Monday, October 31, 1983

Dome 2 side 1


My tutorial went OK, but I’ve got to hand in an essay by the end of the week. Tomorrow I’m helping Lee make a video in Crookgreave Cemetery for his course, and going to see Public Image Ltd and hopefully, Psychic TV on Friday.

Barry and Pete are out at Roxy’s tonight, and will no doubt roll back pissed very soon (it’s 2.40 a.m. Tuesday as I write). Mo has just gone to bed, and I’ve just played Dome 2 Side 1 for about the tenth time today.

A scheme has gradually taken shape for squatting the empty and boarded up Barrel Inn at the bottom of Meadspike Road, and although Lee pursues it with enthusiasm we all hang back and I’m not sure I’d enjoy getting the place all straight and cleaned out only to be evicted within a few days.

Lee, Pete, Mo, Barry and I broke in again through a boarded window at the back of the pub’ and explored the dark and dusty bars downstairs and the six or seven carpeted room upstairs. There are two kitchens (one on each floor) and half-a-dozen toilets. Lee is anxious to get things moving and Pete’s been to the Welfare Office on campus to get a booklet on Squatting.

It all looks doubtful. Lee’s been round here quite a lot during the last week and he’s got on well with everyone.

How long ago that speed trip seems.

Sunday, October 30, 1983

The red tent


Lee and I kipped the night on mattresses on Ian's sitting room floor. At eight the next morning, Mick came in, got some things together, and left again. At ten-thirty we got up and said goodbye to Ian, who lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling. We didn’t think he’d heard us, but just as we were turning to leave we heard his quiet goodbye.

We made our hesitant way home, pausing to play on video games and waste £1.80 on a miserably sparse breakfast at a fast food place. The afternoon was grey and quiet. Lee and I each bought a Bavarian roll and ate it sitting on the steps right at the top of one of the blocks of flats down the road from Jervis Terrace.

Today—at the suggestion of Alex—I sent off £10.23 for my ticket to see Psychic TV next Friday, which includes return travel by coach to Prestwich from London.

Later, Lee, Barry, Pete and I scared ourselves shitless talking about ghosts and strange things that have happened to respective friends. The silence seemed to hover in the room as we talked, in the corridor beyond the door and in the dark and quiet streets outside. I’m probably noticing the absence of the TV. I couldn’t shake off this odd sense of stillness all day. It was weird: Dome 2 captures it, especially Track 1 Side 1 “The Red Tent I.”

Everything is underpinned by this backdrop of stillness and of brooding . . . . Perhaps it’s just my morbid fanciful mind, or perhaps the spirit of the dead in that crypt has possessed me.

The Americans have invaded Grenada following a bloody coup there by members of the self-acclaimed Marxist government who executed the Premier and say they will leave when peace, “democracy” and law and order are restored. In the Lebanon, 200 US Marines and several dozen French soldiers of the peacekeeping force were killed when suicide-squads detonated two trucks containing high-explosives alongside their bases. Cheery news.

Saturday, October 29, 1983

Dreams less sweet


The day started off idle, listening to the sport on and off in Barry’s room. The TV broke down last week and Ade left on yesterday to go see his girlfriend in Oxford, taking his TV and a quarter of black with him too.

Selfish bastard, thinks us.

So we remain Boxless. Athletic lost 0-3 at Dardray, their seventh straight defeat, and they now languish at the bottom of the table. Goals galore in the First Division; Arsenal beat Aston Villa 6-2 at Villa Park and Liverpool thrashed Luton Town 6-0. Man United are at the top.

In the evening Lee came round and at ten, Pete, he and I went down to The Cat and Lizard to meet Ian, a quiet, thoughtful acquaintance of Lee’s from College. He has a crew cut and a pinched but kindly face, and his eyes seem to speak of good natured smiles; I took an immediate liking to him. He’d brought along a Polaroid instant camera, and Lee had his Pentax ME Super with a borrowed flashgun; the plan was to break open a crypt in Crookgreave Cemetery and take pictures.

We had to scale a wall topped with broken shards of glass skirting busy Treadwell Road. The other three got over in no time but I hashed it up and eventually bundled myself over several yards higher up, cutting myself and tearing my overcoat in the process. We walked cautiously through the ivy-choked undergrowth, over graves and between trees, until we found a path that wound down towards the main Wickbourne Road entrance near the Mortuary, a sinister, clinical-looking building with whitewashed windows and a high ventilated roof.

In this area the path broadened out and skirted a dark and massive chapel; here and there were dotted several above ground crypts. We tried half-heartedly to get into two: the doors were of heavy bronze and wouldn’t yield, but eventually we stumbled across one with granite doors that looked to have been recently opened and re-sealed with a strip of crumbling slate. This was easily pried away with the claw hammer we’d brought and after much shoving and scraping and straining, and with a loud grating noise, the door came open.

Our hearts raced—mine was going hammer and tongs, and we pulled the great sheet of stone down from the top like a drawbridge, but it gave under its own weight and with a loud crash broke into three pieces to the ground.

Blackness beckoned within. Torchlight flickered across stone. In a state of frenzied haste Lee and Ian got their cameras ready and as they clicked picture after picture, the jumbled ranks of headstones were lit with searing blue blinks of light.

Ian leaned right into the crypt, photographing the wooden coffin that lay in funereal splendour on a stone ledge within, its lid scattered with plaster and coming apart at one corner. The fear of detection galvanised Pete and I into hoarse pleas to Ian and Lee to hurry up—grave robbing is still a capital offence supposedly—and eventually (thankfully!), after what seemed an age, Ian and Lee came away and we all scurried through the headstones and back into the trees. We had to lead Lee by the arm because the flash on his camera had blinded him and all he could see as we stumbled toward the wall and safety was the stark brick interior of the crypt and its coffin seared into his mind by the intense light.


We got back over the wall higher up Treadwell Road, Ian, Pete and I vaulting over simultaneously, leaving Lee to wait for a safe moment to escape. Ian’s Polaroid pictures were unimpressive. Only two showed anything, the first an end-on view of the coffin in situ, the second showing it at a more perpendicular angle, centred on the gaping blackness where the seams were coming apart at one end. He’d accidently dropped two pictures actually inside the crypt. The dead won’t mind.

We’d all been invited to a party at Sutton Road, so with still-racing hearts we got a cab that deposited us at the party. It was crammed to overflowing inside, so Ian, Lee and I decided to go back to Ian’s flat in Blenheim Place and dump the evidence. His flat is in a superb Georgian house that sits in a large three-sided square with the open side facing the sea.

