I heard stories on the way about a man we were going to meet, how he needed some help from us. How he wasn’t someone you’d say no to. How in his youth he stole cars just to get to school. It transpired that he intended to go and retrieve some televisions someone had stolen, one of which belonged to a member of his family. He knew the stolen goods were being held in a particular house. A thief about to take another thief to task. Had the perpetrator unwittingly stolen from his own? Or done so knowingly, true to the infamous lack of honour among thieves? Did both cases justify a beating regardless? How on earth was this going to pan out, and what on earth was I doing here?

I was so out of my depth, so inappropriately selected. After all, I had once been informed by one of the sixth form hard boys that I actively reduced his street cred simply by being in the same minibus back from a football match. So why me? Weight of numbers? Does that count when one of the number is featherweight? A feather and a hammer may plunge at the same speed in a vacuum, but Huyton is a highly pressurised anti-vacuum where a feather is undoubtedly no substitute for a hammer.

As each detail emerged and each mile passed I felt increasingly anxious. I was trapped, and once our thief chief was picked up I was shuffled over to the middle of the back seat, the classic small kid’s spot. Too cowardly to speak up or refuse, while knowing beyond doubt that I was not going to take part should it come to a fight. I was going to run, however shameful that might be.

We held back at the end of the road as the ringleader went and knocked on the door. Luckily, only the other thief’s sister was at home. There was flat denial answered by a round of shouting and threats, then we simply went home. Some disappointed with the anticlimax, one mighty relieved. With each mile on the way back my shoulders dropped half an inch, my locked jaw loosened, and the colour finally came back into my face.

There was no next time, for me at least. Perhaps they knew.

As Emilio and I walked along the exit tunnel from Sol station a man coming in the other direction approached us. He had scorched skin, a black mullet and a short square face which looked like it had been put in a vice. His white vest had seen much better days. He asked the time, and as Emilio lifted his arm to look at his watch the man’s hand darted into his unprotected pocket and grabbed his wallet. I froze, surprise multiplied by cowardice. Emilio caught hold of the man’s hand on its way out, but before a tug of war could develop the assailant was suddenly pinned against the wall by a passerby. The passerby then pulled the mulleteer’s arm out and simultaneously twisted it wrist-upwards, revealing the track marks and exclaiming almost triumphantly “Drogadicto!”.

The summer of 1990 was the statistical and social peak of Spain’s heroin epidemic , captured in the cine quinqui film genre, and resulting in a rise in muggings and vigilantism such as this.

* * *

I was looking forward to the hot weather, and hadn’t counted on the vampiric living style in flats in Madrid. A fear of the heat getting in, which turns into a fear of any sunlight whatsoever. Curtains drawn, dingy rooms, denial of the summer outside. Shafts of light, sunbeams, a spot of daylight? ¡No pasarán!

* * *

If the heat was intense, so was the build up to Emilio’s mother’s culinary pride and joy: her gazpacho. So much so that I had no choice but to profess that I liked it, despite finding it so sour and vinegary that the first mouthful made me want to retch. With my politeness taken at face value, to my distress I was then served gazpacho countless times in the coming days. The proud beaming smile of the mother answered by baleful protestations from my clenched stomach. It would be years until I could appreciate and enjoy gazpacho, thanks to some Cordoban salmorejo offering cold soup acclimatisation.

* * *

Emilio’s favourite pastime was to play Dungeons & Dragons with his friends, sat on the cool floor underneath the stairs in the building lobby. This was not my idea of either comfort or fun. I entertained myself as best I could by playing along as el burro, the donkey. Emilio found this exasperating as I wasn’t taking it seriously. These games would go on for hours, during which I longed for another trip to the Canillas municipal pool.

* * *

If our entertainment interests did coincide on one occasion, it was on the trip to Madrid’s sprawling amusement park the Parque de Atracciones. Aside from the rides, we watched a concert by the comic band No me pises que llevo chanclas. Is it better to have a hit with a novelty song than not to have a hit at all? They embraced their status, and weren’t shy about dancing around with inflatable phalluses.

