Dancing in the Darkness (13 page)

I
t’s fair to say that a rogue stammer has retarded my development as a normal functioning human being. I originally didn’t want to dwell on it too much in this book, but now that we’re at the final chapter, I thought it could be a nice way of eliciting sympathy. The fact is, there are times when I simply don’t bother speaking. And I rarely tell stories. You’ve all heard of a bad liar? Well, I’m bad at telling the truth.

Someone told me that if you
try
to do something that you don’t want to do then the brain gets muddled up and might stop doing it. So I’ve even consciously
tried
to stammer, and on good days this reverse psychology works a treat. But on bad days, all I get is: ‘Why are you
pretending
to stammer?’

My worried mum put me in for a test with a speech therapist at primary school and, out of sheer bloody-mindedness, I enunciated perfectly. The expectation of the therapist must have galvanised something in me – a deep-rooted desire to prove people wrong.

My all-time low in this respect came when I heard of British Telecom’s plans to reduce the phone bill charges of those afflicted with speech impediments – to compensate for the endless agonising conversations. My own impediment dramatically deteriorated overnight, and I wasn’t the only one sniffing a great opportunity to slash phone bills (‘phone bliss’) and save money; apparently there was a stampede of applications throughout Scotland as, out of nowhere, a stuttering epidemic swept the nation like bush-fire. That meant BT had to withdraw the offer. Someone’s always out to spoil a stuttering Scot’s fun.

I worry that this nervous stammer will never go away. It’s an impediment that betrays uncertainty, a thought process like Spaghetti Junction and perhaps even an unhealthy dose of self-importance – after all, why would you stumble over those words if you didn’t think they held some kind of precious value?

But why can’t we celebrate our mistakes in the end? Perhaps mistakes have just as much right to be
celebrated as deeds that feed our pride. The flaunting of our faults helps others feel better about
them
-selves. And I have learned that telling the truth in a clumsy way makes it seem somehow more authentic. It’s natural and real, therefore it’s true. The action of telling the truth becomes true in itself. And if you don’t believe me, then you can just g-g-go and f-f-fu-fuck off.

L
ate last year, I decided on some peace and quiet to repair my worn-out body and mind. I was looking for a tranquil setting to train for triathlons, compose music and type these words. So I moved to Camden High Street. Just above Lloyds Bank. Now I find myself surrounded by mangy pot dealers, impoverished immigrants, homeless
ex-soldiers
, greasy-haired indie kids and the busiest traffic wardens in the United Kingdom.

Sometimes I dream I’m in a yacht, whizzing up and down the flooded streets of Bath, fast as a fire engine – the lack of control is exhilarating. It’s a big boat and it won’t slow down, even for steep hills, crossings or sharp turnings. Part-apocalypse,
part-aqua
park – one man’s danger is another man’s fun.

Then I’m awakened by a woman’s amplified New York intonations – directly below my
first-floor
window, a middle-aged American tour guide is explaining to a cluster of overweight London sightseers that this is the very same building in which Blur had their HQ and plotted a Britpop campaign against Oasis. I was surprised when I first heard that, but now it takes all of my energy just to resist the temptation to wait till she’s finished, before poking my head out the window like a cuckoo clock and exclaiming, ‘And that’s not all, folks! – I live here now and I was in The Darkness!’

My flat is on a corner with the entrance on a side street; it’s also next door to a drug addict’s halfway hostel. From my bedroom window, I can hear the junkies and ‘alkies’ arguing nightly. All that despair and hopelessness join the rest of the waste – soggy fag packets, crushed beer cans, slashed rubbish sacks and used syringes – lining the narrow street below my bedroom window.

They regularly piss against my front-door entrance and from time to time I catch them at it, but what can you do? It’s not fair to attack a man midstream. And by the time I’ve politely waited for the culprit to finish, the absurdity of the situation has overwhelmed me: ‘Good day, sir, lovely day for a slash. Can I get you a drink or anything?’ One fragrant summer’s day, however, I did get angry
when, after noticing an almighty stench drifting up the stairwell, I discovered a perfectly formed turd on the doorstep (shit-related incidents bookend my life story, you’ll notice). No one else would touch it, including Camden Council, so I picked up a dustpan and brush and trotted downstairs to shovel it up.

