Kaleidoscope of dolls

Last night I went to a party on Broad Street where ‘Z.’ and Oscar live.

It was a predictable hippy gathering, which Lee, Stu, and I disrupted with our loud, strident behaviour. Lee continued his record of causing damage at every party he’s invited to by inadvertently kicking holes in the plasterboard walls during a Freddie Starr impression and then running around screaming. Later, four or five heavies gate crashed the party  one of them—Lonsdale sweatshirt, moustache—forced himself on a girl there (“I want to taste your lips,” etc)., which she politely but insistently refused. But when she went to the bathroom he forced his way in and shut the door, but Lee kept his foot in the way. I thought a fight was bound to happen.

I left about two or three and caught a taxi home alone.

On LSD the mind is an organ that vividly records prevailing sense impressions with great intensity. I’ve never had great revelations on acid (although last week came close, before things turned rotten). Instead the acid experience has always revealed itself in mundane ways; in the ‘fun’ of seeing perspectives distorted and disturbed; in people transformed into grotesques; faces into masks by turns ugly, amusing, or disgusting; a kaleidoscope of dolls and scuttling, rapacious insect-people; TV images fluidly melting from one frozen mind’s eye-instant to the next.

Sideways glance

I’m in the house alone. Stu and Gareth have gone into town to “get drunk.” but are probably round at Barry’s getting stoned. Lindsey is in London at an RCP picket of the TUC. Susie is in Germany, Pete and Guy in America. Lee is at Maynard Gardens.

I’m supposed to be working, writing an essay on the beats, and I’ve taken speed with that end in mind, but with everything that’s going on I’m going to use it instead to try and break this curse of silent misery that’s befallen me. I can’t write anymore—I don’t know where to start or how.

A void stands in the way of further progress. 


How little self-knowledge I have, let alone knowledge of others. This has been revealed by this whole acid episode. For instance, I don’t know Lindsey at all and I never have. What was in my mind re. her long ago was an ideal that bore no relation to actuality, hence the tears and gnashing of teeth. Ideals are forever being destroyed and they destroy us in the process. This hopefully leaves us wiser., but I don’t know about that. In this house, Lindsey’s things are all around me; I long to discover the person hidden in them: to discover a person hidden in these empty objects would be a revelation and make me feel things fully.

What is this divide between people? I’ve never ever crossed it. I’m trying and failing to capture my meaning right now in words and trying to convey a sense of the futility I feel when I look at the things people surround themselves with. I don’t ‘want’ Lindsey anymore in that way, although I want to know her and I can’t; I can only get a sideways glance and in that glance the awful gulf between apparent and real is revealed to me. As it was last Monday night. I’ve been living in the same house as her for five months and I attach the label ‘friend’ to the name ‘Lindsey’.

But yet she’s still a stranger. It fucks me up. There are places in people shut away from others, closed off by walls, mysterious places I understand nothing of. We can’t get there by talking. Lindsey has seemed remote all term. There are difficulties at home hanging over her head, but she never feels any need to share the burden. We hear nothing; perhaps we’re not close enough. Are some walls of reserve so solid that only certain affinities can melt them away? Maybe it’s just Lindsey, just us, or just a combination of the two.

I think she should leave Watermouth, burn her bridges, move away, start afresh. 


I’ve been round at Gaveston Street pretty regularly since I cam back and I’ve got to know Paula and Elaine as well as they let me. At certain points in relationships labels are distributed and the barriers go up. This is what I was referring to earlier with regards to Lindsey’s hidden side. Once in a category it’s difficult to break free, and the first few occasions are crucial.

Class-A

Today I got a letter telling me I’ve been charged with possession and misuse of a Class-A drug, and with supplying it to Stu. I face a maximum sentence of fourteen years and an unlimited fine. 


I’ve been reading about what happened to me that night. I had a psychomimetic reaction, a model psychosis, and to all intents and purposes I was insane for two hours. For those two hours I was locked inside my own mind and it was misery. I knew what was happening although I couldn’t cope with it. I remember seeing myself as though I was acting in some second rate One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.

I also remember thinking that I could have got myself committed permanently by perpetuating my insane behaviour.

