Stand Still Long Enough

Omega punk to the funk

Chapter One

Somebody once said "Stand Still Long Enough and everyone in the world you want to meet will pass by you" which in some way explains a little about my life. I was born a gemini, and the both of us are quite happy together, I have dyslexia which means I have a whole brain working but one side wants to be dominate the other, I can read and speed read many text books and think of things as pictures but I have problems with writing , where most people only look forward enough to the next problem I can be found waiting for everybody to catch up as they will insist on tripping up a hundred times before catching up. I suppose it's what makes me have patience with people.

let me introduce you to my other half..............Here he is the man himself Dave Mohican dahhhh de dat dahhhhh. No really I sound like I have a split personality, I don't but I will let you be the judge of that maybe I have and maybe I don't but you will meet me very soon.

I have always been an odd ball the person who does not fit in , it's the late 70s in Manchester, UK at fourteen I had no school friends, I had deliberately picked a senior school that had nobody I knew from Junior school would of picked. I did not care if I was hated here or anywhere I had me, I could depend on me, when I was five years old I had a Joe Ninety case and would threaten to leave home and pack it with my stuff I was taking. I did not know where I was going but I was going just you see. At fourteen I met a friend who like me was not interested in the normal stuff of youth like football, maybe we would of been labeled as geeks, nerds now, I do not know nor do i care its just labels.

What Bob introduced me to was Punk but already I could see the system was not working, our life maps being planned for at school was, are you factory fodder or could you be an apprentice in one of the big company factories marry then kids then death, you know what I mean, Bob had other ideas and would do anything to get hold of the Punks magazine Sniffing Glue as this would have the latest news of the Punk bands, it was also a magazine not to be caught with, we would scan every sentence every picture and this guy just prints them up and sells them wow, its not the NME for sure, could you see the local newsagent if you asked if he had a copy ha haaaa haa, he would have a fit possibly chase you down the street for asking.
I had a choice of what I wanted to learn but I still don't think it was a true choice it was either do this or something worse, religious studies or sport, nor was I blind to the life choice others were making to get away from certain teachers, my results are as follows,

Religious studies: kicked out for being atheist and able to argue the point.
Government studies : kicked out for being an anarchist and able to argue the point
Computer Studies: No computers left the class myself

Computer studies this was in days of Tony Benns , white heat of technology the days of ICL in britain as a leader of computing, the reality was a bit different, I got the bug from my old infant school where a teacher had built a model to show how computing cards worked yes no answer, many systems in the dark satanic mills of manchester had machines that worked from such cards.

Back to the studies we were each given a slide rule and told to learn that or we would never be able to use computers, it did not matter anyway the school never had one in the first place , I left and then decided I would only go back to computers when they became interesting.

Punk was now a first priority fek what the teachers wanted, fek what anyone wanted. Six days a week I had a market stall job setting up a fruit and veg stall before I want to school and working all day saturday, in turn it gave us a little freedom to go to the gigs the first band I saw was the Damned it was electric, it was a thousand volt shock people were terrified of people in leathers chains bondage. The audience of punks were setting fire to the seats which we were expected to sit in while watching the show, it was Anarchy.......looking back it seems a different time the drummer Rat Scabies lives up in Brentford my son and his son got on for a little while when he stayed and work in a recording studio I was setting up.
I was too young for the first wave of punk, I was still in school rattling the school gate for freedom let me out let me go, I don't care for your world, you can't keep me here once I am gone, I will be gone.
I was able to bunk off school by going to the stall setting up getting changed and and both me and Bob would be off to Manchester City Centre, That was until the day of the phone call, I brought up as a catholic with an irish mother and the Irish have studied at degree level "guilt" . from the simple tell another lie and that's another Thorn in the little baby jesus's head, being told at age five that's what you were doing is bound to send kids to the shrinks or if they enjoyed the idea to jail.
This particular morning I had gone out the door in school clothes, gone to the stall, got changed and went off to Manchester me and bob would hang out looking the at the new punk gear at the Roxy, Bob had a side line of nicking pens from Woolworths the fancy ones and selling them to the teachers at school so we had cash and time to look like punks and scowl at MR Normal.
I arrived home, mother asking me how school was, ok I grunted back, but then she started to ask questions like how was the lessons today which subjects do I take on on a Wednesday, my radar was picking up this is not normal but play along then get out of the way, nope the questions keep coming and I was happily dropping myself into the boiling pot, come little rabbit see this nice new snug home look it's enough room for you to rest your head. "ahhh well glad ya had a good day" says my mother " but only just that school phoned and says your not at school", I now know the lid is closing, " ahh sure the school says I could write a note explaining why yer off", a glimmer of light before the lid is shut tight. "ahh but you know now I won't, you be able to tell them yerself tomorrow*, hundreds of thoughts race my mind, what, how,fek,why, not only have I been slow cooked I am about to get carved up tomorrow with 6 of the best wooden cane, Ummm Umm what a treat.

many people have said I should write my story, so here goes I hope you enjoy, feedback is always appreciated, over the years I have wrestled with the title