Bang

Typically we went for a long journey to Kyoto only to go to a restaurant and miss the fireworks completely. 

Post

One of the longest-standing members of the community centre was mugged when he collected his pension money.  It was a real shock. He was a lifelong smoker and given only a year to live. But it was still a surprise when he suddenly died. 

Latin

The next time I went to college I was supposed to be learning video. I had the great privilege of meeting Hidalgo though he was soon to die after. 

Glandular

Like most people with MS, it started with glandular fever. I eventually realized how sick I was when  I crept from the chair to the couch to lie down. Straight away he got me an ambulance. 

Barn-theatre

Having a huge barn as well as sharing a couple of sheep my dad was able to convert it into a mini theatre for my mum. 

Bruce

In the early 70-ties with the influence of Bruce Lee everyone was into Kung-Fu. So I joined the nearest Karate club which was on Sundays at the back of the pub.

I went to wrestling with my dad. It was amazing to see him so animated.

Club

Choosing heterosexuality, the fantastic thing about being young is sitting in a club between two gorgeous women whilst whittling on. The bloke opposite couldn’t understand how on Earth a guy can be with two amazing people yet talking such nonsense. One was obviously Boots the other was a beautifull friend of Indian heritage. A few moons later we would be sitting chatting by the river only for a deranged guy foaming at the mouth to try to kick me into the water. 

Skool

My dad drove me to a private school in Nottingham every day going through Stavely. One day when he collected me he looked like he’d been beaten up very badly. Though typically he said he’d fallen down in the garage. It was a 50-mile drive to school so doing that four times a day became a bit much. This meant I boarded and read Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger. 

Fire in the kitchen

Thankfully when the pan went up in flames in the kitchen I’d been watching information films on TV so I stripped off my T-shirt dumped it in the water and put the fire out to my mum’s surprise.

Grayson

When I went to Millenium’s graduation I was astounded to be put in a box at the back with Boots. Amazingly Grayson Perry was running the ceremony.

Crestfallen

I played a joke on my dad by buying a fake razor blade that looked like it had gotten into my hand. But he was so crestfallen I couldn’t carry out the joke.

Pierce

Hackney was a new world and the Porridge logic was a first piercing. Mister Seb was very friendly over the phone and we went to Panther House.

Shaka

Guess we saw Jah Shaka in a tunnel under Vauxhall train station but it was too loud for my other half. So we went early. 

Doin

In the mid-’80s we’d moved out of Brixton and found a squat.  As a Going Away present everyone decided to take me to my favourite pub in Brixton. I was going away to uni soon so large quantities of alcohol were in order. Every now and then there seemed to be noise outside but I was busy drinking. Worse for wear I headed for the front door only to find the whole of Brixton on fire. With Linton Kwesi Jonson’s All Wi Doin Is Defendin in my heart we headed down the road. 

Motorhead

Boots’ claim to fame was meeting Lemmy from Motorhead.

Desert

When you’re young things ‘just happen’.

Moving into the bungalow by the old people’s home at the time seemed absolutely straightforward. Actually, loads of sand must have been put all around. I played football with a mate on a newly created flat field by the nursing home. I don’t think my young brain could compute that previously the field had been very up and down. Even in the huge fields at the back, it didn’t occur to me that running a pipe all the way across it to the greenhouse was actually quite complex. 

One Sunday morning I got up extra early and went rabbiting with my pet dog.

With 11 acres the bottom field was great for sledging down in winter. In summer my dad let the local farmer graze his cows on the field which at least meant all the grass got eaten.

Every now and then we kids travelled to the front in the back of a dormobile. Every time we got the ferry from Southampton. So it made sense when we suddenly moved to the seaside from the Midlands.

Phone

Of course, when we lived in the back streets of Brixton, there was a Pay Phone attached to the wall in the hallway.

Egyptian Queen

The thing about going to Berlin with my Hawkwind friend was that he insisted we visit the Nefreteti Museum. Don’t remember much about it but it was on the main road.

Hand

The one advantage of the dole office burning down was getting a coach to Berlin for sixty-nine quid. In the early eighties, Berlin was the cross between the films Possession and Decoder. Wearing a pink pullover the German pub was still quite fraught. Being friendly I grabbed a hand. A prison stare at his hand showed me he was from East Berlin.

Youth club

Going to a secondary school meant visiting a youth club on the weekends. At the time the big item on the soundtrack was the hopeless song by Ronnie Biggs and the Sex Pistols.

House in the forest

A nineties view of a squat in a place by the seaside was actually a house in the forest in the middle of nowhere.