I feel numb.

Mug

Stu and I went to see the solicitor, Alan Martin, and he told us that “the police may well drop charges but I can do nothing until you are sent to court.”

My defense is this: I bought the drug while drunk and took it while drunk, I’m naive where drugs are concerned and I was a mug, etc. I think Martin believes me.

A line of thought can extend itself without end

Stu's been charged with possession of a Class-A controlled drug. I went to the Welfare Office at the Uni. and was told to go see Alan Martin, solicitor with Milton, Abelson, and Goulding.

I overindulged. That much is clear. A line of thought can extend itself without end and I became a victim of my own train of thought. The belief that I was about to die scared me shitless and I suddenly valued the normality I was striving so hard to escape above all else.

I didn’t want to lose it—I didn’t want to die.

Big blue duvet

Objective view: trouble with the cops. Last night, about ten-thirty, I dropped 2½ tabs of acid with Lee and Stu. Basically I fucked up. . . .

To begin with it was wonderful. I knelt on the floor before Stu’s hi-fi, hands extended in front of me like some new apostle as the music caressed me into near orgasm. Paroxysms of delight, unbearable ecstasy, sounds becoming shapes and coloured lights melting away in my mind—real revelatory stuff. I thought I’d found the answer, found ‘It.’ It was just so easy I couldn’t come to terms with it and I kept asking S. and L., how have we been mistaken into deceiving ourselves that this isn’t the way ahead? Just swallow a piece of paper and there it was, heaven on earth.

I knew at that moment that I’d tasted the ultimate in sensory pleasure and I could have died fulfilled right then, knowing I had had it all. I knew everything. 


But as I was lying on Stu’s bed on his big blue duvet, a seed of doubt grew in the very core of my being which I ruthlessly tried to suppress until I couldn’t. Already I was a long, long way from Stu and Lee, so I sat up and spoke.

“I am going to die.”

Lee tittered—it must have sounded so ridiculous. But the more I tried to fight it the worse it got, and the line of thought raced away into the infinite until I was holding on for dear life. I knew if I let go, that would be it . . . I can only indicate all of this in a very obtuse manner . . . I couldn’t sense my body at all. I felt for my pulse. There was nothing there.

I was as good as dead!

This was now a hellish nightmare that kept on and on and on. If I stopped breathing then my heart would stop. I started to panic and throw things, and screamed in my misery and by now Lindsey and her brother Ed (who was down for the weekend) were hovering on the stairs. I insisted they drive me to the hospital.

“I must hold on, I must hold on” I kept telling myself as I lay on my back in the car, my head in Lindsey’s lap, everything fragmented—I can only remember the journey through foreign and unfamiliar streets as a series of suffocating images. Stopped at traffic lights, Ed asking, scared now, if he should run them, me in the back shouting “Yes! YES!” and bracing my feet against the window.

About to expire. 


We found Watermouth General but it was deserted at this hour and I ran around in a panic, tearing off my shirt in, pounding at my chest in fear, trying to restart my heart. The caretaker called the police. On the way to Wessex County we got lost and stopped to phone for directions, and here the police picked us up.

At the hospital I remember a freezing walk across the car park in stocking-feet, naked to the waist, my baggy purple shirt hanging open, buttons gone. A kaleidoscopic of images: a hospital foyer with nurses, wheelchairs, geriatrics. I crawled across the floor, lost, then recovered sufficiently to be led meekly to a white windowless room. There I lay on a mattress on one corner until help arrived.

A cursory examination pronounced me saved and I again entered the world of the living. In the car I’d been convinced that normal life for me was at an end; at worst I would die, at best I'd be permanently incarcerated in an asylum—white gowns, strait-jackets, the lot. But now I began the slow descent to ‘normal’ thinking. 


Back at Westdorgan Road the police made a search of my room and grilled Stu, Lee and Lindsey. Lee, having handed over the one remaining tab at the hospital, was taken to the cells and spent a night locked up on acid, yet still stuck to his story that he was clean and an innocent bystander. He escaped charges on “statutory defence.”

I was OK within half-an-hour and spent an unreal night staring at the wall and feeling dirty. 


