BEATS OF LOVE 

98. Headache by Grouper

RUNNING THROUGH the farmhouses on Red Hill with my mate's older brother, giving chase was exhilarating and once off the path and running across open field, I could easily picture my dead body, left, concealed beneath the long, reedy blades of grass. 

By the time I was eventually caught, all he delivered were a few weak kicks at my scrunched up body. I thought there and then that living in my imagination was more fun than anything reality could offer.

It was just as well. By the time my orthodontist, Mr Bogues, finished his assessment, my evenings were spent sitting patiently with a red, greyhound-style brace clamped around my face, waiting for my teeth to straighten. Barred from entering normal mid-adolescence, I retreated into a world of records, playing them every Sunday night on my imaginary radio show.

By the time he showed me his success with the before and after moulds, my hooter had sprouted both across and out of my face. A face now riddled with at least four red boils at any one time. No wonder I continued with my imaginary radio show and, in essence, still do. Escapism has never left me.

'So', asks nobody at all, 'what is the best record you've bought this week?' This haunting beauty, I reply. A record I should've bought in 2016 but didn't. Thankfully repressed in time for the duvet months. Enjoy. 

     

BEATS OF LOVE 

97. Supa Kool by Mr Fingers

AGEING CAN be great. If you do it properly, by taking a leaf out of Saint Anthony of Padua's book. Who stated wisely:

 'Consider every day that you are then for the first time beginning; and always act with the same fervour as on the first day you began.' 

The tragedy of aging is often a mental ossification, where stubborn dogmas supplant active living and invite despair. The resulting gloom on many elderly faces reflects the heavy, subconscious burden of pretending to know everything.

Propaganda is nothing but a calculated lie and, thanks to social media, it pretty much dictates what riles us. Whether we're buying fake news or opposing it. We've witnessed a complete clusterfuck of Conservative policies and are still sloshing about in a state of false consciousness. Unable to recognise the face of our oppressor. Thankfully, I've now switched off and decided humans don't evolve. What I probably thought aged five.  

When I was living with my kid sister, our housemate was properly middle-class. She had a part-time job that paid more than my full-time job and an allowance on top. I never used the phone, but spoke to my mother when my sister was on the phone. Anyway, we get this bill and our housemate said she didn't recognise some pretty pricey numbers and wanted it split between us.

My sister, being softer natured than me, said she'd oblige, but I snuck into her room and rifled through her things until I found a pad with these numbers. When I confronted her, she soon-after packed off and left saying she didn't feel secure in my company. Her posh family looked at me like I was a thief. It then formed my belief that people with money and easy access to lawyers are not to be trusted. A belief that I still hold today. 

But I know I must let go of such rigid ideas about politics and class to truly live with the fervour of a fresh new beginning. In the meantime, I almost convince myself that I'm beginning already by surrendering to this beauty and losing myself in time and space. 

BEATS OF LOVE

96. Scorpio Rising (The Scientist Mix) by Death in Vegas with Liam Gallagher

WOKE UP up feeling lost at sea. Then had to sweep a Massiv dead pigeon into a bin bag and felt even worse.

That sudden chill when you know you've got two dozen working weeks ahead and you already feel totally knackered after just one. The regret you feel at frittering away all your holidays in a summer that's pouring with rain. Then you bang on this and everything brightens up.

Life in technicolour even. And the sun even comes out giving me a whole day of clear blue sky. If ever Noel's trite Status Quo styling is used to sound gratingly like The Beatles, it's here. The original version sounds too self-consciously aware of this and so creeps about like a non-poisonous snake. The genius that is The Scientist strips away a lot of those superfluous psychedelics and decides that adding keys and vibraphone with toasting over Liam's Lennonesque drawling works best. And it does. General Jah Mikey steals the show, demonstrating that sometimes suspect ideas work really well.

You could roll a big one, or you could do what I do and find your escape in the garden, reaching for the trowels while lost in its reggae skank. Music has always been my lifeline. It is no longer just a hobby; it's the final barrier between me and absolute chaos, recharging my soul the moment Massiv dead pigeons test my patience.

BEATS OF LOVE

95. Something in the Air by Me

The grazing sheep, the divisive red-stone brick
Of a mill-town anger—or is it just innovation stifling the air?
Why commonwealth cousins sailed across a body-filled ocean
Owing to the starkest decisions, and ripping, and killing—

Yet as they landed, the mad sixties swung,
With such wild force, curlers flew like chaff.
And our flush cotton kingdom plunged and died.

Now, rival factions from the terraces
Stand bound in quiet, micro-veiled assault,
Before they vanish in the millennial smog.

All eyes turn to the scapegoats of the screen,
Whom they once baited on the public air,
Now answering back with that same carmine rage—
Like the inflamed suffragette hardening her stance,
To shield the bedrock of a basic right.