But when it came to the encore, and each band member took a solo in turn, it was clear that these were skilled musicians. I’d like to think they found their true calling later. Perhaps one going on to play post-rock bass in Migala, another producing Rosalía’s first album, and still another returning to their Andalucian roots and touring with Tomatito.

* * *

My mid-A level Spanish left something to be desired, especially in so far as understanding actual Spanish people talking. After a trip with Emilio to the centre, with the intention of walking around and visiting a museum, his dad asked me “How was it?”. I answered “It was great” at exactly the same time that Emilio answered “It was shut”.

* * *

We took a day trip to Avila, the spectacular walled town. Emilio’s best friend was spending the summer here. As we walked along a central street, out of nowhere he yelped and leaped and pretended an ATM had taken a bite out of his hand. Here was a vivacious, jocular and clowning young Spaniard. The antithesis of the serious, studious and at times mirthless Emilio; perhaps the pair complemented one another perfectly. I’d found Emilio’s unexpected love for Jerry Lee Lewis and his ability to knock out Great Balls of Fire incongruous with all other aspects of his demeanour and character, but this must have been the bridge between the two boys. I couldn’t help think that my stay would have been better if this friend had been in Madrid the whole time, or if I’d been matched on an exchange with him instead.

* * *

Credit: Sol station photo by TeaMeister

When playing in Brody & Quint with Rosemary and Anna, we gigged regularly in London and from time to time would do a small tour of the North playing at venues in Manchester, Bolton, Sheffield and Leeds.

On one occasion in Leeds we hit it off with a band on the bill called The Avenues, so much so that we returned a few months later to play at the launch of their second album Love, Life and The Giant Leap. We subsequently helped set them up for a gig in London.

With echoes of The Byrds and The Beach Boys in their songwriting and harmonies, they transmitted such joy when playing. My friend Chris had travelled with us from Sheffield, and we exchanged impressed glances when we heard their bass player’s booming voice and blood vessel-busting range. This was Rich, who turned out to be Leeds’ answer to Brian Wilson.

Rich and I stayed in touch over the years, occasionally messaging each other or sharing music we’d been recording or producing. Then at the start of this year he offered to remaster some of the Brody & Quint songs, bringing to life some rather dull and flat recordings.

I never felt we accurately captured the best of our performances, even accounting for many of the recordings being done at home on a hard disc 8 track; we communicated with much more emotion, vitality and spirit live. Combining sparse fingerpicked acoustic guitar, cello and vocals, at times we took delicacy to a dangerous point where it could either fall apart or hit home powerfully. A kind of musical jeopardy, a risk worth taking. I remember the sound man at that second album launch gig shaking his head with admiration when we just pulled it off with a crescendo and sudden drop at the end of 20 Feet Beneath the Sea. The only time I experienced that satisfying reaction from a jaded denizen of the toilet venue sound desk.

Rich did a fine remastering job as I expected, despite being constrained by only having the mixed songs to work with and none of the constituent parts. Listening to these songs again after some 20 years there were many surprises, including entire sections of songs I’d forgotten about and bridges which really sparkled. But the biggest surprise was that the track which I liked most was a seldom-played song called Silvertown, inspired by a visit to Potosí. Not one Rich or I would have ever picked out as amongst the best. It’s the simplicity I think, short and sweet, a reminder that less is more.

I was not prepared for the intense heat of Tokyo in August. It sees your jetlag as you step out of the airpot, doubles it, and laughs at your disorientation all the way to the train station where you will get lost just trying to find the exit. So it is undoubtedly apt that Japan recently unveiled the new word kokushobi for days that reach 40C or above, based on the word koku meaning harsh or cruel. “Cruelly hot weather” suggests an animus, a vindictiveness, a weather that has got personal.

This word was introduced by Japan’s Meteorological Agency, after running an online survey allowing votes on 13 different options. A non-linguistic agency determining language, with a democratic component no less? The dictionary committee of the Académie Française would be up in arms.

