think that this is a lot of crap, but here was a man who'dgot just about everything ever made over the last fortyyears and he really believed there was something specialabout each one. He loved them. He sat up there allthrough the night, in his room lined with brown envelopes,and played them one by one. Records that had beenforgotten even by the people who made them. I'll swearhe loved them all.

Yes, all right. But you've got to know about him tounderstand what happened next.

We were booked for this Hallowe'en Dance. You couldtell it was Hallowe'en because of all the little bastardsrunning around the streets shouting, 'Trickle treat,' andthreatening you with milk bottles.

He'd sorted out lots of 'Monster Mash' type records. Helooked pretty awful, but I didn't think much of it at thetime. I mean, he always looked awful. It was his normallook. It came from spending years indoors listening torecords plus he had this bad heart and asthma andeverything.

The dance was at ... okay, you know all that. AHallowe'en dance to raise money for a church hall.Wayne said that was a big joke, but he didn't say why.I expect it was some clever reason. He was always good atthat sort of thing, you know, knowing little details thatother people didn't know; it used to get him hit a lot atschool, except when I was around. He was the kind ofskinny boy who had his glasses held together withElastoplast. I don't think I ever saw him raise a fingerto anybody only that time when Greebo Greaves broke arecord Wayne had brought to some school disco and fourof us had to pull Wayne off him and prise the iron bar outof his fingers and there was the police and an ambulanceand everything.

Anyway.

I let Wayne set everything up, which was one bigmistake but he wanted to do it, and I went and satdown by what they called the bar, ie, a couple of trestletables with a cloth on it.

No, I didn't drink anything. Well, maybe one cup of