Essex Boy: My Story (12 page)

Then suddenly, I had something much bigger to deal with.

I hadn’t seen Aisha during the first week of college, but I hadn’t expected to, as her whole family had gone on holiday to Turkey for a few weeks at the end of the summer.
Then, in
the second week, a mutual friend came running up to me in the corridor.

‘Have you heard about Aisha?’
he asked.

‘No, what?’

‘She’s had a car crash in Turkey.
She’s dead.
Her sisters are alive, but in hospital, proper badly injured.
I’m sorry, mate.’

I stared at him, unable to take it in.
Then my brain just crumbled and I had to get out of college.
I ran out, crying as I went.
I was so devastated.
I went straight home and proper cried like a
baby for the rest of the day.
It was such a raw feeling of pain, I didn’t know what to do with myself.
I kept thinking how unfair it was on this lovely beautiful girl that she should die so
young.
I was in a bad way and Mum was away on holiday at the time so I was on my own.
But Ashley was great – he was there for me, and came round all the time to check on me and try to cheer
me up over the next couple of weeks.
It was a long time before I stopped thinking of Aisha and missing her.

Meanwhile, my course teacher was on my case for proof of my two GCSE grades, but I just kept saying I didn’t have the certificates from my school yet.
Of course I did,
and I knew I hadn’t got what I needed.
My results had been a whole load of Ds, Es and fails, as I had expected.
So I don’t know how I thought I’d get away with lying, but I just
kept putting off telling them, until one day they asked again, and I said, ‘I called this morning to chase up, but they still haven’t passed them on, so I ain’t got
them.’

‘Is that right, Kirk?’
the teacher asked.
‘Or do you know you don’t have the right grades, so you’re not telling me, as you’ll have to leave the course?
Because I actually called your school this morning.
And they told me you do have your results.’

Well, there was no point lying after that!

‘OK, yeah, I lied to you.
I just don’t see why I need those subjects, they have nothing to do with photography.
It makes sense if I want to do science that I need science or
whatever, but not for this course.’

I’d tried, but he just stayed silent and looked at me.
‘OK,’ I sighed, knowing I had lost this one.
‘What do I do now?’

‘You have to do an art foundation course for a year and get a C or higher, and then you can come back on this course.’

Well, that was it – I exploded, and the mouthy prick side of me came out.
‘No way, for two reasons.
I’ll be a year behind all my mates, with younger kids in my class, and
I’ll look like I’m a stupid kid held back a year.
And two, I’m shit at art, as you can see from my GCSE result.
I can’t draw, so why am I going to do any better at it this
time round?
I’ll just fail it again!’

The problem with art for me was that on one level I loved it.
I do have a really creative mind, and that’s why I was happy to do it at school.
Give me spray cans and a big canvas, as they
did, and I can make brilliant pictures, but give me a pencil and tell me to draw, and it’s a nightmare.
I had an image of this art course at college, all these proper artists sitting round
doing pencil drawings of naked male models.
Not what I was up for!

We had a bit of a barney about it, but in the end I knew I had to do it if I wanted to be a photographer.
So finally I said, ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, give me the art course, and
I’ll do it.’

So I swapped on to the art course.
I was a week or two behind the others, but the idea was that I should be able to catch up.
In the first lesson I asked to have a word with
the teacher, as I thought it was best to be straight up about the situation – I was shitting myself about the course, as everyone else on there really liked art, and was actually good at it.
So I said to him, ‘Look, I’m only doing this course so I can do photography.
I can’t draw.’

‘I understand, don’t worry,’ he assured me.

‘And the other thing is, I’m embarrassed how bad I actually am, so if you don’t hold my work up to other people or anything, I’d appreciate it.’

And he nodded and agreed.

Then the lesson started, and we had to sit around this bowl of fruit and draw it.
I was thinking, ‘Are you having a fucking laugh?
I can’t even draw one piece of fruit, let alone a
whole bowl.’
But he told me to ‘just draw what you see in front of you’, so I decided to give it a go.
And I drew something that to be honest I can’t even describe.
It
looked like nothing I know, certainly not a fruit bowl, anyway!
I was trying to do the bowl, but I’ll be fucked if I could see a fruit bowl appearing on my piece of paper.
I could probably
have done it better with my eyes shut.
And the more I tried, the worse it was getting, until eventually I got so frustrated, I called the teacher over.

‘Look, sir, my drawing is shit!
There’s no way I can do this for a year and walk away with a C.
What am I supposed to do to make it better?’

And he picked it up and studied it, then said loudly, ‘Right, ladies and gentlemen, if I could have everyone’s attention.
If you could all look at Kirk’s drawing, we have an
example here of what not to do.’

Oh my God, I lost my fucking temper!
Though I can’t blame myself, when he was about to do what I had especially asked him not to.
I grabbed my drawing back, screwed it up and threw it
across the class.
Then I turned to him, and said, ‘See you, you’re a prick.’

And that was it – I walked out.
I was so angry.
I felt humiliated and upset, and as always, rather than cry, I had let my frustration come out in a different way.
I thought, ‘I need
out of college.
There’s no way I am going to survive two years of this place,’ and I started walking towards the exit.
I decided to call Dad on my mobile to tell him, ‘Listen,
I’ve fucked it, and I don’t know what to do now.
Any ideas?’
But just as it was ringing through at his end, I walked past the welding course, and I saw my mate Olly in there, who
I had grown up with, and made a decision on the spot.
‘Yes!
My mate is on that course, that will be way more fun.
And if I tell Dad I’m finally swapping to that, doing what he told me
to do in the beginning, he’ll be well happy.’

