Team Supreme

Catching up with four old faces. Going places. Mind erases and then etch-a-sketches them faces back. Jerome buys James a whisky chaser, which I sink without a trace. These boys are back. Not back in town. It’s their first time in Brighton now. James, Tom & Marcus ride the super booster, get flipped upside down and all around. Flip! Scream! Shit, that’s the sea! Air hockey, apple crumble cocktails, jumping in the cold sea at 3am, photographs in the kebab shop – doesn’t feel like 5 years since the last Team Supreme time.

Work. Click. Click. Answerphone. If it was a music genre, it would be drone. Plugged in and we’re together alone. “Can I get through to...?” “I’m calling from...” “Would you be interested in...?” Could someone give me a lethal injection, seeing as I don't seem to be able to catch swine-flu. All I need to do is stay put. Feel like I wanna shot-put the phone across the room. Or javelin-spike every team-leader, not that they’re bad people. Far from it. It’s just that I’m so far from it.

I run. I build in sprints. I have fun. Running is so weird. Running against the flow of people. Running parallel with the sea. Running along the beach. Running to my favourite beats. Running off the junk I ate at lunch. Gunning for a new personal best – not that I time it, just that with consecutive runs I feel stronger. Running is so weird. Street-running could damage my legs. That’s why when I have more money, I’ll take back to swimming indoors. That’s why when it’s sunny, I’ll take back to swimming outdoors. Swimming in the sea. That’s the place I want to be.

Spending your days in front of a screen. Headaches around every corner. Killing braincells. Toasting your brain, when you’d prefer to be toasting to good health or just spreading ginger marmalade on toast. 8 hours at work in front of a screen. 2 hours watching The Wire in front of a screen. Soltary / solitary/ solitary / solitary. Watching a screen is solitary quality. Local pub: a haven, a haven, a haven,a haven. It’s not heaven but a haven but you’re in front of a screen because you don’t have fackin’ wi-fi at home. I'm crazen.

Sales

I have felt like a new episode has commenced in my life. Losing my job at the opera house was perhaps the best thing that could have happened to me to realize that I need to change for the better, to change for the next decade. I’m planning on going to Vietnam at the beginning of November to do a TEFL – Teaching English as a foreign Language Course – and I need to accrue to the funds to survive, right now I’m severely financially damaged.

In a deep economic recession, it was natural to question my chances of finding employment straight away, let alone in 2009. I started by firing off my CV to every job agency in the town and even set up an interview telephone fundraising – ironically the same place that I first tried my luck at when I moved to Brighton last October. The process began by having to read a script during a mock call, trying to persuade a potential donor to subscribe to helping the homeless. The next round was a rigorous one-to-one interview but on both occasions I didn’t even get the pleasure.

I wasn’t too displeasured at being rejected there. Instead I hustled into the only type of work that seems instantly available nowadays, no – not even labouring, that seems full-up, I would have quite happily busted a gut for the summer and got into shape – no, call-centre work. No matter how hard I try, I don’t feel I could make it sound appealing to anyone. You’re plugged into a headset, set a target and if you don’t start selling well after a few weeks: you’re history.

Products I’ve sold before: subscriptions to the Economist magazine, car insurance, life insurance, unsecured loans, wine, opera. I’m not bragging. I’m just listing. It doesn’t especially make me feel good: either making a sale or talking about it. I may be able to sell, but I certainly wouldn’t class myself a ‘salesman’.

I managed to score some work recently, selling a service that enters someone into 500 prize draw competitions a month for thirty pounds. Why anyone in their right mind would want to buy this product is way beyond me, but nevertheless I managed to sell the crap out of it and nearly got agent of the week in my first week if I hadn’t decided to bunk off on the Friday in favour of going and swimming in the hot, blue sea so my hair would get even blonder and my skin browner.

I quit the crapshow after just a week and started up at Inkfish, calling out on behalf of Barclays, at least a well-renowned bank to sell health insurance, which isn’t really that bad. In the vast call-centre space, there are plastic balls being thrown all around, a guy strumming his guitar ALL the time, drum & bass from ghetto blasters and games of scrabble being played. It’s young. It’s noisy. It’s vibrant. And ultimately it’s not for me. It is right now. But not next decade!

Chin High

Roots Manuva - Chin High

My mental splurges and emerges from nothing
I'm the forgotten
The nude that got caught with two keys in his bottom
We don't know him, we don't owe him
Poetic justice with no poem
I study my art 'til I'm blue in the face
No time to waste, my heart's on the plate
The soul and life force dancing on the timelines
These ain't rhymes no more, they're straight sermons
For urban suburban Babylonian contours
Raw roll up raw, sounds of war
To drown out the police and their tracking device
Brings back to mind how they mack on the ice
'Cause they transmit and receive
Best know the beast will listen
Throw your glitz as they strip your assets
How vexed thou art, but you are playing a part
In your own damn demise
You money-grips need to get more wise

Chin high, puffed chest, we step right to it
The choice is there ain't no choice but to pursue it
Chin high, puffed chest, we step right to it
The choice is there ain't no choice but to pursue it
Chin high, puffed chest, we step right to it
The choice is there ain't no choice but to pursue it
Pursue it, pursue it

My I-tal views come from this I-tal brew
Something about these struggles and the things they do
The peace-bringers, quote-key-quote singers
That ring us for nothing in this marketplace
Could be target grace, a new-tical movement
Bringing an improvement to mind and soul
Life's a bitch, we tired of the bitching
Them cheap escape routes got me here twitching
How much money must we waste 'til we see
Them self-made heroes that we make for ourself
Goodbye old me, say hello to the new
Please Lord Jesus, help me get through
Can I be a man for my baby boo
What's a grown man supposing he to do
When the world at large be scared of the truth
I got good reason to be uncouth
Like a big wide hole in the top of your roof
And I really don't got much nice to say
When day-to-day is pure bills to pay
So how am I supposed to change my ways
When this world at large seems to lead me astray

Chin high, puffed chest, we step right to it
The choice is there ain't no choice but to pursue it
Chin high, puffed chest, we step right to it
The choice is there ain't no choice but to pursue it
Chin high, puffed chest, we step right to it
The choice is there ain't no choice but to pursue it
Pursue it, pursue it

Transfixed by an apparent
Will in the way
To seize the day
Accept us to social fray
Most remember what the media push
There goes the crooks who fiddle the books
And run scot-free 'cause money reigns supreme
In the gene of the fiends
Chemical warfare
Biological warfare
The near is never seen
Man and machine
Getting into things
While some claim road and some claim blame
Oblivious to the time that we're living in
The misled mislead
Afflicted by the greed
Government man keep fighting down the weed
While they boost up the booze, the prozac and methodone
And use the taxpayer's money to develop their clones
Misinformation
Mass sedation
Nations baited for spiritual rapings

Chin high, puffed chest, we step right to it
The choice is there ain't no choice but to pursue it
Chin high, puffed chest, we step right to it
The choice is there ain't no choice but to pursue it
Chin high, puffed chest, we step right to it
The choice is there ain't no choice but to pursue it
Pursue it, pursue it

Shakedown

You know nothing

especially about dancing

you can’t dance, you can’t shake it

you’re not part of the shakedown


You know nada

but I know your papa

he can dance, he can shake it

he’s part of the shakedown


I’ll teach you something

something about dancing

it’s all in the hips sugarlips

let’s dance in the shower

careful not to slip