11:07, 30/06/2005

Rock news

Moby Dick, Madrid, Summer '03My band, Electric Shocks, are playing our first gig in a few months tomorrow night in Richmond, South West London. We've been taking a break from gigging while we write and record our second album, which is going very well, thanks very much. As you know, this is not a transgendered thing, so I will most likely be looking something like this photo → taken while I was manning the merch stall at the Moby Dick Club, Madid, when we played there a couple years ago.

Yes, this also means that my wrist is well enough to play the guitar and so I will be making a return to the draGnet soon on a regular basis. I hope you look forward to the next post, which will no doubt be a long, dreary moan about what life is like when you only have a left hand.

Anyway, it would be nice to see you. Here's the details, from the Shocks mailout:

Hey gang,

Long time no speak. The Shocks are back from working on brand new recordings for their second album to bring you a set mixing old, new and... middle at Richmond's PARLIAMENT CLUB!! this Friday July 1st.

Parliament Club plays host to THE FALLEN LEAVES, formed by punk legands from Subway Sect and Music Machine. The Shocks are pleased to break their stage silence on this night. Support comes from THE COLONY.

Doors open 8pm, Shocks expected on the hustings at 9pm or soon thereafter. Order! Order! Vote Electric Shocks this Friday. Entry is £6 on the door.

PARLIAMENT CLUB, Black Horse, 181 Sheen Road, Richmond, London, TW9 1XF

flyer here!

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Shocks out!
http://www.theelectricshocks.com
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15:58, 27/06/2005

Nineteen-Seventy-Seven

Friday 28th October 1977

"So there was this race of people just like us...

"They lived in a very smelly city, a long, long way away from here. It smelt because of... because of the drains. Yes, the drains, that was it... They took to travelling around in these little covered carts, looking for the source of the bad blockages. The carts were sealed off, you see - to cut out the smell - and they had little floral air fresheners inside them."

The strange man paused, looking up the road to see if a bus was coming. Seeing only a solitary Allegro approaching, he turned back to Carrie and continued his story.

"So they travelled round their city in these little carts, looking for blocked drains. They always carried their plungers with them. Did I tell you that their arms were sticking out of the carts? In rubber gloves. With their plungers.

"Funny thing was that they often held other things in their other hands. Whisks, sometimes pliers. Sometimes even fire extinguishers - the ones that spray mist, not the foam ones. But mostly whisks. They loved baking..."

He paused again, looking down at her, smiling. "Am I boring you? I know I tend to go on sometimes. It's a habit I've never really been able to shake."

Carrie shook her head. But she wished her bus would come anyway. It was starting to get a bit dark now. She was starting to think a bit about the nonsense story the man was telling. These people in their little vehicles, trundling madly round their smelly city waving sink plungers and egg whisks. It was stupid. But she knew better than to tell him to go away. Don't talk to strangers.

"That's what reminded me, you see." He pointed down at her school bag. The cake she'd baked today in Home Ec. was badly concealed there. "Cakes, whisks." His blue eyes were narrowed, looking into the distance. "The image just popped into my head, of these... these... things... with men inside." He looked down again, that nice smile on his beardy lips.

"I'm afraid I made up the stuff about the drains. I wish I could remember what they were really up to. Ah. Here's your bus."

Carrie looked up, startled. The green shape of a local bus had indeed pulled up at the stop. She hadn't even heard it. She got up and stepped up onto the platform, going straight up the stairs without looking back. Only when she'd sat down half way up the bus did she turn her head to look back anxiously towards the stairs.

But the strange man hadn't got on. There he was, still sitting at the stop in his funny green coat and old-fashioned clothes. The bell rang twice and the bus pulled away from the stop. Carrie continued to watch him recede into the dusk. When she could no longer see him, she turned to face the front of the bus again, clutching the tuppence her mum had given her that morning with her foil-wrapped sandwich and Curlywurly. She could hear the conductor thumping up the stairs now, to collect the fares from her and the scattering of other passengers.

