At the prefab
 |
| Me in the prefab's garden about 1951 |
 |
| My granny (on the right)
The steep hill the other side from Erith Road was a
scary ride we made using a single roller skate with a piece of wood tied across
the skate as a seat. You sat on the skate, lifted your feet and shot down the
hill. Green double buses and trucks sped down the road as we rocketed down the
pavement a few feet from them. In front of the ten or so prefabs where we lived
there was a downhill pavement. The kids from the prefabs took on a race to the
bushes and trees at the bottom of this hill in their toys. I had a little tin
car and took my feet off the pedals and sped down the pavement and into the
bushes as a brake system.
|
Some of the people living in the prefabs were
something like this: Peggy and Cyril Trenfield at the bottom of the strip of
prefabs. They were the only ones with a car. Cyril was a lighthouse man on the
Thames and in charge of a tug. Then there was the prefab containing the Bentley
family. Anne, the mum, was large in all respects as was her son Peter. Next to
them was Bob, his wife and the roundish daughter Pam. I remember being passed
over their fence when they cooked minced beef stew with chips – something I
adored. Going up the hill the next neighbour I cannot remember except we went
in there on occasions to watch films on their tiny television. They were mostly
Russian films, Ivan the Terrible, for example. On our TV, which was a 9-inch
screen with a magnifier in front of it, I watched, Billy the Bean and his Funny
Machine, The Flower Pot Men, the Cisco Kid and hid behind the sofa when the
Quatermass series was shown. I think they used the ball shaped white buildings
that scarily were visible on the way to Vic and Vi in Basildon.
 |
| Vicky 13 and me 8 |
Further up was the Simmonds family – Bob and Doreen
with Peter, Derek (a bit older than me), Jean (a bit younger) and Jill. I used
to go there for breakfast as mum had gone with Fred on his GPO BSA Bantam to
the post job in Plumstead. I used to enjoy sitting on it when it was in the
shed at Fred and Ivy’s house. It had a red button for the hooter that I loved
using. I do not think it had a rear seat so how mum stayed on I can’t imagine.
Breakfast at the Simmonds was usually a slice of white bread with sugar spread
over its margarine. Vicky would take me across to Lesness Heath Primary School
or I would go with the Simmonds.
Beyond them was the Sugden family. I believe Mrs
Sugden worked at the local bakers. Her daughter enjoyed playing doctor or nurse
and patient games. I was totally agreeable to being the patient, laying flat on
the lawn and being carefully checked by the Sugden girl.
Other games we had round Brook Street include going to
the chalk quarry and avoiding sliding down its sides into the white lake,
investigating the pond in the wood and catching the little fish and frogs,
carrying water to the gravel trench that led down to the stream at the bottom
and making dams and water flows, sitting on corrugated iron pieces to slide
down the trench, throwing stones from the gravel at each other – Peter Simmonds
got one just above his eye from me and therefore had a permanent
scimitar-shaped scar.
The Brook Street collection of homes was about a dozen
prefabs facing over the hill towards Salmon Road (Ivy and Fred) and Roberts
Road (Perce and Dolly). I still wear the ring that was once Perce’s and then
passed to my Dad with its black garnet stone and then to me after Dad’s death.
Behind the prefabs were Nissen huts and behind those further prefabs – the
people in those somehow seeming better off while the Nissen hut families
seemed very hard up.
I remember the Lesness school for its slowest bicycle
race and that is about it. I think I did pretty well at that and no, I was not
using my tricycle, but Vicky’s bike I seem to remember. The tricycle I turned
awkwardly and it bit into my thigh – I still have the scar about 58 years
later. I remember using this tricycle to go with mum up to the shops in Nuxley
Road – the butchers were called Buckinghams (I remember that lamb was cheaper
than chicken – about six shillings against nine). I think the Cooperative was
where we’d go occasionally. They gave tin receipts. The other old injury still
showing is the damage to my fourth finger on my left hand. Pam and Vicky were
on either end of a plank across a barrel and going up and down on this seesaw.
I was fascinated and put my hand in the gap. The fingernail is still much
smaller than it should be. We also had a cow ‘toy’ in the garden that had our
interest, but no bad behaviour from it.
The pavement outside the prefab was always a place for
games, for little toy cars to get in races. There were broom shrubs between the
pavement and the wall leading down to the main road. One episode before 5th
November was that Vicky had a packet of coloured matches. She decided she
wanted flames of a special colour and set fire to one of the bushes.
 |
| Vicky and me - looks like London Zoo |
Seems Julie and I kissed on one occasion (I fancied
her for many years after this) and Roger gave me a small punch while he and I
were on this pavement – perhaps he fancied Julie as well. In earlier years
Julie and I were taken to a fair, possibly in Erith. I do remember a show-diver
climbing up a high ladder, diving off and then hitting the side of the tiny
tank. There were screams and roars of shock from the crowd. I don’t know if the
accident had killed or just injured him.
Christmas
I remember a few Christmas parties while still at the
prefab. I get reminded about many occasions by smells. What I associate with
those first Christmases are smells of bath salts, chocolate (very sweet and in
the shape of soldiers wearing beefer uniform), the pine smell of real Christmas
trees, beer in barrels and those cooking Cornish pies and sausage rolls. The
parties at 3 Salmon Road were typical of the family and probably most families
who were working class and who’d survived WWII. There was always a large barrel
of beer and every other drink that could be gathered. Food was not only the
pies and rolls made by Nell and Ivy, but lots of cold meats, brawn from pigs’
heads, pickled onions, sandwiches – that is my small memory of what was a huge
supply. Then there was music played by those who could and some who just about.
