The assistant has an idea. ‘You couldn’t say rear end could you?’
‘Rear end?’
‘Yeah, rear end.’
I think about it. The punchline ‘right on the rear end’ does have a certain alliterative quality.
‘Alright then.’
I imagine a rubber stamp bashing down on the script. Approved!
A first class return ticket to Birmingham arrived on my doorstep and I travelled up on the day. The audience was not really my target demographic. ‘Right on the rear end’ was met with complete indifference as was everything else I said. It was the worst death I’ve ever had on or off TV. The old people stared at me for my allotted five minutes and the only solace I can find is that they’re all long dead by now. When it was over, the presenter said ‘one more time for Ian Stone’ and got absolutely nothing from them. I still think ‘Arse’ would have got a laugh.
Things We Didn’t Have in the 1970s
Part Three
Part Three: Male Grooming
Take a walk around the average chemist in 2020. There’s usually a section devoted to male grooming, often an entire aisle. Hundreds of different types of shaving cream, shaving oil, aftershave, forty-eight-hour deodorants (presumably for those men who have only got time to wash every other day), moisturisers, four- and five-blade razors with swivel heads, nose and ear hair trimmers and hundreds of ‘Just for Men’ shampoos, conditioners and shower gels. Back in the 1970s, because men were expected to be ‘men’, they didn’t groom. Men bathed once a week. The rest of the time, they shaved, threw some aftershave on and put Brylcreem in their hair. That was it for male grooming. Cats did more grooming than men.
Chapter Four
True Inseparables
Paul Weller wrote ‘I Got By in Time’ in his early twenties. I have no idea how he knew all this stuff at such a young age. From my teenage perspective, he seemed to have lived an entire lifetime. There was such beauty in the idea of not recognising a girl that he used to know because he was looking at his own face. The irony being that it would’ve completely passed me by because I was too busy looking at my own face to see if my nose looked smaller from ANY angle (I positioned mirrors in the bathroom so I could get a 360 degree view – it didn’t). I certainly didn’t spend a lot of time deep in thought, being much more like my dad than I cared to admit. Thinking deeply wasn’t a Stone family character trait.
I never tire of listening to this song. Going out with girls, falling in love, thinking that she was my world and that I’d never live without her but getting by in time. I know all this now but it was a revelation at fourteen. This sounded exactly like the sort of stuff that adults would be doing, although not the adults I knew. My parents were not ones for letting time heal their wounds. If anything, they were getting angrier. Even if I had somehow managed to persuade a girl to go out with me, I don’t think I’d have introduced her to my mum and dad. And even if I had, I wouldn’t have asked for their approval. They were hardly people to look up to in the matter of relationship advice. It didn’t matter anyway; it would be another couple of years before I would get anywhere near a girl. As I discovered, desperation is not an attractive trait in a potential partner.
‘What do you want in a man?’
‘I want a cripplingly lonely man child who looks like he’s never had sex before.’
‘I’ve got just the boy for you.’
As for friendships, Paul’s observations were just as acute. The idea of running into a guy that he used to know and how it seemed to hurt him to say hello, I absolutely adored that. I still do. To me, and I imagine the other young boys and girls hanging on Paul’s words, this sounded like wisdom way beyond his tender years. I know people develop at different speeds and at different times in their lives. Paul seemed a very old twenty. I was a very young fourteen year old.
I always felt I had so much to learn. Just over a year before this song came out, I’d had my Bar Mitzvah, the Jewish coming of age ceremony. These coming of age rituals are very common across the world, but they vary from place to place. In some countries, they happen when the boy is a bit older and involve more physical tests. There may be some courage required, some display of fortitude. Luckily, rather than wrestle a wolf, I just had to read some Hebrew in front of the congregation in the synagogue. It’s harder than you think, particularly if you don’t speak a word of Hebrew.
Ostensibly, once I’d done that, I’d made the leap into manhood. But I only had to take a look at myself in the mirror, a slightly podgy boy with bum fluff, squished into a brown velvet suit, to realise that this was not in fact the case. In truth, I was still light years away from manhood. Sometimes, I think I still am. Boys struggle with this stuff more than girls. It may be a gross generalisation but girls seem to manage growing up better than boys, mainly it seems because they communicate with each other about how they feel. From primary school onwards, they’re chatting away. The process may be drawn out but it’s ongoing.
Whereas with boys, we might talk about football or sex or music or football, but we never talk about the sort of things that Paul Weller sang about. Simon and I may have listened to a song like ‘I Got By in Time’ on a loop, but we never talked about what it meant. It’s only now I see that Paul’s writing helped me and a lot of other young men grow up. It helped us understand ourselves better. For boys particularly, having a strong male role model who isn’t the same age as your dad can make all the difference. Showing us how we might fit in, how we might be useful. I think that was a big part of the appeal for me. It felt like having a cooler, older brother to look up to.
When Paul sang that he supposed that none of it means anything, I loved that ‘I suppose’. So conversational and so grown up. Young people rarely suppose anything. They (think they) know stuff. Even back then, I knew that the friendships I made as a child may not last. It had already happened to me. As a kid, you’re still growing up, still developing and finding your way. You move from primary to secondary school, make new friends. Sex becomes a factor (although not in my case). Any number of things can get in the way.
But as an adult, I always imagine that the friendships I make will be for life and I still find it disappointing when I realise that I no longer have the need to see certain people. Although not as disappointing as when I realise that people no longer seem to have the need to see me. I don’t deal well with situations like that. I didn’t then and I’m still not much better at it now, age fifty-seven. I’m getting there but it’s a slow process. I’m hoping that just before I die, I’ll have a fleeting moment when I think ‘I can live with this’.
I know that things change. Even though I didn’t fully understand the implications, I knew when I first heard this song. Through my life, I’ve gradually lost touch with so many people that I thought I’d know until either they died or I did. People that I got monumentally stoned with. People I spent Christmas and New Year with. People I shared flats with. People who helped celebrate my thirtieth birthday and who were no longer around for my fortieth. People whose weddings I went to. But as the man said, that’s the way that it goes.
Things We Didn’t Have in the 1970s
Part Four
Fashion Sense
The 1970s has been described as the decade that fashion forgot. But who could possibly forget multi-coloured tank tops? Or gold lamé hot pants. Or flares. Flares had high waists with loads of buttons and enormous bell bottoms that quite often dragged along the floor. Colours were loud and garish. Yellows and oranges and pinks and purples.