You don’t look the type

I’m dreading the Letter (or the ‘phone call) with the verdict on my future. Just now the telephone rang and I went to answer it with jangling nerves and a thudding heart . . . but it was only Andrew ringing to talk about the match.

Things are better left hidden and unsaid.

 Last night Lee called in at Westdorgan Road and he and I took the bus into town and went to the Underground. It was full of first year students and I almost felt pity for them all having so long left. I talked briefly with one, a Poly student named Jim who seemed surprised when I said I was at Watermouth.

“You don’t look the type” he told me, which I took as a compliment. 


Afterwards Lee, Barry and I went to Maynard Gardens. These days Gav’s room is always full of people coming and going. While we were there several soul-boys came and settled down, acting very familiar with Gav. His room presented a sordid sight; foil, wads of dirty cotton wool, used syringes, and Rizla papers littered the floor, all the seedy paraphernalia of the drug culture. Ian got quite carried away by it all and started talking about “jacking up” and “dorking out.” 


Barry too is always coming out with drug clichés, endlessly trotting out all the miserable words and phrases (“Chasing the dragon,” “skag,” ‘Blow,” “crash-out”). It’s difficult to believe he takes it all so seriously, but evidently he does.

This afternoon we were at Broad Street, in Jason’s room, and it made me realise again how much I despise that whole type (for it is a definite type that’s about these days, a newer version of the old hippy dope smoking, pacifistic, ‘Bongs-not-Bombs’ formula).

Lee and Stu and I amuse ourselves by parodying the sort of “it’d be good on acid” type comment that they’re always coming out with and which sums up their outlook completely. And sure enough, today as Barry and Jason discussed the relative merits of music vis–à–vis painting in terms of its impact on the audience, Barry declared that music is much more effective and Jason came back with, “yeah, but if go to a modern art gallery while you’re tripping . . .”

I should have got up and walked out right then.

Worse than useless

Narrative description or introspective monologue? I need to choose.

Del has been back in Watermouth the last few days and stayed here at Westdorgan Road last night, sharing a double bed with Stu. He’s all but recovered from his phobic anxiety depersonalization disorder of last summer and seems now to enjoy talking about it to anyone who’ll listen.

It was interesting discussing my LSD panic attack with him and he thinks I was suffering from a perfect case of temporary depersonalization, hence the unreality, deadness and isolation I felt then and then the other week, when under LSD again.

Lee called round here briefly to see if I was going to go with him to the crypt down Smith Square, this after we discovered the other day that one of the large wooden gates was unpadlocked. He seemed distant and left after a little while . . . 

Tonight Del drove Stu, Lindsey and I down into town and we picked up Turney on our way to the Lancaster. Enemies of the State throbbed away upstairs but we didn’t see Barry once and were loathe to fork out £1.50 just for the privilege. Del managed to see him and Barry promised to be down in five minutes to see us all, but we waited twenty minutes and were finally thrown out at closing time and still he hadn’t shown up.

I am finding little success in my attempts to overcome this great block in the way of work, writing and thinking. Instead of fighting it I’m content to swan about lazily, watch TV and sit in the kitchen doing nothing.

No books read, nothing worthy recorded or even in my mind. I feel completely ordinary at this moment in my life, a feeling worse than uselessness.

Flapper

I watched Barry’s band at the Cellar and afterwards I fell into conversation with Rowan Morrison, who I’ve not spoken to for a year or more.

She’s adopted a decadent ‘twenties look—ankle-length fur coat, matching fur hat, flapper hair, cigarette smoked elegantly, head held back superciliously . . . We talked all evening and she invited me back to her room on Avebury Street where she lives alone on the second floor.

We were up talking until the early hours and I slept on her floor. 


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.

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” . . .

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.

Just wait!

The situation at Maynard Gardens persists, and although I’m about to move back in there, my doubts remain.

It’s basically becoming a free house for the shaved weirds Alex considers friends, and Gav is being drawn increasingly into their circle; he now sports a shitty mohican, and when Lee and I object to Alex’s mess or the filth of the ground floor, Gav comes out with liberal sentiments . . . “you don’t have to go into his room,” etc.

Alex has scrapped his move to Amsterdam—which was the only reason Pete and Lee let him move in in the first place, knowing that if he'd been in on Maynard Gardens from the start it would have quickly deteriorated into a Vicarage situation. Sarah lives at Maynard Gardens too now, along with an arrogant twat called Andy who has an insolent and haughty air. Another shaven headed friend of Gav’s has moved in as well, and when they’re all in the kitchen it looks like Auschwitz.