I think it was Ron or George with the tea box, broom pole and string to provide
the bass, a corrugated wash sheet (washboard), a homemade kazoo from tissue and
comb, then voices for the songs of which I remember none, but loved them
anyway. A tradition was devised for songs and who would sing them. Pat and
George sang ‘Angel on my shoulder’, Ron sang a song popular in
the war, Fred sang Rosie I think it was. I remember doing the occasional poem –
one I’d written that was supposed to be amusing. (After we had moved to
Elmhurst I used to occasionally do a tap dance in a corner of the living room
to a song by Tommy Steele “Put a Ring on her Finger”. I wish I’d been more
shy.)
There were many games played with the kids at
Christmas parties. Harry was an expert at making everything fun yet
embarrassing at the same time. There was the one where the kids were
blindfolded and led to Harry and as a donkey he was on his hands and knees. One
of our hands would be led down the ‘donkey’ from the head and our finger pushed
into the donkey’s backside that was slowly revealed to be an orange. There was
another experience for each child who was young (and light) enough that brought
excitement rather than anal fear. This involved blindfolding the kids yet
again, placing them on a chair and having two men take the chair into a
terrifying flight that went high, low, left, right, swooping and rising
quickly. Someone made the sound of a Spitfire. Bottle spinning seemed
relatively easy to experience. A good proportion of the family sat in a circle
and did the usual bottle spinning kiss finding. I remember that my favourites
were Pam and Pat.
I think that Ivy and Fred provided the house for
Christmas for some time. When I was older, like fromthe age of eight, I
remember the party at our house in Elmhurst and Ron and Nell’s at their flat.
(Later Pam and Bill had at least one at their flat that was next to the Mother’s
Pride bakery.) The thing they all had in common was a lack of rooms or beds to
sleep everyone at the same time. The women would go to bed first and share
single beds between two and double between three or even more. I think the plan
was that the men would take over beds as soon as the women were out of them,
but I think the men had more to drink and took a sleep in an armchair if they
could hang on to one.
Music
I occasionally heard some classical music on the radio
– it must have been BBC The Third station. I remember Mum getting irritated by
classical music and called it ‘bloody earache music’ and changed it to the
Light Programme or the Home Service. In the living room I remember hearing
Doris Day, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra and the guy who sang Three
Coins in a Fountain. I loved them all. On Saturday morning I would be in bed
while the children’s music programme – Children’s Favourites - came through
from the living room to our (Vicky’s and mine) bedroom. Tubby the Tubor by the
American actor Danny Kaye, Changing Guards and the one about buying a dog from
the window I think were repeated almost every week. Some time in 1957 and Pam
and Bill brought over to us in the prefab a record of Jerry Lee Lewis’s Great
Balls of Fire – some of the best rock n’ roll ever made and probably the first
we’d all heard. It was probably a 45rpm single. A year or so later Harry gave
us a 16rpm LP that had music from South America like that of Edmundo Ross.
I think Vicky’s first LP was an Elvis one
probably soon after we moved to Elmhurst. It was a fantastic LP I do remember,
the songs I don’t. Vicky will help put this right. This is how she looked about
the time she fell in love with Elvis but before Johnny Mathis (I think). It was
Vicky who bought the Dave Brubeck Take Five pop jazz piece. I liked it so much
at the age of 10 that I closed my eyes and got convinced that I was dreaming as
I listened. When I was 10 my mum was a cleaner at the local old seaman's house
in Belvedere. She started to bring back the occasional LP from an old Mr Peeg,
the first being Sibelius 2 which I instantly adored. There was a Cossor record
player in my sister's bedroom where I played, if she wasn't there, music of any
type whether at 16, 32, 45 or 78 rpm. There was an ep which was blues music
with a central harmonica, 10th Street or similar. I played it in Vicky's
bedroom and danced, off the bed and on the bed.
At The Black Prince in about 1967 were John Mayall,
Georgie Fame, Zoot Money, Long John Baldry, even Jimmi Hendrix.
My first school was 1B and my teacher Mrs Hutchinson.
She was so pretty and with large breasts that I wanted to be her husband. The following year it was 2B and Miss James was the
teacher. She was attractive too apart from a huge wart above her top lip with
hairs poking out like a spider’s legs. I liked her teaching though and felt she
liked my writing. She said I would be a writer one day. I was reading one of
the few books at home – The Dam
Busters. I started to rewrite it, not realizing this was so hard a job,
so many words, so impossible to summarise, such a waste of time.
Me
with mum about 1966. Like my sunglasses!
|
My last year was in 4A with a Mr Prescott. He looked
exactly like The Third Man character in the TV series, Michael Rennie. He
smoked so much he irradiated strong smoker smells even from the back of the
classroom. It was this year that I took the 11 plus exam, most of which I just
did not understand – shapes that had to be analysed, shapes I’d never seen
before. I got a result that would have me go to a Technical School or a
Secondary School (Picardy). The interviewers had asked me what I wanted to
become and my answer was a doctor. Mum was bringing home Lancet magazine from
the Old Seaman’s House. I’d read bits and understood not a word. I got through
to The Dartford Technical School for Boys. Fortunately my best mate and the
person I always dream about, Peter Arnold, was also going there.
I was about 9 years old when I went to see where I
used to live with my next-door neighbour and mate, Derek Simmonds. We went to
the pond in the wood where we used to go and see the frogs, newts and
dragonflies plentiful in and around the pond, but by 1959 there was none of
these. Unfortunately, three boys older than us, forced us into their ‘tent’.
One boy was clearly older than the other two. He told them to strike us with ‘whips’
that were twigs. I was terrified and just felt the fear that we would be badly
injured, or killed! We were ‘released’ after a while of threats.
Girlfriends and bikes
My first girlfriend was Jacqueline from Cumberland
Road and at Bedonwell School – so about 11 years old. Her mum was huge in shape
and her father amazingly thin – both Scottish.