This also raises the question, what are the other words? There is a very orderly, very Japanese scale here:
natsubi - for days reaching 25C or higher
manatsubi - for days reaching 30C or higher
mōshobi - for days reaching 35C or higher

There is also the verb natsumeku for when it is starting to feel like summer, literally to become like (meku) summer (natsu). That’s one of my favourite seasonal transitions, full of hope, but often delayed in the UK where false dawns get interrupted by a week of rain and temperatures dropping. All of which means I don’t have much use for the word natsubate, for summer fatigue, as long as the weather doesn’t become cruel.

There’s a large window at the front, perfect for people watching. I remember sitting there with Damien and seeing Rachel walk right past a couple of days after I had met her in 2002.

And earlier than that, in the late 90s, going with John before salsa lessons on Mondays – and sometimes afterwards too. One time we bounced back twice – pub to salsa club to pub to salsa club. That led to an outrageously late Monday night out, and the only pre-meditated duvet day I can recall. I made an excuse about a leaking roof, for which I got my comeuppance when a colleague asked my flatmate about the roof at a gig a week later. What leaking roof?

In the back you can get stuck with a mid-corridor table if you’re not careful, and the room trades an open layout for atmosphere – but still with elegant, timeworn Victorian decor. There’s an upstairs dining room which I have never frequented but which ticks another box from The Moon Under Water, George Orwell’s sketch of the ideal pub. In fact it meets a surprisingly high number of Orwell’s criteria. It’s on a side street away from the bustle. Its architecture and fittings are indeed “uncompromisingly Victorian”. No music is played, so you can hear yourself talk. If we don’t quibble over the finer details, then all it lacks is a garden and china mugs.

The Tale of Genji seriously tested the extent to which I would finish a book which I have started. I generally follow that principle when it comes to fiction, if not non-fiction. I can’t say I enjoyed the first thirty or so chapters charting Genji’s countless seductions, and I was very close to giving up. However, the reputation and extraordinary background of this work – of which I was embarrassingly ignorant – kept me going. Almost duty-bound. Along with some judicious research along the lines of: does The Tale of Genji get better? Which it definitively does.

This is in many eyes the world’s first novel. I was always led to believe that Don Quijote was the first, clearly a blinkered Western view. Genji was written early in the eleventh century, some 600 years before Cervantes finished the first book of Quijote. 600 years!

Don Quijote was one of the Spanish Golden Age works I studied at university. I remember marvelling at the multiple narrators, one taking up the reins of the story as another died off; I remember the privilege of a solo tuition with Dr McKendrick, a privilege somewhat wasted on youth; and I remember her asking me over and over again about the very first sentence and what it indicated, as I abjectly failed to notice the narrator’s will and curation encapsulated in the verb querer, to wish:
En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme
In a place in la Mancha, whose name I do not wish to recall

And yet I recall no mention of or comparison to Genji. A work which also eschews the retelling of history or myth; which contains both social and psychological realism; which spans decades through interconnected stories featuring hundreds of characters. I learnt all about Miguel de Cervantes, his life and works, but nothing of Murasaki Shikibu.

So I ploughed on reading. Through Genji’s exile and old age to the fortunes of his descendants, legitimate and illegitimate. If the first half was a tough read because of the courtly detail and love affairs, the second was tough because of the great sense of loss and the passage of time. Now I started to see what this work is all about, and marvel at this richly moving piece of literature – written by a woman, a Heian lady-in-waiting proficient in both Chinese and Japanese. I kept noticing the word evanescence, recurring like papillon in Madame Bovary. And the abrupt ending was perfect. I’ll happily buy into the argument that it is deliberate – the cycle will repeat, we do not need to be told what happens to the unresolved rivalry of Niou and Kaoru, we should know by now. I remember being shocked the first time I finished a Murakami novel where he did not concern himself with tying up loose ends. Now, thanks to Genji, I better understand both the reasons and the literary lineage.

