MN
Electrical. Ashley road. BRISTOL-- 1992/ 2006/
2009/ 2016 / 2022
The
shop had closed years ago and you pushed sheets of plywood to get up
to the flat. There were six of us in there, me shacked up in
someone's room. I suppose I should say my boyfriend's room but that's
not how I saw him really. Bryn. It never felt like a relationship ,
more an intermission, somewhere to stay while I worked out where to
go next.
In
the winter the parameters of my world were confined to that freezing
flat. Time was etched out between monitors and mixing desks. I
watched the weeks unravel from a black and white portable, stretches
of daytime tv subsumed in the amethyst light of the room.
He
was always there, a heavy morphean presence, sighing with his back to
me in a broken office chair . Hours would melt into the noodling
labyrinths of Cubase, the bland dogmatism of drum and bass
messageboards. Over the winter he'd got kind of bulky, all that
weed, all those nights playing x box with bowls of doritos. When the
spring came, casting its brutal light on that dusty hallway, I
started going out without him.
STAPLETON
ROAD. --
Day
three of a heatwave, must be 30 degrees out there-
It's
all kicking off , they're not letting some Somali bloke sign on .
Twitchy
attention across the open plan office sucked into a writhing circle
of G4s uniforms.
Onlookers
emerging from Black Swan opposite .
other
blokes mobilizing--
I'm
sitting on a soft green chair watching Nigerian security guards push
him around. Can hear the sirens, the noise outside and i'm thinking
this is going to take time.
I'm
hot after the run down here, sheen of make up slipping off my face.
They won’t sign you if you’re a minute late.
I'm
waiting for an emergency payout, my personal issue.
I
forgot to bring something to read. I look at my phone, scroll through
texts--
look
across the street to the pub, blokes outside with pints of cider,
bottles of lager-- red faced and jeering as the bloke gets thrown in
the back of the van--
My
turn. Usual moronic hassle. What have you been doing to look for
work. Wrote jobseekers diary with five different pens at the kitchen
table before . All this pointless stuff , what i'm available for-
warehouse work, call centres. They want me to go to some logistics
depot in Swindon, threatening to stop my money if I don't.
I
draw on a composite of fictions and convince them i'm pliable.
Neroli,
Magnolia, Rose
those
scents, pulling me out of that seething hive, across the car park-
Black
swan, them lot, usual crew, watching me in the yard, heat intense
and my legs and arms bare, burning now-
push
through Blackthorn stinking leers to the violet cool of the bar.
-subsonic
,big screens, adverts ricocheting across the walls--
it's
the tramadol, maybe it's too much, making everything tremble,
ceilings shimmer, indigo blur round the door-
Sit
in a burgundy corner, ripped wallpaper, low mahogany table, vodka
glass outlined with a neon glow. It was Adam that gave me the
tramadol , told me he scored a batch from a hospital porter. Before
that I was just getting by with the diazepam.
Adam.
Should never have got involved with him. I mean he's alright
looking, mohawk, thick black hair in gluey crests , but the way he
acts, so manic all the time, i can’t handle it.
Gold
piercings in jagged eyebrows-
Fruit
machine
drugs
taped under snooker tables.
This
is a ritual coming in here after signing on, when i've escaped from
the dole office I come in and have a vodka to celebrate--
They
don’t own me. They can cut off my giro. I’m still here. That's
how I think sometimes, I can just take off - hidden tracks, a
helix of boltholes. If it gets too much I can just leave. And i'm
thinking maybe it's time, Bryn at home on Cubase, Adam liking me too
much--
Black
Uhuru on the juke box, juke box wired up to juggernaut soundsystem-
room
reverberates, blokes at opposite table skinning up. I know some of
them from when I was living in that squat in Stokes Croft. Wiry one
comes over, blond pony tail and grey adidas tracksuit –asks me if
I want to order any shopping from Broadmead…
I
tell him, Chanel Chance
and that YSL nail varnish, irridescent black, shining blue like a
magpie feather, he says yeah, should be able to bring it all back
for twenty.-
look
across at the dole office, red brick fortress casting doubt over the
pub--
security
guards talking to the police , screw faces broken now with
sycophantic smiles-
Adam
texts and says he's coming down. I've been meeting up with him in
here, nothing serious- just having a drink, getting stoned in the
afternoon.
Out
in the yard, concrete is warping in the heat, splitting into zones--
exhaust
fumes, cigarette smoke and that scent , Lemon
Haze reminding me of last summer-
Collapsing
buildings beneath the motorway flyover. Biggas carwash, men hanging
round in vests and bomber jackets.
Hoardings
,luminous poster shreds.
Shah
Jalal mosque.
