I find myself flaunting tradition. I feel the steps beneath the soles of my feet and I turn west instead of east. The grass looks a helluva lot greener this way. The sky seems to be a lot bluer as well. On the pavements children have chalked their names, MYRA, SUE, MARK, nothing else just ownership. They own themselves, parents are absent from this world, bedtime and school a forever away.
Cars appear and vanish tracing their wet tyres on the tarmac and yellow lines. I stand and watch the different models chase themselves to houses, pubs, schools and hopeful religious meetings. They swallow their driver and regurgitate them at their destination. I find the fences are black with disease and exhaust fumes. They border our estate, frightening the little, posh bloated people who read the Times. Asians collect the milk from red doorsteps whilst facing west. Or is it East?
I really don't think it matters too much.
Across the street, bricks reinforce a crumbling wall only marginally. Shafts of dusty, grey light gleam through the holes like a torch on a filling. Rain wets the tiled roof with huge, pear shaped drops. A small, hunchbacked old lady shuffles along like an obese armadillo, her head perpetually looking at the ground searching for her lost youth. She radiates age but glorifies death.
School children run ahead of me, each head a home for a different person. Some swagger with pride, their uniforms a badge of honour and respect. Others with heads bowed, staring at their clumsy, unfaithful feet.
The shop doors are open; Mrs Ash almost bustles into me, her eyes ablaze with religious fervour. Stale perfume follows her down the street knocking people over in its wake. She's never late for church that woman. A pint of steri props open the door, it's still cold from the fridge, so I pick it up and the door shuts. Money is warm in my hand but Mr. Adam is as cold as the milk. Bloody ignorant! I can see it etched on his face. But he still takes my money. Of course…
Trees loom over the park walls their branches a shaggy Rastafarian. I see faces in the wet leaves, full of expression but at a loss for words. It probably isn't windy enough. My left hand is blue from the milk bottle; depressed by the climatic change I have induced upon it. I change hands and quickly make another enemy. The traffic wardens are preying on the unsuspecting motorists early today. They've the look of exotic carrion in their black and yellow, just feasting on dead, cold metal. I hear a distant rumble; in the sky a plane paints a scrawl of ethereal fumes in its wake. There's a message there somewhere if I look hard enough. It says; don't be troubled with work today. I think I'll take its sensible advice and head for town. I pass buildings and houses where people are born and eventually die. They look like swollen, angry abscesses ready to burst. Decay is soaked into these streets; its smell stains the sky and permeates the rain. I search the people’s faces that pass me, but all I see is the mask and not the person underneath. I somehow find that depressing and futile.
We seem to stumble through life searching for something solid and real but eventually settle for a sanitised substitute. It's just a reflection, chalk on an old blackboard.
I kick my way through brown leaves and elicit attention from angry, mystified eyebrows. I don't feel ridiculed by them just lost and deeply sad. A wall holds court to chattering birds that flicker and move like a badly placed wig. They breathe life into my stride and the corners of mouth make fresh friends of my cheeks.
 
 I roll out of bed onto a floor littered with last night’s vices. A cheap, dead bottle of Morrinov Vodka, capless and sucked clean of its juices, prods me in the back. The usual vast space between my ears has become a huge, pulsating sore that screams every time my head moves. My mouth is dry and my breath belongs to the cat litter tray. Outside the birds are ignorant of my agony as their usually melodious voices peck holes into my brittle skull. I have the mother and father of all hangovers.
 The coffee pours like acid down my sensitive throat. Singing along with Ian Gillan in full cry is not recommended. "Smoke on the water, fire in the sky." And in my poor, raw larynx. Two fried eggs stare back at me, and I'm tempted to cover them with a liberal sprinkling of my own vomit. I pick up a cold slice of buttered toast and head for the comparative safety of the door.
 
