A Country Gentleman At A White Wedding

 As it turned out, I got my money’s worth out of the old £1 temporary European passport in the name of my old school pal Martin Woloszczuk. In February 1984, my pals The Decorators, set sail, or rather diesel, for a few shows in France. Their alto sax player, the eponymous Joe Sax (Cohen), was still living at Derwentwater Mansions in Acton, where I’d roomed a couple of years previously, and his partner Bareen Shah, now an eminent surgeon but then just a lowly medical student, was pining for Joe. The band had hit Paris and had their first show scheduled a couple of nights hence, and she persuaded Nina and I to accompany her across La Manche to gay Paris. Have fake passport — will travel. Along for the ride came John Perivolaris, a top smudger who was heir, if not to a Greek shipping fortune, something Greek that was closer to Onassis than a mere barber’s or kebab shop. He drove a flash low-slung sports car, across the bonnet of which I’d draped myself for a photo which had accompanied an interview in Sounds music paper by Sandy Robertson the previous year. I was sporting a black James Dean style leather Jacket and a white silk ‘biker’ scarf, and it all looked suitably rock ’n’ roll. 

Bareen had negotiated somewhere for her and John to stay in Paris with some friends of hers and Joe’s, whilst part of the whim that had brought Nina and I along, was that not one but two very good friends of mine were at that time resident in Paris, namely Mark Sullivan and Ruts bassman Segs, both of whom, a trifle naively, I thought it might be fun to drop in on. My pal Dan Heatley, who was kicking his heels after a ‘headachy’ few months drumming for top ‘oi’ merchants The Exploited, had volunteered to mix The Decorators’ stage sound, so it had the makings of a fun expedition. It was the first, and as it turns out remains the last, time I’d been back to Paris since the aptly named Doomed tour in 1978. We embarked the boat train into the Gare du Nord on a cold, grey dawn that earned the cliché, and Bareen and John worked out their metro route to their lodgings, whilst Nina and I headed for a public telephone box to give my Parisian friends ‘a nice surprise’. (I am not being over-formal, but feel to abbreviate ‘telephone’ here would be inappropriate, one of France’s biggest musical exports after Sacha Distel being the band Téléphone.)

Telephone kiosk located, I fished out my address book and with freezing fingers, dialled Segs’ number. His French girlfriend Violon answered pretty promptly, and I cheerily explained who I was, only to find out Segs was in London for a few days, to do a session or something. Curse of Pus was up and running again. Rang Mark Sullivan, who had a day job he was about to go out to, and was clearly a bit taken aback, but gave me directions for the Métro to his apartment in Clichy, and told me his American girlfriend Randy would look after us. [I thought it was quite cool that Mark was living in Clichy, as my dear friend and and sometime literary agent Michael, Mark’s dad, had had a correspondence with Henry Miller, when the latter had been living in Paris with Anaïs Nin, of which Michael was rightly was rather proud. Miller had also written a book about his time in Paris, entitled Quiet Days In Clichy.] Randy was lovely, making us some breakfast and showing us to a bed where we could grab a bit of kip, as we’d been travelling all night. When Mark came in in the late afternoon, we caught up briefly before making our way, with Mark and Randy’s assistance, to the venue for the evening’s show which was in, of all places, a Turkish Baths. Mark and Randy told us it had the reputation of being a really cool venue.

 

It was called Les Bains Douches, and cool it definitely was. It was  mainly candlelit, apart from the stage, and the water in the different baths was gleaming and glistening in the candlelight. It was great to see the lads, and with absolutely no (‘strewth guv’) prompting from me, Mick and Joe asked me if I’d like to compère and support them, as I’d gone all that way. 

[I had no guitar with me, but Mick offered to lend me his, which was a beautiful Gretsch Country Gentleman, replete with the little duvet thing that clips on the back with poppers, and prevents one’s lovely axe getting ‘buckle rash’. I’d found the guitar for Mick through a Wimbledon connection who’d tipped me off. It had  purportedly once belonged to Alan Caddy, the first guitarist in Johnny Kidd & The Pirates, before Mick Green, and was languishing in smashing condition, albeit within a very dusty case, in a storeroom above an antique/bric-a-brac shop in Durnsford Road, Wimbledon Park. The guy just wanted it to go to a good home really, and I soon helped Mick negotiate a bargain.]

Gig was great anyway; Monsieur le post-punk, new wave Froggie appeared an amiable type and all went well. Out of the blue, well the grey if we’re talking about the Channel, I appeared to be er…on tour in Europe. I’d tell you they were spellbound, but I think it was more me that was spellbound at the ambiance of the club and vibe of doing the gig. Nonetheless, they were a whole lot more receptive than the punks in the cattle market in Le Havre had been, the last time I’d graced French shores with my presence, back in November 1979. I think they were more bemused, than amused, as they can’t have understood many of my lyrics. Then again, they can’t have understood many of Mick’s either. As the venue was mainly tiled, the sound could easily have been dreadful, like busking down a subway, but Dan did a grand job and it was a jolly good show all round.

The next day, a Saturday, was chilly with streaks of intermittent sun. After meeting up with Joe, Bareen and John Perivolaris where they were staying, we all went for a late breakfast in a traditional French café, replete with bowls of café au lait, and hard-boiled eggs in those little chromium holders they have on the bar which rotate. Nina, John and I then went for a mooch around. Loving all the ‘Left Bank’ modernist writers as I do, I was keen to visit the fabled Shakespeare & Co. bookshop. It’s in the 5th Arondissement, not far from the Sorbonne, and it was interesting to return to the locale, where I’d last stood in July 1968, two months after the May Revolution. 

The bookshop was dimly lit; fusty and musty; and musky with the faint aroma of the China tea that a few American ex-pats were sipping from oriental cups at a small table. They all wore overcoats with the collars turned up, as it was no warmer in there than on the street. They appeared too cold to wish to engage in conversation either. The stock appeared in total disarray; piles of books all over the floor and the shelves bulging and discombobulated. I didn’t really have any book-buying funds, so after a brief browse while John and Nina’s teeth chattered, we left in search of a bar to have a café and ‘fine’, as Jean Rhys would’ve done. 

Strolling along at a lively pace to try and warm up, we chanced upon the nearby church of St. Julien Le Pauvre, which I had also visited with my father that time in 1968. My dad had regaled me with the none too cheery story, or legend, of said St. Julien, as he knew it from the Flaubert retelling. It’s a ghastly Oedipal tragedy of Julien fleeing to avoid his prophesied fate, namely that he will kill his parents. To cut a short story shorter, he returns home after some time to find his parents staying with his wife, but in the marital bed, whereupon he murders them both, erroneously thinking it was his wife in bed with a lover. A strange case for beatification you might say.

As we entered the square where the church stands, the bells were chiming ten to the dozen, and a newly wed couple, the bride in traditional white being scooped up by the groom, were emerging into the watercolour light as multiple camera shutters clicked. I only had a leather jacket on, whereas John had a sports jacket and dashing camelhair Chesterfield overcoat on top. Being an absolute gentleman, he had taken pity on me and lent me his coat. Aside from being a couple of sizes too large, it had my name all over it, and John added his own shutter to the Parisian clicks by taking a smashing smudge of me with the newly-weds behind, and the church behind them. 