So I called, and Dad answered from Heathrow Airport.
He was about to get on a plane to fly out to America to watch the 2004 Ryder Cup in Detroit, so he couldn’t talk for long, but I had
time to say, ‘Dad, just to let you know, I’ve sacked off art, and I’m gonna do a welding course for ya, and I will come and work for you after if that is OK.’

And he said, ‘Fucking hell, boy, go on!
You get in there and enrol for it, and I’ll give you a job one day a week at my yard while you’re doing the course as well.
Be good
experience.’

And I could hear in his voice that he was really proud of me, so I knew I had made the right choice.
Both his sons were going to have done welding and be part of the family business.
This was
his dream!

‘And you know what,’ he continued, ‘I’m going to bring you back a present from the US.
You know iPods aren’t out in the UK yet?
Well, they are over there, so
I’ll get you one as a well done.’

I hung up from that call really happy with my decisions – and the idea of the iPod!
– and went straight off to re-register myself for my third course of the term: welding.
And, well,
I got stuck into that and liked it – at first.

I was quite enjoying college for the social side of things.
There was a whole group of us that were really into the same music scene, and we would have rap battles on our
breaks in between the obligatory lunch from the local chippy that everyone had, pretty much every single day – chips, cheese and gravy.
I loved that!
I wore tracksuits below my arse, and
talked like I thought I was a stereotype of a black rapper.
I’d kiss my teeth, spit on the floor and go, ‘What’s happenin’, blud?
You sweet?’
I was that kid your
parents didn’t want you to be friends with, and my mum would mock me, walking past and pretending not to see me, and then going, ‘Oh, sorry, Kirk, I didn’t recognize you there for
a minute.’

But I didn’t care.
I thought I was a rapper, and all my crew were at the same thing.
My name was MC Fait, which Ashley chose for me.
I liked that name.

I was also taking my interest in MC’ing to a new level, and had started working on a pirate radio station, which was brilliant.
Pirate radio was massive at the time, and despite being
illegal I think it is really good for young people.
It gives you a chance to do something that makes you feel important – something that feels like an actual career, and that you care about
– and it’s a place to hang out without getting into trouble.

Pirate radio stations can be set up anywhere.
The typical ones in London are in a tower block in someone’s flat, or in a deserted warehouse in the middle of nowhere.
But the one I was on,
called Renegade FM, was in a room in an old building in the middle of a farmer’s field.

I’d go down there whenever I could, and talk on the radio and MC.
Ashley and I started having a regular slot between 8 p.m.
and 9 p.m., one evening a week.
But the problem was, we always
managed to get a lift down there, because it was in the middle of nowhere, but we never found it easy to get back.
We told the radio owner our problem – and he told us we could stay later if
we liked, as there was no one on after us until 8 a.m.
in the morning.
So that is what we started doing, a crazy 8 p.m.
to 8 a.m.
shift.
It was a mission, but just goes to show how many hours you
can put in when you are doing something you enjoy.
It was fun, but I’d be so tired by the end I was pretty much falling asleep standing up while still talking.
I’d run out of people to
big up, and by 7 a.m.
I’d be saying things as ridiculous as, ‘Big up to Maggie Thatcher.
Yeah.
Big up to John Major.’

I wrote some songs at the time as well, while we were there through the night, and one of them was about Aisha and how I felt about her.
I was really proud of that one and recorded it on my
iPod.
I still have the original notes where I wrote it out, and who knows, I might even bring it out one of these days and release it!
I played it to my mate Danny Dyer recently, and he was like,
‘Fuck off, that ain’t you.
It sounds professional; if I heard it on the radio I would turn that up.’

Back on my welding course, though, I was finding things difficult.
On the one hand I liked it – welding is a lot more artistic than I had imagined.
You can be quite
creative and think around things in a way that I enjoy.
It’s not just about getting a bit of metal and gluing it to another bit of metal; there is a real skill to doing it well and making it
look good at the same time.
But I was struggling on the maths side of it.
You have to draw up plans for what you are going to do, and they can get pretty technical.
My brain just shut down and
refused to do that section of it.
Twice a week we had to do a session of maths drawing, and I got more and more confused and angry with it, as I knew it was letting me down, and making me do a bad
job of what I was actually doing really well on every other level.
So although I was enjoying the welding, I was struggling too, and I don’t respond well to that.

At the same time Dad had stuck to his word about having me down working for his firm on the docks one day a week.

The only job I’d had before this had been brief.
At school we had to do work experience, and I went to a place called J & R Belts, just around the corner from my house.
It was a small
shop that made belts of just about any kind, from clothing belts to car belts, where the bit that looks like a rubber band goes around the engine.
I didn’t mind it in there too much, and as I
had given up hope of ever getting a Saturday job – there were fuck all going around our area – I asked if I could stay on and work for them on Saturdays for a bit of money.
I thought it
would be good if I could get some of my own money together for once, rather than always depending on Mum.
So I was there for a few Saturdays, but the same old problems soon kicked in for me.
As
soon as they asked me to start making tea for them I couldn’t handle it.
It went against everything in me – I was a man, and men shouldn’t have to be making tea for everyone!
It
was my old problem of not taking well to authority.
And straight away I was out of there.