Cheap Car Radios

So Del and I were in the beer garden discussing our set list when these two chavs walked by the fence, leant over, and asked the people on the table next to us, if they wanted to buy a car stereo.
"It's pukka kit." they said. "CD player an all. We've even got the speakers to go with it."
One of the guys at the table looks up. "Let's 'ave a gander."
They show him the box. It's the dogs bollocks.
"What about the speakers?"
"They back here. I'll get them."
One of the chavs goes back down the path to the bushes and comes back with a parcel shelf from a car with the two speakers still attached. The dozy twats hadn't even taken them off the shelf they are walking round with a four foot parcel shelf with two speakers bolted onto it.
"Ok how much?"
"Thirty dollars."
I guess that's the new crime speak for thirty pounds.
"I've got to go to the cash machine."
"I'll come with you."
So one chav escorts the prospective buyer to the cash machine at the garage next door whilst the other stays with his girl friend at the garden table.
Ten minutes later the deal is done and the chavs wander off. £30 better off.

Del leans over to me. "Did you see him do a line?" he says confidentially.
"No. I never noticed." My back was to him.
"He's just snorted a line of coke. That's why he's so up and telling jokes like he means it."
"Really." God! Sometimes I'm so naive.
So the buyer who has also been snorting coke, gets into his Transit van and drives off with his girl friend.

I phone our personal taxi service and five minutes later Dels wife Diane is
on the case. I am crippled in the back seat because Del still has his bass amp in the boot and the back seat wont go back so it's five degrees forward to vertical. I'm bent almost double.
"I'm going home Diane"
"No he's coming back with us to discuss our gig."
"No I'm going to bed. Del is lieing."
Diane believes me and brings me home.

I chat with the guys from the Kentucky fried chicken shop next door and the two chavs wander up the road. They see me and give me a funny look. They know I know and they know I know they know I know.
"Alright mate." they say to me.
I nod to them. I say nothing. The fucking shits. They go into the Kentucky "Can you change a twenty for two tens?"
"No we have no change tonight."
Just as well because they're dodgy £20 notes.
They are rife in Peterborough right now.

Outside "hot to shop"my afro carribean friends were having a party. OK it's a hot night. Christ it's midnight and it's still 27C. Their shop is still open but not open if you know what I mean, and they're all outside drinking red stripe and smoking joints. A car is parked outside, the car door open and Bob Marley is playing. I could be back in Kingston Jamaica. It was just like this. It's a roadside social club.

You know Peterborough may be a lot of things but it sure aint boring.

We've got filth, drug addicts, we've got drunks by the dozen, we've got Chavs. We have street fights. We've prostitutes on the corner of my road asking if you want business. We've got drug dealers in black BMW's. We've got people who throw themselves off the top of the multistory carpark upsetting the shoppers and blocking the traffic. We have murderers. Where I used to live in Peterborough, in my street alone we had three murderers. One was next door but one to me and another was a national celebrity at the time. One of them killed his brother, hid the body in the bushes at the top of our road, and tried to blame his girlfriend. His house was up for sale within two weeks. We have perverts, flashers and child molesters. We even had a girl who went crazy and walked intothe local post office four doors down completely naked and tried to collect her social security money. Mr Khan the postmaster was understandably shocked by this. I think he's gotten over it by now. She used to cavort naked in the grave yard opposite us. Well until the police got hold of her and they pumped her full of drugs and she's now stable apparently. I can't remember if that was before or after she set fire to her flat and two fire engines were called to put out the blaze.

Then there's the family who walk past every day. I'm sure they are inbred. The father is the wifes brother and the children all subnormal and now in care. I think it's the web feet that give it away. But then that's the norm for east of Peterborough.

"Come on in. Meet the wife and Mother." and there's only one person in the room.

So many people with dark secrets. In the street they look pretty normal but visit their homes. It's another story.

Peterborough may be a lot of things. But it aint boring.

Rock on dudes