Educating Peter (15 page)

I was creating as well, or at least trying to. As designated director of the video, it was my job to come up with a concept and storyboard. The idea was to do this spontaneously. My problem was Sunforest's chicken song. It was hard to get it out of my head. Every theme I came up with seemed to have chickens in it, either a) crossing a road, b) getting decked by one of Bernard Matthews' turkeys, or c) taking LSD. Circulus hadn't written the song for this video yet, but I was pretty sure that what they did write wouldn't involve fowl.

Eventually, I came up with a story – a reworking of the Little Red Riding Hood myth. Little Green Folking Hood (Peter), while on the way to his grandma's house across the park in Woolwich, carrying a bag of normal mushrooms, would be abducted by a coven of strange, chanting folk musicians (Circulus – or, as they would be known here, The Evil But Really Quite Gentle Pixie People), who would force him to eat their evil mushrooms. First, he would escape, aided by the
strong and silent Folkie With No Name (me), but, finally, in a stunt which involved one of The Evil But Really Quite Gentle Pixie People (Kevin) posing as a holly bush, he would find himself ensnared for eternity. The final scene would depict him being led away to a quiet corner and offered a selection of weeds (non-hallucinogenic) in an ancient ritual that I hadn't quite worked out the point of. The film would serve as a cautionary tale concerning the debasing effects of too many vegetables on the nation's youth. It wasn't going to be
The Godfather
, but, considering the whole thing had taken me six and a half minutes to write, I was proud of it.

‘Sounds alright,' said Peter.

‘Can we wear capes?' said Michael.

‘Where do we get the mushrooms?' said Emma.

Moving on to a path overlooking a walled garden, we began filming – first a heavy-breathing, running scene along the path, then the first encounter between Little Green Folking Hood and The Evil But Really Quite Gentle Pixie People in the garden. From beneath a nearby tree, Kevin located some grey fungus which would pass adequately for mushrooms. A rotting park bench, emblazoned with the legend ‘Tozza dun Kelly Anne here – 11.4.1998', served as my director's chair (I wondered if Kelly and Anne were two different people). From here I barked instructions to my cast such as ‘Try and suffer
with
the mushrooms, Peter' and ‘Emma, dahling,
sense
his pain with your upper forehead', then, seeing that they could handle themselves perfectly well without me, amused myself by trying on a selection of Michael's hats and capes. Occasionally a
passing man in a tracksuit would wander into the background of the shot, but progress was smooth. Peter, who'd obviously studied drama at school, had an unusually intense way of gazing into the camera, while Robin, on camera duty, was clearly from the Scorsese school of tracking shots, and, as darkness swept in over the woods, we had a wrap. Or, to look at it another way, a rush job. In roughly a month's time we'd reconvene, by which point Circulus would have edited these images into some semi-coherent form and placed their spooky, warped folk melodies alongside them.

Before I hurried Peter back to his fencing instructor in North London, there was just time to view ‘the dailies' back at The House Of Folk, as Emma made me a quick VHS copy of our work. I wasn't sure if you could still call your dailies ‘dailies' when you were only shooting for one day in total, but I did so anyway, since it made me feel professional. I needed to feel professional. Maybe it was too early to ascertain if what we'd created was genius or crud, but I was leaning towards crud. Circulus themselves seemed quite content with it, but, then again, the only home video of theirs that I'd seen before was their ‘cover version' of
Permissive
, the long-lost, indescribably grimy movie about bitchiness and suicide in the groupie underworld of Seventies rock. This was three minutes long and consisted entirely of Michael trying on wigs, repeatedly holding up a card with ‘London, 1971' written on it, and shouting at Emma to get out of the bath.

It was only later, watching the
Little Green Folking
Hood
tape for a second time at home, with the help of the fast forward and rewind buttons, that I noticed Peter – rear frame, taking advantage of a break in the action – sneakily slipping a Blue Oyster Cult CD into the pocket of my shoulder bag.

I'd initially thought it was a mushroom.

‘
WE SEEM TO
be meeting a lot of people who wear capes.'

