| This is
part two of a file called "bio", written between 13.3.92
and 20.3.92. That's the wrong abbreviation, of course, it should be
called "autobio", short for autobiography, which is what
this file is trying to be. My autobiography. I think there's more of a case for the obscure to write their autobiography than the famous. After all, if you're famous, all the facts are known already. "Then I tried to get the country to accept a poll tax", that sort of thing. Babes in arms are aware of what a balls-up that was, we don't need Thatcher or her ghost writer to tell us. So why not, the autobiography of a nobody? After all, I've now been keeping a diary for over three years, no-one's likely to read that, but I tap it into one of my pocket computers day after day. An autobiography could be more worthwhile. |
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1971 In spring I dropped out of college again. Moonlighted from the house in Enfield, stayed a week or so at Susie M*****s house, also in Enfield, then moved in with Graham H***** and his girlfriend Val, both from Newcastle, Durham. Their ground-floor flat was at 51, Bulwer Road. Or 38, maybe. I lived in the front room of the house. They occupied the back room and we shared the kitchen, a very small lounge, bathroom and toilet. It was cheerfully shabby. Graham helped me to build up my drinking habit into something substantial. Having always had a weakness for drugs but a fear of being caught doing something illegal it was easier in Barnet to drink rather than look for cannabis. Dealers are always very dull people, anyway. |
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1972 Pete moved into the front room at Bulwer Road. We wrote a few songs together, but mostly worked separately. Offhand the only one I can remember we wrote together is "Love Me For Today", which is pleasantly innocuous; "Whispered words of love have all been said before, All I have to say is love me for today. Don't treat me like faded clothes that you once wore There's no other time, soon enough you'll find I don't like that second verse. I think the tune for the verse
was his and I wrote the middle eight. The words fell into place
generally, they aren't the kind of writing that involves great brain
strain. Still a juvenile at 25, I was growing up slowly, and then puis
lentement. I've been dreaming 'bout the Latin Quarter I'll send you a postcard from Paris In the summer Pete and I moved back to Buckingham and stayed with
his father in the house on Overn Avenue. The house was fairly crowded
with his sisters there as well and eventually I moved back home
for a while. We didn't use the motorway and I remember the journey, apart from
the cold, as feeling almost adventurous. I think it was still almost
possible then to believe in the myth of the open road and the freedom
of the car. Not that I knew much about cars then, and now I'd rather
not. THE GREAT MEETING, THE RISE OF THE HOOS OF CLOSE, AND THE FALL
OF THE HOOS OF MCD*****. The off-licence was wonderful, I got into drinking in a big way. The other lads (Noel, Mick) were nearly all Irish, and drank the profits like fish. I followed their example to the letter, consuming Bulmer's No. 7 in the cellar every time I had to go and put the empties away. The proprietor, Bill, was as Irish as could be and drank as well as any man, on half-bottles of Guinness, which he called "bottleens". He may have drunk halves only, but he drank plenty of them, and he would often open one with a burst of singing "I'll Take You Home Again, Bottleen"! There were two shifts for work, 10 until 4 and 4 until 10. We would
sometimes retire after closing to the boozer across the way. |
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1973 Early in the year my friend Susan Bailey died while climbing in the Scottish Highlands. She was unroped because the terrain was fairly easy going, but in an unguarded moment she slipped on some scree and fell 100 feet to her death. It was John Archdeacon who called at my bedsit in Chippenham Road and told me. It was about this time that I went "jogging" for the first time. I was putting on flesh from drinking too many carry-outs and secret sips in the cellar, and to combat this ran round the block from time to time in the mornings. I must have worn plimsolls, t-shirts, and seem to have vague memories of some sort of track suit bottoms or shorts. I can't have worn jeans, jeans were always worn tight in those days. |
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1974 This was the year I moved into squatting properly. My old friend Rodney came round from time to time to disapprove of my drinking and give me the hard word about the guru Maharaja Ji, spiritual leader of the Divine Light Mission which was now spreading its bullshit through London as swiftly as it could. Rodney, failed Catholic that he was and always will be, was hanging onto the creed of this watered-down Buddhism with his usual naivety. I was thoroughly sceptical. But he also talked about his friends in squats who lived nearby, and eventually I met Paddy C*****. Paddy was from Galway and was working as a plasterer in every sense of the word. The daytime job, when he bothered, brought in good money which he spent on his true vocation, Irish Alcoholic Abroad. He sang songs of longing for his homeland when he was drunk enough. 1975 |
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I can't recall where
I was living on January 1st, but I suspect it was Elgin Avenue or
not very far away. I think I was living in a squat in a street near Elgin Avenue, not Chippenham, but very near that as well. I'll look it up in the A-Z sometime. It was a pretty horrible place, I was burgled twice while I was there. My housemates were a truly grotesque bunch. One was called Nicolette, she was the child of a broken relationship which had foundered before it got started. At one stage I met her mother, who was completely |
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scatty, and her sister, who was disabled and made overt suggestions
about sex to me in front of her sister. I smiled a lot, sat as quietly