Pulping

The next week I was due to go off to the Glastonbury festival so my room would be empty. Living in Hackney it made sense to help my friend out by putting up for free a Greek heterosexual couple. When I came back I went with my mate to take them to the pub at the end of the road.

Fell

With a violin practical exam next week I needed to rest my arms. So what could go wrong racing down the hill on my chopper bike be? Going too fast the bike came out from under me. When I escaped from unconsciousness I had gravel embedded in my hands.

Film reviews

As we left Worksop each day going to school the last thing we saw was the poster advertising new films. In the 70s that would mean Enter the Dragon and Emanuelle. As a special treat, we went to the cinema in Chesterfield to see The Land That Time Forgot.

Adolescent life by the sea

One would imagine that life by the sea was all sandy beaches and ice cream. But actually, it had a sinister side. Maybe it was being an adolescent but growing up always had a weird undercurrent suffused with a threat of violence and disquiet. Things were never what they seemed. 

Thunder

When you get the name of your fanzine from a dictionary it becomes really annoying to find out it’s a horrible AC/DC track.

Apex

Finally, reach the top and it’s a useless knowledge as you taste brass in your mouth.

March

Of course, I went on the Spanner march at the last minute. But somehow I got kicked off because I didn’t look correctly s&m- not trying hard enough.

Show

My introduction to Boots resulted in going with her to the fashion show that she was doing. Bizarrely, this coincided with the beginnings of the whole London acid house scene explosion. In practice, this meant hanging out at some empty warehouse (as you do) to a Nathan Barley background soundscape and (trying to avoid) her while she coordinated with the models wearing her strange costumes and her full-on make-up.

Lawless

My impression of a bit of Amsterdam was of a lawless quarter similar to the book When Gravity Fails. A sort of Dutch Tinker Tailer.

Leave of the shore

Before my dad died I played him my favourite song- Tom Waits’ Shore Leave.

Of course, the General imagined far more discordant music.

Bookshop

When you’re an adolescent there are- sort of- set texts to read everything from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I was still going to Compendium in Camden.  But I’d already got Celine’s Journey to The End of the Night with its lovely train cover before the antisemitic rubbish.

At the time you’d buy a magazine talking of The Spectacle of Death while you admired the fake photos of WW1 injuries that inspired the Dadaists. Doing a bookstall at Camden Market meant going to Compendium most weekends.

Performance

Of course, the Proper Performance Artist left the street before I did. But someone took me to his new gaff via the M25. He lived in darkest South London. At the time Mail Art was all the rage- people sending each other rubbish in the post. He showed me a beautifully produced magazine filled with creepy pictures of women with black eyes. It reminded me of the bonsai lyric on Crass’ Penis Envy.

Total

I was always suspicious of totalising ideologies.

Millennium bug

My fantastic idea (unfortunately not realised) was to travel out to my friend’s house overlooking the Thames on millennium eve. The night would start in Kennington and via various bus routes would end in a tower block on Jamaica Road looking out over London Bridge.

Naming

When you give a child a new name it has to be something you both agree on. Ada was easy because of Ada Lovelace. Misty was more complicated. Misty was the name of a sparky little Gypsy girl we’ve seen at the wedding. My contribution was the Misty in Roots group.

Enormity

Of course, when you’re young and stupid you imagine everything as a backdrop to your life. In this case an excuse for a Performance but standing in an empty field suddenly I am overwhelmed by the enormity of Auschwitz. As the rain comes down they are tears from the sky.

Life on the line

Being amazingly naive meant going regularly to all-dayers at the Ritzy or Scala and reading City Limits. Life in Brixton veered between a sort of Amelie and the disquiet of horrible things I half-saw on the periphery of my vision- the bits in Eraserhead out of the window. Apartheid was going on but it mainly meant avoiding a certain type of fruit rather than the reality of very nasty men doing unspeakable things.

Trench

The one advantage of a brief moment at a private school was resting in a sumptuous library in the early evening and reading Look and Learn on the Mariana Trench.

Graphic Novella and Platypus Records

My first venture into the adult world of books and records was to go to Graphic Novella and the nearby record shop. My initial purchase was Dreaming of Me, some fanzines and a Burrough’s book. The great thing about the bookshop was that it linked to a nightclub playing great new bands. For some reason, it was the place by the seaside aspiring bands could be checked out. It was a kind of Manchester on Sea- which was brilliant as record labels like Factory developed.

Starfish

My first present to Boots’ was an empty tin of chocolate pilchards with a starfish inside.

Many

-I guess he’s reached 10 billion followers.

-Maybe 10 million?

-No, I think he means under 10. Actually his aspiration is that 10 people will read him.

Pearl

My dad’s gastronomic influence was a pearl barley soup and equally strange Lithuanian grated carrots. Every now and then rye bread seemed to materialize from his journeys into town.

