A perfect day in the perfect pub - #6

"My partner 'n my sadness, my story, my wantoness
My wish, my despair, my erasure, my plantation
My white chocolate, my thoughtlessness, my gracelessness
My courage and my crying, my pockets 'n my mistakes

My body and my sex, my gaze and my helplessness..."

It is 2:35pm and the post-lunchtime lull is precious in the perfect pub. She's gone back to work and 'Lions after Slumber' by Scritti Politti invades the airspace. A song that heralds a slideshow of the past... late nights in Meads... daybreak at Birling Gap... a bottle of vodka and white chocolate on a balcony in Brighton. 

Serendipity swings through the door, sunshine trailing in it's wake...

The cricket is going well. Time for me to do some serious watching, accompanied by a cheeky Sancerre (the other half of Tattinger had seemingly gone the way of the first) and The Guardian's sports quiz of the year (held over from December for the purpose of fictional construct). Joined by Slim, breezing in all Hawaian 40's shirt and dangerous wit. He sits at the table and a pint appears (they know him here). We dash through the hundred questions and score a very passable 92 (we were never going to get the equestrian sports but I should have remembered that David Wilkie won the 200m breastroke, not 100m). 

Another flurry of Aussie wickets means we'll be batting before tea! Not quite Trent Bridge but certainly reminiscent of Melbourne 2010. The Sancerre evaporates, as does Slim's Stella Artois. We cover off key topics: the new book about Samuel Beckett, the potential British Lions starting XV against RSA and uncovering the truth behind what happened to the girl we used to go to school with who became a stripper and glamour model. 

I get more drinks and manage to place a bet with David Jenkins & Sons "traditional bookmakers to gentlemen of a literary persuasion". Fingers crossed for 'Bottle of Smoke'... 

A nice 10 minute interview with Michael Holding fills the break between innings. I remember, in the nick of time, that we (Slim & I) always have Cheesy Wotsits when watching England bat together (it's a luck thing). Thankfully the barman was two steps ahead of me. 

A bowl appears along with an ashtray, a selection of Gitanes, Gauloises, Marlboro (soft-pack), Camel and Lucky Strike, as well as a 1965 Zippo that had seen action at La Drang. They know Slim here...

Psychogeographical Meanderings - Brixton > Soho #8

The heady mix of Charlie (perfume and powder) and Castrol GTX (from the arches) are left dancing in the breeze to the sound of the HI-NRG soundtrack emanating from The Royal Vauxhall Tavern.

A gentle stroll as we head on to MI6, a ghastly looking building that is better forgotten - (Although I always loved the fact that everyone knew what it was and who was there but it never appeared in the Londoners bible A-Z). Instead, move on as the Thames shimmers underneath the Vauxhall Bridge.

Talking of bridges, further West the floodlights of Stamford Bridge fill the heart with joy and exuberance.

Even from this distance I can still hear The Shed singing:

"Out from The Shed came a rising young star, scoring goals past Pat Jennings from near and from far, when Cheslea won as we all knew they would, the star of that great team was Peter Osgood, Osgood, Osgood  Osgood, Osgood Born is the king of Stamford Bridge!"

Psychogeographical Meanderings - Brixton > Soho #7

The joy of watching cricket at The Oval never pales. A number 36 bus chugs by outside, as Blowers, Johnners and others mutter their way through a whole days play. The giddy sweet joy of lunchtime drinking. The intoxicating jangle of nerves when opening the batting, flags at half mast for Sir Len Hutton.

Spilling out onto the backstreets, weaving across open ground. The lure of the Queen Anne. Young men flocking on a Sunday lunchtime to the sanctuary of the pool table in the back corner. Peeling portraits of Messrs. Osgood, Hudson, Webb, Bonetti, Hutchinson, Harris and Houseman cling to the wall by virtue of a mix of sweat, nicotine & misplaced lust.

The Danish girl, unfamiliar with local bye-laws, is still spoken of in hushed/embarrassed tones. The pint pot comes round again and it is time to leave. The sun is still shining and the trains rattle overhead, underneath in the Sweeney arches counterfeit money battles for space with a drug factory. It's going to be another interesting day in South London....

Psychogeographical Meanderings - Brixton > Soho #6

Leaving the din and hubbub of the pub behind (having demolished a handful of free tempura prawns and chunks of cheddar cheese), time to mingle with the crowds spilling up and out of The Oval tube. A couple of young fanzine sellers try to flog copies of JM96* before catching up with Gideon Haigh outside the Hobbs Gates.

