When I was a wee shaving, in the dim and distant of three tv channels and playing out, I was fascinated by the graffiti in telephone boxes and bus shelters. Fag was one, the nickname of a much older, Fonzie-cool boy who lived in the corner bungalow nearby. His name was carved into numerous local amenities as far as two villages away and graced at least three bus stops in Town. One of them near a pub. Then there was Whitey, known to me only through fierce rumours - though I may have glimpsed him once, in all his hulking malevolence, on a school bus in the tender half of the First Year. His name was also in Town and on a few local amenities, but not as many as Fag's. Jack, Bungo, and Faz also figured amongst a fair few others, some fresh, some years and, in rare cases, decades old. Pretty tribal, I guess. I wonder if there's such a thing as graffitochronology?
Anyway, there was one name that was everywhere. Every village. The Town. Even the City. And I couldn't figure out who he or she was. So, one day, I asked my Mum, because she knew everything and everybody in the world. She also liked football. Boring, tedious football. When I think back to those interminable football matches I had to sit through in the depths of winter, on a torrential weekend, stuck in the front room because it was the only place with a fire and you can only read comics and draw pictures in a draughty bedroom for so long, with nothing on the telly but bloody football and my Mum, who knew nothing and hated me, sat there watching and knitting. She never even cheered or anything. Just sat there, legs folded beside her, watching and clicking and clacking and telling me off for, like, only everything. So, I finally asked her if she knew who Mufc was.
It is a disappointment that haunts me to this day.
