by Adam Buxton
* * *
Everything at school was different after the disco-dancing class. Tom and I talked to the girls whenever we got the opportunity, and on a school trip to see a theatre production of The Turn of the Screw (or was it The Taming of the Shrew?) Tom sat next to one of the girls he fancied on the bus and I sat next to Alison.
The theatre trip was a fun break from the school schedule, seeing the outside world, being given a small tub of ice cream at the interval and sneakily buying my first bag of Toffee Eclairs when the teachers weren’t looking. The play itself failed to make an impression – I recall it being dark and there was some scenery; all I could think about was how much I was looking forward to talking to Alison when it was over, to laughing at her rude jokes and having her laugh at mine.
In the bus on the way back we asked the driver to put on Radio 1 and ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’ by The Police started playing as Alison and I hid beneath my jacket, ate some Toffee Eclairs, put our heads together and kissed. I’d heard ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’ before and thought it was not as good as ‘Message in a Bottle’, but, kissing Alison, it suddenly sounded a lot better than ‘Message in a Bottle’. In fact, it sounded better than anything I’d ever heard.
I don’t remember if any kind of ceremony took place or if anything was written down to formalise the arrangement, but within a few days I realised that I had a girlfriend.
A local band came to play in the gym one weekend and part of their set was a cover of Supertramp’s ‘Breakfast in America’. Not having heard the song before, I was delighted by how apposite the lyrics were for my new romantic status. On hearing the line ‘take a look at my girlfriend’, I looked over at Alison and grinned, and she smiled back because she was my girlfriend and I was taking a look at her. At the line ‘she’s not much of a girlfriend’, I looked over again and rolled my eyes, hoping Alison would realise this was visual banter rather than a genuine indictment of her girlfriend skills. Then I did the same joke several more times and Alison started rolling her eyes, too. It was off-the-charts Eye-Bants.
That evening we went up to the overgrown maze on the hill above the football pitches, which was known as a hotbed of wayward behaviour. After some light snogging, Alison reached into her jeans’ pocket and produced a small packet of powder, shaking it as she held my nervous gaze. It was Rise & Shine, crystalline orange juice concentrate, which the school had recently classified as contraband, and I was up for it.
We licked our fingers and dipped them into the packet, but rather than suck off the zesty powder immediately, we touched our fingers back to our tongues and dipped again until a damp, sugary orange mound containing enough concentrate for a full glass of fake orange juice had built up on our forefingers. Then we sucked it off. Tangy doesn’t begin to cover it. Now and then I’d see other children round the school with orange forefingers and think, ‘Hello, looks like you’re in the tart but sweet club, too.’
On a handful of intensely exciting occasions, Tom set his Game & Watch to wake us at one or two in the morning, whereupon we put on our slippers and dressing gowns and crept out of our senior dormitory, down the stairs, through moonlit corridors and over to the girls’ wing. If we’d been caught, it would almost certainly have meant suspension and to calm my nerves as we crept I listened in my mind to Madness’s ‘Night Boat to Cairo’ and The Human League’s ‘The Things That Dreams Are Made Of’.
Once in the girls’ dorm, we woke up our respective girlfriends, indulged in yet more snogging, then crept back to our beds feeling like sexy POWs. I loved kissing, though I always said ‘snogging’ so as not to come across as effete. Apart from the fact that Alison wore delicious peach lip balm, whenever we kissed it felt to me that we were defying the normal lonely order of things and forming a connection that went beyond the physical and into the telepathic, as if we were kids with psychic powers trying to evade shadowy government agents bent on exploiting our mind gifts for evil.
* * *
RAMBLE
I spent a lot of time wishing I had special mind powers as a child. During the Seventies films like Escape to Witch Mountain and TV shows like The Tomorrow People enthralled me with their depictions of telepathic and telekinetic children, and when left alone I would narrow my eyes, touch my fingers to my temples and concentrate hard on an object like a cup or a toy car, willing it to move with all my might because I knew that if it did, it would prove that I wasn’t just an anxious thickie who couldn’t do maths, I was in fact part of a new stage in human evolution. But all I managed to do was burst a few blood vessels in my cheeks from straining.
