House

I'll warn you now this is no literary attempt at a story for a story
I just can't do, but still I'll write a little of something I remember
and read it myself - doesn't matter if I'm the only one who does. I can
remember Abbey Road and Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, hmm,
clear as anything, playing from old scratchy LPs but of course they
sound far better like that, with the gravel of the years accumulated in
the sound. We'd sit around in a house belonging to a friend of mine, in
one great and magic summer of youth. His parents had gone away for the
week leaving him and his older sister to occupy the whole house alone -
the sister who was hardly ever there anyway.

In those days we were true to form no good professional wasters and
lazy eaters of food in the indolent sun; expert drinkers of beer in the
mothy dark night; forever unstoppable dope smokers spending most of our
lives stoned as hell - or at least trying to get stoned as hell. Money
was the issue so me and my friend Luke, who's house it was, insured
that we always had A Way. We'd have our own money of course, what we
could scrape together, with this early in the morning I'd go buy like a
fiver's worth of grass, we'd smoke that early, cook ourselves great
epic fantastic cheeseburgers with everything in, endless slices of
cheese on toast, whatever, just to say that this was the ceremony, the
lunch where food came first. After this we'd be pretty much straight,
out in his back garden, and we'd plan who we could ring - who was
likely to have some money, who could get some tick? Smoking just plain
cigarettes and lying back on these great garden seats he had, they went
right back so you were lying looking up at the sky.

- I'm telling you that week was just the greatest weather and prettiest
sunshine week of all of our young lives. We felt important and older,
to be in control, to have that big house (and it was a big house, right
at the end of a long driveway, an enormous garden, five big bedrooms,
airy high rooms), to be able to do what we like, run around in all
those rooms, lay back and be kings for a while. We set up a pool table
in the front room, right next to the old record player and right next
to the glass doors that slid open onto the garden - the breeze would
blow through the house, the music would play and we'd shoot pool on
that rickety old table that had to be propped with books to make it
straight. You always had to be careful not to make the white lie on the
wrong side of the table - the side with the wall too close so to take a
shot required lifting the butt of the cue way up in the air.

I think that at that part of my life I most enjoyed getting stoned, it
was an everyday thing - we had nothing much better to do. - It was the
summer after High School had ended, it went on forever, and we were all
intent (me and my friends) on laying back and enjoying every second of
it. Most days we'd bum about Luke's house, even when his parents were
back from their holiday (they both worked all day so we still had the
house but just had to be a little more careful), but some days we went
for long slow walks out into the beating hot countryside, carrying
bottles of water and a bong, we'd sit under shady trees and smoke away
the day listening to the birds and seeing the flapping butterflies. It
was always the worst when we couldn't score, for lack of money or some
problem with a dealer, and we'd mope about wondering how we could
overcome our problem until we eventually just gave up and played the
old classic Amiga with those wonderful retro games that I still love
more than any others.

It was once I went to college that I had to think seriously about all
this cannabis and all the other shit. I started off pretty young so
even by sixteen I'd been smoking pot for at least four years; it took
me another two, until I was eighteen, before I quit. I realised one day
(I can remember this as clear as hell) sitting in the back of a car,
driving somewhere far away like the West Country or some shit, I was
peering out the window thinking how beautiful the countryside was, it
looked ancient and unreal, full of sheep like little fluff dots in the
far distance, these epic long stretching hills that upped and downed
forever into the fairytale beyond - just to say it was touching and I
was in one of those receptive moods that are good for being moved by
things such as that - I thought, sitting there, that really it was
wonderful and the world was wonderful and 'why is it that I never
notice?' I thought about what I was good at, what in life I could do
well. I'd been real clever at school, could do almost everything, but
right through college I'd lost all ability to put in any effort, I'd
become lazy and not by choice - it was hard to be motivated by anything
anymore. - I thought, 'What is it I'm good at?' and decided that there
was only one thing: smoking hash; getting stoned. - I knew how to
construct every bit of paraphernalia, could roll all sorts of joints,
knew just about everything about weight and cost - and hated it all. It
disgusted me that I'd become out of touch with so many worthy things to
lead a life in smoky rooms where all beauty seems distant; I'd lost a
certain amount of control and until then I hadn't realised. I think now
that partly I was right, as every sensible person knows if you don't do
these things in moderation life can get troublesome - hell, I got off
lightly, some friends of mine really suffered bad through getting
stoned all too much, through losing track of themselves. - But for me
anyway I think sitting there in that car I also realised that I was no
longer a child, that part of myself had gone in the previous few years
and I was shocked to realise this - as I think everyone becoming an
adult always is. So anyway, I decided there and then to quit, and
barring a few relapses I did, with great conviction. And it wasn't
until I had that it occurred to me just how bad things had been getting
in my life, how much things had been slipping away.

