Oxygen (Catfish And The Bottlemen/1975)

Van

"Its 7 in the morning, ive gotta get up, ohhhhhh im so tired," I watched Bondy where he stood, drunk and swaying, half lost his balance atop of a coffee table, a glass of red wine in his hand, the liquid slopping around in the glass wkth his erratic movements and yet somehow never spilling over the edge. He was in one of those moods again, a particularly French mood, so i hadnt been able to stop him before he'd gotten his hands on the aux and now all I could do was sit back and watch as he danced and sang, all gyrating hips and sexual groans to Jacqueline Taieb.

"Well lets put some music on it will get me going, i dont know how about something like talkin bout my g g g g generationnnnnnn!" he cried out one arm raised to the sky, raising a laugh from me when he jumped from the table to the floor and, having noticed Benjis camera trained on him, started serenading down the lense without a worry for might be watching at the other end.

He was brilliant, thats all I'd ever tell anyone about Bondy, but when I said brilliant I meant brilliantly mad.

"The red one is my fathers, the blue one is my mothers, the yellow one is my mothers... Mine must have gone with the wind..." he sighed, hand to forehead and jumped back up, working his hips to an alarming extent.

I couldn't picture my own working so hard.

"Bondy mate," i sniggered thinking, stupidly, that I could get through to him but I couldn't. No one could get through to him once the french new wave came on. After this it would be Jane and Serge, after them it would be something electronic and then, maybe then we would be able to reach him again.

Still he didn't get as far as Bonnie and Clyde because as his strange 7 in the morning song began to fade out and he was all dramatically lapping up the outro his phone began to ring and he was forced to pick it up.

"I thought we..." i started only teasing him of course when I held up my hand to try and snatch it away from him. It wasn't that our isolation rule had gone out of the window, it was just that we were all missing someone and we were all making excuses now. It wouldn't be fair for me to get a call to Fliss if he couldn't call whoever he liked. Whoever he liked being Saffron.

He didn't smile however when he picked up the phone, he didn't even hum along with what she was saying like he usually would. Instead I saw him grinding his teeth, swallowing down his frustration, his adams appls bulging and popping with the strain of it, and then he was gone. One finger in his ear as he legged it outside into the dark if the evening, strangely sobered by the voice on the end of the line.

I looked to the other lads, raised my brow. It hadn't crossed my mind that it might not be Saffron on the phone to him.

"Thats weird," said Bob as if to confirm that we all were thinking the same thing.

If I'm being honest it made me nervous, how quickly he'd jumped from his two extremes. I almost wanted to follow him outside, pretend to be smoking and listen in, but something about the look on his face when he'd brushed past me, phone to ear, all frowns and pooling concerned eyes, made me think twice. In our silence we could hear him anyway.

"Put her on the phone to me," he sighed, i strained my neck to see his hand in his hair through the window. And then just like that his tone changed entirely, "alright buttercup," he spoke softly, "kitty says you've been in the wars," and just like that we were all listening in. "ey, shh Saffy you're gonna be alright, you're safe now darlin," he was being ever so careful, ever so gentle. I felt my stomach twist with a nervousness. Uncertain what exactly had warranted his caution. "ey buttercup you're upsettin yourself just take a coupla deep breaths for me, it want your fault Saffy," he said the rest of his words a string of similarly soothing and yet ever more certain sentiments. I wondered whether they were helping her, because they were only making me more nervous. More and more aware that something bad had happened to our girls and we weren't there to help them.