* * *
For snogging enthusiasts, the biggest event in the school calendar was the End of Term Film. This took place in the school gym the night before holidays began and was as significant for us as Prom Night is for American teens. Establishing who you were going to sit next to in the End of Term Film was a process of lengthy and fraught negotiation that began weeks in advance and could easily fall apart at the last minute if your date got a better offer.
The End of Term Film on Friday, 11 December 1981, was Hawk the Slayer, a low-budget British Sword-and-Sorcery adventure released the previous year. Alison and I found a space against one of the side walls of the gym where all the serious snoggers sat. Sitting against the back wall was no good because that’s where the teachers sat and only ‘Squits’ and tragic losers sat in the middle of the gym, as I knew from bitter experience.
As the film started and the lights went off, Alison and I closed our eyes and began to snog (at least I did; Alison may well have surreptitiously watched Hawk the Slayer). Our mouths didn’t part until the end credits had rolled and the lights in the school gym were back on; 90 minutes in total. If you can beat that, you’ve got problems. A year or so later they showed Hawk the Slayer on TV and I finally saw the images that went with the audio. It was better the first time around.
BOWIE ANNUAL
I’m sure there are French teachers who electrify their students with their passionate conjugations of irregular verbs, and physics teachers who state the principle of moments for a body in equilibrium so rivetingly that lives are changed forever, but you seldom hear about them. Meanwhile, all an English teacher has to do is tell the class to stand on their desks and read out some poetry and at least one or two of their students are guaranteed to crap on about how inspiring it was for the rest of their lives.
My first unconventional English lesson took place in a posh wood-panelled room in an old part of the school that I’d never set foot in before, though by that time I’d been there for three years. The classroom upgrade was one of the privileges that came with being a senior, along with suddenly being treated like an adult by some of the staff (after all, we were 12), and our new English teacher, Mr Davidson, was one of those who seemed especially excited at the prospect of laying some grown-up shit on our arses (that’s not a good choice of phrase in this context, but you know what I mean).
Mr Davidson looked like Serge Gainsbourg with a hangover: unshaven, eyes heavy-lidded, hair messy and clothes rumpled – the kind of person my dad would have called ‘a real creep’. (NOTE: My friend Patrick just sent me a picture he took of Mr Davidson back in those days and he doesn’t look like Serge Gainsbourg with a hangover at all. He looks like a young, smart Serge Gainsbourg in a suit and a tie.)
As we filed into the posh room that day, an unsmiling Mr Davidson eyeballed us silently. There were a few nervous giggles after we’d taken our seats because Mr D still hadn’t said a word. Instead, he went over to fiddle with a record player on his desk and suddenly the sound of a growling electric guitar rang out. Mr Davidson turned to the blackboard and began to scribble: ‘Ziggy played guitar. Jamming good with Weird and Gilly …’
This all seemed a bit daft to me and I looked over at Tom to see what he thought. He grinned and raised his eyebrows as if to say, ‘Go with it!’ Mr Davidson wrote out all the lyrics before the song had ended and when he was finished he turned
and stared at us with crazed intensity.
For the rest of the lesson we analysed the lyrics to ‘Ziggy Stardust’. Though I still struggled to take it all seriously – ‘Why do you think the fly was trying to break his balls?’ – I couldn’t deny it was more fun than a ‘normal’ lesson. I was surprised when Mr Davidson told us the song was by David Bowie. I wasn’t crazy about it. To me it sounded less interesting and inventive than ‘Space Oddity’ or ‘Life on Mars’, but later in the senior common room Bill Muggs put on a cassette of the whole Ziggy album and I heard ‘Five Years’ for the first time.