I am a word on a page

I’ve been putting off writing here and now it is such a relief to escape back into this script, although often this writing bears little relation to anything outward anyone else could see.

How to avoid melodrama? The pages prior to these don’t satisfy. I fail to tell the stories of my days, but I try at least, which is probably more important. Perhaps one day this secret scribble will find its place, but at this exact moment, university, past, present, people . . . it’s all nothing.

I only care about the future. I love life more each day I live it. And if even this means nothing and makes no sense, it doesn’t matter; the answer’s in the attempt. So I channel every ounce of my soul through this hand and pen because this is all I have and will ever have and all the future you-who-reads-this has to tell of me and what I was and how I felt. I have my ‘now’ and you—an older version of me, perhaps, or someone else entirely?—have your own ‘nows,’ and these words are all we have.

Language is metaphorical. History is just words, the only reality we have, a construct of reality. I try to escape the bookish perpetuation of old words, language as metaphor for ‘out there’, ‘in here’, ‘me’. ‘I’ am a word on a page. As soon as I learn that, I’ll be free of the futile attempts at capturing everything that regulates my being through language. I can be free of the book and the page and the word if I can only see it.

Words get me well. “They all talked at once, their voices insistent and contradictory and impatient, making of unreality a possibility, then a probability, then an incontrovertible fact, as people will when their desires become words.” William Faulkner, The Sound & The Fury. p.109.

I feel like a trip into town in pursuit of my ideals of company and wild sociability. 


Apocalypse now and then

I went to see Apocalypse Now and was impressed.

No-thought

It's 6:40 p.m., Jeremy just went back, and I am in Gareth's (my) room at Westdorgan Road, and a fresh page, a fresh start to free myself from the mindless no-thought and the rush of empty headed drunks. Where do I go from here?

Much to say, so much so that I don’t even know where to begin. Words.

What I’m really trying to grasp and failing dismally to do so is the essence of the last few days. How to tell? What have I done but get up late, lounge around watching TV and usually go out in the evening to get drunk. . . .

A party at Mo’s . . . all the crew there, plus Pete’s sister Leila who is down from London and Tony too, from Gloucester (he’s living with Grant). I got drunk and stayed until four. Lee climbed onto the roof of the Tripoli restaurant below and was shouted at by the irate owner.

As original as Christmas

Barry’s band State of Siege played at the Chelsea.

The pub was packed with Jason’s hippy friends and although Jason, Barry, Ade and drummer Chris admitted to being nervous, they sounded passable, with the exception of Jason. He was terrible.

He strutted arrogantly around up front, pouting and whining, the Peacock Prince himself. Barry says he is trying for the Jim Morrison bit. After the set was over and they’d finished to limp silence, Barry seemed sickened off with the numerous comments about Jason’s ineptitude. John Turney was there, back from Greece, and predictably mouthy about his sexual exploits—“I fell in love twice” etc., etc.

“About as original as Christmas” was his verdict on the band. We went back to Gaveston Street and stayed up until four o’clock.

Hectic

I don’t have time for this diary, which is not to say I’m busy with anything worthwhile or important.

Just the usual hectic round of going out, getting drunk and feeling helpless about it all.

Enemies of the state

In Watermouth again at ten last night after a nine-hour coach journey enlivened only by the Pakistani man in front of me crouched miserably on his seat being sick into a plastic bag, the contents of which then leaked out across the floor much to the muttered, eyes-averted disgust of an elderly couple opposite.

Jeremy and Lee had traveled down on Monday night but I didn’t call at Maynard Gardens. Lindsey was in when I got back to Westdorgan Road and she filled me in on all that’s happened while I was away.

Susie is preparing to leave for Germany on October 7th; Stu is still away; John Turney is in Greece (Shelley and her sister too); Barry’s band Enemies of the State (snigger) are preparing for their debut at the Chelsea on Friday—Jason is still with them, ego bigger than ever; Lindsey is still working at the housing office and the Admiral, and Barry works at the Frigate now. Del Caraway isn’t coming to Watermouth this autumn after all. He’s still convalescing at home in Milton Keynes. Gareth is still in Peterborough.

