Comforts

Another lazy day. I enjoyed the comforts of Westdorgan Road and doing nothing in particular.

Door

We were awakened only twice last night—once by three blokes who, on seeing the eerie glow from the porch of the otherwise dead and dark church, stopped their car and crept nervously through the churchyard to investigate.

They saw the tape recorder and asked if we’d heard anything. The second time was around 3.30 in the morning—a ‘clunk’ on the inside of the church door that woke both of us up. Lee whispered to me, asking if I’d heard it.

Unfortunately, I had.

I can’t say what it was, and at the time I didn’t dare speculate. The rest of the night passed off without incident. We were awakened at 7.30 by the arrival of Mrs. Proudfoot who unlocked the door as usual, but we fell asleep again and slept on till 10.30.

We finally packed up our things and struggled back to Sudbury with heavy bags in sticky heat. We waited for a non-existent London bus at 1.30 before catching a coach to Colchester and from there on to Waterloo, and finally to Watermouth.

I slept like a log when we got back.

The most haunted house in England

Lee didn’t sleep at all last night and I dropped off for perhaps half an hour, but woke up cold and shivering beneath my thin blanket. Several bungalows have been built nearby on the grounds of the now demolished Rectory and in one of them, several dogs began to howl and then, just as suddenly, stopped again.

Lee was all for making a move and so, not prepared to stay alone in the field, I reluctantly got up and we walked back up to the church.

Across on the south side of the road is the site of the former Rectory, a place Harry Price called “the most haunted house in England.” Some of the site now lies in the garden of Borley Cottage, which shares the same red brick and high sharp-angled roof of the Rectory and which was bought recently by a retired Colonel for £79,000.

As we approached, seven or eight people were standing by the gate of the cottage gazing across the neatly clipped lawn towards a group of trees and which is where the Nun, last seen in 1972, is reputed to walk. All that remains of the Rectory is a couple of walls, one standing above ground next to the cottage, the other forming part of a stepdown to a lower level and a neighbouring field. We stood with the people, gazing into the shadows. A couple had gone over into the garden to sit by the Nun’s Walk and we could hear them whispering to one another.

Lee and I explored the site, finding nothing but smooth grass. In an adjacent outhouse Lee found an old billiard ball & the remains of old furniture. On the wall of the building someone had chalked the faceless figure of a nun standing with arms outstretched, a circle inscribing the heart, from which a black congealed liquid ran down onto the floor.

Back at the Church, another less obvious rap had been recorded. It was now about four a.m., and a séance was being held on the porch of the church by three girls who used an upturned wine glass as a planchette. They told us they do this sort of thing regularly, “although we only ever manage to get through to a little boy whose spirit will disappear if he knows he’s dead.” They told us that he considers their ouija board to be his own. They did once get another ‘spirit,’ that of an evil man who swore and whose appearances were accompanied by a strong foul smell. He wanted to arrange a meeting with one of the girls, although she—understandably!—declined the offer. One of the amateur researchers joined in the séance and said he could feel the glass vibrate as it started to move.

In the next hour or so they ‘contacted’ an occupant of the Church, spelling out the initials ‘T.M.’—previous rectors of Borley include Thomas Muriell (1680-1709) and Thomas Massenger (1454-1460). ‘TM’ was asked if he was alone in the church?—No—Did he like it there?—Yes—Did he ever come out?—No—Was Harry Price there and were his stories correct? At this the planchette swung wildly around in circles in the middle of the board giving no response either way. One of the girls asked for a positive sign that the ‘spirit’ was present inside the church, and although TM readily agreed, we waited for several minutes and nothing happened. “He must be weak,” said the psychic investigator. Lee and I nodded knowingly.

By now it was light, and people started to disperse, some huddling down in their sleeping bags on the porch to get some sleep, others wandering off to their cars to get something to eat.

I managed a couple of hours sleep lying in the grass beside the porch but woke up at about half-past seven freezing cold. The sun soon warmed me up. It was going to be another hot day, and across the Stour valley towards Suffolk a sea of mist lingered in the hollows and swirled among the trees. Lee and I felt hungry, thirsty and tired, but we lingered in the churchyard after everyone else had left, taking photographs and ciné film of the church.

At about nine, a Mrs Proudfoot came to unlock the church door. She regarded our presence with wry amusement, and mirthfully asked if we’d seen or heard anything.

The Church is quite old—it dates to the twelfth century, and according to the handbook available inside, a wooden structure probably stood there in Norman times. There’ve been 54 rectors since the first one in 1236, although Borley aficionados are familiar with the names of the last few—the Bulls, Lionel A. Foyster and Guy Smith. The Rectory was built in 1863 by the Reverend Henry Bull Snr., although it was his son and namesake (also a keen Spiritualist) who promoted the hauntings at the Rectory. His successor, the Reverend Smith were quoted as saying the Rectory was not haunted, although a look at his private correspondence reveals that he believed otherwise.

It was his successor, the Reverend Foyster, who recorded much of the spirit activity. Poltergeist activity seemed to focus around his wife Marianne, and messages to MF appeared mysteriously on the Rectory walls. I think it was the Foysters who built a summer house especially to watch the Nun on her regular sojourns through the Rectory garden. The Rectory was rented to Price in the late 1930s, and he made it famous with his book, The Most Haunted House in England, published in 1940. The Rectory burned down in 1939 and was demolished completely six years later.

The interior of the church is dominated by the monumental tomb of the Waldegraves that occupies the north side of the nave. It’s 14 feet high and is composed of two effigies, both with hands clasped in prayer, the first of Lady Waldegrave, the other her unnamed second husband. An elaborate canopy rises above the slumbering figures and is supported by six Corinthian columns. The inscription reads, “Lo’ within this tomb lies Edward Waldegrave and (with him) Frances, formerly the companion of his bed, but now of his grave.” It’s adorned with the effigies of the five Waldegrave children, Charles, Nicholas, Marie, Katherine and Magdalin. The tomb was obviously once painted with bright colours but these are now faded & dusty, and the stone is painted to look like marble.

Next to the tomb, mounted high on the wall, is a kneeling effigy of Magdalin Southcote (“Waldegrave’s daughter and Southcote’s only spouse!”). At the eastern end of the Church stands the altar, beneath an elaborate stained glass window depicting the Crucifixion. On the southern wall are two more stained glass windows dedicated to H.D. Bull and J.P. Herringham (these are described in the handbook as “very pleasant”). The western end of the church comprises the tower (built in the 1400s) and the font.

It was in this area that lights were filmed, and heavy asthmatic breathing recorded. A framed yellowing photograph hangs on the wall showing the junior Bull on the occasion of his marriage in 1911, looking a bit like Wyatt Earp with a big handlebar moustache (Lee took this outside and re-photographed it). There’s an organ on the southern wall of the nave and Lee and I discovered a carved pentagram with 666, runic letters and an inverted crucifix writ beneath, carved on the lid. On the walls of the church, people have carved their initials and the date into the stones; one on the north wall of the nave dates to the early 17th century and another in the porch is dated 1722.

Lee and I were soon alone, the last group of people climbing into their car and driving away. I found the family plot of the Bulls at the eastern side of the churchyard where Henry Bull Jnr. and Snr., plus a wife and daughter are buried. The churchyard is full of yew trees that have been clipped into smooth shapes, with large round bases and a gravel path wends its way between these to the 16th century brick-built porch and the front door.

