| NOTES |
Anton Wallich-Clifford turned out to be a tall, gaunt man in his fifties, with a long straggly black beard, very pinched features and piercing eyes. He had an upper-class accent and was, indeed, said to be of aristocratic extraction. He had an undeniable presence - charisma, I suppose you could say. In dress, he was hippy‑influenced and wore beads and bells. He took identification with his fellow inadequates very seriously, even to the point of occasionally fixing up or drinking meths. He almost certainly half-starved himself as well. He was a former probation officer who had decided that the only way he could help many of the can't‑copers and no‑hopers that he had to deal with was to plunge in among them and somehow guide them through a self‑supporting, mutually therapeutic communal existence, away from the world of the adequates, with whom he was undeniably out of sympathy. |
| A common feature of visits by Anton was the Si(gh) session. This was in fact no more nor less than 'hot-seat therapy', which was trendy at the time. It involved picking on someone who then had to listen to criticism of his or herself by anyone who chose to have a go. The victim was expected to answer these criticisms. The more worked‑up the victim became, the more successful the 'therapy' was deemed to be. Given the fragile nature of the personalities being subjected to this, it no doubt did more harm than good in many cases. I was taken very much by surprise to find myself nominated for the hot‑seat. |
| I was even more surprised by the substance of the joint attack. I was accused of sitting in the armchair all day doing nothing and eating more than my share of food. Now, whilst this was undeniably true, the puzzling thing was that it should be considered wrong, given what I had taken to be the philosophy of the place. I countered indignantly that I was an inadequate if ever there was one. Sitting in an armchair was all I was good for - it was my thing. Eventually Anton fixed me with his penetrating gaze and pronounced sentence. "You may well be inadequate," he said, "but in Simon we all do what we can within the limits of our inadequacies. I find that in your case, sitting in an armchair all day has got less to do with inadequacy than with bone idleness. I'm therefore promoting you to worker status. You can start by going on the bread run this afternoon. Tomorrow you will find something to do around the house to make yourself useful." |
| Visiting their website again (in 2013), I see that there is no longer any mention of Anton or inded any of Simon's early history there. I wonder why? | That sealed Anton's fate, as far as my estimation of him was concerned. I decided he was a fraud, a creepy religious masochist, several kinds of idiot and much more besides. If you want a rather different and doubtless rather more accurate assessment of the man and his work, go to the Simon Community website, where you will also find that the Kentish Town unit in question (St Joseph's House) is still very much in business. No doubt the armchair is still there, too. |
| The bread run entailed visiting the several large bakeries in the area and trying to cadge a few loaves of bread. I was detailed to visit an untried one, Marchi-Zeller in Camden Town. I went into the bakehouse and located the foreman. He was East European and could hardly speak English. "Only hard work for bread!" he roared, with such ferocity that I have never forgotten the exact order of his words. This response resulted in an almost apoplectic surge of nationalism in my breast. It also ensured that I didn't even try the next one I had been told to go to. Instead, I secretly spent the last few pence in my pocket buying two or three stale loaves going cheap in a baker's shop. My companions were duly impressed by my begging skills when we regrouped. |
| The next day, I appointed myself to clear up the back yard. In truth, this was a near impossible task, as it was completely buried under a mountain of rubbish, mostly stuff donated but surplus to requirements. I worked hard, but I wasn't seriously trying to alter the landscape - I was just shifting stuff about from place to place. After a couple of days of this nonsense I was called inside. "The van's here and Anton wants you on it" I was told. "He's posted you to Sclater Street." This was dreadful news, as I had already learned that the Sclater Street unit in Shoreditch was a 'first tier' shelter for jake wallahs (meths drinkers). |
| For some reason, instead of disappearing, I actually got in the van and went there. The place was even worse than I had imagined. It was a veritable hell-hole. In a crumbling semi-derelict building scheduled for demolition, Scottish and Irish sub-dossers, in the last stages of decrepitude, barely human, were lying or staggering around, fighting whenever they could manage it, vomiting, shitting themselves, threatening workers with knives and making various lunatic noises. The stench was appalling. Jakies' urine smells just like that of cats, only stronger. In fact some were drinking their own or others' urine - a common practice to recycle alcohol. This place was known as Simonlight. |
| There was, of course, no attempt to provide bedding for the jakies - that would have been ridiculous, but even we workers had to doss on the floor of a back room - not that there was much chance of sleep. I was given the never-ending task of chopping vegetables (I didn't bother to peel them) for the soup we attempted to feed them with. This was kept on the boil in a large cauldron all the time. You just kept throwing in more vegetables and any bones you could scrounge from butchers. We were supposed to help ourselves to this muck - it was the only food allowed, but people who were already getting their 50 pence a week sneaked bread in, and I contented myself with that. |
| I escaped the worst of the mayhem by doing my vegetable peeling while sitting atop the mountain of rubbish in the back yard. But even there, there was no escape from the constant maniacal screaming of a female jakie. Some poor woman occasionally leaned out of a window in an adjacent building and begged me, sobbing, to try to shut the creature up because she was nursing a sick child. I told her that for my part, I would willingly have shot the screeching wreck but, not only did I not have a gun, but that it was a case of the rights of a top-flight inadequate over those of a mere ordinary. A couple of times I was sent on the vegetable run. This meant touring nearby Spitalfields Vegetable Market picking up dropped vegetables from the gutters or picking them out of discarded piles of half-rotten ones. The market traders regarded us with the deepest contempt. |
| After only a few days I was on the point of walking away from all this when the van arrived to take workers who were due for a break to Simonwell Farm. I somehow insinuated myself into the van. I can't remember what tale I told in order to pull that off, but the fact is that I found myself at Simonwell Farm, the jewel in the Simon crown and the lair of Anton himself. |