,950
Average daily word-count = 233.55
Total number of posts = 292
Average word-count per post = 537.50
Blog-induced mental breakdowns = 1.5
Miles paced between living room and back-stairs during the really hard bits= 11.4

An epiphany moment, with swearing.

On the ninth of February, 1999, I had what was to be my last drink for over seven years, and there's no great revelation or magic solution as to how I did it. I woke up one morning feeling shit as usual and I decided that I was fucking sick of living/slowly dying the way that I was, and so I stopped. Simple as.

I talked to myself, out loud,`for the first time since I was a little kid. People say that talking to yourself is a sign that you're going mad, but for me, that one short sentence suddenly uttered aloud from out of nowhere while I stood scrutinising my haggard, grey face in the bathroom mirror one morning after another night passed out on the sofa - that sentence changed everything.

It was a rhetorical question aimed at myself, my earth-shattering sentence, and this is what I asked me in the mirror, out loud.

"Is this really what you dreamed your fucking life would be like when you were a kid?" I said to Mirror-Me, which didn't really need the question mark or require an answer, but "No, of course it fucking isn't, you numpty. I dreamed of being a pop star with fast girls and faster drugs, and now look at the fucking state of us." is probably what Mirror-Me would have said back if I had actually been going mad at the time, but he never.

I'm sure that it's not just me, I'm sure that practically every dedicated booze-hound has a last drink to say goodbye and so long, old chum, and so it was for me. I had a one-litre bottle of White Shite, purchased after some drama where I was some 30p short but also very insistent with the shopkeeper about bringing him the rest at a later date, and then I necked that with a hefty handful of all manner of downers and curled up on a sofa-bed in the corner of Rachel's dining room to sweat out all the nasty badness that done me wrong for so many years.

And that's where I'm going to leave myself for now, curled up in the foetal position as the downers kick in. The booze is wearing off and withdrawal is in the post, for sure, but I'll be okay, I'll get through it.

In the fine, wise words of W. Axl Rose upon finally concluding Guns N' Roses Use Your Illusion twin album concept thing, "This motherfucker is done!" *

THE END.

Bests,

Ettrick Scott/The Claw of Truth, Friday, June the 5th 2009, just after three bells in the PM.


*Apart from the epilogue and the where they at now? bit, anyway. I've always wanted to write one of them.

Turbo-Grim part #5

One day mid-January, the telecommunications people finally tire of never getting any cash off of me and they cut the phone off. I phone Wagsley from the payphone in the block of flats. His younger brother's girlfriend answers and tells me that Wagsley is bad with the booze in bed, and that Wagsley's older brother, Mac, has just died of a massive heart attack, aged 38, not a big drinker or smoker, married with a toddler, just a lovely bloke, really. We used to call him Mac'll Fix It, coz if you had anything at all that was faulty or wrong, Mac would be happy to have a crack at trying to repair it for you, free of charge.

I had to get off booze in time for the funeral, as did Wagsley, who also had a big stash of squirreled-away valium in his house, so I cycled over to blag a handful off him. It's only about two miles to his ma's from Shieldfield, but it's ever so slightly uphill all the way there, and I had to stop after about a mile and push instead, because my body started going into withdrawal-mode and cramping up on me.

I arrived to find Wagsley in probably the worst state I've ever seen him; sweating, vomiting and begging his mother for more money to drink with. But the funeral was two days away, and if he didn't stop now then he wasn't going to be there, end of story.

The funeral went by in a sad haze, like funerals do, and especially if you're spaced out on wobbly eggs at the time. Massive turn-out, with dozens of old faces that I'd not seen for years.

"Alreet, Skotty! What you doing with yourself these days?" - "Errr... systematically drinking myself into an early grave, mainly..."

One thing I remember about Mac's funeral, crystal-clear and like it was yesterday. Wagsley had another brother, Chub, a year older than him and a year younger than Mac. After the internment, I saw him walk over and shake hands with the grave-diggers, because they were his former work-mates. Chub worked at the Crem (as the crematorium and graveyard in the West End is commonly called) for a good few years, and then packed it in because he was getting sick of having a recurring dream where he was wandering around the grounds of the Crem with a coffin on his back, he once told me.

