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?’

Only Tim himself could answer that question – or perhaps you’ll find the reason why secreted somewhere within the pages of this collection. I myself got some kind of glimpse the first time I saw Forced Entertainment perform live. They were doing a piece called The Set-up early in the evening at a local venue called The Leadmill. The Leadmill was (& still is) housed in an old bus garage – just about all the places I frequented in those days were based in places where things ‘used to happen’. I needed to find out what all this shouting was about. I had a right to know why my sleep was being disturbed. I’d seen some ‘street theatre’ at various local festivals & that was pretty dire so my expectations were extremely low. But as soon as the piece began I was transfixed. This was not Theatre As I Knew It. Minimal set, choreographed moves, most of the dialogue coming over the PA from a pre-recorded soundtrack that also featured some very interesting music. I was inspired – I wasn’t sure exactly what it was saying but it set off some feelings inside me. For some reason I am unable to explain I ran back home to the factory & got dressed in an acrylic star jumper that was two sizes too small for me & went back to The Leadmill. The play had made me feel like that Fall lyric from the song ‘Winter’ – ‘I’ll take both of you on, I’ll take both of you on’. Proper got me going. Theatre had never done that to me before.

I had no idea that these stories of Tim’s existed. Some of them even date back to times I have been describing. When I read them I was instantly transported to the Sheffield of the mid-80s & the lifestyles of those who haunted Sheldon Row: a factory ‘just off The Wicker’. It fucking terrified me.

These stories are the opposite of nostalgia – & this feels like the perfect time for them to appear. At the time of my writing this introduction we are once more ruled by a Conservative Party leader who has no problem with declaring war on at least 50% of the country that they are supposed to govern. & these stories tell you what it’s like to live in that kind of atmosphere for years on end. They are frightening – but they’re also necessary. Good things happen when you face stuff head on.

‘Endland’ is right – ‘Endland’ is where we are right now. But the fact that these stories exist at all shows that times like this can be survived – transcended even.

This book is dangerous. This book is a bitter medicine. This book tells it like it was & is.

I respect this book – but I never want to read it again.

Jarvis Cocker, hard shoulder of the M1, August 2019

Endland

Kings, lords, liars, goal-hangers, killers, psychics and prostitutes,

Whether or not these stories bear any relation to life as it is actual lived in Endland (sic) is not my problem and good riddance to all those what prefer to read abt truly good, lucky and nice people – you won’t like this crap at all.

Bear in mind it is not a book for idiots or time-wasters but many of them are wrote about in it. But let no one deny that it is a good laugh to hear about all the various kinds of mischief, curfews, wickedness, pixilation, indolence, rent fraud, roadblocks and general fcuking Hoopla! that went on in that place back (?) when Xmas really meant something.

For the rest – concerning the bad language, bad luck and low habits of the persons described or abt any dubious morals that remain implied or alleged in these tales – I make no apologies and, like the poets say, ‘welcome to Endland’ ©, all dates are approximate.

They replaced the lens in one (1) eye and I am waiting for them to do a operation on the other. Everything is fine. I am not an invalid.

Pax Americana,

Death to unbelievers,

About Lisa

About Lisa

a small bad story in twelve good parts

*

The boss at DAVE’S TOPLESS CHIP SHOP is called Harry Stannington. The shop is just a franchise and the real Dave is more of a marketing proposition than a proper person. Harry Stannington is a pathetic lying police informant who’s going to get his head kicked in and his tongue cut out, at least if you believe the graffiti which someone has sprayed up outside the shop.

*

Harry fancies a new girl that works in the CHIP SHOP who is called Lisa. Harry keeps asking her out but for at least a month she says no.

Lisa is basically an unlucky misery guts with a hidden gift for brilliant ideas.

Putting her top back on after work one day she finally caves in and agrees to go out with H. Stannington.

*

Lisa and H. Stannington go to the pictures. They have to walk thru something like a forest to get there only there seem to be cats stuck up in all the trees – yowling madly and miaoowing to get down.