This afternoon I called round at Gaveston Street after meeting Lindsey at the Frigate and getting slightly drunk. Paula and Barry were playing chess when I knocked on the window.

Barry told me about the band, showed me the posters advertising their debut and he claims they may even get to support New Order when the latter play at Medusa’s. Ade called round later, and Jason too, and I left at 5.30 to walk on Stoneways Road to see if Mo was in; I walked all the way back when she wasn’t.

Lindsey says that Pete has written Mo a letter from Plotinus and that he and Guy and someone else from Watermouth are sticking together and grumbling about everything. I got back to Barry’s at 6.45 and he and I went to play pool in the Chelsea.

Jeremy and Lee called round after we’d got back; Lee says that Alex is back with a £400 fine hanging over him, which he must pay off at the rate of ten pounds a week. ‘My’ room is currently being occupied by the bald Belsenite and Gav’s brother. Oh, and Ian caught hepatitis in Marrakech.

Barry, Jeremy, Lee, Paula, Elaine and I met Lindsey in the Green Man at eight and went to the Chelsea for more pool. Jeremy seemed out of things and ill at ease, but he and L. came along to L.A.’s Roxy night and we all had big laughs at the phallic jugs and pictures of naked he-men generously displayed behind the bar, no doubt appearing very ‘provincial’ in our reactions. . . .

Sussed

I bought the Phases club compilation (“State of Siege”—what a title!) The track by Eat People is “Sussed”—post-punk thrash with Grant’s vocals to good effect. “I read all the right books/you’ve got me sussed” etc. Dad found it amusing.

Grant himself rang, just back from Gloucester. He has a “crap” room with an Asian family who “don’t want him rolling in drunk after midnight” . . .

Summer of 1972

Monday dawned wet and grey. I’d intended going to Watermouth in the evening but couldn’t be bothered. Jeremy and Lee caught the last bus.

 I couldn’t shake off that day-before-new-term feeling which has dogged me since Sunday evening. Mum and Dad thought me “morose” and Dad asked me if I was sad about going back. I don’t know. I just keep my eyes fixed firmly on that light ahead. The next eight months are going to be SHIT but must be endured, then I’ll have done all that’s expected of me. . . .

More family ghost stories.

In the summer of 1972 Robert was going out with Susan Lloyd and they were at her Gran’s house on Greenhead Lane. The house was of the ‘cellar-head’ variety, with the kitchen in an alcove at the top of the cellar stairs. Susan was alone at the time and screamed when she saw a figure—both she and Robert saw it as a dark, shadowy shape bending over the sink as though doing the washing up.

Susan’s Gran was in the hospital and when they told the old woman she didn’t sound surprised and said it was probably Susan’s (dead) Grandad getting the house ready for her return.

Mum told me that when Rob and Susan arrived at our house they looked very shaken.

Mum has frequently told me about her friend Nora Bennett who painted a picture of Mayfield Abbey while they were at college in the early ‘70s. One day the face of a nun appeared at one of the windows and although she repeatedly painted it out, it would simply reappear the next morning. This so unnerved her that she sold it to a junk shop and it remained there for months.

Mum says her friend was a very practical, down-to-earth type of woman, not given to imagination or playing tricks . . .

Carcass of self

Sunday slid by and I no longer remember how. Mum surprised me, making me promise that I’ll ask Jeremy if he wants to go to America after we finish university. She frequently says that she doesn’t care what I do so long as I “get a good degree.”

God, I am sick of thinking through problems and reaching brick-wall of No Solution time after time.

My brain swims with ideas; fragments and snatches of one way, then another . . . this and that route opening up and slipping away again but still I sit on my fat backside. This stinking carcass of self is doomed to a life of miserable self-pity and nostalgia for moments gone, unless . . . unless . . . I decide to grab hold of everything and anything and DO, DO, DO.

Life is here all round me for the use of. Why can’t I release that joy and trembling excitement at things-future all the time?

Young-couple-with-car syndrome

This evening at seven I met Jeremy in the Beatrice Hotel in Farnshaw.

