Читать книгу Rise of The Super Furry Animals - - Страница 17

Later that summer, Gruff was sitting on the roof of a train – speeding briskly through the luminous green forests of Mid Wales. Sitting up alongside him was a teacher he’d met at the party below – a party which they both agreed was crap.

The plan had been simple: Gruff would assist a band of hedonists in transporting a crate of booze between Llanuwchllyn and Bala, after which he could either crash at the party or split with his share of the crate. Something had gone wrong, however: the hedonists had drunk the booze on the train, and subsequently gone out of their minds. Gruff and the teacher – who was equally embroiled and equally confused – had no option but to sneak politely out of the window.

Still, the roof of the train was a serene place to be, and while the teacher explained that he, too, played in a band, Gruff experimented with lifting a beer up to his face, using the force of the wind to surf it towards his mouth.

Suddenly, however, the train began to puff to a crawl. Gruff raised an eyebrow at the teacher.

‘Let’s get down!’

They sky-dived back through the window, kicked the cans under the seats and neatened their shaggy hair. Seconds later, the guard came in and slammed the door behind him.

‘Right, lads,’ he said with vaguely sadistic enthusiasm. ‘Who’s been sitting on my train then?’

After a few seconds’ pause for thought, a hand lifted up from behind a seat, and pointed at Gruff. Then another hand appeared, pointing at the teacher. The two accused could not quite believe what was happening: this was not Spartacus. This was the opposite of Spartacus.

‘Right! You two, out!’

Gruff and the teacher stood in the middle of the tracks as the train pulled away, slowly coming to terms with their new environment. The situation didn’t look promising: the horizon stretched for miles with field and forest, the sun was fading, and to make matters worse a crow was hopping about in front of them.

‘We’re fucked,’ concluded the teacher. ‘That crow is definitely a sign that we’re fucked.’ The two of them estimated that it was an hour’s walk to Bala, although they could probably hitch their way in half that time. The road was deserted and the sun was setting. They began to walk.

‘And that’s how I really got to know Gruff,’ says Bunf today. ‘It was interesting that it was him and me, for almost no apparent reason, meeting like that. You couldn’t have made it up.’