Paperback

Crying on the tube on the way into work is not something I’ve done a great deal of. Not really my thing. So when I found myself sat on the Circle Line, just after 9am this morning, with tears rolling down my face, I wasn’t quite sure what to do, not quite sure where I should look. What I was sure of, without question, is why I’d found myself in this way-too-awkward-for-London spot to begin with. It was because I was listening to “Paperback” by The Scooters. So, for the first time in a long time, I got to blame my friend Anthony for making me look like a pillock in public.

Ant has done this to me far too many times to mention. Making me request “Madame George” from the bemused grunge DJ on a Thursday night out in Metros. Making me tell “that story about Ian and his mobile phone” yet again to a smattering of bored customers the other side of the bar in the Royal Oak. Insisting that taking my shirt of and belting out “Born to Run” with a crap busker on Queen Street at 3am was a really, really good idea. Demanding I join him and the rest of the band to sing “Everybody Needs Somebody To Love” when they played my 21st birthday party, despite me not knowing any of the words. All Ant’s fault. All plainly ridiculous. All destined to end up with me looking like a div. And all things I did because Ant said I should. He has that sort of effect on people.

The thing is, Ant left us a couple of years ago. And that was actually the last time – before this morning – that he’d made me cry. Again, not directly. But when my mam called me on the way into work and told me that Ant had died, everything froze. I stopped, stone still, in the middle of the street and wept like a baby. And then I started calling people. Friends, pals, people that I used to know, so I could try and share the appalling sadness that someone that was always so very alive – that made others feel alive – was no longer with us.

And I kept talking about Ant for the next few weeks. Arrangements to travel home for the funeral. Telling people – any people – about what an amazing person Ant was, the things he’d done for me, how he’d opened up a world of music, books, words and experiences to me as a kid and become one of my dearest friends in the world. I talked, incessantly, about how much I loved this person who’d done more than almost anyone to help make me the gobby chancer I am today, the nights out, the all-day shifts at the Oak, the more contemplative evenings round my place listening to scratched records and talking non-stop about nothing in particular. And I told them about how I would always turn to Ant – Uni trouble, girl trouble, money trouble – when I was in a pickle, and he’d always sort me out. Always.

What I didn’t talk to people about as much, in fact I didn’t talk to people about at all, was that I’d not seen Ant for almost a year. In fact, I couldn’t remember saying goodbye to him the last time we’d caught up. And it meant that however hard I tried, I couldn’t say goodbye to him now, either.

And it was the same a few weeks later when all of Cardiff – and a fair whack of the rest of the country – turned out in St Albans for Ant’s service. People spoke so movingly about Ant – Chris, Bob, Ant’s sisters. And he still pulled a crowd. Standing room only at the back and outside. And after, in Gassy Jacks, surrounded by people who I’d known and loved for all my life and plenty more I knew and loved by the end, we watched Chris, Bob, Tim and Simon play the songs we all loved so much. Their songs. Ant’s songs. And we drank, and I crept out the side in the pissing rain to sneak a fag while my mam wasn’t looking, and I ended up staggering blind drunk down Cathays Terrace with my mate Ian (after Mark made good on his promise to get the last train back to Maidenhead), talking non-stop about nothing in particular like the old days. But I still hadn’t said goodbye.

And I guess that’s why I’m writing all this down, haphazardly on my phone, and why I might even try and think of a way to share it with people at some point. Because this morning, like quite a few mornings over the past few months, I found myself listening to Ant to try and get things straight. I can’t talk to him anymore, but he’s been there, almost every day, over a pretty shitty month. And this morning, he did it again. He got my head straight. Sorted me out. Dusted me down to face the day. And weirdly, finally, on a golden morning out of Paddington, sitting on the Circle Line listening to Paperback, I finally got round to it. I said goodbye to Ant. And then I wrote about it. And after the tears had dried, and the awkward looking commuters on the train had found a way to stop staring, I smiled. I smiled, and I put the song on again.