Educating Peter (16 page)

Basil asks me a few more questions, about where I live, how old I am. Then he makes a call via his crackly radio. By this point, his two colleagues are standing outside the car, waiting to talk to him. Joe and John are sitting on the grass verge; Joe looks sad and worried, but is still sort of grinning.

It is clear there has been a terrible mistake. We have been reported by one of Joe's neighbours for breaking into Joe's house and stealing Joe's bass guitar and amplifier. Basil returns to the car and explains this to me in the chuntering voice of the six-year-old who
knows he is wrong for setting fire to the manger in the school nativity play but doesn't want to admit it in the presence of his tough mates.

‘If you're going to have to pick Joe up in the future, just be more careful next time you're in his area,' Basil tells me.

I wonder what Basil means by this. How can we be more careful to show Joe's neighbours we aren't breaking into his house? Perhaps I should refrain from driving a nine-year-old car with a Dead Kennedys logo painted on the side, or, even better, we should all wear fluorescent t-shirts with name tags and ‘Law-Abiding Citizen' emblazoned on them. I am about to put this suggestion to Basil, but think better of it.

‘And there's one other thing,' he says. ‘You went through a red light back there.'

‘It was amber,' I correct him.

‘It's the same thing.'

I really have to put Basil right here, if only for his own good and his future as a successful policeman. ‘How can they be the same thing if one's orange and the other one's red?'

‘Both signals request the driver to stop. I'm going to let you out the car now, but just remember: you've been very lucky not to be fined. It's a criminal offence to waste police time, you know.'

Police
time? What about Rick Argues' time?

We arrive at Matt's place in stunned silence. For once, though, I feel I can rely on John and Joe for support: we're all pretty shaken up, right? Those pigs are such bastards, aren't they? We're innocent punk rock heroes, railing against the system! I recount the
experience to Matt, being careful to double the number of police cars and the level of physical violence.

‘So then this bastard copper slams John's head against the car bonnet and starts reading him his rights!' I tell Matt.

‘Fucker told me I sped through a red light at ninety miles an hour. I told him where to stick it!' I tell Matt.

I look to John and Joe for support.

‘S'right,' says John.

‘. . .' says Joe, grinning.

Rick Argues' signature song is called ‘T-Shirt'. I genuinely feel it's my masterpiece. Here is the first verse:

The bridge builds the tempo slightly:

The chorus goes like this:

I like the coda best, though:

‘T-Shirt' is intended to be a meaningful commentary on the eternal search for identity via band logos among indie youth at Nottingham's premier alternative venue, Rock City. Through its more profound lyrics – ‘I don't know your name/But I know your name' – I am trying to convey the sensation of not knowing someone, but feeling like you know someone. Ultimately, though, the song is a love letter to the girl in the Suede t-shirt I see at Rock City every week, who, on the one occasion that I tried to speak to her, told me to ‘piss off' before I'd even managed to say hello. One day, I hope, she will sit in the front row at a Rick Argues gig, and I will be able to sing our signature song to her. As I said, I am an idiot.

Rick Argues are called Rick Argues because we have a friend, Rick, who argues. We invite Rick along to our rehearsals as our mascot, but he just disrupts the creative process by arguing.

‘Why did you call yourselves Rick Argues?' asks Rick.

‘Because you argue a lot,' Matt and I tell him.

‘No, I don't,' argues Rick.

Rick argues about everything, but doesn't seem to realise it. I've noticed that when I abruptly change my mind and agree with him on a topic over which I previously disagreed with him, he'll drop his original
argument and borrow my original argument, just because he likes arguing so much. I don't think Rick has ever agreed with anyone in their presence.

Matt and I have a song called ‘Rick Argues', too. It doesn't have a chorus, and the verses simply consist of me shouting out random topics which I've argued about (apart from The Smiths, of course, who are banned). For example:

We don't think of it as one of our classics.

The microphones in the rehearsal rooms where Rick Argues practise smell of regurgitated parmesan. The crusty who owns the studios, Chiz, usually sits in the room adjacent to the room where Rick Argues rehearse, reading the
Daily Star
, smoking weed and feeding Kentucky Fried Chicken to his dog, KFC. ‘Here, KFC, want some KFC?' enquires Chiz.

‘Wuff!' replies KFC.

Our plan was to spend six months honing our style before cutting a demo or playing a gig. However, we feel, with our polished version of ‘T-Shirt' and a new song, ‘Bike Mother (I Want Your Omelette)', we are ready to book time in the Big Room, where people record things.

‘Chiz, we want to cut a demo,' Matt and I inform Chiz.

‘Are you sure?' asks Chiz.

We eventually convince him that we're ready to lay down some tracks, and we're booked in for the following Monday. When we arrive, though, Chiz claims he has double-booked us. The week after that, Chiz tells us his mixing desk is playing up. He sends us back to the rehearsal room with a small, early 1980s tape recorder and a C90 cassette. Matt and I see the rehearsal through in a dolorous mood, both of us thinking the same thing, but not wanting to say it.

‘Matt, do you think we're actually any good?' I ask Matt the next day at college.

‘Of course we are,' Matt replies.

‘But, y'know, I mean proper good. Like on-tour-with-Green-Day good.'

‘I've told you, “T-Shirt” could quite easily be off
Kerplunk!
'

‘So when I sing it back to back with a Green Day song, it sounds just the same?'

‘Yeah.'

‘And that's all we want, really, isn't it?'

‘Yeah.'

I've never wanted to be a rock star – I just want to meet the girl with the Suede t-shirt (I am an idiot). Matt doesn't want to be a rock star, either, but he has different reasons, chief of them being that rock stars are corporate scum. I think if Matt could bring himself to admit it to his subconscious, he would
really
like to be a rock star. I would like to be in a band, definitely, but
I don't think I'm particularly musical. I've thought about the band I want to be in, and I think it should have horns and mandolins and lyrics about nothing in particular and everything in the world, all at once. It should be gentle and poetic, or epic and surreal, not laconic and primitive. Matt would kill me if he knew.