The living room is a cavernous place, decorated in a lavish but faded manner, complete with chandelier and heavy curtains. . . . There seemed to be acres of floor space, and in the far corner of the room, diagonally opposite the door, three people sprawled on chairs watching a tiny black and white TV—Mick, with shaved head (a Psychic TV fan), Alex, from Australia, and a bespectacled Computer Studies undergrad on a visit from Hatfield Poly.

Ian sat in silence, playing with a bayonet. A strange atmosphere prevailed in the room, perhaps only because of the vastness of the place, but it was almost as if we were illegally squatting in a closed-up and rambling stately home. The shaved heads, the torn army fatigues and the careless attitude didn’t match the fading splendour of the room. Someone passed a joint around. Alex kept asking questions in a voice that seemed somehow dwarfed by the prevailing silence. So did everything else.

And in one way the atmosphere there fitted perfectly with the visit to the cemetery and the glimpses of the crypt, a funereal mood, as if the room was a chapel, the living occupying something meant for the dead. Or dying.

The party at Sutton Road was OK. It was very crowded. I found the gang upstairs: Lindsey, Shelley and Susie were pissed, Lindsey in a talkative, loosened-up frame of mind, careless & drunk. John Turney was in wonderful form, and dominated the room with his humourous melodrama. Ian sat quietly on a chair in the corner, watching. Then he leaped up and was out of the room in a flash, saying in his low, soft voice that he had to go and “see you on Monday.”

Lee and I returned to Ian’s to sleep. Ian’s room abuts onto the large sitting room I described above and the earlier mood was pressed home more forcefully than ever. Ian’s bed was just a single mattress on the floor. An altar-like stand on which stood a large simple mirror was placed against one wall, draped with a long flowing white shroud that fell in pale and graceful folds to the floor.

The floor was littered with records; Ian put on Psychic TVs latest LP, Dreams Less Sweet. The windows were deep set and on the broad white sill the light from a white candle filled the recess, a pool of shadow playing around its base. The glow diminished and was lost in the vast gloom of the high room.

Friday, October 28, 1983

Mix


During the afternoon, Barry, Ade and Christian Kemp, a bassist who Mo knows, had a jam together in the common room of Toynbee Hall. It sounded very muddy, not as ‘clean’ a sound as on the tapes Barry had brought down at the start of term. Barry was fairly disappointed with the results and thought that Christian’s bass-playing was crap.

In the evening Pete and Mo and I left for Shelley’s flat on Prince’s Way and she cooked us a meal, a mash of potato and chicken with onion sauce, rice and peas.

We were ushered in by Shelley's effusive flat-mate David and found her slaving away in the kitchen; her other flat-mate Jack was squatting in a chair, bearded, silent, and more intense than the blustering friendliness and chat of David. Jonathan, the fourth member of the household was away. Their house has a pretty impressive sitting room and thru bedroom, but the upstairs is comparable in size and condition to ours; they’re paying £25 per week. David left to buy some booze, Lindsey and Susie turned up, David returned, and we ate.

Afterwards we all caught either the bus or taxi up to the University for the much-publicized “Club Mix” in Blair Peach Hall (where Hendrix once played, according to popular legend). I forked out my £1 to get in and the very first person I saw was Del; since they left Watermouth, he and John Turney have spent time in Bristol, Newport and Reading, and returned to find a house, which they’ve done apparently.

John was already chatting up some blonde girl. Barry and Guy were there too. We had another good night out getting pissed and dancing along with a few hundred others. I felt rotten afterwards and so I made myself throw up by sticking my fingers down my throat. We got back and pissed about with fireworks before going to bed.

Thursday, October 27, 1983

Big E


My tutorial went well and I enjoyed it. In the afternoon after this had finished, I went back to Wollstonecraft Hall, for the first time since I left, for the second meeting of the newly organised American Studies Society that has been put together to help lessen the culture shock for those going to the USA.

There were several fourth years there, and the average amount each has come back owing is £800. The rest of the American Studies first years seem, on the whole, a pretty wanky lot. Pete and I took a look at the prospectus for Miskatonic U.; it’s a vast campus housing tens of thousands of students and dominated by twenty-five-storey accommodation blocks It’s the only University Guy, Pete and I can go to together, as American Studies History and American Lit. people get different campus choices.

Afterwards I went into Watermouth and met Lee in Room 312 of the Art College, right on the top floor. We wandered around town and L. ended up climbing into a derelict house on Barker Street right in the centre of Watermouth; he found two bound volumes of Punch magazine for July-December 1925 and 1926, plus a couple of envelopes full of the most pornographic porn I’ve ever seen, advertisements for magazines with titles such as “Cum” & “Girls Who Take it Up The Ass,” “Girls Who Eat Cum” - incest mags, bestiality mags, gay mags, all featuring explicit (with a big E) cover photographs of girls sucking on enormous cocks, a Chinese girl (?) with breasts and a huge erection raping a bloke up the arse, etc.

I couldn’t stop wondering what actually motivates people to be photographed doing such things . . . What goes through their minds?

Barry, Lindsey and Shelley and I went out for a drink on Wessex Road in the evening and I felt a great sadness creep over me about leaving England in nine months time, an echo of that quasi-sentimental and over-sensitive moodiness I experienced the last week of term last June.

Wednesday, October 26, 1983

Idiot boy


Masquerades beckoned again in the evening. Lee came round while I was on campus rushing off notes for tomorrow’s tutorial on Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads.

We all had a great time and there were about twenty or so people there I knew – Lee, Barry, Pete, Guy, Shelley, Lindsey, Susie, Miles, Fabian, etc., etc., etc. . . .

Lee came back and kipped on my floor overnight.

Tuesday, October 25, 1983

Hexen definitive


I was up early and Ade and Pete and I drove into campus, to find the University in the grip of a hostage drama. Gunmen had raided the Barclay's Bank near the Mace and got away with £150,000, leaving a ‘bomb’ strapped to a security man’s chest.

We went down to the Tuesday mini-market and I spent £9 on a couple of jazz albums and an LP by Dome, which I’ve been playing a lot since. Even Barry likes it. I also bought a pair of black fatigues for £4.

In the evening Lee, Lindsey, Liddy, Barry, Pete, Stu and I went to see The Fall at Livingstone’s on the seafront, near the Aquarium. Barry and I met Liddy and Lindsey at The Lord Raglan and Lee, Pete and Stu in the club. Livingstone’s is a small place, along the lines of The Wavezz Club in Easterby with a bar area that separates the building into one large and one small room. The bands played in the former, a low-ceilinged room with chairs and tables around its perimeter & no stage.

