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“In yellow shoes I get the blues...”

Syd was singing to himself, tunelessly stamping out the lyrics, loudly, to anybody who might be in earshot in the apartment. Currently, that was nobody, save for the massive heaps of cigarette butts - his most recent girlfriend had broken up with him, and he hadn’t called up Iggy the Eskimo in a while.

“Though I walk the streets with my plastic feet…”

Fuck.

He hated being alone, he really did.

Maybe I should call up Iggy. Give her a ring.

I just need some laughs. She’s great for a laugh.

No. That won’t work. My phone isn’t working, is it? Don’t even know why.

Fuck.

He crashed aimlessly on an armchair, groaning. On one side of the chair lay a large mound of cigarettes - some were butts, some weren’t - and on the other Syd’s guitar, his 1964 Fender Telecaster. In front was the television. Syd picked up the guitar, and touched its shining, white body with a cautious, loving touch. He set it down, and crawled towards the television, which he turned on after some fumbling.

A brief click, and the television turned on. Syd slithered back to his chair, crawled up back onto it, and laid the guitar aside. Without even looking, he reached into the mound, pulled out a cigarette and lit it.

“Oh, fucking yes! Yes! Bunn, Wackett, Buzzard, Stable, and Boot!”

From the television, John Cleese looked out with a look of such utter disgust that Syd burst into helpless laughter.

A knock from the door.

“Oh, come on! I’m watching this!”

Another knock.

“What?”

Another knock, and a voice, too: “Syd?”

“What?”

“Syd?”

“Syd?”

A dark humour was in Syd now, and, quietly, he crept across the floor, reaching and then moving a chair to serve as a barricade.

“Syd, are you sliding a fucking chair? The barricade wasn’t funny last time.”

I thought I was quieter than that.

“It’s a barricade. We should only have people in the band who can break through barricades.”

“Syd, come on. It’s Roger.”

“Oh.”

Syd paused briefly, cleared his throat. He began again in some shrill and awful lunatic voice, which Roger supposed was supposed to be a school teacher. He shuddered a bit internally. Fucking school.

“Well, come on then, Waters! Come on inside!”

Roger walked in, and took a seat on a chair relatively free of cigarettes. His gaze turned towards the television, chattering on contentedly in the background.

Syd looked at the television as well. “Isn’t it amazing how we’ve got so many channels of shit on the TV to choose from, and this is the only good show?”

Roger looked back at Syd, expectantly.

“Um. You have something to, uh, say, Roger?”

Roger looked utterly astounded.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Syd, you called me fucking here!”

“Oh, did I?”

“Yes, you fucking did.”

Syd gave his crazy smile, and in a sing-song voice, said “Pulling your leg.”


There was a pause, and Syd got serious, or he at least got as serious as he could be. “Look, I’ve been thinking some more about the, uh, I Ching, that, the, uh, the Chinese book? You remember. We got Heart of the Sun from it, didn’t we?”

“It was that other poetry book, Syd.”

“Right, right. The Book of Changes.”

“What?”

“Book of Changes.”

“What?”

“That’s what I Ching means, man: Book of Changes.”

“Yeah, I know that. What about Book of Changes.”

That same warped smile again, and Syd said, knowing how much it’d irritate Roger, “Book of Changes.”

“Yeah, sure. Book of fucking changes.”

“Have you got it yet?”

“Oh my god.”

“Have. You. Got. It. Yet?”

“No, I haven’t fucking got it yet!”

Syd looked utterly victorious, and from the TV, a man said, “And now, for something completely different.”

“Roger, that’s what we're gonna call the next album. It’s bloody great.”

“We are?”

“Yeah! We’re gonna have some amazing songs, mate! Get some of that political stuff you always want to do? You’ve been wanting to do a song about, uh…”

“The Anzio bridgehead.”

“Exactly! We’ll get that, and some songs about fucking Wilson and Heath, right? And, and, because I know I’ve been really hard to work with, I just want to do one song. Just one. I’ve been working on it for a while. Maybe I told you? You know, Ramadan?”

Roger said, “No fucking motorbike sounds this time.”

Syd laughed. “You were the ones who wanted to use household items, for fuck’s sake.”

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Roger will look at Syd.

Roger will say, “Oh god.

And Syd Barrett will say, “What?”

Roger will say, “Your eyes, man.”

And Syd will respond, with his madcap laugh, “What about ‘em? Do I have three now?”

“You’re obviously high, Syd. Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not fucking high.”

“You’re high as a fucking kite. As the fucking Apollo missions, mate.”

“I am not.”

Roger will rise from his chair, and he will say, with more sadness than anger, “Syd, don’t lie to me. I know you’re high.”

“I’m not-”

“Syd. I know what being high looks like. I know what you look like when you’re high.”

“I might have had some mandies. One or two.”

“Syd, you can’t keep doing this. You said, Syd. You fucking promised, man.”

“I don’t do well alone. You know that. Come on…”

“I don’t know what to do anymore, Syd. We let you take some time off, we were OK with that, and it seemed like you’d gotten better, it did. You even went back on tour, Syd. With us. And now?”

“I’m…”

“Don’t say that you’re sorry, Syd.”

Roger will stand back up from his chair, and he will leave, and Syd will just stay sitting, a cigarette burning away between his fingers, and his eyes utterly hollow and utterly dead.

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In yellow shoes I get the blues
Though I walk the streets with my plastic feet
With my blue velvet trousers, make me feel pink
There's a kind of stink about blue velvet trousers
In my paisley shirt I look a jerk
And my turquoise waistcoat is quite out of sight
But, oh, oh, my haircut looks so bad
Vegetable man, how are you?
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