Punque

I was 10 in ’76 so punk was a weird transitionary period. At the time I was living in a Guest House by the seaside unlike all those cool characters visiting the Factory, ironically, my experience of punk was mainly one of TV- lying on the bottom of a bunk bed and waiting for Soap to finish and the ace Revolver to start. Humour at the time consisted of Kenny Everet’s anarchic but loosely racist programme. Peter Cook was a suitably sarcastic Revolver compere. Learning about punk was watching Eddie and the Hot Rods perform at some festival in the countryside. 

By the time, I was becoming a teenager ska was the big thing, Madness was on TV and I’d cycle to the Youth Club to play table tennis and hear Ronnie Biggs doing “No one is innocent”. At the time, with my fellow musketeers, we’d catch a coach to London and explore Kensington Market, Compendium Books and various purveyors of pixie boots.

Overall

Seeing the documentary on COUM Transmissions makes me realise it is very much the missing link behind so much of what happened. It was the background noise.

Being young and exploring the world was difficult enough. Everything seemed to happen all at once. It only looks exceptional now in retrospect. 

Ironically despite their protestations, COUM was contemporary feminism. 

Village

Having Boots’ sisters down to London was a great excuse to take them to Portobello market. Buying vegetables from a stall her sister ended up queueing behind Damon Albarn. So she was convinced London was like a village.

Foodie

The wonderful thing about living in London was discovering a whole load of new food- everything from pie and mash to bagels and the national dish of curry.

Soul

I don’t know about the music but reluctantly have to admit the BTS Army are alright.

Now go away.

Additional rib

Intermediatezone

Leaving by the seaside, subscribing to the music press, and listening to Into the Valley by the Skids was a new avenue. Exploring new bands meant walking to the Midnight Express. Apparently there was going to be some new band from Manchester- so I guess inevitably they would sound like Joy Division. Getting back afterwards meant going along the seafront in a state of euphoria. 

Dragons

At school, I started the D&D fanzine with the other two musketeers but they soon left. The one good thing about school was borrowing an extra-long stapler. Even going up to events in London just made me realize how much I was into Joy Division but once you’ve started something I guess you’ve got to carry on though at least it was possible to interview mister Gygax at Reding uni.

New born

If you look at the photos you’d imagine an unproblematic relationship with Millenium- particularly now we get on so well. Boots giving birth was perfect.  It was totally the case of both being in it together.

I especially remember going to an Italian restaurant near St. Thomas’ and buying food for the new mum. But reality meant coming to terms with a new, part two, life of having a newborn meant someone coming between what you knew. I lost it. An illogical murderous hatred took over, I am ashamed to say. It thankfully left with the practicalities of guiding a pushchair and rocking Millenium to sleep on the balcony. But it was a close-run thing which at the time I thought would never end. It was a useless depression I escaped.

Boastful

What could possibly go wrong at uni after spending a year with my student friends in Brixton? After my year off,  heading to the provincial university I took the trendy Jeffrey Weeks book that I got from Compendium and a current romantic record to play on my miniature record player- Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy. The whole idea of being young is to test your sexuality. So I went to an evening meeting of the gay rights society but was suitably confused. 

In a very British way my college friend would finally tell me 30 years later that everyone assumed that I was gay.

Little school

The negative repercussion of being ‘chucked out’ of the university after a year meant trying to get to another college. Luckily, it was still a time of grants so miraculously I went to Thatcher’s bizarre educational institute. Surprisingly it was actually an old kid’s school with tiny low-level desks. Amongst other things, my tutor Ellis Hillman was president of the Allice in Wonderland Society. I studied the unusual use of the body which was a great excuse to travel to Russia and back and write it into the cause. Travelling around London on the tube had got me into the idea of Japan so in my third year, I was able to change the course into prospects for women in Japanese society and get a new tutor. I’d never been to Japan but it seemed like a good idea. It meant talking to the young Japanese woman at the end of the road in Hackney. My tutor had lived in Japan studying Buddhism in the early ’70s- so knew everything about the place.

Conveyance

In the best of all possible worlds, you would hope that the fact that you were practising catholics counted for something. So when my friends were gazumped by someone offering ten grand more than the dear old catholic woman knew who to actually offer her house to.

Nonlinear history

Meeting Boots meant going up to her parent’s gaff in Coventry for the Virtual Future conferences and listening to Manuel De Landa.