‘Yeah. It's funny that. I used to like capes when I was a kid – perhaps it's something to do with that. I had this one that my mum sewed for me: it had a “T” for Tom on it, in the same way Superman's had an “S”. Did you ever wear capes when you were younger?'

‘Um. Not really.'

‘But they're quite goth, aren't they? I mean, Batman – isn't he a bit of a goth icon?'

‘No! No way.'

‘But you enjoyed wearing that green cape, didn't you? Don't deny it.'

‘Yeah. It was fun. But I was glad to get my jacket back on. We miss each other if we're apart too long. But they were so cool, those guys. Like, really mental, but dead nice.'

‘Yeah. I always find myself doing an unusual amount of giggling when I'm with them, but can
never really remember what was funny.'

‘Mmm. But, yeah, what I mean is, though, we seem to be doing a lot of folk stuff. I suppose those guys weren't folk, like in the way the stuff my Uncle Charles – he's like this hey nonny nonny guy with a beard – listens to, but they sort of were.'

‘Well, I think you find far more interesting people in folk music, most of the time, than you find in ordinary rock music. You never get a folk musician talking about indie bonuses.'

‘What's an indie bonus?'

‘It's this term that stems from all these indie bands in the Nineties who used to say, “We just do what we do, and if anyone else likes it, it's a bonus.” It's like the ultimate boring thing to say in an interview.'

‘What? You mean a bit like when they say, “The music should speak for itself.”'

‘Yeah. A bit. But what I was saying is folk musicians nearly always have an interesting story, because their music's so inextricably linked to people and places. It's not just this faceless, bland thing. Also, most of the best rock has its roots in folk. Led Zeppelin are very folk in a way. But don't worry – we're only meeting a couple more folkies.'

‘Are they hey nonny nonny guys with beards?'

‘One of them is, sort of. Although he's more hey beery beery than hey nonny nonny. The other one's got a kind of spiritual beard.'

‘Oh-oh.'

‘And there's a really important album I want you to listen to which is sort of folk, but Seventies rock people liked it.'

‘Does it have songs about thyme and roses on it?'

‘Er . . . A few.'

‘I don't mind. It's not that. It's just . . . I was wondering if we could do something that involved something a bit heavier. Something a bit, y'know, punk. Maybe.'

‘Well, I dunno. I don't have much contact with punk people these days. I'm a bit scared of them, to be honest. I used to be well into the whole scene, though.'

‘Really? I wouldn't have guessed.'

‘I'll have to show you the pictures some time. Or maybe I won't. It was a weird phase: lots of cut-off golf trousers and friends with names like Zac and Thud. I still have some of the bruises to prove it.'

‘Really?'

‘No. I was bullshitting. Bruises don't last ten years.'

‘The whole thing's just kind of hard to imagine.'

‘Why?'

‘I dunno. Just . . . Did you have a band?'

‘Yeah. Of course. I sang . . .'

‘You sang! Ha!'

‘I dunno why it's so funny. Listen. Tell you what. I'll tell you a story, then you might understand a bit better. Then you can tell me a story about one of your bands.'

‘Ur. Okay. Go on then.'

‘No. I'm going to write it down.'

‘What, now?'

‘No. I'm driving.'

‘Oh yeah.'

‘To get inside this story, you're going to have to imagine a world with no Slipknot. A world where not every city had a Starbucks on every third street. A
world where mobile phones were the size of dictionaries . . .'

‘I think I get the picture.'

‘. . . A world where Kurt Cobain hadn't shot himself yet.'

‘Cooooool!'

‘I'm going to put it in the present tense.'

‘Why?'

‘So you can imagine you were there more easily.'

‘Oh.'

‘The story starts in a recording studio, where the microphones smell.'

‘I hate the way they do that.'

MATT IS SITTING
on the amplifier, reading from a sheet of A4 paper. I'm leaning against the wall, examining my nails for something non-existent, in that way that people do when they're feeling simultaneously bored and smug. Matt looks up and shakes his head. A smile spreads across his face – a bit like the one you imagine Jagger might have flashed Richards upon receipt of the riff to ‘Satisfaction'. ‘This is it,' he tells me. ‘This . . . this is the greatest thing you've ever written.'

