eleven

After Tony had read Little Red Rooster magazine the guitar became a religion to him. It was as if he had been baptised in the name of the blues. Now, me and Tony had often said to each other we wanted to be real guitarists, but the way we talked about it was like it was a fantasy; like wouldn't it be great if you won a million on the pools or could have a shag with Shareen Carter - one of those out of reach possibilities that vast improbabilities consign forever to the realm of dreams.

However, after Tony had read that magazine, when he said he wanted to be a real guitarist he meant it. It was like he had reached out and grasped that tiny possibility and refused to let go, and from that moment it became for him a reality. He would kneel all day in front of Bob the big orange bastard improvising blues. He never wanted to do anything else.

I used to get fed up sometimes and leave him there and go and watch telly or go out and ride my brother's bike, or, if mum were out, kick a football round the back garden. But, whatever I did or however long I was gone, sure as hell when I got back, Tony'd still be there in the bedroom practising.

Towards the end of the summer, Tony bought this album called Blues Legends which featured tracks by Curtis Cline and DB Daniels as well as people like Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, Elmore James and Little Walter. He used to play along to it for hours. After reading the story of DB Daniels he'd really got into this idea of making the guitar talk. And he'd keep playing stuff and ask me if I understood what he was trying to say.

To start with it was quite a laugh, but Tony just went on and on doing it. Sometimes I used to say really stupid things just to wind him up. But he never got angry. He just became more determined than ever to make me understand what the guitar was trying to say. He used to bend the strings and press and pluck so hard that the finger nails pulled clean away from his fingers which became permanently wrapped in blood-stained plasters.

Although Tony's slavish devotion to the guitar meant that he spent a lot of time in my bedroom, mum didn't mind. He always played through headphones, he was nice and polite and had that fresh angelic face that mothers can't resist. Also his dad was dead, which I suppose was a kind of bonus on the sympathy side of things (besides which mum obviously still felt a bit guilty about the time she'd suggested he was a bit funny in the head). So, really she had no option but to be nice to him. However, between you and me, Tony's obsession with the guitar made me sometimes think that she was probably right - that he was a couple of frets short of a full octave. But maybe you need to be a bit mad to be a real musician. I guess an unrestricted perception of reality lets you play more freely (and certainly Tony's perception of reality was more unrestricted than most).

When he started getting into the blues, Tony set his heart on a Gibson ES335 guitar. I agree with him that the Gibson ES335 is one of the world's most beautiful guitar. These days, Tony could afford hundreds of Gibsons, but back then owning one seemed just another impossible dream. We had never seen a real Gibson ES335 but in Little Red Rooster there was a centre page spread of one, a 1958 maple blonde with a straight through mahogany neck, stud-mounted bridge, twin humbuckers and gold plastic tone and volume controls. Of course there are fancier Gibsons with gold-plated hardware, jazzy tail pieces and elaborate mother of pearl fret markers, but you can keep them. The beauty of the ES335 is its timeless simplicity. It is the definitive semi-acoustic guitars.

Up until then, neither me nor Tony had never seen a real vintage guitar before. But having had our appetites well and truly whetted by Little Red Rooster, we decided to look through the ads in Melody Maker and locate a shop that sold loads of them. The nearest such shop we could find was called Guitar Town, which was in a place called Biddleston, about fifty miles away. Guitar Town's ad offered an amazing and mouth-watering menu of vintage guitars; Hofner Verithin, Gretsch White Falcon, Epiphone Zenith, Guild Starfire, Burns Vitasonic, and a Dan Electro Shorthorn with cylindrical DeArmond lipstick pickups. It made the guitars listed in other advertisements (all those Squires and Arias, Tokais and Charvels) seem about as inspiring as the menu in a cheap take-away.

Those modern production line guitars may sound good and many are eminently playable. But they're all so bland and disposable, the musical equivalent of a cheeseburger, diet coke and fries. Whilst those vintage guitars are in comparison like home-baked cashew and mushroom loaf with fresh tagliatelle verde, followed by mango and melon sorbet and washed down with a couple of chilled bottles of Lowenbrau (OK, so you may not share my culinary tastes but I think you know what I mean).