The support band was a three-piece all-female band from America and were crap and unoriginal in a monotonous, noisy, unskillful and boring way. Everyone sat down for their set, but as soon as The Fall appeared we all stood up and crushed forward, so that only Mark E.’s lank hair and gaunt face could be spied through the forest of heads. They played “English Scheme” off Grotesque, “Ludd Gang,” “Hexen Definitive,” and a whole lot of other things I’ve never heard before, and they played their new single “Kicker Conspiracy” for an encore. They were pretty good, although not as impressive as at Camden last May, and the people leaping about and pogo-ing right in front of me were annoying.

I think Lee found it a bit tedious and towards the end of the set he disappeared and went and sat down. Liddy felt sick and left early.

Monday, October 24, 1983

Jazz, delicious hot, disgusting cold


After a pretty unremarkable Black Americans tutorial, Susie and I met Lindsey and went down to the Cellar for some food. As usual, I had a baked potato with cheese, tuna and mushroom filling for £1.00.

Susie left early and Lin. and I found ourselves alone together. I say it that way deliberately. I couldn’t think of anything to say beyond the utterly trivial and utterly pointless, and I felt at the time that she was in the same plight too.

A jazz group played a few laboured, uninspired pieces, while L. and I got drunk. I cashed and spent the better part of two £5 cheques.

Sunday, October 23, 1983

Mundane things


The grey misery of coming down from the dexys has cast a shadow over the entire weekend. I’m just now starting to feel physically OK again, and mentally I’m sure I will suffer the reverberations for a few more days.

The weekend has come and gone and was filled with mundane things which are lost forever now. Lee and I did break into the derelict pub down Meadspike Road.

Saturday, October 22, 1983

Elysian fields


Lee and I spent the afternoon in Crookgreave Cemetery; we wandered around the graves in the wintry sun, padding on clipped and kempt grass amid the gleaming white and well-tended tombstones, marvelling at the idyllic tranquillity, the hard blue sky crossed by sharp white jet trails. We sat in the sun and couldn’t quite believe the Perfection of this Elysian place. It was beautiful.

Since Wednesday night I’ve been walking around in a cold, suppressed state of gloom.

Friday, October 21, 1983

Something else


I think I’m getting tonsillitis again. When I swallow I feel pain and my neck is swollen. Full of gloomy prophecies and expectations. The dexys experience has left me in a morose, negative frame of mind and nothing seems to offer any solace or prospect for enjoyment. It’s the old thing of wanting to live from hour to hour, day to day at a high and intense level of experience that—for me—seems impossible.

In the afternoon I sat with Lindsey and Barry in the library coffee bar (quite a regular hang out for us all this term) as they aired their dissatisfactions with Sociology and I thought how superficial and intellectually lightweight an American Studies degree is. I really felt quite gloomy. Sociology seems to encourage analytical and thorough thought and speech.

There isn’t a course anywhere in the country which would do Everything I want to do—which is, in itself, Everything. As I plough through a book taking notes, I find the word “everything" somehow dissatisfying and superficial. Occasionally I yearn for something with real bite to it, say English or Philosophy or Politics. That isn’t to say I’m pissed off with my course; I’ve come to terms with what I’m doing and really I quite enjoy it. There’s just the odd discordant note that sounds from time to time and I long for something else.

Thursday, October 20, 1983

Dexys


It’s ten p.m. and I've just about recovered from the excesses of last night. Barry, Lindsey, Susie, Stu, Guy, Ade and Gareth and I—Gareth back after a couple of week’s seclusion through illness—went as usual to Masquerades. For once, Masquerades was crowded and I got drunk and took four small yellow pills—dexys—which Gareth got for six of us for 35p each from a couple of contacts of his.

We got back home at about two-thirty in the morning and one of those classic ‘peak’ experiences ensued. The effects of the pills had taken hold in a very subtle and undramatic way, but perhaps this was only because I was drunk when I took them.

We settled in Barry’s room and the talking began. Conversations raged at blistering pace on all sides, or rather monologues, for we directed long streams of words at one another, only shutting them long enough to let the other person speak, waiting until they stopped so we could begin the stream again. Guy and I talked at each other for four or five hours in an inspired way about school and family—Guy said he was “ecstatically happy,” and I was going through a great ‘Yea-saying’ explosion of optimism and excitement and felt so full of potential that I could only be happy. A delusion, but a good delusion to have nonetheless. Oh to feel so full and intense every minute of every day. Maybe I was glimpsing a higher plane of existence?

I kept going at a relentless pace all through the night. We carried on drinking too, constantly passing around a bottle of whisky Mo bought us as her contribution towards rent. Pete got up and joined us but eventually, after he’d slipped away back to bed, and as the grey unwelcome light of another day and Responsibility glared weakly through the curtains, the talking stuttered, and finally died all together.

And now we paid for our night of rare delights. Stu crept into my room to rest and the others slid into mumbling weariness. I wasn’t feeling too bad and neither was Guy, but Barry and Stu were suffering “utter hell.” Ade collapsed onto the sofa in the back room—Barry said he couldn’t move. We were almost delirious, cracking weak one-liners and saying ridiculous things, laughing weakly and stumbling into verbal dead ends and illogic. I had a tutorial at 11.30 too, so mid-morning, leaving the others lying down and spent, Guy and I emerged into sunlight like new men.


The world looked different, we were different, separate, removed from the people who had just got up and filled the quiet streets and shops. We were different by virtue of what we’d just gone through. Our secret knowledge set us apart. My stomach felt hollow, my eyes ached and my whole body felt weak. I felt a curious sensation of expectancy, almost like anticipation, as though ‘something’ was about to happen to me. Perhaps because I hadn’t slept the night before lent some significance to the new day, as if the Act of staying awake had been rewarded with a glimpse of a sense of PURPOSE. I walked slightly unsteadily down the road to the hitching spot opposite The Cat and Lizard willing something to happen and Be different, filled with that old yearning for more depth and meaning.

It was chaos getting into Uni. because of a strike by BR men over a sacking. A dozen people were trying to get lifts and the buses sailing past packed full. I got to the tutorial room just in time. There are just two people in my Romanticism tutorial and it seems aimless and without a point. I left thoroughly dissatisfied. Our ‘discussions’ take place in a listless atmosphere. The things we say and the things we do don’t seem to be getting us anywhere or even near to approaching the core of Wordsworth’s experiences and feelings.

There has to be more to the study of Wordsworth than this, I told myself—I know there must be. Still, I couldn’t shake off the hopeless insight that perhaps there wasn’t anything other than what I’d just gone through, just second-hand, abstract intellectualising. I suppose I want to FEEL the emotions and sensations as Wordworth felt them in the raw, but then I suppose too this is just the “idealism of a bourgeois escapist mind” at work and is a fruitless point to make.

I met Susie outside the library and sat in the coffee bar with her. My words spilled out in a haste of enthusiastic talk, and after she had gone I even wandered around the library looking for someone else to talk to. I came home and feel utterly washed out, and so to bed.

