by John King
—That’s bad luck, says an older bloke trying not to laugh. You’re a football hooligan now.
—It’s not fair, though. I’m not like that. I’ve never been in trouble before and I’m going to plead not guilty. I’ll say it was an accident. Do you think they’ll believe me?
—You’ve got no chance, but have a go if it makes you feel better. There’s no such thing as accidents when it comes to the old bill. You can do fifteen years for nothing, because the bastards decide to stitch someone up, but they never apologise do they? Look at all the cases that get shown up years after the event. It’s no honest mistake. They need a conviction and they grab someone off the street. They just want to look good. They’re not interested in minor details like innocence and guilt.
—I spat in the gutter outside the ground and a copper on a horse tells me I’m nicked. Another bloke joins in the discussion.
—I just laughed because I thought he was taking the piss and he calls his mate over and here I am. They’ll nick you for anything. They’re probably on a bonus scheme and get so much for each arrest.
I listen to their stories. The skinny kid getting charged with assault when it was me and the others to blame. The young lad spitting in the gutter. The other blokes swapping punches with Manchester drunks. A man in an anorak like the trainers wear, pissed and bleary-eyed. A bunch of losers. Me included. It’s all minor league stuff and just goes to show how the old bill waste time on trivia. What are they bothering with all this for when they could be putting themselves about where it counts. This is the easy option. Get hold of some bystander and spend the rest of the afternoon writing it up. I pay my taxes and this is what I get in return. Mind you, I reckon a few of them agree, just following the political line wasting resources. Rod reckons there’s more people employed monitoring football hooligans than there are tracking down child-molesters. Don’t know if it’s true, but if it is then it’s got to be down to politics.
—My brother’s mate was in Belize, says the pisshead. He says he was on a bounty for the guerrillas he shot. Bounty-hunting in the army. Says he bagged five of the bastards. He was stationed in Belize City. When he wasn’t training he spent his time with the whores, getting drunk or in the jungle killing guerrillas. Says it pissed all over patrolling Belfast.
The drunk must be lying. Either him or the soldier. Can’t imagine the army paying bounties. There again, when you stop and think about it, that’s what the blokes who sign up are doing anyway. Then they slag off mercenaries. Everyone has a go at us lot as well, but what’s the difference? Only ones I can see is your average bloke who gets in a fight in his own time doesn’t get paid and isn’t killing anyone, but maybe I’m missing something.
—City got a kicking before the old bill got there, says one of the two blokes with a strictly casual appearance. More of a nutter than the others, though I don’t know his face. They were sounding off and you don’t have to take that from anyone. Serves them right.
I start thinking about that bird Steve battered in Manchester. Now that’s the kind of bloke who should be sitting in here. Not us lot. Steve should be in Wandsworth or Brixton or some other hole getting a hiding from the other prisoners. Nobody likes a nonce. They reckon there’s honour among thieves. Maybe there is, maybe not. Depends who you’re talking about. But one thing’s for sure, sex offenders and queers are the scum of the earth. More so inside because there’s got to be some kind of standards when you’re being treated like shit. If the cunts aren’t sectioned it doesn’t take long before they get carved up.
Mark did three months for assault after he hospitalised some bloke outside a club in Shepherd’s Bush. He was out with his older brother Mickey and some of his mates. Must’ve been twenty at the time and he was the only one got done. Said it wasn’t as bad as he thought because there were some interesting men inside. Old-time crooks and apprentice hoods. As long as you didn’t show any weakness you were okay. Mind you, it’s no way to live, and he swore he’d never go back. Not that Mark’s changed his ways, he’s just a bit smarter than the rest and keeps his wits about him.
