Carl Halling Weblog

18:00:45 o'clock BST
Feeling Chillin'

Introduction

"An Innocent in Hamburg", the second piece in a series of seventies-themed writings takes place in 1973 and 1974 in a variety of locations. Among these are London and its suburbs, the French city of Bordeaux, Murcia's Costa Calida, and the port of Hamburg, current capital of the German province of Schleswig-Holstein. It was first published (at Blogster) on the 26th of March 2006 as "A Dandy in the Land of Blue Denim 1". Allowing for further minor corrections, a final version was published at http://carlroberthalling.blog.co.uk in January 2008.

Toilers of the Thames

1973 was the year of my first voyage as an Ordinary Seaman with the RNR onboard the minesweeper HMS Thames. Late in the summer it set out for Bordeaux in Gironde in the south west of France. I was just seventeen years old.
During the trip I made my best-ever RNR friend in the shape of a fellow OD Colin who called me only a few years ago from his east London home to talk about old memories by which time he'd become a Chief Petty Officer. I also became quite friendly with one of the most unlikely pair of cronies I ever came across in the RNR or anywhere else. One half of the partnership was Jimmy, a rough, wild but essentially kind-hearted working class loner and ladies' man of about 23 who was rumoured to be a permanent year-long resident of HMS Thames. The other was a far older man, possibly in his mid thirties, but just as much of a hellraising party animal as Jim even though he boasted the super-posh accent and patrician manner of a City stockbroker or merchant banker.
Jimmy took me under his wing with a certain intimidating affection: "We'll make a ruffy tuffy sailor of you you yet!" he once told me, even though we both knew that that I'd never be anything other than the most pathetically effete sailor in the civilised world. There was one occasion below deck during some kind of conference when, after having been asked by an officer what I thought of minesweeping, I replied that it was a gas...another when the ship had been prepared for a major manoeuvre and everyone onboard had retreated to their respective allotted positions, when I was found wandering on deck in a daze only to casually announce that I was taking a stroll. Incidents like these made me an object of good-humoured banter on the part of Jimmy and others, which only rarely verged on the menacing.

The crew spent its final night together in a night club in the port of Portsmouth, although it might just as easily have been Plymouth. The main attraction was a limp-wristed drag queen who tried desperately to keep us entertained by singing cabaret style numbers in a comic falsetto, and telling bawdy jokes in a deep rich baritone, only to be savagely heckled. At one point she turned her attention to me, or rather I think it was me. I was trying to hide at the time, it being one of those rare occasions when I was wearing glasses and I hated the look of myself in the cheap horn-rimmed specs that were the only pair I had in those days. A very close friend of mine from Wales, Rob, once told me I had those kind of short-sighted James Dean, Marilyn Monroe eyes that appear to stare into a person's soul. This supposed gift notwithstanding, myopia always made me feel somehow defective, incomplete; so I refused to wear glasses except for when I really needed them until I was well into my thirties. "Ooh...you look pretty, what's your name?", the cross-dresser might have trilled. "Skin!" was what some of the sailors bellowed back, this being a nickname of mine, perhaps as in "a bit of skin" or something. It's all a bit of a blur to me now.
Before too long, the bearded sailor seated next to me had collapsed face down onto the table with a thunderous crash. Only a short time earlier, he'd performed the theme from "William Tell" on his facial cheeks while I held the mike for him. I'm not certain whether he ever appeared as a musician in public again, but he was certainly a star that night.

A Dandy in the Land of Blue Denim

Back onshore, I resumed my growing passion for louche and shady music, art and culture. Some time in 1974, however, I turned away from what I now saw as the old hat tackiness of Glam Rock, convinced that Modernist outrage had nowhere left to go. Instead, I turned my devotion to the more stylish glamour of previous eras and particularly the twenties and thirties. At some point in '74, I started using hair cream to slick my hair back in the style of F Scott Fitzgerald, sometimes parting it in the centre just as Fitz had done. I also built up a new retro wardrobe, which came to include a Gatsby style tab-collared shirt, often worn with black and white college-style tie; several cravats and neck scarves; a navy blue blazer from Meakers; a fair isle short-sleeved sweater; a pair of grey flannel trousers from Simpsons of Piccadilly, a pair of two-tone brown and white, or "correspondant", shoes; and a belted fawn raincoat straight out of a forties film noir.
As the seventies progressed I became more and more entranced by the continental Europe of recent times, and specifically its leading cities, as beacons of revolutionary art; and of style, luxury and dissolution. Certain key eras became very special to me, such as the 1890s, known as the Yellow Decade in England, and the Mauve in the US, Belle Epoque Paris, Jazz Age New York, and Weimar Republic Berlin.
There were those cutting edge Rock and Pop artists who appeared to share my European love affair, such as Sparks and Manhattan Transfer, and Britain's own favourite lounge lizard Bryan Ferry. Much of the latter's work with his band Roxy Music was haunted by the languid cafe and cabaret music of the continent's immediate past. What's more, some of Roxy's followers sported the kind of nostalgic apparel favoured by Ferry himself, but they were rare creatures in mid-seventies London. As for me, I wore my bizarre outdated costumes in arrogant defiance of the continuing ubiquity of long hair and flared jeans. In 1975, I attended a concert at west London's Queen's Park football stadium in striped boating blazer and white trousers, while surrounded by hirsute relics from the Hippie era. The headliners were my one-time favourites Yes, whose "Relayer" album I'd bought the year before; but my passion for Prog Rock was a thing of the past. I'd moved on since '71...

Take to the Sky

It was while I was sitting Spanish "O" level in June 1974 in central London that I became deeply infatuated with a pretty slim Dutch girl called Maria. She didn't look Dutch, in fact, with her tanned complexion and long dark brown hair, she was Meditteranean in physical appearance, and even had the name to match. It was probably Maria who first approached me, because I was so unconfident around girls in those days that I would never have made the first move. Over the course of the next few days, I fell ever deeper in love, but I didn't have the courage to make my feelings known to her. This was so typical of me, to assume an attitude of diffident indifference when confronted by something or someone I truly desired. So, once we'd completed our final paper, I allowed her to walk away from me forever with a casual "I might see you around", or some other cliche of that kind.
For a week or thereabouts, I took the train into London and spent the days wandering around the city centre in the truly desperate hope of bumping into her. One time I could have sworn I saw her staring coolly back at me from an underground train, possibly at South Kensington or Notting Hill Gate, just as the doors were closing, but typically I was powerless to act, and simply stood there like a lovesick loon as the train drew away from the station. In time of course, my infatuation faded, but even to this day certain songs will recall for me those few weeks in the summer of '74 that I spent in hopeless pursuit of a woman I didn't even know. They include Sweet Soul standards, "I Just Don't Want to be Lonely" by The Main Ingredient, and "Natural High" by Bloodstone, with its pathetic lines: "Why do I keep my mind on you all the time, and I don't even know you, why do I feel this way, thinking about you every day, and I don't even know you..."

Later on in the summer I found myself once again in Santiago de La Ribera by the Mar Menor or little sea, this being a large coastal lake of warm saltwater off Murcia's Costa Calida in southeastern Spain, and the summer of '74 was one of the most blissfully happy summers I spent there. Every afternoon, we used to meet on the balnario or jetty facing our apartment on the Mar Menor which was more or less deserted after lunch, that's myself and my brother, and Spanish friends both male and female, to listen to music and talk and laugh and swim and generally enjoy being young and carefree in a decade of endless possibilities. To some youthful Spanish eyes back in '74-'76, I appeared as an almost impossibly exotic figure from what seemed to them to be the most radical and daring city in Europe, which of course London was. I played up to my racy image to the hilt, where in truth I was barely less sheltered and innocent than they were. All this was to change with Franco's passing, and the birth of the so-called Movida, which could be said to be the Spanish and specifically Madridian equivalent of London's Swinging Sixties revolution. During the Movida, Spain set about sophisticating itself to the extent that on my last vacation in La Ribera in the summer of '84, it was I who was in awe of the local youth rather than the other way around. They'd become so intimidatingly cool, dancing their strange jerky chicken wing dance to the latest New Pop hits from Britain. By then of course most of my old friends had vanished into their young adult lives, and my time as the dashing English prince of Santiago de la Ribera had long passed. I was yesterday's man, and I wassad about it, but I couldn't expect to be chased forever. Some people have to actually grow up.