As we took photographs, I noticed a woman striding determinedly towards us from the Cottage opposite. She came to the churchyard wall, leaned over and angrily demanded that I stop taking photos of her house as this was “an invasion of privacy.” She was quite irate at first, but after I’d explained that I wasn’t in fact taking pictures of her house and that we weren’t any part of the “shenanigans” of last night, she calmed down and even half apologised. Later, as she drove past us in her car she waved, so we seemed to have won her over.

I can fully appreciate her anger. The locals must be heartily sick of the very mention of Borley Rectory by now, and no doubt regard the incursions of the numerous cranks and thrill-seekers (including us, I suppose) with at best mild amusement and at worst utter contempt. The guidebook to the church contains a short paragraph near the back which suggests the local attitude; “There are, of course, those who suggest the church itself is haunted. Many old churches and buildings have chill areas which some would class as ghostly, but those who have lived long in the village and we who worship in the church have not experienced anything which would support such thoughts.”

Later in the afternoon we got sceptical opinions from the Church Warden and his wife and Mrs. Proudfoot: “You’re wasting your time y’ know” said the Warden as his wife laughed. “There are no ghosts here, never have been. . . .”

We intended going to Sudbury for something to eat—we had half an hour or so to spare until the pubs opened and our target was a pub lunch—so we sat in the church in the quiet of the sunny morning. Everything was deathly still apart from the whine of an occasional fly that buzzed at the windows or the muffled chirp of a bird in the trees outside. Gradually, as we sat and listened, we became aware of tiny scrapes and bumps and bangs coming from the altar region of the church. We both noticed a subtle change was taking place; the quiet pious aura typical of a country church was replaced by one less benign.

We felt sure that the air temperature was dropping, and as I stood beside the Waldegrave tomb I became so chilled that the flesh on my arms stood up in goosepimples. We sat in the pews beside the tomb, straining our eyes and ears towards the increasingly unnerving noises, which perhaps were caused by birds coming and going in the roof, or the stirrings of slumbering bats, which we’d seen a lot of last night as they flitted between the yews. But some of noises sounded too odd.

At times we got quite alarmed and left the church in a hurry, only to pluck up courage once we were out in the sun and creep back in. In an effort to determine where exactly the noises were coming from, Lee sat in a chair beside the altar, which was dedicated to the memory of one of the Bulls. The noises just as suddenly ceased, and we heard nothing. Yet when we resumed our position in the pews the shufflings and surreptitious scraping recommenced. It sounded as though someone were moving around beside the altar, trying to be as quiet as possible but not quite managing it.

I left to write up what we had heard in my notebook and Lee stayed on inside but came running out after hearing what he described as something approaching him across the floor. Inside again, we both heard a noise that sounded as if someone was padding very quietly up the carpeted central aisle. At one point Lee thought I’d whispered something barely audible in his ear, and was shocked to turn around and find me standing across the church by the door. We both heard vague, gravelly footsteps outside, ran out to investigate and weren’t really surprised to find the churchyard deserted. Lee also experienced a chill area beside the font.

All of this of course can probably be put down to the stirrings of our over excited imaginations. Subconsciously perhaps, we believe the church to be ‘haunted’ and want to experience something to confirm our faith, and so our ears and minds seize on every click and creak and magnify it. The guidebook claims the church does have chill areas and noises, and these latter might be caused by the contraction and expansion of ancient timbers as they’re warmed up and cooled down each day. Still...

At 12.30 we left for Sudbury and ate a hearty meal at the Casa André before walking the couple of miles back to Borley. It was very hot and the sweat prickled our faces and made the journey, for me at least, very uncomfortable. Once back in the church we noticed the atmosphere was again placid and unremarkable, but sure enough within ten minutes the unsettling raps and clunks began again.

During the afternoon several groups of elderly walkers made their appearance, looking round the church or kneeling for a little private prayer in the pews, making us wonder how on earth we could ever be frightened by the place. One of the Ipswich psychic researchers made an appearance again, a tall plump chinless man with a plump well-fed kid and a similar-looking wife, and sounded interested in what we had to say. He said that if we were staying the night maybe he would come back later and stay with us a while, although his wife didn’t seem too pleased at this idea.

We passed the rest of the sunlight hours lounging around on the grass outside or in the porch of the church. We wanted to spend a night actually inside although everyone we spoke to about it said they didn’t rate our chances as there’d been a lot of damage caused by people allowed in before. At about seven, the white haired Church Warden and his good-humoured wife came to lock the door and turned our requests to stay inside down point blank and made me for one feel rather foolish.

Later on Mrs. Proudfoot came along to lock up and seemed surprised when she discovered this had already been done. She again gave our rather weak and half-hearted attempts to be allowed in for the night short shrift: “No one is allowed to stay inside now. The last group who did so were accompanied by a set of rather weird people who refused to leave in the morning. We had to call the police.” To be honest, I was thoroughly scared by the prospect and secretly relieved we weren’t going to make it in.

So, leaving a note in case our psychic researcher companion should honour his vague promise to return, we set off back to Sudbury for a drink at The Anchor. Our sleepless night was catching up with us. We both felt absolutely knackered and the prospect that awaited us hardly helped. It was pitch black as we walked back. We stuck to the road all the way because our route across the fields looked menacing and difficult to negotiate in the starless night. We got to the church at half-past eleven. Keeping our nervy instincts under firm control we strode with forced nonchalance through the darkness, collected our bags from where we’d hidden them beneath a yew tree and prepared our meagre sleeping arrangements.

Luckily we’d brought candles with us (appropriately enough they were “Price’s Candles”) and thankfully lit a dozen of them, which gives us some measure of light and heat to the bleak porch. It’s a windy night; the trees around the churchyard are swaying and sighing and the darkness beyond the feeble pool of flickering light is impenetrable. I’m trying not to concentrate too much on its presence.

I am ‘in bed,’ huddled beneath my blanket trying studiously to ignore all sounds by writing this.

Eternal crackle

We left as planned today, although not as early as we’d hoped. I slept the night on Lee’s floor, woke at ten and we actually set off an hour or so later as Watermouth was preparing itself for another scorching day. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the heat was already intense and uncomfortable as we struggled to the bus stop with our bags.

Caught the No. 31 to Binston Park and hitched from there, getting a lift from a man who saw my kitbag and thought I was in the RAF. He took us to Junction 8, right at the start of the M354. For ages we tried to persuade cars to stop, enduring the usual thumbs-ups, blank looks and those bastards who indicate they’re stopping and then drive off laughing, before moving to the opposite side of Junction 8, which was all but devoid of traffic. Scores of cars turned off towards Watermouth but only the odd one or two came our way, and none of the drivers seemed inclined to even give us a glance.

All those people who swept past us in otherwise empty cars angered us, but eventually we were lucky and a lone driver pulled up, dropping us at the M3 turn off where we’d scarcely put our bags down before a Ford Transit van pulled up. The driver was a big W. Indian who was taking his wiry insect-like New Yorker passenger to Brixton, so we had an entertaining journey all the way into S.W. London, the American regaling our chauffeur with various tales and stories that reduced the latter to helpless hoots of laughter, which he frequently interspersed with “wow” in his gravelly, incredulous voice. He was deferent towards his passenger, as though he was impressed by his cosmopolitan authority.

We were dropped at Chiswick, and from there we gave up hitching, having saved just a pound for our efforts. We caught a bus into Kensington and from there we got the tube to Victoria. A coach ticket to Sudbury cost £3 each and we had a two-hour wait.