Meanwhile, The Decorators had headed South for another show, leaving a spare room at Joe’s friends Dave and Isobel’s, which they kindly let us have for the night. The following morning, Bareen decided to source a train or coach ticket to join up with the band, whilst Nina, John and I headed for the boat train. Nina and I were more or less potless by now, and we’d run out of methadone till we got home, so it was a journey we were eager to accomplish as swiftly and painlessly as possible. 

When we alighted the boat in Dover, Martin Woloszczuk sailed through the customs without a second glance, but on the other side were two CID men conducting random spot checks. Or possibly laying in wait for a major Interpol level fugitive. Fugitive I was, but there were no ‘have you seen this man’ style posters offering rewards for reporting my whereabouts, certainly not after nearly two years at large swerving what were only shoplifting charges anyway, and Martin Woloszczuk himself had changed his name by deed poll, plus had no criminal record. I was nonetheless relieved when the spot check was over, and we made our way into the station. Apart from anything else, John might’ve addressed me unwittingly as Auntie, Jools, or worse still just Julian. Thankfully he didn’t, but walked on a few paces and waited for us. Cheers John.

1984 it might have been but — lucky Auntie — Big Brother’s eyes were looking elsewhere.

The postscript to this little episode came a couple of months later, when The Decorators once again traversed La Manche for a couple of dates. I was unaware they’d gone until Mick Bevan rang me to ask if I would like to come and compère and support them in Rouen. He told me they needed a small piece of equipment collecting from Acorn Studios in Acton, where they’d been rehearsing, and that if I rolled up there the following day, the necessary piece of equipment would be awaiting me, along with a train and ferry ticket to Rouen, and that I’d also get some small remuneration for my performance. So a definite upgrade from turning up on a whim. I think Mick was suffering in the still cold weather, and what he really wanted me to bring was a nice warming glug of methadone linctus for him, rather than the spare lead, microphone, or whatever it was I’d been tasked to collect. I twigged this all on my little own, and duly presented myself at Acorn Studios the following day, with enough of my prescription in my bag to ensure we’d both be snug as post-punk bugs in European tour rugs for the next couple of days. Acorn was owned by famous wild man junkie Ginger Baker; I can’t say conclusively that every bit of bad press you’ve ever read about the man is true, but I can tell you conclusively that all the staff at Acorn were in terror of him. When I arrived, it was rumoured that he might pay the studios a flying visit or spot check, and all the hard core roadies working there were shaking in their cowboy boots, and palpitating with trepidation should he show up, as he was known to be a loose cannon, to put it mildly.

Not only did I have my ticket paid for, and get paid for doing the gig, but the whole expedition wasn’t fraught with uncertainty, as it had been in the February. The journey to Rouen was uneventful, I’d brought more than enough ‘fuel’ for me and Mick, and when I went on in Rouen, and duly announced: ‘Bonsoir. Je m’appelle Auntie Pus’, they were more than slightly attentive, and even applauded at times. Since meeting Colin Delaney the previous summer, and making a gypsy jazz connection, I’d mainly been gigging that style of music, so it was quite refreshing to air some of my punk songs in public again. I travelled back with the band, and at Dover customs, all they were concerned about was ticking off all the gear on the dreaded carnet, and not Martin Woloszczuk’s documents. I had of course tipped the band the wink to call me Martin, should any conversation between us be necessary whilst re-entering the country.

Aside from gigging the same London pub and club circuit as The Decorators in the early 80s, and Joe Sax often being an honorary Man From Uncle during this time, and residing at Joe and Mick’s flat in Acton, down the road from Lionel Bart, for a while, my connection with the band has left me a special little legacy. In 1981 I had written the lyrics to a song called Falling Star, about my friend Kim ‘Zigi’ Walsh, whom I’d met when she was a devoted teenage Ruts fan, and used to follow her heroes around the country, further motivated by the fact she was having a fling with their singer Malcolm Owen at the time. I’d written the song in 1981 when we were hanging out a lot together, and she was jumping in Dick Taylor’s trusty FUs Transit, and accompanying us to many London pub and club shows. It’s paean of unrequited (and in this case opiated) love, hardly an unusual subject matter, but the metaphors I employed were untried and original. For example, I compared love to ‘a boulder in a brook’, which phrase I self-plagiarised as the title for that unpublished novel every writer has in a drawer. In 1983, Mick Bevan set my words to music and the resultant song was included on The Decorators’ ‘Rebel Songs’ EP released that year. It was a very polished arrangement, Mick had set my words remarkably empathically, and they voiced the emotions exactly as I would have wished. This track remains my proudest achievement to date that has actually found its way into the public arena. Zigi and I remain chums to this day — she was down the front punching the air at a recent Men From Uncle show in London. At Paul Fox’s swan song with Ruts DC in 2007, shortly before he left us for henna heaven, when Henry Rollins sung lead vocals, Segs put Zigi and I on the guest list as Dame Kim Walsh (Zigi’s real name), and Sir Julian Isaacs. Liking our honorary honours, we have adopted these monikers, and Zigi was indeed on the guest list at my aforementioned gig as Dame Kim.

Prison, A Prelude: Dolphins & Sureties

Sometime in early summer 1977, a pad of purloined prescriptions came into my possession. As luck would have it, my mate Morphine Steve's girlfriend Caz was able to show me how to fill them, so that they could then get filled by a pharmacist without arousing any suspicion: the necessary abbreviations and bits of Latin, etc. Ironic, as I'd got my Latin O-level prior to being kicked out of public school, and she most definitely hadn't; not being unkind, but I doubt she had an English Language one. 

[Steve had his eponymous nickname because he was the only member of our using gang who had an injectable morphine, rather than heroin or methadone, 'script'. He was a good lad, a biker who offered me a BSA Bantam and a George Doland maroon wool and mohair drape jacket, with black velvet trim and collar. I was far too scared to accept the former, and gleefully delighted to accept the latter, which I kept and wore for many years. He had 'morph' and 'coke' tattooed on his fingers, instead of the more ubiquitous 'love' and 'hate'. Caz later went out with another biker friend of ours, 'Motorbike Jim' Vine, who had a motorcycle shop on Haydon's Road, South Wimbledon.]

Anyway, to begin with everything went delightfully according to plan. Copious amounts of Diconal were acquired (a luminous pink synthetic opiate pill one could crush up and inject — very popular at the time. My hallway is painted in that colour now. A warped nostalgia possibly, but it's a lovely colour). Like all criminals, getting out while the going was good was not in my lexicon of larceny, and in due course the inevitable occurred. I'd been on probation already, and missed a good few appointments, so when my sweet probation officer, who had the air and appearance of a middle aged primary school teacher, came to visit me in the cells at Wimbledon Police Station, she apologetically told me that, as they say, was all she wrote as far as probation was concerned. I ruefully accepted it, was held overnight, and the following morning, my poor parents still reeling from the police coming to our house with a warrant — a chaotic lifestyle having forced me to retreat there to stay for a while — felt unable to stand surety for me, or to have me living there, so off I went to Ashford Remand Centre. My uncle, a solicitor, had come to court not to act for me, but to advise my parents, etc., and I think he'd brought me a couple of packets of Senior Service, which you were allowed to have on remand, and I didn't have much of a junk habit, so not too hard a landing on the landing, you might say. It was a funny place, they were nearly all little kids in for TDA (taking and driving away as it was then called), and inconsequential stuff like that. The screws were unbelievably racist, calling all the black kids Sambo etc., but there wasn't anything I could do about it. It wasn't particularly unnerving as I was one of the oldest 'boys' in there; I didn't really see any tear-ups and my cell mate was closer to my age. He was alright and liked a game of cribbage, as do I, and he showed me the ropes. 