Gav’s room is awash with pebbles, lolly sticks and letraset. “I have been so abused” is painted on the wall.

We have been so amused—and annoyed—by your pseudery, your useless ideas and liberal ideals, your flirtation with all things Eastern, the Buddha, and Japanese symbols, your low level tables and ‘performance art’ sincerities . . .

Punk Habitat –– Mindless Pretence!

I detest them all.

So in a way, although I’m doubtful about moving back in, I want to, simply for reasons of gut indignation. I don’t want to let Maynard Gardens become another “anarchist squat.” Lee and I are talking about rehanging a door at the foot of the stairs leading to the second floor, thereby sealing it off entirely.

All of this is bound to get to me eventually, so there’s some trepidation when I think about the future and the bleak winter months plagued in that place.

Barry rang this morning from his Dad’s restaurant in Debdenshaw. He and Ade seem committed to leaving the band, and B. considers their demo’ tape terrible. He is embarrassed by it, he says, and the more people he meets the more it is impressed upon him how crap Jason’s singing is.

And today Susie tells me Jason is going around with a copy of the demo tape in his pocket, getting angry at other bands and prophetically shouting, “Just wait . . ! “ 

The miner’s strike is now in its fifth month. I’ve scarcely mentioned the industrial troubles of this summer and spring, but that’s not because I’m ignoring them. I usually buy a copy of the Times to keep up.

Today, three thousand pickets tried to stop two Yorkshire miners from breaking the strike. Big battles with police result. There seems to be evidence of a very small trickle back to work. In Scotland, 105 miners reported for work, five more than yesterday. If the strike breaks now & the men start to go back then the entire dispute will have been lost. On Sunday, a demonstrator was killed by a plastic bullet as the RUC tried unsuccessfully to detain Noraid organizer Martin Galvin. Although they waded into the peaceful crowds with batons he managed to escape.

Life hasn’t been too gripping since I came back from Borley, and since then I’ve done little but mooch about here or wander around town, at a loss at what to do with myself. I suppose if I really applied myself I could go on holiday, to Europe at least, but something (dread familiarity) tells me I’ll stay here until my course over and done with.

I can’t wait until that day.

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.

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. . . .

→ FORWARD →

Four years on from June 8th 1980 → FORWARD →

Pete and I called in at Westdorgan Road last night and were both struck by the atmosphere of boredom, ill-temper and cynicism. We were glad to leave and I began to rue my decision to move in at the end of the month. I put my foot in it yet again when Ade uncharacteristically refused the oil as it was passed to him. I bluntly commented “perhaps you should try reading a book,” and he left shortly after scarcely saying another word.

Since Monday the weather has been consistently hot, not a cloud in the sky. This morning at ten the thermometer in my east-facing bathroom registered nearly 80°F. I’m finding it impossible to work and apply myself to the task in hand. I struggled all morning with the writing of an extended essay on Burroughs for Colin Pasmore, an essay that should have been written and handed in on Wednesday, but by mid-afternoon I’d failed even to make a start and so missed another tutorial (on Alice Walker), which is my second for this course this term. I can hardly look forward to a very encouraging report. I managed two-and-a-half sides and then spent four hours looking at books on photography and film, Rodchenko’s 1924 portraits of Mayakovsky, etc.

I finally managed to write eight sides in rough, and copied up 2½ sides, and at ten-thirty, Pete and I went to the Lancaster to see Jeff Fowler and Miles Beattie’s band That Whole Panic! The music was fast funk, Jeff’s girlfriend Laura on keyboards, M. Beattie all arms and legs, pouting, on vocals (“Trees and sky, no reason why . . .”), JF an excellent bassist. Lindsey, Barry, Stu and Susie were there too, Lindsey and Barry in particular quite drunk.

Our LSD extravaganza is set for the end of next week and the number of participants is now some half-a-dozen. I sat there watching the sparse crowd and wishing I had the wherewithal to perform ‘live.’

Entrance hall

I've been worried about all my things piled up unprotected in my old room at the Vicarage, so quite late on Lee and I returned with his bike lock and a hammer, and climbed in through the basement window (the lock on the front door is now at the Grey House). We found Morris snoring off his hangover in Lee’s old room: Lee had locked him in and so he’d had to piss in the corner.

It was pitch black inside, and as we groped for the stairs we bumped into 'Dylan’ who was wandering about, alone in the darkness. Lee nearly hit him with the hammer.

