Back to Phil
1
"Tune in, turn on, drop out."
The words of the 60's guru of psychedelia, Dr. Timothy Leery, echoed from San Francisco to Kathmandu; from Chelsea to the end of our road. Though interpreted and misinterpreted in countless ways they, nevertheless, seemed to provide a three step course towards 'liberation'. The grand themes the words conjured up in global terms, for some, had peculiar local variations, especially on our estate.
Tune in.
Radio Caroline, the pirate radio station, floating somewhere in the North Sea, flying a Jolly Roger with a reefer in the sculls mouth... pirates, outlaws.
Before Caroline there was Radio Luxembourg sounding as if it was broadcast from some ethereal roundabout on the East Lancs road. The reception was so bad you had to listen for hours until a record was played often enough for you to get all the words down in the back of your homework book. The only records invariably crystal clear were by Pinky and Perky, two pigs with high, speeded up voices. The DJs were people like Alan Freeman and Jimmy Saville. The listening public were 'guys an' gals' or 'pop-pickers'.
During the day there was only the BBC Home Service. Announcers wearing audible dinner jackets would interview workers in various plants and factories. The workers would be asked to dedicate the next 'recorded disk' to a loved one. Everyone seemed about to get married or engaged or having their fifth baby.
" I'd like, ta very much, if you could play the next song for my fiancee, Irene. It’s by Frank Ifield and has a special meaning for both of us. It’s called 'She taught me to yodel'.
Workers Playtime, Housewives Choice, Listen with Mother, Gardeners Question Time, Book at Bedtime ..... or illegal pop music?
Most kids had pocket sized plastic radios. The first of the Japanese wave of imports. Usually in pink plastic they'd work even if you connected them to a pair of old underpants. Nobody bought records because they would have to be played on something you wound up. The few posh kids that had record cabinets the size of a sideboard weren't allowed to play pop music because it ruined the needle. In any case when you opened those early music centres a light would go on and you'd be staring at ancient bottles of Advocat and Sherry. It ruined the mood.
So every minute we could we would listen to Caroline. The Government talked about sending gun-ships and prosecuting advertisers. We knew the police had special detector vans and if you were caught listening to Caroline you went straight to prison, especially if you were ten. It was possible to confuse the vans if you listened under the bed clothes, but during the day, unless you were actually in a toilette cubicle, you were up for grabs.
We lived on the edge. We were outlaws too.
It is a matter of record that every third play on Caroline was the Dubliners singing 'Tied up with a black velvet band'. They guy who owned the station also owned the Emerald label, but it was worth putting up with diddly de music for the illicit tingle ..... the Buzz.
We'd been told often enough that we were on a slippery slope. First Radio Caroline then hard drugs after which, inevitably, a life of crime. We couldn't wait.
The debate about commercial radio went on for years. Radio outside the control of the BBC ( Government ) would automatically, ipso facto and all that, produce violence, pornography and civil unrest ( the beat goes on).
In actual fact, we found out later, the desperadoes, the DJs, were all Tony Blackburn.
Caroline became beleaguered, with supply and mail tenders being intercepted. They really did send in the gun-boats. A campaign to 'Free Radio Caroline' was started and you could write off to Amsterdam. What came back was a small white card with your name printed on it and a serial number. It was very official looking. The stamp on the return envelope started my stamp collection. Actually it was my stamp collection.
I kept my card in a plastic wallet I got from my grandmother for my birthday. It had a see-through panel that went yellow in ten minutes and the stitching rotted in two weeks. We flashed these cards to each other like police badges, or accidentally left them on view to be hastily put away with feigned embarrassment, after we were sure they'd been noticed. Anyone who didn't know what the white card meant received the same disdain as the kids in the Army Cadets.
It wasn't long before we were told, through the grapevine, that British Government agents had broken into the offices of Caroline in Amsterdam and now had the names and addresses of all the supporters. If your name was on that list you couldn't get a passport, work for the civil service or even get a job in a Nationalised industry ( remember those?)
