I had lots of stories planned out for the curmudgeonly couple but I didn’t have the patience for sequential art, so instead I would just draw single panels or covers capturing the idea of the whole story. I used to do them in indian ink and painstakingly cut out the halftone letraset to add shading, a ritual that I used to love, and seeing the final product was especially gratifying as it would look like professionally made comic art (at least it did to me).

I was thinking about this recently, how much I would have loved all the toys that I now have at my disposal, and I wondered if years of using computers might have dulled my ‘analog’ skills, and how much more advanced my technique is than when I was a teenager doodling on the back of exercise books. Conclusion: I think I peaked at 15 and thank god for the advances in computer technology!

It pretty much mirrored today. The economy was in dire straits, massive unemployment, no sense of community or structure for the youth, racial tension, and the police were smashing skulls if you were wearing the wrong outfit or had been in the sun for too long.

But the thing that stands out for me, is that me and my friends never let any of it stop us. I don’t remember ever having this sense of entitlement. There was no air of “society has failed us, so why bother?” We didn’t have privileged upbringings, we all came from pretty much working class families and we were never going to have opportunities handed to us on a plate. But nothing seemed impossible. We were all going to go ahead and do whatever we put our minds to, regardless.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting we were angels or we skipped thru the streets with our shoeshine boxes. Of course we were bored, naturally we got up to a lot of mischief, and if we were ever caught (and we were, a lot) we owned up to it and accepted the rap on the knuckles, smack on the arse or punch in the face depending on the judge and the crime.

But this whole thing that’s happening right now in Birmingham just smacks of defeat. It’s depressing. And the reasons given for destroying our own homes is baffling.

So I want to think about Birmingham in a good way. Me and my buddies in our Nike cagoules and Puma States, on our BMXs steaming past the ChipShop Mob and hoping they don’t catch us, going up to the green hill with Wilbo’s ghettoblaster and listening to UK Fresh or our shared collection of Electro cassettes as the sun goes down.

Man, I feel like an old fart… I can almost hear the Hovis theme tune while I’m writing this.