Our journey out of London and through increasingly rural vistas of cornfields, copses of green verdant trees, and tiny country roads was marked by a growing sense of excitement. As the coach headed into Essex we were in high spirits, passing through Romford, Brentwood, Ingalestone, Chelmsford, Witham, Rivenhall (a tiny place marked only by its old church tower lit by the dying sun), Braintree, Halstead and eventually, at 9 p.m., Sudbury.

As we climbed down from the coach the sun had just sunk below the horizon.

Sudbury was a few shops and Church grouped around a market square, the streets nearly empty even at this early hour, except for the usual gangs of local youth who always seem so prominent in these sorts of towns. We bought a burger from the back of a mobile fast food stall parked in the middle of the square, and set off along the road towards Long Melford and Borley, some two miles distant.

It was getting dark, and our route took us off the main road, down a footpath and into fields alongside the placid River Stour and out through a herd of cows that seemed alarmed at our sudden appearance. The buildings of Borley Hall were silhouetted black against the fading sunset sky, its windows lit and lonely in the blackness.

We came upon a roughly tarmac’d road which wound its way past an orchard and joined with another road, and we were in some confusion as to where Borley actually was, wandering along this road between high hedges (our imaginations working overtime) but seeing no signs of a church, only new and expensive looking houses sheltering behind trees and imposing driveways.

We finally turned round and walked back in the other direction, past a couple of semi-detached houses and the village hall (1878), the road climbing gently now through fields toward the blackness of trees ahead, crowning the hill. Numerous cars passed us, heading in the same direction. The distant trees were occasionally illuminated by torch beams, and the road turned left and swept away towards Borley Green as Borley church loomed up on our right, black and massive among its sheltering trees. As we drew nearer we realised with a sinking feeling that Pete’s predictions were about to be confirmed.

No less than a dozen cars were parked on the lay by in front of the grave yard gate, thirty people at least, laughing and talking, drinking coffee from flasks in the back of their Cortina estates and trudging to and fro in ceaseless procession up the gravel path to the church. We cursed them and their kind and I felt ashamed and embarrassed to be a part of this.

A loud American voice demanded to know where the Nun’s Walk was. The candle-lit porch of the church was filled with people and a couple of amateur authorities from Ipswich Psychic Research Group had set up a tape recorder with a microphone inside the church on the font, and they held court to dozens of people who hovered around the fringes of the candle light; numerous kids and teenagers, most of whom gave the impression that they were here just for fun (the mobile burger van man had said a lot of people visit “mostly just for a giggle”). I think a lot of them had come up from Sudbury especially for the anniversary.

In the darkness of the graveyard, amid the sculpted yew trees and tombstones, handfuls of people wandered around, gazing through the church windows or lying in the grass under the trees, giving the impression that they were quietly waiting for something to happen. There was an air of conviction about them, as though they were certain that they were about to see or hear something unexplained.

Lee and I took on the role of sceptics, and investigated one noise the frightened crowds were attributing to ghosts and deciding it was cows. Various people claimed to have heard things, or seen lights moving inside the church or among the bushes behind it and they clustered round the windows, peering inside. Round the back of the church, Lee and I shone our torches inside, which caused the people round at the front and on the porch to overreact with loud cries of “what was that?” etc. How gullible and subject to group suggestion most people are! It was both amusing and annoying watching them all reacting with alarm and dread to every tiny noise & rustle in the grass.

One lady was head and shoulders above the rest in the foolishness stakes, a self-proclaimed “medium” who chided Lee and I for shining our torches through the church windows because “You’ll make the lights go away.” Later, as the amateur psychic researchers replayed the recordings they’d made, she solemnly declared every rumble and scrape of noise to be ghostly voices or spectral organ music. One bystander said she could hear voices on the tape, and as the tape was replayed the medium enthusiastically said that yes, she could hear them too, and patted one of the psychic researchers heartily on the back saying “Well done! Well done! We have got some good results.”

We could only watch with amused contempt. The tape did capture one convincing noise, a loud clunk which echoed and sounded to have come almost certainly from somewhere inside the church. It was quite chilling to listen to.

More cars arrived, and things began to get out of control. A neighbour called the police and the young PC told us all to move on saying there never have been any ghosts at Borley, so Lee and I left and walked down the road about 200 yards to a cornfield where we’ve spread out our blankets and are going to try to sleep (and where I’m writing this by penlight).

The sky is clear and the stars glitter overhead in icy glory. Out here, far from the polluting effects of sodium street lighting, the Milky Way is clearly visible as a softly glowing band running from horizon to horizon. It’s odd to think what I’m seeing is the light of a billion suns, light from a galaxy so vast it can’t be comprehended in its entirety. Occasionally a meteor flares briefly as it streaks across the sky and then is gone in the blink of an eye.

The eternal crackle of the Universe, a vast emptiness above our heads silent, cold and utterly still apart from the noiseless pinprick of a satellite gliding its lonely path among the stars.

Pseudery

Lee and I were planning to go to Borley in the afternoon but after I’d signed on, sat in a café with Stu, and finally got down to Maynard Gardens, we both started to realise that we were being too unrealistic to expect to be able to hitch the 150 or so miles to Essex.

Lee has bought films for his two still cameras, the Ricoh KR-10 and the Pentax Spotmatic, plus a three-minute film for the Yashica ciné, and has a half side of ciné film left in the Chinon. We’re borrowing Ian’s stereo Walkman cassette recorder, and we’re bringing three blank C-90 cassettes. We still have to buy penlight batteries and candles, and have to retrieve the torch from Smith Square, which I hid as we were discovered by the cops. By the time Ian showed up having forgotten the Walkman, we decided to delay our trip until tomorrow morning.

Lee was helping out with a performance at the Art College at 1.30. I didn’t bother to go along, knowing too well the extent of the pseudery involved, and Lee said it all looked very amateurish and shamefaced, as though the performers knew how empty-headed and pretentious they were being. Performance art is a popular past time at the College and appears to be a thorough waste of time and effort, most of it seeming so jaded and predictable that it rarely stimulates or captures the imagination, or acts as a catalyst for further thought. It usually ends up with just an audience of bored fidgets.

Steve showed up again in the evening, down in Watermouth for the weekend. He has his visa for America, and apart from continuing concern over the ever plunging exchange rate, he’s all set to go at the end of August.

Lee and I plan to set off early tomorrow morning. Pete believes there will be hundreds of like-minded people in Borley this weekend. I hope not, and I hope the event doesn’t turn out to be a complete fiasco and waste of time.

Big black hole

It’s 3. 42 p.m., and Alan, Dave and Clive, the last of Stu’s friends have just now gone, Dave tall with black hair, beard and glasses, Clive evil-looking with greased black hair, and Alan blond and denim-clad.

I'm inexplicably depressed and I can only think that perhaps it’s the after-effects of the acid. We all went up to the Westdorgan at dinner time and I gradually felt worse, becoming reticent and sullen.

Barry finally showed up in the early evening after spending most of the day at Heighton-By-The-Sea recording the band’s demo tape. He said that everyone else was really pleased with it except him and he had more criticisms of Jason (who’s now dyed his hair burgundy), calling him a “male Cyndi Lauper.” He said the studio crew are sufficiently impressed that they’ve asked Barry and co. if they want to put a song on a tape of local bands they’re putting together. The Holland thing seems more likely too.

Barry couldn’t understand why I was so moody and monosyllabic.

Oi!

