Stoppage Time in Whalley Range

“The Hacienda Must Be Built”

—Ivan Chtcheglov, Formulary for a New Urbanism

Should've hated the little bastard, but I didn't. On his bad days, when he was smashing shit up and screaming, you could see the fear in his eyes. He was fighting something he couldn't control. Andy was a smart kid. It didn't help. He loved music. I was trying to teach him chords, and the little fucker had a fit and threw the fucking guitar right in my fucking face.

He had bad epilepsy, like Ian Curtis, the singer from Joy Division who topped himself. I'd go help out at the school where Donna was doing her training sometimes, mostly because I liked watching her with the kids. Andy was a proper handful. A right pain in the arse most days. You couldn't fix him, couldn't make the fits stop, or take away his fear. Donna would always be there for him, picking up the pieces, hoping that, somehow, it was enough.

I was an ace guitarist. I was in a band, a good one. We played with the Happy Mondays. We played the Boardwalk, and then the International 2, and then we got a gig at the Haçienda, and that was it—we were going to be famous. But it didn't work out like that. The record companies didn't come knocking, and the singer decided to go back to college to study Business Administration. The new guy wasn’t as good, and we stopped getting gigs. I didn't care. I had Donna, a girl with big tits and long legs, a girl with a quick laugh and no time for bullshit. She was a dancer. She was training to be a teacher. She used to dance naked in the bedroom for me, and I'd play guitar. She thought it was a laugh, but I was dead good. I could play “Sultans of Swing” with my teeth. I played “Love Will Tear Us Apart” with her nipples in my mouth.

We were living together in Whalley Range. It was the best time. I was in a band, and we were going to be famous, and I was in love. And I didn't have a fucking job—that's the most important thing. I think about those days now, and I think: that's what my life should have been. Living with a girl with long legs and great tits, and not having a job. That's what life's supposed to be about.

When Andy died that summer—fell and hit his head during a fit—I pretended I didn't give a shit. Stupid kid wasn't wearing his helmet because he worried about what the girls would think. Donna saw right through me. She held me while I cried. People say all kinds of shit about what happens when you die. How you look down on your life as you rise up to Heaven. What would he have seen? His home? His school? The life he might have had? His teacher’s boyfriend sobbing like a baby against her tits? Next morning, I told her it was the booze. Then I went out and fucked everything up just to prove I didn't care. 

That was the summer of the World Cup. Italia 90. It was a fucking great World Cup. We all went to a club on Charles Street. There was a big room with a stage and a giant screen, and the bar was always open, and everyone used to sing. England were robbed, but we did well. I was a bit young when we won in 1966. I was nine. But I remember the World Cup of 1970. It was the summer of the sun. My mates and me used to sit on the roof of the shed in the garden, smoking fags and drinking cider and listening to the games on the radio. That was the best. I remember when Brazil beat Italy in the final, we were sitting on the roof of the shed and we all jumped off at the final whistle, and then the shed collapsed and my dad went fucking mental. My mum crossed herself and smiled.

I always liked football, but I didn't have a team. I used to like watching it on the telly. My dad loved it. But I preferred to go to Belle Vue and watch the Speedway. He took me to Old Trafford and we went to Maine Road once. He had a season ticket for Manchester United. I had a programme where George Best had signed his name next to a picture of him in his motor. My mum threw it away. I don't like footballers now. They're all fucking tossers. But Best and Law and Charlton—they weren't tossers. They were great players.

Mexico 86 was great, too. The night Maradona scored the Hand of God goal turned out to be a wild night, one that almost killed my relationship with Donna right at the start. We had a party at the house. We were all drinking tequila and dancing to Latin music and we were all smoking weed. The tequila was great because you could drink as much as you wanted. That's the thing with tequila—it's not like other alcohol, it doesn't damage your brain cells. You could wake up in the morning after a night on the tequila and you'd feel fine. It's got something in it—it's healthy. Donna passed out really quickly on the sofa, then managed to get up and go to bed about an hour later. But I kept drinking.