Teenage life

As a teenager, I sought out tracts by Allan Watts and the Tibetan Book of the Dead (as you do). Weekend meant going after Powys Square and hanging out with my fellow musketeers outside the Performance house before heading to the Rough Trade shop. When I did a stall it meant going every weekend to the Compendium bookshop in Camden Town to look for any Burroughs or Gysin. At that time the Bockris book A Report From the Bunker was just out. The trend was to be into them and of course Warchol. Mike on the front desk always seemed to meet interesting people whether it was Kathy Acker or Baudrillard. At a little desk by the front door or the lads looking for the poetry of Langston Hughes.

Poly

Meeting Boots early on meant not having much money. I’d got my fantastic copy of Polysexuality on the bookshelf. But had bills to pay. The stall in Camden meant at least raising some money. In the meantime, I could go to my obscure book dealer friend and sell my copy of Polysexuality. Boots very kindly helped me out by selling her unusual psychedelic records in Camden.

Disturbance

The ’80s in Hackney were very different for women than the standard narrative- whether it was young women or banding together to give themselves pleasure.

Seems like I’d pulled the short straw collecting syringes from the chemist- when you find all your housemates have turned into junkies. Visiting your art friend on the local estate as he provided the base for a camera crew to make a gritty documentary a bloke would shoot by you on a skateboard pulled by two dogs. Coming from South London people would tell you how brave you must be whereas north of the river seemed far more disturbing.

Moving onto a housing co-op was very much jumping out of the fire into the pan- Full On to Pretty Full On. In much of the same way I’d parachuted into Brixton, I got out of the squat in Hackney to live near to Victoria Park in a street of low-rent houses. At one end of the street was a pub and Victoria Park. At the other end your Japanese friends. A typical day would involve delivering theatre tickets, hanging out in various caffs, and reading Inside Japan on the tube, meeting up with Boots at the Pound a Pint pub would involve a very long walking into town. 5 hours of moving my legs meant drinking half a pint and then blacking out. 

Sitting at the kitchen table in a cooperatively rented house meant reading White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings, imagining the life of a book dealer and hearing about the psychogeographic exploits of Dave the Rent. In a perfect world, these voyages would end in happy stories rather than slit wrist in a bath in Hackney.

Joy

Typically seeing Joy Division mainly seemed to consist of your mates at school telling you about a gig the night before that they went to in which Curtis collapsed and had to be taken to Poole Hospital. Reading the music papers told a story of people getting very wet and cold at festivals in the countryside.

Guest

Somewhere hiding among all the books in my flat is the one written by that famous German journo bloke about guest workers in Germany. Typically life in Berlin in the 80s seemed to consist of going to late-night clubs and then heading back to Kreuzberg for a vegetarian pita in the early hours. 

Platform

Standing on a platform looking over the Berlin Wall was a cross between the Sex Pistols song and the book “Zoo Station”.

Weeks

Looking through the photos you’d think there was something inevitable about meeting up with Boots after that first occasion at the party. But actually, it took weeks of at my theatre ticket job going down the road where I knew she worked to eventually run into her ‘accidentally.

Mango

Millenium grew up watching loads of cool Studio Ghibli manga like the ace Spirited Away (as you do). 

Books

Brixton has its own ecosystem. Squatting around the corner from the Academy makes even going on to the local laundrette estate become an act of byzantine complexity. Luckily it seemed it was ok if you were going nowhere else other than the laundrette. In the same way, heading down Railton Road meant you’d have to have a reason or find your passage barred. Luckily being a white dope-on punk there was some logic in going down the main drag to the bookshop. 

Treats

Staying in a squat off East Street, Walworth with three equally young women meant at least going out for treats. There was the curry house close to the Old Kent Road and, of course, the caff on the ground floor of the Elephant shopping centre. For a special treat, we’d even go for a night out to the basement of the glorious Italian Pizza Castella. 

Wislon

Sometimes the perfect (tragic) music comes along at the right time. Expecting my letter of reply from Manchester uni to tell me I’d be starting there after my Year Out in a year’s time I was somewhat shocked to be turned down. So much for all my dreams of Tony Wilson and Factory Records. I could only listen to the very opposite song “Ghosts” by the band Japan.

Budgie

The amazing thing about finally seeing the Heron Maiden on the Ginza in Tokyo was the privilege that Boots had earlier taken me to see the absolute definitive version at Sadler’s Wells at the Japan Festival in London. 

Instruction

Back at secondary school, I’d go to a Kung-fu class at the community hall in the evening with my mate. The instructor was a young black lad from the Midlands.

He described a recent visit to a tournament in London.  I think the competition was in Brixton in the early 80s. He talked about racing down the street to run for the last train home. Suddenly he was pounced upon by three burly white blokes. Using his martial art skill he swiftly dispatched them. Warily he wondered about some guy on the floor reaching into his coat. Maybe it was a knife or gun. It turned out to be a police warrant card. 