Saturday 29th October 1977

The next day was Saturday, thank God, so Carrie spent most of the afternoon spending her pocket money down the shopping centre with Susie and Olivia. As usual, David Jones was there, spooking them out with his dungarees and his staring. He didn't seem to have any friends, which was worrying enough, but he'd developed this new habit of hanging around by the plant pots outside the new Smith's, on the pedestrianised bit of the High Street, and watching Carrie and her mates as they bobbed in and out of the Top Shop and Woolworths. Carrie found it really annoying and never got sick of telling so to Susie (who she preferred to Olivia, though she'd never tell anyone).

"He's such a creep!" (she'd learnt that word the week before, watching an American film while babysitting next door's Adam).

"Yeah. A creep," agreed Susie. She turned and looked daggers at David Jones, who looked back, blankly. "Come on, let's go to The Golden Egg for a milk shake!" Susie grabbed Carrie and Olivia's hands and they ran off shrieking towards the cafe at the end of the arcade.

Later, Olivia and Carrie were hanging around outside the ABC, trying to see if they could sneak into Saturday Night Fever. Susie had had to go home. They'd thought about going to the Chinese chippy but when they'd got there, there was a bunch of punks hanging around looking scary so they'd decided not to. As usual, four-eyes was hanging round the lobby of the cinema, vigilantly watching for interlopers. Carrie sighed.

"He's not going to go away," she said, looking furtively round to see if anyone was coming out of the one-way exit doors round the back of the cinema. Sometimes, if you timed it right, you could run right in when you saw the door opening. Olivia spat her bubble gum out onto the pavement, folding her arms and looking down the road. "It's going to start soon", she said in her moany way. "It'll be the ads then it's going to start. Why did it have to be an X anyway? We might of got in if it was a double A."

"Cos, it's got swearing and everything in it," said Carrie, wearily, as if for the umpteenth time, not bothering to turn round, "and, you know, the other..."

Carrie glanced round. Olivia was smoothing down the collar on her yellow cheesecloth shirt. Carrie was dead jealous of that shirt, even though the collars always stuck up a bit funny. It went really well with Olivia's new green corduroy flares, which were so wide at the bottom that you could get both feet right up the legs. "Don't know why you want to go and see it so much anyway," grumbled Olivia. "John Travolta looks like a stupid monkey."

Carrie was seized by a sudden rage. "Shut up! If you hate him so much why don't you bleeding well go home then? And he doesn't look like a monkey!" She spun back round to observe the emergency exit, fuming.

There was a brief silence.

"He does look like a monkey," said Olivia.

"Doesn't," said Carrie, still looking at the door.

"Does."

"Does not."

With a creak, the door started opening outwards.

"Come on!" squealed Carrie, grabbing Olivia's wrist. They darted forward, Carrie grabbing the opening door and yanking it open, running slap bang into a startled man, who gave a panicked yell, then teetered, falling backwards down the stairs, landing with a thud on the concrete of the exit corridor below.

The man groaned, rubbing his head. For a second, Carrie was frozen at the top of the stairs, looking at him. Then Olivia tugged her wrist and they ran down the stairs past the dazed man in the corridor that smelt of wee and into the darkened auditorium, where an Old Spice ad was just playing to a close, a blonde haired woman licking her lips at the sight of a bronzed surfer coming into shore in front of an improbable looking sunset.

There were some really scary rough bits in the film and soon Carrie was sort of regretting dragging Olivia into it. But John Travolta was a really amazing dancer too. And he didn't look a bit like a monkey either, well maybe a little bit, round the mouth. But it wasn't too bad.

Carrie wished the disco down the youth club was a bit like that and that there was a boy like Tony Manero who would come up to her in his tight white trousers and ask her to be his dancing partner. She would be dead sophisticated but would say yes anyway and after a while, they would kiss each other and win a cup and a rosette for their dancing too.

