The Townies

Now then, White Voider. It truly is a sincere privilege to commune with you. Where the hell are you? What are you doing? What are your mental thought processes like at the moment? I hope you’re not masturbating in a darkened room feeling like a hole will swallow you up, claiming you into the deepest recesses of the pit. If you are, and you’re probably most likely not, coz you’re not me, then I empathise. I myself am in the library writing this bull shit down, thinking about nothing but you. Really hope you’re well. Wouldn’t it be nice if we met? I’ve just inherited a sense of enjoyment by sampling a can of Karpackie and two pints of run-of-the-mill Carling in the pub. I wish Karpackie was on draught in the pub. Now that would be a truly beautiful thing, see. 9% smack in a frosted glass. I had to buy that from the shop before the pub.

Saw some guy with chain game the other day, while waiting for my injection in the psychiatric clinic. His chains must have been worth a couple of grand. Just thought I’d mention it. He was coloured, per se, not what I would call blacky black. Does having two black parents make you fully black? I would say that unless you are f**king masai warrior, from the heartlands of the dark continent Afrikaans, then you are not black, you are coloured. How hard is it to denote a f**king colour? As the ninja from Die Antwoord says, and he should know his stuff as he’s from South Africa, there are only three kinds of gangs: Whites, Coloureds, and Blacks. I hope that makes things simple for you. Hispanics and Mexicans don’t count, I’m ever so sorry. Now the Aryan Brotherhood is a gang. But minions from Toxeth 8 aren’t. Maybe I’m wrong. I used to be part-in and part-out of a gang meself, as a teenager.

We called ourselves the Townies, as we were from the centre of town. Our HQ was the local youth club, where we played pool, computer games, ping pong (aka table tennis), and most importantly indoor five-a-side. There was a big black cross at the side of the five-a-side pitch and I used to sit on it thinking I was the Black Messiah. It was a vintage frame-of-reference viewpoint to watch the proceedings of the game from, high up and away from lethal toe-bungers. That was between games, when I wasn’t part of the action, usually as ‘The Cat’ in net, putting my face in the pelting line of all the other older townies’ shots. It was a fest of rock-hard dirty challenges at the best of times. We had the equivalent of goal-mouth scrambles in the corner of the indoor space. Basically a free-for-all fouling session in which everybody would converge on whoever had the ball and act like Danny Mills on them. Loads of ‘bite yer legs’ going on. We called it ‘Shitty Corner.’ One guy, Chris Batty, was the most skillful person I have ever seen with a football. You just couldn’t get the damn thing off him. It was like he had glue on his shoes or something. He would wade into ‘Shitty Corner’ totally on purpose with confidence that he would make it back out. He was the only one who could do that. Then there was Big Bad Bob, a weightlifter in charge of the lads, who would hit the painted-on post and claim he scored a goal. He celebrated goals that didn’t go in! Looking back, these were happy times. Just a young kid playing football and doing what he loved.

On one occasion, my very best mate Jon Paul walked in and got flattened with his glasses smashed to boot by a vicious wayward townie shot. Everyone was in hysterics although he was obviously hurt. That fact that he was hurt made it all the more funny, I’m ashamed to admit it. The ball whacked him full in the face and knocked him off his feet. The townies called him ‘Wobble Head,’ for some reason. People doubled up, creased with laughter. That’s one of the greatest memories in my whole life. Peace out x

(Just one more thing. Us Townies had a darker side. We would occasionally beat up a random stranger on the street and we called this ‘Suspecting’. This is why I wasn’t a fully committed member of them, and why I left them to join the Halton View Massive. More on that later maybe. Peace out again x)