Being boring
Being boring “I came across a cache of old photos
And invitations to teenage parties…” Pet Shop Boys, ‘Being Boring’ I can’t remember the first time. She took me on every home match, trussed up in claret and blue. Sneaking into the Centre Spot, fourteen but looking younger, thirteen but looking older. The Beehole a fiver each, the day it rained from start to end; turquoise duffel coat soaked through, glorious in thick glasses and rain. I can’t remember if we won that day. Given the season, probably not. We scrambled to the top of hastily-erected gates, shouting Mullen out, guilty as I jumped down. A greying hangdog man doing his best with a mediocre side. Later, they’d set his wife’s dress alight. Ternent’s bark as bad as his bite, but by then I’d fallen out of love with Inchy Heath and David Eyres, graduated to the Irish pubs I wouldn’t discover my pints of Irish blood for years with uncles and a Dubliner step-aunt, lost Ria to Spanish boys and pregnancy scares. We shared chocolate nail polish, lipstick, a name. At Settle she scored, and I kept the board, dashing between score, batsmen, overs played. Always generous, she made ham salad, shared the pay. I didn’t deserve her, and when she left, I took her Ria and buried my own. My Ria is the one I hate, irrevocably ugly and cripplingly shy; hers vivacious, vibrant, risky, alive. I took her nail polish, her lipstick, her name. *** The last time I saw her, exploding from the bottom of rickety stairs; dressed in white, gold matching golden hair, offering me a full bottle of champagne. This girl I can never forget, still wearing her tarnished silver flowers around my neck. If she came to me tomorrow, I would give her everything I own.
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose leaves
The way I feel today - 10 July 2004
Just seventeen - 17 March 2004
Roads to freedom - 25 February 2004
Confessions of a failed self-harmer - 25 February 2004
Manchester, united - 25 February 2004