I wrote a couple of unsuccessful letters trying to find someone to stand bail for me when I went back to court, the sun was out on the exercise yard, and the time passed quite quickly. Halfway through the second week, I got called for a visit, and it was Bill Major (the man who first called me Auntie), and Bill Wells (another bike man who had been out in India and also later had a bike shop in Wimbledon Chase). They'd come on one of Bill Wells' bikes; as they were nearly twice my age and Bill Major probably cast the kids in the visiting room getting visits off their mum, some menacing glances in my interests, I think that helped me get left alone too. They apologised for not bringing me any dope, but they'd brought me ten Player's each, and the Major said he'd get me a solicitor for when I went back to court. He duly did, albeit not a very competent one, but that still didn't solve the surety problem.

After the fortnight's sojourn had expired, on a nice sunny June morning, off we went bright and early in a proper grown-up meat wagon — not that that stopped the little bastards making as much racket as they could on the metal roof and compartment doors — and in due course I was deposited at Wimbledon Magistrates Court. As said solicitor had sent a barrister, I wasn't put in the cells across the road, but allowed to be in the lobby with him. He told me that some of my friends had found someone to stand bail for me, which was set at £500, and that my parents said I could reside there; I think they hoped I'd had a shock, and they were certainly far from heartless, though not about to risk £500 they didn't have. The gentleman who said he'd stand surety for me was a lovely lunatic Irishman called Mickey (pronounced Muckey) McDonald, who was the same age as the two Bills, had always grafted, and thus owned his own house off Wimbledon Broadway. [If you're a householder, you don't actually have to show the money for a surety.] However you do have to undergo a criminal record check. Muckey was aware of this, but to his knowledge had no convictions. He duly took the witness stand, only for the prosecution solicitor to tell the magistrates they had found he had a conviction for, I kid you not, the attempted theft of a dolphin a few years before. His partner in this escapade had been a fellow named Mickey Friar, a small time gangster and chum of the Krays' buddy Joey Pyle, who was based in nearby Morden. More to the point, Mickey Friar was a great pal and drinking buddy of local celebrity dipsomaniac Oliver Reed, so I guess that makes the dolphin episode a whole lot more believable.

Bottom line, no bail through Muckey, but my brief got the clerk to ask the magistrates to put the case back an hour to give me the opportunity to try and find an alternative. I'd already had a 'sorry but no' from my first alternative whilst on remand, and racked my brains to think of someone else. In the end I rang my friend David Wynne, the renowned sculptor of The Queen, The Beatles, and later the Queen Mother Gates in Hyde Park, whose beautiful bohemian house was one of my main sanctuaries then. [I was friends with his stepson Johnny, who'd been the last person before me to get expelled from our alma mater; an amazing luthier.] I wasn't too hopeful, but whoever answered the phone went and got David from his studio, and to my relief, he said he'd do it and be at the court as quickly as he could. He was there in no time, still in his overalls covered in granite, or chalk, or marble, or something dust, and I can see him now standing in the witness stand like that. Bail was duly granted and outside the court, after chatting to my parents who were also friends of his, David took me aside and said that I might think he was a rich man, but if he lost £500 his family wouldn't have a holiday that year, adding that he had every confidence in me.  Now as well as the aforementioned, one of his most famous sculptures is the 'Boy With A Dolphin' one, for which the model for the boy was his son Roly, a tortured genius who died tragically young. So a bad luck and a good luck dolphin in the Free Auntie Pus campaign.

Meanwhile, whilst on the three week bail for reports, the burgeoning Auntie Pus career was about to go semi-stellar. During this time I first supported The Damned at Hastings Pier Ballroom: a great gig, little did I know that would be the best I'd ever go down doing a Damned gig. The court reports recommended a suspended sentence, so I was quite bright on my return to court. David Wynne had rung me up to say he was sure it'd all be fine, and to pop up afterwards and see him to let him know how it went. It was as fine as it could be inasmuch as I was at liberty, and I told my parents I'd promised to go and see David. A quick bus ride and I presented myself at his stunning house on Wimbledon Common, Rushmere. [It's next to the school Johnny and I had been unceremoniously dismissed from, and these days the headmaster's residence.] David came to the door, shook my hand, and gave me an envelope, saying: 'I knew you wouldn't let me down. I can go on holiday now, so I think it's only fair that you can. Here's £100 — get yourself away somewhere for a bit.' He also gave me an illustrated edition of Blake's 'Songs Of Innocence and Of Experience', knowing that I was a Blake acolyte. Not any old edition, but one previously given to him by his friend Sir Geoffrey Keynes, the prominent Blake scholar and brother of Maynard the economist, with an introduction by Geoffrey. I do not have to consult the court records to find the date, for it is inscribed, on the inner front cover: 'David Wynne from Geoffrey Keynes 5 Jan 1973', and beneath: 'and from David Wynne for Julian Isaacs 8th July 1977'. What an amazing man. The next day, I set off to hitchhike up North and just explore. Having taken the tube to Hendon Central to access the M1, I had a little browse in a shop that sold windup record players, and speaker horns, needles and other accoutrements, and then bought a copy of Record Mirror. Thumbing to find the gig review section, I found a glowing one of my gig with The Damned. As I jumped up into the first lorry that stopped for me, I rather thought it should have been a limo. Delusion's alright — it's when you delude yourself you're not deluded that you're in trouble.

The Vortex

 The Vortex

When I first played with The Damned at Hastings Pier Ballroom in July 1977, their agent Nick Leigh from the Derek Block Agency was there and, in the dressing room, told me that he'd enjoyed my set and that he promoted top punk venue The Vortex, as well as DJing there. [I have a good friend these days who's an academic; he's one of the world's leading experts on Wyndham Lewis, but as Vorticism goes, this was one maelstrom further altogether.] Anyway, Nick gave me his card and told me to contact him. 

When I rang he was good as gold and duly gave me a date at The Vortex on Halloween night to support The Ants — with Jordan singing back then — and Siouxsie & The Banshees. There was another band on before me; they were called The Void and I have no recollection of them, but about fifteen years ago, I was reading the memoirs of a posh boy junkie called Sebastian Horsley, who died not long after, and lo and behold, it turned out he was in The Void. So a posh boy junkie and not very posh boy junkie on the bill that night. Posh he might have been, but I'll bet he didn't arrive at the venue and see in the queue going round the block, a dozen or more of his friends who had come from the posh suburbs to support him. I will further bet even more money that no-one said, as they handed him a syringe loaded with morphine: 'There ya go, Jools, it's in the gun.' [I very responsibly kept it till after my set.]