Pretty much three years to the day later, nearly everybody who was at Mac's funeral is back at the Crem again, and it's the same grave-diggers, only this time Chub's not there to shake hands with them , because it's him that we're burying. He had also died suddenly of heart failure, aged just 40.

I didn't stay sober for long after Mac's funeral. In fact, I'm pretty sure I had a pint at the wake, or a shandy, at the very least. And that's the last tangible thing I can remember before I stopped drinking for good (or for a period exceeding seven years, anyway) around a fortnight later, but let's just assume that every day of those 14 or so or so days was much the same. Except the last one; the last one was radically different, because I heard the voice of God, or something, and it sounded uncannily like the voice of Me...

Turbo-Grim part #4

A few weeks before Christmas 98 and I'm looking out of one of Rachel's windows at next-door's chimney-stack, which is old and knackered and leaning towards chez Rachel at an alarming angle.
"Hmmm", I think to myself, "That doesn't look too clever..."

Fast-forward to late at night on Boxing Day, and I'm in Peeburra, mullered, at a party with the drunken brief, Emma and a few other people. A phone call either from or to Rachel (can't remember which) reveals that said chimney-stack has crashed through the roof and into the living room following an evening of berserk high winds. All the power's fucked, the flat and its contents are covered in soot and building debris, there's a big hole that you can see the sky through and she's staying up the road with friends. She also cunningly deduces that I am absolutely hammered once more, coz I'd been off the booze for a while before I went down to Peeburra for Christmas.

My sobriety lasted as far as getting on the train to go down there, whereupon I chanced upon this total old-skool Black Metal dude who I very, very vaguely knew from hanging out at Grott Guitars ten years earlier, and he had a load of cans in for his trip to London, which he generously shared with me during the two-hour journey. I only had two or three generic lagers, but it was enough of a trigger for me to decide to have a crimbo of booze rather than a crimbo of shaky sobriety and valium. Which was a bad move, because - and I think you'll be nodding your head in agreement here- I think that I've firmly established just how shoddy my braking-system was by now...

I was bringing the daughter back up with me on the 28th or 29th to spend New Year in G.O.C, and the original plan had been for us to stay at Rachel's flat, but the chimney-stack through the roof had obviously scuppered that. I went to meet her there from the train; the place was scaffolded and in darkness and she knew I had a drink on board, and then we set off on the mile or so walk to Lort House in Shieldfield, daughter in pram, dad well and truly off wagon.

And then I couldn't stop drinking. I fed the daughter and put her to bed and then I drank for hours. At some point, I phoned Wagsley and begged him to come over. He arrives first thing in the morning to find that (A) I still can't stop drinking, and (B) I am filled with a weeping self-loathing about this fact that really isn't a good thing for a kid to be around. I phone my mother and tell her that she has to come and get her grand-daughter and then take her back to Peeburra, because I'm fucked here and I can't stop being fucked, not just yet.

She didn't drive at the time, so Rachel came as well, and I went out in the street with them and waved away the daughter that I wasn't man enough to look after. And then I went back indoors and started drinking again. I don't think I was a very happy drunk that day.

Being unfit to look after my own child was probably my own personal low moment in my addiction, although if anyone feels that they've spotted a lower one during the course of this, do feel free to write in..

The next day is NYE, and Wagsley and I are going to party like it's 1999, which it will be, but the start bit rather than the end bit. Two minutes past five bells sees us banging on the glass doors of the post office in town and waving a girocheque at the staff, who, in turn, are miming being on the phone at us, and mouthing "WE'RE RINGING THE POLICE!" through the glass. They've shut half an hour early and that's all there is to it. No spends for you to feed that monkey on your back over the festivities, young Ettrick.

Wagsley ended up having to go to the local offie and begging them for extensive booze tick using my giro as a surety. Astoundingly, it worked, and so I got to spend my last ever NYE as a booze-hound in the sole company of my good buddy, Wagsley, just the pair of us contentedly seeing in the brave new year together, watching shite telly, supping luke-warm mugs of the evil chemical soup that is White Lighting cider and having slurred arguments, like a pair of park-bench Harry Ramps, which, to the untrained eye, is probably exactly what we looked like.

Turbo-Grim part #3

Some call it the horrors, some call it the terrible beer-fear and some just call it RATS, but, whatever you want it to call it, there's nothing quite like suddenly jolting awake in a booze sweat with a vague recall of something absolutely fucking terrible having taken place in the hours before pass-out o'clock.

