Communique #11: A Different Class (11 2021)

This blog is slightly different than first planned. I’ve always loved writing about ‘self / my life’ through connection with other people and places. I just felt my original idea of talking about the death of my childhood friend may be too bleak – I may come back to that. I guess the imagery came from thoughts of skewing the working class aesthetic. Anyone who wants more insight into all things ‘class’ should check out the Poor Lass Podcast. How dreams of escape are all well and good but what happens when we fail? SAN Nov 2021

Your creative themes this month: autumnal colours, remembrance, mystery and letting go.

THE WORDS (Part One): When terraced house turned to Acid House:

On the 17th November it happened. At midnight that four flipped to a five and I became…? Old? Insignificant? Fifty? Fuck! I guess it comes down to perspective. Younger me with scabby knees basically thought that anyone over twenty was past it. Wild twenties me acted like he didn’t want to see another year. I guess I can claim I am a half life. I haven’t married or had kids but I have survived. Many of my friends haven’t. My reward? I will be targeted with more ads for hair dye, cures for impotency and TENA Men’s padded y-fronts. Is there a desire to stay youthful? Is there a quest to find out who I truly am? Acquiring labels and then cutting them out when my mood changes. The short answer is “no”.

Another spur for this post was filling in a wellbeing survey at work – there is a recurring question that I never know how to answer. “When you were fourteen what was social class of the main earner in your family?” A question obviously dreamt up by focus group. To explain, my life pre-teens run rather shakily like this:

We found out my dad was having an affair when the central heating broke down at church. They had it all planned. He would feign illness, me and my mum would still go, his ‘date’ would come and they’d have an hour to get hot and fleshy. On this day though the heating failed and when the priest feared we’d die of frost bite he sent us home after a quick blessing. We landed back after fifteen minutes to much crashing, banging and shamed faces. I’m not sure if he left straight away. I think there was a period where they tried to make do and mend followed by another where he lived in our car. I’m not sure when this was? I have a picture of the loved up couple at the races in 1982 I think so it’d be around then. They both look happy.

It’s now where it becomes blurry. I’ve talked about this before but I’m not sure when my brother’s blackouts first started. Had my dad gone by this point? There was a period of around two years where he went from wheelchair to stick and back again. It became permanent to the sound of Wham’s ‘Last Christmas’. I can’t remember there being much help at this point. Possible reasons?: mum thought that she would have failed, mum felt that benefits were for scroungers and later when it became too much she feared dad would have some claim on me. We were a broken home by the time I’d hit high school. Even then there wasn’t any outward impression of us being impoverished. Well apart from my dragged through a hedge backwards demeanour.

I don’t think I’ve ever written about being on free school meals before. It isn’t a shame thing more that after a while I hardly ever used them. By the time I’d got to third year there was a thing for going to the local chippy rather than using the canteen. There was a lad who’d always buy my voucher off me and I’d use the money to head out with friends. When I look back I imagine his need was greater than mine. Had he even eaten at breakfast? For me it was about belonging to tribe. My tribe was addicted to salt and vinegar. Chucking chips at pigeons. I became adept at inventing an imaginary menu in case my mum asked. It stopped briefly when there was a fight with a rival school and we were all barred from going out. But when this had blown over we were back out there.

I think the first time I became conscious of ‘class’ was when sports fashion became huge. Even then it wasn’t insidious. It didn’t come via “YOU’RE POOR AND YOU KNOW YOU ARE!” chants. It was through emblems on their chest. In foreign names: ‘Lacoste’, ‘Ellesse’, ‘Tacchini’. Why was my school jumper plain? It was perhaps the first sign of how our worlds were changing. Of how clothes and style often give an indication of who we are. There was no way my mum could afford such things. I wouldn’t have expected her to. Over time these emblems spread. There were frequent tall tales of warehouses on the edge of town where the clothes were stored. Of how they were being broken into with the content then flooding the market. I can remember us roaming around Lomeshaye Industrial Estate looking for signs. There never were any.

So with all this in mind I ticked the working class box. My mum was a weaver – the only ‘choice’ she had, a dinner lady and then a full time carer. My dad was a retired policeman, paying maintenance, but absent. Perhaps I’m an amalgam? Some bastardised class? I’m not sure how I would define ‘working class’? Is it like Pulp’s ‘Common People’? A way of life that the well to do want to experience to prove they have lived? Is it more a mental fight or intense longing? Knowing that whatever you do there is no chance of moving on. Personally I feel we are of born losers who often set any distress to music. We are of factory. We are what makes the world go round. Or perhaps we are none of the above? I’m not avoiding digging deeper I’ve just never known where I actually fit in.

Written somewhere in suburbia through the first part of November 2021

THE WORDS (Part Two): ‘The Time When Sacrifice Gave Way To Solitude’:

He wondered when he came to fear so much?
Was it when she died and left him alone?
Her passing brought emptiness and sour endless silence
Only static and his immediate thoughts seemed to linger
How long was left?
Dark nights throbbing and consuming
You have only yourself to blame
He realised that it was only a passing phase
That he would find a likely joy when he felt the warmth of the sun again
When frost and golden hues would be replaced by new shoots
And yet in this darkness he felt so numb
A persistent pain that came this time each year
Where once there were conkers and bonfire crackle
There was now only regret and coldness
Scattered leaves and thoughts of the wars
Thoughts of trench
Thoughts of their bodies and of hers
Of what he had lost
Was it foolish to hope for someone to love at his age?
Who would hold him tight till grave or dawn
Who would laugh at his pathetic jokes
Who would tolerate his snoring
Who would…
Who would just be there
He often wished it was him who’d gone
Who’d left these shores and never returned
Such cruelty in sacrifice but they were not troubled by age
They did not feel his endless solitude
Nor see what wraiths they’d all become
Here in this wasteland of bastard souls
As weathered people laid wreaths and mouthed hymns
Change and decay in all around I see
Earth’s joys grow dim
He gauged his life in simple terms now
In how the number of Christmas cards he sent dwindled
In how many names he’d Tipexed out of his address book
In how many people spoke to him out of choice
Maybe he was to blame but age had become such cruel penance

I started this piece straight after going to Brierfield Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday. I got as far as writing two words: ‘wraiths’ and ‘wreaths’. I finished it on the 16th. It’s obviously not a new idea: talking about the falling of leaves and the falling of men. Odd lines were incorporated from two old zines of mine: ‘Autumn 2018’ and ‘Library 1′. The former dealt with something my dad once said about how he found the dark winter nights all consuming and almost malignant. The latter was really just about the poignancy of the fallen scout statue outside Nelson Library. Although my dad was a very affable chap I think a few things happened to cut him off. He fell and broke his hip, he didn’t have the social groups that my mum had – Trefoil, Town’s Womens’ Guild etc – and he lost his sister.  Perhaps though his isolation started much earlier than this?

THE IMAGERY: Five Scenes From A Northern Industrial Town