You, Me, We Are All Mistakes

1. 1983, THE COLD WAR

PART ONE
ANOTHER TIME

1983

The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed.
William Gibson

CHAPTER 1
THE COLD WAR

If mistakes were to begin anywhere, they would start with a teamaker.

British Summer Time. 1st September 1983 and Nelson Staff was in stage 3 sleep.

07:58. Click.
07:59. Bubble.
08:00. Click, whirr.
"Ninety-five point eight, Capital EFF EMM..."

The world changing first day of an '80s autumn emerged in tedium. A vintage Teasmade, another radio, and a bedroom establishing the stage to an ongoing deceit across the nineteenth, twentieth, and (coming soon...) twenty-first centuries.

The teamaker brewed the first waking cup. A built-in AM/FM radio-alarm crackled the eight o'clock news to a small bedroom washed in orange hues. Shafts of sunlight lit nylon filaments and weightless dust. Outside the only cloud in an azure sky passed below the sun, and the only juggernaut in West Hampstead passed beneath the window.

A chirpy newscaster informed the bedroom of headlines via a set of tinny speakers disguised beneath black plastic grilles. The '83 Cold-War vocabulary persisted. Korean airlines reported one of their planes had been shot down as it strayed into Soviet airspace. The US performed more nuclear tests in the Nevada desert. Multiple UFO sightings continued between Manchester and Sheffield.

As he doled out this undercurrent of ongoing East-West tension, the radio announcer gave no comment on the excellent Darjeeling tea steaming towards the radio's bass and mid-range unit. The Soviet Union and the United States feuded. Life must go on.

The passing truck's low engine rumble vibrated the ill-fitting sash pair inside their wooden frames and Nelson's eyes flicked beneath his eyelids. The thin, ashen curtains offered no defence against the sun's strengthening rays and he stirred reluctantly above the bedsheets.

As he creased his brow and woke slowly, Nelson's arm instinctively reached to check for the NASA embossed envelope that lay on the bedside table. Its top corner was covered in dull red American stamps and postmarked:

Houston, 1927.

***

Twenty-five minutes later the juggernaut was long gone from north London having been swiftly relieved of its last Big Mac buns, tearing past Scratchwood services with diesel vapours dissipating into the hazy morning.

Back in West Hampstead an acrid smell of scorched bread now strayed from the kitchen towards the bedsit living room.

Nelson had stretched hard, sighed deeply and mournfully, crossed to the bathroom and scooped cold water from the tap onto his waxen face. He gazed blankly into the mirror and pondered his current singledom, which is a particularly gloomy story and not this one#1.

A threadbare Heaven 17 T-shirt and cotton boxer shorts protected Nelson's modesty. His light brown close-cropped hair resisted grooming and a suggestion of redness around his green-grey eyes set in a pallid complexion told the tale of a night before.

Nelson was finally suffering his first real hangover. He cupped his forehead between fingertips and thumb and massaged his brow. Good grief! So... no more conceit that I never get wrecked. And why oh why a Wednesday night that wasn't even any sort of great session? No Dog & Duck or Spice of Life. No Mud Club. And still no Duke.

Nelson contemplated scrambled eggs, a streaky bacon sandwich, or butter-fried mushrooms. His stomach weighed up the Guinness, pizza, Cabernet Sauvignon, Caramac, sponge cake, cheese, grapes and milk devoured until the early hours watching his overdue VHS video rentals. The fridge door remained resolutely shut.