Status: Finished, but never forgotten.
Live Forever
So we can start over again.
It next happens a week later; Blur are still the chart kings and I’m counting down the days until The Great Escape is released. While I’ve been consciously avoiding the area around the music shop – I’d like to live until my 17th birthday, thank you very much – I’ve taken a lot of walks recently. There’s nothing better than inhaling the hazy, pollen-saturated breeze from neighbouring gardens under while being licked by glorious rays of sunshine and warmth. You have to make the most of it. By October it’s merely a surreal dream that you had after watching an episode of Holiday set in Spain, with Madonna’s La Isla Bonita playing in the background. Not that I ever watch TV, unless Chelsea have been playing.
In fact, that’s how it started that day – the obligatory breakfast altercation. I innocently mentioned that, as Chelsea were on Match of the Day in the evening, could I please watch it?
“THOSE COCKNEY CU-” my dad begins to bellow. I drop the packet of Frosties onto the floor. They scatter, like sugar-coated miniature people fleeing in a storm. I don’t blame them. “Are you gonna clear that fook’n crap up?”
I sink to my knees, armed with ageing dustpan and flaking brush, and clear that fook’n crap up. Maybe I am Cinderella and I’m waiting for Prince Charming to save me from a life of being relentlessly ordered around by my acrasial father and silent sibling. What will he look like? Melted Malteaser eyes. What will he listen to? Blur, definitely. And not even a hint of Oasis. Prince Charming may not have had a Walkman in the olden days, but…
“For fook’s sake, Lyla!” My father’s austerulous, not-so-soothing tones snap me out of my reverie. “Just fook’n get out. Get out of my sight!”
“My pleasure!” I retort, twirling round, crunching Frosties underfoot. They make the same sound that snow makes when you tread on it. I am treading on my father’s authority, and he doesn’t like it.
As if I needed any more evidence, he throws a milk-dressed spoon at me.
***
Being homeless ain’t much fun. You trawl the streets for hours – looking for a decent shop that isn’t enveloped in the sour perfumes of repugnant harpies, or the stale fumes of the cancer sticks touted by their beefy boyfriends – and manage to find not one single street that you would like to be in. These people are bland; walking corpses; grey squares on a greyer canvas. It is while I consider this that I fall over a pair of grey, battered trainers.
“Watch where you’re going!” yelps the person attached to them.
I suppose that it was like an awful, cheesy romance film. My head whipping round to give him my special, patented evils. Our eyes collide like nuclear atoms. Those boscaresque eyes are etched into my memory. I know this person. It’s…
“Stroppy Blur fan?!” he caws in amazement. I scowl at him. “Ah, yeah, I suppose I have to admit it. You won.”
He admits to being wrong? The males I know, namely the inbreds at school, seem to believe that papal infallibility applies to them. A beatific smile briefly crosses my face and is stripped off when I realise that I am grinning like a lunatic.
“Damn straight! And I’m still winning!” I announce. “Hey, I don’t suppose you know of anywhere near here where I can hang out until this evening without being raped, murdered, arrested or drowned in cigarette smoke?”
“Why?” That’s not the answer I wanted.
“Why not? I suppose it doesn’t help that my dad told me to fuck off earlier. Everywhere I go around these godforsaken city outskirts, it’s like I’ve landed in the third world…” I rant. I’m like a car with no brakes, falling down some bumpy hill.
“You got kicked out?”
“Not permanently.”
“Why don’t you go back?”
“I don’t want to.”
“So – let me get this straight – you’d rather be mutilated in a piss-stained alley than face an awkward teatime with mummy and daddy?” he says incredulously, which is when I become totally unhinged and slap him with the velocity of Concorde. He cusses and cups his face.
“It’s not an awkward teatime with mummy. Mummy’s dead. Mummy is buried in some fucking hole in the ground, rotting, disintegrating, you absolute wan-“ I’m being deliberately melodramatic. It should leave him guilt-stricken, though.
“My God, I’m so sorry!!” he exclaims, looking horrified. “I didn’t think-“
“Nah, it’s ok. Well, it’s not really. But I get it, you wouldn’t have guessed. So it’s slightly ok.” I relax and he relaxes in sync.