My first motorbike was using dad’s NSU Quickly around
the garden when I was about 14. Apparently someone in Germany did more than 100
mph on a specially designed Quickly and died doing so.
My next bike was a James 125cc. It cost £5 and really
that was for its engine – the rest of the bike was unrepairable. The engine
taught me a lot though. The timing was out and I knew nothing about how to
start an engine that refused. I added a chemical to the two-stroke petrol and
it made the bike start and give-off an interesting smell. (menthol I
think).
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| My sister, her close friend Sue, my mum and me - Abbey Woods near Erith |
When I was 17 I rode my BSA 250cc, C11G that for which I’d saved
£15. I acquired a 125cc BSA Bantam, stripped off the mudguards and used it
with a friend called John Scott on a field at the end of King Harold’s Way. We
were chased by a poiceman on a Velocette police bike. John, to my great desire,
had a two-cylinder Norton 200cc Jubilee.
I went to Corinne Summer's house on a road near one
that went from King Harold’s Way. We both were doing Virginia Wolf’s book that
takes place in Cornwall and about a Lighthouse. We had cuddles after the
exchange of thoughts about the novel and then I’d go back home. Her parents had
stayed in the front room watching TV for the entire evening. Corinne was
disappointed when I tried to get intimate on my parents’ bed during my 17th
birthday. My bedroom was being used by a friend called Steve (his parents ran
The Wheatsheaf near Gravesend) on a girlfriend, so it had to be mum and dad’s.
I was just making progress when I heard their Lambretta turn up outside – end
of my/our attempts.
The
Dartford Tech rugby team. Most socks didn't match.
|
I was 17 and the chairman of the debating club at
school. Dartford Technical High School for Boys was my school. I wanted to do
English A-level, but this was not available to us in 1967 and we (myself,
Peter Arnold and Alan Coffin) went across to the Girl’s Technical School and
there I met Christine Smith who was head girl and a year ahead of me. I took
her on my bike (now a Panther 325cc from Uncle Albert) around Dartford on an
attempt to get public opinion on the war in Vietnam. We became instantly fond of
each other and by summer 1967, while I suffered in bed from something with my
chest.
Chris took up a job in an insurance company in London City basically so she could extend the relationship with me. I’d ride over to her home near Swanley on the Panther and then a new bike called a BSA Silver Star. I’d brought this back from Exeter to Warwick University when I was in the first year. The new 500cc bike had a great sound, a troublesome engine, but a great sound. Chris now was in Exeter doing a three-year course on Occupational Therapy. I travelled to Exeter frequently on my motorbike – nearly always with a fault occurring – like the gear lever falling off and me using a mole spanner, the chain breaking and me somehow fixing it. The bikes and their engines often went wrong in the 1960s, but unlike today's they could be fixed on the road - if you took enough spanners and a hammer that is.
I was made Head Boy for some reason I can't really explain. The school had 600 boys, most from working class homes with fathers who were more likely to be labourers than business men. I had to appear on the stage every morning and quote from the Bible then say what was coming. We had one memorable visit from a man in the MI5 to see who would be interested in a James Bond job. Most of the hands went up including mine. I also became the captain of the rugby team. It was the school's first rugby team and we won few games against the teams we played in Kent and Essex. I continued with my position as scrum half at University, but did not last long.
My time at Warwick
University
It should really be called Coventry University so
close is it to this fairly awful city. I tried Essex first of all for
interviews. It seemed brand new in 1968, with tall towers that were famous as
places for students to fling themselves over the edge. How true this was I have
no idea, but psycho drugs were taking off in the late sixties and balancing on
the edge of towers seemed a common effect. The position of Essex seemed distant
from anywhere of interest. I then was interviewed at York University in an office
being used by a famous critique whose name was FD something. The buildings
looked superbly designed, which they were. I took Ned for an interview in 2005
and the buildings looked terrible, as though the white concrete walls had had
mud thrown at them – it was simply their deterioration. I then went for an
interview at Warwick University and it was the good looking, intimidating, a
lady from Australia with a vast and always accurate vocabulary, Germaine Greer.
I’d taken some of my poems and she thought I was too romantic for Warwick, but
I could come anyway if I achieved an A, a B and a C. I’d seen her on TV in Nice Time with Kenny Everett before I’d
even been interviewed by her let alone sitting in her office while she chatted
with incredible knowledge and opinion on Shakespeare and modern literature. She
ended up involved in the 1969 Warwick students’ problem with the Vietnam war
within universities like Kent in the US and the UK plus many others. I was
involved in sitting in, smoking in, drinking in and searching in the Vice
Chancellor’s office. We indulged in many discussions in the evenings with
Germaine Greer and many other lecturers. (Germaine now lives in a house just
outside of Saffron Walden, as we do.) I was on the bar while this went on, handling
it with a few students, taking on long, long lists of drink, supplying it,
working out the totals in my head, picking up glasses through the evening and
then washing up. The two gay bar owners then would spray us with soda water
during hoots of laughter. The bar was in the Rootes Social Hall where
everything else happened. The Who band played there destroying their guitars at
the end – as per every show. The benefits hall was connected with Rootes
eventually becoming part of Chrysler and then Peugeot. The first car I had was,
oddly enough, A Rootes’ car – the Hillman Minx.
