Perverted by language

Pete and I went to Gloucester yesterday to see The Fall and also to see Grant.

Pete didn’t get up until late afternoon and I was getting very annoyed by the time he did, at about four. We bought a gramme of speed for £14 from Phil (of the grey Renault from last June), and got Alex M. to get us an eighth of dope; he’s off to Peru on Friday supposedly. As it was I regretted buying both and I’m going off drugs altogether. They’re just a waste of time and energy, and rarely make me feel good.

It was growing dark as we got on the train. Got to Gloucester at eight-thirty and both Pete and I felt very excited about the prospect. We rushed from the station, caught a cab to the University and followed the crowds to the Refectory building where The Fall were playing.

This was the fourth time I’d seen them since March 1982. The tickets were £3.00 and the place was packed. I searched the sweaty crush of people for Grant’s dark brooding features, but eventually it was he who spotted me in the plush main bar as I made a bee-line for someone I thought was him. He seemed very surprised and pleased to see me; I explained that since I couldn’t be bothered answering his last letter I thought I’d make a personal appearance instead.

He wore the same brown shabby jacket, and sported the usual unkempt, stringy locks. He smokes like a chimney, and there was scarcely a time when his fingers weren’t clutching some miserable stub of badly rolled cigarette; he has pretty huge nicotine stains on his hands. Nik and a silent blond friend of his were up from Camberwell Art College and I actually said more to him that than I had on the previous few occasions I’d met him. He seems OK.

Pete and I left after this to go for a high-spirited dance in a crowded disco nearby; we’d taken some speed and I felt very good here, very carefree, the future and the present glowing with promise and pleasure. We went back to the main hall which was fairly empty and so only a few people saw the performance of the support band, The Wasp Factory, who Grant said were really good. Pete & I didn’t like them very much, finding cause for amusement and scorn in the lead singer’s pelvic gyrations and passé extravagances.

The Fall came on next, almost taking me unawares. They were up and into “Mere Pseud Mag Ed” before I knew it. They played a fairly good (long) set and it was good to hear “Man Whose Head Expanded,” “Marquis Cha-Cha” etc. Their new LP is called Perverted By Language. Grant, Nik and co. had vanished in the melee up front so Pete and I hung about where there was a bit more space and I leaped about with gay, speed-induced abandon and got very tired and hot. . . . One encore, then the lights came on ad the unwilling crowds were drifting out into the night.

Grant’s quiet and vaguely trendy Gloucester friend Gavin Spencer joined us and we walked back to the residence halls, finding everything quiet, dead and in darkness. We’d had a vague image of what to expect at Gloucester, based naively on Watermouth lines, but we’d been warned and should’ve listened.

No one was about and nothing stirred. The silence seemed oppressive; somewhere an air-conditioning or heating unit hummed quietly. We’d at least hoped for a few people to be up and having some midnight lunacies, but all we got was a friend of Gavin’s who had a girl in his room and hissed at us to go away. Grant kept pleading with us to keep the noise to a minimum as the Warden of the Halls lived on the end of the corridor, in the room next-door to his.

We had a joint – Grant kept reminding us about the noise and warning us not to leave any evidence of our illicit smoke in case he “got in the shit.” Eventually he and the others went to bed, leaving Pete and I to bore Gavin with our facetious comments and our incredulity at Gloucester’s deadness. We retired to the Common Room and Gavin went to bed.

Pete and I just sat there, mumbling to one another until the miserable light of morning filtered through the curtains and we tried half-heartedly to get some sleep. Grant made a tangled, scowl-browed appearance at eight, exhorting us to rise before the cleaners came. Nik and his friend left to hitch back to Camberwell and Grant lapsed into a gloomy and intense frame of mind, rarely raising himself from it sufficiently to laugh or smile.

We wandered around what is laughingly called the ‘campus,’ a loose aggregate of low-rise buildings reminiscent of some shabby council estate. The majority of the student population is apparently into PE and rugby etc. . . . What a faceless, dreary, utterly uninspiring place. Staying there will break Grant; he seems to move in a permanent gloom.

Pete and I began to feel very tired, and sat in the ‘bar’ (ha ha) most of the day. Grant’s mental misery rubbed off on me, and I felt a momentary pang of anger when he muttered “Why did you come here?” To see you, you oaf, why else!? I’ve known him since I was a kid, and yet at times he seemed very remote. The more the day dragged on the greater our collective stagnation and I slipped into a heavy, dull silence. I felt thoroughly drained.

Things livened up slightly in the evening, with smoking of dope and some traipsing about to and fro from various rooms with large groups of cheerful people, but I eventually had to leave at about eight. I took some speed and left Pete listening to records in someone’s room.

I felt better after making the effort to move and in fact I quite enjoyed the lone journey back to Watermouth. The speed threw my mind into forward gear and I spent the hours on the train staring glassily ahead of me, my mind awhirl with thoughts and ideas.

I’d got a copy of Grant and Nik’s joint collaboration The Spike, an A4-sized pamphlet featuring Nik’s pen and ink drawings and Grant’s sparse lines of verse, some of which I quite like (for the record – “Lighting Up,” “Hedonist (Socially Mobile),” “Night-Walk”). Most of them concern his usual themes of social isolation, full of images of street-lamps, dark decaying cities and repulsive social/sexual interactions. . . . This inspired me to contrive verse of my own, and elaborate rambling word-structures that I developed into long letters on various themes, but I had no pen or paper and so the creations were lost. Speed is the best drug I’ve had—such glimpses of Potential—but I don’t know whether it’s worth it physically or financially. Perhaps if I took some one morning and allowed a day to run its natural course. . . .

I arrived back in Watermouth eager for paper and pens to convert my speculations into hard actuality, but as usual, I allowed myself to be distracted by Barry, who was crowing triumphantly over some address he’d been given by a girl he had chatted up in the Cellar.

It’s now eleven at night and everyone has gone out to an invites-only party at ‘L.A. thrown by the University trendies. Mo spent ages primping herself up for it, getting her looks in order for the night ahead. I didn’t get invited.

Inga came round wet-eyed just as Mo was leaving, quietly wrought over some bad-feeling in her house. She’s asleep on Pete’s bed now.