Postscript

One thing led to another and I became curious about what it would be like to splice these two masterpieces together, so here we are:

The Shining Prince meets The Knight Errant

A site dedicated to Genji-Quijote sentence mashups. As these two worlds collide a range of strange, amusing and unlikely events are randomly created.

Genji begins to show signs of succumbing to knightly fantasies, beset by narcolepsy and madness. The graceful prince starts clumsily banging into furniture, develops a predilection for indiscriminate painting, and is perhaps not so beautiful after all. This does not stop rumours of Genji’s involvement with Dulcinea, however. And in a darker turn, Genji heads off to confront the highwaymen en route to Seville and reveals a hitherto undocumented murderous disposition.

Meanwhile, he and Don Quijote appear to have become relatives, through marriage presumably, though this does not stop them also becoming love rivals, with the knight surprisingly prevailing on this occasion. Don Quijote and Sancho Panza move in to the palace and lift everyone’s spirits, but it’s not all sweetness and light – Don Quijote despairs at the Akashi Princess’s initiation and there are times when Genji’s mockery gets under his skin and provokes fury.

Roles are exchanged as Don Quijote becomes the tearful master of Koremitsu while Sancho becomes Genji’s faithful squire and is expected to prepare provisions for his trips. But some things never change – Genji and Sancho stick to their respective preoccupations with beauty and gluttony and Tō no Chūjō and Sancho come to blows. In time Sancho gains the respect of Lady Akikonomu for his deft touch as a fictional island governor, and demonstrates the unexpected butterfly effect of untying Rocinante and pulling up his breeches. This is not an isolated event, as the famous horse also becomes an accessory to an old priest’s soothsaying.

Murasaki meanwhile prefers a younger fellow, and the Emperor shows a distinct lack of decorum in his grappling with an Asturian inn servant and undignified musical compulsions.

And when all is said and done, Genji is off to the Indies in a huff.

Here was Churdy, sat opposite me in a cafe in Valencia, Venezuela, in my first month there. He was a friend of Martha, the teacher sub-letting a room to me in her flat. This was the amicable period, long before she decided flat sharing was a bad idea and asked me to find somewhere else (with some justification).

He was introduced as a musician. I remember a snippet of the conversation, which for some reason has stuck with me for over 30 years. Venezuelan cafes served coffee in small doses, espresso-based and milky, roughly equivalent to a piccolo. The beans were sourced from local farms or across the border in Colombia. It was the best coffee I’d tasted. Churdy eyed his small cup and praised the invigorating high of coffee, while lamenting the drop in energy which was sure to follow later. Coffee had this inherent duality, which he compared to how the same notes of a scale can play both a major key and a minor key.

As I started work at the university and made friends, it soon became apparent that anyone with an interest in music seemed to know and love him. And those who didn’t know him knew of him. It turned out he was nothing short of a rock celebrity, not just in Valencia but countrywide. I would learn in time that he played bass for Gillman, Venezuela’s pre-eminent metal band.

This was equivalent to playing bass in Iron Maiden in England. Except this brand of metal was alive and kicking at this time in Venezuela, despite the competition from grunge, alternative rock and other flavours of guitar-based music. Metalheads were everywhere, in a way I did not see in the UK. Impressionistically, it seemed to me that the per capita popularity of heavy metal was off the charts. Statistically, that appears to be true right through to the present day where Latin American metal megacities top the listening charts. (Special mention too for Finland, home to the highest number of metal bands per capita.)

Churdy kept popping up through my year there. Always friendly, devoid of arrogance or airs and graces, never trumpeting his successes. I saw him for the last time around July 1994. Roberto – one of those aforementioned metalheads – invited me to a party near my tower block in Naguanagua. The metal scene was out in force, with a band playing in the yard to the accompaniment of a healthy dose of headbanging. Then Churdy arrived, walking casually and gracefully through the crowd which parted before him, creating an irresistible path towards the band. He took over the bass and played along for a few songs, just doing his thing, loving the music, to the delight of everyone.