In 1970, just before Christmas, Chris told me she had
a new boyfriend called Patrick. I was deeply upset and took it like a mauled
child. This lasted a long time deep inside me, but I put it inside a
psychological shed within a month or so and developed other ‘friendships’
firstly within the university.
 |
| Me with mum about 1966. Like my sunglasses! |
There was a girl called Rebecca. She was very nice,
very intelligent, but not my idea of beautiful. She was keen because her
relationship with her boyfriend at home was shaking. Mine with Christine had
collapsed. One weekend my neighbour in Belvedere and someone I’d known
all my life, Jean Simmonds, came to my flat above a doctor’s surgery in
Leamington Spa for a weekend. Then there was another girl and friend of Rebecca
called Christine Hampshire who was very good at French and the same course as
me – English and American Literature. She lived in the same house as Rebecca in
Leamington Spa. I thought she was attractive and amazingly comical not to
mention highly intelligent. I’d bought a car having sold the BSA in December
1970. It was £50 from Bobby Hayward – a Hillman Minx.
We stayed together from about February 1971 until
after the graduations in June. Above is a photo of her and me at the Warwick
Uni car park wearing a borrowed cloak and board. We should have arrived at
Coventry Cathedral at 11am not IIpm (read as 2pm in Roman style!). Then I had a
little affair with the cousin of a friend – John Kilkenny, called Kate
Kilkenny. This remained until I went down to Exeter to start an education year
education at Exeter University. I travelled there in the dodgy Minx.
Teaching
English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) and Cordoba
We did some English language teaching in Exeter with
boys from the ETA and also from Athens. It was useful for when we went to stay
at my home. We worked nighttimes for a butter company in lower Belvedere to
earn some money to help us pay for EFL. It was a six week course and we both
got certificates. I tried to go to Japan first, then Brazil and I was offered
Cordoba in Spain. Jackie and I were going to take dad’s Lambretta to take
us down Spain, but because of my own servicing it exploded into flames just
before Portsmouth where we caught the ferry to Bilbao. From there we thumbed
cars down to Cordoba – to an ancient run-down hotel in the main square. Jackie
took on a teaching job at the school called Britannica where I taught for all
of £12 per week from 9am – 1pm and 6pm – 9pm. We lived in 7 Zapatero, near the
Mesquita.
At the Britannica school we met Linda Sonntag and she
became a close friend. Jackie left in February 1972 returning to Australia. She
told me she was going to meet a very wealthy guy from New Zealand and then come
back to Cordoba. After a few letters it became obvious that she would not be
returning to Cordoba.
 |
| The Dartford Tech rugby team. Most socks didn't match. |
I’d started some private teaching of English. One of
them was a jewellery importer, most of it coming from India. We had little
chats about what we were each doing. Unless his English was so bad, he told me
he was having an affair with a 15 year-old girl connected to the family. When I
told him that I was thinking of going to Australia to find Jackie, but I had
too little money to get there, he offered the flight cost as a loan that I
could repay when possible. He described himself as a ‘pearl pirate’ and came
across as such.
Australia - first time
Linda and I had an affair and I thought my leaving
Cordoba was the end of our closeness. I went home for a week or so and took a
flight to Sydney. The Jumbo stopped in Rome, Karachi and Jakarta. The journey
took 36 hours in a jumbo flight with a thick cigarette smoke cloud. I smoked a
few Dunhills myself, quite a few. I found a cheap hotel in Kings Cross and
slept until 1am. I got up to have a walk around. On the corner just outside the
hotel was a woman standing there completely naked. I decided to go back to the
hotel and find some sleep.
I had $A100 in cash. I hitched journeys in cars,
trucks and in one instance, a VW van full of hippies and marijuana. They were
really friendly and generous. The reason for going to Queensland was because I
knew that Jackie lived there with her parents considerably inland. More hitched
drives got me to her house early one morning. Their cute dog squeaked at me
from the house door when I arrived at the farm’s-looking gate. The door opened
and Jackie was there in her dressing gown seemingly not surprised by my
arrival. Her father was a captain in the RAAF and her mother stayed at their
huge wooden house and rode the horses they owned. The following day I rode with
her on one of their well-behaved horses. It was a small view from a 1950s US
film or maybe the Australian TV based series called Whiplash.
I left the Foskett’s impressive house and land,
permanently, and was taken by Captain Foskett to somewhere I could get a train
to Brisbane. There, I went to the government offices to talk about a teaching
job. They came up with a job at a place called Coalville, not far from
Townsville, where my cousin, Pam, lived with her husband Bill and two
daughters. In a caravan park in Bowen they had a large caravan and I was
accommodated under a stretch of canvas outside it. I slept in a thin, rough,
plastic bed. During the night flying foxes shat on the canvas a few feet above
my face. One morning I woke with my back being unmovable. I was taken to the
nearest chiropractor. Within minutes of their treatment I was cured. Somewhere
I still have the X-rays showing a slightly bent spine and a chain with a cross
round my neck.
 |
| Chris circa 1969 |
It
should really be called Coventry University so close is it to this fairly awful
city. I tried Essex first of all for interviews. It seemed brand new in 1968,
with tall towers that were famous as places for students to fling themselves
over the edge. How true this was I have no idea, but psycho drugs were taking
off in the late sixties and balancing on the edge of towers seemed a common
effect. The position of Essex seemed distant from anywhere of interest. I then
was interviewed at York University in an office being used by a famous critique
whose name was FD something. The buildings looked superbly designed, which they
were. I took Ned for an interview in 2005 and the buildings looked terrible, as
though the white concrete walls had had mud thrown at them – it was simply
their deterioration. I then went for an interview at Warwick University and it
was the good looking, intimidating, a lady from Australia with a vast and
always accurate vocabulary, Germaine Greer. I’d taken some of my poems and she
thought I was too romantic for Warwick, but I could come anyway if I achieved
an A, a B and a C. I’d seen her on TV in Nice
Time with Kenny Everett before I’d even been interviewed by her let alone
sitting in her office while she chatted with incredible knowledge and opinion
on Shakespeare and modern literature. She ended up involved in the 1969 Warwick
students’ problem with the Vietnam war within universities like Kent in the US
and the UK plus many others. I was involved in sitting in, smoking in, drinking
in and searching in the Vice Chancellor’s office. We indulged in many
discussions in the evenings with Germaine Greer and many other lecturers. (Germaine
now lives in a house just outside of Saffron Walden, as we do.) I was on the
bar while this went on, handling it with a few students, taking on long, long
lists of drink, supplying it, working out the totals in my head, picking up
glasses through the evening and then washing up. The two gay bar owners then
would spray us with soda water during hoots of laughter. The bar was in the
Rootes Social Hall where everything else happened. The Who band played there
destroying their guitars at the end – as per every show. The benefits hall was
connected with Rootes eventually becoming part of Chrysler and then Peugeot. The
first car I had was, oddly enough, A Rootes’ car – the Hillman Minx.
