“I WROTE NOFX ON MY DAD’S CAR IN MARKER PEN, BEAT THAT.”

Me somewhere in France circa 1995. Still a virgin but I had great thighs and a bell in my hair.

My formative years were spent in Wolverhampton in the early to late 90s.  We shall call this era, ‘the 90s’.  I was lucky enough to have about a million friends.  I was by no means the coolest of any gang but I was above average.  I think this was due to my willingness to try and get people to like me by doing ‘naughty’ things.  Nothing like setting fire to a teacher or stealing money from the blind, but I’d stand on a bin and throw a McDonald’s cup at Scott The Chod and it would garner me fans and followers.

People in Wolverhampton still have low standards of entertainment, I may add.  Have you ever seen an episode of either X-Factor or Come Dine With Me where someone from the Royal Borough of Wolverinetown doesn’t feature, giving you more ammo to mock our looping drawl?  We can’t help it.

Anyway, back to the Golden Era of Kerry: the 90s.  My friends and I were a wide array of reprobates and squares and dorks and losers and beautiful people who all had something in common: we liked Nirvana.  I have no idea how this became the benchmark for ‘I’ll be your friend’ but every one of us had a C90 of Nevermind/Bleach that can be traced back to Claire Moran. (sister of you know whom)

Every Saturday afternoon would be spent byt the Man On The Horse trying not to get beaten up by the Sharons and the Kevs but come eventide we had one common goal…HOUSE PARTY HOUSE PARTY!! *Vyvian from Young Ones dance*

The people who usually held these were in the bottom ten percent of the pecking order and their parents would be out of town or stupid enough to encourage them to make friends by hiding in an upstairs room until 11pm when they expected us to make a hasty exit.  These events were where I came into my own.  I’d be great.

At HD’s party, myself and my best cohort, Dando, started gently.  A knife in the video recorder.  A premium-rate sex line called and the phone left off the hook.  It all went to shit the moment Greg turned up.  He was one above me on the ‘don’t invite them to your party’ scale because he was willing to shit in a rubber glove and throw it over the neighbours fence.  Next thing we knew, there was a frog in the toilet, drawings of cocks sellotaped to the dog and sandwiches in the cushion covers.  HD went mental.  At the time I called her a control freak but looking back now, she was quite within her rights to try and kill us with her shoe.  We hid upstairs in her parents cupboard and unfortunately got ourselves locked in.  LOL NOPE!  There was a case of whiskey in said cupboard.  I have no idea how much later it was when HD caught us climbing down the drainpipe wearing her father’s suits.

She has never forgiven us.  I think she’s still not talking to us actually, sixteen years on.

No more house parties were held for several months, or none that I can remember hearing of.  Dando and I were blacklisted and spent most of our time in the park over the back of her house sledging on wet grass and playing with terrapins frozen in ice.  This was about the time we pierced our belly buttons with nothing but poppers to help.

Luckily, on the last day of term before christmas holidays started up, a new boy arrived on the scene and held a party.  Apparently he’d heard of our previous record so we used false names. (both using the same name of a friend of ours who does exist, sorry Jeema)  What a rookie.  We tried to be good by sitting in the garden and taking care of all the drunk people coming out to throw up but this one guy was annoying.  I think his name was Crisp and he worked in a crisp factory or he was pissed off that we were calling him Crisp and asking him what it was like to work in a crisp factory when he didn’t.  Anyway, blah blah blah we pushed him in the pond.  He was so paraletic that he didn’t even try and save himself so we had to drag him out by his leg as he lay face down like a scene from Paranormal Activity 1995.  Some how, a fit of conscience came over us and we felt sorry for getting his shoes wet.  (Regardless of the bit where he nearly died and he was now sat soaking head to toe in the december air).  We took one of his shoes and popped it in the microwave for about ten minutes.  The patented Nike Air system popped, the microwave went a bit on fire and the shoe shrank three sizes.

It was Poo-Glove Greg who was high-5ing us on the driveway as the ambulance turned up.  I have no idea who called 999 because of a shrunken shoe.  What a massive square.

That was it for the big stuff.  We were over.  There was the odd occasion where we’d get done for striking a special camping match on someone’s verandah wall or sicking-up chocolate frosting on the neighbours car or treading on a stereo or battering someone’s younger brother with a line prop but it was never the same again.  Our reign of awesome was over and we could no longer use ‘being a bastard’ to pick up boys.

I moved to London and tried my best but it just wasn’t the same.  If you fuck up a squat, it actually improves the ambience and a poo in a glove would be funded by an Arts Council grant.  If it wasn’t someone’s parents house, it just didn’t bring out the same demon Kegs. (Kegs was my nickname all through my golden era, no wonder I was a virgin until I was 17.)  The last I heard of Poo-Glove Greg around this time was that he was living in a tent on a graveyard dressed as Jesus and got trench foot.

There was a brief reunion one time around about 2001.  A roll of gaffa tape hooked round a door handle and the end stuck to the wallpaper so that it was the host who technically fucked up the place was far too calculated and a cork coaster spread with philadelphia and passed out as a snack before being stuck to the ceiling simply didn’t have the same satisfaction now I was paying Council Tax and had to buy my own Philadelphia.  Another time, I found myself at the home of a Glam Rock Legend’s daughter’s house up the road from my mother’s.  I kept getting shushed and was kicked out within half an hour.  Yes I made away with a box of washing powder, a toothbrush, a magnum of Champagne and some posh ham but it wasn’t the same.

I’m nostalgic for the days of trying to impress people with my devil may care attitude and lack of respect for others.  I snarl at kids in the street squawking or hanging upside down off a bike rack.  Pffft.  I did bigger and better and before anybody else.  Yes of course I was the first.  Every teenager is and we also knew everything.  Wait.  I’m not nostalgic.  I don’t hate these kids.  I’m jealous.

I wish I could still get away with it.  I’d willingly do it all over again yet what’s the point when all around you are telling you to ‘be careful’ or ‘come on, we should get the last tube’ and there’s no kudos or laughter when you ride a sleeping bag down the stairs and into the ornaments while smoking and getting ash on the stair carpet.  It’s all you lot’s fault.  Quit killing my buzz man, stop being a square and help me get this banger up this cat’s arse.

October 30, 2011. Uncategorized.