Anonymous

I woke up lying fully clothed on the mattress in Andrew's room. The flat was in chaos, the kitchen floor covered in broken glass and bottle tops, everything sticky.

We spent the morning listening to records and Andrew cleaned up and when the others showed their faces at eleven-thirty, we grabbed two slices of cheese on toast and piled into Jim’s Renault for the drive into Badon.

We got there in plenty of time and I said goodbye to Andrew. The bus station bright and sunny and I felt sad again, a young couple kissing goodbye under my window. . . . Journeys, the people you see on the way and never know their names, will never ever meet them again. Anonymous beings.

The hot sun and slow bus caused nausea at Nunningley and at one point I almost thought I was going to throw up. Luckily the skies were cloudy and cool by the time I got onto the Reddings-Easterby bus and we all roared out of the ‘bus station at three like before.

We pulled into Holdsworth Square Station at quarter to ten.

Hasted

We were up early and went out to look round Hasted which reminded me of a film set: everything seemed staged, false, and unnatural. I noticed how clean the streets were. Toy town. Andrew was looking for his mate Jim but he’d gone into Badon, so after looking at Hasted Hall and tiny Hasted market we followed him.

Bev and her friend Linda were on the bus and while Andrew talked to them I sat, quietly feeling out of it, superb views of distant Badon fronted by rolling green fields and trees glimpsed through the bus windows.

We found Jim playing pool in a pub with friends Danny and Patrick but they came with us as I was lead on an unenthusiastic tour of Badon's highlights, and we ended up in a wide pedestrian precinct, crowded with hordes of people. We stopped at a really good second-hand bookshop and an interesting antiques market that was almost like a museum. At a second hand clothes stall nearby Andrew put down a deposit on a white tuxedo. Sure enough, the posers were there, moths to a flame, browsing serious-faced through the racks of bright vintage fabric and expensive jackets.

We got back to Hasted in time for the soccer results, and watched them at the student lodge on Market Street after dropping in on Ewan for a while. Then it was back to Station Hill and the preparations for Andrew’s birthday party (records, food, lights, etc.) before another friend Dave, from Badon, came round and we went to the pub’ to meet Danny, Patrick and Jim. We ended up on a mini-pub-crawl, the aforementioned acting like absolute head-cases but really funny. At one point I thought we were all going to get thrown out.

Me and Andrew left early to go back for the party. The house was soon packed, people cramming into Andrew’s room and the kitchen, the music going full blast, and I alternated between the two, drinking cider from a paper cup and having stilted conversation with (Three Kings stripper) Steve. But in no time at all it seemed, everyone left en masse except for me, Andrew, Patrick, Danny and Jim . . . vague recollections here. . . .

The police arrived. Someone had complained about the lunacy going on outside and a young policeman, white faced, glasses, was standing in the hall with his WPC companion, his tone soft but firm. “Let’s be reasonable. . . .” Andrew argued with the policewoman: he was fed up about something and kicked the bin across the kitchen, showering everyone with glass.

The police left, Patrick and Danny started booting a football about the kitchen and made cheese on toast. There was much talk of fascists and hippies. After this the only thing I remember is being upstairs in Bev’s room while Andrew argued despondently about someone’s absence.

Market de Sade

Dad gave me a lift into Easterby and I got the 8.50 bus. We were soon blasting through the cold grey streets of Alverhouse, Whincliffe, Dearnelow, Ecclesley. . . .

We reached Reddings in the early afternoon and chaos reigned for the half-hour or so while the buses were in. Most seem to be leaving at three, so people milled hopelessly around the station for half-an-hour until all the buses roared out like Le Mans and the station was deserted. We were an hour late getting into Badon and I'd just managed to find Hasted and Andrew's flat at 38 Station Hill, meet his flatmate Bev, and be ushered into his room before he arrived from the Student Union hall, breathless, to drag me back. . . .

The bands were already running through their sound checks. The Steady Highs, a reggae band from Exeworthy (drummer, bassist/vocalist, balding baggy trousered saxophonist, and a guitarist), wandered around with the various members of Market de Sade, both bands occasionally breaking into heaving, thudding rhythms which I could feel in my stomach. A side room was filled with booze.

At about nineish, the expected posers and spike-haired types started to show up, baggy trousers and long dark-checked overcoats abounding, and with the drink flowing, things soon got lively. Market de Sade was a nine-piece band but were nowhere near as good as their sound checks had promised, although the Steady Highs were good, and everyone danced wildly about while I resorted to 45p pints of bright orange cider. I ended up puking in the toilets.

Suddenly, it all seemed to end, the lights flicking on, the hall empty and strewn with paper and party wreckage. I was quite drunk but helped carry band equipment to the van in between puking outside, unseen, and I ‘acquired’ a Steady Highs poster from behind the stage. We ended up at someone's house drinking coffee with Andrew’s friend Ewan.

I slept on a mattress on Andrew’s floor.

Slipping by

I rang Kent up to tell them I couldn’t make it for a visit and no, I didn’t want to rearrange it. I sat about reading January’s National Geographic before persuading Dad to run me into Easterby at twelve, ostensibly to go to the library but really to go buy a reggae compilation LP I saw at HMV on Saturday.

I took Mr. Giles’s reading list and got four books out: Kerouac’s Visions of Cody, Nathaniel West (Collected Works), Henry Miller (Tropic of Capricorn) and Tennessee Williams. The album was gone and I felt at a loss so I went home. The weather was sunny and windy.

I got into school just after two. Deborah and Duncan, the Big Two, sat apart. Pride refuses to let me make the first move and she won’t so. . . . It’s so bloody stupid! When she went home I felt cheated: I won’t see her now until next Tuesday . . . time’s slipping by. I went to Mrs. Slicer’s “getting to know you” group communication session which was wooden, everyone embarrassed.

Pop Art ‘till six and then the long weekend. In the early hours I finished the (sad) Desolation Angels.

Sullen

Deborah and Duncan ignored us all day: there were long pointless periods of heavy, sullen silence or boring to and fros. I again felt cheap, inadequate, and false - but when don’t I feel like this?

Angela Watkinson talked about her anti-white racism. Wow.