Pam got me a job at the local abattoir – not legally I
should add – where I had to use a broom to keep a long line of concrete free of
blood. If a butcher stepped into gelled blood with a sharp knife, he could slip
and fall onto it. The butchers sharpened their knives each time they finished
their task on a cow and then placed the knife in a large jar filled with
boiling water. They would occasionally remove a lymph gland that would then be
boiled in the knife cleaner, dusted with curry powder and eaten as a snack. I
was given a piece to try and found it delicious. I was being converted into a
horrific, blood-sweeping labourer. My other task was to pick up severed ears
and drop them into a bin that was tipped into the basement each time it filled.
I went to Townsville and to the job office. I was
given a teaching job in Mossman. Pam and I have driven to a place called
Coalsville to meet the head teacher of its school. The town was a sort of
isolated 1930-looking collection of old buildings and factories. Mossman was
very different and in the middle of rain forests, wonderful beaches, fields of
corn and aboriginal sites. I had a job of teaching English, French and maths,
the first subject being the only one I was qualified for.
 |
| Christine Hampshire 1971 |
 |
| Graduation in borrowed cloak |
Initially I lived in an old hotel in Mossman. A girl
called Judy smiled at me broadly as I moved into one of the first floor rooms.
I was there for a few weeks getting to know Judy (she became Miss Queensland in
the following year). I had an intimate relationship with Judy and we’d spend a
lot of my spare time on the 4-mile beach outside Port Douglas and in the
bungalow. I’d moved to a house for a few weeks in the middle of the
cornfields with an English couple who provided a bed in their pottery-making shed.
Then a bungalow in Port Douglas with a fat guy called Wally. It was a small
quiet village on the coast then lived in by prawn fishermen. Very different and
commercial it is today, sadly. One of the teachers at the Mossman school was
Jean Doornekamp who was kind, very practical and about ten years older than me.
We had a relationship and I went to live in her house about a mile outside Port
Douglas. I sometimes would go out with her along the coast in a tiny boat along
with her Alsatian – Cerskia.
I bought a Suzuki trail bike while I was there and
used it for a trip with Wally and Jean north of Mossman through Daintree and up
to Blue River(?) through forest. Jean had a Honda 50 and Wally borrowed
the bike of the pottery man. This bike had a disaster to its engine so Wally
took over the Honda and Jean was pavilion on my Suzuki.
Jean and I both left Mossman School at the end
of 1973 in her VW Beetle and in hurricane rain. There was not much room in the
Beetle with Cerskia on the back seat and all our travel gear in the front boot.
I left Jean in New South Wales Aldbury I think) though before this I bought
some land in New South Wales. I bought a beach land somewhere outside Adelaide.
It was a superb bit of finance – a few years later I used it to buy my first house
in St Mary Cray (£11k). In Perth I bought my first Holden E series. It was a
driveable wreck.
 |
| My Hillman Minx at house Mevagissey |
We
stayed together from about February 1971 until after the graduations in June.
Above is a photo of her and me at the Warwick Uni car park wearing a borrowed
cloak and board. We should have arrived at Coventry Cathedral at 11am not IIpm
(read as 2pm in Roman style!). Then I had a little affair with the cousin of a
friend – John Kilkenny, called Kate Kilkenny. This remained until I went down
to Exeter to start an education year education at Exeter University. I
travelled there in the dodgy Minx.
I
really enjoyed the Exeter Education department. It was in an old building close
to, but not in the University. The lecturers (Geoff and Paddy) were good fun
rather than highly academic like my Warwick tutors like Germaine Greer and
Bergonzi.I
first met the woman named Jackie Foskett from Australia when walking up and
down the little mountains on the Exmoor barrows and tumuli. We stayed together
from about November 1971. I was 21 and Jackie 25. Jackie had been a lover of an
admiral in Australia. He was the captain of the Voyager. In 1963 the Voyager
accidentally sank the Virgin with the loss of several hundred Australian
sailors. I think he was fired from the navy.
Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) and Cordoba
We did some English language teaching in Exeter with boys from the ETA and also from Athens. It was useful for when we went to stay at my home. We worked nighttimes for a butter company in lower Belvedere to earn some money to help us pay for EFL. It was a six week course and we both got certificates. I tried to go to Japan first, then Brazil and I was offered Cordoba in Spain. Jackie and I were going to take dad’s Lambretta to take us down Spain, but because of my own servicing it exploded into flames just before Portsmouth where we caught the ferry to Bilbao. From there we thumbed cars down to Cordoba – to an ancient run-down hotel in the main square. Jackie took on a teaching job at the school called Britannica where I taught for all of £12 per week from 9am – 1pm and 6pm – 9pm. We lived in 7 Zapatero, near the Mesquita.
At
the Britannica school we met Linda Sonntag and she became a close friend. Jackie
left in February 1972 returning to Australia. She told me she was going to meet
a very wealthy guy from New Zealand and then come back to Cordoba. After a few
letters it became obvious that she would not be returning to Cordoba.
 |
| Near Cordoba - me on the left and Jackie on right |
I’d
started some private teaching of English. One of them was a jewellery importer,
most of it coming from India. We had little chats about what we were each doing.