An Innocent in Hamburg

I returned to London in late summer '74 with a deep tan and hair bleached bright yellow by the sun, and hanging long over my ears and down over my forehead. Within days I found myself on HMS President, moored then as today on the Embankment near Temple station. This entailed my passing through Waterloo mainline station, which wasn't tourist-friendly as it is today, with its cafes and baguette bars, but a dingy intimidating place complete with pub and old-style barber. There I was I was accosted by a hoary old Scotsman, a former sailor who kept going on about how good looking I was. He even told me that he loved me; but he was harmless...just a sweet lonely old guy who wanted someone to talk to for a few minutes, which I was happy to do and then move on. It was all very innocent. I even went so far as to agree to a meeting with him the same time the following week, not that I had any intention of keeping it.
Only days afterwards, HMS Thames was on its way to Hamburg, second largest city of Germany and its principle port. Once we'd arrived, one of the NCOs, a Chief Petty Officer I think advised me not to wander alone in the city. I duly fell in with a group of about three or four, and on our first night ashore we set off on a voyage into parts of the city such as the red light district St Pauli with its infamous Reeperbahn, the so-called "sinful mile" which is lined with restaurants, discos and dives, as well as strip clubs, sex shops, bordellos and so on. On St Pauli streets and in St Paul bars I saw things I'd never even suspected could exist. It was all in such stark contrast to the pleasant outer suburbs to which a coach trip was organised at some point during our run ashore. We ended up in a park where I had my picture taken on a bridge by a reporter for the Surrey Comet; then a group of breathless giggling schoolgirls asked me to be in some photos with them. I of course said yes, ever happy to oblige, and it was a bit of an ego boost for me, as if I needed one. On the way back to the ship, one of the sailors remarked that I'd been a hit with the Hamburg teenyboppers, while another snapped back that it was only because I was blond and blue-eyed, Teutonic-looking in other words. Whatever the truth, there was something deeply moving about these sweet suburban girls and their simple unaffected joy of life, especially in the light of what girls barely older than they were subjecting themselves to in the sad lost northern Babylon of only a matter of miles away.

London, 1975?

Written by croberthg Link to this entry | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

07:33:47 o'clock BST
Feeling Anxious
Hearing The Angels of Ashes - Scott Walker

Introduction

"The Trials of a Teetotaller" was originally published at the Blogster.com website as "Release, Relapse and Restoration" on the 9th of November 2006. In September 2007, a definitive version was published with corrections at the Faithwriters.com website.

A Teacher's Release

In the early part of 1994, I embarked upon the final stages of the Post Graduate Certificate of Education, FE, or Further Education, that I’d been working on since the autumn of ’92, and whose passing would have permitted me to teach French in further education establishments throughout the UK. As extensively detailed elsewhere, its progress however had been significantly hampered by my alcohol and prescription drug problems, which resulted in my postponing Teaching Practise, scheduled to have been completed in 1993, until the following year.
My own history includes three unsuccessful attempts at the PGCE. The first, mentioned in "A Cambridge Lament", took place at Homerton College, Cambridge, the second at the former West London Institute of Higher Education (1990), and the last at the University of Greenwich (1992-1994). I quit both Homerton and the West London Institute immediately prior to TP. With regard to Homerton, TP had been due to begin in a secondary school in a deprived inner city area of Cambridge where I had received a near-hysterical reception from the kids. There was a time when I would have gladly attempted to live up to this incredibly positive first impression, but at 30, I was already in thrall to the deep jadedness and self-suspicion of a man calloused by knowledge and experience despite my still angelically youthful countenance.
My second attempt would have taken place in Hounslow, west London, close by to WLIE itself. This was based on two campuses in the suburbs of Isleworth, where I briefly shared a house, and east Twickenham. Both formed part of the University of London prior to the Institute’s merging with Brunel University. The Twickenham campus where I did most of my studying was recently sold off to property developers.
I finally completed a full TP early in 1994 at Esher College, a higher education school in the little village suburb of Thames Ditton, but had neglected to demonstrate sufficient authority in the classroom or something of the sort, according to the report I was given at my request. This understandably went on to jeopardise my final mark. As a result, despite my having passed every one of the requisite exams except the TP component, I failed the course as a whole. To be fair, my Greenwich tutors offered me the opportunity of retaking the section of the course I botched, but I chose to turn them down.

Flashes of Black Humour

The exact duration of the mood of disappointment to which I was undoubtedly subject, if only fleetingly, as a result of bungling a course which had cost me so much not just in financial terms but by way of time and effort I cannot say for certain. What is sure, however, is that within a short period of time of being informed of my fail, I successfully auditioned for a newly formed fringe theatre group known as Grip, based at the Rose and Crown public house in Kingston, Surrey. I did so for the main part of Roote in a relatively obscure play by Harold Pinter, the monumentally successful London-born dramatist, screenwriter, director, actor and poet. “The Hothouse” is perhaps not among Pinter’s greatest plays, but it is a superb piece nonetheless, and supremely Pinteresque, with its almost high poetic verbal virtuosity and inventiveness and dark surreal humour laced with a constant sense of impending violence. Penned in 1958, it was not performed until 1980, when it was directed by Pinter himself for London’s Hampstead and Ambassador Theatres.
From the auditions onwards, I established a strong connection with the easy-going American director, Tim Williams. Tim was very much an actor’s director, which I would define as one who delights in establishing close relationships with actors, out of a deep respect and affection for their art. As soon he informed me that the part was mine, I was genuinely excited about the prospect of working with him in interpreting Roote, the director of an unnamed government psychiatric hospital, the “Hothouse” of the title. My success rate when it came to auditions for the London fringe theatre had always been low, perhaps because so many of those I’d attended had involved me reciting pieces I'd memorised before what seemed to me to be an offputtingly impassive panel of observers, which was why I felt so grateful to Tim. As an auditioner, he differed from the common run insofar as he had us reading in small groups from the play while inter-reacting with fellow auditionees. This system enables the actors involved to attain a basic feel for whichever character they might be interpreting at any given time, in other words to actually act for an audition.
Tim demanded from me an interpretation of Roote which was distinctly at variance with my usual highly Method-oriented, subtle, intense, introspective and yet somehow also emotionally hyper-vehement approach to acting, but his directorial instincts were immaculate. The pompous and eccentric windbag with the potential for sudden arbitrary brutality which he coaxed out of me was arguably the most successful role of my uneven career. It garnered glowing reviews not just in the local press, but also the London version of the celebrated international listings magazine “Time Out”, in which Kate Stratton described my performance as “flawlessly accurate” and “lit by flashes of black humour”, adding that the production faltered whenever I left the stage. This review created a real aura of excitement about the production, and especially its lead actor who for all the world looked set to capitalize on this unexpected success and become something of a West End star or something akin. One agent went out of her way to ask me to ensure my details reached her, And yet, having attempted to do just that, I never heard from her again. To this day I am uncertain precisely why, but it may have been something to do with my CV, which was not of a sufficient standard of professionalism.