Whenever I hear Wilco’s Heavy Metal Drummer it takes me back to this moment, sincerely celebrating as it does the joys of the metal scene. The double kick drums, the spandex, the KISS covers. I was never a metalhead, but that song and this moment in Venezuela chime and bring a wide smile to the face. For those about to rock, Eulalio Toledo, aka Churdy, we salute you!

Not long ago we went to walk the alpacas at Botany Bay farm on the edge of London. A charming experience with a passionate farmhand and photogenic animals.

This brought back memories of a hostel in La Paz, where the graffiti on the back of a toilet door was exclusively alpaca-themed. Much of the scrawling could have been written about sheep in another location, and followed a common and predictable trope. “Alpacas: wear ‘em, eat ‘em, fuck ‘em – you decide” – and many variations thereof.

However, there was one which stood out and made me laugh. The uniquely brilliant and simple “Al Pacone”. I can visualize its position, off to the upper left towards the edge of the door frame. Easy to miss physically. Easy to miss semantically too, by virtue of typoglycaemia. Set apart, distinct, and a cut above the rest.

Growing up by the Mersey in the 1980s, I used to hear the old air raid sirens being put through their weekly paces. I think the nearest one was at Garston docks. Along with ship foghorns, it’s one of the sounds of my youth. The tests carried on until the end of the Cold War.

Tensions between the USA and Russia were often in the news, along with the anti-nuclear protests at Greenham Common. CND logos were a common sight. I remember being given Raymond Briggs’ When the Wind Blows for Christmas. A graphic novel following an old couple’s attempts to survive after a nuclear attack, the radiation sickness gradually overcoming them. Heartbreaking and harrowing, and not exactly festive – or indeed age-appropriate. This wasn’t The Snowman, and I was mortified. What was my Mum thinking? I wonder whether she didn’t realise what it was about, or knew full well and thought I should be exposed to it. Still, at least she didn’t make me watch Threads.

Given this ambient noise, it wasn’t surprising that at school we would regularly imagine what we would do if the four-minute warning sounded. And given the limited imagination of prepubescent boys, this generally involved tracking down our latest crush forthwith to go out in the best way possible.

From 1982, the Labour Party formally adopted a policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament. I remember being woken up by loud bangs on the morning after the 1987 election. Clearly affected by campaign scare stories, my first thought was that Labour had got in and its policy was immediately being put to the test by an attack. Thankfully it was just an unusually strong wind, banging the thick panes in the old Victorian window frames. Also known as wind throb or Helmholtz resonance. I’ve never heard this phenomenon as loud and frightening as it was that morning, even accounting for my imagination working like a Marshall amplifier.

Is this the greatest line in One Battle After Another?

It stood out immediately the first time I watched the film. This was a man in trouble, yet at peace. Caught, but free. Quietly glowing with the satisfaction of knowing what he has done in the preceding hours for his community, and for ex-revolutionary strangers, actions of which his captors are ignorant.

He’s buoyed by this asymmetry of information, playful both in his dance and his words, admitting to the minor misdemeanour with that delicious smile. They know nothing of the true magnitude of his endeavours. So there’s no denial of the beers, as you might expect. They are celebrated, just as the beers themselves celebrated the earlier achievements of the day. A small rebellion and minor provocation, delivered softly and playfully. The contrast with the menace of the music is striking.

I remember first being bewitched by Benicio del Toro as Fenster in The Usual Suspects. I would have come across him earlier in a somewhat corny henchman cameo in Licence to Kill, but it was Fenster who caught my eye. I was beguiled by his elegant movement, sharp dress and distinctive accent. Not to mention those incredible gimlet eyes. Here was something masculine and feline – not a lion, but a puma or a leopard or a panther. Sensei brings some of those same qualities to the screen, moving half a beat slower than those around him. Sensei will not be rushed. And this wonderfully rich simple line will not be forgotten. A line which it transpires was not even in the script.