Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored by John Lydon Page B

with a jib on it. That was his fantasy. He just loved being in control of
machinery, and he was very good at it. Manipulating cranes and moving things about, very excellent, pinpoint accuracy. The workers on the site really loved him for that, because if he was
delivering the bales of concrete, you knew it would go exactly where it was wanted. There could be some awful mishaps. I’ve seen people seriously injured with that stuff. If the crane driver
wasn’t up to it, there’d be bodies knocked off.
    Dad taught me a lot about how to control the cranes. He’d just shut me in the cabin, and – ‘Get on with it!’ The noise alone wouldterrify me.
There was no such thing as ear muffs in them days, and those machines could kick up a noise – solid cast iron, everything. Everything cold and freezing and hateful. I couldn’t make out
why he loved this. It wasn’t at all my thing.
    If I was misfiring on the pedal, he’d slam his foot down on top of my foot, and that would hurt like hell. I suppose it had to be done, but Jesus Christ, the technicalities of trying to
operate two legs and two arms, and making them all do different things at the same time, was just beyond my reach.
    One time, he broke my ankle with a shovel. Yep. I was actually in bed watching
Mystery and Imagination
, and he told me not to watch horror shows, because they give you bad dreams, so he
slammed the shovel on the bed, and that’s where my foot was, although he didn’t realize that till it was too late. I don’t remember much, like how my mum reacted, just the pain.
My ankle’s been a problem ever since. If it gets in any way cold or damp, oh boy, does that ache. I’ve had a form of arthritis from it ever since. It’s just one of those annoying
things that don’t go away.
    It’s like when I dislocated my shoulder; it was not for any good reason at all, but I was too lazy stretching out in bed for a glass of milk – I love milk, you see, I drink it all
night long, so I always have a glass next to the bed, but I could not be bothered to actually move my body, and so I kind of twisted my whole arm, and dislocated my shoulder. So: hunchback,
dislocated shoulder, shattered ankle. . . Now I can’t move like a suave Mediterranean, and my life’s fucked.
    Long hair had worn itself out for me. It was just a nuisance. It was a good thing to have on the building sites, because the old-aged Paddies hated it. Long hair made you a
magnet for coppers. But then, because that was the case, many thugs
wanted
long hair. Long hair meant many things. For some it meant, ‘Peace, man, I wanna look like Jesus, and
here’s my couch slippers.’ For others, it was a full-on aggressive act, like, ‘Fuck you, I’m not cutting it!’
    The crop, the full-on skinhead crop, was an absolute act of aggression. I think most things begin with a form of aggression, even for the most passive of hippies.
Passive-aggressive was the stance. It was declaring that you don’t fit in, just let it grow out, and whatcha gonna do about it? That’s going to be the order of humanity, I think,
forever and a day; we will strive to be different. By the time everybody catches on, and we find out we’re the norm, then it’s time to move on.
    So I decided to have my hair cropped short and dyed green. Krazy colour was genius. It’s a shame it’s not of the same thickness and durability today as it was then. They’ve
somehow watered it down, and the colours aren’t as vibrant. It’s pretty damn near next to useless unless you want to look like a faded newspaper. You know the cartoon segment that used
to be in colour in rancid old newspapers? Them kind of colours – that’s all you get out of it now. Or maybe people don’t know how to bleach properly. Back then, the colours were
really zingy and thrilling.
    My dad seriously didn’t approve, though, and it was the final straw that got me thrown out of home. Dad’s famous quote was, ‘Get out the house, you look