In the beginning

“I’m off.”  A voice announced.
“And I thought it was the drains down here,” I replied.
I didn’t even bother looking up from what I was doing.  I knew my brother would be standing framed in the doorway, and that our quick repartee had kicked in automatically. Gleaned from hours of watching the real classic comedians like Morecombe and Wise, Tommy Cooper and the Two Ronnie’s, and pouring over their scripts and other scripts by the comedy greats of the last thirty years, learning the lines until they were second nature. Several years of working as stagehands in the theatre had exposed us to the great and the good of variety and given us an insight into the importance of comedic timing. Whenever one of us opened our mouth the other was not far behind with a stinging one-liner.
People who didn’t know us found it annoying, people who did, found it even more annoying and the people who knew us really well simply ignored us and let us get on with it.
“No, I really am off this time.  I have had enough of London.”
“Ah, but was it not Samuel Johnson who said, “A man who is tired of London is tired of life.”
“I’m not tired, I am pissed off. It’s not the same thing. And Thatcher is going to waltz back into power so no change there.”
Dear Maggie had just announced a General Election would take place in a month’s time.
“Couldn’t you just not go to the polling station or go and spoil your ballot paper like we did last time.”
“Nah I have got to get away.”

My brother had grabbed my attention and so I tossed the newspaper I was reading on the desk in front of me.    This was what passed for work in my world.  I lived a kind of half-life in a basement on Garrick Street in the heart of London’s West End.
I worked in the Music Publishing business, which sounded great as a chat-up line but to be more exact I packed bound published sheet music which was shipped out to schools, colleges and libraries throughout the country.  The basement was the packing room for Cramer Music and I was employed to put all the music in large brown cardboard boxes, wrap them in brown paper and packing tape and ship them out to the general public.
It was a long way from my original role in the Musical Instrument department of the Cramer Music shop on St Martin’s Lane.  But the shop had closed down and I was lucky that the company had a vacancy in another department.  Jobs were not in plentiful supply, particularly for retired stagehands with a degree in Archaeology.
It was true that the economy was improving and that unemployment had dropped below 3 million for the first time since 1981.  This was why Maggie had chosen to pin her colours to the mast and go for re-election.

As a student, a few years previously, I had stood up in front of the mic and sung “Cry for England”, a lament penned by a fellow student and band member in which we catalogued the many failings (as we saw them) of the Tory Government.  The lyrics pointed to such travesties as the Youth Opportunities Programme and the Suss Laws. It was hardly poetry but it got a raucous cheer in the Students Union when we played it.  I guess you could say that my politics had remained to the left of centre and the prospect of another term under the Tories, whilst it seemed inevitable, hardly filled me with hope.

I couldn’t say I hated my job. It frustrated me because all I wanted to do was to be a Rock Star and next door to my dingy basement Packing room was a fully equipped 24 track demo studio. The fact that it stood empty and dark for most of the time merely added to my frustrations but I never managed to pluck up the courage to go and see the big boss and plead my case.  I would probably have been laughed at anyway and then fired for my troubles so I kept my musical talents to myself and carried on packing the boxes.

But now Dingo the one shining light in my dark and frustrated musical existence, the singer of my songs was leaving.  I did not have to ask the question.  I knew where he was bound.  We had talked about nothing else since he had returned the previous year.  While I had been flying solo, and selling guitars to the great and the good, he had been out of the country on a fact-finding mission.

Until his departure the previous Spring, we had rarely been apart for any great length of time. When I secured a place at University I quickly acquired a semi-permanent weekend lodger and following Graduation we had both drifted in and out of the same dead-end jobs, interspersed with periods of work in the Theatre as stagehands or as Roadies on tours.

I looked over at my brother. He was stood in the doorway of my cellar dungeon.  Down here the drains did smell. I could look out the skylight at the far end of the room, occasionally there was an opportunity to look up a girl’s skirt but that was a time-consuming exercise and usually, the only result was a stiff neck. I had worked here for the last eight months and really my prospects were looking grim.

But this was to be our chance to start again. To pick ourselves up, put ourselves back together musically, write some new songs together, do a little work, do a lot of drinking and enjoy the sunshine.

We were going to spend some time on a Kibbutz in Israel.