MANCHESTER RANT TWO

The painting above is by David Inshaw, a former member of the Brotherhood of Ruralists, and has absolutely nothing to with this article, except that I envy the quintessentially English serenity enjoyed by the two badminton players. 


It's a quiet Friday night for me, I've been working all day and all I'd like to do is rest. Not even rest hard like most people do at this time of the week, but just sit in front of the television eating something inane and watching something even more so, but apparently it's frowned upon to do that around these parts. 


I've just come back from a short walk incorporating a visit to the local Sainsbury's, apparently the place to go to have one's choice of evening entertainment churlishly mocked. I'm going home to London tomorrow to spend the week with my girlfriend, so sorry for not 'going large' the night before (see My Boyfriend Is A Dick for why). So you may now imagine me, standing in the queue, holding a modest four-pack of beers and a microwave meal. For one. 


I was staring into space and daydreaming as I got to the checkout and proffered said items to Stuart, my indefatigably helpful cashier for the day. Now, it's a fucking supermarket, do I have to have my wits about me every minute of every day, especially after spending hours learning why a fourteenth century Italian courtier should possibly want to be good at archery and ballroom dancing at the same time? And then he popped the question. 


"Night in alone eh?" Asks Stu with a patronising chortle. Urgh. One of his colleagues laughs, and sharing the amusement are three scantily clad female students (inappropriately so considering their generous proportions) each clutching their own crate of Strongbow, who titter asininely. What if I needed ingredients for a salad and happened also to have dry lips? What kind of reaction would I get if I put a cucumber and a tub of vaseline on the counter? For fuck's sake. 


I guess I must live the reclusive life of a total loser, and I was thinking that from now on I should use the self service checkouts so as to avoid the fatuous scrutiny of my shopping (or just to avoid any contact with other humans altogether) when I thought: No, you know what? Fuck you Stuart, fuck you his bald colleague and not forgetting the girls, FUCK you, you three, fat, soon-to-be-drunk bitches. 


I'm going downstairs to put the microwave to good use and listen to Minor Threat. It had better be a good fucking meal. Over and out. 

MANCHESTER RANT ONE

Manchester is home to two massive universities - the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan (three if you count Salford), so the city is great for students. The only problem is there are fucking thousands of them. Living in a student area like I stupidly do, it’s impossible to avoid them.

Tonight was a Monday night, and there was gash on the lash everywhere. Now I’m not a sit at home loser, I don’t even smoke pot anymore, but come on. I’m game for a party Friday and Saturday night, Thursday too, and maybe Wednesday. Okay Tuesday as well if there’s something good on. But Monday night? What could there possibly be worth going and getting fucked for on a Monday? You see drunk girls wobbling across the middle of the road, their fat fleshy arses illuminated in a car’s headlights as it has to slow down and herd them along like cattle. Oh no! Stacey’s broken a heel and now can’t walk because she’s too fucking obese and wasted. I don’t care, fuck you. Just don’t puke on my shoes while I help you stand up again.

So it’s 24/7 this stuff. Am I a psychopath if I have happy daydreams of watching all the shit clubs they go to burning down with them inside? There’d be me cackling on a rooftop somewhere to myself - ‘Tiger Tiger burning bright, Aquapop also alight, etc....’ I’d be listening to ‘The End’ by the Doors, except playing it backwards with my finger on a record player and throwing petrol doused faggots at virgins on the cobbled streets below.

Enough of that - I’m not trying to open myself up to a psychiatrist, or tell the court why I did it. But maybe you can sympathize with me, like I evidently can them - in life you face many difficult situations, so am I a bad person for wanting to smash some heads between a rock and a hard place? OK sorry I said enough. 

TEENAGE DREAMS

Everyone knows the saying 'live life to the full because you never know that one day you might walk into the road and get hit by a bus.' Yeah well me and that saying have a special little relationship, because it happened to me a few years ago. I was about 17 and drinking White Lightning or something similarly homeless near the Junction with one of my best mates, when we decided we'd go off to his place north of the river. Being the good, sensible little boy that I was, I phoned Mother Dearest to tell her I wouldn't be back until the morning. As I was on the phone, the bus came and I couldn't for some reason get my wallet out so I just told my friend I'd get on the next one. Biggest mistake of my life. 

As I was waiting, Mr Cuntfucking Biggest Asshole of all time (from Lewisham, urgh) came and asked me for change. Weighing this guy's appearance up, I decided to walk off, but he kept fucking following and pestering me. At this point I should say that my justification for this decision and some pretty stupid ones that followed it were probably due to the White Shitening, which I have only ever drunk since on one occasion, after which I was woken up by my fringe and forehead getting soaked as my calmly sleeping face splashed into the toilet bowl. I own class, me. So anyway, I kept getting followed, and we ended up on some estate where he was going to roll a joint or something for us. I said I didn't want any, and this must have pissed him off because the next thing I knew he had one of his hands going through my pockets and the other repeatedly punching me in the head. 

As you can imagine, I didn't enjoy this. The thought did cross my mind that I could have been about to lose my anal virginity, but don't worry, that came later by the hands of some Asian dude called Kerpal or something like that. I decided the best thing to do would be to leg it, and seeing a group of people outside the estate and on the other side of the road I reckoned I'd be safe if I ran to them, he wasn't going to mess with five or six people. In an inspired move, I got free and sprinted into the road, only looking for traffic after I was in the middle. I looked right, and missed a Transit van by literally about half a metre, and then coming over the crest of the hill from the left (it hadn't been there when I'd jumped into the road) was a huge passenger coach coming at about 30 mph. I suppose if I was going to do this, I may as well have done it properly, and I'm glad I got hit by one of the biggest fuckers on the road, not some pussy hatchback or saloon. It was literally like being hit by a moving brick wall, the face of the thing was totally flat. I reckon I must have been hit in the leg, flown a few metres and landed on my face. The worst bit is that I wasn't concussed, so I remember it all, the headlights, the hit, the taste of the road, everything. The thought of my teeth grinding along the tarmac still makes me shiver, and I hate that kerb bit in American History X now. 

I got up straight away and walked about a bit before it really sunk in, I was so in shock. Then the blood, Jesus it was everywhere, I wasn't doing things by halves. Some poor woman came up to me and asked if I wanted anyone phoned. I said to phone my friend (I wasn't too intelligible with teeth and bone hanging out everywhere) and tell him I probably wasn't going to make it to his that night, but forgot about phoning my parents, I wasn't really thinking too straight then. The ambulance ride was horrible, but morphine's actually pretty good, why do you think Snoop Dogg smokes medicinal weed? The NHS has got that shit on lock. My Mum got to the hospital, but declined to take a picture when I asked her, I was pretty bummed out by that. Then the nurses insisted on cutting my brand new shirt off (I had not a single chest injury, my face took the fall). I managed to persuade them to leave it, and so I just lay there staring at the ceiling in despair as my stressed out mother thanked God that I was alive. The girl in the bed to the left of me couldn't speak English and was in for a drug overdose/attempted suicide whilst the guy on the right had multiple stab wounds. I love living sometimes. 

That's about it really, I was pretty immobile for the next couple of days. The only further embarrassments/total losses of dignity include drinking a pint through a straw, having some guy shove medicine up my ass, spurting a pretty good jet of claret everywhere when I had my drip removed, not recognising myself in the mirror, having my mum bathe me at 17 and staring at some old guy's stinking, overflowing catheter bag for two days. I don't think I've been lower to be honest, but I got some nice cards and rumour spread that I was in a coma which is always pretty fun.