ALL NIGHT LONG
tony baker
ALL NIGHT LONG
With a couple of pills and a handful of bills You wipe the cocaine dust from your nose. You say you’re gonna party all night long so you sing some songs to some debutantes Who cling on to your every word You’ve got nothing to say, but You just want to be heard Who’s to say you won’t rue the day You wished you’d die before you got old And your hand-me-down values Are going to bury you underground. With your two-tone shoes and your three chord blues You get drunk, you get stoned, you get laid And you get it all - all night long And you cry when you want it And you scream if you don’t You say you’re upon it But you don’t know what you want And you get it all - all night long
“There are two types of people – those that smoke pot, and those that don’t – and I smoke pot.” Richie was seventeen at the time – he’d been at a party with all the people he used to hang out with at school, and was talking with great intensity to Gaynor Walker about something, that at that precise moment in time had seemed to be both extremely important as well as deeply meaningful. Safely hidden in the shadows surrounding the red light bulb, that the host, Phil Roberts, had fitted earlier that evening (in the firm belief that it added an air of decadence to the surroundings), Richie pursued his one-man discourse, content in the knowledge that his theory was about to shed new light on the whole human condition – even though he was struggling a bit to find the right words. The living room itself, was a shrine to the Festival of Britain and a style ambassador for modernity – its decoration being cold, brash and affectedly intellectual – which, when outside of the protection of the shadows, left Richie feeling a great sense of unease. In fact everything in the room seemed to conspire against him – the evil stare of the Eastern European lino-cut that hung above the slate fireplace had been disturbing him ever since he’d arrived and the curtains with their bold abstract patterns of reds and blacks seemed to form demonic faces that leapt at him from all directions, he even thought he could discern faint cannibalistic chants emanating from the general hubbub of the party – all this, coupled with the alienation that he was already experiencing in the present company, had rendered him slightly agitated and prone to saying the first thing that came into his head - no matter how pretentious it sounded. Gaynor was the only person in the room that he could connect with even though three months earlier, everybody had constituted what he considered to be his crowd. Somehow she seemed to transcend the mediocritytrap that the rest had fallen into ever since he’d left and gone to Art School. Their values, quite plainly hadn’t moved on – they were still living in their small parochial world and were destined to become nothing but replicas of their parents. Whereas Gaynor was above all that – or maybe it was just that he’d always fancied her and that she’d just recently split up with Steve Adams – he liked to think it was the former.
It was like all the parties that they used to have. Phil’s parents were away at their annual Dinner Dance and wouldn’t be back until at least midnight. People had started arriving at about seven o’clock, some carrying bottles of Reisling, others with Watneys Pale Ale, whilst Richie turned up at about eight thirty with a brand new copy of Link Wray & the Raymens eponymous LP under his arm and a hip flask of Johnny Walker in his jacket pocket that he’d ‘borrowed’ from his father . He hadn’t yet figured out how he was going to refill the bottle now left standing half empty in the cocktail cabinet – he’d sort that out later – although when that would be, he wasn’t quite sure. He was broke - the money he’d earned hop-picking during the summer had dried up, and much to the chagrin of his mother, he still hadn’t bothered to get a Saturday job. Even the album that he was so keen to promote to those assembled was not even his yet, having been temporarily liberated from the depths of his mother’s wardrobe (her hiding place for that years Christmas presents). But that was Richie’s common practice when it came to organising his life – leave everything to the last minute and try and weasel his way out of whatever predicament he found himself in. ________________________ As well as the LP and the whiskey, he also had a reefer. He’d been given it by a friend from Art School, and having previously secreted in his shirt pocket, he kept covertly testing it to see if it had gotten bent – running his fingers down its length to smooth out any creases – fashioning it into a miniature Corinthian Column with its’ little twist of paper at the end. ___________________________
The minute that he’d arrived, he’d become instantly aware of how much the world had changed since he’d last been there. It had only been three months, yet his two lives of ‘now’ and ‘then’ were already beyond reconcile. When he’d started Art School, he’d had no conceptions of what he was about to enter into – he had no real career plan, and the pursuit of academia had already somewhat passed him by – he liked art, but other than that, he knew nothing. He certainly had no idea as to what an Art Student was (or that there was any distinction between them and any other kind of student) – and he knew even less about the bohemian world that beckoned him. So on his first day when his teacher told him not to call him ‘sir’, he realised that he might be on the road to somewhere else – and, although he felt slightly out of his depth, he none-theless embraced it with open arms – sensing that deep down, for the first time, he sort of belonged.
