The Sewerside Chronicles

by tim lay
SPACA DA Diamond imprint, published by Discovered Authors

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Biography

The cliché ‘write what you know’ prompted Tim Lay to avoid a career path filled with proper jobs and decent wages and tread the path of rich experience instead.

Along the way he has put on raves, been an editor and a journalist, flirted with the fashion industry, worked as a builder’s mate, taught English to foreigners, invented card games and lived and travelled different places.

He has written for The Big Issue, Black Book and Lodown magazine and his short stories have been published in Queenspark Book anthologies. In 2007 he won the Undiscovered Authors national prize with his debut novel, The Sewerside Chronicles.

Read this book called The Sewerside Chronicles, it’s a funny novel about a fashion company, ‘making clothes’ and doing cool T-shirt designs, of moving amongst fashion circles and fashionistas and ‘selling clothes’ – especially ethical and eco fashion – such as streetwear and skatewear. The Sewerside Chronicles is a book about ‘making it’ in a creative industry, and pays homage to graffiti culture, graffiti artists and Banksy style graffiti artwork.
The Sewerside Chronicles is also a novel about skateboard culture and skate ramps and skateboards and skateboarding and skateboarders. But it’s more than this because Tim lay has written a book about raves, organising free parties, and putting on illegal parties in the South West, rave culture and the sewerside sound system, particularly drum n’ bass and the UK hip hop scene (although techno was also popular with local crowds. For this reason, The Sewerside Chronicles is a good read about protest idealism, counter culture, underground culture and anti-globalisation and riots of which the May Day riot of 2000 is featured along with skate culture.
Have you read the Sewerside Chronicles? It’s a wicked book with an insider’s view of the fashion industry, manufacturing and selling T-shirts with distinctive designs, clothes – selling streetwear and particularly skatewear – and the difficulties of not ‘making it’ in a creative industry like the fashion industry (and going bankrupt in the process).
Nevertheless, The Sewerside Chronicles features a lot about skate culture too and gives a good insight into skateboarding and skateboarding culture and putting on skate events and skateboarders building and constructing skate ramps like the Sewerside ramp. The Sewerside chronicles is based at the time of the anti-globalisation and riots and the prevalence of protest and protest idealism in the anti globalisation movement.
For an excellent view of underground culture, also counter culture, in the UK and in particular free party and rave influenced underground culture e.g. raves, DJs, illegal parties, putting on and organising free parties in the South West (music including drum and bass and hip hop with some techno) The Sewerside Chronicles, a novel by Tim Lay, gives a real insight into the scene that’s been catalogued in the artwork of artist Mau Mau.
It’s been asserted that The Sewerside Chronicles by Tim Lay is a funny account of a business going bankrupt, and also features the hopes and fears of protest idealism. In his novel, Tim Lay writes about the anti-globalisation movement, protest and demonstrations (also known as demos), and in particular gives an account of a riot in London in 2000.
However, new novel The Sewerside Chronicles isn’t only about this, it’s also about the music scene, the free party scene – or to be more specific illegal parties that have been organised, put on and run by Che Capri and the Sewerside crew – a counter cultural collective that stir up underground culture with their sound system, DJs and MCS and drum n’ bass and hip hop inspired raves in the countryside, as well as with graffiti and T-shirt designs (Mau Mau could be the inspiration for this too).
This is only one side of the Sewerside Chronicles book, which categorises the coolness of skate culture and skateboarding (and of course skateboarders!) in general, as the crew attend many skate events and provide the skate ramp for events such as OTP. OTP is a fictional trade show dealing with fashion companies, and Sewerside are a streetwear company that make skatewear that trendy people think is cool. As Tim Lay writes, Sewerside is ‘making clothes’ as well as ‘selling clothes’, but the fashion industry is hard and bankruptcy looms.
It’s also been reported that the themes of underground culture and protest idealism have been combined with those of running an ethical business, a fashion business, in The Sewerside Chronicles. ‘Making it’ through the manufacture and sale of streetwear and skatewear and attending events like trade shows and fashion parties attended by various fashionistas is a world that Tim Lay knows and writes about in his novel, often to hilarious effect. It’s the humour and comedy in the book that is a counter weight to the angst of fighting for business survival and bankruptcy is inevitable but a posse of counter cultural figures makes it unpredictable.
There are the Sewerside Chronicles archetypes – the skateboarders, the DJs, the graf artists – based on the artist Mau Mau perhaps? - the MC, the sound system engineer – a nod to an era of counter culture. This is achieved through the clever use of skate ramps, parties – illegal and free parties, also known as ‘raves’ in the Southwest – and events going on the bigger stage like anti-globalisation, corporation dominance and bankruptcy of a small business.
It’s interesting to note that the Sewerside Chronicles portrays the world of graffiti and urban art at a time when the likes of Banksy were not famous. Graffiti art and the graf pieces sprayed on walls were seen as something more subversive, graffiti artists perceived as criminals.