th' wilde bunch

For two weeks or thereabouts Th’ Wilde Bunch terrorised my terrace and the surrounding few terraces on the northern side of Norwich city. The sons of Buttaller Wilde – a known Norwich cad but also local history buff, self-published author and theorist and unlikely architectural authority – the Bunch were a bicycle gang of three, who pedalled the alleyways in torrents of profanity and smashed vodka bottles like an unfolding bi-wheeled apocalypse. I was recipient of their wrath on at least one occasion, where encircled by their bicycles I was forced to pledge allegiance to their intense breed of insularity, decrying the surrounding postcodes with a level of venom they considered suitable (a generosity – they assured me – only extended to me [they called me “el hombre nada”] due to my own possession and daily usage of a bicycle). They offered to ink me with the Bunch’s visual credentials, furtively showing a small pocket book containing a couple of rusted blades and some Bic Cristal ballpoint pens, but I declined their offer, stating that the integrity of the spoken pledge could not possibly be furthered by permanent physical modifications to my person, that the conversational bonds we had shared in the alleyway out back of my house represented my resolute word as pro administrator that would, if anything, be somehow undermined by the crudeness of their artistic methodology. They reluctantly consented to this despite the audible hatred in the many fuck off’s they muttered under their collective breath as I did just that.

In the early twilight, under the bright streetlights that lined the alley, they honked and drawled like copulating felines, stretched and fought and drank heavily, giving indiscriminate single-speed chase to anyone who happened upon them in those middling hours; they caught few, and those who had been determinedly refused to discuss the myriad degradations they had suffered, but took extensive sick leave in the time period following without exception. There was little doubt among residents that the large rancid stools deposited at precise intervals like perverse waymarkers along the several alleyways that comprised the Bunch’s dominion was their work, but the residents were rendered powerless both by evidential inconsistency and fear of reprisal, for at least – as it was – the stools were beyond the boundaries of their gardens (such small mercies!), a fact that could and would be altered with immediate and devastating effect by the incensed trio as situation demanded. With little sacred the wheelie bins were rooted with no single reason but depravity, the bags torn and jutting like black wispy fingers from beneath the lids, the stench of melon skin and full nappies caustic in the winds of the alleyways, the gold curled remnants of cat food pouches like priceless artefacts amidst the blooming weeds.

Buttaller Wilde had long before erected a shed which adhered to no architectural or spatial or even logical conventions in the garden of his over-alley property, and called it – after Chtcheglov – The Hacienda, a new conception of time, space and behaviours, a fluid structure unfettered by limits of construction or engineering or geology, entirely modifiable. It was, he said, a space of psychological furtherance and deep spirituality, a space “more conducive to dreams than any drug”, although what this meant in actual terms was unclear. The panels that comprised the structure were said to be mounted on a series of tracks and runners and attached to a network of gear and pulleys, and could be reconfigured at will like the pieces of some futile jigsaw puzzle. It was, he said, a one-off, and had been the first element and exemplar of the comprehensive planning and design he had submitted to the city council in his proposed bid to have Norwich recognised as the first experimental city attuned to a new idealistic understanding of the ways in which citizens respond to and interact with their cities, plans which were, of course, dismissed out of hand. Wilde was “out of touch”, they said, and “a fantasist” and “(query?) dangerous”.

Three perhaps five days into Th’ Wilde Bunch’s reign of nuisance the Hacienda burnt outside and Wilde sobbed as he watched it fall, the three boys running between it and the outdoor tap with buckets of water in an attempt to stifle the blaze, swearing as they did so, the mix of vodka and Chewits a potent one on their breaths. The heat of the blaze had burst the bulbs in the streetlight overhead and the glare of the fire was the only glare. The arsonist – for it must have been – was never determined, and police had explained how in fact every street was a suspect, given the recent behavioural anomalies of Th’ Wilde Bunch. Wilde nodded as the officer presented the facts of the bad news as it was and shook his hand tenderly as he left. “I'm sorry Buttaller,” he had said. “The Hacienda was quite a place.” Wilde nodded further, as though he may never stop.

He walked through the garden and out of the gate and into the alleyway, where the three boys stood in sombre reflection alongside their bicycles, the smoke from the Hacienda blaze still farting upwards. He pushed each of them to the floor and their bikes too, and began to stamp on the wheels with great might until the spokes had popped out and the wheels had begun to buckle, and he lifted the frames above his head and smashed them all onto the floor of the alleyway in a mess of severed cables and paint chips and broken reflector lamps. Looking at his boys on the floor, mutely crying and so dreadfully idiotic, encircled by the same stools they raised in arms against the residents of the surrounding terraces, he felt an appalling depression of a kind unknown since his wife’s death, when he realised to his sorrow that his plans were now, and always would be, far far greater than whatever they became.