We were in Ed’s then new car; a black Hummer with darkened windows. It made my Land Rover feel like a 2CV. We were driving through the streets of south London on the way to a gig in an old cinema in Beckenham. Ed was determined to make me some sort of club DJ, or at least teach me the intricacies of getting two bits of plastic to revolve at different rates so that the tunes contained sounded like they had the same bpm.
‘Wot sort of party was this you was boaf at, anyway?’
‘The Dear Owner’s. Sir Jamie. One of his birthday parties.’
‘What? Does he have more than one, like the Queen? An official birthday and a real one? What’s that about, then?’
‘Just the one birthday, but several parties. I think I was at the second most exclusive soirée.’ We drew up, obstructed by a bus loading people at a stop on one side, and the oncoming stream of traffic on the other. There was, in fact, a sizable gap between the two, one you could have got any normal car, or even a Transit van, through quite comfortably (the Landy could have made it with both doors wide open), but Ed was probably right in erring on the side of caution, especially as the machine was left-hand drive. Behind us, a horn sounded. ‘Jesus Christ, Ed,’ I said, looking at the rear end of the bus to our left, and the Hummer’s expanse of bonnet, ‘I do believe this thing is literally wider than a London bus.’
‘Yeah, it’s rough, innit?’ Ed grinned, teeth like a snow field.
‘Rough?’
‘Yeah; wicked, innit?’
I slapped the transmission tunnel. This was a tall, black-fur-lined box between Ed and me about the size of a big fridge-freezer combo; you could have believed the thing had a spare Mini hidden underneath. If Ed had been any shorter I’d have had to rise out of my seat to make sure he was really there. ‘What the fuck is it with this fucking black patois shit?’
‘What?’ Ed said innocently. We still weren’t going anywhere. The horn from behind sounded again. I didn’t know who was leaning on it, but they were brave. If I’d been stuck behind a blacked-out Hummer I wouldn’t have done that; I’d have been too scared the fucker would get slung into reverse and just roll right over me.
‘Rough means good,’ I said indignantly, ‘wicked means good, fucking hell, bad means good. I mean, I realise there are issues about slavery and centuries of oppression here, but do you have to take it out on the language?’
‘Na, mate,’ Ed said, finally making slow forward progress as the bus rolled off ahead of us. ‘It’s like you go so far into the concept, right, the meaning, that you come out the far side. Know what I mean?’
I looked at him.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘My mistake,’ I said, waving one hand and looking away. ‘Silly old me. I didn’t even realise that meanings had sides you could come out of. Serves me right for passing up a university education. That’ll learn me. Or not, as is in fact the case.’
‘It’s what language is about, innit? Communication.’
‘You don’t say. But if people make words mean the opposite of-’
‘But everybody knows what they really mean, don’t they?’
‘Do they?’
‘Course they do. It’s about context, innit?’
‘But hold on, the first time somebody said bad when they meant good, how did anybody know what the hell they really meant?’
Ed thought about this. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Way I see it, it was like this. Some bloke was trying to cop off wif this bird, right? An she was a bit coy, right, a bit not wantin to seem too eager, but still wantin it, yeah? An she says, Oh, you wicked man. Or somefing. Like, maybe he’d been telling her all the fings what he wanted to do wif her and she was pretendin to be modest but actually she was gettin really wet, right? He was gettin her juices flowin. But she calls him wicked, an smiles, an they boaf know what she means, see? So that’s the first time that somebody says wicked an means good, brilliant, bring it on. So then, like, by extension, know what I mean, people start using uvver words what are the opposite of what they seem to mean, like rough for cool and bad for good, cause it’s not, like, really much of a leap from usin wicked that first time, an the reason that all this is happenin in the black community, right, here or in the States, is precisely because the bruvvers haven’t got much else that is theirs. We could be boxers or musicians an that, but all these uvver, like, modes of expression is closed off to us artistically, and so we fuck wif your language. An that’s what I fink happened. Plob’ly.’
I stared at him. ‘There could actually be a grain of truth in that silo of gibberish,’ I said. (Ed went, ‘Hee hee hee’, in a wheezy voice.) ‘But this still doesn’t explain how you can come out the other side of an accepted lexicological meaning for a perfectly clear and unambiguous term such as “bad”.’
‘It’s like Klein bottles, innit?’
‘It’s like what?’
‘Klein bottles. They’re like four-dimensional bottles what can only exist in fuckin hyperspace, man.’
‘What the fuck has that got to do with anything?’
‘My old mum knitted me a Klein bottle hat when I was a nipper.’
‘Are you on drugs?’
‘Hee hee hee. Na, but listen, like, the spout of a Klein bottle sorta curves round and goes back into the bottle, doesn’t it?’
‘It may astonish you to know – and it certainly appals me to admit – that I do sort of know what you’re talking about.’
‘So that’s like the meaning I was talking about earlier, innit? Goin out beyond itself an then coming back in. Bleedin obvious, I should fink. Fuckin pay attention, Ken.’
I was actually lost for words. Eventually I recovered enough to say, ‘And you seriously had a hat that resembled a Klein bottle, you mad fuck? Or was that the bit I hallucinated?’
‘Me mum was doing this Open University course, wasn’t she? Geometry an that. So she decided to knit a Klein bottle, and then it sorta turned into a Bob Marley hat. Fuckin orrible it was. She made me wear it to school once, too, cos she was so proud of it; came to the school gates wif me an everyfin so I couldn’t accidentally lose it.’
‘I do trust that your pals did the decent thing and kicked the living shit out of you.’
‘Ha! They did, too.’ Ed shook his head, a happy, nostalgic expression on his face. ‘Never liked mafs, ever since.’
We were silent for a minute or so. Then I said, ‘Hey, we just went past a cop car without you getting pulled over.’
‘That’s cause they fink you’re driving the fucker.’
‘Of course; white man in the right-hand seat. Easily enough to confuse the average plod, I’ll grant you.’
‘Zactly. Why else do you fink I offered you a lift?’
‘You fuck! You’re exploiting me!’
‘Hee hee hee.’
Four. LACKING THAT SMALL MATCH TEMPERAMENT
“No, no, I’m for lots more CCTV cameras. I think they should be everywhere, and especially in police stations.’
Craig, rolling a joint on the kitchen table, sniggered.
‘I’m serious,’ I told him. ‘Canteen culture? Sounds interesting. Let’s see it. Total coverage; even the toilets. No more of these black or Asian guys beating themselves up, throttling themselves and stamping on their own heads, and then blaming our stout-hearted defenders of decency!’
‘The stairs,’ Craig suggested. ‘Don’t forget the stairs.’
‘Oh, Christ, yeah, the stairs; you’d want serious Sky Premier League coverage on the stairs; top and bottom at the very least. With the important Player Cam option, naturally.’
‘Prisoner Cam.’
‘Sus Cam. Con Cam.’ I nodded vigorously, with the intense concentration on total trivia of the truly stoned. ‘Crim Cam.’
‘Shplim shplam bim bam,’ Craig wheezed, laughing.
‘What?’ I said.
‘You still not got Sky yet?’ Craig said, raising the joint to lick the Rizlas.