from that shitty watch company. Apparently it went off. [laughs] James: Tell us about Carl Wood’s daily routine? Oh fuck’s sake. Right, for starters I don’t have an alarm clock to get up because he makes so much noise every morning. Singing, talking utter bollocks. Then he’ll go to work, we’ll come back and he’ll tell me about his day and how shit it was. Pissed off to fuck. ‘I was on price and I earned fuck all.’ Then, still covered in mortar, all over his hands, he’ll go and have a half hour wank in his bedroom. Then boom! Come out with a towel over his shoulder and have a shower. I’ll go ‘What the fuck are you doing Carl?’ and he’ll go ‘Well I’ve been having a wank haven’t I?!’ He’s disgusting. I went to work one day and he’d been laid off for about a month and my bird Abi called me and goes ‘I daren’t leave the room, Carl’s going fucking ballistic.’ I go ‘why, what’s he doing?’ and Abi goes ‘He’s just parading around the house going ‘I’VE HAD A SHIT AND A WANK. A SHIT AND A WANK! WHAT A PRODUCTIVE MORNING! WHAT A PRODUCTIVE MORNING!’ [laughs] He obviously didn’t know that Abi was in the house. Abi had to leave so she walks out and goes ‘Hi Carl’ and he’s all sheepish like ‘Oh yeah, all right Abi, you all right…” [laughs] Was Carl going into town before you? Yeah… It must have been weird when you all got a bit older and Carl started going into town and you stayed in the village? Nath: You’d just go in wouldn’t you? We’d ride the carpark near yours then some people with cars would turn up and be like ‘Right, off to town now’ and you would just stay at home. You were never pissed off about it. Did anyone ever try and talk you into it? Nath: Yeah they did. didn’t they? And on a few occasions you came in, but you could tell it wasn’t a comfortable situation for you to be in. Like you’d be on edge all the time, like you really didn’t want to be there. It slowly got better over time, when we started traveling a bit more. It’s why you’re good at mannys, hops and 180s and 360s, because there was nothing else to do in that carpark. It was just flat. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’ve got a pretty limited trick repertoire, which sounds like it comes from being a street rider growing up in a village. When you got out into the city more, did you never feel like trying to learn loads of other stuff? I think if I learnt barspins I’d feel like I wouldn’t have to learn anything else. Just grinds, twists and barspins. But I’d rather find a nice set-up to do something I feel confident doing rather than learning everything and doing it on anything. It does piss me off sometimes,
like when I did that 180 over that bank to rail. I just wasn’t into it. It’s like my bread and butter, I do that shit all the time. That’s frustrating sometimes. But if you look at Ratkid [Mark Gralla], he’s the best street rider. He’s got a tight niche of tricks and he just does them on interesting spots that he’s found [everyone contemplatively nods in agreement]. When you see riders doing massive stuff and they look terrified of the outcome, I don’t want to be like that. James: Yeah, but you 180ing that rail, I wouldn’t have wanted to do that. I’d be scared of that. You’re really good at that stuff so it doesn’t phase you. I can see that people get comfortable doing big stuff, but sometimes it looks painful. Like, ‘why would you want to risk doing that?’ I had a different view on it before I did my shoulder, but then I did my knee and I started seeing things a little differently. It really knocks your confidence. A week or so after I arrive back from Barcelona I head up to Hull and reality bites. It’s bitterly cold and between the intermittent rain it’s perpetually grey. I’ve somehow missed Hull on my travels around England. As a city, it’s isolated, pinned to the coast by the M64, with Liverpool in the same position on the west coast, some 120 miles away. Hull certainly looks bleak, but any city on a day like today looks bleak. Days like today are like walking in on someone taking a shit – neither yourself or the person in question wants to experience that. The madness of Barcelona has subdued. Sandy has spent most of the time with his girlfriend, readjusting back from living with a pack of feral cats for two weeks. I didn’t expect to get much in the way of photos in Hull, the weather was bleak when I set off. It’s worth getting a picture of the city at least. Sandy gives me a tour, past a gay bar called The Yorkshireman, the art college that used to be an orphanage, to the Hull Barrier banks, where Tom and Nath watched a man commit suicide. “I forget how weird Hull can be at times, it’s only when you start talking about it like this.” He remarks wistfully. We have breakfast that morning at somebody’s wake. The feelings of Barcelona start to well up again. It’s hard not to like Sandy, there’s an honesty to him that’s quite humbling. I try to picture him as this nervous wreck of a child, but I can’t. He seems at ease with himself and where he’s at, even after having such a terrible time with injuries in the past. His friends undoubtedly had a big hand in the guy he’s become. I mentioned earlier in the interview that ‘riding helped him get over his anxiety’ – sounds like bullshit, I know, but in retrospect, it was probably more to do with having such a funny, weird and solid group of mates around him.
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I THINK IF I LEARNT BARSPINS I’D FEEL LIKE I WOULDN’T HAVE TO LEARN ANYTHING ELSE
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