But here he was once again, in the house of the unfamiliar, feeling nothing but distance and an eerie sense of déja-vu that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. People were already fully engaged in their respective rituals by the time he’d made his entrance – the majority of which were stood around talking with half-filled glasses, propping up any available wall space. The exception to this being Sarah Houlding, who, already a bit tipsy from half a glass of Cider, was dancing barefoot to ‘Rock Island Line’, closing her eyes whilst she mouthed the words and shook her body into a shimmy that echoed the punctuated rhythm of Lonnie Donnegan’s staccato vocals. Although she was the only thing moving in the room, nobody seemed to notice her – or to be more precise, everybody had noticed her, they just chose to ignore her. It happened every time – an hour of wild activity, and then she’d be in tears for the rest of the evening with all the girls taking it in turns to console her.
Whilst on the other hand, Martin Derby and Sally Richardson made their presence blatantly evident by their predictable absence. It was their wellrehearsed routine - a few days earlier they would have broken up for good, but would have made it back together that morning. They would spend the first half hour of the night independently talking to everybody, ingratiating themselves to all and sundry and, after having been presented with the award for being the life and souls of the party, they would then quietly sneak off to the master bedroom to spend the next two hours ruffling the sheets of the parental double bed – only to return ten minutes before the end of the party looking distinctively wide-eyed and a little bit drained.
In the corner of the room, and intermittently knocking the floor-standard lampshade with his flailing arms, Johnny Collins was talking animatedly about the night before when he had been seduced by Mademoiselle Didot the French assistant, and was going into graphic detail about what they did (or didn’t) get up to in her flat above Lloyds Bank in the High Street. “It’s so much better doing it with an older woman” he confided (although his words were really directed to the whole room) “they let you do everything. I’m telling you, I could hardly walk afterwards”. His audience, namely Chris Vickers, was captivated by his account, eager for every detail, believing this to be part of the tapestry of life that he’d heard so much talk about, and of whose authenticity he would come to doubt in later years.
“But you mustn’t tell anyone – she could lose her job if this got out” It was all pure fiction – it was just Johnny’s way of turning his fantasies into reality – and in five minutes he would tell the same story to somebody else in the same strictness-of-confidence, albeit with a few further embellishments. “They’re all so shallow’ Richie whispered to Gaynor ‘they’re just completely superficial’ He’d always harboured a belief that he was somebody different, however the conservative culture that pervaded his schoolboy world had kept this conviction firmly locked in the closet – but now that he’d joined a club of outsiders where everybody was different (like everybody else), he felt the compulsion to declare it at any given opportunity. “It’s embarrassing, they’re like drones, doing the same thing over and over again – there’s more to life you know. – something more meaningful. Like, we’re not just here to go to school, get a job, get married, have a family and then die – there’s something else. It’s hard to put into words – if you know what I mean. It’s like we need to step out of our bodies and start to exist on some higher plain. It’s all about ideas really – that, and getting laid”. The hip flask was nearly empty and he felt that he was making ground with Gaynor – she seemed really interested in what he was saying and kept smiling all the time. Gaynor, however, saw things a bit differently. She’d always found Richie to be sweet, yet a little too self-obsessed. There was no denying that she was grateful for his company and that she was outwardly flirting with him, but this was less to do with any kind of sexual attraction and more to do with the fact that Steve Adams was leaning on the mantelpiece snogging with Penny James - and that Richie made a great shield. If Steve’s amorous activities continued in the direction that they seemed to be heading, she might even have to resort to coming-on to Richie, just so as not to lose face. She’d hate herself for it afterwards, not so much for the fact that she might hurt Richie’s ego, but more because she was still completely besotted by Steve, and that it was so demeaning to stoop to this level to try and win back his affection.
“I mean it’s like, if you don’t have ideas then you don’t really exist – and then what’s the point?” He unscrewed the hip flask and finished off the last of the Johhny Walker, not thinking to offer any to Gaynor. ‘And if you exist, you need to experience everything to the fullest – there should be no taboos – ecstasy and pain, it’s all the same. It’s like Burl Ives said in ‘Cat on a hot tin roof’ – if you don’t feel pain, then you don’t know you’re alive.
