William Nix

And then there was this guy called William Nix. I met him in the Post Office Club one night. He was a tall gentleman with a drum kit and we started playing together on the weekends. We played a kind of music that nobody liked, but because we never played anywhere but in his garage, it didn’t matter.

Then all of a sudden it did. Willie said to me, half way through a boogie, ‘Hey, Markie. You know what.’

‘Yeah?’

‘We really ought to lay it down somewhere the people might hear it.’

‘Get the band back together, Willie? You serious?’

‘What the fuck are you talking about. I didn’t say no nothing about getting no band back together.’

‘I know, Willie. But you’re right - we really bloody should get the band back together.’

And that was when we went out of the practise room and into the light outside, and down the street and into the pub on the corner, where we said, to the big bar man the size of a house, we said ‘Baby! We got the boogie. Now, are you gonna let us lay it on you?’

The big barman the size of a house just laughed. And then he said how old we were?

‘Old enough to know better,’ I replied, pulling out the cigarettes.

‘Shit,’ the big barman said, bringing his dish rag down on the bar top. Then he just told us to leave.

So we went outside, saying over us shoulders that we’d be back.

I wasn’t so certain this was really the truth of the matter. But really, I didn’t think that had anything to do with it; what was important was we got the band back together. And so I said it again, ‘Willie, you’re right, we really should get the bloody band back together.’

But William Nix was not the kind of person who could deal with this kind of inccessant nonsense from one such as I. So he told me to leave it, that he was going into banking, and that he might get a day off some time, but it was likely that we’d never see each other again.

‘Into banking?! But, baby, what about the boogie?’

He told me it was through; a done deal; the end of the road for this thing we had going.

To which I replied, ‘But Willie, we ain’t never played it in front of no one but ourselves.’

‘Maybe that’s enough,’ he said, as he turned and went up the street.

Well, at this point, I was so despondent, I turned on my heel and I walked right back into that bar and I give that barman a piece of my mind. And, after a while of him saying he didn’t want it, I think he saw something in me made him think made he was making a mistake. So he gave us the gig.

God, I was excited, I ran right out of the place, all the way to Willie’s house. Only when I got there, Willie was nowhere to be seen. So I asked his Mother, and she said he was on the way down to the bloody Barclay Card, to hand himself over to the powers that be, put him a suit on, and forget forever about all the dirty music we had been laying down since that day in the Post Office Club.

‘Holy shit,’ I said, having a bowl of his Mum’s nice stew she always seemed to have on the go whenever I appeared.

And she looked at me as if to say, Well, you know what you need to do now.

After the unexpected dining situation, I was ready to go bust my baby William out of the bloody Barclay Card, and then we were going to play the show. Only thing was, what about the advertising. I mean, what with the gig he’d given us being that night, how were we going to mobolize the people to come hear the boogie, how would they know to come.

I decided on the way, to post an add in the evening edition of the newspaper. But the bloody bloke in there said we weren’t able to do this, on account of there ain’t no such thing as an evening edition of the paper anymore.

I just laid it on him that it was important, a real life and death situation, and if he didn’t do it, well, there would be some kind of repurcussions.

So after I’d stopped in at the press office I kept on into the town, to the bloody Barclay Card, the bloody boogie destroyer, Barclay Card.

And there was my buddy, William Nix, behind the counter like he was enjoying it. But I knew for sure he wasn’t enjoying it. And so I told him, right there and then, ‘Willie, it just won’t do, all this bullshit. It’s like that bit in the Full Montey, where Robert Carlisle comes in to get Mike Addy out of the Asda, so they can go and be strippers. It’s just exactly the same, only ours is more bloody believable. I mean, they weren’t even their real names. Bloody Gary and Dave – they were bloody Robert Carlisle and Mike Addy. But not us, not me and you, Willie. We are not so bloody foolish as to not call us selves by our own names.’

And with that, William Nix, this tall man with a drum kit I met in the Post Office Club one night, he was off with his tie and we were away, right out the front of the bloody Barclay Card, falling over this bloke from Asda pushing trolleys down Parliament Street. And we were running. Good god, we were going. Because there was a show tonight and we were not going to miss it.

Of course, when we got there, there was nobody about to even be bothered to see it. They were all in the snug watching the snooker. But we didn’t mind one bit, because we had a gig. And boy did we have a bar tab. I mean, it was like nothing I had seen before. I just said to the bar man, ‘Lay it on me’, and there before us, like something out of an advert or a film, were these two pints of bloody Bombadier bevvy, and just for me and Willie.

But what about the music? 
Well, let me tell ya. The music was good and the music was loud. And then I said, as I turned to the crowd, ‘No more bloody Barclay Card for me and Willie. We seen the future, and the future is laying it down – while you watch the snooker, or whatever it is you do to stop thinking.’

Of course, the real magic of the story is the late edition, the fact we managed to get the newspaper man to get us in there, at such short notice, in a paper that didn’t exist, until I walked in the room and told him that it did. But right now I have to be getting to the Argos to buy a mattress protector. Cos this mattress I got from Benson’s Beds, it is bloody hurting my neck. And they want the pictures to prove it ain't soiled. And the pictures need the protector. And I know that.