‘Five Years’ was like a whole film in a single song, beginning with a silent, empty aerial shot that gradually zoomed to earth to the sound of a beguilingly odd drum pattern, before finding Bowie making his way through a busy market square as around him people struggled to take in the news that the world was ending, not that day or the next, but in five years. I didn’t like to think about the end of the world, but because Bowie was there it felt OK somehow, and by the flashback to the ice-cream parlour and the ‘milkshakes cold and long’, I was no longer on a beaten-up armchair in the senior common room with Bill Muggs, but smiling and waving from inside the song.
I bought The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars on vinyl during the holidays (my first LP) and back home in the front room, studying the rear of the album sleeve, I saw the message: ‘To be played at maximum volume.’ That wasn’t going to happen because I didn’t have headphones and I wasn’t up for Dad interrupting to tell me to turn it down. Nor did I relish the prospect of either of my parents hearing the line about a cop kissing the feet of a priest and making a ‘queer’ throw up.
Instead, I played the record at approximately one-third of the maximum volume but lay on the floor with my eyes closed and the shitty hi-fi speakers positioned right next to my ears. In that position I listened to ‘Five Years’ over and over, mishearing the line ‘your face, your race, the way that you talk’ as ‘your face, you’ re ace, the way that you talk’, which made me think of Alison. By the time the song reached its emotional crescendo in the cold and the rain with Bowie feeling like an actor, my throat hurt and my heart ached, and it was tremendous to be alive.
CHAPTER 6
ARGUMENT WITH WIFE LOG
When two people live together for 25 years, from time to time there will be irritation. If those people share the money they earn, have brought one or more children into the world and continue to have (occasional) sexual relations, the potential for friction increases dramatically. If one of those people is in the habit of texting during movie night and thinks proper cutlery-drawer segregation ‘feels racist’, then it’s argument time.
Underlying each argument are resentments and insecurities that haven’t been satisfactorily dealt with. So a comment that was in no way passive-aggressive about always leaving the door of the dishwasher open (which is a tripping hazard) takes only a few minutes to spiral into a series of acrimonious accusations over class, money, parenting, education, climate change and the meaning of life.
In the heat of an argument the notion of admitting I might be wrong or attempting to unpack the disagreement is about as likely as being in the throes of sexual passion and suddenly deciding to make a start on those taxes. It’s technically possible, but it’s not top of the agenda.
Much more important is acting as though I’m innocent of all charges, turning my wife’s every accusation back on her and, most crucially, having the last word. Sometimes we’ll reach a point in the argument when we’re just going round in an angry loop – in these situations I sometimes find it useful to deploy the Silent Walk-out in High Dudgeon. Medium or low dudgeon may also be effective.
Some might see the Silent Walk-out as a dick move. In the past my wife has called out, ‘Go on then, off you go!’ as I depart, but if I’m able to stop myself going back for more, the suspension of hostilities afforded by the Silent Walk-out is vitally important. Only when we’re out of physical proximity is it possible to begin the Chill-out Section, and if all goes well, that’s followed a while later by the shambling, shamefaced Apology Summit. The duration of the Chill-out Section needs to be right, though; turn up for the Apology Summit too early and you risk being served a giant helping of Argument Rehash.
When I argue with my wife it’s one of the worst feelings in the world, because it brings into view, however distantly, the possibility that our differences are too great and it would be better for everyone if we were not together. Then I imagine the reality of splitting up. The pain and regret that I’d feel if I lost my closest and kindest ally. The sadness our children would endure. The admin. Oh God, imagine the admin! And, of course, one of my big podcast catchphrases would be fucked.
I’m happy to say that over the last few years my wife and I argue less. This is partly because we have both done our best to talk through some of the underlying causes of our trivial disagreements with an admirable degree of maturity, but I believe another important factor has been my determination to keep a log of our arguments, providing as it does an easily searchable database of grievances that reduces the chances of covering old ground during valuable argument time. For the record, my wife strongly disagrees.