We went to Masquerades last night: I called round to Maynard Gardens to tell Lee and then we met everyone else—plus Barry, Raven and Elaine, his two-flatmates-to-be—at the Green Man on Philip Street.

Stu and co. all got quite drunk, drinking 9-10 pints each, and afterwards we visited the crypt. I scaled the fence first, then Dave, then Lee. He went back over to see why no one else seemed to be appearing and unbeknownst to us was immediately apprehended by the police.

Two more of Stu’s friends, Paul and Clive, started to climb over to join us and as the latter balanced precariously on the very top of the wooden fence I heard someone shout “Oi!” Clive half fell, half jumped off the fence and we all ran across the wasteland to the opposite fence to be greeted by another voice saying “we know you’re in there . . .” so we sprinted back the way we’d come until a warning that “we’ll send the dogs in” finally subdued us.

We climbed passively out to face our telling off. The policeman was dogless and swore at us when we appeared. Clive refused to divulge his name, and eventually we were allowed to go. We got a cab back.

This afternoon Stu, Clive, Dave and Alan and I met Shawn Bennett on the pier for a drink. Stan and Paul left in the afternoon; Stan’s arm was in a sling because he’d fallen off the fence too and sprained it. Later in the evening Barry and Stu and I took some acid and we all watched Alien. The acid was quite strong, coloured lights wherever I looked, Barry laid on Stu’s bed listening to Hendrix with a huge inane grin fixed to his face . . . I got to bed at 3.30 a.m.

You've got everything now

There are very few moments when I’m actually happy, but likewise there aren’t many occasions of real unhappiness either; my life just becomes one long blur of vague frustrations and malcontent, a succession of similar non-emotions, non-thoughts and lifelessness.

Last night we all went out to the pier and got drunk. Barry was penniless as usual and borrowed a fiver from me. He’s supposed to be moving out today to a place on Gaveston Street which he’ll be sharing with Elaine and Raven (Paula), two of Jason’s punk-hippy acquaintances. The two girls found the place and now all he’s got to do is raise the deposit and four weeks advance rent, which considering he’s already £380 overdrawn, is presenting some difficulties. This morning he went on to campus and managed to screw another £100 out of the bank, and it seems he’s actually got the place. He keeps raving on about how “brilliant” it is, how near to the clubs and the shops and cafes but as we’ve all heard this dozens of times before we take it with a pinch of salt.

His enthusiasm for the band has wavered a bit just recently. They’re still nameless despite various suggestions—One Floor Down seems to be losing out to the current front runner Feed of Man. They’ve been practicing a lot (four days last week) and are booked in to a studio in Heighton-By-The-Sea to record a demo tape, with which they hope to secure a ten-day tour of Holland and the usual record contract etc.

Barry played me a cassette of one of their practices. Barry’s friend Mike plays drums, Ade’s on guitar, Barry plays bass and Jason sings. The music sounds quite competent—Ade’s reverb’d guitar and Hendrix flourishes and Mike’s Nick Masonesque drumming give it a psychedelic feel—but Jason’s singing is crap. I think so, and apparently so does everyone else. He spits his words out petulantly and sounds like a whining cross between Alice Cooper and Marc Bolan but it’s all but unintelligible as it’s smothered under echo and phasing.

I told Barry what I thought and he said he was pissed off with the band and feels like he has to either kick Jason out and find someone else to replace him or stick with him and probably fail. Of course Jason has been telling everyone about the band and how he “has what it takes” and how “if we get big I’m gonna get addicted to everything I can, yeah?” and other such crap statements.

Barry also complained about what he calls Jason’s “arrogantly mindless anti-intellectualism” which goes with the whole hippy bit and the drugs.

We hardly see Lindsey most days. She works at the tax office working out arrears and rebates 9-5 and three evenings a week goes straight to the Admiral until 11.30 (where she’s regularly pestered by a Texan rodeo rider). Susie is still going out with the bass player from Atom Dance Eight and she’s hardly ever in either. I’ve seen Shelley twice all term. She’s moving into another house with old flatmate David.

Stu and Stan and Paul are upstairs listening to The Smiths (“I’ve never had a job/ Because I’m too shy . . .”). – We’re going to Masquerades tonight and then Paul wants to go to the Smith Square crypt.

Bravado and expectation

I visited campus and did some work for my extended essay, looking up references to the Beats in magazines and periodicals, seeing if they were in the library: nine of my forty two were. It was another hot day, the sun burning even at ten when I walked for the bus with Barry—no wind, the sky a limpid, bleached out blue, the colours of the trees and buildings tired in the heat.

I got back to Westdorgan Road at about three and a couple of hours later Stu’s friends arrived—Paul East and Stan, the former tall and thin with a face somehow reminiscent of Ivan Lendl’s, when not talking staring hard with dark eyes under a frowning brow. Both were dressed fairly similarly in pointed boots adorned with buckles and studs, black canvas jeans and leather jackets.

Next weekend Lee and I have planned a trip to Long Melford and the site of Borley Rectory. We plan to spend a couple of days and nights with tape recorders and ciné and still cameras. When the Rectory burned down in 1939, the ‘hauntings’—whatever they are—moved next door to the church where a TV crew filmed mysterious pin pricks of light on the choir screen and recorded chilling sighs and shuffling footsteps. July 28th is reputed to be the date on which the Borley Nun walks the Rectory grounds, so Lee and I—full of bravado and expectation—plan to use the full battery of our visual and audio equipment to record whatever it is that’s there.

In the evening I fell to talking of it with Stu, Barry and Stan. The darkness felt heavy and thick beyond the curtains and the little pool of light from the lamp. The wind was blowing a gale and I got a tiny taste of what might be the real gut-freezing fear to come. Stan said he’s been to Borley but there isn’t much there apart from the Church. Where the Rectory once stood is wasteland, and the whole village consists of a couple of houses. It made him wonder why there’s such a big church for such a small village.

I tried to imagine staying overnight in one of the most haunted churches in England and found I could imagine it quite well, especially at night. Come daylight, the familiar sounds and sights reassure and it’s hard to capture the state of utter apprehension and animal fear, of a kind I’ve never experienced.

My daylight rational self knows that if ghosts exist they’re simply undiscovered natural phenomena behaving according to unknown but predictable principles and says ‘Go! It will be interesting’ But in the dark, the primeval fears surface, especially in the musty ink-black inside of a church, the night concealing who knows what, and my midnight animal mind says ‘Why have a potentially horrible experience?’

But as Stu says, most likely nothing will happen.

No possibility

Pete and Lee called here about four in the afternoon and we were extremely bored sitting in my room.

Pete didn’t stay long as he was going back to London in the evening for work tomorrow and he kept winding me up by saying he wasn’t giving me any money for the electric. A tiny thing, but the cumulative effect of this and everything recently combined to make me gnash my teeth in despair and frustration at myself and the world.

I see no possibility of escape.

Cocktail lounge executive

I paid the £101.25 electric bill for the vicarage.

Miles Beattie brought round a letter from Seeboard delivered to Jervis Terrace threatening court proceedings for recovery of the debt if we didn’t cough up by next Tuesday. Pete was in London, Lee’s only got £2 left to his name and Barry wasn’t in so, unfortunately, the money had to come from me.

Luckily I’d just got cheque for Christmas and Easter housing benefit and this morning I got another one, for supplementary benefit from the 2nd of July. So after paying off my overdraft, four weeks rent and the electric bill, I have £75 or so left.