Trials of a Teetotaller

Although I was nearly 40 years old at the time of "The Hothouse", I feel safe in saying that I barely looked more than 25, 30 at the very most, and so possibly struck others as an ingenous young man at the start of a brilliant career, rather than one with some decade and a half of experience under his tightly knotted belt. It could be sad then that I was a kind of a Dorian Gray figure, and yet I was no curator of a once perfect portrait corroding in an attic in tandem with its subject’s increasing depravation, not I, for I was still filled with the naively fervent desire for holiness that is so characteristic of those known as "baby Christians".
Still, despite the aura of carefree youthfulness I projected, I was suffering within, sorely missing the escape alcohol once offered me, and the revels extending deep into the night that once used to follow my acting perfomances, and during which I’d throw my youth and affections about like some kind of maniacal delinquent gambler squandering his life’s savings at the poker table in the face of imminent insolvency.Years later, on the other hand, I had to make do with a sickly sweet soft drink to facilitate the socialising process in the vain hope that it would serve as a mild euphoriant. To further complicate matters, I started being subject during the run of “The Hothouse” to heavy spiritual problems related to my thought life, possibly connected to my pre-Christian existence which after all had only recently ceased to be. Within a year I would actively seek refuge in what is known in Pentecostal-Charismatic Christian circles as Healing Ministry, in consequence of these and other torments.

Qualms of a Christian Actor

My faith didn’t violently clash with the contents of “The Hothouse”, although its unremitting sombreness of tone certainly caused me some qualms. Still, I had a high regard for the work’s artistic merits, and its unsavoury elements didn’t provoke revulsion in me, unlike certain plays I considered in the mid 1990s. I mention this to make it clear that fame as an actor, indeed as an artist or entertainer in general, was no longer the obsession it had once been for me. With regard to this, a person very close to me told me back in the late '80s or early '90s that it is possible to want something too much, perhaps implying that my thirst for renown or notoriety prior to my becoming a Christian was of such a pathological degree of intensity that it ultimately set about devouring me. Whether such a theory has any real basis in truth I cannot say. What is certain is that since coming to faith, my priorities had drastically shifted, and I viewed worldly acclaim with a far more dubious eye than before. Perhaps that's why I failed to take fuller advantage of a late-flowering opportunity for success within my chosen craft than I should have done. Although I was pretty calm about this at the time, I now realise that if an opportunity carries within it the potential for future professional and social status, it should be unhesitatingly seized upon. To do otherwise is to risk a legacy of shame and remorse.

My First Relapse

Within a short time of “The Hothouse” reaching the end of its two week run, Grip’s easy-going artistic director Martin Richards asked me if I’d like to audition for his forthcoming production of “Two” by the playwright Jim Cartwright, best known for the play and film “Little Voice”, to be directed by Martin, and produced by his fiancée Chantal. "Two", as the name suggests, is a two-handed play in which all the male characters are played by one actor, and all the female by another.
I of course answered in the affirmative and auditioned succesfully, with the result that I found myself playing opposite the superb character actress Jane Gelardi for a fortnight...and by the end of the run the houses were so packed that people were sitting on the side of the stage at my feet. In other words, the production was an unqualified triumph, gaining uniformly enthusiastic reviews, although sadly only in the local press. Still, while working alongside Martin, Jane and Chantal on "Two" was an unalloyed pleasure, I dreaded the end of each performance, seeking only to distance myself from the audiences who came nightly to see me do what I did best as soon as it was possible to do so without giving any great offence.
Sweet release from a prison of sobriety presented itself while I was attending some unrelated function at the Rose and Crown some days following “Two"’s final performance. What happened was a tall, bearded man I was casually chatting to offered to buy me a drink, at which point rather than the soft drink I normally opted for, I hazarded a single glass of wine. It was the first alcohol to pass my lips since January 1993, that is, without taking into account an incident at my parents’ house when I took a large gulp of what I thought was water but which turned out to be vodka, or gin. Far from having an adverse effect, however, the wine made me feel wonderful, its intoxicating properties doubtless enhanced by the purity of my system . Cycling home that night I felt perfectly blissful, emancipated at long last, or so I thought, from the torturous shackles of sobriety.
From this single glass of red wine, my drinking escalated by degrees over the next few weeks, only to culminate in an evening in a Twickenham pub with an old university friend during which I boozed and smoked with all my old ardour. Cycling home afterwards, I came off my bike as I passed a bus shelter near Hampton Wick in Kingston, and dashed my head against it before falling flat on my back. I deserved to die there where I lay, and might have done had it not been for the mercy of God. He picked me up from the ground where I lay, abject and stinking of drink, and soon I was shakily resumed my journey home. However, weeks of controlled drinking, as well as one massive binge, possibly combined with the adverse effects of violently smashing my head against a bus shelter, resulted in my becoming ill and incapacitated for what might have been as long as as a fortnight. As I remember, there were times during this awful period When I'd awake in a frantic state, sickly pale and in a deathly faint, close to blacking out, fearful of death, but each time I felt God came to my rescue just when my situation seemed hopeless. All I could do was lie around, waiting, praying to get better, but it seemed to take an eternity, and yet once again, the Lord was with me at all times, and I eventually made a return to full health, before resuming the life He saved me for...

Written by croberthg Link to this entry | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

18:18:58 o'clock BST
Feeling Chillin'
Hearing All I ask - Crowded House

Introduction

"Of All Sad Words of Tongue or Pen" debuted at the Blogster.com website on the 25th January 2007. It consisted of an introduction, the main body of the work, formerly untitled but now "Some Sad Dark Secret", and an epilogue. Before a definitive version was published at the Faithwriters website in September 2007, it was quite comprehensively edited, while not having been significantly altered in spirit.

Galvanising Mentors

"Some Sad and Dark Secret", was forged using creative methods scrupulously described elesewhere. It was based on notes contained within a single piece of scrap paper which I recently unearthed, and probably dating from 1982 or '83, during which I was a French and Drama student at Westfield College. The first three sections contain words of advice imparted to me by Dr Margaret Mein, who was my principle tutor during my final year at Westfield, and under whose galvanising direction I studied as my main subject the controversial and often disturbing writings of Andre Gide. Throughout the year, she tirelessly encouraged my intellectual and literary inclinations, determined that I should go on to become a professional academic. She also believed that I had the makings of a successful writer, informing me at one point that if creative writing is of a sufficiently sensational nature, it is guaranteed to be read by a ravenously curious public, and thence to be financially successful, or something similar. The fourth and fifth sections have as their basis words once spoken to me by another of my Westfield tutors, the genial Dr Simon Harvey, and referring to my former desire to shock, through my writings, by the affection of an almost hysterical vehemence of tone, as well as the endless inclusion of ranting lists.

Some Sad Dark Secret

Dr M. said:
“Temper
Your enthusiasm,
The extremes
Of your
reactions,
You should have
A more
Conventional
Frame
On which to
Hang your
unconventionality.”

The tone of some
Of my work
Is often
A little dubious,
She said.
She thought
That there
Was something
Wrong,
That I’m hiding
Some sad and dark
Secret
From the world.

She told me
Not to rhapsodise,
That it would be
Difficult,
Impossible, perhaps,
For me to
Harness
My dynamism.
“Don’t push People”,
She said.
“You make
Yourself
Vulnerable”.

Dr H. said:
“By the third page,
I felt I’d been
Bulldozed.
I can almost see
Your soapbox.
Like Rousseau,
You’re telling us
What to do.
You seem to
Work yourself
Into such an
emotional pitch…

And this
Extraordinary
Capacity for lists.

