On the day Maggie came to power

I was oblivious to what it would mean. Sixteen. At school I fought with the teachers and tried to avoid the O-levels looming just ahead. And in the evening, we went to Barbarella's. To see Iggy Pop. Crunching over broken glass, and lifting feet stuck to carpet with beer and ash. Broad Street before it was redeveloped. No go canals full of trolleys and dead dogs. A ragged dirty city, where men tumbled out of The Antelope on a Saturday night and threw up beside bus stops where grannies in their Sunday best would stand on their way to church the next morning.

We took the night bus home - May 4th, - and sat upstairs, smoking, joking, as people stumbled their way off the bus. Tight drainpipe jeans. Men's jackets from Oxfam. Remembering Iggy Pop pulling down his trousers to his knees and waving his penis at the crowd.