‘And the strange dust lands on your hands and on your face‘

My daughters have developed an interest in funeral customs.

‘Is the open coffin thing an Irish tradition Dad. Do you want one?’

‘I think they do it in lots of cultures’, I guessed, ‘but I’ve seen a few in my time.’

‘Didn’t your mum once take you to someone’s house when they were dead?’

‘Indeed she did, yes. She said we were going to Tess’s house to pay our respects. She didn’t warn me that Tess was lying in her coffin in the front room and no, I don’t want one’.

‘Were you frightened Dad?’

‘No, but it was one of the more memorable house calls I made with my mother.’

‘What about the circus cannon? Do you still want to have your ashes fired from a circus cannon Dad?’

‘I’ve been considering that wish and I think I am going to give you girls 3 options to mark my passing:

1. Indeed, the circus cannon. I think the firing of my ashes mixed with glitter from a very loud circus cannon at a moment of peak excitement in the circus programme would be just splendid. I’d like to think that ‘I’ would shower down on to happy smiling faces and if there was enough glitter involved they would never suspect that the strange dust was six parts old guy cremains. My atomised self would then be carried on clothing and shoes into the living rooms of elated Blaydon families returning home full of tales of the circus. I would happily mingle with their house dust and dog hairs and end up (still glittering a little) in their Dysons.

   
   

2. I would also not be the least bit averse to having my ashes flung with absolutely no ceremony or a second thought from the bridge at the foot of the hill in Cloonaghgarve, County Galway. As previously mentioned this bridge was blown up twice by my great grandfather in his campaign of sabotage against the British colonialists. My great-grandfather died an old man of natural causes, by the way.

   
   

3. Egg timer. This is a new one, but would repurpose my ashes and put them to good household use. Put my ashes in a plain, but tasteful, egg-timer to sit on a kitchen shelf. The new 'me' would be wipe clean, very useful and wouldn’t look out of place on Instagram.’

‘Wouldn’t it need to be really big, Dad, to take all of your ashes?’

‘Not necessarily. You could just use the finer ashes for the egg-timer and design it so that it timed a pizza in the crazy hot bottom oven. About 8 minutes I reckon. The coarser cremains could be added to some brightly coloured maracas and these could be shaken while you/your friends/your children/their children (eventually) have a sing-song while they wait for the pizzas.’

Hard paper round

‘How old do you think I am?’

This struck me as an interesting departure from the usual: 

‘Going anywhere nice on your holidays?’

To which I inevitably answer:

‘No…...I’m going to Northern Ireland (sad face)’

I looked at my new barber in the mirror.

The salon owner is my usual barber. The salon has a big TV permanently tuned to MTV. There is also an alcove in which a very large bird cage houses half a dozen canaries. The canaries seem to sing along to the music on the TV. When there is a gap between music videos the birds seize the chance to entertain the customers on their own.

The owner is Omar and he is not much over five feet tall. He calls me over to a chair and avoids standing anywhere near me. Omar is in the habit of giving me manly tips: a very convincing hair transplant in Poland for only £200 or a happy finish at the massage parlour over the road (fee negotiable).

‘I’m single – always horny innit,’ he said in his defence.

Omar was chuckling as I pondered how old his apprentice was. I suspected that this was a routine designed to break up the barbers’ day and that it was very probably a trick question.

‘I’m not a good guesser of ages,’ I said, ‘I tend to cause offence.’

He was smiling and told me to go ahead – he wouldn’t be offended. He was stocky, hirsute and what can only be described as very ‘Turkish’ in appearance. 

He looked at least 30, so I thought it best to shave a few years off (excuse the pun). 

‘I’d say about 26…’

Omar laughed wholeheartedly. This joke clearly never got tired. The junior barber laughed also.

‘I’m sixteen,’ he said. ‘I know I look much older. I’m a boxer you see. I box when I finish in here.’

He paused and assumed a south-paw stance.

‘To get anything in life, you have to fight and work (left jab) hard! (right upper-cut).’

I could see that he was looking me in the eye (in the mirror) – waiting for some kind of reaction. I felt slightly uncomfortable being given life advice by a 16 year old - even if he did look much older. I could see that he was sincere, though, and he certainly had a point.

I just smiled my best smile of admiration for his youthful bravado. He then guessed at my age and prudently went for 44. 

