WINTER 2020 THIRD PLACE
My milkman was in The Fall. He played on Hex Enduction Hour. If you catch him on a quiet morning, he’ll reminisce about recording ‘Hip Priest’. The postman was also in The Fall, around the time of Cerebral Caustic. The guy who runs the local shop was in The Fall. The crossing lady at the primary school was in The Fall. Everyone in the pub was in The Fall.
I was never in The Fall.
Most of my colleagues in the office were on Live at the Witch Trials. The pizza delivery man was in the touring band for Bend Sinister. The gang who lurk around the park were involved in some of the Peel Sessions. The girl on the supermarket checkout co-wrote ‘Kurious Oranj’. Everywhere I go, all I ever hear is people talking about their time in The Fall.
And I was never in The Fall.
In 1998, Mark E Smith boasted that The Fall would be The Fall even if it was just him singing and your granny on bongos. My grandmother was, of course, in The Fall. She played the bongos. Before she died, she would tell a delightful anecdote about meeting Iggy Pop in New York. I wish I’d gone to New York. I wish I’d met Iggy Pop.
But I was never in The Fall.
My wife finds me crying in our bedroom. I’m sat on the edge of the bed, my head in my hands.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asks, kneeling down before me.
I wipe a tear from my eye. ‘I was never in The Fall,’ I sob.
My wife smiles. The smile is patient, indulgent; it is the way she would smile at our children when they were younger. ‘Of course you were in The Fall,’ she says, stroking my sides. ‘You’ve just forgotten, you big silly. All of us were in The Fall.’
I sigh and prop my chin on her shoulder. On the opposite wall is a framed picture of my wife with Brix Smith. They are grinning with their arms wrapped around each other, triumphant after a show in Berlin.