Wednesday, October 19, 1983

Backlash


Del and John finally left for Bristol last night at half-past midnight. The collective chaos and disorganisation had become too much for them and they’re going to return in a fortnight. A mood of relief possessed us after they’d gone and now at last things can begin to settle into a routine and we can make a start on tidying this place up.

Yesterday was a bit of a failure work wise; after writing yesterday’s entry I went down to the cafeteria underneath the library and met Lindsey, Barry and Guy. Shelley turned up later too, but she now seems somehow distant and far-removed from our circle.

I suddenly felt very hungry, and so I persuaded Mo to come down to the Cellar with me for a baked potato. We met Guy and Barry again in the Cellar; they’d just been looking for a drummer. They were again full of the band and how good it’s going to be: “I want to make it the biggest thing on the planet,” says Guy, half-seriously.

Mo left after a little while but we decided to stay—Barry was in a bad mood and wanted to drink away his temper, so we did just that and got quite drunk. We found ourselves in the middle of a reggae disco; the DJ refused to play anything other than reggae or funk.

I bought a couple of LPs yesterday too, Backlash by Freddie Hubbard and an early Ornette Coleman trio LP, plus three singles—speaking of which, the last of the cheese went yesterday as well.

I didn’t get up until twelve this afternoon. The sun was streaming down from a clear and cold blue sky and Barry and Ade were already up and talking.

We met Roy last night in the Cellar; he had a dour, dumpy-looking girl in tow and was obviously at there for this one and only reason. My contempt for him was reaffirmed. Lindsey really sold herself cheap when she went out with him.

Tuesday, October 18, 1983

No way is noble


Days roll by and I’m at a loss as to whether or not I should chart them in all their mundane detail.

John and Del left this morning to again look for places and were at their lowest ebb yet. The housing situation in Watermouth is worse than ever and John in particular seemed very down.

Ade came back last night from his few days in Bournemouth with a “sore cock” (to use his own words); he and Del and John don’t get along particularly well and after D. and J. left this morning, Ade was still lounging on his mattress in Barry’s room. Someone suggested that the three of them should share an £85 per week house advertised in the Herald, but this met with a poor response from him. I don’t see that he really has the right to refuse at this moment in time.

A feature in today’s Union News claimed that the compulsory year in the States has been scrapped for this year’s 1st year American Studies intake. The Union is fighting it all the way, but it’s obvious that if it’s not scrapped this year, then it will be next year. I’ve got in just in time.

Since last Wednesday at Masquerades, I’ve felt very satisfied with my prospects. It’s quite amazing how cold the Art History idea has become with me, and I think it’s just as well because it would be too late to change now anyway. Guy’s enthusiasm rubbed off on me I think.

Last night Barry, Guy, Lindsey and I went to the opening night of a new club, Roxy’s, held at the L.A., a well-known gay disco. I walked all the way to Shelley’s on Queen’s Road on the seafront but she was out so I trudged all the way back and found the others already there.

Roxy’s was free to get in before eleven; I was ushered in to an elaborate glittering foyer, complete with fountain, and found myself surrounded by a couple of characters who looked as they’d auditioned for a part in The Adams Family. Roxy's was quite impressive inside, with two bars, split level seating and spectacular lighting for the dance floor. It was crawling with the trendy post-punk crowd, crowns of dyed, spiky hair jostling for the attention, black, black everywhere.


I was in black too.

Across from us two seedy and forlorn looking men in tacky suits were deep in animated, intimate conversation. Someone called Guy a hippy, which annoyed him, and after this he was full of contempt for the place and the people. They are just a bunch of very conventional extroverts. “Experimental is conventional, conventional is experimental. And no way is noble.”

This applies to the Sanctuary and Roxy’s gang who’ve substituted the predictable uniformity of a more sophisticated kind for the Farahs and wedge-cut anonymity of the Saturday-nite soul-boy crowd. And the sickening thing is they all believe they’re being so different. “Art is not dictated by what coat you wear.”

I would do well to listen to this and practise what I preach.

The girls who lived at Jervis Terrace over the summer made an appearance, and Miles Beattie raced between us and the dance floor while Barry and one of the girls fell into a long conversation. Barry's band dominates conversation at the moment, and it gets a little tedious listening to their prophecies. Ade was saying when we got back that he “cannot wait” to get up on the stage, and I can see both he and Barry really getting into it.

I’m in the throes of starting several books, among them Colin Wilson’s The New Existentialism and The Magus. I also want to read some more Nietzsche, and the chapter on N. in Lukacs The Destruction of Reason. All this and course work too? Probably not.

Monday, October 17, 1983

Mobility


I got a letter from Dad and things seem to be looking up. He has the chance of a job as commissionaire at the Easterby Echo and should’ve found out by now whether he’s got it or not. He sounded very hopeful, and if he’s successful, the three Martindale brothers will be reunited under the roof of the same employer.

I hope he does get it, for it’ll mean that he and Mum will get on better and feel better for the extra cash that’s coming in, and also I’ll feel less selfish about burdening them with all the extra financial responsibility my year abroad will entail.

Andrew has got a job at the Sackett Group in Epping, Essex, so soon the money will be rolling in and he’ll be well on the way towards reaching that well-off position he aspires to.

Sunday, October 16, 1983

Talent


Another drunken night; a party at Lindsey’s friend Liddy’s last night, which everyone attended. While Barry and I went to meet Stu in The Cat and Lizard, everyone else set off in Del’s Hillman Imp.

Stu went to dump his washing and Barry and I had a game of darts, but we got sick of waiting so we hung about outside. It was wet yet again, and as we waited Barry spotted Lee who was wending his way down Meadspike Road towards the derelict pub’ at the bottom. He saw us, waved, and came across. He had a hammer and screwdriver with him and was just about to break in to the pub when we’d seen him. He’d called round Jervis Terrace but we’d just gone.

When Stu turned up he and Barry strode off into the rainy night leaving Lee and I to our own devices. We walked all the way to Stoneways Road and there caught a bus into New Lycroft, found Lindsey and Susie out, but discovered them with everyone else in the Nelson Inn nearby. John and Del were on acid and in loud jocular spirits; Lindsey said she found them “irritating.”

Liddy’s party, evidently quiet and cultured before we arrived, turned manic after we showed up. John and Del immediately set to work chatting up “the talent,” including Inga, a friend of Pete’s from Sweden, who seemed a bit overwhelmed by the deluge of Turney-speak which hit her. Lee squirted twin streams of saliva from his glands at various people and spat lemonade all over one girl’s back, I stood on his head with my para boots and ground him into the sofa as he sat there leering at me (he then squirted lemonade in my face). Finally I poured the bottle over John’s head as he sat talking to a girl.

