ON BOWIE
I guess the only failing of David Bowie, if indeed you can attribute failings to a man such as he, is that he didn't come from the north. If he had come from the north, would we not have cherished and revered him so much more than the denizens of dismal Dagenham or soulless Staines, and would we not have cleaved him to our northern bosom where he would have been completely intoxicated by the nurturing aromas pouring out of northern breweries, fecund hedgerows and salty chip shops. That heady brew of Northern health giving properties would have sustained David for many more years than the watery, thin gruel that trickles through the arteries of blighted southerners. The same can be applied to his Purple Majesty, Prince, who, transplanted from Minneapolis and grafted onto the streets of Didsbury or Preston, would have thrived on the Northern goodness of tripe, rainwater and trams. If Prince had tried filling himself with industrial quantities of painkillers in the midst of no nonsense northerners, he'd have got short shrift and been told to piss off and get back to writing blissed-out. guitar driven soul poems.
I only have to spend a weekend in Lancashire in late November, ambling through bustling street markets where old boys with purple veined noses stare moodily into the middle distance, whilst pigeons dance comically around the cake crumbs to feel whole again.
'Tha's come back up to gerraway from yon soft southerners nae doubt' comes the voice of the ruddy cheeked barmaid in the Whippet & Ferret as she pours me a pint of black sludge ,
'I read tha' book on Joy Division, it were reet incisive an that' she continues and the regulars stand around laughing at me and I know I'm home.
paul borely