A Spider Across the Skies

To my shame, I confess that the first employment I sought after leaving Westfield was as a wandering deliverer of novelty telegrams. It may be that I gave no serious thought to the future, because I didn’t seriously intend having one. My life’s work was apparently the pursuit of immortality through acting, music or literature, or ideally all three, while tasting as many earthly fruits, strong sensations, and limit-experiences as I was able to in the interim with the aid of my own personal elixir of ethyl alcohol and then simply burning like a fabulous yellow roman candle exploding like a spider across the stars, to paraphrase Jack Kerouac. I had no deep desire to leave anything behind by way of progeny, nor for any career other than one liable to project me to global renown, although in keeping with my then passionately felt liberal-left convictions, I did vaguely entertain the thought of an alternative career in one or other of the caring professions, namely psychologist, social worker, care worker etc., at one or more stages of my pre-Christian existence. I struggle to adequately explain why I was quite so reckless with the many gifts heredity and good fortune had bestowed upon me, as I'm such a different person today, and one who honours and cherishes everything that contributes to the well-being of the individual in society, from the family onwards. It may be that I was in the grip of a condition of which sudden inexplicable recklessness was a primary symptom, because it would be inaccurate to state that I was unvaryingly reckless. In fact, I was capable of immense diligence especially when it came to my acting career, only for the recklessness to return...and often when it was vital to my career that it remain at bay. What is certain is that whatever I was in thrall to has been significantly tamed by my faith, offering me the chance to revisit my younger days with an eye rendered mournful and wise by bitter regret, as well as the gift of hope for the future, which my folly almost deprived me of permanently. I am fortunate insofar as God has offered me a second act, during which I might go some way towards repairing some of the damage I once did, so that one day those terrible words contained in “Maud Muller” by the American Quaker poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) might not burn themselves too savagely into my soul:
“For of all sad words of tongue or pen
The saddest are these: ‘it might have been!’”

Written by croberthg Link to this entry | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

12:22:52 o'clock BST
Feeling Angry
Hearing Give Me What I Cry For - Chris Rainbow

Introduction

"Shreds of Nothingness" centres on my brief stay at Homerton, a teaching training college contained within the University of Cambridge, with its campus at Hills Road just outside the city centre. First published at the Faithwriters.com website in August 2007 in definitive form, it is a fusion of two previously published works. These are the original "Shreds of N." as published at the Blogster.com website on the 6th January 2007, but now modified and consisting of "In Such a State as This" and "A Cambridge Narrative" 1 & 2; and "Final Flight from Hills Road", formerly "A Cantabrian Lament", this first published at Blogster on the 10th of June 2006.

A Cambridge Narrative 1

"In Such a State as This" was adapted either from a page of diary notes, or an unfinished and unsent letter, written just before Christmas 1986 during my brief stay at Homerton. I created it by extracting selected sentences from the original script, and then joining them together, before subjecting the result to thorough editing and versification. It conveys the pathological restlessness, romantic and otherwise, to which I was subject in the mid 1980s, and which resulted in my quitting Homerton after a single term. However, quite why I was so determined to put a final flight from Hills Road into practice remains a quandary to me more than two decades later. After all, I had every reason to relish my time there, given that I’d been made to feel most welcome and appreciated, not just by my tutors and fellow students, but others, including a student director, renowned throughout the university for the high quality of his theatrical productions, who singled me out to feature in a play he intended putting on during the Lent Term. He did so after seeing me interpret the leading role of Tom in Tennessee Williams'“The Glass Menagerie" soon after the end of the Michaelmas Term. Furthermore, the then president of the world famous Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club had gone out of his way to ask myself and a friend to appear in a Footlights production he was preparing as part of his year-long presidency. It was as if I was convinced that life's most precious opportunities constitute an inexhaustible suppy, which of course they don't, as I know all too well today, all too well.

In Such a State as This

In such
a state as this
I could fall
In love
With anyone.
The night
before last
I went
to the ball
Couples
filing out
I wanted to be
one half
of ev'ry one
But I didn't want
to lose her.
I’ve done
little today
Except mope
Dolefully around
I’ll get over
how
I feel now,
And very soon.
Gradually
I’ll freeze again,
Even assuming
An extra layer
of snow.
I have
I have
I have
To get out of here...

A Cambridge Narrative 2

It will be obvious to any half-way sensible reader of the following piece that had I remained at Cambridge for the brief three terms required of me by the dictates of my course, which included teaching practise at the Manor Community College in Arbury, a deprived London overspill area north of the River Cam, I would have been primed for success in an area in which I excelled, namely comedic character acting with a satirical edge. Not only that, but I would have passed my Post Graduate Certificate in Education through Cambridge University, as part of a course intended to produce something of a pedagogic elite. As if all this weren't enought to keep me at Homerton, when I made my first appearance at the Manor, the pupils reacted to me as if I was some kind of visiting movie or Rock star. Why in the name of precious reason itself was I so determined to put such a blatant act of self-sabotage into practise? As a born again Christian, my faith helps me to withstand the pain of not knowing why, and yet knowing all too well what I lost. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that without it I would find my memories almost too painful to bear. My faith protects me from the full furious ferocity of my follies past, and without it, I would be at their mercy, and they would rend me to shreds of utter nothingness.
Unless I'm mistaken, "Final Flight from Hills Road" was forged from the same source material as "In Such a State as This" before being subjected to a similar editing process, and then published at the Blogster.com website on the 10th of June 2006.

Final Flight from Hills Road

Homerton's always a little lonely
at the weekends...
no noise and life,
I like solitude,
but not in places
where's there's recently been
a lot of people.
Reclusiveness protects you
from nostalgia,
and you can be as nostalgic
in relation
to what happened halfan hour ago
as half a century ago,
in fact more so.
I met Marie and Paul
at 11.30 am,
and they took me out to lunch.
We went to Evensong
at Kings,
and it was beautiful;
the choral music, haunting.
I went to the PGCE
Xmas party. I danced,
and generally lived it up.
I went to bed sad though.
Discos exacerbate
my sense of solitude.
My capacity
for social warmth,
excessive social dependance
and romantic zeal
can be practically
deranging;
it's no wonder
I feel the need
to escape.
I feel trapped here,
there's no outlet for my talents.

 

Written by croberthg Link to this entry | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

20:24:23 o'clock BST
Feeling Anxious
Hearing Nancy (let Your Hair Down for Me) - Prefab Sprout

Introduction

"The Twilight of an Actor" existed initially as nothing more than "Such a Short Space of Time", published at the Blogster.com website on the 19th of February 2007. However, I decided to flesh it out with some background information in the summer, and so the additional prose sections of "As Swift as the Wind", "Lovelives at the Rose and Crown" and "Fragments from a Work Destroyed" came into being. Long before being given the title of "Such a Short Space of Time", it was an unfinished autobiographical story penned almost certainly in the early part of summer '99. In the winter of '06, I extracted portions of it for the purpose of transforming it into a workable piece of writing, and one evoking the sense of deep longing and melancholia with which I was afflicted as the decade, century and millenium were all three coming to an unquiet close. In August 2007, a definitive version of the piece was published at the Faithwriters.com website.

Such a Short Space of Time

I love...not just those...
I knew back then,
But those...
Who were young
Back then,
But who've since
Come to grief, who...
Having soared so high,
Found the
Consequent descent
Too dreadful to bear,
With my past itself,
Which was only
yesterday,
No...even less time...
A moment ago,
And when I play
Records from 1975,
Soul records,
Glam records,
Progressive records,
Twenty years melt away
Into nothingness...
What is a twenty-year period?
Little more than
A blink of an eye...
How could
Such a short space
Of time
Cause such devastation?

Youth is (As Swift as the Wind)

My parents were on vacation during the period which inspired "Such a Short Space", and so I spent alot of time at their house performing various tasks such as watering my mother's flowers. I decided to take advantage of their absence by using their music system to transfer some of my old LPs onto cassette. It was an unsettling experience...to listen to songs that, perhaps in the cases of some of them, I had not heard for ten years, or even fifteen, or more, and which evoked with a heartrending intensity a time when I was filled to the brim with sheer youthful joy of life and undiluted hope for the future. Yet as I did so, it seemed to me thatit was only very recently that I'd heard them for the first time, despite the colossal changes brought about not just in my own life, but the lives of all those of my generation since I'd actually done so. Thence, I was confonted at once with the devastating transience of human life, and the equally devastating effect the passing of time has on human life on the other.