And so it was with me one morning as I awoke at around eleven bells, coat and boots on and passed out on the bedroom floor in the Lort House flat. Retrack and rewind and oh dear, the clearest mental image of the night is of me lying on a pavement looking up while the snarling face of this skinhead bloke I vaguely know( who goes out with a woman in Fenham who I've known for years) gazes angrily down at me - that's not good, is it?

Wagsley called round a bit later that day, and I begged him to call this mutual friend of ours and find out what had gone on. Beyond saying that I had indeed behaved in the manner many shades beyond the pale and that they'd had to throw me out, she preferred not to dwell on it.

I had taken Tempazepam on top of booze that night, and I remember phoning her and her inviting me over at around ten bells, the aforementioned snarling skinhead incident on the pavement, waking up on the floor in the morning...and nothing else; yer actual proper black-out.

Turns out, as she finally told me a year later, I had turned up with a level of incoherency of around 85% and was practically slobbering at the mouth, much to the consternation of some friends of theirs who were also visiting at the same time. I hadn't been there long when I announced to all present that I had had a torrid affair with the good lady of the house many years previously, and then I got my cock out and jumped around the living room, waggling it and shouting "I bet you miss this, eh?", at which point, her bloke threw me out, and then I tried to regain entry by climbing over the back-wall, fell off it twice while they all watched me from the living room window and then went and leaned on the door-bell until her bloke came out and set about me and I hit the deck, which is where I took a mental snapshot of the only two seconds of the whole evening that I could actually remember the next day.

So remember, kids: Downers or booze, not downers and booze. Let's keep it safe out there...

Turbo-Grim part #2

Yesterday was fun, mind. There's nothing quite like spending the hottest day of the year indoors and writing about when one used to be a helpless addict to really take the spring out of one's step.

Still, it's my own fucking daft fault for starting this project in the first place, eh? In the words of the mighty Motley Crue, "On with the show, we're going on with the show, come on baby, no, no, no, ooooh, my, my, my, my, my...." (Proper fucking poets, them lads.)

Phone crappiness featured heavily towards the end. The band had no gigs booked and had stopped rehearsing, but they still had to deal with lengthy, deranged phone calls from me at all hours. John got the worst of it, I seem to remember, but I bugged the fuck out of the other two on several occasions as well. In fact, I was talking to Ross about a year after I put the booze down and he told me that he hadn't fully appreciated the fact that I had a serious drink problem until I phoned him at nine bells one Saturday morning and was obviously completely shitted already.

I can dimly recall the morning he was talking about: I'd run out of booze around 5.30, and, rather than pass out, I'd decided to wait an hour and then cycle a couple of miles to a Newsagents I knew of that also sold booze. (I had to go on the bike as it turned out I was far too drunk to walk...)

Strictly speaking, the Asian lady in the shop wasn't meant to serve any booze until ten bells, and I'm sure that if I'd given her the chance to speak, she wouldn't have done. As it was, I stumbled boldly and confidently towards the booze section and picked up four cans of Stripe. She started to say something, but I just gave her the right money and said "I really need these, here's the cash, and now I'm gone" and legged it out of the door with my precious booty before she could object. And then I necked the fuckers and drink-dialled Ross, among others, I'm sure.

Another poor chap who unwittingly got involved with my booze madness through no fault of his own was the bass-player from Tinitus, whose name currently escapes me. He did gig reviews for a local music rag, so I phoned them up and got his number, because I had had a sure-fire winner of an idea that would make us all rich, and I thought he might want to get involved.

With the benefit of hindsight and sober reflection, my genius idea was a proper big old pile of shite with fat hairy bollocks on top, and the fact that I thought it was a good 'un should indicate to you that I was mainly operating on another planet by this point, if you hadn't sussed that already.

That great idea, then, in a nutshell: You know The Who's Tommy, yeah? That seminal rock opera double album about a deaf, dumb n' blind kid who sure plays a mean pinball? Well, my plan was to rerecord it in its entirety, with a different band from Newcastle tackling each song, and we would call it (cue drum roll)... "Hoo, Tommy."