Anyway, that's not the point of this story; here I'm talking about
earlier on in my history, a time of more innocence and joy. The Beatles
rang in and out of our lives, they were our anthem. Revolver and Rubber
Soul; Help and A Hard Days Night. That great album Abbey Road which is
one of the coolest things ever written - the strange epic brilliance of
the White Album.

It's the week Luke's parents went away that I'm talking about. I'm
almost certain that it was the end of July, maybe just the beginning of
August. People (good friends and others we hardly knew) had been coming
up for the last three days and Luke and I just sat back laconic and
pool playing hanging joints from our mouths welcoming them all in, the
same happy smile, as long as they brought some beer or some hash then
we were fine.

One morning following the third late night of drunken chaos it was
peaceful and calm in the house. The place was a mess - but it was our
mess so we didn't care, it read like a book of the previous days of our
debauchery. We'd slept with every window wide open - it was one of
those hot boiling nights that swoon steamy and still making sleep hard
to find. The morning was wonderful and calm, by nine we were up, the
birds chirruped and sang, we always saw the same two lucky magpies that
lived in a tree nearby, butterflies fluttered, it was stillness,
cigarette smoke and the clean smell of dew. A great friend of ours at
the time (still is for that matter) came up at about ten (we had no
problem rising early back then) and with a tinge of laziness we shot
pool and laughed, listening to Fixing A Hole and A Day In The Life. He
went back out with all the money we could muster to score for the
morning and when he came back we cleared a space in all the mess and
commenced to get stoned in order to work up our appetites for the
day.

- It was good, I can remember. We talked about the night before,
everything was a host of stories back then, funny things seemed to
happen constantly and constantly we'd laugh to remember them. The day's
hot air blew through the house and we felt cool and on top of the
world. Luke was crazy in those days, had enormous resources of energy
that could be directed at anything, and he was an incorrigible
conversationalist. The other friend, Mark, was a strange deep
character, an enigmatic style that has only increased as I've known
him. Would go off on mysterious errands sometimes and nobody ever knew
what he was doing, was idiosyncratic, different to anybody else I knew,
was just about the coolest and cleverest of the lot, full with obvious
talent and style.

So we were sitting there uncaring laughing away, talking seriously
about everything we thought was serious, when the phone rang - it was a
friend of Luke's sister, turns out she and him had been at the shops
together when Luke's terrible terrifying unknown grandparents saw them
and pulled over - this was a great stroke of luck. They had been on
their way up to the house where we were sitting amongst the illegal and
incriminating accretions of three days of all out wildness, Luke's
sister had told them to wait because she wanted a lift home - she was
worried, she knew the deal, she was the older and was expected to be
responsible for her younger brother - she was easily as bad as us if
not worse! Before she jumped in the car she asked her friend to phone
us and tell us the score - she must have been in overdrive trying to
think of a way out of the mess.

- We panicked. The shops were only three or four minutes away by car -
it seemed hopeless. Up we jumped incapable in our current state to
think straight and immediately, true to form, Mark said he was leaving
- wow, truly the funniest part. He was white in the face, obviously
guilty but nonetheless he just wasn't built for that sort of thing. He
was the type of kid that never met anybody's parents, couldn't conform
and hated more than anything situations he couldn't control - he left
with apologies and Luke and I laughed for a solid half a minute, it was
hilarious, we too wished we could leave.

Right then, we had to snap out of it, we'd already wasted a good
quarter of our time. Luke began his usual routine when parents arrive
at an inopportune time - he sprayed a whole half can of sickly air
freshener about the entire house. I frantically picked up ashtrays,
rizlas, tin foil, bongs, everything terrible that littered the place.
There was no time to dispose of it properly so I pushed it all beneath
a bush in the garden for later retrieval. Things were bad. We had about
a minute left, there were beer cans everywhere - we hurriedly put them
all in a bag and threw them in the garage; all the furniture was out of
place - we pushed it back as fast as we could - ah! and uncovered
discreetly hidden butts and other rubbish that had lain unnoticed
beneath the sofa - we picked these up and threw them in the garden. -
Now we were on borrowed time, they were overdue. Luckily all the
windows were open helping the smell to disperse. We had no time to
check upstairs, we knew it would be bad but hoped Luke's sister would
do her part and keep the grandparents confined to the safer spaces of
the lounge and kitchen. - Hell, for all we knew there might well be
someone still asleep up there from the night before!

