Was that all he had to look forward to? A wife who had gonecold on him, a stack of porn in the shed and offers from toothless old crones?
As he stood on the roof with all these thoughts tumblingthrough his mind, all he could think about was how much better life had been inthe past. As for the future, he certainly couldn’t imagine any scenario wherethings were going to improve. In fact he could only envisage things gettingworse. Was it really worth sticking around to find out?
Why not just end it all, here and now?
Modern Life is Rubbish
November 2018
When he was young it had all been so different. Kent had reallyfelt part of the world, embracing popular culture along with the rest of hisgeneration. He had felt edgy, cool and at the forefront of everything that washappening.
He had been born in 1976 at the end of one of the longest andhottest summers the UK had even known. He knew this because he’d been toldabout it by his mother. She had complained many times about how uncomfortableit had been being heavily pregnant in the heat, sounding as if she blamed him. Kentfelt this was a little harsh: he could hardly help when he was born. If anyonewas to blame for the timing of the event it was his father.
He had popped out on the bank holiday Monday at the end of August,just as the heatwave broke and the heavens opened. He couldn’t rememberanything about the 1970s but he did know that he had been born into a greattime. It was the beginning of the glorious era of punk rock, just before theSex Pistols were about to shock the establishment.
He had loved pop music when he was a kid. One of hisearliest memories was seeing David Bowie performing “Ashes to Ashes” on Top ofthe Pops. Very soon after that he became obsessed with the charts. Itstarted with listening to the weekly rundown on Sunday teatimes with hissister. A few years later, he insisted that he be allowed to come home for hislunches on Tuesdays in order to hear the brand new chart being revealed.
As the DJ read out the songs he used to try and write themdown as quickly as possible in a Woolworths exercise book. Then he’d gain kudosfrom his classmates when he took the book back into school in the afternoon to announcethe rundown all over again for them. He was only about nine or ten when he wasdoing this, and had bold aspirations at the time to become a Radio 1 DJ when hegrew up.
By the time he was in his mid-teens he was helping out a DJwho ran mobile discos at various local youth clubs and social clubs, but that amountedmostly to fetching and carrying for a bit of extra pocket money. Rarely was helet loose on the decks and this was as far as his DJ’ing career ever went. Variousother distractions such as girls and beer got in the way, so, like most of his youthfulambitions, it ultimately came to nothing.
As he became increasingly aware of the whole music scene inthe early 1980s, he was thrilled at how vibrant and exciting it seemed. Thehighlight of the week was Thursday evening when Top of the Pops came on.Week after week, new and innovative acts filled the screen, alongside the moreestablished artists.
He could remember so many watershed moments, such as thefirst time Culture Club appeared. ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ was the hot topic ofdiscussion at school the next day. Even at five or six years old all of the kidswere into music in a big way. It wasn’t long until he went through a major riteof passage of every child in those halcyon days: the buying of his firstsingle.
It was 1984 and he didn’t get a huge amount of pocket moneyat that time – 50p a week if he remembered rightly. Although 50p went a lotfurther in 1984 than it did in 2018, he still had to save up for two weeks tobe able to afford to buy a record. It was very hard for him to resist spendingthe first week’s money on sweets, which was where his pocket money usuallywent, but he had put the money in his piggy bank and vowed not to touch it.
Nearly all music back then came on 7” vinyl singles. CD was inits infancy and cassette singles had not really caught on. They never did, asfar as he could remember. His sister, who was three years older, already had a largecollection of singles from the big stars of the day. It was she who had takenhim down to Woolworths to buy that first single. How he remembered and cherishedthat moment! Life had seemed so simple back then and the world an exciting andamazing place, full of new experiences.
That world that he had grown up in was long gone. Even Woolworths,a shop that had been ever-present throughout his life and a monument to his childhood,had vanished, gone bankrupt during a recession which Kent blamed on recklessand greedy bankers. The reality was, it probably would have gone bust anywaysooner or later, a victim of changing times rather like Kent himself.
As he had grown up, the music scene had got ever more exciting.By the time the seemingly futuristic year of 1990 rolled round, Kent was a teenagerand ready to fully embrace the whole Madchester music scene. The Stone Roses, HappyMondays, The Charlatans and many more provided the soundtrack to the first halfof his teenage life.
As soon as he had turned thirteen he had got himself a paperround. For this, he got the princely sum of £15 a week, most of which he spenton records. After much badgering, his parents had bought him a small hi-fisystem for his fifteenth birthday
