NOTES
There are no notes for this chapter yet. Some of the notes on other pages are based on info YOU send me. |
For a while, the novelty of being in a 'relationship' (this horrible use of the word was quite modern then) kept Angela and me at Chesham Place. We spent a lot of time helping the Simpsons with their winemaking, and would think nothing of taking all day to prepare an elaborate meal. The Simpsons were vegetarians, and as we were cooking for them as well, I not only learned to cook, but gradually became a vegetarian myself (Angela had already taken this step some time since). I soon developed a strong aversion even to the smell of meat and fish, and found myself crossing the road to avoid butchers' shops, which were much more numerous then. (In fact, this aversion that develops after giving up meat makes it hard to understand how anyone can revert to meat-eating, once they have given it up). It was more difficult to be vegetarian in those days. We were not catered for at all in supermarkets, and very few cafés and restaurants had veggie options. Back then, veggies probably accounted for less than one in a thousand of the population of the UK, now it's said to be about one in thirty (or one in ten, if you count those who eat fish and poultry from time to time). |
| I had somehow managed to save about £100 during the short time I had been washing-up at the Royal Sussex. It was by far the most money I had ever had, and seemed like a fortune. I don't suppose I earned more than about £12 a week over those two or three months, so I can't have given the Simpsons much for my keep, despite my original good intentions. Possibly, they flatly refused to take anything. Of course, these savings were now slowly ebbing away. I had no intention of going back on Social Security. You may remember from Chapter 52 (last paragraph) that I had somehow managed to bluff and bluster my way into the extraordinary position of getting maximum benefits while openly declaring that I was a full-time voluntary worker, and therefore not seeking paid employment. This situation had lasted for about three years, even though it was absolutely against the rules. It enabled me to look upon the State hand-outs I was receiving every week as payment by the government for all the work I was doing to build a great charitable empire to rival Oxfam. Now that I had to admit to myself that nothing like an empire had even begun to appear (except in my head), my pride wouldn't allow me to go crawling back to the State and apply under the normal rules, especially after my more recent experience in Leicester (see Chapter 73 - last paragraph). |
| There seemed to be only one thing for it - use the capital I had left to start a business. What was this business to be? I thought of running a stall in an indoor market. There was no indoor market in Brighton. In any case, apart from the Simpsons, Brighton was all washed up for us. It was rapidly becoming no more than a ghost of the place of only a year or two earlier. The magic of the place that enabled you to feel you could get up to whatever you wanted and make a success of it, had faded. Well, that been the general magic of the late sixties, not just Brighton. Anyway, I remembered having seen a large indoor market in Bristol, during my 'Grand Tour' of 1964-65 (chapters 31-34). That was it - we would go to Bristol and run a highly successful market stall. Small details, such as what to sell, could wait until we got there. |
| I'm not sure if we said goodbye to the Simpsons and whoever else was staying there at the time, but that sort of thing wasn't really required in those circles. We just stuffed lots of pulses and grain and the few clothes as we weren't actually wearing into some carrier bags, and off we went to stick our thumbs out on the road West. That was how the great Brighton era, which has taken up 27 chapters of this saga, ended. I could never write that much about any other period of my life. In fact I left many things out, or there would have been another dozen chapters devoted to that period. These days, four years go by in a flash, but the four Brighton years still appear to me to have covered half a lifetime. It's the same for Angela. |