- Right, we were ready, good as it was going to get. We went into the
kitchen and screamed and laughed all at once - it was awful, every
piece of cutlery, plate, bowl, cup and glass paraded unwashed taking up
all the worktops. - We grabbed them all, filled up the dishwasher
dangerously high, I stacked dirty plates in their cupboards, placing
one clean one on top - cunning! It was hardly good, the kitchen still
looked apocalyptic but there was nothing more to do. Now I thought Luke
and I would go and sit down, try looking innocent and explain away all
the little problems that still remained - but no - we heard the car
pulling up, I saw the grandparents I'd never seen looking expectant to
see their grandson, and Luke says to me 'come on, let's get out of
here'.

I laughed, he laughed, but I knew he had it right - we were going to
escape, as fitted our philosophy at the time, best run away and take
the consequences later. This part was tricky - we were trapped, the
only conventional way out was down the driveway, the driveway his
grandparents were now driving up, so we had to take things a little
further. There backed onto the house a tidy and regimented garden
belonging to a bungalow owned by an old and miserable couple. In our
bravery we'd often jumped Luke's fence and crouched in the trees at the
back of this garden, keeping an eye on the overlooking kitchen window,
waiting until it was all clear so as we could dash through to the road
out front. You see this cut five minutes off our journey to go and
score - now it seems hardly worth it but I s'pose it sums up our
laziness that we risked that gauntlet of a shortcut for such a small
reward. So that was our escape. - We heard the front door opening and
voices coming into the house, we dashed out into the garden and
clambered up the fence - six feet tall, old, rickety, dangerous at best
of times. - Luke had no problem, scampered over and landed in the pine
tree shrubbery at the back of the old couple's garden, quiet as a mouse
- me on the other hand, in no fit state reached the top and stopped,
teetering and toppling, I was laughing uncontrollably, it was all I
could do to sit up there in between the gardens - I couldn't move - I
heard the music still playing, saw all the windows of the house still
open, heard the grandparents approaching the vacated lounge, and just
laughed, - it was the Mary Celeste, the mysterious empty but living
house - it seemed ridiculous that we were running away from those poor
harmless grandparents - hell, we were terrified. - Down on the pine
needle floor Luke was bent double trying as best he could to smother
his laughter, looking up at me saying 'just jump man jump, come on,
it's not too high', and I was laughing and swaying until right at the
last second, when I could even hear the conversation of Luke's
grandparents and sister moving into the lounge, I toppled
unceremoniously onto the ground next to Luke.

I was scratched and bruised, Luke was nearly dying laughing - so was I
- we lay there fighting for breath and trying to be silent and at the
same time listening as best we could to the voices coming from the
house. Once recovered we shiftily moved into the other garden, eyeing
the kitchen window looking for movement, then at the last minute made a
dash for it and ran spluttering and giggling down the side of the
bungalow and out onto the safety of the street. We didn't stop running
until we were at a safe distance, we looked back to check that we
hadn't been spotted then collapsed out of breath onto the pavement -
still laughing like maniacs.

Luke wanted to just forget about it, leave his sister to it and not go
back until late that night, but I felt guilty - the poor grandparents I
thought, they don't need finding out that their grandchildren are
corrupt, they just want them to be good sweet children, too old for all
that I thought. I made Luke ring his sister from the phone box - and
wow, we were ok, all they'd done was stay for a minute or two to check
everything was all right - they'd complained about the mess in the
kitchen and the noxious smell of air freshener but that was it, we were
off the hook. So back we went, walking the long way this time, and
settled nicely back into our old routine - that night there was a big
party and all the mess had returned by the next day.

When his parents arrived back from their holiday Luke was in a bit of
trouble, there were a couple of unmistakable cigarette burns on the
floor and a few glasses had been broken, but all in all everything was
fine. In fact I think his parents were pleasantly surprised, they knew
what he was like and could have guessed what had been going on, but as
long as the house wasn't too messed up they were happy, I think they
understood how it was.