Totally Friends With Billy The Subways

I wander into the kitchen to help Jason with the dishes. This is uncharacteristic of me – we normally have a bit of an arrangement: I make the mess; he cleans it up. You might think that a bit unfair, but you couldn’t be more wrong. Those of you who know Jason well will know he loves it in there; his borderline obsessive-compulsive personality is directly conducive to all that dishes / sweeping / wiping / antibacterial-wipe-cleansering palaver. But I digress; the point is that he was in there and so was I, and like any evening Chez Proctor the DAB radio is on.

So, we do this dumb thing with the radio, every day it’s the same: if he leaves the room I switch it onto BBC 6Music. I have mentioned them once or twice here before. If I manage to do this, and then absentmindedly leave the room myself, he switches it onto Planet Rock. This is what we do.  Anyway – he’s on his hands and knees washing the floor (no, I’m not kidding) so it means that the dial was stuck on the latter. No matter – it happened to be a band that I quite like.

“You know what it is?” he says. “I just really don’t like The Ramones.”

“What?” I stop drying the plate I am holding.

He doesn’t look up from his position on the floor, and says again, “I just don’t like The Ramones.”

“But you have that greatest hits CD,” I remind him.

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure you can have that CD,” he says.

I am happy for this floor-washing inspired generosity but simultaneously a little disappointed – I can count on one hand (hmm... okay, maybe two hands and a partial foot) the number of bands that we both like – we can hardly ever go to gigs together as it is – my tastes are bent toward the jangly-clinky-clanky and his are more growly-barf-chuggy. In this particular instance it is of little matter I suppose; it’s not exactly as if Joey Ramone is in any position to rally the lads up for a reunion show any time soon.

“So what you’re saying is that in our musical divorce, I would get custody of The Ramones,” I deduce.

He nods. “Without hesitation.”

“I suppose you’d lay claim to The White Stripes then?” I enquire.

“Nah, they’re not really worth fighting over,” he says, dismissively.

I deliberately sass him: “I get The Subways.”

“Don’t even think about it,” he says. “It was me who bought their first CD; you only like them because I played them for you.”

“Whatever, punk. I’m like... totally friends with Billy The Subways on Twitter, anyway. I follow him and once he Retweeted a joke I made this one time.”

“I don’t know what this means," he dismisses me with a shake of his head.  "But I’m pretty sure it doesn’t affect the argument; I will be guardian of The Subways.” He is cocky. It is unbecoming; transparent. He’s a pussy, really.

This is what we’re like when we do the washing up together. He can fucking** do it himself, tomorrow night.

**I just read this aloud to him and he said, "That was good right up until the swearing bit at the end."