Now that wouldn't be too bad, considering we were all destined for a life of crime anyway, but we were also told that supporters were being put under surveillance. This was a kettle of a different fish. There were things I got up to that 'I wouldn't like my mother and father to know about', to use a useful phrase from the confessional. In fact most things I did I wouldn't want them to know about. Drastic action was called for.
We ritually burnt our Caroline Club membership cards, telling everyone it was in solidarity with the burning of draft cards in the States over the Vietnamese war.
I was followed by Special Branch for two weeks. These were dangerous times. I knew people who knew people who'd had their door kicked in late at night. Their bedrooms had been ransacked and their stashed copies of Tit Bits had been shown to their mothers. I cleaned house.
It was a long time before I got out of the habit of wiping my fingerprints off everything I touched. The circumlocutions I had to go through in order to loose my tail on the way to and home from school put hours on the day. Dangerous times, dangerous times .... but we still stayed 'tuned in'.
Turn on number one
Blues, Purple Hearts, Mandies, Bombers, Pinks, Black and Greens (mothers little helpers) we used to eat them like sweets. In fact we used to eat sweets and pretend they were etc., etc. We'd hang around on street corners and wait till someone was passing then begin to furtively exchange Swizzles mumbling " I'll swap you two blues for a pink " or whatever. We were still on the 'slippery slope', the inevitable degradation was immanent. We welcomed the notion of moving from the illegal use of our ears to the illegal use of our mouths, stomachs, lungs and minds. If only we had money or knew someone.
We began with cider and Woodbines. Every Monday evening when we had our dinner money for the week, it was two bottles of Stronbow ( girls drank Woodpecker ) and five Woodbines. We'd sit on the bins at the back of the flats and talk about 'what really mattered'. On the way home I'd chew some disgusting private hedge leaves to disguise the smell.
" Ye've been drinkin and smokin again. "
" No I haven't, little Irish mother, what makes you make that observation?"
" Yer mouth's green."
Time passed and it became easier to buy Strongbow without pretending it was for your dad. The Woodbines went ( girlie fag anyway, my mother smoked them). We graduated to Park Drive and then Number 6. Instead of fives or even singles ( one shop near the school sold one cigarette with one match for a penny or something, but you had to be under nine ) we started buying packs of tens. ( at one point it was cool never to be seen smoking the same brand twice. There were thirty or forty brands and we had to try them all. We ended up with Number 6 because they gave green coupons with them and you could flash your wodge of coupons to show how cool you were by how much you smoked )
The drug scene was still elusive but fast approaching.
In the 40s and 50s in the States they had , apparently, very violent comics. We had the Dandy and the Beano, they had ' I was a teenage serial killer'. So criminals used to plead in court that they had been corrupted at an early age by the ' comic books'. We had a similar thing here.
" What made you start using Hashish?"
" It was the poems."
Poetry was a big thing in Liverpool. There was no point in learning the guitar, the fucking Beatles had used up all the chords, but poetry, poetry that didn't rhyme, any fucker could write that. So the deal on a Friday was , home from school, off with the maroon blazer with the motto in Latin 'We show our faith by the way we live', on with the flared camel-haired hipsters and the home made cowboy fringe jacket and down to the centre of town to O'Conners Pub.
" You 18?"
" Yeh"
"When were you born ?"
" 1904"
"Cool"
And there it all was, the Liverpool Scene. Adrian Henry, Roger McGough, Brian Patten, music, poetry action. We were high on a half of cider and the fumes from the Gaulloise cigarettes ( we thought it was the stuff) We would nod sympathetically to Adrian's list of heroes ( I recognised three out of the hundred or so ) and we would be 'in the groove'. Of course the inevitable happened and one day I was approached by a cool looking hippie guy.
" Hey man, you want some shit?"
In our house we pronounced it shite.
"Er,I think I'm okay for shite, actually, er, man."
"Shit man, I mean, like, shit, gear, smoke, blow, y'know, were the fuck you from?"
Without thinking I said Blundelsands ..... aaaagh.
" No, no I'm joking, Liverpool 8, really."
None of us knew were it was but it came up in all the poems.
" Like, how much is the shite, er, shit?"
" Ten bob deal."
