Cover

Dedication

For my friends and fellow travellers at Forced Entertainment.

Introduction

Introduction

What’s the opposite of nostalgia? I ask that question because the stories in this book take me back to a time & place I thought I’d forgotten – but I really wouldn’t want to go back there.

I used to sleep a lot. I’m still fond of a good kip & will grab a snooze at the drop of a hat if the opportunity ever presents itself but back in the early 80s I really used to sleep a hell of a lot. Back then sleeping was my favoured method of escaping Thatcher’s Britain.

I left school in 1982 & went straight on the dole. I left home & moved into a flat above an old factory. My friend was the caretaker. The building had been divided into units that housed band rehearsal rooms, offices, a model railway enthusiasts society & two table tennis clubs (who used to take it in turns to shit outside each other’s doors). Abandoned takeaways left outside the rehearsal rooms attracted rats. Sleeping was a much better option than facing the day-to-day reality of living on Sheldon Row.

One morning (or maybe it was early afternoon?) I was rudely awakened from my slumber by the sound of shouting coming from the room downstairs. It sounded like a domestic argument – but that was impossible because we were the only people actually living on the premises. Plus, it was a little too repetitive & rhythmic. I was irritated, also a little intrigued . . .

That was my first encounter with the work of Tim Etchells. The noise I had mistaken for a ‘domestic’ was actually the sound of a Forced Entertainment rehearsal & Tim is a founding member of the theatre group that bears that name. The more I found out about Forced Entertainment the more my curiosity grew: I was intrigued by why they rehearsed during the day, I was intrigued as to how they had got rid of the food co-op that used to be downstairs (rat droppings were found in the muesli, apparently, leading to them being evicted), but most of all I was intrigued as to why a group of talented, creative people would move to Sheffield voluntarily at a time when the whole city was so obviously going down the pan. In other words: ‘Why the fuck would anyone move to a shit-hole that everyone else is trying to escape from?’