Undrafted

  The first time I saw Robocop was on VHS rental from my local video store. It was in the school summer holiday of 1988. I was ten years old. When my friend and I tried to rent it, the video shop lady (that's what we called her) unsurprisingly said we were too young and refused to give us the tape. But we were persistent kids who wouldn't take no for an answer, so we needled her, trying to break her down until she said yes. She eventually relented and made us a proposition: If we returned with a letter from our parents saying we could watch the film, she'd let us rent it. We explained that our parents were all at work and my Grandma was looking after us (which was true). So she said we'd need written permission from my Grandma. We said ok and left the store. She probably thought we were just trying it on and that she'd managed to get rid of us. But we went straight to my house and asked my Grandma— who was standing in the kitchen organising the contents of on...

Roger is in his late fifties. He's young at heart and bounces around with animated sugar-rush energy.   Six cups of tea a day (four sugars in each) will do that to you.  He's medium height and looks haggard yet healthy, with tanned,  leathery skin covering his athletic frame. His usual greeting when entering a room is a loud and friendly, "Hello, groovers!" The most striking thing about Roger's appearance is his wavy collar-length bleach-blonde hair (noticeably darker at the root). Only slightly less remarkable are his jewel-like blue eyes that seem to squint and shine with secrets. Below them, he wears a quasi-permanent crooked, toothy grin. At least one of those teeth has cracked completely in half and been  superglued back in place by his own fair hand. His wardrobe, like his record collection, is entirely from the seventies. All natural fabrics (assuming you consider velvet to be natural); he's never worn a piece of sportswear in his life (unless you c...

It was around midday when we found Miguel. He was slouching on the steps beneath a human-sized stone cross on the edge of town. Slim, with tanned, leathery skin, thin lips, and dark, lank hair falling on his shoulders from beneath his leather cowboy hat, he looked every inch the Western outlaw. We knew right away he was our man. He got our attention with an almost comic book line, "Hey, you want something to smoke?" We said yes and began conversing in the local tongue. I say we—I left the talking to my travelling companion, Senor Tony, as his Spanish was far more fluent than mine. Within a couple of minutes, Miguel presented us with a small block of hashish. I could tell right away it was good stuff; dark and oily—the best we'd had all trip. This was Ronda, the final stop on our two-week tour of Andalusia. And this had been our customary approach in every town along the way— walk the streets until we found someone who looked like a good bet, then ask to score a smoke....