In my stupidity I walked the several miles to the Seeboard HQ on Barker Road, nearly in Blacklow, and found it closed, so had to come sheepishly back and pay the bill at a showroom along Wessex Road. Then I went to the pier with Ian and Lee. We had to queue to get on and the weather was very warm. They both took cameras although they didn’t use ‘em.

Pete was back in Watermouth in the evening, so Stu and I met he and Lee in the Pembroke. The Pembroke has a new cocktail lounge executive image and landlord Joe has been sacked for not bringing in enough money and (probably) for attracting wrong clientele—skinheads and bikers, etc.

The new man is fat and well spoken and always in a suit and tie and has a Ronnie Kray-style barman, a Geordie. When Lee and I went to play pool, they demanded a £3 deposit on the cues. Previous bar help Donny was playing pinball in the corner as we stood there disbelievingly. He made some comment to Ronnie Kray as he asked us for money, and we could tell he was bitter, and towards the end of our game we glanced up to see Donny and the new barman pushing each other provocatively: “Come on then . . . outside . . .” etc., etc.

At the Grey House, Lee showed the 8-mm film he took in the 6th form autumn 1980 and Stu and Pete couldn’t believe Lee and I’s youthful tastelessness. We ended the evening at the all night café, Pete whining on and on because he wanted to go out and “do something,” although he couldn’t decide what (and also because he was drunk).

Poppy heads

Lee rang at dinnertime to say he was back in Watermouth.

He came round and we went into town, back to the pier. He confessed to having the same anti-climactic feeling on returning I do. “I expected it to be really good”!

Instead he’d got back to a dark and empty house with no one about. I feel the same when I go back to Easterby and this merely confirms again the truism that Happiness is in Anticipation.

Back at Maynard Gardens Lee and I worked ourselves up over Alex and his punk-hippy friends who are turning the Grey House into a pig sty. In the kitchen we found the pathetic remnants of their attempt to boil poppy heads and make narcotics. Down in Ian’s basement room (which he’s cleaned, painted and filled with bed, books and belongings), we found the Minolta ciné camera Lee was going to sell to Gav, minus the lens cover, the lens all greasy and finger smeared, the camera body speckled with droplets of white spray paint.

This increased our anger, but nothing came of it, and I went to the Frigate. I retreated swiftly at the sight of John Turney, Barry and Guy: I couldn’t bear to speak to them and put up with their usual repartee, so I went home to ring Mum to wish her a happy birthday. . . .

Roar and stutter

I went with Stu to meet Shawn Bennett on the pier. Barry gave us a lift into town in Ade’s car, which seems to run on a perpetually empty tank. We paid our 30p entrance fee.

It was only my second time on the pier since coming to Watermouth, the first on the occasion of my interview February ‘82 when waiting for the coach home with my friend-of-a-few-hours and soon never to be seen again Neil Dickinson. . . . Now it’s high summer and the pier's crowded with holiday-makers of all nationalities in the sun sporting tanned limbs and bright clothes, playing the amusements and thronging the hot arcades to the roar and stutter of video games and the chink of coins.

The passive sea laps green and quiet at the metal legs of the pier while ‘on deck,’ Empire Pier Radio blares out its happy holiday tunes. The pier has a Ghost Train, a Helter Skelter, a Penny Arcade machine museum, the usual burger bars, archery stalls, ‘Euro-Ball,’ Punch and Judy (“That’s The Way To Do It”), gift shops . . . “fine earthenware cruet set,” a prostrate female figure, headless, knees in the air, tits as salt and pepper dispensers, “Skeleton Power Dolls” with bony erections that unfurl if you push down on the doll’s head, Big Daddy mugs . . ..

It all seemed somehow the more ridiculous and grotesque to Stu and I next to the banner newspaper headlines screaming “20 DEAD IN MCDONALD’S MASSACRE.” Lone gunman James Huberty, 41 of San Ysidro California, told his wife “I’m going hunting for humans” and took his Israeli made automatic and shotgun and revolver into the local fast food restaurant and opened fire. Twenty dead.
“It’s a slaughterhouse” said police.

After a one hour 25 minute siege a police sniper shot Huberty dead. What would Ronald McDonald say?

We waited for Shawn in the Centenary Bar at the very end of the pier and when he showed up took our drinks and sat ourselves in deckchairs, staring across towards France. Shawn told amusing stories about Gareth, who’s been taken up by a girl name of Liliana. They  met at Kamran’s party.

“He told me he couldn’t even remember what she looked like but went and stayed at her parents' house last weekend, and she’s phoned him every other day since they met, even from Italy once.”

This of course all to be taken with considerable amounts of salt considering Bennett’s less than reliable record as an informant.

Fleapit

I restored my room to something like its natural state, removing the TV and the debris of everyone’s meals.

In the afternoon I called round to Maynard Gardens to see Pete. Alex answered the door wrapped in a dirty blanket and said that Pete wasn’t in and had moved a lot of his things out. The downstairs of the Grey House looked semi-derelict, and this irritates me. Sarah now appears to be a permanent fixture there too. Her room (ground floor, at the back) is an untidy fleapit, walls pinned with scraps of paper, drawings, ‘collages,’ etc.

I spent the evening up at the Westdorgan with Lindsey or Susie or Stu or Barry or some combination of all four.

Other life

I returned to my other life today, a journey that took nine hours marooned on a coach and no one to talk to, getting back to Westdorgan Road to find my room occupied once more by the TV, numerous dirty plates and ashtrays and Stu, immobile before the screen, fag in hand. Barry was sleeping in my bed.

I don’t think Stu really understood why I was getting so uptight. I suppose my current mania for order and privacy (of belongings if not of person) does appear a little neurotic and overblown. But I can’t help it. It’s hard to pin down the subtle mental change that takes place as I travel the miles from Easterby to Watermouth, and I think really it’s the losing of full mindfulness of home as the familiar topography flows away and melts into flatter and more modern lines, one life flowing out of direct perception (like the scenery), the other flowing in.

Some sort of perspective on that other life.

Lee is coming back to Watermouth on Thursday. He rang me up last night to ask if I wanted to go across but I had too much packing. It was a tranquil sunny evening and later I half-regretted not going. He’s just got back from a weekend in North Wales with his Dad. They visited Portmeirion which was full of Prisoner  cranks saying “Be seeing you” to one another. He spent £6 on ‘Prisonerbilia.’ His Art College course seems to have gone quite well, although he, Gav and Ian Tropp have been ‘referred,’ so he has essays to write over the summer vacation to make up for it.

Jeremy enters the 3rd of a 4-year course at Edgestow in September and he’s staying in Easterby over the summer, despite Steve Bates’s insistent attempts to get him to go to Spain.

Steve is still at Debdenshaw U. doing Chemistry. He was mugged a week last Monday and was almost proud when he told me about it when we went out on Saturday. He doesn’t like me and I’m not too fond of him with his wooden student stereotypes.

Tommy is now at Brynmor Poly.

Richard Houlding works at the tax office in Farnshaw and is in a band, The Metros. When I saw him last he was wearing stone washed jeans elasticated at the ankle, bright red specs, and low cut blue loafer shoes. I thought he’d changed a lot at first, but beneath it all he’s still the same person he was in sixth form.

Peter Wood is working on his Dad’s fruit and vegetable stall in Whincliffe market.

Robin Quinn makes good money working with computers in London . . . he and Tim Moyles went potholing in the Dales at the weekend.

Andrew Boyd is leaving Ecclesley Poly because he doesn’t like the people there and is going to do a journalism apprenticeship at the Echo. He’s going out with Louise Metcalf, and according to Jeremy says he wants to “change her.”