Unless his English was so bad, he told me he was having an affair with a 15
year-old girl connected to the family. When I told him that I was thinking of
going to Australia to find Jackie, but I had too little money to get there, he
offered the flight cost as a loan that I could repay when possible. He
described himself as a ‘pearl pirate’ and came across as such.
Australia - first time
Linda and I had an affair and I thought my leaving Cordoba was the end of our closeness. I went home for a week or so and took a flight to Sydney. The Jumbo stopped in Rome, Karachi and Jakarta. The journey took 36 hours in a jumbo flight with a thick cigarette smoke cloud. I smoked a few Dunhills myself, quite a few. I found a cheap hotel in Kings Cross and slept until 1am. I got up to have a walk around. On the corner just outside the hotel was a woman standing there completely naked. I decided to go back to the hotel and find some sleep.
Linda and I had an affair and I thought my leaving Cordoba was the end of our closeness. I went home for a week or so and took a flight to Sydney. The Jumbo stopped in Rome, Karachi and Jakarta. The journey took 36 hours in a jumbo flight with a thick cigarette smoke cloud. I smoked a few Dunhills myself, quite a few. I found a cheap hotel in Kings Cross and slept until 1am. I got up to have a walk around. On the corner just outside the hotel was a woman standing there completely naked. I decided to go back to the hotel and find some sleep.
I
had $A100 in cash. I hitched journeys in cars, trucks and in one instance, a VW
van full of hippies and marijuana. They were really friendly and generous. The
reason for going to Queensland was because I knew that Jackie lived there with
her parents considerably inland. More hitched drives got me to her house early
one morning. Their cute dog squeaked at me from the house door when I arrived
at the farm’s-looking gate. The door opened and Jackie was there in her dressing
gown seemingly not surprised by my arrival. Her father was a captain in the
RAAF and her mother stayed at their huge wooden house and rode the horses they
owned. The following day I rode with her on one of their well-behaved horses.
It was a small view from a 1950s US film or maybe the Australian TV based
series called Whiplash.
I
left the Foskett’s impressive house and land, permanently, and was taken by Captain
Foskett to somewhere I could get a train to Brisbane. There, I went to the
government offices to talk about a teaching job. They came up with a job at a
place called Coalville, not far from Townsville, where my cousin, Pam, lived
with her husband Bill and two daughters. In a caravan park in Bowen they had a
large caravan and I was accommodated under a stretch of canvas outside it. I
slept in a thin, rough, plastic bed. During the night flying foxes shat on the
canvas a few feet above my face. One morning I woke with my back being
unmovable. I was taken to the nearest chiropractor. Within minutes of their
treatment I was cured. Somewhere I still have the X-rays showing a slightly bent
spine and a chain with a cross round my neck.
Pam
got me a job at the local abattoir – not legally I should add – where I had to
use a broom to keep a long line of concrete free of blood. If a butcher stepped
into gelled blood with a sharp knife, he could slip and fall onto it. The
butchers sharpened their knives each time they finished their task on a cow and
then placed the knife in a large jar filled with boiling water. They would
occasionally remove a lymph gland that would then be boiled in the knife
cleaner, dusted with curry powder and eaten as a snack. I was given a piece to
try and found it delicious. I was being converted into a horrific, blood-sweeping
labourer. My other task was to pick up severed ears and drop them into a bin
that was tipped into the basement each time it filled.
I
went to Townsville and to the job office. I was given a teaching job in
Mossman. Pam and I have driven to a place called Coalsville to meet the head
teacher of its school. The town was a sort of isolated 1930-looking collection
of old buildings and factories. Mossman was very different and in the middle of
rain forests, wonderful beaches, fields of corn and aboriginal sites. I had a
job of teaching English, French and maths, the first subject being the only one
I was qualified for.
 |
| Me near Port Douglas 1973 |
I
bought a Suzuki trail bike while I was there and used it for a trip with Wally
and Jean north of Mossman through Daintree and up to Blue River(?) through
forest. Jean had a Honda 50 and
Wally borrowed the bike of the pottery man. This bike had a disaster to its
engine so Wally took over the Honda and Jean was pavilion on my Suzuki.
Jean and I both left
Mossman School at the end of 1973 in her VW Beetle and in hurricane rain. There
was not much room in the Beetle with Cerskia on the back seat and all our
travel gear in the front boot. I left Jean in New South Wales Aldbury I think)
though before this I bought some land in New South Wales. I bought a beach land
somewhere outside Adelaide. It was a superb bit of finance – a few years later
I used it to buy my first house in St Mary Cray (£11k). In Perth I bought my
first Holden E series. It was a driveable wreck.
 |
| My temp job in Perth |
After
a few jobs including grave digging, selling coupons, travelling with people in
a Jaguar to sell marked match boxes etc. to garages (the girls with short
dresses were successful at their sales, I was not) and selling fizzy drinks
from a truck, I got a teaching job in Harvey which is about 90 miles south of
Perth. There was a woman in her late twenties called Jane who seduced me – and
not the other way round. The Smoker couple Lawrence and Piet also seduced me.
In spite of that were great friends.
At
first I stayed in the local doctor’s surgery each night sleeping on the narrow
and high medical table. Then I lived alone in a wooden house leased out very
cheaply by the head mistress. The tiny house was invaded each day by mice. I
played the guitar I bought in Spain as a way of keeping me entertained. My
cooking was done each night in a frying pan with an electric lead. This was all
I had. It meant my tea and coffee, using water boiled in the frying pan, always
tasted of fried meat and potatoes.
My
E Holden had lost its silencer. One of the teachers (he used a video machine on
his dash as he drove) gave me some help and put on a silencer that did little
silencing so the estate car sounded like a Harvey Davidson – ironically given
the town name.