Mark kicked the fuck out of this nonce one time. Says the screws stood back and watched. Laughed as he sorted the bloke out. Didn’t give a fuck. Says the bloke raped a kid or something and deserved what he got. Says the blood was thick like he’d hit an artery and he got a bit worried because you can’t hide a murder inside. The screws told the bloke to get up and shut his mouth. Took him off to see the doctor and sectioned the bastard. It made Mark feel better because he was boiling up and had to take it out on someone. I suppose there’s a pecking order everywhere you go. People follow the same rules whether they live in a fifty-room mansion in Kensington or five hundred to a cell in Brixton. Everyone’s trying to better themselves. We all want to get another rung up the ladder and make ourselves feel important. There’s always got to be some cunt worse off because if you reach rock bottom you’re fucked. Mark says he has no regrets.
—Chelsea are getting stuffed, lads. A copper looks in through the hatch and laughs. City scored three times in the first twenty minutes and your new goalkeeper’s busted his leg.
It’s hard to know if he’s telling the truth. They get a thrill out of winding you up. It’s all cat-and-mouse once they’ve got you under lock and key. It keeps them on their toes. It’s all mind games and though you blank the comments and insults it starts to get on your nerves after a while. One time I got put in the cells overnight for being pissed on a Friday night in Hammersmith. I woke up with a hangover and a copper said I’d raped some bird. He said I followed her after she’d got out of a taxi and fucked her round the back of the optician’s. I was so pissed I went for some chips and they caught me. I couldn’t remember anything and was shitting it. I’d lost two hours of my life and only just remembered getting nicked. Everything else was blank.
The copper went off and I was sitting there for half an hour. I saw myself sent down for ten years ending up like the nonce Mark battered. I wanted to tell someone it wasn’t me responsible. That I must’ve been on remote control. That I didn’t remember anything, so how could it be me? If you don’t have a memory of what you’ve done then how can they blame you for the crime? I was sitting there feeling like shit. Knew that’s what nonces say. That they hear voices, or can’t help themselves, whatever. I could see it all coming my way. Up in court and the shame, everyone turning against me and then the years inside. I’d rather have topped myself. Then another copper comes along to give me a cup of tea and I ask him what happened. He said I kicked some dustbins over and was singing football songs in the middle of the street dodging traffic. I was drunk and disorderly but they weren’t going to charge me. Just give me a warning and send me home. I was so happy I could have hugged him. My hangover disappeared as I drank the tea. He was alright that one.
I sat there waiting for them to let me go home and the bloke in the next cell had killed his wife the previous night. I could hear him crying. They had an argument and he knifed her. Just went mental according to the policeman. Said the bloke didn’t know what happened. One minute his wife was there shouting at him, the next she was going stiff I felt bad for him. Life is shit sometimes and there’s always going to be someone round the corner waiting to take advantage. Slip up and every cunt’s on to you before you’ve hit the pavement.
—What’s the score at the game? The drunk asks a copper passing the cell.
—One nil to Chelsea.
Silence.
—Has the Chelsea keeper broken his leg?
—Not as far I know. He just saved a penalty. Radio said it was one of the best saves seen at Chelsea for years.
