You know how the smallest thing can trigger a memory?

I was driving to work this morning, thinking how lucky I was that it only takes an hour and a half and that it’s payday tomorrow. When Status Quo came on Radio 2 (I listen to Radio 2 because I am old, and bald, and fat – and because one day, Chris Evans might make reference to the two books that I sent for him and the team to have a read of – But I shan’t be holding my breath, because: implied advertising / BBC / not in this day and age / Oh blimey no, more than my job’s worth.)

And it certainly wouldn’t happen this week (or next week) as he’s currently off and Sara Cox is filling in for him – And it’s his Birthday today (1/4/15 – April Fool’s day… Figures)– Happy Birthday Chap

So, got hit a bit with the tangent-bat there didn’t we?  Back to The Quo.  Now, I can’t actually remember which track it was that they played.  It wasn’t Caroline, or Rocking all over the World and in fairness it doesn’t matter as my vision did the whole ‘biddle-biddle-biddle’ thing and I was transported back to 1985 and a sticky-floored nightclub in Derby called…

The Rockhouse…

Now, I’ve spoken about The Rockhouse before, if you remember it’s where those nice, friendly ladies, Rockbitch, played and my gibbon-armed colleague managed to investigate their anatomy quite closely a few times. In the late 80’s – early 90’s. It was pretty much my second home.  I had a lot of ‘experiences' there, but the one that came to mind in this particular instance was one that happened most weekends (if a particular instance can happen repeatedly that is)

You know a particular song that has a dance routine?  I’m thinking of things like The Macarena and suchlike.  Or how in any given Hollywood film that features a dance-number there’s a bit where all the ‘normal’ extras clear off and are replaced by ‘super-pretty’ extras who launch into a spectacularly choreographed routine featuring a song that the leading man has only just written?

There’d be a time when the DJ would play Status Quo… Any Status Quo track would do*, and two lines of greasy biker/rocker/grebo types would line up facing each other like the chorus line of Mad-Max the musical and ‘spread’ – Now you’ve probably seen this dance even if you’ve not known what it is, it happens a lot at birthday discos for 40 & 50 somethings and wedding receptions where the just-pre-elderly enjoy embarrassing the youngsters. It consists of a number of people (Well, I suppose one person can spread, but it’s probably the saddest sight in the world) standing, facing each other and then sort of moving the top half of their bodies, forcefully, left and right with the beat whilst leaving their bottom halves immobile.

I’m not describing this hugely well am I?

But you know what I mean right?  Believe it or not, there was a hierarchy of ‘spreaders’…

Right at the bottom were the ‘swayers’ – The people who really didn’t know what was going on and just wanted to be part of something larger than themselves. They would look, nervously, along the spreading line whilst flopping about whilst repeatedly falling out of time with everyone else.  They were often felled by impromptu accidental head-butts.  I guess that you’d call them n00bs nowadays.

Then you had the ‘loopers’ – The ones who put their thumbs in the belt-loops of their jeans as they had seen on Top of the Pops the week before… This was a common misunderstanding by ‘trendies’ and this was a dance more associated with the bands The Bay City Rollers & Mudd in the previous decade.  This is the style you’d mostly see at parties.

Then, above the ‘loopers’ by quite a large amount, were the ‘punchers’. These were the first rank of ‘real’ spreaders.  The dance itself was very simple, you twisted to the right for two beats, looking down, then moved your head/hands to the upper left for a beat, then to the upper right for a beat, then down and left for two beats (Repeat ad nauseum – sometimes quite literally) – A ‘puncher’ is identified by a punching motion during the upper two beats, often with the opposite hand.  Occasionally, people stood next to punchers were rendered unconscious due to standing too close… More often than not, during a guitar solo.

