A memoir by Mark E. Smith. Amazing. Despite my slight issues with the title - “Renegade”? Why not “The Definitive Rant”? Or something like a Fall title? “The M.E.S. - Brigadier Park No. 2”? “Union Inspector Rot”? “Middle Bastion Snarl”? - I will definitely be reading this.
An excerpt:
Sometimes in the school holidays when I was about twelve, and my mam and dad were at work, I’d be looking after five fucking girls: my three sisters, this adopted kid, and another whose parents were abusive to her. They were about four or five at the time.
I devised this thing called “Japanese prison camp”. I’d make them sit in this room under a table with a big cloth over them because the air force might be coming. I’d be the Japanese guard. “You can’t go out. You must stay under there,” I’d tell them. Then I’d shut the door, say I was going to the bridge on the River Kwai, have some pop, go out with my mates and, half an hour before my mam and dad came home, I’d return, saying, “Japanese prison camp is now over.”
If they escaped, the punishment would be “No lemonade”. They used to love it. Throw sweets under the cloth. Good laugh.