A
load of lads in off the street, baggy jeans, fluoro vests, Adam's
crew wheeling massive speaker cabs . Yard becomes a spindly
convolution of tarpauline and scaffolding poles. He comes over in
that bouyant, arrogant way he has, spike under his lip , vexed
Egyptian eyes.
I
knew from the start I shouldn't get involved with him .
When
he asked me to go round to his I always made excuses , but then there
was that party, that solstice one in the orange factory--
me
in that stretchy pink dress, bleached hair backcombed, first blazing
heat of the year.
We'd
been drinking in the Coach house, that pub under the railway bridge.
Place was full of Trowbridge punks, rough cider, Amebix patches
hanging off denim jackets. There was something disorientating about
that pub, like stepping into a mirror, all the rooms seemed to
double - two bars, two snooker tables, twin corridors of yellow
light. -
I
remember the banners draped behind a burgundy stage- text becoming
invocations-- Class War A.L.F the conjuring of Swing risings.
There
was a yard at the back, plastic chairs and sullen brick walls..
Sabs
in combat trousers, black vests, baseball caps
plotting
rural revolt
I
remember how we stepped out on to the street to face a crescent of
filth with telephoto lenses.
We
gathered in the stark , mathematical shadows of an iron railway
bridge and faded into lanes of conifers . The track brought us to
the M32 and the concrete inclines of an unsteady footbridge. Lines of
vehicles were waiting on Gatton road, a convoy going to this party.
It
was in a red brick factory on an industrial estate hemmed in by a
span of railway tracks and the elevated section of the A434. The
convoy trailed into a desolate lane of corrugated iron and
breezeblock walls.
We
slinked in under a metal shutter, place still had the stink of UHT
orange -
I
remember heavy chains and fluorescent strip lights, long corridors
crawling with glyphs and sigils--
then
a vast hall-- all the rigs were in there, doors thrown open to a
scratchy meadow of broom and gorse-
bashment,
jungle, breakcore -
big
crew in there , time distorted, circles moving.
I
wanted to be outside—there was a bonfire and a few people I knew
from the Swan .
Adam
with his mohawk, his intense eyes.
Wasn't
really my type, bit young, early 20s maybe. I wasn't really feeling
it-- there was something not right about him, maybe the accent, a
kind of public school smoothness beneath the slangy narco speak--
there was a swagger about him but even through the veils of MDMA I
knew it was fake.
We
talked for hours, strange unspooling conversations about hospitals,
hostels, the network of institutions he'd inhabited. He told me
about his walks around Bristol—he called them circuits, told me
they were all mapped. He made notes on every
place he scoped, routes in and out of the city centre, Broadmead
Shopping centre, the new Harbourside Development, the abandoned
sorting office behind Temple Meads.
melancholic
dub , stacker PA's
bass
kick
drum
scratchy
breakbeats
crew
swarming around us, absorbing us into a strident, fleshy band-
that
ALF lot from the Coach House going on about the Beaufort Hunt and
that Life Sciences place in Cambridge-
the
monotone credence of their talk, the tramadol, the residues of those
pills- I just remember the motorway slip road buckling, bending
like plasticine as anxiety rose in icy beads on my arms.
I
wanted to trace his circuits through the city centre, back to Easton-
back
to Stapleton road, a load of us, a collision of his crew and mine.
5 am, sky a dazzling salvo of
Freesia,
Litchi, Peony.
scents
coming in waves--
Spiralling
tracks round Brandon hill, site of insurrectionary gatherings, mass
gatecrashing.
He
showed me nests of intricate symbols on walls and windows, he told me
he'd been communing with the revenants of the city, channelling them
into oppositional currents-
He
spraypainted burn down
sigils over the new developments with a practiced elegance, dancing
runes marking the hoardings, the new vestibules-
He
took me through Harbourside, the rebranded docks, showed me the
heritage symbols , the psychtropic theme park, the parched tangle
of trees in aluminium tubs.
Toxic
stink of the aerosol -
Ox-eye
daisies, red campion , knapweed-
Cascading
down Bridewell street, the ruby fracturing of morning-
buildings
opening up , neon interiors, glowing amusement arcades .
Saint
Jude's
Saint
Agnes
Stapleton
Road
Shutters
down, the haze of morning rain burning off in the heat-- iridescent
vapours and saplings of ash in breezeblock yards--
TSB,
luminous signs replicating , detaching from the front of the
building , glowing circles of jade-
two
storey houses, flaking paint, grey with exhaust fumes
all
sloping towards us.
Attic
conversions heaving off rooftops, cracking and breaking--
He
reaches for my hand, a cool act of possession-- I feel nothing but
pale, narcissitic attraction- the glimmer that comes from being
wanted-
had
hoped for another taste of last summer, those incendiary days of
Yorkshire, -
but
as we traipse through overgrown gardens, expanses of scorched ivy,
it's not even an echo.
breezeblock
walls, exquisite scent of damask , forgotten tangle of roses.