I was dancing with a girl, and she had the biggest tits I'd ever seen in my life. She had really big tits. Her nipples were sticking out through her t-shirt like a couple of fucking champagne corks. I was dancing with her, and I was trying not to look. I was dancing with her and her friend, and I was kissing them both, and then the friend said to me, “Don't you want to kiss these?” and she pointed at the t-shirt. I said, Yeah. And she said, “What are you waiting for?” and I put my hands on her tits and kissed her nipples through the t-shirt. They were hard. And then the other girl said to me, “What about these?” and she had the biggest nipples I've ever seen in my life. I didn't say anything, I just put my mouth on them. And then my hands were on them. And then the other girl said to me “Do you want us to take our tops off?” and I said “Yeah, go on, why not?” We were all pissed, everyone was dancing, it was a great party, and they took their T-shirts off and everyone stopped dancing and looked at them and started clapping and cheering and the girls started dancing together. Their tits were massive. They were bigger than I ever dreamed of. And they were real. Their nipples were the size of Grolsch bottle tops. I just stared at them, and everyone stared at them, and they were laughing. And then one of them said to me, “You want some more,” and she held up her breasts, and I said, “Yeah, go on,” and I kissed her tits and the other girl put her tits in my face and I kissed them too, and the other girl grabbed hold of my cock and she said, “You want some more?” and I said, “Yeah, go on, why not.” They were both pissed and we were all pissed and it was a great party and everyone was laughing and I said, “Come upstairs,” and I took one of their hands and the other grabbed and held onto my cock through my jeans and we were laughing and I said, “This way,” and we went into my room and shut the door. I didn't have a bed at that time. There was only a mattress on the floor. There was the girl I shared a mattress with, the one who was a dancer, the one I'd just started seeing, the one who wanted to be a teacher. Donna. Beautiful, patient, funny, serious, loving Donna. But she was asleep. And then there was me and the two girls from the party. I didn't know what to do. Donna was sprawled at the foot of the mattress, so we sat down at the head. Then I was kissing the girl with the biggest tits, and the other one was taking off my trousers. She said, “Can we have some more tequila?” and I said, “Yeah, go on,” and I gave her the bottle of tequila, which somehow I'd thought to bring with me. The other girl said, “You want to kiss these?” and she pointed at her nipples, and I said, “Yeah.” They were huge. Her nipples were the size of my thumbs. I was kissing them, and she was drinking tequila. She was pouring it in her mouth and on her tits, which were in my face. And I was licking it off her tits. And the other girl was doing the same thing. They were pouring the tequila on their tits, and their tits were in my face, and I was licking it off, and Donna was sleeping. It was the maddest night of my life.

Donna woke up in the morning. The two girls were naked. I was naked. She didn't know anything about the night before. She looked at the three of us. We were all lying at the end of the mattress together, and the two girls were still asleep. They were lying on my arms, and their tits were in my face. Donna didn't know what to say. She just sat up and looked. I said, “I didn't do anything, nothing happened.” I said, “I just woke up with these two girls.” I said, “I didn't mean to do anything. It just happened.” I said, “We were all pissed, they wanted to come up to my room. Things got out of hand.” I said, “I didn't do anything.” She said, “What's going on?” and I said, “Nothing,” and she started crying. And I said, “I swear,” and she kept crying. 

The girls woke up. They didn't know what was going on. They gathered their clothes and left.

Donna went to the bathroom.

I put on a record to drown out the silence. Joy Division's “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” First time I heard it, I was too thick to really get it. 

Sometimes I got it. I got why Curtis topped himself.

For a moment, I wanted to tell Donna everything. How scared I was. How everything always fell apart. How everything went to pieces. Then Donna came back in the room.