 Mark is sat swaying on his garden wall, headphones the size of a small dog balanced on his shaven head. I wave half-heartedly and he grimaces a hello with his vacant eyes.
 ~ out last night?
~ yeah! up stairs all nite in't Crescent  
~ did ya see Cill ?
 ~ she wor kneckin' wi that purple haired twat
~ oh, reight
 ~ I'll do him far ya if ya want

  I left him at this point, his suggestion tempting as it was I couldn't find it in my slightly scarred heart to validate. It was highly unlikely Mark would follow it through anyway. He'd already had two broken noses and it was only January.
Town was brimming with juveniles. It's funny how I considered them kids now and how suddenly everyone below twenty was a child. Age seems to suddenly spring upon you when you least expect it. One minute you're squeezing spots and the next you're remembering them...fondly.
 Ame's Records doors were locked tight, a sign proclaiming, "CLOSED FOR REFURBISHMENT," pasted to the window. Inside I could see burley workmen ripping at shelves with claw hammers and screwdrivers, hard concentration stamped on their bovine faces. Change was becoming a regular part of this small, cotton mill town. Buildings were being reduced to rubble to make way for uglier, more modern structures. Our streets were falling beneath the huge hands of commercialism, the intrinsic neighbourliness of our communities being torn apart by square, characterless estates. The more progressive we become the further apart we drift.
 The Record Exchange was faithfully and thankfully open for business as usual. A quiet, browsing selection of infinitely different people where scouring the many racks. In one corner a small, leprechaunish man filed his way through Traditional Irish Folk Singers, his lips moving unintelligibly with each familiar title he comes across. Down the centre aisle a large, circular woman fights her way through various operettas, turning her nose up at the Male Soprano section. At the top aisle Martin Ruddock stands legs apart and jacket screaming,” WHO KILLED THE DEAD KENNEDY'S?" This is uncommonly subtle for Martin, "FUCK YOU AND MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!'' the usual, more striking, declaration. I wearily sidle up to him, having no other safer route as he is situated at my particular favourite section. Punk and Alternative, being irretrievably and irritatingly mixed. He spots me in an instant.

~ jammin’
~ wot?
~ it's jammin'
~ wot the fuck are you on about Mart?
~ It's good to see ya. Jammin’
 ~ yeah, same
~ 'ave ya seen Mark, bastud owes me a couple o' quid
~ yeah he's sat outside is 'ouse, listening to some tunes

 He picks up a Crass album, nods and walks to the counter where the owner, a blue and white bobble hat perched unflatteringly on his bearded head, sits tuned in for the forthcoming Rovers match. He stares absently at the littered desk directly in front of him. The punk slams two pound coins on the counter and walks to the door, strutting like a rather down market idiot gorilla, and leaves the shop. A perplexed look whittles its way out of the hair on the shop owner’s whiskered face as he stares, mysteriously, at the gold coins then at the figure as he marches confidently further away from the shop.

 ~ two pound fifty that bloody record, two pounds and fifty!

 Martin is the eternal punk, at thirty-one, life is still a series of violent, infantile episodes. He spends most of his time caressing cans of Holsten Pils whilst scrawling his signature on any available space. I suppose it's the life he has chose and he is living it particularly well. When I really sit down and think and speculate on other people’s lives, I can only look on them with envy. It seems, regardless of what path they have taken, I consider them more satisfied and generally content with their lot than me.
Perhaps I just haven't grown up yet.

Rain beats its way down the street, cars shine and radiate newness in its gorgeous splendour. People naively dodge and weave hoping to miss each drop of falling water. Puddles explode showering angry onlookers who have sensibly brought out an umbrella after consulting their region's weather forecast. I  stand and watch natures beautiful mystery captivate and ensnare us all. Pathetic romanticism or stupidity, I couldn't begin to guess.

The wine sellers shop window is misty with condensation, inside half-formed shadows move and  flicker like fish under frosted glass. The interior is bright and stark with ugly fluorescent lighting. Cans of lager and assorted ales stand centre stage, as powerful and mighty as the pyramids. A bottle of Thunderbirds, a primitive mixture of fermented apple and pears, beckons unconditionally to me. I take a split second to decide and my arm flashes out like a striking cobra. Yet, my victim will be feeding me with her wonderfully delicious poison.