" Right, I'll check with me mates."
Twenty minutes later ten shillings in three penny bits, pennies and sixpences was exchanged for a small hard lump wrapped in silver foil from a fag packet ( in those days you could peal the paper off the silver. This was before tin foil, and when cling film was just a scientist's dream.)
A brief stop for five park drive and a packet of rizzlas then off to a mate’s house, the one with the mother on a valium drip feed. She'd married a bloke much older than herself, like older than my grandfather. He'd had a TV and settee graft when he was 70 and never moved again. She thought we were all about 8 and kept making us jelly, which usually ended up down the toilette. She hadn't noticed when we painted the walls floor and ceiling of my mates bedroom black gloss. Fucking perfect parents, lucky bastard.
So, five guys and a block of shit, Dylan on the record player, 'Like a rolling stone', perfect.
Anyway, this shit, what do we do with it? It’s too big to go into a cigarette paper, maybe ten together? Also, what if it’s got something in it that makes you instantly addicted, and insane, and makes your hair grow?
Eventually we chop it into bits, put it on the Rizzla, sprinkle with Park Drive, and five goes at trying to roll it. Tobacco and shit all over the record sleeve but it’s alight.
Its like trying to smoke a tube of meteorites, lumps of glowing shit everywhere, camel haired hipsters fucked, covered in burn holes. The bright idea of smoking lying down came a cropper with the first inhalation of a burning mass.
So three reefers later and another side of Bob Dylan. We are all looking at each other, none of us feels a thing and we are all thinking the same thing, "We have been fucking ripped off."
Dylan has been singing the same song for about three hours and we've eaten all the jelly.
"You know this song is really long."
"Yeh, it’s a long song."
"When it’s finished we can say, so long song."
"Yeah."
We smile at our wit and repartee.
"That jelly was fucking ace, y'know."
"Yeah, like very slippery and sort of .... "
"Yeah"
But it has to be said, someone's got to say it.
"Well fuck it, lets face it, we've been ripped off. I don't feel a fuckin thing."
For some reason we are all creased up laughing with tears streaming down our faces.
It was the poems, it was the poems.
Turn on number two
After listening to all the hippie records, Sgt. Peppers, Lucy in the sky, we had to try acid, but not without some trepidation. We'd been told the horror stories but we'd seen the pictures of beautiful chicks with no bras and flowers in their hair. We knew what 'My friend Jack eats sugar lumps' really meant. So, Saturday morning at the mate’s house, same black room.
"You sure your parents won’t be back, that'd be a real bummer."
"Yeah, they're in Manchester for another funeral of one of me dad's mates. They're staying over, in fact he'll probably stay on at the cemetery.
It’s not worth the effort him coming back. Anyway she's left plenty of jelly, enough for about a fortnight."
We've done our research, orange juice in case we want to come down quickly (the dreaded 'bad trip'), nice psychedelic pictures around, groovy sounds, and away we go.
Christ! Now maybe it’s just me and my mates, but people who, like, can go out , outside, on acid, concerts and stuff, mind boggling. I got hung up on the amazing wall paper for an aeon and there was no wallpaper, just black gloss everywhere. That sounds like it could be a downer but it was actually quite cheery, I mean it was shiny. But go to a concert? One note did me for about eight hours. An acid house party? I wouldn't get past the groovy sounds emanating from the ticket. I inhabited a jelly for about three days, raspberry, lovely, very slow and sort of wobbly.
True story. Some guys I know were coming down and decided to go for a late night drive on the M6. They're zooming along in the outside lane, no other cars, listening to music and really enjoying the exhilaration of life in the fast lane. Of course they're eventually pulled over by a police car.
"How fast do you think you were going, sir?"
"About 70, man, maybe 75 possibly 80."
"Well for the last five minutes we've been following you, sir, and you were doing 8 miles an hour."
Maybe it was different stuff back then, I don't know.
The bubble burst for me when I went to a lecture by a guy who was involved in the early research with Dr. Timothy Leary. You could buy the stuff in barrels then from some place in Switzerland. The C.I.A. and the American military were all researching it. Leary and his mates were all dropping about a pint a day. Anyway this guy became disenchanted, particularly when in one session a researcher got up in the group and announced that he had discovered the meaning of life. Apparently when he stood on his toes he could touch the ceiling.