Jean
Doornekamp came over to Harvey at the end of my one and only term at the
school. We drove back to Aldbury in the worn-out Holden that gasped its last
near Adelaide. We drove to where I would enjoy my first skiing
experience – having failed to do so with Jackie Foskett near Granada with not
enough money – but the slopes had more mud than snow. I left Jean and flew to
Athens. I met some of the Greek students I’d been teaching English in Exeter
after my Education Certificate was won. One of them recommended the island Ios.
I had two weeks there of absolute sunshine and pleasure. I read the John Fowles
book The Magus. It could have been written on Ios so comparable was the island
to his fictional one.
Two
Americans a few years older than me took me as their pet on Ios. He was a
writer of scripts for TV and cinema and his girlfriend Nancy was a dancer. We
remained good friends and kept up letters for some years. They introduced me on
Skiathos, where we’d taken a ferry to, to a Canadian woman a few years older
than me called Susie. She also kept up letters for some time after we’d had a
short Grecian affair.
Back in England, Linda and Publishing
I
was met at Heathrow by mum and dad probably end of August 1974. I stayed at
home for a few months, though it was difficult as mum had extreme drinking problems. Dad, Vicky
and I joined the local Al-Anon society in a desire to help dad rather than mum.
Dad, at this stage, especially before I came back home and after I left, often
went to aunt Nell’s for the night, or up to the Heath to spend the night in his
tiny Mini Traveller. For a while I had a Riley 9 – a lovely car and mass of
problems. It spent most of its life with me up ramps while dad tried to fix its
clutch, its brakes, its pretty much everything. A great car though.
I lived
with Linda for a few weeks. She had a one-room flat in East Dulwich. Since
Spain she’d lost weight and her hair was now curly. She worked
for Sphere publishing in Gray’s Inn Road. She got me some ‘reader’s’ work from
her boss Angus Wells. My summaries were far too long and detailed at first and
then I received an interview at Macdonald Education in Poland Street (just off
Oxford Street). Dan Grisewood had been its Managing Director just before I joined and formed Kingfisher publishing. Peter Usborne left soon after I joined and formed a very competitive publisher of children's books using his name.
My first editing at Macdonald's was Engines which was harder than I thought it
should have been for your average 12 year old so I changed it. The author was
in his sixties and worked for the BBC in their oldest building - Bush House. I
went there a few times to sort out problems with Arthur, the author and was
impressed by the building's feel of the 1920s. My next book was Tennis with the John Osborn (?) who became a well-known presenter at Wimbledon. He was incredibly posh especially
with my boss - Anne Furniss. She was attractive, intelligent and had a voice of amazing poshnesss.
I
was living near Holloway prison (as it happens). I rented a room from a girl
who was an NUJ assistant official and girlfriend of the guy who was head of the
trades union. Her teeth pointed out in the extreme, but she was very nice. I
remember Linda coming near my 25th birthday and gave me freshly made
ginger cake. I had some and was almost instantly sick and had diarrhoea as a
result.
Linda
and I decided to move in together. We rented a small flat in a road in Clapham
called Clapham Manor Street. It had a tiny kitchen, a tiny bedroom and a tiny
living room. I bought a Suzuki twin 125cc 2-stroke. Like the old Panther it
produced smoke more than anything else. I used it to get me to Macdonalds. We
even used it to get us on summer holiday in Normandy. The engine stopped during
a ride down a road in the countryside. It was the burnt over contacts that had
stopped working. Luckily I had a file on some nail clips and used that on the
contacts – it worked to my surprise.
 |
| Linda about 1982 |
We’re
in 1975 and by the winter we’d moved out from the flat and bought a house in St
Mary Cray using the Australian profits I’d made. Just before the move I sold
the 250cc and bought a second-hand 400x4 Honda. A brilliant bike I was
convinced it was a good machine by seeing a yellow one with drop handlebars. Mine
was red, fast and low enough for my shortish legs. I loved it.
At
Macdonald I had been doing books with Thames TV – Mary Berry mostly on the Good
Afternoon programme with Judith Chalmers. I
interviewed Neil Tennant who worked at the Marvel comic company and took him on
as my assistant. My secretary was Rosie Black, an Australian girl and having an
affair with Neil. They used to come to St Mary Cray and Neil would bring his
guitar. He sang his own songs as well as some from where he was brought up – Newcastle.
Linda
and I had a difficult time and we had an emotional trauma that broke us up making us sell the house we had in St Mary Cray. I bought
a flat in Willesden she shared with me until she could buy a flat in Dollis
Hill – just up the road. I had an affair with an Australian girl called Susan
Mitchel who worked for the Macdonald production department. She was amazingly
quick at typing. Her strong Australian accent and good looks lured me in. I’d
been approached by Viv who had worked at Thames and moved on to the US
company CBS. They were in the early stages of producing a partwork on the
Natural World. Someone called Peter Godwin ran the small company. He was an
Englishman who stayed a long time in New York and now had an in-between accent.
He also was a friend of Felix Dennis. I went to see him for some reason. He had
an office just off Oxford Street and running porn magazines. In those days he
was up-himself, so to speak, and pretty much ignored me as someone not high
enough on the CBS Co is how I took it. I was better paid there than at Macdonald, but had little
work to do. The little group of editor, designer, secretary, governor, and
Peter produced the first partwork on Natural World while I did research and
sample articles on World War II, it being 40 years since its start. I enjoyed
it. Sadly, the ITN that normally advertised the partworks, went on strike for 9
weeks. CBS were unable to take this lack of earnings and closed the little
company. Ironically while I researched the second world war Kate Paris was
working at Marshall Cavendish on World War II Letters.