“I thought I had met an early demise” said Dylan, in his odd, precise way.

Lee and I went upstairs and smashed the glass above the door on the first floor landing leading up to my room, wound the bike lock through the gap, and thus sealed off the top floor. We left our friend (“psychedelic Ken,” according to one of Alex’s friends who seems to know of him) standing bewildered and lost in the dark entrance hall outside Ben’s room, his glasses still hanging precariously from his right ear.

Decent trousers

I spent the day reading Wilson’s The Occult, pleasant inaction before the fire in the unaccustomed comforts of the dining room, understanding that I need to digest and come back to what I’m reading before its full import can be properly realized.

Dad is angry that the familiar dark blue of Easterby City buses is being changed to the standardized red and white of Yorkshire Metro, which he sees as an erosion of the ‘individuality’ of the identity of the old city of Easterby. When not in daily contact with him it’s easy to forget, but I realise now how utterly reactionary he is.

Mum too keeps making her customary digs and hints about my appearance and my ‘career’ after I’ve graduated. “You’ll have to buy a pair of decent trousers when you’re looking for work. Both Andrew and Robert have realised that you have to conform eventually.” She says she was tempted to buy me a pair of “decent trousers”—presumably jeans—before I came home and today mentioned, with contrived nonchalance, that Andrew had commented on my suitability as an editor at a big publishing firm like Longman’s.

I refuse to respond to any of these hints and nudges.

Fabric of the everyday

I’m planning an essay on William Carlos Williams and his relationship with the Modernist artists of the early 20th C; I want to compare Duchamp’s ready-mades and Williams’ “Red Wheelbarrow” (from Spring and All) etc. . . . I’ve done a little reading today in the library and I think I can produce a decent piece of work, as it’s very interesting—in fact so much so that I could hardly keep my mind focused on the specific problem long enough and so had to come home, intending to utilise this momentum in a much needed attempt to write something here a bit more worthy than the usual pap.

Instead I got enmeshed in the fabric of the everyday—conversations, extraneous thoughts, the fruitless chat and chaff of humdrum living—and I forgot my resolve.

Sometimes I find living in a communal household fairly difficult, and I’m reduced to a state of edgy irritation and needless ranting. Tonight I was as fractious as ever, and it produced exactly nothing. My natural disposition is towards the solitary and self-contained and I think there’s a lot to look forward to in living alone (as Barry, Lee and I all intend doing after June 30th). We’re going to start looking soon.

Lee faces an assessment on March 14th he says he knew nothing about, and he’s a bit alarmed as he feels he’s done nothing really apart from his photogram box, which he’s now going to build into a full-size room, complete with glass-paneled door. He and I removed one from the vicarage up Albany Mount tonight and struggled with it back to the Art College.

Now Ade is here, waiting vainly for Barry to turn up. Plans for the as yet unnamed band still fly back and forth, with drummers to be contacted, portable recording studios to be booked, tapes to be made etc. Five months has produced nothing but plans, plans and more plans. Barry’s out more evenings than not; potential girl friend Tina has stood him up several times and fobs him off with excuses. He’s also been after a Swedish friend of Inga’s he met recently at the Broadway and, scarce able to conceal his jubilant swagger, announced to Lee and Pete and I that he was spending the night at her place. Turned out he, Inga and the girl slept in the same room on separate mattresses, and her Swedish boyfriend turned up the next morning.

The end

I spent most of the day with Lindsey. I met her in the coffee shop in the library basement, went for a baked potato in the Cellar and ended up round at Gareth and Stu’s.

They live next door to the pub up Treadwell Road, near the cemetery. They both dislike living where they do. Their landlady overpowers them with endless talk, and when we arrived they were sitting watching TV in her tasteless living room. She was out, but her ugly Pekinese Ming slobbered all over us and even tried mating with my arm.

We had a drink at the Wickbourne Road Inn, and Lindsey came back with me to Jervis Terrace. Barry and Pete had rented a colour TV and threw bangers at us as we stood at the door. Ade gave Lindsey a lift home. We got on well I thought, but I’m wiser this time, and I won’t make the same mistake again.

PiL loomed in the evening, but I came to the conclusion that I didn’t really care whether I saw Public Image Ltd. or not, and on reflection I think it was a positive thing that I didn’t want to go. It turned out they only played seven numbers anyway.