Flats 

I think my naive, idealistic, and romantic view of the world (thankfully) rarely came up against reality. It was only by speaking to someone who’d recently come over from South Africa that he could explain the lived realities. Even then it was probably too much for my young brain to comprehend. 

Ditto when I opened the door of the rented flats to three burglars.

Gay-tinged-squat 

As I found out after uni sticking a very nice Gay Lib poster on the wall gives everyone a wrong impression.

Hard place

I’ve written before about Brixton at the time being a hard place.  It would be too easy to give the impression of glorious larks.

When I first moved there,  I remember going to some party upstairs in Herne Hill. There was a noise outside and I went out onto the street. A Rasta guy had been crossing the road when a succession of skinheads had gotten out of a car and attacked him with baseball bats.

The police had come and were lifting him off the road. They were not lifting him in a particularly friendly way.

 

Revelation

The wonders of going to Barcelona with Brigitte and the architects were checking out places you wouldn’t normally be allowed into. So we got a train with our friend H. and went to an obscure monastery outside Barcelona. It was dedicated to the Book of Revelations and had all sorts of weird murals. So I bought a postcard of the Perverse Woman from the shop.

Walking down dusty roads I had a long conversation about performance art with H. She was a young woman who was much into punk. I found out later she had barricaded herself into a room at college in order to give a performance. The college authorities were so worried about her safety that they knocked the door down. When I spoke to her later in the UK she was eating raw onions which was her response to being diagnosed with AIDS. 

Rabbit

Not sure whether it was Bunny Wailer we meet when his girlfriend introduced ‘Bunny’ to the class but it wouldn’t surprise me. It was the sort of mad thing that happened then. 

The rise of SKA

Meeting Boots for the first time and going up to Coventry revisited my links to SKA.       During the particular period when I was at school SKA and Madness came to the fore. So journeys to London inevitably involved buying pixie boots and assimilating two-tone trousers in Boscombe. 

A new outlook

My mum had a friend at the BBC so I visited the Outlook radio programme in my best-ripped jeans. I think they were even less impressed when I wrote an application saying that a friend of the family works there and could they give me a job. Needless to say, they never replied.

Gates

The soundtrack to the late 70s was very much Confusion by New Order. I remember leaving through the school gates only to be meet by fascists handing out useless leaflets to us school kids. It was a one-off event never to be repeated but characteristic of those times. 

Bang Bang

The second time around Boots was a good insistence to get a stall going but it didn’t always work out. One time when we turned up the whole of Camden was hit by a bomb alert. We went to where it was cordoned off and stood by the bin on the other side. We waited around but nothing happened so we walked down in the direction of Mornington Cresent and got the tube home. It was only when we watched the news that we realized a bomb had gone off in Camden and killed someone. It had been in the rubbish bin where we were waiting. 

Squirrel

As a result of my article, I go to a Security conference. I guess Secret Squirrel was cunningly disguised in a single rather than double-breasted waistcoat. 

Holy day

According to the three women that I squatted within Elephant and Castle the bloke that would come down from downstairs to shut up in the living room apparently it was Speed but he always seemed to be zonked out afterwards. I suggested following him one time on his journey to Brixton.

It was truly a holiday in other people’s misery. He wasn’t keen as I came but I went with him anyway arriving at what I would later discover was a Smack den. Various people seemed to be crowded around a white guy with dreads who slowly seemed to be collapsing to the table. 

Facsimile

To impress Boots’ dad with my amazing technological aptitudes what can be easier than installing a fax machine. After plugging it in it had to receive the first message. Each of the phones in the house rang once followed by the fax machine going up in flames. 

Translation

On my first trip to Japan Boots came briefly and she introduced me to friends in Tokyo. Together we visited the bar in the hotel seen in the film Lost in Translation. Looking out high over Tokyo we enjoyed our drinks.

That night I initiated a special expedition to discover Gay Japan. First of all, we dropped off Boots at a high-level Lesbian club so we took the girls to the front door as men were chased away as if we were harassing them which meant that I would have to go to a boiling hot club in the bowels of the Earth. With my friend, we seemed to be in a steaming hot room full of shirtless Japanese men. As the evening progressed it seemed as if there was only one woman there- a topless Japanese woman in the midst of the maelstrom chatting to her male mate. 

Afterwards, the idea was to hang out on the cruising street and meet up with Boots and her friends, and swap notes.

The girl

My present to Tracey Thorn would be to tell her that there was a romantic alternative to Red Sludge that sat around drinking red wine with Russian sea captains and going for late-night boating trips in the park. 