Olivia kept going on about the bit at the end where she's being all horrid to him in her flat and eventually they make up. But all Carrie wanted to do was think about the dancing. Because the scene in the woman's flat at the end reminded her that Tony Manero's stupid friend had fallen off the bridge the night before and Carrie had been so scared by that bit that she'd had to hide her face.

She and Olivia were in the Golden Egg again. It was five thirty, dark out, and time to go home soon.

Carrie had ordered a chocolate milk and some chips. Olivia was having lemonade and they were talking about the film. They were sitting in a booth and Olivia had her back to the side of the counter and was facing the door. Carrie had her back to the door and was stuffing the soggy chips into her gob like they were going out of fashion.

That was when the scary thing happened.

First, Carrie was aware of a draught on her back, and realised that someone had come in the door behind her. The next thing, she looked up from dipping her chip into the puddle of vinegary ketchup (not Heinz) on the side of her plate, to see Olivia staring, mouth open, at the man who was now walking past her to the counter.

Carrie raised her eyebrow in a "what?" gesture and Olivia nodded surreptitiously, indicating that she should look up without making a big show of it. Carrie did so just as the man said, "white coffee please, love" to Doreen at the till.

Carrie looked up. And looked quickly down again, face burning. It was the man from the cinema. The one they had knocked down the stairs as they had run past. The one that had groaned and rubbed his head. She looked up again, aware of Olivia's eyes burning into her face.

The man was leaning on the counter, looking blankly into the distance, waiting for Doreen to do her business with the coffee. He was reaching slowly into his coat pocket with his right hand, pulling out a crumpled packet of cigarettes. As Carrie watched, he flicked the packet up and as one of the fags came flying out, he caught it between his lips. He put the pack back in his pocket and his hand came back out with a match, with a pink head. Holding it in his closed fist, he made a flicking motion with his thumb and the match sparked into life. The man took a deep draw as he lit his fag, using his first smoky breath to extinguish the match. All this without once looking down or breaking that blank look or taking his left hand out of the other pocket. Carrie couldn't believe it! If she hadn't been so frightened that he'd look over and recognise her, she'd have snorted and said something sarky about the man's completely rubbish attempt to look cool.

He took another draw of his cigarette. He was a strange-looking bloke. Quite tall, but skinny. You could see some scraggy blond hairs poking out from under his old-fashioned snap-brim hat. In fact, he was dressed weird and old fashioned from head to foot. From the hat to the shabby cream trenchcoat to the straight jeans, he was dressed kind of like Carrie's uncle Harry, who ran the goldfish and tropical fish aquarium shop in Old Windsor next to the chippy and the Tote Bookmakers. But the shabby man was only half Uncle Harry's age. He looked like he hadn't shaved in a couple of days too.

Suddenly Carrie realised she was staring as Doreen handed the man his coffee and came over to clear her and Olivia's table. They'd already paid, so Carrie came to a snap decision. "Let's go!" she whispered to Olivia, grabbing her bag and leaping up out of her red plastic chair past the approaching heap of middle-aged woman that was Doreen.

That's when the really unfortunate thing happened. Somehow, the strap of her bag got caught in her chair leg and pulled her back off balance as she tried to dash out. In front of Olivia's astonished eyes, Carrie tumbled backwards, straight into the approaching Doreen, who gave an outraged squawk and staggered back, colliding wallop into the shabby man. Who yelled as he toppled over a stool at the counter, spilling scalding hot coffee down his coat and trousers before ending up in a heap on the red and white checked linoleum flooring of The Golden Egg Cafe, High Street, Slough.

"Bloody little pests!!" she heard the irate Doreen bellowing as they careered through the front door into the dark, cold evening.

It was five thirty-four, on Saturday 28th October, 1977. Later at home she'd remember that she'd completely forgotten to tell either Susie or Olivia about the other strange man. The one she'd "met" at the bus stop outside school yesterday. Carrie Mills was thirteen years and exactly eight months old.

» to be continued

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