A Walthamstow punk rocker spends Saturday watching the Windsors fight over car registrations while her band fights over a borrowed amp
Saturday, 17 October 2026. Walthamstow, flat above the launderette, 9.40am, tea stewed beyond saving.
Woke Up To A Royal Family Running Its Feelings Through The DVLA
Woke up with glitter in my ear and a set list stuck to my cheek. That is how you know Friday went well. Sid the cat was sitting on my chest like a small furry bailiff, and the first thing I read on my cracked phone was that Prince William has gone and ordered three personalised number plates. NOTYET, NOTHARRY and DISTASTEFUL. I had to put the tea down.
The full report on Prince William’s three personalised number plates explains that there is an Aston Martin for waiting, a Range Rover for avoiding his brother and a Bentley for disapproving of basically everything since 2018. I have been in a punk band for six years and I have never once managed to say that much with a vehicle. Our van is a 2009 Transit with a sliding door that only slides if Moth kicks it at a specific angle. Its emotional register is one word, and the word is BROKE.
I read the whole thing out to Dazzer, who plays bass and lives on my sofa in a technical sense, meaning his body is there but nobody has ever seen him pay towards the gas. He listened, nodded, and said our van needs a plate too. He suggested NOTPAID. Kez said FUMES. I said CLUTCH, because that is what it smells of. We put it to a vote and Sid won by sitting on the paper.
The Bentley Of Disapproval Versus The Transit Of Despair
The bit that got me was the Range Rover with the Sussex Avoidance System, where the satnav refuses to recognise Montecito and the radio changes station whenever someone says Harry and Meghan. I want that for my ex. I want a car that changes station whenever anyone says Callum. Callum was the drummer before Moth. Callum thought the Clash were a brand of energy drink. Callum left to join a ska covers band in Romford and I still have his hi-hat stand, which I use to hang my tights.
Then, of course, Harry and Meghan are actually back. The coverage of Harry and Meghan’s return to Britain and the Nottingham charity visits made a point I found genuinely moving, in between laughing so hard tea came out of my nose. They went to a community recording studio in St Ann’s, listened to a fourteen-year-old sing a song about peer pressure, hugged her and left. No gold stick. No velvet cushion. No retired admiral needing structural support for his medals.
A community recording studio. Do you know how long I have wanted one of those? Our current rehearsal space is a bin shed behind a Turkish bakery on Hoe Street. The acoustics are mostly cardboard. On a good night you can smell fresh simit through the vent and on a bad night you can smell the bins, and on a punk night you cannot tell the difference and you do not care.
Private Citizens With Photographers: A Lifestyle I Would Like To Try
Ten minutes later the sister report landed, the one where Harry and Meghan insist they are private citizens while arriving behind barriers in front of what sounds like every lens in the East Midlands. Someone wrote down that her belt was from Marks and Spencer. Someone in an office decided the belt mattered.
I want to be a private citizen like that. I want to walk into Lidl in Leyton and have a man in a fleece shout that the Duchess of Bin Shed has arrived. I want somebody to log my belt. My belt is a guitar strap I cut down with kitchen scissors in 2021 and it has a Crass patch on it. Nobody from ITV has ever asked where it came from. It came from a skip in Hackney Wick, if anyone from ITV is reading.
Kez says the whole private citizen thing is the most punk act in British history, because they told the establishment to get stuffed and then kept the merch. She has a point. Every band I know quits a label and keeps the logo. We left a label once. Well, it was a man called Terry with a stamp and a Gmail account, but it felt like a label. We kept the stamp.
The Gold Stick Is Our New Mascot
The Nottingham piece spent a paragraph on the Gold Stick, the ceremonial post whose job is apparently to hold a stick that is gold. There is also a silver one. A backup stick. Moth heard this and went very quiet, and then said that is exactly how she feels about her drumsticks, she has one good pair and a backup pair she found in a Wetherspoons, and she would die for both of them.
We have now voted to make the Gold Stick our mascot. Dazzer spray painted a broom handle gold in the yard this morning while the baker shouted at him in two languages, both of which I understood perfectly. It is propped by the amp. It does nothing. That, Kez says, is the whole point of a constitutional monarchy.
Elsewhere In The Kingdom Of Daft
Scrolling between rehearsal breaks I found the press has apparently gone out looking for anyone who still wants Brexit. The Daily Mash has a piece on how journalists are scouring Britain for the last remaining Brexiters, and it reminded me of my uncle Gerry in Dagenham, who still has a flag in the window and a mug that says Take Back Control, which he uses for his teeth.
And NewsThump has gone full Baker Street with Sherlock Holmes and the case of the mysterious hyphen, which I read aloud to the band in a terrible Watson voice until Moth threw a tambourine at me. I deserved it. I did the voice for eleven minutes.
Tonight’s Plan
Gig at the back room of a pub in Clapton that I am not allowed to name because the landlord says our last visit was not covered by his insurance. We are opening with a new song called Notyet, which is two minutes long, has three chords and is about waiting for things that are never going to happen: a decent bus on the 48 route, a refund from Terry, and the Ration Books getting played on 6 Music.
The chorus goes Not yet, not yet, the Aston is waiting, the Bentley is hating. Dazzer thinks it is our best work. Dazzer also thinks the gas is free. Sid has been fed. The gold broom handle is in the van. If anyone needs me I will be in a bin shed in Walthamstow, being a private citizen, very loudly.