A jumble of images and vague memories of excess . . . I kicked a door at someone, glaring threateningly, but needless to say, I remember none of this (but was told it later). Why I was in the mood I was in I don’t know . . . We all piled out and into a fast food place nearby, and I think we were on the verge of getting kicked out of the party anyway.

Today we drove up to the restaurant at Nick’s Hill for a meal but found it closed and ended up forking out £3 each for food at a King’s Road restaurant which we could only partly eat.

I’ve spent all evening working on the history of the civil rights movement throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s for my Black Americans tutorial. Next week our collective scrutiny turns to SNCC.

Saturday, October 15, 1983

Anchor


Lindsey, Guy, Barry, Stu and Mo and I met up at the Anchor last night and ended up in the dark pretentiousness of the Sanctuary beneath the Helios Hotel. Stu and I got absolutely drenched as we had opted to walk the few hundred yards from the pub while the others caught a cab. Mo rode home on the bus and we struggled on although the heavens had opened & the roads were awash.

Afterwards, we had a cup of tea at Guy’s place on Sutton Road and met one of his flat-mates, Felicity. She and Barry got embroiled in a political discussion; she supports Labour and CND, and she sounded no less committed than Barry, if the less realistic. Guy interspersed the debate with inane drunken comments, and Stu and I took up a position loosely aligned with Barry.

Everything fragmented and took a pleasingly ridiculous turn and the room was soon filled with laughter. We went to bed at four and slept on the carpet in the large living room.

I woke up cold and uncomfortable late in the morning. We lay like slugs in our blankets and sleeping bags watching the TV, until the appearance of Felicity’s Mum and Dad roused us to action. We left, accompanied by Guy, and got something to eat at a fast food place near the sea front. The sea was brown and ferocious, great lines of breakers roaring in one after the other against the beach. The wind was so fierce that we had difficulty standing at times, and I can’t ever remember being in winds as strong.

After getting home we descended en masse on Holmes Avenue laundrette and I slipped into one of my black paranoiac moods, getting irritated by everyone. We got back after dark: John and Del sat watching TV. They’ve been looking for a place to live, but still haven’t found anywhere, and both Barry and I are getting a bit pissed off by their continued presence here. They seem to take this place for granted simply because Barry lives here, forgetting that Pete and I do too. Neither of them ever contribute towards food or washing up, and leave their dirty pots and pans about until someone else (usually Mo) clears them away. Trevor’s constant talk of sex and how good he is with girls is a drag too, even though I suspect most of it is self-parody.

Friday, October 14, 1983

She knows you know she knows


I sometimes find myself liking John, yet at others I dislike him for the way he pins me so thoroughly to the wall with his words.

Last night, he and Del (who returned on Wednesday) slept on a mattress in my room and before they fell asleep John kept asking questions: “How often do you think of sex?”; “Do you wank?”; “You fancy Lindsey, don’t you? She knows you do, and she knows that you know she knows, but her conditioning as a woman prevents her from asking you to bed . . .” and so on. He was in a manic mood earlier, leaping about and constantly cracking one-liners. I don’t think Mo likes him very much. Today, he and Del have at last set out in search of somewhere to live.

After a talk with Guy on Wednesday evening at Masquerades, I’m now certain that switching to Art History would be a bad idea. As a result, I’ve been a lot more positive about my course and I’m actually enjoying doing the work. I spent the entire afternoon today making notes for Monday’s Black Americans tutorial. Pete was a bit pissed off at his lack of motivation, and at teatime walked out in a sulk to buy a bottle of whiskey. Barry is messing about with his synth at this moment and Del and John are still out.

Cecil Parkinson finally resigned today over the ‘scandal’ of his pregnant secretary Sarah Keays, sanctimonious statements of support from Thatcher and colleagues still ringing in his ears. Thus the grey-faced guardian of Tory morality bites the dust. He’s finished, and I’m pleased he’s met the end that he has. If I were S. Keays, I’d have the baby in London and name it Cecil Jr. or Cecilia, lest he tries to sweep it under the carpet—but maybe that would be too cruel on the kid.

Thursday, October 13, 1983

Pass to the golden world


Last night at nine, after rushing to finish my work on Blake, I caught the bus to Masquerades and to what turned into a repeat of the last time we were there. Most people save Gareth turned up; he’s ill with food poisoning. We all got pissed on the ½-price drinks.

I presented my tutorial this afternoon on Blake’s Prophecy, in which America emerges as a symbol for the realisation of man. This is a theme which fascinates me, and it’s detectable through a lot of the literature I’ve looked at (Wolfe, Whitman, Thoreau, Kerouac, etc.). Although our dreams are always shattered by reality, still we go on dreaming.

After my tutorial ended I went down to the library café and met Guy and we went home on the bus amid tremendous downpours; we got absolutely soaked as we sprinted for Dee’s Diner, where we had something to eat and played a few games of pinball and Pac-Man.

Wednesday, October 12, 1983

The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal


Last night John Turney cornered me in my room as I was trying to read The Magus. I saw his eyes flit across my desk towards this journal, lying unconcealed. “What’s in that book?,” he asked me bluntly, as if he meant to put me on the spot. He said he’d been in and read it the other day, and teased me (“you’ll never get off with her”), before trying to pass it off as a joke.

I was left feeling very unsure. For better or for worse all my weaknesses and emotional excesses are exorcised on these pages. This is how I am.

But amazingly, it seems that he'd come into my room for advice, or rather to clear his mind by talking to someone, which he then did for several hours, a long monologue about his friend Martin who he’s fallen out with over the latter’s “sinister” attempts to undermine John in other peoples’ eyes—they had a disastrous holiday together in Greece and things came to a head in Holland where they stayed for six weeks—all the usual intrigue, romance, ‘eternal triangles’ etc., etc. John says he’s writing a play in order to purge himself of all his vindictiveness and anger.

He criticised the RCP too; he characterised its leading lights (people such as Pat Roberts and Carl Cotton) as “narrow,” perhaps even dull people, even though they're well suited to the RCP’s current party-building needs.

He described a quality in Carl that I’ve noticed before too, namely the way he never divorces himself from Party business. He comes across as someone who (in John’s words) “brings their office work home with them”; he’s cold and aloof around we students, alienating everyone with his impossible-to-escape RCP opinions. He judges on the basis of political commitment or the potential for such. Trevor said he’s praised Lindsey as the only person at Watermouth prepared to get herself involved in the mundane necessities of building a revolutionary Party.


 I must rank with the worms in his eyes. I’m sure he finds the world of students thoroughly contemptible, but mockery, sarcasm, condescension and belittling people isn’t the way to win support. Friendly conversation is.