When they get to the pictures Harry doesn’t like the film but pretends he does. Lisa also doesn’t like it but can’t be bothered to pretend.

*

It’s one of those films where the plot was just a flimsy excuse put together to justify a procession of different sentimental conversations – at hospital bedsides, on dusky beaches, in empty offices and at tearful breakfast tables.

That night Lisa’s sister gets murdered and Lisa blames herself – if she hadn’t gone out it would never have happened etc.

*

Each day for a week Lisa has to wear her dead sisters anorak and other clothes to reconstruct her last journey. Lisa gets to be on television. She likes acting and wonders about making a career out of it. The people from the TV station have her typecast as the dead girls’ sister though and won’t give her any other parts.

*

Time passes and the relationship with Harry comes to a natural end and he sacks her from the CHIP SHOP.

There are no leads in the murder investigation except perhaps Mike Foreman who’s arm is as thick as a porn stars penis (at least if you believe what the girls say) and who was occasionally having it off with Lisa’s sister.

Mike hangs around in the Bull & Patriot Pub – everyone knows he’s guilty but there’s no evidence.

*

Lisa has a dream where she wins the Eurovision Song Contest singing a song in Portuguese. Later on in the dream she is back with H. Stannington having sexual intercourse in the Chip Shop and he is imploring her:

“Speak Rwandan to me, speak Rwandan, I like it when you speak Rwandan . . .”

These kind of crazy dreams drive Lisa crazy.

*

One day Lisa sees Mike Foreman going down a side alley and knowing that the law is an arsehole and that Forearm is a murderer she kills him dead, with no regret.

The gods (such as they are) are pretty angry abt this and Zeus, Tesco, Venus, Mr Stretchy, Penelope, Kali and all the rest are all having a big row and making various wagers abt what will happen next.

*

The ways of the gods are mysterious tho. Lisa isn’t struck by lightning or by a satellite falling out of the sky. Instead her whole life just starts to go bad.

To start she has panic attacks, and many many long nights of sleeplessness. Her room is burgled (twice times), flooded (also twice times) and burnt a bit in a fire that is something to do with a bad persistent electrical fault.

*

Later (probably July) the automatic doors in all the buildings in the city seem to ignore her and no longer open anymore like they know she is no longer human or worse perhaps no longer a living thing of any kind.

Only by waiting for a stray dog to trigger the infra-red can Lisa get in anywhere.

*

Lisa gets more bad luck. She gets a skin complaint and falls out with her mum. Her new job at The Institute For Physical Research doesn’t last.

Before long Lisa can’t even see her image on the CCTV screens in town and she knows she’s disappearing and she understands quickly that this is the punishment the gods have meated out for her vengeance of her poor innocent sister.

*

People in the street try to talk to Lisa and try to act like everything is OK, but machines and most animals ignore her.

Lisa changes her name by deed poll. She calls herself something more suited to her age, race, sex and occupation. She calls herself SILENCE.

And from that moment on she lives up to her name.

Shame Of Shane

Shame Of Shane

Once upon a time there was a mad biker, a dope dealing Grebo from Derby called Shane. Shane went in a pub where the barman’s name was Meniscus on account of how full he liked to fill the glasses with shandy and ale.

Shane was a thief, a misogynist and an intellectual pygmy. Meniscus was his friend.

*

On each third sequential Thursdays in the above mentioned pub they contrived to run a semi-legal Karaoke-lock-in with Meniscus as the compere.

Such nites were a great laugh and indeed Shane would gladly oblige all with a song. BRIDGE OF THE RIVER KAWAI by Vermin was one of his popular choices and his rendering of BUTCHER HEAD by Carlo Verbatim Alfonso is still a urban legend amongst the assorted biker scum and wanker proletariat of that area.

*

SHANE + MENISCUS = TROUBLE

someone had wrote up in the wrecking yard of a old factory in Endland (sic) and this equation pretty well summed things up.