The massed ranks of buoyant West Indian supporters gently tease the young cricket fan up from the coast for his first ever Test Match, making him feel bothelated and disappointed that his side couldn't put up more of a fight. He takes his seat in the Peter May Stand and is offered a can of Red Stripe within the first 10 minutes. This is going to be a beautifully long day...

Meanwhile, in The Surrey Tavern the same soul sits staring at the TV screen above his head, contemplating whether to take his seat in the ground or head over to Stamford Bridge to see the first home game of the season. He downs his 3rd pint and chooses the latter option as the cricket is going nowhere. His decision seems vindicated, Chelsea won 2-0. The fact that he missed Devon Malcolm taking 9-57 does not come to light until he gets home at midnight.

Meanwhile, inside the ground. Michael Holding prepares to bowl to Tony Greig... This is going to be a very short innings and a very tough day for the South African/England Captain.

Because on this day the legend of 'Whispering Death' became a joyous reality!

Psychogeographical Meanderings - Brixton > Soho #5

Routemasters, black cabs, couriers and white vans continue to ping past at rush-hour pace. Meanwhile, coming the other way an Anti-Nazi League march merges with a CND rally, heading to Brockwell Park or to confront the National Front.

The chants and songs blend in and out of tune: "Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, Out, Out, Out", "The National Front is a Wanker's Front - Smash the National Front". Whistles, drums and Red Stripe cans driving the rhythm on from The Oval up the Brixton Road on to Brockwell Park. Where rain pours down and The Style Council wrestle with a poor PA system.

We can wave and cheer our support for the Home Counties rebels, suburban revolutionaries and the interminably volatile splinter groups losing sight of the ultimate aim. They head on towards Weller & Talbot, we head on towards Hobbs & Edrich... A pint of London Pride beckons.

"Smash the National Front..."

Psychogeographical Meanderings - Brixton > Soho #4

Late night gig crowds flood out from the Academy. A young Bowie waves hello to his dreams. On the Brixton Road, bombing towards The Oval, an Olympic Couriers cycle courier nearly dies under the wheels of a huge haulage truck. The BMW in front had cut the courier up and he had to swerve out into the middle of the road. That was close...

Ignoring one-way signs and red lights is one thing. Cheating death is another.

Meanwhile, we stride purposefully towards where a carriage has pulled up outside an abandoned house. The batteries on the Sony Walkman fades, 'Because of you' by Kevin Rowland stumbles into silence. The tall figure of Mr Sherlock Holmes emerges from the fog...

The graffiti tags on the wall... RACHE

A change of batteries and tape 'Cupid & Psyche '85' melts into our ears. We can move on, as far as Holmes is concerned
- the case is closed.

Psychogeographical Meanderings - Brixton > Soho #3

The clank and holler of Electric Avenue disappears behind us in a cloud of reminiscences, with the faint scent of late nights clinging to the blackened pavements. The rattle of the Victoria bound train glides overhead. Time to cross the road.

The Brixton Academy looms behind the rainclouds and the hymns of Nick Cave, Paul Weller & The Pogues ricochet around the auditorium. A wraith whispers...

Take a little walk to the edge of town
And go across the tracks
Where the viaduct looms
Like a bird of doom
As it shifts and cracks
Where secrets lie in the border fires
In the humming wires
Hey man, you know
You're never coming back

Past the square, past the bridge
Past the mills, past the stacks
On a gathering storm comes
A tall handsome man
In a dusty black coat with
A red right hand...

- Nick Cave

But we must head on to the future and a possible meeting with the World's first consulting detective!

Psychogeographical Meanderings - Brixton > Soho #2

The Dogstar looms ahead... a pint of Guinness and a fish finger sandwich - the ultimate 'White Bread, Black Beer'. A little further down Coldharbour Lane, lies a recording studio, the air thick with diminished chords and popstar dreams. But we aren't heading that way today. Heading straight on down towards Brixton tube station.

The unnecessarily attractive 'Militant' agitator selling a socialist heaven to an unforgiving commune of commuters. Dope dealers and Big Issue vendors vie for our attention. The morning crush and the evening throb clash in the spinning middle distance of memory. I could curtail this whole journey by simply turning right and heading down the escalator. But where is the fun in that?

A copy of Midweek under my arm. The rain mingling with the sunshine and snow. Shooting a glance down Electric Avenue, the smell of curried something blending in with the tang of rush-hour petrol. Sweet sounds drifting out of record shacks and ghetto-blasters again. The soundtrack of this, that and every other day... East of the River Nile, Club Classics Vol 1 and Technique...

Psychogeographical Meanderings - Brixton > Soho #1

Following on from a re-imagined kaleidoscopic stroll from Langney Green to the end of the Pier. The next drift, takes us from St Matthews Church in Brixton, to Carnaby Street, Soho.

