The Nameless Horror

I’m sure by now several of you reading this are already nursing hangovers as this year’s Harrogate Crime Festival kicked off yesterday evening. You’ll all have to have a drink on my behalf (followed by my traditional 10am crawl into town to find a chemist, having ritually forgotten to take paracetamol), because I’m not going to be there this year. First time in, IIRC, seven years on the bounce (though the first of those was a one-night special for a Penguin party, which ended with myself, the inestimable Stav Sherez, Jim Kelly, Chris Simms and Kernick occupying the bar of the Majestic, I think it was, until… oh, I think it was about 4am by the time I left. The staff had given up and left us the run of it as well, as I recall. Someone must have promised to pay for whatever we drank…). Two factors behind it:

• Normally, I juggle Aidan’s schedule with his mum so I can go up on Thursday and return Saturday (to avoid Sunday trains). This wasn’t doable/desirable this year because he set off this morning to America with her and his stepdad and that side of his family for nearly 3 weeks. The juggling worked the other way; he’s been with us since Monday.

• I can’t really justify the expense this year. Awesome as it always is to catch up with everyone in the flesh, it’s ~£100 in train fare, £120 (if you’re blessed with a miracle) to £200 (more likely) for two nights’ accommodation, and very possibly, though not necessarily, the same again in food and drink. While, with my remaining two slices of definite income due any time now (German money for THE LEVELS and the paperback tranche of TRG) and nothing to follow after, it’s tempting to eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die, it doesn’t really seem like a sensible idea given that I’ve got more than one book to write and a baby due in a little over a month. My old flat’s just started the paperwork stage of the sale process, and when that goes through it’s all basically gravy, but I don’t want to count my chickens. I’d rather come back next year with a firmer grip on what’s laughably referred to as “my career” and with a much smaller workload waiting for me.

So have fun everyone, and you’ll all have to be charmingly filthy in my place.

Buildering, i.e. climbing buildings, is stupid dangerous. Buildering always results in serious injury and horrible death. Buildering is illegal. You will be caught, charged with trespassing, and spend years in jail. All media contained within this guidebook is fictional. It is a fictional account of fictional characters doing fictional things. All photos have been doctored to give the appearance of buildering. They are not real. This guidebook is not intended to promote or legitimize the illicit activities of criminals. Buildering.net promotes climbing in gyms, walking on sidewalks, and good dental hygiene.

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Go and read this excellent photoessay and interview with John Javellana.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/video/embed

(The Guardian’s Nick Davies on phone hacking and the police)

I sometimes look back at that evening in Mac’s yard. Summer starting, and so many other things ending. School out, time to move on to the big, wide world beyond. There’s a photograph tucked in a box somewhere in my closet. The eight of us. Fat Hal Lennox acting like he’s going to toss Mickey in the pool. Kyra held aloft, laughing, on the shoulders of Ali and Zack. Will Harris at the side, raising his bottle at the camera like a brandy snifter. And Stacey flinging herself at me like she’s not sure whether to put me in a headlock or kiss me.

Kids, graduating from nothing much to nothing at all, life at its brightest and most goddamn stupid.

They cut Mickey out of the wreckage of his car three months later. Wrapped it round a tree on the Richboro road, trying to impress a couple of girls he nearly killed alongside him. Ali and Kyra lived together for a while. Then he moved to New York and became a suit. She married, had a kid, divorced, works teaching English to the next batch of clones off the same conveyor produced us. Neighbors found Hal in his bathtub two years ago. I still see Zack around town, but his eyes, hell his whole body, gone dull and faded through drink. Don’t think he recognises me, or if he does, then we’re both pretending like we don’t. I heard Will was put away for armed robbery not long after we all graduated. Stacey… Stacey was here, and now she’s gone.

I still think about her, now and again. Even after everything, all that happened, and all that’s passed since then. You never forget. Even if you want to. Wonder where she is, what she’s doing. If she’d talk to me. If she’d be happy to see me if I showed up, or if memory of what we had and what we didn’t would make her kick me to the curb all over again.

No bigger barrier to overcome than the long stretch of your own history, and the gulf between what you are now and what you once hoped you’d become.

I take out that photo, just sometimes. Eight strangers looking back at me from the past, and I’m one of them.

By me. “Wakes” is (intended to be) an occasional-regular writing exercise, fragments out of nothing, inspired in part by whatever cycles through iTunes as I sit down to work.

Wake 3: 'With Me' - Sum 41