When
I first turned up in Bristol last Autumn it was about getting away,
being off the map. What I was looking for never appeared. It wasn't
enough, me and Bryn, one of those dull, drifting relationships,
neither of us really bothered, shacked up for convenience and comfort
. It started when he was coming down off a three day bender. He came
round to our squat in Stokes Croft and asked us for temazepam, or
codeine, or anything to take the edge off. He was hallucinating
catastrophes, walls swarming with black. I'd managed to straighten
him out, nursed him through the next few days. He'd triggered
something in me, a protective, nurturing side and we started hanging
out in the flat at Ashley road. It was less hectic than the squat in
Stokes Croft and I thought maybe it could be ok staying there a
while, I could cook dinner and have everyone in for a few beers,
seemed more like a family than that big office block before.
Transit
vans parked skewed angles on the pavement,
Adam
smiling , holding my hand,
a
greedy, monopolising smile.
Narwaz
Kurdish
Flat
to let , window held together with parcel tape.
mattresses
and bed frames.
heavy
plastic sheets behind smashed windows.
There
are three of us now, me Adam and some bloke picking up coke cans in
search of a lost stash. The way he trudges, seems like he's blind
to us. Adam said he'd met him sleeping rough in the Bear Pit, that
brutalist hollow between Stokes Croft and town.
Shah
Jalal mosque, under the motorway flyover. It was them that was first
onto him, Adam, much later, long after i'd gone-
Peach
walls, ,flow charts, redacted words.
I
mean i'd seen it, I knew that he wasn't
right, that's why i'd ended up avoiding his
calls, why I bailed out of Bristol altogether— he was too hectic,
all those weird drugs he was getting from the hospital but still
the ban on alcohol--
squeezing
through green railings, beneath the sweep of the motorway-
round
the back of the dole fortress,, 90s architecture harshing my buzz.
He
puts his arm around me, speaks softly to me, presses a valium into
my hand-
Row
of derelict houses, windows sitexed.
Buddleia
sprouting, bin bags hurled on pavement – a network of itinerants
following codes-
they
are there if you can read them--- marker pen letters sliding off
walls, shoes hanging from telegraph wires, sigils spraypainted on
plywood windows-
Under
the railway bridge- that stone they have in Bristol, crumbling red
like Mars-
their
house ,
three
satellite dishes, barred windows, yellow newspapers taped inside-
and
pale green plaster like sugared almonds.
a
front room you walk into off the street -
70s
wallpaper, orange geometries unfolding across damp walls-
mottled
olive green carpet.
place
stripped of furniture--
Records
and cds splintered across the floor, prismatic reflections on the
ceiling.
photocopied
maps in a heap,
miniature
lightbulbs, circuit boards-
And
upstairs, two little rooms. That biscuity smell of old bedding.-
sloping
ceilings, dorma windows , light filtered through sitex sheets-
We
sit talking, he says he wants a total reordering of the UK, wants
to see the entire system dismantled-
I
say I understand that--
He
says Britain is a cesspit, says the shopping centres, the clubs in
town are immoral hives -
feel
like i've been here before-
those
words, echoes of another time-
the
sleeping bag , the scorch marks, , marker pen circles-
Spike
under lip.. two rings through eyebrow-
he's
staring at me, demanding something.
I
say i'm going downstairs to the bathroom
hexamethylene
triperoxide diamine,
spooked
electronics
video
on loop.
everything
falling into place.
Creep
through the front room-- bloke shuffling about near the door —I'm
not even sure if he can see me.
Into
the kitchen , missing mdf units, gouge marks in the wall-
I
try the door but it's jammed behind a case of steel.
Bathroom
at the back. Wasp carapaces on a dusty window sill. Peroxide
bottles, mould creeping across the ceiling. I try the frosted
window, feels stuck, frame resisted by a chlorophyl bank, a yard of
nettles neck high. I clamber onto the ledge , shove through and
fall into the stinging tangle , blisters of pain erupt across my
body, the pleasure of them rising in the rush--
By
2009 I was back living in Yorkshire, i'd never bothered keeping in
touch with him or any of that crew. I'd never been able to connect
with Bristol and didn't miss it.
I
read they'd given him 11 years. Must have converted the year after I
left.
Broadmead
shopping centre was the target.
Home
made vests.
Air
gun pellets, batteries , electric bulb filaments, ball bearings,
tubs of screws.
12
bottles of peroxide.
They
said he kept the explosives in the fridge in a Family Circle biscuit
tin.