Deborah is still working for an accountant and is still going out with Tony Megson. She’s undecided about taking up a place on an accountancy course at Brynmor in the autumn, her doubts apparently springing as much from her Mother’s keen promotion of the idea rather than from any real misgivings. Needless to say, Tony doesn’t want her to go.

I haven’t heard from Claire since April. I never wrote back in reply to her last letter, a decay in interest that occurred as I realised all my feelings for her were false and overwrought. I was more attracted to the idea of her than the reality of her. I suppose I should give her my new address.

Grant Riley is home for the summer and is planning a new magazine venture with Nik Gordon and intimated that contributions are welcome. A friend of his at Gloucester is making a film and he’s playing the role of Charles Bukowski. Although I keep inviting him to Watermouth and he keeps expressing enthusiasm for the idea, I somehow doubt he’ll ever make it down.

His mate RJ is still living with Jackie in Lockley. Nik is in his last year at Camberwell College of Art.

I reread my journal for January and February of 1983; how becalmed in non-emotion I am now! Then, every day seemed to pass in a blaze of raw hypersensitivity. Lindsey was a symptom of my despair and lack of direction and I think I was in love with her at one point, something I hadn’t felt before, or since . . . But that was over a year ago, I was 18 then. Now I’m 20 and  a little older.

Cull

I went with Dad into town at one, he to work,  me to buy Mum a card and a present for her birthday on Wednesday; I bought a copy of Marc Riley and The Creepers album Cull. I got Mum V. S. Naipaul’s Area of Darkness. I have doubts over how she’ll like it.

I packed at a leisurely pace in the evening.

Dover and Belfast dock workers have joined the stoppage and the High Court declared that the government’s ban on unions at GCHQ contravenes “natural justice.” There’s much talk of “banana skins” and “the deepening industrial crisis” etc., etc.

I watched a World-In-Action programme about MI5 ‘molehunts’ in the 1950s, ‘60s and ’70s. In 1955, MI5 broke into the offices of the Communist Party of Great Britain and stole fifty-five thousand files on membership while the staff were gone, copying them all onto microfilm and returning them before dawn. MI5 found that thirty one MPs and numerous trade unionists and “top public figures” had links with the pro-Soviet CPGB, and it was believed that numerous spies of a similar operational status to Philby and Blunt evaded detection. Even the head of MI5 was a suspect based on strong circumstantial evidence!

Imagination and memory

I went on a walk over Oaklass Moors with Mum and Dad. We set out very early, and were donning our boots and thick socks in Oaklass car park at ten o’clock.

Our route was a familiar one that we’ve done at least a couple of times before so I knew every part of it well. We walked through Oaklass to the waterfall, which is very popular this time of year, filled with lots of tents and cars and families. We struggled up the steep path to the ‘pavement’ of scree at the back of the waterfall and then through the desolate landscape beyond, leaving all the people behind. Oaklass Pond was soon opening up before us, its wooded borders contrasting with the high limestone scarred fells beyond.

We ate our dinner at the water’s edge.

The rest of the walk was a gradual climb beyond the Pond, following a tarmac road some of the way before cutting across the boggy moors to Ewedar Edge. I clambered into Albert Cave and briefly relived my potholing days as I crawled on my belly between boulders to emerge thirty yards away, much to Dad’s amusement. It was warm as we slogged along the foot of Ewedar Edge, the unchanging limestone precipices gleaming remote and glittering in the sun, the call of curlews and the lone silhouette of a hawk high above the rocky skyline.

Dad reminisced about a day out he had had as a fifteen year old, pushing his bicycle up past Ewedar, and the high crags and rock faces had never seemed so awesome and alone to him as then, and he’d wished he’d someone to share the feeling with. . . .

Soon the sun was swallowed up by grey rafts of cloud and we were climbing again, past Cartdale Hall in its bowl of black forbidding hills, overlooked by the dark granite peak of Coneyford Haw. Spots of rain began to fall but we trudged on and on, up and up, past herds of cattle and young calves, through limestone boulders breaking through the turf, up to the very head of the pass and a sweeping panorama back down to Oaklass Pond and beyond to Ainderdale.

In the plains towards Sandhow and Parson’s Moss, a grey pall of rain blotted out all but the faint whaleback outline of hills and threw the distinctive twin peaks of Owl and Black Crag into sharp, dark relief against the all-consuming grey. The rain still spat, and although we were still shadowed by a black cloud bottom its fringes were bright, and we could glimpse placid skies with towering yellow cumuli far away on the horizon.

It was late afternoon by the time we had descended once more to Oaklass for tea and toasted teacakes at Braystone Lodge. The journey home took fifty minutes and those vistas I can never capture in words were relegated once more to the land of imagination and memory.

The country is in the grip of what some would call a crisis. The miners have been on strike for seventeen weeks and the dockers are out now too, tightening their grip with today’s announcement that all lorries are banned from ferry services. Dad is convinced the two strikes are part of a larger plot by “subversives” and “left-wing types” to overthrow the established order.

I find it hard to understand when the leaders of the striking dock-workers are quick to deny there are any political aspects to their strike and that it’s purely economic. I suppose on one hand it’s easy to see why: The union leadership is scared of losing its stake, scared of destroying their bourgeois respectability—scared of making plain what they know deep down to be true. Instead of shrinking from the truth, the union leadership should broadcast it.

No doubt the workers themselves know it.

Striking is obviously political because economic relations dictates political power in the country—employees and employers, workers and state. When scenes of police clad in riot gear battling with stone throwing miners appear on our TVs who can deny that the strike isn’t for purely economic reasons? The miners and the dockers are engaged in a fight with the police, the judiciary and the media—all the apparatus of the State. I doubt they can win—indeed, in most peoples’ eyes they are the villains of the piece anyway.

A compromise, in famous British tradition, will end the dispute and life will again return to normal . . . . I hope I’m wrong.

Misanthropy

I finally bought my coach ticket and I return to the South on Tuesday.

I can’t say I’ll be sorry to go. A fortnight is just long enough here. Mum and Dad went to Rob and Carol’s in the morning to fix up a shelf but I stayed bed-ridden until the very minute of their return, throwing clothes on in a frantic shame (it being 1.30 p.m.), and as a result, I didn’t get out of the house until three. I was quite looking forward to the evening; I planned to meet Deborah, Jeremy and Steven Bates in Farnshaw, but as it was only Jeremy and Steve turned up.

Peter Wood, plus a large group of his friends and other Egley Grammar School types, occupied one corner of the Red Grouse. My entry into the pub’ was greeted with jeers of ribald laughter, so I stared back unsmilingly. Steve has confessed to Jeremy that he finds me arrogant, so things began a little awkwardly but alcohol soon loosened us up; we met Richard Houlding in another pub and went with him to the Builder’s Arms and from there to a curry house.

The macho men were out in force, their aggression fueled by alcohol, and one particularly foul example of humanity called Glen threw his weight around, threatening to “deck” the stony-faced waiters who clustered around him. As we left, a separate group of soul boys scrapped it out on the pavement and I cursed them and all of humanity out loud.

 I think my enthusiasm for this narrative is lacking somewhere, because deep down perhaps I know I’ve reached the end of the line with this. I must not lose all voice while I struggle to resolve my ‘problem,’ which to outside eyes appears as no big deal, but because I keep thinking how I want to go beyond the simple day-to-day reportage level of usual diaries and desperately want my writing to yield something other than half hearted characterisations of the typical days events.

