The tracks of a young boy’s years
BROKEN GREEK: A STORY OF CHIP SHOPS AND POP SONGS
MUSIC journalist Pete Paphides stopped speaking at the age of four and was seven by the time he spoke again. His was a self-conscious silence; he knew it was an odd thing to do and he wasn’t entirely sure why he was doing it, but he refused to say a word to anyone who wasn’t his Greek mum Victoria, his Cypriot dad
Chris or his beloved older brother Aki (it was Aki who gently suggested his sevenyear-old brother might want to try speaking again, putting an end to three years of mutism).
Instead, Paphides communicated in a series of nods and shrugs and, although he was outwardly quiet, inwardly his mind was bright and buzzing and as loud as the pinball machines in the back room of his parents’ Birmingham fish and chip shop, as this wonderful memoir reveals.
It’s the engaging and often very funny story of a boy who’s struggling to find his voice, constantly wondering who he would become, and afraid what the answer might be. A homeless tramp? A friendless outsider? The boy who fulfils his parents’ expectations and takes over the family business?
This last seemed like the worst outcome because the fish and chip shops (they owned a few) made his mum and dad miserable.The Turkish-Cypriot war of 1974 squashed their dreams of returning “home” and they were stuck working long hours in a place they didn’t want to be. It made their marriage fraught, with Chris often taking out his frustrations onVictoria (who Pete loves from the bottom of his heart).
It’s difficult to read about Chris’ rage but Pete is eventually able to view his dad’s behaviour with a compassionate eye: “It’s hard to hate someone when you start to understand them.And once you understand someone, you might even start to feel pity.” But it also made him determined not to follow in his dad’s footsteps.
Music became his escape from the chip shop, with a slow, steady
realisation that pop could transform his world.The book is packed with brilliant descriptions of the records he listened to, the singles he bought on day trips into town, the songs carefully taped off the radio onto cassettes and the pop trivia that delighted him.
Hand in hand with the pop stories, Paphides has a lovely line in wistful nostalgia. Blue Riband biscuits, Dial-A-Disc and Panini football stickers were treasures for this shy, introverted kid who was afraid of tall buildings, mushrooms, haircuts and was drawn to singers who looked or sounded “kind” – The Wombles, The Brotherhood Of Man,The Rubettes and Abba all get a look in as early favourites.
He even had unabashed love for the appalling comedy songs of The Barron Knights. He never claims to be cool; that accolade belongs to Aki.
He admired Madness, a band whose songs “corresponded so closely to what some of my classmates were going through that it felt more like reportage than pop”. But the bands most often on the turntable as Paphides approached teenage-hood were Orange Juice and Dexys Midnight Runners, whose ragged dungarees and rallying call to all lost souls offered a “strange, comforting sensation… a sense of companionship”.
Alongside the musical nostalgia, Paphides is not afraid to own up to his most vulnerable feelings or to admit to the moments when he made the wrong choices in life.
It’s this honesty that makes Broken Greek such a heartfelt, genuinely affecting read.