Lovelives at the Rose and Crown

Some might say that a further contributory factor to my sadness was the fact that by the final summer of the century, my own original chosen career of actor was effectively at an end, but I can't in all honesty countenance such a theory. What is true, however, is that in the last half decade I'd only appeared in five plays. Following the second of these, Jim Cartwright's "Two", which I touched on in some detail in, I performed in one final production at the Rose and Crown theatre, the character-driven comedy "Lovelives". Directed by Ian McGlynn, "Lovelives" was written by the cast, David French, Stirling Gallacher, Jane Gelardi, Andrea Searle, Deborah Wilding, and myself, and consisted of a series of sketches centring on the desperate antics of a group of young professional singletons. Perhaps then it was in perfect synchronicity with the spirit of British post-war comedy, with its exaltation of suburban ordinariness and even failure. A great success at the R&C, there is every probability that "Lovelives" could have been developed into a succesful television play or even series, but sadly, as is all to often the case, a brilliant cast dispersed not too long after the final show. In late September '95, I played two parts in a production of Euripides' "Iphigeneia in Taurois" at the Tristan Bates theatre in central London. These were Pylades, boon companion of one of the main characters, Orestes, and the Messenger. It was directed by my longtime friend, the writer-director Adrian Thurston-Gordon, who also translated it.

Fragments from a Work Destroyed

From January 1996 until the following summer, I served variously as actor, MC, script writer, singer and musician for Street Level, a Christian theatre company based at the Elim Pentecostal church in West Croydon, Surrey. A group of three, we toured several shows around schools in the Croydon/Norwood/Crystal Palace area of south London. One of these, "Choices", was almost entirely written by me, although it had been based on an idea by the company leader Sally Ovendon, who also heavilyedited it for performance purposes. The kids were astonishingly receptive to our productions, and we were greeted by them with almost uniform enthusiasm and affection.
Towards the end of the summer, Sally asked me to write a large scale project for Street Level. She suggested a contemporary version of John Bunyan's classic allegorical Christian novel "The Pilgim's Progress". I duly spent several weeks labouring over the project until it had evolved into an unwieldy epic voyage to the end of the night punctuated by scenes of the blackest humour. Soon after handing it to Sally, weary of the long early morning train journeys to West Croydon station via Wimbledon, I left Street Level. Quite understandably, my version of "The Pilgrim's Version" was never produced. I came ultimately to destroy all but a few pages of it, because although artistically it had its merits, it was spiritually immature. I don't have any regrets about my decision.
By early 1997 I'd vanished into the anonymity of office life, remaining therein on and off for over three years. However, there was one final acting hurrah from me in the shape of the series of cameos I contributed to a production of the so-called "Scottish Play" at the Lost Theatre in Fulham in 1998. Despite these being praised by more than one cast member, I have barely acted since. In fact, but for a single instance of walk-on work in March 2005, and a handful of failed auditions for film and TV, I've been defunct as an actor now for nearly a decade. While I'm still open to the possibility of film or television work, the likelihood of my appearing on stage in a play again is remote indeed because simply, the passion to perform that once raged inside me to the degree that renown became a serious possibility more than once in my career has long been quieted.

Written by croberthg Link to this entry | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

02:43:31 o'clock BST
Feeling Anxious
Hearing Through the Long Night - Billy Joel

Days of Greenhithe

In late 1977, with the purpose of training to become a radio officer I joined the now no longer existent Merchant Navy College in Greenhithe, Kent, which had merged with the Thames Nautical Training College HMS Worcester in 1968.
At the college, I formed several close friendships; but closest of all was with Jesse, a lovable live wire of about 18 with a thick London accent who'd been born into a longstanding Indian community in nearby Gravesend, part of south east London's vast suburban sprawl. Young Asian men like Jesse, whose real name was Jasbir, were compelled by their circumstances to know how to defend themselves should trouble arise. But he was kind and loyal and formed strong ties of friendship with those he liked such as myself, and for a time we were inseparable.
It was through Jesse, unless I'm mistaken, that I started attending dances at Gravesend's Woodville Hall, where young people would regularly congregate in late '77, clad in bizarre escapist fashions clearly influenced by Punk. After all, suburban life in those days did not include such contemporary distractions as mobile phones, DVD players and the internet.
I used to persistenly harry him to be calmer and more moderate in his manners, as if fearing that his ball of fire intensity would cost him his place at college, which was ironic as things turned out because it was I who quit before he did. A very short time after having done so, I auditioned for a place on the three year drama course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and much to my astonishment (having already failed two RADA auditions) I was accepted. Despite the fact that I wasn't due to start the course until the autumn of 1978, this success was a source to me of the most intense exhileration imaginable.
On New Years Eve I took Jesse to a party in trendy west London. It was one the last, and perhaps even the very last, in a long series of parties I'd gone to throughout '77 courtesy of my old friends from Pangbourne, many of whom were now resident in the London area. Jesse and I arrived at the party with Craig H., one of my dearest buddies of all from my days as Cadet C.R. Halling 173, and I can recall him uttering the words: "I'm suitably impressed", following a solo street display by Jesse of his formidable self-defence skills. Jesse was a good man to have on your team to say the least and Craig, hardly a milksop himself, had a healthy respect for his streetwise but sweet natured ways, and we all got on famously that night.
Jesse and I remained in contact until well into the '80s before sadly drifting apart.

Suburban Punk Attire

Having been impressed by the hairstyle of one of a confederacy of Punks I knew by sight from nights out in Dartford, a large suburban area near Greenhithe straddling Kent and southeast London, this same consisting of a halo of bright blond taking in the front of the head, sides and a strip at the back, I decided to emulate it. I have part of a photograph I took possibly towards the end of '77, or the beginning of '78, of myself sporting this style with a fringe at the front before it assumed the characteristic Punk spikes, although by the spring of '78 it had been supplanted by a spartan crop.
By this time I was a full-time Punk and rarely wore any kind of clothing other than Punkish attire which in my case consisted of such items as a shiny black tee-shirt with cropped sleeves, drainpipe jeans of black or green, worn with black studded belt festooned with silver chain, flourescent teddy boy socks, and white shoes with black laces; and it was a somewhat hazardous existence. Understandably so, given '70s Punk's culture of outrage, extreme even by the standards of post-war iconoclasm.
At a Sunday night disco in the furthermost reaches of suburban South West London where as I recall I saw Surrey Punk band Sham 69 play prior to their becoming nationally famous, a friend of mine, a Teddy Boy I knew from my days as a '50s aficionado was forced to persuade another Ted from starting trouble with me with the magical placatory words, "...'e's a mate". Another time he'd sought assurance that I hadn't defected to the Punk camp, for Teds and Punks had become sworn enemies by the summer of '77, and I'm ashamed to admit that I gave him my word I hadn't.

Coco in Fuengirola

In the spring of 1978, I arrived in the famous Costa del Sol town of Fuengirola near Marbella, with the intention of helping to set up a sailing school with a young Englishman I knew only vaguely. I was put up in an apartment but the project never came to fruition. However, I stayed on in Fuengirola, eventually becoming lead singer of a band playing nightly at the Tam Tam night club. In time I became something of a local character, the crop-haired English Punk "Coco" absurdly striking Rock star poses night at the Tam Tam despite my penury.
I returned to London in September 1978 to take my place at the Guildhall, but by following summer, I was back in Spain. However, it was not to Fuengirola that I returned, even though my friends from the band had wanted me to resume my duties as front man, but to the little former fishing village of Santiago de la Ribera overlooking the Mar Menor in the south eastern province of Murcia. I felt a deep sense of exhaustion as I stretched out in the sun on the balnaro overlooking the Mar, but I don't recall being especially disappointed or disheartened by the knowledge that I would not be returning to the Guildhall as a student for the autumn term of 1979, so it may have been just the intense heat of the sun that left me so atypically enervated.