I was at the time living at my gran's flat in Holland Park. My friend Adam Cox, another posh junkie, who had close-cropped blonde hair with red and blue dye in, and was dressed that night from head to foot in studded black leather, so at about eighteen stone and six feet, an imposing character, came to call for me and, guitar in my hand, we hopped on the Central Line into town. I can't remember if we alighted at Oxford Circus or Tottenham Court Road, as Wardour Street is equidistant between the two, but guess the former as it comes first.

When we got to the venue, they were indeed queueing around the block, and I was amazed to see so many of my pals there, including Bill Major, the man who'd called me Auntie in the first place, and who never left our manor, unless to see an American bluesman at the 100 Club. He had on his signature green and white striped rugby shirt, but luckily in view of the crazy pogoing that ensued inside, he had by then swapped the leather Indian sandals he always used to wear, for a pair of twelve hole Dr. Marten's. Also there were my pal Bob Wilson [known as Watson, or sometimes Sonny Boy, because once when under the influence he had been trying to talk about Sonny Boy Williamson and had inadvertently said Sonny Boy Watson], who was right down the front when I was playing and dancing like a maniac, whilst another punter set his hair alight on the floor next to him; my dear friend Robin Bibi, who would play on my single the following year, and with whom I've been playing on and off ever since; with Bill was a fella called Bob The Bins (for obvious reasons) —he had been a semi-respectable sales rep about four years earlier but had fallen into bad company i.e. us lot in the pub, and rather gone adrift. He was the one who handed me the works. My pal Glenn Mason, known as Coco for equally obvious reasons, was in attendance too.

My manager David Scott had also come up to Brighton with some pals to support me, and do some networking; it was David who had promoted the Hastings show, and I think his partner in crime Phil Church was with him. Their main income was from a car front they had — I don't know what motor they were in that night, but he always turned up in something eye-catching; the best was a white Rolls Royce like John Lennon's. When I got inside, one of the first people I saw was my other dear friend Arturo Bassick from The Lurkers, who was in conversation with Jimmy Pursey from Sham 69. I don't think they were pals, although the Sham bassist is a friend or ours, rather just two people in up and coming punk bands. Anyway the fact that I had known Robin since we were in our early teens at my public school, and Arturo since the school I went to after that one expelled me, made seeing them both there all the more emotional. As an aside, they didn't meet each other (through me) until 1980, but after that they played together in my band The Men From Uncle, and in Arthur (Arturo)'s bands The Lucky Saddles and The Blubbery Hellbellies.

I can't tell you much more about the gig — I was high as a kite on nerves beforehand, elated afterwards and don't remember much of the main bands, except for Jordan's amazing coxcomb hair, and Siouxsie's whole look. The following year I saw The Banshees at Kingston Coronation Baths and they were magnificent, and more enjoyable for me because I wasn't distrait and floating on air. I don't even recall shooting the morphine up — I think I might even have kept it till I got home to Holland Park. Nick Leigh paid me the kingly sum of ten pounds, and Damned tours and downhill slopes beckoned.

The Posh Boys' Blackboard Jungle (1)

I began attending King's College Junior School, the preparatory school attached to KCS Wimbledon, the public school, at which my father was a modern languages teacher, in September 1965, having sat the entrance examination a few months earlier. Within what was seen at the time to be my outstanding and precocious  academic prowess, lie the roots of my downfall, my road to hell lined with good intentions, and any number of other proverbial clichés. In short, my marks were so high that the KCJS Headmaster, Mr. Peter Gibbs, approached my father and said that they thought I should be placed straight into the second year. [Less than three years later, he'd be saying to my father that I needed the services of a good psychiatrist, and that he could recommend just the fellow. But, as the narrator in G.F. Newman's The Corrupted says, there I go, getting ahead of myself. Good narrative device, Mr. Newman, please take it as a compliment.] In all fairness, I can see why my dad, a very intelligent man, must have seen this as an accolade, and delighted in his first born son being being a chip off the jolly old block. Sadly, I was a chip soaked in paraffin due to ignite shortly. The initiating tip of the fulcrum the wrong way was that, the logistics of the combination of being born in August, and the academic year starting in September, meant that I was twenty-three months younger than the eldest boys in my glass. As I'd just turned eight, that meant they'd already lived nearly a quarter of my life again. The obvious compensating factor would have been if I were any good at sport. I am not and never was. I like a jolly old politically incorrect football chant, and I have always adored Test Match Special, but I have been short-sighted since I was six and, throw a ball of any size anywhere near me, and I either duck, flinch, or both and more besides. The only minor redeeming factor was that we played association football in the first year, so I had to wait until the following year to have my ears rubbed raw in the rugby scrum, between two boys two years older, and at least two stone heavier, whilst having all the skin taken off my knees, as they rubbed on the ridges of frozen mud beneath. The only difference from Ypres was there were no shells. However, I recall no birdsong either. So there you are, I started life at KCJS as a rising star, but one on the old hiding to nothing and, akin to my career in show business, also destined to be up and down from then on, with a lot more declines than inclines.

Before I ever developed a carapace of eccentric style, I was always unusual. I think it came from my mother, who certainly was. Anyway, being unusual is the worst possible outcome for any school pupil, and even more so pre-teen ones. It wasn't long before I began to be, not so much physically bullied, but taunted, mocked, and picked on. I was singularly inept at dealing with any of this — usually I'd react by trying to draw attention to myself by taking my shoes off, throwing them at the culprit, and then throwing myself in a playground puddle or something. One lunchtime — I don't think I was being harassed, I just felt entirely alone — it all got too much, and I ran back to our empty classroom, found my desk, the old wooden ones with the inkwell in, flung the lid up, and started to howl. Then I thought of Amersham, Buckinghamshire, where we lived till I was three and a half, and the horses in the field I used to feed on the way home from nursery school. When I rubbed my eyes a few minutes later, there was that black puppy in my desk, sleeping softly. I can't tell you the date, but I can tell you that was the day a switch flicked in my life.

————————————————————————

Not long before starting at King's, I had been with my dad to watch a school cricket or rugby match, and my dad had introduced me to a man called Tony Hein, then in charge of the first form at KCJS. He was a young guy, about thirty, roughly contemporary to my dad, ginger haired, smiling and lively. He told me he looked forward to having me in his class. Due to my jumping that year, this was unfortunately never to be. However, Tony Hein is indeed a lovely guy, a keen rugby player, who was extremely popular with the boys. In I think my second year, he married a glamorous French girl. 

Cue: Vintage Sports Car digression #1

After Tony Hein's wedding, the Assistant Head of Music, Walter Taylor, drove him in his vintage Daimler convertible in a lap of honour around the quad, while all the boys lined the perimeter and cheered. [We will come, in due course, to the issue of pederasty. How could I write a memoir of life at a boys' public school and not mention it? Anyway, suffice for now to say that said Mr. Taylor was a fully paid up member of said society.] This interlude has the happiest of endings, in that Tony Hein and his wife are both still thriving, and I recently made contact with both him and his daughter via social media.