Turbo-Grim part #1

There's a photo on the daughter's cabinet that I find almost physically painful to look at. She's got a dapper little red winter coat on and is smiling happily for the camera, while I'm peering over her shoulder with huge bags under my eyes and sporting a particularly nasty purple beanie hat. The date is December 24th 1998, everything is horrible in my world and I'm barely holding on.

Most of those last few months was like one long out-of-body experience, or so it seems now, with the bit of my brain that deals with the self-preservation side of things looking on aghast as I stumbled from bed to offie to sofa and back again, twice a day, every day. White cider and valium were the unbalanced cornerstones of my diet, and a sausage sandwich with brown sauce every other day my sole nutritional intake for weeks on end. On really bad days, I would be too fucked to leave the house for the second offie run before they shut at ten, which meant 12 hours or so of sleepless twisting and turning before I could score some more of the White Shite again. The valium took the edge off it and stopped my body going into detox shock when this happened, but it didn't take away the craving, the need to be obliviated at all times.

And there were many times when I just couldn't wait for our local offie to start dispensing at ten, so I'd walk the mile or so into the town centre as soon as the shops were open and head for Fenwick, a department store which is deluded enough to call its off-licence dept The Wine Cellar. It's a bit too classy to be punting 5 litre bottles of White Lighting, but thoughtfully caters for the helpless booze-hound portion of its clientele by selling a wide range of fortified 'wines' like Thunderbird and MD 20/20. I myself was partial to a pint of Kiwi-and-Lime flavour Mad Dog for breakfast, which I would consume sitting in a cubicle in the bogs in the Central Library. And then I'd go home, just in time for the Shieldfield offie to open.

Many years after I got sober, I somehow ended up briefly tour-managing a disco-punk band from Glasgow on their first UK tour. They never quite broke through into the mainstream and got all big like they should have, but that's possibly something to do with them being called Shitdisco: it's a magnificent name, for sure, but it comes with its very own glass ceiling attached. But that's another tale, and I'm mentioning them now because they had a phrase that they used when the bad times got really bad, and that phrase was "Turbo-Grim". Truly, I feel that I am now entering the turbo-grim period of my life...

He's an Ettrick, got a family full of eccentrics...

It's the beginning of September 1998 and big changes are afoot. I'd been accepted on a two-year, full-time drama course, so I'd be signing off the dole and applying for grants, or at least, that was the plan.

As ever though, the reality was somewhat different and altogether shitter. Two nights before I was due to start school, Safehouse played a record company showcase gig upstairs at the Bridge Hotel, which was a bit weird as none of the three bands playing were actually signed to said record company. We were the middle band, sandwiched in between the aforementioned shouty arty shite of Tinitus and a troupe of oi-oi postcard punk throwbacks who went by the name of Loaded 44.

I can still clearly remember the promoters chirpily informing me that this was the quietest gig they'd ever put on - 24 paying customers on the door, apparently, and not a single hot chick among their number.

I'd been off the pop for a few days beforehand, but I was uncomfortably sober. Itchy would be a good word. As soon as we'd finished entertaining the mildly disinterested 24, I made the short walk from stage to bar and started banging down double Southern Comforts with lime, reasoning that a drink that tastes like liquid sherbert but fucks you up like a train crash would be the very thing at that juncture.

The weekend passes and Monday comes, bringing with it a new college term. All the bright young things sharpen their pencils, don their boaters and college scarves and skip gaily away to their lessons...but not me. I'm in my flat, drinking whenever I'm awake and just generally sabotaging my life, good-style.

I snapped out of it enough to visit Peeburra for a few days, where Emma was having a party to celebrate her new chap moving in. It was a fairly ruinous sort of do, or maybe that was just me, because I was still going strong at three in the afternoon the next day, sitting in a tent in the back garden necking fizzy white wine. Impressively, I managed to legally change my name by deed poll halfway through the party, as The Drunken Brief - my former kamikaze booze buddy -
had hooked up with a mate of Emma's and was now residing in Peeburra.

We did it properly, mind - I swore on a bible that Andrew Scott could fuck right off and Ettrick Scott was proper fucking mint, right, (I'm paraphrasing there; it was a bit more wordy and a lot less sweary than that) and then I signed on the dotted line and instantly made Googling my own name about a million times easier, although I did not know this yet.

Mr Sartorial Elegance gets confident and intense...