GENERAL HOSPITAL someone else had written on the same wall.

TRUMP TOWER and YOUR FLESH IS NIGHT.

*

To tell the truth Shane never had much luck like for example the time he arranged to meet some biker mates to go to a disco. Shane set off to the disco on foot but soon got lost and came to a clearing in the woods where a woodsman’s cottage stood.

Nosy, full of fools pride and lager, Shane went inside despite the signs which told him not to and upstairs he found a beautiful woman asleep in a bed.

Shane thought his luck was in.

*

PATH BLOCKED BY SLEEPING PRINCESS – it said on the wall of the room indicating the true nature of his entrapment – THROW A SIX TO CONTINUE.

Shane spent nine hours rolling the dice, unable to get a six in mounting frustration and missed the fucking disco.

*

Shane’s bike was a souped up NORTON INTERCOURSE 650 and when he road it in the mountains, with other bikers trailing behind him on their CARPARK COMMANDO 250s, then he felt free.

Shane had a woman (skirt) called Donkey on account of how many people had ridden her on the beach one night. Shane loved Donkey, at least so far as he understood the idea at all and anywhere he went she travelled pillion on his bike. Together with a load (outlaw posse) of other bikers they all went off in the hills of Nevada.

*

That night at Edale when the big hand was on the 2 and the little hand was on the nine Donkey walked away from the pack at biker campfire a little way and sat down.

Shane went over and a argument ensued about the plot of an obscure slasher movie, voices were raised and Shane was observed to strike Donkey and later, when he returned to the main body of the narrative, he was alone.

Shane was a murderer then.

*

Months, weeks and days passed and Shane fell out with Meniscus, partly abt the murder of Donkey and partly on the subject of ‘interllactual property’ (sic). Meniscus changed his voice to sound like Shane’s, he cut his lank hair the same way too and when Shane had a tattoo done in big green letters on his forehead what boldly declared I AM THE ONE AND ONLY, Meniscus rushed right out and had one done just the same.

Meniscus was a moron, a joker and a failure. Shane stopped being his friend.

*

Round this time in Endland (sic) the king passed a decree to decimalise time. Ten (10) hours in a day there were then and ten (10) day in a week and approximately ten (10) long months in a year.

Shane was one of the many unfortunate bastards what lost his birthday in the changes and from that point on his legal (and mental) age stayed exactly the same.

*

Shane watched his friends getting older but no changes happened to him.

Bob The Biker got fat and got a beer gut. Jo Jo had twins. Clinton got busted. Twig got a job and Meniscus rightly got sacked from the pub.

He it was that nicked fivers from the till, poured chemical waste in a black bloke’s beer and blocked up the urinals with bog roll, causing a huge eponymous problem in the gents.

*

Shane was still 25, you couldn’t exactly call him a Grebo anymore but he still wore jeans and a dirty tshirt.

Picture this: Shane with his stupid baby face while the rest of his olde crowde are pulling gray hairs from their genitals and sadly regretting the passage of ‘decimalised time’ ©.

*

Shane alone. Shane in the city.

Shane stood still at the cross-roads of time.

Shane reads all big books on human biology but it’s no bloody good. His pals all die and he’s still young. Like a vampire film. He rides the bike but gets no kicks anymore.

*

Shane visits a Shaman in the shopping precinct near Hillsborough.

In the empty shop unit, next to that one that sells cheap types of broken biscuits, in the gloom of a fluorescent light he consults with this bloke, lighting a candle to the old gods, speaking backwards language, squeezing drops of his own blood onto pictures of the Mighty Morphine Power Rangers and weeping in a Kleenex once owned by a cousin of the Queen.

All this to no avail.

Shane still 25 in Endland (sic), time stopped and ‘future endless’.

Who would dream that truth was lies?

