Walking down to my favourite watering hole (The Benches at the Lagan Meadows) last night I came across The Indie Kid who lives at the end of my street sitting crying.
I asked him what was wrong and he told me that he was sad because he was coming to the end of his last year at uni and things hadn't went the way he'd hoped.
He said that (I didn't ask him any of this, he volunteered it) he'd had his first kiss (?!?) last summer and that he thought things would follow naturally and that this year would have been really full on with studying and relationships, just like in all those shows he used to watch as a kid. Even the biggest dicks in them had loads of girls chasing them.
I told him the sad fact that those shows lied, especially to lonely boys who couldn't attract girls.
And when he read the teen pages of ceefax on channel 4, boy oh boy there sure sounded like loads of fun yet to come. And when he started his band with Rock and Roll Stephen, how the fuck did it all go wrong?
I told him that I missed the teen pages on teletext. Dr. Nick Fisher, and Bamboozle, those were the days.
He was finishing University in a month and he was going back to live on his da's farm outside Omagh and become a culchie Joe again, and have all these dicks round him talking about jam pieces and futball, and gaying the doag the wildest baitings.
What about art? and deep stuff? and life?
I told him something most girls find out at the age of 14 - "when it comes time to bleed, you bleed".
He just cried even harder, so I went to another bench to drink my wine, just me and Battle Cat.
The Indie Kid's Future Bandmate.
