Shadowlands

On listless, carefree summer nights, we'd drive from the drab estates deep in the London shadowlands, to the outskirts at the edge of our small town, up to the viewpoint at the summit of Winter Hill

We'd take xtc and fly blind through the falling twilight, round lovers’ lanes and narrow country bends. Laughing like idiots as smoke poured through the windows and the aerial snatched pirate transmissions out of thin air. It wasn't big and it wasn't clever but neither were we. Wide-eyed. Teenaged. We were falling in love with hedonism for the first time, as our fingernails dug into the tatty seats of Dan's 1.4 Vauxhall Nova. In a humdrum town, with a typical suburban cast of snobs, bullies, cowards and divs, it was an adrenalised escape into a world all our own

I just assumed we'd die at some point. But there was a freedom in surrendering yourself. Knowing as a passenger you had no control. You know how Egyptian princes were buried with certain possessions they wanted to take with them into the afterlife? I always thought of that Nova like our Egyptian coffin. Except instead of gold statues of cat people, we'd end up in Heaven with lost packs of Rizla, sapphire cider tubs, dog-eared copies of Max Power

No one did die in that car. But gradually friends from those days started to slip away. Funerals are the sort of thing that change people, usually. But I found a way to defer all the grief. I ran off to find people like me. Who didn't want life to be anything other than that speeding car, running at full speed, all of the time

I suppose it's one way of dealing with your problems. I knew they'd find me in the end. But I wouldn't change it for a second. My only regret is that I won't get a chance to make the same mistakes again