I first met Steven when I was either four or five years old, in Miss Shoesmith's class at Lees Primary School. He had a bit of a mullet, and there was some controversy over whether he was a boy or a girl. By the time we were in the top class, aged 9, we were best friends. We spent a lot of time collaborating on vast drawings populated by thousands of stickmen. Together with a third boy called Tony, we tried to convince ourselves that there were werewolves locked in a basement room underneath the playground, or that we had spotted vampires twitching the net curtains in the upstairs bedroom of a semi just beyond the schoolyard wall.

When we moved up to middle school the next year, the house system separated us into different classes. I remember the first day very vividly. I was terrified by the older children marching around the playground. As the bell went to call us all into school, Steven said, "Meet you here at playtime." Knowing that at every break and lunchtime we would meet up helped me through those first, unpleasant days.

By the time we were twelve Steven had introduced me to heavy metal, through a mix tape borrowed from one of his dad's mates at work. We listened to Metallica, Accept, Motorhead, and especially Iron Maiden. Steven had a huge poster on his bedroom wall of the "Number of the Beast" cover. I wasn't allowed those kind of posters. Neither would my mum agree to sew heavy metal patches onto the back of my denim jacket, as Steven's mum had. After a long negotiation I was allowed a single Marillion patch, but by that time Steven had torn the sleeves off his. We used to go down to a certain record shop near Keighley train station to browse the records in the heavy metal section, and admire the lurid and grisly covers.

It was around this time that we began an odd ritual of setting fire to Star Wars figures using a contraband cigarette lighter. Steven's bedroom was very small, and each ritual sacrifice ended with us opening the windows and spraying deodorant around as though we were underage smokers (we weren't, yet).

We programmed a computer game for the ZX Spectrum called "Murder in Megacity One". You played a psychopath who had to murder as many citizens as possible before you were caught by Judge Dredd. It was rubbish.


A few years later we progressed from metal to goth. Again it was Steven who introduced me to the Sisters of Mercy, the Cult, All About Eve, the Mission. We began to make trips to Leeds to visit what must have been the last surviving goth shop in the city, to buy Patchouli oil and to wish we could afford leather jackets and trousers (Steven did finally get the trousers, years later).

John.