Now in the audience I was a part of half went into a smirking sort of laugh while the rest of us sat there devastated. I mean we'd all found the meaning of life loads of times and then, sort of, forgotten how to explain it.
Drop out, number one
" So what are you doing when you leave?"
"I'm going to Afghanistan. Gonna get one of them long sheep coats with the embroidery, dead cheap out there and afghan black is the best shit there is, apart from Thai Temple sticks of course."
"Well why not go to Thailand, then?"
"They haven't got the coats."
The plan. Leave school, grow the hair, fuck the system, travel, be, write poetry, brilliant.
But first, a job as an Insurance clerk, to get the funds to do the deeds. I had tried getting a job at Fords on the line. Plenty of overtime, good pay I'd have enough to sod off in a few months. I was the only interviewee who arrived on time, the only one in a tie and wearing my school blazer ( black in the six form not maroon, and badge with motto optional) Needless to say I wasn't 'given a start.'
Second day in the office I'd finished everything I'd been shown to do on the first day, So, not to be bored, I took out a book and started to read. The supervisor came over looked at me and turned purple.
First lesson, make the job last.
I stuck it for about three months, even past New Years Day. If you weren't Scottish you had to work. Only the big bosses were Scottish, of course. The last straw was when I found out the public school tosser I worked with, who started at the same time, was, and had been all along, on more money than me. I stormed into the boss’s office, well, slinked in with high dudgeon. He explained to me it was because of the differences in our qualifications.
" I know for a fact he's got two O Levels at the lowest possible grade without actually failing, and I've got six at good grades."
"Ach, the nu, ye ken he has Maths and English, Ye no have the English you see, it’s a requirement. I took you on, against advice, because I could tell you had potential, och aye the nu."
Apart from inserting the rabidly anti Scottish phrases, that's how it went. This was the guy who told me off for being twenty minutes late on New Years Day. No doubt it was reported to him by that public school wanker.
I had, in fact, failed English. No doubt the examiner had been impressed by my Dylan Thomas pastiche (I was particularly pleased with one hyphenated sentence that ran for five lines) but unfortunately I'd only managed eighteen pages of essay before time was called, if only he'd read the other twenty-three or so I still had in me. I eventually resat the exam and wrote an essay about Tom, Dick, and Harry going camping. Full of punctuation and speech,
"Gosh," said Tom.
"Were?" said Harry.
"Over there," pointed Dick with his dick.
It was exactly two and a half pages long. Grade one.
I had to move on, the money was crap and the prospects were soul destroying. The bosses were Dickensian, very serious and sober business, Insurance. (I'd gotten into trouble for issuing a fully comp extended cover note over the phone for an imported pink Cadillac, without asking any questions of the guy like 'who are you?'. I just thought he sounded cool.) The risk assessors and inspectors all thought they were James Bond, the fat fucking middle aged baldy cunts. They treated the juniors like shite and groped all the girls. But it was the cakes that finished me off.
When it was your birthday you had to buy a tray of cakes, one for everyone over the three floors, not including the files basement. Your D.O.B. was on file so you couldn't get out of it, and why would you ? It’s nice. It shows a great company spirit. The bosses loved it. They smiled indulgently as these cloned girls appeared from some hidden place tottering under the weight of their fucking cakes and passed them round. The juniors got last pick, of course. I hate macaroons. It was every day! They must have employed people to fill in the gaps in the calendar, and yet the boss’s birthdays all fell on a Saturday or Sunday. Every year! Something to do with the differences in the Scottish calendar.
March was fast approaching (work out the significance yourself) it was time to go. But to where? Not another office. Then it struck me. Journalist!
I'd never got into the habit of reading a newspaper, my mother wouldn't let them into the house saying they were just full of filth ( the same woman when, as a nine year old, I asked if I could join the Boy Scouts, replied "The day I see you wearing an English uniform I'll skin ye alive.")
