2. The Shakespeare Opening
A Heraldic Welcome
Still Friday, still late morning, still around 2005 or thereabouts.
ENTER Raul, pursued by bear
Raul: How goseth it, pig fuckers? Good to welcome you all here to the hurlyburly. You’ve come at the right time – middayish – when the New Portonians – or at least the best of us – are blinking out into the sun from our pits. Don’t trust any fucker who rises before three farts and a stretch. In thunder, lightning, or rain, we are here, but today it is sun-out, and although this is rare it’s how we all remember things, isn’t it? Oh, yes! Either this or snow and ice and those glory moments; pub lockins, broken collar bones (always the collar bone!), snow angels. You’d think we had so many memories of it it’s like growing up in Canada or something. But this story that you’re here for we’ve decided to tell in the summer end of things. Walk with me. Look at these beautiful buildings – how they glisten in the heat like old dead dinosaurs or something – look at them. Above the ground floors, obviously. Ground floors are grubby and fucked if it’s not Iceland or a poundshop or Maceedees; but look up. Look up! Beautiful buildings. Old fashioned and all that shit. Over there, that empty building, it still has bullet holes from the when the king’s men tried to kill a load of suffragettes or something. The history is right there, just above the eyeline. Hello there, my fair lady. My fair lady this city, this town, this corner of a dying fucked world that we call our own. But do we care about the crumbling pisspots and the Tory bastards and the pushing down and the bad bad bad ways of people? We try not to. We keep on keeping on and we look up. This – look at it – is the stuff of life. Stop here and glare in at those fuckers playing Dungeons & Dragons. What a way to spend your fucking life. Better than being a crackhead, I s’pose. Stop here and look at the suits on the mannequins, the ties and braces and think of the type of git that buys them. Stop here and think about getting some chips – not yet, not yet. Full English in the market. So come round this corner and through these gates and up these steps and have a quick finger flick through these records – yes yes yes got got got, met Gary Numan once and he’s a mad fucker nice guy though yes yes yes got got got remind me to tell you about the time I got backstage to Robert Plant and Alisson Krause yes yes yes got got got and Arthur Lee that mad bastard he’d just got out of prison and he wouldn’t take his shades off and there was a moment he was sat there and we all thought he’d died. Never took his shades off. Never said a word. Could have been anyone, to be honest. A complete fucking imposter. Keep up. Full English. Marjorie – no idea if that’s her name but she never corrects me, and she calls me Raul and who knows if that’s the name I was born with, but I like her attention to detail. Yes, Marjorie, the Works, yes indeed, and a mug of brew, three sugars; yes, I know the sugar’s on the table, I’m just saying. God, she’s a miserable cow but you gotta love her – gotta love you, haven’t we, Marjorie? You eat too, order across the caff like this shouting and waving your arms; she loves that. And then sit here and look over the iron and tarp of the old market. Been here since God was a tadpole. Breathe it in, deep breaths, go on, suck it all in. Bacon and tobacco and Demestos and the sizzle of that fucking sunshine on the skylights. You’ll need the smell of the place in your nostrils for this story you’re about to embark on. The smell, and a full belly. Eat up eat up. After this: beer. Get that froth right up there in the moustachio muthafucker. And you’re set. Anything can come at you and you’ll be ready. A fucking warrior. Shall we howl? Like wolves? No? Maybe later. Eat up. After this: beer.