“I thought you loved me. You don't love me,” she said. I said, “I do love you. I love you more than anything.” She said, “How can you love me if you want to be with other girls?” I said, “I don't want to be with other girls.” I said, “It's not like that. We were all pissed. They wanted to come up to my room, and they were showing off their tits, and we were all pissed, and we fell asleep.” She said, “How can I trust you? You've been with other girls. How do I know you won't be with other girls?” I said, “I won't be with other girls. I promise. I swear. I promise.” She said, “How do I know? I don't know if I can trust you. How do I know if you're telling the truth?” I said, “Because I love you. You can trust me because I love you. Because I'm in love with you. I've always loved you. I've loved you for a long time. Since I first met you. You were in the pub, and you were standing at the bar, and you had the most beautiful legs I've ever seen in my life, and later I was watching you dance. I was watching the way you moved when you danced. You were the best dancer I've ever seen in my life. And I was in love with you.”

She didn't believe me. I didn't blame her. I didn't believe me. I was a proper liar.

It took me a long time to win her back. Then I had her and the band and the football and the tequila. The band wasn't getting many gigs, but we were improving. Donna was the most beautiful girl in the world. She had the best tits. She had the best legs. She was kind, and loving, and patient. I was helping at the school. We were going to get married, and have kids, and live in a house. I had learned my lesson. 

Then Andy died. 

It was that night on Charles Street. It was after the semis. Italia 90. I was really pissed. Andy was dead. The screens kept showing close-ups of Gazza crying after he got his yellow card, almost as if he knew things were never going to be this good again. There was this bird there, and I'm pissed, and I'm thinking, I'm going to fuck this girl, and Donna doesn't have to know. I'm thinking, Donna doesn't need to find out. I went to the ladies—the men’s was busted—and this girl was there. They were belting out Pavarotti in the main room. I said, “Hello, what's your name?” and she said, “My name's Daisy,” and I said, “I've been watching you,” and she said, “I know,” and I said, “What's that mean?” and she said, “Nothing,” and then we started kissing. Then Donna walked in and caught us. 

Things changed. I started drinking a lot. I didn't care. I didn't give a shit. Donna had left me. The band was going nowhere. I was working in a call centre.

I lost my job in the call centre. I had to get a part-time job in a record shop to pay the bills. I still couldn't pay the bills. I couldn't afford the rent. I had to move out of the flat.

It wasn't just me who was struggling. Everyone was struggling. Everything was fucked. Everything was going wrong. The government was useless. There was no money. People with homes were losing them. People were losing their jobs. No one had any hope. 

I was living in a bedsit above the chippy. I had to live on £30 a week. The record store closed down. I had to live on benefits. It wasn't so easy as it used to be. Each time I went to the Jobcentre, there were no jobs. I couldn't even afford chips. Drinking wasn't as much fun as it used to be, either.

The café where Donna used to grade her papers closed down. Donna, with her quick laugh and stubborn streak. Donna, who always saw through my shit. Donna, who always wanted me to do better. She was teaching now for real.

The City fans above used to keep me up all night, drunk and stamping on the floor as they sang, “Are you hungry, Bobby Sands?”

They were nasty, racist, sectarian little shits, but they weren't bad lads.

Finally, I got a job, a job I hated. A job that made me miserable. A job that made me want to die. A job that made me want to kill someone. I got a job at the Jobcentre.

Sometimes I wonder if Donna saw the man I could've been, not the tosser I was.

There was a girl, Alison, in the office. She was a member of the Labour Party, and so I joined. She was a bit like Donna, but without her sense of humour. I thought I might have a chance of getting off with her. It didn't work. I didn't even get a sniff of her knickers. I was secretly pleased when Labour lost.

Four years later and I was still working in the fucking Jobcentre. Alison had married a guy called Marcus and moved down south. Donna had married another teacher, called Jonathan, and was living in Bowdon. Jonathan had a son, Tom, from his previous marriage, and Donna was pregnant with their first. I sent her flowers when Peter was born.  

