UB40

I hate UB40. I hate them with a passion that has nothing to do with the band, their songs or their sound and everything to do with Sunday afternoons.
You couldn’t get away from UB40 on a Sunday in my village. ‘There’s a rat in my kitchen’ was pumped out of crap stereos in row upon row of back gardens. You could hear ‘Red, Red Wine’ wafting through kitchen windows in entire streets and if this wasn’t bad enough, it came wrapped in the smells of cooked cabbage, for UB40 was the official soundtrack to the Sunday Roast. And ‘Kingston Town’ blasted out of car stereos the village over, making UB40 truly unavoidable.
Back when I was young, shops didn’t open on a Sunday. Nothing did, apart from the pubs and the off-licenses. The pubs, restricted by the licence laws at the time, opened between 11am and 2pm and again between 7pm and 10pm, and the off-licences sold alcohol in hours to match.
When I was a child, Sundays meant four things: Sunday dinner, dad coming home from the pub drunk and late for dinner, a bath before school and UB40.
I loved Sunday dinner (still do), but I hated that dad would be drunk and that he and mam would argue. I liked school, but I still got a sinking feeling when bathtime rolled around because it heralded the end of the weekend, and I hate UB40 because it reminds me of all of the above. There was nothing to do on a Sunday except play outside and wait for these four things to happen.
A quiet desperation clung to the village on even the sunniest, shiniest of Sundays.
By the time I hit mid teens, Sundays hadn’t changed much: I still looked forward to mam’s dinner but got the same sinking feeling in my stomach as the clock hand landed on two-thirty and dad stumbled up the drive, but the bath before school had been replaced by a mad dash to the offie.
We would hit the offie at noon, drink down our purchases, go for Sunday dinner, have a bit of a nap then make a mad dash back down the offie at seven for more booze. Depending on how much we’d bought and who was drinking that evening (we always underestimated how much we’d need when Trish was with us), we’d make one final dash in the run-up to ten. We’d usually get there at one-minute-to, purple in colour and about to heave our guts up.
And still, UB40 blared out of anything with speakers.