But you really should believe me when I say I’m happier now than I’ve been for quite some time. My lawyer has finally recovered some funds owed to me by The Darkness and I feel I can, at last, finally move forward. Throughout the writing of this book, I have read and felt patterns of truth emerging, like frost on a winter windowpane. Knowing they won’t stay there for long, I thought the most apt way of ending this book would be to jot down and share with you my up-to-date impressions. So here goes.

The ones who act square are crazy and the ones who act crazy are square. Why else would the ‘crazies’ get so crazy all the time? They’re desperately trying to hide the fact that they’re really square. And that’s why the squares act so square all the time: it’s just their way of concealing the fact that they’re secretly crazy.

I started off this book thinking I was square, and then I went through my crazy period, before finally accepting I was probably just a bit of both, making
me ‘squazy’. Just out of curiosity, I looked it up in a dictionary, and discovered it was, in fact, Latin for ‘washing-up liquid’.

Get in touch with your dad before it’s too late. This summer I’m visiting brother Chris again in Venezuela, and I’m taking my Polish cleaner this time. Then the three of us are sailing off to St Vincent in the Caribbean to track him down. He’s 70 now and bringing up two young sons on his own, after the 25-year-old West Indian lover and mother left. It’s unnerving how karma catches us out in the end – the deserter becomes the deserted. Jason and Rupert are four and seven years of age now and probably the only kids on the island brought up by a single father – the majority being raised by single mothers. It’s oddly reassuring to witness definitive confirmation of where my contrary streak came from – along with, fingers crossed, an ability to father kids at a late age.

I can’t wait for him to confess everything to me. And I want to tell him about my plans too. I’ve purchased a rundown property in Poznan, where my Polish cleaner comes from. She’s going to help me convert it into a boutique hotel, because hotels are the main things I miss about being in a touring rock band.

This one is going to be different, though. It’s going to have a more personal touch, for a start. Our aim is to create a kind of ‘eco temple’, with rooms tailored to the needs of the staff as much as the customer. It’s a chance for me to recapture my youthful Marxist idealism and fuse that with a new Green Fundamentalism. We’re going to customise it to the highest standard possible and improve on people’s expectations rather than just meeting them, so expect to see the following concepts:

• GUEST CLEANING ROTA – to replace the outdated concept of room service. We believe guests taking turns cleaning each other’s rooms would improve client relations and foster a sense of eco friendship.
  
• MASSIVE BARS – to replace the outdated mini-bar set-up. We’re convinced that having larger in-room refreshment facilities would save on the time wasted in restocking them every day.
  
• GEEK GYM – including a state-of-the-art chess simulator machine, the objective of which is to pick up and move a very light object every five minutes.
  
• POSH TABLE TENNIS – our eco-conscious golden ping-pong balls will be fashioned from
  recycled Ferrero Rocher wrappers, to create ‘Rocher Ping Pong’. (With this game you are spoiling us.)
  
• ON-SITE SOLICITOR’S OFFICE – to be open 24/7. Convenient if the customer wishes to take legal action against our establishment – or if Germany decides to invade Poland again.
  

Unfortunately, we can’t use the name Fawlty Towers, for copyright reasons, but there’s no reason why we can’t use ‘Faulty Hotel’ instead – ‘Here to make life more complicated during your stay.’ And there’ll be an open invitation for my mother, father and all my brothers to come over any time – not forgetting the newest arrivals, Jason and Rupert. We may even have to kidnap them if Austin really has lost his marbles.

Then my father’s five sons can form an in-house band, performing a sweet blend of calypso reggae, highland folk, flamenco rumba and glam metal, using steel drums (Jason and Rupert), a bagpipe (Chris), a battered old trumpet (Tim) and a Thunderbird bass guitar (me). My father always wanted to be a conductor after he hung up his violin, and this could be his big chance: ‘Austin Power: Five Golden Members’. I do hope there’s
no misunderstanding at Customs, though – they may just assume he’s coming over from the Caribbean to be a
bus
conductor.

And that’s not all. My mum always wanted to be her own boss and with
her
five sons she’d have a great time running Faulty Tours – ‘
One man’s danger is another man’s fun
’ – and supplying the clientele for Faulty Hotel. She’s got 15 years’ experience of tour-guiding around Scotland and, with Chris the party animal, Tim’s ‘posh Tourette’s’, Jools’ love of a hammock, Sam’s asthma and my appalling sense of direction, we could be the next Thomas Cook.