NOTES
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All I remember of the journey from Brighton to Bristol is one particular lift, in a van. It sticks in my mind because at the end of the lift, wherever that was, we discovered that a lot of the pulses and grains we had brought with us had spilled out all over the floor of the van. It lightened our load but didn't impress the driver. Upon arrival in Bristol we found a student pub near the university. The first student we asked readily agreed to put us up for a few nights. Unfortunately, we discovered that no-one in the house of many students to which we were conducted ever went to bed. The raving went on pretty much round the clock, so I don't think we were able to sleep. However, we soon found a bedsit in Ashley Road, off Whiteladies Road. A strange little feature of the room was that when the curtains were drawn and it was sunny outside, a chink in the curtains turned it into a camera obscura. Traffic, in sharp focus but upside-down, progressed continuously round the tops of the walls, like a frieze. This was quite amusing, considering that there is a famous camera obscura at nearby Clifton, which we visited. Another feature was David Bowie's Space Oddity drifting down through the ceiling for hours on end every day. Take your protein pills and put your helmet on. |
| It didn't take long for the market stall idea to collapse - there was a very long waiting list for stalls and, in any case, the Corporation were very fussy about who they would let in. For a couple of weeks we remained in our little camera obscura, mostly lying on the bed with the curtains drawn and that record filtering through. Soon, of course, we began to run out of money. Now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare... |
| Angela soon found life modelling work at the nearby university and at the art college. I got a job in a skiving factory, by the usual method of walking in and asking the foreman, who told me to start next morning. Skiving means re-treading worn tyres. I only lasted a couple of days there before disappearing. My job was to lift huge lorry tyres, unassisted, onto benches. I could manage the first two or three of the day, but after that I had to call for help, which made me very unpopular. The working conditions were appalling - rubber dust and no rest-room for the short breaks. I couldn't force myself to go in on the third morning. |
| We soon got behind with the rent, and Angela decided we were going to forget Bristol and hitch to London. She contacted a friend, Barry Strevens, whom she had met on a Transcendental Meditation course. He was now living in Kentish Town, London. Angela went a few days before me, leaving to me to find some way of transporting the few possessions we had accumulated in our three or four weeks in Bristol - mostly clothes and cooking utensils. When it came to it, I couldn't be bothered. I left almost everything behind and simply hitched. I've always regretted leaving a very nice mandolin behind. |
| Barry's place was a council-owned flat at 13 Healey Street, in a Victorian terrace. It consisted only of a bedroom, a tiny kitchen and bathroom. Barry was already putting up two other drifters, a man and a woman, and for a while all five of us shared the one bedroom. We soon fell out badly with the other two. Despite the fact that they were giving Barry rent and we were not, as they were quick to point out, it was they who got their marching orders from Barry, not us. Soon after Christmas, Barry himself left to go on a course with Maharishi in Switzerland. He had given up his job as a packer in a cigarette warehouse, and had no intention of returning to Kentish Town after the course. Although it was very much against the rules, he handed over the keys of the flat to us. We heard recently that Barry was one of the seven people killed in the Berkshire level crossing crash in November 2004, at the height of his success as a management consultant. |