(for my seventh birthday)
But my friends are still laughing at me. (for my seventh birthday I asked me dad to steal us a bike) So I explain the feeling I'm having, the sudden realization that it's a dream. A very specific feeling, you only get inside a dream, (not any old model mind) You never get that feeling in real life. This finally gets their attention. (Boomerang Mountain 509) Some of them are looking worried, others are getting angry. I think they're starting to realize that it's my dream, and that when I wake up, they'll simply vanish. They don't want to vanish. They're fighting against it. Still hearing these voices
(not any old model mind, Boomerang Mountain 509)
(not any old model mind, Boomerang Mountain 509)
I offer to prove it to them, once and for all. I tell them I'll open the taxi door and step out, even though we're moving at top speed on a very busy road, (steal us a bike, steal us a bike) I tell them that no harm will come to me, because it's only a dream.
(hearing these voices, lost in the mix)
So I open the door, (pixel face boomerang) The road is just a speeding blur. I prepare to put a foot down on the road. As I step out I see a large truck hurtling down towards me.
(Boomerang Mountain 509)
Nonetheless, I do step out, only a little scared
PIXEL FACE
'I can't locate that shit,' he says. 'How about a new computer?'
I tell him I've got two already and if he doesn't deliver the bike, I'm telling the cops about him.
'Give Melvin what he wants, you useless twat,' my mam says.
I like my mam, she can swear.
'You get to work,' my dad says to my mam, 'before we all go starving.' Then he turns back to me, saying, 'Steal your own fucking bike, you want some flash. Haven't I taught you good enough?'
Anyway, he gives in to my wishes eventually, with Mam's help, but only to turn up with a lilac-finish, nineteen-geared Wombat 207! Put stabilizers on it, I couldn't be more embarrassed.
'Well say something, you fucker,' says my dad.
'Thanks, Dad,' I say, but thinking really you should get arrested for stealing such shit.
'Happy birthday, Melvin,' says my mam. 'Go on now, you'll be late for school.'
But I had my own wheels now, and the school could go fuck itself. So I ride myself over to the old biscuit factory on Hamlet Road. It was raining like forever and the factory looked great against the sky, like a hollow skull with a thousand broken windows for eyes. My dad had his last real job there, making tons of custard creams and bourbons and digestives. But now that place didn't make crumbs, even.
Anyway, there's this waste ground behind the factory. Where they pulled down the hospital and didn't put up shit to replace it. There used to be a pond there but that got drained and now there's just a hole.
Just a fucking great hole in the ground. Absolutely!
The crew was out there, circling the hole, making a noise and riding down into it like crazy stuff off a vid game.
I hang around the edges for a while, thinking it's now or never and then whoosh! Activate burners! Check co-ordinates! Commence manual override! I'm making like Xterminator 7 meets Whizz amp; Chips in
the House of Krazy Mak Robokat, down down down! I'm shouting something loud and stupid, I can't quite remember what.
Fucking floating, man! Aye, I bet that's what it was.
Shit, the Hang 5ers think I'm the cops! They scatter like chickens till they realize it's only me. Then they get angry. Dazzle and Spike start laughing at me.
'Pouf bike or what!' says Dazzle. 'What is that? A Wombat 205!'
'207,' I answer, trying to make something of it.
'Looks more like a pram!' says Spike, and Matchstick starts to laugh and twitter along.
Matchstick was a loony. He hardly did nowt but laugh and twitter.
And then the whole crew's laughing except for Flute, who's a girl and Dazz's girlfriend, so she just hangs back, saying nothing. But even Flute has got a better bike than me, so I'm like totally embarrassed.
'What you after?' says Dazzle.
'He's after getting twatted,' says Spike, swinging his dad's hammer.
'I wanna be a Hang 5er, Dazz,' I say. 'I wanna steal some stuff.'
'Let's see that pram go ride!' says Spike, making faces.
Dazzle and Spike live on the same street as me, King Lear Walk in the Shakespeare Estate, five miles out from Namchester. A right dump, Shakespeare is. No big shakes and certainly no spears. Just a slagheap or two, some dirty sparrows and a mangy blackbird. All the streets are named after stories by this William Shakespeare guy. Dazzle taught me that fact, not that he'd ever met this William Shakespeare or anything. He was quite kind to me, Dazzle, when he wasn't hanging five with the crew, and I was always after joining.
'You're too fucking young,' he says now.
'I'm seven today,' I answer.
'You've gotta be eight to join.'
'I've got a bike,' I say.
'Wowee!' says Spike. 'It's the fucking Melvmobile! Wobble on it!'
'Fucking wobble!' says Matchstick. Which is a bit much, coming from him.
'Shall I take him out, Dazz?' says Spike.
'Enough,' says Dazzle. 'Let's do the biz. Hang 5 alive!'