Gillian Wade turned up not long after, as did Deborah Blakey and boyfriend Tony; Tommy never quite managed it. Gillian is off to study Philosophy at Rummidge. She was OK this time, not trying so hard and thereby coming across more as herself. Deborah and Tony showed up late; they’d been to Fiona Abery’s wedding (she was in the year above us at school). Julie Crabtree is married now too, and Sharon Horsfield has a baby. . . .

It’s an odd thought, because we college-types remain in identical circumstances to two years ago and live below the official poverty line. Deborah and Tony are sliding irretrievably into marriage and the young-couple-with-car syndrome, all set for the next few years.

Being fairly intolerant these days, I couldn’t understand what D. finds attractive about T. He seems particularly dull and dead. I nipped to the off licence at nine to buy a bottle of whiskey for Jeremy and I as were going to Addie Williams’ party “somewhere in Egley,” and then the five of us drove to Keddon and the Copper Kettle before dropping Gillian off at home. Deborah gave Jeremy and I a lift back to Egley and we tried to find the party.

Jeremy’d lost the invite but remembered it was at No. 11, so we tried 11 Egley Rise, then 11 Briar Avenue. The rain began to fall and we splashed through the streets cursing the heavens and ourselves.

Terrible times.

After an hour of this we were soaked and no longer cared about the party; we wanted to get there merely on principle. We eventually gave up at about one and went back to my house and sat up talking in the front room until three.

I give up on Easterby.

Inflated sum

Lee has sold the oscilloscope we blagged back in February to Andrzej Wiechec for £30, who intends reselling it for an inflated sum.

Bridge

The weather has been a bit better.

Claire rang at seven to say she would come up in ¾ of an hour and dutifully arrived; I suggested we go out somewhere. She was driving her new car, a yellow Fiat Polski, which roared and shuddered and kangaroo’d as she crashed through the gears. I giggled in the passenger seat while she laughed and occasionally stalled the car. She hasn’t passed her test yet although she seems quite a competent driver to me.

We headed for the King George at Garsdale Glen and she clattered across the swing bridge over the canal at such speed that it caused us both some amusement. We stayed until closing time, three pints helping me to overcome my usual woodenness, loosening my tongue. The evening passed off unspectacularly but enjoyably—I like being in her company and I think she had a good time too.

On the way back we bought fish and chips and ate them at her place (her brother slumped in front of the TV), before she gave me a lift back to Egley after midnight where we said goodbye until next Easter, perhaps.

Rain grey

Mum told me today that Dad is seriously thinking of jacking his job in at Christmas and may stay ‘retired’ permanently. . . .

I spent the day predictably. I did an hour’s work if that—a token gesture brought on by Mum’s arrival home from school and Nanna P.’s arrival at six. The weather has broken and it rained grey all afternoon.

Somewhere else

I still don’t know what to do about the Maynard Gardens squat.

Lee and I have to cough up £90/find a guarantor or the electricity to the second and third floors will be cut off. Is it worth staying on there . . ? It seems like capitulation, giving up the house to the Philip Street mob, and Lee says he’d feel bad about leaving Mr. Coldwater-Hicks with Gav and co. to contend with.

Yet again it seems I’m prey to these hassles just before another term begins. We’ve almost decided to find somewhere new—“we’ll get somewhere else, then,” says Lee, simply—but it won’t be as easy as that.

Hidden circuits

The history of England is filled with ruthlessness and brutality to other peoples and to our own, traditions and institutions bathed in blood—the Highland Clearances for example, that systematically destroyed the tribal society of the Scottish Highlands so that the English and anglicized Scottish gentry could have their grouse moors and estates.

No doubt Devolution has always been a dead duck as far as Westminster is concerned because the English government wants the money from North Sea oil and Scottish businesses have actively campaigned against a separate assembly for Scotland because they know that such an assembly would be returned with a Labour majority. Class interests transcended ones of nationalism in that case.

People have been exploited, oppressed, misled and slaughtered and yet they still flock around politicians and, like Dad, hoot and wave the flag and say that Britain is great.

Tedium

A day of unrelieved tedium. I rang Jeremy to see if he fancied going for a drink but he said he wanted to watch the US Open men’s tennis final. I also rang Claire but she was working.

Pete and Guy will be in Plotinus at this very moment.