BOMBAY MIX
They probably think Vince Matthews went a bit mental when he left England, that he came back a shadow of his old self, but it doesn’t bother me because I view everything from a different angle now, seeing things in perspective, skinheads running over the bridge heading for Hayes with a big mob behind them, locals outnumbering the shaven-headed aliens
ten to one, and they’re big blokes with machetes and those kung-fu sticks Indians use when they’re looking for trouble, and then there’s this nuclear explosion as the pub blows up, or petrol bombs inside more like, popping glass, and everyone sort of hangs in the air for a second like the film’s been stopped and someone in a recording studio’s chopping up the negatives, but then their brains click into what the noise is, because, after all, they were there a few minutes before watching the Business 4 Skins Last Resort play, or in the case of the locals armed and called out for duty, probably angry because of the NF march when Blair Peach got a pasting, and that sort of thing sticks in the memory, so when a mob of skinheads comes on your manor you’re not going to muck about asking questions, because tabloid pin-ups go a long way, read your papers and every skinhead is a white fascist who hates brown and black faces, never mind the JA music and clothes, the old rude boy style, and anyway, there’s stories going round about these East London hooligans thieving from shops and slagging off Indian women and girls, someone’s mothers and daughters, and if you do that you’re asking for trouble because, the thing is, white blokes from outside the area think Indians and Pakis can’t look after themselves, which is a load of shit, and everyone goes along with the easy image that blacks and what have you, even the Greeks and Turks up in North London, are so fucking hard that the Indians just follow in the wake of their mums and dads and inherit all the cornershops and cash-and-carries, but if you knew some of the blokes in Southall, like George, who got embarrassed when his old man stopped to give him a lift home after school when he was with his mates, when it was summer and he had the windows open in his Ford Estate, playing devotional sitar music you usually hear down the temple, yelling at his son to be careful crossing the road, and George knew a load of blokes in the local National Front, or at least blokes who said they were NF but understood none of the politics and wouldn’t believe Martin Webster was bent, just thought the NF badge made them hard and got the Socialist Workers Party and Anti-Nazi League going, the same kind of thinking that makes the Union Jack an anarchist symbol, and George said he saw their point of view, in a funny sort of way, and he was like an honorary white boy though he was no Uncle Tom doing tricks in the white man’s circus, a hooligan who worked as a hod carrier for a while in Hanwell then built himself up with weights and did some kind of training so he was hard, one of the martial arts, maybe it was kung-fu, and nobody would push him because he’d been inside, did borstal and was never that bothered, but fuck knows where he was when the skins got steamed in Southall, he’d been around a few years before when the NF tried to march through and the whole area got mobbed up and there was a right royal riot and Blair Peach, a red teacher militant or something according to the papers, got killed, battered to death, and a lot of people say it was the SPG, they’ve changed their name now, big deal, and the studios of the Ruts and Misty In Roots got trashed, black and white united, the West London punk and reggae bands, and George and his crew were down there that day, rioting along the Uxbridge Road, he kicked a copper in the bollocks and his extended family were straight in, all that lot, real Indians without the cropped head and natty clothes George wore, but when there was trouble they’d turn up with ceremonial swords in the boots of their rusty imports and do the business, I got a kicking a couple of times off Indian gangs, after dark at closing time, it was just part of the landscape, but Southall was rioting in broad daylight and the police steamed into everyone in sight and George and the family nicked a bus, gave the driver a kicking, bit out of order that but bad things happen in times of war, people go too far and commit atrocities, it’s always the innocent who get lumbered, and George himself was up behind the wheel, putting his foot down racing through the streets, a double decker 207 I think it was, but who cares about numbers, they never paid the fire on that trip, Southall looks after itself and you go down there it’s another world with people all over the place and the shops full of food spilling onto the pavement, there’s always something happening, a different kind of culture which younger whites find it hard to get into because the blacks have their own thing and the music lets whites get in on their life a bit, but the Indians, they’re another story, just do it and live it and there’s a single attitude and that’s why West London is a different place to South London, or even North London, because it’s got that history, that punk flavour, whether it’s the Ruts or that Oi riot, two strands of the same thing, and I think about all this sitting in the cafe I use, the most authentic Indian cafe in the