The other happy thing that occurred in the third form was that my dear friend Jason Steger came to the school. We hit it off straight away — both inveterate readers, and Jason managed to be cool whilst still having a great big heart and never mocking me. He soon took me home to meet his parents — his father was an Austrian aristocrat and his mother an intellectual Englishwoman, with a rich county accent — in their beautiful house in Wimbledon Village. Jason's mother Joan, was very academic and also a great reader, whose one weakness, or nod to popular culture, was a liking for the soap opera Crossroads on TV. A bizarre coincidence: she herself reminded me a little of Noele Gordon who starred in it. Jason and I have never really lost contact — he has for decades been the Literary Editor on The Age in Melbourne, and we've had a couple of reunions over there. Give me  three more decades, I'll tell you. Suffice for now to say that the Stegers extended to me acts of generosity in the face of adversity, that far exceeded the hand of friendship. Allow me to get ahead of myself again a touch. Next door to the Stegers lived the Tubbs family, the two sons of which, James and Jonathon, are friends of mine too, though we didn't meet till Senior School. Cue:

Vintage Sports Car Digression #2

James, the older Tubbs brother, acquired in his teens, a beautiful vintage Alvis convertible. One balmy summer's night a couple of years after 'leaving' school, when our local — the Hand-in-Hand on Wimbledon Common, opposite our school — closed, and we extinguished our jazz cigarettes, the guitar pickers packed up their instruments and headed back to someone's gaff for more drinks, music, and obviously jazz cigarettes, a rich young guy I barely knew called Roderick invited me along with James and a couple of girls back to his parents' house in St. George's Hill, Weybridge. And off we went, in James' Alvis with the top down. We lived in a lovely Victorian house in Wimbledon Park then, in a quiet tree lined street, and with a lovely garden with over a hundred rose bushes, so not too shabby, but we didn't have George Harrison for a neighbour. I think we only stayed a couple of hours, and just smoked a couple of joints, played some albums, and had some snacks. However I was about sixteen and all the others three or four years older, and it felt proper sophisticated. I don't know remember if there were any stars twinkling over the stockbroker belt, but it felt there were. There were no iced swans, nor any frolics in or around the pool, not even a cheeky line of Charlie but, when a couple of years later, I fell in love with F. Scott Fitzgerald, on reading The Great Gatsby I thought of that excursion. I also confess, en passant, that I didn't mind the film they made of it a couple of years down the line, with Mia Farrow and Robert Redford, which was generally critically dismissed.

Prison (2)

Prison (2)

On Sunday, 16th June 1979, The Damned tour on which The Ruts were supporting, and which I had been compèring and doing short support sets also, reached its terminus at the Bristol Locarno. It was a climactic end to the tour for a number of reasons. Dave Ruffy's girlfriend, Rachel Howard, the fantastic fashion designer and artist, then sixteen, had come down to Bristol to see the show — Ruffy introduced us, telling me she was an artist and would be up for designing the Auntie Pus logo I still didn't have, except in the jolly old mind's eye. [A couple of months later The Ruts seminal album 'The Crack' would be released with the now famous cover art picture of the boys at a party in the company of various other rock stars and notables, which was painted by Rachel's father John, soon to be a fellow Twickenham resident alongside me. Rachel's younger brother Olly, aka Bill Ellis, designed the cover art for my poetry chapbook Tears In The Rigging in 2017.] I duly described the drawing and lettering I could visualise to Rachel, and after a three month hiatus — you'll soon see why — she presented me with my finished logo, which couldn't have looked more like the one I'd imagined if I'd been able to draw it myself. Call it telepathy, serendipity, what you will, it was nothing short of miraculous and I used it for my badges, my single cover art, and the centre label of the record.

The Locarno gig was secondly remarkable because I inveigled Dave Ruffy to play a short rock 'n' roll set with me, accompanied by Shanne (from The Nipple Erectors, etc.) on bass. Shanne used to knock around with Captain Sensible in punk's early post-natal days, plus she came, as does Dave Vanian, from Hemel Hempstead, built like nearby Welwyn Garden City by a post-war government doing its best to hide the Roman splendour of St. Albans as deep in a concrete Hertfordshire countryside as possible. We'd played in Hemel Hempstead the night before — Vanian's parents attended the show, the only time I ever met them, and a less vampiric, more suburban couple one couldn't hope to meet. Shanne had come to the Hemel show too, and had decided to come on to Bristol for the tour dénouement the following day, as they'd be returning to London where we all lived straight after the show. It felt good having a powerhouse rhythm section, but I got no less stick from the audience than usual, and Shanne recalls it none too fondly to this day as being one of the more unpleasant and terrifying experiences of her life. Not only was it an honour to have Ruffy, probably one of the best drummers in the world — who in the interim before reforming Ruts DC went on to drum with, inter alia, The Waterboys, Aztec Camera and Prefab Sprout — playing with me but also he had, not five minutes earlier, come off stage with The Ruts, who were about to hit the big time, so not only had he barely had time to towel the last set's sweat off, but he was about to destroy his credibility by playing with me. A cliché I know, saying someone is a scholar and a gentleman, but let me tell you Ruffy — as well as being a loyal friend who has produced sessions for me, put me up, and told me loads of good jokes over the years — is both.

Thirdly, the Locarno show signalled not just the end of The Damned/Ruts tour — not to be repeated until 2013, apart from a few amazing and very emotional shows in July 1980 the week after Malcolm Owen had left us; talk about no people like show people — but the end of my liberty for three months or so. I had skipped bail on some shoplifting offences before the previous Damned tour a couple of months before, and was also on a suspended sentence so, as the fella in Trainspotting memorably says: I knew it was in the post. The net wasn't so much tightening as the holes in it if I was in London and off tour being noticeably smaller. The Damned were their usual charming selves all the way back up the M4 to London — even if you're a nice person not a tour bully, the last date of any tour is shrouded in a big looming comedown for any musician — and when we came off the motorway at Hammersmith and hit Earl's Court, I got Tommy Crossan, the tour manager, to drop me off at the earliest opportunity. It was about 1am, I had no money and nowhere proper to stay. [I think I abandoned the gob-splattered 'Puscaster' Top Twenty solid guitar The Damned had bought me in Chiswick on the way to the M4 out of town, when the tour had been setting off a few weeks before, in the tour bus. Whilst they had been making this kind gesture, I had been getting some tour support money releaving the next door branch of Woolworth's of four electric kettles.] However, I had the key to my old mucker Arthur Billingsley aka Arturo Bassick's bedsit above the Beggar's Banquet shop and record company HQ in the adjacent Hogarth Road, where I had been sofa surfing, or it being rather a lumpy old sofa, more like body boarding. There was only one snag, namely I had given the address as a bail address to the Kensington police, after being apprehended liberating one too many Kenwood Chefs from the electrical goods department of Barker's in Kensington High Street earlier in the year. [The shop assistant had been awaiting my next appearance, what was once a pyramid display of said items now being down to its bottom two layers.] I mounted the stairs to Arthur's palatial abode, where my none too ginger key in the door roused Arthur from the drunken slumber he'd just entered, June 16th being his birthday. I explained that I knew it was a bit dodgy, but that I'd set the alarm, grab a change of clothes and be off early in the morning. [To set the scene a little, the bedsit had white address labels at prominent points on the walls left there by Arthur's former room mate, Dave Allen — then Art's bassist and co-writer colleague in their band Pinpoint, but who would go on to produce The Human League and many others — saying, Cluedo style, 'bathroom' above the one sink, 'library' above the single bookshelf, etc.] I duly set the alarm for 7am and got my head down.