Without pain there wouldn’t be any art – I mean, without pain Rimbaud might just as well have written for the Beano, and Van Gogh become a florist”. Gaynor’s ability to bite her tongue was beginning to wane. “Shield or no shield”, she said to herself “if he comes out with just one more pseudo-philosophical posture, I’m going to have to walk over to Penny James and punch her in the face, whether her tongue’s stuck in Steve’s mouth or not.” “If you don’t live life, then you’re not alive – and if you’re not alive, then life’s not worth living”. He concluded, then reached for the pocket of his shirt where he pulled out the well-worn reefer. He’d been waiting all evening for the right moment – and this was it – he was going to make his absolute statement. For a minute, everything froze in time – the needle on the stereogram ground to a halt leaving a scratch on the record that had been hitherto minding it’s own business, Sarah Houlding, who was reaching the peak of her frenzy, became instantly sober, conversation stopped and all heads turned in his direction as he took the box of matches from his trouser pocket. Tilting his head back he struck the single England’s Glory in the style of a ‘B movie’ cowboy, igniting the twist of paper held between his lips, and took one long drag from the herbal cocktail. He paused for what seemed like a lifetime, then opened his mouth letting the smoke waft gently towards the ceiling. It was then that he made his famous address. He’d wanted to make an impact – and although things didn’t quite go according to plan, there was certainly no denying that he made his mark on the evening’s proceedings.Gaynor, shocked at his little performance, ran into the arms of Steve Adams, who abandoned Penny James in an instant to go to the rescue of his future wife, and Rodney Lewis, a quarterback for the Lower Sixth Rugby Team who had attended a talk only the previous week at his church youth club on the dangers of drugs, handed his glass of Watneys to Clive Johnson, walked over to Richie, rolled up his sleeve, punched him slap-bang in the face and then proceeded to pick him up by the collar of his corduroy jacket and throw him out of the house – declaring that he didn’t want to be under the same roof as any degenerate dope fiend. From then on in, he became known as Reefer Richie. Of course, Martin and Sally didn’t get to witness the events first hand – they had to be told later. _______________________________
Although his face was sore for a few days, he quite enjoyed the reputation it had earned him, and he thought of the cut on his cheek as a fencing scar – a trophy to be displayed in a prominent position. It also allowed him plenty of scope for invention when it came to explaining its noticeable presence. One account involved four teddy boys with flick knives down a dark alley, in an other it was the result of a drunken brawl over a girl – for his parents he told them that he’d tripped over his shoe laces, which thankfully they bought hook line and sinker, although this did open him up to an extensive lecture from his mother entitled ‘I told you so’. As for the hip flask that had fallen from his pocket somewhere between his flight across Phil Robert’s living room and his landing in the laurel bush in the front garden – he hadn’t yet worked out what he was going to say – maybe his father wouldn’t notice _____________________________ Richie loved Art School, but he loved himself even more, and he dropped out after Easter swapping the small world of suburbia for an even smaller bed-sit on the attic floor of a house in Notting Hill Gate. He moved from one dead-end job to another, on almost a weekly basis – picking up his wages on a Friday, spending it all on uppers & downers for the weekend and sleeping it off on a Monday morning. He did however, somehow manage to take out a hirepurchase agreement on a Vox AC30 and a red Gretsch guitar – and with it, procured his back stage pass to the world of rock’n’roll. When he’d first arrived in London, his evenings would be spent drifting around the bars of Soho, usually ending up in the 2i’s coffee bar in Old Compton Street where there was still a proliferation of skiffle. Later on, he gravitated towards the Marquee in Oxford Street as it was then, where he would go to see the likes of the Cyril Davies R&B All-Stars, and where one night his world was turned around by the recently formed Blues Incorporated which featured a young Charlie Watts on drums. It was right there and then that he decided to form his own combo, coming up with the name of The Orbits before he’d found any musicians or even bought his own guitar. The blues according to Alexis Korner seemed to hold all the answers to what he’d been looking for – he had finally found his niche as well as a bolthole in which he could hide away from the demands of the real world. It also offered him the promise of getting laid – something that he not only aspired to, but had already started to put into practice. The combination of the twinkle in his blue eyes (usually the result of some derivative of amphetamine) and his ability to charm women as he talked ten-to-the-dozen in what, on the surface, appeared
