The Side A Theory

When Lawrence Pip was born at his parents’ house in Pilthorp in 1978, the radio was turned up loud. What was playing on the radio was this : ‘Born Free’. The theme from the film ‘Born Free’. The 1966 recording my Matt Monro.

This story became family legend, and for the rest of his life, Lawrence Pip had an umbilical connection to music.

As he grew up, music became everything to him. I know what you’re thinking. Lots of people like music. But Lawrence Pip felt that music spoke to him in a different way. That songs were about him, and for him, and could affect his life in ways that others simply couldn’t understand. But only the songs from side A of a record. He felt uncomfortable about the songs on side B of an album. Side A was all about hope, excitement, the thing wasn’t even halfway over. Side B is the decline, the relentless downward slide to the end. And Lawrence wanted none of it.

Even the thought of side B could depress the young Lawrence Pip whose initials are cleverly LP in case you hadn’t noticed.

So the music obsessed Lawrence Pip grew up only ever listening to the Side A of every album he owned. But that was all he wanted. He carried with him a little notebook, and would write the titles down of songs that spoke to him at particular points.

One day. When Lawrence Pip was eleven years old, he was waiting outside the school gates. It was early November. It was half past six. It was getting dark. Lawrence Pip was expecting to picked up by his mother in her little blue Renault 5. He was expecting her at six o’clock after the rehearsal for the school play had finished. But she wasn’t here. A little worried feeling crept up from his small feet, up his legs and into his tummy. Soon it reach his eyes, and then he would cry. This was one of his fears. That his parents would forget about, forget that they ever had him, or maybe decided that they didn’t want him any more. And now maybe - this was the day, this was the time.

The school wasn’t in a busy part of town. It was in rather a remote location. Only the church nearby, and Hardman’s Wood behind, where, as night descended, you could hear the foxes bark in the eerie way they do.

Lawrence decided that this was to be the last moments of life as he knew it. And as tears pricked his eyes, he began to hum ‘Don’t You brackets Forget About Me close brackets’ by Simple Minds, from Side A of The Breakfast Club Original Soundtrack album. Somehow he felt that this would make his mother remember him. The songs speak to him, after all. He pulled out his little notebook, and wrote ‘Don’t You - open brackets Forget About Me close brackets’ . Then he did a peculiar thing.

He ripped off the sheet of paper, and ate it.

About thirty seconds later, a Renault 5, which he and his mother had named ‘Little Blue’, screamed round the corner, and a breathless, and nearly crying mother jumped out and squeezed Lawrence Pip so tightly he farted. She’d lost track of time, and was he all right, and he could have whatever he wanted for supper.

So LP was all right. All his worries had been for nothing. Apart from one of them. He had lived the last moments of life as he knew it. Because he had started something he couldn’t stop.

These songs were more than simple melodies. He could control his life with them. And so began what Lawrence Pip called ‘The Side A Theory’.

Whenever he wanted or needed something, he would simply find the appropriate song, on side ‘A’ of an album, write it down in his little notebook, and eat it, and it would, as far as he was concerned, come true.

Now - it is fair to say that a lot of his little miracles were self prophesying. On a trip to the circus with his parents when he was just a little too old for it, he made quite the show of eating a piece of paper with ‘Send In The Clowns’ written on. And on the train to Cornwall with some school friends in 1994, he smugly ate a piece of paper with ‘Go West’ written on it.

But other times were more inexplicable. When, at seventeen years old he fell in love Carmel Diskens (initials CD) in the year below him, a girl so very very far out of his league, he scribbled ‘Love Me Do’ on his notebook, and swallowed it. A week later, Lawrence and Carmel were found kissing on the bench outside Our Price in the High Street. It was during that week that he also ate a piece of paper with ‘I wanna sex you up’ written on it. Which also came true. He did want to sex her up. He wanted to sex her up very much. But Carmel didn’t want to sex him up. So he wasn’t sexed up. But his faith in ‘The Side A Theory’ held firm. When he wrote things down on pieces of his paper from his notebook and ate them. They came true.

And this didn’t stop as he got older. Instead of using an alarm clock, he ate pieces of paper with ‘Wake up Boo’ written on them. Or on occasions where he wanted to rise before his house guests left, ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go Go’.

He even tried to record his own album - and the first track on Side A was called predictably ‘The Side A Theory’. But this was a project he soon gave up on. Music was made for him. He didn’t have to make music.

Once, his girlfriend at the time - Molly Prandle the Third (initials MP3), tried to talk to him about this over dinner. She was pretty convinced that he had a serious psychological problem. He ate a piece of paper with ‘Don’t Speak’ written on it, and poor Molly almost immediately started to choke on a fishbone.

Lawrence Pip was unshakable in his theory. And it worried the hell out of his friends. Clearly there was something wrong with Lawrence Pip. By this time it is 2010, and Lawrence Pip is 32 years old. A 32 year old man who eats bits of paper so that his wishes came true.

So, in December of 2002, a gathering of 8 of Lawrence’s closest friends staged what an American would most likely call ‘An Intervention’, and what we would call a “jolly good talking to.’

This was it. Enough was enough. Lawrence Pip was never going to grow up, get married, have children or even a proper career while he leaned on this ridiculous crutch.

So one Tuesday night, with a light sprinkling of pre christmas snow on the roads outside , Lawrence’s friends gathered in the Saloon Bar of ‘The Walnut Tree’, a nice little pub just a couple of doors down from the taxidermists. They sat a table a decent distance from the Jukebox, and waited for Lawrence.

When he arrived, they laid it all out for him. How illogical it all was. How inappropriate it was that he dumped his longest ever partner by eating a piece of paper with the words ‘Leave Me Alone’ written on it.

He had to stop all this. Leave it all behind. Grow up. Be a Man.

But Lawrence was furious. They didn’t understand. They never had. What he had was a gift. They had seen it in action. They had seen the miracles. Just last month, at a party he had demonstrated the magic. But - his friends said - eating a piece of paper that has ‘Do The Conga’ on it is not a miracle. The people did the Conga - said Lawrence. Yes. They said. But ‘Do The Conga’ was playing. You had nothing to do with it.

But just as Lawrence started to write ‘Shut Up’ on a piece of paper, the notebook was snatched from his hands.

Aha. He said. Why would you take the notebook, if none of it is true? You believe it.

We don’t. They said. But you do, and that is the problem.

Lawrence opened his bag and pulled out a much larger notebook. I can make you believe it. He said.

And pulling a marker pen from his pocket he scrawled ‘The Side A Theory’ in capitals on the paper.

This piece of paper was much bigger than he was used to. So he ripped it up in to smaller pieces, and popped the first one in his mouth.

And within ten minutes he was dead.

The autopsy confirmed that Lawrence Pip was a sufferer of Pica - an illness which is characterized by an appetite for non-food items. It usually occurs in children, but passes. Not so in Lawrence’s case. The massive amounts of paper he had eaten over the years had eventually killed him. He hadn’t realised that paper contains trace amounts of mercury, and is deadly to humans in large quantities.

But there was one peculiar little twist. Before they piled Lawrence into the ambulance, on that December night, the paramedics pulled a piece of paper out of his mouth. The little ripped bit of the ‘SIDE A THEORY’ note.

The central piece of the note.

Which simply said. ‘DE A TH’.