The Determined Dragon of Squatting Defeats the Running Dogs of Imperialism
;)
The amazing thing about
our house in this street in Somerstown was that it wasn't blown to Kingdom Come,
and us with it. There was always a smell of gas, and it had to be
leaking from somewhere. You noticed it on your first visit,
but after being in the house for a couple of days it seemed to blend
into all the other, rather more exotic smells, and you didn't notice
it any more. First there was the patchouli, the general all-purpose
scent, sprinkled by male and female heads in their hair, clothes,
and Afghan bags. Joss sticks were always burning somewhere. Cooking
smells--no such thing as a traditional meal in this household.
Vegetarian curries, dhal, brown rice with Eastern spices, stir-fries
with different sauces, any number of fried concoctions with chilli
peppers and tomatoes, take-away pizza, Welsh rarebit smothered in
cheese--the all-purpose snack for day and night, and burnt toast made on
overturned electric fires (anything white, bread, sugar, etc. was bad--anything brown was good!).
Then more minor smells of old
newspapers, stale beer and cider, bodily odours, unwashed clothes,
and several times a day, hashish.
Perhaps that was why, when we went out at the week-end, the girls used so much scent. Boy, you really needed something strong to drown out those Desolation Row odours! They were only following the dictum of Karl Lagerfeld: "A woman does not put on my fragrance. She enters it." Their makeshift dressing-tables were overflowing with little smoked glass and porcelain perfume bottles with mysterious- sounding French names like Jontue or Chantage, or Cavale or Cachet. "Mieux que des mots," proclaimed one of them--better than words. And some of them followed Marilyn Monroe in going to bed in Chanel no 5--and nothing else.
;)
On the positive side, this
was a little
cultural oasis, a throwback to the early seventies. Before the
sophisticated peasants in designer beards, Laura Ashley skirts,
espadrilles and earth shoes took over.
The heads were still playing Dylan,
early Van Morrison, and getting into John Martyn.
A nostalgic sad reminder of the
(morning) glory days of hippiedom. Especially when we were drunk. Or stoned.
Or both. Then we'd get all bleary-eyed and the Irish among us would sing
auld come-all-yehs and the Brits would come out with
Streets of
London.
Until Tony came in from the late shift: "You fackin' cants! What ve fack are you bleedin' Micks sengin' aba'? Kickin' up a fuss til all ha's! You bin drinkin' ma cida' again? Get the fack ou' ov i'! Fackin' freeloaders camin' over here, you Micks!"
The
front of that house was famous for
its mural of two naked fifteen-foot-tall flower children kissing.
Tourists used to stand across the road and stare, and occasionally
be rewarded with a provocative glimpse of Viv or Sue,
while Fritz the Thief
would be loading and unloading his stolen goods outside the house next
door. The core residents were
Bob and Tony, from Rochester in Kent, and Sean, from a well-known
Socialist/Republican family in Dublin. Other "cosmic debris" drifted
in and sometimes stayed. Young Sue, daughter of an English
mother and a Burmese father, arrived from the North and ended up with
Bob. Sean's sister Maureen was living with Tap, a guitarist,
and visited
often, and her friend Rose ended up with Tony. A musician friend of
Sean's from Dublin, Stack, arrived over to make a demo tape.
Sean had met Viv in a bar and recognized her as the woman pictured
in the tabloids dancing nude at a rock festival, and she moved in with
her young daughter, Chloe. A former member of Tap's band, Robbie,
arrived with his pregnant girl-friend Marion. As did Sean's best
friend Harry, and his girl-friend Liz, daughter of a prominent
Dublin Jewish businessman.
But I said . . .
Look here brother,
Who you jivin' with that Cosmik Debris?
(Now who you jivin' with that Cosmik Debris?)
Look here brother,
Zappa, Apostrophe, 1974
;)
Later in the year, after someone ripped off the lead from our
roof and it began leaking, I moved to Oakley Square, situated between
Euston and Mornington Crescent stations. I'd sometimes meet the lads at St. Anthony's Café, across the road from Euston, for a half-and-half chicken curry. In fact, Euston station had been extensively damaged by an IRA bomb which exploded close to a snack bar two years previously, in September 1973, injuring eight commuters. The Metropolitan Police had received a three minute warning but were unable to evacuate the station completely before the device exploded. The following year the mentally ill Judith Ward was convicted of this and other crimes despite the evidence against her being highly suspicious (she was later acquitted).
As regards Oakley Square, the original Victorian square, including St. Matthew's church which had been standing on the North side of the square since 1856, was being taken apart bit by bit: first part of the south side of Stuccoed Victorian houses was destroyed in the 50s. Despite a widespread campaign by local residents and the founding of the Society for the Preservation of Oakley Square, the remaining houses on this side were demolished in the sixties. I was wondering what would be next to go... As I later found out, the square had a a wealth of historical heritage and famous past residents - Lenin had stayed in number 6 on his last visit to London in 1911, the naturist Robert Swinhoe lived at number 33 and the philosopher Herbert Spencer lived at number 24.