What with Lydon’s unashamed exploitation of his audiences (same songs duplicated on each LP) and his recent feeble renditions of “Anarchy in the UK” (quote: “If I ever play a Sex Pistols song again it will be the end”) then I don’t believe I missed out. My recent comments as to his ‘historical importance’ were all just crap. Forget him. He’s lived too long and is an example of what happens to all true punks in the end; they either die or cop out, and it’s Lydon’s misfortune that he didn’t do the former.

So Barry, who’d come to the same decision as me, partly motivated by prospects for female company at the pub, went down in Ade’s car with Pete and Mo’s tickets as well, and got £5 each for them.

Dexys

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No way is noble

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was in black too.

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

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

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

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

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

Gang of one

I got up early-ish and set off to Grant’s, getting there at eleven; he was out so I went into Easterby and signed on along with skinheads and others. I have to go back on Wednesday at 9 a.m.

I bought The Fall’s new single “The Man Whose Head Expanded/Ludd Gang” which was new in the shop today, but it’s disappointing. Marc Riley’s been kicked out and Mark E. said in the Melody Maker recently that he wants to cut the melody out completely and get back to a simpler more noisy format, but this single shows no sign of this, just a restatement (and not as good a restatement at that) of old themes.

Maybe I’ll grow to like it.

I went back to Grant’s house and we passed the afternoon in the dark back room playing records while Grant criticised his brother, forcing him into humbled half-apologies. He was pretty fed up again I think and dislikes his family, describing them as “good liberal middle-class Guardian readers.” He seems to be constantly on edge and in a prickly mood with them which his Mum counters with blind cheerfulness and chuckles.

His sister has grown up a lot since I last saw her and has developed into a typical Egley Grammar Schoolite. His brother flogged me some singles  by New Order, Sex Pistols and Public Image hw wants rid of. At his age I was listening to Santana and jazz-rock, but then I didn’t have Grant for an older brother. But he’s still into Doctor Who, so he’s an odd mix.

At seven we went round to Nik’s house and set off through the woods to the Albion. Grant and Nik seemed quiet and subdued. Tim the guitarist was there and a few others I remembered soon turned up.

I went to cash a cheque at the off-licence nearby, came back and bought Grant and Nik a drink, half-intending on getting pissed but my money soon dwindled. We went to the Brass Cat and then the Hare and Hounds where we met Jackie, but I had to leave to catch the last bus.

Eat people

We got up early and struggled to the bus stop with our bags for a cramped ride into Cambridge with a busload of kids and workers. Barry and I hung about near the bus-station until 10.15 when the coach left. Barry slept for most of the journey and we got to Ecclesley shortly after three; there I said goodbye to him and I was back in Easterby by 4.30.

I felt nothing particularly on getting back, none of that “thrill of recognition” I remembered after only six weeks of the first term. Nothing at all. Perhaps I even felt regret, wishing now I’d stayed down in Watermouth for the summer.

I waited for Dad in the station car-park in bright sunshine, conscious of the slightly more hostile nature of the atmosphere ‘up north.’ Soon Dad rolled up; he was just the same. The house was just the same, Mum the same, everything in fact just the same, as if I’d never been away. In one way it was terrible—total stagnation. I don’t think Mum or Dad could understand why I was so quiet. I passed it off as tiredness.

I rang Grant and he was out, but shortly afterwards he rang breathlessly back and said his band Eat People were playing tonight at the Phases club on Canal Parade. I set off at nine, a little to Mum and Dad’s surprise I think. But truth is, I had to find something to do to smother my disappointment and regret.

Phases was fairly small inside, with a bar to the left as I walked in, a smallish stage in front, and a lot of tables and seats round the corner to the right, where Grant and his entourage were camped. He came up to me shortly after I’d paid and talked enthusiastically, his hand over his mouth.

I was introduced to the band: Tim on guitar, drummer Jon, and tall, trendy blond bassist Jimmy. Grant is the vocalist. Nik Gordon was there too, plus assorted girls and silent blokes. The first band on were clones of The Jam—virtually identical songs and style—and they were quite skillful.

Eat People came on next. The long-haired compére in tux and bow-tie introduced them: “I’ve been looking forward to hearing this band for a long time.” And they began.

Grant screamed at the top of his voice, a scream that echoed endlessly instead of dying, and throughout their set his voice had tons of delay on it, so each word echoed at the end; it was quite a good effect. The drummer laid down a heavy rhythm, the bass laid another over this and the grinding guitar added to the Birthday Party-esque roar. Grant dominated the stage with his shrieks and doom-ridden moans (“What are the songs about?” I’d asked him earlier—“About people getting fucked up,” he’d answered).