Who would dream that truth was lies?

true story of earth and the gods

When the goddess Helen and the god Apollo 12 gave birth to sons it was the talk of Heaven and the naming day for the twins (Porridge and Spatula) was a party that most would not easily forget and some would not easily remember. Wine poured out of the wine boxes like it had no end point and everyone laughed out loud and wore those necklaces filled with luminous yellow fluid what men sell on bonfirenight.

Towards the end of day when the babes were asleep and all older gods dozy with ‘medicine’ the younger Gods like Herpes and Vesuvius were fighting and dancing. The young Goddess Anastasia and a few others had opened their luminous bracelets and were flicking the fluid down thru the sky onto earth like a bright yellow rain. All over the world people were looking up and looking around – they knew that something wild must be happening in Heaven.

Now, upon the earth at this time there was living a very pretty girl called Naomi and as Porridge and Spatula grew up they both fell in love with her and made no secret of it – visiting earth and telling her so, sending flowers and fancy chocolates etc. In all aspects Porridge and Spatula were inseparable and friends – and together they loved to go joy riding, flying stunt kites and to funerals. But as time trickled on ther rivalry over love of Naomi grew too great and they fell out, the one calling the other a complete lying cunt and the other vowing never to speak to that dickhead again.

Of course other Gods – Scalectrix, Fudge-Packer, Chandelier and Rent Boy – all tried to reason with the twins saying it was not Godly to fall out over a woman thus and to ‘get things in proportion’ – all to no avail. Only when Porridge and Spatula had a big fight in a Yates’ Wine Lodge causing £100s worth of damage did their mother Helen intervene.

At her suggestion the twins agreed to stage a contest and that the winner of their contest would be free to woo Naomi while the loser of it would have to fuck right off out of the way and keep his bloody oar out. The principle of this she agreed with the boys and left it to them to sort out what the ‘exacting nature’ © of the contest should be. In this detail did the troubles truly begin.

In Endland (sic) at this time there was a dire and miserable gameshow called QUIZOOLA! that by law was forced to played on TV each Sat nite at 7.30 til midnight on every channel and repeated on Tuesdays. Everyone reckoned that to win on this piece of shit programme was better than being King or being in MENSA or like being Albert Schweitzer. QUIZOOLA! went the catch phrase. YOU BETCHA! went the audience and the whole thing was a degrading spectacle whereby knowledge itself was rendered to be mere information and every human capacity and imagination were redrawn as stunted and thwarted lies.

Anyway. Porridge and Spatula decided to solve their contest over Naomi by going onto QUIZOOLA! and playing to the death. When word of this reached Helen and others of the older crowd of Gods they were dismayed for of cause it was against the rules of the Immortals to compete in a human game show. Apollo 12 summoned the warring twins to his side and told them off, asking them to abandon the dispute but both men refused.

Come the day Spatula and Porridge both had a lot to drink in the pre-show VIP lounge and argued a lot, throwing jibes at each other and some other celebs. On screen and sat behind tawdry podiums the regular captains Fred and Rosie West introduced their guests/team-mates Porridge and a pale girl called Leah Betts on Fred’s team and Spatula playing for Rosie alongside Joe Haldeman, a minor and allegedly corrupt govt official from the Nixon era.

Spatula and Porridge both looked very much the worse for wear and from the outset it certainly seemed they were determined to outdo each other in bringing heaven and godliness into general disrepute with the studio audience. At many of their jokes and lewd comments Naomi (who had showed up specially for the filming in a nice frock) had to look away and of the questions they answered most of the time they were wrong.

Spatula did not know who had invented invisible barbed wire, or what was the capital city of Spain. Porridge did not know how many letters there are in a alphabet or even the name of the first Black Pope. By the interval all crowd was laughing at them and Naomi was covered in shame.

As the TV played commercials for Baby Sham (fake kids) Porridge and Spatula threw water and then crisps at each other in full view of the audience and a scuffle emerged. Lucozade (who was king of the gods at this time) took offence at this and finally decided to intervene, appearing in the studio like a flesh of lightening and causing an immense silence so great you could even hear the spiders spinning their webs.

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