Reading With Polythene Sheets

Photo by Sonia Melot

These New Puritans are four gaunt, well-spoken 19-year-olds who’ve been clumped into the imaginary “Southend Scene” (one club night is not a scene) with bands like The Horrors and Wretched Replica (who have now split up) but sound nothing like either of those. Taking their name from a song by The Fall, they’ve been likened to the Manchester band on a number of occasions but this comparison doesn’t really tell you a whole lot. Quite simply they’re a bunch of kids in a post-punk band who are a bit more well read than their peers. Vice: So can you guys read? Tomas: Yes, of course we can read—very well, in fact. Cool. What type of books do you like to read? George: We all like the author Michel Houellebecq. Sophie: I recently started reading Rebel Ice. It’s a sort of 16th century French satire about two giants. I like the way it’s written. George: Books are beautiful things. They are indeed. Which books did you read at school? Sophie: I liked Alice in Wonderland. I dressed up as her and won a prize at the school fair. George: It was a big school as well, a fucking big school, so… Yeah. That is some achievement. What did you win? Sophie: Nothing. Tomas: Not even a Curly Wurly? They didn’t even give you a badge? Sophie: No, just the knowledge that I was the best at dressing up like Alice in Wonderland. What if books were never invented? How would you cope? George: I’m sure there would be some other way of writing things down. No. You can’t have any form of writing. That’s not allowed. Tomas: Drawing? Sophie: If books weren’t invented, then I’d invent them. Were you a good reader at school? George: I was like the best reader in the world at school. Without doubt. So you weren’t held back or anything? George: No, but I did have to read through polythene sheets for a while at school. They didn’t understand me as a child. When I first went to school, they would ask me to do work and I’d say, “No thank you.” So then they thought: Why don’t we give him coloured sheets to make him more interested in the page. They thought you had problems. They thought, if we give him colour, it will be fine, because everyone loves colour. George: No, I just didn’t really fancy it. They thought the colour would make the page jump out, but it didn’t. I took as many coloured sheets as I possibly could and I’d always ask for a new colour. I built up quite a collection. JOHN MCDONNELL