Matt calls me up one night. ‘Up for a rehearsal this weekend?'

‘Yeah, deffo,' I say. I'm panicking because droning away in the background as I speak is
Bona Drag
, a solo album by Morrissey.

When I come to college in a t-shirt which doesn't say ‘Too Drunk To Fuck', ‘Never Mind The Bollocks' or ‘I Am Not What I Own', Matt tells me off. ‘What the fuck you wearing that for?' he asks me when I turn up in the bootleg Teenage Fanclub shirt I bought outside Rock City the night before. I'm growing my hair out slightly, and hoping he hasn't noticed. At lunchtime, in the college refectory, I often think I'd quite like to sit next to Nick and Steve from my design class, but they have long hair, and Matt says all people with long hair are ‘townies' or ‘hippies'. Matt also says you can't trust a song which doesn't include swearing. The few lyrics Matt writes for Rick Argues invariably contain the words ‘coagulate', ‘enema' and ‘pigfuck'.

I think I'm in the process of re-evaluating my artistic relationship with Matt.

‘. . . This is the greatest thing you've ever written,' Matt is repeating, still shaking his head at the piece of A4. ‘I mean it. This is it, Tom. This is what I knew you had in you.'

John fiddles with his drumsticks. Joe grins. I slouch
against the wall, shrug, and smile internally. I'm wasting more of Rick Argues' time, but I have to admit I'm quite enjoying this. Maybe I'll let Matt construct a few chords around my lyrics. Then, at some point, I'll gently explain to him that the words on the piece of paper are not mine, that I copied them this morning from the sleeve of The Smiths' 1983 album,
Hatful Of Hollow
. But not yet. Not just yet.

‘
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER
that?'

‘Oh. We split up.'

‘What? Without playing a gig?'

‘Yeah. We were meant to play the college refectory one time, but the computer room above it flooded so the gig got cancelled.'

‘That's a bit shit. Can you call yourself a proper band if you haven't played a gig?'

‘The Beatles went four years without playing a gig, so, yeah. Can Goat Hero call themselves a proper band if you haven't recorded a demo?'

‘We're just getting properly prepared. Anyway, it's Punishment again now.'

‘What? Why did you change it back?'

‘Raf got bitten by a goat at breaktime.'

‘Ouch.'

‘So what happened to Matt? Do you still know him?'

‘Yeah. He's one of my best mates. He works at the DSS these days. Big Kylie Minogue fan.'

‘What about Rick?'

‘You could say we've grown apart. He argued too much. Works for New Labour now.'

‘I hate Labour. It totally pisses me off what they're doing with A-levels.'

‘Mmm. Don't tell Rick that. I have a feeling he'd be forced to argue.'

‘What about the girl in the t-shirt song?'

‘I went out with her for six and a half years.'

‘Did she ever hear the demo?'

‘No. Joe stole it.'

‘I can't believe you liked Green Day.'

‘Sad, isn't it?'

‘Well . . . I'm sorry, but yeah. They're a dork's band.'

‘Your turn then.'

‘What? You want me to write it down too?'

‘No. I don't imagine you'd ever get around to it, seeing how long it's taking you to read that Julian Cope book.'

‘No. I probably wouldn't.'

‘Go on then . . .'

‘Just let me think for a moment . . .'

‘
IT WAS REALLY
funny. There was Raf and me, and we were standing outside class, waiting for this kid, Jeff, who was supposed to be lending Raf his homework to copy, and this girl Carly walked past and this piece of paper dropped out of her bag. Raf picked it up and it was, like, this love letter . . . No. Hold on.'

‘What?'

‘That story's a bit shit.'

‘Sounded quite interesting to me.'

‘No. It's, er . . . I better not tell you that. Let me think of another. Hold on a moment . . .

‘Okay. I know. It was dead funny. Me, Raf and these two mates of ours, Zed and Nic, were in central London one day and we decided to ride the Circle Line all the way round for a laugh. Anyway, that got a bit boring after a while, and there was this, like, really tall building in Kensington, and Raf decided . . . No, I can't believe I'm telling you this. It's so stupid.'

‘No. Carry on. Please.'

‘Well, yeah, anyway, we got out at, like, Kensington High Street and Raf suddenly went under this, like, skyscraper and started looking up and shouting, “Colin, don't do it! It's not worth it!”, then Zed joined in and these people started to crowd round to see what's going on – like, as if there's this bloke going to jump off the building or something.'

‘What, in London? I didn't think they'd have cared.'

‘No, there were, like, about twelve or twenty or something, all looking. And while me and Zed and Nic carried on shouting, Raf got his guitar out.'

‘He had his guitar with him?'

‘Yeah. I meant to say that. He'd just been to his lesson before we met him. So, anyway, he just starts, like, busking, playing this American Hi-Fi song, which I, like, hate, but it's okay 'cos it's so funny, and all these people suddenly start watching, and me and Zed and Nic are pissing ourselves laughing. But then Raf starts singing this other song, which is made up from the lyrics of this love letter we found.'

‘So that story you started to tell first is really part of this story?'

‘Yeah, I suppose. I shouldn't tell you what was in the letter, but it was so funny – all these really dorky lyrics about this girl's fluffy sweater and stuff. We kind of joined in on percussion and this woman – she was, like, really old, probably a librarian or something – said to Raf that he was going to be at the top of the charts one day.'

‘Wow. But I guess Raf's not that bothered about being at the top of the charts, is he?'

‘Not really. Well, maybe the metal charts.'