Tractor

When he didn’t go on about helping to get the Labour MP elected one of my dad’s first experiences after the war was working on a farm. He’d been a farmer in a previous life but this new-fangled machinery of a tractor proved problematic. Apparently, it ran away from him and ended up crashing into a gate.

Millenium name

Coming up with a name for your child involves loads of discussion. The one name we could definitely agree on was Misty- partly because of the amazing Gypsy girl we saw at our friend’s wedding. If ever we were going to have a kid then a brilliant positive one like her was definitely on the cards. The link to Misty in Roots was a clincher. 

To my mind, there would have to be a connection to an inventor of the computer for anyone who is going to live in the XXI century.

Obviously, there would need to be a reference to the simultaneous imminent collapse of the entire computer system caused by the Millennium Bug. There was every chance that given Boots’ ethnicity, the child could emerge looking suitably Asian. The one guarantee was the nod and a wink estimation that the baby would be a boy.

Hackney carriage 

Hackney in the 1980s was a strange place. Coming from Brixton, my North London friends imagined the South London place was fearful to them whereas being practically brought up in this area and experiencing it as London it was the East End that seemed worrying. A typical day would mean having breakfast in the cafe with your friends only to have your friend with a nose ring abused as an obvious Gypsy. It was that time when pubs still had a sign outside saying “No Gypsies or Travellers allowed”. Being young and stupid and getting your information from fanzines you imagined Hackney as a psychedelic place of characters whereas the reality had a much harder edge. You can see why the Temple had an axe strapped to the back of the front door. 

The eleventh day of September

In a perfect world, you would imagine a poignant event like in Pattern Recognition. But the reality was lying on the sofa with the worst migraine ever with the tv programme you watching changing to Breaking News. With a laugh, it was almost like things couldn’t get any worse.

Chips

In the early days of the Wick Lane House, the kitchen was pretty narrow. Mum put on some chips in a deep pan fryer which quickly caused a blazing fire. Grabbing my t-shirt I immediately pulled it off soaked it in the sink and threw it over the flames. Which prevented the house from catching fire.

Muito bem sucedida

Running a community centre on the principle of Phoenix Nights was pretty hard going. Even Boots wouldn’t have anything to do with the centre.  She didn’t like coming to meetings and see me take that much abuse. Initially, most times it involved a hardcore group of elderly South Londoners sitting there and smoking their fags and giving this young lunatic a hard time.

Our most longstanding affiliate group was the Portuguese Social Club which met once a week on a Sunday. The police counter-terrorism units once approached me to see if the committee had approved the rental of the place to some doggy hardcore group on Sunday and I could tell them quite clearly that the protagonists wouldn’t stand a chance. The definition of a fierce argument is one Portuguese person in an empty room. Love’em but I never meet a more disputatious group of people.

Of course, every now and then there would be a once-in-a-million occasion that the community centre would make it all worthwhile. Imagine something like a scene from “Good Fellas” and you have me and Boots turning up for a once-in-a-year New Year’s Eve social events poking our heads around the door and popping in on the way out to a different event. Turning up had a magical quality. Welcomed in, a table appeared from nowhere in the noisy venue along with the celebration food and suddenly a bottle of champagne. In over ten years of wonderful madness including someone dropping dead at the Bingo, this was the greatest ever night.

Journey

I am sure that the Peace Bus had all sorts of idealistic ambitions but for me, it was an opportunity to travel to the Soviet Union with my Scouse mate for a hundred quid. The difference between the idealistic vision and the stone called reality was probably best exemplified in the dining room in the posh hotel in Moscow. I was eating a boiled egg in elaborate circumstances whereas my Scouse friend had the good sense to go to the prefab at the back of the hotel to buy his breakfast from the actual kitchen staff themselves. He ended up with a huge slap-up meal and good conversation.

The idea of the Peace Bus was for people of different religions ought to travel to the Soviet Union and backstopping off at every religious site on the way. On the Peace Bus, the Shintoists had the best ceremonies consisting of elaborate claps whereas everyone else had some detailed ritual. At least in  Moscow, we could film them going in and on one occasion hang out with the lot from Blue Peter outside. The final irony was that travelling back into Germany we completely run out of food and have to go to the canteen of an army base to eat. Fantastic meal but not really what they imagined the Peace Bus was all about.

Boots and Coventry

Getting with Boots involved a lot of staying with her glorious family in Coventry. You imagine the first meeting being a historic arrival in a taxi to be introduced. Whereas it involved going in the front door and being pushed into the nearby loo and being told to get my suit on before I can be introduced to the family. A typical journey would involve a train from London to Coventry followed by the news I was supposed to meet them at an obscure pub. Imagine turning up at the opening time and waiting for the grand entrance of the family.