Farewell Lauderdale Tower

I'd saddened my beloved friends in Fuengirola by choosing to escape to La Ribera rather than sing with a band that had shown so much promise in '78, and been so close. Furthermore, just prior to quitting Fuengirola towards the end of the summer of '78 I'd been approached with an offer of singing in the Canary Islands. Who knows where they might have led...but then had I gone to the Canaries to sing I would not have attended the Guildhall, through which many good things came to me, notwithstanding the disappointment of being asked to leave after a single blissful year as a would-be gilded youth at the Guildhall School. I don't recall exactly how I felt about this, but what is certain is that there were those who wept openly at the thought of my imminent departure. Indeed, there were moving scenes at my farewell party held as I recall in the depths of the Barbican Estate's Lauderdale Tower. In the course of this party, a close friend Gill Abineri advised me to contact a London-based agent who was well-known for offering young actors their very first positions within the entertainment industry. I owe her alot because the agent in question, a warm, generous, flamboyant man with an office near Leicester Square, was as good as his beneficient reputation.
Within a few months I was doubling as Christian the Chorus Boy and Joey the Teddy Bear complete with furry costume in the pantomime "Sleeping Beauty" that began its run in Ealing, culminating around Christmas time at the Buxton Opera House. Early on in the new year moreover, the celebrated theatre director Richard Cottrell offered me the part of Mustardseed thefairy in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the Bristol Old Vic. My acting career was off to a flying start.
The following relic from an unfinished tale, which has been reproduced with only very minor alterations and editings, and which I have called "Along Whiteladies Road", I retrieved only a day or so ago from a notebook I habitually wrote in during spare moments offstage at the Bristol Old Vic while dressed in my fairy costume and covered in make-up and glitter; and while doing so, some of this glitter was transferred from the pages with which they were stained more than twenty six years ago onto my hands. It was an eerie experience.

Along Whiteladies Road

I remember the grey
slithers
of rain,
The jocular driver
As I boarded the bus
At Temple Meads,
And the friendly lady
Who told me
When we had arrived
At the city centre.
I remember
the little pub
on King Street,
With its quiet
Maritime atmosphere
And the first readthrough.
I remember tramping
Along Park Street,
Whiteladies Road
And Blackboy Hill,
My arms and hands
Aching from my bags
To the little cottage
Where I had decided to stay
And relax
In beween rehearsals,
Reading, writing,
Listening to music.
I remember my landlady,
Tall, timid and beautiful...

Written by croberthg Link to this entry | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

11:33:34 o'clock BST
Feeling Anxious
Introduction

"West of the Fields Long Gone" has been composed of pieces from formerly published writings, including "Ice Spoke of the Spells of Calm", which was first published at the Blogster.com website on the 25th January 2007, and from which "First Night of the Dream" and "The End of the Century Young" were culled. "Like Some New Romantic" was originally part of an early draft of "West of the Fields Long Gone" published at Blogster on August 20th 2006. All sections were subjected to considerable modification before being published in definitive form at the Faithwriters.com website in August '07.
It takes up where the previous story, "Gilded Youth at the Guildhall School" left off, which is to say, my arrival in Bristol in south west England to appear in Richard Cottrell production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the city's Old Vic theatre in the winter of 1980. Moving into '81, it goes into some details about my tenuous links with the New Romantic movement, and ends with my becoming an aging student at the University of London.

First Night of the Dream

My time in the city of Bristol as an actor with the Britol Old Vic theatre company in early 1980 was restless and unsettled, to say the least, that is with regard to my place of residence. Initially, I stayed in an elegant little dwelling in the affluent Clifton area to the west of the city centre, much of which was built from profits from tobacco and the slave trade, but was asked to leave by my landlady because my room was urgently required by a relative or something along those lines. At this point, Kathy, a friend from the Vic who also happened to be the wardrobe assistant, generously asked me if I’d like to stay with her for a while. I said yes, but it wasn't long before I'd relocated to a boarding house, also in leafy Clifton as I recall. There I stayed until it was time for me to return to London.
Appearing alongside me in Richard Cottrell's production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the BOV were Daniel Day Lewis, future oscar-winning character actor of fabled perfectionist genius, and Nickolas Grace, best known for his screen portrayals of flamboyant dandies both real and fictional, among them Anthony Blanche in "Brideshead Revisited", the peerless 1981 television version of the novel by Evelyn Waugh directed by Charles Sturridge and Michael Lynsey-Hogg. They both made a considerable impression on me, as did other members of an incredibly gifted generationof actors at the Vic. Talking of which, prior to the Dream's first night, I had been fortunate enough to witness a BOV production of one of my favourite ever musicals, Frank Loesser’s “Guys and Dolls”, with Clive Wood as Sky Masterson, and another future screen legend Pete Postethwaite as Nathan Detroit, and which I can quite honestly say provided me with more unalloyed joy than any other theatre production I have seen.
Cottrell’s “Dream” was lavishly praised, and there was even some talk of its going on to become as renowned as the revolutionary 1971 production by Peter Brook, so much so that it relocated to the London Old Vic in the summer, where it was no less succesful than at Bristol. Towards the end of its Bristol run, I undertook a small role in an obscure play by the German auteur Rainer Werner Fassbinder entitled “The Freedom of Bremen” together with several other actors who didn’t have overly demanding parts. It was directed in the BOV Studio theatre by Michael Batz, currently the artistic director of Hamburg’s Theater in der Speicherstadt in the city’s historic Warehouse district.
Following my modest triumph in "The Dream", I succesfuly applied for the position of sales assistant in Bentall's china department in Kingston-on-Thames, and remained there until just after Christmas. It was early in the new year if I'm not mistaken when, thanks to the kindness of an actor friend of my father's, Haydn Davies, I found work at the Phoenix Theatre, Charing Cross Road, in “Satyricon”, based on the original by Petronius, and directed by Peter Benedict, initially as an assistant stage manager and percussionist and then as an actor in a non-speaking part. Soon afterwards, I contributed to an audio project of Haydn's known as “The Poetry People” with, in addition to Haydn, John Pine, Kay Clayton, and Maria Perry. Maria, who became a good friend of mine, went on to become a successful historical writer and broadcaster.

Like Some New Romantic

1981 was also the year in which I was most active as an enthusiast of the New Romantic movement which had been originated in the late 1970s largely among discontented ex-punks who were reacting to Punk's increasingly drab uniformity. The New Romantics embraced a hyper-nostalgic devotion to diverse ages past which they interpreted as romantic, whether recent times such as the twenties or forties, after the fashion of such pioneers of the movement as Bryan Ferry, and Ron Mael of Sparks, a startlingly inventive avant-pop outfit of American origin, or more distant historical epochs, which inspired such accessories as ruffs, veils, frills, kilts and so on. Its soundtrack was not guitar rock, but an electronic dance music influenced by German art rock collectives such as Kraftwerk and Can, as well as electro-disco pioneer Giorgio Moroder. To some degree, it set the tone, musically speaking for the entire decade, after having been brought into the pop charts by acts as diverse as Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran and Ultravox. By the end of '81, the movement was no longer cutting edge as I recall it, partly perhaps because of the scarcity of bands clearly identifiable as New Romantic. That said, it went on to exert an immense influence on the development of music and fashion throughout the eighties, not just in London but other cities throughout Britain, Europe, and beyond.
I attended New Romantic club nights at Le Kilt and Le Beat Route among others, and was even snapped at one of these by the legendary London photographer David Bailey, but I was never a true new romantic, so much as a fellow traveller keen to experience first hand the final truly provocative London music and fashion cult before it imploded as all others had done before it.