On stage he stared and squinted manically, occasionally erupting into a jerky thrash. They played for about half-an-hour and got quite a good reception, especially at the end (irony not intended) when there were demands for an encore, and they launched into “Pretty Vacant,” their “token cover-version” as Grant put it, and got cheers and applause from the sparse audience.

The club emptied pretty quickly, but not before I’d spoken with some of Grant’s entourage. One of them, Jenny, was very drunk, and she held Grant’s hand while telling me about her dress-making business which she and another friend have started up on their own. Once we’d been kicked out, she announced that she “hated university students” to which I said “thanks a lot.”

After this I was conscious of my separateness from what Andrew would call the “Easterby alternative set”—I felt like an anachronism with my southern twang and American Literature. We walked back through Lockley, Grant and I in front and Nik and his friend Jackie bringing up the rear. Nik was quite drunk, Grant very tired and pissed off. We ended up at Jackie’s flat in Bavaria Crescent, a huge roomy place compared to our flat in Watermouth, for which she’s only paying £12 a week.

Jackie is 25 and is waiting for the results of ‘A’ levels she’s taken at Easterby College, which is where Grant met her. She often hung her head low, occasionally glancing up at me with dark eyes through her long black hair. She wasn’t very open and seemed to hang on Nik’s every word, curled up at his feet like a cat. We had a bottle of wine and some lethal mixture of spirits and cider and Grant sprawled on the floor gloomily.

I walked the five miles home.

Never mind the bollocks

 I stayed up all night reading and taking notes on The Awakening. I finished it at 3.30 a.m.: I enjoyed it and I can see why it was considered shocking and outrageous when it was first published. Barry and Russ stayed up all night doing work as well. By 5.20 a.m. it was broad-daylight out, and we pottered about enjoying the coolness of the morning before setting off to vote.

This was a ‘cut and run’ election sprung by Thatcher with only a few weeks notice, and for days now the result has been a certainty, the Tory press proudly gloating over the latest poll figures, a landslide predicted for the Conservatives and utter defeat for Foot and co. It’s been a bitter election campaign and I think it could be an important one in the future.

Election fever hasn’t really percolated through to campus and although the usual forest of leaflets and notices adorns the walls and trees, a general lack of contact with TV has ensured our immunity. As the minutes ticked away until seven, Russ and Barry and I hung about the deserted polling station in Watermouth Hall until finally we were let in, the first, perhaps the very first voters in the country.

I scrawled “Bollocks” on my ballot paper and popped it in the box. Russ did the same and Barry spoiled his paper too. The first three votes cast, the first three votes ruined. We came away satisfied.

At nine I went to my American Lit. tutorial which was a quiet, weary and subdued affair. Miriam had a dig at me for not reading Freud’s Essays on Sexuality. I almost fell asleep I was so dead-beat. I have four essays to write for Tuesday, and one Black Americans essay to complete for Monday. Impossible.

Gareth and Stu left early in the morning for Paris and the Bowie concert; they’ll be sleeping in cemeteries and no doubt at this very minute will be knocking back the booze in some café.

I went to bed at mid-day and got up about half-eight. Just a few people about. The radio said that the turnout had been high. I stayed up into the early hours to watch the results come in and it was quite obvious early on that the Tories were going to be re-elected with a big majority. Tony Benn lost his seat, as did Bill Rodgers of the SDP. Some conservative oaf behind me cheered when it flashed on the screen that Watermouth/New Lycroft was a Tory seat for another four years. Labour lost Easterby West—Dad’ll be pleased.

It’s a black day for the Labour Party. The Liberal/SDP Alliance held a handful of seats, but it’s another Thatcher government for four years. One step nearer the one-party state, and there’s more unrest to come for sure. Perhaps this will encourage dissenters to look outside the narrow, archaic world of parliament to the streets and cities where the real action will begin.

Tonight I feel thoroughly pissed off, I don’t know why. My world feels narrow and stifling and I feel trapped. Just lately I hate this narrative. It’s so useless trying to record the things I do, for my writing is so constrained and limited and I scarcely explore the possibilities a journal offers.

I have nothing to look forward to over the next few days except a hard slog to try and get some of these essays out of the way. Tomorrow too I have to find £50 to pay the deposit on the flat. I’m getting the money transferred from my NatWest deposit account at home.