to be a most flattering manner, had earned him the reputation of being a bit of a ladies-man. However his liaisons never lasted long – he would usually conclude them after a couple of weeks on the premise that the relationships were going nowhere – but it was usually because he’d got his kicks and had moved onto somebody else. It didn’t take him long to realise that a ‘day job’ was not his destiny, and when the market on Portobello Road gave up its’ fruit and veg in favour of a parade of antique stalls, he saw his opportunity and seized it. His evenings would be spent rehearsing The Orbits and playing the burgeoning circuit of pub venues, whilst during the daytime, which normally didn’t start until after eleven o’clock, he would either pass the time frequenting The Prince Albert on Pembridge Road or go to auctions and house clearances around London and the home counties. And then on Saturday, as the climax to his week, he would see sunrise for the first time from the other side and set up his stall for the days business. Initially he’d had to borrow money from his parents, but after a few months he was actually starting to make a profit. He seemed to have a talent for finding things that people wanted to buy – his speciality being enamelled signs – some of which he had been known to liberate himself from the sides of buildings during the early hours. He justified these liberations with his theory that many of the products were now defunct , therefore they were superfluous and he was, in fact, providing a service in finding a good home for them – and anyway the buildings would probably be pulled down and the signs with them, to make way for a new high-rise. So he was actually preserving a heritage that was fast disappearing. _______________________________
And that was the rest of his life mapped out for him. There would always be the occasional foray into other enterprises (screen printed mirrors, badges, Hawaiian shirts to name but a few) and he would regularly supplement his income with roadie work which took him up and down the motorways of Great Britain, usually ending up at the Blue Boar in the early hours of the morning eating bacon sandwiches and drinking large mugs of tea. His role in such expeditions encompassed everything from stringing guitars and humping gear to getting money from reluctant promoters who had been known to propose the toss of a coin and double-or-quits as an alternative to paying the agreed fee. He would also be the sound engineer, and a regular scam of his would be to charge support acts for mixing their sound – and if they didn’t have the ‘readies’, he would accept whatever narcotic they had as payment in kind.
The Orbits gathered a small local following and released one single that made it to number 83 in the charts - they were also support act to a few well known acts, most notably the Pretty Things – although they never had to pay to have their sound mixed. In later years, when he frequented the wine bars of the Kings Road looking for ‘dolly birds’ as liked to call them, he would seek out society girls pretending to rough it in their sequined lapping tongue T Shirts and tell them in the most plausible fashion, how he used to jam with the (Rolling) Stones. This was his greatest half-truth - as well as being his favourite chat-up line. The whole truth was that when they toured with the ‘Things’, he and Dick Taylor would usually sit around the dressing room improvising around a three chord blues progression until the groupies arrived – at which point Richie would put down his guitar leaving Dick to carry on, whilst he pursued more carnal progressions. Dick had been in the original Rolling Stones line-up and was still playing on their recordings at the time he and Richie would jam together – Richie felt that this tenuous link was sufficiently strong enough to merit his claim. And his story never failed to impress the attentive ears of his audience – well-moneyed, impressionable and looking for a break from the confines of their destiny. To them, Richie appeared to be the real thing – a little rough around the edges, yet an authentic representative of those frequently hyped halcyon days. And if he didn’t succeed in ‘getting his end away’, then at the very least he would get a free drink. He had a whole back catalogue of tales that never needed any real qualification, as the main protagonists were either dead or had memories so clouded by the results of their hedonistic lifestyles that they’d believe it to be the truth, so long as it enhanced their reputation. There was no denying that he had been around on the scene, but the degree of intimacy that he professed wouldn’t stand up to much scrutiny. For instance, it was true that just after he’d moved to London he’d re-applied to Art School – this time to Ealing – and that when he was waiting to be called for interview he found himself sat next to a tall skinny guy with a beaky nose who wanted to do graphic design – however, this did not quite constitute ‘hanging out with Pete Townsend’ as he regularly referred to it. But that was the world in which he resided and he had no reason to give up his dubious right of tenancy. He was comfortable there, and there was a form of consistency in it that suited him – he was in a time capsule where the repetition of his routine kept him firmly fixed somewhere in the nineteen sixties – where he and many others had a vested interest in maintaining the mythology of the time – in the way that every generation believes that its youth is unique in the history of civilisation – when in actual fact its only really important to their own