John sees himself as unsuited to this era of RCP history and firmly believes that the people involved now who are creating the “vanguard” who will become Party “heroes” when the Revolution eventually does triumph, as he’s certain it will. I’m sure if that day comes, there’ll be a lot of people who, having shunned the drudgery of six a.m. paper sales, will happily take up their unquestioning places behind the barricades. Stu is one of those people, and if The Revolution erupts in my lifetime, I know which side I’ll be on—and it won’t be that of the Government or the Police. Meanwhile, I don’t want to forsake the idle pleasures of capitalism just yet while they still have something to offer. Why can we still find refuge in capitalism? I wonder what Carl’s answer to this would be?

I don’t like the RCP. Secrecy, utter commitment and a quasi-military organisation might be necessary at this time, but will that tendency be reversible when the RCP becomes a mass party with nationwide support? Will this country’s much vaunted ‘democratic tradition’ come to the rescue and stop the British revolution going the way of the Russian? I often wonder if one day, the Carl Cotton’s of this world will have people such as I put up against a wall and shot.

I got a letter from Claire this morning. “Can you ever smell perfume on my letters?” she asks, which makes me wonder. . . I spent most of the day in an ill-temper. I tried to hitch in to campus but stood for ages with no luck, until finally a car put its indicator on as if to stop. I thought my patience had been rewarded, but the bastard drove off laughing. I gave up and stalked home moodily.

Tuesday, October 11, 1983

Vision from afar


I went into the library at mid-day to work, but it’s now six p.m. and so far I’ve done nothing. I met Barry and Pete in the library cafeteria at four; that old sense of claustrophobia, dull irritation and boredom seized me. Shelley made a brief appearance; she’s moved out of Jubilee Street and is now sharing a flat with her three friends from K.F.C.: “My room faces the sea and in the evenings it’s filled with the glow of sunsets!” etc. She stayed about a quarter of an hour, that was all.

I’m reading America, A Prophecy by Blake, and at home I’ve begun to read The Magus by John Fowles. As I started it I was filled with a feeling of loss and self-recrimination about the wasted summer.

Barry and I paid our rent today. It was late and we’ve been speculating that perhaps we haven’t been hassled because the flat is in such a shit condition. We’ve been thinking of getting the Rent Assessment people in to force Crown Racing’s hand into doing repairs. We’ve now discovered damp in the back sitting room; the wallpaper in one corner of the ceiling is hanging off in great sheets, which are black underneath. Barry’s bedroom is damp too, and the staircase seems afflicted with the same. Everywhere is still a mess, the kitchen grotty and cluttered with dirty washing up.

Monday, October 10, 1983

Devil's advocate


A foul wet day. I got a lift into Watermouth and bought tickets for myself and four others to see P.i.L. on Nov 1st. I don’t like their latest single, but J. Lydon is one of those people who’ll go down in the standard histories as “important,” so I suppose I want to see them purely for the historical spectacle.

I trudged around the streets in the rain, fulfilling all my mundane objectives. The glimpses I caught of the sea made me want to go and look at the grey angry waves, but the drizzle deterred me.

Mo still hasn’t found anywhere to live; she keeps going to see places but is always put off either by their poor condition or the price. John hasn’t, so far as we know, even rung anywhere up yet. He spent most of the day asleep in Barry’s room, and I think Barry is getting a bit pissed off with him.

In the afternoon I had a tutorial and as usual I hadn’t done any work for it but conned my way through. I got back at teatime to find Lindsey, Susie and Barry watching the TV. It was an uneventful evening; we went out for a drink at the Jervis Arms.

Derek, Kevin and John stayed up all night in heated conversation and I think things got a little ‘heavy’ and politically pointed at times. John claims that at this era in its history, the RCP is all about party-building, and so it needs the Carl Cottons of this world. Apparently last night Kevin criticised John’s lack of RCP involvement; John attacked Kevin in turn, which left the latter “shattered” according to J. “I acted as the Devil’s Advocate, putting doubts into his mind to see how he’d respond.”

I think my decision over the summer not to go to the RCP meetings was a decision motivated primarily by fear. Looking back it was such a feeble, negative response, and a transparently obvious one I’m sure. Instead of this feeling of helpless confusion, what I needed and still need is some sort of cogent response or concrete argument in support of my position. Stu has a good answer: Given the RCP’s demand for total commitment, if you’re not prepared to give that whole heartedly then it’s pointless giving any. Despite my hasty judgements, Barry’s friends do doubt the Party and are critical of its attitudes and the “Genghis Khan” elements within it such as Pat Roberts.

I still can’t make my mind up about changing courses. I’m sick of waiting for a Way to emerge from the tangle of confused options that clog my mind. What do I want to do? Only I can decide that, but even this act of self-will escapes me.

Sunday, October 9, 1983

Fixtures


Last night, not long after we got back from the football, we set off to the pub for a few drinks, and there ensued a brief but intense discussion about the RCP. I stayed silent for much of the time.

Doug feels alienated and find the Party’s inflexibility a little irritating at times; all questions or criticisms founder emptily against the brick-wall of the RCP’s ‘my Party right or wrong’ syndrome. The Party demands 100% commitment and nothing less; Doug took the line that living a life in the best (Marxist) way possible for yourself simply wasn’t enough and was, in fact, futile if you weren’t involved with wider party politics, etc. He was quite forceful about this.

Eventually, after everyone else turned up, we stopped at the pub off-sales shop and walked to Marion Place. Katie greeted us at the door. She cultivates coarseness in herself, and was full of knowing smiles and ‘deep’ looks. Their clean, large house is magnificent compared to ours and it soon filled up, developing into a fairly good party.
'
I got pleasantly pissed and found myself embroiled in one of those self-induced and hatefully enjoyable meetings with Rowan alone together in her room. Then I met one of the girls who lived in Jervis Terrace over the summer; she seemed very naïve and innocent. I met other people too, fleetingly in the crush of the corridor or in some dim room; Guy was pissed, and after asking me if he could, head butted me and knocked me over. I saw Lindsey and Susie and Gareth and Stu briefly on the stairs . . . lots of other faces . . . fragments of situations, too many and too complicated to recount in detail. . . .

I drifted up the stairs to find Barry, Guy and Miles Beattie plus assorted others watching a video of The Young Ones. Ade and Doug lay on the bed, the latter with his head in Lindsey’s lap, she with her arm draped across his chest. For an instant the old hurts sprang up like flames inside. “Oh dear, Lindsey’s involved,” said Susie pathetically, sitting on the steps. . . .

My evening ended down in the basement in a windowless room whose walls were papered with words such as “Lust” and “Bonk," scavving dope from a soldier home on leave from N. Ireland and his hippy friends while Katie and Rowan stared unblinkingly at one another, playing their Staring Game.

