*The Week That Was – 29th October 1984

Record of the week: MDC – Chicken Squawk 7″

31st October 1984
Start work Monday. Pissed off with people thinking they’re hard by drinking.

1st November 1984
Went to London with Paul, Alex and Charlie. Youth Brigade were stuck in Poland. Got MDC and MRRs.

2nd November 1984
Don’t want to do Youth Club anymore. See Wednesday.

3rd November 1984
Jasper did fireworks.

4th November 1984
Lost Cherrees was today. Went down but didn’t go in cos it cost too much.

New York – 10th September 1983

Let’s all go to the big, big city
With dust and scum, all things pretty
We’ll get a jet and pollute the air
Cos in New York they just don’t care

1st May 2023 – Not sure what I had against New York at the time. I think it was just an example of a city to use and had been used by the Sex Pistols as a song too.
Still living in the countryside I knew that cities were where things were happening and I felt desperately that I wanted to experience it. At the same time, I also knew that the countryside had very few eyes to discover the shenanigans of us bored teenagers.
In the next couple of years, I started to go to London infrequently for gigs and record shopping and always returned home blowing out chunks of black snot.
When I finally did end up in a big city, Sydney, it was the perfect balance between urban and rural. I still feel very lucky to have had that opportunity.