For AJ.pdf

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The Chronicling of Sods Law

JOURNAL 1


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Monday the Thirteenth of April, Nineteen Eighty-Seven

5 oclockin the afternoon

While I am prepared to take responsibility for my actions and in most cases the result of these actions,I refuse to be held accountable for circumstance. To illustrate, I was driving the Peugeot, the Peugeot

did not crash while I was driving the Peugeot. Said Peugeot crashed while I was asleep, the question

now is whether I am responsible for falling to sleep, if not, then who or what can be blamed for such a

transgression against consciousness? Alcohol, perhaps? Sleep, lack thereof, more likely; Id had nought

but a glass or two of 87s finest commercial merlot. My glands, the neck ones, had been swollen for

nigh on a fortnight. Sleep was disgusting and, if it werent above or equal to ten percent, any liquid felt

like a fat hare easing its merry way down my tortured gullet.

Holden knew fuck all about cars, all that wretch knows is how to cause me inordinate transocial

discomfort and the delicate intricacies of choppingPurple Haze into a toddler, slowly disembowelling

a garden spider. No, I concluded, this bloated Luddite of a machine could be fixed by me and me alone.Chase Holden was my travelling companion, wed known each other for quite some time.

Get the fuck out of my way Chase, Ive had enough of your backwards floundering. I politely yelled

at said companion. He probably backtalked me with something petty and malicious, the little gobshite.

Wrenching the spanner from his vicey little man hands, a spinning spore of my handsome phlegm honed

in on the cunts forehead as I graced him with more friendly commands.

Let go, you shit! As I struggled, vying for dominance.

Victory! With a twinkle of dancing charm lodged firmly in my eye.

And go make yourself useful, roll us a spliff you tiny drug-fiend! Over my sincerest autocratic

undertones.

Holden composed one of his heavier sighs (a sighissimo if you will), laden with signature

begrudgingment, and made use of his pins. Of course, I knew almost as little as he when it came to the

belligerent art of automobilia, but I couldnt let him have the satisfaction dear reader; no, no, you see

this was a man who had spent the majority of the nineteen seventies hemi-demi-semi-heartedly taking

up musicality to earn a place among historys finest and fawned-over. Mark me, his mark on history

would be no less than the lacklustrest quaver the world had never heard. The satisfaction would in fact

be mine, and mine alone. I squeezed into my most delightful smile.

What are you going to do about this, man? Well have to find a new car, you know? Of I course I

knew. After pounding a bonnet for four hours even I could admit I may lack expertise in engineering.

Of course I know!Quipped I. We can get something better, something fab.We can get a Volks, or

some variation of of one of those loud American cars, the large ones.

Muscle cars.

Muscle cars? Utter trite. The man wasinsane. What manner of car muscles?The rat had gone

loopy. If that boy hadnt been constantly lecksd out of his skullthe whole damn time, I daresay we

mightve made it to Edinburgh in time.

The next few hours were an assortment of hikes (hitched) and miles (walked), not forgetting of course

custom (spread) in way of beverages. By something like ten, or thirteen for all I knew or cared or care,

we grew anxious, the post meridiem was running short and the two of us were being hastily approachedby the smaller hours. We had left the car and filled our bags with as many essentials as necessary;


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Holden said hed called the AA at a phonebox near the Wyre after those abhorrent fucking fisheries but

Id not the slightest whether he meant to save the car or if in a mad flash, decided we needed to sort our

festering lives out with a bunch of solvent abusers in some ditch off the M6. We had between us three

bags. My knapsack was laden with spare changes, coffee, LXT, tin foil and the rest of the essentials,

Holdens messenger held commodities the likes of maps, marmalade, and toothpaste, hed also insisted

on bringing the tent, which took up most of the third.

I watched the last vermillion lining thread from Englands grey clouds, setting in the natural darkness.

The dual carriageway stretched beyond sight as Holden and I found our vision restricted by the rolling

embankments on either side. He shifted from his perch, swinging round the uniform trunk of a young

ash to tell me Im popping off to burn some lex, before asking fancy a wheeze? I declined, the tent

needed pitching and if that vacuous sod was out on some inane mission then Id have to be the surrogate

adult.

Tuesday the Fourteenth of April, Nineteen Eighty-Seven

2 oclockin the morning

Curdling under a fetid festival blanket, my icy fingers succeeded in a struggle against the cork; the

pungent liquid broke over my lips and I suckled from my store-bought, five-pound mother. To my right

vehicular wailing accompanied evanescent silhouettes, to my left Chase endured. He gasped, violently

rejecting my knapsack, burying his feral face in his own nap-sack. Emitting a cry of pain he flung up

and then, while gazing into the noisy canvas above as if it were the night sky, groaned pure nirvana.

This went on for a length of time, framed perfectly by pattering rain.

Are you awake, Chase?

No.

Do you want saves on this fag?

After a few moments, an expired Chase emerged from within his quilted cave. White knuckled and

spent faced, the poor bastard reached out and gently plucked the half-smoked roll from between my

fingers. He docked the end in the cast-off bottle and, replying with my last vintage, I checked for sunrise.

With wine we sat in amicable silence for the larger half of an hour and spent the other discussing the

day to come. Replacing a few batteries, my shoddy Walkman filled our shelter with the tin sound of an

almost live Hendrix 66.

Dy reckon Mitchll be pissed we sampled his cargo?

No, I assured hell have known we would. Were shit, but he can trust us. Hellve given us extra

on purpose.

I doubted that, but it didnt hurt to keep Holden docile. I didnt want him to get weird on me.The first

time I ever saw Mitch, he was pissing in a bed of wilted roses. I asked him something, he replied with

something contextually appropriate; I find memory often fails first impressions, it defies the originary

in an instinctive quest for the relevant. We never bonded or hit it off per se, but shared smoke and a

common appreciation of the Romantic curled itself into something resembling mutual respect. His well-

folded and perfectly dark skin hung like a painters canvas, a mess of hair growing down into thick

bristles which were in turn, dammed by the creases of that stalwart smile, his entirety enthralled myattention. My appreciation for his aesthetic, alongside his eclectic lexis which was doubtlessly more


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finely honed than my poorly whetted vocabulary, verged dangerously on the precipice of Freudian.

Omnipotent? Omniscient, perhaps? The man simply felt like providence.

Have you ever been lecksd, Des? Would you like to try?He let an impish smile.

Im not touching the filth.Whatever the man was playing at irked me. Dont fuck with me, Chase.

It aint half as bad as you think, man.Said the dishevelled heap soaking in his own sweat.

And I suppose youre the poster boy for things what aint half as bad as they seem?What a fucking

cretin. Today, powerful dissociatives, tomorrow, vote Tory.

This shut him up, as estranged as he was, Chase loved his father very much; when the four of them,

Chase, sister, and folks, came east from the United States, Mr H. Holden thought nothing would be

more wholesome than taking up work in the mines. Joblessness and no-more-milk left as sour a taste

on the collective Holden tongue as on that of any indigenous Briton.

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