On 5 October two bombs exploded
in the Horse and Groom, Guildford, a pub frequented by military
personnel. Four soldiers were killed. Gerry Conlon from Belfast, who was charged
with the bombing, was working on a building site at Mornington Crescent
at the time (as was Sean Whelan, in fact it may have been the same site).
Gerry and 3 others, one of them his father Giuseppe Conlon (on right), were tried
for the bombing, based on "confessions" extracted after beatings in prison.
None of them (known as the "Guildford Four") had ever had any connection with
political or terrorist organizations.
They were found guilty, despite their
protestations of innocence.
After many appeals the British Home Minister
released them, admitting that a miscarriage of justice had taken place,
and that they were
in fact innocent. Giuseppe had died in prison, the others spent 25 years
of their lives incarcerated for a crime they didn't commit.
Shortly afterwards, on 22 November, the Provisional IRA bombed the Mulberry Bush in Birmingham. Twenty-one people were killed and many injured. A wave of anti-IRA and at times anti-Irish feeling swept the country. The Prevention of Terrorism Act was rushed through Parliament.
Those days were difficult times for the Irish in Britain. There were reports of fights in various parts of Britain, anti-Irish demonstrations took place, the National Front and other fascist organizations had a field day, and it was generally a time to keep your head down.
On the music front I visited a club at Mornington Crescent on Wednesdays, held in the bar of the Unity Theatre. It was run by Jack Firestein, a left-winger and former Communist Party member who noted down the name of every singer and song sung in the club. The clientele was made up of older left-wingers, Communist Party, I suppose, and one or two veterans of the Spanish Civil War. They sang the same songs every week, mainly dealing with the Spanish Civil War and left-wing causes. I first heard St. James Infirmary here, sung by an American who seemed to be suffering from Parkinson's. The theatre burned down the following year, which was strange, because it was always a pretty damp place!
On only one occasion I visited the Singers Club at the Union Tavern, King's Cross Road. This was run by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger. Ewan was well-known for having written Dirty Old Town, The Travelling People and other staples of the ballad singer, as well as having done theatre work and Peggy his partner (or wife by that stage) was one of the famous Seeger musical family. In contrast to the previously-mentioned club, they never repeated a song in a year. It was a fairly big place and the atmosphere was serious--Ewan and Peggy did most of the singing and the couple of floor singers who performed had to sing songs of their country or region. I missed the "crack" of the Irish sessions. A strange coincidence that evening was meeting Georgina, a left-winger I had got to know in Dublin and whom I had last seen about 3 years previously, when she left Dublin for good.
Then of course there were concerts in the Roundhouse on the Chalk Farm Road. The Roundhouse started off as a "cable house". There's a slope from Euston Station up towards Primrose Hill, and the very early trains, with the passengers on it, couldn't make it, so they were pulled by cable from the Roundhouse. It was later owned by Gilbeys before becoming a theatre and concert venue.
There was a free concert by Don McClean in Hyde Park--we were up front somewhere, with gallons of cider.
;)
One Spring afternoon I bumped into Sean at Euston Station as I was returning home from an early shift, and he asked whether I knew of anyone who could switch on the electricity in a new squat that they had found. Squatting was a political action, as well as being cheaper and a lot more interesting than renting a bedsit ("remember--trying to stop squatting is like stamping on a greasy golfball", source unknown). I went with him to look at it, on Elsworthy Road, West Hampstead. I later read that Sigmund Freud, when he came to London after the Austrian Anschluss had lived in the house next door. I told Sean I'd fix up the place if they gave me a room, and he agreed on the spot. The house was in good shape, all rooms were carpeted, and the only thing that could not be obtained was running water in the bathroom. Tap, Bob, Tony and Rose, Robbie and Marion, and Dermot also had rooms there. The rest of the story of Elsworthy road can be found in London--the Prelude.
Across the road from us we had Primrose Hill Park and just beyond that Regents Park, filled at week-ends with muslims from the nearby mosque. On the other side we had Hampstead Heath--mile upon mile of green grass, thickets and dells, a pond for bathing, another for fishing, another for wild life. We were spoiled. "Open countryside on a miniature scale within half an hour of the centre of the City," as Melvyn Bragg called it in one of his novels.
I liked to look down into the smoke and the dust from the leafy heights. When I had to go into work on the early shift, through quiet empty streets lit by the first rays of the sun, the feeling was magic. The pleasure of walking down into the hazy city was summed up by a few words from an ancient poet (Henry Howarth Bashford):
As I came down the Highgate Hill,
The Highgate Hill, the Highgate Hill,
As I came down the Highgate Hill
I met the sun's bravado,
And saw below me, fold on fold,
Grey to pearl and pearl to gold,
This London like a land of old,
The land of Eldorado.
It represented to me the special beginning-of-summer light that makes London shimmer, viewed from above, in the early morning.
"I love walking in London," said Mrs. Dalloway. "Really it's better than walking in the country." (Virginia Woolf)
;)
It pleased me too, to be in an area with a mixture of styles of building
and of people. Our area had it all: Victorian, Georgian,
bed-sits, families, corner shops, trees, community centres, vegan
cafes. From the richest established figures in Hampstead to the
freaks and hard-working immigrants around Camden Town, from respectable
retired folks' immaculate dwellings to the
squatters of Chalk Farm. And lots of little shops everywhere,
where you could get everything you wanted--London's little shops were its virtue, not the grand
department stores. Every corner had its own little Greek or little
Indian shop, open in unsocial hours, purveyors of everything from
poppadums to paper hats.
