Sinister: seven sevens are forty nine

[Kieran Devaney]

Dear Sinister,

Last nights rain prompted a hundred lonely poets in a hundred lonely garrets 
to tap out ‘the rain buffeted and lashed against the window’ on their 
laptops, and then delete it – too trite, and though the rain seemed so 
fitting, so apt for last night, they felt it such an overused device, a 
cliché – something that had been overplayed by Hollywood and cheap novelists 
for decades. And that was half the problem – time, in all its guises was 
conspiring against them, for how could they compete with the generations of 
literature, with the words that had come before them? They wanted to create 
a new classicism; with all the baroque splendour of those cracked, leather 
bound tomes, of faded velvet and smoky-slick pavements, the streetlights 
reflected in the rain, but all that seemed so distant, seemed to belong to 
other people. What’s the point in nicotine stained net curtains if you can 
afford new ones? What’s the point in playing the warped vinyl when the CD 
sounds better, when laptops are more convenient than scratchy fountain pen? 
The poets wondered if their second hand suits and squalid bed sits really 
made them poets at all, or at least how often they slipped into playing he 
part of suffering artist, sneaking looks in mirrors as they passed, setting 
their gaze wistfully out of rain streaked windows, minds blank, laptops 
humming. How much of life becomes this filmic affectation, they ponder, how 
much do we live in the third person singular? And then they write because 
it’s raining, at night, when one should be writing – and then read it all 
back, sigh and shut the laptop down without saving.

_____________________________________________________________________

Doing work experience, at some particularly grotty local newspaper (The 
Express and Star, serving West Bromwich mainly), a couple of years ago, 
taught me a lot I think, less about journalism than I would have liked – but 
a lot about office politics and stuff like that, and this I found much more 
interesting and entertaining than the drab, bland stories that went into the 
paper. I was even allowed to write a couple of such bland stories myself; 
and I learned that local journalism is much less about literary flair or 
creativity, but more with adapting whatever facts you have into the uniform 
style of the paper, which happened to be featureless dull-mongering. I’m 
sure all journalism isn’t like this, but not where I was. Not on a vaguely 
conservative local rag anyway. I don’t think the staff really took to me 
either, there were two other boys doing work experience that same week, one 
of them was the nephew of one of the reporters, and the other was a tall, 
ebullient sycophant who the staff all took to immediately. I was silently 
but speedily labelled as the sullen boy who tried to put jokes in his 
articles and didn’t look you in the eyes when you spoke to him. I was taken 
to the youth coroner’s court, which was as grim as it sounds. I hated it, 
but as I say, I did learn a lot, something about myself as well, which I 
thought was important. One of the things I was told to do when I arrived on 
the first day was to answer the phone if it rang and say “Hello, reporters…” 
fair enough you might think, and I was told how to transfer the calls to the 
other phones, since I probably wouldn’t be able to answer any of the 
inquiries put to me. I’m not very good on phones at the best of times 
really, and the system for transferring calls didn’t really function 
properly when I did it – it did when others tried it, but not for me. I 
swear that phone bore some irrational grudge against me; I just couldn’t 
work it properly at all. I came to dread its ring, because I couldn’t help 
whoever was calling, and I couldn’t put them into contact with someone who 
could – it was a lose/lose situation – what I tended to do was answer, 
listen to the callers question and say something along the lines of: “I’m 
not really sure about that one… I’ll put you through to someone who should 
be able to help…” and then I’d desperately try to key in the transfer call 
code which would inevitably fail, and the caller would be cut off. I’m not 
sure how the phone system worked exactly, but it seemed as though whenever a 
call was made to reporters it would be sent through to a random phone – so 
the person I had just cut off would, assuming an innocent glitch in the 
line, ring again and be connected to someone who actually worked for the 
paper, and could answer their query. That was my system for five long days. 
On the Friday, the last day of work experience, the hated phone rang, and 
after wishing spontaneous combustion on it and giving it my most evil of 
stares (which, to be fair, isn’t that evil), I picked it up, answering: 
“Hello, reporters…” with as much of an air of casual familiarity as I could 
muster – the bloke on the other end must have swallowed this routine, 
because without pausing he launched into this spiel about who he was and 
that he had a story which might be newsworthy and he gave me a quick summary 
of the story and then asked:
“So do you think this has a chance of getting into the paper?”
There was a pause. I didn’t know what to do; I couldn’t just say, “I’m not 
sure… I’ll put you through to someone who should be able to help…” no. I was 
in too deep, saying that would have made me sound completely inept, he’d 
just told me all the facts – and after my confident ‘hello’ and the fact 
that I’d just let him talk for more than a minute without interrupting all 
conspired to mean that transferring the call would have bordered on rude 
really. And besides, I knew the story was newsworthy anyway, even a cursory 
glance over some of the crap I had seen written during the week told me 
that. The gist was that this guy was the music teacher at some struggling, 
what Alistair Campbell would have called ‘bog standard’ comprehensive in 
West Bromwich; but instead of being the usual tale of poor funding and woe, 
the schools orchestra had actually just won a national music competition 
(admittedly a very low key one, but that isn’t the point), and the prize 
entailed a trip to play in a larger competition in Brazil somewhere. 
Brilliant. This is the stuff that local newspapers lap up; they love it – a 
classic 'rags to riches' story, sort of. The failing comp gaining something 
approximating glory – this would probably be worthy of a full page spread, 
perhaps the paper could send a photographer over to take snapshots of the 
grinning ensemble in front of the crumbling façade of the ramshackle school 
buildings, a true triumph of ambition over adversity – working class heroes. 
Fantastic. This all swept across my mind in that pause.
“Hello…?” he said
“Sorry…” I said “Yes, I definitely think that’s newsworthy… could you give 
me a few more details?”
Now I may not be a particularly effective or committed reporter, but if 
there’s one thing I am good at, it’s bullshit – because you see, I had no 
real intention of writing up this bloke’s story. This wasn’t out of cruelty, 
or any particular malice towards him, in fact I quite admired his sincerity 
and enthusiasm – but it just wasn’t possible. As I say, it was too late to 
transfer the call to someone else, it was also the last day on a work 
experience placement that I had hated from the start, and being the last 
half of the last day I probably wouldn’t have had time to type up such an 
article anyway. Plus I don’t think media coverage of this type of thing 
really glorifies the success of the schools at all, if anything it cheapens 
it. There was no way I was ever going to write his article, and as such, no 
way it would ever make the paper. With this in mind I listened attentively 
to the man as he rattled on about how they had won, what they had played and 
so on, and I played my part excellently – though with massive pangs of 
guilt, asking questions where appropriate, even asking him to repeat or 
spell difficult things, so that it appeared as though I was making notes. By 
the end I felt quite awful, but it was much too late to do anything. I had 
no notes to work from, and I couldn’t very well ask him to repeat the whole 
thing, we must have been on the phone for a good fifteen minutes – it was a 
good job none of the staff paid me any heed otherwise I could have been in 
big trouble. Then at the end he again asked:
“So… do you think this’ll make the paper then?” and I replied, guilt 
stricken:
“Well yeah, I definitely think so… I’ll write the story up, but obviously 
it’s not up to me if it goes in or not… so I can’t guarantee anything, but I 
can’t see why it wouldn’t.” all the time playing the part of the slick 
reporter that the innocent guy on the other end of the phone thought I was, 
and hating myself for it. We thanked each other and hung up. I looked over 
at the clock, there was about three quarters of an hour left of my work 
experience – not enough time to write up such a long story and get it 
checked by one of the staff (which I had to do before sending it) and 
everything I told myself. It just wouldn’t be possible. Three quarters of an 
hour later I said some rather indifferent goodbyes to the reporters, and to 
the two other work experience boys, and went off to catch the metro back 
into town.