Having grown weary of mooching about in Andy's Music all summer, me and Tony decided to 'take the train to Guitar Town' (which, incidentally, later became the title of one of our instrumentals). One Thursday morning late in August we set off for the station with our return fares in our pocket and a rucksack containing four rounds of sandwiches (mature cheddar and ploughman's pickle), two satsumas, two Twixes, a Swiss army penknife, a four-pack of diet Fanta, a black biro, a large pack of prawn cocktail flavour crisps, a woolly, green jumper and Little Red Rooster magazine.

The train station was on the edge of town near where Tony lived. The station had an Edwardian ticket office and a canopy over the platform which had been added in the nineteen twenties. The canopy was supported by four ornate wrought iron columns that were leftover from the bandstand in the park. The bandstand was built after the first world war using money bequeathed by the town band's philanthropic forefather Sir Earnest Fuller.

Basically, the trustees of Sir Earnest will had made a mistake when ordering the columns from an iron works in Somerset. When twelve instead of eight columns arrived none of the trustees elected to take responsibility for the mistake and as the columns had already been paid for there was no pressure on them to do so. However, one enterprising trustee (who had a certain talent for impersonating handwriting) added a note to the bottom of Sir Earnest's instructions 'providing for further four columns with which to erect a canopy at Westing Station.' The columns were duly put in place, and carpenters and glaziers were called in to construct a canopy upon them.

Although the canopy has rotted and been replaced at least twice since then, the wrought iron columns remain. Although they are on British Rail property, the columns are actually owned by Westing Town Council and have been repainted several different colours over the years according to which particular party happened to be in power. When I was very, very young I remember the columns being bright red for a short while. For a long time after that they were a dirty pale blue, until one spring when the Liberals took over and the columns were ordered to be painted primrose white. As far as I am aware, they are now what one might describe as pale smog-brown, except when it rains heavily and then they are a kind of streaky smog-yellow.

Beneath the station canopy, bolted to the platform, were two wrought iron benches decorated at the back with the same florid iron curlicue as the columns. Although the canopy provided shelter from rain and shade from the sun it did nothing to deter the aerial bombardment of the pigeons that lived beneath its wooden eaves. Regular commuters, who had already suffered much indignity and dry cleaning bills avoided the seats. However, occasionally, some unsuspecting visitor, laden down with luggage, would decide to take the weight off their feet for a while and settle upon one of the unfortunately positioned benches. The pigeons, fat and flat-footed, would stroll like an army of grey feathered Charlie Chaplins up and down the beam casually crapping over the side, their barrage of shit bombs exploding on bags and heads below like blobs of Italian ice cream melted beneath a sauce of smelly butterscotch. Then calmly dodging the insults and polystyrene coffee cups hurled up at them, the Pigeons would retreat to fuck and flap in the security of the canopy's darker corners.

To the east of Westing, the railway track runs by the canal along the edge of town. And, as the train clattered out of the station through that warm august morning, I gazed over the brambled embankment into back gardens at sheets and knickers on washing lines, runner beans twisting up canes beside whitewashed greenhouses and a garden with numerous gnomes, a miniature wishing well and a dipping windmill bird with a big red beak and yellow blades for tail feathers.

Beyond the shade of the houses, where the streets gave way to fields, the window was fogged by sun shining on the dirt-encrusted glass. I raised my hand to shade my eyes and continued to gaze out at marshland bordered by bulrushes and paddocks of crumbly mole hills and rabbits that sat and watched the train then scattered bounding between clumps of course grass into dense copses of spindly trees, branchless trunks covered in ivy, reaching up through darkness to a canopy of leafy hands that spread and clutched hungrily at the sun. Whilst I peered out of the window, munched prawn cocktail crisps and pondered upon nothing in particular, Tony took out Little Red Rooster and started to read.

"Aren't you bored of looking at that yet?" I asked.

