"if you want to have fun on a monday night, come down to the petshop with me."
when i was, i think, 9 my friend chris and i started writing poetry together in the playground. the compass grew to include jack, and the other chris and some other people, but it was our project. i remember the battered spiral-bound notebook chris would pull out at break and lunch times - chock full of the scrawlings of our collective art. in fairness, most of it was derivative or just plain ripped off, and a lot of it was ruined by trying, in our own small-child, pun-obsessed way, to be funny.
one day we realised that a lot of the better material we had written wasn't poetry so much as song lyrics and we formed a band. it mattered not a scrap that none of us could play anything (though i think i was already a very poor clarinetist by this point) - hey, many bands have formed and then worried about learning to play things.
heavily inspired by "morris minor's marvellous motors" - a popular children's tv comedy at the time - we settled on the name sid shuttle and the space cadets. i wish i could remember the ridiculous themed pseudonyms of other band members but i can't even remember which out of chris and i lost the battle and ended up being sid shuttle.
why we chose to write a song about a pet shop also escapes me, and with the cynical eyes of hindsight it all seems rather pathetic, but for a few moments we believed in something - and made some (albeit faintly ridiculous) assertions about our collective future.
i'd settle for a childish clarity now
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