Bill Major used to talk about 'the luck of the nine blind bastards': 'What luck did they have, Auntie, blind and bastards?' and that was certainly what befell me the next morning. The newly come on six till two shift at Kensington nick were bored on a nice sunny summer's morning, so decided to have a little look in the warrant drawer and see if they could keep themselves amused executing a couple. Mine was top of the pile and so, half an hour before my alarm was due to go off, the door opens and in come two policemen. They probably would have burst in but the confines of the room were such that no-one was going to be bursting in, more the furniture and clutter of clobber and instruments was likely to burst out. [The clutter included a pile of crushed wire supermarket baskets at the foot of Arthur's bed, which were there because I used to go out and get breakfast and supplies from the Mac Fisheries mini-market opposite in the Earl's Court Road. I'd fill a basket up and then just leave with it, bypassing the tills, and take it back to the bedsit, where I'd dump it on Art's bed. Whereupon he'd sit up, inspect the contents, lick his lips, and get up. While he washed and dressed, I would put the shopping away, and then Arthur, being a shall we say well-built gentleman, would jump on the basket in his monkey boots and crush it, for ease of storage and to avoid having to return it.] One of the policeman prodded Arthur, asking: 'Julian Isaacs?' Art had no choice to reply that he wasn't and indicate me where I laid playing dead beneath a blanket on the settee. Arthur is still amused by the policeman's response of: 'Oh, we thought that was a pile of old rags.' So off we go, 'cuffed up, down the road to Kensington nick. I was only in the cells there briefly, before we were off again back to my home manor of Wimbledon, for me to appear before the magistrates who had imposed the suspended sentence of three months. Thus, where at 10pm the previous night I had been appearing rocking and rolling onstage in front of about a thousand wild young punk rockers, at 10am I was now on a far less appealing stage, appearing in front of the bench. A carpet is London slang for the number three, which derives from the fact that one stood on the carpet in front of the magistrates to be handed down a three month prison sentence. Well that was where I now stood, and three months was what I got.  

In those days, Wimbledon Magistrates' Court, had no cells beneath the court — one was escorted out the front of the court and over the road to the police station cells to await the prison van, if one had received a custodial sentence. As they walked me, handcuffed again, across the road, who should two other coppers in front of me be escorting to the same cells, but my using chum 'Gypsy Dick' Miles, originally from the Isle of Wight, but more recently resident in the Richmond squats where I used to hang out, who'd just been weighed off too. I called to him, and we were chatting as they were unlocking the cells. The custody officer that morning was a local PC called Joe Hillson, whose bicycle I had once inadvertently stolen from outside the Hand-in-Hand pub on a Friday night, mistaking it in the inebriated gloaming for my dad's bike, on which I had ridden up to the pub from our home in Wimbledon Park. Joe was there in a sorry attempt at plain clothes, to make an even sorrier attempt to apprehend a couple of people smoking dope, a plan doomed to failure as, helmet or no helmet, everyone knew he was the local bobby. However Joe took the bike incident in good heart, and that morning in the cells, asked if Dick and I would like to be banged up together, as we were both waiting on the same prison van to take us to HMP Brixton. They also sent out for some food for us, instead of forcing the station canteen crap on us, so we had quite a pleasant afternoon catching up, as I'd been off on tour for a while. To be entirely accurate, I knew the sentence was coming, as it was suspended and I had contravened the terms, but because my mitigation was primarily that of being ruled by my addiction, they remanded me for medical reports for three weeks, prior to imposing the sentence. Dick and I were thus remand, and not convicted prisoners. This made a big difference in those days, and in Brixton, if you had the contacts, you could have a daily visit where you could be brought a home cooked or takeaway meal, plus two cans of beer or a half bottle of wine, plus as many cigarettes as you wanted. Everyone that had these visits would invariably have two cans of Special Brew, the strongest option available. If you had any decent clobber, which Dick and I didn't, you were also permitted to wear your own clothes on the wing. 

When we got to Brixton, it was tea time, and by the time we had been processed through reception, where we had the standard bath with three inches of tepid water, and the medical where they ask you to cough and if you've ever had VD — in my case supplemented by bringing my addiction into the equation, unnecessarily as it happened as I was going to the medical 'F' wing, known as Fraggle Rock because of the dribbling, muttering nutters housed there, for my reports in any case —and were escorting us across the prison yard with our pillow cases full of rough starched bedding to the wing it was 9pm and nearly dark. They showed me to a single reception cell for the night, and told me I would see a doctor in the morning. It had been a long day and I was glad of the peace and solitude in which to rest as the sun went temporarily down over SW2 and the Auntie Pus career.

Sweet Temptation

Sweet Temptation

In 1971, the year I turned fourteen, my mother's yearning to escape the confines of our pebble  dashed three bedroom semi-detached house in anonymous Raynes Park SW20, and house the bargain Victorian furniture —the polished mahogany dining room table and chairs, for instance — she had been sourcing over the preceding few years at local antique shops and auction houses, in what she  accurately considered the more élite environs of Wimbledon Common or Village SW19, was to see fruition. Knowing my parents had been viewing houses in the neighbouring, and posher —at least up the Hill — postal district, some friends of my mother's, on coming round for dinner, tipped them off about a house in Dora Road, Wimbledon Park, whose owners they knew wanted a quick sale, and if possible a cash buyer. It was a four bedroom house with beautiful front and back gardens, containing a hundred and fifty rose bushes —documented in my poem '150 Rose Bushes' in my Wimbledon sequence —and the vendors wanted something unbelievable like seven thousand pounds for it, a ridiculous snip even in the early 70s. To this day, my father believes there must have been something suspect about it, but there wasn't from our end: my parents could raise the money and my uncle on my father's side, a successful partner in a completely straight West End firm of solicitors, acted for them in the purchase. We moved in the summer holidays, when I was just immersing myself in my earliest vice after nicotine, that of gambling on the horses. I had therefore nipped into Smith & Cane (Turf Accountants) in Raynes Park while the removal van was being loaded that day and put some bets on. I remember it being quite a grey day for midsummer. When we got to our new home in our white, two door Triumph Herald, registration UYN34F, the removal men were there waiting. In the course of them beginning by offloading a few of the smaller things that had been loaded last, as you do, I got the removal men to get my single bed and my desk chair — on which I am sat writing this — into my new bedroom overlooking the garden at the rear. Plus our portable 16" screen black and white television set. It was early afternoon by now, and I quickly got the TV plugged in, played about with the plug-in aerial, and got a good enough picture to watch the racing. [I forget the exact date but it must have been a high profile meeting to have been televised, so at that time of year probably the Eclipse meeting at nearby Sandown Park, or maybe the Ebor meeting at York.] Suffice to say that my parents were not best pleased at the delay in the removal procedure incurred by the removal lads noticing and being impressed that I had the racing on, and keeping on popping into my new room to check it.