Argument with Wife Log 1
SUBJECT OF ARGUMENT
FUNNY LOOK WHEN I WENT TO THE PUB WITH DAN
MAIN POINTS – WIFE
‘I didn’t give you a funny look. Maybe you feel guilty.’
MAIN POINTS – BUCKLES
‘I don’t feel guilty at all. And you DID give me a funny look.’
WINNER
BUCKLES
SUBJECT OF ARGUMENT
MONEY
MAIN POINTS – WIFE
‘We need to save more and spend less on gadgets.’
MAIN POINTS – BUCKLES
‘I need those so-called “gadgets” for my work.’
WINNER
BUCKLES
SUBJECT OF ARGUMENT
‘RUDENESS’ WHEN FRIENDS OF WIFE CAME TO STAY
MAIN POINTS – WIFE
‘You immediately went to your shed when they arrived.’
MAIN POINTS – BUCKLES
‘I needed to check on the rat traps, which, if you recall, you asked me to put there in the first place.’
WINNER
ONGOING
SUBJECT OF ARGUMENT
PAINTING A LARGE MURAL OF MY FACE ON THE SHED
MAIN POINTS – WIFE
‘It’s a waste of time and money and it’s insane.’
MAIN POINTS – BUCKLES
‘Remind me again who graduated with first-class honours from art school?’ (I did.)
WINNER
WIFE
SUBJECT OF ARGUMENT
WIFE NEVER BUYING MY FAVOURITE FLAVOUR OF JAM
MAIN POINTS – WIFE
‘Everyone in the house likes raspberry.’
MAIN POINTS – BUCKLES
‘I loathe raspberry. Do you even know my favourite jam flavour?’
WINNER
BUCKLES
SUBJECT OF ARGUMENT
TOILET-ROLL HOLDERS
MAIN POINTS – WIFE
‘The vertical wooden pole is classy.’
MAIN POINTS – BUCKLES
‘The wall-mounted holder is fine. The pole is bourgeois.’
WINNER
WIFE
CHAPTER 7
1982
By the time I left my Sussex boarding school at the end of the summer term in 1982, a few weeks after my twelfth birthday, I preferred life at school to life at home, and though saying goodbye to my friends was painful I had every intention of staying in touch, especially with my girlfriend Alison, with whom I still held the snogging record, and my best friend Tom, who had promised me that somehow, someday we would see Alien.
Over the summer our family returned to the best place in the world: the USA. Whether we were staying in a smart resort or a shabby motel, every second out there was a vibrant and luxurious cont
rast to life in England in the early Eighties.
A fan of John Wayne and all things western, Dad adored places like Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Texas and Alaska, where he could indulge his cowboy fantasies of honest folk living decent lives in respectful harmony with magnificent nature, but I preferred it when we went to stay with Dad’s older brother David and his wife Leslie in their hillside bungalow in Santa Barbara, California. As far as I was concerned, they lived in a paradise of permanent sunshine, palm trees, multi-coloured cereal that tasted of sweets, exotic household-product smells, giant air-conditioned shopping malls that looked like the lobbies of fancy hotels, friendly people who thought my British accent was ‘cute’, multi-channel 24-hour TV and, best of all, films that came out months before they did in the UK.
Virtually every aspect of Uncle David and Aunty Leslie’s life in Santa Barbara made the materialistic monkey in me salivate. They had not one, but TWO big TV sets operated by remote-control devices like something out of Blake’s 7. They had a fridge with a built-in ice machine that dispensed not boring cubes, but half-moons. They had two cars (one of them a sports car), which sat inside their own garage with an automatic door, and most extraordinarily of all, they had their own swimming pool. That’s right, an actual pool with no one telling you not to run, dive bomb or engage in ‘petting’ (not that ‘petting’ was a priority with just my family using the pool, but still, nice to have the option).