Plunge

I went to the match with Rob and Carol and saw Athletic lose 0-5 against a very good Whitstall Park team. We had a pint in the Hanson Arms beforehand. Rob and Carol stayed until dark and C. drove back across the moors to Saxton.

In the evening I typed out an account of our trips to Borley Church. No work attempted. I’ve been dreaming vividly—Lindsey, Claire, arguments with Dad. I wake up feeling scared about the lack of time I’ve allowed myself to do my extended essay.

I’m in a headlong plunge toward the new term and the third year at Watermouth and soon I’ll be without free time, without time to think or relax, in a very similar position to the one I was in just before my ‘A’ levels.

I have the same intimations of disaster, only this time I don’t think I’ll get away with it.

Nameless voices crying for kindness

I signed on in Farnshaw at twelve and phoned Grant to ask him if he wanted to go for a drink.

While waiting in the dole office I noticed my old English teacher Mr. Giles sitting there—Jeremy told me later that he’s been made redundant after taking secondment for a year. I didn’t get a chance to speak to him.

I met Grant by St. Anne’s and we went for a drink at the Albert Hotel down Moxthorpe Road and had four pints there listening to “Pyjamara,” “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Suffer Little Children” repeatedly on the jukebox—this last song has been banned by some shops because of its Moors Murders subject matter. We went on to the Builder’s Arms (PIL, Hendrix) before walking home to listen to more music - Beefheart and The Fugs second album this time. The latter is an excellent record.

Grant mentioned as an aside that John Peel played a track by the (now defunct) Eat People on his show last night. Grant and the band recorded the track for inclusion on a compilation LP of bands from Phases back in February—he came up from Gloucester to a studio in Whincliffe especially. The LP is out now and John Peel played Eat People’s sole contribution at 11.30 p.m. last night, much to Grant’s surprise, who was listening in bed at the time.

He said it was an odd and slightly embarrassing experience hearing himself singing on national radio; he now thinks the band’s stuff is fairly undistinguished and he agreed with me when I said it sounded very much like the Birthday Party. He even conceded that such was his admiration at one stage he’d made a conscious attempt to sound like Nick Cave. . . .
He left about five. Mum and Dad came back and Dad later told me of his amusement at the way Grant had asked him for a light, with exaggerated politeness and awkward words. Nanna P. was brought across in the evening, and although she was quieter than usual, she was OK. Andrew rang later too. He’s back in the UK after his Denmark trip and is talking about America now.

An end to all that

Lee got back last night and I called round to see him.

He was noticeably quiet and subdued but seemed to perk up when out of the house. As we waited for the bus into Easterby he told me Ian has come back from Marrakech bronzed and sunswept, only to discover that Gav and co. had "borrowed" £150-worth of his dole money while he was away. The squalor of the Philip St. squat continues, as does Alex’s detention in police custody pending charges about the stolen skull.

Lee tentatively suggested we “find somewhere else,” which I’ve been advocating all summer—he’s always refused to consider this as he feels bad about leaving Mrs. Coldwater-Hicks’s son with the mess of Gav, etc. I just wish we’d crossed this bridge weeks ago as I’ve got the new term looming ahead with all still to do.

I feel overwhelmed.

On top of all this, Lee showed me a letter from Seeboard demanding either a guarantor or £90 to keep the electric for the top floor of the grey house. This seemed like the final straw, the effort needed to sort out the hassle just too much . . .  So we—Lee, Ian and I, and possibly Stu and Gareth—must find somewhere new and soon.

Lee’s brought the nicked oscilloscope up from Watermouth to flog. An end to all that. Our striped jersey, swag bag days are over, an odd feature of life at Jervis Terrace and the Vicarage, now gone in a new regime of moderation and stability.

I came home with Dad at three and telephoned Watermouth DHSS to see if I could sign on up here, spinning a yarn about needing to look after a sick relative. It worked, and now I don’t have to travel 600 miles just to sign a scrap of paper.

Dad seems to be in a better mood today, limiting himself to a single despairing tirade against the “evil and ugly” McGahey who “deserves to be hanged.” He speculates that McGahey is waging war on Coal Board boss MacGregor because of ancient clan differences—“I bet that’s it! I’ll bet McGahey’s a Campbell !” I couldn’t believe it.