 Night bears down on the town, stars blink between thin cracks in the black. Shop windows caress the eyes and become fresh and beautiful. I watch as taxies pass me by, each car on a desperate journey, a sojourn into a blind disorganised night. I kick at cans that have become useless, a receptacle to stale and polluted air, my sad entertainment for a long walk home. 
I walk past the canal where barges are moored for the evening. Inside, lights reflect onto the cold waters, occasionally shadows flicker across the canal scaring and exciting me. Beneath Stanhill Bridge familiar figures move and shout, their voices carrying through the winter night like restless, haunted spirits. I recognise shifting silhouettes that reach out and beckon me. Music blares from a small, archaic cassette-radio, someone is singing about, “… things getting better…” and I suddenly feel lost and depressed. Formless shapes are slumped lazily on the cold grass and up against the wet bridge wall. A thin cloud of perfumed, dirty smoke glides over their moving heads and a heavy, laced boot beats time to a dark, restless rhythm.
 I find myself some space amongst the swollen shadows and the discarded cans, then sink slowly to the ground.
 I'm here again. Down amongst the loafers, the spongers, the layabouts, the scum, the dregs of society... or so our society would have us all believe. Karl is lying in a stupor, an empty carton of chip shop delicacies resting on his heavy chest. A long, thin line of dribble lies plastically on a prominent stubbled chin. Sal is nodding her shaven head in time to the music, ‘…light the candle, feel the flame…’
Two new faces hold one lager can between them, their lips close enough to touch, they are sexless in the shadows. Voices are soft, even reverential, to the ambience of the night. As a group they are keeping more than the cold at bay. 
I envy them all. They have chosen a lifestyle that they prefer and refused to conform. Alarm clocks and set, orchestrated, timetables have been burned on the fires of individuality. They all look after themselves as a group and comply with no ones regime or rule. Each of them has tasted the monotony of working for the boss and spat out the vile, bitter taste of ritual conformity.
We are all found guilty of not thinking for ourselves.

 The sky is a bloody red, an open wound that bleeds yellow with the morning sun. Gulls circle the many houses that line my street. I watch them swoop and pirouette, their cries an angry, shrill lament in my ears. Milk floats drone past the closed curtains and locked doors of the sleeping, contented people, the empty clinking bottles a shrill reminder of another day.
The kitchen is cold and quiet, its tiled floor generating numbness in my feet. The family cats greet me with lusty, eager purrs, a none to subtle reminder of empty, meat stained bowls. I feed them with an already opened can, then leave them to their own resourceful devices.
 Richard and Judy are relinquishing motivating ideas and remedies for the constipated and elderly. As I am neither, I switch channels to a more entertaining schools programme. A fluffy jumpered, bespectacled, forty-year-old teenager is informing us that stinging nettles make a very tasty meal. I put the t.v. on stand-by and drift into a bored doze. 
~ are you takin' the fuckin' shot or wot
~ sorry
~ frightened o' losin' a quid ya tight bastud      
~ oh, fuck off

 The interior of The Rose is exceptionally wide and spacious, yet years of neglect have left the walls and floors in desperate need of restoration. Peeling wallpaper hangs like grey dandruff off Pinocchio’s wooden head. Tables and seats are scattered about the two adjoining rooms in a generally haphazard fashion, giving the capacious pub a genuinely mangy, disorganised look. Three books, that anyone who patronises the pub can’t possibly have read, support one leg of the only pool table. On the wall, directly opposite the toilets, a dartboard hangs sad and ineffectual, the necessary numbered wiring used has a t.v. aerial for the tubeless box in the corner. I’m sat in one cobwebbed nook of this quaint establishment nursing a flat pint of Harp. It’s half past nine on a quiet Sunday evening, the jukebox is blaring out a ‘well-known’ Menowar tune and I’m getting pleasantly pissed on a sad, watery lager.
At the north wall, twenty or thirty feet away, the bar stands like an ancient temple to the blind drunk and degenerate. Two shabbily dressed men, who typify this, have elbows propped up on the bar, sitting red faced and bleary-eyed staring into half-empty glasses of flat ale. They have both been there since the doors of The Rose had wearily opened. Pint after pint has been greedily consumed, failing in quenching their bottomless thirsts. And now they had finally arrived at their last affordable beer.
 I was familiar with the bearded, red nosed chap on the right, but the fat angry looking bloke was a total stranger to me. From the look on Fattie's face it was obvious that an awkward and possibly dangerous situation was about to arise. Unfortunately for the rest of the customers Beard was seriously doing his best to intensify the menacing, yet latent, emotions of Fattie. Beard was effectively prodding and poking at Fattie's ample chest proportions with a thin and dirty finger, his voice occasionally rising above the blare and heavy guitar of MotorHead.
~…uk…giro...ya...kin'…`anker!
~…Money…money…'ve no...uckin'...oney!
~ ...I'll...gi....no...f’…uckin'...ney!
 The speed at which Fattie threw his huge callused fist belied his size, it struck Beard perfectly under his shaggy, disorganised chin with great aplomb. At that moment I instantly thought that perhaps Fattie had once graced the ring with his pugilistic skills, for it was an immediate and potent knockout. The seat fell gracefully backwards taking its somnambulistic occupant with it. He hit the floor with a nearly silent whoosh of air. I could almost see the invisible exclamation marks escaping his broken mouth. He led there uncomfortably entwined in the wooden supports of the broken bar stool, his chin hanging limp and disjointed, his dentures spilling rather effectively over his bottom lip. The entire scene was a muddled Picasso abstract painting:
‘Bar stool and early man co-joined in a vicious embrace, whilst primitive ape stands jubilant and exultant in its joyous, bloody victory.’
 Fattie swivelled his huge neanderthalic head in my direction, a cold sneer splashing across his stupid, long face. We had total eye contact for about a fifth of a second and that was more than enough to spur me on and out of the, now, terrible place. As the door slammed shut behind me I heard a sound like a melon being hit by a cricket bat, ugly images flew through my head as I flew up the street. I'm no coward but their has to be a limit doesn't their?