When I got back to Jervis Terrace everyone else was asleep and it was five a.m.; I had to wake Ade up to let me in.


Today Doug took Barry and I for a drive to see ‘Nick’s Hill,’ a mysterious mound a few miles north of Watermouth. We followed Hill Road through suburbia until we were out into the countryside, the fields rolling flintily away towards the chimneys of Langridge Cliffs power station and the grey blur of the sea.

At the Hill itself there were a lot of Sunday trippers, Mums and Dads and kids who kindled memories of not too distant occasions with my own parents on similar outings. A restaurant and pub stand on a low plateau facing on one side the tremendous grey vista of the flat plain striding toward the horizon and London, and on the other the Hill itself, a perfectly conical mound rising from the bushy landscape, its even slopes dotted with shrubs and clad in a paler grass than everywhere else. The wind was bitter, cutting through us as it roared in from the sea, and although a few people had braved the ascent up the slopes, we weren’t feeling so strenuous so we braced ourselves against the wind and strode back to the car.

Doug left at teatime to go back to London, to be replaced by yet more of Barry’s RCP friends—John again, and Derek Caraway (who they all call Del), a replica of John with a gaping shark-like and down-turned mouth, and the quiet Kevin, who reminded me of a character from a 1930s Boys Own comic. They were all in fine form and I slunk into my customary position along with the rest of the fixtures in the room.

When John and Del got together the sparks flew. The three of them went out for a drink with Barry and came back at closing time in high spirits. Barry and Pete and Mo have gone to bed and the other three have taken acid and driven off into Watermouth in Del’s car.

Saturday, October 8, 1983

Derby


I wrote to Mum and Dad, and a typically limp letter to Claire before Barry, Guy and I set off to the football and the local derby with Bedgrove.

We met at Guy’s local, The Wessex Ram, near Sutton Road, and drove to the ground. We parked the car a discreet distance away and joined the scattered crowds all heading the same way. There was forty five minutes to go before kick off and the Bedgrove fans were already a massed bank of yellow and red on the South Terrace, diagonally to our left. At times the noise was terrific; “You’re gonna get your fucking heads kicked in . . .” etc., all the old favourites, all aimed at our side of the ground. I tried to separate their faces out as individuals, but they were small and blank with distance.

The game itself wasn’t very distinguished and Bedgrove were two up after just twenty minutes; the South Terrace went berserk, while the figures around us muttered dumb acknowledgement. For too much of the match though, events off-field detracted from the events on, and our eyes were drawn irresistibly to the spectacle of dozens of Bedgrove fans kicking with their boots at the large double gates at the front of their cage. The police hurried quickly onto the cinder track between the pitch and the fence and stood with their arms and bodies braced against the gates as a section of the crowd threw itself repeatedly at them, the cops fending them off by prodding with truncheons through the mesh. At one point we all thought the gates would go and the mob come pouring onto the pitch.

Watermouth applied intense pressure for the last quarter of an hour and forced several corners and free kicks, but Bedgrove held on and at the final whistle our section of the crowd fled. The streets leading from the ground were full of hurrying figures, bent against the bitter wind, some even running and casting anxious glances behind from whence drifted the faint sound of triumphant voices.

We called in at Guy’s for a cup of coffee before driving home. Doug, yet another of Barry’s RCP clique of friends, was waiting when we got back. He hides the RCP hardness beneath a more amenable, less intimidating façade, but deep down it’s there all the same.

Friday, October 7, 1983

Mickey Mouse


John Turney (who left early this week and made a brief appearance last night when we were all in The Westdorgan with Carl Cotton-even the normally house-bound Ade had come along), went again this afternoon, looking very smart with Brylcreem-d hair and a paisley cravat. Carl C. left this morning too; he, Barry and Trevor slept three-to-a bed last night.

When John and Carl get together I feel out of my depth; the political grasp and confidence of those two makes me despair for myself, and makes me feel like all my ideas and thoughts are like so much insubstantial chaff. While John and Carl were in the house our world here seemed to stand on shaky, crumbling foundations.

Students. The word should be spat out.

Stu and Gareth have finally found a place to live, a bed and breakfast for £20 per week not far from us in Tremont Place, which is temporary until they find somewhere more suitable.

Do I stick with my American Lit course or change to History of Art? A recent survey in the Guardian said that these two courses were the “Mickey Mouse” courses at Watermouth, and the ones least likely to provide their students with a job, which of course is just a typical situation for me to be in. I’ve heard rumours that Watermouth’s History of Art course is poorly taught, and Mo knows two people who’ve dropped out for that reason.

Mo and I are alone in the house; everyone else is out. I’m saving myself for the excesses of tomorrow night’s party at Marion Place, and an afternoon visit to Empire Lane to watch Watermouth Trinity. I’ve reading to do and an essay to hand in on Monday for my Black Americans course, and I must write home too.

I got a letter from Grant in Gloucester, written while sitting alone in his room, the weather pissing it down outside. He complained of everyone being “stand-offish.”

Thursday, October 6, 1983

A prophecy


I attended my first tutorial of the term on Romanticism at eleven thirty. I hitched there and back, which I quite enjoyed as it was a superb warm autumn day.

The tutorial went OK, just a discussion about how the course is going to be run with two other tutees and my Personal Tutor, Don Carwardine. I have to present next week’s tutorial on Blake’s America, A Prophecy to the group. As D.C. rambled on quietly, my indecision over what to do about my course raged within. I’m still very undecided about what to do and as a result I’m not particularly bothered which course I take. Mr. Ingham was right—I have no ambition. Still, I left the tutorial feeling optimistic.

Mr Carwardine asked me to stay behind and asked how my summer was. I told him about Calverdale and my three months of inactivity and how this accorded well with my nature. He seems to be taking more notice than normal of my progress, and perhaps I’ve been identified as potential failure material?

As I wandered back towards Wickbourne Road, campus was in one of its bright, sparkling, lively moods and I kept seeing familiar faces. I bumped into Lindsey, her friend Liddy and Carl Cotton, who aim to be the nucleus of a potential RCP movement at the University. I know Lindsey has her reservations about being increasingly enmeshed by the commitment but Carl—who lives, breathes and sleeps RCP—no doubt dispels all her reservations when he’s with her.

He and Lindsey came back to our house in the late afternoon after a day of selling Next Steps, and she sat quietly on my bed with usual downcast eyes. Carl was critical of Barry’s band schemes: “I thought he’d grown out of that frame of mind when he was 15.”

Once Barry’s paid our rent of £208 he’ll have exactly £1 left to last him all term, and he wants to borrow £50 from me, an idea Carl doesn’t think much of. “I wouldn’t lend it to him.”