I had flirted with the third estate, or is it the fourth estate? Well I've flirted on a lot of estates over the years. Anyway, the Times did a school promo. Get the Times every day, very cheap, two or three of you do it, peanuts. I signed up with the mates and then forgot about it. I was heavily into my solitary poet phase. Each morning I'd meet the train coming in carrying all the kids from up the coast, borrow a pass and set off for the day. I wouldn't go into school except for English and occasionally History. Sometime a week or two would go by when I missed even those lessons. Consequently when I did go in a mound of newspapers were stuffed in and around my desk. The lid would be vertical.
I'd go in the morning early, show my face sort of thing. Four neat rows of desks and mine at the back looking like an explosion. No-one said anything. The mates pissed themselves of course, but the screws, the teachers never said a word. One did say "You seem to be behind in your reading, Foster." The caretaker collared me, "I know its you over filling them bins, I'm not Samson. you know. Do it again and I'll report you." That meant I had to come in even earlier to spread the buggers around the other classes. I would rather get caught in a Ladies lavatory with my prick in my hands than in a classroom to which 'I didn't belong.
So me and whichever estate it is were pretty much total strangers, except, and hears the rub, I had read the collected works of O'Henry. Ta da.
It was a very thick book. I had come across it when we were going through our phase of who can read the thickest book, that isn't stupid, like the bible.
I won for a short while then someone produced War and Peace, voted stupid, and then came Lord of the sodding Rings. I tried to force a technical foul, saying it was actually three books, but it was pointed out that mine was a collected work, therefore not a book at all and American therefore not even literature.
As you know, O'Henry had a column in the New York Times, or one of those, and wrote regular, short, poignant pieces about characters I loved. Hustlers, gamblers, losers all featured in his writing.
I was pretty sure that no one would have heard of him at the newspaper office ( the book had been checked from the library only twice in the last ten years, it had a plain blue backing, no picture to make it memorable, no problem)
I phoned for an interview in Southport and went on the day early to check their library. They didn't even have the book, but they could get it for me, funnily enough, from my local library. Oh, no they couldn't, I'd stolen it a week earlier.
I can't spell. My writing is so poor I've had notes I've written cashed as prescriptions. I was asked to write a page and a half on the wedding of some fat smelly bitch to a creep who collected children's toenails. Ten minutes latter I'm out on the street. They don't think I'm suitable, the hacks.
Next door is the offices of the local bus persons. I walk in, ask if there are any jobs, fill in a form. The interview is conducted (I know) through a glass hatch over a counter. We are interrupted occasionally by bus men cashing in, handing over bags of pennies and tickety things.
"I see you've got six O Levels, why don't you apply for a job in the office?"
I think for a moment.
"How long would I have to work in the office before I earned the same money as a bus conductor does now?"
After a ponder he said, "About five years."
I arched an eyebrow, well that was what was in my head, or on my head. I probably said, " Well, er, actually, I've always wanted to be a bus conductor. Its the uniform, see, its the power."
Curse those O Levels. They have been nothing but a bane around my neck since the day I was born. I knew I was a marked man. I'd got the job, they were desperate, but I'd called into question his whole reason for being. I'd rejected his lifestyle; I'd spat on him with contempt when he'd offered me the safe haven of his office, temperature controlled, asinine, full of birthday cakes. He would never forgive me and tonight he would go home and not speak to his wife for forty-five minutes.
(An aside. Story I heard, pre war, post war, who knows. British Rail recruited from the top Universities for executive posts. Spend three months in each department then fast track to the top. The Civil Service did something similar. Your man comes down from Cambridge, a First in Maths, enters the system then disappears off the radar. Ten years later some personnel shake up discovers his file and tracks (I know) him down to the Department of Timetables. His job was to work out all the different connections of trains all over the country. He was asked, "Why didn't you ever say anything, you were supposed to be there for three months?"
"I found it interesting."
Stupid fucker.)
So, I look in the paper locale (the bastards) find a one bedroom room. Move in a week, job done. (what have I done, what have I done?)
That was Friday. Monday an hour late for work.
"Mr. Foster, can I have a moment?"
