This is the true teenage stage of being a complete sap, careening round a seaside town in a tail fin-ed Ford Zephr, running into Peter Hook, exploring a disused sanatorium, reviewing a variety of gigs (not particularly well) for the local rag to standing on the pyramid stage  at Glastonbury at 7 in the morning learning Tai Chi among other things …

The Party

It was like the end of Apocalypse Now with Willard materialising from beneath the waters transformed – except The General’s face was a vivid mix of combat paints and crazed enthusiasm.

It was my fault really, telling him I was worried about gate-crashers at my teenage party. Possibly it was a bit of an over-reaction by The General to turn out the back room lights and crawl out on his stomach into the dark to make a recce. But he did not do things by halves. After all had he not recently emblazoned the back of his left hand with a regimental SAS-style cobra.

Those early years of the nineteen eighties were the height of the Cold War all over again and we seemed to be sitting on the cusp of Armageddon. Only a few years later, the Berlin Wall (seen from the viewing platform near Checkpoint Charlie) or travelling through Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union, seemed very solid and immovable.

The General was an avid reader of the monthly Protect and Survive magazine, the bible on how to safeguard against the imminent nuclear holocaust. He suggested I should whitewash the windows of my parents’ house in order to deflect the intense glare of a nuclear blast. But somehow I didn’t think they would approve.

Suitably disgusted he commandeered the front lounge of his own grandparents’ house to build a nuclear fallout shelter. He upturned two sofas and thatched together sufficient blankets to keep him warm from the forthcoming Nuclear Winter. Suitably ensconced he had collected together enough rations to survive a week. So he was somewhat irate to be chased out of the front room by his grandmother who needed it back to watch her favourite tv soap opera.

Suitably cautioned, he began a new hobby – launched upon an unsuspecting world at his college Hobbies Exhibition. I went along too as a helper. This gave me scope to impress The Ladies, dressed as I was in my nattiest threads, and crucially, carrying the ‘Advanced’ Dungeons and Dragons fanzine I edited, Blunderbuss. Soon his stall of vintage fire extinguishers was drawing a crowd. I wore rather fetching two-tone trousers bought in the light of a recent trip to London and thought I would soon be the centre of attention. Which indeed I was – as he spontaneously demonstrated the capacity of a dry-powdered fire extinguisher by unloading its white flecked contents all over me.

At the time The General was going through a mysterious phallo-militaristic phase. He told me each day without fail he would polish the large ‘ack ack’ gun he had found buried in the undergrowth near his college. Given its deep psychological resonance, I thought it best (for his own sanity) that I invite him to my forthcoming ‘coming of age’ party. There would be girls there! And perhaps he could pick up a few tips from The Master.

The General returned from his recce to report there were no obvious intruders and it was now a “sterile environment”. To be honest, I was more interested in the magnificent older girl who had mysteriously turned up. I just needed to loose her from her handsome companion.

She had that look of fit, older knowingness. Surely now, at my party, my time had come. I impressed upon her, in the brief moment her ‘friend’ went to the loo, only I had the key to the Pleasure Palace – the downstairs basement room.

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Later, in a semi-lucid state. I had managed to encourage Mystery Girl’s companion to partake and now he was washed up comatose on the sofa.

I looked for Mystery Girl who had walked out in disgust at her light-weight friend but she was nowhere to be seen.

The house was starting to look all distorted – and suddenly I needed somewhere to rest my weary head. Thankfully, I still had my keys to the basement room and it remained an impregnable fortress. Or so I thought …

Somehow Mystery Girl had managed to get in there (and I admired her tenacity and sheer dexterity!) I could see her already sitting up in bed, the bed-sheets drapped seductively around her.

Just as I was about to introduce myself, I heard someone about to head down the stairs. So, with no means of escape, I ducked behind the curtain by the door and hoped I wasn’t discovered. I held my breath.

His footsteps thudded down the rickety stairs. From behind me a seductive voice called out for Big Boy to bring those cups of tea and come back to bed.

I flattened myself into the alcove at the bottom of the stairs behind the curtain hoping that I was not discovered. As he passed me closely I held my breath in and tried to stay motionless.

Peering through the tiny gap in the curtain all I could see were a pair of big hands around the mugs of tea he had obviously prepared. As I blacked out worse for wear, the last thing I remember thinking was that a drain-pipe drawn on the back of his hand?

*Civility and legal issues mean that you probably have to think the story a bit younger.