Wednesday, October 5, 1983

Masquerades


Guy, Gareth, Stu, Barry and I went to the Masquerades nightclub in Cudmark Way. It only cost 75p to get in and until eleven the drinks were half-price. We went over the top and I spent in the region of £7 or £8 and ended the night buying a total of fourteen whiskies, four Southern Comforts and three pints of bitter.

I wasn’t as ill or as drunk as these figures would suggest, my greatest social faux pas being to fall asleep as everyone chatted. There were only a few people there, so it was a sedate evening by usual ‘club standards,’ being more like a glorified pub. Lindsey and her new friend Liddy rolled up shortly after us, and Graeme made a brief (and boring) appearance.

Barry, Stu and I were quite pissed driving back in the car; we’re bound to get done sooner or later.

Tuesday, October 4, 1983

Exorcism


I met Lee at the Art College in the early afternoon. It was bright and sunny and he showed me the work he’s been doing, which isn’t like ‘work’ at all. He’s painting Japanese soldier figures with photographic emulsion and exposing them, trying to get all the light and dark tones to reproduce themselves via the emulsion, but so far it hasn’t worked. He’s got a darkroom to himself, and works all day until evening.

We went for a walk round Watermouth and ended up at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, on Seaview Crescent near Maynard Park. We were drawn to it because of it’s sheer size: vertical walls tower into the clear sky as high as the average church steeple, and if you stand right at the foot of them you have to lean backwards to see the top.

Inside it was quiet and hushed, the vast chamber cowing us to low whispers, the traffic and city tumult dying to a distant, unimportant murmur. Everything about the church was massive, the altar a great marble edifice, framed by an archway and two giant candles, one at either side. The gaudy altar struck me somehow as crude and ‘idolatrous’ (if I can say this without sounding too Protestant—is this my ‘conditioning’ speaking I wonder?) High on one end wall, opposite a huge stained-glass window, was an enormous cross. Even the normally irreverent Lee was impressed enough to put a simple “amazing” in the visitor’s book.

Later on, we went to Shelley’s ‘party,’ held at 6 Jubilee Street. She’s moving out and Shawn is moving in: he’s living in Penny’s room at the moment with the Girl herself, and Shelley is moving in with her Kentucky Fried Chicken pals; she apparently wants to do more work for her course and thinks living with them will give her a settled routine. Shelley seemed quite touched that everyone had made the effort to show up, and I think she was surprised. Rowan was there too; I’d met Lindsey and Susie on my way to the off licence and after going to the pub’ for half-an-hour we found Rowan sitting on the doorstep of No. 28, under the impression that everyone was out. She’d been given the wrong address.

The party was really just an evening sat round drinking and talking and listening to the meagre selection of tapes on hand. Rowan and I gravitated towards one another: I’m such a sucker for punishment, but I can’t resist the fascination of Rowan, and the usual tête-à-tête developed.

We exorcised the strangenesses of last term and she apologized for her behaviour then. I told her that I felt I’d been taken for a ride and that she and Kate had been laughing at me behind my back and I’m certain of it now for what she said was a virtual admission. What I’d known all along had been proved true. She and her puppet Kate cackling at my feeblenesses while I cried myself to sleep. I will not repeat those mistakes again. She apologized and apologized, begging me to forgive her and coming out with all the usual crap. I know now that I’m well and truly back.

 I didn’t want to leave . . . everyone was there and I didn’t want to leave . . . but finally in the small hours of the morning, Barry, Ade, Stu and I dragged ourselves away and drove home.

Monday, October 3, 1983

Blindness


Vivid dreams about Claire. I woke up and realised that the cold grey light around me was the real world, not the warm glowing one I had just been in.

The house this morning was in absolute chaos. Seven people slept here last night: me, Pete, Mo, Barry, John, Ade and Stu. Another week beckons, taken up with the routine superficialities of student existence; booze, socialising, and no work. Another week gone in my life, no nearer working out the things I profess to seek an answer to. Another week of blindness, of my malleable existence.

Sunday, October 2, 1983

You'll never get rich


Nothing special. We were watching the Spurs v Forest match live on ITV when Lee rang the doorbell.

Things quickly turned chaotic; Lee climbed up into the loft, Pete and Mo cavorted on their bed and Barry and Ade plugged in their guitars and demolished us with sound. Lee and I left, borrowing a screwdriver from the next-door neighbour (“Hope you’re not going to break in”), and proceeded to attempt to break into a boarded up and derelict pub on the Wickbourne Road.

We spent the evening at The Westdorgan up on Holmes Avenue. Stu turned up mid-evening, hair dyed black; he’s the same as ever. We rounded things off with a Chinese take-away and watched Bilko.

Saturday, October 1, 1983

Dummies

I spent the night on Lee’s floor and I got up quite early by my standards. We watched a kid’s show on TV and then in the afternoon went for a walk up Old Priory Road to Gaunt’s Hill Road.

The hills were shrouded in a mantle of cold wet drizzle and mist, the distant sea hidden behind banks of grey fog. We went back to Varney Hall and had something to eat before I walked home. I got lost on Jervis Golf Course.

When I got back, I had to run the expected gauntlet of laughter, teasing and commiserations over my short hair (“baldy,” etc.). Barry and friend Ade drove down last night bringing John Turney with them, plus masses of stuff. The hallway was cluttered with Barry’s £460 synth, and he and Ade told me they are concentrating on getting a group together. The flat—not built for seven people and a tip anyway—was just ridiculous; we could barely move.

Our night out was already planned, a trip to Lindsey and Susie’s new flat across the other side of Watermouth. We took Ade’s car, but Ade himself didn’t come as he was tired and on the way we stopped at an off-licence. It took about an hour for us to negotiate our way through the maze of one-way streets.

Lindsey and Susie’s flat is small but very clean and very tidy and makes our place look filthy in comparison. There is just one main room, with cooker, fridge, shower etc., off which lead their two bedrooms. Lindsey looked as dark and pretty as ever, and I melted into the background. Shelley arrived and we all tucked into the food L. and Susie had made, and the room became a stage for John Turney. . . .

After the food, we all piled into Ade’s car (three in front, five in the back), and risking Barry’s license, drove along the seafront to The Sanctuary (it was called Antoinette's last term), a depressing night-club in the basement of one of the large Georgian hotels for which Watermouth is famous. It cost £2 to get in. The club was full of Siouxsie Su look alikes, black the predominant colour, and sickened us all off. Scores of bored, boring people sat about pretending to be different but looking like so many predictable dummies. Clubs are pretty shit places anyway, but this one was shitter than most, and we left after half-an-hour, preferring to leap about on the beach, play on the rides and swings and throw pebbles at one another.

We drove back to Lindsey and Susie’s and stayed until well past midnight. Ade’s car broke down in Watermouth so we walked the rest of the way back.
Google Analytics Alternative