Colm O'Regan: My old copybook — a hymn to a misspent youth

A 'vintage' Capital Exercise Book — celebrated on a Hairy Baby t-shirt. Picture: Hairy Baby hairybaby.com/capital-exercise-book

“Made by Capital Spicers Limited Walkinstown, Dublin 12 Ireland”

I probably stared at hundreds of times without asking. I asked less questions then. There was no point. No internet to tell me where Walkinstown was. Dublin was mythical enough in 1990. But Walkinstown? What kind of a place was that? I didn’t realise at the time it was the scene of the Walkinstown Roundabout, the massive intergalactic portal that destroys all who get sucked into it.

When I google Capital Spicers now, company records website say it’s inactive. It had €2 in 2004. The company’s book-keeping copies glory days are long behind them.

If you can’t picture the Capital Book-Keeping Series it’s was the A4 copies, ledgers and journals with all the £1, £5, £10 pound notes design on it. There was no picture of a £20 on it. It wasn’t for handing amounts that big.

I rescued this particular Memorandum book from my father’s Spray Cupboard. The Spray Cupboard did not contain essential oils. A spray cupboard on a farm contained Roundup, Gramoxone and other ‘icides’.

When I opened the copy, I my face nearly disappeared into my mouth with cringe. The pages were full of lyrics of songs. Thankfully not my own. Lyrics of music I had tried to write down. Do you remember that? Guessing what the hell the lyrics were? You next to the tape player, biro ready. Pressing play. STOP! Scribble. What was that word? REWIND A BIT! — play again. STOP! And repeat ad nauseum. Like a forensics expert. Some songs gave up their lyrics easy. Others continue to baffle to this day. I wisely stayed away from REM. Since no one knows what the songs are about anyway, it’s really no surprise you would think “The SideWinder Sleeps tonight” chorus “Call me when you try to wake her” is “Don't even chat a baker up”.

The songs I was transcribing were rap. I was bringing all the cultural heft that a 12-year-old on a Dripsey farm could muster to transcribe the works of Long Island New York hip-hop pioneers De La Soul. And in particular all four verses of Eye Know (1989)

The results are an embarrassing mix of lucky guesses and being miles off.
“welcome to my world of phrase. I'm right up to bat” becomes “welcome to my world of phraselight back to back.” “Pleasure principle” turns into “Pleasure of the Prince of Bull.”

“Quiz your involvements” SOMEHOW got mangled to “Push Your Baw-bleeks”.

I didn’t worry about what a baw-bleek was. I just assumed they meant something somewhere.

This would be fine if it stayed inside of the covers of the Capital Spicers product. But one day in Deerpark CBS, the First Year Business Studies teacher Mr Keenan just decided to give us homework off if enough of us sang a song.

Guess what this little shrimp still wearing his Confirmation Shoes sang in front of a class with a fair few hard chaws?

Yes. I rapped. The world’s whitest boy rapped. Saying words phonetically. Gibberish.

Thankfully no one noticed the phonetic lyrics. I think they were too taken aback. Even the hard chaws didn’t know where to look. In a school where you’d get a year of carefully honed slagging for a huge range of smaller crimes, a small boy from a small farm rapping was never mentioned again.

We got homework off but I think a lot of the lads would have gladly sorted out the accounts of the imaginary company rather than have had to witness me baw-bleek my way through hip-hop royalty. Just as well I didn’t do my back up song from NWA. That’s was on page two of my Capital Spicers songbook.

Thanks for the memorandum, 12 year-old Colm.