"I'll be with you in a minute mate, just going for a piss."
Then, in his glass cubicle (I told you Dickensian) I prepared to face the music. Bring on your bag pipes, you fucker. He made me leave the door open so that all those earwiging could hear every word and also, I suspect, because two people in such close confines could create quite a stench. This was before deodorant or, even, washing.
"You were late today, what is the reason, och aye the nu." (okay, I'll stop that)
"Well, I was writing a poem on the train and I became so engrossed that I didn't get off at my stop." I said with a smirk. (What is a smirk?)
"Poetry, eh, I'm partial to a bit of poetry myself. Who do you read?"
I trotted out my collection of the Liverpool Scene guys.
"Sadly, I've not heard of those fellows. I don't keep up as much as I used to. Do you read any other poets?"
I spilled my guts. I told him everything. I started easy with the War Poets, school stuff, slipped in Dylan Thomas, no problem, Walt Whitman, could be tricky. He countered with Burns. When he told me that Burn's mother was illiterate but could sing over a thousand folk songs I was sweating. He talked about Yeats, mentioned what he called the new poets Plath, Larkin, Hughes, others. I was so far out of my depth that the invisible plastic water wings you wear on your arms to keep you afloat (every teenager has them) were starting to deflate. I had nothing left, only Hopkins.
"Hopkins, marvellous, but a difficult poet. Do you have a favourite?"
I mentioned a couple and he nodded, sagely (?) We were winding down, the dangerous magic of poetry was dissipating. I felt drained, but okay. I wanted to know this guy more. I'd suspected him of having hidden shallows, but there you go.
"Well, George, I think there was something you wanted to tell me?"
The bastard knew.
"I'm, well, I'm leaving, jacking it in, I've got another job."
"Another job? I don't think we've been asked for a reference. What sort of job?"
" I got a job as a bus conductor in Southport."
"A bus conductor? Why would you want to be a bus conductor?"
And the line I'd been practising for days, my exit line, my peace of resistance,
"I want to travel."
"When are you leaving us?"
"Friday."
"You're supposed to give a months notice, but we'll forget that. If you want a reference in future contact me. I must say, though, like a lot of people of your generation you lack patience. You've never suffered real privation and that's a good thing. I don't know what you want, I suspect you don't either. Whatever you end up doing, George, don't piss your life away. Do something worthwhile, do something good.
Now. there's no point in you staying here till Friday, go get yourself sorted out. I'll pay you till Friday anyway. I don't want you encouraging others to go travelling on the buses."
He stood, smiled and shook my hand. I wanted him to adopt me. I wanted him to take me home to his interesting wife who didn't add extra water to Cadburys Smash to make it go further, like my own mother. I wanted him to find me interesting, and he'd said the word piss.
And so I left. A new life, independent in my bedroom room and the glamour of the buses.
Drop out, number two
Look, what happened on the buses is part of another story. Crazy people I have met etc. I'm trying to concentrate on the tune in riff and we're up to drop out.
I saved money, the mates met regularly and we honed (?) our plans. Afghanistan had been a typical school boy fad. How we laughed at our selves. Sort of Ho, Ho, Ho type thing, but without the Father Christmas redolence.
Ethiopia, no question. The first Christian kingdom; churches carved out of solid rock! By this time we were into spirituality. Lobsang Rampa, a shoe in, Alistair Crowley, forget the crazy rituals, the man was a genius. We'd all read 'The Devil Rides Out' and knew the dangers. We'd done Weegga Board, palmistry from a book, tried tea leaves by opening a bag, that was a mess. We were ready. Well some of us were.
None of us had girlfriends, apart from me, of course. But mine was a Protestant so had no spirituality whatsoever. I was very cool towards her, merely bombarding her with two or three poems a day. I was particularly good at writing poems were each line began with a letter of her name and they rhymed. I got that from Dylan Thomas. You could read her name down the page. She never caught on even though she had two Zs in her name. Rhyme that you bastards.
So there was no, like, chicks, apart from mine, but one guy was going to Art School so couldn't go to Ethiopia for five years, another was just starting a course as a Window Display Artist (it impressed me, I didn't know it was a window dressing course that eventually paid half minimum wage when minimum wage didn't even exist) That left three of us.
