Barry Adamson - Up Above the City, Down Beneath the Stars

Manchester. Wednesday, June 11, nineteen fifty-eight.

It is dark inside the Room. Dark, dismal and eldritch.

A low, thumping, rhythmic, engagingly hypnotic boom blends easily into the ominous electronic sounds that drift all around me.

The commotion creates an intense, continuous atmospheric soundtrack, from which there is no reprieve.

Eyes open or closed, the effect is exactly the same.

This Boom-Boom Room has been my home for as long as I can remember. I cant put a date on it but believe me, it feels like forever.

I dont mind it so much. Everything I need seems to be right here but, lately, Ive had thoughts about being someplace else. Somewhere Ive never planned to go to.

Its a notion that has been gnawing away at me for some time

Globules of light sail by, floating into an ever-expanding screen, before dissolving. The rise and fall of each beam offers some hope of another life outside of the Room. Some indication as to where I might be headed, perhaps?

I ask nobody in particular, Is this a memory, a dream, the start of something new. Or is it something else altogether?

More whirring, bumping and the occasional pulsing of lights but no answer.

The not knowing forms a troubling knot of anxiety in my jelly-baby belly.

For reasons I cannot comprehend, not for the first time, I am beginning to doubt myself and all that surrounds me.

The Room has rarely been as disheartening as it is now. The light dissipates and tenebrous shadows, coupled with the sheer loneliness I have gathered up over all the centuries Ive been here, collude to chip away at my fragile mind.

It begs me to question if something other, something better than all this woeful ambiguity, might lie ahead of me, once I evacuate this claustrophobic, muscular, pear-shaped organ.

I try to accept my fate and hope my mood will pass.

Like an old friend, a sound Ive become familiar with is audible from somewhere nearby. I recognise it instantly. I even know it by name.

The bass line from the song Fever, by Peggy Lee, has begun to play.

As troubles dissolve, its just me, the bass, the drums and those ohso-enticing finger clicks. In the darkness, a wry smile creeps across my lips as Peggy cantillates.

Never know how much I love you

I fall under a kind of narcotic spell. The music takes a hold of me and consumes my every bodily cell, as my unborn self tunes into the arrangement.

There are no other instruments on the song except for the upright bass, drums and voice, all the way throughout. Without knowing this, youd swear that there was a full orchestra playing. You may even need to go back and check if you heard me right, as the feeling from the record is so musically complete, despite its minimal construction.

I screw up my embryonic eyes, young hips swaying through the first of the three key changes, head slowly lurching back and forth to the beat. The way those toms punctuate the song, every time Peggy shouts fever, would almost cause me to fall over if I wasnt in here, sloshing around.

The key changes again for further elaborations on how this addictive phenomenon, a sickness known as lust, is whats really making the world go around.

I bathe in the afterglow of the song, which, as it fades, promises to stay with me forever. I also realise that my anxieties have now completely faded too.

Im free to speculate how long it will be before I reach the final stages of whatever the hell happens next. And while I put those to bed quite quickly, one question remains like a lone child at the gates after the first day of school, waiting for a parent to arrive.

When will I finally get to meet whoever owns those mixed tones? Those tones of conflict, derision and laughter, those muffled inflections I hear in close proximity every day?

Mum, Dad, Our Carol. Those are the words I hear, repeatedly. Sometimes Lily, sometimes Barry, sometimes Our Kid.

After much pondering, I finally get it: Mum is Lily. Dad is Barry and Our Kid is Carol. They have something to do with this, Im sure. It feels like a point of connection, whenever I hear their voices. Satisfied, for now, I yawn and listen to the sounds in the Room, before slipping into sleep.

It is now 7am and there seems to be more of a commotion than usual outside the Room. It makes me imagine crowds of people gathered outside, waiting for some kind of show to begin.

The front door shoots open.

From a high angle, looking down on a terrace called Upper Medlock Street, the summer morning sunlight surrounds us as we spill out of the house, all four of us.

Its a kind of controlled chaos, with me hidden away inside my little Room.

I hear the familiar sound of car doors being opened and then slammed shut.

My mum (I assume its her) is yelling at a couple of kids to Shove off! as they ask if they can touch my dads skin for good luck. This is followed by the sound of thickened footsteps as my dad (Im sure its him) makes his way around to the drivers side, jumps into the car and turns the ignition key.

St Marys here we come, Barry lad, he says out loud. It would seem that my time has, indeed, arrived.

The mood is light enough, but I have this feeling, though. A feeling I heard Our Kid express recently as: Somethings not quite right here.

We are now inside the hospital.

There seems to be little movement in my arms and legs.

I can see their blurred image, but I cant exactly feel them.

They simply wobble and float around, no matter how much I will them to stay still.

I try to manoeuvre, to turn myself around, and as I reach around to pull on a rope attached to my belly, I fail to grasp it. Im now looking for a way out but then, in the blink of an eye

In a moment of radical midwifery, I am dragged out by my backside and flopped onto a stainless steel table, like the latest little catch hauled out of the ocean.

I dare not open my eyes, as the difference between here and the Boom-Boom Room is optically overwhelming.

Above me, a filament strip of light buzzes and slowly glowers out of the darkness. Strange electronic noises permeate the atmosphere a kind of echo of where Ive spent the last months. I begin to observe the world from below as several blurry faces now lean over and engulf me. My eyes attempt to widen as the faces make themselves fully clear.

Lily Maud Adamson, English, pale of freckle, thirty-five years of age.

Palbert Wellington Adamson, also known as Barry, Jamaican, as tough as old boots, thirty-three.

Carol Anne Adamson, an eleven-year-old cherub with light brown skin.

They dont quite seem to know what to make of the new arrival. They all look upon me as though examining a rare new breed of animal. They gaze at each other, full of apprehension and concern, as swinging doors swing open and a voice booms out loud.

The boy has dyschondroplasia.

Tibial dyschondroplasia (TD) is a metabolic disease of young poultry that affects the growth of bone and cartilage. Often occurs in broilers (chickens raised for meat) and other poultry which have been bred for fast growth rates. The tibial cartilage does not mature enough to ossify (turn into bone). This leaves the growth plate prone to fracture, infection, and deformed bone development. It is the leading cause of lameness, mortality, and carcass condemnations in commercial poultry.