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.