We had some interesting neighbours in our new street: up the road was a television producer called Ben Rea, who was at the time producing the BBC police drama Softly Softly, and whose glamorous wife Angela used to come and babysit my younger brother, and hang out chatting about pop music with me whilst doing so, just at the time that glamorous women were starting to interest me. [Of little consequence is the fact that Softly Softly starred the actor Stratford Johns, who lived locally in Merton Park — near the old B-movie film studios, appropriately enough — whose daughter Frith was the first girl I ever had a kiss and cuddle with at a youth club dance.] Almost opposite the Reas at the top of the road lived a man named Johnny Placquet, a small time villain who owned a living flame fire shop in the town centre. Johnny was famed locally for when ordering a pre-dinner drink, asking for 'a pair o' teeth', and his wife, like Angela, was proper glam' and fetching, driving a Volvo P90 like The Saint on TV. Sadly they were not really my parents' sort of people, so she never came to babysit my little brother or hang out with me. A few doors down the road from us lived a well-to-do Bolivian family, a banker called Billy — well he was 'something' in the city at any rate — and his wife Yolanda, a stunning Latino with trademark long dark lustrous hair like Evita or Frida Kahlo with her plaits undone. They had a son and daughter a few years younger than me, both enrolled at local public schools, the son at my school, KCS, and the daughter at Wimbledon High School. Yolanda used to say that her family were part of a revolutionary party back home, and would alternate between positions in government with attendant luxury, and spells in prison when the revolution went the wrong way – all very Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Anyway, when in Wimbledon, Billy and Yolanda were more fond of house parties than political ones, although always quite low key. At one of which  parties a couple of years later, my parents told me the following day, they had been introduced to a mysterious man, taciturn with a hint of flamboyance, who had not stayed long, but after whose departure, Billy had 'let slip' was Carlos the Jackal, the infamous revolutionary. 

We now skip to the New Year of 1978, when I had retreated back home to my parents out of necessity for a few weeks; I was just about treading water in the wonderful world of punk rock, but kept surfacing and spluttering for air in the heroin addiction stakes. That New Year's Eve, Billy and Yolanda threw a party to which I was also invited. I was junk sick and shivering that day, but knew the drink would flow down the road, so at least I could hopefully get drunk enough both to take my mind off it and get a few hours sleep. My mother too looked very glamorous that night in a long black velvet skirt, although noticeably tipsy and well on the way to being noticeably drunk, swaying when she danced and flirting with other gentlemen guests. The combination of my feeling for my dad because of this, and my withdrawals, meant that I wasn't thinking straight, nor was I to think straight until the penny dropped many years later, as you will see.

Whilst plying his guests with wine, gin and tonics, champagne etc., Billy himself drank only mugs of tea with at least a quadruple vodka in each time, plus he kept disappearing upstairs to his little den, which I observed out of the corner of my eye, albeit with the penny still firmly stuck in the slot. Midnight came, as it generally does after 23.59pm; I think we had a champagne toast but no Auld Lang Syne, thank fuck. A little while afterwards, there was a ring on the bell, and Billy ushered into the front room, where I was sitting more quietly with just a couple of other guests —swerving the gaiety and music, drinking in morose contemplation, — a tall handsome black man with an equally tall (partly due to her porn star heels) and stunning black girlfriend, who looked like she'd just floated off the winner's podium at a beauty pageant. After getting them drinks, Billy introduced the guy to me as a fellow musician, none other than the great David Ruffin of The Temptations, brother to Jimmy. Shortly after, David left his girlfriend with her legs that went up to her hips flashing through the slit in her skirt, and disappeared upstairs with Billy for a while. When they descended, David Ruffin and his girlfriend soon left — I expect they had a driver outside and went onto Tramps or somewhere. Around 4am we went home to our house four doors up the road and, as luck would have it, while I was trying to force a boiled egg down for breakfast about midday, our 'phone rang, and it was Bill Major to tell me that I'd missed out the previous evening as, just before midnight the door of our local pub, The Hand-in-Hand on Wimbledon Common, had opened and a mutual friend had arrived with some bags of not half bad gear; however Bill, bless him, had saved a bag and was ringing to say we could share it. No-one got to say Jack Robinson, or anything else, before I had shouldered my Raglan camelhair Crombie and was hoofing it round to Bill's in Kingston Road — a half hour walk if you ran, as they say. Somewhere at the back of my chilly mind, that penny was still wedged in its slot.

David Ruffin's death in 1991, following overdosing in a crack house in Philly, passed me by at the time, and it was only on reading about it some years later, that it finally dawned on me what a famous soul singer and his model girlfriend were doing making a quick NYE guest appearance at a low key and outwardly sedate house party in Wimbledon Park. Just think, if that penny hadn't stuck, the Major and I could have been having a crystal speedball that New Year's afternoon.

The Elephant Fayre 1986

The Elephant Fayre 1986

In the middle of the week ending 25th July 1986, three separate elements conspired to my attendance and performance with two different bands at what was to be the last ever Elephant Fayre on the beautiful Port Eliot Estate in South-East Cornwall, just outside the village of St. Germans, and on the St. Germans or Tiddy River, as it curves towards Millbrook Lake and the open sea.

Firstly, a girl called Sue Bailey was at the time lodging with my partner Nina and I, who had co-opted herself into playing drums in my punk rock 'n' roll band The Black Devils. Sue had a drum kit, but struggled, to say the least, to find her way round it. Sue had a couple of years previously been (mis)managing my friends' cowpunk band Boothill Foot Tappers, by running them into the ground trying to live a rock 'n' roll lifestyle on their money. I ruined my own career doing exactly the same, but at least it was my career, not someone else's. [I only managed my dear friend Arthur's band The Lucky Saddles for a few months in 1981, and I didn't get them very far in life, but at least the accounting was above board.] Sue's barely rudimentary drumming made little odds as I had myself co-opted Nina into playing bass for the band. Nonetheless, this was slightly different as, although not a bass player, she loved soul music and her rhythm and timing was cool. [For musicians reading, most of the songs were in A, so I explained to her that if she lost her place on the neck, just to play the second fattest string open against A, the fattest under E, and the one the other side of the A over D. If all else failed she was to play the second fattest (A) string over everything, as it would harmonise with the other two chords and the rhythm would thunder relentlessly on. At least it would have done if Sue could drum.] However, Sue came from a musical family: her dad was 'Big' Pete Bailey, who had played congas for The Graham Bond Organisation and Pete Brown and His Battered Ornaments (as a poet and musician one of my favourite teenage bands), and her brother-in-law is Lew Stonebridge, the keys player in The Blues Band. 

Through her dad, who lived just outside Camelford in Cornwall and was friends and muso colleagues with Rick Worthy, the festival organiser, Sue obtained us two slots on both the Saturday and the Sunday, to perform a gypsy jazz set with Auntie & The Men From Uncle, who the following year would become The Helen Moore Trio, after I met said amazing chanteuse, and a punk R 'n' R set With The Black Devils, who the following year went back to being Auntie & The Men From Uncle. Since he restarted The Port Eliot Festival on the same site about 20 years later, and my move to the West Country, Rick Worthy is now a friend and fellow guitarist, but I didn't know him then — strangely, it was him that told me a couple of years' back of Pete Bailey's demise. 

