PINS - Rule Twenty-five: Units
(London, Paris, Accrington!)
In PINS, units are used to carry out orders from the C.O.s, and, ultimately, those in charge. Units can be anything and come from anywhere. Here are some examples.
Children’s television is both melancholy and psychedelic. On some of it - like the programme with the bears and with the rich, fruity voice talking - the picture doesn’t move. It is often sinister. Especially sinister are those programmes in which a frog comes to life with a rag doll and sings of drownings and storms and so on. But then, it’s in the new colour TV and on a screen, so don’t trust it. It’s obviously made by young adults, you saw some of those come to the house, your mother said they were her Younger Cousins. They all looked at you. They sat in a row on the chairs dad brings down from the upstairs landing for when people visit, and smiled. Don’t trust them. The Smiling Younger Cousins can be a unit.
Some units are bought in shops. Like the plastic soldiers owned by the older boy up the road from your grandmother’s. His units are placed carefully on the top of his Airfix boxes. No-one else is allowed to touch them, even you.
The people at Rollerama Disco with Burberry scarves wrapped tightly under their noses.
The gangs down behind the allotments, behind Dill Hall Lane. They are Catholics. Your mother knew some of their mothers in the 1950s.
The gangs in Low Fell and Elswick you see. Definitely units, them. Hard, skinny, covered in mud, and hair clipped with a bowl, says your dad. Play football with them but nowt else, mind!
The various audiences at Greasbrough WMC in the early 1960s would make good units. Lots of people to choose from too. Great times! You saw everyone there! International stars, superb local acts and chart bands who had daft names. That was 1960s music for you, all too clean for your liking. The Beatles had a couple of pretty tunes, but all that choreographed movement, not for men, that. But the old stand ups were the best. Not what your granda says mind, he still thinks the Felling Male Voice Choir can be a world beating unit. They went to the Netherlands on a friendship tour. Singing Owen Brannigan songs I’d bet. Mam was pleased to get him out of the house. Not too keen about that new flat they have, wrong end of Felling and it’s got cockroaches. Not good enough from the council.
A great place to find units would be at the Belle Vue Circus. We go past that in the car, close to every Christmas. Lit up, the circus and park looks enticing in all the surrounding cold and damp. Mother says it’s mucky, but what do you expect in Manchester? There’s a poster of a tiger, like the old stamps of Malaya. Units with tigers would be unbeatable.
Stamps of the Austro Hungarian Empire under Franz Joseph. Kais.Köningl. Oesterr. Post. Pictures of Mercury (newspaper stamps), the double-headed eagle in silhouette and the old Emperor himself, with his prominent side whiskers. Units can be split over issue, colour, age, even postal mark. There’s books on that.
Units can be arranged astrologically. Capricorns, for instance. Your mother rolls her eyes and pats your hand in sympathy when she mentions your star sign. Capricorns: MISUNDERSTOOD. AS MANY ENEMIES AS FRIENDS. ALWAYS LATE TO THE PARTY. TOO DUTIFUL. WORRY THEMSELVES INTO ILLNESS. She also tells you a traveller once stopped her with you, when you were in the pram and said, you would be PIERCED with MANY SPIRITUAL WOUNDS in your life. (Much, much later, elsewhere, an Indian gentleman will cross the road and tell you you will have a very long life. Another person will give you lavender and a week later you will fall dangerously ill. Yet another will warn you of never being happy, of false claims about children you are supposed to have sired, and beseech you to keep away from drugs.) Of course: units can be made from other star signs. Make sure you have a photocopied pamphlet drawn up by your own mother to hand, detailing your sign’s traits and woes. For instance, a Capricorn unit must wear a shade of grey, as it suits them. But don’t tell your dad any of this.
You can’t play PINS on the new Metro as that’s too clean and modern. Though you can give your units the names from the stops - from Gateshead to South Shields on the south bank, and from Longbenton to Tynemouth on the north.
Brilliant United, with Bobby Brilliant up front. Number nine, the best number. One thing to do and he does it: put the ball in the back of the net! Any unit’s better with Bobby Brilliant there, man.
An accompanying post to this Rule, with relevant illustrations, can be found in the Museum of Photocopies.