‘I’ll take that’, I said and then told him I was 53. 

‘I’ll make you look 48,’ he exclaimed and the very brief glow I had been feeling quickly subsided.

Charity Case

As a teenager I would get the bus into Manchester city centre on a Saturday and return with some ill-advised 'fashionable' clothes and some records.

I would buy at least two vinyl LP's a week – based on recommendations in the NME - which arrived through my letterbox every Thursday morning.

On moving to the north east I would buy records and cd's in Newcastle in much the same way – but a little less frequently to allow for social expenses. I even remember pre-ordering the first Daft Punk single for collection on release date. Who did I think I was? Maude hated it and would say ‘please don’t play Daft Cunt again.’ 

Now I buy second-hand cd’s from the charity shop across the road from work - as my Honda 'people carrier' has a cd player. They cost £1 per cd and occasionally I find a gem: the first Arctic Monkeys album for instance. Last week I bought a Bob Dylan box set for £3 (3 discs and I was honest about that when the elderly volunteer asked). I then found it new online for £80. It’s been knocking about the car now though – so it’ll not go on ebay.

The cd’s in the charity shop seem to arrive in clearly discernible batches.

Harry Secombe albums and collections of marching band music say ‘house clearance’ and ‘dead senior’.

A dozen or so indie albums from the 90’s will often appear in one go – usually on a Monday, after a weekend donation. A batch like that makes me think that a spurned woman has found petty revenge on the boyfriend or husband of 20 years who has suddenly told her that he needs some space. Things have come to a head over the course of a weekend. His return to their flat to pick up the ‘last of his stuff’ would be fruitless. The lock would be changed and the voice from the letterbox would offer the following advice:

‘Try the fucking charity shop!’  

Or perhaps a widow can’t bear the sight of her prematurely dead husband’s cd’s anymore and has plucked up the courage to donate them to the hospice charity which did, after all, look after him as he ‘lost his brave battle’.

There is also the possibility that a forty something guy or woman has decided to Marie Kondo or ‘Queereye’ themselves and clear away all physical media they own. ‘Haven’t you heard of streaming!’ one of the Queer Eye guys exclaimed recently as they boxed up all of the dvd’s and cd’s which had dominated a slovenly middle-aged man’s trailer home.

I realised I was becoming a shop regular when I didn’t have the £1 required to pay for my single cd selection last Monday. I couldn’t pay on a card, as it was below the shop limit for cards. The nice volunteer lady just said:

‘Don’t worry, just pay next time you’re in.’

'I can remember when all this was sex shops....'

'Did you know they've demolished your old primary school?'

I did know. My old classmate was busy organising a reunion and thought she'd prepare me for the shock if I were to come back for the event. I felt sad that I wouldn't be able to glance at the school as I passed it on my way home. My old landmarks steadily disappear. Manchester refuses to maintain the landscape I scampered around in a range of outfits from short trousers, through dishevelled school uniform, to secondhand clothes from Affleck's Palace.  

An old friend recently joined me in lamenting these changes and, in particular, the gentrification of the seedy Tibb Street area. It is now all fancy artisan cheese makers and aparthotels.

'I can remember when all this was sex shops,' she said with a nostalgic glint in her eye.   

On one scamper through Moss Side, I watched as a friend was knocked down by a car. Reports said that Johnny was 'run over', but he wasn't. He was 'knocked down'. 

It was a Hillman Hunter, the car. We had just come through a Moss Side alley beside a shop once owned by Anthony Burgess’s family. Johnny and I were eager to cross the road and get back to ‘The Big Alec’ for a game of pool and some stolen crisps.

The ‘Big Alec’ was a large Victorian pub, officially called The Alexandra, but aggrandised to distinguish it from two other smaller local pubs bearing the same name. Johnny's father was the landlord and the family lived in a spacious flat on the first floor. The first floor also housed a disused ballroom - in which we played football and fired air pistols (not usually at the same time).

So, Johnny didn’t 'viddy' the Hillman Hunter. The car hit his right leg and broke it in three places. He then rolled along the car wing like something out of 'The Professionals'. Unlike anything seen in ‘The Professionals' he let out a high-pitched squeal and neglected to shout ‘Cover Me!’