Being there

When you’re growing up and your dad is Lithuanian I guess you don’t really notice any differences from all your mates. When I was a kid we’d go to the continental shop in Worksop to buy black bread and occasionally he would make a Lithuanian vegetable salad. It was only when dr Awkward and Musketeer nr 3 came around as fellow teenagers. Suddenly I could appreciate that not everybody could understand what he was saying. 

 

Kitchen Yoga

At the very beginning of the relationship, I understood Boots went to a regular morning yoga class once a week. For some reason, I got it into my head that it was in Hyde Park. Being skint and utterly devoted I thought it made sense to get up very early and walk from Hackney to Hyde Park hours later I could hear what sounded like symbols coming from the window I guessed this was a yoga class.

It was only when the police were called that I realized that I was in totally the wrong place and standing outside a kitchen. 

A bit later we would walk across the park into Soho for a yoga lesson. Needless to say, the abrupt callisthenics would mean that during the final rest, I would fall fast asleep.

Travelling

In many ways, my experience of Dungeons and Dragons was an introduction to the sort of life we live in the XXI century. Reading Howard’s Conan books introduce you to a universe of men with preposterous muscles and a sort of Istambul/Raiders of the Lost Ark world of multivarious religions. It gave an excuse to travel up to London and stand outside a D and D convention advertising the fanzine dressed as a cowled and hooded monk. Interestingly the best-attended session was on the future of Travelers with someone explaining but medical intervention would be a person tapping you on the shoulder in a Philip K. Dick way and saying “Let’s get you better Bill”.   

Guerilla

Typically when we took one of Boots’ sisters to the West London market to buy veg she found herself in the queue with Damon Albarn. She seemed to be under the impression that London was like a village in which you could see famous pop stars on every street corner. If only.

A few years later a queue seemed to be forming on the Southbank which having nothing better to do I joined. Finally, we were led into a tent selling Gorillaz merchandise.

Acid House

Inevitably in sunny Hackney at this time with taping from Pirate Radio and E slipping into billboard advert I was saved from all the Acid House nonsense by meeting Boots. Thankfully she was coming from a totally different direction being into Iggy and all sorts of obscurities. 

Homeland

Needless to say, Millenium had to be introduced to do history, having photocopied an article about the Sioux Ghost Shirt years ago I went with Boots to a special Indigenous Indian class during the day.  Followed by her dad seeing the three younger members doing a Blackfire hardcore punk gig at a pub in King’s Cross.

 Les Guichards

Going to a house in France in the middle of nowhere from the early ’70s meant being in a deserted village as the only English family. Sunday seemed to be heading to a vast empty furniture store in unlikely places. Exploring a huge shop full of furniture when you’re a little kid is kind of amazing. Eventually, someone would appear but in a very long time.

First meetings with Boots

After that first explosive night, it was just a case of accidentally running into her. I found out where she worked and went up that street delivering theatre tickets. Inevitably I would run into her. Going every weekday it took just three months.

Thinking of the kind of restaurants I would like she elected for a posh one in Covent Garden. It didn’t really work out and we were much happier with a curry house in Soho.

I agreed to meet up with her outside a gay pub. Of course, I needed to go to Portobello to buy a record first, and standing outside with a big bag saying Rough Trade probably wasn’t a good idea.

Comical

Saturdays seemed to involve checking out the later D and D accoutrements at the King’s Shilling and then heading to the comic shop nearby for esoteric copies of Biz Heavy Metal and its french equivalent Metal Hurlant.

The Room of the Bath

The brilliant idea for my year off was to live in London with current uni students. They lived in Loughborough Junction on the outskirts of Brixton. It would be a fantastic opportunity to discover adult life away from the seaside. I was shown the large room at the top of the house with a cupboard where I can put all my books. Everything was as one would expect apart from the large bath on the left-hand side of the room. The room was a bit cold, but the ice melted on the top of the sheets by 12 am. Just in time for breakfast. I was allowed to bring a stack of books into the main room on the basement floor. As well as compendium I would venture into scoop books in Holborn and spend a relaxing afternoon scouring the shelves. Eventually, it became a key source of stock for the stool in Camden. 

The other great thing about living in Loughborough Junction was heading off early in the morning to Brixton Tube and buying a cheap travel card. This allowed me to discover the city. For example, I went to the Poetry Library and discovered Jim Morrison’s poetry. I looked for the Albanian bookshop. Apart from endless tracts I bought former leader of Albania Enver Hoxha, the only thing that was purchasable was a book of moderately funny cartoons. The other amazing thing about the Albanian bookshop was its location in a square of very typical houses this meant you could walk out of the square and then go back into an identical square minus the bookshop. It was like the cartoon shop at Mr. Benn wet too.

