No One Here Gets Out Alive

Craig Birrell

The smell of the pine cones is heavy in my nostrils as I unwrap the parcel under the tree. A skateboard, helmet and kneepads; yippee! It's Christmas 1982 and I'm 14. Another parcel from my sister; a book oh no...but there's something alluring about the singer on the cover - it's a biography of Jim Morrison of The Doors. Later for books, I'm out on the skateboard with my friends but then it snows and you can't skate in slush. Soon I'm by the fire all snug - I'll have a look at that book.

I read of Jim's childhood, sledging down the snows in America , I'm there. I get a loan of 'the greatest hits' off my sister and hear 'Light My Fire', it's magical. The pictures in the book show Jim acting out their anti-Vietnam war song 'unknown soldier'. It's a mock execution on stage and he is being 'shot' by Robbie the guitarist. I want to see them live even now but my sister says he's missing or dead, apparently died in a bathtub in Paris. Mum is cooking Xmas dinner, turkey and all the trimmings but I'm absorbed in the book. 'Craig, time for dinner' she calls and reluctantly I leave the book for a while.

After dinner back to Jim Morrison the rock star. I stand on the bed with my tennis racket and look in the mirror. I am Jim at the Hollywood Bowl with the crowds cheering. Dad shouts up 'C'mon down Craig for a mince pie and your first beer!' I tell Dad of The Doors. He tells me, while pouring a Tennents from a can with a model on the front; 'Yeah I had that band on 8 track in the ice cream van we had in the seventies. You were scared of them when you were seven. You used to say they were spooky like horror film music'.

Back to my bedroom and the writer is telling me of the books Jim read. They include Rimbaud - the French poet, Nietzsche- the German philosopher and Kerouac and the American beat novelists. It seems like a new world out there for me to discover. I make a decision: I'm going to read all the books Jim read, start a rock band with my brothers and friends with me singing and writing the lyrics.

Blankets of snow cover the garden and trees outside and frost glistens on cars by the garages. I'm curled up warm in my bed listening to 'Riders on the Storm' on my old record player and reading about Morrison's amours. I lapse into a dream and my band has sold millions, we're living in the Hollywood hills and Nastassia Kinski is my wife. A voice calls out startling me awake: 'Craig, put off that music and turn out your light, let your brothers sleep, we're at gran's tomorrow dear' my mum says.

I put my new book on the shelf between Lord of the Rings and The Poems of Robert Burns.