Mars isn’t the Red Planet, Nibiru is. Planet X, the Frightener. I’ve been informed that it’s on its way by the World Wide Wait. 2012 the shit will hit the fan, so don’t be alarmed if you encounter the Mothman on Deansgate sometime soon; he is the harbinger of cataclysm. In this cock-headed age of internet social networks and forums, it’s possible to waste a significant fraction of one’s week doing absolutely piss all and learning about the end-times. Chatting to people you haven’t seen in decades or indeed ever. The UWS forum is particularly troublesome; wondering if anyone responded to that post you made four hours ago. Sometimes there’s discussion on the UWS forum about sayings and expressions people can’t stand. One I personally dislike is “nailed on”. It makes us sound like northern cavemen. What happened to all that other slang we had? Things were sound, people piped, blimped and zapped. A geezer was an ice-cream, to stop something was to loz it. To get away was to smishe. You either didn’t do it at all or you did it Full Lock. Was it really so cool that today’s New Manc has turned it into a cliché and an embarrassment to use? Where once we zapped we’re now back to nailing? Charming. I’ve actually been accused online of making all the old slang up. It’s gone, along with the magic of United Road Cantilever. But United are still there, as unpredictable and frustrating as ever, even in magnificent victory. I’ve just watched that Tottenham match at Old Trafford where we suddenly decided to score 5 goals in the second half for reasons that were never made completely clear. I’d suggest Asian gambling syndicates were involved, but my bodyguard’s taken a month off and I kinda don’t give a fuck anyway. Actually, this past few games at OT have reeked of conspiracy. You know it makes sense. Dramatic comebacks against Villa and Spurs. Gets ‘em all riled up. And then the 2-0 against Portsmouth after we let ‘em knock it about a bit in a cold funereal cauldron. It’s a nailed-on conspiracy is what it is. Now I’m using expressions that I don’t even like…Taped the match on the DVR, ‘cos we went shopping in 88-degree weather while it was on live. AC on Full Lock. Came home and did a nice barbie; spicy sausage, chicken drumsticks, burgers, asparagus (you cockneys will know what that is) and the full-term pregnant missus joined me in a protein-fest while we watched the Reds. As you can imagine, when the half-time whistle went we were seething, saying stuff like, “Ferguson better lash a full tea-set in the Bulgarian’s face in that bastard dressing room!” I resisted the temptation to fast-forward until I saw something interesting and dug in for the second half drinking a Bud Lite (in case an emergency dash to the local maternity ward was on the cards). When we came back from 2-0 to sink Everton in April ’07 we went mad with joy, but somehow this Spurs turnaround was muted. Why? We’re 3 points clear with a game in hand and in the EUFA Champs semis…but United fans love good football, and we hadn’t been hitting the spot in that department. Ironically, the Scousers would probably settle for anything that leads to a league trophy right now but they’re playing out of their skins. Until we slapped Tottenham we’d been playing shite for a while. The 5-2 was a – what? You what? You’re asking yourself, “What is this balloon doing, trying to write about football? Where’s the nonsense and the weird stuff?”
You want nonsense and weird stuff, do you, you cunt? Alright then, let’s ‘ave it…
Hell is a city. Especially a city like Manchester. I mean, right through the 60s, 70s, most of the 80s…we were sidelined and misunderstood by the arse-lingerers of Fleet Street and Television Centre. Back when the only cool cities in Britain were London, Liverpool and Glasgow. When the Manc accent was regarded as a faceless patch in the quilt of “oop north”. Teddington Lock, Middlesex…what did they know of the exploits of Vinegar Vera? Come to that, what do YOU?