------------

The junky upstairs was arrested last night. He'd come to the door, topless and brandishing a knife. It wasn't a good look, nor was it a good evening to be hosting the Finnish Girl from next door. Thankfully, things were calmed by the presence of my flatmate holding a stool and me waving a Gray-Nicholls GN100...

First thing in the morning, crisp frost clinging to the grime of the once pink pavement, out and over the road. The option was either walk past the Ace Cinema or The Fridge, good nights spent at both venues. Either way one had to skirt St Matthews Church, which was firmly planted on the roundabout at the foot of Brixton Hill. Up the hill and over the intervening 60 odd miles was home but the flat with the junky upstairs would have to do for the moment...

Lockdown - Day #30

And so, that journey ends, at the end of the pier, with the promise of love and the threat of violence. The soundtrack of youth and exuberance spills out into the night and floats along and over the Channel. 

Even now, fisherman swear that on any given Monday night they can hear 'Southern Freeze', 'Favourite Shirts' and 'Tears are not enough' reverberating up and down the coast, from the Royal Sovereign platform to Belle Tout. 

Those nights live on...

Lockdown - Day #29

The Monday night queue for Dixieland is full of a slew of new Mods, old Punks, Soul Boys, us Dole boys and hundreds of smoothies and regular punters. A couple of New Romantics totter along the wooden plank floor. Below us all is the enticing maw of the English Channel. Rubbing gently against the iron legs that prop up nightclubs, pubs, bingo halls and half Seaside’s teenage population.

Inside the darkness, the stench of illicit cigarettes clings to the red velvet. The clash of Blue Stratos v Old Spice v Brut 33 goes on. The sweet cloying stickiness of the latest perfume merges with hairspray and tons of Country Fayre gel. 

A maximum of 3 songs per tribe… The funketeers dominate the dancefloor, meanwhile tribal conflicts simmer and the sordid lure of infidelity permeates every conversation. 

I promise I’ll dance with you next week…

Lockdown - Day #28

Loose change jangling in Levi’s pockets. Chip shop vinegar on the tiled floor. The Blue Room beckons. A day spent watching Pete play Space Invaders, Air Hockey tournaments that went on for the length of the summer holidays.

Along the Langney side of the pier, beyond the midway bar with the girl from Nottingham handing out the free pints and expensive kisses. Tourists grip the side rails or hunker down in the deckchairs.

A small souvenir hut full of dull shells and inaccurate replicas of the pier. Stuffed seagulls and badly made beachballs.

The sound of money spinning out of the hands of the unemployed into the bingo-masters back pocket. 10cc’s maudlin hit plays on repeat. One day, some bastard is going to torch the whole lot and retire to the Canaries on the insurance…

Lockdown - Day #27

In the passenger seat, twiddling the radio dial, messing with the cassette player, trying to finesse the soundtrack of another day. The Mini/Triumph/Morris Minor/VW Golf glides up and down the seafront at dawn/dusk midday/midnight.

The girl at the wheel, the boy looking seawards. The postboxes are full of Valentine’s cards and the phone boxes echo to the latest dial-a-disc hit. 

Stop in the bus bay by the pier. "Just drop me here..."

Meanwhile the cassette finally plays the track he'd been searching for since Princes Park.

'If you ever feel the time to drop me a loving line
maybe you should just think twice
I don't wait around on your advice
You tell me I can go this far, but no more
Try to show me heaven and then slam the door
You offer shelter at a price much too dear
And your kind of love's the kind that soon disappears

So don't brag how you have changed
And everything's been rearranged
I thought all that was over and done
But I still get the same from Each and Everyone
Being kind is just a way to keep me under your thumb
and I can cry because that's something we've always done
you tell me I'm free of the past now and all those lies
then offer me the same thing in a different guise...'

Lockdown - Day #26

There is a green-grey Morris Minor heading for a breakdown just outside Southampton, trundling from Stone Cross to Paradise Drive via the seafront. 

Two boys, two girls. The music fills the car. 

Behind the car, the School Bus. Upstairs, at the front. A Grammar School boy ponders The Jam/Ramones, Ramones/The Jam. A yellow and green Max Records back on his lap.

He looks beyond the immediate.

The English Channel stretches left to right (as it always has done), lapping softly against the bloodied shingle. 

Despite the best will in the world. This ain’t no Rockaway Beach.

Lockdown - Day #25

The flags on the pier are cowering from the horizon, bullied by the eternal sea fret. Marine Parade (an interloper in the Grand scheme of things), smothered by the worn rubber of a million tyres. The Corporation buses grinding full-on Leyland chug, from the Point to the Head and all stops in between.

