Walking Through The Fire

For as long as he could remember, Gary had sought solace in music when times were difficult for him.The Bruce Springsteen lyric that mentioned learning more than from a three-minute record than school was quite appropriate to his life, as indeed it might have been to Springsteen’s, the song was called ‘No Surrender,’ and that was something he had never consciously done.

Gary was never a fan of school and thought it to be like a prison for kids, once out of class he would run home and play records loudly when his folks were out. His metal and punk records were what he loved, the Ramones, Motorhead, the Damned, Iron Maiden, the noisier the better, to drown out the boring drone of the teachers' voices in his head. Music was his first love, and it would be his last, he thought at the time. Wasn’t that a song lyric too? He would Google it later.

A lifetime ago when he received his first exam results which were to dictate the route his future employment and/or further education would meander along,  he sought refuge in the corrosive bass riffing and incendiary drumming  of Motorhead’s ‘Overkill,’ and that had helped him forget his failure temporarily, which was a good thing.

Around the same time, he recalled sitting in the English class, when the teacher was expounding her opinions on Dylan Thomas’ poetry, when he and his mate Davey were scrawling the lyrics to Ian Dury’s ‘Sweet Gene Vincent’ in their jotters, when they were supposed to be composing a poem of their own based on Thomas’ famous villanelle. Gary was scrawling his ideas around the idea that his idea of hell was a villanelle, he snickered at the potential for rhyme with ‘hell’ and ‘villanelle,’ no doubt the Wifie Reid would tick him off for being cheeky in class, as she often did. He found it much easier to understand Dury’s lyrics than he could Thomas’ poem about the death of his father. Gary's much alive dad had liked the music of Gene Vincent when he was a lad, especially ‘Be Bop a Lula', 'he was much better than Elvis' he occasionally opined.

Gary never had any Dury albums, money was tight in those days, but he  had the single ‘What A Waste,’ and the lyrics were like a poem, ‘very poetic,’ as the Wifie Reid often said in class, far better than Dylan Thomas, he, and Davey thought. Gary was not a poetry fan as a teenager, his love of poetry  would come in later life, once he was 'released' from school.

Back in the present time, here he was, on the eve of his retirement from the job he had been in since school. He was looking forward to a future, aye the rest of his life, however long he had left, when he would have time to do all the things, he had never had the chance to do; writing poetry,  painting, DIY, musical journalism online, the list was endless. He had not had the time to write the 'bucket' list yet!

The song that came to mind today, was ‘Mississippi,’ by Bob Dylan, the slower version from  ‘Tell Tale Signs’ album. He smirked to himself as Bob drawled the line about staying in Mississippi much too long, that could be applied to Gary and his career in the place he had worked for the last forty odd years. He had never intended to stay, but time passed, and he always felt he had gone with the flow, doing what folk he thought to be his friends had done.

However, where were all  these friends now?

All gone to different jobs, in the oil and gas, or journalism, whatever, some had passed away or were terminally ill. It was a bit like when leaving school, all the friends went their seperate ways , climbing career ladders or following marital journeys. Gary thought he had done ok, but did it really matter when you were on the cusp of retiral, did it matter?

He thought about a book he had once read by Charles Bukowski, with a poem in it called ‘What Matters most is how well you walk through the fire’ and thought that’s what he had done in respect of his employment in the last four decades, aye, which put it in perspective. Walking through the fire for forty years, that was it, he had worried, been stressed, been happy , the full spectrum of emotions in that place in his time there, and latterly he had felt nothing , just kept his head down and soldiered on , like his dad and grandad before him had done.

He had done it all, ate the biscuit, worn the T-shirt, you name it within that company, he had done all the jobs, but times and people change, and the pandemic a few years ago, had changed a lot of things.

But now, retirement was beckoning him and leading him down a path he hoped might lead to happiness, in being able to do the things he had never had time for or perceived that he had no time for.