Outside our own little eclectic circle, coloured with British, Irish, French and Italian cultures and enlivened by the many blow-ins who came our way, some freaks were reliving the summers of the sixties. Swinging London, an epithet that was outliving its usefulness as quickly as all the other eruptions of those summers--Flower Power, love-ins, hippies taking over grandee residences in Piccadilly, happenings at the ICA. These faded freaks were still into Sergeant Pepper, beads and bells, and an unending contest for the most oddball party in the most offbeat place. "Nothing happened in the 'Sixties except we all dressed up," said John Lennon--and he should know.
I preferred going to the street markets rather than department stores (Portobello was the liveliest, and the vegetables were the cheapest anywhere). You were always bound to meet people you knew there. There were a few pubs along Portobello Road that Sean and Harry used to go to. Oxford Street on a Sunday was packed with people, window-gazing. We would walk further on to St James's, to the luxury shops which sold (in stout defiance of the vagaries of fashion), bowler hats, and view cheeses, fishing tackle and fine porcelain, then visit shops with pleasing Anglo- Saxon names like Lock, and Leather and Snook. You expected to find elderly, gentlemanly experts in their field here and you did.
For a change on a Sunday I'd go to Brick Lane, which specialized in antiques and junk,
to eat jellied eels, and afterwards visit Tap or Susan.
Or Petticoat Lane, near Liverpool street--the sales patter of the
cockneys is an entertainment in itself. We were thinking of
setting up our own stall there. "Fancy a stall in Petticoat Lane?"
ran a regular ad. You just had to go along with your bits and pieces and
you were in business. Weekend stallholders flogged anything, their old
clothes, old bed-steads, bound
volumes of parsons' memoirs, elephant's foot umbrella
stands, any Victorian parlour clutter.
Or we'd go to Hyde Park.
London was a haven for every
kind of eccentric: some given official recognition on the soapboxes at
Hyde Park, others who lectured in the Tube. Gavin Ewart mentioned the latter
in a poem about Earl's Court and its "sense of free and easy": ...
"Eccentrics too, Who in the bus will tell the passengers, "Today's the
birthday of the Princess Royal". . . ". We'd join in the customary
heckling at the meetings.
After the bombings in Britain politics became sourer and fascist groupts
like the National Front and British Movement turned their attention from
the immigrants to the Irish. While they were not ignored, there were
few direct confrontations with these groups on the Irish issue.
There was so much to do, so much to see.
As soon as people heard you were living in London the requests for
special items that could not be readily found back home came in.
Blues records, guitar strings, patchouli, hash pipes.
It was like being in
the middle of a vast cornucopia. I found out that there were
pasta makers in King's Cross, manufacturers of Turkish
Delight in Stoke Newington, an auction house for elephant tusks in the
City, a kipper smokery in a mews behind the Gray's Inn Road. In one
enormous warehouse in Camden Town you could view every variety of keyboard
instrument; in Holborn, all kinds of paper; in Whitechapel, fur and
suede; in Victoria, any Ordnance Survey map, blown up to any size.
On the other hand, the limitless selection was exhausting.
After our gang moved to Primrose Hill (where I too took a room) tensions developed. Tony had brained Stack because he had attacked Bob for no apparent reason one evening as we were sitting around in his room listening to the Eagles. Sean wasn't speaking to Bob because he suspected him of trying to get off with Viv one night when he was away. There was tension with the talkative Liz. The women disliked Robbie because they said he disrespected Marion, and Sue because she was so young and tended to walk around the house naked. And so on.
During my stay in London I looked for the words of a poem put to music by Supply Demand and Curve, without success. I eventually found the poem years later in Germany. It's called "The Young Woman from Ireland", by John Arden.
I was walking out
Upon this rainy day
A half-blind gay young woman
Came agreeably in my way
She travelled out of Ireland
Into England to live
To blink for a young Englishman
And her affection to give
'Oh I have had sorrows
I have had grief
So many men's sorrows
As the dew falls on the leaf
So many said they loved me
With words at my ears
Like needles of sharp ivory
They scraped me with their beards
So many said they loved me
And I blinked at them again
But all that they did for me
The wind does for the rain'
We were in Trafalgar Square
Where the rain was blovm to hail
Lord Nelson's eye was filled with feathers
From every pigeon's tail
'I can half-see you, you young Englishman
And naked shall you stand
Between my white bosom
With your hand in my hand
If you want I can then clothe you
In red and in white
Your eyes in my bedroom
Shall be all I need for light'
Her eyes being weak and watery
She took liberty to use mine
She said, 'Where I could see three tall chimneys
Now I can see nine'
The eyes she borrowed from me
She returned to me once more
And I see a whole great waterscape
I never saw before
So I am rowing out today
On this rainy windy lake
That throws my boat so up and down
I am sure my oars will break.
;)
;)