Tony shook his head and shut his eyes, his lips moving silently like a hungry diner reading a menu, tasting the names of all those guitars we were about to feast upon; Gibson Byrdland, Rickenbacker 330 Fireglo, Fender Jazzmaster, Guild Starfire.

The train we'd caught was one of those ones with three carriages that clatters across the countryside and stops everywhere. As usual its two second class, non-smoking carriages, were absolutely packed to bursting. At the far end of our carriage were three broad-shouldered men with moustaches, collared T-shirts and footballer hair cuts. The men had deep tans, tattoos and a mountain of beer. Beside them was an elderly couple surrounded by huge suitcases and lots of grandchildren with colouring books and constant mouthfuls of crisps and questions. In front of the children were a couple of travellers with half-shaved heads, laceless boots, army surplus shirts and a sleepy lurcher. Next to them was a business women with dyed hair, pearls and a pleated skirt, who unpacked from her briefcase, chicken sandwiches, Perrier and files full of letters and official looking papers on which she scribbled with a stainless steel retractable pencil. The woman paused occasionally to smile at the infants opposite, who played loudly with plastic monsters, and to wonder how much extra first class would have cost. The first class carriage was, as always, completely empty, except for a young mum who, unable to find a seat in second class, had stuck her two kids in there and refused to move. We heard her arguing with the guard.

"I've paid over forty pounds for their seats," she said. "Forty pounds and I'm not having them stand for an hour and a half."

"I'm sorry love but you can't sit here," said the Guard, "There's plenty of room down the end of the next carriage."

"I'm not having Daniel sitting in all that stinking smoke," said the woman. "He suffers from asthma."

"That's not my problem love," said the guard. "But if you don't move now, I'll have to charge you the price of a first class fare."

"I'm not moving anywhere," said the woman.

"Fine," said the guard.

"What are you doing?" we heard the woman ask.

"I'm writing you out a first class ticket. Now lets see that's one adult and two children first class singles from Brighton to Biddleston, via Westing. That's eighty-seven pound forty please."

"You must be joking," said the woman. "I'm not paying that."

"I wouldn't tear that up if I were you Madame," said the guard. "Defacing train tickets is a criminal offence, and I should also point out that under the Railway Carriage and Premises Act of 1935, anyone caught deliberately littering a train is liable to a heavy fine."

"Well you can stuff your stupid act you pompous twit," said the woman.

"No need to get abusive," said the guard. "I'm only following the regulations."

By this time everyone in the carriage was listening to the argument. The guard's ticket machine whirred in the momentary silence, then his voice came down the corridor again. "That's eighty-seven pounds forty."

"I don't know why they bloomin' bother with first class," muttered the grandad who sat to our right. "No-one ever uses it"

"Isn't it a shame," said his wife. "Poor woman"

"I can't really see that she's doing any harm," said the business woman, who didn't particularly want another couple of kids, asthmatic or otherwise, crowding into the carriage and further disturbing her concentration.

"Sounds like a right bastard," said one of the men with the hair cuts and tattoos.

"I think he could do with a lesson in manners," said one of his burly mates. "Talking to her like she was some old slag. Who does he think he is?"

"I'll tell you what he is," said the third man slamming his empty beer can on the table then rising to his feet. "He's in deep shit."

The other two men got up and followed him out of the carriage, and disappeared through the door to first class where the guard and the woman with the asthmatic kid could still be heard arguing.

"Oh dear," said the old granny, the concern in her voice doing little to conceal the look of satisfaction on her wrinkled face.

From the first class carriages came a cry of, "Oi mate, we'd like a word with you," followed by a loud thud and the sound of the guard squawking like a frightened parrot.

"Oh dear," repeated the granny. She grinned and bit her bottom lip, then hurriedly raised her hand to her mouth to stop her dentures slipping out. "Oh dear," she said.

When the train arrived in Biddleston, the police were there. They had a big fight with the three men with moustaches, whilst the guard was carried away on a stretcher. Meanwhile the woman who had been in first class, escorted her kids out through the second class carriage mingling with the other passengers as they left the station, murmuring: "Come on Daniel. Keep walking Natasha."