In short I want to become a writer—this is the crux of my dissatisfaction. Because of these things and more I must discard the present format. . . . Four years and no progression, no evolution onto better things.

The days glide innocuously past and present no real challenges or remarkable events. All the better, because my romantic notions of home demand that things here remain perpetually the same. It’s a pity but true. I’ve noticed even at this early stage (my past not being too far removed from my present), that Easterby is changing.

Old familiar landmarks are being demolished, roads are altered, junctions widened, and to my horror I find myself adopting a reactionary attitude, which is one aspect of my mental outlook I particularly want to change. Just for a moment the full impact of Dad’s influence on me emerges. I doubt it’s something I shall ever be free of.

Dress code

The funsters had risen early with their thick heads and bloodshot eyes and were all gone by eight thirty, because some people still work in Thatcher’s England.

I didn’t get up until noon. Jeremy and Tommy came with me into Easterby where we split up and I tried unsuccessfully to get a coach ticket back to Watermouth, before I got a lift back to Egley with Dad. Grant Riley called round late afternoon and stayed for tea. We went for a drink in Farnshaw.

We were refused service at the Windmill at Moxthorpe Roundabout because Grant was wearing “faded denims.” He’s moving off Gloucester campus next term and intends spending most of the summer in Easterby.

We met Jeremy in the Red Grouse.

The thing

I went into Easterby again, to Suits Me to peruse their suits, and then to a Heel Bar to buy dark brown dye for my DM shoes that I’ve still only worn once—I dyed them from their original oxblood to black and now to a deep brown.

Jeremy rang me in the evening to persuade me to go to his house; I declined at first, but when he rang back at eleven saying I just had to go, I half-heartedly acquiesced—he said his step-brother Colin was having a party and it was “quite amusing” to watch. So I walked into Farnshaw and met he and Tommy beneath St. Anne’s steeple.

Tommy has transferred to Brynmor Poly and is on a design course, to which he commutes from Easterby. Jeremy has also transferred, from Bristol University to Edgestow, so in September he will be a new boy again. We walked the remaining miles up Whincliffe Road to Jeremy’s, where the beery gathering was reaching an inevitable and time-honoured finale. Jeremy’s Dad has married again, and so Jeremy has inherited a new family, a step-brother and step-sister, plus their friends and girlfriends/boyfriends. He says he feels like a stranger in his own home and wants to spend Christmases away now because he feels he no longer belongs.

For some reason, when we got there all the males present were stripped to the waist, Colin barely coherent, his eyes bloodshot, soon to pass out on the living room carpet. We then had to play host to one of his drunken acolytes, a self-professed biker who constantly impressed upon us the favour he was bestowing on us by actually speaking to us.

“Some of ‘em think yer should speak just to bikers, but me, I think that’s wrong.”

He demanded we share an opinion of him: “If yer think am' a shit then say so, I don’t care.”

Jeremy’s step-sister was pissed as a newt and flopping giddily about, falling onto Tommy and making him flush with embarrassment, before she disappeared upstairs with her boyfriend for a giggle and a grope. She came back down in a dressing gown, saying she felt embarrassed, “in front ‘er so many men.” Jeremy, Tommy and I watched The Thing on video while the revelries subsided and Colin locked himself in the toilet—he had £100 stolen that evening too.

I went to bed at five.

No feelings

I caught the Gilthwaite bus onto Lodgehill and walked down to Lee’s. Lee was bent over his desk fitting new lenses into his Malcolm X sunglasses when I got there, his Mum humming and singing to herself contentedly as she pottered about. Lee was very subdued during the time I was there.

Jeremy turned up shortly after I did. I felt down, so I left after a few hours and caught the bus into Easterby and went to meet Mum at Nanna P.’s up Cross Green Road. The latter looked ill, grey and old and quite subdued. Uncle Kenneth called round briefly while I was there.

No feelings for relatives.

Blank

I met Lee in Easterby at eleven. He was with his boxer dog Monty, a great sturdy slavering beast who charged around all day, straining at the lead and causing minor chaos.

We discovered a goldmine of suits at Suits Me. Many seemed to fit and all were in the range of £9-£20. We passed a pleasant hour or two trying on, examining and running out of epithets to describe them . . . I came away in good spirits with a brown & green check ‘60s suit with turn-ups.

It was warm again although there was a bit more cloud about and it was showery by the evening. Dad and I went up to Keddon Moors at six and spent an hour or so strolling across the bracken-clad hills in a blaze of setting sunshine. The clouds were very spectacular.

So I’ve come to the end of another book, 2200 pages and four years and one month in from the day I started, June 8 1980. End thoughts: things have got to change and the way I’ve let it slip and lost all interest or enthusiasm for this narrative has got to go. I won’t go over the old ground again. I know the pros and cons too well by now, but I confess I haven’t a clue where or how to go from here, knowing only what I DON’T want to do, which is to continue in the present secondhand and word strangled fashion. The book form is more suited to ways of old than ways of now and I feel like raving on to break the spell words and sentences have over me, but oh so much talk, which IS NOT ENOUGH!

I’m leaving the succeeding two pages blank as a symbol of my frustration and lack of direction. After four years, the wheels are grinding to a halt for this current configuration, or at least I hope and pray that this is so.

Only I can decide, so. . . .

Apart and unknown

A quiet day, with nothing outwardly separating it from a thousand other such days other than the inner knowledge that it’s my twentieth birthday. My teenage years gone. All that heartbreak and wrangling over nothing.

Mum and Dad gave me £10 and a shirt and Nanna P. £5. She is subdued and anxious, apparently worried about her impending X-ray results and still sickened by the theft of her £90.

I didn’t go out, and lounged around until Dad came back from work at two; I stayed in in the evening but rang Grant. We talked, but I hardly felt able to reach him I think, although we spoke of many things. I felt very apart and unknown.

Timeless zone

I caught the 1.30 p.m. coach from Victoria. The station was absolutely crammed full of sweating, impatient queues of holiday makers.

I reached Easterby at seven o’clock. It was good to be back in the timeless zone.

Moiré music

Andrew and I went to the Bracknell Jazz festival. We had to be up early so we could buy me a spare motorcycle helmet, as the one I’d managed to borrow from Susie’s new boyfriend Vince proved much too small. Andrew bought a cheapo white one with peak and visor.

It was an enjoyable journey to Bracknell, the breeze warm as we powered along the motorway into Berkshire, stopping in Slough to check we were on the right route. . . .

It was incredibly warm. A marquee stood in the grounds of South Hill Park, overlooked by a terrace and a bar, and hordes of people sunned themselves in the fierce heat or packed the marquee to listen to the music of Dreamtime. Andrew and  I worked out an itinerary, to get in as much music as we could. I was so impressed with Dreamtime that I bought their album from one of the record stalls.

Joachim Kuhn and the Siger Band were so-so and the John Williams Octet produced passionless, empty jazz, but Lol Coxhill & Associates were excellent, with a quirky array of sounds, voice-overs, electronic synthesized screeches & moans . . .

The main attraction for Andrew & I were Miroslav Vitous & Stan Clarke who played an electric/acoustic bass duo. SC played bits of “School Days” & had us smiling in fond remembrance . . . His bass playing was unbelievable! Next up was Trevor Watts Moiré Music which was one long afro jam with congas, percussion and voices and received a rapturous reception, then the Gordon Beck Quintet which was being recorded for a forthcoming LP, and finally, the main attraction No. 2, the Carla Bley Band, Carla Bley (orange outfit, spindly legged, large yellow sandals) introducing her band with an appealing breathlessness & innocent enthusiasm. They played a Bley arrangement of Thelonious Monk’s “Mysterioso,” but we left before the encore to beat the rush.