The day has been long and the shadows have lengthened to darken our lives. A warm rain is soaking the clothes that were hung out earlier this morning. Sweaters and socks flicker in a warm breeze. Children are ushered to bed with tiredness closing their eyes. Each step is a mountain. I am sitting beneath a tree that is as broad as it is tall. Leaves form a broken carpet beneath my small feet. The brook is whispering gently with the soothing rain. I should be home, but I am too tired to move. My eyes are weighed with the pull of dreams. Blades of tall grass border the brook, the green is so sharp I can almost smell it.
I am drifting in and out of sleep, slow traffic in the distance is a comforting hum. In my dream I am standing beside my father. We are holding hands, my fingers tight in his strong grip. I can smell the brylcream that shapes his short back and sides, flecks of grey are pure silver in the sun. A crop-sleeved shirt reveals strong forearms that have been shaped by many years of hard work. It is a hot, balmy afternoon, clouds are a lazy puff of white in a vast sea of blue. I feel safe and contented by my father’s side.
People pass us by, some smiling and nodding, others stopping to ruffle my hair. I grin proudly at the attention I am receiving. My father gently squeezes my hand, a cool breeze caresses my face, as I turn to look at him...
A shock of white opens my eyes to the sound of  mother, she is calling me home. The dream is a shadow in a fast falling night, it merges with the darkness the more I pry. My cheeks are cold and wet, the taste of salt is on my lips.
I stand and start my race with the fading light...

~the ego of your Mick is well out of proportion to 'is fuckin' looks
~‘e can pick up any bird he wants!
~only if 'is in a fuckin' aviary
~funny, fuckin', ha! ha!