When I came back to Manchester a few weeks ago, it was just for a few days and anticipation of being ashamed or proud of the place in front of an American never occurred to me. Americans are out of the loop and so an emotional investment was not required. Not like meeting a cockney, when you waited for the norf-sarf comments. Worse. We primed the brain-pump with 2 days in the Borough of Kensington. Not easy to live up to, I know. As we rolled into Piccadilly at 8:30 AM (worst possible view approaching the city centre: Why?) the station was echoing futuristically, its foyer thick with balcony banter and tannoyspeak. We walked into the air and I suddenly felt that thing. That grip in the guts when you remember all the verbal advertising you’ve done for the old place. The pressure of being judged, and of having your entire city judged with it. We walked down the ramp, under the weirdly neglected balcony looming at the base of the undulating glassy wave above us. These things are what make Manchester Manchester. The assorted to-do items littered busily through the heart of the centre. It’s comical, but we imagine it confers a “big” or even “exotic” vibe on the place. It really doesn’t, but it does do something; it exposes the stainless, streamlined ferocity of the Mancunian landscape, with its moon-age daydreams, cast-off industrial protuberances and other space debris. The American was only there for 24 hours, but the trajectories we took were among the worst possible. A brief glimpse of Eastlands from the slowing train had hit me like an omen, a blue space-ship over a charcoal shanty town. The temperature had dipped for the weekend, but it warmed up again and felt completely comfortable by Monday. The Yank and I were both thoroughly convinced the climate really was colder up there that fateful Saturday. It lent a barbaric, primal air to the place. Then I remembered those mild vapours that convect between Penines and Irish Sea; momentum-fed by the North Atlantic Drift, breaking the region into a mosaic of smaller and smaller and smaller truths: Pit-head-mimic skyscrapers, classic commercial buildings and stone towns strewn across green blankets intersected by dry-stone walls. Too knackered to hit town after the match, the delights of the core catacombs evaded us. Restricted to the crud-accreted eastern edge of town, plus Blackfriars, Ordsall, Old Trafford and Kearsley, his conclusion: “There was a sense of lawlessness like a frontier…it was too far from civilisation…the people looked less evolutionarily evolved than the people in London”. You fucking what?! Hilarious.
Writing isn’t always fun, ‘cos you don’t always have an idea what you’re gonna write about when you sit down. It’s happening to me right now. The deadline for this is tomorrow and I’m stumped. You have to be able to impress the ones who know what’s going on. Maybe you know what’s going on. I wouldn’t be surprised if you did. Well, it’s your lucky day! We’re now having a very personal conversation, just you and me. Should we talk about Planet X and AIG? Do you really give a shite? Or should I just carry on pouring my heart out as the day tips inexorably towards Monday morning like a sinking galleon? There was a ten-pager about Planet X on the UWS forum recently. Some lads I’d thought were proper earthy showing their paranormal colours. The truth is out there, they say. Planet X is a huge red orb, a gigantic looming Frightener that will appear in our skies sometime in the next few years. When Earth comes between it and Sun ye shall know terror and raining fire. The twin giant leeches of savagery and entitlement shalt dominate thy landscape. Thine pants will be soiled, thy cloth touched and global follow-through events commonplace; humanity will shit itself.
Life isn’t a movie, a soap opera or a sitcom. It rests somewhere between NBC and HBO but many people labour under the naïve notion that it can only be one or the other. Thus, they manufacture a “Friends” like scenario; kinda like “Coupling” (itself shite) minus the booze and the sex-talk. It’s a puritan’s dream and the antithesis of everything we loons live for. They are closet boozers who act middle-aged when they’re 25. Those most in fear of going mad are the rigid straights; their path is continually corrected like that of a flying saucer, erratic in its precision but lacking the emotive force of true humanity, trampling the feelings of those around it as it meanders on its Five Year Plan. When Planet X arrives these arrogants believe it is they, the entitled ones, who will survive the cataclysm. They call themselves The Indigo Children. If the Frightener does hit, I give you my oath I’ll be on your side; I’ll slaughter those spoilt Indigo bastards with gun and blade till my dying breath. I get the impression half the UWS forum will, too.
How is this season gonna end? The end lies in the future, which is as yet unformed. Scientists have managed to send a photon into the future. Being fluid and open, it received the photon physically. But the past? The past is congealed and cannot be changed, however many sly edits to Wikipedia you make, or new “Madchester” documentaries appear on YouTube. If they could seal me in a steel capsule and propel me like a silver bullet into the cholesterol heart of East Riding (what the fuck happened to Humberside since I flew the coop anyroad?) on May 24 I could know the answer today. But like today on my DVR, I don’t want to press the fast-forward button. I want to roil and soil and heave a vile curse upon the House of Scouse. For these are the great days, the end-times of a domination stretching back decades. The end-times indeed, when a crimson globe will appear in the sky, as big as the sun. When dogs and cats are living together and the crème de la crème are whisked off to secret bases deep under the Rockies. Or the Penines.
I have to cut this short, as my wife is LITERALLY in labour (not joking here, Mr. Mitten) and we’re heading out the door to the hospital. Something large and round is pressing to appear. Something red and painful that will change my world forever. It ain’t Planet fuckin’ X that’s for sure, but it will definitely be a Red.
