check the guy's track record

The god damn sun was shining again. The only problem was it was lighting up the wrong side of the street. I stepped out onto the verandah in the shadow of our 1950's built tenement and scowled at those bastards sunning themselves in deckchairs and makeshift loungers. Wished them all melanomas as I shrank inside my duffel coat. Even the air is different this side of the divide. Damp. Not humid. The residue of cold rain sandwiched into concrete. Settling in the marrow.

     The entire block and those surrounding it have little portholes built into kitchens overlooking the balcony outside. To remind everybody making tea that their lives are all at sea. That each new dawn flirts with sinking as the walls around subside.

     One side of the street sails the Bahamas through summer, its tenants smothered in sun screen. The other patrols the black Irish Sea. Life jackets on parade.

     Every passing cloud is a triumph.

     I stepped back indoors and bit into a burger to get my dose of Vitamin D.

     No news is good news. When the telephone rings it may be news that someone has died. When it doesn't ring it may mean that somebody has died, regardless. Should I feel the urge to keep abreast of hostilities I can always turn the dial on the radio. I prefer to hear it as unillustrated dirge. I tend to lean towards the World Service. Its echo of the colonies.

     I loiter too on the Shipping Forecast. Gale warnings. Ronald Binge. A woodwind arpeggio.

     Where jazz aficionados have their "Stormy Weather" to keep their boat afloat, this island provides beautifully manicured vowels and consonants.

     Bowed under by the weight of regional accents, we blindly gravitate towards them for instruction.

     Even here, north of the border - the dark end of the street - our ears remain tuned to the crisp rebuke.

hip dub priest

▼THE FALL: HIP PRIEST from "Hex Induction Hour" LP Kamera (KAM-005) (UK) 1982

▼THE FALL: BIG NEW PRINZ from "Big New Prinz b/w Wrong Place, Right Time" 7" 45 Beggars Banquet (FALL 4) (UK) 1988
▼THE FALL: BIG NEW PRIEST from "I Am Kurious Oranj" CD Beggars Banquet (BEGA 96CD ) (UK) 1988