I wore my recovered coat today—I’d given it up for lost. . . .

New Britain

I was up before eight in time to see Mum leave for work but I made no effort to sit down and make a start on my work.

I frittered my valuable time away until  two when guilt finally took a hand and forced me into action. I made desultory notes for an hour and a half until Grant’s call interrupted me. It’s just a case of getting going, because I know once I’ve conquered the initial psychological barrier I’ll be able to do the work quickly and do it well. Perhaps coming home to do it was a mistake.

Grant called round half-an-hour after he’d called, staying until ten. He says he’s writing an obscene country and western song based on an impromptu rendering into a tape machine he and I did years back and has just finished reading a life of Artaud. I played him Whitehouse’s New Britain and the shrill electro-screams and metallic breathing prompted him to put his hands over his ears and demand that I turn it off because it was unnerving him. We listened to The Fugs and Captain Beefheart instead. . . .

Grant is going back to Gloucester soon to find accommodation for next term, which begins Oct 1st. We talked about the supernatural for a while and he told me of the alleged haunting of Woodley residence hall at Gloucester, where the shade of a mid ‘70s suicide has been heard and glimpsed on the top floor—one student supposedly felt himself being dragged across the floor in the middle of the night. Crying and sobs have been heard coming from one particular room, but always stop when the door is opened, & Grant said the building has an odd atmosphere. He also told me about the ‘Gloucester Prowler’ who creeps around the corridors of Woodley trying doors.

Dad was morose and subdued the brief time I was in his company. This I attribute to his hassles over his job that continue unabated. I’m returning to Watermouth tomorrow night to sign on Friday, and I’ll then travel back to Easterby the same day. This will consume another two and possibly three days of my rapidly dwindling holiday. I can’t push the guilty feelings from my mind. . . .

Numbers

I was up at twelve: Dad came home at two-thirty, Mum at four. . . .

Lee rang to say he’d got my coat from the bus station which is the best news I’ve had all week! I half expected Claire to ring and was vaguely disappointed when she didn’t. . . .

No work attempted. Lee comes back to Easterby on the last coach tonight. Head full all day of Spielgelgasse 1, Zurich (Cabaret Voltaire open nightly here, Feb-Aug 1916), Spiegelgasse 6 (where Lenin lived), and Bahnhofstrasse 19, on Zurich’s main shopping thoroughfare (Dada Gallery where many important artists showed).

Manifold errors

Jeremy and I went into town late morning and returned four hours later with several books from the library.

He isn’t looking forward to the festive season because with his Dad’s remarriage he feels like a stranger in his own home. He described to me the “constant edge” which exists between him and the rest of the ‘family,’ particularly with his step-brother and step-sister who have the usual tap-room derision for all forms of further education. I don’t envy him his situation.

Constant rain today, very heavy at times, but it’s still quite warm. Dad was annoyed at today’s TUC Congress; he said that their decision to give full support to the striking miners was “shocking” and “disgusting,” and declared it to be a “turning point in this country.” TV shots of the miners demonstrating outside the Congress elicited the usual “Look at that lot! You can’t tell whether they’re men or women” etc. “Look at that face—a shocking man,” he said when McGahey appeared, and he emphasised this last point with muttering and sighs.

Ever the reasoned polemicist.

I suppose I’m just as bad, flying into an internal fury on catching sight of the vision of baldness Alex’s friends uniformly present. They’re so utterly predictable, and this is what irritates me, but I never stay around to find out what they’re actually like as people; maybe this is unreasonable but I feel I’ve got the measure of them. Their ‘uniform’ of ‘weirdness’ and dole culture alienates me immediately.

Genesis P. Orridge was on ‘Earsay’ the other day talking about his mixed-media ideas, which I found quite interesting—but why the tired iconography of skulls and shaven-headed mysticism? It’s a tricky path negotiating judging harshly and failing to judge at all; both attitudes lead to manifold errors.

Andrew has been in Denmark since a week last Wednesday. Sten owed him some money from when he worked the festival last time and so paid for his airfare over. He hasn’t been in touch yet.

