Mark Hooper looks back over a year that put us all on Boil Notice.

Boil Notice

As I’m writing this, in early December, my entire town is on ‘Boil Notice’. It’s been almost two weeks since the water supply was turned off in Tunbridge Wells. The irony is lost on no-one that a town owing its existence – and name – to the discovery of a natural spring now has no water. (Although, funnily enough, the spring itself, recently renovated and monetised by an enterprising local, is still bubbling away quite happily, next to a vending machine selling bottles of the mineral-rich elixir for around £7 a pop.)

The problem, according to a slow-drip of corporate comms that I’d trust as much as the tap water, was a ‘bad batch of coagulant chemicals’ added to the treatment plant. Which fills you with confidence from the outset. To be fair, water returned to our taps after six days but, as of now, we are helpfully informed that – and I quote in full – ‘Your water is chemically safe, but a potential fault in the final disinfection process means you must boil it (and let it cool) before drinking.’ Which is as clear as the water coming out of the taps (before letting the sediment settle, as advised).

I’m aware that all this may sound like a very First World problem. Especially as I only returned to my hometown on Day Two of the very middle-class emergency, having been on holiday in Tunisia, where of course we were advised to only drink bottled water because our sensitive Western-softened bellies might not be able to handle the coagulant-free variety.
But, as frivolous as it may sound, the effect was more traumatic than I expected. It was like a mini Covid flashback – the deadlines and messages changing daily, the home-schooling and gallows humour unlocking some residue of lockdowns past, mental muscle memory kicking in. It also felt like an apt metaphor for a deeply weird and unsettling year, one that put us all on Boil Notice as we were gaslit and ghosted on an industrial scale. The simmering anxieties were partly why I decided to opt out of social media, making one last virtue-signalling post on my birthday in February, before deleting my data from Meta (a much easier process than you’d expect – although I now keep getting ‘Memory almost full’ notices on my new laptop from all the backed-up Instagram images I downloaded).

The idea was to step away from the increasingly binary debates that are no good for anyone; to spend more time in nature; to wait for the storm to break.

I’m not sure it worked entirely. For a start, my social media detox wasn’t total: I kept my LinkedIn profile going, to keep an eye out for jobs. No joy there. In fact, if anything, it only added to the tension. Not only did it confirm that everyone is ‘Open to Work’ these days – even those few still doing the hiring – but it also confirmed my worst suspicious about social media. It seems to be dominated by tech-bro wannabes giving you five key but irrelevant takeaways for your business while trolling you about AI, ICE, KPIs and ROIs. But in between the slop and the dross there are still the odd gems – mainly from witty, out-of-work admen (and -women) with newfound time on their hands.

With my own spare time, I vowed to spend more times doing rather than thinking about doing. That meant trips to Bristol to watch the brilliant Idles at their hometown-square gig, as well as GANS, my favourite new band of the year, who I saw in three different towns, from a tiny pub basement to the Troxy, each a fantastic, visceral, life-affirming treat. The Bristol gig was my favourite, because it’s my favourite city. While the rest of the world plummets to hell in a bile-powered handcart, it remains a sanctuary of good sense and good vibes. A place where you’re a Bristolian first and anything else is secondary if not extraneous; where a nod’s as a good as a welcoming West Country hug, where everyone’s your mate, ‘moi darling’ or ‘moi lover’ (especially when said with gusto between two burly heterosexual males). Some of my favourite people live in or come from Bristol (the former just as important, because they have actively made the decision to be there). This includes Johnny, my oldest friend, who I never see enough, and who can always be relied on to provide the best counsel on life, music, politics and flags. Needless to say, he loved GANS too. 

Other musical highlights this year included The Beta Band at the Roundhouse – where we randomly bumped into Marc Wootton, my comedy hero (not to be confused with Dan Wootton, AKA the worst man in the world). The Betas were of course amazing – any gig that starts with Bowie’s ‘Memory of a Free Festival’ played at full blast is incapable of failing, never mind the 90s nostalgia. (On that, it would be remiss of me not to confess I went to see Oasis at Wembley, along with approximately 20% of my generation. I’d never seen them before, and as the years have passed, I’ve bought into the agenda that they embody all that was wrong with 90s laddism, and I convinced myself that I was doing it for my 10-year-old son, who had never seen anyone before, and who has become – Dad bias notwithstanding – a very talented guitarist. The first song he ever learned to play was by Oasis, followed by his second. When I told him it was amazing that he could play two songs, he replied, ‘To be honest Dad, it’s pretty much the same song.’ Anyway, they were incredible. Of course they were. Even better was Richard Ashcroft. I shed a tear when he dedicated ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ to ‘All those we’ve left along the way’. As we shuffled our way out at the end, a random scouser high-fived me and called me ‘Dad of the year’ at the end too, which was nice.)

The Social Street Party in June was another highlight – one of those events where you can guarantee to catch up with the best of the best without any pre-planning – this year Stephen Cracknell of the Memory Band, Mathew Clayton (and some post-planning), plus my old mates Mike and Val and a cast of hundreds made it an afternoon to remember (don’t remember the evening, tbf).

At this point I have to give a vigorous nod to KIF’s Still Out, the brainchild of Will Cookson and Tom Haverly, which Will had mentioned to me in passing when we met at last year’s Neo Ancients festival in Stroud. At the time, I made the sort of noncommittal noises one does when someone mentions a personal pet project. But when Will followed up with a link to the trailer and soundtrack (the result of a roadtrip from North Yorkshire to North Devon, inspired by the KLF and directed by Rufus Exton), I was uncharacteristically effusive. It felt like the soundtrack to my own off-grid ramblings, a connection between the past and the present. Fortunately, a few other people agreed. The film was screened at The Social, while the album was listed among Disco Pogo’s top ten of the year. My all-time favourite album, however – of this or most years – was Blood Orange’s Essex Honey. A deeply human study of loss, written and recorded by Dev Hynes as he returned to the UK to look after his dying mother, it feels like the perfect summary of this weird year, with people forced to question their sense of belonging and self. Talking of which, there was a rare moment of perfect irony when the Tories’ own have-a-go antihero Robert Jenrick singled out the Birmingham district of Handsworth as a ‘slum’ that showed a lack of integration. The irony being that Handsworth’s most famous resident, the late, great Benjamin Zephaniah, did more for integration than any other Briton I can think of (if, by integration you mean a sharing and blending of cultures, rather than wholesale submission to one by all the others). In lieu of a rant against the jackboot-lickers that are getting far too much airtime at present, I’d rather leave you with a few choice words from our unofficial poet laureate who, in his poem ‘The British (Serves 60 Million)’, lists the many nationalities that make up our nation, urging us to:

Leave the ingredients to simmer
As they mix and blend allow their languages to flourish
Binding them together with English
Allow some time to be cool
Add some unity, understanding, and respect for the future
Serve with justice
And enjoy.

We’re still on boil notice, waiting for the storm to break.

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You can listen to Mark’s soundtrack to this piece here.