The Small Room On Big Wednesday

Editor’s note: Some time ago we started working on a story about Snobs. Darren sent us this to use. It’s lovely. He told us ‘No tongue in cheek here, it’s a straight up poem about meeting my future wife at the Big Wednesday night in the mid ’90s. Love Snobs and have great memories of the place’. This poem is quite a big part of the story we are still writing, but we wanted to share it with you now, the day after Snobs as we all knew it closed. If you have anything to tell us about Snobs use the comments, and let us know if we can nick your story for our own (Jon H)


 

The Small Room On Big Wednesday

He was a vertigo-liver, but for tonight he’ll spin.

‘Just gimme some more!’

The unworn denim sleeves are a counter balance,

but it’s so fast, he’s seeing the inside of a potter’s wheel,

covering a vase from within, painted with a smear of ruby spot lights.

‘Pass the peas, like the used to say, pass the peas…’

They never talk; he’s only heard her mouth ‘Alright?’ to him all summer,

but they know each others’ moves instantly:

a midnight jigsaw of skin, sin and soul.

‘Doing it in the park, doing after dark, oh yeah, Rock Creek Park…’

Just be in a fag cloud’s distance from the DJ booth and it’ll happen,

tattooed by the same violet beams – a regiment line appears –

feet in-line, dance formation conceived,

45-degrees to 360-degrees, trainers played the parquet floor like a stylus on a record:

‘It’s a family affair!’

He thinks this is the closest he will ever get to women;

he’s soaked, his skin has been crying out of happiness all night,

but thinks: ‘I can’t hug and sponge sweat on your dress.’

The boy will be thinking about tonight for years to come,

in a still, warm house with a dawn storm roaring outside,

after they are married.

Super Prix

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Remembering the Super Prix is a fiction within a fiction.
Going to my Nan’s flat,
180 Elizabeth Fry House,
just to hear the roar and grumble
of the cars from her balcony.
A simulcast of first and second-hand experiences.
Being there but not being there.

Watching the race on TV
with the fringes of town
shown as a kind of alternative, patched up, Monaco,
but never making it
to see the actual event.

Thinking I’d only been on the No. 8 earlier that week, along that same stretch of road, sitting upstairs on the front seat of the bus, no less.

The No.8’s route was an adventure into the forbidden space of the Super Prix.
The excitement started when the bus deviated from the orbit of the inner ring road, on to the Hagley Rd.

First, passing the Oratory with the raised disc of Five Ways at the end of the corridor of traffic.
Either side of me, I thought the office buildings projected a Texan-style flexing of the city’s identity, of wealth made from making energy from fossils. Oil money craned into the sky.

Then, the bus did a grand right on to Islington Row, where motorsport’s slogans of legal addictions – stuck on the the crash barriers and safety fencing – slipped into view on the pavements of Belgrave Middleway.

Everywhere there were Camel yellows, Marlboro reds and a familiar deep, warm orange –
the same colour as the carpets
in the Central Library.

Then to Haden Circus –
and as reality continued to be suspended – there was a pit stop for emergency vehicles, protected by a half-crescent of concrete blocks, like some physical, road-built morse code
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