Crag

Our hike went off as planned despite glowering skies and spots of rain.

We left the house at nine and parked in Ranelathe, a place I dislike for the simple reason that I can never forget the terrible outings we had there with Nanna Beardsall and Reg when I was a kid. We would sit by the river while the latter would drag an unwilling Dad to the White Boar for a round, N.B.’s sandwiches of undercooked bacon and limp white bread getting bigger and bigger in my mouth as I chewed until, finally near to puking, I’d remove the rubbery mass without being seen.

With these memories looming large in my mind we set off over the bridge and on towards Carngill.

The Ainder was in full spate despite the drought, the water racing muddily between its banks. We tried unsuccessfully to cross through fields at Carngill but were forced back by a vicious looking brown bull with a ring through its nose which ignored Dad’s attempts to deter it with his stick. He was angry and “humiliated” at having to retrace his steps past two men repairing a roof who we presumed to be the creature’s owners.

We continued on the road through Raikel Stones. It grew very still and warm despite the overcast and as we climbed up onto the moors near High Edge Farm it looked as if it could thunder. . . .

We crossed a metaled road and continued along a green track emerging high above Whitgarth Reservoir which has recently been enlarged. Mum and Dad showed me a nearby barn that has been thatched with ling and heather by an expert from Northamptonshire at the behest of the Water Board. From then on it was a steady climb through fields to Dry Crag and the road which passes near Whitehill Cave; this we crossed to follow a rough rocky track across the moors, being passed by dozens of trials bikes, some of them quite old. We headed back down a metaled road to High Edge Farm in bright sun and our walk was nearly ended.

We were back at Ranelathe for six and at home within an hour.

Jeremy arrived at eight while I was on the ‘phone to Lee, who’d rung to say his bike has disappeared from the hallway of Maynard Gardens and that he was going round to tackle the prime suspects (from the Philip Street squat) with Gav, whose bike has gone as well, although his was stolen in the first place.

Our tape with the “whispers” has turned up at Radio Watermouth, which is good news as we thought it had been lost. I said to Lee that I’ll see him on Friday as I’ve got to sign on, but will probably come back straight away.

Jeremy is staying overnight.

Revenants

I slept with the light on most of the time last night again; this current surge of interest in things unknown has done nothing for my peace of mind at nights.

Dad retold me his experience with the mysterious cat during our first visit to Calverdale when we stayed in the cottage at Gilsey in August 1980. He was the only one up and he’d just come out from the kitchen after switching on the kettle when he saw a cat saunter with tail in the air across the middle of the floor. It disappeared behind a sofa in the corner of the room. He said he hadn’t noticed the cat on his way to the kitchen and was sure he would’ve had it been there. He pulled out the sofa but the cat was gone – no trace of it. He looked all around the room and even checked to see if there were any holes in the sofa through which the cat could climb into the upholstery.

Nothing.

Mum also told me how she hated sleeping in the upstairs bedroom and was often “scared stiff’ by tapping at the windows and rattling casements, as though someone was walking about in the room. There was also an unpleasant atmosphere and a cold, damp sensation up there.

I remember that second night Lee, Jeremy, Michael and I spent in the porch of the church at Borley; we’d just heard the whispering on the tape and we were suddenly assailed by a powerful smell like rotten and decaying vegetation. It was a musty unpleasant smell and reminded me of the odour of the stinkhorn mushrooms that grow sometimes in the garden. We all four noticed it more or less simultaneously. Lee even went outside the porch and said the smell lingered there too. As I remember there wasn’t very much wind. It seemed odd that the smell should just suddenly occur.

Jeremy rang tonight, and he’s coming over tomorrow night about eight. The rain has been falling steadily all day, although Mum and Dad went to Snaythrop Abbey to pick blackberries during the afternoon. They left me here to “work,” although needless to say I did little of that, listening instead to Athletic’s match at Holmeshaw on the radio, which they lost 3-2, and reading Underwood’s Borley book.

Planning on a hike near Raikel Stones and Whitehill Cave tomorrow if the weather is good. It’s 12.30 and the rain is still pouring . . .