“Can I make it up to you?” he asks, face creased up painfully.
“Yeah, you can buy me food. I’m fucking starving. Get me a Yorkie,” I order him, because he owes me one. “And… I don’t suppose you want to accompany around here, lest I get beaten up again?”
We amble towards the amber sunset.
In fact, that’s how it started that day – the obligatory breakfast altercation. I innocently mentioned that, as Chelsea were on Match of the Day in the evening, could I please watch it?
“THOSE COCKNEY CU-” my dad begins to bellow. I drop the packet of Frosties onto the floor. They scatter, like sugar-coated miniature people fleeing in a storm. I don’t blame them. “Are you gonna clear that fook’n crap up?”
I sink to my knees, armed with ageing dustpan and flaking brush, and clear that fook’n crap up. Maybe I am Cinderella and I’m waiting for Prince Charming to save me from a life of being relentlessly ordered around by my acrasial father and silent sibling. What will he look like? Melted Malteaser eyes. What will he listen to? Blur, definitely. And not even a hint of Oasis. Prince Charming may not have had a Walkman in the olden days, but…
“For fook’s sake, Lyla!” My father’s austerulous, not-so-soothing tones snap me out of my reverie. “Just fook’n get out. Get out of my sight!”
“My pleasure!” I retort, twirling round, crunching Frosties underfoot. They make the same sound that snow makes when you tread on it. I am treading on my father’s authority, and he doesn’t like it.
As if I needed any more evidence, he throws a milk-dressed spoon at me.
***
Being homeless ain’t much fun. You trawl the streets for hours – looking for a decent shop that isn’t enveloped in the sour perfumes of repugnant harpies, or the stale fumes of the cancer sticks touted by their beefy boyfriends – and manage to find not one single street that you would like to be in. These people are bland; walking corpses; grey squares on a greyer canvas. It is while I consider this that I fall over a pair of grey, battered trainers.
“Watch where you’re going!” yelps the person attached to them.
I suppose that it was like an awful, cheesy romance film. My head whipping round to give him my special, patented evils. Our eyes collide like nuclear atoms. Those boscaresque eyes are etched into my memory. I know this person. It’s…
“Stroppy Blur fan?!” he caws in amazement. I scowl at him. “Ah, yeah, I suppose I have to admit it. You won.”
He admits to being wrong? The males I know, namely the inbreds at school, seem to believe that papal infallibility applies to them. A beatific smile briefly crosses my face and is stripped off when I realise that I am grinning like a lunatic.
“Damn straight! And I’m still winning!” I announce. “Hey, I don’t suppose you know of anywhere near here where I can hang out until this evening without being raped, murdered, arrested or drowned in cigarette smoke?”
“Why?” That’s not the answer I wanted.
“Why not? I suppose it doesn’t help that my dad told me to fuck off earlier. Everywhere I go around these godforsaken city outskirts, it’s like I’ve landed in the third world…” I rant. I’m like a car with no brakes, falling down some bumpy hill.
“You got kicked out?”
“Not permanently.”
“Why don’t you go back?”
“I don’t want to.”
“So – let me get this straight – you’d rather be mutilated in a piss-stained alley than face an awkward teatime with mummy and daddy?” he says incredulously, which is when I become totally unhinged and slap him with the velocity of Concorde. He cusses and cups his face.
“It’s not an awkward teatime with mummy. Mummy’s dead. Mummy is buried in some fucking hole in the ground, rotting, disintegrating, you absolute wan-“ I’m being deliberately melodramatic. It should leave him guilt-stricken, though.
“My God, I’m so sorry!!” he exclaims, looking horrified. “I didn’t think-“
“Nah, it’s ok. Well, it’s not really. But I get it, you wouldn’t have guessed. So it’s slightly ok.” I relax and he relaxes in sync.
“Can I make it up to you?” he asks, face creased up painfully.
“Yeah, you can buy me food. I’m fucking starving. Get me a Yorkie,” I order him, because he owes me one. “And… I don’t suppose you want to accompany around here, lest I get beaten up again?”
We amble towards the amber sunset.