We had a wearying tense journey back along the seemingly interminable North Circular Rd, Andrew anxious and angry over his malfunctioning rear light . . . We were back in Stoke Newington at two a.m.

Hey student!

A hot day, the sun blazing down, Lindsey wandering around the house in silent boredoms, her vest revealing a pale mound of swaying breast beneath; I was eager to be gone.

I caught the 6.30 coach and left all of Watermouth playing happily in the sun. We reached Waterloo two-and-a-half hours later after a vomiting drunk had been ejected from the coach just outside Watermouth, leaving the beery contents of his stomach behind as a memento. Two police officers removed him: “you’re not going anywhere in that state.” During the subsequent journey the coach was awash with vomit.

It was a hot evening in London, churning crowds outside the train station, joyous evangelicals holding a revivalist-style meeting. I caught the bus to Stoke Newington and as we drove through the busy streets the warm scents of dry and dusty pavements, cooking food, and crowds assailed my nostrils.

I reached Stoke Newington OK but got lost following Andrew’s directions and traipsed miles out of my way before eventually reaching Reighburgh Road and journey’s end. Andrew obviously pleased to see me; wooden intros to black flatmate Sheena and a meal of sausages, rice and fried peppers. The house is only costing Andrew £21.50 a week. “I’m sick of living like a student,” he says.

I slept in his friend’s bed who's up in Edinburgh.

Waiter

Job search continues. Mo had wind of a job going as a waiter in a restaurant down Fireland Avenue, off Stoneways Road, for £50 per week (with a chance to double this up with tips), but I hedged and hedged, finally striding there full of determination only to meet Pete on my way back, and realized how unemployably scruffy I looked.

I never went back.

Now time has caught up with me, and with Lee going back to Easterby today and I’ve got round to thinking that way too…. 


Soup kitchen supervisor

Went back to the Job Centre. I asked after a temporary post as security guard at £105 a week, but I was immediately told that I wasn’t suitable. I contemplated applying for the Community Program post as a soup kitchen supervisor but I realized I wasn’t being realistic.

Pete, in the cold light of today’s hangover realism realized his Easterby plan was impractical what with forms for his America trip to fill in and send off—he’s put his trip North back to Sunday, and I’m supposed to be meeting him in London but things remain doubtful.

The day passed in a dull blur, headache and muzziness my lot. I begin to doubt whether my oft-discussed holiday to the States in September will really ever come about. The longer the time goes on while I sit idle, the less likely such plans are to reach fruition. I haven’t yet admitted this publicly.

Masquerade

A fruitless and half-defeated-to-begin-with search for work. I called in at the Job Centre down East Street and the one down Milton Street, scanning the ‘positions vacant’ boards with a resigned, unhopeful eye.

In the evening I got pissed with Pete and Lee at Masquerades, Pete, in the full grip of alcohol enthusiasm, suddenly deciding to go up to Easterby with Lee on Thursday. John Turney was there and we had a long conversation about Easterby, he just having returned, filled with Whincliffe Strangler, Lockley, and Volunteer Inn memories.

Job centre

I wore my shoes thin looking for a job.

Lindsey and I tried the Royal Britannia Hotel and a couple of other big places but had no luck. We signed on and went to the Job Centre where Lindsey inquired about a clerical vacancy. My eye was caught by a £91 a week job supervising soup kitchens for the homeless (evenings five-to-eleven) and I inquired about it, although I was foolishly honest by admitting I wasn’t wanting a permanent job.

The temporary vacancies pay crap money, but I’ll go back tomorrow and apply, and hope they don’t remember me. I’m overdrawn by £41.

Lindsey and I caught the bus back to Meadspike at teatime and in the evening she, Stu and I went to the Westdorgan, supposedly to meet Barry there at nine, but he never showed up. Later I rang Dad to tell him I might go home for my birthday next Monday and stay for a few days. He was full of news about breeding fire-bellied toads, all the old enthusiasms and preoccupations, which seem secure and unchanging. My mind was at peace as I got off the ‘phone.

Do I fear change?

I’m looking forward to the future and to my time post-finals when my life will be my own. I love life and I feel utterly certain of my burning will to create, which must be part and product of the search for meaning, a search to which my life—all of life—will doubtless be devoted.

Self remembering

This afternoon I moved all the armchairs but one, the TV, the sofa and a sideboard out into the kitchen or Barry’s garage-bedroom. He seemed quite satisfied with the TV down there. Lindsey got home from the Admiral late this evening and we talked about nihilism and thoughtlessness and she said she isn’t keen on the idea of staying here another year, especially after Susie leaves for Germany in the summer.

I warmed to the idea of my stay here over the afternoon, especially after I’d got my things sorted out and some degree of order imposed on the chaos of half-unpacked boxes and suitcases. But doubts remain, and I foresee difficulties in carving out a track for myself in this environment. The physical separation from the Grey House is mirrored in the mental sphere, in forgetfulness and self-doubt.

Jason called in briefly at quarter past nine and stayed half-an-hour or so. It’s 1.20 a.m. and Barry and Stu are still up, listening to music—The Doors at this moment, “Not To Touch The Earth,” is loud from the garage beneath.

I’m drawing to the end of another untidy journal and my thoughts naturally look beyond. My dissatisfaction with this form is a fairly constant and ever-growing preoccupation at the moment, and this is something that will get worse, not better, as time progresses. Progress—a word to be conjured with, implicit in which is the idea of evolution and steady improvement. All I see is the same endless limping from one month to the next, one year to the next . . . Words dissemble, words not quick, words lie on the page to taunt with their stark inaccuracy and brute second-handedness, life itself glimpsed and experienced but gone, gone, never to be captured in all its glitter and crackle and drear on the white angularities of a two-dimensional page—not by a biro-driven chronological narrative anyway, not in its present form.

Perhaps if I expanded this account to record my days in all their minute eternities from dawn to dusk, each tiny sensation and flow of idea mirrored and translated into a fluid flow of words. The hissing breath of time rushing by.

“Purple Haze” pounds through the floor now and it is 1.31 a.m. Monday morning and I write write write for the sheer pleasure of writing and wish it could always be so. Too often of late I’ve found my mind in the dread grip of torpor and lethargy, unable or unwilling to pierce the dreary fog of lazy thinking and the crudity of reality-approximating words. I finish each entry for the day or week with the dead weight of frustration and uninspired fatigue inside. I find it genuinely difficult to write about each day as it comes, especially if the day is routine.

I find it hard to separate out the surface fabric of my did-so-and-so-at-such-and-such-a-time life from the richer inner patternings and textures which mark me out as distinct and separate from friends and other people. I half-plan to continue on the typewriter, which I think would be a good idea and would give me a clean start. Read between the lines and see what is there, pierce the surface drudge of descriptive language and finite vocabularies to see what the words mean, see how they fit the intuitions, events, places, and moods I attached them to.

This text must change, must expand, must grow to fit all the things I want it to be, to realise the potential of Words and Mind moving together, so I can become a writer in the truest sense. This requires selfishness, self-motivation, self-remembering, and above all observation. I must look, see and learn at all times, until it becomes a habit, and see in new ways too, not the cobwebbed ways of the past.

Pry open the hidden texts, images, sounds.