The End of the Century Young

As '81 progressed, my acting career faltered somewhat, and so a family decision was reached to the effect that I should become a mature student at the age of 25. Accordingly, I passed interviews for both the University of Exeter, and the University of London and specifically, Westfield College, situated on the Finchley Road in Hampstead, north London. Founded in 1882 and going on to serve as the model for the University for Women parodied in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic "Princess Ida", Westfield was an all-woman college for more than 80 years, finally becoming co-educational in 1968. She officially merged with east London's Queen Mary College in 1989 to become Queen Mary and Westfield College, until the turn of the century when she was renamed Queen Mary, University of London, while legally retaining the original title of QMWC.
To cut a long story short, I opted for Westfield, and so in the autumn of that year, I found myself embarking on a Bachelor of Arts degree in French and Drama mainly at Westfield, but also partly at the nearby Central School of Speech and Drama, while resident in a small room on campus. My dissatisfaction with my situation was initially so strong that at one point in an attempt to escape it I auditioned for work as an assistant stage manager, or acting ASM, for my old friend and agent Barrie Stacey. However, I was not succesful. Soon after this fiasco, while ambling at night in what I think was the Swiss Cottage area close by to the Central School, I was ambushed by a group of my fellow drama students, who were clearly thrilled to see me. It felt wonderful to be accepted so unconditionally by them. Perhaps they appeared to my jaded 26 year old eyes to incarnate the sheer carefree rapturous vitality and joy of life of youth.
Before long I settled down at Westfield, in fact came to love my time there, coinciding as it did with the first half of the crazy eighties...last of a triad of decades in the West of unceasing artistic and societal change and experimentation. It was a wonderful time in many ways for those who were among the most privileged members of western society, but at what price one might ask...at what price?

Written by croberthg Link to this entry | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

19:31:08 o'clock BST
Feeling Frustrated

Farewell Lauderdale Tower

In the summer of 1979, following a year at London's prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama, my career as an acting student came to an end. I don't recall exactly how I felt about this, but what is certain is that there were those who wept openly at the thought of my imminent departure. Indeed, there were moving scenes at my farewell party held as I recall in the depths of the Barbican Estate's Lauderdale Tower. In the course of this party, a close friend Gill Abineri advised me to contact a London-based agent who was well-known for offering young actors their very first positions within the entertainment industry. I owe her alot because the agent in question, a warm, generous, flamboyant man with an office near Leicester Square, was as good as his beneficient reputation.

From Buxton to Bristol

Within a few months I was doubling as Christian the Chorus Boy and Joey the Teddy Bear complete with furry costume in the pantomime "Sleeping Beauty" that began its run in Ealing, culminating around Christmas time at the Buxton Opera House. Early on in the new year moreover, the celebrated theatre director Richard Cottrell offered me the part of Mustardseed the fairy in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the Bristol Old Vic. My acting career was off to a flying start.
The following relic from an unfinished tale, which has been reproduced with only very minor alterations and editings, and which I have called "Along Whiteladies Road", I retrieved only a day or so ago from a notebook I habitually wrote in during spare moments offstage at the Bristol Old Vic while dressed in my fairy costume and covered in make-up and glitter; and while doing so, some of this glitter was transferred from the pages with which they were stained more than twenty six years ago onto my hands. It was an eerie experience.

Along Whiteladies Road

I remember the grey
slithers
of rain,
The jocular driver
As I boarded the bus
At Temple Meads,
And the friendly lady
Who told me
When we had arrived
At the city centre.
I remember
the little pub
on King Street,
With its quiet
Maritime atmosphere
And the first readthrough.
I remember tramping
Along Park Street,
Whiteladies Road
And Blackboy Hill,
My arms and hands
Aching from my bags
To the little cottage
Where I had decided to stay
And relax
In beween rehearsals,
Reading, writing,
Listening to music.
I remember my landlady,
Tall, timid and beautiful...

Written by croberthg Link to this entry | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

15:09:45 o'clock BST
Feeling Frustrated

The Siege of La Rochelle

If my memory serves me faithfully, some weeks after returning from the Ocean Youth Club trip to the Baltic in the summer of 1975, I sailed with the RNR to La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast of France. La Rochelle was the French city that adopted Reformist ideas during the Renaissance, and thenceforth became the unoffical capital of Protestant France, that is, from the year of the Edict of Nantes (1568). The latter, issued by Henri IV, accorded Huguenots certain rights until 1627, when a British-aided Protestant uprising resulted in the Siege of la Rochelle, during which Cardinal Richelieu blockaded the city for 14 months. Following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685, some 200.000 Huguenots migrated during what has become known as Le Refuge. Among the destinations of the Huguenot diaspora were North America, notably New York and South Carolina, Great Britain and Ulster, Germany, Dutch South Africa and the Netherlands. London became a key Huguenot centre. In South Carolina they rapidly integrated into the nascent Southern Anglo-American society.
My best RNR friend Colin, now a Chief Petty Officer, phoned me only a few years ago from his east London home to remind me of one memorable evening we spent in La Rochelle in the summer of 1975. There, in a dingy dive we fell in with some wild locals led by a Romany-like minstrel and his winsome female companion who spoke to me protectively possibly fearing that as military men Colin and I might be in some physical peril. However, on the way back to our ship from a night club in the early hours of the morning we were set upon not by local cutthroats but a pack of mangy looking pariah dogs, and it was Colin who somehow persuaded them to retreat. It may be that I owe that lovable east London sailor my life.

The Pool of London

Soon after returning to London, I was with the RNR again, this time in the Pool of London, subject of a famous British crime film directed by Basil Dearden in 1951 and referring to that stretch of the Thames lying between London Bridge and Rotherhithe.
In order to reach my ship, I was compelled to take a motor launch with a group of other seamen, one of whom, very much a handsome sailor of about 30 or thereabouts, had taken unofficial charge. Once we were all safely aboard, it was the turn of our self-appointed leader to join us, but as he stepped off the launch, he somehow lost his footing and slipped into theThames beneath him. Within a horrifyingly short space of time his heavy clothing and boots, helped by a truly ferocious current, had dragged him beneath the river's surface and he was lost.
Upon returning to London, I told my mother about this terrible occurence, and as she broke down in tears it brought home to me for the first time just how deeply tragic an incident it was. I am reminded thereby of the words of that beautiful song "How Men Are" by Roddy Frame and Aztec Camera, which was a British hit in 1988: "Why should it take the tears of a woman to see how men are?"

A Gosport Discomaniac

Staying with the maritime theme, 1975 was also the year I attempted to pass what is known as the AIB or Admiralty Interview Board as a means of becoming a Supply and Secretariat officer in the Royal Navy. This involved me taking the train down to HMS Sultan, the Royal Navy's specialist training centre in Gosport, Hampshire, and spending three days attending various examinations and interviews intended to assess my potentiality as a naval officer. Today the tests consist of Maths, English, verbal and non-verbal reasoning, and general and Service knowledge, and there is a leadership task, a group discussion exercise and two interviews, and presumably little has changed since '75.

On one occasion early on in the sojourn, clad in my usual finery and delicately putting the final touches to my costume in preparation for one assignment or another, one of the hopeful future officers I was sharing a dormitory with made a comment to the effect of: "Oy, mate, it's an interview board for the selection of naval officers not some flaming male fashion parade". Not my sort of man, which is to say the kind I wanted accompanying me to the local discoteque as soon as I had an evening free. Ultimately two of my fellow interviewees were up the task, at least that's what I thought at first. I can recall asking one of the them precisely what he was expecting of the evening soon after we'd plunged into the exhilerating semi-darkness of the disco, and he muttered something to placate me, but it was pretty clear on retrospect that he was anxious to return to Sultan, and sensibly so I'd say.
In the event I was left alone at the club dancing with a soft-spoken local girl by the name of Shiralee. Every inch the gentleman, I accompanied her homewards along a busy main road on the way back to base, with several cars sounding their horns as they passed by, onlytodiscover to my horror that Sultan's main entrance had been locked and was now being manned by an armed guard.

If the young man nervously trying to reach someone in authority within the training centre on a walkie talkie was wondering precisely what kind of man returns to base dressed to the nines after a night's carousing when he was supposed to be in the midst of three days of gruelling tests and interviews that were vital to his future career, then he gave no indication of it.
He did eventually make contact, and I can vaguely recollect passing through an officer's mess soon afterwards and briefly engaging in conversation with its genial inhabitants. Their actual opinion of me of course they kept to themselves.
Beyond this somewhat less than auspicious beginning, I worked hard to impress my assessors that I was deserving of a commission in the RN, because at the time I was genuinely enthusiastic about becoming a legitimised officer and gentleman, but alas my efforts were in vain. It may just be me, but I can't help thinking that had I returned to Sultan that night prior to being locked outside its ominous gates, I might have been in with a better chance of success. But then again, not necessarily.

