Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. I was ecstatic when my brother gave me this for my 16th birthday. The Sex Pistol’s debut was released in 1977 but it was a year later that I immersed myself in the punk scene. They were the quintessential agitators. Sacked by two previous record labels, banned from playing live in many venues for encouraging Anarchy in the UK. They were subsequently ostracised by BBC Radio One for mocking the Silver Jubilee with God Save The Queen, which paradoxically, reinforced their popularity fuelling the angst of the 16/25 age cohort of which I was now part.
They encouraged us to break the system. To be individuals. They were rebels. Rebels are defiant. Rebels have a cause. They oppose and challenge perceived injustice, inequality and oppression. My father died ten days before my tenth birthday. We had no money in the house. My mother was at the end of her tether with five children to rear on a widow’s pension. Distraught with anxiety thick as treacle, she could have made scones with it, had she the energy.
After his death I went off the rails socialising with a much older cohort in the local bookies or playing darts casually in The Tower Bar. I was good at mental arithmetic which led to my being asked to chalk the board for the senior players thus allowed to travel to other pubs to score the big tournaments. This was a big responsibility for a sixteen year old. Emboldened, I started to actively play darts eventually winning a few individual competitions, which at that time were all double to start games. I was asked to play on the seniors team as a substitute in Belturbet Co. Cavan that led to nervous tension which I assuaged with Crème de menthe liqueur. I played the opposition’s best player pulverising him in one of the legs whereby I gave him the brush (he didn’t get a starting double before I finished the game) He was chagrined in a big way. I was the hero celebrating with the remainder the green alcohol at the expense of the pub landlord.
After being dropped off home I sneaked in quietly falling asleep on the armchair with my trophy. When I awoke I realised I’d left my brother’s new Wrangler jacket behind in the pub. He would have went apoplectic so I mitched off school, hired a taxi to Belturbet successfully retrieving the jacket. The fare cost me the most of my week’s wages from my part time job in the newsagents but I was so relieved. I couldn’t go back to school so I spent the day playing darts in The Tower Bar.
When I went home around school finishing time I recognised a car outside the house. Mr Dunphy’s, my headmaster. I stayed outside the front door frozen to the step but my mother espied me making me come in. He had The Sex Pistols album open reading the sleeve notes. ‘Do you like being a rebel? Do you think these boys are a good example? Do you think this behaviour is fair to your mother?’ I could feel my nails digging into the ball of my hand, my mouth feeling like a
Barrett’s Sherbet Fountain. I didn’t answer. He never said another word as he exited the front door. Surprisingly, my mother was not near as indignant as I thought she would be. ‘Son you really don’t want to be doing this. You’ll never pass your Inter Cert’.
The next morning I was summoned to Dunphy’s office. Expecting retribution I convinced myself he would have calmed down but remained somewhat apprehensive. On entering the office I noticed the English teacher Mr Mc Kenna beside him. ‘We are entering the Co. Monaghan schools debating competition next month. As you are the school rebel, we’re making you captain of the four person team’. ‘Sir I’m no good at speaking in public, I’d be no good’. ‘Excuse the pun Sid, there is no debate on this debate. You are doing it’. (His comedic reference to Sid Vicious took me by surprise as he was normally as funny as a white two foot coffin). The normally monosyllabic Mc Kenna added ‘the motion of the debate is Punk Rock is Ephemeral. Go and research it with your colleagues’. Dunphy uttered some GAA metaphor about not letting the team down but I wasn’t listening as I didn’t know what ephemeral meant, too embarrassed to ask for an explanation.
The dictionary told me ephemeral is lasting a very short time. Transitory. Well we will see about that I thought. Over the next month I had several workshops including mock debates with the team. Mc Kenna now seemed to be enthusiastic, with a smile like the silver fittings on a coffin. I now had a clear strategy of how I was going to handle the debate. But in the meantime I had other fish to fry. On the way home from school I met Bimbo the street-sweeper who was that energetic dogs pissed against his leg. He told me I was on the eight man darts team to play in the pub in the village of Corranny Co. Fermanagh that very night.
