Contents
Cover
About the Book
Dedication
Title Page
ten years in an open necked shirt
euro communist/gucci socialist
the ghost of al capone
i mustn’t go down to the sea again
the face behind the scream
90 degrees in my shades
psycle sluts: part one
psycle sluts: part two
the day my pad went MAD
i married a monster from outer space
belladonna
i wanna be yours
readers’ wives
i was a teenage werewolf – or was i
a love story in reverse
this heart disease called love
post-war glamour girl
full-time loser
the new assassin
the it man
evidently chicken town
the day the world stood still
i travel in biscuits
salome maloney
midnight shift
kung fu international
36 hours
the pest
drive she said
valley of the lost women
gaberdine angus
i don’t wanna be nice
health fanatic
track suit
sleepwalk
beezley street
suspended sentence
limbo
a distant relation
the house on nowhere street
spilt beans
majorca
conditional discharge
nothing
23rd
the bronze adonis
you never see a nipple in the daily express
the isle of man
night people
Copyright
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781448162031
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Published by Vintage 2012
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Copyright © April Music 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983
Illustrations © April Music 1982, 1983
John Cooper Clarke has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
First published in Great Britain in 1983 by
Arena, an imprint of the Hutchinson Publishing Group
Vintage
Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA
www.vintage-books.co.uk
Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm
The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780099583769
Punk. Poet. Pioneer.
The Bard of Salford’s seminal collection is as scabrous, wry & vivid now as it was when first published over 25 years ago.
The marvellous illustrations herein
Were rendered by my great friend, Steve Maguire.
I shall always remain grateful for his undervalued genius.
John Cooper Clarke
September 2012
to young macdonald
(the one without the farm)
Lenny Siberia was the bastard offspring of Captain Africa (the lard mogul) and Tracy. The captain disappeared without Tracy who perished alone with her diamond collection, the victim of a mau-mau hit squad, leaving Lenny alone with the one thing money can’t buy poverty
He was discovered at one year old by a wayward nun; he had been living in the dumb waiter of the zambezi juice bar Sister James (for it was she) lost no time in mailing the child, by first-class parcel post, to a friend in Brussels. Fortunately he was erroneously delivered to the Eros Luxury Club, a converted charabang in the bowels of Manchester’s la quartière latin.
The proprietor, a swarthy ill-mannered character of Armenian origin, received the package with a bestial grunt. Taking a curved knife from a canteen of curved knives, he slashed it open Lenny gazed into the face of this his first stranger and what he saw was pure malevolence
He ran down flattened streets patrolled by aimless amputees through a world of refugees, out of the cold war into the deep freeze, he ran out of money, he ran into trouble
He was adopted by Sheba and Rex, a pair of alsatian dogs who regarded the boy with an uneasy ambivalence They lived in an Art Deco cocktail cabinet by the bicycle sheds of Salford Metropolitan Police compound They were devout Catholics.
It was arranged for Lenny to attend the School of Our Lady of the Seven Robes of Gold by the Garden of Sorrows in the Vale of Tears which was run with teutonic efficiency by the little daughters of the sick under the iron rule of Mother Cyrene.
Mother Cyrene was everything rancid to Lenny her mouth a malignant slit in the murderous mask she called a face, her cheesy breath steaming up his spectacles, her eyes like mobile ball bearings – their colour left a mechanical taste in the mouth
Daily religious instruction furnished his vacant mind with tales of treachery, morbid betrayals, oceans pink with the blood of multitudes, saints looking to the sky their living bodies smashed by hammers before the alien idols of the heathen Incense filled his nostrils with the fatal breath of ghosts, hermaphrodite choirs droned in his ears.
Each student could elect to spend their free time in one of three ways sporting activities, visiting the sick or in the service of the Knights of the Sacred Orchid. The latter seemed the least demanding, the most hygenic and it also appealed to the lad’s naive sense of chivalry.
The Knights of the Sacred Orchid held their thrice-weekly routines in the spacious open-plan lounge of the sinister Raoul, who affected the manner of the proto-fascist with psychotic attention to detail His navy blue hair sleeked with ancient grease, his meagre Don Ameche moustache waxed stiff like the legs of a dead fly. He went nowhere without the chums.
The chums were namely Horace and Boris, the brothers Morris, a titanic duet each in possession of a powder-blue safari suit and arms of anthropoidal length Their physical immensity fully emphasized the stiff angular grace of the nifty Raoul who now led the way into the lounge
The lounge was furnished by three rows of seven leatherette easy chairs faced by one formica table The curtains were the colour of mustard embellished with the bleeding heart motif The walls were hung with colourless daubs The carpet was monotonous, its pattern gave the impression of a small animal crapping at regular intervals The whole scene was lit by a soundless colour TV and a row of six orange table lamps in which shifting globules of molten wax moved like specimens of rare snot
Enter Mother Cyrene, flanked by the chums and a hyper-reverent Raoul who wore the look of a man obsessed She stood on the table and began
‘Even as I speak a filthy tide of bolshevism issues from the dives of tin pan alley in short the world is a subterranean playground for lounge lizards from every sphere of idleness and crime who their pockets a-jingle with Moscow money go unchecked about their evil business take china cathedrals ransacked churches turned into judo schools I have seen the finest laundries in the world converted into bordellos for the gratification of the lumpenproletariat what with the drink trade on its last legs and the land running fallow for want of artificial manures I leave you with this thought’