Twist and Shout at the Camden Palace

It’s 11:45 on a Wednesday evening in 1987. And I am having my best fun!

I look 13 but I’ve made it past the bouncers, yet again.

Never mind that it’s a school night and I am meant to be home in 15 minutes. That nagging feeling in the center of my chest is fading with each golden drink.

A track comes on and before I know it, I have abandoned my drink, my boyfriend and the next toke on a spliff.

I am bounding down the stairs in my DM’s, two at a time, red velvet flashing before my eyes as I race to the belly of the club where I’ll surely find my mates.

We’re on home turf, We cut our teeth in this club a year ago. We’ve since moved on to The West End and class A’s.

But tonight we’re back; We’re Camden Girls in Camden Palace.

Dancing to Mr Big Stuff in a circle.

Laughing at business men, twice our age, still in ties, who think they are in with a chance.

Running rings around the Kiwi backpackers who are even drunker than we are... We’re invincible!

‘Mr Big Stuff, Who do you think you are?

We’re 15 and bold as brass, God dammit!

we get free tickets for the Camden Palace sent to us each week which we sell to tourists for a tidy profit up and down Camden High street.

We know that Bombs are bad and ‘Barclays Bank is a racist bank’ and that tearing Mercedes Benz emblems off cars and pinning them to our bomber jackets is kinda cool as are Zippo lighters and missing our mock GCSEs to go to Glastonbury festival and get paranoid in a tent on acid.

And It’s filet o fish and apple pies all the way in Macdonalds because We Are Vegetarians.

But things are not quite right in my middle class home, mental illness is impregnating the walls with its deadly odour and even if I could have found the courage to talk about it with my girlfriends, I don’t reckon I could have found the words to describe my parents behavior.

Time is flowing so fast nowadays. It’s not even 2 years since I started bleeding and I now am on the pill and the lies that come tripping off my tongue and my compulsive stealing habit stays secret even to me.

The closest I would get to articulating my distress would be in the early hours of the morning when I returned from that outer space of orgasm to the sound of my boyfriend pleading ‘what’s wrong...please tell me what’s wrong!’ As once again the sobs wracked through me.

There is nothing whatsoever fun about Thursday Morning. I have a massive hangover, I’ve had 3 hours sleep, I didn’t make it home at all last night and that nagging feeling in the centre of my chest is rising up my throat.

it’s double chemistry with Miss Rees first thing and NONE of my gang have made it in.

Miss Rees doesn’t miss a trick.

She is so close to me now that I know she can smell the stale cigarette smoke on my hair and I sense that she can also smell the stench of stale sperm as it blurts out into my knickers.