Allotment

When he was on his last legs in as much way as he still studied language on the kitchen table, he grew magnificent vegetables on his allotment. When I was a school kid he introduced me to a variety of books. My Book Reports were somewhat different from Musketeer nr 3s 150 page accounts of Lord of the Rings. He introduced me to Voltaire’s Candid and The Good Soldier Svejk.  After he passed away, he left some amazing foods to eat. Somehow I was too heartbroken to pick anything.

Loops

Reading about special techniques, it told me you should always read something unexpected. So when Millennium was small, and we were venturing to the seaside it was important that I should read something really different heading off from London on the train. I bought Millennium a couple of magazines about knitting with a free gift stuck to the front. I avidly scanned the pages and learned everything about knitting. 

I know nothing about knitting now.

Advanced Interview

I guess in the old days Dungeon Mastering let me do Blunderbus and into viewing Gary Gygax at Reading Uni. It was something you did as a teenager with your mates Dr. Awkward and Musketeer nr 3 before heading off to the Big Smoke. And inhabited a strange place that was Conan the Barbarian in a Raiders of the Lost Ark temples governed by mysterious religions.

The sort of death of Love performance

When you are young and stupid and split up on the backstreets of Barcelona late at night you imagine that you can kill love. Needless to say, my response to the ending of one of my first serious relationships was a performance. Literally. Initially, that meant a misguided performance involving a doll mannequin, a length of chain, and not a great deal of clothes. The one thing that was not meant to happen was the snapping of the chain- which of course happened. The traditional performance was meant to involve the decanting of various alchemical liquids and a shamanistic ritual. Having put myself through this first part the obvious conclusion was the burial at sea of the mannequin and to take it down by train to the seaside. Carrying a mannequin everywhere under your arm brings a few funny glances, particularly at the fishing tackle. I think my sister thought we were involved in a photoshoot rather than a shamanic ritual. Having filled the mannequin with pebbles needless to say it needed to be buried at sea.

But you can’t kill love. One month later Doctor Awkward found an identical mannequin in a skip in London. It was filled with rubbish but buried in there was a doll of a baby.

Famous gigs I missed

At school, I missed the legendary Joy Division/Buzzcocks gig at the winter gardens. Contemporaneous school friends stayed in the bar awaiting the Buzzcocks and missing entirely, as far as I know, it, the drama of Curtis collapsing and being whisked off to the hospital.

(Pat the Plumber was to later tell me of the legendary semi-apocryphal gig at the town hall when a reggae band took it over, locked the security out and carried on playing through the night).

I’ve only met two people who were actually at the Joy Division gig … and one was the Proper Fanzine Writer.

Muse-ic

This takes in stuff like gig venues like The Academy, Upstairs at Erics and, of course, The Midnight Express; Snu Peas record shop, and the legendary if barely visited (by me) Armadillo records.

Stuff that may go elsewhere once I know what the hell I’m going to do with it.

6^th form

There was a series on philosophy presented by Magee  on TV that made it sound more interesting than it actually was – or so I found out when it  got me applying to do PPE at uni.

In retrospect, it was lucky that I couldn’t go to the Smiths gig where us children flooded the stage (tickets ordered by post from the BBC). Because years later I would give my unused tickets to Naka as a birthday present – and next thing I was meeting Mr Clarke …  

Keith Allen

In the evening, we watched the Oxford Road Show and I caught the mystery of the last ever Keith Allen’s (Lily’s dad) Whatever you want – which, from memory,  mainly consisted of Keith talking to camera and sitting in an empty, wind-swept studio. I wrote a letter saying it was the best programme I’d ever seen and someone wrote me back thanking me for my comments and sending me the diagram of how to build a pirate radio transmitter.

 Back room

I painted the back room of my bedroom and its walls with fetching green hand prints and had a plant holder (with plants) erected from ceiling to floor.

Millenium

How to bring up a child:
Community – Phoenix Nights
Body Image – Tod Browning’s Freaks (It has a cute kids sub-text)
Gender – hula-hooping at Pride
Relationships –
Twin Peaks, The Graduate
What men are about, life, etc – Rome (episode 5 onwards – for the kids’ angle)

Zephr

The fins of an eel launch silently into the still waters… of Bournemouth!

Imagine an old boy minding his business and shuffling to the paper shop on a Sunday … and being blasted by a 50s Buick with a three-person seat across the whole of the front while ‘Scott Walker sings Jacques Brel’ blasts from the speakers…

Painful

Amidst all the fun and silliness, I’m going to say some harsh, un-cuddly, painful things. (Painful to me!) But I’ve got to.

You’ve been warned.