cultural make-up. And if they were ever to take the time to research the past, they would soon discover that it had all been done before anyway. At the time that Centre Point was attracting a fair amount of press coverage, Richie moved from his bedsit into a squat in Camden. Not only did this provide him with free accommodation, it also made him appear to have some form of social conscience in a left-wing, pseudo-anarchist sort of way. Initially there was a floating occupancy of around ten people, but as children started appearing and fellow squatters began to abandon their hippy lifestyle in favour of careers and fisherman’s cottages on the Kent coast, Richie became the only remaining resident. And after fifteen years of illegal occupancy where he continued to profess his allegiance to the anti-capitalist movement, he became the official owner-occupier – buying the property at a knock-down price - and with the renting of the spare rooms to a succession of lodgers – preferably young, attractive and female – he successfully cemented the end of his social conscience and secured a lucrative income requiring the most minimum of effort – an arrangement that suited him right down to the ground. ________________________________ Along with his trousers, Richie grew out of many things, but his reliance on chemical stimulation never waned – at the age of sixty five he was still to be found in the bathroom at parties wiping the cocaine dust from his nose and hanging out with aspiring thrift-store glitterati who saw their future in his example. He still carried the obligatory reefer and spouted un-corroborated theories about anything from conspiracies to self-serving politics and the meaning of life. He had no children that he knew of, he’d had crabs so long that they’d become household pets, and if he was to pick up a tape measure and record the distance travelled since that pivotal night, it would barely be a stones-throw – yet in between he’d had what he called a ‘bloody good time’ ___________________________________ He’d already been at the party for a couple of hours and had just finished singing some songs from the Orbits in-extensive set list to an unreceptive pair of socialites who’d been sat on the sofa busily texting a litany of vacuous messages to recipients who had failed to make the guest list. Not quite the debutantes of the past, these were daughters of the nouveau-riche – starved of love, pampered with products and quarantined from anything resembling taste – in short, they lacked breeding. Yet, due to their extensive portfolios, mainly the results of property investments, they managed to find their way on to the ‘C’ list of various Hello Magazine-featured parties. Richie’s invite although similarly tenuous, was at least founded in some form of lineage that linked him to the host, albeit a friend of a friend.
It was the same crowd as usual – a handful of bona fides, but mostly hangerson and media types, all following the tried and tested formula – the ‘made-its’ talking exclusively about themselves, with those looking for a social leg-up attentively listening - and with the only alternative topic of conversation strictly limited to the spurious subject of who’s-doing-what-with-who. Stood next to an old Wurlitzer jukebox was a woman who he’d never seen before. She appeared different from everybody else – less desperate to impress than the others, and seemed to possess a certain aura of contentment. It was obvious to Richie that he wasn’t going to score with the two Paris Hilton lookalikes, so he thought he’d try his luck with the Wurlitzer woman – although, he had to admit she was a bit too old for his usual tastes – but as there was nothing else on the table, he might just as well see what was on offer. “Have you made your selection yet?’ he smiled, walking over to her. “Sorry?” He directed a nod in the direction of the jukebox. “Oh no – I’ve never heard of most of them, and the ones that I have, I wish I hadn’t.” Richie couldn’t help feeling an affinity coming on – he might even go as far as to say that they were of a kindred spirit but then he always was quick to jump to conclusions. “I only keep updated with contemporary music through my granddaughter – and she’s now of an age when her tastes are becoming a bit more sophisticated which means that I’m spared the torture of listening to the manufactured drivel they churn out these days.” “Yeah – at least back in the day music had a degree of originality”. Already, he thought, they were starting to hit it off. “Don’t kid yourself - it was no better then than it is now – it’s only because you’re wearing rose-tinted spectacles. Pop music was still in diapers – it still hadn’t learnt to walk, let alone, run. In fact the whole scene at the time has been greatly over-rated if you ask me”. But he hadn’t asked her,’ he chuntered silently to himself, ‘he was just trying to make pleasant conversation – to share a common ground and in return she had the audacity to challenge both the roots of popular culture and his own heritage in one fell swoop – just like that, with no consideration for his feelings.