The clubs were changing. The music changed. People took pills and drank water while I stuck to the beer.

When you're drunk, you do stupid shit. You fuck someone you shouldn't fuck. You smash something up. And you blame it on the booze—but the booze didn't make you do it. You wanted to smash that shit up. You wanted to fuck that person. But you knew you shouldn't, and the booze gave you an excuse.

And we all collude in this little lie, pretending it’s the drink that makes us do awful things. But it's not. It's us. And we all agree with this line because we all know that we need it, but we cannot admit that the whole fucking system is rotten, and maybe we wouldn't feel the need to lash out and destroy things, destroy relationships, if we didn't spend our days in misery, serving a system that was supposed to serve us.

Drugs, though, that's different. That's proper bullshit. It's like you've stuck the TV aerial into your head and tuned your brain to a pleasure channel. I did ecstasy a few times—more than a few—and the comedowns made me so suicidal that in the end, even I knew I had to stop. And yeah, it felt great. I loved everyone. Everyone loved me. But it never lasted, and it never meant anything. The music was beautiful but empty. I'm not saying I didn't love some of it, but it didn't move me the way The Smiths or Joy Division had done. It was cold.

I was struggling. I was depressed. I was drinking too much. I was smoking too much. I was overweight for the first time in my life. At some point, I stopped being able to eat whatever I wanted. I had a new girlfriend who would never have coped with a kid like Andy.

It was a Saturday morning during Euro 96. We had been out all night, and I was hungover, and she was still asleep. The covers were pulled down, and I could see her bare breasts while I watched the telly. The news was reporting from the Arndale Centre. The Provos had made a bomb threat, and the police had evacuated the area. 

The windows rattled when the bomb went off. Her breasts didn't move.

I helped with picking up the pieces in the weeks that followed. 

Nobody organised it. It was just people. We came out of our homes and flats. We swept up broken glass. We helped board up windows. We comforted one another. When the lads from upstairs started going on about Fenians, I told them I was a Taig and if they had a problem with it, they could take it up with me or they could shut up and help clean up. They helped clean up. They weren't bad lads.

I thought about stopping drinking. I managed three days without cigarettes.  

I hung out with a few of the Labour Party people who were still talking to me the night of the election. We'd been up all night when they announced Blair had won. Someone had the idea that we needed to buy some champagne to celebrate, but we couldn't find anywhere open, and our enthusiasm quickly faded.

The Haçienda closed down. It was the greatest club of all time. It was more than a club. It felt like someone had died. 

I no longer played guitar, but I had started writing songs. The band had folded. We were all getting older. They were more like poems, really. But I didn't show anyone.

Time seemed to speed up. One minute, United were winning the treble, the next it was the Commonwealth Games. I barely noticed. The smoking ban, I registered. I stopped going out and drank at home instead. Blair was kicked out. Tony Wilson died. Brown was kicked out. I no longer cared. 

At some point, my girlfriend left me.

My supervisor called me into his office. I thought I was going to get fired.

He congratulated me and told me my fifteen years service was coming up next month. “Sally's arranging a small celebration. You'll get a plaque and a small gift. Nothing major.”

I had no idea who Sally was. I had long since stopped paying attention when people joined. I only found out their names when their leaving card went round.

“Can I get the day off?” I asked.

“Er, no,” he said. “But you will get a small gift.”

“I wasn't expecting champagne,” I said.

He didn't laugh. “There won't be champagne. It will be a small celebration,” he repeated.

They never gave me my plaque or the gift. I didn't bother asking.

“You're better than this,” Donna would say, her voice a mix of hope and disappointment.