We were going to hitch-hike. We were going to hitch-hike to Ethiopia. You can't hitch-hike with three people. Its perverse, its obscene. It leaves a funny taste in your mouth, like when you were a kid and tried to suck your own dick. You couldn't do it but it still left a funny taste in your mouth.
I was magnanimous. I was the lone poet. They could go together, the wimps. It turned out they were lone poets too. We all set off separately.
Again, those stories belong to another time. I came back from France after two weeks with second degree sun burn; one of us never set off, and the third got as far as southern Spain.
I got my job back on the buses, and nobody noticed I 'd left.
Drop out number two
I was working on the buses, writing poetry to the girl I'd left behind, (I'd chucked her when I went to Ethiopia) and basically feeling lost and forlorn, maybe fivelorn.
I had a quiff. It was like a wave that you could surfboard on if you were a Beach Boy. We all knew about surfing from the songs, but we didn't know what it meant. We'd never seen it. The quiff stood out from one side of my head like an Australian hat. I had been warned several times that my 'appearance' was not consistent with the requirements of their bus operatives. It was only a matter of time.
Then the mate said come to Art School, its a blast, and you get a grant. Free money for nothing!
It occurred to me that if you can't drop out by going to Ethiopia or Wales or some place, then the next best thing was going to Art School, John Lennon and, er, people like that ilk. One problem, I had absolutely no talent. In fact I had minus talent. I'd only done art at school because the art teacher and woodwork teacher tossed a coin and the loser got me. This could be a problem. The mate offered to lend me some drawings but I reckoned I'd be sussed in about two seconds. No, I had to do it myself, somehow.
First thing, chuck in the job. I gave them notice of quitting, about five minutes, (there are people in Southport still waiting for a bus that will never come) signed on the dole and bought my supplies, tracing paper, a roll of wall paper and kids non-toxic poster paints.
I traced my LP covers and transposed the images onto the wall paper (the blank side, obviously, no one dreamed of Brit Art in the 60s) I had an old book I'd bought in Paddy's' Market, caricatures by Max Beerbohm, so traced out images of Wilde, Beardsley and people I'd never heard of mixed in with tracings of Desperate Dan et al from the Beano. I was pretty confidant that nobody would have heard of Beerbohm, the book I had was pretty old, probably the only copy in existence.
The day of the interview I looked like an art student. My hair had been permed by a mate's sister to get rid of the quiff. It stood out from my head like the nimbus in a holy picture. The first afro in Southport! I was very thin and from behind, apparently I looked like a mean portion of candy floss.
First question at the interview,
"I see your interested in the work of Max Beerbohm, why's that?"
Shit. Okay, honesty, then collect my stuff and sod off.
"I don't really know anything about him, I just liked the images and I'm sort of into Wilde, Bernard Shaw and Beardsley and that type of stuff."
"Hmm. These, er, works on wall paper, why wall paper?"
"Its cheap and I thought the slightly embossed pattern coming through on the back might make the pictures more interesting."
"Hmm."
And so it went. When I was asked why I didn't draw my brothers and sisters and explained that non of them stayed in one place for any length of time and anyway they'd just take the piss, they looked at me like I was an alien.
I was asked to wait outside while they conferred.
"Aren't you going to look at my fish?"
I'd spent three months every Tuesday dinnertime working on that fucking fish. All its scales were made individually, tiny balls of clay pressed into the surface. It was eventually fired and glazed and I was rather proud of it. It was the one and only thing I'd ever made. There it lay in a bag on the floor, rapped in newspaper.
"Oh, sorry, we thought that was your lunch. So you're interested in ceramics, hmm?"
"I don't really know, I liked pottery."
After ten minutes I'm called back in,
"As you probably know, the term has already started, can you come in Monday?"
Yes!
And that, chaps, was the beginning of my drop out phase which, thankfully, continues to this day. In 1969 I started my gap life and over the years I've been occasionally turned on, sometimes tuned in but always in freefall, always dropping out.