A
few weeks after Linda left my flat I became sad and had a sense of guilt and
loneliness. I tried to phone her – no joy. I went to Dollis Hill on my 4x400
and rang her bell of her first floor flat – no joy. Her car was there (one of
the many minis we had as a result of her dad’s company gifts) and somehow I
knew she was in the flat. I went back to my flat and picked up my electric
drill. I spoke to the people who had a ground floor flat under Linda and told
them I was deeply concerned about her, so therefore I would open her front door
with a drill, so could I use their electric connections. I had virtually
removed the entire Yale lock when she opened the door.
 |
| Our wedding in 1981. Neil Tennant is on the left, Linda on the right |
This
was my restart to the relationship. I moved in to her flat eventually and sold
the one in Willesden. I had a job with Pony Express delivering parcels on my
motorbike every day mostly in London. It was tedious and frequently dangerous.
I did it for three or four weeks and was surprised how well it paid. We got
married on December 9th 1979 and went to Bude in Devon for our
honeymoon over Christmas. The hotel we stayed in was terrible with the majority
of guests being in their seventies.
 |
| Wedding with Linda - Dad and Nell |
We
now bought a house in Wimbledon – at some point in 1980 after months in Dollis
Hill. I’d left Pony Express and joined the strange company of Charles Letts
roundabout June 1980. They had their fame for diaries, but they also had a
publication section that was successful with education books specifically for
GCSEs. That is where I spent a whole year, a terrible year The Christmas we went for a few days to Wales with Leo and
Lesley – long-term friends slightly younger than us.
Angus Welles, the editor at Sphere, at one time
Linda’s boss and a successful writer of westerns, was deserted by the woman
he’d married called Chloe or similar. He was desperate and came to Wimbledon to
be a tenant at our house for what seemed like a long stay, but probably just a
few months. He had a Yorkshire terrier that seemed a nuisance every minute of
the day. (Sadly Angus was killed in a house fire, in Nottingham, some time in
the 1990s.)
The world trip 1981
By
summer 1981 I’d left Letts, bought a VW left-hand drive campers van from
Southside for £400, we had Wimbledon up for sale and a plan to save our new marriage and
old, shaky relationship.
 |
| The VW travelling home. |
We
set off in the VW with a steering wheel that went a loose quarter of a circle
with each turn or attempt to drive in a straight line. It left a puddle of oil whenever it
stopped. I used masses of STP that was supposed to thicken the oil and prevent
its release from the engine. We had the following movements from September
until near Christmas:
through
France in sunshine and via Switzerland into Italy; down to Rome, then Naples
and across to Trieste; into Yugoslavia and down the coast to Split and
Dubrovnik; across the country into Uzice and then Skopje. We drove into Greece. We went down to Athens and
then Piraeus where we met with Lesley and Leo. We crossed to Crete which we
drove round over a two-week period of sunbathing, drinking and rowing.
 |
| Me, Lesley and Leo near Chania. My first of many visits. |
We’d
met and travelled in Israel and then Egypt with a young guy called Peter. He
was a pleasant Australian who was a Mormon, but very relaxed about it. Linda
went to Freemantle to meet up with Peter. In Sydney I met a girl who’d been the
secretary for Bernard Fisher(?) – a guy who ran Business Education Ltd. I
worked on two magazines for him – one was the BTA tobacco company and the other
was something like Tektronix that was a magazine for an IT company. Both
produced me good extra income as I worked for Quarto. I stayed with the
secretary for a few days until the New Year and then moved to a place in
Paddington and started getting together with Sue Mitchell who lived in Sydney.
She had a good job there, a flat and a large, smart car. But then I started to
get messages from Linda who I deeply missed
I
went to Freemantle where we stayed for three months. Peter was just a good-looking and helpful friend.
I liked him enormously. I found a job teaching, but only Saturday mornings.
Hardly produced enough money to keep us fed, buying wine boxes, running another
Holden E, paying for rent at a flat in Freemantle etc.
In
the Spring we moved to Sydney. On the road from the west across to Adelaide the
car packed up. We were dragged by a guy using wire from the fallen fences and who drove a powerful Holden. We ended up in Bondi and spent some weeks therei – a Jewish area and not far
from the dirty and crowded beach. We went to recover the VW van from the garage
it had been in for months. It was covered in dust, the tyres were flat and
there was a tiny red light showing what was left in the battery. It started
with my first turn of the ignition! We drove into Belgrade (capital of Serbia)
and then Ljubljana (capital of Slovenia) – no signs of what would soon follow
in the 1990s in Yugoslavia.
Back to England 1982
We
travelled through a freezing and slippery road into Switzerland. It was in
Switzerland that the four-stroke engine in the old dear, threw out a spark-plug
and its worn-out receiving tube. Somehow we got it fixed. It allowed the engine
to work again, but the rest of the weakened VW lost bits and pieces as we
headed home. We went into a café near Paris on the day the Falklands war
started (April 2nd 1982) and received wordless stares from the
French. ‘Home’, by the way, we did not have anymore. We went and stayed with
Lesley and Leo while we attempted to buy, not one property, but two. Linda,
meanwhile, went to Orbis to work (where Lesley worked as an editor). While this was going on I bought a house in
Stoke Newington that was near to where Lesley and Leo lived. I worked, some of
the time with Leo, on this terraced home. By moving one bit of wallpaper I
ended up removing all of it. Then I started on putting in internal heating. I
slept there sometimes once the heating worked, otherwise in Lesley’s and Leo’s
flat. Linda meanwhile had left their flat and had bought one in Clapton. By the
end of 1982 we put our disruptive marriage back together. I sold the half-finished
house in Stoke Newington and bought the School House in Heveningham.
 |
| The School House in Heveningham, Suffolk, built in 1860 |
 |
| We are in Aldeburgh about 1983 |
