Educating Peter by Tom Cox Read Free Book Online Page A

wouldn’t happen to know if this is the garage which the Rolling Stones urinated against in 1965, would you?’
    Peter lurked behind me, flicking through a copy of
Kerrang!
    The men who work at the Shell station on Romford Road get asked about pissing a lot. At first they look at you suspiciously, as if merely by being in this dodgy corner of London and wanting to make conversation you must be up to no good. But then their tight scowls break into voluptuous grins and they pointyou towards the legendary spot, chuckling.
    Did they think that the mythical value of their bricks gave them an edge over the Esso station across the road, which only has a normal, prosaic wall? I wondered.
    â€˜Perhaps.’ They laughed.
    â€˜Has anyone ever thought of erecting a plaque?’
    â€˜Oh, no. I don’t think Mr Shell would like that!’
    â€˜And what about The Stones? Do they come back here much?’
    â€˜Not really.’
    â€˜What about other bands? Do they like to piss here, too? You know, like the way dogs like to piss where other dogs have pissed.’
    â€˜Er. Mmm. No.’
    I’d always loved The Rolling Stones – thought of them, perhaps, as the ultimate band – and felt that I’d be a pretty lame teacher if I couldn’t find a valuable lesson for my pupil somewhere within their four-decade history. Romford Road seemed a good place to start, since a) Mick Jagger was too busy promoting his latest movie venture to show us around his mansion, b) it was one of the few legendary spots associated with the group that didn’t charge an entry fee, and c) it was on the way to Brighton, where we were scheduled to stay at my in-laws’ house, before dropping in on Ed The Troubadour in Hastings the following day. I also had a vague memory of a student teacher once using a poem about people pissing on the floor as a disarming device on my fourth-year English class. ‘The Waz’ might have been a hackneyed conversation loosener between adults and children, butthat didn’t mean I wasn’t going to use it to my full advantage.
    My original intention had been for Peter and me to recreate the famous piss, but as the day had gone on, I’d become more and more worried about stage fright. Besides, now we’d befriended the petrol station’s employees, being rude to them and provoking them to call the police was going to be slightly less practical, especially as I’d asked one of them to take a photograph on our behalf. So, instead, we hunched over and mimed the crime, looking back over our shoulder and scowling like Satanic Majesties as the cash assistant shouted ‘Cheese!’ What can I say? It was tacky. It was touristy. It was precisely the sort of thing I’d hoped we’d get up to on our adventure.
    For the first time, Peter seemed to be enjoying himself. Fortified by the family-sized pack of Wheat Crunchies I’d bought him at the Crouch End branch of Budgens, he’d begun to open up and relax on the way here, even going as far as to tell a few anecdotes, almost all of which would start with the phrase ‘It was really funny . . .’ and involve one of his friends putting a pair of pants on their head. Still, I couldn’t help puzzling over what he really thought of the latest stage of his musical education. To me, The Rolling Stones were still untouchably insouciant icons, but that was because I owned twenty-one of their albums and had spent a third of my life pretending I was living in a late-Sixties utopia. To most of my generation, they were shrivelled old skinflints. To Peter’s generation – or at least the members of it that had bothered to notice the second biggest band in the history of theuniverse existed – they were probably something much more decrepit and embarrassing.
    â€˜You’ve heard of Mick Jagger, right?’ I’d asked Peter earlier, in the car.
    â€˜Yeah. Of course. He’s the