whole of Southall, a bit unusual for this part of the world because it’s mostly South Indian food, massala dosas and thalis, even idlis in the morning which I have on the way to work if I’ve got the time, but this place is the business, because when I say authentic I mean the real thing, the best way to spend Saturday evening is sitting in here, I haven’t been in a Southall pub for years because they’re all shit, basically, and who needs drink when I can come here and have my food then wash it down with a bang lassi, the original item, the bang lassi is a lassi with a bang, and the bloke who runs the place remembers me from when we were kids, I knew his cousin, George, the hooligan who went back to India and runs a guest house in Bombay, some people reckon he’s a fool because Bombay’s full of junkies, others say he’s into the old export business, maybe he is, maybe he isn’t, could be he just wants to live there, I don’t know the truth about the situation, don’t ask me, I haven’t seen the bloke for a good ten years, maybe longer, he’s like two different people, and the bang lassis take my head off and the prices are authentic as well, or near enough, a special rate because I’m a familiar face, one of the old herberts, thanks for the cocktail of drugs mixed in with the lassi, and it’s Saturday night and I’m watching the people pass outside, like I’m back in India, the other side of the globe, and I don’t have to move from this place to see the world, just let the lassi take effect and look through the window, and it’s a good mix tonight, the chaps have done me proud, a jug of water on the table with dents in the metal, and my hearing must be going because I can hear the voices change in the background, the sound of punk, a good memory, from the Ruts to the 4 Skins, but at least it seems to have quietened down these days, though you go across London to Bethnal Green and Whitechapel and it’s another story, another story altogether, and you’d think it would have sorted itself out by now, especially after the Trafalgar Square riot, that was the last punk riot, and there were a few political groups there but there was a lot of everyday people as well, everyone up for a go at the police, and that was the dirty side of punk after it went underground, animal rights and squats, white dreadlocks, but a lot of ordinary people, because how I remember it that was what punk was all about, ordinary people with nothing to say about fashion, except that it was shit and a con and a giant rip-off, morons, and Trafalgar Square was surreal, whatever the word means, South Africa House on fire and bongos vibrating through Nelson’s ears, smoke everywhere, horses and riot police, bricks and truncheons, and the police lost control that day and it was the big restaurants in the West End that got wrecked, must be a good feeling putting bricks through the windows of McDonalds and steak houses, and none of the Indian restaurants got touched, just the big corporations and banks, serves them right, all that bad investment and manipulation, and I’m moving now, my head working in a lot of different directions, the peaceful bustle outside has the same kind of electricity as those riots, somehow, shouting voices and political violence without the organisations, youth rivalries, the race question which those at the top keep using, and I wonder where these people come from, they should try living round here for a while and they’ll know what’s what, because they always go for what they think is the easy option, and that’s why the Indians get attacked so often, because of that belief that they’re somehow incapable of defending themselves, that they’re weak, that they’re all peace and purity, a punch bag for the rest of the country to have a go at when they need to unload a bit of frustration, but it’s not like that, I know that from growing up
in the area, it’s bound to happen, different groups maybe but you’re living in the real world, not some whitewashed Tory idea of a constipated paradise or socialist ideal of good-natured underdog, just people, that’s what it is, just people, and this bang lassi is doing my brain in, and I see Rajiv coming in now and he’s sitting down opposite with the small wooden chess set, Punjabi-made he tells me, and he’s knocking back his bang lassi talking quietly, too quietly, and I know what he’s saying but can’t get to grips with the words, funny that, and he’s setting the chess pieces up and there’s no place for violence and riots any more because it was a long time ago and we’ve all grown up and, anyway, chess is a gentleman’s game, a bit of logical thinking and calm, fucking right it is, and we’re starting with a bang, big bang theories, the Saturday night ritual for the last six months now, and my mind’s set on the king and queen, washing away the aggravation, something inbred and part of the culture, my life story, something that gets dismissed and ignored and it’s easy to see how history is just the winners telling everyone how bad the losers are, Johnny Rotten said that, should call the boy Lydon I suppose, classic line which sums the whole thing up, and even he’s got another life now, maybe that was what started me thinking about all that punk stuff, how everything’s gone back to square one again, and then those stories on the telly, about the BNP in the East End, and the NF have changed