The second component to my going to Cornwall that weekend is that I was doing a bit of low-to-medium level dope dealing, moving a kilo or two here and there onwards and outwards, including doing a bit of work with two lovely Somerset fellas with 'convoy' connections, and we had a bit of business going down which, as luck would have it, we could conduct at The Elephant Fayre. Now, if you read the online historic recall of the festival, lots of people, including Rick Worthy, evidence the local St. German's village being vandalised by members of the so-called Peace Convoy, whilst at the same time acknowledging that it was the year following the famously brutal police v. hippies Battle of the Beanfield, and that identities were blurred. All I can tell you is that my friends, a soft-spoken curly haired slim guy called Pearl, and his hippy chick girlfriend Biff, from Frome, and Pearl's partner Ian, were all mild mannered people; further they were on the site all weekend, much of which we hung out together, and they certainly did no damage. Quite the opposite, they volunteered as litter pickers on the Monday, and Pearl told me it was the best job he ever had — they found rolls of money, ounces of cocaine, and all sorts in the mud. [It is true that Pearl once drove a car straight through a police road block in Wiltshire, but the car was full of dope, no-one was hurt, and it was an act of self-preservation, and not attempted injury to others.]

Thirdly, I was also working a bit with a Scotsman called John Mac', and he had a friend with a nice old yellow medium-size bus, about ten seats and a couple of bunks, who was going to the festival and had no-one in the bus but himself. Happy days. On the Friday afternoon, Nina, Sue and I loaded up our gear onto his bus, and off we set, arriving at the site around dusk, stopping only once for fuel and snacks, and again just outside the area, for the driver, whose name eludes me, to secrete his own hash stash in a hidden compartment just inside the fuel tank. On pulling up at the gate and attendant hut, Nina elected to get out and sort the passes out, whereupon she caught her foot in a cattle grid, and I had to take over. The first time I attended Port Eliot Literary Festival — at which I read poetry last year — about twenty years later, I think when my mates Alabama 3 were playing, I drove down the track to the estate with my girlfriend. As we drove down the track, the memory came back to me and I related it to my girlfriend Lesley. Sure enough when we pulled up at the entrance hut to sort out our passes that time, there was the very cattle grid, large as life, and I made sure not to twist my ankle in it. Back to 1986, we duly found our way to the camping spot for performers in the big marquee we were to play in, had a wander round, and got our heads down. All was well, and I was looking forward to Colin Delaney arriving in the jolly old green Mercedes in the morning, with our genius trumpeter Will Algar. During the early hours, it rained. Very heavily. This is crucial to the story.

Saturday morning the sun was shining, the ground was drying out, and I had a wander round. It was a while since I'd been to a full-on festival, and the atmosphere was fantastic, with loads of smashing food stalls etc., not to mention things that have sadly gone out of fashion, like tents with signs saying: 'Hot Knives - 50p' — you don't see any of them at Port Eliot Literary Festival — rather they have oyster bars and artisan gin. Thatcher was in full flow in 1986, sending the country out of the traps and on its way to the dogs. Within a short time, there was Colin and Will in the green Merc' weaving their way through the rutted and partly dried mud towards me. Colin was always what he called 'on the night shift', so he'd done a bit of mini cabbing to get some funds, picked Will up and driven through the night. Great, they'd made it, so I showed them where we were plotted up, and where we were to perform later, and set off circulating again. This time, it wasn't long before I came across Pearl, Biff and Ian, so into their tent, quick bit of business, and that was mine and Nina's indoor money for the weekend sorted out. 

After parting company, by which time it was around lunchtime, I was meandering back to our bus and tent, when who should I run into but my old mucker and top double bass player, Lloyd Gordon, who was hanging there with Simon Le Bon's brother — I think there'd been a bit of country house debauchery taking place recently, and who can blame them, I say? Anyway, Lloyd is a great player in any genre, and we didn't have bass in the jazz band, so I was delighted when, on asking if he'd got his double bass with him, he said yes. Good plan really, if you're a good player and got a ticket or pass to a festival, you're bound to be able to 'stage bomb' a couple of places. [Lloyd was also incidentally the bassist in Boothill Foot Tappers.] I told him where and when we were playing, he asked if I'd got chord charts for the standards we'd be playing, I confirmed I had, and arranged to see him at the marquee for the first set at 2pm. 

Now, remember the aforementioned precipitation in the early hours. Lloyd, who is a lovely fella but nothing if not a trifle unreliable at times, was there bang on time, I introduced him to Colin and Will, and off we went. Hot Club come to Cornwall — I think we even inveigled someone faintly competent (unlike Sue) chap to play some swing drums with us. We were going down great, the marquee was full, must have been a couple of hundred people, and I was in my element. Colin was no great crooner, like Bobby Valentino, but he could sing and took the vocals on a couple of tunes, and the audience loved it. About three numbers away from the interval, I realised that the rest of the lunchtime cans of Stella were bursting my bladder, and that no way could I wait ten minutes. As soon as that number ended, I stood up, lent my beloved Gibson ES120t against my beloved Ampeg Reverbrocket (both of which I am still using) and ran for the side exit/stage door/flap of the marquee to relieve myself, with Colin shouting after me: 'Auntie! Where the fuck are you going?' As I glanced round the tent flap to shout that I was just taking an unavoidable leak and wouldn't be a minute, a large section of the marquee roof, maybe two metres by one, collapsed from the weight of the rain that had formed a well in it. Whereupon, at least a couple of gallons of water flooded down, drenching the chair on which I'd been sat not a minute before, talking into a microphone and playing an electric guitar through a vintage valve amp with dodgy circuitry (since addressed). Someone wiped it down with a cloth, and we proceeded. Atheists take note. At the end of the second set, I shook hands with Lloyd and gave him a hug, telling him he'd been great and what a pleasure it was — both entirely true. Lloyd responded: 'Oh, that's good, I'm glad it was ok. Only I forgot I'd said I'd play with you, and about an hour before the show, someone gave me two tabs of acid. It was just as I was coming up that I remembered. I couldn't see the chord charts at all — they were just dancing in front of my eyes.' There you are, told you he was a good player.

In the interval between our jazz and rock 'n' roll sets, I went wandering again, meeting first Buster Bloodvessel from Bad Manners, who were on and whom I hadn't seen since 1980, and my old mucker from when he lived on my manor, Wimbledon, in 1975, the great jazz guitarist Jim Mullen. Jim was there to play a quartet gig with fellow Scotsman Bobby Wellins, the renowned saxophonist — I watched their set half spaced out and awestruck, but with one eye on my watch knowing there was still another gig to do that evening. The second set went down well too; it didn't matter about Sue's drumming — the people running that stage were family friends of hers and had spread the word that we were a special attraction sourced from London, and luckily they believed the hype.

Come the Sunday, the same thing on repeat, but minus the near-death experience. On the Monday we bade farewell to Pearl and crew, who as I said stayed to pick litter or mine gold, as the case may be, our driver swapped a chunk of his remaining hash with some other convoy types for a couple of gallons of scrumpy for the passengers to neck en route home to ease the comedown, as you do at festivals, and by nightfall we were home in East Twickenham. And dry!