Ive had a few emails recently regarding The Novel I may never finish with a few readers asking if there were/will be new chapters. Well I had a look through an old diskette and found this unfinished Chapter 2:

Please note, the language is rather… fruity:

TWO – Scotland’s Armpit

Somehow my one off performance with The Vinyl’s ended up as a regular thing for me and soon I was playing gigs every week around Glasgow’s bars and clubs. I wanted to play wherever there was a plug socket and a few ears that would listen to our cover versions. We always had a great response with our audiences and we seemed to play better with every passing week even though the group underwent around five personnel changes within a month. The original members: Russell and Jackie O’Toole decided enough was enough after playing covers of other people’s music for three years non stop so they formed their own folk band ‘ The O’Tooles’. With the many changes, Clifford Blythe and I were the recognised face of The Vinyl’s.

However, I was starting to get tired of the songs and I wanted to do something original but Clifford Blythe was always a shitehawk. He never wanted to do anything that was new and original. He seemed content playing Beatles covers for life and hopefully getting a shag at the end of the evening. This was not my idea of the life worth living concept so after a difficult band meeting I left The Vinyl Covers in search of something new.

The trouble was, The Dole Office found out about my ‘undeclared earnings’ and threw me off the dole as a punishment. I was in serious shit now because I didn’t want to work in an office or anywhere to be truthful. I have a healthy respect for workers. They get up in the morning, go to work, come home, have dinner, brush their teeth, have sex or get intimate on their own and sleep until the new day dawns. The robotic way of life was not for me. Call it arrogance or what you will, but I would have been useless in the workplace and I would have perhaps dreamt up ways on how to get the heave ho.

Music made my heart sing (no pun intended) Fuck working. That’s was not for Renwick Shaw.

Without money the path to fame and fortune is full of the landmines of life and brick walls that appear without warning. The major brick wall was my beloved father who nicknamed me ‘Rene the fairy’ after I told him that music was the thing I wanted to do. He believed in the robotic way of life; Get a job, meet a woman, marry then fuck her in the missionary position until your tap runs dry taking break in-between pregnancies. Eat ready made TV dinners from the microwave, raise the children until they leave home and then wait on them getting their own back when they return middle aged to put you into a retirement home. That seemed to be Michael Shaw’s ideal life and he wanted the fruits of his loins to follow the same path. I was close to telling him to fuck off many times but he would have thrown me out.

I was nearly twenty two, I had no job, I had no intention of working, I am useless, I can play guitar, and I like listening to indie music and electronica. What do I do now? The answer to this latest brick wall came from an unlikely source: my father. When I look back now at the conversation at the dinner table with him that changed my life its easy to blame him for making me exposed to Stepchurch and THEM

Getting up in the morning was something I did not enjoy. Yes I was lazy but my father was always up at dawn and was never in the best of moods. A coach driver for more than twenty five years with the Corporation he was starting to suffer from the medical condition called coach drivers clutch. This condition was similar to arthritis in that it affected the joints of a driver’s clutch foot leaving the person in a lot of discomfort and pain, especially in morning.

Michael Shaw was a crabby man and he has always been that way as far as I can remember. He came from a strict Catholic background and was an only child. Due to his religious extremist of a mother, Michael didn’t like anyone who was not of his religion or social background. His own father died when he was young so all he knew came from the extremist views of his mother. Some have said that he is ‘just old fashioned.’ No he isn’t old fashioned, just a bigoted old bastard.

I don’t know what Mother saw in him, and to be honest I don’t care. They never act the happily married couple. It is a strange set up as she lives her own life and only makes him his tea, cleans and irons after him. They hardly speak at all..

© Stephen Sherry