My hands had started to feel stiff. And I got the shakes. In winter, I coughed really badly. I continued to write poetry in secret. I'd never been good at English. I couldn't spell. I was ashamed of it. The teachers had just dismissed me as stupid when I was at school. They didn't know what to make of me—the kid with the funny Irish first name and the Brazilian surname, who spoke well, with a Manchester accent, and swore like a navvy. Fuck them. My grandad had told me about the hedgerow schools that sprung up when the English refused to let Catholic children get a formal education. I was a hedgerow poet, an urban storyteller. When I was in private. When I was in public, I was full of shit. It was like I couldn't stop myself from pretending. When I was writing, I could be honest for once, but I couldn't show anyone.

During the Olympics, I couldn't bring myself to watch. I was tired of screens. I was tired of being told how I should feel excited, how much, and when. While everyone else was glued to the events, I found myself just wandering around the city, staring at the buildings, getting a feel for each neighbourhood. It was easier to see things when there were fewer people about. I thought about Andy. I thought about working with disabled kids. If I could only accept that a day job was all I was ever going to do, I could get a better day job. But I couldn't let go.

Time sped up.

Donna never forgot to send me a happy birthday. When I met up with the old crew, they always mentioned her. She remembered all of their birthdays, even though she'd barely known some of them. They didn't need to tell me I had been a twat. 

I voted Leave. I regretted it. A terrorist blew up the Arena. The world lost it over a virus. We stopped getting summers. It was cold and wet all the time. The Queen died. We now had a King. I couldn't get used to it. Whenever someone said “the King” I was puzzled for a moment and wondered who they meant. It was like the new faces in the office.

The new King looked like a child's drawing of a gnome, but people seemed to like him. I got an extra day off to drink for the funeral, and another one for the coronation, and I wasn’t complaining, but I just didn't get it. It was all like something from Lord of the Rings or that Harry Potter nonsense Donna's kids liked.

I saw a Gibson acoustic in a pawn shop window and bought it. I couldn't wait to get home to play. I sat on a bench and tried to play “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” My fingers refused. I threw the fucking guitar right in the fucking canal.

I voted UKIP. They lost. There was another World Cup. England lost. They were proper rubbish. They didn't deserve to win.

I saw Alison's name in the paper. She'd become an MP. She still looked good.

The Jobcentre was closing. We had to move to the Arndale. It was all part of yet another regeneration. Something to do with Alison. They were talking about letting go of some staff to replace them with computers. I guessed I was done.

Donna sent me a photo of Tom and Peter dressed in 90s clothes for a school party. “Takes you back, right?” was all she said. I felt sad.

She had divorced Jonathan. I wanted to reach out, but I couldn't. I couldn't. 

Pissing had become difficult. I kept waking up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep. My hands hurt all the time, but I didn’t see a doctor because I hadn’t registered at a new one the last time I moved, and I just never got round to it. They were proper useless anyway.

I’d started getting pains in my chest. Sometimes there was blood when I coughed. 

Sometimes, when I'm alone in my flat, pissed out of my mind, I put that song on. And I think about Donna, about everyone I've fucked over. I think about the life I could've had if I wasn't such a coward. And I get it. I get why Curtis couldn't take it anymore.

And if I had another chance, I know I'd probably fuck it up all over again.

At least Curtis had the balls to put it all out there, to show the world how fucked up he was inside. Me? I just keep pretending. Keep talking about tits and football, like nothing really matters. 

I was drinking, the telly was on. I had the sound turned off, and the news was all images. I kept the sound off when the game started. United were rubbish. They scored early but failed to hold onto it. Their best player was red-carded. They lost their lead with an own goal. It was painful to watch. They missed every opportunity to win it back in the second half. They played every ball poorly. The game went into extra time.

I'd had enough. With United. With everything. With myself. I'd stop drinking. My chest felt very tight. I'd stop smoking. I'd stop pretending. I'd show someone the poems. There was a pain in my arm. I'd call Donna. I'd call Donna. I'd call Donna.

I called Donna. “Tadhg?” she said.

The final whistle blew. The stadium lights grew cold.