One Three One: A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel (20 page)

But with regard to how our choices of Worst Enemies were
reckoned, our methods diverged wildly from the Orthodox Hooliganism of the day purely because our little tribe emanated from so many different corners of this UK. Thus, Turf Wars were for others and it was always personal rather than club revenge that was to be our primary order of the day. When we stayed over in Sheffield for what-turned-out-to-be the Hillsborough Disaster, the bathwater at the city’s top hotel Hallam Towers was brown, almost bloody, rusty brown. So when Messrs Have-a-laugh and Stuart got back from being nearly crushed’n’smothered to death and – despite having brung this top hostelry mucho Sterling – only thick menstrual gushings being available bathwise to the pair, it was off into the wilds of the Peak District in ‘Wash Me #1’ that those two oily tykes proceeded, and at one hell of a bate. And when, on Totley Rise at sunset, they located a dead sheep rotting in a field, the letters G and S wrapped that sucker up and smuggled it whole into the bloody rust-red bath of Rm 1321 Hallam Towers. Gory. Biblical. Appropriate. About the only thing that was appropriate that whole fucking day. For how much longer must we tolerate mass murder? Discuss.

Yeah, Anna, let’s discuss Mass Murder. Let’s take some time out to talk through those things we never ever want to address. Let’s discuss disasters and the culpability of those great authoritarians – police, politicians, media moguls – who feed off the approval of the general population and the benefits of their esteemed positions, but fail in their duty to their own population on those precise days when we most require them Not To Fuck Up! I knew I’d be on solid ground discussing with Blessèd Anna the Judahizing of Liverpudlians during the Hillsborough Disaster. For her own Sardinian people had been treated with similar disregard at Italia ’90, during which time those cynical Italian mainland authorities had chosen to corral Europe’s toughest fans – English and Dutch – in Sardinia’s capital city. I wondered: had it always been this way?

Then I began to explain to Anna the obscene manner in which much of the British press had reported the Hillsborough Disaster, how they had tarred every Liverpool supporter with the same hooligan brush. But as the tragedy had affected almost every one of my associates, I soon got too far ahead of myself and realised that I first needed to explain to Anna my own peculiar take on that tragic day’s events. For seeing as I had been the only Nottingham Forest supporter among our little tribe, I had therefore experienced the main event purely as an observer, safely ensconced in our pre-designated area in the Spion Kop stand. It was utterly impossible to imagine by now, but I’d been proud that day to have been given the rare opportunity to ‘play host’ to some of my closest mates. For Mick’s sister Sharon, fearing the worst, had refused utterly to allow her twelve-year-old twins to attend the F.A. Cup semi-final. So it was to my door that Brent, Dean and their distraught Uncle Mick had beaten an immediate path with a desperate request for ‘safe’ Forest seats atop Spion Kop. No fucking problemos, gentlemen.
And
very glad to oblige. As a decades-long Forest fan, this was easy easy easy for me to achieve. Moreover, I was delighted to have such top company up my end. Early ’89 had proved so busy for my DJ career that I’d missed most of Forest’s F.A. Cup run. So now I was determined to carve a fantastic time out of Semi-Final Weekend. Bring that fucker on!

I couldn’t drive because of an unfortunate Wembley incident the previous week at Forest’s highly skilful 3–1 League Cup Final victory over Luton Town, in which I’d borrowed a Wembley fork-lift, ostensibly to transport myself and my old Eastwood mate Gaz Marshmallow back to his car, which he’d insisted on parking fucking miles away near Canons Park tube station – ‘to be near the M1’. Not realising how drunk I was, and Gaz too much of a yokel to alert me to the massive tailback building up behind us along the A4140, I’d eventually keeled over and fallen asleep at some traffic lights on Honeypot Lane. When the cops had nabbed me, Gaz just jumped off and hightailed it back to Eastwood. Thanks, old pal. Suspended driving licence, night in the cells, ra-ra. Who gives a fuck! It just meant that I’d be able to enjoy the Hillsborough Semi the way it
should
be enjoyed, i.e.: I could malinger in the passenger seat, spray a few walls and drink-and-drug even more than usual. Totally off the hook, or so I thought.

Now the media were all over this ‘F.A. Cup Semi-Final Re-make’ as they billed it. Same teams as last year, same venue as last year, same result? No chance. Liverpool might have been on a 104-day winning streak, but Kenny Dalglish was no Brian Clough
and
we’d just won the League Cup. But the media frenzy surrounding this double-bill ensured that our weapons stayed back at the D-Cough. For the previous year had seen Hillsborough swarming with cops and stewards, and it was fair to expect the same volume of bluebottles per square inch this year. So on the day before the Disaster, our three vehicles – the two Astra vans and Sharon Goodby’s Vauxhall Cavalier – crossed the Pennines nice and early, allowing plenty of time for fun and frolics at Sheffield’s finest hotel Hallam Towers. And while we moaned about the anticipated overwhelming police
presence, well at least our heroic boys-in-blue would – with the TV eyes of the Straight World fixed firmly upon them – hopefully feel obliged to be generous in their behaviour towards the supporters of such important national teams as ours. They were not. Now, I don’t want to be a hindsighty cunt about this. But on the day of the Hillsborough Disaster, I would not under any circumstances have been up that Leppings Lane end because, by then, I just didn’t trust anyone at all. Spring 1989 was already an especially sensitive time of too many public disasters with too few authorities taking responsibility. At the Clapham Rail Disaster, just the previous December, thirty-five commuters had died through the admitted malpractices of British Rail. That same month, terrorists had brought down Pan-Am Flight 103 over the Scots town of Lockerbie. Barely a month later, a British Midland 737 had got into difficulties near my Uncle Mog’s house in Gotham, and he’d watched forty-seven die as the jet had ploughed into the M1. In such a time of strange accidents and sinister events, surely this F.A. Cup Semi-Final should have been a grand old opportunity for the authorities to have shown the public how smoothly everything runs when they get their operations totally right. Nope, no chance, the cops that spring were on a Dwindler and nothing could have upped their game.