their name as well, just like the SPG, and I would have thought that was all in the past now, that we’d gone through a bit of a breaking point with those two Southall riots, and I grew up with Indians and Pakistanis and know the difference, two separate countries, they killed hundreds of thousands just to get that border, and don’t forget Bangladesh, and that was the starting point, knowing the difference, and maybe there was a bit of aggro now and again, but that was just different gangs of kids, even Paki-bashers used to be black and white, that was bad enough, sad bastards, but not like this new stuff young kids getting stabbed to death, what’s going on, and even that Oi riot, who’s to say those skinheads were racists, I don’t know, it’s all up in the air and there’s accepted stories about history, invented by those in power who weren’t even there in the first place, and I can’t get my head round it, can’t get my head round this game of chess, three moves in now and I’m looking down through the board, down through the white squares and they’re tunnels drilled through the table, except there’s no bottom and the sides are red, marble instead of wood, a translucent red haze, very odd, some significance I suppose, symbolic maybe, or just confusion, I don’t care, I’ve got to make the next move, another step forward in the evolution of man, this man, move a piece forward and put the opposition under pressure, shift the emphasis to Raj so he has to work out a plan, and it’s all about clear thinking and seeing beyond the initial action, making the right decision when there are so many different versions of the truth, getting beyond the generalisations and having respect for the opponent, and chess is more than competition, of course it is, that’s why me and Raj play the game, every Saturday without fail, George’s cousin brings a massala dosa over and Raj is getting stuck in and, I can’t remember, I just can’t remember, trying to think whose go it is and I don’t want to ask, there must be a bit of something special in this lassi because I’m having trouble keeping my thoughts together, pulling the different strands tight adjusting the contradictions, like the information has got tangled together and my brain is being squeezed by the rush of images, and I’m thinking back again into the past, trying to remember if Raj made the last move, or was it me, I just don’t know, I can’t ask, can’t ask the question, I can’t fucking speak, just can’t get the words together clearly, no such word as can’t, that’s what they say, a full steam ahead attitude, and Raj is sitting dead still with a chunk of dosa in his hand and sambhar sauce dripping onto his plate, just silence now, then the sound of the Ruts in the background, I can hear ghosts, Malcolm Owen singing H-Eyes, poor bloke, and it’s all there in the song, no need to say anything else, imagine writing a song about your own death, how did his mum feel, poor woman, and his dad, it makes me miserable, such a waste of a good life, and then his voice is fading and the 4 Skins are singing Wonderful World, going on about the suss laws, and it’s a strange moment because the Ruts had a song called Suss, imagine that, never thought of it before, not till this second, but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who wouldn’t consider the two groups on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but maybe they just don’t understand, I don’t know, it’s just a thought, and what has he put in the bang lassi, I’ve got that paranoid feeling, like everything I think I’m saying out loud, that there’s no secrets, and I’ve got to ask Raj whose move it is, the words are there now, full frontal delivery, he’s lifting his head looking up from the board telling me that he doesn’t know, he can’t remember, and there’s a bit of a gap in the conversation as we both try acting with a spark of dignity, the clatter of plates as the cafe closes up for the night and the plate cleaning gets under way, they always let us keep playing till we’re finished, but we have to know whose turn it is to make a move so me and Raj start playing backwards, trying to retrace our steps and see how we ended up in the present situation, making slow moves on the board so we don’t forget, looking back on choices, turning time upside down and shaking it so the answers fall out, I must remember my original position, but after a couple of backward moves I’ve forgotten, I hope the same goes for Raj, that he’s not carrying the image in his mind, I don’t want to look stupid but somehow I know he’s in the same state, those bang lassis, talk about value for money, that’s what we’re getting, no doubt about that, because this is the authentic India right here in this cafe, and we could be in Rajasthan right now, sitting in a desert town confused by the Golden Crescent’s finest export, brought across the desert by bandits, the Thar Desert here in Southall except there’s no Pakistani border to cross, and it’s magic because I don’t have to leave London for a taste of the East, all that travel overseas, the clatter of plates in the kitchen, water running, and we’re sitting here staring at the chess board, lovely colours too, pulsating and swaying, wooden fractals going with the grain, and there’s not much to say, it’s all quiet, just my heart thumping, nothing to think about but the next move.