Image: 1975?

 

Written by croberthg Link to this entry | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

23:28:23 o'clock BST
Feeling Worried

Photo taken London 1975?

This, the second piece in a series of seventies-themed writings took place in 1973 and 1974 in London and its suburbs, Bordeaux, capital of the Aquitaine region of south west France, Murcia's Costa Calida, and Hamburg, current capital of the German province of Schleswig-Holstein.

1973 was the year of my first voyage with the Royal Naval Reserve onboard the minesweeper HMS Thames, destined as I recall for Bordeaux in Gironde south west France, late in the summer. I was just seventeen years old and my hair had lately been bleached a yellowy blond by the Spanish sun and was far too long for a professional seaman.
In the course of this trip I fell in with an immensely good-hearted Londoner of about 27, an Ordinary Seaman like myself who went on to become one of my best RNR friends. I heard from him only a few years ago by which time he'd become a Chief Petty Officer. I also became friendly with one of the most unlikely pair of boon companions I ever encountered in the RNR, one half, a tough, wild but warm-hearted loner of about 23 who was rumoured as I recall to be a permanent year-long resident of HMS Thames, the other, an older man, possibly in his mid thirties, just as much of a lad as the first, but infinitely more refined and with a cut-glass accent and patrician manner to boot. The younger rating, who was an Able Seaman if I remember aright, was fond of me and took me under his wing, telling me on one occasion something to the effect that I'd be turned into a rough 'n' tough sailor yet, even though we both knew that this was but the remotest possibility, given my justified reputation as a decorative but incompetent adolescent, wholly unsuited to naval life. But I was amusing to the ship's crew, especially after I'd been asked by an officer what I thought of minesweeping, and replied that I considered it a "gas"...or the time when the ship had been prepared for a major manoevre such as a jackstay transfer, and I was found wandering as if in a dream, only to announce that I was taking a stroll...
The crew spent its final night together in a club in what might have been Portsmouth, or Plymouth, wherein a transvestite performer sang cabaret style songs and told bawdy jokes while being remorselessly barracked by the jack tars. At one point, the cross dresser turned to me, or at least I think it was me and trilled something to the effect of: "Ooh, you look pretty, what's your name?", whereupon I could have sworn some of the sailors bellowed back "Skin", this having been the name by which I was known by a few of them.

Back onshore, I persisted with my relentless pursuit of louche glamour, in the shape of the musical stars of Glam Rock, but also increasingly as the seventies went on, flamboyant artists from earlier stages of the Modern Age...poets, playwrights, novelists etc.
Once '73 had turned into '74, I became dissatisfied with seventies Glam which started to seem corny and old hat to me, and turned my attentions instead to what I saw as the more elegant glamour of previous eras, particularly the '20s and '30s, embracing a frenzied nostalgia which persisted throughout '74 and '75, and to a lesser extent thereafter. At some point in '74, I started using hair cream, combing my hair back 1920s style, and sometimes parting it in the middle; and building up a dandiacal new wardrobe. Throughout '74 and '75, some of the sartorial fruits of my new weltanschauung included a Gatsby style tab collared shirt often worn with black and white college-style striped tie, several cravats and neck scarves including a long white one, almost certainly silk, a navy blue Meakers blazer, a fair isle short-sleeved sweater, grey flannel trousers from Simpsons of Piccadilly, white trousers, white shoes, brown and white "correspondant" shoes, fawn raincoat etc. But sometimes, I dressed more casually, for example in tight V neck sweater worn without a shirt, set off by knotted silk scarf, worn at a jaunty angle.
These years were also marked by the birth on my part of a fascinated preoccupation with the continental Europe of recent times, and specifically its leading cities as beacons of revolutionary art, and of style, luxury and dissolution. And certain eras associated with these cities came to hold me increasingly spellbound throughout '74 and '75 and beyond, such as 1890s London, the so-called Yellow Decade, Belle Epoque Paris, '20s New York and London, Berlin in the 1930s, and the artists associated with these epochs.
There were those cutting edge Rock artists who appeared to share my Europhilia, particularly Bryan Ferry whose work with his band Roxy Music was haunted by the languid cafe and cabaret music of Europe's immediate past, and certain of Roxy's followers affected the kind of nostalgic apparel favoured by Ferry himself, but they were rare creatures in mid-seventies London. I wore my bizarre anachronous costumes in defiance of the ubiquity of long hair and hippie-style clothing. By the spring of '74, I'd constructed a defiantly sneering persona to match, although I could still be exceptionally gracious and eager to please to the point of self-effacement.

I'd begun sitting the first of the GCE "O", or Ordinary Level exams I'd failed to take while at Pangbourne in '72 or '73, and continued with them in '74, taking Spanish over the course of a few days in June in central London, and while doing so, became deeply infatuated with a Dutch girl sitting the same exam and with whom I'd established a friendly relationship. I desperately wanted to get close to her and yet despite the bravado I was able to manifest back then in certain situations, found myself hopelessly inhibited in her presence, and so allowed her to walk casually away from me once we'd completed our final paper. Sick with amorousness, I spent several days thereafter haunting the streets of central London in the forlorn hope of encountering her. One time I could have sworn I saw her staring indifferently at me from an underground train, possibly at Gloucester Road, South Kensington or Notting Hill Gate, as the doors closed, but as usual I was powerless to act, and so finally abandoned my absurd quixotic quest.

Later on in the summer I found myself once more in Santiago de La Ribera, a little village on what is known as the Mar Menor or little sea, being a large coastal lake of warm saltwater off Murcia's Costa Calida in southeastern Spain, and the summer of '74 was one of the most blissfully happy summers I spent in La Ribera. Every afternoon, we used to congregate on the jetty facing our apartment on the Mar Menor which was largely deserted it being the time of the siesta, that's myself and my brother Dane, and Spanish friends both male and female, to listen to music and talk and laugh and flirt. To some youthful Spanish eyes, I appeared to be impossibly exotic in those days, coming from London (actually suburban Surrey); while Spain was still relatively sheltered in the years immediately leading up to the death of Franco, but enchanting for all that. All this was to change with Franco's passing, whereupon Spain set about sophisticating itself to the extent that on my last vacation in La Ribera in the summer of '84, even though I'd just come from Paris, I was in awe of the young people rather than the other way around so intimidatingly cool had they become.

Returning to London in late summer '74 with a deep brown tan and hair bleached gold by the sun, and hanging long over my ears and forehead, I created something of a stir on my first day back on HMS President. To begin with I'd been hailed by a Scotsman in late middle age at Waterloo mainline station, which wasn't the bright tourist-friendly station it is today but a far rougher place with its own barber and pub, attracting not a few souls down on their luck for one reason or another. My new friend was an old former jack tar as I recall, and as he was a harmless old salt, making no attempt to act indecently towards me, I was more than happy to converse with him for a while. I even went so far as to agree to a meeting with him the same time the following week, and yet as sweet as he was I had no intention of keeping the appointment, despite his beseechments.
And then onboard HMS President, moored then as today on the Embankment near Temple station, I behaved affectedly in front of some of the older ratings which was unwise to say the least, given that I was due to sail to Hamburg within a matter of hours, and so boarded HMS Thames with freshly shorn locks, and a reputation as an oddball...although I ended the trip on good terms with pretty well everyone.
Once in Hamburg, one of the NCOs, a Chief Petty Officer I think advised me to latch onto a group of older seamen while on leave, for fear of what might happen to me. I duly attached myself to a group of about three or four sailors, and on the first night ashore we set off on a nocturnal voyage into parts of the city such as St Pauli,