Maverick scribbler Tim Wild reviews… things

This month – Moments I relive in the dark night, unable to forget

The Hairdressers

I despise barbers and hairdressers of all kinds. Youthful humiliation seemed always to be order of the day, but this one incident still haunts me particularly. My Mum, ever-practical, booked me a haircut in her own favoured salon, which happened to be the pinkest, most feminine establishment in town. It was staffed with a 13 year old boy’s mortal enemies – confident and attractive teenage girls, one of whom set about my unruly locks with a mixture of amusement and condescension. Then one of her boyfriends came in while she was working, and mistook me for a girl from the back. Just as I thought my shame couldn’t deepen any further, I came to pay and was a quid short.

“My Mum (oh Christ) works just up the road. I’ll leave my bike here and go and get the money”. Dashing out of the salon, I made to cut across the green. Moving from a trot into a sprint, I reached the low hedge surrounding it, tripped, and landed on my face not ten yards from the salon window, from which I could faintly hear the sounds of uncontrollable laughter.

The French Exchange

I did not like the family, and they definitely didn’t like me. One look at the station when I arrived confirmed that the presence of a suburban proto-hippie with long hair, ripped jeans and a guitar was not the exchange partner they envisaged for their lumpen, potato-faced offspring.
They tried though. After several days of Siberian silence from both parties, the mother made a conciliatory gesture. Pointing to a magazine picture and gesticulating wildly, she managed to tell me that she wanted me to play the guitar for the family.

They sat opposite me on the sofa, silently, expectantly. I launched into my best Beatles crowd-pleaser, hoping to god it was one pop song they might actually recognise. I started tentatively, but actually began to enjoy myself after a bit. I was throwing myself about, hitting the big notes, closing my eyes, when I suddenly felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked up to see the father of the house, who uttered the first and last word he would ever exchange with me before kicking me out of the house three days later. It was “Stop.”

The prawn sandwich

It was from a well-known High Street bakers, and it wrung me out like a wet rag. I lived in the toilet for three days, alternately shivering in a duvet or exploding with intestinal discomfort. However, it was the end of term, and had to vacate my accommodation. A friend’s family had offered me a lift back down south with a stopover at their house in Leicester. I pulled myself into some sort of order before they arrived, but my composure didn’t last. By the time we reached their furniture shop in the town centre, I was in trouble. They had to detour from their evening plans to drop me at their house, where I literally ran up the stairs and into their one bathroom, remaining there for several dreadful hours.

I finally fell asleep about 4 in the morning, and was awoken the next day by my friend’s mother, who put a cup of weak tea next to my bed. As I came to my senses, my nose woke up first, and my friend’s mother looked at me quizzically. In a flash, we each simultaneously realised the awful truth – her bedsheets would never be the same again.

The Slow Dance

Her name was Melinda, and she wasn’t exactly going to make the cover of Vogue, but she was a girl, and that more than met my requirements at the time. I was thirteen, the church youth club disco was in full swing, and skidding about on the floor because it was shiny was no longer on the agenda. I had to step up. I think the song was ‘Wishing Well’ by Terence Trent D’Arby. I started chastely, with my hands on her shoulders, and then…I froze. My legs kept moving, fuelled by involuntary spasms of terror, but my arms remained straight. The poor girl was locked in a rictus of my embarrassment for the full duration of the song. As the other couples grew closer together and began their furtive grappling, her eyes slowly began to register her dismay, but I was powerless to act. My only hope was that the darkness and music had provided some small cover for my shame, but as the lights went up, I saw two of my mates reenacting my dance style for the benefit of a large group of onlookers.

The last time I went to the knob doctor

You’d cry too, with a six-inch metal swab in your jap’s eye.

Filed under: Life, The Wild Reviews by Flexmaster Nylon
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