In one statement she had demolished his very foundation. He realised that he was lost for words. Nobody had ever challenged his existence like that before, it was tantamount to blasphemy and he was struck dumb by it all, being no longer able to hold court in the manner that he’d always been accustomed to. ”It was just a load of blokes playing with themselves, mistaking their hedonistic exploits for some kind of social movement that was going to liberate the soul and emancipate mankind forever – they were either overdosed on guile or totally naive. And the feminists were just as bad. You had the likes of Germaine Greer shagging anything in trousers and building up her investment portfolio whilst penning her diatribe on the inequality of the species – and then the next thing you know, she’s on Celebrity Big Brother. And as for political lesbianism – what was all that about? It was all hokum.” Richie shuffled his feet. “Yeah, I suppose you have a point”, he agreed whilst inside a silent voice berated himself – ‘What are you saying? – it’s all bullshit, and you know it’. And it was true – he did know it – but what alternative did he have – his defences were well and truly down, and the thick skin that he’d developed over the years was now rendered wafer thin. Whereas in the past he was oblivious to the sideways glances of incredulity that his bar room seminars normally attracted, he was now questioning everything he said before he even opened his mouth – the result being that he was rendered virtually mute. ‘The way that those people abandoned their ideals at the drop of a hat,” she continued “really makes me sick – making a career for themselves out of preaching their principles, then going home to their Shangri-las in Sussex to let every sucker, loyal to their scriptures, pick up the pieces. It seems that it’s always the most principled of people who change course mid-stream and always in the most dramatic fashion. Which makes you realise that their integrity was merely a way of satisfying their own overwhelming needs for attention – all ego and no substance”. “Yeah, but” some of his old rhetoric was starting to creep back “without ideas, you’d have nothing, and the genius needed to come up with something original needs nurturing, pampering even – otherwise there wouldn’t be any ideas – and where would we be then?” “Ideals – not ideas. You always were a bit naïve Richie when it came to your philosophical discourse – it’s gift-wrapped hypocrisy, just like Crosby Stills & Nash singing songs about some utopian world where consumerism was an evil presence lurking at its perimeter, whilst at the same time insisting on there being a Persian rug on stage before they would even consider performing”.
“Excuse me?” “I said it was a bit like Crosby…” “No – not that – you called me Richie”. “Well – it’s your name – Reefer Richie as we used to call you”. “We?’ “Everybody that you left behind so that you could discover yourself”. Richie was now totally confused – not only had she cast aspersions on everything that he held dear, but somehow she seemed to know who he was. “And who, exactly, was everybody?”. “Well, me, Steve, Phil, Penny, Rodney, Paul”. “And which one of those was you?” “Me? I’m Gaynor – Gaynor Walker - I think you had a crush on me – I became Adams, but changed it back to Walker about twenty years ago”. “Well – I don’t know whether the crush bit is quite accurate”. He knew he was lying through his teeth, but he had to save face somehow “So – what happened to Mr Apollo Adams?” he couldn’t help but feel a pang of triumph knowing that she’d split with Steve – even though it had taken her over twenty five years to do it. “He’d had an affair – tried to play the mid-life crisis card, but at the time, I had an entire pack as well as a joker, namely the menopause – so I sort of held all the trumps, and wasn’t up for listening to negotiations. He tried begging, but it only made him look pathetic – and I was always a bit intolerant of weakness in others – mainly because I hated my own failings and didn’t want to be reminded of them. I’m not bitter or anything, it’s just something that happened. Anyway, we still see each other from time to time – family parties and all that”. ‘You should have left him with his tongue stuck down Penny James’ throat – it would have saved you a lot of bother”. “Funny you should say that – it’s probably where he is right now.”
“Ha” he couldn’t help but let out a yelp “the captain of the first eleven and pouting Penelope shacked up together – Ha – no imagination – I don’t know what you ever saw in him”. “Well actually – he was fantastic in bed”. “But, let’s face it, he was as shallow as an ornamental pond” All his petty jealousies were starting to come back with a vengence, it wouldnt be long before he started off on one of his teenage rants. “That’s a bit ripe coming from somebody whose only depth is their ego”. “Well at least I’ve got some depth”. There was a brief silence – not frosty – just a break to delineate the end of one topic and the start of another, as well as giving Richie time to finish his glass. “So,” she said, starting up the conversation again, “did you ever get around to changing the world?” “Well, I changed my own world – but I guess , although the will was always there, I was just probably too busy having a good time to do anything about it” Richie surprised himself with the frankness of his self-analysis – it was probably the first time that he’d applied objectivity to himself with any sincerity, since he’d filled out a personality questionnaire in a copy of Cosmopolitan that he’d come across in a doctor’s waiting room - and he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about it. “And was it worth it – I mean, are you happy?” “Yeah - I reckon. I’ve done things. I know lots of people – well I knew lots of people – there’s a few who aren’t here anymore. I’ve had a few laughs and met some beautiful women along the way – what more could you want?” “And do you think that’s enough?” “Yeah – for me it is”. “What about the higher plain that you used to talk about?” “Well if there was any of that going, I’d have some of that as well”. “Did you never think about having a family?”
