Bit of a Blur Read Online Free Page A

Bit of a Blur
Book: Bit of a Blur Read Online Free
Author: Alex James
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book. I had a lot of them.
    The first thing he said was, ‘How long have you been playing the guit?’

Graham
    Graham was as brilliant as he looked like he would be. He was excellent at drawing things - faces, girls, monsters. The morning after we met he dangled the flex from his standard issue student Anglepoise lamp out of his bedroom window so that it banged on the glass of mine. I stuck my head out of the window. ‘Brekkers, cheers? Nice.’ He communicated mainly with facial expressions and in his own language. He was always playing with words. The linguistics department at college would have been fascinated.
    There was a student demonstration taking place that day, to protest against the abolition of grants. College was cancelled, and we were to march on Westminster. We had breakfast at the Camberwell Grill in Camberwell Green. There isn’t much green in Camberwell. It’s grey, mainly. The café was all red and yellow plastic. We didn’t ever have enough money to go out for dinner, but breakfast was cheap. There were the four of us - Paul, Graham, myself and Jason. Paul was still interested in tomato sauces. So was Graham. Graham squirted ketchup all over his food. Paul and Graham both saw the possibilities of tomatoes as art, but they were different types of artist. Paul wanted to create the essence of tomato and Graham wanted to make pretty patterns.
    It was quite rowdy when we got to Waterloo. There was a good turnout, thousands of students. All the colleges in London had closed for the day. There were placards and banners and people were chanting, and singing, ‘The students united will never be defeated.’ The march came to a standstill. We couldn’t work out why. The tense and menacing atmosphere was gradually building into a physical uprising. Everyone was shouting and jeering. It was very noisy and exciting. We pushed our way down to the front, like at a concert. There was a line of police defending the end of Waterloo Bridge. They didn’t want thousands of rebelling students going anywhere near the Houses of Parliament on the other side of the river. A police helmet was being thrown high in the air around the crowd. Every time it soared there was a huge round of applause and cheering. Down at the front it was a perilous crush with everyone shoving from behind. I reached out and grabbed a helmet and flung it in the air. There was a big cheer from behind as I felt the hands of many police officers seize me. As I was wrenched bodily from the mob a dozen more hands from the crowd grabbed my arms to pull me back in. I was on my back on top of a sea of people with the police on my feet and the students on the other end playing tug-of-war with my body. I kicked my feet, got one leg free and lost a shoe as I hauled the other leg from the arms of the law. I disappeared back into the throng with the police swearing and the students cheering. You needed two shoes that day, especially when the riot police arrived. The riot police are like a branch of the army, really. You can’t fight them. It’s time to go home when they arrive. Nobody did, though. The police were on horseback and they galloped at the crowd. People were crushed and some were quite badly hurt. Speccy girls reading botany at Bedford New College or anyone who happened to be in the way got charged and flattened. A few people hung around throwing things but it had certainly broken the crowd up. I couldn’t find my shoe, or Graham. It was a big day, though, and we were mates after that. I’d liked Graham from the moment I saw him. He was cool. Everyone doing art was cool, but Graham was the coolest and he floated around college.
    He was listening to the Pixies a lot and he had their lyrics pinned up on his walls. He was really good at guitar. He could play anything, even the Smiths. I still find those guitar parts tricky. He was in a few bands. One was called Idle Vice. The songs were mainly about beer, but some were about vodka. He played the
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