On the morning of the match, being already set up in the Hallam Towers, my own little group had enjoyed a hearty oversleep and some midday room service. Then we’d moseyed over to the stadium a full hour behind Gary Have-a-laugh, Rob Dean, Stu, Yeh-Yeh and Doughy. But when Mick, Brent and Dean finally saw the true nature of their Vichy seating arrangements, they all looked totally gutted, especially as we’d just passed a bunch of Liverpool fans singing ‘We’ll Win the Double, We’ll Win the Double Again’ to the tune of ‘Roll Out the Barrel’. And
even as we climbed up into the Spion Kop, neither Mick nor the twins would take off their Liverpool rosettes. Fair enough, lads. I’ll give you no pressure. It’s not me who’ll get beaten up. Besides, the whole afternoon was a red celebration and no Forest fans could have expected the enemy to be sitting right up that close! Especially when that enemy currently seemed to be down the Liverpool end of the stadium and engaging in some rather bizarre behaviour. For, with the match just seconds away from starting, I told ye Bard that the Leppings Lane end didn’t look at all right to me. My instinct told me there must be something wrong, or else they’d have all been moving outwards, not all clustered together with the kick-off so imminent. Why weren’t the Liverpool supporters separating out? Even from this far up the other end, you can always tell what a crowd looks like. You know where it’s full, and you know when there are gaps. But right there in the Liverpool knot, in the scrum, you could see nothing but heads. No colours, no scarves, just heads – the crowd wasn’t moving.

Then the teams emerged to fabulous applause and cheering. All right! Now we’re cooking. Up our end of the field, Nigel Clough and ‘Psycho’ Stuart Pearce were mugging for the press, while Liverpool supporters broadcast their delight at the return of their Scots captain Alan Hansen, though Mick and the twins had big doubts about the effectiveness of his return at such a crucial time. Of course, I myself was delighted to see him, and for those same dubious reasons. But even as the players were kicking off, still the Leppings Lane end was all jammed at the centre and I worried about how our own tribe would be approaching spectatordom in these crowded-as-fuck circumstances. Next to us, a youngish mother with two little boys aged about seven or eight approached the policewoman standing
at the end of our row and demanded to be allowed to leave. When the policewoman asked her why, she pointed down to the far end and said she wouldn’t stay another minute longer. It was only five past three, so the policewoman had to accompany all three of them off the premises. Was it a woman’s intuition? What had she seen?

Describing all of these creepy, horrific experiences to Anna thrust me back temporarily into those sleepless nights immediately after the Disaster. What could I have done to help? Now,
the sadness of so many footballing families was once again overwhelming me. In the dreadful aftermath of that savage weekend, why had there not been weeks of organised national mourning over Liverpool families’ losses? Any other English town could have expected the kid gloves treatment. Why had the press, in this early ’89 atmosphere of chronic disasters, not just declared the sheer tragedy of Hillsborough? Instead, they had rushed to confer ‘Good Guy’ and ‘Bad Guy’ status without any real consideration. Why had the viciously judgemental Blame Culture not just backed off one temporary iota? And why, if the South Yorkshire Police had nothing to hide regarding Hillsborough, had there been this colossal rush by the right wing media to shore up their dwindling reputation by tarnishing the reputations of the Liverpool dead? But I well knew that we lived in a society that had always made saints out of cops, had always made positive TV shows about those fuckers, mostly awarding them hero status simply for doing what they were being paid for, which they clearly enjoyed or they would not have been doing the job. If a cop got beaten up, it made perfect sense to me. But if the press reported it, every bruise was like one further nail in the coffin of Polite UK Society. And if a cop got shot? Fucking hell, it was like Baby Jesus had just been murdered.

Simply on account of the sheer power wielded by their new tradition as hosts of the F.A. Cup Semi-Finals, the South Yorkshire Police Constabulary and the Hillsborough Powers That Be had – that shameful Saturday April 15th 1989 – hoodwinked great numbers of Liverpool families into entrusting the safety of their beloved offspring, sons, daughters, nephews, nieces, etc. to Sheffield Wednesday’s far too meagre Leppings Lane facilities. Then, those authorities had sat about clucking like zombies and watched Liverpool people drown in that Red Sea of Suffering.