“It was never my bag – it seemed to involve too much responsibility , and I never did quite come to terms with that kind of thing – and the idea of looking after another life – I could barely look after myself. And you?” “Yeah – two daughters and three grandchildren.” “No I mean are you happy?” “I don’t know – I don’t really ever consider it.” “Do you not think you should?” A commotion appeared to be happening in the ballroom and the two would-be debutantes burst into the room in an avalanche of giggles that spilt into their cocktails, and Richie, whose attention was always easily distracted found that his train of thought had become de-railed in an instant , and he stood with his mouth wide open gaping at the two as they stumbled across the room. Aware of his stare, their laughter gained momentum, which Richie mistook for flirtation - and like one of Pavlov’s dogs with an uncontrollable reflex action, he gave them a wink. “Fucking paedo” the taller of the two shouted, wiggling her little finger and looking down at his crutch “does your old lady know what’s going on inside those trousers of yours?” and they walked off accompanied by a fanfare of hysterics. “You’re type never learn do you?” Gaynor turned to him “ You rely upon your blue eyes and libido to carry you through a succession of one-night-stands in your youth, and then sometime in your late thirties – Kapow – you’ve turned into a dirty old man who doesn’t realise that the girls you’re ogling at are young enough to be your daughter – and that, in short, they prefer men of their own age”. “But I don’t have a daughter”. “Precisely – if you did, then maybe you’d not lust after the memory of your teenage years, but partake in nurturing that of another’s. It might shock you to know that it can be quite enriching – it makes you feel that you’re part of something bigger than your own desires – that you can exist after you’ve gone – that a little bit of you still lives on”.
She was pushing him into the uncomfortable territory of mortality and he was finding it difficult to hold on to any clear thoughts. “I tried Buddhism once, but I couldn’t quite buy into that re-incarnation stuff – I’d prefer to just carry on forever in the form that I’ve grown accustomed to. And anyway, I don’t like worms. It would just be my luck to come back as a worm – I’d get claustrophobic having to spend most of my day burrowing my way through half a ton of soil – and then, when I’d finally poke my head out, I’d probably get eaten by some gigantic starling with a beak the size of a Calmac ferry”. “I was meaning that some essence of you carries on – that you’ve passed on something – that you’ve shared something that has some kind of meaning. All your disdain for the old crowd – accusing them of being drones without direction, destined to step into their parents shoes – was just your fear of having to belong to a community where self-gratification isn’t always the first thing on the agenda. For sure – the world revolves – but not around you”. She drew a breath. “I find it all a bit of a shame. Even though you talked a load of philosophical babble, I quite liked you. In certain respects, it was all quite endearing. You were at least trying to break the mould with some degree of intention – albeit a bit misguided. But then you just replaced it with another. The main thing, I suppose, is that you tried - which I guess is all that anybody can expect to do – it’s just a pity you didn’t go that bit further”. She took a sip from her drink giving Richie the window of opportunity that he’d been waiting for. “So I don’t suppose you fancy a shag then?”
________________________________
ALL NIGHT LONG is a short story based on the lyrics of the song of the same name. Although not making any references, or drawing any parallels to the man himself, the premise of the song was inspired by watching Keith Richards performing to an audience of ‘society’ people in the Martin Scorcese film Shine A Light. Reefer Richie, the main protaganist in the story is a product of the early sixties, who never quite moved on from his rebellious teenage roots. Having dropped out of art school, he carved himself a niche living in a squat, playing in second rate band, running a stall at Portabello Market and believing himself to be God’s gift to women - but then his past creeps up on him. Tony Baker has played in quite a few bands, didnt drop out of art school, never lived in a squat and has held down a full time job teaching for too long to mention. He lives in Leeds with Mary and has three children and a dog.