This bloke walks into a Quayside pub one Friday night in August 1998, right, and he's wearing a pair of totally fucked-up and falling apart Levis, a T-shirt with the Ford logo on but it says 'Fucked' instead, a crumpled and stained black dinner jacket with silk lapels and - get this - a massive straw cowboy hat with a huge hole punched out of the crown.

A bloke sitting at a table near the door notices him come in. He turns to his mate and says "Who the fuck is that?"

"Errrr", replies his buddy, who is perhaps best known to readers of this tale as Ross, the drummer out of Safehouse, "That's our singer, actually..."

Yep, I really pulled out all the sartorial stops for gig #3, although I don't think the titfer made it as far the stage. I certainly hope that was the case, anyway, but I can't really remember because my head was in a very bad place indeed, and, by that, I don't mean 'under a shitty hat'...

Me and Roz, six weeks summarised. Weeks one and two,I pretty much move into hers, week three I go to Peeburra, week four I come back pretty much move into hers again, week five and it appears that we used poor-quality twigs and not nearly enough cuckoo spit while building our love-nest because it's feeling decidely shaky, and then it's week six and game over, and your hero dons his metaphorical Speedos once more, having spotted a golden opportunity/excuse to dive off the wagon and into a churning ocean of self-pity and White Lightning once again.

We were playing at a Local Bands For Local People gig at the Riverside, upstairs in the little room, sandwiched between Tinitus (who couldn't spell Tinnitus, had listened to too much Beefheart and thought that shouting shite in a made-up French accent was the New Punk) and SR22, who were dragging the now sounds of 1988 into the late 90s by being quite a lot like the Stone Roses, with a singer who really should have been called Ian Blonde, what with him essentially being Ian Brown, but a blonde version thereof.

Reviewing the gig for Newcastle style-mag The Crack, some writer bloke said "Safehouse are up next, and their singer is confident and intense..."

Aye, that was me: confident that the Big Old Drink I started necking roughly five minutes before we got onstage (and finished around three days later) was going to get me intensely fucked-up....

This Is Tap And Spile...(See What I Did There?)

While it's faintly depressing that three out of the four venues that Safehouse played before their erratic singer went all erratic on them don't exist any more, I have to say that the second place we played makes a far better optician's shop than it ever did a pub. Unless they've kept some of the old clientele on as staff and an eye-test involves looking at someone's pint/bird until they kick your head in, but that seems rather far-fetched.

The pub in question was The Tap and Spile, and, as Daz from Distraction Records (music for the strange kid at school) has just pointed out to me via the medium of the internet - "The Tap and Spile was infamous for having a big fuck-off pillar obscuring the view of at least a third of whatever band played there."

Part of the massive Victorian Grainger Market complex (the distinct smell of which you can easily replicate at home, simply by putting some raw sausages on a hot radiator for ten minutes or so..) in the city centre, the Tap obviously suffered from (A) being away from any of the town's main drinking drags, and (B) being otherwise largely frequented by the strange, radgie criminal-underclass families that the Grainger Market has long since attracted. Obviously, most of them are lovely people, but some of them will stab you in the eye just for looking like a student, so it's best to tread very carefully in the pubs around the market, especially if you're of a slightly alternative bent.

Fortunately, though, we weren't playing in the main area of the pub; there was a basement you could hire for nixie that had a separate entrance. I met the landlord in the main bar one day to book it; he was a small, rotund, bearded gentleman with a sort of medieval jailer vibe about him, which was quite apt, because he then led me down to a depressing basement, albeit a depressing basement with floral wallpaper and overly-varnished tables, and the aforementioned fuck-off pillar right in front of the titchy stage area.

Things I remember about the night: putting out flyers for the gig in the upstairs bar about two hours before show-time, only to become aware that the landlord was a few steps behind me, removing them from the tables as fast as I was putting them on...there were about 25-30 people there, and, slightly disconcertingly, Roz's ex-bloke came with her sister...there was some incident where someone's expensive jacket went missing, and I had to spend a week tracking it down and returning it to the rightful owner...Wor Kid was there with a manic-depressive mate who was currently manic, and he left at the end of the night and then ran back in two minutes later, shouted "I LOVE SUCKING COCKS!" at the two doormen and then dashed back up the stairs...