I remember that a classmate had quizzed me about Johnny's accident – hoping for gory detail. She’d never really spoken to me before. She lived in a cul-de-sac in Chorlton-cum-Hardy (postcode M21) and thought that we lived much more exciting lives on the other side of the tracks (postcode M14).

‘Oh, you know, there was a load of fuss and I had to get Johnny's mum and she was really really crying and we all went in the ambulance and it had its lights flashing and its siren on and Johnny was screaming and asking if he was going to die and we went about 90 miles an hour and we shot through all the red lights.’ 

I was reporting in a flat tone, like it was just one of those everyday happenings in the ‘hood’.

‘When we got to the hospital they just burst in through the doors and people jumped out of the way until they got Johnny in to the 'Total Emergency Ward' and I went home in a police car.....again.'’

Her eyes were wide and she was hungry for more detail, so I thought it only right to feed her some.

‘And the driver must have been really really dodgy…’

‘Why?’ she leaned forward and I caught the scent of shampoo from her hair..

‘Well, he got out of his big sports car and just, like, RAN! 
Quite an old guy, at least thirty. But he couldn’t half move….
and, yeah, I’m sure he threw something while he was running....
Think it might have been a gun….’

At this point, I got up and walked away with my best approximation of an inner city swagger.

Johnny came back to school on crutches with the biggest plaster-cast any of us had ever seen. I rehearsed him on my enhanced version of the story and we were the talk of the yard - for about a week. 

Everybody signed his cast - even some of the teachers.  Some of our teachers were nuns. I don't think any of the nuns signed the cast. That was a shame. That would have created a photo opportunity worthy of a quirky 'Get Well Soon' card.

I think Johnny got a taste for the attention. I remember he suffered at least two more broken limbs while at school - one of which was an arm broken in the still spinning drum of a spin drier. I still don't quite understand how he achieved that, but the girls didn't ask too many questions - they just queued up to sign his cast.  

'Hatful of Gladwin'

'Is that a cravat?' asked Archie.

'No, it's a scarf.'

I was showing Archie pictures of our family trip to the bleak tundra that is Edinburgh Zoo in late March.

'I am, of course, wearing a cravat under the scarf.'

Archie smiled and admirably feigned interest in the rest of the pictures.

We were catching up with Archie and Leap after a long estrangement. We were in a bar in town. It was one of the bars with fruity beers and an Italian name designed to justify its high prices and to distinguish it from the unashamedly Geordie bars: The Market Lane, The Beehive and (surprisingly still trading under the name) The Blackie Boy.

Archie and I have always enjoyed talking about music - ever since we lived in neighbouring bedsits. We were on the ground floor and one of Archie's sash windows didn't lock. If I was locked out I would climb through the window and probably borrow a cassette on my way through.

I could see that maintaining an enthusiasm for pictures of my children pointing at two bedraggled zebras who couldn't believe their bad luck at ending up on a Scottish hillside was becoming a strain for my old friend, so I moved the chat on.

‘I'd love to know what you think of my ideas for niche compilation albums. Original takes on songs we all know....'

‘I'm all ears...’

‘Do you remember Joe Gladwin?’

‘Of course.'

‘Well, though I say it myself, I do a really good impression of Joe Gladwin – nearly as good as my Max Wall. I also know enough chords now on the ukulele to put my uncanny Gladwin to music. It’s a concept album of ‘Joe’ singing Smiths songs: ‘Hatful of Gladwin’. The backing obviously wouldn’t be as elaborate as the originals – more strummy uke than jangly guitar.’

'I'm liking it.'

The twinkle had returned to Archie's eye. As he considered the Gladwin concept, he stroked his beard. I watched as fragments of crisp left the beard and danced in the mood lighting before they dived into his beer.

''I'm thinking of tracks that showcase Joe's trademark rolling of the 'R':

'Reel Around the Fountain'
'Girl Afraid'
'Miserable Lie'
'William, it was really nothing'

Arch struggled to hear my Gladwin rendition of 'Reel Around the Fountain' above the noise of the bar, but nodded and looked positive.

'Amazing! I love it. What are the other albums? You said 'concept albums'.'

‘Well, the other compilation album I was toying with is called ‘Now That’s What I call Fetish...........1'.

That one's not as well thought through, but I do have an opening track'

Archie's interest was now well and truly piqued. He leaned in to hear the title and his face glowed with approval as I whispered:

‘The First Time ever I soiled your face.’