 The ‘conversation’ was drawing to a close. I'd been sat inside the Bite 2 Eat for what seemed like hours waiting, none to patiently, for Jase to show up. Actually I had only been there twenty minutes at the most, but the time was dragging. Occasionally a clock on the Formica, chip wall chimed the arrival of another quarter. Various pleasant cooking smells drifted over the few customers that sat occupying the small, scruffy cafe. I was positioned, uncomfortably on a red, plastic moulded chair, sipping my third cup of coffee and my nerves were dancing rapidly to a jittery, caffeine beat.
Behind me two youths shared a pot of tea and, what sounded like, one solitary brain cell. They had been arguing endlessly about the positive and negative aspects of their many siblings. Mick had been the sixth and questionably the last and I was reaching the end of my, admittedly, short tether. It was getting to the stage that I knew more about their families than my own.
 Outside a cold, sharp rain beat incessantly against the cafe window, sketchy figures weaved and sped through the heavy downpour. Above us, burnt candyfloss clouds threatened to sweeten the streets with rain forever. Directly opposite the Bite 2 Eat, a young woman stood sheltered from the weather, I had only noticed her because of the garish, red, waterproof mackintosh she had draped over her small shoulders. My attention kept drifting from her to the two comedians on the next table. I couldn't, obviously, make out any real features but she seemed to be swathed in an aura of cool dignity that made heads turn and immediately recognise. Perhaps I was just being my usual naive and ultra romantic self, analysing just for the sake of it, but I strangely hoped not.
The weak coffee was developing a thin film on top because of my stubborn reluctance to drink it any faster. It slithered up against my lips like phlegm each time I took a small sip. My patience was decidedly getting thinner, and Jason was getting irritatingly later. The only positive thing that had happened in the last ten minutes was the thankful departure of the two yapping meatheads.
Quite suddenly the cafe door swung open, bringing with it a shower of  January rain and a wet, flailing scarecrow named Jason. He was stood bathed from head to foot in an assortment of soaked clothes that hung from him like rags on a second hand hat stand. A grey, withered Stetson was propped askew on his grinning head, water spilling forward onto the tiled floor as he acknowledged me. Wet strands of ginger hair lay languidly on his broad shoulders, they are as separate as a litter of hungry, feeding river rats. He makes an order then surreptitiously beelines his way to my table, carrying what looks like a coffee and a well-buttered Chorley cake.
Jason Franks is twenty-two, though he looks much older. He has been through a failed succession of foster homes from the age of six. Both of his parents had died tragically in a huge motorway pileup on the M52. From then on he had been bandied around various families in north-west Lancashire until, at the age of nine, he had been introduced to the Franks family.
Although sometimes quite shy he had overcome any obvious social problems that life had inadvertently thrown at him and had developed into a thoroughly likeable, young man. At six foot three he towered over me by at least four inches, often taking advantage of his size to intimidate any uncomfortable scenarios that cropped up from now and then. I had been saved from numerous beatings, in the town centre, from drunken louts more times than I cared to remember. 
 "Hi, mate."
 "Alright mate. Where the fuck have you been?" I hated foul language but sometimes it just fitted the occasion. He removed the tall Stetson and placed it on the table between us, his thick red eyebrows forming a frown that resembled two caterpillars smooching. " I've been in the Rose, had a quick pint."
Now, I knew Jase enjoyed a swift drink, he could fill his frame with litres of lager  and then some, but at ten past twelve in the afternoon it was hard to believe. He was usually more than often recovering from a sizeable hangover from Friday’s vitriolic excesses. Anyway, I knew the Rose had been closed this one particular morning for redecorating, the quickly shedding wallpaper was literally rebelling against the constant splashes of alcohol diluted blood donated by aggrieved customers. " And Rovers are going to win the Premier League!"
" What are ya on about`?" His reply was quick and straight to the point, but mine was quicker.

" The Rose is shut this morning, they're poncing it up for the New Year!" He swayed uncomfortably in the plastic chair, it squeaked loudly with the shifting of his buttocks, and then quickly his eyes darted to the right. It was a furtive, nonchalant glance but it was enough to give me a strong impression of what he was looking at.
 I could hardly believe it; he was looking at the girl in the red mackintosh, the strange, alluring figure on the steps of the town hall.
  I think in all of the time I had known Jason he had only had one rather insubstantial relationship, and that had been a quick kiss and cuddle in the park with Veronica Deers, a forty two year old housewife who he had escorted home one warm, balmy Wednesday night after a competitive game of midweek darts. He had, to his dismay, laddered her American Tan tights in the heated process of removing them; thus speedily culminating in her dampened ardour...`wot'll Jack say? `.... I think everyone and his dog, apart from me of course, had sampled the ample wares of Mrs. Deers. She had flaunted her huge, wobbling cleavage at any male passing through puberty since the Big Bang. 
"You kept that quiet, ya big, dark horse!"
Outside the rain beat a peppery tattoo on the cold window, people continued to glide past dispersing like clouds on a hot day. Figures collected and suffused on the town hall steps, each of them being swallowed in the anonymity of the crowd. She, a red petal on a pond of quickly moving people. Jason turned his face to the window, sweeping his hand against the pane, the perspiration a wet sheen on his long fingers. We sat their with the silence, a woollen gloom that threatened to settle on us forever, his eyes intense and unrelenting.
 I tried to speak quietly but my words were like thunder in the anomalous hush," What is it Jase, are you supposed to be meeting her?" He continued to stare fixedly out into the downpour, mercurial beads of rain still continued to erupt and die on the cafe's window. I was starting to worry; this was totally out of character. "Come on, first you're late and now you wont talk. I've a good mind to start divorce proceedings." I reached out to touch his arm, and in the process knocked his hat into the coffee cup were the hot liquid rocked to and fro threatening to spill out and soak the both of us.