I’m still quite wary of phones to this day, and I do often wonder what 
happened to the teacher and his orchestra, maybe he phoned up the paper 
again a couple of days later, or a different paper even, and got his story. 
My get out clause probably removed any chances of him harbouring me ill 
will, because when he saw that the story wasn’t in the paper, he would 
almost certainly have blamed the editors for not including it, rather than 
the reporter (who incidentally he neglected to ask the name of, and wasn’t 
offered it). I certainly think that incident revealed a part of my character 
that I usually keep concealed, my capacity to spoil things that other people 
value – to lie callously and keep a straight face while doing it, all to 
save myself embarrassment, for convenience.

_____________________________________________________________________



Sinister is becoming a kind of tawdry autobiography for me at the moment. 
This isn’t necessarily a good thing, but writing things like that down is 
cathartic I think. I’ve told people that story before, and mostly they just 
laugh – and it is funny, in a way, but very sad too.

Anyway, on a more Belle and Sebastian related note, I neglected to either 
tape or listen to the live broadcast thingy a week or so ago (I’m behind I 
know, but I’ve been without internet over the weekend), so if anyone would 
be kind enough to do me a copy of the recording I’d be much obliged – email 
me off list if you’d like to do that. I’ll send you something lovely in 
return – if you like you can suggest a theme and I’ll make you a mixtape on 
said theme – so if you wanted, for example, the theme of ‘large animals’ I’d 
probably have stuff like Japancakes ‘Elephants’, something by T-Rex, maybe 
The Flaming Lips’ ‘This Here Giraffe’, stuff like that. See? I’ve really 
thought this through.

Also, I just bought tickets for the London show… I think I’ll allow myself 
an exclamation mark for that. Yay!

Cheers
- Kieran

p.s. Jesse, if you’re reading this, I haven’t spoken to you in ages, so if 
you want to, feel free to email. I’d mail you, but I don’t think I have your 
address.




_________________________________________________________________
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