Joy Ride

A little memory from youth

I’m 16 and hurtling along in a car. A fast, black car I do not know the owner of. I only know;

“Brad found it so we may as well go for a drive”

That’s ‘Brad’ as in ‘Bradford’.

Long before Brooklyn Beckham was a twinkle, in Rochdale we had one of our own named after a slightly less glamorous place.

I’m never quite sure what ‘found it’ means and I admit, I daren’t ask. I’m informed by his girlfriend Shelley that “he always puts them back afterwards”

Well, that’s reassuring then.

Gotta love a bit of social responsibility.

Brad is a wild eyed ginger about three years older than me. You choke on the fumes of his nicotine childhood as he approaches. He has a milky muscular body and a strong local accent. His features heap like disturbing courtroom evidence on his face. They are clues that have you trying to piece together his story, plead his case, but never his innocence. Swollen lips buoy his skin as splitting battered rafts. Narrow eyes flit as disrupted minnows in a stream and his nose dips beakishly. His arms and legs host a series of amateur tattoos that look as if they were branded upon him one fateful night he was captured by a gangster. Given the company he keeps, this may well be true.

But for all that, he’s a laugh. Think he has a day job as a welder but he makes most of his money as a small time weed dealer. Many on the estate supplement their income in this way. In my head I cast him as a modern day Huck Finn, ducking and diving and somehow surviving.

If he didn’t hit my friend, Shelley, I could almost like him.

Shelley has a porcelain beauty, rare in these corned beef parts. Her hair is a spin of red corkscrew curls, as though a Celtic mermaid washed up on the Manchester Ship Canal. She is ill at ease with her gangly figure, slouching her supermodel shoulders and dropping her head.

Shelley wants to blend in, not wishing to attract attention. On a council estate In 1990, this means wide baggy jeans and swamping tunics with Aztec prints that hang like shapeless lampshades. On her feet, sit boat-like suede beige kickers that come with tags that hang their baby clouds.

And there we are, Saturday night, a few others too. There’s maybe six teenagers crammed into the vrooming vehicle as though it were an urban rocket. Happy Mondays blaring from the top notch sound system.

“We all learn to box at the Midget Club”

My glam metal mates have suddenly defected and become obsessed with the new Madchester sound.

I’m not over keen.

I dislike that I’m suddenly odd one out with my tasseled skirt, doc martens and goth make up amongst a pack of ‘townies’.

Suddenly, it’s curtain dos and sovereign rings.

Suddenly, everyone is moulding their Lancashire accent into a more fashionable Mancunian one.

Suddenly, everyone is an acquaintance of Shaun Ryder, Bez or Ian Brown.

“Me cuzin knows im from dole queue”.

I’m treated as a bit of a killjoy, a has-been because I still want to listen to Guns and Roses, Poison, Kiss and Hanoi Rocks. Still want to back comb my hair and put bandanas in it.

But I didn’t change. They did.

No, they inform me. The world did. Times have changed. Things moved on, and I need to too.

Apparently.

It’s my first experience of a feeling I’m going to have to get used to in life. When you like where you are, are comfortable but for whatever reason, are not allowed to stay in that place.

I’ve always hung on.

Clung on.

Sometimes, way too long.

We contemplate going to Blackpool to see the illuminations but settle instead, for a jaunt on the nearby moors.

I close my eyes and I am in Blackpool, regardless. As Brad drives erratically, my stomach does somersaults, the speed and movement reminiscent of rollercoasters and dizzying carousels. Every now and again Shelley will warn him he’s going too fast. Not me. I’m loving my heart in my mouth. At sixteen, it feels likes exactly where it should be.

After a while, he pulls in at a lay by, somewhere on the tops with an unhampered view of town. Town obliges, splaying open before us like a whore’s legs. We wind down the electric window, admiring the spectacle of distant lights. Amber, ruby and ice white. We get out, pass round a joint and squint our eyes like happy cats on the roof of the world. Our vision grows hazy as the lights whirr like a spinning top before us, until we no longer see an ordinary northern mill town but a giddy kaleidoscope of neon possibility.

We see New York, LA.

We dream.

Slitty eyed, we pile back into the vehicle. As we head back to the estate, I consider the car’s background and proceed to give it human qualities, wondering if its missing its owner. A cautious lady driver maybe. Someone who takes good care of it, cleans and maintains it. Listens to Radio 2. Someone like my mum, maybe.

Then again, perhaps the car is loving the trip too, I muse. In a 30mph life, don’t we all yearn for a night doing 90? I smile imagining its secret contentment at having had such an adventure with a gang of unruly teenagers.

Tomorrow, it will go back to work runs and supermarket stints, just as we too will soon return to school and college.

But don’t we all want just one crazy night, off limits?

Don’t we all want our engine revved to the max, senses in overdrive?

Don’t we all want just one joy ride?

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