MENK, BY JOHN DORAN - HOW CAN YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT?
I’m certain I was working at the Safari Park on the 15th of April, but I can’t remember anything about the shift. As soon as I got back home I phoned my mate Steve to see what time we were going to the pub. He was really odd and quiet and eventually told me that his mate had been crushed to death at a Liverpool game in Sheffield that afternoon. He’d been drinking with him the night before. Your first experience of the death of someone close – when they aren’t old – is always going to be abysmal; I don’t even want to think what it must be like when you realise you’ve just watched it live on TV.
At college on Monday, one of my teachers said we didn’t have to stay in class if we didn’t want to, but if we did we could we read in silence as he was feeling out of sorts. It wasn’t long before he started talking, though, telling us everything that he’d seen happen, his eyes full and watery but not brimming over. He kept on shaking his head and looking out of the window anxiously as he talked as if he was watching something awful unfold in the distance across a field full of golden rape seed.
The rest of the summer was mainly great. I fell out with my dad over some bullshit. He said some mean-spirited things to me and I tried, very half-heartedly, to hit him with a big spanner. I’m really glad I missed.
Read the full article here
