Heavy Duty Attitude by Iain Parke Page B

night.
    Cambridge crew are keeping themselves to themselves, but Bung and the other Brethren, with me tagging right along after them, are mingling with visiting clubs. Patch, side patch, MCCs. Come to show their colours and/or pay their respects? Even a women’s patch club, The Psyclesluts MC. Very scary crop haired women with ears that looked as if they’d been in a nail factory accident. Why should the guys have all the fun?
    Seems they’ve all read Heavy Duty People . Bung at pains to tell me that he’d nicked it, not bought it. Long surprising discussion with two Brethren, nicknamed Eric and Ernie, about twentieth century English novelists, a dismissal of D H Lawrence as really just an Edwardian writer and an appreciation of the oeuvre of Virginia Woolf. Astonishingly well read but then a real surprise. Open University English degree. BA Hons, the both of them. On the road and inside, Eric explained, Not a lot to do inside but read . Ernie: He waited ’til he got out to graduate y’know, so he could go up on stage with his colours under his gown.
    Impressive camaraderie and self assurance. People who trusted each other bond of brothers. Explanations of their philosophy. We’re not called The Brethren for nothing. The name wasn’t picked by chance you know? These are my brothers, my family . Then more serious. Our trouble is we make good villains. The lament on the proffered business card, When we do good no one remembers, when we do bad no one forgets.
Bad munchies. Mars bar, chips, and a coke from a van.
    Bonfires of tyres from neighbouring field after dark. Party atmosphere, faces emerging from the black, lit up by the fierce yellow stinking blaze. Laughter as one of the strikers rips the arse of his jeans on the barbed wire of the field as they struggle back over the hedge bearing a dead tree for the bonfire. Ribald and very concerned inspection reveals that the family jewels are intact.
    The music from the sound system in between bands. A cracking set. A lot of stuff I don’t recognise, some stuff I do. Anti Nowhere League’s driving rasping gargling version of Streets of London running straight on after John Otway’s Beware of The Flowers , Dumpy’s Rusty Nuts, A Burn-up On
My Bike , Christ, not heard that in years, and then ZZ Top, Blue Jeans Blues .
    Roaring noise in my ears. Stagger out of main tent, not sure if it’s the skunk, the generators, the booze or the bands. I’m sodden. Around midnight, Bung had had Wurzel and one of the others wrestle me down into the mud amongst the press of the beer tent towards the bar. My first Brethren party so he said I had to be baptised. Half a dozen of them pouring pints over my head, laughing while I buck against the weight and grip of the bikers and call them bastards!
    Back at the huge roaring bonfire, all red, orange and white heat against the blackness of the night, Brethren and others sitting and lying around the upwind fringes to avoid the driving acrid thick smoke coming from off the burning tyres.
    People increasingly wrecked. You need to write this down all about how we came together as a band of brothers to ride free and go out righting wrongs. Laughter from further round the fire at the bullshit. Protests: no I’m serious!
3 The show
Sunday 2 August 2009
    Shit I felt rough. I just lay there unmoving for a few moments after I’d woken up, just to let the nerves that were jangling from this unexpected and rash decision to regain consciousness, recover.
    After a minute or so, the bursting need to get out for a piss finally and reluctantly convinced the rest of my body to begin negotiating the process of extricating myself from the coils of my sleeping bag, which seemed to have me trapped like an anaconda after a good breakfast. I fumbled with the zip having untangled my feet slowly and somewhat unsteadily levered myself upright. Thankfully I’d abandoned my boots close by and so I shucked them on and staggered as carefully as I could through the