as possible, and left early. It had nothing to do with her disability,
I just don't like being ordered about... |
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So one autumnal Saturday while S***** was out, I fled to Lucy and Roger's house in Brixton. Fleeing was done in Lesley's Mini van. Everyone thought I was suffering paranoia, and maybe I was. Anyway, they were all very kind, Lesley, Michael, Lucy, Roger. This move was a radical change of setting. South of the river for one. Did I get a special feeling from being south of the mighty waters of the Thames, did I sense a new kind of ambience, a spirit that informed the streets in an altogether different - leave it out, John. I was just glad |
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from the enemy, amongst friends. The change of season had brought
cooler days and I began to relax again. The house was in an L-shaped terrace, all the houses had been bought up by the council and taken up by the squatters. |
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1976 In summer, mid-June or July, I moved to Milton Keynes. I got a job within 24 hours of arriving in Fullers Slade, working in British Rail Engineering Limited in Wolverton. |
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1977 Left BREL in the spring. It was a lovely sunny day when I walked out of the yard at Wolverton for the last time. I never looked back, literally as I crossed the bridge and dived down the steps to walk home along the old canal, nor figuratively as I spent a year alone in Milton Keynes on the dole. I can't remember what my entitlement was but I spun it out by working at the health food shop Acorn in Wolverton, and later with a group that included Dick Parker. It was at Acorn that I first heard of the Open University. The shop was a cooperative and various worthies had put money up to get it started, including a genre of person known as "OU trendies". They were usually scruffy and slightly odd; for men, beards were not optional, they were de rigeur. But the dole. I'd never been on the dole before; every time I'd been out of work in London I'd simply survived on what I'd earned until I got another job. How I did it I don't know, but I could no longer do it in Milton Keynes in the late 1970s. Well, I had my own house now, my own gas bill, electricity bill, rent to pay. But I survived, and didn't suffer from boredom until well into the next year. In fact I have no memory of serious boredom, and if I hadn't met Jane Bailey at that party in Stantonbury and through her met Barbara whose surname I've forgotten, who put me in touch eventually with Alan Woodley of IET. But I am once again getting ahead of myself. |
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1978 Started work at the OU in April. Probably April 1st. Went to Edinburgh in August with the show about Joe Orton, "Joe". Met L**** through her then-boyfriend Bill Billings, [ed. John wrote this song about the MK poet and sculptor] when she was living in a house in Stantonbury. There were drunken ends to PHAB (Physically Handicapped Able Bodied) meetings where I probably played guitar. |
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1982 After having put up with L**** constantly moaning about her periods on the pill (too heavy, too early, too late, too painful) for two years I decided to have a vasectomy. Why not? I was quite happy with our two children, didn't want any more. So we went to the doctor. Our regular doctor wasn't there, but the guy we did see made an appointment for me with Bedford General. So I went to the South Wing of Bedford Hospital one day. Must have gone on the train from Bow Brickhill, this was back in the days before everybody drove everywhere (though things were getting that way, and we had a car, a Vauxhall Viva) and walked. I was out of condition for cycling it, that's what I'd do now. I turned up at the right time and was told that I'd have to provide a sample. A lady with cold eyes and steel hair told me it would have to be fresh, five minutes old at worst... I remembered the doctor had said that the sample would have to be "masturbatory". I don't belong to that school of men that say they never do that kind of thing, nor to the Clive James school that say they like nothing better than a swift one off the wrist. It's just that talking to that woman I felt definitely… uninspired, you know? But I went to a pub up the Ampthill Road called The South End and after a pint of Guinness did the decent thing. They found I had a low sperm count but I ought to have the snip done to be truly safe. So I booked a slot at The John Nuffield in Oxford. The doctor was younger than me, had a pleasant gallows humour. I had problems walking afterwards, limped to the car and L**** drove me home. I spent the following week, which was early summer, sitting somewhat painfully on my bum in bed and reading Wallace Stevens. I love Wallace Stevens, and the loss of my power to procreate troubled me as much then as it does now - not one whit. When you think of the multitude of things they are to do in life, having children is only one way of having fun. And when you look at the multitude of people there are in the world, who wants to help the overpopulation problem? At the moment the population growth rate in England is going up again. In November L*** left me. November 28th. The date burned in my mind for years, and now won't leave me ever. That's alright, some things you never forget. I remember many things, why not that? Things started to go downhill more for L*** and me during the summer. I think the move from No. 8 to Green Cottage didn't help. To me it was the answer to a long uttered prayer, I finally lived in a house which did not have party walls. The noisy bastards who had made my life miserable for years with their drums, their rows, their Led Zeppelin, I was free of them. I didn't care whether I lived in Green Cottage for two years or twenty, I was On Holiday from the moment I moved in. But L*** saw it differently. |
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