Right at the top of the tree you have the ‘Ninjas’ or ‘Aces’ – These people are the elite.  They’ve been spreading to Status Quo songs since before Frank & Ricky were touring in Frank’s Dad’s Ice-Cream van singing about Matchstick men.  Their bodies move like heated quicksilver, they watch with impunity as the people next to them in line fall to the floor in exhaustion.  Where ‘punchers’ punched the air, the ‘ninjas’ would use an open hand in such graceful movements as ‘clearing away the mystic wind’ and the ever popular ‘if you only touch it gently, it’s not technically masturbation’.  There was no sweating from them, no heavy breathing, and no excuses.  And you could tell who they were even if they weren’t dancing for two easily spotted tell-tale features:

1. 1)      They wore crowns and ermine capes – A bit like Freddie Mercury’s
2. 2)      They had ‘trap’ muscles (the ones that join your head to your shoulders) like a steroid-addled cardassian weight-lifter from all of the forcefull bobbing about

I’m proud to say I was eventually one of their number, it took me years to work my way from being a humble ‘swayer’ through the ranks of myriad ‘punchers’ to the heady heights of ‘Ninja’dom. 

What did it earn me, other than the undying respect of my peers? you ask.

Well I'll tell you...

I could legally ask one of the lower ranked customers to give me a piggy-back across the 18” of flooded gents’ toilet.  And they told me who could turn off the security cameras whilst I became ‘better acquainted’ with various young ladies on the fire escape outside, rather than televising it in HD on the stage projector.

(OK, so technically that only happened once, but it was a very long time ago. And it wasn't to me, honest.)

'They' say you should dance like no-one's watching.  I beg to differ, I say you should dance like everyone's watching, but that might be 'cos I'm a massive show-off - Or a bit of a cock.

Rock-on kids

*and possibly ‘Spirit in the Sky’ by Doctor & the Medics but not all the time. 

But will it fly SMick?

Firstly can I congratulate my Daughter on starting her own Blog - Gods bless it and all who sail in it. Hopefully it will give you a somewhat skewed teenagers eye view of the Dandy Universe.

Important word of caution, whilst I am usually a good natured, happy go lucky kinda guy with an infinite amount of patience and startlingly good cheekbones, any sniff of abuse or unwarranted* unkindness towards her and I will, most definately, reach down the perpetrator's epiglottis and show them things that would normally only be available via x-ray.

-oOo-

Right, onto the job in hand.

We've all heard stories about people who've found wonderful things in the most unlikely of places. Antiques Roadshow is full of people who have found original Picasso sketches in their Aunt Mabel's loft or there are those despicable people who find an original, fully working, 1920's Brough Superior in a neighbour's garage which they buy for a fiver as 'It was our Derek's and he never used it, even when he was still alive'.

So, imagine my excitement, when everyone's favourite Chilli cook and professional Scotsman, my good friend SMick, arrived at my front door with news of a 'vehicle' that he'd found out about, just lying in the mud in a farmer's field just around the corner. It was, quite literally, just around the corner, as in those days you could spit the distance from my house to the wonderful British countryside - You had to check no-one was in the way of course, things like that didn't go down well with the residents' association, but a well-hawked loogey would land on grass, or in a tree, or on a sheep.

So, dutifully, I clamboured into his Peugeot and drove the 100 yards to the farm. I walked around to the outbuildings, through knee deep mud, in my white Status Quo style white hi-tops (It was around this time that I changed my footwear of choice to second-hand army boots) and said to SMick.

'OK, where is it?'

'There,' pointed SMick, proudly

'Where, is it behind that scabby P.O.S. Mk1 Transit Luton?'

The slow grin that swept across SMick's face told me all I really needed to know.

'You've got to be.. erm... flipping joking, I'll be in the car...' I said, and started to squidge away as fast as I could.

He convinced me that it would be a good idea, a nice little project, something to do during the day when the pubs were shut. And if we couldn't get it going, then the box on the back was aluminium (Not Al-OO-min-um) and we could weigh it in and get some money out of it.

I honestly cannot remember how we got it out of the field, I think I blocked it from my memory the same way that victims of alien abduction do, I'm fairly sure it involved lots of sheets of wood, many, many bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale and an almost Olympic quantity of swearing.