It's 1993, and Matt and I are the principal songwriters in Rick Argues, the punk band we have formed at FE college. That is to say, I bring four verses and a chorus of preternaturally banal teen angst to the studio, and Matt constructs a three-chord riff around them in the style – we would like to think – of our Californian teen punk heroes, Green Day. Either that or we just cover a Green Day song. Green Day are still in the hardcore punk ghetto at this point, and have yet to be signed to Warner Music. We look at it this way:
liking them makes us very obscure and cool, and if, when we finally get around to playing a gig, someone mistakes one of Green Day's songs for one of ours, we won't go out of our way to correct them.

Matt listens exclusively to three-chord punk music. I listen exclusively to three-chord punk music and The Smiths. I think The Smiths are brilliant. Matt thinks they are ‘puff music, for puffs', even though Matt – who, incidentally, won't be homophobic for ever – has never properly heard The Smiths. Matt and I argue about The Smiths constantly, but try to meet somewhere in the middle (i.e. I am banned from mentioning The Smiths, Morrissey, ambiguous sexuality, or our college friend, Robin Smith). But today, after three months of hard work, Matt is looking at me affectionately, concluding we have made a major breakthrough. This, I can tell he is thinking from the far-off look in his eyes, is the first step on the way to a support tour with our peers, Throaty Toad, a local band with the distinction of ‘once going out for a drink with the Buzzcocks'.

What is the inspiration behind Rick Argues? I don't think either of us can quite put our finger on it. I would ask John and Joe, the other two members of our band, what they thought, but it would probably be a waste of time. John, who drums, and Joe, who plays bass, are never quick to take advantage of Rick Argues' democratic forum for free expression.

‘I was thinking of moving the second line of verse one into the third line of verse two. What do you think, John?' I sometimes ask John.

‘Okay,' John replies.

‘What do you think of this riff?' Matt sometimes asks John.

‘S'alright,' John says.

In an attempt to get John more involved, I write ‘John's Hair', a song built around the central refrain ‘Once it was short/Now it is long', detailing the journey of his lustrous locks from crewcut to pony tail. ‘What do you think, John?' I ask.

‘S'alright,' says John.

Joe, our bassist, isn't quite so loquacious. One of life's great smilers, Joe has such a repertoire of attentive grins that it's possible to have a half-hour conversation with him without realising he hasn't spoken. When Matt and I fight over The Smiths, Joe grins. When Matt tells me that what I've written is soppy shite, Joe grins. When I gently suggest to Matt that he might want to add a fourth chord to his repertoire, Joe grins. Joe's grins, despite their diversity, all seem to mean the same thing: ‘S'alright'. Do John and Joe enjoy being in Rick Argues? Who knows. Do John and Joe talk about Matt and me behind our backs? Perhaps, but in our presence they communicate with one another on a purely psychic level.

On the days we can't afford a proper rehearsal room, I drive across town to Matt's front room. First of all, though, I pick up John and Joe, who live on the posh side of town, and load their equipment into the boot of my parents' Vauxhall Astra. I drive in the style of a punk rock Alain Prost, but not quite as slowly. I am an idiot. No-one talks, because I've worked out by now that John and Joe are beyond words, and besides, Green Day's
Kerplunk!
, cranked up on the car stereo,
makes conversation difficult. You might say that, as seventeen-year-olds go, I'm a reckless driver, but I know the etiquette of the highway. When, such as now, I detect the wail of an ambulance's siren behind me, I pull over to the side of the road with my hazard flashers on. Only, instead of an ambulance, the Astra is surrounded by three police cars, one in front, one at the back and one at the side.

Joe, John and I are bundled roughly out of the Astra and get a police car each. I see John's policeman accidentally-on-purpose trap John's leg in the door. For once, John doesn't say, ‘S'alright.' He says, ‘Owwww!!' The policeman doesn't apologise.

My policeman doesn't say anything for a couple of minutes, while I sit there, thinking how much he looks like a human version of Basil Brush. He asks me for my name and licence, then enquires what I was doing outside Joe's house five minutes ago. I tell him I was picking Joe up. He asks me where we are going. I tell him our band, Rick Argues, is on the way to rehearse our new song, ‘T-Shirt'.