Thank you. Thank you very, very much.
It's the summer of '93 and the 17 year old Moey is released into the raucous Reading festival crowds for a weekend of loud music, fast drugs and piss weak lager. Life is good.

My long hair flops about to the sounds of Rage Against the Machine & Ned's Atomic Dustbin. I nervously throw acid down my throat for the first time, lay back and let the curious warblings of Ozric Tentacles run riot about my brain. Life is still good, if a little wobbly and weirdly coloured.

Then my older brother turns up. That's no bad thing, he brings new and exciting drugs with him, as well as having lovely cash that I can scrounge under the pretence of not having eaten for several days. But he is also the bearer of bad wickedness that would taint my whole experience.

You see, he'd been having a full and frank discussion with my mum. She knew all about his ways, he was off at Uni and had long ago boasted openly of his weed smoking and of how she couldn't do anything about it. She'd accepted with surprisingly good grace ("but not under my fucking roof...") and no more had been said. But this recent exchange had nothing to do with him. This recent exchange was all about his younger siblings, all about our narcotic past times.

I'm greeted by his smug face and the words "Mum wants you to call her". Fine, thinks I and I throw some change into a payphone before bashing the number into the keypad.

Ring ring

"Oh yeah" says the sibling.

Ring ring

"What's that?" I ask.

Ring ring

"I told Mum about you smoking weed last night" he pouts.

Ring...

"You fucking what, you fucking cunt, I can't belie... oh, um, hi mum."

Life is suddenly much less good.
( Moey, Tue 6 Jan 2009, 16:50, Reply)