I told my mother I was away to practice the debate with the team. But debate was the last thing on my mind. This was the final. I was playing last. We started favourably with a three nil lead making a win look like a fait accompli. I might not even need to play. At the bar throughout the game there was an Irish Traveller woman who was the spitting image of Gaelic storyteller Peig Sayers talking audibly to her husband. ‘Tom,Tom I reared 17 of your childer Tom, 17 of your childer Tom, get me another stout Tom’. The players found this very discomfiting but were too afraid to say anything as Tom was built like an oak tree. The game turned as we lost the next three legs. Peig started again. ‘Tom, Tom, I reared 17 of your childer Tom get me another stout Tom’. Thankfully it didn’t impact on our seventh player as he was deaf, completely oblivious to the distraction. If I won the next leg the cup was ours.
Unfortunately I was matched against their best player rendering me incredibly nervous which I assuaged with a generous amount of the green liquid. ‘Tom, Tom, I’m going for a pyssh Tom, will you get me another stout Tom?’ I started the game immediately on double sixteen while my opponent missed his starting double. I scored well leaving double twenty with my adversary on 165. Peig Sayers was back at the bar as I’m ready to throw to win the match. ‘Tom, Tom, I reared 18 of your childer Tom, 18 of your childer. Will you get me another stout Tom?’ Full of nervous energy I said ‘ah Jaysus boys go quick she’s after dropping another one in the toilets’. Everyone in the entire bar fell into a paroxysm of laughter…. Everyone, except Tom, who gave me a look that could have taken paint off a door. A Charolais bull, he lunged at me ‘you smart little runt yah, say it to me face yah runt yah’. He threw a punch that would have tossed both Samson and Hercules, but being somewhat inebriated he missed. The bouncers were able to pin him to the ground, securing him in the storeroom. With Tom now contained I threw for the match hitting double twenty. We won. The the cup was filled with all sorts of liquor as we celebrated all night. I have no idea how I got home. I didn’t care. I was the hero. I was Spartacus. I was Horatius on the bridge.
‘Get up, get up, your big debate is in Castleblaney today. Mr Dunphy is at the front door waiting on you: oh Jesus Mary and Joseph what have you done?’ I emerged from the armchair in the living room with my head pumping as if Tom the traveller had punched me. My trophy didn’t buy me any credence with my mother. Her frown indicated that it was a devalued currency. I doused my face in cold water, sprayed my hair with starch and blonde colouring, finishing off the punk look with a ripped shirt and tie replete with razor blades. My mouth filled with cloves to kill the odour I sat in the back seat as Dunphy collected the other team members hitting the road to the hometown of Big Tom.
When we got to the venue I discovered that the son of the chairman of Monaghan County Council was the opposition team captain. We were goosed. My fear was reinforced as all the adjudicators looked older than Methuselah. They probably thought a Sex Pistol was either a contraceptive or an aphrodisiac. Fortunately the opposing team’s content was that badly researched they would have been more proficient talking about potholes or the price of drop calves than about Punk Rock, The Clash or The Stranglers. At the rebuttal stage of the debate, (at which I ostentatiously produced a giant safety pin piercing my left ear as a final act of defiance), I destroyed their captain’s weak arguments, winning the debate by unanimous decision.
On the way home Dunphy was over the moon. He discussed where he thought we won the argument. How my denouement was a clinker. The mitched day at school was in his dustbin. I felt like a Cavan man with a box of white fivers. This was undoubtedly a feather in his cap among the other headmasters. Near home he pulled up at the petrol station, throwing us a £5 to get some crisps and drinks. On my return who was pumping diesel into a white Ford Escort van at the adjacent pump only Tom the traveller minus his 18 childer. He stared at me. It wasn’t a Pretty Vacant stare either. Recognising me, he was about to lunge forward but realised he couldn’t abandon the pump. I jumped into the car exclaiming ‘sir please just drive now. I will explain later’ ‘but why? What’s wrong? ‘No reason sir, no reason at all’. As Tom pulled at my locked door handle Johnny Rotten blasted out from the radio
Now I got a reason, now I got a reason
Now I got a reason and I’m still waiting
Originally from Clones Co. Monaghan, Houdi McCabe is a legend in his own mind. He worked as a Branch Manager with Dunnes Stores all over Northern Ireland for 42 years. Retired, he now writes and acts on a full time basis, with over thirty films/plays within his oeuvre. Some of his stories have been adapted for short films, by himself and with other collaborators. He is a regular performer at literary events TENX9, Soundwaves Portrush, Pub Poetry Causeway Coast, First Drams NI and Flash Fiction Armagh. Resident in Portrush Co. Antrim he is married to local girl Carole Robinson.
They have three adult children and one grandchild, Genevieve. Houdi doesn’t have any pets as he loves himself too much.
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