A Deux Chevaux stutters and shudders from East Dean to Churchdale Road. It takes a boy and a girl to drive AND change gear. The cassette player chews the latest release by St Pancras Records.

"Hegemony, hegemony...

You are the fairest creature

You are the fairest creature that ever I have seen,

And it's all for Monopoly

On all those pretty sexibles/sensibles,

That rot and raise a nation the capacity for change

An honest day's pay for an honest day's work

You can't change human nature

Don't bite the hand that feeds you…"

Lockdown - Day #24

A disarray of Seagulls on the sun wounded rooftops behind Leaf Hall, 

early on a Sunday morning. 

 

The crack-clank-rattle of the milk float, chinking up Marine Road. Hungover Mods swaying on lampposts, benign besuited beggar men, drifting towards the damp cradle of the beach.

Frosted kisses burned into the back of the heart. 

She never looked that beautiful, until now.

Darkened back room, sunflower curtains

and half a bottle of oakysmoke, 

easy to remember, 

inevitable she’ll forget.

These streets, eroded by memory, occasionally swept by the council. Blood money loose change, sluiced down the drains… ghost barmen still serving in the Burma Star Club…

A sweet tender suffocation, another cancer, another death.  The afternoon haze collapses beneath the ash swirls, buffeted by the prevailing South-Westerly.

Humour me and pretend we are all free...

Lockdown - Day #23

The taste of another Kronenbourg night reminds me where I am, not alone in a single bed. Dressed, out and up the steps back onto Marine Parade. Back over the rode giving the flying fists of The Crown & Anchor I wide berth.

The tide is inching back, the gulls are hopping from bin to KFC box. I can clearly make out the miles of anti-landing wire & wood rolling along the beach. All the way from the threat of Operation SeaLion to VE Day.

Six young men in two different bands, split into two teams and yet another rusted can of Pepsi is converted into an Adidas Mondial. A blur of tartan shirts, Levis and chukka boots. A brace of bikes stolen from outside the town centre Library are leaning gently against the dark blue railings. 

Final score: Hip Troop 13 v 12 Aztec Camera... 
(Based on time-honoured last goal stands tradition)

Lockdown - Day #22

It is tempting to leave the seafront and just pop into the Marine for a pint or two but we’ll leave that for Christmas Eve (or post cup-final lash ups). Equally tempting to pop into Fusciardi’s Ice Cream Parlour, all the while remembering Dayville’s ghastly but memorable Bubble Gum ice cream…

The rear of The Leaf Hall (never did know what it was for) looming over some rooftops, backrooms and bedrooms. The Seagulls starting to mass on the rooftops and railings. The humdrum, dead-drunk pubs become more plentiful.

Waking up in one of the back bedrooms, to the sound of gulls bending TV aerials and tapping against windows. Going to sleep in a damp basement flat, with the sound of taxi’s careening round the corner at club closing time, with the taste of Rico’s Special Burger on my lips.

Lockdown - Day #21

A young George Orwell escapes from his prep school (St Cyprian's) for an afternoon. He finds himself on the eastern side of the pier, he misses the tiny clutch of New Romantics edging their way home from Dixieland after another brush with the Soul Boys. He also fails to see Frederick Engels taking a lunchtime break from editing the Communist Manifesto.

Eric Arthur Blair (as he was then) is too busy looking at the fishermen selling their daily catch under the pier, meanwhile Douglas Bader and Tommy Cooper pass each other 45 years apart

Time strolls along the seafront. Sir Peter Blake's Butterfly Man barely visible in the distance. Roger Moore leaving his penthouse for a barely relaxing walk. The famous and notorious arm-in-arm, stretching the length and breadth of history...

All the while, the tide shuttles to the rhythm of the moon, relentlessly shimmying up and down the beach. Picking its way over the pebbles, seaweed and the daily decay...

Another day, another wedding ring lost at low tide.

Lockdown - Day #20

Meanwhile back on the other side of Royal Parade, the B&B’s and Guest Houses transform into Hotels (no motels or Holiday Inn’s). The number of potential party venues increase. Eighteenth and Twenty-first, Wedding receptions and cricket club dinner and dances. 

Inside the sound of Southern Freeze warps minds. I don’t know what this is but I have to dance to it… On the road itself, the itchy/scratchy sound of FS1E (Fizzy’s) ricochet between the parked Capris and Allegros. The Hailsham Boys are in town, all Saxon and Iron Maiden. 

Meanwhile, Claude Debussy takes his daily walk along the promenade with his inamorata the young Emma. His life in exile only enlightened by the memory of her delicate kisses in the morning and the music of the sea… the eternal music of the sea!