I went to Manchester this summer and met Shaun Ryder. (If you don’t know who Shaun Ryder is..that kinda sucks. He’s the singer of the Happy Mondays, but knowing that isn’t enough to understand what it all means, if it means anything. Which it really doesn’t.)
Alright, so down Portland Street, my first day in Manchester, with the McDoldalds right across the street and Morrissey’s Central Library to the right and down a block. There’s a Big Issue vendor there because they are everywhere, but this is the first time I notice it’s the Mondays on the cover. I can’t really remember how it all happens, but I am having trouble getting my money out, so we start talking to pass the time. Colorado comes up, and the vendor (Douglas) starts telling me a bunch of stuff about Colorado that I don’t know and some stuff that I do know; and then through this and that and all kinds of things literature comes up and I mention Oscar Wilde. This is the moment I realize that Manchester is better than everything: he starts reciting The Ballad of Reading Gaol to me like a trained actor. It is a great moment, one of those crazy great moments. A homeless man reciting Oscar Wilde on the streets of Manchester!
Anyway, day two: I’m doing this Morrissey tour thing with a Canadian boy from my hostel who doesn’t really know much about Morrissey or The Smiths but knows a lot about environmental issues and Wu Tang Clan. His name is Nathaniel. As we’re going from the library to the Hacienda I hear someone shout, “Neal Cassady!” It’s Douglas, of course! We talk about On the Road and Kerouac and I tell him that the Denver Library had and might still have the scroll, and we freak out about it together. Then I remember that I have my little book of Howl and other poems on me and ask if he’d ever read it; he hasn’t so I give it to him and say he can keep it. He says no dice, come back here before you leave and I’ll give it back. (It sounds dull, but that bit’s important!)
Day three: the Mondays are playing at the Ritz and Douglas is nowhere to be found.
Day four, my last day: I bump into Douglas outside of the McDonalds at the end of Portland. We go in for coffee and he tells me about how he met Bez and got him to sign his last Big Issue and about how he got into the show. We start talking about me again--when I leave and all that, and he gives me the Big Issue as a going away present (and because he didn’t finish Howl and really wants to). And then, out of nowhere and as excited as a child, he tells me to come with him to meet Shaun Ryder. He whips out this huge camera, right, better than the one I have, and tells me about how he’s sort of like a polite paparazzi type thing, but he’s only doing it until he gets a flat and a proper job, then he wants to take only artistic photos or something. It is all really strange. So we go to this hotel and stand outside for a bit, and then wham! Shaun Ryder. He is really nice and very…fragmented, maybe? The drugs took their toll. But he is still very clever. And he has the shiniest and whitest dentures ever. I can’t stop staring at them. Most of the time he and Douglas talk about Manchester in the eighties and the new smoking ban while I just watch. (I don’t feel right bothering celebrities (is Shaun Ryder a celebrity?) when they’re not doing the whole, ‘hey come meet me because I’m famous’ bit.) Then Douglas and I leave.
So it goes, and as it goes, so it went. Shaun Ryder.
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