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1977 - LOVERS OF TODAY

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FOURTEEN

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ONE

'One moment, sir. '

They stopped him as he was coming through customs. Why wouldn't they stop him? Terry looked like trouble.

His skin pale from too many sleepless nights and God knows what else, the second-hand suit jacket from Oxfam, the CBGB's T-shirt, Levi's that hadn't been touched by water since the day he bought them and wore them in the bath (his mother telling him he would catch his death, his father telling him he was bloody mental), Doctor Martens boots and - the crowning glory - his short, spiky hair dyed black, and badly, from a bottle of something called Deep Midnight that he had found at the bottom of the ladies' grooming counter in Boots.

Sir used like a weapon, like a joke. As if anyone would seriously call someone like Terry sir. Two customs men, one of them knocking on for thirty, with mutton chops and a mullet, like some King's Road footballer trying to keep up with the times, and the other one really prehistoric, maybe even as old as Terry's father, but lacking the old man's twinkle. 'Been far, sir?'

This from the elderly geezer, ramrod straight, all those years in uniform behind him.

3

'Berlin,' Terry said.

The younger one, as hairy as a character from Dickens, was already in Terry's plastic Puma kitbag, pulling out his God Save the Queen T-shirt, his silver tape recorder, a spare pack of batteries, a microphone and a change of Y-fronts.

As Terry's mum always pointed out, you never knew when you were going to get knocked over.

'Berlin? Must be lovely this time of year,' said muttonchops, and the old soldier sniggered. They thought they were funny. The Eric and Ernie of Terminal Three.

The old soldier flipped open Terry's thick blue passport and did a double take. The pale-faced, black-haired youth before him bore little resemblance to this incriminating snapshot from Terry's previous life, his mousey-haired and baggy-flared life, the living at home with Mum and Dad life, the working at the gin factory life when he walked around lost in dreams, and all his dreams were of getting out.

In the mug shot Terry peered out at the world from under a failed feather cut, trying to look like Rod Stewart but coming out more like Dave Hill of Slade. He even had the start of a suntan. It was a snapshot from when Terry was still waiting for his life to start, and his cheeks were burning as the old soldier closed the passport.

Then muttonchops was digging deeper in the kitbag, making Terry flinch now, because he was touching the things that really mattered to him, pulling out a two-week-old copy of The Paper with Joe Strummer on the cover, looking as beautiful and doomed as Laurence Harvey in Room at the Top. He flipped the big inky broadsheet open, gawped blankly at the news pages, at headlines that meant nothing to him.

This Year's Costello. Talking Head Cases. Bachman Turner Overdrive Disband. Muddy Waters - Hard Again. Fanny to Warm Up Reading? Quickly flicking through The Paper now. Not even glancing at the double-page centre-spread cover story on the Clash by Skip (ones, the greatest music writer in the world, but pausing - as if that's what it was all about! - when he got to the classifieds.

'Dirty Dick's Records - get yourself a dose', muttonchops read out loud, pulling a face. 'That's disgusting, that is.'

He tossed The Paper to one side and rummaged deeper, producing Terry's battered copy of The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Vlake Streamline Baby with entire paragraphs underlined, and then the truly irreplaceable - cassettes from Terry's recent interview with the legendary Dag Wood, the only man to be booed off stage at Woodstock.

Terry watched the priceless cassettes being handled as though they were something that they gave away with the petrol and he felt like telling the bastards to do something useful, like go and catch Carlos the Jackal.

But he thought that might be an invitation to a full body search, so he bit his lip, clenched his buttocks and wondered how long his girlfriend would wait for him. 'And was your trip business or pleasure, sir?' said the old soldier. 'I'm a journalist.'

It still gave him a kick to say that - nine months into the job and it gave him a thrill to see his name in a by-line, especially next to the postage-stamp picture you sometimes got. Small things, but they signified that Terry was becoming the someone he had always wanted to be. They couldn't stop him now.

A journalist?' said the man, a note of suspicion in his voice, as if a real journalist should be wearing a suit and tie, or carrying a briefcase, or old or something. 'What do you write about then?' Terry smiled at him.

It was the end of a summer day in 1977 and there was something in the air, and in the clubs, and pouring out of every radio. Everything was suddenly good again, the way it had been good ten years ago, back in the Sixties, when Terry was a child, and his parents still thought that the Beatles seemed like nice boys.

4

5

What did he write about? He wrote about the way everything was changing. From haircuts to trousers, and all stops in between. What did he write about? Oh, that was a good one.

Terry thought of something that Ray Davies had said recently, about how he felt like sobbing his heart out whenever he looked at anyone's record collection, because it was just so moving to see that personal soundtrack laid out before you, naked and open and fading with the years, because if you cared about this kind of thing then it was all there among the scratched vinyl and the cracked gatefold sleeves, as plain as could be, all the hopes and yearnings of someone's private universe, and everything that a young heart could possibly want or need or yearn for. T write about music,' Terry said. Misty was waiting for him at the arrivals gate.

He saw her before she saw him. He liked it that way. It was one of his favourite things in the world - to see her before she saw him.

Misty. His honey-haired, cat-faced darling. Tall and slim in a simple white dress matched with a pair of clonking great biker boots.