Eventually, it found itself on my drive. It didn't actually look all that bad with a large proportion of the mud washed off. It also turned out to have a V6 engine which was a bonus, which on it's own started a selection of trike/go-kart fantasies. After the battery was left on charge for about six weeks, the engine would succesfully turn over but not 'catch', dutifully we did what any men confronted with a failing engine would do, we stood staring at the engine and scratched our heads.

'I think the carb needs priming,' SMick suggested, sagely.

'Right you are, how do we do that?' I replied - I wasn't then the mechanical whiz that I'm still not now.

'Well, we just take the air filter off, put something flammable down the carbs and see if it will start then.'

'Flammable?' I asked, nervously, not quite liking where this was going, 'Like what?'

'Like... petrol!'

'Like petrol, or actually petrol?'

'Actually petrol, we've got petrol, and it's what you'd expect to find in the carb anyway, should be fine.'

I bowed to his greater knowledge and we poured, what turned out to be significantly too much, petrol into the top of the carburetor and turned the engine over.

Now, I've never seen a real giant lightsaber, but I can imagine it looking something like what came out of the top of the carb - a nine foot high column of flame and noise which existed just long enough to drive my eardrums into my rectum and blow my eyebrows over to the other side of the road - It's a good job, in hindsight that we'd taken the bonnet off else it would have bounced off it and cut a neat porthole in the garage door.

'I think we might scrap it,' Said Smick, batting at his still smouldering sweatshirt.

'What?' I shoulted as I was still mostly deaf and over the other side of the road looking for my left eyebrow.

Over the next few weeks we set about stripping down the van to its component parts. Many interesting and fun times were had during the project.

Do you remember when I talked about our friend 'Gullible' Steve? The gentleman who ate of the baby-carrot and rottweiler chilli? Well, a couple of incidents involved him:

1) He was stumbling about in the back of the van, seeing if there was anything of any worth amongst the rotting hay and mud. When there was a cry, a protracted coughing fit, a torrent of expletives directed at myself, SMick, life in general and birds in particular. I turned to SMick, who was sat next to me in a deck-chair and said,

'Didn't think to tell him about the nest full of rotten blackbird eggs we found yesterday then?'

'Nope,' replied SMick, taking another gulp of his beer. 'But I did put it right near the side door so we wouldnea forget to throw it in the bin.'

2) The roof of the Luton box was made of fibreglass, which is not as weigh-innable as aluminium sheet, so we asked Steve to have a go at taking it off. We assumed (Which taught me that you should never assume) that he would get a ladder, and maybe a saw and cut the roof off. But no, he clamboured up onto the roof with an axe and a hammer.

'Is that a good idea?' I asked SMick, knowing full well that it wasn't

'Idea? No... Opportunity to laugh? Yes.' He replied, reaching down into the crate for another beer.

It took him a good fifteen minutes to fall the eight feet or so into the back of the van as he smashed the roof our from under himself. Thinking about it now, we really should have thrown that blackbird nest in the bin.

I didn't remain completely unscathed through the project, I had countless fibreglass splinters pulled out of my arms with pliers, cuts, bruises and boo-boos of various kinds.

And I understand that SMick still bears the scar of his particular mishap. We had got to the stage of trying to flatten the aluminium enough to get it in the back of the car and take it to the scrapyard and SMick was belting away with a lump hammer at a piece of metal that he was stood on.

Well, he missed... And hit his shin... He went completely silent, looked at the group of grubby schoolchildren that were hanging around watching us, looked at me, said, very quietly,

'Excuse me.'

And went inside the house.

The flow of profanity lasted a good half an hour and featured words that I didn't think could be used in that particular context. It left seven local dogs paralysed down one side and a further three pregnant. He'll show you the scar now if you ask him nicely, it's quite impressive.

I'll never forget that summer - And neither will the person whose drive we dumped the burning remains of the van on.

Anywho, I've been informed that my Daughter has mentioned about the time I shot myself, maybe I'll tell you about that on Monday. Have a good weekend, and if you see me around, feel free to buy me a pint - I think I deserve it, I've had a hard life!


*There are times when my Daughter's Blog will warrant abuse, feel free to fill your boots in situations such as these.