One too many brothers (2008)

 Abel had Cain, Romulus had Remus, Don had Phil and Donny had a whole heap of brothers - only going to prove that one can have too much of a good thing.

Obviously my brother feels the same way.

That winter produced crisp layers of white snow on tarmac roads, heavens heavy with leaden grey except for brief moments of startlingly white cloud and piercingly blue skies. On rural roads snow compacted into gleaming white ice while hazardous black ice waited in patches for inexperienced motorists, footpaths occasionally sprinkled with a slight dusting of powdered snow, concealing treachery beneath.

Because of hazardous conditions driving was slow, but dad’s light, yellow, fibreglass three-wheeler made good headway as he drove us – mum, my wife and I through the worsening climate towards my brother’s semi-detached suburban house.

The air was as crisp as the roads and our breath came out in puffs of white, making us all resemble small human steam engines - relics from a more homogeneous 1950s. We were, I admit, a little elated. It was Christmas, there was snow, and I was meeting the brother I hadn’t seen for about seven years.

Distance had kept us apart. Not distance measured in miles, but distance measured in age. Nine years may not seem much gap, but for my brother and I it had become an almost unbridgeable one.

My brother’s teens disappeared into a safe and secure married life with children, while I began to experience thrills of dating and the seemingly endless pursuit of alcohol and the female form.

His Tony Curtis quiff dropped as Cliff and the Shadows became more respected and more respectable - my hair crept ever downward towards the nape of my neck and beyond.

His Lambretta was swapped for a Jaguar 2.4, his symbolic parka hung in the closet, his furry foxtail stored away alongside fond memories of skiffle and rocking around the clock - I donned a trendy blue military jacket, knee-length black patent leather boots and black crushed velvet trousers edging ever closer to halcyon psychedelic days.

He and I were generations apart. We were the epitome of sub-cultural difference.
His world of two point four nuclear children comprised of mortgages, insurance, badminton clubs, nappies, while mine was full of sex and drugs and rock and roll – to quote Ian Dury.

It was the tail end of the sixties. Mod had turned its page and discovered Timothy Leary’s Psychedelia. Harold Wilson had met with The Beatles and according to Roger Miller the rest of London swung while tambourines turned green, hazes purple and Sunday afternoons became lazy. The Fugs suggested that we all Tuned in, Turned on and dropped out. So we, obligingly, did.

Suburbia was effectively split between the first and second waves of prosperity emanating from post war Britain. The first wave, with re-constructed middle class values, clung onto their Britishness, conservatism and stiff-upper-lip jingoistic nationalism, while also becoming adept at drinking Java and jiving.

The second wave edged even closer to the American neo-cultural revolution having its nascence in post war opposition and an intellectual youth revolt via the American Beats and folk protest, fuelled by a mentality incorporating both optimism and hedonism.

In a sexually liberated London freer cash prospered the new modernity of Twiggy, Mary Quant and Cathy Mc Gowan, soon to devolve into the seedier side of protest and pseudo-revolution championed by Oz magazine, International Times and The Black Dwarf. Quant mini-skirts became Biba midi-skirts, with beads, bells, kaftans and the IT girl replacing Mc Gowan as sub-cultural icon.

Jukebox cafés were replaced with free concerts in Hyde Park. Beer and Ale were replaced with marijuana and cheap wine, while music sought its influence both from technology and other cultures.

It must have been difficult for my brother, now living in his personal land of plenty, to see his brother degenerate into a long haired, scruffy Hippy. His world and my world clashed in so many places that he found it easier to figuratively and literally cross the road to avoid me, rather than say hello to the creature he believed I had become.

That walk to the opposite side of Colchester high street was the beginning of the unmeasured divide. Those few steps symbolised the difference between our two worlds, one that could never be re-trod. Like Armstrong on the moon, one small step took us to an immeasurable distance.

There had never been a closeness to revert to afterward.

Living nine years in my future effectively alienated my brother from me. Closeness had not been achieved in early youth, and so was not there to call upon when the world returned to its conservative self post 1960s.

Time and years dragged on with little chance of reconciliation, both changing, both going through the remaining of Shakespeare’s seven ages, getting older.

Eventually, and not without a certain difficulty for the tallest of us, we scrambled out of dad’s Reliant Robin, careful so as not to slip on the icy pathway. We waited for dad to finish locking the vehicle and with him in the lead trod snow up the path to my brother’s green ivy wreath bedecked front door.

Introductions were swapped with the male figure upon opening the door, my brother no where to be seen. The gentleman, a long standing close friend of my brother’s it would seem, looked a little quizzical as my father introduced me, and said, somewhat baffled “I never knew that Victor had a brother.”