I was planning to tell you all about my plans to murder my neighbours this month ( the Welsh Terror I mentioned last time), about my plans to superglue the locks on their doors and watch them slowly starve to death, or to break into their loft via mine and drip poison into their sleeping mouths (ala 'Grosse Pointe Blank').
Instead I'm going to tell you about two rather unpleasant experiences I've had of late. The first one involves a random act of violence inflicted upon myself by a total stranger (who I'll refer to as 'The Cunt'). I had been out in Blackpool with my Golf Harris colleague Paul, watching a rather good band whose name escapes me ( 'Kasino 76' or something), I was rather drunk and had decided to get some fried 'chicken' prior to getting a taxi back home. I was alone, Paul having decided to leave earlier on, munching on my food when all of a sudden some bloke ran up to me and punched me in the face! Was this some disgruntled Syd Barrett fan, annoyed at the Hirundu's version of 'Bike' recorded some 15 years previous? Or a militant vegetarian protesting at my choice of late night snack? No. It was A Cunt. One of the thousands of Cunts who come to Blackpool every year, get pissed, fail to pull and resort to punching people for no reason what so ever. The suddenness of the blow left me stunned for a moment, until I realised I now had a mouth full of blood instead of chicken, and had one front tooth missing. The Cunt had run off before I knew what had happened.
Incandescent with rage and spewing Claret l resolved to phone the police immediately. I stumbled into a near by Chinese restaurant with the intention of using their phone but a waiter turned me away, my blood spattered appearance no doubt putting the customers off their Foo Yung. I called the cops from a nearby public phone and they arrived promptly. They had no intention of going after my assailant despite my pleas that we tracked him down like a dog and dished out some 'frontier justice'. My missing tooth was nowhere to be found despite the trail of blood and the only conclusion was that I'd swallowed it, (and I never did find it 'out the other end').
This wasn't the first time I'd been set upon by 'holiday makers', the year before I got my jaw broken by some Jocks for no reason at all. That's the nature of Blackpool these days. Anyone thinking of coming next year be warned, this is a violent violent place and the cops do fuck all. So DON'T COME HERE. Go abroad. I lived in north London for 5 years, in an area rife with crack dealers, shootings and murders, but not once did I get into a fight, nor even an argument. As soon as I returned up North, a broken jaw and a missing tooth in the space of 18 months. Maybe I've got a face worth punching, or maybe this town just attracts Cunts.
Any way enough of the self-pity; apart from nearly getting killed coming back from Newcastle. We'd been to see Radiohead play live (see the music section). 'We' being most of Sinister Footwear and friends. It was a Sunday night and we left Newcastle at about midnight. We where returning to Blackpool via the scenic but treacherous A67, which cuts nearly an hour off the journey time if you take the motorway. All was going well until we got past Kirkby Stephen and then - Fog. Thick pea soupy Fog. Visibility was down to zero. We managed to get onto the motorway and then things got serious. Looking out of the front window there was nothing to be seen; only the faint glow of a cats eye on the road in front. We laughed about it at first, but them we realised we where driving on the motorway completely blind. That's when I noticed the icy chill in my bones and the sick feeling deep in my guts. We all realised that there was a very very real possibility that we could all be killed at any moment. Anything coming behind us (a huge container lorry for instance) wouldn't see us till it was too late and could plough straight into us wiping us all out in an instant. We had no idea what we where driving into. We couldn't stop, or pull over, because we had no idea where the side of the road was.
For the first time in my life I knew what it felt like to face death. Then, as quickly as it had appeared the fog vanished, much to our relief. That's when we realised we where heading the wrong way. We were going north towards Penrith, and not south towards home. Sweet home. So we had to turn round and go back into the mist, and re-live the nightmare all over again.
Now I know people drive through thick fog all the time, and compared to an emergency landing in an aeroplane, or being on a sinking ship, or being kidnapped by terrorist this was a minor incident, but I personally have never experienced those things. What I have experienced is blind panic and sickening terror first hand. A big thank you goes out to Adam Scholes, Sinister Footwear's keyboard player for getting us all back in one piece.
Mind how you go.
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