Ocean Colour Scene’s Lining Your Pockets blustered skyward in dampened undertones as if the sound was immersed in water. She snapped open a Quality Streets tin with a Discman and loose stack of burnt CD’s, and plugged the player into a loose stereo connection. ‘Sort-a,’ Lunagirl grinned, ‘But it’s a bit more sophisticated than that.’ ‘It’s a giant speaker innit?’ asserted Rainfish struggling to keep up. ‘Foukin’ hell! – You made a weather machine out of a karaoke unit and bike wheel.’ And from the vacant speaker casing the bicycle radial glinted like gravel as it spun and swivelled madly on a forked axel.
A television antenna protruding from the side of the unit vacillated wildly in wind like a duelling foil. They connected to a large monitor speaker, which was fastened over the skull of the chimney. Cables ran from the amp head, up the wall, and alongside a foot ladder. Atop a mixing board of volume faders reinforced with lashings of duct tape rested a row of dials and red-blinking LED galactic-buttons. Attached to the vein of an ornamental chimney running up the brickwork behind Rainfish was an amp stack with loose casings. They scurried up the stairs, out Lunagirl’s rear bedroom window and onto a crawl space on the roof. A plasma screen illuminated the derelict lounge room with an empty electric-blue wash that spilled out through the open doorway and splashed down the hall past the staircase to the back kitchen. It was late in the dark frosted night when they bungled into Lunagirl’s house. In stolen moments Lunagirl was alone between wake and sleep she fitted the missing parts to her prototype. The following week Rainfish and Lunagirl were all bacon and brown sauce. Lunagirl told Neil to ‘shut-it,’ and punched him in the arm. Afterwards Rainfish said he reckoned One-Legged Keith had a bit of a crush on Shades cos he was exceedingly reserved. Keith adamantly refused payment while calling Lunagirl a ‘cum-well’ and a ‘titty-fuck’. Lunagirl knew instantly the wheel was perfect but indulged Keith who insisted testing it on A-frame – tweaking the spokes to straighten minute and invisible lateral kinks like a master tuner. Rainfish and One-Legged Keith agreed when they heard the scream it also sounded like Eureka. Lunagirl later called it an ‘Excalibur Moment,’ where among the clutter of discarded, bent and broken wheels in an upstairs room she seized the obsolete radial she’s been looking for. And it meant he smoked a lot more, he said it made him feel ‘more even and functional.’ But he complained the medically prescribed gear was shite, and he preferred pollen, or resin. Rainfish heard One-Legged Keith could have obtained a legal prescription for marijuana on account of his moderate ADD. Rainfish sat with Keith sipping a brew and smoking pollen that he brought for Keith.
#Stella glow keith series#
Even the tabletops and kitchen table spilled over with cluttered tools, grease, gears and cables.Īs Lunagirl sailed from room to room she let off an ecstatic series of gasps and yelps that made One-Legged Keith twitch and occasionally yell out from the back steps shit like ‘cunt-flaps’ and ‘fuck-hole’. The scale seemed larger on the inside since Keith had stripped it back to plastered walls, and old blackened dusty floorboards.Įvery room apart from the kitchen and bedroom on the third floor was devoted to bicycles rooms for old and broken ones, rooms hanging restored bicycles on the walls like art, torture rooms with helpless frames mounted on stands awaiting dismantling or assembly, rooms devoted to every set of spare part like toolbox compartments, and rooms dedicated to absent-mindedness where bikes were abandoned or forgotten for another project. It didn’t look so grand anymore, umbered and dripping in the rain. Keith lived in the same grand old Victorian red brick house in Whalley Range where his parents raised him. Rainfish swung his sharp shoulder into Lunagirl with a grin. And he won’t go near ‘em if he reckons they’re pilfered.’ No one knows how he lost the other one or what landed him in the crazyboat. Not dangerous mind you – he’s got a bit of the Tourette’s and barks and yells when he’s nervous.
But to pass the time as they headed up the back of Alexander Park he started telling her about One-Legged Keith, which to Shades, sounded more like warning. Lunagirl knew it was an apology of sorts, albeit unspoken, after being abandoned on the first day they met – even though Lunagirl stopped feeling abandoned a long time ago.
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